Bethesda has dropped a surprising announcement at E3 2016 that will inevitably change the gaming industry's landscape for the years to come. The game publisher announced that Fallout 4 is getting a virtual reality transformation via HTC Vive in 2017.
Fallout 4 fans may soon find themselves wandering the nuclear wastelands with their feet as the game becomes even more immersive once VR hits the highly popular post-apocalyptic game. The exciting VR announcement came alongside Bethesda's recent reboot of the cult classic uber-fast FPS game Doom, Neurogadget reported.
Media-hyped VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive was notably introduced to change gaming by way adding a more interactive element to electronic entertainment. However, there are no well-known games playable on VR platforms to date. Currently available VR games were experimental projects originally designed by indie teams of programmers and engineers.
"Our view is... let's not make a short [VR] version of Fallout 4... the promise is the whole game. And that's what we're going to be doing," Bethesda Executive Producer Todd Howard said as quoted in Road to VR report.
"The interface is already on your wrist [with the Pip-Boy], you can pull it up and switch around, playing with the weapons. It's exciting for us where even though we've lived in the game, to step it into VR it becomes real on another level."
As reported by CNET, Bethesda will be one of those few game publishers that are making some of their big-name titles available on virtual reality. Japanese tech giant Sony is reportedly preparing a lineup of games slated for PlayStation VR release sometimes this year.
With Fallout 4 and Doom, the industry will surely be paying close attention to the outcome of the VR litmus test for brand-name games that involve a lot of locomotion. The trick in hardware and software development in VR gaming is to come up with a technology that minimizes, if not eliminates, motion sickness.
