Winter: The Game That Could Have Been
by drrandle
It Just Got Colder in Here Chilling concept art. (See what I did there?) IGN happened to drop a great piece on a game that, at this point, will never see the light of day, called Winter . Built from the ground up to take advantage of the Wii's motion-capabilities and pressing the hardware for graphics, Winter was going to put the survival back into survival horror. This is a game about a girl l...
It Just Got Colder in Here
Chilling concept art. (See what I did there?)IGN happened to drop a great piece on a game that, at this point, will never see the light of day, called Winter.Built from the ground up to take advantage of the Wii's motion-capabilities and pressing the hardware for graphics, Winter was going to put the survival back into survival horror. This is a game about a girl lost in a mysteriously cold Midwest town. Not about Leon S. Kennedy and his guns, not about Silent Hill 5 (in general, which is a good thing), and not about being trapped in space. This was going to go the route of old school Silent Hill kind of games.
I would go on more about it here, but I think Matt Cassamassina's interview tells it way better than I can, since, you know, I have nothing to do with the whole thing.
Some people want to fault Nintendo for this game not coming to light, but I don't see it as their fault. They didn't have any real responsability to pick it up. In fact I can't really fault the developers for not wanting to take a huge risk on it. I mean I can, and will, but... what I really, really want to do is blame gamers. These foolish misconceptions about the Wii not being a real gaming system, or what have you, are downright stupid. There are plenty of amazing and unique titles for Wii, as well as some pretty solid remakes. It's not a perfect system by ANY stretch, but the fact is it's just as viable as the other two. I would go so far as to say you have no right calling yourself a hardcore gamer if you don't at least want to own all three systems to get the most out of your gaming. (I understand that in these harsh economic times, it's nigh impossible to own all three, but I hope you have the sense to see where I'm going with this.)
The fact is that the reason developers are finding it hard to put their A teams on Wii games comes down to the fact they dont' think the game will sell. Even Metroid Prime: Corruption didn't sell what it should have, and that game is amazing in all respects. I fear that The Conduit will be a critical success but a commercial failure, as well, simply because it's a new IP and it's a hardcore game.
The reason nobody thinks hardcore gamers are buying Wii games is perpetuated by so called hardcore gamers who refuse to pick up the hardcore Wii games. It's a terrible catch-22 that makes no sense, and if you are one of these people, you should outright be ashamed of yourself.
I will admit last years pickings for the Wii were pretty dismal, yes. But I still have more games for the Wii worth keeping around in the two years it's been out than 360 games in the three it's been out. I'm not saying they're necessarily all as good, but they are all good games.
My point? My thanks to those gamers out there who don't know a good thing when they have it, because now this awesome looking game will likely never see the light of day. And I pretty much blame you. Have fun playing the same, broken Gears of War games when other perfectly amazing concepts get shoved under the carpet.
I also still hate people who pirate games.
-Make it a good one. (And learn to support games.)
Randy "Dr. Randle" Marr