Ved dette års E3 i Los Angeles, fik vi muligheden for at tale med Team 17's egen Kevin Carthew omkring Escapist 2. Her kom vi blandt andet ind på, hvorvidt spillet er blevet mere tilgængelig, siden det første spil var så udfordrende, og Carthew forsikrede os om, at det var tilfældet.
"Sure, and we have absolutely done that" udtalte han. "I mean there are several things about the original game [...] some of the things in the original game, we never wanted to take the challenge out of the game, but there are a couple of areas where I think that the game was a little bit unforgiving, at times felt a little bit unfair. We've contextualised all the things that happen in the game now, so for example in the first game we used to see these like dialogue boxes pop up, and there were certain ways that the game didn't want you to play, rather than kind of like rationalise that in terms of the game's mechanics and the player's interaction with the other NPCs in the prison, sometimes we'd just pop up a dialogue box and say "oh, no, you can't steal a key, that's not how we want you to play it, that's not permitted within the rules".
"We've got rid of all that, for example. You could absolutely steal a key now, you can keep hold of the key. If a guard catches you with it, or a sniffer dog catches you with it, you'll understand the reasons why you're being busted. Sometimes in the previous game there were certain edge cases, certain situations where you wouldn't have known ahead of time, you know, you kind of just had to find out through trial and error. We've removed all that from this game. At the same time, in the first game, to figure out crafting recipes, for example, you had to either again go through a process of trial and error or you had to look up FAQs, figure these things out for yourself or look them up online. We were thinking: 'well if people are just going to go online to look at it, why isn't that information in the game?'. So all the information's in the game now. The game absolutely still represents a huge challenge to the player, but at the same time I'm hoping it's a little bit more accessible for players. Well, in fact, I know it's a lot more accessible for players because we've done a lot of testing, and I think we've proven it as much."
At spillet er mere tilgængeligt, betyder ikke, at det nødvendigvis er lettere. Det lyder som om, at Team 17 har forsøgt at bevare sværhedsgraden, men samtidig gøre det lettere at spille. Og det er vel egentlig en meget effektiv brug af en fortsættelse. Du kan se hele interviewet herunder.