They admit with Primal their ”ambition exceeded our reach” but it still provided a ”one-of-a-kind, story-driven adventure with a quite unusual charm.” Cult TV influenced it.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dark Angel were the ‘foremost’ core influences for Primal’s tone. It also let them show off ”cool technical and artistic things” for its time on PlayStation 2.
”The premise was a classic: pretty girl meets gargoyle, explores demon worlds, acquires demonic powers, and (spoiler!) has to kill her boyfriend to save the universe,” recalled Chris Sorrell.
”In retrospect, it’s clear that in some regards our ambition exceeded our reach, and that the path we took with Primal was at odds with the larger directions the gaming world was headed — the open-world excesses of Grand Theft Auto or the social/casual gaming trends pioneered by Singstar and Eye-toy. But I think all of that makes Primal all the more notable as a one-of-a-kind, story-driven adventure with a quite unusual charm.”
Primal will appear on the US PSN PS2 Classic list today. Check out the full US PlayStation.Blog piece on the re-release of Primal and what some of the developers fondly remember of it.
