Red Steel 2 will use Wii MotionPlus accessory

By Stephen Munn | July 28, 2008

Red Steel. Remember Red Steel? Red Steel is a very important title to those of us who were into Wii before it was even called Wii. Red Steel was the first game the general public ever saw images of. Early in development (that would be about a month before release… zing!) some images were publicized that later turned out to be concept art. We all thought they were screenshots, though, because we were naïve. Heck, it was 2006, we were young. Red Steel came out at launch and eventually sold more than a million copies for developer/publisher Ubisoft, partly on the promise that our minds made. This promise was that we could do swordfighting using the Wii Remote and FPS shooting using the IR pointer and it would be perfect.

It wasn’t perfect. Swordplay was gesture-based and everything else was just… unfinished. The game was one of the better looking launch titles, though. The game was big on promise and just short on execution.

Red Steel 2 has been in development for a long time now, but it wasn’t until the reveal of WiiMotion Plus right before this year’s E3 that I thought that maybe they could do it right. Red Steel’s hook is swordfighting, just like Star Wars. But would Ubisoft use that? We don’t even know if Lightsaber Battles will use it, and that’s lightsabers!

“The Red Steel brand is strong – I think we released it on year one, and that people understood that it was a first try on new technology, technology that wasn’t completely finished. And our game tried to grab the best out of it, and was a bit rushed to be sure to offer something in year one to Wii consumers,” he added.

“So Red Steel is a brand, and as with every brand we have, we now have to reach the top quality possible. What was missing was the preciseness of the sabre – and with this new device I think it will change the experience.”

It turns out Ubisoft will use the WiiMotion Plus device to provide accurate one-to-one sword control in Red Steel, which means Red Steel 2 now has the potential to out-Star Wars the Lightsaber Battles game. Nice.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz via The Wiire