Insane picked up by new dev, still two years away

Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that his video game project Insane is still in production, now under a different developer, but it will still take another two years to finish and may no longer be part of a trilogy.

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Insane was Guillermo del Toro's ambitious video game trilogy. THQ had originally picked up the rights to publish del Toro's horror title, but the rights were recently returned to the director as part of the company's ongoing financial problems. Insane isn't canceled, however, and the project is still on track under a different developer.

"We were going to go to a lot of developers after THQ, but it seems like we're going to be developing it after the first meeting we had," he told IGN. "I can't disclose where it was, but we went to a great developer on the first meeting and it seems that they're picking it up because they love the package."

Del Toro says the pre-production design work is finished, including the creatures, setting, and story. "We are now going to take that and start doing all the leg work with coding it, creating the engine, and starting to test it. It's going to take a good two years of modeling and rendering and creating the environments and all of that. The basic tenants of the game is that it's created, but now we’re going to need to start actually making it."

He says THQ's recent financial troubles "took everybody by surprise, everybody." The game isn't facing the kind of economic hardship that it once was, but del Toro suggests that he may scale down the scope. Asked if he's still planning it as a trilogy, he said, "I think we're going to concentrate on making it a great game and then we'll see. Obviously, among the assets was that idea, so I think there's a possibility. But we are not exploring it."

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    December 3, 2012 10:35 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Insane picked up by new dev, still two years away.

    Guillermo del Toro has confirmed that his video game project Insane is still in production, now under a different developer, but it will still take another two years to finish and may no longer be part of a trilogy.

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      December 3, 2012 10:41 AM

      I wonder what studio is working on it now. My money is on one of the Warner Bros studios. Worst case scenario: Spark Unlimited. I can see Spark becoming GRIN 2.0 and dragging all of it's projects down with it.

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        December 3, 2012 11:16 AM

        You'd bet on Warner Bros over EA/Ubisoft/Activision? What makes you so sure?

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          December 3, 2012 4:23 PM

          Won't be Activision because Del Toro says that a trilogy isn't what's being planned anymore and Activision seems to only want to go ahead with something if it comes out every year and makes them alot of money.

          Ubisoft I see as being too busy with the next AC that they'll be shipping next year along with sleeping dogs, and the two clancy games in development. They also have another Prince of Persia reboot for next gen that's being worked on as we speak so almost all of their capable studios have something in the pipe.

          I don't know if EA would be game for putting one of their teams to work on something they don't own. Which is different from EAPartners because they would be using EA personnel to make the game.

          I picked WB mainly because they have a capable team in monolith that hasn't worked on a retail product since FEAR2 and it seems like this would be right up their wheelhouse.

          I think it's more likely that the studio that's working on the game is related to one of the smaller publishers like Bethesda, 2k, WB, or Squenix. A publisher who could see the collaboration as something they could use to beef up their portfolio a bit. Choosing a developer after only meeting once and the enthusiasm that they have (according to Del Toro) implies a boldness that Activison and EA may not have due to their management. Ubi would go for it but I think they're just too busy with their own projects.

          Tl;dr - My gut told me.

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      December 3, 2012 12:50 PM

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