Phil Fish, the artist and designer who made the basic 2012 indie recreation Fez alongside programmer Renaud Bédard, has spoken candidly for the primary time in regards to the cancellation of its sequel the next yr.
Fez 2 was canceled amid controversial circumstances, only one month after its June 2013 announcement. Fish, an outspoken and caustic determine each on-line and off, had been concerned in a Twitter spat with journalist Marcus Beer after saying Fez 2 wouldn’t be launched on Xbox. (The unique recreation had debuted on Xbox 360 to nice success, however Fish had fallen out with Microsoft over the patch certification course of, amongst different issues.)
When the argument with Beer went south, Fish abruptly introduced his withdrawal from public life and the cancellation of the sport, stunning even his colleagues on the studio he based, Polytron. The belief was that he’d accomplished so in a match of pique. “Fez 2 is cancelled. I’m accomplished. I take the cash and I run. That is as a lot as I can abdomen. This isn’t the results of anyone factor, however the finish of a protracted, bloody marketing campaign. You win,” he wrote on the time.
The truth is, as Fish advised journalist and writer Simon Parkin for Parkin’s My Perfect Console podcast, his coronary heart wasn’t in Fez 2 within the first place.
“Clearly, I wasn’t feeling it to start with,” Fish stated. “It felt just like the factor to do, strike whereas the iron’s sizzling and make a sequel. That’s what you do in video video games, you make a franchise. And the extra I began engaged on that critically, the much less I used to be feeling it, and the extra I used to be getting […] disillusioned with all the pieces — even in my place of getting simply had a profitable online game, having to comply with up on that was plenty of strain.”
This week’s visitor is Phil Fish, co-creator of Fez, who spoke about taking notes whereas taking part in Zelda together with his father as a younger baby, how starring in Indie: Sport the Film modified his life, and why he cancelled Fez 2: pic.twitter.com/QFEwT8PSaF
— My Good Console Podcast (@myperfectcnsle) March 1, 2023
As for the inciting incident, the spat with Beer: “Perhaps it was a little bit of an out,” Fish conceded. “[It] was the final straw, the place I used to be already desirous about doing all these issues and there was simply this one second the place, you already know what, fuck it, I’m not doing that.”
Fish (whose actual identify is Philippe Poisson; sure, actually) revealed that Fez 2 was extraordinarily early in growth, which made the choice to cancel it straightforward. “We weren’t that superior, we didn’t have a complete lot to point out aside from the emblem we confirmed,” he stated. “I definitely had ideas and idea artwork and issues like that, however we didn’t have something playable. We have been in pre-conceptual section for the sport once we introduced it. Deciding to stroll away was fairly straightforward, as a result of there was no actual funding at that time. It hadn’t actually value us something in time or cash or power, and there was nothing actually to be tremendous hooked up to.”
Fish stated he had beforehand “fantasized” about cancelling the primary Fez throughout its tortuous five-year growth, “however it was clearly not a practical factor to truly do.”
Similtaneously canceling Fez 2, Fish eliminated himself utterly from social media and public life. Catapulted to stardom alongside different figures like Tremendous Meat Boy’s Edmund McMillen and Braid’s Jonathan Blow — thanks partially to their appearances within the documentary Indie Sport: The Film — Fish had change into a divisive, argumentative determine, and he struggled with managing his fame properly.
“There’s no opt-out for the sewage pipe that will get opened up into your front room while you’re a public persona on the web,” he stated. “And simply making that minimize, that severance, of similar to — you already know, I’m simply going to return to only being personal me, I don’t need to tweet each dumb factor that goes by way of my mind on a regular basis? It was like kicking another habit at first, however after the worst of it’s over, you see in hindsight, oh wow, that factor was driving me loopy. That was poison.” He definitely seems like a calmer, extra measured particular person now.
“To determine to return to work in a very quiet, secretive manner, might be very onerous however might be liberating additionally,” Fish added. “You don’t know the issues that I didn’t end, that I ended up canceling, these initiatives that I labored on. There’s no massive drama round it.”
All of which begs the query of what Fish has been engaged on for the previous 9 years (other than serving to out with the discharge of VR recreation SuperHyperCube, and provides or take, as he advised Parkin, some six months dropping himself in Skyrim). True to his dedication to privateness, he was unwilling to share particulars of his subsequent undertaking — however he hinted it may not be a online game.
“That was very liberating to interrupt away from [Fez 2], after which understand that I can do one thing else. And it doesn’t even essentially need to be a online game. I don’t need to say what, trigger I’m nonetheless engaged on it, however… let’s go in a very completely different course.”
We could by no means see its sequel, however Polytron has made certain that Fez itself stays straightforward to seek out: it’s presently out there on Steam and different PC shops, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 4, and iOS. And it’s nonetheless as sensible because it was a decade in the past.