More Anime-bait please

You know by now that I'm an eclectic gamer- I pick up any and everything and don't allow the concept known as 'Genre's to stop me unless they truly are reprehensible- such as the survival game genre. (That concept has only ever thrived as an addendum towards other more complete genre ideas and I will die on that hill.) But recently I have to admit to being blown away by a few of the action games that we have been gifted as of late- a couple in particular, that speak to the scale of big budgets that we except to be realised. It isn't often I have to sit back to take in the insanity of the spectacle, and you can kind of start longing for that sensation after a while. When you don't get it from the grandest TV or the most exciting movie- I guess that's just another way that gaming leapfrog's traditional entertainment.

Black Myth Wukong has been on everyone's lips who gave it the good old shot, and I think that might be because of the blockbuster energy that the game just exudes- not in the tired 'game large for the sake of being big' Ubisoft trite; nor the 'we literally hold our consumers hostage with our entrenched multiplayer systems then brag about the player retention' Activision method; but rather the 'everyone shut up and listen- this game is the one' kind of way. And we've had actually a few games like that this year, funnily enough. It's not perfect and it doesn't do everything, but that it does set out to do it performs exceptionally at- but what take the cake for me with Wukong is the presentation.

From the very first cutscene you know right away that the name of the game is 'taking the action to the limits of extreme' in a manner you only really get out of the most bombastic anime. Wukong and Erlang, themselves inspirations for some of the most iconic anime rivalries out there, literally fly through the air propelled by the the force of their colliding staves- like a Wuxia movie, only with stunts that are animated and therefore don't feel stiff and on wires. The gigantic scale of the Heavenly Kings leering down on the battle are just the cherry atop the cake. And you know what- that isn't even the best that the game has to offer.

Action games that can transfer the energy and excitement into both their gameplay and their storytelling are far and few between- and off the top of my head I can only really think of Devil May Cry from 3 onwards as a definitive comparison. In those hands you get the kind of set-piece moments that hang around in your nogging for months even years after in fond reminiscence- and that is by no means an easy feat to achieve. Particularly in gaming- big set pieces can be so very difficult to make land as well as they did on the paper when first conceived- and maybe it's the years worth of those pretenders and attempters that made me so very unprepared for moments that would send me back to the giggling glee of childhood just like Black Myth is stuffed with.

Another contender has been my time with Final Fantasy XVI which, true to it's recent processors, is full of eye-popping spectacle moments that regularly blow you away as you sit back in sheer awe. This is actually nothing new for Square Enix or Final Fantasy, it seems this style of cinematic excitement has been their go-to since at least the days of Final Fantasy XII if not before. In fact, some describe the style of Final Fantasy as a bit desensitising in their more hyperactive throes- and to that I will say: there were moments during Final Fantasy XIII where I literally did not know what I was looking at one screen. Cluttered designs are no stranger to the halls of the Enix.

But XVI manages to bridge the gap between spectacle and gameplay which we don't always see teased. Even more so than Final Fantasy XV before it. Give us a big Kaiju fight and we'll remember it- let us partake in a Kajiu fight and we will love every second of it! There's something novel and cool about taking control of giant country-side destroying mega-forms for a brief amount of time to really stand-out through an otherwise jam packed adventure story. And even beyond that we get to face up against the very forms of godlike power themselves- playing against the man-versus-goliath visual often. There's even some great main story boss fights against aggressive and spectacular monsters with the kind of attack sets that make you just want to zone out and appreciate the intensity of it all.

I like to call these 'Anime Bait' moments, because they do tend to cater to the standards of excessive maximalism when it comes to action set pieces that Anime champions. A design standard of 'if I can imagine the coolest still frame moments for a conflict, then all I need to do is transition to those moments as smoothly as possible to get cinematic signatures'- and it proposes the kind of thrill-based eccentricity only really successfully catered to by animation. We're talking set-pieces that are all about embodying something primal, from pure crackling energy to effortless weightless grace to dying beauty and birthing monstrosity: these are the moments that memories are made of.

And I want more of them. Yes I do, I love this times. More than any action movie, no matter how expensive the budget- these are the kinds of visuals that speak "big budget blockbuster" to me. The only case in which such features don't tick off my 'possible embezzlement' alarms. 'Anime-bait' may sound vapid, and some times it can totally be, but even in their most infantile and blunt- the best anime astound in the understanding and manipulation of visual art- much more so than any other genre in the medium. Matching that in the 3D realm is that step beyond the pale that video games can trail, and modern AAA games lacking that can of visual excellence just don't sell it to me anymore. So for the next $70 'premium' title I see on the shelves, those are the kind of visuals I'm going to be on the hunt for. Like a true Anime weeb. 

