To Complete Your Training You Must Face Vader in ‘Vader Immortal Episode III’ (The NoPro Review)
ILMxLAB’s flagship series reaches a satisfying conclusion
If you grew up with Star Wars — be it the original movies, the prequels, the games, whatever — then there are a few things you’ve imagined yourself doing.
These archetypal moments include making the jump to lightspeed, fleeing a giant monster, and facing down Darth Vader — the Dark Lord of the Sith — in personal combat. Moments that you have surely experienced with the help of toys, video games, and a healthy imagination.
All these are things you can — and will — experience in a whole new way as part of the complete Vader Immortal cycle, whose third and final episode drops on November 21st for the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift.
Episode II ended with you bringing down the Darkghast — the only thing scarier than a Rancor — and finding yourself charged with attacking the Imperial garrison in Vader’s castle. Vader, it seems, is on the verge of activating the Aeon Engine, which can be used to breach the world of the dead, at the cost of the living. He’ll kill all life on the lava planet of Mustafar — you know, the one where he lost that fight with Obi-Wan — to undo the mistakes of his past.
That is, he’s going to try. But The Force is your ally. Along with a droid army, an ancient lightsaber, and a witty droid voiced by Maya Rudolph.
As a Star Wars fan — which I am, and then some — there’s a lot to love about Vader Immortal as a whole, and the third episode in particular. ILMxLAB nails the landing on this final chapter, which brings the run time of the story in the series to about two hours worth and change of adventuring. There are moments that push Star Wars lore into slightly new territory, and all of it is anchored by the motivations of the characters — from Vader’s obsession with the past, to the Black Bishop’s mysterious agenda. It’s good genre storytelling, balancing the characters with a rewarding sense of discovery that games do so well.
The package brings to mind a kind of greatest hits of the Lucasfilm interactive legacy, and feels like you’re playing the “story mode” of a lost LucasArts game that has been translated into virtual reality.
Luckily for us, ILMxLAB is fluent in over six million forms of communication… or at least is fluent in translating the adventure game milieu into the six degrees of freedom afforded by the Oculus Quest. Sure, there are still limitations on the tech — occasionally I yanked myself out of the play space or bounced too close to a virtual wall which ended my fight choreography real quick — and the chase sequence in Episode III involves a looping shooting gallery that’s less interesting than the monster escape in Episode II, but by the end of the story it really does feel like you’ve fought in a Star War.
What’s key is that the team really gets what makes VR special. It’s not just the graphics or the fact that you can walk around: it’s about what you can do in the environment. In short: VR — the whole field of XR, really — is about the verbs you use, not the nouns you encounter. By the time the series wraps a whole vocabulary has been established, which left me wanting to jump into the next tale so I could test out my new literacy.
While the verbs are the star, it doesn’t hurt to have some compelling nouns, uh, characters and places in the mix.
After having run around Vader’s castle and the lava tunnels of Mustafar for over two hours I feel like I know the place. It’s not quite how I feel like I know Black Spire Outpost on Batuu (ahem, Disneyland), but there’s more of a sense of scale and proportion to what’s here compared to when I recall the Wookie home world in the recently released Jedi: Fallen Order.
Beyond that: as much fun as it is to duel the Second Sister in J:FO, it is nothing compared to crossing laser swords with Lord Vader in the climax of this adventure. Because there’s a world of difference between the abstract button combos of an action game, even one that demands a high degree of precision like J:FO, and actually having to block Vader’s every move. The lightsaber combat in J:FO is deep, at times more than this old gamer can deal with (hello, Story Mode), but here it feels real.
Look: we’ve all imagined it, we just haven’t had something respond to our imaginings like this before. We haven’t stood — literally stood — up to Darth Vader before. This feeling — that you’re moving around inside Star Wars, doing Star Wars things — is a feeling that has sold more than one Quest pretty much on the spot. I know because I’ve watched friends take off the Quest after I’ve put them into Vader Immortal and ask: “How much is one of these things?”
Which makes the announcement that the series is going to be a holiday pack-in for the Oculus Quest a slam dunk. Sure: all the episodes only amount to about $30 worth of software, but there’s little that shows off the range of what the Quest can do like Vader Immortal does. And that’s before we even get into the dojo.
When last we met, I was but the learner…
The total Vader Immortal adventure is only half the equation, because there are hours of fun to be had inside the Lightsaber Dojo mode of each of the episodes. Like the story, these training modes build on each other, with the variety of challenges building up in each edition and carrying over into the next. While we learned to use a saber in the first, and the Force in the second, the third is just a symphony of destruction as all the powers come into play and then some.
Seriously: the only flaw with the dojo is that you’re pretty much stuck to a three foot circle. Which is probably best for safety, because I definitely would have run into a wall chasing down droids and stormtroopers otherwise. The urge to get one’s Jedi Party on is quite strong.
As it stands, the dojo is the most fun I’ve had in an Oculus Quest this side of Beat Saber. For the third edition the team has upped the ante on the unlockable rewards, adding modifications to play style (I don’t want to spoil what, exactly) as part of the options. If all that the ILMxLAB released was the dojo, I’d be a pleased padawan, so getting it as a bonus on top of an already excellent experience is pure desert.
There’s just so much right about the whole Vader Immortal series — from storytelling to price point — that I’m sad to see it go. What I hope is that other developers and publishers take note: this is how you do VR.
Vader Immortal: Episode III will be released on November 21st for both the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift platforms, and will be priced at $9.99.
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