Friday 12 February 2010

Red Eagle team with Obsidian to make WHEEL OF TIME game

Red Eagle, the Wheel of Time rights-holding company, has announced it is partnering with Obsidian Entertainment to make the long-awaited new Wheel of Time computer game. Red Eagle has been developing a film project with Universal for the past two years with no real progress announced, so it sounds like the planned game will be set in a different time period to the books/movies with additional movie tie-in games released when that project finally starts moving again. Obsidian Entertainment are the modern incarnation of Black Isle. As Black Isle they created several of the most influential and critically-acclaimed computer roleplaying games of all time, including the original Fallout and Fallout 2, the Icewind Dale series and possibly the greatest single CRPG ever made, Planescape: Torment. They also partnered with BioWare to work on the classic Baldur's Gate series. As Obsidian they created the brilliantly-conceived but (under publisher pressure) incomplete and bugged Knights of the Old Republic II for LucasArts, and the better-received Neverwinter Nights II and its expansions. Obsidian are prepping to release their first original IP under their current name, Alpha Protocol and are also working on Fallout: New Vegas for release this autumn from Bethesda. This is excellent news. Obsidian have great form and should be able to deliver a great gaming experience in the Wheel of Time world. Interesting to see how this turns out.

5 comments:

Jeff King said...

I'll be getting that one... thx for the info.

Jeff said...

I loved the first game, although I seemed to be one of the few who did. Not quite sure about this one being set in a different time period. With Jordan having passed away a few years ago it might not feel as authentic as it should. At least Brandon Sanderson has extensive notes and scene summaries to go by.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

The company has a pedigree - they should do right by the game. I dug all of the games you mentioned, so looking forward to Wheel of Time.

Anonymous said...

Movies ? What movies ?

Adam Whitehead said...

Red Eagle are developing a film version of THE EYE OF THE WORLD in conjunction with Universal. They are still talking about the project, but the impression I get is that it is stalled somewhat by the technical and structural problems of getting fourteen 700+ novels into a reasonable series of films without cheesing off the fans or scaring off the casual viewer. Whether the film gets made or not is still in some doubt, but given the success of the books some kind of adaptation is inevitable.