The Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo that launched last week has proved to be rather buggy and Big Huge Games wants players to know these bugs are not representative of the final product. The demo was not actually built by Big Huge Games, but shipped to a different development contractor three months prior to release. The contractor apparently did not get all of the bugs out in time.
"There's a lot of tension about the demo, which we didn't build in-house,” Ian Frazier, lead designer at Big Huge Games, explained. “It was branched off our code about three months ago. It got a lot of bug fixing. We sent them what we had, but there are a lot of bug fixes they didn't get. So we're all nervous, like, the demo's really buggy.”
"We're very not happy about that,” Frazier admitted. "The thing that's really hurtful for us is they actually introduced some new bugs in the demo that weren't even in the game when it branched.” The demo had to fulfill the size-restraints in order for Microsoft and Sony to approve the demo. In doing so, the contracting developer cut certain aspects of the game, such as dropped voice over dialogue.
"Don't get me wrong - they did a good job with little support from us. I'm not trying to poo-poo those guys by any means. But in order to get it to fit to be a reasonable size download that would actually meet Microsoft and Sony's requirements, they had to cut everything that wasn't needed for the demo, like extra art and audio assets, and they cut a little much. They cut some audio that actually is in the demo. So if you talk to something and that clip's not there, you'll just see the words flicker across the screen."
Frazier wouldn’t name the contractor and went on to complement them for the work they did under their time constraint. "They did an amazing job within the context of the time they had,” Frazier said. Despite the bugs, players should still play through the demo. Completion of the demo results in exclusive Mass Effect 3 “Reckoning Armor” DLC and that is definitely worth sifting through the bugs. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning launches February 7th, 2012 on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-25-kingdoms-of-amalur-reckoning-demo-bugs-wont-be-in-final-game-dev-vows
