So about that Gearbox conference...

And at the tenth circle of hell...

At the start of it's life, E3 was a trade show made for huge video game publishers to flaunt their upcoming projects for the health of their company. Simple as that. It was just an opportunity to say "hey everybody, this is what we're working on and I think you better start squirrelling away some disposal income for our day one sales, what do ya say?" As the years went by and the industry shifted, the event has largely retained that purpose whilst slowly adopting a bit of 'celebrating the artform' thrown in there for good measure. Still, in it's current iteration E3 is the flagship event of the year for gamers as it marks the time when we can sit down and cross our fingers as all the biggest games of the year are going to be announced here first and foremost. Well, that is unless they are booked for the VGAs. Or if they wind up as part of the independent showcases that all the console developers are doing now, such as 'Nintendo Direct', Sony's 'State of Play', and Microsoft's 'Everybody shut up and look out of live stream with the games and everything'. Or they just decide to have reveal whenever the heck they want to because we live in an open digital age now. Okay, so E3 doesn't hold the monopoly over the gaming industries news that it once did, in fact a lot of the time the rigidity and archaic practises of the event are widely, and rightly, mocked. But the expectations are still there each and every year; because we gamers just want a time of the year to come together and see the games.

They could have at least thrown in some new screenshots...

This event for showcasing games has gone through drastic evolutions throughout the years as the art of game marketing has shifted and changed to meet consumer demand. Once upon a time we'd see swathes of CGI trailers that ooh and wow, but didn't really show anything about the game in question. That's a practise now mostly frowned upon, especially as it's seen as a waste of resources that could have gone to the game itself. We used to see unbelievably grandiose composite gameplay that oversold what the final product would play like, but that's been stamped out for the large part by annoyed gamers who were burned one time too many by one devotee of this practise in particular. (Here's looking at you, Ubisoft.) And announcements would come out for projects years down the line, until enough cancellations and broken promises made companies realise that it's better to wait until the thing is at least likely to be out before the next E3, else you get stuck with another 'The Last Guardian' on your hands. 

These are just some of the many rules that go towards hosting a successful E3 conference, and as the industry event has begun to open up and allow many more companies to hold their conferences in this space, these expectations have bled onto them. We don't cotton to the pathetic 'Epic Store excuse' of "Oh, well it took those guys decades to get their ducks in a row so we should be allowed some decades of our own!", no we expect developers entering the position of being able to host their very own conference to hold themselves to the high standards we set upon everyone. That doesn't mean they always do, and right now the problem of "Showcasing when you only really had a single game to show off" is starting to permeate the practise and its becoming a struggle to insist to these companies that taking a year off is completely fine if this conference is going to a dry wasteland. Because at the end of the day we're not here for your quirky little comedy bits, or your 'personality'; we want games. Plain and simple.

As long as you stick to those rules, there's not really many ways you can go wrong. Which is why when you go out of your way to systematically break all of them, you'll do far more than just disappoint your audience; you'll utterly confuddle them. Thus was the case with this year's Gearbox E3, which I believe was the very first solely Gearbox headed conference that they've ever done. (I know they did their own event thing for the Borderlands 3 announcement, but I think that was actually independent of E3 as I remember.) Personally I heard about the existence of this conference and was struck with some immediate pause as I never really considered Gearbox as a studio large enough to warrant an E3 conference of their own, but then I thought about all the games they had under their belt, Borderlands, BOA, Duke Nukem, Homeworld, etc. And I figured this might not be a total waste of time. I can now saw that I was very wrong about that assessment.

How about we start with the big one, the thing that everyone wanted to see. In the leadup to this event, Gearbox had come out of nowhere to announce the very first standalone spin-off game to Borderlands called Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. A fullblown fantasy spin-off title in the vein of her Dungeons and Dragon's themed DLC for Borderlands 2, but expanded into a fully fleshed out and realised world space. Of course, that's fantasy with guns as well as magic, because Borderlands has a brand to maintain and swords ain't gonna cut it. What we'd seen for that announcement was a single CGI trailer and we wanted some actual gameplay come E3 time, and you know what we got? We got the same trailer... and then they talked about the game. Or rather, a single developer answered two surface level question atop gameplay of the aforementioned Borderlands 2 DLC... Huh...

