A sad tale that we’ve been hearing a lot as of yet in the video game world is that of publishers rushing developers to release a game long before it’s ready. You might recall this happening with titles like Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Cyberpunk 2077 (though that one was just as much about the developer), Balan Wonderland, and so on. Fast forward to now, and you can add Sonic Origins to that list. Because the game has many different bugs that have made fans mad…and you can add the developer to that list of mad people as well.
In a massive Twitter thread, Simon Thomley of developer HeadCannon talked about the conditions of making the game, and how SEGA took what they had…and apparently made it worse:
“This is frustrating. I won’t lie and say that there weren’t issues in what we gave to Sega, but what is in Origins is also not what we turned in. Integration introduced some wild bugs that conventional logic would have one believe were our responsibility- a lot of them aren’t.
Regarding Origins, we were outsiders creating a separate project that was then wrangled into something entirely different. We knew going in that there would be a major time crunch and we worked ourselves into the ground to meet it just so this would even be made and released.
Again, I can take responsibility for my and my team’s mistakes, and there were some. Some actual mistakes, some overlooking, some rushjobs, some stuff we noticed but weren’t allowed to correct near the end. It’s absolutely not perfect and some of it is from us. It’s complicated.
We asked to do major fixes near submission but weren’t allowed due to submission and approval rules. We asked about delays early and repeatedly but were told they weren’t possible. We offered to come back for post-release fixes and updates- we do not yet know if this is happening.”
He went on for some time about this, and it doesn’t paint the best picture of Sonic practices. Especially considering that they’re “betting it all” on the upcoming Sonic Frontiers. Hopefully Sonic Origins at least gets the chance to become better.
Source: Twitter
