The Assembly
The Assembly is being developed and published by the Hampshire based team nDreams. The game was released back in October of last year for the PS4 and will hit the shelves on the 20th of this month for the Xbox One. The UK dev house has previously worked on PlayStation Home, the virtual world on the PS3. There main focus these days is in creating VR titles, indeed The Assembly was first built with VR in mind.
The Assembly is a first-person story driven adventure game that puts you right smack bang in the middle of an ongoing story. The Assembly are a collective of scientists and engineers who work underground in secret free from government control and societies morals.
The game puts you in the shoes of two different protagonists. Madeleine Stone, a new recruit looking to join The Assembly. Madeleine is tasked with a bizarre induction program designed to test her skills before been accepted in, and Cal Pearson, a veteran scientist who is looking for a way out. As Cal you will make a series of shocking discoveries that will lead you to question The Assembly's motives and methods in the pursuit of progress. Although our two scientists meet briefly in game, their stories are completely separate, offering two totally different perspectives on The Assembly and their shady plans.
Both Madeleine and Cal must solve a series of puzzles to progress the story. As Madeleine for example, moving blocks, listening to audio tapes and inspecting objects are some of the obstacles that stand in your way. Cal on the other hand is on the hunt for evidence that will help expose The Assembly and their sinister ways. As you progress through the game you will learn a good bit more about both our scientists back stories, what drives them and why they are there. Also thanks to the duel nature of the story telling in the game, learning the truth about The Assembly is not straight forward, the choices you make as either character will effect the end of the game. Answering one question might just lead to another.
As I said at the start, The Assembly was designed from the ground up for VR. The game received a mixed reception when it came out last year. VR sickness and awkward controls have been the biggest complaints. Trying to view objects from certain angles in VR is not easy when your using the warp control method. Thankfully we won't have to suffer those VR problems on the Xbox One as the game is designed for your TV using a controller. With a bit of luck the Xbox One version will be the best of the lot.
Will you be picking up The Assembly? Do you like these types of narrative driven games? Please feel free to leave any thoughts you may have in the comments below.
Video By GameTrailerZone
Image From pcadvisor.co.uk