:
Lol.
But seriously, it'd be nice if you could show us some more footage  |
I think it's perhaps worth taking a minute or two on this, so here we go. Caveat being that this is
my personal opinion and thoughts, and thus not necessarily being those of Lorne and the crew...
During game development, there's a period where you're pretty happy with what you have and you want to share progress with key parties. This will happen with every game. So whilst I'm not going to go into detail about to whom or where we showed Soulstorm this week, obviously one of those parties was Xavier. This was pre-set up a little while ago in advance, and Xavier was gracious enough to spend the time to come see the game.
What I should stress, then, is that this stage could very well happen without any public announcement of that specific game. That is: all these demos, meetings and so on normally happen well before a game is announced. In our case, we wanted to be very clear last March that we're working on a
new game - remember: this is a new game, the first all-new game since Stranger's Wrath, and thus it was important for us to get that message out, and we think it's a message well received. People were hungry for more Oddworld, and we're delivering that.
To complement the reveal, given it was done a little further ahead of the game's reveal, we started to boost the lore with an ARG that is designed to populate the gaps a little more than we'd be normally do: instead of complete silence, you get those cool screenshots and puzzles that not only show off the visuals and provide some community-building challenge, but should also help fans figure out where we're going in terms of the storyline this game.
So: we aren't yet at the stage where we want to put out screenshots and videos of gameplay - it's too soon. As Lorne said on the Giant Bomb show on Wednesday evening, the marketing cycles are way shorter just now than they might have been a few years back - just look at all the games announced at E3 this week that are out this year.
However, we
are at the stage where we can show the game privately, because such meetings and demos aren't bound to the usual marketing cycle, and that's actually what we've been doing for some time. Whilst we wouldn't normally show a fan/community member, Xavier's been great with us recently and we would consider his opinion on things carefully, hence the demo. For what it's worth, Xavier got a really good handle on what we're doing with the game and associated manifestations of that, but it doesn't make total sense for him to talk about what the game is right now because it's more sensible to package up all the info properly as there's a lot to digest, and we want to get that messaging right, at our own pace.
Again, to re-iterate, this happens with video games all the time.
So, whilst I appreciate that some of the comments in this thread suggest frustration and so on, why not take away something else instead: the game very much exists, Xavier liked what he saw and felt compelled to communicate that with his assurance that he wouldn't go into specifics. I understand that you want more info, and that will absolutely happen, but there are multiple reasons why that info isn't happening right
now publicly.
That said, we very much see and hear the desire for
something, and thus once we get back from E3 you can expect the ARG to start to move onwards again, towards what we hope is a satisfying immediate conclusion. We have grand plans to explore the new lore this way whilst the game reminds behind the curtain, that's always been the plan since LL committed to it last March. Does that mean we can fire out screenshots, puzzles and mini-movies every week? No, but we
will be widening the scope of the ARG, and we think there'll be plenty to get your teeth into.
~a
.
. While Exoddus was a good game, and there was SOME enjoyment out of Munch's game, a lot of their potential was lost due to technology limitations and time restraints. They have the technology now to do what they wanted to do in the late 90's/early 2000's, but they still need to take the time for the game to be another masterpiece like Abe's Oddysee or Stranger's Wrath. I'd rather have a game that's gonna take an extra year to make, than a game that comes out in a few months that has game-breaking bugs, major plot holes in the story-telling, or boring and repetitive gameplay.
. Also, completing levels just didn't feel as rewarding as the previous two games since they didn't have cutscenes in between the Paramite Run and the Splinterz CEO office.]
