Too Human due in Q1 2008

Silicon Knights made headlines recently, thanks to its very public legal spat with Epic Games. In July, the Ontario-based studio sued the North Carolina-based developer, claiming the latter had given "false and misleading statements" when licensing its Unreal Engine 3. Last week, Epic countersued, charging that Silicon Knights' suit was merely an attempt to acquire the development toolset for free.

The ugly exchanges overshadowed the impending release of Too Human, Silicon Knights' long-in-the-making action game. First announced for the original PlayStation at the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the title was shifted to the GameCube when the studio entered into an exclusive partnership with Nintendo. After disappearing for several years, Too Human was publicly re-unveiled as an Xbox 360 exclusive in 2005 and shown off to attendees of E3 2006.

Since then, though, public views of Too Human have been all too hard to come by. The game missed its scheduled spring 2007 launch, and its publisher, Microsoft Game Studios, has been largely mum on the game's release date.

Today, the reason for the silence became clear. Speaking to GameSpot at the Leipzig Games Convention, Silicon Knights' president and cofounder Denis Dyack confirmed that the game is now scheduled for 2008.

"We're looking for an early first quarter release of Too Human," the developer said. "We're really excited about it, we can't wait to show people and...time will tell."

Dyack went on to call it Silicon Knights' "best game to date" and promised that a demo of the game would be on Xbox Live Marketplace. However, he did not give a time frame for the when the demo would be released, or what it would consist of.

For more with Denis Dyack, check back tomorrow for a full video interview with the celebrated developer.