Jens Peter Kurup: "I’ve had several sets of emotions in the last year. Just around launch I felt pretty confident and okay. The review scores that we had already seen at IO looked to be a tad lower than expected – some 8/10, some 7/10, but some 5/5’s as well. We also had a good feeling about some of the bigger sites because it seemed that the latest hands-on sessions had gone well, especially with the Fragile Alliance element of the game.

Even though we received nice scores in a lot of the mainstream and lifestyle press, the more specific gaming press started to give it mediocre scores, and we knew that we wouldn’t hit our Metacritic mark. That felt confusing and unfulfilling, but by and large I was still emotionally unaffected by the criticism. I agreed with the existence of most of the game's issues and I knew that it was all something we could deal with professionally when the team took the franchise forward.

Then GameSpot reviewed the game. And they didn’t like it one bit.

I’m not quite sure why, but I remember that review hit the team like a hammer. You can just 'absorb' a bad score but there was something in the tone of that review that was tough on people, and on me."