Battlescar review: an amazing punk story in VR

Some weeks ago I was reading Upload VR and I found an article with its review of Battlescar, a storytelling VR experience. I was very surprised to see that at the end it was awarded a 5/5 score, which is very rarely given by Upload, so I really wanted to try it. I contacted Atlas V over Reddit, and I was given a key to try the experience myself and be able to express my opinion online. And well… Upload VR hasn’t given it 5 stars by chance! Discover with me why it is a must-see for all VR enthusiasts.

[WARNING: as always, when I review storytelling pieces, there are some mild spoilers scattered around. But I won’t tell you how it ends, don’t worry]

Battlescar video review

Here you are my video review of Battlescar, where you can not only find my commentary, but also the gameplay video of the first minutes of the story! Enjoy!

The textual review follows here below, as always.

The Story

The official description of the story by its developers is as follows:

BattleScar follows a year in the life of Lupe, a Puerto Rican-American living in late 1970’s New York City. The film utilises Lupe’s handwritten journal to guide us through her experiences spanning across the year 1978 as she meets Debbie, another runaway kid living in the city. Debbie will introduce Lupe to the Punk scene of the Bowery and expose her to the secret worlds co-existing in the Lower East Side in the late 70’s.  BattleScar is a coming of age drama that explores the theme of identity through the use of animation and immersive environments in virtual reality.

Basically, Lupe meets during a night in jail Debbie, that shares the common pains of a teenage runaway girl, but that is very different from her. While Lupe is cute and is more introverted and educated, Debbie has the typical punk look, is instinctive, and curses a lot. The two are a very strange couple, but they will live some crazy adventures together while they try to express their internal discomfort becoming a female punk band. These adventures last for 3 episodes for a total duration of around 30 minutes during which I have always been interested in what was going to happen. I felt a strong sense of presence because the story was interesting, and I never knew what was going to happen next.

All the story has very punk vibes: if you love the genre, you will surely love Battlescar as well. Everything, from the characters, the songs, the visual style… everything is very punk. The way the story is told is too, as we’ll see in the next chapter. Honestly speaking, I’m not very into punk, so this was not my genre, but the high-quality experience made me appreciate it the same.

Ah, the story contains some references to drugs, violence and also a lot of cursing… so I wouldn’t advise letting your kids watch it. It is pretty crude and dark, you have been warned.

Gameplay & Visuals

I tried the experience on my Oculus Quest 2, and I had a very positive impression of the visuals of Battlescar. The 3D elements are well-conceived and drawn, with a style that for the most part is made of 3D CGI elements, like the ones of animation movies.

I say “for the most part” because defining the visual style of Battlescar is incredibly hard. The experience changes many visual styles, and it does that pretty fast. And what is interesting is that it perfectly mixes all these styles together, with something that in the end results anyway as coherent. Maybe is thanks to the magic of punk.

The experience starts that is like a 3D diorama with the two main characters inside a little jail that is in front of you. Then the environment expands all around you in life-like dimensions, and you are in 3rd person. But then soon you will find yourself having a 1st person view from the eyes of Lupe. And then again you will see a close-up of some 3D elements, with everything black around. Another time, Lupe and Debbie are 2d silhouettes made of paper that move inside a 2.5D paper-made view of a New York avenue. Then the two girls are speaking with another girl, and everything is in 3D, but Debbie and Lupe are represented just by the 2D drawing of their faces. Every scene is made different. All the time there are 2D writings in the air, most of the time like written in chalk, but other times like cut-out letters from newspapers that appear in the scene together with the 3D elements.

The visual style changes very fast… there are always new things happening around you, and every time they are represented in a different way. You may think that this may lead to confusion. Well, sometimes it happens: there have been some moments where I had no idea of where I had to look at at the beginning of a new sequence. But most of the time, this doesn’t happen. First of all, because the story unfolds always in the 180° in front of you, so there’s no risk that something important is happening where you can’t see it at all. Then because the story is so fast, and your brain is so interested in what is happening, you learn fast in following it in whatever style it may be. And while all the styles may be different, they all share a common visual coherence, a common punk style that connects them together. I don’t know how to explain it, but I found it more a cool thing than a problem. Since you have continuously different visuals and points of view, your mind is always active, is always in a flow state to follow the story, and so you remain entertained.