The forbidden remake

 

Anticipation is a potent spell. This magic is known well to any marketing executive across the planet- it's their very reason for being- to deftly place the pellets that lead an audience to "ohh" and "ahh", ideally over a promise not spoken. Otherwise I consider marketers little more than glorified showgirls, putting up lavish displays of actual achievements. No, it's those that conjure tapestries from mist and rumour from direction which earn my respect. Anyone can make a great looking game shine if they have enough pool, only a talented marketer can sell the essence of a game on whispers and hype. Of course at some point the world become receptive to their techniques and then the conversation changes. No longer do we assume the unspoken is unbidden- because now what is unsaid must be charged! Why not speak of a much requested product. Because you make it in secret of course!

And this way of thinking doesn't stem from nothing, mind you- we have precedent. Hollow Knight Silksong fans have been led by the neck for years on the promise of a sequel that seemingly will never be made. Each passing day expanding the gulf between anticipation and deliverance. Then we have the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Remake which entered horrific production troubles but all behind the scenes away from any official word. Just recently we heard that whoever caught the hot-potato of development responsibilities promises with their pinky out that it's still being worked on- trust! And let us not forget about Beyond Good and Evil 2- a game delayed so horrifically long that every interesting idea it once presented has been outstripped by various other titles across the two console generators since. We used to dangled promises from the abyss.

Which is why I can presume there is an inexplicably movement out there utterly convinced of the single most unbelievable production ever- the secret development of a Bloodborne Remake/Remaster from the Sony devs. Now of course, Bloodborne is a much beloved Souls game that is considered to be among the best by those who had the fortune enough to play it during that original release for the PS4. But seeing as the game has never once been ported to newer platforms, nor to PC, nor patched to run above 30 frames per second- it might seem as though the franchise has been abandoned by any and all. But don't tell that to the faithful. They'll call you a liar and forge forward with the belief of madmen- emboldened by the viscous, saccharine syrup called 'Anticipation'.

It doesn't matter that Sony have rather aggressively avoided maintaining anything related to Bloodborne as part of their image unless they're really pulling for scraps, such as for Astrobot. It doesn't matter that the literal creators of the game themselves, FromSoft, claim to not have any control over the franchise and what happens to it. It doesn't matter that Sony's goto remake developing studio, Bluepoint Games, are currently wrapped up on what they insist is an original title; (and they aren't really of the size to be multi-tasking) people will accuse them of making Bloodborne 2 if it'll aid the anticipation! (Which is utter nonsense; who would be insane enough to make a sequel to a FromSoft game without Fromsoft? Madness!)

At this point people are willing to conjure any reality imaginable, just so long as within that fantasy space they have a semi-modern release of Bloodborne to keep them busy- but Playstation's hold of the franchise in a limbo state seems less like 'playing with anticipation' and more like 'fumbling the bag.' What I think truly has Playstation's nuts in a vice is their simply insatiable thirst to ruin the playability of their ports in order to squeeze out pointless subscriber numbers that they can flaunt for investors. So why haven't we got a Bloodborne port yet? Because Playstation are on a totally different wave than we think they are right now.

You'd think this is all a business and it's about making money- so just give us our port and make that bread- but whilst that makes sense to literally anyone else within this spinning globe of ours- Sony want something else. They're not just putting out games to make a buck, they're putting out investments on PC to spruce up their numbers. Forcing players to sign up to PSN for literally no benefit- sometimes even lying about 'moderation' or 'user experience' to secure their bag and then making off with your information. In some places that makes these products straight up impossible to buy because of no PSN coverage- in England that means that Sony are literally scoping for our damn Passports so that for their next hack our country can see a handy spike in identity thefts- thanks for that one! And for everyone else this adds an 'always online' functionality to otherwise entirely single player games that Sony have no right messing with.

Bloodborne, on the otherhand, is this antiquated little niche title that didn't even sell gangbusters when it originally released and would struggle under the weight of forced online requirements. (Even though all FromSoft games have some form of optional online anyway.) It just doesn't slide in neatly enough with Sony's image to warrant doing. Does it matter that they've been hassled about it forever at this point? How about the fact that Souls-Like's have ballooned into big business? Well... maybe they would have considered changing their view if the Demon Souls remake had taken off- but whether due to poor PS5 sales or just general disinterest; that didn't pan out too well either. More and more, as they rise, the bottom line is really starting to form the heart of Sony.

