Immortality's Sam Barlow discusses his new game, and the modern creative machine at GamersHub (by Edmond Tran)
- 26 Sep 2023
- By Edmond Tran, Sam Barlow, and GamersHub
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... Also, I think it’s been it’s been 10 years now, since I was working on Legacy of Kain, which we were working on for a few years, and got cancelled. So it’s been 10 years since I’ve officially been making, a “proper video game.” And in those 10 years, I got to sit on the sidelines and be like, “Come on, people! Be more innovative! You’re remaking Resident Evil 4 again?! Come on, let’s go!” Which is very easy to say from the sidelines. So this is me going “No, let’s put my money where my mouth is. Let’s see if I can.”Her Story originally came out of the frustrations from having worked on Legacy of Kain for three years, that being cancelled, and seeing just the state of AAA single-player story games and being like, “Oh, man. Crap, it’s suddenly really hard to make those things.” And by necessity, the rate of evolution is very slow. If you think of a big video game, and it takes four or five years to make, to sign that game you’re pitching it by saying, “It’s kind of like that other game you’ve already played, which was a game that took four or five years to make.” And, you’re promising that you’ll make something like that game, but it will be like 10% fresher and more innovative.
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I had this huge frustration working on Legacy of Kain and things like that, where if you’re making a big story game, you don’t have the luxury that say, a screenwriter would have, to just spend some time planning things out in a creative, happy place.Because what happens usually is: On Legacy of Kain we probably had a 10-page pitch document that got signed off by Square Enix, and we started making the game and immediately, we had to ramp up, because the publisher wanted the game as soon as possible. There’s a lot of game to make, so people are building animations, people are building level grey boxes, and people are designing game mechanics, whilst I’m writing the story.
So it’s very inefficient and painful. ...―Edmond Tran[1]
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- ↑ Immortality's Sam Barlow discusses his new game, and the modern creative machine at GamersHub (by Edmond Tran)