Some solutions are very creative: I loved a lot the mix of 2D and 3D elements for instance, with some parts that seemed cut out from a paper magazine, and the other ones rendered in 3D. Another interesting example is when Lupe and Debbie are interacting with other people and what the other people are doing to them is represented by some giant hands that interact with them. So at a certain moment, a giant hand with a giant pistol is against the head of the girls, and while completely irrealistic, it becomes pretty scary. All these solutions also help in giving a more comic-like touch to the visuals.

There are also some moments of presence that I felt personally pretty cool: for instance, the moment when they sing on the stage (and I was on the stage with them), I found myself pretty excited by her energy while singing and the enthusiasm of the audience in front of us. I loved that part of the movie.

The way the story is told is punk and rebel as the girls depicted. Punk is being against the rules, and here the storytelling techniques go against all the most used rules. There’s not a single style, but a mix of 3D, 2D, and writings that is different in every part of the story. It is very innovative for VR, I can’t remember having ever seen something similar. It is a good exploration of a new way of telling a story.

This is a massive production, and in fact the final list of credits is pretty long. There are many visual elements that have been modeled and drawn: the story is narrated very fast, and many objects get presented in front of your eyes, and many environments get explored. They are all high-quality and I’m sure that creating them required a lot of time and money.

Audio

The audio is as high quality as the visuals. The voices are great, and in fact the narrator is Rosario Dawson, the famous Hollywood actress. The sound effects are well made. The songs… well, this is an experience about punk music, could it be bad? Of course not. If you like punk/rock music, I’m sure you will like it as well. The music is also fundamental to give an even stronger “punk” atmosphere to the whole experience, to complete the mood set by the visuals.

Regarding the dialogues, I have to say that for me that I’m not a native English speaker having some words of the dialogues written everywhere around me helped in following better what was happening. Ah, and if you speak a bit of Spanish, like I do, you may understand also some little parts where Lupe speaks and that are not translated in English!

Input

Battlescar is not an interactive experience. You may see this as a shortcoming, but I think it is not. As I remarked many times, this is an experience with a very fast rhythm, and so it must go in automatic mode. Every time a storytelling experience waits for the input of the user, it has to pause a bit, and while this is acceptable in slow expereinces like Wolves In The Walls (better, it also enhances the sense of presence), it would completely ruin Battlescar. So I think that giving just a passive experience to the user has been the correct design decision.

Comfort

You can play Battlescar seated, and there is no locomotion to be performed. There are some movements of the camera in some scenes, but I had no motion sickness vibes in it, so I think that unless you are extremely sensible, you should be able to enjoy it.

Empathy

(I didn’t know how to name this section of the review, so I just used the world “empathy” that Chris Milk loves that much)

I want to say is that the biggest drawback of Battlescar for me has been the fact that I didn’t feel much connected with the characters or the story. I mean, when Battlescar ended, I removed the headset and I thought “Wow, this was amazing!”… but… that was it.

My favorite VR storytelling experience is still Dear Angelica. When I tried Dear Angelica, I didn’t only appreciate its unique visual style that makes you feel like you are in a painting, but I also felt very connected with its emotions. When it ended, I felt empty, I wanted to cry (but I was too manly to do it :D), because it gave me so strong emotions. With Wolves In The Walls, I lived a story together with Lucy, that over tree episodes became a friend of mine, and I felt on myself her emotions.

In Battlescar… I haven’t felt this connection with the characters, I haven’t felt my heart full of emotions. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed its amazing quality, and nothing more. Maybe it is because the experience is so fast that I had not the possibility to enjoy what was happening and feeling connected, maybe it is because I’m a tech guy and I find it hard connecting with two punk girls. I don’t know, but this is what has happened to me: my brain was amazed, and my heart was mildly satisfied.

Price and availability

Battlescar has been made by Atlas V in coproduction with 1STAveMachine, Fauns and Arte France in association with Kaleidoscope. It is available for €5 on the Quest Store or Steam. It is only compatible with Oculus headset, though.

Final impressions

This review of Battlescar can only finish with a very positive judgement about it. It is in my opinion a must-try if you like storytelling experiences in virtual reality. It is innovative, it is immersive, it has high-quality visual and audio elements, it has an interesting story. It is difficult to spot a shortcoming. It comes as no surprise that it has won many awards.

Yes, maybe it is not the most emotional of the VR experiences out there, but I’m sure that it will make you spend a beautiful half an hour. Have fun with it.

And that’s it for this review of Battlescar! Have you tried it? Did you like it? Let me know in the comments!

(Header image by Atlas V)