A/V Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series

Wow. What a great tease. Grrrr. Lol. Hopefully it will be launched this month.

 

SWCC panel on Friday, April 12.

https://www.starwars.com/news/ilmxlab-vader-immortal-panel-star-wars-celebration

 

I really hope this eventually gets ported to PlayStation VR. I love Vader, VR, and Goyer, but I can't get an Oculus Quest any time soon.

 

I totally forgot to watch the live stream of the Celebration panel! Here's a post from ILMxLAB:

 

There is a thread about it on Twitter summarizing the most important parts.

Spoiler

 

Commenting on one of the characters named --

Spoiler

-- after our concerns on page 2, @spicer and I can breathe easy now!

 

I think this pretty much confirms the Sith Temple theory

 

Looks good, but I'm not a big fan of VR and don't think I'll be getting it just for this game. Perhaps in couple of years, when the old VR devices will cost only few bucks.

Will watch the gameplay videos for the story though.

 

Looking forward to watching playthroughs of this on YouTube.

 

Just got back from celebration, I got to play the demo. Right as we were walking out of the area, guess who walked in? Someone who I'm 99% sure was Sam Witwer!

On to the actual game: I still can't justify to myself spending the money to buy an Oculus when I'd only ever play one game on it, but what I saw was pretty cool. If my friend gets it I'll definitely have to borrow it. Recap below:

Spoiler

I woke up with an interrogator droid staring me in the face. (Although my character apparently wasn't tied up, since there was an empty prisoner rack next to me). Also there was the cyborg Imperial. (Although he didn't introduce himself as a Commander, but an Admiral). He told me that Vader has a job for me, that if I do it I'll be granted a swift death, and he warned to obey Vader because he (the Admiral) hates having to clean the room when Vader makes a mess it it.

What comes next is the game perfectly capturing the fear of Darth Vader striding down a hallway towards you, and looming over you, staring you down.

Vader had me open a puzzle box. I tapped the center, which made it open and glow. Vader was pleased with my performance, and then with a scene transition I'm in a room on Mustafar. There's a lightsaber in the center of the room, which I grab with the controls, and testing starts. First remote droids come out and I have to deflect the laser bolts, then droids armed with lightsabers come out and I have to fight them. (I did it one handed, but I saw other people use two hands. It was pretty fun).

Finally Vader appears surrounded by darkness with his saber ignited, tells me that I am Force sensitive, and that I'll be helping him get the "Brightstone."

Like I said, the fear of facing Vader and the fun of swinging around a lightsaber made a good impression.

 

If San Hill were a playable boss character in the Mustafar catacombs I'd buy ten dozen Oculi and give them to all my imaginary friends.

#SanHillImmortal

 

Speculation time...

What will be revealed about Mustafar's past?

-We know in Legends the world once was beautiful and featured a Jedi Temple until destroyed by the Sith.
-We know in canon there is some structure below Vader's castle rumored to be an ancient Sith temple (seen in a comic hidden in the art).
-We know an earlier VR story from ILMxLab "Secrets of the Empire" featured an ancient proto-crossguard-lightsaber.
-We know Mustafarians survived the cataclysm that turned the world lava, have a clanbased culture and practice shamanism

Anything else?

Does Mustafars ancient secrets rival in age to those of Malachor, Moraband or Ach-To perhaps? What do they reveal about the ancient times?

Cancelled TCW arcs featuerd an ancient temple below the Jedi Temple on Coruscant with some ancient lore in the episode and new creatures/guardians. I do not know if this will be reworked as part of the upcoming TCW Finale Season or not, but if not, a temple below Vaders on Mustafar reminds me of the episode concept of a temple below the Jedi's on Coruscant. Could it be they took inspiration from that script and instead of with the Jedi, do the concept with the Sith on Mustafar?

Also: The Protosaber concept was first developed for TFA concept art. Unused variations of it later got used by Lego Freemakers as well as Secrets of the Empire and also Rebels tv show even. It is said to appear in more sources that probably will connect all these ancient references painting a picture of times gony by. (Prime Jedi on Ach-To had a lightsaber in the mural, Freemakers had ancient Kybersabers which predate energyblade lightsabers, Rebels had ancient crossguard lightsabers with green blades indicating Jedi using them on Malachor, Secrets of the Empire had another ancient crossguard with a white blade potentially older than the one from Rebels, more prototype...)