It's just a shame how Sony grew from this allusion to player first attitudes into this voracious beast that everyone has to struggle against in order to get the basic most morsel of food. That's what happens when you give a studio no competitors, allowing their greed instincts to take over. And Bloodborne fans join the ranks of us Silksong clowns, beating our head against our computer screens every big event praying for an impossibility out of the cold husks we call companies. It's a self defeating circle of embarrassment. 

   

The final word on Shattered Space

 

Now the reason I struggled so much with getting through Shattered Space after the first few hours of genuine promise that I was really excited for was not because the content was horrible- it was actually the crushing realisation that Shattered Space might have been the single least ambitious pieces of DLC content that Bethesda have put out since Oblivion- and it is galling to see them bold face call this great high quality content worthy of the fee they charge. It's almost as though we're watching a delusional man with a missing limb swear-down that he is completely uninjured as the blood literally cascades out of the giant whole in his body. You can expect this to go on for years until Starfield is behind them before Bethesda will admit they didn't maybe perform to their best- and by then it will obviously be too late. Take it from Fallout 76- they react like a cocky anime villain after the protagonist's music starts swelling: overconfidently and not effectively enough.

Shattered Space felt like cut content with a little bit more on the package, a definite break from the rules that founded their least interesting modern game- procedural generation and small content pockets, but lacking in any overall purpose to define it's existence. Not that purpose is a must-have for every single questline in any wandering Bethesda game but for a major DLC in a recent struggling release that seems like a huge omission! Take us back to Fallout 4- their DLC's both attempted to address a vertical of the gameplay experience. Far Harbour was an answer to those that found Fallout 4's roleplaying options severely lacking, Nuka World was an answer to those that thought there wasn't enough evil play options- therefor Raider-cosplay DLC! And Shattered Space... was to answer those that found procedural generation lacklustre? Is that really all it tries to do?

Okay so sure, that's a purpose no matter how you cut it- but does that really add the gameplay formula? I'll admit- I actually enjoyed seeing the sights of... the new location who's name I can't remember and won't look up: I liked walking about and seeing what was there- even if none of it was exactly Bethesda at their A-game of world building; despite the relatively constricted space they had to work with. (Remember when 'Shivering Isles' did the same and managed to contain some of Bethesda's best world building?) Shattered Space doesn't really achieve the same level of quality, nor the level of scale of a traditional Bethesda game- so it just goes to demonstrate a direction that Bethesda could have gone in if they decided to put a bit more of themselves into creating their worlds and trusted less to the generation machine. Which just makes me feel sad because they didn't.

What about arguably their best title- Skyrim? Heathfire introduced constructable player housing that fed into the simulation loving audience, Dawnguard played into their alternative playstyles and made Vampires the most interesting they'd ever been in the franchise, Dragonborn expanded the adventure- Dragonborn abilities and played to nostalgia. All of these felt like honestly directed experiences with a direction and a goal- I'd even extend the same virtue to Starfield itself- though I feel the direction might have not perhaps hit everything it wanted to. Shattered Space, predominately, feels like content for the sake of content. Like you might get in a live service where a land expansion is mandated for this year even though no one really has an inspired idea on what they want to do with it- that's Shattered Space in a nutshell.

And I think it's apparent even in the name. 'Shattered Space'? Evocative, but empty in the face of context. 'Shattered' is clearly suppose to refer to the incident that befell the the Va'ruun which ended up breaking reality around them and seeping in creatures from some other form of reality into this one. (Don't get excited, this isn't Star Trek. They're just mindless teleporting bugs- no creative imagination required.) As for Space... where? What does this have to do with space? The DLC is rather pointedly landlocked throughout it's duration. With a title like that you would expect some kind of implicit shift to the foundations of the normal Starfield tries to set- that of Space Travel. Something about that has become 'Shattered'- it's wrong, broken and fits together differently now. But what we got feels a bit more like content designed to fit the title rather than a title conceived to label the content. Does that make sense?

Perhaps the enemy design best highlights the sheer lack of heart here- because outside of the teleporting bugs which are fine- not scary like the team tried to build up- they're just fine. We also get humanoid void enemies. Their thing? They shoot and they teleport. Kind of like the Starborn then? Eerily like the Starborn. Not quite. See, these guys are treated like infantry and so you'll come across them in chunks, and they seem to have basic grunt AI which means they charge you- constantly. So yes, the flagship new enemy of Shattered Space are basic grunts with a blue ghost effect slapped on them and the ability to teleport behind you- which they spam endlessly. How does that sound to you? Fun? Honestly, it's a bit annoying. And it becomes more frustrating the higher you attune their deeply unbalanced difficulty scales. At basic 'Extreme', which is one below the highest setting, you feel like you're beta-testing a broken mod from a first year game designer. I feel like how I imagine the testers for 'Fallout: The Frontier' felt- like my brain was melting along with my patience.

