As a PC gamer who pitifully tries, on occasion, to boost her woeful Xbox score with the console version of games she has already played on her computer, I'm all too aware of how poorly certain control aspects cross over. When put in the wrong hands, control adaptions can be a complete nightmare for those who ultimately have to play through them, and anyone who has experienced the same game on two platforms knows what a disappointment it can be.
Luckily for The Cave fans, one person who's also aware of the pitfalls is Double Fine producer and designer Ron Gilbert, who recently discussed with Rock Paper Scissors his dedication to the PC platform as a whole, delving into his desire to ensure the controls feel natural to PC players. When asked about The Cave's PC functionality, he describes himself as "primarily a PC player", and goes on to say,
“To me, making sure that PC game felt really good and natural to play with the mouse – and not just, like, a bad console port to PC – was personally very, very important. So yeah, I want to do as much as humanly possible with the mouse and all that. On the PC version, you’ll just be able to click with your mouse. Characters will walk to wherever you click. Switching characters with the keyboard by just hitting the number keys [is also an option]. So there’s some streamlining like that that happens with the PC version.”
Having played a game with quality PC control adaption (Alan Wake, for instance, was done beautifully), this makes me appreciate Ron Gilbert all the more. When asked if his next project will be PC-centric, Gilbert says “Yeah, absolutely,” adding, “I definitely am [happy to see PC back in the limelight].”
Double Fine's The Cave will be distributed digitally by Sega next month on Xbox 360 and PC.
