The Monday Inbox looks at open world game design in a post-Breath Of The World environment, as a reader considers playing Beyond: Two Souls.
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First decisions count
It’s hard to guess when exactly Sony is going to have their PlayStation 5 reveal event now, what with everything that’s going on, and since they’ve handled that situation well I don’t think they’re going to be in a hurry to reschedule. My guess would be later in the month, but I imagine they’ll just play it by ear.
Not that I’m in a hurry but I wonder if even if this plays into their hands – and if Microsoft waiting until July is another mistake on their part. The longer we go without any info on the next gen the more people are going to either lose interest or just make their decision based on gut instinct. And I think most people that would do that at the moment would choose PlayStation.
I’m not convinced an amazing (good or bad) reveal from either will make a difference after people have already pencilled one in. If there’s anything the Internet age tell us it’s that people hate to admit they’re wrong or in anyway change their mind, and if Sony are seen as the default, that’s a big obstacle to overcome.
Myself, I like to think I’m open-minded but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was assuming I’ll go with PlayStation 5, even if I’m interested to see what Microsoft’s offer will be.
Cubby
Raiders of the back catalogue
So these 2K ports to the Switch seem to have turned out pretty good, even XCOM 2, despite not sending out review copies early. It does make me wonder how far this can all go though. XCOM 2 is a pretty complex game that didn’t work that well on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and now it’s only a bit worse on Switch but what’s going to happen when we start to get into cross-gen games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which will probably not work that great on the current gen at all?
Normally you’d just expect publishers to give up supporting the Switch, but since it’s still doing really well, and third party games do sell, I wonder if we’ll start to see even more remasters from this and the previous gen? Anything that was on the Xbox 360 would run fine on a Switch, for example.
I thought the Reader’s Feature about PlayStation 5 about to get a flood of remasters made a lot a sense and I can see something similar happening for Switch. As others readers have pointed out, making new games takes a long, long time nowadays and something has to fill the gap and if people are going to pay full price for compilations of two or three games, even if they’re really old, I can see them becoming commonplace very soon.
Boef
Minecraft Crossing
It’s hard to tell for sure because there isn’t a physical version, but it looks like Minecraft Dungeons has been a big hit, even knocking Animal Crossing: New Horizons off the top of the Switch eShop chart. My kids and me have been enjoying it so I’m perfectly happy with this and now expect there’ll probably be more spin-offs in the future. Not sure what they’d be though since a dungeon crawler isn’t a very obvious guess and I don’t suppose the next one will be either.
But the mention of Animal Crossing does make me wonder whether they could do something along those lines. If not with Minecraft than with something else at least.
I don’t know why other games companies sit and watch Nintendo have hit after hit with all these family friendly games and never try to do something similar. Nobody wants a straight clone but there’s virtually no family-focused games from either Microsoft or particular Sony. What even is Sony’s most all ages franchise? Ratchet & Clank? A third person shooter that hasn’t had a new game (as opposed to a remake) in years.
Just seems like leaving money on the table to me.
Topper
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Acceptable alternative
Nice Reader’s Feature at the weekend by Nuno Oliveira RE: local multiplayer and preferring playing with mates on your sofa as opposed to playing with strangers online, with said strangers throwing insults or cheating.
I would however say to Nuno: give online a chance. Playing with your mates is still great (and online is probably the only way to do this anyway at the moment) and you don’t have to play with strangers if you don’t want to. A group of mates and I are playing through an intensely competitive Formula 1 season and do a race every weekend. It’s often the best part of my week.
I can take or leave playing with strangers, however during the week, if I’ve got a spare half hour, I might also do a few much shorter (five laps, say) online races with strangers. No insults come my way, but there is a lot more intentional ramming and general argy-bargy (which is cheating, albeit within the confines of the game). For me, the trick is to not take these sessions too seriously – I treat them as training for the main event with my mates. If I can get a handful of laps of proper racing in (even if it is towards the back of the grid after being unfairly taken out at the first corner!) it’s still worthwhile.
Of course, there are some things you can’t beat local multiplayer for. Party games, split-screen co-op (A Way Out handled this brilliantly), and Mario Kart are the ones that spring to mind!
Julian
Slow response
I just read the Metro’s report on Call Of Duty having a Black Lives Matter screen at the start of each match. I’m not knocking this, as anything is better than nothing but in my view the problem is with the reporting process when it comes to calling out racism and other offensive content. If I play Modern Warfare in online multiplayer the number of players with offensive emblems, etc/ is high. It is easy enough to report but the player/offensive content stays up for hours. I think, when It comes to extreme content, that the content itself should be removed or blurred in some way on a temporary basis.
I can understand not wanting to ban players before an investigation but I don’t see why such images need to stay up in the meantime. The social media representative I spoke with was really polite and understanding and it’s not their fault personally. I guess I’m suggesting there should be action not just words from game developers.
K J Snider
GC: They have acknowledged this recently and promised to improve, but it remains to be seen whether they actually do.
So bad it’s good
As with many others, recent events have allowed me more time at home and I have finished a couple of games from the backlog I probably wouldn’t have gone back to otherwise.
