VR Report: Fated

The second VR game I tried last week was Fated: The Silent Oath. This takes place in a cartoonesque but beautiful environment where you are a Norseman named Ulfer. You've been granted a second chance at life, but the deal with the gods was that you've lost your voice. This actually sets up an interesting mechanic where you can communicate with those around you by nodding or shaking your head—there's something about being directly involved in their dialogue that was really immersive. The game involved a number of different mini-games that were seamlessly incorporated into a very involving tale: follow people (it's slow enough free movement that I didn't get nauseous), go hunting with a bow and arrow, steer horses along a mountainside at high speed during an avalanche while being attacked by something chilling and gigantic, navigate caves and time your movements to avoid deadly traps and pitfalls, and even manipulate a few ancient puzzles to make progress. These games naturally dissolve into the narrative, and the beauty of the experience and the emotions of the characters you travel with are much deeper than you'd expect. More than a few moments in the game had me stopping to simply observe, and the crawl through a small tunnel infested with spiders will be quite unnerving for the arachnophobic and claustrophobic. The only downside to Fated was that it takes just 1 hour to play through, there isn't a lot of reply value, and isn't very challenging, but supposedly this is only the first chapter and there's more to come. For $5, the price was perfect.