Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer • Hacker News Board

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#261

Post by keeganpoppen » Wed, May 04, 2022, 6:36 AM UTC

Cloudef wrote: post #236

keeganpoppen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can't agree about xiv-- i've never been an mmo guy, but have absolutely loved playing xiv. the story, esp. w/ Endwalker (the newest expansion) is fantastic. but to each, his or her own, i suppose. :)

Probably because xiv isn't really a mmo but single player theme park, with some multiplayer features.

i guess that's true, but my friends and i always kind of hacked the system in a way where we were all leveling in lockstep and stuff anyway. but yeah, the individual quests themselves are mostly single player, with some weird multiplayer affordances (like sometimes if you are on the same quest as someone else you can kind of fight the same mobs / make the same progress). i found all that stuff pretty boring anyway-- the trials, dungeons, etc. are the meat of the game as far as i'm concerned (and they are the ones bookended by the cinematics that deliver the meat of the story).

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#262

Post by randomcarbloke » Wed, May 04, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #49

TillE wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about Deus Ex is that there's nothing particularly special about the "IP". Anybody could make a near-future cyberpunk conspiracy-oriented immersive sim, and call it whatever. The modern Deus Ex games were really average, and (as detailed in the recent hbomberguy video) failed to grasp the key principles of level design that are required to make games like that work.

Human Revolution excelled as a stealth game, which was fine for me because that is how I (and, judging by the critical reception to DXHR, many others) usually play immersive sims. It's almost as much of an underserved genre as the immersive sim. Mankind Divided improved on a lot of the criticisms in DXHR, but ended up being too ambitious for its own good, setting sales goals (and production budgets) in a somewhat nic…

The newer DX games are immersive sims inasmuch as their forebears were immersive sims.

They are just FPS stealth games that inherited a genre descriptor.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#263

Post by Forgeties79 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

telman17 wrote: post #259

Forgeties79 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been playing the Mass Effect trilogy again and man...I really do appreciate how cinematic the game is while also having very satisfying/dynamic combat. Especially ME3.

I just started my replay of the Legendary Edition with some mods and having a blast. I love that it hits that sweet spot of narrative and gameplay. For a decade old trilogy it definitely holds up.

The QoL improvements to ME1 are a welcome change. Very impressed with how seamless they are/how well they integrate with the gameplay.

I'm also impressed with the upscaling/visual improvements. The game looks how I remember it looking, though I know full well it didn't look this good. Still, it wasn't a massive overhaul. Light is a little better, edges have been sanded down, etc.

Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer

#264

Post by jrsj » Thu, May 05, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #167

jrsj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you zoom out a little it makes a lot of sense. FF15 and FF13 were both failures, company had serious financial issues before FF14 took off. Hopefully you will get to enjoy FF16, and making that game wouldn’t have been possible without the success of 14. FFXIV also has the least addictive qualities of any MMO I have played in my experience. There’s very little FOMO & you’re encouraged to play at whatever pace you…

I wouldn't call FF13 or FF15 failures from a sales point of view; they both performed strongly. From a "brand damage" point of view, though, they were catastrophic. I think the development of FF16 speaks for itself: they gave the development of a mainline single-player title to Creative Business Unit III, their FF14 studio, because they have a rep for making consistently good content and delivering it on time. Meanwh…

From a sales standpoint alone no, but from a profitability standpoint definitely. A lot of time and money was poured into developing a game engine from the ground up that ultimately ended up not being very good and thankfully is being replaced by Unreal in FFXVI.

Crystal Tools was supposed to make development for several games easier & faster, but instead it took more effort to complete than expected & was still difficult to work with after it was complete.