Systems: Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR
Release Date: May 21, 2019, September 25, 2019, & November 21, 2019
Publisher: Disney Interactive
Developer: ILMxLAB
Play Time: ~5.5 Hours (Not including another hour or two playing around with the lightsaber training).
[The Reason: I started this article sometime shortly after finishing the third game in this series, but I ran into general hang-ups when writing about anything Star Wars-related. There is the fear of sounding like I don't know what I am talking about when it comes to Star Wars lore and misinterpreting people and events as they relate to the Prequel and original Trilogy; which is probably why I never wrote about the Aftermath Trilogy by Chuck Wendig which I loved for the most part. I also found that I did not get all of the screenshots/videos that I wanted to at the time. So this article languished as unfinished]
I picked up the Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series (just Vader Immortal from here on out along with reference to specific Chapters when applicable) as a bundle the weekend I gifted myself (Santa brought) the Oculus Quest 2 for Xmas back in 2021, partly because I am a sucker for Star Wars, partly because I had heard good things about the three-chapter series, and lastly because there was a bundle on the Oculus store for all three chapters for 45% off. I have briefly (previously) talked about my own experience with Star Wars in a VR/AR setting but I was looking forward to more than lightsaber training and fighting off Stormtroopers.
My biggest hang-up with the game was the loading time overall. Like a lot of the games on the Oculus, there is an initial load time of about 30 seconds or so, but here I found myself waiting on the initial load screen for well over a minute. It is probably a little weird seeing me just standing there in our living room not doing anything with this VR headset on being silent. The upside though was that this seemed to be mostly upfront loading whereas load times that occurred during the actual game, were very minimal.
Once starting the game up, I was a little amused at being told that the cordoned-off space in our living room for playing VR games, which essentially is the size of our rug, was smaller than the recommended 6.5' x 6.5' x 6.5' the game recommends. I figured I would be fine and that I would not end up diving into our piano, but what I had not counted on was vertically slashing at flying lava imps above my head and smacking my hand on our ceiling fan light; that gave me a sore knuckle for an hour or so. But that has been the only event where I accidentally hit/interacted with something outside the playable zone (knocks on wood). In the rest of the areas in the game, I was able to somewhat move around freely using the snap-movement option instead of the walking movement
In Vader Immortal, you play as a non-descript genderless (I'm pretty sure there's no reference to your gender, but I could be wrong) smuggler who just finished up a mission smuggling something along with their copilot droid ZO-E3 (voiced by Maya Rudolph), is captured by Darth Vader's (not voiced by James Earl Jones) forces and taken to his fortress on Mustafar. The first thing I want to mention is that this story here is canon according to Disney Star Wars cannon and takes place sometime between 2 BBY and 0BBY (BBY being Battle of Yavin, the events in A New Hope). How this fits into the larger mythology I am not exactly sure. The first chapter starts you off on the bridge of your ship before you jump to lightspeed which was pretty exciting to witness although what was missing was the sensation of the ship jerking forward once you enter hyperspace. The second chapter has you escaping from your cell, wandering around Vader's fortress, and defending yourself against local wildlife. You also learn more about Vader's plans for you, what he is doing while on Mustafar, and how it relates to the Prequels. The final chapter has you squaring off against Imperial forces and ultimately Darth Vader which was pretty intimidating, as you almost forget how imposing of a figure he must be in-universe standing nearly 6ft 8 inches tall (203 cm for you Imperial Unit People).
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I did play around with the lightsaber training (called Lightsaber Dojo in-game), but as previously mentioned, there was a fair amount of verticality required, with lava imps flying at your head, Stormtroopers taking the high ground, and modified Marksman-H Training Remotes flying past your head while taking pop-shots at you. If we had higher ceilings, I probably would have played this mode far more than I had. It was nice though that each chapter had its own variations of lightsaber training so it was not just a reskin of the same thing for each separate game. In the first Chapter, most of the focus (that I could get through) was on the training remotes and other droids. In the second chapter, there were mostly lava imps along with the training remotes, and the third Chapter had you going up against droids, remotes, and Stormtroopers, with the option of dual-wielding lightsabers although that also meant that the game was going to throw more enemy combatants at you.
This series was really a blast to play, and one of the first to give me a sense of vertigo while free climbing the cliffs outside of Vader's fortress. I also had a strange sense of reverse sea legs, or whatever the term for coming out of a VR game and not having the world move/feel the way that it had while you were playing a VR game. Maybe I will eventually go back and replay this series, which does not feel daunting since each chapter runs about two hours and felt perfectly paced both in terms of story and comfortability playing a VR game.
There should be even more VR Star Wars games.
P.S. Here's a fun sequence in the final chapter where I initially did not realize that you needed to use your force grip powers to proceed.
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