The Long History of Too Human

We take a look at Too Human's ten years of production

Too Human, the action RPG coming to Xbox 360 later this month, went through more than a few hiccups over the course of its development. As I hinted at in my hands-on preview a few weeks ago, the path to a game shelf near you has been quite a rocky one. Thanks to Denis Dyack's willingness to share with anyone who'll listen, we've had a lot of insight to the drawn out development of the title and thought that it would make an interesting read for NZGamers out there...

Originally slated as an action-adventure game on the PlayStation, Too Human was first shown at E3 in 1999. Developed by Silicon Knights, who were still riding high from the release of the well received Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, Too Human received a lot of attention from press at the time. However, before the game was finished, Silicon Knights entered into a second-party developer agreement with Nintendo and Too Human was retooled for the Gamecube, itself not yet on the market.

Given that it's some eight years since the Gamecube version was shown in video form and you already know it's coming out this month on the Xbox 360, it will come as no surprise that the game never eventuated on Nintendo's platform. Before it could be completed, Silicon Knights and Nintendo parted company, and Too Human for Gamecube was never heard from again.

In 2005, Silicon Knights announced that they had done a deal with Microsoft which would result in a trilogy of games, based in the Too Human universe, being released exclusively for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360 platform. Given what we know so far, this would seem to be the end of our tale - but it's not. Far from it, in fact...

At some point in development, it became apparent that, much like many other developers, Silicon Knights was using Epic's Unreal Engine 3 technology. Unreal Engine 3 provides the core rendering engine, along with a suite of developer tools intended to enable the developers to concentrate on delivering game content rather than having to build all that complicated back-end stuff over and over with every title. It's an extremely popular option, with many of this generation's biggest hits (Gears of War, Unreal Tournament III, Rainbow Six Vegas I & II, etc) as well as plenty of flops (Fury springs to mind) and dozens of as yet unreleased titles (Mirror's Edge, Tom Clancy's Endwar, etc) all springing for the solution.

The game that arrives in stores at the end of the month, however, doesn't include any Unreal tech under the hood. On the 19th of July, 2007, Epic announced that they had been served with a lawsuit by Silicon Knights, alleging that Epic (the people that make Unreal Tournament, Gears of War and the Unreal Engine technology) had taken the money paid by Silicon Knights (and other licensees) and used it to create their own game software (Gears of War), instead of providing service to Denis Dyack's Silicon Knights team. Further, Silicon Knights allege that Epic were actively sabotaging their licensees by their lack of support to stymie competition for their Gears of War product.

The various allegations found in a legal document spread like wildfire, with various news agencies and popular game forums such as NeoGAF receiving frequent updates as the story unfolded over the following days. Several other developers joined Silicon Knights in their petition, with many more being sought for comment. Ultimately Denis was forced to remove Unreal Engine 3 tech from the game, which he claims they've completed - despite being counter-sued to the contrary by Epic in August of 2007.

And believe it or not, the story doesn't even end there. As previously discussed, Silicon Knights founder and chief Denis Dyack doesn't feel the need to rein in his comments to the media. He often appears on podcasts and in interviews, making outrageous comments about his products, Epic and the industry. Further to this, he's well known for making grandstanding comments and claims direct to gamers themselves, often taking advantage of the hugely popular NeoGAF forums to directly engage with players.

In one recent thread, Denis asked users to stand up and be counted as to whether they were "for" or "against" the title, knowing what they already do. The theory was that the thread would be revisited once the title was out and the dust had settled and either he would be tagged with "Owned by GAF" if the title was poorly received or those that stood up and said "Against" would be titled "owned by Too Human". For this reason, and many other posts, in which he claims Too Human will be amongst the best ever games on the 360 (or any other platform), his current title on NeoGAF is "Still figuring it out"...

So: development timeframe, platform changes, middleware/engine problems and extrovert personalities aside, Too Human is going to be on store shelves for players to judge for themselves on the 28th of August, just over a week after it touches down in the US and some 10 or more years after the title first went into production. We'll be hitting it hard the second Microsoft sends us a copy - stay tuned to hear if we're for or against and be sure to post in the forums as to exactly where your own allegiances lie.