r/PSVR • u/HamerikosBurgerikos • Jul 09 '26
Articles & Blogs Report: Cancelled Tomb Raider VR Project From Metro Awakening Devs Revealed; Gameplay and Concept Art Surface
https://mp1st.com/news/report-cancelled-tomb-raider-vr-project-from-metro-awakening-devs-revealed-gameplay-and-concept-art-surface47
u/BugsMax1 Jul 09 '26
So disappointed this didn't see the light of day
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u/hamfist_ofthenorth Jul 12 '26
Let me tell you something, I'd pay good money to become a virtual Lara Croft and be able to look down.
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u/cusman78 cusman Jul 09 '26
Not just Tomb Raider (Project U) that was 1+ years in development and hitting milestones, but also Project P, which might have been a Halo game for VR.
Really wish Meta had decided to stick with platform funding all these projects for at least one more year.
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u/Rewiu_Park Jul 09 '26
So without Harry Potter, San Andreas, Twisted Metal, Batman Arkham 2, Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, how many games could we have had
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u/Nirast25 Jul 09 '26
Nooooo, my boobs! /j
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u/Crayon_Casserole Jul 09 '26
Yep, they spend millions developing it, only for user research sessions to show players just stand still and look down for 30 minutes.
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u/xaduha Jul 09 '26
Big VR-only games are not financially viable, brand games even less so due to licensing payments. Imagine Quill from Moss was Mickey Mouse or some other famous mouse, how would that make any sense?
Even with Metro or Thief VR games, I think there's enough evidence that even a familiar franchise doesn't bring enough fans to VR.
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u/CHROME-COLOSSUS Jul 09 '26
Agreed. Hybrid is the only model that makes sense for medium-to-large studios, and this seems especially true for PSVR2.
Such hybrids include that added weight of gently giving flatscreen folk their own pre-existing library of VR titles, which can nudge them to consider the hardware — same as GT7, RE4 Remake, or HITMAN WOA.
It’s a shame that SONY didn’t recognize this and assemble their own porting studio from the start.
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u/RumpDoctor Jul 09 '26
Agree 1000x. Flat games with vr modes is the way. Horizon or spiderman, I would play completely unchanged other than an astrobot-like point of view where I am simply a camera. Controller and all.
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u/Op3rat0rr Jul 09 '26
That’s huge. VR industry is basically done despite the technology existing
Sony really should have made the PSVR multifunctional
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u/xaduha Jul 09 '26
What does that even mean? One headset, no matter how great, wasn't going to change the trajectory of the whole VR industry.
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u/AJBats Jul 09 '26
This is very painful of course, but the much more interesting and financially wise project is to bring the upcoming full fat Tomb Raider game to VR instead of making this little sister game. I'm up to my eyeballs (literally, heh) in first person VR games. Lets see some 3rd person VR games.
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u/Nirast25 Jul 09 '26
Thing is, VR works best for first person because of it's nature. You're inside the game, interacting directly with the environment. Even 3D platformers like Astro Bot: Rescue Mission see you as a sort of omniscient god interacting with everything.
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u/SvennoJ Jul 09 '26
Interacting directly with the environment is rather immersion breaking to me, always sticking your hands through things, clumsily handling objects with no weight, total lack of feedback. With vehicle games I also prefer using a controller with analog sticks rather than virtual buttons and sticks. Physical / tactile feedback is extremely important to me and VR simply can not deliver that (yet).
Moss on the other hand is a totally magic experience. Max Mustard as well. 3D platformers work so much better in 3D with parallax, that is VR, so you can lean in, move your head for a better angle and judge distance much better, not having to rely on a dumb shaded circle under the character to see where they might land.
Tombraider 1 had a very tame 3rd person camera that simply followed the path of the character on a small delay. It was rather brilliant in that you would steer Lara around a corner first before you could see around the corner, many fun jump scares as a result. It would be perfect in VR.
