The new Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge VR experience releases today, and I had a chance to play through it and talk to a couple of the creators from ILMxLab about their latest steps towards their vision of “storyliving.” It represents a lot of progress from their initial three chapters of Vadar Immortal, but there’s certainly a long ways to go to be live fully into this vision of storyliving. Galaxy’s Edge does have a lot more sophisticated gameplay with smarter AI enemies, you have more agency to move around during the cinematic cut scenes with more aspects of open-world exploration, and the pacing of the story elements with interactive exploration has also evolved quite a bit as well.
For anyone interested in tracking the evolution of VR and immersive storytelling, then there’s certainly a lot of innovations that are building off what Half-Life: Alyx was able to achieve. There are more choices for missions or challenges to accomplish as well as a few different combat gameplay options as well, but it’s still mostly a linear unfolding of missions and stories. The full manifestation of storyliving will need a lot more technological innovations with AI and natural language processing, the underlying narrative structure with more dynamic character interactions, and finding ways to move beyond the constraints of the mobile compute capabilities of the Oculus Quest through the future of remote rendering and distributed compute. In the large context of storyliving, this represents some small incremental steps on a much larger and more ambitious journey for where this is all headed in the next 10-20 years.
ILMxLab is certainly pushing the limits for quality and fidelity as the worlds are very expansive and immersive, with a compelling cast of characters and virtual performances featuring some the voices of Frank Oz as Yoda and Anthony Daniels as C3PO, which triggered some deep fanboy nostalgia in me that was honestly a bit surprising.
It’s also worth noting that Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge has a significant amount of accessibility options for different types of locomotion, standing vs seated, torso & height customization, and being able to turn on sticky grip so you don’t have to spend hours holding down buttons. All of this is a substantial foundational work that will allow the team to release additional story chapters as told by the bartender Seezelslak as voiced by SNL’s Bobby Moynihan that can be unlocked by gathering enough ingredients in the world.
I had a chance to catch up with ILMxLab senior producer Alyssa Finley and art director Steven Hendricks to talk about the journey from Vadar Immortal to Galaxy’s Edge, how they designed around the story and compelling combat, and some of the different tradeoffs they faced along the way.
There’s some interesting use of augmented reality-enabled watch to help provide direction and guidance on some of your missions through a compass and destination overlay. You can also learn more about the world through scanning objects to unlock journals, and it’s also a holographic communications device so characters can provide you guidance to keep the story moving forward and provide some deeper context to situate you in this place and time.
In the end, I ended up completing all of the missions and achieving all of the challenges. I was hoping for more narrative payoff with cinematic cut scenes or pushing a deeper story forward, and so some of the tasks are more about the journey than the final destination. Going through each of the challenges and missions encouraged me to explore around and discover part of the world that I would’ve not otherwise stumbled across, and it also gave me more things to do in the world after completing the main campaign. The store shows up too late in the game to do anything meaningful with the accumulation of Galactic Credits, and some of the options are more cosmetic skins than changing any core mechanics of the gameplay. But it’s providing the foundation for future stories and expansions into new worlds and stories that will be told across space and time in the Star Wars universe.
Overall, I was satisfied with my time spent in the experience, but if anything wanting more bits of character interactions and narrative rewards for completing some of the side missions. There’s some really great sound design, soundtrack, world building, and overall polish that gives an immersive quality that makes it a joy to explore this world. And I expect there to be a lot more storyliving iterations and innovations as ILMxLab continues to explore this intersection between immersive storytelling and interactive gameplay.
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Music: Fatality
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So there's a new Star Wars game that just came out, Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, and it's a pretty big evolution from the previous iterations of Vader Immortal. So there's a lot more exploration, a lot more evolved gameplay, and also just new paradigms when it comes to how they're telling stories within this experience. So I had a chance to play through all the game, got early access, and then had a chance to talk to a couple of folks from IMLX Lab. Alyssa Finley, she was a senior producer, as well as Steve Hendricks, who was an art director. Just to get a chance to talk about this latest iteration of Story Living and what they learned from previous experiences and where they're going here in the future. One note about this interview is that I actually had a technical glitch where the first five minutes on my side did not record, but I was able to get a lower quality recording for the first five minutes. And so after about five minutes, it improves. But yeah, that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Alyssa and Steve happened on Monday, November 16th, 2020. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:17.591] Alyssa Finley: I'm Alyssa Finley, and I am a senior producer here at X Lab, and I was the producer for Tales of the Galaxy's Edge.
