The developer on Reddit basically confirms that Gearbox didn’t have too much to do with Aliens: Colonial Marines due to the fact that the developer was doing Borderlands 2. They basically got TimeGate to do most of the single player campaign due to this. In my opinion, Gearbox and SEGA should never work again. This game was in the works for 6 years and Gearbox couldn’t give less of a shit about it, it seems. Pecan = code name for Aliens: Colonial Marines.
“Additionally, campaign (which was being developed by TimeGate) was extremely far behind, even as Pecan’s Beta deadline got closer and closer. In April or May (can’t remember which), Pecan was supposed to hit beta, but GBX instead came to an agreement with SEGA that they would push the release date back one more time, buying GBX around 9 mos extension.
Considering that SEGA was pretty close to taking legal action against GBX, asking for an extension wasn’t an option, and so Pecan crash-landed through certification and shipping. Features that were planned were oversimplified, or shoved in (a good example of this are challenges, which are in an incredibly illogical order). Issues that didn’t cause 100% blockers were generally ignored, with the exception of absolutely horrible problems. This isn’t because GBX didn’t care, mind you. At a certain point, they couldn’t risk changing ANYTHING that might cause them to fail certification or break some other system. And so, the product you see is what you get.”
You can read more over at Reddit, even ask the guy some of your questions.
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That is disappointing. I haven;t played the second Borderlands, but thought the first one was a huge let down. I hope Sega takes some kind of legal action towards them.
Sega should still sue Gearbox. They gave them a TON of leeway and made this the most highly promoted and advertised Sega title in years only to have Gearbox send this off to some D-Grade developers and have them do a rush job.
This title just killed all the momentum Sega has gotten over the past two years and people will once again look at Sega as a poor quality software maker like in the mid-2000’s.
Gearbox used the money from Sega to focus on Borderlands 2. A similar thing was happening with Silicon Knights using the funding from some superhero license, I think it was an X-Men game, to work on an Eternal Darkness sequel. They are being sued over that.
I hope people give gearbox shit about this and NOT SEGA.
Sega had to make this game by an own studio like team cs1. I hope the wii u version is better but i don’t think so.
I just had a feeling that this game was going to be a pile of shit, lot of hot air over nothing worth shouting about.
If Sega has been cheated and ripped off which it seems they have so far, they need to take action, a team has took their generosity for granted and funded some other project instead.
Though Gearbox does share a lot of the blame, Sega had final approval and they were the publisher for fuck’s sake. I’ve seen footage of the Xbox 360 version of the game, anyone with a brain in their head who looked at that could see that the game was not ready for release. Why didn’t Sega tighten the reigns?
If you’re putting your name on a project and you see the project being half-hazardly outsourced to poor results, you step in and make changes!
That’s the one thing Nintendo does that Sega desperately needs to learn from; if you publish and put your name on a game you need to be ACTIVELY involved in its development. You don’t have to run the show but even if it just means sending staff down to the development studio regularly to check it out, or having a Sega producer with a mind for quality involved in its development….
…I don’t know if Sega of America has the staff to do this, of course, but that’s…that’s how it’s supposed to be done…. That’s quality control. I’m amazed that Sega saw the final product and decided to release such an unfinished and bad game. It’s like Sega learned nothing from Conduit 2.
This is a failure of both Sega and Gearbox but speaking for myself, I’m more disappointed that Sega would release a game in this state knowing what’s at stake here.
As Capcom learned with Resident Evil 6, if you release a bad game, people will stop buying it! Why did Sega release and heavily market such a bad game? And if the game was this bad, why didn’t Sega step in years ago and fix it? Unbelievable.
Tighten the reigns wut? After 6 years? I think there was more wrong than what meets the eye. I think the cooporation for this game was simply flat out bad and SEGA had no choice but to make it end ASAP. So yeah they took the easy way out, hyped the shit out of it with one of the greatest marketing i’ve seen SEGA ever pull off. Many people actually thought it was going to be an amazing game from impressions, previews and gearbox’s reputation in general.
There was no saving this I think. And you cannot blame SEGA. I am glad nobody is calling out or blaming SEGA. You’re the first one I see doing that and I wonder where that’s coming from. You should watch the videos with randy pitchfard overly excited, explaining how much hard work and passion is being put into making the game. How much he loves the franchise, how much “they” love the franchise.
