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There was a nice surprise last week when during PSX Sony announced that it intends to give PS1 adventure MediEvil the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy treatment in the form of a remaster. However, two people who were also in the dark about it until the announcement happened to be Sir Daniel Fortesque’s original creator Chris Sorrell and MediEvil’s original lead designer Jason Wilson.
Speaking in an interview with Push Square, Sorrell – who was also responsible for creating James Pond – said the news came ‘out of the blue’ and said that ‘I wouldn’t have expected them to do this after so long and I certainly have a lot of questions!’. Wilson was similarly shocked, first hearing the news from Spanish MediEvil fans over Twitter. ‘At first I discounted it as another fan-made game, trailer, or fan-film’ he said.
‘But it turned out that this was an actual 100 per cent official Sony announcement and at first I was rather bemused then happy at the thought of our fun game being released; it was after all the happiest time I had spent in the games industry and I’m proud of our work on MediEvil.’
The two do have high hopes for the new remaster, with Sorrell citing the recent Crash Bandicoot and, more recently, the footage of the upcoming remake of Shadow of the Colossus as to how he hopes the remaster will turn out. ‘If that’s what’s happening then I’m sad not to be part of that team, but I know I’d be thrilled to one day load up that game and revisit Gallowmere in 4K splendour. Giving me hope is the fact that so far this generation, Sony seem to have been doing an amazing job of meeting fan expectations with its remasters.’
Both men are nervous about the update too however, as neither appear to be fans of the previous update in MediEvil Resurrection for the PSP, with Sorrell saying ‘The team went on to make a game that no doubt was technically superior to the original, and made some notable character design improvements – I really liked their update of Sir Dan. But… it also spoiled a number of other characters, messed with the story, weakened several levels, and omitted some of the best, most quintessentially MediEvil levels altogether.’
‘I hope there are people involved that would appreciate that this isn’t the version of the game that fans want.’
Wilson was similarly damning of Resurrection, saying ‘Apart from a few visual elements such as Sir Dan’s physical redesign I also didn’t much care for the PSP remake – it looked grey and pallid compared to the colourful excess and arcade adventure clarity of the original.’
All that being said, both Sorrell and Wilson retain some optimism over the new version of the game, with Chris saying ‘Working on MediEvil was a definitely a special time in my career and the one of the most enjoyable team experiences I’ve even had. If the new team has as much fun with this as we did back then, then perhaps my fears are unfounded.’
Wilson adds: ‘I hope that Sony and a new team honours the legacy of Sir Dan and have as much fun as we had making it the first time round. I know that there are many fans around the world that share the same wish.’
MediEvil’s PS4 outing is set to land sometime in 2018.
