‘Fallout 4,’ ‘Doom’ games coming to virtual reality

Fallout 4 is making a virtual reality transformation, coming to the HTC Vive next year, Bethesda Softworks announced at its E3 press conference Sunday night.

Bethesda actually tried out VR past year with Doom 3 BFG edition and were impressed with the feedback received. VR isn’t a new infatuation for Bethesda, either. While we weren’t in attendance at Bethesda’s event, some of our journo compadres were, and first impressions of Bethesda’s VR offerings are decidedly mixed. This is a major challenge considering the size of the Fallout 4 sandbox.

Fallout 4 isn’t the only title to go VR. It’s all part of Bethesda’s drive to remain a leader in cutting edge technology and to offer fans the best games on whatever platform they choose according to a statement. Whether these three – “Contraptions Workshop”, “Vaultec Workshop” and “Nuka World” – will also make their way in a VR format to the HTC Vive will be interesting to see.

It’s quite the get for HTC’s Vive as competition heats up with the Facebook-backed Oculus for VR dominance. However, as the game already has a diegetic interface in the Pip-Boy, it could easily be nailed onto the player’s Vive controller. However, a “virtual tour” might make more sense given the game’s intense speed. For now, no one knows about Bethesda’s next move to tackle the motion sickness problem, which users experience while moving long distances pretty fast being wired.

It’s a seriously awesome, slightly frightening prospect, as anyone who lost multiple weekends to Fallout 4 last autumn will attest.