Mustafar is distant from Moraband and the Sith worlds, so if it is an ancient Sith world, or Jedi world, its location far away certainly is interesting. Especially if Prime-Forceusers/Jedi from Ach-To moved to the galaxy via Jedha (and Tython), the first Darksiders may have not been those from Moraband but maybe Mustafar or else long before that? Anybody up for the Prime-Sith?

 

jut had another thought... why is it titled Vader IMMORTAL? Aside it being a cool sounding title, could it literally have to do with immortality? We know Palpatine and Plagueis sought it, we know Plagueis found part of the formular but could not save himself. We know Palpatine in Legends found it. Recent Marvel Vader comics hinted at ways of artificial immortality tied to masks and objects as well as a Netherworld portal in the Mustafar castle.

Is Vader searching for it too, unrelated to Palpatines own search? Anakin as Vader is constantly suffering with guilt, pain, his wounds. Pain gives him strength in the dark side, yet does he want to forever have it with immortality? I doubt it. Unless immortality is sought in other ways, free of the flesh of the painful body, free of guilt and memories.

ROTS: The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural!
Rebels: World between Worlds and timetravel!
TESB: Luminous Beings are we, not this crude matter!
TLJ: Force Skype, Projection and Teleportation yay!

Rise of Skywalker: Hello there! All that came before is childsplay compared to what we have in store now regarding new Force-tricks! The Force truly awakened... no longer a meere tool to enhance the body Prime Jedi will be like gods, nothing is impossible so long your mind is not in the way and you are a free empty slate.. a Nobody with no family, no ties, no past and thus nothing clouding the Force like doubt, fear, memories, hopes etc.

In that regard... what will or can Vader do that directly influences the future beyond his death? What can make him immortal?

Immortal due to being remembered for something? Immortal literally? Immortal due to his legacy or what he did/prepared/started that others may use/finish for him later?

 

First look at Vader Immortal episode 1.

https://ew.com/movies/2019/05/07/star-wars-vader-immortal-first-look/

Spoiler

We’ve been to Darth Vader’s lair — and escaped to tell about it.

The virtual reality experience Vader Immortal from ILMxLAB is one of the key titles for the upcoming Oculus Quest wireless headset, immersing the user in an environment where even the bravest denizens of the Star Wars galaxy might fear to tread: The Sith Lord’s hellish castle on the volcanic world of Mustafar.

Vader Immortal is part one of a trilogy its creators plan to roll out, with volume one available for download for $9.99 to the Quest headset when that $399 device becomes available May 21.

The main question from Star Wars fans is: What exactly is Vader Immortal?

Even its creators struggle with this. None of the usual words apply. “What’s fascinating about VR is it’s not a video game,” says writer and executive producer David S. Goyer, best known for the screenplays to Batman Begins, Man of Steel, and the series Da Vinci’s Demons.




It’s also not a movie or a show, since there’s interactivity involved and it’s all viewed through the first-person perspective, like Doom or Call of Duty. And they aren’t even sure what to call you.

“We didn’t want to say ‘player’ because that connotes a video game,” Goyer added. “We didn’t want to say ‘viewer’ because the experience is much more immersive than just viewing.”

Smuggler’s Blues
The creators call the user the “participant” or the “visitor,” and the experience of Vader Immortal is actually most comparable to being in a stage play with the most fearsome villain of the Star Wars universe, albeit a show without an audience except for the star performer.

“‘Performer’ might give people anxiety,” Goyer says. Okay, so no on that word, too.

There’s no exact comparison, which is evidence the designers at ILMxLAB, an offshoot of Industrial Light and Magic and Lucasfilm’s special virtual reality division, really is pioneering a new kind of storytelling.

Vader Immortal feels most analogous to a play because you have a role to fulfill — actions to take, places to go, and even some stage fighting in the form of lightsaber swordplay.



You’re performing as a captured smuggler who first spends a few minutes exploring his own ship with droid co-pilot ZO-E3 (voiced by Maya Rudolph.) You don’t speak, although in future virtual reality experiences perhaps your voice will become another way of engaging.

“What we did instead was say, ‘Okay, well, we’d need to use our sidekick droid, Zoe, to give you a voice,” says Vader Immortal director Ben Snow. “One of the great aspects of being able to get Maya Rudolph to play Zoe, was we needed the character to be your guide. The character had to be worldly, knowledgeable and feel assured and confident. And also, she had to lighten the mood sometimes.”

