Hurri;
[color:"orange"]Anyway I don't want to be the difficult guy. I'm just saying, I saw it happen with Outcast 2, Totems.[/color]
At least with Outcast 2 ('totems' is too common a word to find details on the right game with a quick search) the problem was the publisher trying to force the developer to dumb down the game (to make it more popular with console players). This resulted in key people quitting in protest, and the game was canceled shortly after. The ex-developers have since regrouped and formed a new company, Elsewhere Entertainment.
Larian had a similar experience with their first RPG, where the publisher went out of business, taking the rights to the game with them. However, they are now AFAIK mostly or completely self-funded, so there is no need to bring in a publisher early in the process, and no need to sign over rights to the game in order to get it finished. Also, with the DD publisher changing the name of the game, they are probably careful about giving up even minor creative control if they do not need to.
Nobody outside Larian can kill the next gen game, and it seems highly unlikely Larian would abandon it, especially after Lar soliciting feedback on certain features a couple months ago. At worst they may need to delay in favour of shorter term projects to pay the bills.
Wallace;
[color:"orange"]I am concerned that all may not be all-right at the larians.[/color]
I don't see any reason to suspect a problem. Lynn said they would start to talk about stuff 'in the coming months', which Lar has done, just not in specific detail or on a regular basis (yet).
In the Oct '06 PC Gamer preview, they list the release date as 'not in 2006'. This implies that in mid 2006 (AFAIK magazines usually have about a 3 month lead time before what is written gets published) they either couldn't or did not want to commit to a release date in 2007. Maybe they have a projected timeline with a possible late '07 release, but want to allow for delays. Maybe they have an earlier or later release planned, but simply do not want to make a public announcement too early.
If I was them, and could afford to release the game at my own discretion, I would wait until it was pretty much done to start revealing information. The time spent getting a publisher, arranging reviews, advertising, etc could allow for a thorough QA past, fine tuning game balance, and possible tweaking based on feedback from a demo (though complaints about voice acting should be ignored <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> ).