Need I even bring up comparisons? The new lord Vampires from Dawngaurd with their crazy cool design, new abilities and an entire league of smaller mob redesigns to buff up their faction. Alongside the creepy Chaurus Hunters. And the entirety of the Forgotten Vale with it's unique Fauna? Shattered Isles entirely unique enemy set (with a lot of reskins, to be fair- but that was back in 2006.) I know I'm delving deep into 'petty' here but it's the only way I can try and identify all the ways in which this one DLC from Bethesda has totally shattered my belief that there is a company I recognise in modern Bethesda. But there has to be, right? There haven't been that many gigantic staff overhauls- the creative powerhouses are still there, aren't they? So what are they doing?

It isn't a total disaster. The beginning mission for Shattered Space is fine, and the finale is actually uniquely cool. One of their better faction finales. But that is pretty much all it was. A fun start, a cool end and a middle so utterly bland I could not tell you what happened if you held me at gunpoint. Terribly boring characters, a script begging for rewrites and cuts, mostly uninspired quest design, (the dam one was alright) and- of course- horrifically short. Vague consequences that are hinted at but displayed nowhere. Shattered Space was the worst it could have been- a total waste of time. For me and Bethesda. And that's all I have to say on it- and it's probably the last I'll think of it too.

The paradox of Paradox

 

So oft do we discuss the machinations of the titans of our industry it can sometimes escape mind that the backbone of gaming is more commonly everything but. The indies, the AA's- those who entreat the niches of our niche and not just the big crowd seekers that seek the every expanding splash. And admits them there is none that I am coming to respect ever more in my advancing years than Paradox- a publisher who exists to squirm annoying in the face of those that insist gaming is and always has been solely for children. (Yes, I read that Metro article- inflammatory and reductive though it was.) Theirs has been the realm of 4X tactics games, Simulation titles, city builders and maybe even a life sim if we lived on a different timeline. But alas- that particular cancellation is the topic of today.

Life by You was the topic of many a thought piece not that long following their rather sudden cancellation just a few short weeks before the supposed launch of their Early Access- and in that void questions have sprung up as hearts sored for what they never had. Personally I saw Life By You as little more than an overly ambitious pipedream fed out of a little bit of a ropey-looking Unity project- but in hindsight I came to appreciate the spirit of what the game promised which everyone else seemed to grasp so much more readily. It wasn't about the individual quality, but having the desire to try and challenge and remake the stagnant life sim genre- wresting a monopoly out of the hands of Sims 4- a game which disappointed in scope back when it first launched- let alone to this day!

But how does a game go along the track to imminent publishing before getting pulled out from under someone like that- to such a rapid degree that even the development studio didn't expect it? Following the cancellation a lot of questions hovered around regarding the game, why it was canned- even by the developers themselves! Well, that was before they, Tectonic, were shut down by Paradox in a move which I think can only be described as 'shocking'. Then again, with the space of hindsight, I suppose Tectonic were founded with the sole goal of creating Life By You, therefore without it there's no objective reason to keep them around- but outside of objectivity it's just kind of a dismissive way to treat your studios. As though we don't already have enough systemic wrestles with self worth in this day and age- you know?

Now I think a lot of unfortunate circumstances have come crashing together for Paradox of late, creating a kind-of miasma of despair they've unfortunately fallen prey to. I'm talking about the general dissatisfaction with City Skylines 2- the complete and utter failure of Lamplighters league, (Wait, that was a Tactics title? Like X-Com style tactics? Might have to check that one out...) Oh, and then there was the split with Double Elven- creators of the cult classic 'Prison Architect' (A game I tried desperately to get into several times) causing the sequel to be delayed into eternity. This has been a bad year for the company all around- and I hate to see it because honest- at their best Paradox published titles hit the kind of itch no-one else can. Stellaris, Crusader Kings the first City Skylines- I love those games for what they are. I'd hate for their publisher to find themselves in jeopardy. 

