ARKTIKA.1, now in development for more than two years, is shaping up to be a gritty VR shooter with a AAA look and feel. Ahead of the game's launch on the Oculus Rift we spoke with the game's executive producer, Jon Bloch, to peer inside the making of the game. [irp posts="69400" name="'ARKTIKA.1' Review – A Gorgeous VR Shooter, Plain and Simple"] Familiar Inspiration If you've played any of 4A Games' Metro franchise—all set in a post-apocalyptic Russian wasteland—you won't be surprised to find that the studio was founded in Kiev, Ukraine. And though Arktika.1 isn't part of the Metro universe, and despite the fact that the company's main headquarters moved to Malta in 2014, the studio is sticking to its guns for their first VR game, building out a new universe, but one which still very much influenced by the region. [caption id="attachment_69366" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] 'Citadel' concept art | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] Marketing materials for the game give an indication of the setting: Nearly a century in the future, the world has fallen into a new ice age in the aftermath of a silent apocalypse. Only the equatorial regions remain habitable, yet pockets of humanity survive in small numbers all over the planet, hanging onto existence in the resource-rich territories to the north and south—resources that everyone wants to control… "There were a number of things that we wanted to do [in VR]. We'd prototyped a number of different ideas and we kind of came back around... some of the ideas went kind of left field," Jon Bloch, Executive Producer on Arktika.1, told me. "We wanted to stick within what we know really well, because venturing out into this new territory of VR, it seemed to make sense to have some sort of pillar to build everything around, and that pillar should be something that we're familiar with. So we wanted to ground it in stuff that we do really well already and so that means post-apocalyptic Russian shooter." [caption id="attachment_69376" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Environment concept art | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] But beyond that familiar foundation, Bloch says the studio wanted to take advantage of the unique capabilities of VR. Touch Made 4A Games Pull the Trigger Arktika.1 has been in development for more than two years, though Bloch says that the studio had been flirting with Oculus for nearly three years, since the Rift DK2 era. At the time the studio hadn't yet committed to making a VR game, nor were Oculus' Touch controllers on the map just yet. Bloch recalls that Oculus' VP of Content, Jason Rubin—who knew the studio well as the former president of THQ—had invited some studio members to come see Touch for the first time. "They contacted us and said 'hey come check [Touch] out'. So we had some people go over and check out some demos... I believe it was maybe at Paris Games week... the people that went were hooked and they came back and said to everybody else here, 'Hey guys, you have to check this out, we have to do something for it. This is really really cool'." [caption id="attachment_69381" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Environment concept art | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] Among the studio's early VR experiments was even a story-driven puzzle game. But once Touch was in the picture, it was clear that a shooter would be ideal, and that AAA production values were on the table right away. “Going back to another one of our [studio’s] pillars, which is story driven content, we knew we wanted to wrap a story around it. And we started developing that and tried to find ways that we can weave all these little bits and experiences into a story and into a more cohesive experience,” Bloch told me. “And we also knew that we wanted to make something that was AAA quality and AAA scope, particularly for VR, where even today much of the space is still short to medium length experiences.” [caption id="attachment_69378" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] A 'mech' from the Arktika.1 universe | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] Continued on Page 2: Effortless Movement » Effortless Movement Back at the start of development, more than two years ago, locomotion design for VR was even less well understood than it is today. The node-based teleportation system that the team chose for the game was relatively new at the time. Bloch says the choice for node-based teleportation was made knowing that they wanted to give the player the freedom to move around large virtual environments, but also be able to utilize their physical playspace without needing to maintain co-awareness of the real and virtual spaces. “When we were starting out, obviously it was very early days. Everything [in VR game design] at that point was still experimental, everybody was still kind of doing all sorts of crazy things back then. We had tried a few [locomotion schemes] that Oculus had been playing around with, even in their internal studios that they were sharing,” he said. [caption id="attachment_69374" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Environment concept art | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] Players will find that when they teleport to the various nodes available to them within a given environment, their playspace will be anchored at a common point to that node, allowing them to physically move to nearby cover using their local physical