A few quick thoughts before we get rolling:
The 2DS is an incredibly stupid concept, and at this point, it seems like Nintendo is trying to make decisions so poor that they make Microsoft look good. It's almost working.
Game of the Year editions: Terrible idea. Punishes the early adopters who actually bought the DLC as well; scummy cash grab at best. Several titles with GOTY editions didn't recieve a GOTY nod from a source worth mentioning, used the moniker anyway... The whole thing is just fucking confusing. Just call it a Complete Edition, or a Bundle Edition, or a Season Pass Edition, or something else entirely.
Blast Corps: With the increased power of current(and upcoming) consoles, I'm surprised this IP hasn't been revisited yet. With engines like GeoMod around, and real-time destruction showing up everywhere, this cult-hit N64 title could make a huge splash in today's market.(That, and I'd like to see something besides a 3rd Perfect Dark and a 4th attempt at Goldeneye, if we revisit anything from the N64 from here out.)
Screen tearing: Lots of complaints about screen tearing lately, mostly in reviews, but sometimes on message boards and in other places. Screen tearing is (counter-intuitively) a good thing. We're nearing the end of a console generation, and we're pushing the GPUs in these systems to their limits(and sometimes beyond), which causes them to come as close to possible on time to render. Sometimes, there's too much going on, and the frame rolls over(and usually all this action won't be over in a single frame). This leaves two options, draw to screen when complete, usually causing a tear, or wait for vertical sync, which causes slowdown(in most engines, things are timed in frames as opposed to real-time). While, at times, screen tears can be horribly jarring, most of the time they're subtle enough to be concealed by the action taking place and drawing your focus. On the other hand, slow down of any kind outside of, for example, the Max Payne series, particularly unintentional(not game mechanics related) slowdowns, are far more jarring, and have a tendency to break focus and any sense of immersion. So, kudos to those willing to take a few points in the reviews and tear their screens, rather than sacrifice quality or speed. It's the right thing to do.
And now for something completely different:
There's a lot of reasons for this that are incredibly obvious to everyone, like keeping things fresh, and exploring new features in a console. This is not what I'm here to talk about.
On the far more subtle end of things, is the way that storytelling has evolved in the interactive medium since story actually became a relevant piece of the puzzle, somewhere around the adoption of optical media discs and appropriate hardware limitations(Earlier on PC, somewhere around mid-cycle of the original Playstation for consoles). The problem here is that with franchises encompassing ~6+ titles across 2-3 console generations, that evolution began with a story that was neither well planned, nor well written. Most, in fact, were just added to give some sort of reasoning for why the player was doing what they were doing, with little thought to further installments, or any sort of overarching narrative.
Now, we've got games like Telltale's The Walking Dead, and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, yet we still accept franchises with downright horrid sequencing, like the Devil May Cry series. Devil May Cry 2 was such a disappointment that Capcom did everything they could to push that game out of the continuity of the series, having 3 as a prequel, and 4 taking place sometime between 1 and 2, before they finally got fed up and rebooted the whole franchise. Tomb Raider also befell a similar fate, and it's also looking like the next Resident Evil might take this path as well.
With consumers continually buying up "Top Game of Last Year and the 5 Preceding It: Part 6", there's little incentive for the publishers and developers to take a chance on a new IP, but that also forces them to build upon an already flawed storyline, with some having almost as many retcons and rewrites as it would require for Joss Whedon to make the entire collection of Firefly and Serenity fan-fiction canon. One of the biggest culprits of this is the Legacy of Kain series, which has gotten more wibbledy-wobbledy timey-wimey than the entire series of Doctor Who.
That having been said, if we want to see better stories in the future, told in more compelling and meaningful ways, they will not be told in the giant franchises you've come to know and love. They will be something new, a shot in the dark, like a chance encounter in a smoky bar with someone you've never met before, and might never meet again; risky, but worth it all the same. Whether this will come from the independent space, or from some insane gamble in a powerhouse publisher is yet to be seen, but it will be. It has to be, for the sake of the players, the creators, the consumers, and the industry as a whole.
