Dan Carlin narrates an immersive VR ride through WWI trenches and skies.
From developer, Flight School Studio, and publisher, MWM Interactive, comes War Remains: Dan Carlin Presents an Immersive Memory. It's an unforgettable history lesson and a horrific glimpse into life on the Western Front during the First World War. Whether you're a long-time history buff or have only heard the name Passchendaele in passing, this VR experience is worth your time, if you can bear it. Here's what you need to know.
Growing up Canadian, I'm no stranger to the First World War and the role my native country played. There are names of locations in France and Belgium that ring out in my head whenever the period of history is recalled. One of them is Passchendaele (or the Third Battle of Ypres), where more than an estimated 500,000 casualties occurred over the course of fewer than four months. Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, and the German Empire all participated in this horrific conflict that ultimately achieved nothing.
The fertile land and careful drainage of the Flanders region had long been destroyed by millions of artillery shells, resulting in a landscape that more closely resembled the moon. That is, if the moon was covered in corpses, deep, sucking mud, chlorine gas, and worse. Seeing still photos and shaky, colorless video of some WWI battle is one thing, but what about being transported back in time to sit and watch it happen in real-time?
The fertile land and careful drainage of the Flanders region had long been destroyed by millions of artillery shells, resulting in a landscape that more closely resembled the moon. That is, if the moon was covered in corpses, deep, sucking mud, chlorine gas, and worse. Seeing still photos and shaky, colorless video of some WWI battle is one thing, but what about being transported back in time to sit and watch it happen in real-time?
War Remains is not a game. It's an immersive experience intended for mature audiences. It's loud. It's brutal. It's informative. Dan Carlin, the host of the incredible Hardcore History podcast, narrates here, moving from growl to near-whisper in his usual style.
I've read plenty of history books, but that doesn't mean War Remains doesn't have something to offer. Never before have I been perched in an observation balloon above a battlefield. Never before have I been in a trench while soldiers go over the top, only to be mowed down by modern machine guns never before experienced in warfare. And never before have I sheltered myself in a bunker while drumfire artillery rolls overhead, shaking the rough-cut ceiling above me and knocking out the lamps. Whether you're a newcomer to or a scholar of WWI history, War Remains should be experienced.
Some things to consider
War Remains doesn't sugar-coat anything, and it is full of disturbing scenes and situations. Do not go in expecting a watered-down version of events. VR makes everything a lot more immersive, so those sensitive to violence or loud noises should likely steer clear. Carlin has this to say about the VR aspect:
Virtual Reality creates other dimensions. The medium allows the storyteller to engage the audience in a way that previous storytelling genres haven't been able to tap into. The engagement level is so much higher because the audience is 100% involved. It's an active, not passive experience. At times, it can seem so real that the human body will unconsciously react to what's going on in the experience even though the conscious mind knows that it's an illusion. Someone once explained it to me by saying that this technology can fool a person's "Lizard Brain." Being able to activate that part of a person's sensory system is a fantastic tool to put into the hands of someone trying to make their audience feel that they're inhabiting the tale. It's one less layer of reality, separating the audience from the story.
Lasting around 10 minutes, War Remains strips back much of the complexities and intricacies of WW1, producing a punchy and often harrowing experience. As a piece of historical education, it’s unconcerned with capturing the entire story of life in the conflict — one of long stretches of silence punctuated with combat of unprecedented destruction — and jumps straight to some of the expected and effective cliches, shown in VR for the first time.
Its most effective touches are the ones it doesn’t draw your attention to; glancing away from the action for a moment to notice you’ve been standing next to the mangled remains of a soldier for the past minute, or watching a line of hanged rats sway and shake to the erratic rhythm of gunfire. Skywalker Sound delivers overwhelming audio design, including one rare moment of true, unbridled atmosphere in which, hidden underground, you’re subjected to a merciless barrage of artillery fire, every detonation igniting a dreadful pang of desperation. It’s the one moment the experience holistically achieves what it set out to do.
And yet War Remains is too brief a creation, too simplified in its depiction to really let its impact sink in, at least in the home experience. In cutting straight to the action, the piece deprives you of the necessary context to really hit home; the dread that precedes the action, the fever-pitch anxiety and much-clinged-to humanity of the soldiers around you. These are vital elements to communicate the enormity of this conflict and they’re lost here.
Carlin’s narration is almost comical in the intensity of its delivery, as if he were trying to market an apocalyptic blockbuster or even at times sell you on a spooky story around a campfire. Occasionally his dialogue strikes the right kind of accessibility, introducing the machinations of modern warfare as concepts straight out of science fiction. But then, more often, it gets carried away with the idea, lacking the prose to back it up (as one point he informs us that WW1 battlefields resembled “the moon, only weirder”). The wording skews to a younger demographic than the hyper-violent imagery is appropriate for.
Indeed, hardest-hitting lines are direct quotes from those who experienced the real thing, the eloquent structure of which somehow seems to better encompass the scale and persistence of this disaster more so than the experience itself. Personally, I’d love to play through the piece without narration to try and truly lose myself in the creation.
War Remains Review Final Verdict
War Remains delivers perhaps as much you could ask of a historical experience for VR headsets in 2020, then. Without the time nor resources for substance, it instead centers on explosive presentation, offering an assault on the senses not easily replicated outside of VR. But ultimately this only captures the surface of a war with all the violent viscerality you’d expect. Anything deeper remains out of reach for now.
(Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/war-remains-vr & https://uploadvr.com/war-remains-review-dan-carlin/)