That was perhaps the biggest letdown of this event, seeing as how a reveal of Wonderlands gameplay would have made for a perfect showstopper event, (If they didn't have any gameplay ready, then why did they even announce the thing?) but Gearbox don't do things in half measures apparently. Why upset us just a little bit when they can go all the way? Homeworld 3 was spoken of during this event, but to a degree even more insignificant then Wonderlands was. We got little vignettes between panels of developers proving they still knew what Homeworld was, all in the brief 20 seconds they had before the 'important' parts of the conference rolled through. Okay, so what was it that Gearbox wanted us to see more than the sequel to that beloved classic RTS game?

Godfall. God, I forgot Gearbox published that. How bizarre that someone could just excrete something as rank as Godfall out for Christmas and then drag it infront of audiences to show them how proud you are of it for E3. Whatsmore, they invited a developer for the thing to talk about it on zoom call, which is essentially just providing a target for all of those disillusioned fans and saying "This here, this is one of the guys responsible for taking your money to pay for this mess!" Godfall is a bad game, and the fact that it got the second most amount of screen time in this conference is an absolute crime. Whatsmore, it was the only game of this conference that got new footage! At least I think it was new. (This game's architecture and design intent is so bland that it's hard to differentiate the new from the old.) The only amount of entertainment I managed to get out of this panel was at the game's expense, given how aside from some DLC announcements, the big reveal for Godfall was the upcoming PS4 port. A port you say? For the game you personally advertised as only possible on Next gen? That's quite some crow to eat there, Gearbox my lads.

And of course it gets worse. How could it possibly? With the pinnacle of cringe, of course. You see, one of the most interesting tidbits that has been floating around Gearbox of late was the feature length movie adaptation of Borderlands. It's coming up, it has an allstar cast, and I think it's pretty sensible to be excited about that prospect. And if you're the CEO of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford, you're clearly a little too excited about it. Due to what I can only assume were explicit demands from the man himself, half of the time for this conference was taken up by panels of Randy on the set of the film and plodding around a soundstage like a wonderstruck child. Clearly this has been a childhood fantasy for him, and I'm starting to think the only reason Gearbox had a conference at all was so that Randy had an excuse to broadcast all of this. (For bragging rights, I guess?)

If you came to E3 looking for games then I'm sorry to disappoint you, this conference here became the Randy show with regularly scheduled interval updates featuring nothing more than his gormless face desperately trying to snake around this soundstage whilst showing of literally nothing cool whatsoever. (because he clearly hadn't bothered to ask the movie studio for some sort of exclusive tease that would make all of this tedium at least somewhat worthwhile) But where does the cringe come in? Well aside from watching a grown man waste our time for his own selfish amusement in the middle of a ludicrously expensive advertising slot, there were the 'interviews'. (see 'ambushes' in your textbooks.) I know for a fact that all of this footage was all off-the-cuff, and that's not from the couple of times they had to literally cut away for fear of something actually interesting (and under NDAs) coming into frame. I know because he dragged several key members of the crew in front of the camera to ask breathy, uninspired questions that one might expect a teenager to devise when put before a film crew. These poor victims always looked surprised and unprepared for these encounters and thus provided whatever answer would get Randy away from them as soon as possible. This was crowned, of course, by the one celebrity he managed to get into the shot: 'Kevin Hart', a man who sounded genuinely annoyed when Randy went knocking on his trailer for another adlib interview. For unintentional cringe comedy gold, I'd actually recommend watching a supercut of these clips because they seriously give 'The Office' a run for it's money at times.

