Rime and reason

Tequila Works' Remy Chinchilla has revealed that the long-awaited Switch version of RiME will make use of the console's unique HD Rumble feature.

Speaking to WCCFTech, Chinchilla also mentioned that the touchscreen will be utilised for menus when playing in handheld mode:

One of the features we put in was the HD Rumble. Yeah, it’s really cool. The designers put in a curve to how much they vibrate depending on what you’re doing in the world. The only thing really in there is in the menus – you can touch the screen. But that’s all, because we didn’t want to add any other gimmicks. RiME was never planned with any gimmicks in mind, and we thought if we add them now they might not fit with the game as we intended.

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Chinchilla adds that the team stopped short of adding in motion controls in order to keep the experience as close to that on other systems:

We also wanted the players that only played on Switch to have the same experience that players who played on PS4 or other consoles have had. If we put in the gyroscope or something like that in puzzles, then it would’ve been different to the way it was played elsewhere.

Elsewhere in the interview, the tricky topic of porting is addressed:

There were some challenges in porting to Switch, we had to optimise a few things. It was also due to the software, Unreal. We started porting on Switch around a year ago, and at first the Unreal Engine wasn’t ready straight away on Switch. We had to integrate several versions on the engine that were released. There was some middleware and software where the support wasn’t there on day 1, so we had to adapt.

Chinchilla also heaps praise on Tantalus, the Australian studio responsible for bringing the game to Nintendo's console:

The good thing about Tantalus being in Australia is that when we get home we send an email saying what we did and they pick that up immediately afterwards, and when they finish their day, we start immediately afterwards. I used to say the sun was never out on RiME because there was always someone working on it around the world. We took advantage of it when it comes to organization because if you ask for something to be checked in the evening as you leave, it’ll be ready for you in the morning. It was great. Tantalus did all of the code, all of the logic, and we helped with optimising assets because we couldn’t use all of the original assets, but we did our best to keep the same visual style.

RiME launches on November 14th in North America and November 17th in Europe. 

[source wccftech.com]