Aardman Animations announced a new collaboration with Atlas V and Meta to bring a new Wallace and Gromit VR experience to Quest 2.
Wallace and Gromit: The Grand Getaway will release for Meta Quest 2 in 2023, which Aardman says will be the “next step” for the pair’s adventures in immersive media after the mobile AR experience ‘The Big Fix Up’, which released last year for iPhone and Android.
Here’s a description of The Grand Getaway, direct from Aardman:
In ‘The Grand Getaway’, holidays are in the offing for Wallace and Gromit. Sun, sand, and the chance to test out their latest contraption, Auto-Caddy. But Wallace has his dates mixed up – they have to be on the other side of the country in just half an hour! There’s only one thing for it… they’ll take the Rocket. But a mishap with the controls sends Wallace, Gromit and Auto-Caddy hurtling off course. Will this be a holiday to remember?
Funded by Meta, The Grand Getaway will be a co-production between Aardman and Atlas V, allowing players to “walk around, explore and get hands-on (or paws-on!) within the world of Wallace & Gromit.”
Aardman is an animation studio known for a myriad of successful animation properties, movies and shorts, including Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Shawn the Sheep and more. Atlas V, meanwhile, is a production studio that has also worked on animated movies, but focused around immersive VR experiences and narratives, such as Gloomy Eyes, Battlescar and Madrid Noir. It will work on this new Wallace and Gromit experience in association with studios No Ghost and Albyon.
I was a big fan of Madrid Noir – it made some interesting stylistic choices with how it framed narrative in an immersive medium. There were sections where the animated characters were staged like a stage play occurring around you, with dramatic lighting and environments that almost looked like a movie set. The history of strong stylistic presentation makes me excited to see what a Wallace and Gromit collaboration with Aardman will look like. On paper, it’s a match made in heaven.
You can read more about The Grand Getaway over on Aardman’s site.
