So I had this idea last week (actually the idea has been around for a while, I just didn’t do anything with it until last week) that I should give you guys a regular progress report for all our titles in development (the ones that aren’t secret, that is). Since Oni qualifies as one of these, and since a lot of things are happening quite rapidly with Oni right now, and since I forgot to write one up last week, it only makes sense that I give y’all a quick run-down of what’s going on.
- We’re at Beta 18.
- Marty just showed me one of the cutscenes with his sound work finally added. It’s really choice stuff; when you get Oni, try playing with the sound off sometime to see how much atmosphere you miss when Marty’s contribution is absent. NB: Please remember to turn the sound back on when you’re done with that little experiment. Otherwise Marty will kill me.
- A while back we had these plans to do some cool marketing tie-ins for Oni, the sort of things we don’t normally do. There was one very cool project in the works, and a few days ago a couple of us wondered "Oh yeah, whatever happened to that Oni [censored] that [censored] was doing back before we got bought out? Is that still gonna happen?" Well, it is. :-) I for one am really looking forward to it, and I expect many of you will buy more than one. On a related note, it should be a relief to some of you that Take 2 is all over this sort of thing and definitely has a marketing plan for Oni.
- Sneaking up on an enemy and using Konoko’s back-breaker move is even more fun than just running up and beating the crap out of him. Joe "Fight Dirty" Staten is a big fan of stuff like this.
- The Screaming Cannon is aptly named. I remember back when we were testing Marathon 2, seeing a shotgun turn someone into Rice-A-Roni for the first time and thinking "They’re gonna love this." The Screaming Cannon has the same sort of effect. :-)
- Chris Butcher said something that really impressed me: "Everyone agrees that our final level is really tough and immensely fun, but so far no two people have come up with the same strategy for finishing it." How many different ways of finishing are there? One must wonder.
- You might hear a familiar voice or two in Oni. ;-)
Although Oni has been in development for a long time, the beta testing seems to be going well.
