Gunfire Games’ Chronos is an atmospheric RPG with over 10 hours of action and adventure, and it uses a satisfying combat game mechanic that’s very similar to their Herobound: Spirit Journey on the Gear VR. Chronos had a lot of buzz from GDC as being one of the more compelling launch titles for the Oculus Rift, and the promise of 10-12 hours worth of gameplay has many people looking forward to getting immersed within a grand adventure reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda. I caught up with developer Ben Gabbard at GDC talking about some of the gameplay design and VR design principles that they implemented with Chronos & Herobound: Spirit Champion
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Chronos uses a unique third-person perspective camera that’s different than the approach taken by Lucky’s Tale in that it’s locked into place, and it cuts between rooms as you explore a labyrinth that has many puzzles to solve and enemies to battle. They decided to deliberately violate film’s 180-degree rule, which draws an imaginary line between the middle any given shot and the camera doesn’t usually cross this line as the director cuts between shots. This is a language of 2D film that helps the audience preserve the spatial relationships between the characters within a scene.
But with VR, there’s no need to orient yourself in 3D space because you’re already immersed within another world, and so Gunfire Games wanted to have more freedom to creating maps that weren’t artificially constrained by this fixed perspective. They use the continuity of being able to see the main character as you move between rooms in order to help you orient yourself to the spatial relationship between the different rooms, and how they’re connected to each other. This deliberate violation of the 180-degree rule is a really interesting development in the language of virtual reality, and one that I think works out pretty well — even if it may be a little disorienting to people at first, especially people with a filmmaking background.
Gunfire Games follows the 180-degree rule within Herobound: Spirit Champion, and my recollection of playing the game was that I had the perspective of a security camera always looking north. But my recollection of playing Chronos was that I still had a somewhat distant perspective of the action, but that I was more immersed within their world.
One advantage of violating the 180-degree rule is that it does provide a bit of a cognitive gap that caused me to stop, re-orient myself, and really take in the entire scene. The art direction in Chronos is stunning, and there’s a lot to look at and take in. Gunfire Games seems to have created a pacing in the game that is slow enough where you can take the time to really appreciate this imaginal world that they’ve created.
Chronos is a Oculus Rift launch title rated as comfortable, and will be selling on the upper end of the price scale at $49.99. It feels like one of the most complete adventure games available on the Rift at launch, and if you enjoyed the Herobound: Spirit Journey series on the Gear VR, then you’ll find a lot to love within Chronos. If Luckey’s Tale is the Super Mario Brothers of VR, then Chronos just might be the Legend of Zelda of VR.
Here’s the Chronos Reveal Trailer that was released 9 months ago. The camera position in this trailer are a little closer to the ground and have more movement than what is in the final game.
Here’s a bit of the Chronos combat gameplay, again with the third-person camera placed closer to than the ground than what was shown off at GDC:
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:00.068] Kent Bye: My name is Kent Bye, and I host the Voices of VR podcast. And back in July of 2015, I quit my job to do this full time. I just love doing it. But I do need your support to help continue this podcast. I've got lots of great insights from GDC and a lot of other conferences that I want to travel to and kind of be the proxy of the virtual reality community. So if you do enjoy this podcast, then please do consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voices of VR.
