Stranger Things VR is "definitely not" trying to make you empathise with Vecna
radiotimes.comPutting players into the slimy shoes of Vecna, Stranger Things VR is out now on Meta Quest headsets.
But how did the indie developers at Tender Claws end up working on one of the biggest fantasy brands on the planet?
«We pitched for it,» Tender Claws co-founder Danny Cannizzaro tells RadioTimes.com over Zoom, the night before the game launches into the world.
He explains that the pitch took place «after season 3, before season 4 came out, and before Vecna was a thing in the world».
«And our pitch for it was that VR is great at representing these kind of abstract memory, dream, mind spaces, and the show already had Eleven psychically projecting into the void and these kind of similar spaces, and doing telekinesis, which we thought would just be really fun gameplay thing.»
The idea developed into what Cannizzaro describes as «a game that is set in the characters' memories and dreams, and expands them emotionally rather than trying to just do some side adventure».
«And I think that ended up lining up really well with what the series creators and writers had in mind for season 4,» he continues.
«Like, as we started getting the season 4 scripts, and saw that the big bad of the whole series was someone that could manipulate your dreams and nightmares, we were like, 'Okay, this lines up really well with what we want the game to do.'»
Touching on one of the ways in which Stranger Things VR subverts expectations, co-founder Samantha Gorman adds: «When you hear 'Stranger Things game', you sort of expect certain standard perspectives.»
By showing events from Vecna's perspective instead of revisiting that core gang of main characters, Gorman feels, «There's a lot that you can imagine creatively, because you know in season 4 that Vecna's been in the background the whole time… so, like, what has he been doing?»
Players will find out exactly that in the game, which starts with a young Henry Creel getting a grip on his powers, before jumping ahead in time to visit him in The Upside
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