Espire 1 official announcement teaser trailer

On September 20, 2018, Tripwire Interactive announced they are publishing Espire 1 with the following teaser trailer. Tripwire have supported the development of Espire since late 2017 as we work to create VR’s definitive stealth title. View the full press release here.

Espire Development Team

Espire 1: VR Operative is developed by Digital Lode (Melbourne, Australia) with the oversight of Tripwire Interactive.

Core Espire Team – Digital Lode Immersive Media

Michael Wentworth-Bell / Game Director, Game Design, Art, Programming

Nick Acciarito / Business Manager, Production Manager

Alex Floate / Level Design, Game Design, Balancing

Alex Shedlock / Narrative Design, Game Design

Darren Wallace / Lead Concept Art, Lead 3D Artist

Alf Kuhlmann / 3d & Motion Graphics Artist

Patrick Giang / 3D Generalist, UE4 Generalist, Optimization – PC to Oculus Quest

Matthew Henderson / 3D Generalist, UE4 Generalist, Optimization – PC to Oculus Quest

Shane Colbert / Programming Lead, Core Game Mechanics, Voice Recognition Plugin

Khanh Dat Ho / Gameplay Programmer

Timothy Kardaras / Gameplay Programmer

Justin Hendrix Villegas: Programming – AI system

Reel Pictures Animation Studio / Development Partner

Shane Herbert / Pipeline Tools

Josh Simons /Advisor

Richard Knight, Tim Brcan, Ben Brcan, David Johnstone /Business Development

Audio

John Longley / Audio Engineering

Chris Lisati / Composer

Andrea Moor / Colonel Pyre

Sarah Kennedy / Ashley Baker

Michael Dunleavy / Unit Commander

James Eynaud / Additional Audio Engineering, Soldier voice

Ivy Tseung / Espire Console

Vertical Slice Credits

Our Vertical Slice (2018) was pivotal in getting this game off the ground and into full production. The following personnel were critical to the development of the Espire Vertical Slice (June 2018)

Jessica Herrera / Cartoon Espire Design

Laura Doddy / 2D Illustration

Mal Padgett / Voice – Espire Commander

A special thanks to the Unreal Engine Community, in particular the following developers:

Mordentral, creator of the Unreal Engine VRExpansionPlugin
Cubit Studios / Ballistics FX
Drix Studios / AI Behavior Toolkit
Mathew Wadstein, Unreal Engine Expert
Mitch McCaffrey / Mitch’s VR Lab

10 minutes of Espire 1 gameplay (June 2019)

Recorded at E3 2019, this video by VR content creator Nathie includes gameplay footage of our E3 demo with commentary by Michael Wentworth-Bell and Nick Acciarito from the Espire Development team.

Espire 1: VR Operative was originally revealed with the below trailer on February 5th, 2017.

The trailer shows a gameplay sequence from the Espire proof of concept, developed over 7 weeks from December 2016 – through to Mid January 2017. The gameplay sequence demonstrates some of the main gameplay mechanics developed up to that point.

All members of the Espire dev team are huge fans of the Stealth Genre and are VR Evangelists. With Espire 1, our goal is to create the definite VR Stealth experience, utilizing the new immersive medium of Virtual Reality to transport players into these virtual missions in a way that is only possible with this technology. Our hope with this initial trailer in Feb 2017 was that it excited fans of Stealth and Action games and we welcome any feedback and comments.

Learn more about Espire 1: VR Operative on the about page and check out the press release. We are releasing Development videos that detail the main mechanics of the game, the development of key features (what is and isn’t working in VR) and revealing the storyline and characters. Join the discussion about these videos on the Espire 1 VR Stealth YouTube Channel.

Development update from August 2017.

The video below shows the progress the small Espire team have made on the prototype between Feb and August. Director Michael Wentworth-Bell has been forming the Espire development team and together we have completed the prototype. The video below shows the many features now implemented.

Our August update video above demonstrates our “Control Theatre” VR locomotion system – an optional comfort mode that will allow all players to experience full freedom of movement in the game, regardless of whether they are suspectable to motion sickness. We also show some gameplay from one of the prototype’s 6 Virtual training challenges. Since the release of this video in August 2017, we have greatly developed Espire in all areas. This video does not reflect the current state of the game.

View the reveal trailer for Espire 1: VR Operative, published by Tripwire Interactive.