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NEWS: Summer Lesson VR Game Gets English-Subtitled Release in SE Asia in 2017




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LinkTSwordmaster



Joined: 23 Dec 2005
Posts: 370
Location: PA / USA
PostPosted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 4:53 am Reply with quote
Literally everything Harada said is exactly what I want from VR. Essentially, something that speaks to and feels "personal" (in some sense) to the player. Setting the potential for inadvertent upskirt-fests aside, I'd love nothing more than an extensive and personal VR version of a Persona game. First-person dungeon crawling is a no-brainer, but the thought of wandering around a town like Inaba and physically sharing space with Yosuke and Yukiko in a classroom or on a date or something would be amazing, purely based off of the already-established social interactions Persona already includes.

I think that's why Final Fantasy 15's VR demo was a little bit of a "misfire" for me - the car scene at the end has potential, but actually trying to fight in battle purely with warping around & a lightgun-style combat.....I'd maybe have rathered them just make it a normal battle demo but with a gamepad & VR headset, or keep the VR segments isolated to driving the car and hanging out with the other guys in the party while they travel and goof off.
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Pokenatic



Joined: 24 Jan 2012
Posts: 563
Location: Neo Venezia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 10:29 am Reply with quote
LinkTSwordmaster wrote:
Literally everything Harada said is exactly what I want from VR. Essentially, something that speaks to and feels "personal" (in some sense) to the player. Setting the potential for inadvertent upskirt-fests aside, I'd love nothing more than an extensive and personal VR version of a Persona game. First-person dungeon crawling is a no-brainer, but the thought of wandering around a town like Inaba and physically sharing space with Yosuke and Yukiko in a classroom or on a date or something would be amazing, purely based off of the already-established social interactions Persona already includes.

I think that's why Final Fantasy 15's VR demo was a little bit of a "misfire" for me - the car scene at the end has potential, but actually trying to fight in battle purely with warping around & a lightgun-style combat.....I'd maybe have rathered them just make it a normal battle demo but with a gamepad & VR headset, or keep the VR segments isolated to driving the car and hanging out with the other guys in the party while they travel and goof off.


I agree, that kind of VR experience is what I'd want too, but... the probable reason as to why Final Fantasy 15's VR mode is like that is probably tied to what is arguably the biggest problem VR has to deal with: motion sickness. That's why a large majority of VR experiences involves teleporting around like FF15 or has movement that's limited to how much you can move in room-scale plus teleporting. Capcom tried to just have a typical video game movement scheme with the Resident Evil 7 VR demo and from what I've heard from that, quite a few people got motion sickness from trying it. (as for why stuff like Until Dawn: Rush of Blood doesn't seem to cause as much problems, there's apparently enough stuff fixed to your movement that the game doesn't trick your brain into thinking that it's in motion, or something like that)

So until an 8 ft motion ball that you play VR in is standard or they come up with some other sort of solution, movement in VR is gonna be limited.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 1991
PostPosted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:34 am Reply with quote
I believe the Visual Novel genre can get an enormous boost from VR.

So too can the point/click genre be reinvented.

Essentially I can imagine detective games like Hotel Dusk, Trace Memory, 999, etc. could be awesome.

Don't need any high falutin visuals or large mobility. The current VR setup would already make these games more interesting.

Good art design, easily achievable with anime aesthetics using enclosed spaces would run fine.

Hanging with your bros in Persona would be awesome just being there with conversations between everyone at Junes, that sort of thing.

Of course the dating sim part would also be awesome.

The turn based nature of such games would also likewise be the best fit for the current VR limitations.

Though considering a game like Zone of the Enders 2 takes place with someone stuck in a cockpit of a mech for the entirety of the game would also be good for action mech games.

Considering VR doesn't have locomotion nailed down that well yet a Persona game could just swap to third person whenever you need to go around and enter 1st person during battle or when talking to NPCs or for cutscenes.
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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:54 am Reply with quote
I find something strange about a character with giant anime eyes also having a fully-detailed set of teeth.
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Hikarunu



Joined: 23 Jul 2015
Posts: 950
PostPosted: Tue Oct 18, 2016 1:07 am Reply with quote
Boo. Not gonna play this boring game. Illusion's one look better and gameplay probably not restricted too.
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LinkTSwordmaster



Joined: 23 Dec 2005
Posts: 370
Location: PA / USA
PostPosted: Wed Oct 19, 2016 4:04 am Reply with quote
jdnation wrote:

Hanging with your bros in Persona would be awesome just being there with conversations between everyone at Junes, that sort of thing.

Of course the dating sim part would also be awesome.

Considering VR doesn't have locomotion nailed down that well yet a Persona game could just swap to third person whenever you need to go around and enter 1st person during battle or when talking to NPCs or for cutscenes.


Take Persona 4 for example. Say after classes, you invite Yukiko out to a food place for a date. Once the call is finished, the game displays a message like "Please secure your VR display now", and then fades into the scene of you (Yu) sitting in a booth at the restaurant waiting for Yukiko to arrive or something. You sit stationary in the booth with the VR helmet on, listening to her talk, answering dialogue boxes, eating your food/not depending on your controller navigation. At the end of the date, she bashfully suggests she'd like to try sharing a milkshake with two straws in it, and after having sat across from each other the entire date, you can lean in closer with her for the straw as she nervously tries not to stare at you too much while she's blushing and her face is (uncomfortably?) close to yours. At the end of the restaurant scene, the screen fades out softly and moves you automatically to the street near her family's Inn as she says her goodbyes and you see her to her door. The screen fades one more time, and the message "Please remove your VR display now" displays as the game resumes its normal RPG gameplay.

My point being in that example, is that I'm fine if the entire game isn't VR, just some very special sections/scenes of the game that make sense for VR. I think where VR is going to shine its best is not in high-intensity action sequences, but closer moments involving human social interaction. I really like that Summer Lesson seems to at least have that concept nailed down, and I'm sure they likely have many similar situations to the one I mentioned included in the game. The thing is, I don't expect Summer Lesson to be as long or as story-intense as something like Persona. I want to have my VR cake and eat the deep RPG combat too. Even if "remove VR display now" messages risk breaking immersion, I still argue that they'd feel "special" and "memorable" in their own right if the scenes and transitions were framed/telegraphed properly. I could endlessly come up with ideas....sitting in a clothing store as Ai tries on different clothes and asks what you think of her outfits, sitting in the Nightclub while everyone plays the King's Game - you wind up with someone on your lap, lounging in the Hotsprings and being able to dip your head underwater....I can only hope Persona 5 gets some kind of update or DLC on PS4 that pulls stuff like this off.

All I'm hoping for is that the more notable game series like Final Fantasy, and especially Persona step back and take some time to think outside the box with VR stuff and create unique experiences that otherwise couldn't be achieved just by sitting & watching the TV screen. If I ever get a chance to buy the Asia-region Summer Lesson with the English subs, I'm totally up for that, but VR will never jump to the next level of mainstream acceptance until we can steer away from all of these "roller coaster-shooting gallery" games that evoke memories of crappy Wii motion minigame compilations.
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