I saw Punchdrunk’s production of Faust in London around 10 years ago, which took place over several maze-like floors of an abandoned archive building. Immersive theatre productions face similar problems. This notion of focusing attention can be a real issue in VR storytelling, which is why this single moment of the one jellyfish appearing before the others is so important. Once you’ve spotted the jellyfish you know it’s there and you know it’s coming so even if you look away you are aware of the jellyfish.
It’s a simple technique but what it achieves is that it focuses your attention. As you descend further the light is revealed to be a jellyfish and moments later you are surround by dozens of them. If you look down through the floor of the cage you see the darkness of the cave below and within that darkness a single, glowing light. There are also some light narrative elements here, just by virtue of the movement itself and also with a clever use of visual foreshadowing.
The second stage introduces the movement of the cage and as the cage descends there is a sense of potential danger lurking in the unknown darkness of the cave. It’s a perfect visual analogy for how far you as the player are willing to go with VR. In the second, Wildlife Tour, the same thing happens except this time the cage descends into a cave where you encounter stingrays and glowing jellyfish. This is fundamentally a 360-degree video with little movement and certainly no sense of peril. In the first episode, Coral Reef, you watch as angel fish and turtles swim by. All three place the player inside an underwater diving cage. It consists of 3 stages that are essentially three parts of the same experience. Ocean Descent is, and was presumably designed to be, the perfect introduction to PlayStation VR.
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