And my climbing axe!
I've not exactly been subtle about my feeling towards Microsoft's new hotbutton game studio that they've conjured up, saddled with the mysterious, yet also eye-rolling, name of 'The Initiative'. (Sounds like Nick Fury's personal development studio with a name like that) From the very second I heard it, a single eyebrow rose, and the second followed when with the cringe-worthy follow up claim that this would be the first studio ever to put out 'AAAA games'. A term which is literally meaningless and yet will hang around this studio like a bad stink until, as I've predicted many a time, the group dissolve over many of the complications coming their way that seem inevitable. The premise of a game development studio with a bottomless pool of funds seems like a literal invite to waste money, and if Microsoft think that by doing this they'll unlock some heretofore undiscovered new layer of quality lying dormant inside the bowels of the earth for all these years- I have to admit that I don't share their enthusiasms. But hey, at least Perfect Dark is getting a sequel after most of the world has forgotten about it. Yay.
Things have gone utterly dark (you might say perfectly dark) regarding how this company has been getting along in their mission since their announcement to the world, which is either a very good sign or a very bad one. Mayhaps this team have stuck their nose to the grindstone and are busy pumping out simply delirious quantities of code and content, fuelled by a blank cheque, or maybe they're having troubling at an administration level and haven't conjured up anything worth talking about yet. All we can say for sure on this matter is that the recent Nvidia leak going into all of the 18k titles that have used Nvidia services or wishes to release to Nvidia support in the next 2 years, The Imitative were on the list for an apparently 'untitled game', which feasibly could be Perfect Dark, but maybe it isn't and we're looking at the start of overlapping projects already. So as I said, either they're in charge of their resources enough that they can take on a second game, or bad management is just starting to show as their splitting focus before their first game even has a release window. There really is no in-between with an idea like the Initiative, and Microsoft don't want there to be. It's their 'hail Mary' proposition, their one way to get that leg up over Sony.
In that sense it shouldn't be much of a surprise at all that Crystal Dynamics, creator of the Tomb Raider games and most commonly seen with their paymasters over in Square Enix, have partnered with The Initiative in order to further work on Joanna Dark's return. (Oh great, even more people in the development chain? What could possibly go wrong...) But seriously, this is going to be the first major new project we've heard out of Crystal since their time on The Avengers, which doesn't paint the best possible picture of what this new game might look like. Square Enix's Avengers, a game which notoriously turned people off by playing things too close to the chest, and then lumped a highly questionable (and by that point cliché) business model that bled into poor sales and worse retention. (One speculation claimed that the initial release lost around 60 million for Square Enix.) Yep, sounds like the sort of crack-team I'd want working on the debut to the biggest development team gamble I've ever done!
To be fair, I actually do respect the team over a Crystal Dynamics a whole lot, and though I maintain (and will continue to maintain) that The Avengers was a misbegotten mess of an idea that shot itself squarely in the foot before it ever had a chance to make it in the real world, that doesn't take away from the other projects the group has bought out. Tomb Raider's revival is a prime example of this studio at it's best, and an example that these guys are experienced in taking a pre-established female-led franchise and rewriting it from a modern, grounded and exciting, perspective. And they were also behind the 'Gex: The Gecko' games. So that's got to count for something right? (Right?) I don't hate the idea of these teams joining hands in matrimony, I'm more just sitting in foreboding of what might happen when The Initiative drag Crystal Dynamics down with them for yet another spectacular failure.
But then why am I so pessimistic to this venture? Beyond my usually playful exaggerated tone, I seem to find it genuinely unfeasible that things are going to work out for Microsoft here and I'm struggling to put a finger on why that is. I mean I've actually played the original Perfect Dark (albeit the remastered version) and can therefore insist that it was a heck of a lot of fun for a stagebased first person shooter style game. Sure, personally I happened to enjoy Star Wars Dark Forces a heck of a lot more, but I think there's room enough for a reimagining wormed in this game somewhere. Maybe a turn to how you approach the game which more aligns with the 'spy' elements of this alleged spy game. Heck, I would absolutely flip my lid if the teams went to the natural conclusion and made this upcoming game an incredibly high production immersive sim. But somehow I'm just not that confident.
I think it's because in the back of my mind, beyond the source material and the talents of those on the cutting room floor, I'm thinking of the big entity sitting on a pile of money behind them and thinking "What are you doing?" A bigger example of 'putting all your eggs into one basket', could not exist, as I guess Microsoft want to surpass the 'crack teams' over at Sony. What Playstation have managed to build up over the past generation, a team of talented AAA straight-shooters who put out exclusive banger after banger, is the dream of all console manufactures, but in my head I feel like it works because there are so many studios putting out these games at a rate that is consistent and varied in offering. (Not too varied, mind you. These are all adventure games.) Microsoft dabbled in the same, luring countless small companies under it's banner, but the results in the five years since they started this shift in direction, has been underwhelming. The most they've got is an exclusivity deal with Bethesda, which is big, but those two companies were heading that direction anyway; what else does Microsoft have up it's sleeve?
To be devil's advocate, maybe the exact thing that Microsoft need is someway to be competitive to Sony that hasn't been tried before. Maybe something that only someone with tech billionaire money could pull off. And is that something sticking a bunch of newbies in an office block and then slowly drowning that skyscraper in money? Well that doesn't sound right, but it might be. Mechanically, it tracks that the more resources you give a product the better that final product will be, which is why I understand that some might find my scepticism utterly bewildering. But you try and apply that very same logic to something as intangible as an artform, your results aren't ever quite as consistent. A lot of the best works of art out there, especially in the world of gaming, are made under the pressure of constraints, in tools, time, team and money, and when you go the other end of the spectrum the results can often be muddy and unpolished. (Like Anthem.) Maybe I see The Initiative as the ultimate final boss of art excess, which is why I can't fathom anything worthy coming of it all. Although that doesn't mean I don't want it to.
AAAA games, whatever that means, might just be everything that Xbox and it's supporters have needed to justify the existence of that console. Something with the scope and scale to achieve anything, (and with the right leadership to reign it all in and sharpen a golden vision from that chaos) might just be the future of premium priced games. I'm just not going to hold my breath on it, especially given that the debut title of this venture is a remake. I mean, doesn't that just sound odd? A fresh new venture, trying something that's never been tried before, and they're stuck making a remake to a cult classic Rare game? (Maybe that choice symbolises the team's dedication to grounding limitations, despite infinite resources, in order to focus the team. I don't know.) With any luck everything will work out and I'll come away with some serious egg-on-my-face, and it that happens then that'll be some crow I will happily chow down on.
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