Exclusive - Doctor Who game developer on David Tennant's return: "He's such an amazing actor"
Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality will bring together David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker.
Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality is an upcoming video game for consoles and PC, which will bring together David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker's incarnations of the Doctor.
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The Edge of Reality is being made by the team of developers at a British company called Maze Theory, who previously released a VR game called Doctor Who: The Edge of Time and a mobile game called Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins.
When RadioTimes.com was talking to Maze Theory's CEO Ian Hambleton recently, about revisiting the locations and characters of Blink for The Lonely Assassins, we couldn't resist asking for an update on The Edge of Reality as well. For any Whovian, it must be a dream come true to work with Tennant himself.
Hambleton told us, enthusiastically, "Having done the voice recording for [David Tennant] for it... he's such an amazing actor. And you know, he was great. And we know that fans love him. We wanted to get that - him and Jodie working together. Yeah, we're pretty close to finishing that one."
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Hambleton wouldn't be drawn on a firm release date for the game, but he did tell us a bit about how the project came to be. It all started with The Edge of Time VR game, and the fan reaction that it generated.
He explained, "Having made The Edge of Time, probably the number one thing that we saw as comments, other than 'we loved it', and 'oh my God, it was terrifying', there were so many fans that were like, 'Can you make us a console game? Can you make this as a console game? Can you do it?'.
"And we didn't just want to do just a simple port of the VR game, because the VR game is like... we call it 'existing in the world', and being there, and the presence is a part of it. Whereas with the console game, it's much more of an expansive universe."
There are, however, some elements that exist in both The Edge of Time and The Edge of Reality.
"It does take a lot of [material from] The Edge of Time," Hambleton added. "Probably the first half of the console game is a lot of that stuff, albeit expanded levels and gameplay and different stuff. And then what we've done with Edge of Reality is, we've also introduced other baddies, like the Cybermen that you've seen, and whole different levels and layers that make it much more. There's definitely a difference.
"You know, in VR, you're there, you're looking around you, you're poking around. In console, you can't do that, because you can move so much quicker through the world and different things. So that game has got a lot of elements from Edge of Time. But I think even if you played The Edge of Time, you're going to feel pretty rewarded by [The Edge of Reality], hopefully, because there's a lot of new content. But yeah, in the main, we wanted to just put it everywhere fans could have it, right? So that's what it's going to be - on all PCs, all consoles, the lot."
As for whether The Edge of Time will connect back to The Lonely Assassins, the mobile game which featured Ingrid Oliver as Osgood and Finlay Robertson as Larry Nightingale, Hambleton was happy to reveal that there is some connective tissue between this trilogy of Doctor Who titles.
"They are slightly interwoven," he explained. "So like Larry is the laundrette manager that exists in both Edge of Time and Edge of Reality." But Hambleton is keen to stress that you don't need to play these games in any particular order.
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As he puts it, "What would be our hope is that players can pick up one of the games on their own and just enjoy them. But if they play all three, they'll just feel a bit more of a richer reward from it all. But there are a few interconnected bits in the stories."
Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality launches later in 2021 for consoles and PC. We'll bring you more news as we hear it, but until then, you can check out the trailer below to hear David Tennant back in action as the Doctor...
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