[00:01:25.781] Steve Henricks: And I'm Steve Henricks. I'm environment art supervisor here at ILM X Lab, and I was art director on Star Wars Tales from the Galaxy's Edge. Awesome.
[00:01:35.615] Kent Bye: Well, I had a chance to play through both the original Vader Immortal as well as this, and I see that there's quite a big difference in evolution in this game. And so maybe you could start with the lessons that you learned from Vader Immortal and then how you wanted to change it up for Galaxy's Edge.
[00:01:50.635] Alyssa Finley: There's a ton of lessons from Vader Immortal and part of that was just an understanding of the Quest platform and how to make the most out of that and a whole lot of learnings that we got along the way during that project that we're able to start fresh with this time around, which was a great feeling. Then from an interactivity point of view, I think one of the biggest things we wanted to accomplish with Tales was to take a little bit of that on-rails feeling of Vader Immortal and let the player have a little more choice about what they wanted to do in the world. And that had a lot of implications. It meant we had to be able to support combat from a variety of spaces rather than in the lightsaber dojo where we had you locked in one place. It meant that we had to work out a whole set of accessibility options and comfort options that made sure that everybody could get into this experience and feel like it was customized to the way they wanted to play. And it also made us really think about player tools and what we wanted to offer to players to let them feel like they were, whether they were choosing between missions and challenges or choosing between playing a tale and playing the main adventure, or even within the main adventure, how they wanted to take on any given piece of combat. Every one of those points, we sat down and said, what can a player do here and how do we support different play styles in these arenas? And I'm really proud of the expansion upon the core mechanics from Vader, both in the adventure realm and also in the tale where you're playing a Jedi.
[00:03:19.063] Steve Henricks: It really speaks to ILMxLAB's goal of story living. In Vader Immortal, we often had you in a static position when you were watching cinematics play out, and that's not the case anymore, and that was a conscious decision to allow the player to experience the story any way they want to. If Cecil Slack and Mubo are having a conversation and you don't want to hear it, you just go over and play darts, but the story still evolves around you.
[00:03:42.524] Kent Bye: Yeah, that was the thing that I noticed the most when I was playing through Vader Immortal again is that whenever I'd step on one of those squares and it would fade to black and I just wanted to like shut my eyes and open up again just because otherwise it was a bit of a presence killer. And I actually had the experience of going through Galaxy's Edge and almost getting lost a bit, which I guess was refreshing because in Vader Immortal it's so on rails that you don't really have the opportunity to really get lost at all. So it's a bit of a luxury to get lost here in Galaxy's Edge. But it also took me a bit of time to really understand the augmented reality button that you have that will give you an arrow for what direction to go in. And if you're looking for something in your current mission, if you want some hints, it'll give you some direction as to where to go. But turning that on allowed me to not get turned around because there was actually one time when I actually got turned around and I ended up going through the world's backwards that I'd already been through. And I was actually going like in the wrong direction for where I actually needed to go for the mission. And so Eventually I was like, what am I doing now? Where am I going? So I think there's a little bit of just becoming fluent with that tool that people have to cultivate in order to know what the mission is. And if you need help, then you can push that augmented reality button and that'll help guide you on your way. And once I really figured it out, then I was like done killing and I wasn't as interested in killing enemies, but I just wanted to know what whatever I need to do to be able to move on to the next story beat. And that AR button really helped guide me towards how the story was progressing.
[00:05:05.810] Steve Henricks: That's awesome. There's also a pause menu, and in that pause menu it lists all your missions, and if you didn't experience it, it's in there and it'll tell you what mission you're on. So if you save the game or, say, take the headset off and come back a day later, for one, you have a saved game, and two, you have a journal which will help you out in the era that you discovered.
[00:05:25.158] Kent Bye: Yeah, so I guess when you're structuring an experience like this, then how do you try to strike a balance between the fighting enemies and story beats and more of the puzzle elements of doing a scavenger hunt? As you're architecting this, then what was your process of trying to map it all out?
