While Walt Disney World now has an opening date in sight, theme parks have been closed for months and even as they begin to reopen, going back to Disneyland or Disney World is going to be a bit more of a chore than it once was. However, if you're a serious fan of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, but won't be able to visit Batuu any time soon, there's an alternative on the way. Today Lucasfilm has revealed a new Oculus VR experience titled Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge.
The VR experience will place users on Batuu during a period of time set between Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, exactly as the land exists at the Disney Parks. It boasts an original story will all-new characters you'll be able to interact with in a game world that replicates the Star Wars land found in the theme parks.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge comes from ILMxLab. The team the has already produced the Vader Immortal series for Oculus VR headsets as well as worked on the excellent VR experiences for THE VOID like Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire and Avengers: Damage Control.
However, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge is promising to be something even more. Those other experiences are linear stories that give you some ways to interact with the environment, but are otherwise set to take you from start to finish. Tales is touting much more freedom, including the ability to make choices that impact where the story goes, which, if nothing else, will give the player a reason to play through the experience more than once.
Any fan of Disneyland or Walt Disney World has probably wished they were in their favorite theme park at a time when they couldn't be more far away. Tales of the Galaxy's Edge looks to be able to really drop you inside the land as it appears in both theme parks, the first time such an idea has been seen from Disney for VR.
As a fan of VR games, Star Wars, and Disneyland, this is an incredibly exciting concept. The only downside is that all we know about Tales of the Galaxy's Edge as far as a release date is that it will be out later this year. This is exactly the sort of thing I, and probably a lot of other people, could have used at the beginning of this pandemic.
At the same time, even after we can visit Galaxy's Edge in person again, it's still not going to be that possible to actually do for a lot of people, so there's still a lot of value in this idea. Sometimes, you just want to go to Oga's Cantina and get a drink and if Tales from the Galaxy's Edge will let you just hang out there and listen to R3X play music, I might never leave.