[00:00:35.422] Ben Gabbard: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:41.886] Kent Bye: My name is Ben Gabbard. I'm the development director at Gunfire Games. We're getting ready to release Kronos. It's on the Oculus Rift. We're also doing the port for Hero Bound Spirit Champion, also on the Oculus Rift. That was first released on the Samsung Gear VR. Great, so I think one of the most interesting things about these two games is that you're using a really innovative third-person perspective that is kind of like a fixed camera, that you see the scene kind of unfold. So maybe talk about the development of that and how you've iterated and changed that over from the first Gear VR, Hero Bound, Spirit Champion, all the way to Chronos. So one of the things that we really wanted to make when we went into VR was the comfortability. Oftentimes more intense experiences, you'd lead to that uncomfortable moment where you can only get like, you know, 5-10 minutes of that type of experience. Much similar to like riding a roller coaster. It's just so intense that you can't continue to do that all day. And so one of the big things that we set out to do as we were exploring cameras and how that works, is we wanted it to be very comfortable. We wanted somebody to be able to get that traditional gaming experience where I want to sit in and just enjoy the environment for countless hours. And that kind of led us to the static camera that you see, or the Resident Evil style camera that you see. Initially with HeroBound, we kind of were presented with that just because of the limitations on the Gear VR and what we wanted to show on the screen. And so we thought, hey, this might be an easy way to get a comfortable experience. And in Herobound it's very static, you move left or right, but you really don't get to use any of the head tracking or necessarily, it wasn't set up to really enhance the immersion of that experience. It was much more seeing it as an isometric kind of view. And so we brought the camera more intimately and close, so you could really get to see the character, but also There's a few bits of design wisdom that we learned where in Herobound you lost sight of your character so we created this little pop-up that kind of showed you which direction your character was at. In Chronos it's very much you're the camera moving with your head and as a character goes through the camera triggers in a Resident Evil style camera, you're always focusing on that character as he comes in and it makes for a very comfortable playing experience to where you're not lost with I'm moving left and all of a sudden now I'm moving right and I'm going right back through another camera trigger. We add tolerances into the controls So you're not just bouncing back between camera triggers. And it makes for a comfortable experience. So that you're always, I see my character and now I'm involved in this room. And so these little room dioramas as you're going along playing through the game. Yeah, I think that, you know, coming from a filmmaking background, they have what's called the 180-degree rule, where you never are supposed to cut between two different scenes that you cross, kind of like this imaginary line that's 180 degrees. And I noticed that you're actually kind of violating that rule in the Kronos, where you're actually flipping the camera on the other side, such that you are running, and then when you're running, you're kind of running in the opposite direction. Is that something that you did consciously in order to open up the creative options for the layout? Or talk a bit about that decision to do that. Well, absolutely. It was really more of a gameplay decision to where we needed to lay out the levels to be able to focus on the person coming through. It was very interesting. As soon as you add a type of transition for the eye, it becomes a much more comfortable experience as you're doing those 180-type flips or those 90-degree flips. And what we really discovered in playing through was the ability to be able to say, hey, as long as we have tolerance and if I'm pushing left on the control stick and I still continue to move into the room a little bit like that, I can naturally transition to moving right and it doesn't affect how I'm playing the game. It's very natural. It seems like, oh, okay, I've run two or three steps into that camera and now all of a sudden I'm moving that avatar. But from film versus gaming, it was very nice to be able to explore that, oh, as long as we have that transition of some type of visual break for the eye, when we switch the camera like that, it's not jarring. It's not, oh, what just happened? Where am I at? It's very comfortable because the mind expects that. You almost expect to see, that's where the next camera position should be, because that's where my character is leading into. And so you become very comfortable as you're playing through the game. Yeah, and I noticed that one of the side effects of that is that as I was pushing down the control stick and coming through the door, pushing down in that same direction actually made me go in the opposite direction, which stops my character, which then kind of made me stop and look around and check out the scene before I would just continue to move. Yeah, correct. We really wanted to be able to get you in there, continue with the motion of where the control stick was going, and then kind of stop you to give you an ability to be able to switch directions, change, and also explore what's going on. Our game is very deliberate. The pacing is very deliberate. We want people to not only enjoy the VR experience and the immersion, but also kind of plan what's going on in the next. It's not just a run, hack and slash kind of adventure that you're going on. It's much more, hey, it's a very somber, very you're alone as a hero kind of wandering through this world and figuring out the story yourself.
[00:05:02.725] Ben Gabbard: Yeah, and I really love the Herebound Spirit Champion.
