WWE 2K20 developer Visual Concepts says the absence of Yuke's, the developer which previously headed up WWE 2K game development alongside Visual Concepts, was "freeing". Publisher 2K announced WWE 2K20's new developer setup in August, shortly after WWE 2K20 was revealed.
When WWE 2K20 was first announced, it looked like it was going to be just about what fans of the series expected, but things soon started to look less promising. Clips and screenshots of the game began spreading online, revealing that WWE 2K20's graphics were hilariously bad, looking almost like a PS3 game. Some character models looked nothing like their real-world counterparts, and many animations were stiff and alien. To make matters worse, WWE 2K20 was plagued with glitches, sending characters falling through the ring or getting caught in the ropes. In fact, it turned out WWE 2K20 had problems with nearly every feature.
Speaking to GameSpot at a WWE 2K20 event, Visual Concepts' creative director, Lynell Jinks, said the first feeling the team had upon learning it would be taking over the WWE franchise was one of freedom. Jinks said the team knew they could now pursue all the ideas they'd had but weren't able to implement during previous games' development. After that initial feeling, however, Jinks said reality set in, and Visual Concepts realized it had to try to figure out how Yuke's had put things together for the last 20 years, writing new tools and creating art assets to get WWE 2K20 ready. This meant not only understanding the code, Jinks said, but making it better and making it Visual Concepts' own.
Jinks cited WWE 2K20 Originals, a series of WWE 2K20 DLC that mixes up the series' traditional wrestling gameplay, as a showcase of Visual Concepts' newfound freedom, saying it's allowed them to break away from the simulation-style roots of the franchise. The first WWE 2K20 Originals pack, Bump in the Night, added supernaturally enhanced Superstars to the game in five new story chapters.
While WWE 2K20 does some things better than WWE 2K19, the game-breaking glitches show that a lot about the game is actively worse than its predecessor. Following the flood of fan backlash and glitch videos after release, WWE Games released a statement about WWE 2K20's poor state, saying it was aware of the issues and is working to address them in an upcoming patch. In the meantime, WWE 2K20 remains a bit of a mess.
Source: GameSpot