That young Sakura kept on insisting that she couldn't wait to see me, so I caved in and finally met her... That's how I ended up buying myself a Vive, getting a couple brand new onaholes, and impatiently waiting for our next date.
Less than two weeks before release. My body is ready. And I'm frankly eager to see how this game is going to turn out. In the meantime, let's wrap up the latest information and ongoing discussions.
On content, interactivity and "immersivity" :
Initially, there was a bit of uncertainty about the nature of the content that Illusion would include in this game, especially if they wanted to distribute it on Steam. But when they announced that they'll support motion controllers back in December, they lifted any possible interrogation : at the end of their preview video, you could see one of the Illusion devs thrusting his hips in the air, an Oculus Touch controller attached to the pelvis, while the caption text could read "Otherwise, we're also investigating on how to use them the Illusion way" (その他、イリュージョン流使用方法も研究中。).
That's exactly what we wanted to see : a real-life application of the good old Air Hip-Thrust move from the venerable Illusion School of Grind-Fu. And if there remained any doubt to clear, they recently added a little Q&A on their website to answer our questions : yes, this game will feature H-scenes, with plenty of service, coital sex ("insertion" as they say) and interactive fondling.
To illustrate those features and showcase their motion controllers support, they even released a preview video where the player would
literally grab her by the pussy. It probably triggered a couple people, since the video went down a few hours later and the Youtube account for VR Kanojo was terminated... Nevertheless, they quickly re-uploaded this video on their website, along all the other ones, where you can witness the player tickling the girl, massaging her, lifting her skirt, pulling the elastic band of her panties to take a peek... There seems to be a pretty nice range of possible activities in this game.
I'm really happy that they took the decision to delay the game after receiving their Touch devkit and to work on proper motion controller support. Interactivity is a feature that is truly lacking in the latest games from Illusion, which relies too much on "click to select position / click to insert / click to cum" mechanics. A VR game where you cannot actually interact with the girl would have been really sad and I'm glad they didn't drop the ball. What they showcased so far is really hype-worthy : it seems like they're actually making pretty good use of the VR medium, using your head and hands as input, and showing concern for principles like presence and immersion.
If you're familiar with those weird "doki-doki" instants a VR game can induce, you should have a good idea where this could be going. A game like
Honey Select was not made for VR and is far from being highly interactive, but can already be quite troubling at time : the first time you meet a girl in the lobby, and she slowly raise her head to look at you smiling like you're some familiar face... it just fucks your brain and makes you halt for a second, asking yourself just what happened.
So, if a simple gaze is already enough to blow some minds, just try to picture how those times you'll share with Sakura can turn out. Contrary to the dolls from HS, she was programmed to acknowledge and act upon our presence and actions. If they are properly scripted, events like her confession or her first kiss can have an unsettling impact (personally, I can't wait to witness the scene when we will decide to clumsily service my VR self for the first time).
What a fucking time to be alive, when you think about it : we're going to witness the release of the first professionally-made, immersive, first-person VR sex game. A game where a life-sized virtual girl looks at you in the eyes, reacts to your touch, shies away from your lascivious gaze, shares intimate moments with you... The novelty and uniqueness of this concept is pretty much assured to make it genre-defining : even if they don't produce adult content, everyone in the VR industry will have to scrutinise this game and learn a few things from it, be it do or don't.
As such, it has the potential to be a huge success and, even if it fails commercially, it will draw attention and make a lot of noise. A lot of noise coming from a fully-immersive motion-controlled sex game where the goal is to fuck a young and shy schoolgirl while we're in a position of authority as her tutor. This is going to be interesting, to say the least.
On room-scale :
That cross-section of owners is about to become much smaller with the release of Oculus room-scale support. Additionally, you should understand that a locked viewpoint is not a prerequisite to seated support; with room scale, you simply sit down, and you have seated support.
First, lets make sure that we're not arguing over semantics : to me, "room-scale tracking" only applies to technologies that are able to perform proper 6-DoF (rotational and positional) positioning without occlusion in a room-sized volume (hence, "room-scale"). A system that allows you to stand up while facing the tracking device (like the PSVR) is not enough to qualify for "room-scale" in my book, even if it comes with tracked motion controllers. And a "room-scale game" is a game that actually requires you to use those tracking possibilities, moving and turning around and flailing your arms (games like Gorn or Racket:NX are good examples).
It means that I never totally bought the "Oculus can do room-scale" pitch. And so far, from what I heard from Rifters, the Constellation system doesn't really offer stellar tracking capabilities... to say the least.
With that in mind, I still think that Illusion made the good choice not to rely too much on room-scale : with VR still being a fragmented and burgeoning market, you don't want to exclude too many players. As such, your best bet is to design your experience to be played while standing still (or sitting) in front of your computer, with motion controllers support as well as keyboard / mouse / joypad inputs as a fall-back for those who can't Touch.
It also prevents excluding all of those people who don't have room enough to move around. Available space is still a big issue, especially in Asia, and I doubt players from Tokyo, Taipei or HK can easily afford to have a big nice many-square-metres play space (my entire Tokyo apartment could fit in my French bedroom).
Now, note that I said that they "should not rely too much on it", and not that "they should absolutely prevent it" : the game should be designed so that you don't have to be wandering around, but definitely should let you do so if your setup is meant for it. And it seems to me that it is the direction they've taken with the game lately (which is great).
The game seems to be totally focused on the seated experience, but that doesn't mean that you can't go standing room with it. There is just no support for moving around and your height doesn't change. So, if you play it room scale then it seems like you are standing below the floor level.
Since they promised that the game will feature "plenty of fully-immersive service", we can indeed expect the game to be featuring a lot of seated positions, even when it comes to H-scenes. During those sequences, it's highly probable that the girl will be doing all the work while you sit down and "relax", using your spare hand to fondle her.
