Xbox One players can now unleash their inner Sherlock Holmes with the release of "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" in January 19.
The game's developers, The Astronauts, made an announcement in their official page that the successful horror-mystery game will finally be released for the Xbox One. It was also announced that they are already accepting pre-orders.
"The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" is a first-person mystery game where players take control of a detective trying to solve the mystery of a young boy's disappearance after receiving a disturbing letter. The game requires a lot of problem solving and will rely mostly on the player's powers of observation.
The original game was released in 2014 and then remastered using Unreal Engine 4 for the Playstation 4, then being renamed "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux" when it was released for the PC in 2015.
The Astronauts said in their official webpage that the reason it took them two years to release the Xbox One version of the game was mainly due to their lack of resources, particularly the manpower necessary to work on porting the title. It took the company more than a year to find the right people for the job — Poland-based game developers SPIN Software.
Another reason for the delay was that according to The Austronauts, SPIN Software made such a great job with the game that it was an understatement to call it a port as the end result was more close to an actual upgrade than a simple porting, as optimization for Unreal Engine 4 required some codes for the game to be rewritten.
What separates the latest version of the game from its predecessor is the addition of a "Free Roam" mode, which allows the player to roam the entire world of "The Vanishing" minus the storyline. Objects and event triggers have been removed to ensure that players can really immerse themselves in the lush and stunning 3d environment courtesy of the Unreal Engine.
The "Free Roam" mode is exclusive to the Xbox One release and, according to the developers, will not be making its way to the PC and Playstation 4 versions for a while.