Paradox Interactive recently went in front of their investors to be appropriately upfront about what they see as being 'the problem'. Overconfidence, in a word. The deputy CEO spins a tale about going into projects too hard, investing early in ideas that might have ended up not panning out the way they wanted them to and this feeds into a lot of problems we see effecting the industry at large. Bigger teams with longer tails end up circling the wagons more on simple tasks. We've recently been inundated with excerpts from Jason Schierer's upcoming book on Blizzard that relay similar confusions, where team members end up working on assets that had been completed by someone else months prior. Even just arguing about the direction of a game can hold of months of pay, muddy an idea or entrench viewpoints that fail to reflect the realities of the outside world. Long story short- it's tough out there for scaling up production.

For Paradox it seems they claim their confidence applied blinders, maybe something akin to the sunk cost fallacy, where ideas that really weren't working were allowed to fester because to say otherwise would be to admit having wasted time and money. That explains how a Life by You would have made it all the way to the week before launch until someone sat back and went "This game really isn't going to do well at launch". It sounds harsh, but bare in mind Paradox recently went through City Skylines 2- a game which had the entire genre-type in a chokehold during marketing only to realise as a poor shell of the original title that sought innovations in areas that few to no player really appreciated in exchange for taking liberties in places that players really cared about- such as accessible performance. Skylines still has a sore reputation in the community after years and that rubs off on the developer and the publisher- maybe Paradox saw the exact same situations approaching with Life By You.

Of course we're never going to get specifics, that would be 'unprofessional' or something- but you don't really need everything written in bold ink to figure the heart of it all. We hear about them 'trusting the devs' before realising "Everything will be worse if we keep going, so we have to stop." It seems a good guess was made by the community in the assumption that the cost required to make this game a true competitor to Sims 4 was more than the publishers realised that they could fund- and in the current state the Early Access would embarrass more than it would impress. And that's a really hard thing to see from the inside looking out, to be honest. Getting to that point requires some real introspection that can become muddied in the big picture of a team project.

Where they are right now, Paradox has really burnt up a lot of that consumer trust they had- which is significant given how much a publisher their size relies on that trust. Sure, on one hand you might argue they have a stranglehold on games of this type built to this size, but on the other- a lot of their popular titles are enfranchised. All those popular hitters I named are years old supported by infrequent DLC drops, you can't really support a growing publisher off of that. You need new games that people buy, expanded IPs, eggs in more baskets. But as I said for 343, recognising the problem is the first step to fixing it- and I hope Paradox really knock it out the park in the years to come because, to be honest, their a unique little star in our industry I want to see shine more. 

Shattered Space: Not what it needed to be

 

I always approached Starfield with an open mind because to be honest- I like the raw gameplay, I think that with the difficulty options switched on it play in a very unique manner (they should have all been available at launch) and like many others I think there's so much potential for Starfield to shine. (Or rather I thought that way.) I was very receptive to the direction the team implied they would go with Shattered Space to try and pimp up the game experience, leaning more towards Morrowind-esque gameplay experiences, and I wanted to see what a grounded Starfield played like given that the biggest problem with the loop is decent shooter experiences stretched between large gaps of boring space travel. And after giving Shattered Space a faith shake- I'm not only unimpressed, I'm a little disillusioned.

Firstly, I will say that I like the world building of Va'ruun pretty much exclusively compared to every other faction in this entire game. No one else interested me with their premise nearly as much as the science cultists do, and figuring out how they maintain their bizarre belief platform is interesting- even if increasingly less convincing the further you dig. Discovering some concept of 'god' sort of begs for a level of universal cause and effect that would be up to the writers to elucidate and make physical in the world building sense- conjure some observation on the nature of life and mix it with the symbology of snakes and you'll have the basis for creating a believable cult. As it is Va'ruun just kind of feels like Scientology- lazy and stupid. The interest more lies in learning how their society works.

That's where the Morrowind comes into my impressions of this DLC. By going around and talking to people, getting sucked into their little problems and losing yourself in a minor quest line, there's a decent and subtle way to build up cultural quirks and worldly traditions that brief life in the micro of this society as well as the macro which the main quest revolves around. Unfortunately it is with that macros that Shattered Space feels a little wanting. Actually a lot wanting. And it might be because this DLC is unforgivably short given the price tag. I don't know what Fallout 4 did to change the brain chemistry of everyone at Bethesda, but sometime half-way through the development cycle of that game's DLC they ramped up the DLC price out of range of reasonability for what they were actually offering and they haven't grown out of that since. It's been close to eight years at this point.

And the length of the DLC is reflecting in the depressingly small scope of what this DLC aims for which makes the whole thing kind of come across as cut content instead of a focused expansion. I know I already pointed out that this content was penned before the release of Starfield and so wouldn't sit as a course correction based on player feedback but it was still largely developed after release- there was time to add onto the DLC elements that would reassure fans that Starfield is aware of it's faults and is working on some of them. But now I'm starting to wonder if all the criticism that the team listened to started and ended with structural space exploration problems- because they absolutely do not start and end there- to be clear!

