Molyneux Is Sorry For Denis Dyack

VideoGamer.com sat down with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux at E3 last week, where he apologized for Denis Dyack not living up to his creative vision. "I feel sorry for Denis Dyack because you know, I think a few things were said wrong," he explained, responding to criticism that his original plans for a more dynamic, more interactive Dyack didn't come to fruition. Molyneux's original vision for Dyack was of game developer that matures with time, reacting to the environment and society in a natural way that would be appealing to all gamers. Players were promised a Dyack where you were fully free to explore, and were instead presented with a final product stubbornly set in its path.

Rumor has it that Molyneux is currently working on Denis Dyack II, which is said to feature more realistic gameplay, and possibly a dog.

Dyack vs. NeoGAF, Part II

Oh, the drama. In the latest 1Up Yours podcast, Too Human creator Denis Dyack explains just why he went after the NeoGAF Too Human haters. In his own words, Denis Dyack:

I was basically calling out people who had no way of assessing the game... All I wanted to point out to people is that this is so ridiculous... I went through all of this for two reasons.... If you're going to look at the NeoGAF forum as a non-profit organization, if it does not reform itself, it's eventually going to crumble. There's going to be a point where they step over the line where someone's going to shut them down. That would be a loss for everyone.... The question I have to ask the moderators of GAF: Are you going to follow your own rules? With people making GIFs of myself that are, I would say, attacking me.... Why haven't 180 people been banned now? If I wanted to move in and shut that place down, do I have grounds under their own forum policy?

There's more. Oh, yes. More. Hit the jump for more excitement!

Too Human: "This Has To Be The Worst Game I've Played In The Last 5 Years"

Poor Denis Dyack. Too Human's not even out yet, and already, the knives are out. None sharper than this one: over on the Eurogamer boards, one of the site's mods - a chap who claims to be a journo - says his Too Human review NDA is "against [his] human rights". He also says "this has to be the worst game I've played in the last 5 years", citing everything from the game's animation to its supposedly repetitive combat. This follows on from a few hands-on impressions hitting yesterday that range from the wary to the downbeat to the cautiously damning. None of which are the final word. But all of which will nevertheless be taken as final gospel/reviews by the impressionable and trollish (despite the potential that one is a complete fabrication), which should make a fascinating case study in the construction of internet preconceptions for some student, somewhere.

"Interview with Silicon Knights about Too Human" [Eurogamer, via VG247]

It's puzzling to think that Silicon Knights has been plugging away at Too Human for well over a decade now. Sure, it's been planned as epic stuff from the get go, back when it was a PlayStation title and boasted of a scope that would require four game discs over 80 hours of gameplay. It later became a GameCube title, a transition that obviously required much of its previous iteration to be scrapped.

But as I hacked my way through the Xbox 360 game's first six hours of the single player campaign — putting me at about half-way through, according to the game's own Stats ticker — I began to mostly puzzled by what it was the team was doing with its time. Too Human seems surprisingly unpolished for a game that's been in some form of development for a decade, delayed multiple times, one due to be released in less than two months. Granted, the letter that accompanied our preview copy of Too Human did warn that our pre-release build was not "final retail code" and may have gameplay bugs that "will be addressed in the final retail game."

That was certainly taken into consideration as I completed Too Human's first two chapters, but some of the core issues I had with the game aren't the kinds of things that will likely be ironed out in the final thrust of development.

Denis Dyack Tells Too Human Trolls "Put Up Or Shut Up"

Dyack: Hollywood-Like Publisher Consolidation To Continue

Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack has often spoken about the so-called "one console future," where the hardware biz will consolidate sufficiently so that there are no more platform wars.

Speaking to GameDaily, though, Dyack also said he thinks we'll see continuing consolidation in the games industry itself, with the big publishers eating up the smaller ones until there are only a few major companies left for all products, Hollywood-style.

Of course, bigger publishers are less agile, and this future for the business is pretty bleak as far as risk and innovation goes. Dyack said that studios will be challenged in maintaining their independence and creativity:

"It is definitely more difficult to stay independent as time goes on. However, we really don't think about this very much, and instead turn our focus and attention toward what is best for moving the interactive entertainment medium forward. Making excellent games helps pave the way for the future of any developer, and any developer's mantra should be 'quality first.'"

Dyack: Future Will Only See Handful of Publishers [GameDaily]

Too Human Just Days Away From Completion

Silicon Knights head Denis Dyack writes on his IGN blog that Too Human development is finally coming to an end and that the team expects to deliver a gold master of the Xbox 360 game after squashing a pair of bugs. A positive Dyack writes that "this is likely just days away." He calls Too Human's development "a very rough road" but talks of "staggering" depth and an "awesome experience," something we look forward to evaluating for ourselves when the game is finally complete.

In even better news, Denis writes that "there will be plenty of time for press to critique Too Human as they will receive evaluation copies well in advance of the release date." We're expecting to get a new preview build pretty soon and look forward to spending plenty of time with the game.

End Game Approaches [Silicon Knights Blog]

Two Humans' Hands On with Too Human

Denis Dyack kept things short and sweet at yesterday's Xbox 360 Spring Showcase event. He wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to play through some co-op on Too Human.

The game is releasing on August 19 in North America, but the once four-player co-op has been trimmed to two because, after play-testing it for awhile, he realized that there was too much going on with that many players.

Later, Dyack told me that the engine still supports four player co-op, but that things were getting too confusing on screen once you factored in the four players, their special attacks and spider-bots plus the army of creatures that would spawn to deal with them.

