Rumor: Pandemic Brisbane's 'Dark Knight' game failed because of EA, time constraints PDF Print E-mail
Written by Phil Meza   
Friday, 16 January 2009
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An interesting, and a bit controversial, story has come to light today. Just this week it was revealed (unofficially, of course) that EA had shut down the Brisbane, Australia branch of Pandemic Studios. This was the studio that, coincidentally, had been behind both the 'so awful it was axed' The Dark Knight game, and the first few Destroy All Humans! - a series that Pandemic Brisbane didn't want to continue with after the first sequel, despite THQ's interest. We saw what has come of this.

A few alleged sources have spoken out about what went down within the studio leading up to its closure, and what eventually happened to the ill-fated open-world Batman game we all had secretly hoped for, but will likely never get. Pandemic Brisbane was split up into two different teams  - Alpha and Bravo - in order to persue new projects following the decision to move on from DAH! in 2006. Alpha took on an open-world title codenamed The Next Big Thing for Wii (which they retained upon closure and will pitch to other publishers), while Bravo was eventually tapped with production on Pandemic's new Batman venture - a project that they managed to score after deals with EA, Warner (holders of the Batman license) and DC Comics. An amazing opportunity, right? Especially given the fact that "The Dark Knight" was nearing. One problem reared its head. Apparently, EA's rights to the IP were going to expire in a mere 18 months - and thus, breathing down their neck, that was the short timeframe given to Pandemic's Bravo team.

According to sources, it wasn't until several months into pre-production - a time in which the team was "excited" beyond reason - that EA informed them that, of course, this was to be a tie-in to "The Dark Knight" film - to be released day and date. Yes, despite Pandemic's enthusiasm for creating something like what Eidos is set to deliver soon (sort of), this was to be a licensed property cash-in. The work that had been done up until that point had to be scrapped. Pademic soon moved onto making this game an open-world Batman adventure set in Gotham City, however there was yet another set of problems here. First, none of the employees on Bravo team knew anything about open-world design, since Pandemic's only open-world title, Mercenaries, was handled by the Los Angeles branch. second, the engine technology chosen to be used was the same one that was going to be used for Pandemic L.A.'s upcoming WWII-era stealth game, Saboteur. An engine that, as it turned out, was not designed to handle what this Batman game would become. As well, an issue arose with a High Dynamic Range lighting engine which took a total of 7 months to implement that proved to cause quite a bit of trouble. It allegedly made a visually stunning product, however, one that crashed within minutes everytime and had an average frame-rate of 5 FPS. If that wasn't bad enough, it's reported that the level designers - usually the most important part of a development team - didn't even get the tool they needed until 6 months in and were having to deal with severe management debacles.

The sources claim that the gameplay differed in terms of how well it was being handled. "One says many of the game's mechanics were brilliant and potentially revolutionary, while the batmobile and batbike were loads of fun once you looked past the streaming problems. Another says the missions were mostly borrowed from other open world games and the core gameplay was dull and boring." Toward the end of the project's life, the sources claim that roughly 130 people were onboard, since more and more employees were continually brought on as "outside contractors" to help with development. However, no amount of employees could slow the rapidly approaching train that was the shipping deadline: July 18th, 2008. It's was decided at a later date that this date would be an impossibilty, so EA chose to instead focus on delivering the game day and date with the Blu-ray and DVD release which would have been this past December (and also when their 18-month rights timespan expired) - this was something known back when rumors of this title sprung up late last year.

As it stood, an alpha stage was supposed to have been playable by September 2008, but "massive" problems plagued it - take your pick, really - and the brutal and money-losing decision was made to cancel it altogether. Following this, 20 staffers were fired, leaving Bravo team in waiting. Eventually, the entire Brisbane studio was included in EA's massive lay-off decision in December, which has begun this month. Damn. What a series of unfortunate events for what could have been a potentially amazing experience. I guess we'll just to make due with Eidos's (awesome-looking) effort due out this Spring. Of course, this is all a rumor, so who knows if it's what really happened.



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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 January 2009 )
 
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