Beneath A Steel Sky - Development

Development

While working at Activision, Revolution co-founder and CEO Charles Cecil got the idea of working with Dave Gibbons, artist and co-creator of comic book Watchmen, as Cecil was a fan of the comic book himself. He approached Gibbons, but shortly thereafter, the old Activision broke down. However, they maintained a friendship, and Cecil would later contact Gibbons to ask him to work on Revolution's second game. Seeing his son play video games, Gibbons became interested and realized that his skills in drawing, writing and conceptualizing could be useful in a gaming environment. Joining the team just before the release Lure of the Temptress, Gibbons was sent a rudimentary outline of what could happen in the hypothesised game, and wrote a longer story with new characters and scenarios, to which Revolution then added further. Originally the game was named Underworld, a title proposed by Gibbons, but it was renamed due to the release of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss.

The production values became much higher for Beneath a Steel Sky than for Lure of the Temptress, resulting in a game six times larger, and by the end of 1993, the team working on the game had grown to eleven. The game was created in sections, which allowed the team to ensure that each part was "perfected" before moving on. Its 2-year development cost £40,000, a large amount of money for the company at the time.