Remedy Learns Hard Lessons, And is Ready to ‘Control’ Its Own Destiny

Remedy Entertainment has been known for creating a variety of IPs that not only turned into brilliant game experiences, but have also become recognized video game franchises and they have influenced so many other developers. Quantum Break, as Remedy Entertainment claims, taught the company hard lessons. They featured original IP combined action gameplay with live-action TV episodes that changed according to the choices made by players. Okay, such an ambition was great and all, but as soon as it needed to be realized it significantly increased production costs. At the time, it was also an Xbox exclusive and after lousy sales, a sequel had to be set aside.

The Finnish developer also has Alan Wake in its library of excellent games. They have been working with Microsoft for years, but even Alan Wake, as good as it was, couldn’t warrant a full sequel. CEO Tero Virtala, who joined the team some months after the launch of Quantum Break, was sad they weren’t able to follow up on all the work that was invested into that particular game.

“You always learn on every aspect, definitely on the creative side,” said Virtala. “But maybe the biggest lessons were on the business and production side. We can create excellent games, but the type of games we do with an immersive world and characters, memorable stories – those are typically building blocks in any entertainment business for franchises that could live for a long time. And now for the second time being in a position where we had done all that groundwork and then there was not a possibility to continue those stories… we didn’t want to face that again.”

So, what do they have next in the pipeline? As we’ve witnessed during the E3 2018, Control is their latest project and it’s looking great. This new endeavor clearly means a lot to them. Incidentally, Microsoft still has the rights to both Alan Wake and Quantum Break IPs. Remedy was determined to hold their ownership of the rights to ‘Project 7‘ – i.e. Control.

On the subject of Control, Virtala had this to say: “It’s a Remedy game. It’s from our creative people who think about what type of stories they would like to tell and what type of games they would like to create. There is a meaning behind it all, and supernatural elements play a role there. All that you see in the game, eventually it will turn out there is a clear reason for that. That’s the driving factor in what type of game we want to make, what’s the game we’re creating. That decides the location and artistic style we are creating.”

Meanwhile, it was also revealed recently that the game is going to have a ‘Metroidvania’ game world.

Feeling excited about this one? Let us know in the comments.

[Source: Gamesindustry.biz]