Developer promises ‘impossible’ graphics on Wii
Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 11:46am by Press Release
UPDATE: Newly released Sadness screenshot fails to excite.
CALABASAS, Calif. –Emergent Game Technologies announced today that the highly-anticipated psychological thriller Sadness for Wii™ is being built on the Gamebryo game development platform. The first Wii title to be presented entirely in black-and-white is in development by Poland-based game studio Nibris. Taking place prior to World War I, Sadness is a crime noir thriller with richly detailed characters and an engaging storyline.
“Without a doubt, Gamebryo is the most powerful engine available for the Wii. After getting familiar with the engine several months ago we made the decision to choose Gamebryo. Since then, our team has been working on Sadness and we are quite impressed,” said Tomasz Wisniowski, Project Manager of Nibris. “We will have quite a few graphical effects in our game, which some believe are impossible to attain on the Wii. Gamebryo helped make it possible. We are firmly convinced we made the right choice.”
“From the early stages of pre-production with Sadness, Nibris realized that they would need development technology that allowed for an extreme amount of flexibility in the creative process, which is a cornerstone of the Gamebryo framework,” said Geoffrey Selzer, CEO of Emergent. “Sadness is designed to push the bounds of Wii technically and creatively. We are thrilled to be a part of Nibris’ ground-breaking product. We’re really looking forward to playing Sadness on Wii.”
Gamebryo gives Nibris’ developers a considerable head start by implementing numerous Wii development features that do not typically come with standard SDKs. Loaded with rendering and animation tools, a Wii-specific viewer, extensive libraries and APIs to simplify pipeline integration, Gamebryo provides Wii teams everything they need to optimize and deliver visually stunning games on time and on budget.
Sadness is a horror adventure game aimed at adults with strong nerves. Players will need to confront their greatest fears and protect themselves in hopes of not getting trapped inside the main character’s nightmare. The game has eight different extreme endings each with their own premise, which are assigned to a player based on specific factors during the game. To compliment the intense gameplay, the Wii-mote and Wii Nunchuk control the main character’s hands so players feel as though they are in the psychological thriller.
About Gamebryo
Gamebryo has been fully optimized for development on PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, PC and Wii, and has recently gained attention as the engine used in Bethesda Softworks’ record-breaking Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3 and PC title, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and on its upcoming Fallout 3 across the same platforms. Gamebryo is also being used by EA-Mythic on its upcoming Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Gamebryo is a mature software product that ships with 3,500 pages of fully indexed, searchable documentation. To date, Gamebryo has been used in more than 200 games titles ranging from massively multiplayer online games, high-end retail games across multiple genres, and casual games.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:56 am
This thread is worthless without pics
April 14th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Dustin, rumor is this is in-game. I believe it was released today along with the press release
http://news.spong.com/asset/270355/11/15206/entity
April 14th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
You’re right, it doesn’t look like much. It’ll be interesting to see if the claims are true.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I dunno, disembodied anonymous Infendo Press Release poster — I think the black and white could definitely work. Plus, without all those colors you can really focus on making things sharp. It’s “different”–that’s for sure; something the industry could do well to embrace right now.
The game may tank, but the concept is gold, IMO.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
That pic actually looks like it could be in engine. Up till now we had only seen concept art, hopefully this turns out.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
this sounds cool, regardless of press hyperbole
April 14th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
You guys ARE familiar with Sadness and Nibris, right?
The odds are that this game, and in turn the screenshot, are fake. They’ve been producing Sadness since before the Wii launched…but this is the only screenshot we’ve gotten to date. The concept art has been found out to belong to some guy on deviantart (I think that’s right).
The game, the screenshot, everything, is at best a BIG rumor and at worst a complete lie. The idea behind all of it, though, is neat, and I hope someone runs with it regardless.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
My guess is, this game is so slow in development that they are planning on releasing it on Wii-2. Which is why they are making graphics that are LITERALLY impossible on Wii.
April 14th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I’m with Sensai. Without proof of game and only empty promises, Sadness is just an idea. I’m open to the game being real, actually I’m hopeful it is; but I’m not expecting much. And if it is real, it’s had a development cycle longer than Twilight Princess, so my expectations will be massive.
April 14th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
*cough* Model from Sadness: http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/5011/digitalamigosjh1.jpg *cough*
April 14th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Well, regardless of whether it’s really ever going to come to fruition or not, I always thought it looked like a really unique and interesting game. And it’d have to be damn good probably to sell well, since I could see the darkness and the black and white etc of the game to not look appealing to a large crowd, myself NOT included.
April 14th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
I won’t believe it until I see it on the game store shelf.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the only ‘impossible’ thing about this game, is it ever being released. We’ll all be playing Duke Nuken Forever before this piece of vaporware.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
“My guess is, this game is so slow in development that they are planning on releasing it on Wii-2. Which is why they are making graphics that are LITERALLY impossible on Wii. ”
LOL
Nice. It WOULD make sense, actually.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
While I won’t hold my breath for the game, I’m certainly interested in seeing the Gamebryo engine pushing the Wii and seeing what it can do. It was certainly impressive on the 360 so I wonder just how well that technology scales down to the Wii.
If theis game is really comming out, I’ll assume they had to practically start over with Gamebryo (not to mention those months taken to learn the tools).
How about we start making bets on when this comes out or if we’re looking at the next Duke Nukem Forever.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I am familiar with what Sensai is on about. These guys are simply a joke and lack complete credibilty. Dismiss this fellow Infendo readers.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
[...] (u.a. via Infendo) [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
What? News about Sadness? Finally.
Who knows, maybe the Wii still has a chance…assuming that Nintendo announces anything but Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing during E3.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
@ vertol
If that’s real, that’s just beautiful.
On a different note,
EIGHT “X-TREME” ENDINGS!