[00:05:40.629] Alyssa Finley: It all started with the green story, which all starts with just giving you a character to inhabit that allows you that fantasy of being anybody who becomes somebody in the Star Wars universe. Right, like anyone can be a hero, and in this case, it's a droid repairman. technician. So we wanted to make sure that you always were grounded in the world with what you could do and who you are. And, you know, just a couple of those key tools, knowing what your all kit is, knowing that you have a hover pack, like these are the verbs that you have to work with the world in. And now we're going to throw in some challenges like the Guavian Death Gang. And I think from there, once we knew that the player could inhabit that persona, that was when we wanted to really open things up and say, OK, now that you've been through the mission of what happens on the cargo transport, now you can have a list of challenges that you can complete at any time. Now there's a couple of choices as to which main mission you want to go on. If you're really interested in hearing Cetislak's tale, you can just chase that goal first. Go collect some ingredients for him to make a drink and bring them back to the cantina. So I really think it was about grounding you and then opening it up and letting the player find their path.
[00:06:51.498] Kent Bye: Yeah, and one of the other things that I experienced was that in Vader Immortal, I could go through it without ever dying. And in this experience, I think I died like way more than any of the other previous experiences. And I was playing on the normal level and there was a difficulty level. I actually ended up switching it to easy at some point because I found it that I was like, okay, I got enough out of like, what's it like to fight these enemies? And I found myself kind of running out of ammo and then struggling around as sort of gen. So there was sort of like this, I guess the game elements of Galaxy's Edge were quite evolved from what I would say, like the Vader Immortal felt more like a cinematic narrative experience where there was almost like a repetitive aspect to the interactions. Whereas this actually feels like there's a little bit more evolved gameplay. So maybe you could talk about how you started to design the gameplay elements of Galaxy's Edge.
[00:07:44.178] Steve Henricks: Yeah, it's definitely a much evolved game. You're dealing with real AI characters when you're dealing with a Guavian death gang and the Kowakian monkey lizards and the demlins. Those are all AI systems that we built specifically for this experience. So it is definitely much evolved from Vader Immortal, which we try to root ourselves in story first and then make meaningful interactions and encounters that forward the story and still allow you to live it. You know, you can make choices, you can go through and wipe out pirates if you want to, or you can use training remotes the whole time. So yeah, it was definitely involved.
[00:08:19.877] Alyssa Finley: And even from the very beginning of the project a year ago, we had two threads happening simultaneously. And one of them was that story development thread, because that is the heart of everything we do. And one of them was building out some example combat so that we could understand what kind of gameplay we wanted to offer. And then once we had one really solid encounter that showed the fun, spread that out and riff on that and bring that to more areas. But it was really important to us to get one encounter right first so everyone had a really clear shared understanding of the experience we were looking for.
[00:08:52.311] Kent Bye: I'm wondering if you had any specific influences when it comes to other just video games or VR games as you were designing Galaxy's Edge.
[00:09:03.578] Alyssa Finley: Well, we're really lucky that we have a diverse range of folks on the team, people who are complete VR heads who play everything that they can and people who are novices, you know, who are really experiencing VR when they are doing their work and not all other times. And I think there were a ton of games that were influential. I mean, obviously, Vader was a huge influence on everything we did because it was the foundation we built it off of. Even Secrets of the Empire and some of the previous X Lab experiences also informed a lot of what we were doing. And then, of course, when something like Half-Life Alyx came out halfway through our development, that was something that everybody was talking about and everybody was keeping an eye on, for sure. And Steve, you probably have some influences as well.
[00:09:45.268] Steve Henricks: No, I mean, I think you covered most of them. I mean, Alyssa and myself have been in AAA games for a long, long time before we came to XLAB. So, you know, there's influences at my time with my previous employer where, you know, just fundamental game ideas are there, like things like The Journal and things like that. I mean, those are obviously sort of taken from other experiences that we've had before, but there's still a ton of value in it. And there's a lot of ways to make it new and interesting, especially in VR.
[00:10:14.743] Kent Bye: Yeah, the, uh, the multi-tool, I think I could see a little bit of the half-life Alex influence there. And I actually had trouble figuring out the first time I had to switch from the screwdriver to another one. And I actually kind of got stuck there and I had to like restart and then do it again. And then I was like, okay. And then eventually I kind of accidentally discovered that. So. of all the different things I'd say that was the most confusing aspect and also there's a sense of needing to pick up and drop things and I actually eventually turned on the auto grip because I was like holding the grips for so long and so I think like the default settings were such that It could be a little bit fatiguing of kind of like carrying things around or needing to drop things. But maybe you could talk about that design element, because I guess when you talk about a VR game, you want to be able to make it so that you're you're doing this kind of like juggling almost with like your things that you're carrying. You have to drop things and kind of pick things up. And so maybe talk about that aspect of designing those VR interactions.