None of the game's maps are randomized, he told me, but the creatures that spawn in them are. The game will take a player about 15 hours to get to level 30 and 50 to 60 hours to get to level 50.

"I don't know how long it would take to see everything, I don't even know if that's possible," he said. "Too Human may look like an action game, but don't be fooled—it's actually a very, very deep role-playing title."

Everyone needs to firmly understand that the console manufacturers have a closed model. If they win market dominance, it moves the market toward a monopoly, because it's not an open, competitive market. If Nintendo wins 95% of the market, it definitely becomes a monopoly, because if they control the hardware, they control everything else. The current parties who are involved in pushing forward closed systems will never want a single-console future, because it goes against the current business model that they're trying to apply.

I think stories like [the ones in the books] Hyperion or Altered Carbon or very serious science fiction — we need to get stories to that level in the video game industry... Bubblegum stories are OK, but there's no reason we can't aspire to do more for those who want to do more. Certainly there's room for everything. If Too Human can say anything, it's that it can be done, and we should at least attempt to try.

Silicon Knights' Too Human has been a long haul. Too long. The game was first shown at E3 in 1999 for the original PlayStation. Eons ago! The development dragged on for donkey's yonks, and the game switched to the GameCube. Later, Microsoft stepped in and partnered up with Dyack and co. to publish the game exclusively on the Xbox 360. All that, and Silicon Knights' head knight Denis Dyack isn't worried! Heck, this huge delay is a good sign. Says Dyack:

And what I think — it's really interesting, that I didn't know that, that all the major hits had been significantly delayed... Hopefully that will bode well for Too Human. In the end, we could only make the type of games that we're proud of making, and we just, from Silicon Knights' perspective, we will not give in to anything else. We just won't let it happen.

Silicon Knights Gets Cash Infusion For Whatever's After Too Human

Too Human and Eternal Darkness developer Silicon Knights got a little walking around money from the Video Game Prototype Initiative for an unannounced title. Numbers-wise, it's a cool half-million Canadian bucks that will go toward a multi-platform title scheduled for 2010. The game, which wasn't discussed by name, seems to be the third project in development at the studio, with Too Human (hopefully) wrapping up soon and a Sega-published product already over three years in development.

The mystery "third-person action/psychological thriller" may very well be published by Sega, however, as SK prez Denis Dyack has said the relationship with the label is a "long term opportunity." We trust that Denis knows exactly what a long term opportunity is and look forward to learning more about Eternal Darkness II. Oops, I mean, whatever "Project Number 3" is going to be.

Eternal Darkness 2? [TooHuman.net]

Niagara has always been an industrial city and that's starting to change. We're going to start seeing things in this region that people are not used to.

Too Human Finally Arriving In May, Says GameStop

Retailer GameStop says that the extremely long in development Too Human from Silicon Knights is scheduled for a May 6 release—yes, that's in 2008—in its weekly e-mail update.

It writes refreshingly of Too Human: Part I, that "Claiming up front that your game is going to be a trilogy in the tradition of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings is a bold statement. After all, Weekend at Bernie's only made it to two movies. Too Human has an intriguing story-based plot that may very well live up to that claim. Play as a cybernetically enhanced Norse god as you defend humanity from evil machines."

You may remember project lead Denis Dyack writing that a "firm date with tons of new info is coming soon" back in August of last year. That means we're now doubly informed, possibly knowing Too Human's planned ship date and that "soon" means "within the next six months" to Dyack.

Thanks for the pointer, Mike!

Dyack Worried About Quebec Brain Thieves

Are Canada's video game development subsidy priorities out of whack? Outspoken Silicon Knights head Denis Dyack thinks so, calling Quebec's financial ability to attract developers "insane." When not knee deep in development of Too Human for the Xbox 360, Dyack worries that money going to powerhouse like Ubisoft, EA, and Eidos, all of whom have developers in the region, is creating a brain vacuum elsewhere. Those hoping for an end to the tense relations between programmers in Canadian provinces Ontario and Quebec won't find any relief, but an inside look at Silicon Knights is worth the peek at Gamasutra.

Silicon Knights' Dyack: Quebec Game Company Subsidies 'Insane' [Gamasutra]

Denis Dyack on PS3 vs. Xbox 360

I don't think that Dennis Dyack, fearless leader of Silicon Knights, is really a fan of any console platform that's different from another. But that's not going to stop him from weighing in on the epic, Xbox 360 Vs. PS3 processing power debates that we so enjoy.

The 360 and the PS3 are equal in power in my eyes. Maybe the PS has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. It's pretty much a net, net.

One Console Future Is "Inevitable"

Imagine a unified platform — one console for all gamers — that would bring a massive paradigm shift to the games industry, where games would become better in quality, cheaper, and more widely available. Sound good? It can happen. Better yet, it's inevitable. It will happen... A one-console future is a future I think we can't avoid - and thankfully, it's a future where everyone would win.

Silicon Knights' main man Denis Dyack wrote in the TooHuman.net forums today that the long in development Too Human will be out sometime in 2008, just days after confirming that the title is "on track" for a release next year. He also promises a "firm date with tons of new info is coming soon." Following that, anyone looking forward to the former Nintendo 64 adventure game should then keep their eyes open for a playable demo of the game on Xbox Live.

Dyack also claimed that the Too Human demo "will speak for itself." Can't wait to hear what it has to say.

Too Human Confirmed for 2008 - Demo Forthcoming [TooHuman.net]