71–80 of 118 posts
It's almost, almost like people are valuable and worth retaining.
I loved Prince of Persia, bummed to hear the re-launch has been shelved.
I find almost all modern content producers to be a depressing business, fundamentally incompatible with being a large corporation. This includes movies, TV and video games. The problem is the large corporation wants to remove creativity from the process. They want a repeatable formula that they can scale and infinitely reproduce. The wet dream for the modern AAA studio is a "game" like FIFA that has annual releases a…
Civ 7 sort of killed that, unfortunately, but at least the bones are there and future updates can fix it, I think it was largely just released unfinished.
Which is another pet peeve of mine with AAA studios lately. So many are putting out what are rightfully early access/beta versions as the full release, then "fixing" it with paid DLCs down the road. At this point, I no longer by AAA games on release. I wait a few years until I can get it + all the DLC on a steam sale for half the cost.
> I do miss the days when games were games not just loot box slot machines with annual reskins.
That still exists, you just won't get it from AAA studios. Thankfully there's a thriving indie scene and fantastic titles from smaller studios, most of which are better than the AAA slop coming out now. There's been some good releases from big names recently, mostly BG3, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk but all the others? I feel like gaming peaked, for the type that I play, with the Witcher 3 and its been downhill since then.
It's interesting. I wonder how much large-company disfunction is derailing these things. Recently Hytale, a would-be Minecraft successor, released early access. That project started around a decade ago as something of an indie project, was purchased by Riot, then cancelled by Riot, then recently sold back to the original project people... who basically undid a lot of fruitless work done by Riot and... as I said... no…
This is a 23-year-old game we're talking about here. The design work was complete long before anyone working on this project was hired by Ubisoft, and proven in the form of a game that shipped several console generations ago. Ubisoft presumably still has all of the original art assets for reference. All that had to be done was to study the original game code, port it for modern systems, and then polish up the visuals…
It depends what you mean by "original". The very first Prince of Persia game came out in the early 90s. It's at least 35 years old. It was noteworthy as being one of the first games (if not the first) to have ragdoll physics for the movement of the player. It was a game of playing through 12 levels (IIRC) and if you died, you started over completely. I played it for 20 hours straight at one point and ended up beating…
Prince of Persia had rotoscoped animation that made the main character look very fluid in movement.
This is a 23-year-old game we're talking about here. The design work was complete long before anyone working on this project was hired by Ubisoft, and proven in the form of a game that shipped several console generations ago. Ubisoft presumably still has all of the original art assets for reference. All that had to be done was to study the original game code, port it for modern systems, and then polish up the visuals…
I agree that remakes sound straightforward and it's baffling that Ubisoft couldn't get this one out the door: there are rumors that even before its announcement in 2020, the Sands of Time remake had been started, scrapped, and restarted. But even Nightdive Studios, a perennial remaster maker, struggled for many years with their System Shock remake [2] so it must be harder than it sounds.
I'd love to hear the inside story from folks who've worked on remakes (both released and cancelled) about why they aren't as straightforward as fans expect. Nightdive recently discussed the emotional toll from dealing with angry fans [3] but I haven't seen any interviews discussing the development challenges.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_remake#Remaster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock_(2023_video_game) [3] https://frvr.com/blog/system-shock-remake-lead-couldnt-sleep...
The problems really started when Ubisoft headquarters began interfering more and more with the studio's decisions. Because of that management pressure, a lot of the top talent just decided to leave.
Ubisoft leadership has made so many bad moves lately. They wasted huge amounts of money on NFT/crypto stuff that nobody wanted. Then they made that awful comment about how "gamers should get used to not owning their games." Even if that’s where the industry is heading, saying it out loud to your own customers is just crazy. It’s like they don't understand their own audience anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are still a few studios fighting the good fight Rockstar, CDPR (they at least made up for their big mistake), Larian, FromSoft, Naughty Dog, Valve
Does Valve even still make games?
This is a 23-year-old game we're talking about here. The design work was complete long before anyone working on this project was hired by Ubisoft, and proven in the form of a game that shipped several console generations ago. Ubisoft presumably still has all of the original art assets for reference. All that had to be done was to study the original game code, port it for modern systems, and then polish up the visuals…
The process you describe, of porting the code and polishing the visuals, is for a "remaster". Ubisoft's now-cancelled Sands of Time project was described as a "remake" [1], which generally is a bigger project that keeps the same characters and story beats as the original, but revises the art and gameplay almost as if it were a sequel. I agree that remakes sound straightforward and it's baffling that Ubisoft couldn't…