Ghostbusters VR Is ‘Not a Sequel To Afterlife’ But Features Plenty of Familiar Elements [IGN]

Senior VP of Virtual Reality for Sony Pictures Entertainment Jake Zim tells IGN that Ghostbusters VR will not be a follow-up to the story explored in Afterlife, though there will be a lot of familiar elements based on the film.

“Our game is not about Afterlife,” Zim says. “It is not a sequel to Afterlife. It does not go deeper directly into the stories. It is a new story, it’s a new concept, but it ties closely back into lots of things that people loved from Afterlife and the broader Ghostbusters world itself.”

As for where Ghostbusters VR fits in the franchise’s timeline, Zim says there’s “a little bit of a time gap,” noting that players can think of the time period as “being modern day and maybe slightly in the future.” Fans shouldn’t expect any characters from the films to appear in Ghostbusters VR, with Zim noting that it was “really important” for the development team to “move forward and create a whole storyline.”

Unlike the original movies, which were set in New York City, Ghostbusters VR will be set in San Francisco. Zim says that the developers will have a lot of fun with the setting, but will still try to make it fit within the franchise’s universe.

“When we talked about designing a game, we thought about a city, a place that could offer a lot of really cool environments,” Zim says.

“If you think about San Francisco, if you think about earthquakes, about its history, about locations, bridges, certain prisons, neighborhoods, the environments, the type of people who are in San Francisco, and the history that it has, it offered up a lot of opportunity for nDreams to really have fun with that, while still playing in the world of Ghostbusters.”

Ghostbusters VR currently does not have a release date, but it is expected to launch on the Meta Quest 2 at the very least.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.