Starfield has a problem with larger consequence that only really pans out in a single mission of the main game and a post game summary. Seeing as how this DLC would be around saving the forgotten house, my expectation was for a Nuka World style post game where we would build up Va'Ruun's presence around the settled systems and reintroduce them to the galaxy, or something that would carry outside the scope of this DLC to have an impact in the wider game to make this feel like the evolving world that Bethesda have been trying to sell us. Or at the very least give us an indication that the choices we make had a knock on effect on the wider story of the universe in the post game summary! But unless there's a really belated effect (and maybe there is, I wasn't exactly exhaustive) it seems like the buck ends with the DLC. There's no grand ambition. There's no proof that this was always going to be additive DLC, and not just content ripped from the base game and sat on.

Of course that also bleed into itemization which I'm going to be honest- has been getting worse at Bethesda. Fallout 4 kind of kicked the rock down the hill with the introduction of legendary effects that tried their hardest to replace unique weapons in a meaningful way, but I kind of figured they learned their lesson with the various DLC the game got since, and even the more recent updates and CC content which all championed unique guns with unique functionality. Starfield was the absolute worst of it, where even unique items had non-tailored buffs and effects and Shattered Space- fixes nothing. Which is horrendous given how core to the gameplay loop itemization is- how has Bethesda not heard this critique? It boggles the mind!

Which brings me at last to the open world. Shattered Space offered to be a chunk of old school Bethesda open world to keep us satiated and it almost delivers on that promise. From the outside it all looks promising enough, but of course Bethesda drop the ball in how they present it. Repeated locations hurt a bit more in apparently tailor-made content, inconsistent enemy makeup that defies the lore makes me think back to the days of Skyrim where DLC would conjure up an entire new faction if they needed trash mobs for a single location- and the new horror elements that Shattered Space tried to drum up- predictably atrocious. This feels like an outsiders take on the kind of world spaces that Bethesda used to make- or maybe a Modders interpretation. It doesn't feel like the Bethesda main team.

I never saw the moment where Bethesda changed so completely that they are no longer the team that made the great games of the past. There hasn't been any monumental staffing changes, just some natural small scales peel-offs here and there. But After Starfield and this expansion that at least should have course corrected- I sense Bioware levels of drift. This does not feel like the same Bethesda and I'm not sure I can continue following them as rapidly as I have. This is the last Starfield content I buy, probably until the complete edition comes out and I have some sort of 3rd party assurance it's an all-around improvement. Now my attention, and nearly birthed fears, are pointed towards where I hope the missing effort is- The Elder Scrolls VI. Please come back, Bethesda- I miss you...

TIm! You make me angry, Tim!

 

Timothy Sweenus, master of the house Epic, never seemed to learn how to add two and two together and it drives me nuts. Tim Sweeny has been the CEO of Epic throughout it's greatest triumph, the release of Fortnite, and presently you don't even need to know the history of what actually happened with that game to know that every bit of success they achieved was absolutely accidental on Tim's side. I have no doubt that every bit of insight and direction he fed to that game probably went towards building 'Save the World, the nowhere-dead base of the project with shrivelled up like a prune because nobody cared about for the months leading up- and it was the actual down and dirty developers who came up with the idea of the ancillary battle royale add-on to the game which ended up changing the face of pop culture forever.

I know that sounds strange- shouldn't I be giving the literal CEO of the company his dues for being there? Afterall, he kept the company going for as long as it did in order to make Fortnite, he probably had a hand in assembling the team that ended up striking double-platinum- sure, and just as much praise as a good casting director would get for nailing the perfect actors, I'll afford Tim- but as a leader, a visionary- as a voice of our industry the man is painfully awful. He is the very soul of the blind fool who desperately twists his desperation and fading desire into his minuscule world view. Not in the way a trailblazer starts with before making that vision a reality, but in the way a delusional fool does whilst their world crumbles around them.

Let us not forget the war which was fought by Tim Sweeny over his attempt to create a competitor to Steam, literally the most trust-absorbing and widely beloved platform in the world. (Whether or not that trust or love is duly and fully deserved given some of their policies.) Tim made the tiny leap of logic that competition is good in the market- well done Tim, you've attended a single lesson of community business school and listen for 5 minutes, what a trooper! He then proceeded to rush the output of such a Storefront, so it launched with the aplomb of a competitor but with the functionality of bloatware and then tried for years to win over developers with a more favourable revenue split- only for their failure to generate users seriously undercutting any potential benefits of that revenue split. Nowadays the only way they can get one other on Steam is by the single worst thing the PC platform can endure- store exclusivity- which sucks and ruins their reputation and sales potential everytime Epic does it. But this market is Tim's baby, so he insists.

