Good news for those excited about Insane, the horror gamne project from Pan's Labyrinth and Cronos director Guillermo Del Toro. It seems that THQs financial woes haven't killed the game after all. While things looked grim a little while ago when the publisher announced that it would no longer be developing of the proposed Lovecraftian horror trilogy, then in pre-production at Red Faction and Saints Row developer Volition, Del Toro has now revealed that the project will go on.
Having had the IP rights returned to him following THQ's step back, the director set up a string of meetings with other developers but apparently came to a happy resolutrion very quickly. Speaking to IGN, he explained,
"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. 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."
As for how long the game will now take to complete, Del Toro says that while a fair bit of pre-productiun work was done with Volition, there's still a way to go.
"We put a good year and a half into it and we have the universe quite figured out, but 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."
While the idea of a trilogy is no longer being actively explored, this has to be good news indeed. One of the most accomplished horror and fantasy directors in the industry, Del Toro's genuine love and artistic appreciation of gaming makes him an excellent bet to bring something very special over from the world of film. Any guessses on the who the mystery developer could be? Dead Space studio Visceral games would be a good bet. Though Valve have been praising Del Toro lately, and he's a big fan of them as well. In fact he's even cast voice of GlaDOS Ellen McClain as an AI character in his upcoming science fiction film Pacific Rim...
