Haze Developer Talks Balance Issues and Reasons for Past Delays

The oft-delayed Haze is almost ready to launch, so Strategy Informer got to chat with project lead Derek Littlewood about the game’s many delays, development cycle, and which part of Haze he likes most. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t really peg any one reason for the delays but said that’s thankful for gamers patience.

What has been the most challenging aspect of the game so far in terms of development and why?

Definitely the way the game constantly streams throughout, meaning the player can play from start to finish without seeing a single loading screen. The amount of data you’re streaming on the fly to create the sort of high-res, lush environments you’ll see throughout Haze is just insane, and the amount of technical problems we had to solve that we’d never encountered before were huge.

But when you see its effect on people, you know the effort’s been worthwhile; one journalist who came to see the game had to be dragged away after about three hours because he’d just been rolling through the entire first third of the game without noticing that he was progressing from one level to the next. He described it as ‘relentless’, which pretty much sums it up for me too.

When asked what he would be working on next, Littlewood wouldn’t go into specifics on any games or platforms, other than saying, “[Y]ou can be assured they won’t have the word ‘exclusive’ anywhere near them.”

Read the full interview at Strategy Informer.