Delays

Rescheduling conflicts 

As we have much to celebrate when it comes to gaming in this fine year, so too do we have cause to mourn; for that which was once on our doorstep has been shoved back into obscurity. Such is the consequence of 'delays'. That which was imminent becomes far, and that which is immediate is then immaterial. And we'd all be liars were we to insist that the wounds don't sting a little each time our upcoming hype trains take an unscheduled hiatus. Yet it's generally accepted etiquette nowadays to be understanding and patient in times such as these, as most tend to evoke that old Miyamoto Quote that I abuse worse than a Jamaican dominoes set. "A delayed game is eventually good but a rushed game is forever bad." What's that? Nintendo Life say the quote was never coined by him and instead belongs to some dude called Jason Schreiber? Look, Nintendo Life- no one's looking to have you ruin their fun, 'kay? I'm going to carry on attributing it to industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto and we'll hear nothing more about it!

Yet recently, with the sheer amount of game delays that just seem to pour out of the industry with every new release, sometimes I can't help but slip out of that meditative stoicism, stamp my feet a little and say: "what is going on?" It seems like the only games which come out when they say they're going to anymore are the uninspired yearly reiteration franchises; and it's so far in their best interest that they don't miss their own deadlines that they're willing to release cobbled together yawn generators rather than push back a release by even a couple of days. But with Breath of the Wild 2 being delayed, Baldur's Gate III being delayed, God of War: Ragnarok delayed twice; one starts asking questions like: is there any big game which hasn't been delayed?

Now of course one must be attentive of the times we live in. And of course with work at home and all the disruptions that has manifested in the industry over the past couple of years, there's going to be some hold-ups in the production line. And of course no one is going to gripe on the STALKER 2 devs for pushing that game into indefinite holding on account of the simply sickening disaster their home country is being forcibly subjected to currently. But this pattern of developers announcing big games and then changing course, sometimes at the last minute, hasn't been unique to these last two years either. It's almost an expectation that the industry has adopted in the last console age that has just carried itself on to this one. And I wish to speculate on why that is and could be.

The first time I really was shocked by a delay, it was all the back in 2012 with the bait-and-switch of Grand Theft Auto V which was surprise pushed back half a year. That was easily the biggest game of the year, what would go on to become an industry definer, just getting casually punted into next year on the verge of release. And by 'verge' I'm perhaps talking a couple of months out, but that's still  dangerously close to pull something like this. And whatsomore, given how long the delay was for, it almost seems like this was a decision that had been already pre-made. If I want to give the company the benefit of the doubt, I suppose I could try and interpret this as Rockstar's moment of integrity crisis; maybe they were behind on the project right up until the last 10 weeks and had to really sit down and ask themselves whether it was better to release a broken game today or delay out of their financial year. A crisis of faiths that lasted a little too long, perhaps; but one which ultimately scoured us a 10/10 masterpiece. (If only more modern titles would have learned from such a decision.)

On the other end of the spectrum we have the Cyberpunk delay. Not the first half dozen, but the delay which pushed the game from April of the year so that it would drop into the late Autumnal drifts- all on the eve of freakin' March! That's- just insane. They definitely had made that decision weeks beforehand and were too cowardly to let everyone down at once. Whatsmore, given the pathetically broken state the game ended up launching in anyway, one can just imagine the disaster which everyone in the team was staring at in March. Perhaps, and this is very much speculation, they looked at the state of the game back then and realised that they had utterly failed in making the game they wanted to, but figured the next six months could work to polish it into a fine game in it's own right.

What really gets to me is the way that I knew this delay was coming, it was obvious. Why? Because there was no marketing material whatsoever to even advertise this thing in the leading months. They weren't even getting TV spots yet, let alone the extended gameplay previews that I, and others, were expecting. Of course CDPR would end up going overboard, spending months hyping the dream of a game which at that point they had to mostly all know was going to disappoint; but at least at that point the name of the game was getting out there. Who were they fooling that April ever was looking like a release vector? I doubt they even prepared a single marketing graphic for that fake date. And yet, inexplicably, they maintained the false hood until the last possible moment! Bizarre.

Breath of the Wild 2, I don't even know the title yet, was delayed out of 2022, and that's something we're all trying to get to terms with. This game has been an enigma upon enigmas, with but a couple intentionally detail sparse trailers to feed us vague dregs about what this title might contain. Heck, it was only during this delay announcement that we got to even see the Master Sword for the first time in order to spot how mangled and broken it was. We hadn't even seen that series stable in the regular marketing yet! Yet this is a more understandable and forgivable delay. Made nearly an entire half year before the prospective release, not too many more months thrown on top, and clearly just a question of needing more polish time. No one is so wound up that they can't forgive a first delay like that.

When you're on your third delay, however; people can get disgruntled. Baldur's Gate III has been rubbing nerves with it's latest delay out of 2022, and it's pretty easy to see why. This title has been in early access for a year and a half, and though this is obviously the biggest project that Larian has ever worked on, one might start to question whether or not this undertaking might have been bigger than they anticipated. I love getting little teases into the gameplay, UI and classes of the main game; of course I do, but I'd much more love a complete and polished adventure to go through which doesn't leave me blue-balled before the wrap up of act 1. Delays have come timely, and kept a respectful distance, but they've also been grating after all of this time in active development. One has to wonder how drastically Early Access is holding things up and whether the game would have been better off without this period! Not having played the full thing, no one outside of their offices can really say yet.

Personally, I can take the wait. I think there's too many big games flying this way and that any given day and a little bit of spacing things out isn't going to kill us. But by that same merit, making dates is a promise and breaking that promise kind of sucks. It hurts my trust in the product and the company handling it, as I'm forced to ask if literally anyone has a good handling on the project and the work going into it. (I'm still wondering if Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 is happening. That game is literally as old as this blog, please don't let me outlive the first game I spoke about here!) Maybe we'd all be better off if developers waited a bit longer, for the project to be a bit more fully formed, before slapping dates and getting hopes up. Else we all end up like that one guy who booked his holidays off-work time for the Cyberpunk release under the explicit promise by the Cyberpunk marketing team that the game would hit it's current release, only for a delay. (It made for a funny tweet, but please let's not make that a habit.)