Inside sources claim Eternal Darkness 2 was/is in development, struggling in a big way
The following information comes from inside sources, including former Silicon Knights employees...
- Silicon Knights was working on Eternal Darkness 2 alongside X-Men Destiny
"SK didn't take the development of XMD seriously the entire time I was there. They were working on an Eternal Darkness 2 demo that they could take to publishers."
- Dyack was using the X-Men Destiny game as a project to just get by until development on Eternal Darkness 2 was finished
"SK had about 60% of the development team working on XMD and the other 40% working on ED2. This was brought up several times; that some of the individuals on the other project were major contributors, and should be brought onto XMD to shore up the team and help them get back on track.
The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior. It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side-team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear really hurt that demo. Other than that, I can't explain why things went so poorly for them [except that] a lot of key people responsible for the original Eternal Darkness are long gone."
- the dev team struggled with the tech aspect of the game, as many were new devs
"the tech was really in its infancy. We didn't have a good level editor, as we started a new one from scratch, in a language that none of the programmers had any experience with: C#. The editor and exporter were terrible to work with. It took hours to make a change and see it in the game. It did improve over time, but it was never really good, or on par with modern editors and engines.
SK kept getting stonewalled by Activision regarding extensions for the game and pushing back the launch. However, SK management was convinced they would have to delay; as a result, they started shifting a few more resources very quietly to ED2.
This was the first time that a publisher basically said, ‘No, finish the project and get it out the door'. Keep in mind that during this time, SK continued to have some pretty senior people staffing [Eternal Darkness 2], and had no intention of moving them back over to XMD to help out the title."
_____________
This is all in relation to the quality of X-Men Destiny, which turned out to be a rather poor title.
- Silicon Knights was working on Eternal Darkness 2 alongside X-Men Destiny
"SK didn't take the development of XMD seriously the entire time I was there. They were working on an Eternal Darkness 2 demo that they could take to publishers."
- Dyack was using the X-Men Destiny game as a project to just get by until development on Eternal Darkness 2 was finished
"SK had about 60% of the development team working on XMD and the other 40% working on ED2. This was brought up several times; that some of the individuals on the other project were major contributors, and should be brought onto XMD to shore up the team and help them get back on track.
The farthest they got with it when I left SK was, literally, one two-level church interior. It was really bad, as I recall. It took the side-team a long time to even get that far. Bad tech, combined with a team composed of people who had not shipped a title since Metal Gear really hurt that demo. Other than that, I can't explain why things went so poorly for them [except that] a lot of key people responsible for the original Eternal Darkness are long gone."
- the dev team struggled with the tech aspect of the game, as many were new devs
"the tech was really in its infancy. We didn't have a good level editor, as we started a new one from scratch, in a language that none of the programmers had any experience with: C#. The editor and exporter were terrible to work with. It took hours to make a change and see it in the game. It did improve over time, but it was never really good, or on par with modern editors and engines.
SK kept getting stonewalled by Activision regarding extensions for the game and pushing back the launch. However, SK management was convinced they would have to delay; as a result, they started shifting a few more resources very quietly to ED2.
This was the first time that a publisher basically said, ‘No, finish the project and get it out the door'. Keep in mind that during this time, SK continued to have some pretty senior people staffing [Eternal Darkness 2], and had no intention of moving them back over to XMD to help out the title."
_____________
This is all in relation to the quality of X-Men Destiny, which turned out to be a rather poor title.
Related Posts:
- Silicon Knights has a staff fewer than 5 people - GoNintendo
- Report: Silicon Knights Was Working on Eternal Darkness 2 - IGN
- What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights' X-Men: Destiny? - kotaku