So that, in a nutshell, was the Gearbox conference, and can I just say; why did you hold that, Gearbox? I mean, I know why you held it; Randy Pitchford was giddy as heck about his visit to a soundstage and wanted an excuse to show off his terrible footage to the world; but why did you humour him? Where are the investors to clap Randy around the ear and tell him to leave well enough alone? Without them, we've now got a contender for worst conference of E3 2021, and I personally believe it wins the gauntlet. There was another event which showed off just one, already announced, game, (Bandi Namco) but that one wins points for being short, Gearbox's was utterly excruciating. Let this be a reminder and prime evidence that no one company needs to hold an E3 conference if they don't have something to show. Else you wind up so caught in asking whether you could that you never stop to think about whether or not you should. (Thank you for another timely and timeless summary, Jeff Goldblum.)

Uh oh, Godfall sucks

 Allegedly...

The PS5 is finally among us, which means that the age of the launch titles has now officially begun, and these are always interesting times as we see the deluge of games that touch upon what gimmicks the next console can do and see if it's interesting enough for future developers to capitalize upon. (Basically the difference between PS' Six-axis and Xbox Kinect's voice commands.) And right away I can say that from what I've seen, Bluepoint's Demon Souls' remake looks absolutely gorgeous. That seems slightly weird to say about a game set in an intentionally dreary and depressing world, but the developers have done such a great job sprucing things up to the point where Demon Souls looks positively delectable. Those moments in the firey world pop so well it gives me shivers. Of course, this is coming from someone who just recently started a playthrough of the entire DS franchise (I'm reaching the DLC portion of 2) so I'm definitely a little biased. As for the other big launch title (Excluding Spiderman, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty... and Bugsnax, I guess.) Godfall appears to be everything I thought it would be.

Now to be clear with you all, I have not played Godfall. Nor, judging from what I'm seeing and hearing, will I ever, because it appears to be the sort of game built specifically to piss me off. (I'm sorry that I still haven't finished 'Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel', Gearbox, but I hardly find this as an appropriate recourse) As I recap, from the very first trailer I saw of Godfall I remarked on how unremarkable it looked. I don't know why, but literally everything about this game looked out-of-focus and without purpose to me. The shiny textures looked far too clean, thus losing that sense of realism, the visually impressive armours looked overdesigned, to the point where a visual that could have been cool just looks cluttered and impractical, and the dialogue from the trailer was just a single step better than faux gamer talk. (That doesn't make it good, just better than the absolute worst thing imaginable. Not a high bar.)

But that was the past me, the present me can look at the game as it stands and see... I was mostly right. The textures aren't as bad as I remembered, but everything else pretty much stands. Visually, it must be said, the game looks super pretty in that 'it's the next gen so lets bump everything up' sort of way, but graphical fidelity is only half the battle with me, I'm afraid, I need some solid artistic intent too, and I just don't feel it's there. It's strange to say, because all the essential ingredients are there, from the colourful shrubbery to the large glittering courtyards to the epic sprawling dungeons, but all of it just feels so heartless and barren, and worst of all lacking in identity. If you were to take a screenshot of this game and take out the enemies and the player character it would be impossible to tell what game it was, (aside from through the cool next gen resolution) and even the genre would be a little murky. It would look sort of sci-fi fantasy maybe? (Actually, I guess that does sort of describe the game, doesn't it?)

In fact, this game sort of reminds me off titles like 'Killzone: Shadow Fall' or 'Ryse: Son of Rome'; they're these big polished up extravaganzas of visuals and effects which eclipse what the last generation was capable of in a way which makes the audience "ooh" and "ahh", but the substance isn't there to make the game itself stand out. Not to say that either of those games are terrible (they certainly aren't good) but I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that they stood out as particularly memorable games. Killzone had some gameplay issues and story failing whilst Ryse suffered from- well, mostly the same except the gameplay issues were arguably slightly worse and the story was at least enjoyably corny. So does Godfall improve upon either of those game's track records? Apparently not, if the reviewing public is to be believed.

