The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is coming to PS4 and, I discover, is actually being remade for the occasion using Unreal Engine 4 (the original game was UE3). That's why it's taking so long. But it's in beta and it should be out in the third-quarter of the year, he tells me. The concrete date depends on certification processes out of his control.
After, this enhanced UE4 Ethan Carter will be re-released on PC, free to existing owners of the game. And after that, work begins on Ethan Carter VR and, simultaneously, a brand new game.
Wait, what about Xbox One - will it come to Xbox One?
"I honestly have no idea," Chmielarz replies. "When Sony presented the game they called it 'console first'; there might be a window there. It depends on a lot of factors - it's a question of what we will be doing at this point.
"Take a look at Gone Home: these guys sold a lot of copies on PC but you don't see a console version of any kind. And it's not because they're stupid and they don't want money: something else is keeping them busy - and I think they tried and it didn't work. I cannot promise anything at this point.
"It might be that PS4 is going to be the only console, or it might be that we will sometime later do the Xbox One version - I honestly have no idea."
The decision to remake Ethan in Unreal Engine 4 came by virtue of UE3 not being future-proof or supporting the newer consoles. "We didn't remake the assets from scratch but we did remake the game, everything else, from scratch," he says, "so that's why it's taking so long. It's not like we change a couple of variables or whatever and it runs on PS4, no - we are making it from scratch on Unreal Engine 4.
He isn't "going all George Lucas on our original creation", and dramatically altering anything, but there are things - both in terms of content and performance - that will change. But overall it should look and feel a lot like the original.
Nevertheless, moving to Unreal Engine 4 means it can't look exactly the same, and also that the game's open-world is better supported. "It already feels better because it's a much smoother experience," he says. "And because of that management of assets it also allows us finally to make a proper save system."
The biggest single change came from player feedback and is to do with backtracking at the end of the game. The Astronauts thought people wouldn't mind but they did, so whereas in the original game there was one shortcut, now there are two.
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