This is the man running one of the most profitable studios in all the industry and it's galling to think the man considers their success in someway due to his wit and leadership. You can tell how self absorbed he is, it truly is pretty nauseating. Still it shocks me everytime to hear just how off-base the takes he makes are, even with the false confidence he instils behind each utterance- and of course, just like the Winter Soilder hearing those words, his latest dribbles have sent me reeling once more into asshole mode. I'm gonna be an asshole towards him right now. Sorry. (Not really, I could care less how I look in the face of that guy.)

"Generational Change!" cries Tim at Unreal Fest in the face of the modern industry; citing the way that consumers are moving away from the way that development is trending in the industry- which is true! And I thought: 'wow, Tim has his head on straight today!' 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling." For the briefest of moments I recoiled in shock, is Tim himself going to sing the praises of smaller and cheaper projects? Why, what could have possibly happened in his life to offer the man such enlightenment? Surely not from experience- maybe our man has been abducted and instead of getting the probe was treated to a customary brain transplant from a passing extra-terrestrial who felt bad for him? For a major voice to decry over-bloated game budgets- why, that could set some genuine precedent in the world... Yeah, of course that wasn't where he was going...

Fortnite is ever-growing, lucky Epic, and big budget games are missing sales expectations- to put it lightly. So what does this say? "We're seeing... a real trend where players are gravitating toward the really big games where they play with more of their friends." He- what? Value "grows in proportion to the number of friends you can connect to." that is... head-achingly simplistically dumb, is he serious? As Sweeny struggles to hold his hands right on a inky void of stage, with nowhere to hide his insanity, Tim actually said the words, and I'm so sorry you have to hear this uttered in the year of our lord 2024- "Some people will call it the metaverse." Two more angles fell from heaven at that very moment. "It's new" (not really anymore, mate) "it's exciting" (to investors, I'm sure) "and it's something that's never happened at this scale in the history of entertainment." Once again, well done Tim- you've discovered what Market growth is, dude is a savant, I'm telling ya.

Now given that Tim is talking about Big budget flops, lets put his theory in action shall we. What were the biggest flops of this year? 'Concord', some say it's the biggest flop in the entirety of entertainment history- I say wait until the re-release- but currently, yeah it might just be. "Suicide League collapse under the weight of their own medicority", 'nuff said about that one. "Skull and Bones" I'm putting an asterisk around that one, I'm pretty sure whilst it clearly flew short of expectation somehow the game has enough numbers to keep a small community alive- which is confusing, but shouldn't be dismissed unduly. "Foamstars", that was this year? Yikes! "Star Wars Outlaws" I'm not I'd call it an out-and-out flop, but it did hit short of sales numbers. And it's the first non-live Service game on the list! Point one for Tim! And 'Alone in the Dark'- that one was a shame, I was routing for it. Huh, funny that. Most of those games, the biggest losses, were all online Live Service games that threw as many players together as possible in the hopes they would make a community. Almost as though a game's value is not tied to how many people can play together, hmm... but I can't make that assumption without looking at the biggest success' of the year.

'EA Sports College Football', little limited as far as multiplayer connectivity goes. 'Helldivers 2', that's a little more like it. 'Dragon's Dogma 2', UGC but otherwise no online connections whatsoever. 'Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth' as singleplayer as it gets with a tiny amount of UGC tacked on top. 'Persona 3 Reload', singeplayer RPG, little bit of online suggestion content. 'Black Myth: WuKong' a little early to get definitive sales figures but the game certainly has the buzz- and I personally think it's a masterpiece. Warhammer Space Marine 2- multiplayer content is available, but that's not what got people through the door. Do you see what I'm trying to say here? There is no one-size-fits all hack to success in the art/ gaming world, and over-promised Live Service multiplayer cages seizing at your time and wallet leads to failure more often than success- it's only those out-of-touch execs like Sweeny who desperately insist otherwise and listening to them will be our folly. The more we allow voices like this to speak out and guide our industry, the more face-plants like 'Concord' we're going to see.

Too many Souls-Likes?