Now before I go any further it's important that I clear up one thing, this game is a live service. (I honestly don't know why I never made a 'live service' tag given the frequency at which I mention them. It feels a bit 'too little, too late' now.) Now if you're a regular game consumer or just spend your time paying way too much attention to every game which comes out because you have literally nothing better to do, then you'll know two things about this game immediately from that fact alone. Firstly you'll know that there's an inherent lack of content at launch which the developers are already promising to start supplementing as time goes on, and secondly that the gameplay has a good chance of being really rudimentary to the point where it's starting to feel like people forgot that Destiny did so well because it's gunplay was literally impeccable. (Why does it feel like these Live Service games are getting worse with practice?) Oh, and both those points you assumed are true by the way, good job, 5 points to Ravenclaw.

This title is built around a hack-n-slash model which has a distinct and troubling lack of ranged combat. (Don't get me wrong, I usually prefer to be up close and personal in games like these but even I understand the importance of combat variety) As for the hacking and slashing, it's perfectly serviceable for a mid-range title from about 5 years back, but when this is a game advertised alongside Demon Souls, you can't stop me from laughing my butt off. Once again the ingredients are all undeniably there, there's a heavy attack, a light attack and some combo potential, but it all just doesn't come together in any manner you'd be able to get behind. I've been looking around and most all the criticism is the same, combat feels repetitive, enemy variety is lacking and... I'm sorry why do all these Live Service games end up all with the same issues as each other? How is that even possible? Maybe life is just a sick play written by George Lucas and his obsession with 'rhyming'. (I hear it's like poetry)

As for the heart of the game, maybe it's the Dark Souls in me speaking but I like to think we see that best reflected in story. I think that the right story has the potential to unite all the fragments of lore into a sweeping great chain through context given the right conditions, maybe not working as a solve all for every problem, but at least providing the glue that holds it all together. And yes, I know that not every story can be this intricately crafted thematic suite which covers the breadth and morality of the tale whilst simultaneously also touching on the gameplay; those are standards a little too high. But even admitting that, gosh does this goes storyline bore me, I mean seriously. I can barely read a synopsis without falling asleep, let alone watching it myself. It's just about a man who wants to 'become a god' with you (their sibling, I think) working to stop them, it's so barren it really feels as though literally no-one cared enough to devote their creative soul to the project. Apart from the concept artists, I think they really tried, they were just a little lacking in direction.

So is it fair to say Godfall sucks? Well somehow it's turned into one of those games that folk out there have really latched onto, so I suppose not. I've even seen reviews that have gifted it in the mid-range tier whilst admitting that the only thing which makes it so is the graphical fidelity, which doesn't quite compute to this guy over here. We are talking about a game here, right? Shouldn't the gameplay, be a priority? (Oh wait, is this secret game reviewer speak! Like how '7/10' means "This game sucks but we're too scared of being denied our access rights to rate this any lower"? Big if true.) I dunno, but if there's one thing I'm taking from this it's that my gut is better at reading things then I initially thought, so I'm just gonna go ahead and do some back patting, don't mind me.

Godfall

Daedalus & Son

If you cast your memory all the way back to the very first hints of the next generation of console gaming, during the VGAs and long before the 2020 blowouts, you might remember 'Godfall' as being one of the games that won a lot of coverage at that event. Now for my part, I can't exactly imagine why such attention was paid toward 'Godfall' given how, as I described in my blog on the topic, I found the trailer to be utterly devoid of anything resembling unique creativity or technological complexity. The game looked too clean in it's textures, too messy in it's designs and too vague in it's trailer, for me to muster anything more than a half-hearted sniff in it's direction. I was unwilling to give the title more than my precursory time of day until such a time where we heard anything more concrete about how the game played. Well, I guess today is the day for judgement as 'Godfall' hit the PS5 event with some honest-to-goodness gameplay; so let's see how Gearbox's new franchise is shaping up.

