The end of 2018 was especially harsh for Starbreeze Studios, as the company had to deal with the Swedish Economic Crime Authority, their raid on the dev's offices, terrible launch sales numbers of
The Walking Dead, and finally CEO Bo Andersson Klint's resignation. According to the latest report, the developers of
TWD from Overkill were fighting a losing battle since the game's conceptual phase.
As revealed by Eurogamer and over a dozen current and former Starbreeze staff members, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect their careers,
The Walking Dead was set to be built on Starbreeze's in-house Diesel game engine as a project comparable in size to
Destiny. The engine was developed by Grin, the studio that gave us the
Bionic Commando reboot and PC poer of
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, the tool that was first used in the 2001 game
Ballistics before powering
Payday.
In May 2015, Starbreeze announced it had bought the Valhalla game engine. As one person tasked with building it said: "
Valhalla was a piece of shit." "
It was unworkable," said another. "
In most cases it was like the engine was fighting against you." One person added: "
Valhalla felt to me it was barely 50 or 60 per cent of the way in terms of usability and stability. It was just not good. Like most engines, it had good potential, but it wasn't in a good place for people to properly develop a game. That was the problem. It was just way too far behind in the pipeline."
Shortly after facing the initial troubles with the game's engines, Starbreeze management tried to save it by the getting the pricey license to use Epic's Unreal Engine instead. The change basically meant that two years of work were "
chucked in the bin." "
It was as if switching to Unreal was going to solve everything. In their minds it was magical, but we had other problems that couldn't be fixed just by changing the engine. The goal was to produce a triple-A multiplayer game in a year on Unreal. Anybody with common sense knew from the start it wouldn't be possible. A lot of people expected us to postpone the release of the game," another developer continued.
"
This is why the game feels so alpha," another said. "
It's because it is. It's a year-and-a-half in. It's a beta game because we made it in a year-and-a-half," a Starbreeze employee concluded. Considering that
Overkill's The Waling Dead was basically created in less than 18 months, it's hardly surprising that its PC port received mixed reviews at launch, currently sitting at a mediocre 51% score on Metacritic.
Following the rather underwhelming initial sales of
Overkill's The Walking Dead, Starbreeze has announced that some major improvements are coming to the multiplayer-only title with the inclusion of
Season 2 that's bringing new missions, weapons, and playable characters to the core experience.
OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead is a four player co-op action FPS, where you and your friends fight the dead as well as the living. Set in The Walking Dead Universe, you and your group tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. Each character has their own Special Abilities, Skill Trees, Squad Roles, Play Styles and Story Arcs, but teamwork is paramount. The action is close-up and intense: take out enemies carefully with silent melee attack or go in guns blazing with your choice of each class firearms. You need to be able to improvise as nothing is certain and a horde of walkers is always right around the corner.
Overkill's The Walking Dead is available for PC NOW, as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions have been pushed back indefinitely.