The Watcher in 3D Augmented Reality: A Little Adventure with Infinity Stones & Fist Lasers for the Hero

You can either stand in one spot in a virtual environment, watching things play out for you and taking part in the activity, or you can pass through the experience, where cell-shaded 3D augmented reality characters talk to you. You play the “Hero of the Multiverse,” a nameless character who is recruited by The Watcher, narrator on the Disney Plus series, to save the multiverse by acquiring the Infinity Stones.

Wong, the master of the mystic arts, dislikes you because he’s not sure who you are. He trains you but you have to go through realities to acquire eachInfinity Stone for a vague reason. Along the way, you acquire various abilities, and Wong teaches you special gestures that activate them. You can wave your hands around to banish your opponents to the pocket dimension inside the Soul Stone or clench your hand to shoot fist lasers using the Power Stone.

It is fun to do, but constrained by the fact that you have to be perfect at certain times. That would be fine if the story was compelling, but it’s not given any room to be. The set up for the next section consists of a series of brief clips and you are dropped in to get whatever stone you are after at which point you learn a new skill. Each one of the vignettes feels like it builds to something that never pays off.

Many elements feel like they are not part of the package. For one, it looks great, and for another, it is fun to see The Watcher standing over me in my dining room, to get a better idea of how big of an issue it is. I liked shooting fist lasers, too. The end result is a mediocre experience that doesn’t go all the way to video game or movie.

What If…? A Story About Interacting Doctor Strange and What Are We Really Doing in Immersive Gameplay (with an Appendix by Dave Bushore)

Dave Bushore, who directed What If…?, told The Verge in an email that the experience is “holistically different than a game.” The interactive bits, he said, are meant to support the story. And Shereif M. Fattouh, an executive producer at ILM Immersive, said the team plans to keep supporting the app and will “be monitoring to see if there are any updates” needed based on user feedback. The app will only be temporarily free, though they didn’t say for how long or how much it will eventually cost.

The story of What If… is a story. All parties involved are taking care to call it that. It doesn’t seem significant given that the game isn’t a game and has a lot of exposition.

The bulk of what a user is asked to do is make a fist with their hands, and then use a shield like that of Doctor Strange. If you extend your hand, you can see objects and control them with telekinesis. You can open portals, alter the fabric of reality, seal “dangerous beings” away, and send energy blasts from your fists. Over the course of my time in the story, I forgot many of the tricks but they are based on a few similar movements. It was sometimes difficult to know what I was supposed to be doing, but luckily I had Apple publicists there to remind me.