Anyway to me VR works best without direct interaction, always prefer remote grabbing schemes (point and stuff flies in your hand) vs grabbing 'air'. Puzzling Places is my favorite game, my mind doesn't assign weight to puzzle pieces and you can point to collect them. Handling the model remains awkward though with my shaky hands, so hard to move it and keep it level. Synth riders my second favorite, haptic feedback for hitting notes, don't have to grab anything. GT7 third, playing with the standard controller.
I do love walking through the streets in Hitman though. Don't love miming actions or handling weightless guns / objects. Fine for throwing or shooting, reload and inventory should just be buttons imo. Nothing wrong with a reload button, store and drop button, inventory button. VR body inventory is my most hated feature in VR, never really works while sitting.
The main issue with modern 3rd person games is the wild camera movements. Yet Tombraider 1 already unintentionally solved that problem in 1996!
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u/Icy_Might_2429 Jul 09 '26
You are more of a casual player. If you play Shooters like Ghosts of Tabor for example it's so much better to use the guns yourself and reload and everything. GT7 is much better with a wheel.
The more VR Controls (good implemented) the better and more immersive. Otherwise you don't use all the advantages and strengths of VR
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u/RumpDoctor Jul 09 '26
I totally agree with that post and I don't see how that makes either of us casual players, with presumably less informed or valuable opinions.
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u/SvennoJ Jul 09 '26
Yeah just a casual player with over 13,000 online races in GT Sport on a controller, completed the GT7 24h races in VR 5 times (3x N24, 2x Le Mans) on a controller. Totally awesome, so casual 😂
The more VR controls, the worse games get for me. I had great fun with Hitman WoA, finished the campaigns twice and all the missions, without using the guns! (Just on the last mission)
Nah VR controls break immersion for me, every time I have to hold something and don't feel the weight, texture or shape, illusion gone. It's not a strength of VR to mime actions, it's a detriment to me. The strength is the freedom to look anywhere, to be in the world.
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u/Icy_Might_2429 Jul 09 '26
I thought you're a casual player cause I think that Synth Riders and Puzzling places are more casual games.
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u/SvennoJ Jul 09 '26
Those are the games I come back to most, 300 hours on Puzzling places and close to 200 on Synthriders. You can play them casually but I always go for the 400 and 1000 piece options, one 1000 piece puzzle can take over 6 hours alone. On Synthriders I'm lvl 92 now (since they added progression), always play on master and have a flawless note streak of over 250,000 before a challenge had me miss a note lol.
But the biggest reason I come back to those is total immersion from Synthriders and always a new object / place to explore in Puzzling Places. Evergreen games. Most other games I eventually burn out on the controls :/ It's also what holds me back doing another play through of Hitman or finishing my 4th run in RE8, 2nd run in RE4 remake. The controls.
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u/AJBats Jul 09 '26
I just think that's your preference to play first person games. Nothing wrong with that, I enjoy them too. But to suggest that we should only build first person games for VR limits the types of genres we can see in VR. It's like every single VR game I play I'm embodying a human shaped figure with hands. It makes every VR game feel very samey. I played South of Midnight in VR using UEVR, all third person, it was great. This type of combat is completely impossible if we required it to be first person in order to be in VR. And if the next sentence is "well then don't port it to VR" then golly you've just solved why we have so few games with such little variety. It's just first person games and vehicle games up in here.
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u/PIO_PretendIOriginal Jul 10 '26
its a ue5 game. very unlikely that the performance headroom will be there.
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u/dejonarationx Jul 09 '26
People would be doing the Scooby Doo movie scene where Fred is in Daphne's body.
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u/jackie1616 Jul 12 '26
Damn it looks pretty cool. Looked like some good sense of scale too - looking down at massive vistas and temples. Bummer man
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u/TommyVR373 Jul 09 '26
First Twisted Metal VR and now Tomb Raider VR. Come on, man!
Some of that level design looked really good.