With Arkane Studios progressing with its reboot of "Prey," they're making real sure that it has learned from its experience with "Dishonored 2" with its Austin branch ensuring that the PC version is "flawless."
Based on an interview with Game Informer, creative director Raphael Colantonio has acknowledged the issues of the "Dishonored 2's" PC version.
"In development you never know what you're going to see, most of all with PC because there are so many different configurations," said the creative director. "Unfortunately it is what it is. It shipped, then it got patched, and now it runs really well.
"So of course we are paying double-attention to making sure that this time," he went on. "The PC version [of 'Prey'] is really flawless when we ship."
"Prey" is going to be subject to a lot of play testing to weed out performance issues on the PC, with "a little bit more QA time" implemented. In addition to that, Colantonio actually mentioned that the rebooted sci-fi game will be built on a more stable engine, which may have a better foundation for the PC.
"It's a different engine, so the constraints are different. In the case of Dishonored, we created a new engine ... even though it's based on idTech, most of it has been redone," he stated. "The risk isn't the same, in the case of Prey we're using the CryEngine, so it's an engine that has already shipped things before. So it's not the same configuration."
He went to say: ""Nevertheless, we are of course aware of [potential issues] now, and were back then already, but it caught us by surprise a little. This time we're paying more attention for sure."
While "Dishonored 2" was one of the most anticipated games and possessed a lot of good reviews, the PC port had numerous issues that have been fixed with subsequent patches. Even if there were some extensive testing, game director Harvey Smith said that these problems arose in spite of that.
"There were certain combinations of things that we just didn't expect, despite extensively testing the game; very high-end CPUs with low-end GPUs, and older drivers, things like that," he said. "I'm a PC gamer. There is nothing like running on a super high-end PC. But it's also the most varied platform to support. It's way, way more complicated than consoles."
The "Prey" reboot is said to come out sometime this year and meant to be "a hybrid game where there's narrative mixed with action mixed with a little bit of [an] RPG layer," according to Colantonio.
