Take a tour of Just Cause 3’s Medici in virtual reality

Square Enix is letting Just Cause fans get an early glimpse at Just Cause 3’s Mediterranean island of Medici thanks to a brand new virtual reality app out today on Google Cardboard for iOS and Android. The game itself doesn’t come out Xbox One, PS4 and PC until 1st December 2015, but anyone eager to do a bit of virtual reality sight-seeing right now can download the app for free and view up to ten different locations from the final game.

There are five stationary panoramas available where you can look around in full 360 degrees, but the real treat comes when you start up one of the five Wingsuit tours. Here you follow protagonist Rico Rodriguez as he swoops and dives round Just Cause 3’s beautiful vistas and landscapes, getting a bird’s eye view of just some of the places you’ll be visiting in the game come December time. The Wingsuit is a vital part of Just Cause 3, as it’s one of your main modes of transportation round the island, and each tour is expertly crafted to show off all the the nooks and crannies of Medici’s various locales.

Google Cardboard isn’t required to use the app – you can also view each tour just by using your turning and moving your smartphone around you – but you do lose that sense of immersion, particularly when you’re sweeping past radio towers and cliffside villages in your wingsuit. All the footage was captured using the game’s internal engine, too, so what you see in the app is exactly the same as what you’ll find in-game. According to Square Enix, over 10TB of data was captured to make these virtual tours, with the resulting videos around “5.5K in resolution [which were then] resized to Full HD in order to make it managable for distribution in the app.”

Of course, ten locations might not sound like a lot for such a huge game – Medici contains over 400 square miles of chaotic sandbox terrain – but Square Enix has promised that more locations and tours will be available closer to the game’s launch. “The first release of the app will feature five Wingsuit tours, allowing you to join Rico on one of his adrenaline-fuelled skydives, and an additional five 360-degree views of key locations from the first region of the game,” a Square Enix spokesperson told me. “As launch day approaches, the app will be updated with different locations from new regions of the game.”

Still, ten tours is more than enough to get you started, and it’s certainly a fun way to experience the game before it’s released in December. If 1st December seems too far away, download this today and start planning those chaotic stunts now.