ONM Remembered – PSM Week, day 1
“Imagine being able to drop into Egypt clutching a pair of Croft’s Colts, or bantering with Barrat and the gang in Final Fantasy VIII, or actually being Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid.”
from PlayStation Magazine issue 62 (September 2000)
Giddy with excitement about the imminent release of the PS2, this issue of PlayStation Magazine kicks off with a look at the future of gaming – putting yourself inside the game!
Okay, this early stepping stone consists of making a blocky polygonal skin of yourself to dump into Quake III, but imagine where we could go from there! Voice communication with the in-game characters! Your physical movements being emulated by the in-game player! And maybe at some point all the motion capture bullshit can be chucked out in favour of true, in-depth virtual reality!
There’s something incredibly charming about the mag’s unbridled optimism, but frankly, I think virtual reality is what folks really want, and I seriously doubt we’ll ever accomplish it. I mean, virtual reality would be pretty friggin’ sweet, but there’s so many huge expectations and would require such an enormous feat of technological wizardry, there’s no way it would live up to the imagination. Besides, you see those slick ads for touch-screen mobile phones, and then you try them for yourself and it turns out they’re wonky pieces of shit. If we can’t master touch screens, how ever can we master virtual reality? Case closed, am I right?
Mind you, if we ever did get a true virtual reality game, I hope the physics will be as broken as Skate 3. I’d love to experience clipping through the core of the earth for myself.
