Sony has officially taken the wraps off of The Persistence, the next horror title it’s releasing specifically for its PlayStation VR hardware. Developed by European developer Firesprite, The Persistence is a procedurally generated first-person sci-fi survival horror game specifically developed for PSVR.
In The Persistence, you play as a crewmember of a doomed research vessel. Awoken from cryosleep, you’ll need to traverse the ship in an effort to bring its engines back online to prevent you and the rest of the surviving passengers from being sucked into a black hole.
Blocking your path will be mutants and other monstrosities that the ship’s computer has mistakenly created in an effort to save the ship by attempting to reconstruct its deceased crewmembers. A premise that works well with how the game handles death, which is an important component in the game. Each time you die in the game, you respawn as a different passenger on the ship.
The biggest feature of The Persistence will be its procedurally generated ship that changes itself and its contents each time you die and respawn. As previously mentioned, dying is also a big component as it allows you to enhance your character through collecting stem cells that will only affect the next character you play as after death.
Stem cells for enhancing your character can be collected from enemies using the Stem Cell Harverster, which acts are your primary sidearm. Other weapons in the game include a pistol that fires dark-energy-infused bullets, a Gravity Bomb that creates a small black hole, and a Rage Serum that temporarily turns you into a super human with immense strength.
The Persistence will also release with a companion app that turns the game into a two-player affair where the second player, holding either a smartphone or tablet, can either help or intentionally mislead the player in the VR seat depending on the objectives given by the app. The main player can also “upload viruses” to the tablet or smartphone to disable the app’s functionality to gain additional XP.
The game is scheduled to come out sometime in May 2017 for PSVR.
[Source: PlayStation Blog (US)]
