The British developer, now known as Crytek UK, said that history has been ”much kinder to the game” than they thought it would. PC wasn’t part of the plan.
Codemasters gave them good support noted the former Free Radicals but the creators lost confidence in the franchise before it could ever really begin. ”Overall it didn’t generate sufficient interest for us to feel it was worth making a sequel,” said Karl Hilton.
”We had some ideas ready, but we decided it didn’t have any momentum as a new franchise. Codemasters gave Second Sight good support and we even released a PC version (which wasn’t part of the original release plan).”
”Ultimately history appears to have been much kinder to the game than we would have thought after its initial release,” continued the Crytek UK boss.
Second Sight developed something of a cult following and I had the good fortune to play and finish the game myself. While dated you could easily pick and play the psychic-based shooter today and enjoy literally screwing with the minds of your enemies.
”Second Sight does crop up occasionally in discussions in the gaming community about good narrative in games and games that were ‘sleeper’ hits (although you could never describe the final sales figures as a hit),” said Hilton.
”As a developer you always automatically want more marketing as it is always a positive and should help your game to sell more.” There just wasn’t enough noise about it.
”However, I think the lack of a proper ‘build up’ phase when we didn’t have a publisher hurt us more in the long run. A new IP needs to build anticipation and hype in the gaming community and Second Sight didn’t get that chance.”
”In terms of press reviews, it certainly didn’t get the overwhelmingly positive response that you always hope for. Most reviewers ‘liked’ it and it got a mix of reasonable scores for story, graphics, sound etc. but nothing outstanding.”
Crytek UK most recently built the multiplayer for Crysis 2 and is heavily rumoured to be developing Time Splitters 4 for Xbox 360 and PS3. Second Sight’s IP remains with them studio so they could, at any time, bring us more mind bending fun.
