Milo and Kate Might not See Release After All

Some people at Microsoft really needs to make up their goddamned minds. Milo and Kate, the Kinect-controlled story of a boy, and one of the first pieces of software to demonstrate the newfangled technology was originally announced as an upcoming game. Then, according to Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg, it was only going to be used as a tech demo. A day later, Lionhead boss Peter Molyneux said it was going to be a retail game.

Now – speaking with USA Today – he’s said he doesn’t see it as a release right now, and that it’s “contentious” of Lionhead to do a game about a boy – as it’s something that appeals to the “dark thoughts of humanity.”

We think about [Milo] being an ongoing experience,” said Molyneux. “This is a completely different way of authoring than we have ever done before. The way that we developed Fable, all the features are developed in parallel. The way we develop something like Milo  is much more sequential. We spent a lot of time getting the stages and the environments right. We spent a long time on the procedures. You can now experience to release-level quality the first three to four hours of the experience.”

When questioned about a release date for Milo and Kate, Molyneux responded with  “I don’t think of it as a released product at the moment. I still think this is a very, very big tech demo. I don’t think of it as something that would be a boxed product on the shelf.”

“But is it something consumers will eventually get some aspect of? I think so, eventually. I do. There’s a lot of huge mountains to climb before that happens. The reason for that is it is enormously contentious for us to do a game, a story, an experience, about a boy.”

“You are immediately appealing to all the dark thoughts of humanity. I actually love that, the idea of being so contentious that it makes people turn around and say, ‘You can’t do a story about a boy.’ But, for me, doing that in that way is absolutely right.”

“One of the best films I saw last year was about an old man and a Boy Scout,” said Molyneux, justifying the story. “It was called Up. If I described for you this story, ‘It’s about an old man and a Boy Scout, strangers meeting and living together and going on adventures,’ you’d say, ‘You can’t do that. It’s out of the question.’ What you look for in drama and story is uniqueness and you look for experiences that people haven’t had before and I think it’s good to get it on a contentious level.”

“Some of the most amazing experiences really in entertainment are things like Toy Story where you think you are seeing one thing and actually seeing something else. That film was for people of a certain age. It wasn’t for kids at all. Kids loved it because it was brightly-colored toys. But it was all about me remembering when I was a kid. And that’s a wonderful story to tell and in a way that’s what Milo is about. Finding out a little about yourself.”

“I’ve seen people experience Milo and time and time again say ‘I remember that moment.’ That’s a wonderful feeling. When you want to find out who you are, remembering who you were is the most emotional side of that.”

Microsoft have been known to avoid releases for their platform that appear controversial – and playing an open world game with a virtual boy may have offended some executive’s sensibilities, preventing it from getting a release.

Source : USA Today

Last Updated: August 6, 2010