[00:11:15.888] Steve Henricks: So that stuff's always challenging, specifically when you can't literally feel something in your hand, right? So, you know, there's a lot of technical wizardry going on there to make that even feel right. Like when you're shooting guns and stuff like that. I mean, we have haptics on our controllers that help augment that, but we also do some animations and things like that, that actually help your mind understand that you're getting some kind of kickback from those weapons. Yeah.
[00:11:39.073] Alyssa Finley: In terms of the Sticky Grip, that's a great piece of feedback. I think we took our best guess as to what a good set of default settings was to try to really bring immersion to the player. But everybody's got their, like, our director Jose has RSI, and so he's like, Sticky Grip is essential for him. He does not want to be grabbing stuff for long periods of time. Whereas for me, it really helps me keep track of where my hands are and what they're up to because I'm thinking about like, okay, this is a conscious hold. I have my gun over here. I have my all kid over there. But a lot of the work we did in the comfort settings menu and the settings menu in general was to try to offer as many choices as we could towards making people feel comfortable in VR for what works well for them.
[00:12:22.540] Steve Henricks: Yeah, accessibility is huge at ILMxLAB and to Alyssa's point, all the settings we have in there, including just being able to move your torso around, you know, to accommodate different sizes and shapes of people, that stuff that we don't take lightly. So sorry that you had that experience, but I'm glad you found all the settings there to change it and make it your own.
[00:12:42.940] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was actually the tool tips and the loading screens where I saw that little tip and I was like, oh, you know what, I'm going to switch that because that is kind of annoying. But maybe you could take a step back and maybe ground us into where we're located at here in the cinematic universe of Star Wars and, you know, who we're playing and then just kind of set the broader context of where we're at in this story.
[00:13:04.250] Alyssa Finley: Steve, I'll let you take that since you decided literally where we are in the world.
[00:13:09.614] Steve Henricks: Well, we're in Black Spire. We're on the outskirts of Black Spire Outpost. We're in the wilds of Batuu, and we go through a couple different biomes, and you've seen them. They're pretty different spaces, but we wanted to show the vastness of Batuu. You know, we play as a droid repair technician who works for Mubo and Mubo is a character that actually exists in Black Spire Outpost at the park. He appears as audio in a couple places, including Ogus Cantina. But now, you know, we've made him real. He exists. He's with you. He has a glowing personality. He's tons of fun to be with. And, you know, we're excited to have him. But as a droid repair person, you're an everyday Joe, just doing your job. And then you get thrown into these crazy, exciting circumstances where you have the option to become a hero.
[00:13:56.562] Alyssa Finley: Well, one of the neat things about Part 1 is that everything that you do in Part 1 is set on or around Batuu. And I say around because, of course, you start out in space. But then you come crashing down onto the planet. And from there, the entire adventure is either in the outskirts of Galaxy's Edge or in the wilds. But then even the tale for the first part is that in a different timeframe, but in the wilds of Batuu as well. So we really wanted to like expand that world and let people feel like they were seeing a part of the park that nobody has ever gotten to, a part of the world that nobody's ever gotten to see before.
[00:14:32.701] Kent Bye: You said the park, is this the same area that was built out there at Disneyland in California?
[00:14:39.475] Steve Henricks: Yeah, at Disneyland and Disney World, the stuff you see behind me actually exists. If you happen to make it to the park, you'll see this stuff in real life and be able to walk up to it and touch it. And I think one of the really interesting things, especially about VR, is that for those of us who have been to Galaxy's Edge, you can actually go up to the window in the cantina and look at a spot that you physically stood on as a real person in the real world.
[00:15:04.130] Kent Bye: Hmm. Yeah. And I really liked going out and gathering ingredients and then coming back and then getting a drink and then getting a story. So maybe you could just talk a little bit about the bartender character and the conceit of going into these almost like interactive dreamlike stories that are going into different aspects of the lore.