[00:05:04.826] Kent Bye: I played all the way through it, and it's for the Gear VR, and I think it's one of the more involved experiences that feels like a full experience, a lot of really amazing puzzles, having to switch between the different weapons and solve different puzzles. And so, maybe you could talk a bit about, like, what were some of the design intentions that you were trying to do with the Herebound Spirit Champion? So with Spirit Champion, what we really wanted to do was add a more whimsical, but still fun experience where you're able to solve those puzzles with the different gear items as you unlock them throughout the progression of the game. And I think in similar titles that have come before us, it was an homage to that, to where, hey, I've got this gear item, I beat this boss, and now I'm able to utilize this gear item. to further the quest to vanquish the four spirits and finally defeat the fire spirit at the end of the game and save my village, you know, in Herobound. And I think for us it was a guided tour of, you know, we had four months to work on it and we had never done a mobile game before and so our idea was like an homage to that kind of experience, a very comfortable experience, but just like you described where I've got this gear item and I've got this intricate puzzle, how do I solve it with either something I've got or something that I've already obtained to be able to get through this next level of the dungeon or whatever experience you were providing. And I think it also really uses the strengths of virtual reality, which is to be able to take you through different entire worlds. And so you have different earth, air, wind, and water realms that have different characters, but also different worlds, and scenes, and aesthetics, and art styles that you're trying to really explore. And maybe you could just talk a bit about that in terms of using VR to take people through these imaginal worlds. So yeah, absolutely. We think that every room that we craft is like a diorama of where the person is going to come in and explore their own story and kind of, you know, as you're going through these areas, you know, most games and most things that we've seen have very limited amount of these. We do, you know, at Kronos there's over 400 of these different experiences that you're going to provide in each little camera transition and each little experience and you kind of build upon those things. Now I'm in the, you know, the fire area or the earth area and I feel that The interesting part with us is deciding to be third person. Oftentimes people get, oh, well, third person, that's not really VR. But if you get to play it and experience it, I think it really changes your perspective of what can really happen with the medium and how you can tell a story and really feel immersed in that area, in that environment, and be comfortable and say, hey, I can play this an hour or two or whatever I want to do. And I'm not queasy or any of those other kind of negative or uncomfortable feelings that you get when you have more of those intense experiences. I think one of the other interesting things that I've found in playing both Herobound Spirit Champion, as well as Chronos, has a lot of this very similar fighting mechanisms and game mechanics in terms of the fighting, the blocking, the rolling, and maybe you could talk a bit about, in terms of trying to design the gameplay, what you were trying to do with making it challenging, but also so that a player could be able to get better over time. So yeah, one of the big things for us in Gunfire is that, as we were previously Vigil and we did Darksiders, we really like action-adventure and we like combat. And so I think when we brought that to the Herobound series and also to Chronos, we wanted to really experience that combat, the nuances of combat. Herobound is a lot simpler than Chronos. But we still wanted to make it kind of cool, you know, like you could learn some of the mechanics and be able to say, oh, wow, I didn't know I could do that. Or a dodge roll coming into a combo where you bought one of the combo skills in Herobound is really interesting and a fun way to experience the game. In Kronos, it's much more intricate. There's shield parries, there's different mechanics that we've added. to where you're now rewarded for learning the combat system better. There's heavy light attacks with the same weapons. There's multiple weapons with different animation sets that behave all differently as you're going through the game. You can get the one that feels right for you, and then that's what you like to do. And we've also added the magic component as well to Chronos to where you're now rewarded by your sword or weapon flaring up at the right time, and then you're able to strike with more damage if you're able to learn those nuanced mechanics of the combat system. And we really wanted to bring that to VR and say, hey, this is a rewarding experience for those folks who get better at it, you know, wow, I can really learn the combat system. And I feel like when I first started, it was just spam X as best you can. And now I see the pace and how you can set things up and block parry and do all the other things about the cool part of combat. So Kronos, you know, it's got this element of time and as the character gets older and, you know, maybe describe the other different dimensions of Kronos that kind of make it more interesting to you in terms of the decisions as a player that you have to make and the different choices that you have in order to evolve and grow your character over time. Okay, so I think one of the things you can start out with is, you know, it's not revolutionary, but we have a male and female protagonist that you can choose right at the beginning. As you level up, there's two systems. One, when you die, you age a year. It's a lifelong