Though I gushed over the last Syberia game I played many years ago, I’ve never actually played the first adventure Benoit Sokal’s wrote for our fair adventurer Kate Walker. Once a New Yorker desk jockey, Ms. Walker has since done plenty of sightseeing in the weirdest of places in what I can only describe as an incredibly imaginative world that balances one’s suspension of disbelief enough to ground them into a setting where automatons do heavy lifting, mammoths seemingly still exist, and discoveries still yet exist outside the reach of the modern man.
I originally planned to play the remastered version of Syberia, the one that launched on PC and consoles a month ago. But when I heard that a VR conversion was also launching alongside these platforms, I got curious and put in a request to try it out. It’s not every day an adventure game makes it to virtual reality and, honestly, my Quest 3 had been collecting dust for months. It was either now or never, lest the battery on this poor headset gave out from sitting in a closet for so long.
And on one hand, I am glad to have seen some of Syberia’s wonders in VR. On the other hand, the conversion job this point ‘n click (“PnC”) had over to the pancake lenses wasn’t exactly the best I’ve experienced.
(Microids)
But let me touch on what Syberia is all about before we really get into the virtual reality-aspect of things. After all, this is a narrative-heavy game, as all adventure titles tend to be. Here, players take on the role of a Ms. Kate Walker, a young lawyer from New York who has come to the fictional town of Valadilene, nestled somewhere in the French Alps, to complete a transaction set out between a toy conglomerate Universal Toys and the local landmark Voralberg Mechanical Toys. Now, in this humble little town, the Voralberg company was once their pride and joy, bringing commerce and prosperity to the few denizens that waltz about here—but there’s more to this company than just toys: they are a producer of automatons, robotic humanoids that nearly grasp the concept of full-fledged artificial intelligence.
Naturally, Kate is amazed by all this. She’s a wonderful character, Ms. Walker, one of the best examples of well-written female characters in gaming. She’s thoughtful, inquisitive, and does her best whenever the situation calls for it. She certainly isn’t perfect, but in the backdrop of characters that frequently badger her in-person and abroad, Kate really keeps her cool on. I suppose that’s just the trait of all PnC protagonists—you know, putting up with the inane and having to delve into multiple side quests just to get some lug out of the way of a door. But, eh, c’est la vie.
As you’d expect, nothing goes quite as planned when Kate makes it to Valadilene. Turns out, the factory’s last owner, a Ms. Anna Voralberg, decided she really didn’t want to wait for Kate and pressed F5 to quit life. That wouldn’t be too big of a problem in itself… Except for the fact that an heir yet still remains. A Mr. Hans Voralberg, the last survivor of the Voralberg family and, as it turns out, the genius behind all the machinations that follow in Kate’s wake as she seeks him out to complete what should have been a simple task.
Kate’s adventures take her to the strangest of places. Areas that wouldn’t be entirely farfetched but have some unsettling or other miscellaneous oddities that the player has to infer from dialogue and the few books strewn about to learn more. World War II also plays a small but integral factor in the state of things that Ms. Walker comes into contact with. Because the stains of war never really go away; they just blend in until people get used to the state of things. When Kate interacts with these environments and the lives that are still being led in them, it’s hard to tell fact from fiction and your sense of time will be thrown into the fritz as you progress through the main narrative. The one thing that could keep our protagonist grounded, the phone calls from back home, make things seem even stranger as no one can quite grasp what Kate is telling them nor are they patient enough to await her return.
I love this slightly unsettling feeling Syberia leaves me with. And the way the narrative is delivered and how it’s structured make it so that Kate’s adventure never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome makes me a happy camper.
Now, Kate gets through her adventure by clicking things/people/automatons, storing things in her sack, and putting whatever needs to be putted in its rightful place to progress. On a typical TV screen, you’d play as Ms. Walker from an isometric view that changes depending on her location. That, of course, is not the case in Syberia VR, where players quite literally play as Kate from the first-person perspective. That means everything and everyplace you would have clicked on to walk to now must be traversed by you and yourself alone. That also means that distant objects you’d once eye for a short while and moved on are now focal objects that can amaze thanks to the scale of the world and the perspective that VR offers.
Syberia VR is a decent conversion. I can say that it was generally easy to understand what I could and couldn’t interact with at just a glance. The game can be played either standing or by sitting and you can either walk to your desired spot physically, via the left joystick, or by flicking the right thumbstick to select and “blink” to a location. It was certainly way more satisfying, completing puzzles and figuring things out in first-person than just clicking away at a screen, that’s for sure! I also enjoyed experiencing the wonderful weirdness of Syberia, especially as Kate approached the end of her adventure.
Unfortunately, in the end my experience with the whole thing was rather clumsy and I’m not sure where to begin expending my frustrations. An inherent problem with taking a screen experience and bringing it to VR is that certain assumptions have to be changed, namely when important objects become available for interaction as well as explorable areas. Syberia VR has its fair share of invisible walls and sometimes, a character may leave an item behind that I definitely would have noticed on my PC, but I glossed over a couple of times in VR.
That is just the nicer side of the frustrations I had with the game. See, it’s very easy to miss important information as sometimes you can skip entire quests that are filled with valuable lore. This is especially noticeable in the first area of the game, where I ended up missing important information on the very adventure I was setting out on because I had apparently advanced the main story point too quickly. Speaking of things going quickly, character dialogue would often skip unprompted, occasionally leaving me confused as to what I needed to do (the finale especially got weird!). Kate’s notebook can be of great use at times due to this, but pulling out the ledger is awkward as it had this odd jitter to it that can make it difficult to read.
Jumping off that, some reading material Kate can pick up on her journey can be read by holding the side bumper on the Questcon. You need to hold this, otherwise Kate will put the item away, which is understandable. Except there are a few items that have many, many pages to them and holding that side button eventually starts to get annoying which eventually led me to stop reading any long-winded material altogether. Loading screens are plentiful as maps are small and, this being an adventure game, you’ll be spending plenty of time going back and forth to see what works and what doesn’t. At certain points of Syberia VR it almost felt like I was playing a loading screen simulator due to the sheer number of times I was hopping between zones.
The whole experience came off to be rather unpolished, which heavily impacted what was otherwise a fun and novel adventure experience in virtual reality.
Would I recommend Syberia VR? I’m not really sure as, despite my large number of reservations and frustrations, I ultimately did enjoy the experience. It’s all very much thanks to the creative world of B. Sokal’s Syberia and seeing some of the sights in virtual reality really was a treat. This is a great adventure game turned clumsy VR experience, but if you can put up with its oddities, you’ll have a good time. ∎
Syberia VR
Played on
Meta Quest 3
PROS
- Syberia's world is as lovely as it is novel.
- Puzzles are straightforward but will occasionally tease.
- Decent VR conversion.
CONS
- Plenty of bugs.
- Loading screen simulation.
- Lack of polish across the board.
