Owen O'Brien, Executive Producer on Valkyrie, opened up at Fanfest 2014.

What has your partnership with Oculus been like, as a co-publisher?

Our partnership with Oculus has been very strong from the beginning. I wouldn't describe it as co-publishing...co-publishing's a slightly different relationship. We are developing a game for their platform, that's exclusive to their platform on PC. How you actually describe that in short terms, I don't know, but that's the relationship.

E-VR came about because some of those guys were backers of the Oculus Kickstarter, and they got hold of some of the early kits, started messing around with it, so they've always had a very close relationship with the dev team – and that continues.
 

What have you specifically enjoyed about the Oculus' Rift and Sony's Morpheus so far?

The main thing about both of them is just the underlying experience that they give you. It's very similar in terms of that complete immersion in a VR world. When you try it, you can't really explain it to people. I feel like I'm going around like some sort of madman saying "You haven't seen the light! You don't understand!" *laughs*

It's a real shame that VR has such a tainted history, because every time you try to say to people "but it really works this time!", they're like "yeah, okay." As soon as they try it, then they know. For me, the world falls into two categories: there's people who've put the headset on, and there's people that haven't. If you haven't put it on, you don't understand. To be honest, if you believed without trying the headset on, then you're a lunatic. You have to actually experience it. I haven't had anybody yet who's tried it on and they're like "Meh."
 

Nobody?

No, I've never. I haven't been there for every single person who sat down, but even anecdotally, I've never heard anybody say "Yeah, this guy really didn't get it, it really wasn't fun." And we reckon over 5,000 people have played the game in various forms.
 

Was the half and three quarter visor design of Rán meant to mirror the Oculus headset?

Yes. Yeah, it was.
 

What was the story behind that design?

It came from our Art Director. One thing we find is the closer you mimic what you're doing in the game to what's happening in the real world, the more immersive it is. Now, this (the visor) doesn't directly translate to it, but it's kind of a spiritual translation where, y'know, if you look at a Valkyrie pilot like Rán, you see she's got this thing over her eyes and you kind of go "Okay, well, I understand why I'm putting this thing on now." So, it's all about not breaking immersion. Plus, it just looks good!
 

Could you shed some light on the Valkyrie logo's general design or specific elements?

I wanted something that spoke to the Valkyrie mythology, which is about death. The Valkyrie either flew horses or they had wings, depending on the depiction...and they're pilots, so the wings made sense. The shape of the wings, we've played a lot with the angle of that, so that it hits the V for Valkyrie. The skull comes from two things: one is obviously the pirate side of things, but also the Guristas logo. We wanted to hark back to that because they came from the Guristas. The eyepatch is, of course, another hark back to the pirates.

The elongation at the bottom here, the "teeth"... in an earlier version, it was even longer. It was supposed to signify the soul being "sucked out" – both in the Valkyrie mythology, but also in the EVE mythology of the consciousness being stolen. We shortened it down for aesthetic reasons. They're certainly reminiscent of fangs, but it came about from more the soul being sucked out. The similarity and the effect of fangs is not unintentional either; basically these guys are lethal predators. 

Have you guys been talking about potential Easter Eggs, like references to Oculus or things like that?

Yes, we've talked about it, there's lots of... *laughs* We've talked about a lot of things! Usually we were drunk! There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with VR, just messing with people's heads, things they hear behind them: "Is there something else in the cockpit with me?!" I'm a big fan of anything like references to EVE, or references to other sci-fi, things that people will... if they know it, they'll get it, but if they don't, that's okay.

Is there any chance that the visor for Rán (the lore's main character) is hiding something, like some kind of disfigurement?

.....I can't answer that.
 

Seems my baseless speculation was onto something! Did the Guristas try to subdue the Valkyries by holding their vision hostage? ...is Rán blind? Whatever secrets lie beyond the visor, we'll have to learn further down the road. In the meantime, I'll be counting down the days.
 

A big thanks to CCP Games and Owen O'Brien for a great sit-down at Fanfest 2014.

Colt "ShdwFlm" Casey
Deputy Editor