quest, so you have a hero out there, I'm trying to get better, I've still got to persevere and go through that. And so one of the interesting things we have is you get traits as you become older. So every ten years you get a trait, and then you're able to select that. So in the beginning it might be youthful vigor, Where, hey, you know, I get a little bit more stamina as I go along, or brute strength, or these youthful traits. And then later on you get arcane wisdom where, hey, now I'm able to use magic a little bit better as I'm going along, modifying my character through these traits. And also, I'm not going to say it's a reward for dying, but it's another element to say I'm learning the experience. And this makes me more able to achieve those goals of vanquishing the great evil. And so I think from that mechanic, you see a female and a male both progress, not only visually through the aging mechanic where you'll see an older person on the screen as you age 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old, but you'll also be able to get those traits and customize your character in the role-playing sense. And it's kind of interesting and intriguing that, hey, I'm dying, but I get sort of a reward every 10 years that I get, okay, now I've got this new trait that I can possibly enhance my character or do those kind of things. Are these immortal characters or at a certain age will they die permanently? So there was a great debate in the studio about dying permanently but we thought we might get lynched if somebody had you know 12 to 14 hours into a game and all of a sudden because they turned 80 years old on 81 years they die and their game is gone and so at this point 80 is the max out of where you can get to. Oh, so you will die after 80. No, no, you don't die after 80. You get your character. At 80, you'll still be able to play the game. OK. We made that conscious decision. There was a great debate in our studio. There was many people who wanted it to, hey, you know, that's the idea and the nature of the game. But at this point, it's like that. OK. Yeah, that makes sense. And so talk a bit about the extended amount of time that you expect people to be able to play this game. Sure. Right now, we're looking at anywhere from 10 to 12 hours plus. Really, the game is one of the more in-depth games on VR right now in the VR experience. We wanted to really provide to the end user that ability to really get into the game and really see visual stunning things. You know, we've got different types of puzzles that we're really kind of excited to be able to have people learn and kind of explore and understand. And I think from that mechanic, you really have a solid game here with, you know, 12 plus hours of experience. So what can you tell us about the backstory of Kronos, like this world that you're in and what you're trying to do as the protagonist? Sure. So initially, what you'll find out is that you're a hero here that's been selected. It's a post-apocalyptic world. Something bad has happened. You kind of get that through the initial, we kind of give you the story initially of what's going on. You've been selected and now you're out here to go save your community from this great evil. Without giving too much away, what you'll end up doing is you'll end up visiting these fantastical lands to kind of make your way towards that goal.
[00:12:21.596] Ben Gabbard: Now, when I was playing the demo, I was interacting with the computer terminal and getting kind of a back story of this world.
[00:12:26.861] Kent Bye: And do you imagine that some of these things that you're reading about that's getting into the story, is that something that's sort of just adding flavor to the experience? Or is that something where later on you may actually need some of that information to actually solve some puzzles? So not to reveal anything, but we wanted to definitely not hammer you over the head with the story. We really wanted users to be able to kind of create their own. What really happened? I read this about Commander Ford. What did he really do? Who was he? And starting to see those elements, we really wanted people to kind of establish their own story. Some of those are flavor, just text that just add to the environment. Other of those things could be possibly pieces that you'd have to remember or something that would lead you to a solve of some type of other type of puzzle. And so for us, it was really interesting to allow the user to experience those things in their own mind. Like I can create that story as I'm going along and not, hey, here's another cut scene that kind of tells you what's happening and we need to refresh your memory of what kind of happened. You're kind of just playing through and establishing that story as it goes along. To begin off the experience, you're sitting around this table with people in a group, and you're getting a story that's told to you, and this beautiful kind of campfire-like experience. Are there other cutscenes throughout the experience, or is this something that the story is told entirely through the experience within the third-person camera and the gameplay? We have other areas where we do introduce a little bit of that, but not many at all. I think there's less than a handful of them. And in that type of situation, it's kind of unique. We wanted to really set, hey, this is what you are. You're a hero that's been selected. Go out there and save the world kind of idea. And I think as you go through some of the other cinematic experiences, we still wanted to maintain that level of immersion in the world so that you're not taken out too long. And so what were some of the lessons that you've learned through these experiences of developing these games in terms of how to tell a story using virtual reality? I think, you know, for us at least, we wanted to make a game experience