I was interested in Detroit: Become Human despite trudging through Heavy Rain (possibly the dreariest, dullest, non-game I have ever completed) and so had added it to my collection when it became ‘free’ on PlayStation Plus. The graphics are certainly pretty and I think the themes of androids becoming self-aware and fighting to establish their rights to freedom and equality are interesting enough to build a game around.
Why oh why though do Quantic Dream insist on including lots of the most mundane activities into their games? It’s a completely signposted QTE from beginning to end anyway, but the amount of doors I seemed to open (right stick up, quarter circle down), along with making beds and general tidying up, make the pacing almost catatonic at times. The ending got more interesting, as you would hope, but am not sure it’s worth the journey to reach. Not recommended.
Playdead’s Inside however, transported me to a dark, dystopian land and one boy’s journey to escape imprisonment and persecution. It does this without dialogue, text or narration. You create the story, the background and the characters motivations entirely in your mind, whilst the simple platforming and engaging puzzles are very much a video game experience. I had enjoyed Limbo anyway and, whilst similar, Inside echoes the style but dials everything up a few notches. I am not really sure what happened at the end but I am glad that I took the four hours or so to get there. Highly recommended.
ProEvoSan78 (PSN ID)
PS: I still have Beyond: Two Souls in my library. I expect it’s no better than any other David Cage QTE-fest?
Now playing: Mafia 3 (PS4)
GC: Beyond: Two Souls is one of the very few games we would regard as so bad it’s good. We don’t like any of Quantic Dream’s games but Beyond is easily the worst, and yet in its way also the most entertaining.
Farming subsidy
I just read your Reader’s Feature about Stardew Valley and I completely agree with it. I’m not sure if you know, but it had been ported to the Nintendo Switch. The price is not bad, I am in USA but it was only $14.98.
I play it often also, after one of the updates I have been able to play with my brother wherever he has Internet. What I like about it on the Switch is your save file can be transferred to another Switch.
Geoffrey
GC: We just checked and it’s currently only £10.99 on Switch, which, as you say, is well worth it.
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Game play
I think Ali K nailed why, for me, a lot of open world games played (or made) after Zelda: Breath Of The Wild continue to have some problems. Despite being massively hyped for it, Red Dead Redemption 2 kinda felt the same for me as Grand Theft Auto 5 has for Ali K. I only recently started Horizon Zero Dawn and, certain obvious enemies notwithstanding, it feels almost exactly like a third person Far Cry to me.
There’s still pleasure messing around in a lot of open worlds but there’s often no real reward or discovery for doing so and when there is it doesn’t quite feel like any of it really belongs to you.
The problem is that ensuring exploration, experimentation and discovery feel as enriching as in Breath Of The Wild nowadays has little to do with technical prowess; it just requires a huge amount of design work that most studios aren’t prepared (or equipped) to put in.
I’ve also heard Breath of the Wild come up a few times in discussions about Ghost Of Tsushima, following the recent preview. And while we won’t know how justified that is till we play it, I think it could easily fall into the same pitfalls as almost every other open world game this generation. Instead of a big neon arrow telling you where the next bit of gameplay is there might be a change in wind direction but it still needs to be more than just following indicators like it’s the game that’s playing you. (That’s not even going into what the actual content is when you get to your destination.)
Funny how recent it was that the likes of Bethesda, Rockstar, and maybe Ubisoft, were pretty much the sole authorities over big budget open world games and now each of them will have had to regroup to some degree and work out whether they can still contribute anything to help them continue to stand out. Contrary to some recent letters, I’m not putting this down to the increasing technical complexity of state of the art games.
When Breath Of The Wild was first revealed a lot of people questioned what open world gaming would bring to Zelda but I was more interested in what Zelda could bring to open world gaming. If the answer is it potentially ruins it for everyone else, that might explain why there have recently been much longer intervals between some big sequels.
Panda
Inbox also-rans
If anyone has a burning urge to play Super Tennis online on the Switch SNES app then my friend code is SW-0797-7784-1585. I want to play against a human but none of my mates are particularly into playing 30-year-old tennis sims online!
John
I wish I could think of a way that Sony could include Ridge Racer in the PlayStation 5 reveal. Obviously they could just make a new one but nobody’s going to care without a gimmick and I don’t think even VR could be that nowadays.
Tosh
This week’s Hot Topic
The question for this weekend’s Inbox was inspired by reader Korbie, who asks what unlikely sequel or reboot would you most want to see in the next generation?
With the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X now just months away from release, and already rumours of the return of numerous franchises – from Fable to Demon’s Souls – what old video game series would you most like to see get a sequel, reboot or remake?
The game can be as obscure as you like, as long as it hasn’t had any kind of new release this generation. Why do you want to see it return and what do you think are the chances it actually will?
E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk
The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length.
You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.
You can also leave your comments below and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
MORE: Weekend Hot Topic, part 1: Favourite Japanese video games
MORE: Weekend Hot Topic, part 2: Favourite Japanese video games
MORE: Games Inbox: Final Fantasy 16 suggestions, Call Of Duty 2040, and PS5 reveal date
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