Rebellion Interview - Battlezone VR & 98 Redux

Well, first things first: they are two very different games! We think they both go to show just how multifaceted the Battlezone license has been in its long life.

Let’s start with Battlezone for VR. Back in 1980, Battlezone arcade cabinets had players peering in through actual physical visors, so they would feel like they were inside the cockpit of a tank, shooting enemies in the game’s iconic wireframe world. So it was like Battlezone was a forefather for virtual reality, and it went on to have a huge cultural impact, including being a major influence on the Tron film that followed a couple of years later!

Skip forward 36 years and we’re rebooting the 1980 arcade Battlezone for virtual reality, but with all the modern bells and whistles, AND it’s for VR! Our Battlezone puts you in the cockpit of a futuristic super weapon as you tear your way through waves of enemies across incredible neon-coated wastelands. With the power of VR devices like PlayStation VR behind it, Battlezone is this incredible new experience that we’re so excited about. As we’ve seen at shows and previews, people who come away after playing it are raving about how it felt to be inside the tank, and the amazing scale of the game worlds and the intensity of the combat.

On the other side of the spectrum you have Battlezone 98 Redux, a remastered re-release of Atari’s 1998 Battlezone game that was a mixture of a real-time strategy and first-person action. It’s one of the defining games in its genre, and we’ve been delighted to work with Big Boat Interactive on bringing it back for modern systems with upgraded HD visuals, Steam Workshop support, online multiplayer and more. And it’s out right now if you want to check it out!

Oh, significantly. Battlezone is of course our first VR game and that means we’ve had to invest a huge amount of time and resources. We’ve been adapting to a new way of playing games, and that means a new way of developing games. At the same time, we worked very closely with PlayStation who were generous enough to give us access to early Morpheus dev kits, and I think that will show in the end result; we really think we’ve not just got a great VR experience in Battlezone, but a great game too.

Our lead designer on Battlezone, Steve Bristow, often describes it as unlearning a lot of our preconceptions about games development. You do a lot of things that would seem counterintuitive for a typical ‘flat-screen’ game. Also, being part of this first wave of new VR games makes us feel like pioneers, charting previously uncharted territory and learning along the way, which makes it all terribly exciting ... though our producers might not be thanking us! It’s a great time to be playing games, and to be making them too.

You just have to look at the quality of the games, the excitement of everyone trying the devices, and the amount of backing they’ve received to know that it’s very, very different this time around. As a child, my imagination ran riot at the thought of VR and I’m now lucky enough to be in charge of a studio making a real VR game, so I’m a little biased. But you don’t have to take my word for it – these are huge, huge companies and they aren’t just experimenting. They see VR as a big part of future gaming as do I, and I certainly believe it can be sustained. Otherwise we wouldn’t be making Battlezone.

We want Battlezone to be the PlayStation VR launch game you keep coming back to. By re-generating the hex map procedurally when you restart the campaign, we can have loads of different combinations of environments, mission types and levels. So it won’t be the same game when you play it a second time, or the third time, and so on. We’ve always maintained that we don’t want Battlezone to just be a VR experience but absolutely a video game in its own right. Thematically it makes sense too – you’re a tank commander in a virtual simulation of a future war, so we can have fun playing with the rules of engagement.

I don’t see any reason why there can’t be a mix of content for the platform, just like there is with gaming right now. It’s about the experience, not the list of features, or the campaign run-time. Naturally, as people get accustomed to VR, I can imagine games keeping things shorter so as not to overwhelm new players, but who knows what VR epics we could be playing in a decade.

Super easy! We’ve got a video on our YouTube channel in which we made a map in 30 minutes – check it out here:

We love all our children equally! They are very different projects, and there are great reasons to be excited about both. Don’t make me choose!

We’ve just announced that we will be planning more Redux-type remasters of our older games that some players may have missed all those years ago, so that’s something to keep an eye on in the coming months...

Beyond that, well, we are always working on multiple projects at Rebellion, some that we’ve revealed and some that we’ve not. But right now, I’m sorry, we don’t have anything else to announce just yet. With Battlezone 98 Redux out now and Battlezone for VR and Sniper Elite 4 both on the way this year, we’d like to think we’ve got enough on our plate for the time being!