Before I get into it, however, allow me to share the description on this game on the off-chance that it rings a bell with you as it did with me. Godfall takes place in the world of "Aperion - a world on the precipice of ruin." The player stands up for this world in the form of "the last of the Valorian knights", ('Valorian'... really? That made it to the final script?) "god-like warriors able to equip 'valorplates', legendary armour sets that transform wielders into unstoppable masters of melee" blah blah. So let's asses; We have a fantastical, yet ruined, world with 'god-like' influences being involved and the player being put into the shoes of 'fantastic warriors' who need to hide inside of metal suits in order to defend their country. (Also, the game is a looter-slasher) Isn't this just 'Anthem' with weaker Javlin design? I can't be the only one who sees the parallels, right? Did Gearbox seriously just yank Bioware's blueprint for their failure-of-a-game under the assumption that they could do it better? Probably not, it's likely just coincidence, but I'll throw some healthy scepticism on this fire.

My first takeaway from this game as of the new trailer is that this title suffers from a little bit of an identity crisis that stems from a 'like me' syndrome. By that I mean, in the 2019 reveal trailer the game seemed set on establishing itself as some grand 'David v Goliath' type game with the typical accoutrements one would expect from that sort of world. You had cinematic action, dynamic camera angles and a dramatic soundtrack; all of these elements came together to put up a rather mediocre looking game. (In my opinion.) But now we have gameplay everything looks a lot more vast paced, a lot less intense and dramatic and the footage is accompanied by this completely out-of-pace rap track that just oozes this sense of "Kids like rap, right? Let's thrown in as much rap as we can!" Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with rap or it's potential use in advertising; but I find that more often than not whenever rap finds itself in an advert for something  that product is entirely unrelated to the song in question. (With every other type of music, people expect some sort of connection.) It's a nitpick, to be sure, but it highlights the laziness which is going into the marketing of 'Godfall', and that doesn't exactly reflect well on the potential of the full game. What is this game supposed to be- dramatic or laid-back; a hair-raising cinematic event or a pick-up-and-play time sink? Pick a lane!

In terms of the actual gameplay itself it's here where I do actually have some positive things to say about Gearbox's new beau. Godfall looks to be fast paced and exciting in it's third person melee combat to the point where I see shades of the hack-and-slash genre in there, which is certainly a good example to follow. Strikes look swift, powerful and the actually illicit feedback from the enemy, which sounds like it should be a given but you'd be surprised the amount of games where NPCs shake off taking a warhammer to the face. (>cough< Skyrim >cough<) These are the sorts of core systems that games like this need to nail, especially if they have eyes on becoming a live service like 'Godfall' definitely does. As someone who was always a fan of this type of game (DMC fan since a young age) I do admit that I'll slightly swooned at the prospect of a quality hack-and-slash title with significant replay potential; but I fail to see the 'breakthrough personality' that games of this genre usually covet to it's audience. 'Devil May Cry' has it's versatile juggling system which allows for weapons and forms to change on a dime, 'Bayonetta' and 'God of War' have their trademark epic encounters and set pieces and 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence' has it's vividly gory swordplay. What makes 'Godfall' unique amidst those titans? It's rap?

And have you noticed anything missing from this latest gameplay demo? A promise, made all the way back from that first trailer, that went unfulfilled throughout all of this footage? How about the mildly promising setpiece of a large swirling tower in the sky with a deadly Hydra atop it, what ever became of that? If anyone came away with any impression of what it was that 'Godfall' represented after that reveal trailer, it would have been of a co-op based slasher that revolved around 'Monster-hunter'-style showdowns against impressive huge beasts. Now would that be an assumption on the part of the viewer? Certainly. But assumptions don't spawn from nowhere as this was the expectation that original trailer established. Yet here we have some gameplay showing no co-op play, no boss encounters and practically no real 'blow my socks off' moments to talk about over the water cooler. Now I'm not really a fan of the term 'water cooler moments' but it's a real phenomenon that Gearbox haven't catered to in the slightest with this trailer and that is saddening.