The cooporation was simply bad. This will defenitly end the relationship between the 2 companies.
I agree with Crazy Tails. Its hard, you have to understand, Nintendo does it with their own franchises! This is a license property. Fox 20th Century most likely wanted it out last year with the movie Prometheus.
The only other option was to boot Gearbox, a developer that didn’t give two shits about this game and was focused on Borderlands 2, but then you have a unfinished piece of shit to take to another studio to figure out what needs fixing in a shit ton of code.
SEGA should have ressurected the project 2 years ago, kicked off Gearbox and have a in house studio make it. Frankly I would have thought SEGA should have made a western studio with people from Amnesia helping out. Made it a straight horrror shooter.
Trusting a developer to be creative and do their thing is usually a goo quality. You criticize them for not micromanaging and taking over the project? I totally blame Gearbox, and don’t want anything to do with any of their games in the future.
All hail the true spiritual successor to Sonic 2006!
*shotgunned*
And the worst thing is, when Gearbox announces Borderlands 3, everyone will completely, selectively and conveniently forget about this game to go “Hail Gearbox”!
“There was no saving this I think. And you cannot blame SEGA. I am glad nobody is calling out or blaming SEGA. You’re the first one I see doing that and I wonder where that’s coming from. ”
I dunno man. I’m not sure how you can not blame Sega, they’re the ones selling you a broken and terrible product for $60.
Should we let Sega off the hook for Sonic ’06 as well? I’m just not seeing a difference except for the fact that this was developed out of house.
Yeah I know the game spent 6 years in development but it’s very clear that the game didn’t…really spend that time in active development, by all accounts it was thrown together in the past year and a half (if that).
George is right, Sega should have stepped in and fired Gearbox years ago if it wasn’t working out. (and it clearly wasn’t.) Or, again, stepped in and demanded improvements to the project. That’s their job as a publisher, they’re the ones putting their names on the product, to ensure that they are releasing a quality game. I have a funny feeling that Sega had almost nothing to do with the development of the game.
Obviously I am not saying that it’s entirely Sega’s fault (obviously) but to say they’re completely blameless for releasing a crap game is crazy to me. This is the game that Sega……yes, Sega, is putting out and telling you to go buy.
Its hard on SEGA when they also have to please Fox, the license holder of the game. I want to know who’s idea was to take the direction of the game the way it did. Feels like either SEGA or Fox demanded changes like “More COD clone less horror aspect. Didn’t you see? Horror sales are low.”
Gearbox seemed passionate on videos to make it a horror game, stating stupid shit that it would be better than Dead Space 3 (bullshit) and turning in a COD rip off that has no horror elements at all.
The issue is that Gearbox’s president is basically great at talking the game up. Watch interviews about the game, he sells it. Imagine you where a company, you would feel that you were in good hands. I mean, they are hot off of Borderlands.
I don’t want what I said to be mis-interpreted….I am not saying that Sega is entirely at fault, of course. Gearbox made this game and they made a bad game. But Sega should have been the ones in charge, this is their license. Again, if other companies give out their license to another developer, typically they have their people monitoring and checking in on development constantly, if not producing and guiding the project.
Gearbox seemed passionate, sure. But if Sega had been regularly monitoring the progress on the game, they would have noticed something was wrong…years ago, and fixed it. By either booting Gearbox or sending in their own people, something. I mean if demoes were being faked as late as LAST YEAR, there’s just no way this game was being developed for 6 years.
Of course it’s too late to fix things now, the game had to be released this year….but clearly there are problems that had been going on for years with this game. It simply amazes me that nobody at Sega …noticed this. They’ve had years to see that this wasn’t working. But they seemingly didn’t notice or didn’t care.
And now they’re claiming that the game wasn’t outsourced despite overwhelming evidence that it was; are they just playing dumb or do they really not have a clue?
Gearbox, though, of course, should take the most responsibility for this crappy game. I just wish Sega had exercised some quality control long ago, as this is an incredibly important game for them and I’m wondering now if even they know how much is riding on its success.
So SEGA CAN promote a game if they want to, but decide to do it on a game that ended up being awful.
Priorities SEGA….promote your own games before trying your hand on a development hell title that you pretty much knew would have been bad if you kept to GB.
Not blaming SEGA for their lack of QA (although that surely needs to be questioned now), I am blaming them for hyping a game they merely license over their OWN games.