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Video Games: A (Sonic 3D) Blast From The Past


KiDisaster

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1 hour ago, KiDisaster said:

Big announcements for Playstation today. 

The Last of Us Part II got a trailer, but still no release date. (Warning: Trailer is brutal. Had me actually cringing.)

New trailers for God of War, Detroit: Become Human and quite a few others as well. Those two I linked are the ones I'm most excited for though. 

Good stuff. That hammer must've been modded to give it a limited number of insta kills.

I'm really hoping Detroit : Become Human ends up being awesome. I loved Heavy Rain. 

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What went down on the Visceral Star Wars game.

Apparently it was less the multiplayer focus - EA even let them ditch the multiplayer feature altogether to focus attention on the main game - but more the insistence on the team using Frostbite even though it couldn't be used for the things they needed, and the failure to find a second tier of team leaders who could work under the creative director. EA also kept interfering with the game design, bringing in focus groups and questionnaires showing that a Star Wars game needed lightsabres and the Force. Apparently one EA executive asked them if the game could realistically make a billion dollars like the latest FIFA title (an annual game with very little variation from the previous year with set, clear rules and goals), which is beyond weird.

It sounds like the main problem is that EA wanted a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up and then got uncomfortable that the game was a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up.

Ironically, it now sounds like the end game design may circle back to being Visceral's original plan for a space pirate-focused open world game, just now from EA Vancouver instead.

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36 minutes ago, Werthead said:

What went down on the Visceral Star Wars game.

Apparently it was less the multiplayer focus - EA even let them ditch the multiplayer feature altogether to focus attention on the main game - but more the insistence on the team using Frostbite even though it couldn't be used for the things they needed, and the failure to find a second tier of team leaders who could work under the creative director. EA also kept interfering with the game design, bringing in focus groups and questionnaires showing that a Star Wars game needed lightsabres and the Force. Apparently one EA executive asked them if the game could realistically make a billion dollars like the latest FIFA title (an annual game with very little variation from the previous year with set, clear rules and goals), which is beyond weird.

It sounds like the main problem is that EA wanted a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up and then got uncomfortable that the game was a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up.

Ironically, it now sounds like the end game design may circle back to being Visceral's original plan for a space pirate-focused open world game, just now from EA Vancouver instead.

It's also clear that trying to keep a studio in San Francisco was a fool's endeavor.  It's just too expensive there to justify the cost per employee when it comes to game design.  The article mentioned they estimated that it cost approximately 16,000 per month per employee there compared to the generally accepted industry standard of 10,000.  

And then when they brought in a Canadian studio to help, they ended up putting that studio on Battlefront 2 and hanging Visceral out to dry, which certainly didn't help.

From the sound of it, though, this isn't purely an EA issue.  The studio had a game that was too ambitious for their team, an engine they were forced to use that was ill-suited for the game they were designing, a lack of the resources needed to make the game they wanted, a general lack of manpower, a poor studio structure, someone in charge who was brilliant creatively but lacked an equal in the gameplay department, and on and on and on.  Probably didn't help that EA destroyed the morale on the team by forcing them to make an FPS game they wanted no part of.  Sounds like fuck-ups on every level, honestly. 

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

What went down on the Visceral Star Wars game.

It sounds like the main problem is that EA wanted a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up and then got uncomfortable that the game was a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up.

Ironically, it now sounds like the end game design may circle back to being Visceral's original plan for a space pirate-focused open world game, just now from EA Vancouver instead.

So going from a Star Wars / Uncharted Mash up to a Star Wars / Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty mash up :-D

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6 hours ago, KiDisaster said:

Big announcements for Playstation today. 

The Last of Us Part II got a trailer, but still no release date. (Warning: Trailer is brutal. Had me actually cringing.)

Sucker Punch's (of Sly Cooper & Infamous fame) new IP, Ghost of Tsushima got announced. An open world game set in Japan during the first Mongol invasion. I've loved all of their games so I'm looking forward to this one. 

New trailers for God of War, Detroit: Become Human and quite a few others as well. Those two I linked are the ones I'm most excited for though. 

Interesting. So it might not just be a Joel and Ellie show. They may be one thread in a larger story. I hope that doesn;t blaot the game too much and diminish what made TLOU special, which was the relationships and the player's sense of connection to the characters.

I hope Sucker Punch having a new IP doesn't mean the death of inFamous. That story has not been fully told.

