EnklawaNetwork.pl: Released back in 2015 Book 1 of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms promised a bright future for fans of the world, that had been brought to life by Kult, your very first game. But soon after release of Book 1 it was more and more clear that situation of your newest game is far from being ideal. What happened?
Peter Nagy: Unfortunately, shortly before the release of Book 1 we were informed that our publisher at the time had filed for insolvency protection. It was very unpleasant situation as the game was already out there in Early Access, people were expecting it and we learned that our partner cannot be relied upon to fully publish it. We have decided to release the game anyway. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and the publisher went bankrupt shortly afterwards. We had to nearly close down our studio but fortunately we have survived. After some legal proceedings we were able to acquire the rights back and we started to plan the completion of the game. It was not an easy way; but eventually I believe the game will be much better than it would be possible before.
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EN: Should we expect improvements on a tech side? Better graphics, new sounds or extended music score?
PN: Oh yes, definitely. I actually wouldn’t call it improvement, but it was completely reworked from scratch. In fact, there is almost nothing being used from original Shadows – with the conversion to Unity we had to create completely new models, textures, lightning, scenes, etc. To improve the gameplay, we even changed the layout of the scenes. So it is really perhaps the most remastered game I have ever heard of. [smiles] Performancewise the game has also improved tremendously. And with all the experience from Vikings, the game runs smoothly and looks significantly better than Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms. The original game was never released to consoles because it suffered with low framerate but Awakening is already running smoothly on PS4 and XBOX One, so I think the huge improvement is obvious at the first glance already.
