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Groucho on 20 January 2009
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jetrii said:
Groucho said:

Alan Wake will sell better (maybe), but Heavy Rain will get the critical acclaim. I kinda think Alan Wake is past the point where it could possibly be a great game. It may be "okay".

If the devs were really talented, it would have been finished by now, rather than dragging on this long. They probably backpedaled a couple times to push the date out this far (5 years now? It was shown, and claimed to be "pretty far along" before the 360 was even released), and that's never good for the end product.

 

Remedy is a third the size of studios working on similar projects. What other developers do in 2 years could easily take 5 if their staff was as small as Remedy's. And no, Alan Wake has only been actively in development for 3 years.  The fact that a game in development this long looks this good is a testament to Remedy's competence. They designed the game with future graphics in mind, not current. But I do agree with you, Alan Wake will sell better but Heavy Rain will receive better reviews.

Alan Wake had a full-on CGI trailer at E3 2005 (nearly 4 years ago), and the design was pretty far along.  They showed gameplay in 2006 (3 years ago).  "In development" includes pre-production -- Alan Wake has been in the design and development phase for at least 4 years now, probably closer to 5 by the time the game is released, as I stated.  Games don't get CGI trailers at E3 until they are decently far along, to begin with.

Alan Wake is far overdue.  Also, Remedy is not so small, really -- their website claims they have 40 developers, and if they are all commited to AW, then their team is not much smaller than most large-scale devteams (50-60 is usually the biggest it gets, for one game -- larger studios have more than one game in progress, and if they have more than about 60 people on a single game, they are almost certainly overspending).

Don't get me wrong, Remedy is awesome in my book -- Max Payne and its sequel were great games.  However, AW is taking too long, and is looking mighty suspect now, as a quality contender.  People get tired of working on the same game for too long, which is really the main issue with a project dragging on -- I sincerely hope that Remedy pulls through and brings us a hit.