While Journey has come to be known as an excellent adventure with a compelling narrative as well as visuals, life for the critically acclaimed 2012 game from thatgamecompany (the game’s developer) started off very differently than what the game’s end product later turned out to be.
During this year’s PlayStation Experience–which occurred last week on Friday, December 5 in Las Vegas, at the “Prototype to Product” panel presented by Sony Santa Monica– Journey’s early beginnings and working prototype was showcased to the world, complete with an explanation of how it worked.
As featured above, Journey’s prototype was a top-down game, with the players themselves being represented by dots instead of armless, ornately decorated red robed figures as seen in the final product. However, the commonality between the two versions is that the play could only communicate one way: using vocals. However, with Journey’s prototype the only vocals used was the word “hey” (which would be shouted by the player), while Journey’s final version had chirps for its only vocal usage. The prototype only had blowing wind for sound as well.
Unlike Journey’s optional in-out two-player co-op, its prototype was a four-player game, which later turned out to be rather chaotic, as one or more players could have teamed up against the other players, disrupting the progression of the game itself.
What’s more is that the game’s prototype also featured collisions, allowing for early players to push other players into pits. The team behind Journey soon realized that this mechanic wasn’t working out for them, as they released that players weren’t as behaved towards each other than what they hoped, and so moved on from it.
We’ll bring you more news on Journey and on this year’s PlayStation Experience should further information reach our ears.
[ Source(s): DualShockers ]
[ Image source(s): Twitter ]