27 Jan, 2012
If the demo to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was a complete turn-off, then rest assured that none of the numerous bugs that were apparent won’t be in the final game. At all.
Big Huge Games’ lead designer Ian Frazier said that the completed game is “in much better shape” than what the demo represented. In fact, Big Huge Games said that the demo was outsourced to another studio.
“There’s a lot of tension about the demo, which we didn’t build in-house,” Frazier said in an interview with Eurogamer. “It was branched off our code about three months ago. It got a lot of bug fixing. We sent them what we had, but there are a lot of bug fixes they didn’t get. So we’re all nervous, like, the demo’s really buggy.
“But all the time the demo was worked on is time we spent de-bugging the main game. It should be clear from the reviews the main game is in way better shape. That’s been a source of nervousness.”
Perhaps it was a giant miscommunication, but it’s good to know that the main game won’t be as broken as the demo was. However, the demo’s broken nature generated many a negative review, and Big Huge Games isn’t happy about it.
“We’re very not happy about that,” said Frazier about the demo. “But at the same time, the feedback overall has been really positive. Given the bug situation I’m incredibly happy with how positive the reaction has been.
“I’m not going to say the game’s bug free — no game is. But it’s pretty darn solid. Final code will show it’s way better across all three platforms than the demo build. The demo didn’t see the advantages of the last home stretch of bug fixing, which is a little bit painful.”
Well, the demo also managed to introduce new problems into the game that never existed in the first place.
“The thing that’s really hurtful for us is they actually introduced some new bugs in the demo that weren’t even in the game when it branched,” said Frazier.
However, despite all the issues that came about from the demo, Frazier insists that the contracting studio did a superb job with what they had and with the time frame they had. And no, he didn’t say who the contractor was either, insisting that said contractor “does great work.”
“Don’t get me wrong — they did a good job with little support from us,” said Frazier. “I’m not trying to poo-poo those guys by any means. But in order to get it to fit to be a reasonable size download that would actually meet Microsoft and Sony’s requirements, they had to cut everything that wasn’t needed for the demo, like extra art and audio assets, and they cut a little much. They cut some audio that actually is in the demo. So if you talk to something and that clip’s not there, you’ll just see the words flicker across the screen.
“They did an amazing job within the context of the time they had.”
Via Eurogamer.
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