The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR launches tomorrow and invites players to undertake a hell of a ride, quite literally, as they navigate this rail shooter through various terrifying levels filled with monsters, demons, and grotesque scenery while being tormented by the demon Belial. The Dark Pictures Anthology inspires eight of the ten levels, but the story Switchback VR tells is entirely its own.
“We're not telling the House of Ashes story, we're not telling the Man of Medan story,” game director Alejandro Arque Gallardo tells me. “It is our own story in those settings, so if you haven't played [the series], you can still enjoy the whole game and see references to horror movies, horror books, or horror games. If you have played, then you'll see, ‘Oh, that's Silver Ash's room’ and ‘Oh, I know that monster. I know that moment.’ But we never retell the story.”
Switchback VR is a love letter to horror as a whole, rather than solely paying tribute to The Dark Pictures Anthology from which it was born. You can see references to horror flicks and books, with nods to scenes or things that have made our skin crawl over the years. No one can forget the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, and Gallardo confirmed they served as inspiration for the horrifying mannequins that move when you blink in the game. Part of the fun of Switchback is spotting different easter eggs for both the series and classic horror in general.
As a fan of TDPA, I especially enjoyed spotting the Curator when I previewed Switchback VR and I couldn’t resist asking Gallardo whether the new character of the demon Belial was indicative of what kind of being the Curator is, to which he hinted, “He'll be watching everything you do. You'll never see Belial next to the Curator ever. That's all the clues I'm going to give you.”
Gallardo explains that the team knew what the PS VR2 was capable of when they began planning the exclusive, then thought of ways they could apply it to what they wanted to achieve, and use it in ways it has never been used before
“The first time we got massively impressed was when we did the eye tracking. We created this corridor full of body bags on the ceiling floating, and then every time you blink, they keep changing locations, and every time you look away, something starts moving out of the corner of your eye. That pushed us to think more outside the box.”
Gallardo also tells me how the team participated in various activities to soak up all the horror they could to channel their experiences into Switchback VR. They went to horror escape rooms, did horror movie nights, went to scare parks, and looked for different inspirations. I expressed my own fear of horror parks because I get too spooked by the actors dressed up, even though you’re told they can’t touch you, but Gallardo told me the team went to Horrorland, where the actors can touch you, and how it made it even more intense. The PS VR2’s tech allowed the team to take those experiences and recreate them in a digital space, with Gallardo telling me, “We wanted to replicate what we felt in real life. Grabbing those influences for us was very important.”
Switchback VR is a spiritual successor to Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, Supermassive Games’ last rail shooter, and the spin-off of Until Dawn. “We're all fans of Rush of Blood. We had that game as a base, how to use a roller coaster, how to move, and then how people look or how fear works in VR. Then we took those lessons, and we ramped it up to 200. In the beginning, we did a lot of prototyping. How fast can we push a roller coaster? Now we have new tech, how far you can see, how much can we move you without you feeling too dizzy. And we did a lot of tests, which we got sick in, so you don't have to.”
Much like the main series, Switchback VR offers player decisions and consequences and promises that no two runs will be the same. These can be smaller blink-and-you-miss-it moments, pun very much intended, entirely different endings, or various results from the puzzle traps you can try and solve along the way.
“Wherever you look, or whenever you blink, there are things you may miss,” Gallardo tells me. “For example, on the mirror corridor, if you blink, everything changes to create a lot more enemies. There's another one where if you look at a TV, someone is coming for you from the other side. So it's all based on where you look and what you do. There are lots of little things you can do and choices that will make your own path.
“If you save, kill, or abandon the people you find, that will come and haunt you on the last level. The last level is Belial's frozen hell, and she's gonna bring all those choices you didn't want to make back in, and who you saved and didn't save will give you more or less of a chance. That will influence what sort of ending you get. It's not like, 'I save everyone, and I'm getting the good ending'.”
As a result, Switchback VR has plenty of replay value for different types of players. Those looking to score the highest on each level can replay and try to beat their best score, with Gallardo explaining there are leaderboards to compare scores with friends and other players in the world. As well as Trophies to hunt, players can try and spot all the Gargoyles hidden throughout the game, and of course, you can try and see every possible ending.
“There are a lot of different ways to play the game. We want to give choices to players,” Gallardo says. “At the end of every theme, we show you a map of everything you've gone through, and you can see icons of what you've missed. We won't tell you what it is, but just you’ve missed this or this, something that says, ‘Oh, you killed this person, or you didn't see these things’. We're not telling you what it is or how to do it, but maybe you’ll miss a point.”
While you can replay individual levels to better your score or experience different events, Gallardo tells me that any different decisions you make when replaying will not register properly in impacting the rest of the game, so you’d have to replay the story mode again to see different outcomes, much like the other games in The Dark Pictures Anthology. If you didn’t save the other passengers during your first playthrough, you’ll have to completely play again to see the outcome of saving them all.
There are ten levels in total, and Gallardo tells me the average playtime for each is 15-20 minutes, assuming you don’t die. There are also three difficulty levels to choose from, so it doesn’t sound too taxing to replay through to see different outcomes, especially if you bump the difficulty down to breeze through in a hail of bullets.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR launches March 16, so prepare for jump scares, a bullet-heavy fight to survive, and gore-galore.