It's a crapsterpiece that execs wanted all along.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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The author of this article has a little website where he reviews indie games, its been a good read, and just reeks of a passionate writer. https://buried-treasure.org/
Well, it's like this: games are not made by just one person and whilst it seems their art direction for this game is competent, it also seems their game design is not.
Maybe it's something to do with the MBA CxOs of many of these "top" game makers nowadays neither being nor ever having been gamers, but they can, just like most people, look at something and think it's pretty (or not), with the end result that they're putting more money into and hiring better people on that which they can judge - the visual side of things - rather than on that which they cannot - the gameplay side of things.
Further, nowadays it still does make a difference for sales how good the game looks on the pictures and short videos customers see on whichever online stores they use to buy their game, something that also pushes towards focusing on looks more than the rest, especially for Marketing-driven business strategies, such as the ones said MBAs have been taught to use.
Had no idea they’d reskinned the Ubisoft game for Star Wars.
Hey has this been cracked yet? I'd like to try it, but only psychopaths give Ubisoft money.
No. It has Denuvo.
So in other words nobody has forked over the $5000 for Empress to crack it yet.
Damn shame.
It's a good article that showcases the way AAA games are basically hollow. They wear a lot of art, incredibly elaborate, expensive, art, but none of it comes together to make the experience it promises. Everything is built in separate pieces and stuck together later, and its boring gameplay that shows no interest in being art of its own is the glue. I remember Yahtzee did a video about the first Destiny that made this same point, about how the environmental art in a few areas was fascinating and clearly full of effort, but the gameplay was a slog that lacked the same ambition.
That sums up my thoughts pretty well honestly. It is a generic Ubisoft open world game, with all the same tricks. But the story is decent, different than the traditional Jedi stuff usually made, and some aspects of the game play are pretty fun. Others are the generic Ubisoft formula, which is to be expected.
It's better than I expected, nowhere near worth $110 or whatever for the game and season pass, but worth the U+ subscription for a month to try it out.
I thought we were calling AAA games 'Corporate Games' now. Is that trend over already?
This is a mainstream news site, did you expect them doing that?
Also, personally I haven't heard about this trend, but let's do it! It sounds good. Or another option is calling them triple F games.
I should've specified that I meant in the Lemmy comments. But yeah, I've seen 'corporate games' mentioned in a few threads already.
Sooooo... So far the games that were supposedly AAAA have all been crap? Maybe that's the criteria to differentiate AAA and AAAA.
All bad AAA games shall henceforth be known as AAAA!
I missed out on the marketing for this. Was it supposed to be AAAA like Skull and Bones?
Ubisoft is the one that started the AAAA crap, so everyone's mocking their big budget games
Yup!
The extra A stands for Ass!
To an extent that level of beauty in the scenery creates the lackluster gameplay. If you've finished one of these jaw dropping environments, only to realize late in the day it's mediocre gameplay-wise, you simply can't redo it. It would take months.
This is oversimplifying a bit, but not by much honestly.
I had no intention of playing it, but I have been known to love a crappy masterpiece.
I don't know why people are saying this is a well written article - the author seems to be bewildered that a game that looks good is bad.
It's really not that complicated. At the end of the day it's a game and gameplay is the single most important feature.
Just look at Breath of the Wild: it doesn't look particularly amazing, and it runs like shit on the only hardware it's available on.
But it's the great gameplay that keeps people coming back for more.
Breath of the Wild has a good art style though. Which helps with the low fidelity.
He is baffled by the focus of assets. Thousands of people from across the world came together to create these beautifully meticulous visual details, yet nobody bothered to make sure the game is actually fun to play.
Also, I know I'm going to be gunned down on this hill but BOTW is boring. I have tried again and again to get through that game and can't push myself beyond 10-15ish hours. It's like everyone that is raving about it has never played a basic open world game before. It has a cool physics system but that can't prop up the fact that the huge open world is just EMPTY and when you do finally find something to interact with it's either 1)One of 4 enemy types that you can either use the physics engine to cheese or just whack at using the most basic combat system imaginable (and you'll be punished for using with a broken weapon), or 2) an incredibly basic "dungeon" that involves 1-3 simple puzzles and maybe another boring fight.
To top it off the writing is absolutely atrocious, so you can't even rely on that to drive you through the mediocre gameplay. I just don't get it.
It's all the Zelda fanboys that puff up those games, really. They're so damn vocal about their actual love for a video game, which is weird.
I personally wouldn't say "gameplay is the most important feature", but it's intertwined.
A game is a piece of art, and a piece of art passes a message or a sentiment to the end user.
Some don't need gameplay at all, like the novel-like games with eventual quick time events like Until Dawn, just nice graphics and an appealing story are enough to pass on what the creator wants.
Other games require heavy focus on gameplay, remembering enemiew behaviors and learning a plethora of items and skills so the player can even experience thee world around him, a good example would the Souls series.
There's even games in between, like Cyberpunk, where the graphics and storytelling are the most important aspect, and the gameplay is there but is not important enough to pass on the message. And vice versa.
The worst a game can be is "meh", or leave you uninterested on any of its aspects. Haven't played this SW game, but if I compare to the the SW works, the focus should be either good action (like Jedi Academy game) or a deep and interesting story and world building (like the Andor series). If the only thing It has is graphics, then I can see how uninteresting it can be.
What they’re confused about is how it was deemed necessary to spend all that time and money on making a game look that good but not to do the same for the gameplay. It’s insane that they can make a world with such immense detail that most people probably won’t even see but don’t value the effort that would make it play well, something that everyone notices. It’s in the title, it’s about the dissonance.
You’re agreeing with the author of the article. They even point out pretty much exactly what you said when they said “How can someone look at this, this majesty, and say, “Hmmm, seven out of ten?” And then a guard sees me through a solid hillside and ruins fifteen minutes of painstaking stealth, and I wonder how it can be on sale at all.”
Confused? This has been an ongoing thing for the past 20 years. Ever since the corporate types deduced that a solid ip with pretty graphics got enough people to buy the game to recoup the cost. Sometimes not even the solid ip was needed if the cinematic was good enough.
Unreal Engine 5 is going to enable many beautiful bad games
It's got that AAAA quality
if only they had put out a AAAAA quality game
They need to update a few of those As to S tier ASS quality
It would be cool if some of the large level designs in some of these games were made more widely available to other developers. They could sell it, doesn't have to be free. Seems like it could be a decent business model.
This is the thought that really stuck with me from the article. Even if it were through some kind of marketplace, couldn't developers share assets for reuse across different games? You can't tell me that an asset can't be retextured or an animation tweaked to apply somewhere new and be virtually indistinguishable for a fraction of the cost of creating it from scratch.
Isn't that what they do for the Unreal store or whatever? I know on Epic you can straight up buy Unreal 4 assets.
I believe that store is for individual assets rather than whole levels with the assets already arranged... But I'm not certain because I haven't used it.
I honestly don't know. It just seems like a tiny bit of cooperation could vastly reduce the costs of game development for all studios involved.
Mods are where asset reuse shines.
Honestly, this is a really well made article. They've got a damn good point.
really well written article, thanks for sharing it
Some insightful points from kotaku from all places...
Broken clocks
Many worse publications than Kotaku.
such as?