A Bad Feeling…
As your starship is drawn to the volcanic world of Mustafar, you learn you have latent Force powers that Vader believes can help him solve an ancient mystery that will lead to relics that can help the Sith bridge the chasm between life and death.

In that way, Vader Immortal borrows inspiration from another Lucasfilm property — Raiders of the Lost Ark. “Of course, we’re big fans of that. That’s a really fair comp,” says Snow. “He’s got this connection to the Force that he alludes to and talks about in Star Wars: A New Hope when the generals are criticizing him. He obviously had this mystical connection, and this allows us to explore that in a way that gets you a bit more intimate with Vader.”

Only his interest in these artifacts is personal. He’s gathering them for a specific, almost heartbreaking purpose that threads into his past as Anakin Skywalker. “It’s less about a military aspect of Vader’s role and much more about his own spiritual mystical interests,” says Mohen Leo, the project’s narrative director.



Sometimes you’re assisting Vader. Sometimes you’re fighting side by side. Other times you’re trying to escape and catching glimpses of him through the slats of a ventilation corridor, communing with one of his relics like the Ghost Glass, the sunrise-glowing crystal (pictured above) that reveals part of Vader’s secret anguish.

“That was a moment that I pushed for from the very beginning,” Goyer says. “It just seemed like one of the promises of this experience would be getting into his personal space, in these kind of privileged environments where we really shouldn’t be.”

That’s where the suspense of this stageplay comes in. “On the one hand, there’s the apprehension that he’ll catch you,” Goyer says. “That’s an eerie moment, but the promise is also to evoke empathy in these characters.”

“What does Vader do when he’s not Force-choking people?”
Can you feel sympathy for this galactic devil? Vader Immortal reveals aspects of his existence that may make you see him as Luke did, when pity overwhelmed his contempt for the monster. “Vader is in constant pain,” Snow says. “He has a constant headache, and his whole body is in pain. I think that help makes him such an iconic and rich bad guy.”

But like all villains, there has to be other dimensions to him. “I raised a question, ‘What does Vader do when he’s not Force-choking people?’” Goyer says. “What does he do when he walks into his meditation chamber, and his shoulders slump, and he doesn’t have the weight of the Empire on him for that moment? What does he think about? We tried to start to get at that in that [spying] scene as well.”

It’s not all Sith angst. Vader has no qualms about invading your personal space too, confronting you in a prison chamber with a torture droid to his left and the mechanical-faced Admiral Karius looming to his right (seen at the top of this article).



“We were pretty sure people would be intimidated by Vader when he walks up to them,” Goyer says. “Some of the people that have tested it are just completely freaked out, which is awesome.”

Vader isn’t the only one who’s immortal here. Unlike a video game, you can’t really die. Walk off the edge of a narrow ledge you’re traversing on the exterior of Vader’s castle and you will hover in mid-air like Daffy Duck before he realizes he walked off a cliff. You mays slip down a ladder, but you can’t fall to your death (unless you have an actual sinkhole in your living room).

Vader Immortal is less about puzzle solving or surviving and more about exploring the space of this foreboding and forbidden place. In that way, another less-obvious comparison might be a Halloween haunted house. You have to get yourself through the labyrinth, but the thrill is what you discover in the shadows as you make your way.

This segment is also only volume one of Vader Immortal. It’s a trilogy, with two other installments due this year. In the first, your smuggler learns about the lore in the caves beneath Vader’s temple, and crosses paths with a native Mustafarian priestess (pictured in concept art here) who is determined to prevent Vader from accessing her civilization’s secrets.



You also learn how to wield a lightsaber, using the two Oculus Quest touch controllers that manipulate your character’s hands. In Volume Two (which doesn’t have an announced release date) you’ll use these to add Force movements to your repertoire.

“As we move into the second episode, there’s a lot of one-on-one interaction between you and Vader, who has to teach you the Force,” Goyer says. “As you can imagine, he’s not the most patient teacher.”

A New Language
The struggle to articulate exactly what Vader Immortal is will likely be answered by the audience itself. ILMxLAB is trying to create a new language, and no one does that alone.

“The audience itself will mature, and the audience will guide us,” Goyer adds. “I liken some of the stuff that’s happening in VR storytelling now as almost like that original Walt Disney cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Like we’re not even at the first half hour long cartoon yet. We’re at Luxo Jr.” That’s the once-groundbreaking now-primitive digital animation short Pixar created with hopping desk lamps in 1986.