I loved God of War. But I'm not sure about this new one. I can understand the desire to keep Kratos going, but I would have preferred to pivot to a new character now that they have moved to a new setting. Maybe this will be Kratos' swan song and a new tortured anti-hero will emerge.

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16 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I donated a lot of creds for rep points,got a follow up courier message worth a lot of creds and while enroute got attacked. 

Bring it on, I thought.  Barely won the fight but accidently fired at a security ship. Lost my rep with that faction, got blown up, and got hit with a bounty - and failed the mission.

oh well - took another mission to deliver more cargo to that system - and got scanned seconds from docking. Because of the bounty I got blown up again, failong yrt another mission :(

 

I had that happen earlier on in the game... but after I just stayed away from the system until the bounty expired.  That stinks about the rep though

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Fought through a couple of insanely tough BSG Deadlock missions and managed to get some momentum back. Unlocked the Jupiter class Battlestar (that's the Galactica-type to everyone else) and it's a great ship with a lot of firepower, but it's so slow compared to an Artemis I'm not sure it's worth the extra money. It is a lot tougher though (the Artemis can be a bit too fragile).

The story's also gotten quite interesting (spoilers in case you're planning to play this).

 

Apparently the war turns on the introduction of three IL-series Cylons who are given strategic oversight for the war. One of these decides to make peace and the result is a Cylon mini-civil war, so in a couple of missions you have to side with the rebel Cylons. Eventually, I'm assuming, they gain the upper hand and make the peace deal that ends the conflict.

No allusions to the Final Five yet, although the Galactica itself has shown up now in a couple of missions.

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On 10/30/2017 at 7:09 PM, Werthead said:

 

It sounds like the main problem is that EA wanted a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up and then got uncomfortable that the game was a Star Wars/Uncharted mash-up.

Weird as that's basically what happened with Rogue One and the Han Solo movie.

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Worrying news that Warner Bros. is the publishing partner for Psyonix in putting out a retail release of Rocket League. Worrying because Rocket League already has the whole random loot box micro-transactions BS, and WB is one of the worst offenders when it comes to putting lootbox  and other microtransaction and paywall crap into retail games. I'm worried for the future of Rocket League.

Has anything good ever come of an independent studio with an iconic game being swallowed up by a mega-corp? I think the pages of video game history are littered with stories of big corps ruining franchises and killing smaller studios. While this is just a partnering up for a retail release of a 2+ year old game, it is possibly a harbinger of a much greater doom for Rocket League and Psyonix.

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On 10/30/2017 at 7:45 PM, briantw said:

From the sound of it, though, this isn't purely an EA issue.  The studio had a game that was too ambitious for their team, an engine they were forced to use that was ill-suited for the game they were designing, a lack of the resources needed to make the game they wanted, a general lack of manpower, a poor studio structure, someone in charge who was brilliant creatively but lacked an equal in the gameplay department, and on and on and on.  Probably didn't help that EA destroyed the morale on the team by forcing them to make an FPS game they wanted no part of.  Sounds like fuck-ups on every level, honestly. 

OTOH, it sounds like almost exactly the same problems that sunk Mass Effect Andromeda. So maybe it is more on EA for not being able/interested in properly managing its studios.

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5 hours ago, Fez said:

OTOH, it sounds like almost exactly the same problems that sunk Mass Effect Andromeda. So maybe it is more on EA for not being able/interested in properly managing its studios.

No doubt.  It seems like there were problems all around.  I wasn't trying to absolve EA of blame, but the entire story was very interesting and gave a good idea of how everything that could go wrong did go wrong, from planning to design to not having a proper management structure to being in the wrong city to EA fucking up repeatedly and not giving the proper resources.

Just a mess.

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The LoU trailer outrage is pretty comical.

Character getting a noose put around their neck? Yeah, never seen that before. Another character getting beat with a hammer? Yeah, never seen that before either. Polygon was shitting their pants over it. You'd think they'll never play another second of the series. 

The only reason the internet was crying/cringing over it is because the characters getting abused are female characters. And a female character was the one giving the orders to do it!! Naughty Dog, and the LoU in this case, actually has a wide variety of characters that aren't all white males, believe it or not. It's not realistic that only men would be at the receiving end of abuse in this game. No one is safe from the abuse. 