Now as it happens 'Godfall' does have an official website, as every game does nowadays, however it merely redirects to the epic store page so we divert there for more in-depth details. Here we can read the Devs bragging about the diversity of their environments from "the above-ground reefs of the Water Realm to the subterranean crimson forests of the Earth Realm." (Feel like the world designer got a bit confused there.) It's here where I find one of my biggest issues with this game somewhat confirmed, this entire gameworld feels excessively flimsy and undercooked. What, we have elemental based realms? Warriors called 'Valorain Knights'? Valorplate armor? It's all surface-level drivel that lacks any real depth, and perhaps that was the intent on the world builder's side but personally, as someone who like to get lost in the immersion of the worlds they explore, this doesn't feel like it was constructed with heart and a vision. There's also some information about 'mastering weapon classes' which makes me think this game will have some 'Monster Hunter' DNA in it, a RPG system which is sure to be rudimentary and, as of so far, only one revealed endgame activity in 'The Tower of Trials'. Which are essentially just 'Strikes' from Destiny. (Does this game have an original bone in it's body?)

Of course, the question I must always ask in these trailer reveals remains the same; does this title deserve to be a Playstation 5 exclusive. And on that I'm strangely undecided. (Strange, as we've seen a decent amount of visuals and gameplay by now) Whilst there are certainly framerate limitations on current gen consoles that couldn't run the footage we're seeing; textures, resolution and pure technical capabilities still seem somewhat lackluster. I haven't seen any degree of the weather effects that last year's cinematic played up, nor the scale of battle, so I'm left wondering if this title has any right showcasing the capabilities of the next gen. But by that same merit I can't help but feel like this title is the victim of horrendously bad marketing, and that there's several sides to this game that we haven't seen yet. So I'm choosing to be agnostic on this particular topic for now. (We'll see if that lasts.)

In conclusion, 'Godfall' still has failed to impress me for many of the same reasons as last time and a few smattering of new ones. I think it may be time to come to the conclusion that this firmly isn't my kind of game and pass it off to you; does anything you've heard, seen or read on this game seem any bit interesting to you? Because where I'm sitting, all I can see is a game that looks cynical in almost every respect and find it hard to deduce if there was ever some soul or vision which spawned this project. Of course, this is all just my impression from the marketing and, as always, I hope I'm wrong and this game launches like a cannonball aimed at the stratosphere, but as of right now I'm getting serious 'Anthem'-vibes from everything 'Godfall' has shown, and it's starting to feel like Gearbox might have drifted too close to the sun. (Urg, that was a terrible reference. I hate myself for that.)

Godfall

Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created?

The future is now, or rather, it will be by Christmas 2020 for that is when we will finally have the drop of Xbox Series X (Or whatever the final title ends up being) and the PlayStation 5, ushering in a brand new age of consoles. (An age where early predictions estimate the Series X as being a significant environmental risk due to energy drain. Sure hope your working on that one, Microsoft!) Recently the next gen has been on everybody's lips after the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in which Sony officially revealed the logo of their next console. (Spoiler: It's exactly what you think it is.) What folk didn't realize was that this logo did not actually debut with CES (Despite what was said at the expo) but was sneakily shown off a month early during the VGAs in order to tease a brand new title; Godfall.

Now, personally I'm not much of a fan of those first few games of a console generation. I remember 'Killzone' from back in the day and 'RYSE: Son of Rome'. Both beautiful games for the time, no doubt, (Heck, RYSE still looks good) but wafer thin on actual content and value for your buck. Such is the trend with 'launch titles' which is why I sighed when I saw this trailer when so many other people gasped in excitement. I see past the glossy visuals and overdesigned armour pieces and see the product for what it seems to be, a glorified tech-demo that wants to retail itself at full price. But perhaps I'm just being a Debbie downer and there's potential here that I'm not seeing; lets take a look.

