Skydance’s Behemoth will make you duel with giants in VR

Skydance Games showed off its Behemoth title at Gamescom as its latest virtual reality game coming for the VR platforms.

The game makes good use of the sense of size that you can get in a VR game, with an enemy towering over you as if you were an ant. I tried it out and it was pretty spooky, as if I were playing Shadow of the Colossus with giant monsters to somehow defeat.

The $40 action-adventure game is coming on November 14 from Skydance games for Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, PlayStation VR2 and PCVR. It’s expected to be rated M for Mature, PEGI 18, and CERO Z.

It’s the first major VR game for Skydance since it tackled the the award-winning The Walking Dead:
Saints and Sinners franchise.

“VR is really unique, and so it was really exciting to us to create a real, next-level spectacle,” he said. “There’s something really unique about building combat systems in VR because you have that full range of motion with your hand tracking. It’s a unique set of inputs that are avaialable to you when you are building any combat system. In The Walking Dead, our combat system was very grounded.”

This game will have heavy weapons that you swing with two hands, and it will have big swords too. There are four big behemoths in the game.

“We can crank everything up to 11, and make your actions feel like they matter,” Murphy said.

It is a first-person action-adventure VR title that combines brutal physics-based hand-to-hand combat with player traversal, environmental puzzle-solving, and larger-than-life boss battles. In my short demo, I was able to wield a sword and slice at human sized enemies who were wielding swords themselves. I had to turn my sword sideways to block blows in a precise way, and if I blocked properly, I could take a swing at a stunned or slowed opponent.

I also carried a grappling hook in my left hand that I could use to traverse different surfaces in the terrain. I could also use it to pull myself very quickly to enemies and stun them before hacking them down.

Skydance’s Behemoth is an original story set in the Forsaken Lands, a medieval region haunted by tragedy. A cursed warrior, known as Wren the Hunter (the player), rises from their near-death and amnesic state. Wren is charged by a mysterious figure to embark on a perilous but preordained quest to rid the Lands of an insurmountable threat: the monstrous Behemoths.

Armed with an arsenal of limb-tearing weapons, a grappling hook, and a curse that yields supernatural strength, Wren must venture forth and reclaim the realm by slaying the Behemoths and exposing their sinister origins. This treacherous journey will bring the warrior to their limits, requiring their wits, skills, and unyielding determination to overcome whatever brutality the Forsaken Lands have in store for them.

You have to go on harrowing quest to reclaim a once-thriving kingdom. The hero has to survive the brutal conditions and crushing oppositions in the Forsaken Lands. Played exclusively through the total immersion of virtual reality, Skydance’s Behemoth is an engrossing narrative experience that elevates storytelling and interactivity to new and dreadful heights.

Brian Murphy, game director, joined the company about a year ago to work on Behemoth. Previously, he was creative director at Drifter and was also at Microsoft for a while working on projects such as HoloLens.

“Behemoth was kind of born out of a desire to take what Skydance had done on with The Walking Dead,” he said. “We wanted to take everything that was really visceral and cool about The Walking Dead universe, but then bring it into our own world and see if we can’t explore other things that are really big and exciting about VR. That was how we ended up pairing that visceral combat and commitment to storytelling that Skydance is already really focused on, and then we sort of paired it with this idea inspired by Shadow of Colossus, where you fight a giant monster that’s the size of the skyscraper.

Hazards lurking on-ground are only precursors to the gargantuan dangers that threaten from above. Monstrous embodiments of the curse, the Behemoths ravage the Forsaken Lands and corrupt the hearts and minds of those who remain there. Where did these abominations come from, and what does their presence mean? To find the answers, Wren must attempt to slay the Behemoths on land, in the air, and while scaling their massive, tower-like bodies.

The company wrote a full graphic novel as the backstory for the world.

Brutal violence solves everything

In the Forsaken Lands, Wren will encounter hostile strangers who aim to end the hero’s journey prematurely. Armed with a grappling hook and curse-given superstrength, Wren possesses the skill, power, and unyielding resolve to cut down, maim, sever, break, and rip apart all who stand in their way. Precise weapon strokes lead to flesh-cleaving, bone-crunching impact, and clever use of surrounding elements gives way to satisfying, overly violent results.

Skydance Games brings its signature creative and technical approach, virtual physicality, to Behemoth. Realistic weight, physics, and interactions create a sense of immersion that feels both natural and heightened in all facets of the game: combat, traversal, puzzle-solving, and more. Coupled with eye-popping VR visuals and a dark fantasy narrative, Skydance’s Behemoth aims to set the bar once again for VR experiences to come.

Skydance, which is owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is also working on games led by Amy Hennig and Julian Beak (Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, untitled Star Wars Game)—as well as its games publishing, interactive licensing, and transmedia storytelling teams.

Murphy is a big XR fan who worked on augmented reality with the HoloLens and he’s excited to see Apple get into the space.

“I’m personally focused on creating these more immersive core gaming experiences,” he said. “If you were to compare where VR is today from where it was five or seven years ago, it is night and day in the tracking that the Quest can do.”