Unseen News

Robert Seddon made us to notice about an article on Kotaku, in which we can read that some stuff that was previusly cut from Warhammer Online, was later released with the December update:

Two of the classes cut from the game back in July are set to make their triumphant return in December, and your races shall soon have tanks! In his first State of the Game post, Mythic’s Mark Jacobs announced that the Dark Elf Black Guard and Empire Knight of the Blazing Sun are both returning in a big way.

Still, it seems that the removed parts were more than these:

In an interview with MMORPG.com, Mythic Entertainment VP and General Manager Mark Jacobs explains that in order for the game to be ready for launch, certain sacrifices had to be made, including nixing four of the six staring racial capital cities in favor of one for each faction, and getting rid of four of the classes that they just couldn’t make work. On the cutting board are the Choppa (Greenskin), the Hammerer (Dwarf), the Blackguard (Dark Elf), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)…two DPS classes and two tank classes.

..maybe for the next expansion? 

On October 2008, a playable prototype of Happy Camper, an unreleased NES game that was in development at Color Dreams, was discovered between various  remains of the studio. NGD was the lucky collector that got his hands on this legendary game and he decided to share his find with all the other NES fans: infos and screens from HC were soon released, so that documents of its existence can now be preserved. But that’s not all. The next week (February 2009), Happy Camper will be finally released to the public, complete with a phisical cart, a paper manual and much more! We had a little interview with NGD, to talk about his discovery, the release of the game and the thoughs of a collector on the wonderful world of unseen games.
>> Read the full interview
 

A new link from Robert Seddon, that lead us to an article on Kotaku that talks about some removed Jedi Powers from the latest Star Wars game:

We implemented more force powers than we shipped with […] we removed some because of consumer feed back. There were too many in the game and (the force) started getting watered down.

We had this plague power where you could infect enemies and they would get sick and lose health over time,” he said. The plague power, which showed up in a different form in the final game as a crystal power-up for the light saber, also spread. When an infected enemy got near their cohorts they would catch the killing disease too. […] The Force Unleashed is such a visceral, fast-paced time, that it wasn’t that effective.

Well… this cut makes sense i presume.. but we can only wonder which other Powers were removed.. 

Thanks to GlitterBerri and her translations, we can read a series of interesting interviews about the development of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with informations on some of the changes that were made. You can check the full interviews in here. Huge props to Glitterberry as always! Here are some highlights:

At the beginning, there was only Hyrule Castle.

In the beginning we put in so many trees, but they were becoming obstacles so we gradually removed them and in the end the wilderness disappeared.

For a long time Hyrule Field had nothing, it was terribly uninteresting. Of course, while you were trudging along in that wide empty plain we had planned to introduce effects such as wind, temperature, and atmosphere.

Absolutely, there were people suggesting “playing the ocarina is too tiresome, let’s make it automatic.” I was undecided as well, but when I went to examine the situation, I found the complainers were happily playing the ocarina too.

It’s also possible to call the horse with the ocarina.
In the beginning you used a reed pipe, but it was too much trouble so we eventually changed it to the ocarina.

I changed the ranch girl Malon into a songstress, so the horses were attracted to her because of her song. However, this didn’t really suit her dialogue at the time. Originally we had her singing alone in the middle of the ranch, but halfway through we changed it so she went to the castle, but then she didn’t sing anymore.

The story in Ocarina of time isn’t actually original, it deals with the Sages’ Imprisoning War from the Super Famicom’s ALttP.

Beyond that, at first it wasn’t a window Zelda was looking through, but rather a peephole. But then someone asked “why would there be a peephole in a castle courtyard?” Sadly, when we asked the the mappers to change the peephole to a window, I think we made one cry…

We also put material from one dungeon in others, no sense wasting what can be used again. It was easy to forget which devices were made for which dungeons.

We tried to put in lots of rupee-filled treasure chests at first, but people ended up getting annoyed wondering why there were so many rupees in a place where they were totally useless.

I, personally, really like the Forest Temple. It was the very first dungeon we designed in Ocarina of Time

We’d been fussing over how Link should open a treasure chest for 3 years. [..] We actually had some better ideas for the treasure chest, but we couldn’t fit it in this time. Maybe in the near future…?