[PSVR] The Inpatient

[christian]

http://www.supermassivegames.com/games/the-inpatient

1400_700_INPATIENT-1.jpg (470.6 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

Story trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LproxdJlAQo

[christian]

Hands-On With The Inpatient's Voice Recognition Dialog Features - https://uploadvr.com/psx-2017-inpatient-voice-preview/

My experience with The Inpatient this weekend was highlighted by two key features: the voice-recognition powered dialog system and wonky locomotion. For the dialog system every time a character spoke to me I’d have two potential responses appear in the air, floating next to their head. The one on the left represented a positive affirmation-type response, while the one on the right was always more negative, skeptical, or sarcastic.

For example, if a character asks what I’m doing in the asylum, options might say something like “I don’t remember,” or “I’m on vacation.” Clearly the first one is more genuine, whereas the second one is cracking a sarcastic joke. Instead of picking my choice with by pressing a button on a controller I had to literally speak it out loud. As in, using my actual real life mouth and voice.

It’s a relatively minor thing, but when combined with the immersive power of VR, it makes me never want to pick a dialog option in another VR game ever again. Games like Skyrim VR have silent protagonists, but countless VR titles like Arizona Sunshine feature voiced characters that can be jarring for the player to hear. If I’m led to believe that I’m embodying a character inside a VR game and then another voice comes out of my face, it breaks the immersion. The Inpatient circumvents that issue by asking you to speak the words instead.