 

With coming to the end of Black Myth Wukong I'd had chance to reflect on the year full of Souls-Likes that we've had, the year topped up with them beforehand and probably a proceeding stacking too- I'm not sure, I haven't checked next year's line-up for fear of seeing a deluge. And the reason I find this a topic worth considering is simply because Souls-Like games have proven to be the successor to action adventure games that we didn't know we needed- perfectly blending the excitement of action games with the do-or-die stakes of consequence on the line- Souls-Likes introduced the arena-like challenge to a stagnating genre of platformer exhaustion. Even Final Fantasy ended up getting in on the fun with XVI- and the craziest thing about all this- this are the thoughts I have and I'm not even playing a Souls-Like.  

Sure, WuKong is clearly heavily inspired by your everyday Souls-Like games with their focus on precision combat and light character building work- but there's absolute no risk of loss and the game itself isn't really that hard- it's more designed to make you feel intimidated before feeding the same sort of power fantasy as your average God of War game. But the lessons are there- we've learnt how to make this style of game permeate successfully without needing to ape it. So with that in mind- just why do we need to make every single game on the planet earth that is a third person no-shooting action game a Souls-Like? It's getting a little old!

Just this year I've played Lords of the Fallen, Lies of P, Flintlock: Seige of Dawn and Shadow of the Erdtree to completion- and those were all the bigger budget Souls-Likes of this and last year- there's been more since! Then you've got the smaller titles like Entropia which I would normally try out if I didn't have so much of a negative experience with the last lower-budget Souls-Like I tried. (Which I shan't name, but I will say it's one of the titles that got in on the trend relatively early- see if you can guess.) What I've discovered is that there's a bit of a divide between the perceived accessibility of this style of game and the level of talent required to make it right.

Because when you think about- you're dealing with games stringent on the successful and intelligent management of balance and difficulty- which are some of the highest level of design you can deal with. We're not talking about Ubisoft levels of game design, where they kind of throw a dart at a gameplay concept and wrap that up to ship with six months time- you need to know your game inside and out in order to properly balance for challenge. When I was making my RPG I literally crunched every single ounce of XP it was possible to have acquired at every milestone so I knew how to appropriately crank up the challenge to meet the player's level- and if you don't have data which starts at that level (I'm still very much an amateur to design, remember) then what are you doing making a game that revolves around difficulty and challenge?

But the way that trends work is that everybody experiences the moment of influence at around about the same time- but the effort it takes to learn and reciprocate those lessons digests at different rates, typically prolonged, so that even though FromSoft were making Dark Souls games for a good chunk of years before this trend hit off- these new titles are all popping up around about now. We're getting to a point of over-saturation but the teams working on these titles are too far gone to turn back now- they've been on these games for nearly half a decade now! And that's how you get games launching far out of season, like 'Suicide Squad disappoint with another crappy Season' or 'Concord'. Which is why we are told to develop games for an audience of the future rather than the fads of today.

Not so long ago I saw an industry showcase trailer for an anime-looking game that I believe had 'Barbarian' in the title but for the life of me I can't track it down again so I may have imagined that little title nugget. Now the visuals for this game looked true to style, the animation quality and the landscapes peaked my little ears to attention and then the gameplay started and I just >sighed<. Do you wanna know why? Because from the very first step the player took I saw the exact movement style, camera position and HUD layout of a Souls-game. Specifically a FromSoft one. And do you know how disappointing it is that those markers illicit a natural distaste from me nowdays? Everything about that trailer was to my tastes until that moment where I just turned off and now can't even remember what the thing was called. 

I do think we're leaning towards a critical mass of this genre of games bubbling over in a manner that might put off the public to these titles for a good while- just like how I've always felt about survival games only to grow utterly aggrieved with them over the course of titles like 'Rust' and 'ARK' and the truly awful 'Survivalists'. (From a studio I genuinely loved too...) And in that climate we could see the erosion of some of the game design trends that have make surrounding games so darn good in the interim. I don't want to lose actually engaging boss fights after the deluge that was late 2000's early 2010's action games. I don't want to lose precision gameplay, meaningful progression, rich but directed worlds. But give us enough over saturation and it won't be long before 'back to basics' becomes the rallying cry.

Elden Ring really did slap the gaming world around the face and showed them a totally new style of game. Well... new to them- the rest of us had been here a while. Now it's not so much a 'clutch pearls' moment for a game to be naturally challenging, maybe even a little overbearing at times, and I like the feelings those titles give me. (Not including Lords- that games was just tedium incarnate.) Maybe if a developer like FromSoft remains at the top of the pack, even when this genre reaches peak saturation their own innovations will keep the heart alive in the new era- beyond into that age of Dark. At the very least I hope that's the case so IronPineapple can have content to review forever- love that channel.