Godfall hit hard with a teaser trailer that actually shows off some rendering potential, although after Xbox Series X's first game showing (which we'll talk about in due time) this one did feel a little weak. Rather than get a good look at all the complexities that go into rendering human skin, what we see is a fellow clad in shiny, overcomplicated armour that is dripping in gaudy overlays, a monster-hunter style mane on the helmet and a flaming Pauldron; (Possibly the most eye-rolling character design I've seen all year) as he races down a pristine lavish hallway in the midst of what seems to be an earthquake. Eventually our man bumps into a couple more walking tin-cans, bringing that character count up to golden three that's favoured by games like Destiny and Division. (Guess this is a looter shooter then.) The group exchange some off-kilter banter that veers dangerously close to 'Faux-live player speak' and the camera pulls back on a gigantic hydra beast atop a gleaming golden tower and wreathed in dark storms. (How cataclysmic.)

Does any of this ring a bell for you? Because for me when I see this title all that comes to mind is Anthem which, in-case you've forgotten, is the title that was lambasted for being all style and no substance. We see it all here, (although thankfully without the 'faux player speak'. I don't think I'd have been able to keep my lunch in for that.) from the full-body suits of messy-looking armour to the three characters (likely representing the inevitable three character classes) and that final money-shot with a scary looking badguy that will probably be a disappointment in person. (At least this time we got see the monster inside the storm. They can't bait-and-switch us quite so badly this time around.) This game elicits pure skepticism from me and I would caution all those getting their hopes us to adopt a similar view of things.

To play devils advocate for moment, however, if we take all we saw at face value then this would end up being a perfectly balanced teaser. Let people see the world, smatter some establishing lore so everyone knows we're in some sort of apocalypse and give folks something to be excited for. All of my negativity for this title stems from crappy launch titles in the past, which is due to the short turnaround that those projects are often subjected to, however there is evidence to support that Godfall may not suffer from this issue. We started hearing about developers getting their hands on next-gen dev kits as far back as early 2019, and Godfall's Devs, Counterplay Games, haven't put out a game since the well-received CCG-Turn based hybrid 'Duelyst'. (Looks like it should be the name of a Silicon Valley start-up...) It is reasonable to assume that the team could have been working on this project for several years in order to get a quality product out for Christmas 2020, and I'm just being s superstitious jerk.

However there is another dimension of this title that should be considered, and that is the fact that this title has been described as being a "Looter-slasher". (Yeah, I knew this was the case when I wrote that earlier joke. I just wanted to look smart...) Any rational person should be seeing alarm bells ringing from that statement alone, because if there's one game type that no one can get right it's 'Looter Shooters/Slashers'. As we have discussed in other blogs, Looter Shooters need a lot going for them in order to be successful, not least of all interesting and varied loot. Destiny has had trouble pulling this off and that's run by the storied vets over at Bungie. Counterplay is made up of former Destiny Devs (and others, I'm sure) but that just makes me feel worse about this project's chances instead of better. Who's to say that they don't repeat their past mistakes? Will anyone remember to tell a good story and provide a decent amount of content to keep things feeling fresh? What the heck is The Darkness? All these are questions that I would levy at Counterplay if I had the chance.

The launch period of consoles are always a rough time as it is the point where everyone is doing their best to find their feet. The players are starting to get used to this new system, developers are adjusting to the new ecosystem and the big gaming companies are wondering how to quickly migrate their community. With all that shifted attention it can mean that too little diligence is paid to the games which launch in this time frame allowing for mistakes to be made. History proves that if a AAA reputation-carrying product is going to slip through Sony's QA, this is the period in which it will do so, and that has me worried. Justifiably so, I would say.

Ultimately, there won't be much more to say on this title until E3. Well actually, there might not be a truth to this title until the game launches, as Anthem taught us how studios are prepared and ready to lie their way through E3 when they need to. Punditry generally tends to be positive towards this title, however, and I wonder how much of it is genuine considered feedback and how much rides on the back of the hype train for the next generation. Maybe my pessimism is showing, but I'd just like to impart a pertinent Shakespearean adage to those that seem impressed by Godfall's visual fidelity and flairs; "All that glisters is not gold."