By Harold Goldberg

There’s nothing quite like it. Hero: A Verite VR Experience takes you, the traveler, through a Syrian town that’s being bombed. It features a VR headset, backpack and special effects. But what makes it feel even more real is the humans you deal with during the experience. This is the virtual meets real, and it’s done in a creative way I certainly have never seen before. It’s harrowing at first. But ultimately, it’s hopeful.

Navid Khonsari’s game, 1979 Revolution, received multiple New York Game Awards nominations. Now, Khonsari returns with a VR project that’s equally frightening and inspired. In Part 1, the director and producer talks about what it took to make this piece of creative art a reality and where he hopes to show Hero (as it’s not for consumers in their homes).

Starbreeze’s head of content Brooks Brown greenlit Inkstories’ multisensory Hero: A Verite VR Experience. In Part 2, Brown, a Columbine survivor, talks about how his experience during and after the horrible high school shooting impacted his decision to produce Hero, which won the Storyscapes Award at the Tribeca Film Festival last week.

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg is the founder of the New York Videogame Critics Circle. Find out more at harold-goldberg.com