[00:15:24.296] Alyssa Finley: We always saw Tails as a platform. I think from the very beginning of the time that the idea was cooking around xLab, which was many, many years ago, I think maybe three years ago, it started to be talked about. There was always this idea that of this cantina that you could go to and the stories that you could hear there that would literally transport you. I think that was one of the things that we most wanted out of this project was that central person who's the storyteller. And who can be the, you know, you talk to Cecil Slack, you bring him a couple of things he needs, he will take you to a place that you could not even imagine and let you experience the story firsthand. I mean, Jose likes to say he's the best storyteller on Batuu, and I think that's right on. But our vision for that was really about making it so that we could go to any era in the Star Wars timeline and give you a little taste of those worlds. And I think this is a great opening salvo to the potential of what we'll be able to do over time.
[00:16:22.126] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the other aspects of this experience was that you're collecting all sorts of stuff. You're collecting spare parts, you're collecting money, and you're kind of accumulating things. And then it wasn't until, I don't know, maybe three or four hours in before I could really do anything with any of the things that I was collecting or buying. And so maybe talk about that exchange in currency. Cause it was pretty late into the experience until I even knew what, and eventually I just stopped picking up the money. Cause I was like, you know, I have no idea why I'm picking up this money. Cause I don't know how I'm going to be able to get out of it. So maybe just talk about the currency and what you were thinking in terms of what kind of upgrades or things that you can give for the players.
[00:16:59.673] Steve Henricks: Yeah, I think the currency really comes down to play style. So if you're a heavy droid user and you use marksman droids all the time, you're bound to lose a bunch of them. And if you have cash, you can go back to Mubos and you can shop for the ones that work best for you, you know, whether it be a shield droid or the bomber boats, which, you know, you throw out there and they just go after people. So it's really about allowing you to purchase the tools to play the way you want to play. And then, of course, there's some cool new outfits, which everybody likes new outfits.
[00:17:31.239] Alyssa Finley: Yeah, I think there's some cosmetic upgrades. And I think that Mubo's workshop is one of those places where we have a lot of room to expand over time as well. We really wanted to get the foundations out this time around. And I think where it appears in the current story, to your point, it really is it's late in the game. So it's not go to all the time resource. But I think as we develop future adventures and future stories, there'll be more to do there.
[00:17:54.945] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could talk a bit about like how many stories are you launching here? Because I know that there's a tales tab that has at least one of them that I was able to unlock. And then the other ones have a lock. And I don't know if I just need to play more and unlock those or if those are going to be launching later.
[00:18:10.869] Alyssa Finley: Those are coming with part two.
[00:18:13.828] Kent Bye: Okay. So as you, you have basically the one application that people are buying and then from there you're going to be like, and these upgrades and updates, are these going to be like DLC or are they just going to be pushed out as you go on?
[00:18:28.411] Alyssa Finley: It's going to be one app overall. And so over time we will release part two, which will have more adventure, more tales, more fun things to do.
[00:18:37.683] Kent Bye: In part two, is that a free update, or I guess I'm just trying to get a sense if that'll be like a paid update, or if it's just releasing in phases.
[00:18:44.073] Alyssa Finley: Unfortunately, our lips are sealed on that one.
[00:18:46.938] Kent Bye: Okay. Great. And yeah, so I guess moving forward and looking at all of the other aspects of the Star Wars universe, you know, I just think of the Mandalorian and the virtual production tools. And so I know that Jon Favreau has been involved in creating experiences like Gnomes and Goblins and, you know, doing a lot of stuff within VR. And so to what degree is the stuff that you're working on there at IMLX Lab feeding into other aspects of productions within virtual production or other aspects of how the pipeline of other stories are being told?
[00:19:21.857] Steve Henricks: I think for me on the art side, asset sharing is huge for us at ILM and ILMxLAB. And as we work on these virtual production tools, which are real time tools, we sort of become more valuable in that space because we do real time. We make things work in real time all the time. And we aren't constrained by some of those film requirements. We have our own set of constraints. But we do a lot of sharing of assets already. So like the Millennium Falcon that you see in the game is actually literally a translation to real time of the asset that's in the movies in episode nine. So in terms of asset production, we definitely have a pipeline where we can go back and forth into those kind of worlds.