I don't think anyone who's played the first game of this series would be surprised to know that the second installment will be filled with violence. Of course a great story runs alongside the violence that is present throughout the game. The thing that was upsetting to me was the unfamiliarity of the characters shown. If I didn't know it was a LoU trailer I wouldn't have been any the wiser.  I first thought the blonde female character was Tommy's wife, but it's been pointed out that it is most likely Ellie's mom in some sort of flashback. The game will be played through Ellie's perspective, largely, but appears other characters could be prevalent as well. I haven't seen the Joel is dead stuff in a while. I'm not a believer of that anyway. 

Looks like 2018 is the goal for this game. Can't wait.

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5 minutes ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

The LoU trailer outrage is pretty comical.

 

  Hide contents

Character getting a noose put around their neck? Yeah, never seen that before. Another character getting beat with a hammer? Yeah, never seen that before either. Polygon was shitting their pants over it. You'd think they'll never play another second of the series. 

The only reason the internet was crying/cringing over it is because the characters getting abused are female characters. And a female character was the one giving the orders to do it!! Naughty Dog, and the LoU in this case, actually has a wide variety of characters that aren't all white males, believe it or not. It's not realistic that only men would be at the receiving end of abuse in this game. No one is safe from the abuse. 

I don't think anyone who's played the first game of this series would be surprised to know that the second installment will be filled with violence. Of course a great story runs alongside the violence that is present throughout the game. The thing that was upsetting to me was the unfamiliarity of the characters shown. If I didn't know it was a LoU trailer I wouldn't have been any the wiser.  I first thought the blonde female character was Tommy's wife, but it's been pointed out that it is most likely Ellie's mom in some sort of flashback. The game will be played through Ellie's perspective, largely, but appears other characters could be prevalent as well. I haven't seen the Joel is dead stuff in a while. I'm not a believer of that anyway. 

Looks like 2018 is the goal for this game. Can't wait.

 

Well, Ross. We have a checkered pass, you and I, but having not looked into this matter any further than your perspective here(and almost certainly never will unless it's big enough to be on Deadspin) I agree wholeheartedly. Although I kind of hope that you're overreacting to the level of outrage, because I'm imagining like fifteen D- level youtubers made tweets about the issue.

But yeah, I agree anyone who is offended is an idiot. It's a violent fucking game, people get viol fucked up in LoU. I smashed like a hundred women over the head with bricks in the last one, didn't interrupt my experience at all.

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21 minutes ago, l2 0 5 5 said:

The LoU trailer outrage is pretty comical.

 

  Hide contents

Character getting a noose put around their neck? Yeah, never seen that before. Another character getting beat with a hammer? Yeah, never seen that before either. Polygon was shitting their pants over it. You'd think they'll never play another second of the series. 

The only reason the internet was crying/cringing over it is because the characters getting abused are female characters. And a female character was the one giving the orders to do it!! Naughty Dog, and the LoU in this case, actually has a wide variety of characters that aren't all white males, believe it or not. It's not realistic that only men would be at the receiving end of abuse in this game. No one is safe from the abuse. 

I don't think anyone who's played the first game of this series would be surprised to know that the second installment will be filled with violence. Of course a great story runs alongside the violence that is present throughout the game. The thing that was upsetting to me was the unfamiliarity of the characters shown. If I didn't know it was a LoU trailer I wouldn't have been any the wiser.  I first thought the blonde female character was Tommy's wife, but it's been pointed out that it is most likely Ellie's mom in some sort of flashback. The game will be played through Ellie's perspective, largely, but appears other characters could be prevalent as well. I haven't seen the Joel is dead stuff in a while. I'm not a believer of that anyway. 

Looks like 2018 is the goal for this game. Can't wait.

 

Are spoilers required for trailer commentary now?

I wasn't aware of any internet outrage. Very strange considering it's LOU. What do people expect? Did they play the first game? I was probably half way through TLOU when I decided it was people Joel and Ellie needed to be afraid of. The infected are much easier to deal with. Ultimately, the depths to which humanity can sink is the real horror in this kind of story.

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Total War people talking about their upcoming releases.

The guy working on the next historical tentpole mentions they've been researching and implementing historical city layouts, so hopefully the shitty Warhammer sieges are gone, and he brings up the comment about never doing a 'third' game in a certain era to say that it isn't necessarily true anymore, so I'm tentatively hyped for Med 3 (one day).

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4 minutes ago, The Drunkard said:

Total War people talking about their upcoming releases.

The guy working on the next historical tentpole mentions they've been researching and implementing historical city layouts, so hopefully the shitty Warhammer sieges are gone, and he brings up the comment about never doing a 'third' game in a certain era to say that it isn't necessarily true anymore, so I'm tentatively hyped for Med 3.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHH

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