The 2DS is an incredibly stupid concept, and at this point, it seems like Nintendo is trying to make decisions so poor that they make Microsoft look good. It's almost working.
Game of the Year editions: Terrible idea. Punishes the early adopters who actually bought the DLC as well; scummy cash grab at best. Several titles with GOTY editions didn't recieve a GOTY nod from a source worth mentioning, used the moniker anyway... The whole thing is just fucking confusing. Just call it a Complete Edition, or a Bundle Edition, or a Season Pass Edition, or something else entirely.
Blast Corps: With the increased power of current(and upcoming) consoles, I'm surprised this IP hasn't been revisited yet. With engines like GeoMod around, and real-time destruction showing up everywhere, this cult-hit N64 title could make a huge splash in today's market.(That, and I'd like to see something besides a 3rd Perfect Dark and a 4th attempt at Goldeneye, if we revisit anything from the N64 from here out.)
Screen tearing: Lots of complaints about screen tearing lately, mostly in reviews, but sometimes on message boards and in other places. Screen tearing is (counter-intuitively) a good thing. We're nearing the end of a console generation, and we're pushing the GPUs in these systems to their limits(and sometimes beyond), which causes them to come as close to possible on time to render. Sometimes, there's too much going on, and the frame rolls over(and usually all this action won't be over in a single frame). This leaves two options, draw to screen when complete, usually causing a tear, or wait for vertical sync, which causes slowdown(in most engines, things are timed in frames as opposed to real-time). While, at times, screen tears can be horribly jarring, most of the time they're subtle enough to be concealed by the action taking place and drawing your focus. On the other hand, slow down of any kind outside of, for example, the Max Payne series, particularly unintentional(not game mechanics related) slowdowns, are far more jarring, and have a tendency to break focus and any sense of immersion. So, kudos to those willing to take a few points in the reviews and tear their screens, rather than sacrifice quality or speed. It's the right thing to do.
And now for something completely different:
Why New IPs Are More Important Than Sequels(For Now)
There's a lot of reasons for this that are incredibly obvious to everyone, like keeping things fresh, and exploring new features in a console. This is not what I'm here to talk about.
On the far more subtle end of things, is the way that storytelling has evolved in the interactive medium since story actually became a relevant piece of the puzzle, somewhere around the adoption of optical media discs and appropriate hardware limitations(Earlier on PC, somewhere around mid-cycle of the original Playstation for consoles). The problem here is that with franchises encompassing ~6+ titles across 2-3 console generations, that evolution began with a story that was neither well planned, nor well written. Most, in fact, were just added to give some sort of reasoning for why the player was doing what they were doing, with little thought to further installments, or any sort of overarching narrative.
Now, we've got games like Telltale's The Walking Dead, and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us, yet we still accept franchises with downright horrid sequencing, like the Devil May Cry series. Devil May Cry 2 was such a disappointment that Capcom did everything they could to push that game out of the continuity of the series, having 3 as a prequel, and 4 taking place sometime between 1 and 2, before they finally got fed up and rebooted the whole franchise. Tomb Raider also befell a similar fate, and it's also looking like the next Resident Evil might take this path as well.
With consumers continually buying up "Top Game of Last Year and the 5 Preceding It: Part 6", there's little incentive for the publishers and developers to take a chance on a new IP, but that also forces them to build upon an already flawed storyline, with some having almost as many retcons and rewrites as it would require for Joss Whedon to make the entire collection of Firefly and Serenity fan-fiction canon. One of the biggest culprits of this is the Legacy of Kain series, which has gotten more wibbledy-wobbledy timey-wimey than the entire series of Doctor Who.
That having been said, if we want to see better stories in the future, told in more compelling and meaningful ways, they will not be told in the giant franchises you've come to know and love. They will be something new, a shot in the dark, like a chance encounter in a smoky bar with someone you've never met before, and might never meet again; risky, but worth it all the same. Whether this will come from the independent space, or from some insane gamble in a powerhouse publisher is yet to be seen, but it will be. It has to be, for the sake of the players, the creators, the consumers, and the industry as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment