This “VR Game” Cost $1,400,000...

[@HolyTerminator]

To be fair, I think their budget was far too small for their ambition. I think they did what they could with the money they had.

[@74amazing]

Thx for this honest view on firmament. I think your channel will be one of my new go to channels, when it comes to vr. More informative than than every other vid I saw about the game by now.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Thank you! Appreciate that you're enjoying the content and will do my best to keep the videos coming.

[@HedgeThorne]

The original proof of concept demo they released to backers when the game first funded I felt was a bit more "VR" in its interaction. The adjunct was a floating robot ball thing that responded to hand gestures. It would fly where you were pointing and recall back to float by your head. You could reach toward it and it would flip around to present a handle attached to its back you could grab. Somewhere along development I guess they dropped all those neat interactions in favor of the gauntlet adjunct. Kinda sad, but maybe it made for better puzzles or something? I haven't finished Firmament yet, but I'd like to take a look at all the puzzles once I do and see if they would work with the old floating adjunct style.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Ah, that explains the gif I saw on their kickstarter page a bit more! Even just that level of interaction would have been a great addition to the game. The interaction side of thing is huge in VR, and the fact that this game has virtually none is just disappointing to me. Even if only 20% of items were able to be interacted with, it could have really pumped up the immersion and fun factor in the game. Imagine a puzzle where you need to stop a big ol' steampunk cog from spinning by using whatever's lying around in a room, maybe needing to play a music code on a piano to open a door, or even just pick up a few littel trinkets, even if the physics were broken and wonky when they land. Very interested to hear your thoughts on the puzzles in terms of the floating adjunct potential.

[@HedgeThorne]

​@@FrontwaysLarryJust finished the game! Haven't revisited the puzzles yet, but here are a few thoughts. The VR interaction and gameplay is pretty lackluster I agree. I think polishing/fixing could take it to acceptable or ok, but I don't currently see a way to go from the adjunct based puzzles to something that "feels vr." Still want to really analyze the puzzles on that front though. However, I think the environments were definitely designed for VR first. Sometimes even desktop second. Their scale, as you mentioned, is the big obvious facit, but even the design is geared toward VR in ways that I don't think are immediately obvious. Many (most?) of the puzzles are 3d spatial reasoning based, I found them easier to understand and solve in VR. I wonder if that spatial reasoning basis is what actually causes the issues you mentioned with "taking so many steps to get from point a to point b." (Could be interesting to compare the puzzle natures to Myst or Obduction puzzles. Most notable difference is Myst and Riven puzzles often required a pen/paper. Don't need any in Firmament, presumably another VR first design decision.) And then there are the "inclosed space - open world" reveals throughout the game. At the beginning in the bunker, each time you raise a spire, and the best one at the end of the game. That final one was an incredible moment obviously intended for VR - my biggest regret was that I was playing desktop at the time. Which is really the issue. The VR gameplay and interaction being so mediocre had me switching back and forth between desktop and VR. Since the VR couldn't hold me, I missed out on a moment that was clearly designed to be an amazing VR experience.

[@thomasg86]

My guess is they were having trouble making it work seamlessly. The type of gesture based interactions with the Adjunct as originally conceived were probably becoming a nightmare to make work correctly AND implement in some passable fashion for the desktop version. So they dropped it for the simpler concept we see in release. My guess at least. The game looks and plays great in VR, but there isn't really anything in it over the desktop version other than the increased immersion.

[@Earthgore]

i'm glad they didn't go full VR. This game would have much higher requirements, and it does not need to go around trying picking everything

[@showlottathings]

5:14 the stock crates and gas cylinders broke the immersion for me at this point

[@jspearson5325]

Bro idk it takes me a while to trust new KZbinrs yours is a quick one keep up the great work I love your work

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Thank you a ton! Will keep trying to keep content flowing as much as I can.

[@wbwright79]

this is actually a fantastic review. i really appreciate your time to put this together for us.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Thank you! That means a lot!

[@andreasoberg2021]

I do love Cyan. They really make wonderful games so even a limited VR makes me happy.

[@gregkrazanski]

i dunno... i kinda feel like sense of scale and VR compatibility and good-feeling controls is enough for me. I don't think I need VR to completely re-invent what gameplay is. I mean the sense of scale in VR vs desktop is sooooo amazing in this game. Even though you're only interacting with the adjunct/sockets, I think it feels good/satisfying to control. As far as being able to interact with knick-knacks in the world... I don't really see a point to that. I don't really want to waste my time interacting with stuff that has nothing to do with anything, but I'm glad it's there art-direction wise so it doesn't feel empty. I think it serves its purpose.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Appreciate the feedback! This is 100% the kind of thing I was intrigued to hear about when making this video to see what some people think. The cool thing about VR is that there are so many variables for how to present the medium that this is the reason why some big companies are afraid to hop into VR still while we figure these kinds of things out. Totally agree, however, that the mountains in this game are amazing. The scale is great, but I think for a lot of us we've already experienced snowy mountains to scale in games like Skyrim, so we're looking for new experiences that push the envelope, or at the very least keep up with what other games have succeeded at.

[@mystman1210]

Yeah, the fact of the matter is we've all been spoiled by Half-Life: Alyx and while I now want every VR game I play to have the same amount of detail and polish, it's just not feasible for most companies.

[@gregkrazanski]

@@mystman1210 very fair, i'm not a huge gamer at all so i don't really have many experiences to compare it to

[@showlottathings]

Was there a narrator beside you talking the entire time, sounding like bjork trying to read a script from 50 ft away?

[@dirkroeleveld2433]

I've finished the game on desktop and the controls do fit the keyboard quite well. One thing I'm actually glad about is that you can't pick up the random objects you see in the game. They are there for atmosphere but aren't needed to finish the game and don't add to the story line. If anything it would make the game take 10 times longer as it would mean you'd pick up every single object in fear that it might be holding some vital clue! Another place where having two sets of controls at once would have been nice is when controlling the Camelus Harvestor. Closing the books were also clunky in the desktop version - it was hard to click off them, instead you'd have to press ESC to quite the books, and I'm not sure how you would do that in VR. My favorite puzzle was wearing the suit underwater with the heaters. Overall I quite enjoyed this game. Thank you Cyan!

[@jadegecko]

7:10 you can't just tease Nine Foot Tall Mode and only give us twenty seconds of it 🥺

[@FrontwaysLarry]

lol watch me do an entire playthrough at that height

[@jadegecko]

@@FrontwaysLarry "Do you find something comical about my appearance when I'm riding my conveyance pod? Every keeper needs a conveyance pod, even the very tall. Should I therefore be made the subject of fun?"

[@lilBugger35]

In my opinion the way Cyan does their puzzles it wouldn't be good to be able to pick up everything. It's good that mostly if you can interact with something in a Cyan game you know its important and probably needed for a puzzle. With that said I haven't played all the way through Firmament yet but I have played all their other titles and love Cyan games.

[@albertforline9175]

Look at the kickstater page.. the kickstarters are pissed

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Ah, just looked and noticed that some tiers apparently aren't getting fulfilled. Dang. That, on top of VR taking a backseat compared to its initial pitch is really a sad blow here.

[@Nathan-is7li]

Tbh, i just want all games to be hybrid

[@JamimaPanAm]

That's too bad to hear. I am planning to play this in VR, regardless. I know I enjoy Cyan games, with or without VR. This tempers my expectations for the gameplay. However, I come to Cyan games for the story and puzzles, so I think it's okay for me.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

And that's totally fine! It's just disappointing to see that they had virtually no creative VR implementations in a puzzle game, which in VR makes almost any puzzle possible. If it's instead looked at as the opposite of its original pitch though, it'll be great as a PC game with VR *support*.

[@colinsmith6280]

It will be interesting how it preforms when it arrives on PlayStation and Xbox ,watching it play on "VR" it looks jumpy image to image ,plus to play on a computer you need a expensive gaming computer for a game which is point and click .

[@guytero8812]

That's weird. I have a non-overclocked I5 8600k and a GTX 1080 Ti and I can still run the game on high settings in VR with no problems. Tweak your settings in the Nvidia control panel.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

It's possible they've optimized it a bit more recently, so might give it another go. Also helps that the 1080 Ti has a good chunk of extra VRAM, honestly. It's possible that even the 12GB version of the 3060 could outperform 8GB cards if the game is heavily reliant on VRAM.

[@guytero8812]

​@@FrontwaysLarryThanks for your prompt reply. I've only just got the game, so maybe it has now had it's issues resolved. Maybe try to change the graphics settings using the Nvidia control panel. I used it and Nvidia Inspector and changed a few basic settings and it even runs on Ultra settings.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

@@guytero8812 Will give it a look! Honestly, given my other gripes with the way the game is built, I might play it through just in desktop mode. It looks fantastic on ultra on this ultrawide, and there being no additional controls to utilize in VR just makes me not as hyped to play it that way... Which is a lot to say for someone dedicating an entire channel to VR content. lol

[@mitcherny6965]

The one thing which makes VR great is SCALE. Everything else is important but secondary. Scale=immersion. There is plenty of immersion in Firmament, regardless of some questionable puzzles or interactions, I loved every second of it. Flat-screen gaming no longer exists for me. If your PC can pull it off, it's a must-play for any VR puzzle lover.

[@TheActualDylan]

Pretty cool video. I've had this game on my radar for a little bit, but wasn't aware of the Kickstarter or claims of being a "VR first" title - I just saw it and was excited that Cyan was releasing another title with VR support. Admittedly, I haven't played the 2021 Myst remake yet (only the original Myst way-back-when), but I have played The Last Clockwinder, which is published by Cyan and AFAIK the developer - Pontoco - collaborated on bringing VR to the Myst remake. That game didn't have a lot of world interactions, but the puzzle premise was definitely VR to the core (and a great game!). Anyway, it surprises me that this almost looks like a step backwards from that, especially in the face of being "VR first". On the one hand, I'm totally happy with developers adding "simple" VR support to otherwise desktop-only titles. Even supporting the bare minimum can be a ton of work due to the variability of hardware, but I'd argue the value-add totally justifies that effort. In that regard, I think a lot of people are too harsh on developers when they release VR support without making it "do it all". On the other hand, though, I'm not sure about flying the "VR first" flag with a feature-set like that - it definitely feels disingenuous. The game does look beautiful. Cyan seems to love building beautiful, hollow-feeling universes, and this looks to absolutely hit the nail on the head there. Were it only a steampunk Myst, this game looks like it would knock it out of the park, but in the face of all the negative press it's getting for the simplicity of the puzzles and botched VR support, I'm wondering how well this will shape up. Let's hope for some massive patches in the coming weeks.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Yeah, at the end of the day I don't mind them releasing a desktop game that has VR support. That's fantastic! But they took $1.4 million dollars from their supporters under the promise of making a VR game "the way VR should be played", then a PC game second, but just made it into the opposite. Disingenuous is definitely the right word, there, even if just in a minor sense. Somewhere along the way, they must have just lost sight of it, or perhaps their team really doesn't play VR games much, or are too stuck in their ways of thinking about how flatscreen games work traditionally. Imagine if the core gameplay focused on an adjunct in each hand, with you instead having one that you switch between on desktop. Having the ability to move two things simultaneously could have really added to the VR aspect without ruining the PC version, and even really amplified the caliber of puzzles they could create. Don't want the game to fail or anything, but can't say they don't deserve some bad press right now for doing a 180 on their initial game pitch. Even so, I'm not sure. Lol - I'm okay if everyone tells me that this level of interactivity is fine with them in a VR first title, even if it surprises me a bit.

[@TheActualDylan]

@@FrontwaysLarry I'm still not sure either, but I think it's a good conversation to be had - and a lot more productive than "VR game bad/good".

[@mintomacco]

you are right. they wanted to put the story/narrative first and after early playtesting they reworked a lot of the mechanics to get rid of things that distracted from the story. i think that was the moment several ideas about vr 'gimmicks' were removed. i love the game and the story, but i played in flatscreen mode. it is not a vr first title any more. however you have the opportunity to see the world in vr if you want to. like it has been the case with several cyan games in the past. it is a great cyan game, maybe even my favorite, but with all the trouble and years of delays (and development during the pandemic) the idea of vr-first got scapped along the way. maybe with their next title.

[@Athanor3d]

Well said! I have similar graphics issues with VR: flickering shadows, clouds are completely wrong, subtitle box that sometimes won't disappear etc, (RTX 3080 with 16 GB Vram, laptop). A big step down from Obduction.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Thanks! Yeah, honestly it's just surprising how they shipped this game like this. The stuttering can vary per device, but the clouds and subtitle boxes are pretty hard things to miss in this game.

[@pedazodeboludo]

Still not fixed the issues, looks like they never will. I mean come on, how hard is it to get Unreal support or one engineer to figure out why one eye doesn’t draw the shadows…

[@florisrem4213]

First i played 1 hour keyboard and mouse and i like it. Than i played 1 hour in VR and i thought ,why they didn't ask help from Valve for example

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Yeah, for real. I think the thing for me is that this is the kind of VR experience we were okay with in like 2016 when simply just seeing things in VR was an insane novelty to behold. In 2023, though? The gimmick is over, we need substance and actual uses for VR, which have been tested and proved for them in the wild already, but they ignored all of those VR use cases when making this.

[@Xoanon]

Thanks for the honest opinion, can agree here! If you build a game from the ground up for VR then it should be WAY WAAAAAY better optimized in the first place... Did someone of them test it?! I am a VR only streamer and have streamed about 70 VR games now (and played even more)... Only 3 or 4 have crashed so far for me at some point and Firmament - I am truly sorry - is the worst in that row as it is crashing about 3 times every stream (that's about once per hour). Though I am playing on a 3080, have 64 GB of RAM and playing that game already on the lowest possible settings. It still looks okay for viewers, but inside my headset I have extremely low graphics and it should run better. And if it is not crashing, it just jumps every now and then in the background, which leads to "not working in headset and on stream anymore", so I have to quickly open SteamVR Dashboard and focus the game again. Never seen such a behavior before. But if I do that I really have to be careful as every movement of my motion controller on my desktop then will make the game going left and right real quick, so I need to get away from the Desktop quickly... that is not good for people with motion sickness. Luckily I have no motion sickness in most games, but I would advise people who deal with that to be cautious on that game in general. Some viewers having already problems with me running the whole time, but if I would need to do that all with just walking, I would get more annoyed as I feel slowed down for nothing (nothing than maybe just wasting time in slowing me down). I like the world and the graphics, but no, this is not how a VR game should be like, not even close. This feels like a VR Mod, and not a too good one. I never played other Cyan games and tbh, I am very annoyed of some puzzles in there where I (as a heavy puzzle gamer and enjoyer) lack logic... Or maybe lack of hints in the world of WHAT IS EXPECTED... I know Cyan games do not work like that, I get that, but still they should have in mind that VR players are limited and do not have pen and paper there, cannot look something up real quick and have a probably more limited view on things... The menus are HORRIBLE too for VR usage, sometimes I do not see the end of the laser and just HOPE I click correctly (especially on save games. While you see on screen where the laser points at, I see it differently in VR). On the Camulus my height was always set wrong when I climbed down the ladder... I was floating above the ground. Also I set the ladder climbing to "teleport" in general though I am a heavy VR user and always love to climb and crouch with gestures/crouching IRL and do real movements to influence stuff, but the behavior on climbing was so weird, I had to activate teleport... Also the subtitles are flickering as hell for me and they even do not show up on stream which is very disappointing as I always make sure people can read along because I myself nor all my viewers are native English speakers and sometimes my TTS can overlap a dialogue if someone writes at a "bad time".... And so much more things are not working well from my VR streamer standpoint. I can live with games where you cannot grab everything though, I think that is nice but can be seen from another perspective too. Every object you make grabbable will need calculations and can also be mistaken as something you SHOULD interact with. Especially in a puzzle game do not place too much interactable things or make sure the player can see it is not part of a riddle/solution before they try for hours to deal with that. Not sure, but no one can tell me even one person in that company is a VR player and said RIGHT, THAT IS HOW VR WORKS! I am finishing the game, of course in VR, but I cannot recommend it to VR players, sorry... If you advertise it for VR you really should do better.

[@timothydog76]

Day 1 Kickstarter backer. I was extremely disappointed by this game and sad to say I actually never finished it. It was sold as a VR-first game built from the ground up and it had (and still has) horrible problems that Obduction (a game that was converted to VR) doesn't even have.

[@SuneJorgensen]

Agree, I also play this game in pancake mode (I have 4090/5900x/Vive Pro 2/Index) with Panini Projection using UUU. Myst VR was better (or at least not worse years back) as I remember. Just played Vertico 2 in VR and now Lonn and they are "real" VR games.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

I'm envious of those specs, damn. lol - Vertigo 2 is amazing, and I need to hop into LONN still. A huge misconception of VR by some people that haven't tried it is "this is no different from playing on a flat screen", and with this game it's sadly true, which is really sad to see happen. I'm betting a few people that backed this a few years back even picked up a VR headset *just* to play this game, and I hate the idea of anyone being disappointed by VR as a whole if this is their first journey into it. Really love the visuals in this game though, so I'm hoping Cyan just learns from this for next time if they attempt a VR game again.

[@Rockovissi]

Nothing will ever be Half-Life Alyx. I just sort of came to terms with that.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

I mean, I'd definitely recommend Vertigo 1 & 2. Keep in mind, Half Life: Alyx took 4 years to make, and proved to tons of studios that VR is a viable medium. If we assume even 3 or 4 studios are attempting a game to rival Alyx, it's around now and beyond into the next couple years that we'll be seeing some more things on that scale, for example, Vertigo 2 (which was also made by only one person). Also, Asgard's Wrath 2 is boasting that it'll feature 60 hours of gameplay with very nice worlds shown off. We don't need everything to be Alyx, but I think it's fair we reasonably ask to be able to interact with more than just a single digit number of items in the world. It's not uncommon for standard video games to have physics objects to shoot, it's the same concept as that, but your hands become the thing that collides instead.