“You have to understand that no one has attempted to do what we’re doing before, to create this robust, serialized kind of adventure in VR,” Goyer says. “I mean, the pieces that have been released so far have been relatively modest in scale compared to this, like Trials on Tatooine.”

That’s the seven-minute short ILMxLAB created in 2016, available on the HTC Vive headset, which allows the user to defend the Millennium Falcon from Stormtrooper attack on the desert world, deflecting blaster bolts with a lightsaber delivered by R2-D2.



There’s a legend that the first audience to see the Lumière brothers’ 1895 short motion picture of a train pulling into a station screamed and dove out of the way as the locomotive approached the screen. Something similar happens with virtual reality. The audience marvels at the wonder, then has to get acclimated for the new storytelling form for it advance to the next narrative level.

Mark S. Miller, executive creative director for ILMxLAB, recalled one such incident during a demonstration of the relatively static Trials on Tatoonine. “One guy literally, even though he knew in his smart brain that he was in a little eight-by-eight plastic room, he just put his head down and charged the Stormtroopers and ran right into the wall,” he said. “Luckily, he wasn’t hurt or anything. But then we had to start telling everybody, ‘You can’t run. You can’t walk. You’re in a limited space.”

Experimentation Stage
“When we formed ILMxLAB, the reason we put in the word lab — because that throws people — is because we knew we were going to be experimenting,” says Vicki Dobbs Beck, the executive in charge of the company. “We knew we were going to be learning things. And some things were going to work and some things didn’t.”

The company’s Secrets of the Empire virtual reality experience has an entirely different approach from Vader Immortal or Trials on Tatooine, relying more on real-world environments, even if you can’t see them. That one, also set at Vader’s castle, is shown only at The Void commercial spaces that have walls and doorways you can move through, and objects you can pick up or touch, which all mirror what you’re seeing in the virtual realm.

Other titles, like the company’s Project Porg, are mixed reality experiences. In that one, made for the Magic Leap goggles, you can see the world around you — tables, chairs, stairs — but holograms of the feathered creatures from The Last Jedi are wandering around and appear to be climbing around those objects. But there was no real story. Just playtime with virtual pets.



The story they’re telling in Vader Immortal is canon, and it’s set before the events of Rogue One, which fills in the blanks of what Vader was doing in the years between becoming the rasping, robotic Sith Lord and his appearance as a Rebellion-smashing enforcer in 1977’s original Star Wars.

“It’s like if we’re going to go to the trouble of telling this it has to hook in [to the larger narrative,]” Miller says. “But we didn’t want to hook in directly, like recreating a scene from one of the movies. That might be interesting, but as a passive observer — ‘oh yeah, I remember this scene’ — the fans would quickly get to the point of ‘Okay, now what?’”

Early iterations of Vader Immortal also had a new story playing out with the “visitor” having no role or action in the story. You were just an invisible presence, watching Vader interact with The Emperor or other minions, without engaging with you at all.

Instead, you get to battle ancient droids, reminiscent of the resurrected skeletons of Ray Harryhausen from 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts, only these ones are mechanical and swinging electrostaffs. (You’re not a Stormtrooper, though. This is just concept art.)



A Day Long Remembered
Dobbs Beck, says that even though Vader Immortal is the cutting edge of what they can create right now, she already is looking forward to the day it’s looked back on like Luxo Jr. or Steamboat Willie — a charming relic that began a much bigger journey.

“Every project that we’ve worked on has been a stepping stone toward a bigger future,” she said. “What we’re really aspiring toward is this idea of living stories and persistent worlds. The way we think about it is taking a really holistic view to a narrative and then designing individual stories that all add up to a greater whole. “



Someday, she said, “what you do in one experience will actually influence other experiences. Eventually not only does your choice matter for you in that individual experience, but the choice that you made actually impacts what others experience as well.”

That will be the day when virtual reality ceases to be a play, and starts to become another way of life.