space without needing to make little adjustments to their virtual position. “[...] we wanted to utilize your playspace to take advantage of cover, and instead of having to think about moving, we wanted it to be a lot more instinctual, so like looking up and thinking ‘I want to go over there’ and then: blink, you’re there,” said Bloch “And then from that point on, you’re using your physical playspace to actually move your body around the objects that are there [for cover] instead of thinking ‘oh I want to go just a little bit further this way, or a little bit further that way’.” Players with larger than the minimum playspaces, Bloch says, will be able to get some angles on enemies that smaller playspaces would not. Guns. [caption id="attachment_69369" align="aligncenter" width="1021"] Enemy concept art | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] And of course with cover and shooting comes guns, something of a specialty for 4A Games. While the Metro weapons are largely gritty, improvised affairs, the weapons in Arktika.1 are streamlined and elegant. It’s clear just from seeing and handling the game’s weapons that a significant amount of thought went into crafting their sleek lines and varying capabilities. [caption id="attachment_69373" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Weapon design concept | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] “Initially a lot of [the weapon design] was based on coming up with different ideas that were fun to hold and fun to use… initially we had a lot of pistols or laser guns, and we wanted to make them more unique and different. And so we started to try to find unique ways that we could pull them away from each other [with regards to functionality],” Bloch told me. “Like the Carver weapon [which can curve bullets around enemy cover], it’s definitely one of the shining examples of how we want to make things different.” [caption id="attachment_69386" align="aligncenter" width="2019"] 'Carver' | Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] Of the 10 weapons players will have access to throughout the game—many of which have a range of attachments to augment their capabilities—all of them are single-handed, ranged weapons. Bloch tells me this was an intentional design choice after experimenting with melee and two handed weapons (including a bow). “That was one of the things that we made a decision on early on… with [our goal of making the game] grounded in reality and really selling the immersion—the really thick atmosphere, and really feeling like you’re there—we wanted every interaction to also feel really realistic,” he said. “We weren’t really fond of a lot of the two-handed interactions because you don’t have anything physically constraining your hands to feel like you’re actually holding both parts of that item. Some other games recently have done that well, but it still feels a little bit… it’s not quite as realistic as we’d like it to be because you don’t have that physical constraint there.” [gallery td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="69389,69388,69387"] Continued on Page 3: Interactivity & Scope » Interactivity & Scope While the weapons are certainly a highlight, Bloch says that players can expect to do more than shooting in Arktika.1. “We have loads of [interactive things]… levers, different computer interfaces… one of the things that we use in between the combat areas are rooms where we might deliver some story, there’s puzzles, there’s different ways to get from one area to the next—you might [need to] open a door and find the key to open that door, or maybe you have to program something to unlock the security system… different things like that.” [caption id="attachment_69377" align="aligncenter" width="2048"] Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] As for the scope of the game, Bloch says Arktika.1 is "definitely on a magnitude of hours to get through," and the team has peppered in reasons for players to go back for another runthrough, including difficulty settings which he says do more than just increase enemy health and damage. There's also an 'Objectives' system which challenges players to complete levels in different ways; doing so will unlock 'Perks'. "We tried to build things in that make it so if players do want to play more they can go back through and change their experience and get more and unlock more, and play through differently. Even play through with fun things... some of those Perks are strategic and some of them are almost like fun cheats, and some of them are just straight out silly." At $30, Bloch says the game is "aggressively priced." Arktika.1 launches exclusively on the Oculus store tomorrow, Tuesday October 10th. [caption id="attachment_69364" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Image courtesy 4A Games[/caption] It remains to be seen how the game will be received, but Bloch says whether or not the studio will develop another VR isn't decided just yet, but they would certainly be up for it. "We definitely wanted to jump into VR, especially from the early days and do something really cool and see what we could do with it. We've had a lot of fun doing that with this game. What we do next is up to a lot of different factors. Would we want to do something [in VR] again? Sure, it's fun." More from this series: Stormland – Insomniac Games Asgard's Wrath – Sanzaru Games Blood & Truth – Sony’s London Studio ASTRO BOT – Sony’s JAPAN Studio Lone Echo – Ready At Dawn Robo Recall – Epic Games