Interview with Frederick Raynal on Agartha

[pcwzrd13]

I recently sent an email to Frederick Raynal, former head of No Cliché, who you may know from the Dreamcast games Toy Commander and Toy Racer. Some of you may also know that the same team was working on a new survival horror game called Agartha. I've always been very curious about this game and so I decided to contact Frederick about it. I wasn't too hopeful that I would actually get a reply but to my surprise, five days later, there is an email from Mr. Raynal in my inbox. So without further adieu, I present to you my brief interview with Frederick on Agartha:

Me: Could you tell me how far into development the game was? Was it close to being completed but cancelled due to the Dreamcast being discontinued?

Mr. Raynal: Agartha was cancelled because Sega stopped all developpment activities in Europe. The studio was closed. Agartha was not close to completion, the main character is just able to walk into some scenery, but there isn’t any interaction. There is a video we did at the end showing the state it was then, there is nothing more. There is a realtime version of this video.

Me: I heard that there was supposed to be online features to this game as well. What was that to include?

Mr. Raynal: No online feature were planned, just some small side games on the VM.

Me: Lastly, is there any chance Agartha will ever be released on another platform?

Mr. Raynal: No, it will never be released on another platform, the main idea which was to be able to do good or bad actions and choose your destiny is no longer original, and the game was anyway not enough advance to keep anything. And a full and free roaming world isn’t an advantage nowadays.

But all the researches we did to let the player choose his behavior, and how to manage a multi ends plot keeping the red thread always accurate are unforgettable and I hope I’ll be able to build on that one day. I still want to do an other survival horror adventure, a very special one that would use some concepts from Agartha...


And that's all folks! I'm really thrilled that he took the time to respond to my email. Most companies would just ignore emails not related to their current products or projects. If you have any other questions you would like me to ask him, please let me know and I'll put them together in my response. I don't want to bombard him with a million emails so the next one will be my last.

[Jenkins]

Nothing really new but many things have been confirmed.

Thank you Frederick Raynal and you, pcwzrd13!

[mazonemayu]

thanks Wiz, its always nice that folks are willing to answer these kind of questions after so many years...

[pcwzrd13]

Nothing really new but many things have been confirmed.

I've always wondered how far into development it was so I'm glad to finally have that confirmed. I actually had thought it was close to completion but apparently not. It seems they had done a lot of work on the environments and character models but I guess that's about it.

We also know now that the game was not to have an online mode which was rumored by the unseen64 page I linked to above.

It is cool that he still wants to use some of the concepts in a future game. I will definitely be looking out for that.

thanks Wiz, its always nice that folks are willing to answer these kind of questions after so many years...

Absolutely! It was awesome of him to take the time to answer my email.

[WildCard]

Thanks for sharing, love reading stuff like this.

If you have any further correspondence with Mr. Raynal please pass along the thanks of the Dreamcast community to him.

[pcwzrd13]

If you have any further correspondence with Mr. Raynal please pass along the thanks of the Dreamcast community to him.

Will do!

[dreamcast-news]

Thanks pcwzrd13 for this interview.

[Alex Supersonic]

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

I wrote him too maybe 5 years ago with more or less the same questions about Agartha, never got an answer

[Jenkins]

We also know now that the game was not to have an online mode which was rumored by the unseen64 page I linked to above

SEGA Europe himself spread this rumor.

Please take a look at the official promo cover of Argatha:
http://www.sega-dc.de/dreamcast/Agartha

[pcwzrd13]

SEGA Europe himself spread this rumor.

Please take a look at the official promo cover of Argatha:
http://www.sega-dc.de/dreamcast/Agartha

Are you sure that's an official cover? It looks fan-made to me. Regardless, the head honcho himself says there were no online features planned.