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The Germans always get it first 02 Jun, 2008, 17:43 / 11 comments

By Jason


As you know from reading The Pumpkin Post, the folks at Adventure Treff took a trip to the Hamburg offices of Crimson Cow, where they were able to get a close look at an alpha build of A Vampyre Story.

While Google's English translation is a little rough for my tastes, several details are revealed, and others are reaffirmed. It seems like the game's delay comes from issues with the coding side of the game, and the programming has been outsourced to the company Bear Technology to finish things up. On the plus side, and as we've already known, the art side of the game has been long completed, which is why A Vampyre Story 2 is already well into pre-production, with an extremely early suggested release period of Christmas 2009.

See new screenshots and learn much more, including about the game's possible iMUSE type system and future AVS sequels, by reading the whole preview.
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11 Comments

  • Diduz on 03 Jun, 2008, 20:15…
    There's an official Spanish translation at Aventura Y Cia:
    http://www.aventuraycia.com/previews/22/a-vampyre-story/
  • JohnGreenArt on 03 Jun, 2008, 01:34…
    Beautiful.
  • Kroms on 03 Jun, 2008, 02:32…
    Schya, it's Bill Tiller Gone Wild.
  • The Tingler on 02 Jun, 2008, 18:27…
    I don't like the word "outsourcing". It never results in a good thing. I hope I'm proven wrong.
  • Udvarnoky on 02 Jun, 2008, 19:46…
    I don't know that I'd call it good news, but it's not like the art or the dialog has been outsourced!
  • tenochtitlan on 02 Jun, 2008, 20:58…
    Many people in the adventure business believe in outsourcing of the coding work because this way they can keep their sole focus on the creative work. And this outsourcing only affects the quantity of bugs and the development speed but not the game itself.
  • The Tingler on 02 Jun, 2008, 21:04…
    Fair enough.
  • Thrik on 03 Jun, 2008, 09:01…
    It's also probably worth noting that the majority of Insectide's development was outsourced from what I recall, with external teams handling the art, sound, and programming, and the story/etc being handled by the in-house guys we know and love.

    Even Peter McConnell could be classed as outsourced if you look at the games he's done music for since leaving LucasArts, and the same for Peter Chan (concept art).

    There's no real reason to expect bad quality from outsourcing, although it can happen. It's really the only way a lot of the former-LEC crowd can continue operating.
  • Udvarnoky on 03 Jun, 2008, 14:52…
    Right. According to Mike Levine Crackpot Entertainment is actually just him and Larry Ahern. There are outsourcing companies involved with Insecticide that reek of being, well, outsourcing companies (mostly the coding stuff), but all the other ex-LEC folk who worked on that game (and there were many) were outsourced. These included people from every spectrum of development, from design, environment building, animation, and sound.

    Also, when Thrik says that some of the artwork was outsourced he's probably not wrong, but don't get the impressions that this was exclusively the case. Larry Ahern was of course the art director, LucasArts alumnus Ralph Gerth was an environment artist, Peter Chan and Anson Jew were concept artist, and Grim animator Peter Tsacle did the cutscenes (his work really shows). With small companies outsourcing is simply a necessary way of making ends meet. You're absolutely right that it can be a bad thing, but a lot of that depends on how it's handled.
  • Metallus on 02 Jun, 2008, 18:19…
    This game should come out.
  • elTee on 02 Jun, 2008, 18:27…
    Yeah, I agree, it probably will.