[Update: Nightdive has released a statement saying that the Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion remaster is delayed on all platforms except for the Switch in Europe and Australia. The release says, “This was not the plan,” and attributes the mix-up to a difference in their holiday schedules.
They go on to say that while those regions will have access to the Switch version of the game early, it will be a version with “known bugs and missing quality-of-life improvements.” Nightdive also says that a patch for these issues already exists, but they can’t deploy it at the early launch in these regions. Furthermore, because of the mix-up and the certification process, they expect that the patch won’t be available for these regions until mid-December, whereas other regions and platforms will have it at the launch on November 30.
While there are definitely worse things that could go wrong around a game’s launch, this all sounds like a massive headache for the team at Nightdive. Our original story follows.]
Nightdive has announced that their remaster of the 2000 not-quite-classic Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion has been delayed by a couple of weeks until November 30. The initial release date was set for November 14.
I think I know why. Let me find the tweet. Here it is. Lead engine designer at Nightdive, Samuel Villarreal tweeted, “Nothing’s better than failing PS4 certification one week before a game is shipped because it crashes when loading a specific level, only on a PS4 Pro, only on 4k resolution, and only when a debugger is not attached.” He then sarcastically added, “Yup, I sure do enjoy that.”
He later added that the issue has now been fixed, but the turnaround time on certification is slow.
There’s no official confirmation that certification problems were the cause of the delay in the press release or anywhere else that I can find. Wait. I can get confirmation. I asked Larry Kuperman at Nightdive, who opted not to talk about specifics but stated that “supporting multiple platforms at launch is always a challenge.”
I guess it doesn’t really matter why. It’s been delayed, and knowing the reason won’t un-delay the game.
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion is the last of the mainline trilogy for the N64. It was the odd one since, rather than be a simple, fast-paced blast-’em-up, it lifted a lot of the formula from 1998’s Half-Life. So, it’s more linear, with more of a focus on narrative. I really dug it when I was younger, though it didn’t leave a huge impression on me. I mostly just remember the first area.
However, I was surprised when the remaster was announced. The first two Turok games had PC ports that Nightdive could work off of, while Turok 3 only came out on N64. Doing a new port from an N64 exclusive long after its initial development is really not any easy thing to do, but Nightdive was determined, and now it’s almost here. Oh, wait…
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch on November 30, 2023.
