Game designer Amy Hennig spoke about her expertise working at Visceral Games on the cancelled Star Wars action-adventure game.
Codenamed Ragtag, Hennig’s challenge was canned and Visceral Games stuttered in October, 2017.
Much of that work ended up at EA Vancouver, who have been initially instructed to develop on the idea to create an even bigger, extra replayable game, earlier than EA realised doing that will take too lengthy, and subsequently downscaled the project to be extra in step with the unique imaginative and prescient.
At DICE Summit in Las Vegas, the veteran designer and game director mentioned a handful of subjects, one in all which was about her tenure at Visceral, and the work the crew did on Ragtag. The topic of Frostbite, the engine the game was primarily based on, got here up in an interview with USgamer.
“So I think Visceral was sort of beset with a lot of challenges. Even so, we were making a game; people have said it was an Uncharted Star Wars,” stated Hennig.
“That’s kind of reductive, nevertheless it’s helpful as a result of folks can sort of visualise one thing of their head. But what that meant is we clearly needed to take the Frostbite Engine, as a result of there was the inner initiative to be sure that all people was on the identical expertise, nevertheless it was an engine that was made to do first-person shooters not third-person traversal cinematic games.
“So constructing all of that third-person platforming and climbing and canopy taking and all that stuff into an engine that wasn’t made to do this. We did lots of foundational work that I believe the groups are nonetheless benefiting from as a result of it’s a shared engine, nevertheless it’s powerful once you spend lots of time doing foundational stuff however then don’t get to go ta-da! [laughs] You know, right here’s the game.”
Frostbite is some extent of rivalry due to EA’s want to make it the go-to tech for its internally-developed games, as a manner of chopping engine licensing prices and maturing its in-house tech to be malleable sufficient for all of its improvement wants. Unfortunately, Frostbite was created for a first-person shooter at the start, and studios throughout EA have reportedly had hassle working with it in games that aren’t FPSes.
BioWare famously devoted lots of time to getting Frostbite to do primary options like stock and the third-person methods wanted for Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Years later, a few of Mass Effect: Andromeda’s troubles were blamed on DICE’s engine, to the purpose BioWare’s basic supervisor on the time, Aaryn Flynn, had to dismiss the concept EA pressured the crew to make use of it.
Now, with Anthem’s reception being as poor as it’s, some are as soon as once more suggesting just a few the game’s technical points are the results of its engine. It’s arduous to say for positive with out enter from builders who labored on the game, however you may see a sample right here with – on the very least – BioWare’s two most up-to-date tasks.
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