Sony explains PS Move Sorcery "re-tooling"
"There were some things we weren't happy with."
Sony has explained why PlayStation Move game Sorcery - re-announced yesterday with a spring 2012 release window - was "re-tooled".
"Coming out of E3, we knew there were some things we weren't happy with," design director Brian Upton said in an interview with the PlayStation Blog.
"We really wanted to re-tool the game's look, its world. We had the gameplay we wanted, but it just wasn't ready for public consumption."
The promising Move-enabled action adventure was first shown off at E3 in 2010. There was concern the game had been canned after it failed to turn up at E3 this year - prompting Sony to last month reassure PS3 owners it will still in development.
Yesterday Sony unveiled a new "tone" for the game. "What we showed at E3 was largely organized around a dungeon crawl, and we realized we didn't want that," Upton continued.
"We wanted a full-blown fantasy world, not a series of tunnels. A lot of our re-tooling involved moving the action gameplay into a more free-flowing space. The E3 version also had a much younger hero, and the enemies were a lot more cartoonish. We though, 'you know, we have a game here that would appeal to a hardcore PlayStation gamer…and it looks a little bit like Spyro!' [laughs]
"We didn't want people to get the wrong impression, so we wanted to bring the visuals in-line with the gameplay."
In Sorcery you play Finn, a sorcerer's apprentice "and a real hothead". He ventures into the realm of the dead, and, oh no, accidentally unleashes something "very, very bad".
Sorcery's motion controls, which see the player use the PS Move controller as a magical wand, are accessible, Upton said, helped by a God of War-style automated camera.
"The very first spell you learn, arcane bolt, is very simple to use because you just flick it forward. It's like throwing stuff at your enemy. As you keep using it, you start to realize its depth: you can curve bolts and arc bolts around obstacles. When you start using ice magic, you can slow down enemies, or freeze them repeatedly and smash them with another spell."