[00:20:07.802] Alyssa Finley: Yeah, and I think the same goes with technology. There's some really smart people developing some really smart stuff. And whenever we can take advantage of those ideas and those technologies, we do. Whenever we can give back, we do. And that's one of the beautiful things about working at ILM, XLAB, ILM, and Lucasfilm is that there's this tremendous sharing culture where it's about making this world come to life. And everybody is working towards that larger goal. And it can make some tremendous magic happen.
[00:20:38.233] Kent Bye: And I don't know how much people, when they're going into this, if they're going to know who's going to be featured in this, but for me personally, as I was in the experience and I was able to see and hear some of the original voice actors and some of the original series, there was something about that that made me I don't know, maybe extra nostalgic or felt like extra present, but also it was kind of a surreal moment, I have to say, when I was like listening to that. So I don't know if you want to add anything there or leave that for people to discover for themselves, but maybe talk a bit about that aspect of getting that talent to be featured in here.
[00:21:12.450] Steve Henricks: Yeah, we can definitely talk about it, and we're happy to. Meeting Frank Oz virtually is like a dream come true for all Star Wars nerds and non-nerds alike, myself being a pretty big Star Wars nerd. He actually took the time to explain the motivations of Yoda, the character, and really help us understand who Yoda was. And that is an invaluable resource for us that now we have in our pocket from the source. So that was incredible.
[00:21:42.676] Alyssa Finley: He also helped us understand really where Yoda would be at this particular time frame based on Yoda's life experience, which was huge. I mean, it was just so incredibly informative.
[00:21:53.420] Steve Henricks: Yeah, and Anthony Daniels was a treat to work with also. It's really amazing that you can go in VR and virtually experience these characters that you've only seen on the screen. Like you said, it's very eye-opening to be standing next to C-3PO when Anthony Daniels, C-3PO, is speaking to you. It's amazing.
[00:22:12.431] Alyssa Finley: It's incredible. But that said, we also have some new characters that, you know, Tara Rashin, who's voiced by Deborah Wilson, who was also in Jedi Fallen Order, talk about a intense, wonderful, like she brought that character to life. And she was recommended to us based on her performance in Fallen Order. And it really makes it, it brings the world to a whole new level of just intensity when Tara is coming at you as she does.
[00:22:38.745] Steve Henricks: Yeah, her performance literally changed the course of that character in our story. So she really brought it.
[00:22:44.707] Kent Bye: Nice. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:22:56.297] Alyssa Finley: it's all about empathy, to be honest. It's about being able to literally stand in someone else's shoes and have them be your shoes, whether that's embodying the character that's a little more defined, like what we did in the tale with Addie Sun Tze. You are in this character, you hear her voice, you are experiencing what she's experiencing at the same time, but you also have the adventure in which you're your own character. And I think the things that happen to you in VR create an emotional dent in a way that is really meaningful for telling great stories. And I think that's what we most want to explore in our narrative work at XLAB.
[00:23:33.463] Steve Henricks: And I think for me, VR is really about exploration and transporting yourself to different locations and just experiencing other ways of life, right? Star Wars has all these walks of life that are totally unique and interesting. And I just want to be able to go to all those places, like particularly now with some of the restrictions we have with COVID, to even be able to see Galaxy's Edge virtually is a treat for me. And it definitely helps transport me to a time when we didn't have such a such a restriction.
[00:24:04.069] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:24:10.317] Alyssa Finley: I think from my point of view, the biggest thing is that we made Tales so that people could play in the Star Wars world, and we really hope people enjoy the opportunity to do so.
[00:24:23.235] Steve Henricks: Yeah, we're definitely looking forward to people experiencing the stories that we've put forth here. And, you know, I just wanted to thank our team for putting in some really Herculean efforts to get this to the quality level it is. And we hope, hope you all enjoy it out there.
[00:24:38.588] Kent Bye: Yeah, I have to say that the world building across the different biomes, as you mentioned there, a nice diversity, but also just for me, I was just impressed to see how good a lot of these worlds looked. And yeah, I just enjoyed exploring through them and having the agency to be able to move around and as a cinematic started not be locked in. And yeah, it just felt like there's an additional levels of polish on this experience that I think it's nice to see the evolution. And yeah, I look forward to seeing the increased updates and where this all goes. And yeah, I just wanted to thank both of you, Alyssa and Steve for joining me today on the podcast and look forward to the future chapters. So thank you.
[00:25:15.008] Steve Henricks: Thank you, Ken.
