Whether you love ’em or hate ’em, you have to admit that Crytek has had its work cut out for it ever since it first revealed Ryse: Son of Rome for the Xbox One at this year’s E3. One of the key concerns for the game has been that it relies too much on quick time events or QTEs in place of actual combat. While these same commands can be used to call troops to your aid, there has been a worry that the basic combat has been all flash.
However, speaking to producer Mike Read, this is most definitely not the case. “What we showed at E3 was a small slice of what we had planned to deliver for the final game. Unfortunately, we had to make a series of cuts to the demo to make it a more enjoyable and polished experience for both the visuals and the gameplay.
“After E3, we took note of the response to it and felt that we could have done a better job in explaining where we were going with the combat systems. We feel that coming into Gamescom last month helped to dispel some of the negative views people had on what we presented with regards the ‘game playing itself’ or being ‘nothing but a series of QTE’s”.
We also quizzed Read on how Ryse was supposed to work out on the Xbox 360, especially since Kinect isn’t as major a component on the current-gen console as it is on the Xbox One (though recent developments now allow Kinect to be disabled on the latter as well). Read replied that, “The game you see now is very different than what we showed some years ago as a purely Kinect-based title. There were a series of prototypes that were put together and the version that we are showing now is what ultimately ended up as the winning idea in the end. The option for Kinect integration is ultimately left up to the developer as to how far they want to take it.
“We experimented with a series of things including things like hand gestures as a method of control. At the end of the day we found that things like this took away from the player experience we were trying to deliver. That’s not to downplay the Kinect at all. It’s a very powerful device and with the standard inclusion of this with the Xbox One it will be interesting to see what kind of things developers will be able to pull out of it in the years to come.”
Ryse: Son of Rome is currently scheduled to launch with the Xbox One when the console releases on November 22nd across 13 territories.