but also tell the story and let the user kind of appreciate everything. So there's a deliberate pace to some of those things that we're doing where you can just look around and you're not bombarded by combat all the time and you kind of miss, you know, smelling the roses as you're going along. And so we really think that we have a captivating art style that people really feel immersed in those environments and want to just explore and look around. But also at the same time, we're all gamers and we really love games and solving puzzles and interesting things that are going on, so we wanted to provide that as well. And I think the evolution of going from mobile and the lighter titles, the whimsical title of Herobound, to a more, I'm not going to say adult title, but more serious title, where you're a very somber type mode, I think for us was compelling from a story part, where it's an elaborate, more complex story that you can tell. You know, where the same kind of, hey, a hero goes out and saves the world. In Herobound, it's very simplistic. It's, hey, I've got five spirits and I've got to unite them all. In Chronos, there's much more twists and turns along the way to tell that story. And it was very, for us, being able to fulfill that and the interesting things was really from a static camera where people traditionally don't see that as VR. It's like, oh, VR is first person running along on a roller coaster. While those experiences are awesome, and we do have first person in our game to where you solve puzzles and different things, we wanted to make it comfortable. And I think for us, it was really the game and how that related came before the virtual reality part to make sure that we provide that for the person picking up the title that they say, hey, I got my, you know, this was an interesting title and I'm glad I experienced it because not only did I get the immersion and as you played the game, the sense of being that that works really well in VR, but I also actually had a game here that I was playing for multiple hours. and, you know, for add length. And so for us, it was establishing that and learning those rules and what really felt comfortable for us as a studio, while we're all big RPG fans, and action-adventure is one of the things that we really like to do. Yeah, one of the things that I thought worked really well with Herobound Spirit Champion was that you had to collect a number of different coins, and then once you got to a certain point, then you could update your weapons, and then you have more powerful weapons. And so there was kind of like this progression of your character getting stronger over time. And you've kind of got a similar type of thing within Kronos where as you level up you have a decision to give experience points into a number of different categories. Maybe you could talk a bit about those four different categories and what type of trade-offs you have in terms of how that's going to change your character and how it relates to the world. Sure, so just like in normal RPGs, we have four different traits that you can level up as you level. You've got strength, agility, arcane, and vitality. With a strength type, it helps you maintain blocks, so your blocks don't get broke. It also enables you to do more damage with strength-based weapons. Agility is you're more evade, you're more dodge central, and also do more damage with agility-type weapons. You still get a bump a little bit with strength or agility, but if you choose down that route, it does more damage. Arcane allows you to do more damage when you're in The magic component, so every time that you do a dodge correctly or a shield parry, your weapon will be imbued with a magic component. And that arcane allows you to hit those better and also do more damage when you're ready to strike with those kind of abilities. With vitality, it's pretty simple. You just get more health, so you're a little bit more toughier, tankier, so you can continue on as you're going along. Healing in our game is very decision-made. The animation takes a little bit more time, you don't have a lot of heals, and so you have to really plan when you're going to use those components in the fights and make sure that you're in a safe area before you decide to trigger off a heal. Yeah, and what I noticed is that there's no kind of UI to give you any indication as to where you're at. So you go into the start menu to get some of that metadata in terms of your strength and everything. But the other thing that kind of brings up with these decisions is that it seems like you could play Chronos once and make a series of decisions and then play it again making kind of different decisions for how you're distributing these different qualities and that it could actually give you a different experience of playing through it. Do you think that's true or is it something that people play through once that once they get through it that you don't imagine that they're gonna invest playing another 10 or 12 hours to get through it again? I absolutely think people will go through it. Each weapon that we have has a different animation set, so it feels completely different than the weapon that you previously tried. Even though we have three or four strength weapons, at the end of the day, they all feel completely different in how you play and how you fight in combat. Now, obviously, if you solve a puzzle the first time, you're not going to necessarily get the rewarding experience if you solve it a second time, because you already know how that kind of feels out. But overall, in general, I definitely see people being able to say, hey, I beat it with this agility-based build, now I would like to try an arcane style build or I'd like to try this and then you could go through and the combat is very rewarding to where you start feeling the nuances of the other combat as