[00:25:15.989] Alyssa Finley: Thank you so much.
[00:25:17.407] Kent Bye: So that was Alyssa Finley. She's a senior producer at IMLX Lab, as well as the producer for Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, as well as Steve Hendricks. He's an environmental art supervisor at IMLX Lab and art director for the Tales from the Galaxy's Edge. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, well, they certainly did get a lot of lessons from Vader Immortal, because as I played through Vader Immortal again, there's a lot of things that make it a cinematic narrative experience, but there's a lot of the interactions and gameplay that became a little bit tedious. And I'd say that there's similar aspects of this game where at some point I was like, okay, I'm done with the combat. I just want to know how the story is going to continue to unfold. And it's significantly a lot harder than the previous games. And so I would expect for folks to die a lot. And I think once I switched over to the easy mode, then it actually became almost too easy. But for me, I had got enough out of what the gameplay was from the combat scenarios. And I was more interested in getting to the end of the story. And I think at the end of this experience, I ended up doing all the different challenges and all the different missions. Overall, it's still a fairly linear experience in terms of the missions and stuff. There is some choices that you can make, but they're not significant choices in terms of when you go into the world for the first time, you have to go through in a linear fashion, and then you can kind of jump around and have more agency to where you go. As you go through, you have to unlock all these different worlds. And I think once you get a sense of how to work with the missions and using this little augmented reality watch where you can push a button that helps give you clues and directions if you're lost, which I found personally helpful to be able to do some of these different missions and Who knows what it would have been like for me to be able to go through this entire experience of trying to find all these objects and whatnot. It's a bit of a scavenger hunt. Having gone through all that, I'd say at the end, I would have liked to see a little bit more payoff after going through and collecting all these different objects, if there's some sort of story beat or whatnot. It's just sort of like your reward is some credits, or you just have a little blue box that says, OK, you accomplished that mission. So I don't know, I guess looking for a little bit more of a reward, if there's some sort of story or something else that gets unlocked, you know, you're gathering all these objects and you're accumulating all this currency and money, but yet the only thing that you can really do throughout the entire experience is to play darts. Or once you get to a certain point after going through like 80% of the experience, then you finally like unlock being able to go to a store and then By that time, I personally didn't need to buy any of these other objects because I just accumulated enough on my own. And then I guess my play style just adapted from what I was able to get access to. So just having access to that story a little bit earlier and then also just doing things that are not just cosmetic, like something like Half-Life Alyx, where you're gathering the different resin and then you're able to actually upgrade your weapons and change your experience of the game. I didn't feel like the accumulation of this different currency was actually changing my experience of the game. It's more cosmetic and be able to change my gloves. I ended up buying all three versions of the gloves and basically spent all the money that I accumulated through the entire game just trying to figure out, OK, what are the differences between these things? And it really wasn't. It was just like a cosmetic skin that you're able to get. So, I guess that was a little disappointing. I'd like to see a little bit more thought in terms of how to use the store a little bit earlier within the experience. In terms of the character acting and the performances, I thought all those were really quite good and immersive and, you know, some of the best that I've seen in VR altogether. I could certainly see a lot of influence from something like Half-Life Alyx in terms of, you know, not being locked in one place and be able to have the agency to kind of move around a little bit. And even the multi-tool had certain aspects that reminded me of the puzzles in Half-Life Alyx. Although I'd say that the puzzles in Half-Life Alyx were a little bit more interesting they were able to do with IMLX Lab. I mean, once you kind of figured out the conceit, you're just more of a manual switching of these things rather than actually trying to solve any sort of puzzle. So, it became more of an embodied friction rather than sort of a mental friction, because it's more about you switching your hands. There's almost like this juggling mechanic where you have to drop things and be able to pick things up. And so, yeah, for me, I would always keep two extra guns on my side and then have like four guns at any time, just because it is fairly easy to run out of ammo once the combat gets ramped up there at the end. So I think it is saying something that I was motivated to play through the entire experience and, you know, to really stick with it. And the AI was a lot more evolved, a lot more interesting. You know, I'm not a big fan of the shooter genre in general, so I don't end up playing a lot of these other games. So I'm not a good person to compare how this rates into the other genres of the first person shooters. But I think for me, as somebody who's not into the first person shooters, I actually had a fun time playing this game because I thought that there was other things that were in the world that I wanted to explore. And there was also things in terms of the story beats and how things