Star Wars Battlefront II VR is not happening, which comes as quite a surprise considering the rather good X-wing VR demo from Battlefront I.
In an interview with the Metro, Star Wars Battlefront II designer John Stanley and Criterion general manager Matt Webster confirmed the bad news, though did say that they had learned a lot from the VR demo, including “how you deal with gameplay in a bigger space”.
When asked if there would be any VR options in the game, Webster replied with a flat out “no”, although he then goes on to say that “VR for Criterion is something that’s very important”.
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“VR is going to be a part of gaming’s future in the coming decade,” he said. "At some point we could sit down and spend a good number of hours talking about where VR needs to get to in order to work with that, because in something like this you’re doing the job of a fighter pilot. And in the real world that has a significant physiological effect on you, which would dramatically limit the audience. Matt mentioned at the start, how the handling doesn’t feel the same as in VR, and that’s because they’re completely different beasts.But making the VR demo absolutely informed the work we’re doing now. So there’s a lot of the VR mission’s soul in Starfighter Assault”.
The fact that the X-wing VR demo was very well received, yet EA is not pushing forward with plans for VR in Star Wars Battlefront II doesn’t bode well for the future of PlayStation VR. Already we’re seeing more of the big games tack on a VR mode (see Tekken 7, for example) rather than the big developers offering a fully-fledged virtual-reality experience, but now one of the big guns isn’t even going to do that.
What’s strange is that as early as May 2017, Sony appeared to confirm that Star Wars Battlefront II would be VR compatible. “While there is PS VR gameplay available as downloadable content for Star Wars Battlefront (released in 2015), nothing has been announced regarding PS VR support for Star Wars Battlefront II”, they said in a statement (via Upload VR). Whether it was a thing at one point and it’s now been canned is unknown.
Are you disappointed at the lack of a VR mode in Star Wars Battlefront II? Let us know in the comments below.