Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has taken us to iconic locations from the Star Wars universe in VR for the past six years, and Beyond Victory shows how far the studio has come while highlighting how tricky mixed reality can be. Read on to see why its ambition doesn’t always make the jump to light speed.
Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset is more than just another Star Wars game; in some ways it’s the realization of a childhood dream. I still remember standing in a line that wrapped around my local theater twice in 1977, waiting to see this popular new sci-fi film that promised a galaxy full of space wizards and laser swords. None of us knew it would alter the course of modern cinema forever.
What is it?: A blended mixed reality and virtual reality narrative adventure with an Arcade and Playset Mode.
Platforms: Meta Quest 3/3S (reviewed on Quest 3)
Release Date: Out now
Developer: Industrial Light & Magic
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content, Inc.
Price: $19.99
That day changed everything for me as a kid, mesmerized by the events unfolding on the screen. Next Christmas came all the official Star Wars merch, and I luckily got most of the play sets I wanted. As for the larger ones we couldn’t afford, I made my own from cardboard and items found in the family junk drawer. Decades later, that same galaxy far, far away is now unfolding around me in VR with a digital toy set.
Opening scene of Star Wars: Beyond Victory Adventure Mode captured by UploadVR
The Story
Beyond Victory starts with a literal bang. After a short opening race segment, we’re greeted by a spectacular cutscene where our main character has crashed his podracer. Over the next three hours, it shifts between story-driven VR scenes and mixed reality sequences.
This new chapter in the ongoing Star Wars saga places you in the role of Volo Bolus, a young pilot mentored by podracing legend Sebulba. It explores the dark underworld connected to the podracing scene, and ILM’s goal is to unite generations of Star Wars fans through a new type of experience, stumbling somewhat in execution along the way.
Gameplay Modes
Adventure Mode is where this story unfolds, offering a narrative-driven experience in the style of the Vader Immortal trilogy and Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, but with a twist. This mode features both third-person tabletop on-foot exploration in MR, very easy puzzle-solving in first-person VR, and then back to MR for the main part of the story, which is the third-person podracing.
This is where things started to go off the rails a bit for me. Constantly shifting between VR and MR becomes annoying after a while, and occasionally a change would go to a bad camera angle depending on how I previously positioned the game board. Both modes work well enough on their own, but the constant shifting between them is a bit too much. I find myself wishing that some scenes would stay in VR mode, especially the podracing sequences.
Arcade Mode, on the other hand, takes the third-person podracing from Adventure Mode and adds competitive online leaderboards. This scenario returns to a mixed reality perspective, where you place the course in front of you and race from a tabletop view. While visually cool, it sacrifices necessary depth and visibility.
Piloting a podracer at wild speeds through a Holotable that only becomes as large as your arms can stretch is a deeply flawed idea. I can’t see far enough ahead to plan turns, and it’s never as thrilling as actually sitting in the cockpit. It’s not awful, but it isn’t what I imagined or hoped for when I learned ILM was making a podracing game. It should have offered a fully immersive option for VR, or at least given players with strong VR legs the ability to switch to an in-cockpit, first-person perspective.
Posing action figures in Star Wars: Beyond Victory’s Playset Mode captured by UploadVR
Playset Mode offers some pure sandbox fun in mixed reality, unlocking new items through completing races in the other modes. You can place action figures, vehicles, backdrops, and set pieces into your room with the option to move, resize, and even pose them in various ways, letting you build your own Star Wars mixed reality diorama or room-scale experience.
This brought back fond memories of playing with my action figures, nailing that sense of childlike wonder as I sit on my floor and play with everything I’ve unlocked. If you’re an older player who grew up during the 70s and 80s, this mode alone may be worth the price of admission.
Between these three modes, I’d consider picking Adventure Mode as my favorite, and in some ways I still do with its cinematic nature. However, constant jumping between VR and MR kills that for me. You’ll go from first-person immersion to tabletop MR and then back again, often without a warning or clear reason. The transitions seem cool at first but quickly break any sense of immersion. After a while, it feels like three separate ideas stitched together to test the medium rather than decisions made for player satisfaction.
To bring balance to the Force, ILM would need to completely retool this and allow players to choose their preferred method of play, whether in VR or MR. There’s been no suggestion that will happen here, so players seeking a deep podracing experience will need to find that elsewhere.
Star Wars: Beyond Victory is mostly played in mixed reality, so you’re not subjected to artificial locomotion while in passthrough mode, which should keep players feeling comfortable.
In VR mode, there are choices for standard comfort options, such as teleportation movement and snap turning. Some players may also find the switching between VR and MR to be an uncomfortable effect.
Star Wars: Beyond Victory is rated as Moderate on the Meta Horizon Store page.
Graphics and Sound
As anticipated, ILM surpasses its previous Quest titles for visual fidelity. Beyond Victory’s VR sequences look outstanding on my Quest 3, and the mixed reality pops nicely against the camera backdrop. There are a few graphic anomalies in the Playset Mode where items would pass slightly into a real-world mapped surface and shimmer or fade out of existence, but this is nothing we haven’t seen in other MR titles before. It’s a limitation of the platform supporting the game in its current state.
Gameplay images captured by UploadVR
Beyond Victory’s soundtrack is precisely what you would expect, blending the iconic sounds of the franchise together with skilled voice acting and an original soundtrack. This mixes traditional cinematic orchestral-style scores with alien hip-hop coming from the radio in the speeder repair garage. It’s not the iconic John Williams soundtrack we’ve come to expect in any Star Wars-based media, but it works well here.
Gameplay footage captured by UploadVR
Voice acting is exceptionally well done, as we’ve seen before from an officially licensed Star Wars title created by ILM, and the cast does a wonderful job balancing the narrative’s humor and drama. I instinctively stayed through the end credits, and without giving any spoilers, there is a short bonus scene waiting at the end.
Controls and Performance
While this would be a perfect game for hand tracking support, Star Wars: Beyond Victory only supports the touch controllers. For the racing and exploration sequences, this is fine, but using my hands during the Playset Mode would be preferable. Being able to pose and position all the models using hand tracking would have increased both the immersion and precision.
In the podracing sections, these controls feel chaotic and rely more on quick reflexes than on skill. There are times that I’m just flicking the stick and laying on the boost in hopes that my tiny podracer would somehow make it to the end of the race without crashing and burning multiple times. Some of this issue arises from the limited view in front of me, though much can be attributed to the imprecise controls here. Unlike the Playset Mode, this is better with controllers.
Performance holds up nicely. There are very few times that I notice any framerate issues, even when the podracing scenes become congested with several other racers and on-screen particle effects. The moments I do see them are during transitions from VR to MR and occasionally when resizing and zooming the overhead map during exploration sequences.
Star Wars: Beyond Victory Review – Final Verdict
Every time I put on a VR headset for a new Star Wars experience, I’m always chasing that same feeling as the kid sitting in that theater in 1977. When the screen opens on a field of endless stars, anything feels possible, and Beyond Victory gets close to that feeling a few times with the Playset Mode bringing back the magical feeling of being that kid again.
Unfortunately, ILM’s use of shifting realities for Adventure Mode feels experimental, and the podracing is ultimately disappointing. The option to podrace in first-person VR would dramatically change Beyond Victory into something both intense and satisfying, while not forcing the fast-paced movement on players who aren’t ready for that. Without that option, I’m left suggesting these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
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