Can RTS Work in VR? - Eternal Starlight Review
Eternal Starlight attempts to fill a very strange niche, in fact a couple of strange niches. It is an RTS, or Real Time Strategy Game, and at the same time is a roguelike. Both genres, while having long histories on traditional gaming platforms, are rare in Virtual Reality. What examples do exist are also mostly on PCVR. For those that desire an option on the Oculus Quest there is really only Eternal Starlight and Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl. The latter is more of a Clash Royale in VR than a strategy game. So that leaves just Eternal Starlight for the Quest 2.
A video version of this article can be found here on Youtube.
Homeworld in VR?
Eternal Starlight is sort of a Homeworld in Virtual Reality. For those who don’t know, Homeworld was an RTS game published in the late 90s that became a big hit, and remains a cult classic for aficionados of the genre. The big draw of Homeworld was its full use of three dimensions in its tactical combat, which was very fitting as it took place entirely in outer space. Coupled with a compelling space opera story, it had the potential to redefine the genre. Unfortunately, it did not.
That is what makes Eternal Starlight so interesting. It takes some of the same concepts that made Homeworld great and utilizes them in Virtual Reality. Each dimension of space is fully utilized. Ships can move upwards, downwards, and side to side in order to gain a better firing angle or positional advantage on an opponent. Just as in Homeworld there are ample asteroids and space debris to utilize in order to hide or block firing angles. The environment is, at least in theory, as much a part of the battle as the ships in the arena.
Let’s back up for a second, to truly recognize this comparison, and to determine if this use of three dimensional space in a VR RTS makes for viable and interesting gameplay, we need to know a little more about Eternal Starlight.
Eternal Starlight - An Overview
As mentioned before Eternal Starlight is a VR RTS Roguelike. That is a rare thing in VR, a platform that lends itself to first person experiences. VR is the ultimate form of first person. The player’s arms are virtual arms, their virtual body is their actual body. No other medium allows for interaction that is so close to real life. However, an RTS is so impersonal, so divorced from the sort of physical interaction that makes Virtual Reality immersive. Still, Virtual Reality certainly brings some upsides.
In Eternal Starlight you get a beter view of the battlefield than in any other RTS game. RTS camera controls are pretty standard, the camera can be panned, it can be zoomed, but it always a 2D display of 3D objects. In VR you can look around as though you are a giant head on the battlefield, craning your neck easily to capture any angle you desire. Rather than move a mouse you grab space and move yourself around with your hand. It feels kind of like climbing a ladder. Two hands are moved towards or away from each other to zoom in or out. Sort of like would be done on a Phone or Tablet.
These are map controls that are the same as they are on a computer screen, but the movement of the map is so much more intense. It feels as though you are there, floating through space. It is a simple translation of old RTS camera movement to a new medium.
It works and it adds that new dimension of up-close intensity and immersive spectacle that VR always does, but it doesn’t add much. It’s cool, and it is a novelty. Craning your neck around to see a laser beam slice into an enemy ship is great, but it doesn’t add anything to the actual gameplay experience other than a nicer view. Nothing here utilizes VR specifically to affect the gameplay, just how that gameplay is observed. It is merely a fun way to reuse an old system with a new view and new control inputs.
The rest of the game is inconsequential to VR. New ships can be rewarded through missions or bought for a high price. There is a great modular equipment and upgrade system that allows the player to increase the strength of each individual ship and specialize its role with weapons systems, special ability items, and upgrade modules.
Roguelike For No Reason
That brings up the roguelike aspect of the game. This game seems as though it was designed to be a linear experience with permadeath added afterward to encourage replayability. If the player’s flagship is destroyed then game over, start again from scratch. There is some light progression, completing missions gives a slightly more upgraded flagship on following runs, or options for different types of starting flagships. They do make subsequent runs easier, but what makes this game a bad roguelike is how punishing it can be of small mistakes.
Barely winning a battle with the final enemy ship can still lead to a game over when that ship explodes and destroys the player’s flagship. A really good run can have a single mission which goes badly and cannot be replayed. Maybe a couple of units were in the wrong place, and then were destroyed. Maybe that unit was fully upgraded and cost many thousands of resources, locking the player out of harder missions for possibly the rest of the game as they struggle to catch back up.
Resources can be hard to acquire, because if a ship is damaged resources must be spent to repair it, a sizeable amount of them. A balance can be achieved where the player accumulates more resources than they consume, but it is a hard balance to strike. As a new player it can be easy to feel as though there is no progression and every mission is a net loss. Even with the ability to pause the game at will and issue commands it can be overwhelming. New players should start on “Easy” mode if they want to make any meaningful progress.