well. I've also heard recently that you've added some multiplayer capabilities to the Hero Bound Spirit Champion. Is that true? So Oculus did. It's Hero Bound Gladiators. They're used a lot of the art from Hero Bound Spirit Champions but we weren't involved with the actual making of that but it's on the Samsung Gear VR I think right now and you can play as like four gladiators that fight waves and waves of monsters. We have Well, there's a surprise in the Rift, not multiplayer, but in the Rift version of the port that we're doing for Herobound Spirit Champion. There's a surprise area for that for folks, but not multiplayer at all on the Rift. But on Gladiators, they did that and added the multiplayer component. Okay, so is that a collaboration with Oculus Studios that they worked with you to put out the first two games, or is that something that you did on your own? That was a collaboration. They came to us in first steps. We helped out with launching that. And then they wanted a fuller experience. That was like a demo experience for them. And so what we did was Spirit Champions on the Gear VR. We're bringing that to the Rift. We redid the art. Basically, if you look from the two, they have the roly-poly characters and some of the different things that they did. And then Gladiators is brought through Oculus. Again, I think they wanted to show off multiplayer. And we were pretty busy with some of the stuff that we were working on. So I think they just took most of the art that we did from Spirit Champions and made a bang-up game. And Gladiators is pretty fun. So what do you want to experience in VR then? I've experienced some amazing things already just being down here at the Oculus Media Days. They have some cool things with the touch going on, with Dead and Buried, multiplayers. I'm a big co-op slash PvP multiplayer thing and you can just start seeing some of the interesting things that can happen with that. I think that you've got a strong line of titles that are just compelling, that you have the intensity of some titles that are like, wow, that was super amazing, and the other titles are like, hey, that would be cool to just sit down, like we played the Dragon game with the cards, and it's extremely compelling, where there's the evidence of Hearthstone and some of the mechanics there, but the amount of things that they've added to that has been really awesome for us, and seeing that, just the evolution of games in general, not only from Oculus' side, but seeing what Vibe's doing and all the other folks are doing, I mean, you can just see this wave of new ways people are going to tell stories and create end users to be able to just, wow, what an experience. What a moment that I can just talk to either my kids or my friends around, just wherever you're at and say, 20 years from now, you'll be talking about, wow, the first time I played VR, it was this experience and that really stuck with me and that's why I did X or that's why it's so amazing to see the revolution and the updates of what you can see possible, and not only in games, but just in media in general. Does that mean that you're potentially looking at some track controllers like the Touch or HTC Vive to be able to do some more engaging experiences? Is that something that you're looking in or are you looking at sticking with a third-person perspective cameras and the Touchpad? We're always, you know, we just, as Gunfire got established back in September of 2014, currently we're looking at a lot of different things. You'll be surprised when we announce whatever we're going to be doing. But we're looking at everything. Great. And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable? Wow. I guess it's all about the hardware and how fast you can push things. I mean, right currently, rendering out at 90 frames a second and getting that comfortable experience, you're at the top end of what video cards could do right now. But you're so surprised tomorrow somebody announces another breakthrough or another way that things are able to make things faster. And I foresee some type of cyberpunk type thing where you're plugging something in your head and getting some amazing experience, you know, lawnmower man experience where you're just lost in VR completely and able to have that holodeck experience if you want where it's, you know, AR and you're, you know, now you're doing the Starship Enterprise type mechanics. I don't see how that, you know, it's kind of like sci-fi kind of develops the future, you know, where they had rocket ships, you know, way back in the 30s and then you see ways to jump and now all of a sudden you have that. Television was kind of explored way back in the 1880s where you'd be able to project a picture to somebody else over time. Technology, folks that are super smart are working on that stuff right now. You know, I think Amazon announced they're going to do commercial space flights here pretty soon or something like that. So, the sky's the limit with technology, VR, and the immersion that you can have. where you can just see right now, if you had 360 video and VR, you could be on a beach somewhere and almost feel like you're there. All you have to do is add some wind and smell and I'm in the environment, I'm on the beach. And I think from that perspective, it's very intriguing and exciting. Anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say? No, we're super excited. Hope everybody gets a chance to check out the different titles. I think that releasing on the 28th, for those folks that are fortunate enough to have the Rift, check it out, man. We're super excited. We're gamers ourselves. And I think that this is an exciting moment for us as a studio. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you.
[00:23:06.867] Ben Gabbard: And thank you for listening! If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
