Brutal Legend confusion

[Kroms]

If you read this old article, written back in the Days of Yore of 2006, it says Double Fine's new game is coming in 2009. Today is 2008. You don't suppose they either CUT anything or there's a chance it might be postponed?

 

(I know I'm being pessimistic. My optimistic side says: "Dude maybe they found a way to make it faster, OR this was just speculation." And Optimist may be right. Maybe.)

[Udvarnoky]

The more recent date would of course be the more accurate one. As far as why the year is different, I do think you're being a bit of a pessimist. I mean, who knows if they even had a publisher in 2006, which would certainly make Campbell's unofficial estimation for a release year more conservative.

 

As for a delay, it could certainly happen, as all of us who followed Psychonauts' life closely know. but then 2008 could easily happen too. Some sites are even reporting the game to be out in late summer, not December, which really isn't that insane when you think about it. That's still a three and a half year development cycle (assuming they actually started active development right after Psychonauts - probably not), which is longer than usual for most games. That's also how long Psychonauts was in development to hear Double Fine tell it - the progress on the game made in the first two years was essentially thrown out, and simultaneously the company itself was being built in the early years.

 

Bottom line: I would not assume a 2008 release to mean a rushed game. Brutal Legend has a lot of advantages that Psychonauts didn't, not the least of which is an excellent team that was fully in place from the project's inception, rather than being built along the way. Also, the game didn't even get dropped by Sierra yet.

[Kroms]

Well I know that they were well into production by August 2006, because that's when Metalocalypse entered production - and Tim Schafer told IGN that they were afraid it would be similar to BL because they were all ready "well into production" when Metalocalypse was announced. So that's easy.

 

I hope the game gets released this year and is as good as Schafer wants it to be. God knows he deserves that, and a hit would be good for Double Fine*. Telltale is doing well, thank God. I hope Autumn Moon does well, and Crackpot too. And Hothead. And Gamecock Media And...everyone else. Has anyone been covering Mata Hari lately?

 

I worry too much.

 

 

* Hell and Mojo

[elTee]

Telltale have surpassed all expectations. I mean, seriously. I knew they'd be 'culty' but their 'innovative and original' spiel seems to be unusually genuine, and people have realised it outside of our weird little circle.

[Kroms]

Yes, yes. I hope Telltale flourish. They seem to deserve it. They're certainly nice people who care about games and their customers. Unlike Lucas"We-Are-Not-a-Star-Wars-Company"Arts, who sign their customer service with "May the Force be with you."

 

DoubleFine and Telltale have established themselves, Crackpot is trying. Autumn Moon looks promising. The gameplay I've seen from Penny Arcade looks good...hmm.

[elTee]

The worst thing about LucasArts is that gibberish spouted by Jim Ward about how returning to old IP is usually a bad idea. Then as if to pre-empt the next question, inserted that proviso that if it's twenty years later it's alright, magically incorporating Star Wars into legitimacy.

[Kroms]

What I never got is how people were still suckers for Star Wars games and kept buying them.