SouthPeak Pushed Two Worlds II to 2011. Dev's Claim it's Already Finished

So here's an interesting tidbit.  Two Worlds II was supposedly going to be released on October 5th in North America. But yesterday afternoon that dream was crushed when SouthPeak Games announced that the game would be pushed to January 2011 in order to make sure it was certainly not going to be a re-hash of the Two Worlds I debacle.

We understand that this is not great news for those of you eager for an October release and we can understand that you might feel that our European cousins’ potentially getting the game before you is frustrating to say the least. However, there’s a reason for everything and although we feel that the game is truly at ‘AAA’ level, that reason is that we want Two Worlds II to be absolutely flawless when it launches in the North American market. Although we could bring the game to market earlier in order to take advantage of the holiday buying season, we felt that we would do a better service to you by making sure that the game you want is absolutely as it should be.   It’s vital to us that we always give you the best possible information and this is the reason that we haven’t commented on the date before now; we did not want to say something to you, only to have that information change once again. Now, we are in a position to confirm the January release date.

The reason, as stated above, was to refine the game and ensure that it went through "heavyweight Quality Assurance (QA) for the North American market."  Now, I'm not so sure how smart it is to basically tell European gamers that they might be getting an inferior product, but those of us living in the States could find a small amount of solace in the special treatment.

Now this is where things get strange.

Today, Developer TopWare Interactive (you know the guys actually making the game) contacted GamesSpot to let them know that the game was already completed.  Honestly!

"Truth be told, fans only have so much time to spend playing these content-rich games, and there were concerns our title could potentially be lost in the fanfare," TopWare managing director James Seaman said in a statement. "Our publishing partner SouthPeak, to their credit, has acknowledged this fact and made an adjustment, postponing their launch of Two Worlds II into early 2011."

And about that additional QA testing that SouthPeak was going on about?

The TopWare statement went on to call SouthPeak's assertion that the game wasn't finished "factually incorrect." All production, bug testing, and localization work was finished in mid-September, the company said, adding that this year and next year's Two Worlds II launches will contain the same content (except for patches or updates released in the interim, which could make it onto the 2011 retail launch disc). Instead of working to finish up the core Two Worlds II game, Reality Pump is instead readying its post-launch support and downloadable content plans.

An understandable move considering how tightly cramped this October is with new games and some monster RPG's.  However, if you're going to make up stories and release them to the press and community as public knowledge, it might be best if everyone was clued in.   Don't you hate it when mommy and daddy fight?

Two Worlds II is done after all - TopWare (GameSpot)