Ninja Theory, developers of Heavenly Sword and the soon to be released Enslaved has said that under different circumstances, they would have most likely have made a sequel to PS3 exclusive Heavenlt Sword. The main problem however is that Sony own the IP and the technology.
In an interview with CVG, NT’s Tameem Antoniades said that the motivation to make games for other consoles, coupled with the fact that the studio never made any money from Heavenly Sword meant that the Ninja theory looked to work on new and different project such as Enslaved.
“We couldn’t do Heavenly Sword 2 as a multi-platform because it’s owned by Sony, the tech we developed for that game is also owned by Sony,” Antoniades said.
“There’s a different dynamic with a platform-holder. I mean, we signed up and we were happy to sign up to it because it allowed our studio to grow and we’re really grateful for that, but it feels like, as a studio, we need to think about the next few years, the next games we release.”
“We want them to be multi-platform so we had to come up with a new idea.”
Money, as ever, played a huge part in theri decision to go multiplatform.
“I don’t know if Sony made any money on Heavenly Sword but we didn’t,” he added.
“There are pros and cons. If you’re exclusive you get more attention, but when you’re multi-platform, at this stage in the cycle, there’s more competition. You’ve got to weigh it against each other.”
Shame. Heavenly Sword was a flawed masterepiece. No one played it. Maybe they would have played a sequel?
I didn’t play it. Heard it was quite poor.
It depends on what you’re into as a game. Contrary to what the article states, it was by no means flawed imo, unless we’re going to bring in a few technical issues that it had, but considering that it was one of the first games to be made exclusively for the PS3, it shouldn’t be bashed specifically for that. Ninja Theory have always been unique. It’s a beautiful game, truly a cinematic masterpiece, with an amazing cast of voice actors, gameplay is great, and the visuals…well, like I said, NT are NT in that aspect – one word: mindblowing. The only thing that brought reviews down was that it was quite short compared to other games, but it was a masterpiece to experience nevertheless. One of the things that bothered me about it was the lip-syncing issues. The timing was quite off, but even on a platform like the PS3, the amount of detail packed into that game made it suffer and lag occasionally in a process, but nowhere near enough to make it a horrible experience. If anything, it should be taken into context that it was one of a kind.
However, I can understand why the game wasn’t that popular amongst hardcore gamers, so that might even be one of the reasons as to why I loved it so much – it’s true that as such, the game didn’t really provide much of a challenge to the player. But I’m just glad that it exists as a game, and that it didn’t discourage NT enough to not continue making the fantastic and unique games that they make.