 

Since we all can't have VR sets

Spoiler

 

https://www.ilmxlab.com/news/vader-immortal-episode-1-experience-guide/

Spoiler

Who will I be?
In Vader Immortal, you take on the role of a ne’er-do-well smuggler. As captain of the Windfall, you’ve been in your fair share of scrapes — which your droid co-pilot ZO-E3 likes to remind you of at every turn. After escaping a battle, you suddenly find yourself pulled out of hyperspace by Imperial forces, who force you down to the surface of Mustafar. There, a certain Dark Lord of the Sith is waiting for you with a very specific task…

When will I be?
Vader Immortal takes place in the largely unexplored time period between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One. If you’ve had the chance to try Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire, our VR experience at The Void, you’ll recognize some of the scenery. That’s because Vader Immortal takes place a short time after Secrets wraps up. Keep that in mind, because as the Vader Immortal series continues you never know when elements that were introduced in one experience might pop up in another.

Is this considered Star Wars canon?
Absolutely. You get to be the hero in an adventure that lives within the same story world as Return of the Jedi or The Phantom Menace. In fact, it’s the third experience we’ve made that Lucasfilm has classified as canon. The other two are Droid Repair Bay, which takes place during the events of The Last Jedi, and Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire.

Who am I going to meet?
Like any Star Wars adventure, you can expect to run into all manner of exotic aliens and compelling characters. There’s ZO-E3, as we mentioned before — voiced by Maya Rudolph — and you will come face-to-face with Darth Vader himself. (Well, it’ll probably be more like face-to-chin, but you get the idea.)

We promised no spoilers earlier, so we’re going to hew to that, but you are going to an Imperial facility that is located on Mustafar. Who would you expect to meet in such a place?

What will I be able to do?
Here’s where things get exciting, because Vader Immortal: Episode I is unlike anything you’ve experienced before. When your adventure begins, you are the hero — and you can interact with the world in any number of ways. If you see a switch, you can flip it. If you see a level, you can pull it. See a helmet, or a bowcaster? Try it on, or pick it up for a closer look. This project isn’t just about you watching a Star Wars story — it’s about being inside one for yourself.

Doing so requires using just two of the buttons on the Oculus Touch controllers. The grip button lets you close your hand, perfect for grabbing hold of ladders in order to pull yourself up — or, say, picking up a lightsaber. The trigger button? That’s what you’d use to turn a lightsaber on – assuming you find one, of course.

How do I explore?
If you’re like us, the first thing you want to do when you find yourself inside a Star Wars adventure is to take a look around. In Vader Immortal, you can simply do that with your own two feet. If you start to stray outside of the safe playing area that you’ve set for your headset, the Guardian grid will pop up to give you a warning.

For traveling bigger distances — and let’s face it; when you’re inside Darth Vader’s castle you’re going to have reason to move quickly — you can use the thumbstick on one of your controllers to teleport from one location to the next. Just push the stick forward to bring up your destination indicator, makes sure it’s pointed to the right place, and off you go. And if you’d rather see every inch of the place, you can turn teleporting off in the settings and just navigate with the thumbstick itself.

Can we talk more about lightsabers?
One of the most exciting parts of the narrative adventure is the moment that you get your lightsaber, and if you enjoy that portion of the experience you might want to check out the Lightsaber Dojo. That’s a standalone experience: 40 levels of challenging, 360-degree lightsaber training. You’ll need all of your senses and some razor-sharp reflexes if you hope to make it all the way through — and there’s more than just bragging rights at stake. Based upon your rating in each level, you’ll earn Imperial Commendations, which will help unlock new rewards, including kyber crystals to change your blade color, and a handful of lightsaber hilts that you’ll find just a little bit familiar. Hit the menu button on your left controller to uncover all the items you’ve unlocked.

Is there anything else I should know?
The best way to learn more about Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series – Episode I is to step inside the world and experience it for yourself. And if you like what you see, don’t worry — we’re hard at work on two more episodes, and Darth Vader has plenty of things to show you.

 

this almost seems like they're setting up a reverse Luke journey. Instead of Ben, you get Vader to introduce you to the force. This doesn't bold well for the character lol.

 

Spoiler

Wonder who the guy talking to Vader is?

 

With that cameo of the canon proto lightsaber, I wonder if the weapon even predates the Old Republic/Sith.

Pre-Republic era should be explored in the current canon someday.

 

I think it's supposed to be Momin.

Also, I think over the planet is the first in canon appearance of an Interdictor Star Destroyer. I think the ones in Rebels were Cruisers.

 

That droid is massively annoying. It is like they tried to copy Claptrap or something.

 

I don't know who Claptrap is, but to me she's obviously inspired by L3-37. Also I don't think she's that annoying.