Eternal Starlight is not helped by how difficult it is to control units. The VR interactions again are not new, but novel in their Virtual form. Trigger selects units, or can be used to drag them to a specific location. The problem is that they don’t seem to listen. Even telling a unit to attack an enemy can be unhelpful. For instance a ship designed to use long range artillery might very well decide to close with the enemy ship to use its short range weapons rather than bombard it from afar as intended. Turning off the AI can help this, but it does not help how unresponsive they are. Just trying to tell a unit to turn, for the love of god TURN, so that the enemy is in the firing arc of its weapons is extremely frustrating. Only using special weapons such as a Fusion Beam makes the ships move into firing position with any kind of alacrity. For a game so reliant on use of terrain and precise maneuvering to outfox the enemy this is a serious handicap. Starting from the beginning once more because units did not respond to orders as they should is not a good feeling.
Even without the VR aspect, combining a roguelike and an RTS is an uncommon combination, and should have been handled with more care. Possibly the ability to redo missions, at least for a limited number of times, might have made this game feel less unfair. As it stands the roguelike aspect of the game does not mesh well with the Strategy aspect of the game. It feels punishing to try new and interesting ship combinations, because if they don’t work then the player has to start all over again. While there is a skirmish mode for experimentation, the overall effect of the roguelike aspect of the game is frustrating. This is especially true for those who don’t want to sink many hours in a single game completion. It does get easier over time as the player learns how to make powerful ships that can simply tank and dish out a lot of damage, but this takes so long that it might drive many players away early on.
Most missions are always the same, though different ones appear each playthrough. Not every mission can be completed in one successful run, but most can. This, unfortunately, leaves out some important story elements when the final battle comes around. Speaking of the story, it’s alright. The aliens are all silly with one dimensional personalities like those in Star Control, which makes them suitably entertaining for a little while. There are some plotlines that feel important to resolve the first time, but not the third or fourth. The big enemy that is the focus of the game has some enigmatic master controlling their aggression. Enough story to tie the battles together in an interesting way, but not enough to be a draw on its own.
But What About RTSes In VR?
So Eternal Starlight has some problems, but what does this mean for the efficacy of VR as a medium for RTS or Strategy gaming in general? Eternal Starlight does show that utilizing 3D space ala Homeworld is one of the best and most impressive ways to utilize VR. For all the sameness of the control schemes it is much easier to direct ships to move up and down rather than simply side to side. That ability is directly due to this experience being in Virtual Reality. Zooming out far to see the battlefield is also much easier in Virtual Reality than in any other medium, though occasionally finding smaller ships like fighters against the backdrop of space can be difficult.
Those are mostly intrinsic qualities of the medium, and Eternal Starlight does little else with the fact that it is in VR. It would be about as good of a game if it was on a traditional flat screen. So if anyone out there is looking for proof that VR is a better medium for strategy, then you may have to wait for longer. Though all of this begs the question, what would make for a better RTS in VR?
Assuming that Eternal Starlight’s more mundane flaws could be fixed. The finicky movement, AI controlled ships being very unreliable, and the many problems with its roguelike format, what else could be done? Maybe if special abilities had to be flung towards their target like a hand grenade, or some other form of control that was more conducive to hand movements. Adding a “skillshot” element to the game might not be very strategy-esque, but games like League of Legends have already done wonders with the need to time and aim powerful abilities in order to land them.
Since the game already has an emphasis on using very few ships, what if one ship could be directly “helped” by blocking incoming fire with the players hand, or wound up like a clockwork toy in order to increase movement or reloading speed? Maybe it is the lack of direct interaction with the game world that is so a part of the RTS genre, which does not mesh with VR. A marrying of the two might be required. The trappings of an RTS game and controllable units, but with an added layer of direct player interaction and control which can utilize VR more fully. Units which are directly controllable have been implemented in RTS games before, and such a hybrid approach might be engaging in Virtual Reality as well.
Eternal Starlight is a spectacle for sure, and is very frustrating to begin with due to its roguelike format. It is just a shame that it does not show off anything new, and is rather a rehashing of the old in a new format. Though for an effort by an incredibly small team it is a decent experience. At the time of writing is is available on the Oculus Store for 19.99$ and Steam VR for 19.99$. It is a bit pricey for what it is. More than likely only those who are infatuated with the idea of what a VR RTS could be, or Strategy aficionados, should check this out. Unfortunately Eternal Starlight is not the future of RTS on VR, but it does offer a small glimpse of what that future could be.