Trivia / WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

• Creator Backlash: After Civvie 11 posted a video to talk, play and criticize 3D Realms' released and upcoming games, KillPixel would leave a comment on it talking about the Troubled Production on Wrath and its controversial gameplay ideas:

  It's true that WRATH was my baby and I made most of the design decisions (for better or for worse) in addition to doing the majority of the art and sound — textures, models, animation, fx, name/logo design, etc (I only did a texture set or so for episodes 2 and 3 and the rest were done by someone else). The Symbol (tentacle enemy) and the Lance (rail gun) were my final contributions to the game before I ended my partnership with 3D Realms in 2020.

  I agree that WRATH has many problems. Some are just plain poor choices/implementation on my part, some not, and some are the result of regrettable circumstances. I respect the people that were brought in to complete the game after I left — I know the mess they inherited and I'm not sure anyone else could've done much better in that situation. I deeply believed WRATH had everything going for it, everything it needed to be a truly great FPS. I believed it so much that I dedicated my entire life to it. I went all in. I can rightly place the blame for WRATH's failure on certain 3D Realms leadership, but I can also blame myself. To varying degrees, I permitted the fatal blows WRATH was dealt during development. Developing a game is one thing, but developing one while simultaneously trying to protect it is something else. I truly, truly loved WRATH and believed in it and really did the very best I could, but I eventually had to face the reality of the situation, let go of it and step away.

  WRATH was an extremely painful lesson, but I still hope to do another game someday and succeed where I had failed.

• Dueling Works: With fellow Retraux shooter DUSK, although the latter left early access first and much earlier than Wrath eventually did.
  • The full 1.0 release of the game also ended up being this with Nightdive Studios' Updated Re-release of Dark Forces - of all things - that was released just a day after.
• Schedule Slip: The game was originally scheduled to come out during Spring 2021, but it was delayed to Summer 2021 after a few members of the production team got infected with COVID-19. Come Realms Deep 2021, and the game was delayed again, this time to an undetermined date, once again due to COVID-19 and the outdated programming of the Quake engine itself, which is far more complicated to program compared to modern 3D engines like Unity and Unreal Engine. To compensate for the delay and the lack of updates since the latest Early Access build, the developers promised bi-weekly news updates to Early Access buyers. Realms Deep 2022 would finally clarify an intended release window of Spring 2023, only for it to miss it again and announce that it will not be released in 2023 at all. The game was not even featured in Realms Deep 2023. As one of the developers said in the official Discord, the game will only be released when it's done. The final release date was finally revealed to be the 27th February 2024.
• What Could Have Been: The death-match multi-player for the game was planned, but because of the protracted development it ended up being cut to focus more on the single-player.