Still, while most of the preview videos show the player sitting, they're also showcasing a scene where he is grabbing her chest while standing behind her, a scene where he's kneeling on the floor lifting her skirt, crouching while massaging her... on top of this infamous "air hip-thrust move" I talked before. It seems like the game will allow you (or even require you) to alternate between sitting and standing positions.
It's good news : it means all the issues the demo had relative to Z-Axis positioning are going to be ironed out. The world scale and floor level were completely wrong in the trial and it was a big immersion-breaker. Especially when you faced Sakura, who was fucking gigantic for a girl who is supposed to be 162cm tall (162cm is the average size of a Japanese girl, by the way).
I only tried it in room scale as I'm actually not setup for sitting. Although I could move a chair into the room scale space, I prefer to stand.
While there will be fall-back control schemes allowing the game to be played sitting in front of your keyboard, it seems to me that the optimal setup will effectively require you to drag a chair in your play space, with just a little bit of room in front of it so that you can stand up and sit back down easily. A forward-facing experience where you will be able to alternate between sitting and standing play-styles.
If they can make it so that the in-game chair always stay mapped to the same real-life position, you'll be able to move around freely and go sit back on your real-life chair without having to activate the camera of lift your headset. That would be nice for immersion.
More on content, interactivity, immersion, and room-scale :
The compelling part of room-scale is to simply "be" in a given space. You can breathe down the model's neck, or you can lie down and hang out, or you could be an ass and go lay on her bed (EEE's mods allows you to shift the world space by grabbing and dragging in mid-air, so you can create your own floor level to, say, lay down on a bed if you like). This game neuters all that, making it a kind of glorified 3D movie. You can't reach her, you can't touch her or be creepy (except for certain scripted moments), you can't explore her room or her space, you just get to come along for the ride. Sadface VR support, there.
Oh, I know that too well.
At first, I believed that this kind of game would be best played while sitting, so that you can fap easily. And then I got my Vive and saw the light.
After receiving the VR Blessing, I remapped my playspace so that my sofa is inside the Chaperone boundaries, while still excluding it from the (rectangular) play area. It allowed me to sit down with Elena while watching Saya getting gang-banged by faceless dudes and to lay down while she facesits me with her acolytes (Rinkan). To get cosy on the sofa in the girl's room in Honey Select while watching a couple of them masturbating on the coffee table or lay with them on the futon in the washitsu.
I fapped while sitting. I fapped while laying on my bed. I fapped while standing. While crouching. Kneeling. Back against the wall. Hands on the floor. Onahole stuck on my desk. I enlightened myself to roomscale masturbation. And it was fucking glorious.
But, as cool as it, it's not that great from an immersion standpoint. Being able to grab the space to position myself may sound fun, but it doesn't give me the least bit impression to actually be there. The girls still don't react to my touch, they still don't give a shit that I'm around. It gets boring very quickly.
When you think about it, all the magic happens at the moment you position yourself exactly as the male character and have the girl look at you in the eyes while blushing. This is what makes the experience : when the girl actually interacts with you, as simple as those interactions may be. This is the moment when your brain goes "Holy shit!" and the immersion really kicks in.
It is not about roomscale, but all about consistency and feedback. This is what allows you to truly "be" in a given space. You simply do not exist if you can't interact.
That's why I believe VR Kanojo will be a great VR experience. Even if it only offers limited room-scale support and doesn't allow me to teleport all over the place. Even if the events are going to be heavily scripted. Simply because it's a game that is designed around my presence, and not around an avatar which I need to slip into : I don't need to be shifting the world space and mimicking its position to have a taste of what it is to be in the character's shoes, I simply AM the character. This is what VR is about.
And the best part of it is that you can have your cake and eat it too : there's nothing preventing you to mod the game to fully support room-scale.
Do you know ? The
VR Kanojo demo was leveraging the exact same source code than
Honey Select. With a bit of luck, they're build on the same systems, and porting mods from one game to another is going to be child's play. If they keep the same skeleton for the girls, you will be able to port clothes without having to remodel nor reskin anything : the only though part will be on how to make the new clothes fit into Sakura's closet. I can see modders like vrl0ver creating plugins to inject animations from SBPR or HS into VR Kanojo (he already made it happen for HS Studio).
And, with a lot of luck, they kept the same kind of "feelings system" underneath. And the same stat-based ADV system that triggers events depending on the girl state. We don't really have any clue on the way the game is going to be played, and even if it's a good rule of thumb not to expect too much from Illusion, there may be some sweets surprises to come.
Well, we
almost have that today with Play Club / Sexy Beach / Honey Select and EusthEnoptEron's goodies. His VR mods are sophisticated to an unbelievable degree. Just look at his
README; it's insane! And you yourself know the sophistication in HS's relationship metrics-- can you imagine an Artificial (Girl,Academy) VR sandbox that smashes these two genres together? Holy Hell that will be amazing.
And inevitable. They've got all the code already to make that happen. They probably need the hardware to catch up a little to engage multiple actors in VR.
It will be coming. But don't get too hyped : we're at least 3 years away from a decent VR sex game coming from Illusion.
What we can expect with this game is a nice but heavily scripted VR visual novel with some interactive breast fondling. A collection of cute little scenes where we eat some "Chocolate Bocky" with the girl, look under her skirt and chase after cockroaches. If we are super-lucky, we'll have a couple "favour" stats to raise, or "hearts" to unlock through our actions. Or a couple different routes leading to different sex scenes like in
Real Kanojo.
And this is probably going to be enough to blow our minds : a simple game carried by the novelty of virtual interactions with a cute anime girl. For anything fancier than that, we'll have to wait.
