27 Mar, 2011
Remedy games have spoken out about how their psychological action thriller Alan Wake, which had cult television fans of the last 20 years or so going into involuntary wiggles of excitement was originally planned as multi-format release. The company has posthumorously acknowledged that signing a deal for exclusivity with Microsoft was a rather large risk business, but one which was too good to be turned down in addition to granting the developement team relief from technical hoop-jumping in what a spokesman admittedly was perhaps an ‘overly optimistic view of the schedule’.
Markus Maki of Remedy spoke of the plight of Alan Wake at the GDC earlier this month, saying that the initial concerns about the potential alienation of a significant portion of their market had it’s advantages in allowing Remedy to deliver a more concentrated and focused product. In a quote from his speech at the GDC Maki stated:
“Our strategy was one of focus,”- “That’s actually a really core Remedy element, well if you forget the ambitious goals we had. We needed to be top notch in some areas, but we knew we couldn’t do everything better than some developers out there. For example, this meant there was no multiplayer. That wasn’t in our core set of skills and it would have been a huge effort.
“We also took the approach to license middleware that made sense, even when we didn’t end up using it all for one reason or another. And then, the big deal – to go with Microsoft and take one big technological effort, the PS3, out of the equation. That then changed the technology risk to a business risk – but that’s a subject for a different talk altogether…”
An example of the advantages brought forth by technical free-up came in the form of the game’s engine, which Maki boasts was built from scratch by a core team of just 8 programmers, a project Remedy claim they are ‘delighted’ with for it’s ability to impressively create realistic lighting effects and large open world environments. Maki also spoke of how they had explored their options in terms of using engines such as Unreal as a foundation ground, but that this was before the PS3 and 360 had even hit the shelves. Fellow Remedy programmer Olli Tervo says that the company will continue using this engine ‘unless good reasons appear’.
Fans will remember that a PC version of the game was still very much on the cards until mid-last year, when Remedy announced that they had indefinitely canned the project.
Alan Wake is available now for Xbox 360 via retailers and Games on Demand.
Source: CVG
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