I've had a lot of fun in the last year with open world RPGs, in particular with Skyrim and now with The Witcher 3 as well, although I toyed with a number of others.

For the most part, I strongly prefer first person perspective over third person perspective in games in general, however both have their place and can work well. What I like more is games that let you hit a key to toggle between first and third person perspective, such as Skyrim, The Last Testament of Sherlock Holmes etc.

When it comes to being fully immersed into another world - nothing beats first person perspective except even more direct first person perspective. How can something feel more real than feeling like you're actually there yourself doing the stuff you're doing and looking out through the eyes of your character? That's one thing missing from The Witcher 3 that I wish it did have was a first/third person toggle. The game is great as-is with just the third person mode but that does remove me one degree from having full immersion, and I wish it had the option to go full on first person perspective.

Anyway I really love RPGs and in particular open world non-linear ones like these games and I started thinking "what's next?". Well, I don't know it will be next per se, but proper virtual reality is certainly looming on the horizon, with Valve's Vive system going to market in November and the Oculus Rift coming in 2016 as well as other offerings from other companies coming in the near future as well. VR is only likely to dramatically up the game play immersion of any game that uses it effectively to give you a view into an alternative world through your own eyes. And so it would seem a logical conclusion to assume that sometime in the next 2 years we are going to see a game of this caliber come forward and bring us into the world of virtual reality RPG gaming. I for one CANT FUCKING WAIT for that to happen! :) I'm really looking forward to this next evolution of gaming and I believe that first person RPGs are the perfect genre to experience it with. I can't help but imagine that Skyrim or Witcher 3 would be mind boggling to play with a VR headset if integrated properly.

Now it's obvious that there are going to be competing VR solutions and that the market may or may not accept all of them and some people might hold off from purchase until things consolidate around one or two good solutions. I'm also sure that any hope of anyone getting a $300 VR headset any time soon seem like a pipe dream. If I hazard a guess it'll be that the Rift markets for $600-1000 and the Valve Vive for $1500-2000 or more from what I've read about the units to date. I'll be outright shocked if they are under $500 that's for sure. So realistically speaking it'll probably be 2-5 years or more before the average Joe gamer will likely be able to afford to even give a crap about VR at all.

But...

Forget about that. Lets assume that time has passed and VR *is here now* and all that has sorted itself out and the prices of the hardware have come down out of the stratosphere to the point where the average gamer either has one, wants one, or plans on getting one soon. Now that our minds are in that place... and assuming you have no medical/biological/mental/etc. problems with wearing VR head gear (vertigo, motion sickness, epilepsy, whatever yada yada)...

Are you as excited as I to await a massive open world RPG game in first person virtual reality? What type of FPPVROWRPG (I just coined that acronym thanks!) would you like to see? Skyrim 6? Witcher 4?

And finally...

To CD Projekt RED: Please make Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 4 have a first person mode and first person VR headset support! :)

For me the games I am looking forward to playing in VR are and 7 [url=http://store.steampowered.com/app/251570/]Days to Die (VR support is supposed to be upcoming)

The problem with VR is, that certain genres and gameplay elements just don't translate well to it. Complex, fast paced combat, like in the Witcher 3 or the Souls games just doesn't work well in FPP, much less in VR.

Of course, the question is, whether a focus on combat would even be required to make an open world RPG interesting. I imagine a focus on dialogue/story and world exploration could potentially be just as immersive and entertaining.

The best VR games are going to be the ones specifically designed for this kind of technology, with both its advantages and disadvantages in mind. ( This also means there won't be many such games around for the foreseeable future, since it's not viable for a studio to work on AAA VR games , as long as the userbase is too small to support such projects. )

And what you've said about the required hardware is only half of it, since you also need a PC capable of backing up the VR headset. For an enjoyable VR experience you need at least 1920x1080p @ 60FPS, preferably better. Once for each eye, that is. Even current high-end cards have trouble rendering stable 60FPS in games like Witcher 3, much less so doing it twice simultaneously.

Edit: I don't know much about Cyberpunk 2077, but if it's more of a Shooter/RPG, then a first person mode option seems likely.

Only half-jokingly, I look forward to video games being as depicted in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

EDIT: Augmented Reality seems a reasonable halfway point, and would help with graphics rendering since a lot of the "background" would be real stuff. This video is just magic handwaving and not real (yet) but it could be close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMHcanq0xM

Maybe i'm old fashioned but i don't care about VR, perhaps my opinion is related to the fact that i never experienced it... On the other hand, something tells me that games will be even more dumb downed to walking corridors simulators with stuff being throw to the players face ala 3D movies.

You make an excellent point that I had not remotely considered. You're absolutely correct, the way combat works in TW3 has ultra fast movement in all sorts of directions that would be disorienting to say the least in FPP mode, especially Ciri's expanding-circle-attack-5-people-mode thingie. Another excellent point. If it's possible to make a game equally playable on VR and on a traditional display and have it work right in both cases, then it would be cool to see some RPGs developed that take advantage of VR like this, but it does make a lot of sense to not put any significant resources into it until it's a bit clearer what the market is for VR+type of game. Depends on the VR gear I imagine. The Rift is a single 1920x1080 display shared between both eyes so it would theoretically consume a similar amount of resources to a normal display. In my case my monitor is 2560x1600 which is slightly more than double the pixels of 1920x1080, so that'd give a VR headset setup some leeway what I'm used to with games for my system at least. Unclear yet but perhaps they'll show off some tidbits at gaming conferences this year.


With Skyrim being toggleable between FPP and TPP, there is some hope at least that it could have VR support. I believe the Fallout games are like this as well, and Fallout 4 is being developed at the moment. Would be cool if it had VR support. I'm pretty foaming at the mouth for proper VR, but I wont buy a VR unit until they are $350 or less all-in, so there are probably a number of years to go until we get to that point.

AR on-site RPGs might become a thing, but that does require being in a specific location. Larry Niven's Dream Park series of books is built around this concept.

Right now it's probably reasonable not to care too much about it, since it's going to take a few years yet, before the technology is advanced and affordable enough to be relevant to the average consumer/gamer.

And yeah, most of the early VR game releases will probably feel gimmicky. But there's also potential for entirely new genres, which wouldn't work with traditional hardware setups.

"Disorienting" is a slight understatement. More like insta-barf, after about 3 pirouettes. Apparently motion sickness is still a problem, even in less fast paced games, especially when not being used to the VR hardware. I heard they want to focus on Witcher 3 for now, since they still have the expansions in development. But they might throw us a few "crumbs" for Cyberpunk. At least there's some 3 or 4 major VR systems currently in development, possibly more, so that's going to provide a boost to development and is also likely to bring down prices. But yeah, it's going to take a while yet.

As for software, the only major VR exclusive game I know of is that Valkyrie-something-something online space shooter, although there's many more being developed for VR & "traditional" hardware. Games which weren't originally developed with VR support in mind probably won't provide a good VR experience.