[@Rockovissi]

@@FrontwaysLarry Yeah, but without the interaction VR is just a gimmick. I’m very hard on VR because it has the potential to be so much more. Instead, we get subpar goofy “games” and it just comes off as cheap to me. So yes it was Valve. But VR hasn’t lived up to the promise. It’s just an expensive demo. I don’t think it would be too hard to program your hand not going through objects if it was built for VR from the ground up. VR needs to be better, both hardware and software.

[@TNJX]

Agree with every word of this

[@pleaserespond3984]

It's still a VR game, just not a good one. I think The Room did it pretty well - you still couldn't interact with the world outside of the puzzles, but the puzzles themselves made good use of your hands and VR presence. You still had to pick up and carry things around like in real life. And don't have the player interact with the world via some gadget in-game. That feels so bad and is honestly quite cringe. Make my hand *be* the gadget, e.g. like the gloves in Alyx. There is already one layer of interface - the controllers I'm gripping, giving me a second layer - an in-game gadget to manipulate, just makes things needlessly complicated.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Agreed. The switching back and forth with the "jam it in and solve it" device felt way too cheap as a VR experience. This game is so basic in controls that it could probably be played with the Oculus Go's controller. Heck, even just the back/forth, up/down mechanics could have been motion controlled by moving your arms in VR. Just no motion controls or regard for modern VR expectations to me.

[@Alec-y8m]

Having purchased an HP Reverb g2 VR headset, I was so pumped for Firmament to launch. I do love Cyan games. You can imagine how disappointing it was to find Firmament is not compatible with the HP Reverb. It's not a game designed for VR, it's a game designed for specific VR headsets only.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Damn, that's even sadder to hear. It really is annoying how this game has launched. I usually try to be pretty respectful if I get a game early to review, but there are just too many blunders here to excuse them.

[@35IQDev]

it's not true. I bought the game more then 6 month ago (right after finishing Obduction also in this headset), and it works perfectly with my reverb.

[@k0lpA]

I actually liked this game, played it on PC, didn't even know it was a VR game (didn't have a headset at the time). I just didn't like the story much.

[@ugzz]

Oof. i only made it about 45% in and then the stutters started to make me sick. I backed this one, and I only played about an hour of it and dropped it. It was just so... boring. I was so hype for it too.. disappointing.

[@patrykzukowski7471]

1.4 million is nothing, though?

[@MOLLIMEDIA]

Not everyone cares about VR. It ran great on my laptop.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

I mean yeah, but this game's entire budget was community-funded on the basis of it being a native VR title. The flat-screen experience being great doesn't change that they did a complete flip on their backers.

[@MOLLIMEDIA]

@@FrontwaysLarry Either way… I’m not disappointed. But I appreciate your insight.

[@fCauneau]

In French : "La critique est facile, mais l'Art est difficile". TMHO VR is part of the art of "World" conception in immersive video games. Which means that VR, like almost any of previous Art representation technique (sculpture, drawing, painting...) brings the artist to a classic choice : should the representation tend to be realistic or should it just address in a more minimalistic way the advanced analytic capacities in the spectator's mind ? Don't forget that Hyper-realism never met any significant public. In other words, an artistic representation of a world don't have to be complete to be understood. The so-called "imperfections" of Firmament VR worlds you point out are to me irrelevants (you may also point out the irrealistic textures of da Vinci's Joconda). At first comes the genius of the artist, and what he wants to communicate. And Cyan's artists are Masters...

[@edwardderr6859]

I'm with you. Not only about VR, but the entire game, for me in general, is a terrible disappointment. I always and completely detested this kind of quasi-religious, moral up-your-ass crap. For all the work that went into this, and all the terrific 3d modding virtuosity, I'm sorry to have backed this disaster. After being the biggst Cyan fan as anyone, this will make me consider not backing Cyan's next one.

[@FrontwaysLarry]

Yeah, and apparently the early build for this game was actually more VR-centric, but somewhere in the pipeline they changed their minds. Really sucks when a company does something like this, as these kind of false promises only hurt the consumers and other future kickstarter attempts by devs that are legit. There's one game that looks super promising called "Tomb Explorer VR" on Kickstarter and I'm worried it won't get funded in time.