Speaking at PAX West over the weekend, Matt Booty (head of Xbox Game Studios) has given an update on the development of the Perfect Dark reboot from The Initiative. Work is said to be going along well, despite earlier reports about the incorporation of a second development team joining from Crystal Dynamics. The discussion can be seen in a series of tweets from Idle Sloth on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/IdleSloth84/status/1565804160825556993?s=20&t=18-52XwqcvXeCTNUUbEBew
The way that games are developed is said to be “evolving” according to Matt, and that it’s an outdated notion to assume the majority of games are made in-house under one development team. He addressed the concern found in online posts that the game is in trouble as being “quite the opposite”. Development is said to have been slow due to the careful nature of updating the game. This slow development process was cited in a report by VGC as a key reason for developers leaving the company.
Matt then spoke about Joanna Dark and Perfect Dark in general. On the character of Joanna Dark, the team seeks to modernize her “very carefully”, as the features of the original “don’t always age well”. He describes the game as a “super agent fantasy, the Bourne Identity, James Bond kinda thing”, calling the foundations a “cool meme”. Whilst development may now be going well, when we’ll next see more on Perfect Dark is unknown. It seems there’s still a while to wait.
Are you looking forward to Perfect Dark? Has the interview made you more confident in the release? Let us know in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more news.