were progressing that made it more interesting for me to be engaged in that type of gameplay combat. And it was interesting to hear how there's at least some choices of the combat. You have these droids that you can send out three at a time and they go out there and they shoot lasers and fight the enemies. And so if you want some help and that's the way that you want to fight, then that's one option. It's a little bit more passive in that sense, because you're letting these droids go off and do a lot of the combat for you. But just to have at least some of those options and choices. And one of the big things with the store was able to buy more droids. But like I said earlier, it's like the store shows up so late that you can't really do much with that as a strategy. You're already kind of fixed into your strategy by the time you get to that point. And I think the other big thing I got from talking to them was just the emphasis of different accessibility options. There is this tradeoff between like holding the grip and being able to pick up objects and dropped objects. And I would say that that actually is more immersive. And I understand why they chose that. It's just after playing the game for a while, you're holding down the grip button essentially the whole time, unless you only carry around two guns and you kind of put it to your side, then I guess you wouldn't have to carry it. But I was carrying two guns the whole time and kind of like holding in those grips. And so it kind of gets a little fatiguing So the sticky grip, I think, is a good option for folks if you want to, you know, start with seeing if you want to hold the grips good is a little bit more better experience and more immersive. But if you do find yourself getting tired, then you can find the sticky grip. So yeah, just having a wide range of accessibility options seem to be pretty important for IMLXLAB. There are some challenges that are left there that are a little bit like achievements that in some ways point you in certain directions to be able to look at things that maybe you weren't looking at. And I like some of the challenges better than the others. Some of them you just automatically do just from the course of playing the game. But in terms of choices that you have throughout this experience, I did find that there was like maybe two or three choices at any given time for what you could do and maybe focus on one of the challenges. But the missions kind of get unlocked as you go along. And there's kind of ongoing missions, but it's really like a handful, maybe two or three at any moment. And then it's otherwise fairly linear as you're going through it. So I think that makes sense in terms of just structuring the game. But I think as it moves on, just thinking about if there's even more ways to make it more nonlinear. especially as you start to figure out the little augmented reality button that you can push to be able to help give you a little bit more direction, which I see is a bit of a tool tip. Like if you don't want to use that, then you can probably play through the game and try to achieve all those things. And it's significantly a lot harder. But if you do need some help and some tips, then when you push that little arrow, then it'll give you a little diamond to show you where you go generally in the direction and then you have a little arrow on your watch that points to you what direction you need to go to actually get there. So I found that to be kind of an interesting, like the Google Maps of this world where you're getting a little bit more direction as to where to go. And there was a really nice conceit as well as having this little wristwatch with holograms and just to help move the story along as well. And there's different journal entries that you're scanning these different objects throughout the world and then you're getting more context into the lore and there's over 50 of those different journal entries that you can get. So yeah, I think overall it was a satisfying experience. And like I said, I 100% completed it, which is not something that I always do on all these games. And so I found it engaging enough. And it was pretty nice to see some of these characters that I'm familiar with since my entire life, pretty much. And just to be in the same virtual world with those same character actors, there was something that was different about that, about that sense of nostalgia and having a connection to these characters from the movies and to be able to actually see them within VR and to hear their voices. And yeah, I don't know, it's hard to describe exactly what that felt like, but it was different than other experiences, I'd say. It was like this nostalgia and, you know, this fanboy aspect, I guess, for someone who's been a fan of Star Wars for my entire life. So if you're into Star Wars, I think you're definitely going to be into it. And yeah, in terms of like living into the dream of story living, I think there's quite a long ways to go in terms of actually get there. We're still at the very early days and where we're going to get to in like the next five, 10, 20 years is going to look a lot different. I think this is good stepping stones and it's definitely going the right direction. I'm happy to see the evolution from Vader Immortal, which I honestly wasn't all that impressed with because I just felt like it was not necessarily pushing the innovations in terms of storytelling or gameplay. And so, as we get into this experience, though, I think they're actually starting to have a little bit more cohesion in terms of how these aspects of gameplay and story start to fit together. Yeah, I'm excited to see their vision of story living and how that continues to evolve moving forward. And I think they have a good platform here to be able to build upon. So that's all I have for today. And I wanted to just thank you for listening to the voices of VR podcast. 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