My second E3 prediction! Devils Third

[fleischr]

I predict Devil's Third makes a grand re-debut at E3 2015.

DT's reception last year (2014) at Nintendo's E3 was mixed. In hindsight, it's appearance may have been rushed. Being tacked on after the digital event, you have to wonder if Nintendo had planned to unveil DT as WiiU exclusive at a later time.

Chief among the concerns for the game were the graphics and some framerate issues present in the demo. In fairness, the technical deficiencies of the title at E3 last year could have be owed to 2 things:

1- The development team recently changed engines. From the Darksiders 2 engine, to Unreal Engine 3.

2- It's unknown for how long the WiiU was the target platform. Previously DT was a PS3/360/PC game. Until Nintendo white-knighted the project, you have to figure Valhalla was really only focused on Xbox, Playstation and PC platforms. They may have worked on the WiiU version here and there, but let's be serious: the 360 and PS3 were their original target platforms. We know it can take some time to really port a game well to WiiU, enough time that it almost seems like you're re-developing the whole game.

In December 2014, Itagaki said the game was now complete. Assuming Valhalla doesn't have any other active projects, this title has had a lot of time for polish.

In all, they've had plenty of time to make the game run good. So what about gameplay?

Itagaki himself has a good track record with Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden. He says this is his best game yet. The standards for Nintendo's SPD group are also reasonably high. And in terms of features, we know Devil's Third is already confirmed to have a bunch of things Splatoon honestly... doesn't (Voice Chat, Clan system, editable maps, loads of content)

All in all, it sounds to me that DT may come back guns blazing this year with far more polish than anyone would possibly guess.