Unreal Engine 3 No Good For Too Human? // UPD...

Unreal Engine 3 No Good For Too Human? // UPDATE - Yes It Is

After so many Unreal Engine 3 licensing agreements announced as of late, and Epic Games' CliffyB and Mark Rein claiming that developers are loving their engine tools, it comes as a bit of surprise that Silicon Knights - the guys behind Too Human for the Xbox 360 - are said to be dropping Epic's next-gen engine. The rumour was sparked by Advanced Media Network, whose anonymous sources reveal that the first game in the Too Human trilogy won't be using Unreal Engine 3 after all.

Instead, the devs from Silicon Knights will apparently be coding their own engine, something that - if indeed true - will certainly lead to another lenghty delay in the game's release. But, then again, it wouldn't be the first time. After all, Too Human was originally slated for the PlayStation, then the GameCube, and now (finally?) for the Xbox 360. Last we heard last month, Too Human had suffered another delay and was set for a Spring 2007 launch. Now, we're not too sure about that either...

For the time being, Silicon Knights are keeping a tight lip on the matter, refusing to give any sort of comment. Although it's interesting to note that their case may not be singular. AMN's story also talks about other similar rumours emerging in the past few months, about developers having trouble using the Unreal Engine 3 due to it being hard to work with and very buggy, supposedly.

Are we to see more studios giving up on Unreal Engine 3 in the near future? Or is this just another phase for the Too Human project, which by now is at it's third tentative platform? One might even say that Silicon Knights are too unreal about their own project.

UPDATE: Next-Gen reveals a statement from Microsoft stating that "Silicon Knights continues to build Too Human using the Unreal Engine 3", and that "rumors of Too Human experiencing production challenges that will cause massive delays are false". So there you have it, all's well when ends well. In Q2 2007, that is. [16.08.2006, 00:43]

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)