Denis Dyack: “Too Human” is practically done

“There are only two known rare crash bugs still left in the game.”

Today, Denis Dyack, President of Silicon Knights posted on the company’s IGN-sponsored blog that “Too Human” is merely days away from its first Release Candidate. Should it pass the Release Candidate tests and diagnostics, the game will officially “go gold” - industry lingo meaning the game is complete and will be ready to ship to stores in the coming months.

Billed as “part one” of a trilogy of games, Too Human began its storied life as an original Playstation title in 1999. Since then, the game’s development cycle has been fraught with delays, technology issues, and platform changes. After being announced for the Playstation, it was canceled and retooled as a Gamecube game, and after that, Microsoft and Silicon Knights signed an exclusivity deal for the game to appear on the Xbox 360. At E3 2005, during one of the first public playtests of the game, Too Human made a splash after EGM gave the title a harsh preview - almost polar opposite of what they had said about the game a few months earlier. Denis Dyack proclaimed their preview was unfair, a matter he was very vocal about. In 2007, Dyack blamed Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 for some of the delays Too Human had been suffering, claiming Epic breached their contract with Silicon Knights regarding help and support the company needed when working with Unreal Engine 3 for Too Human. Silicon Knights eventually sued Epic, saying Epic was more interested in developing the technology for their own game (Gears of War) than they were helping other companies who had licensed the technology from them.

Today, with the game nearing completion after almost ten years in development, Denis Dyack says,

Despite it being a very rough road, I feel we have gone beyond what we expected to achieve with “Too Human.” Through the pure talent and determination of the team, we have created an awesome experience that gamers should appreciate for a long time. It is our best game to date. And, with our deep love for “Eternal Darkness” that is saying something! Hopefully gamers will agree.

I look forward to reading about different character build strategies, and stories on how well they worked on the boards.