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Wow, so you were alive during the demo of Lost Soul Asideā¦
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The new Onimusha looks like RE4 with swords.
I think I havenāt said anything, but Ubisoft Spain has organized a strike against the central offices due to the change in the work conditions (they are being forced to change from remote work to office day work), and Ubisoft France and Italy, if Iām not wrong, have joined the strike.
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There are big strikes in France today regarding video game workers:
There was a specifically large one by Ubisoft France in October last year which was regarding the change to remote working:
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Yup. Itās the same strategy I think other companies did in the US and Canada to do quiet layoffs and Iām glad several companies in different countries in Europe are standing up together.
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It will be interesting to see how these layoffs are handled in respect to the union and the works councils here in Europe. I know sadly in the US the turn around from losing a job to being gone from a company can be a matter of hours, but here there is a better protection when people are forced to leave a role or company.
Itās made the news here, which is great to see the union (STJV) is being fully recognised and their voices are being heard.
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I donāt work in the industry, but I have been laid off by a giant corporation. I was let go in an email and it took about an hour to lose access to everything, including the email notifying me I was laid off.
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Well, at least I got this part right.
I donāt think itās this, exactly. A big thing that comes to my mind is that weāre coming out of the tail end of like ten to fifteen years of remakes, remasters, and sequels being just about the only thing most big studios were making (and really this probably goes back further if you consider the entertainment industry as a whole, rather than just gaming). People are conditioned not to want new things by this point because in broad strokes, new stuff wasnāt being made (and it still isnāt, in broad strokes, but that does seem to slowly be changing)
As far as we who still crave the new are concernedā¦
It was just kind of an underwhelming showcase, I think. While thereās new IP, even the new stuff is largely riffs on older things: new shooter A or B, character action game X or Y and so on. Nothing here was particularly fresh I donāt think. Even for those new IPs, itās often the case at this point that itās often the second game in a new franchise or its follow-up that tends to be the āgood oneā. Few studios can really knock it out of the park with a first installment of something new (and when that happens they tend to be very established studios whose owners havenāt liquidated all their talent since the last game, which is an increasingly rare thing)
Some of us are also just old and our tastes are well established, too! For myself, Iāve played enough shooting games in my time to know that I almost never like them, so any time I see a gun floating on a screen in a first-person perspective, I tend to just tune out (unless they also tell me itās RPG anyway, suggesting that the demands of the FPS gameplay wonāt be so high that Iāll be able to enjoy myself)
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Well, we are being attacked by techbros and the US precisely because we are the place that tries to put laws into any existing field and this usually become the basis for a lot of standards. Not like we are the best, but maybe this is the best place to exercise some change despite how bleak the industry is.
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I think youāre simultaneously touching on several subjects here, and Iāve spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking about this. For me at least, I donāt get too excited by most trailers because the games industry hype machine is generally nonsense anyway. If itās a trailer for something Iām familiar with, I dont need to see it to be excited by the idea of more of that familiar thing.
If itās a trailer for something new, well Iāll be more interested when the gameās out or thereās a lot of info about the actual gameplay available. But if itās a dev I already know, well now itās familiar again.
I remember Bungie saying during Halo: Reach development that players donāt know what they want, so you have to figure it out. If you ask a Gamer what they want, 100% of the time the answer is some permutation of āMore of the same but differentā.
Perhaps a hot take, but when Blizzard devs said āYou think you want it, but you donāt.ā The Gamers got pissed, but they were right. They didnāt really want WoW Classic, they wanted the feeling of WoW Classic and thatās what they eventually got. Like Shovel Knight is wildly different from an NES game, but it reminds you of one in all of the best ways.
Putting aside the fact there are no original ideas, if you want to sell people on a new idea, youāre forced to convey it in terms theyāre familiar with like, āItās like 2D Minecraftā, āItās Halo meets Starcraft.ā I donāt envy anyone trying to build interest in their new thing. Especially if theyāre indie.
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A realistic, down-to-earth game thatās completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots.
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Sony keeps making the mistake again and again of introducing new IPs without any gameplay.
This is counterproductive because it doesnāt give people any clue or signal whether the game will be something they might be interested in playing. It relies entirely on vibes, consumer loyalty and brand equity. You guys like AKIRA and trust NAUGHTY DOG and wish you had a PORSCHE, right?
People connect Saros to Returnal because that is the only reference they can attach to the potential experience they are expected to wishlist now.
It probably does not help that most of the ānewā stuff was just PS3 game design karaoke through Chinese kids who grew up idolizing Nomura. People liked the Konami game because it was a simple trailer with a functional main character that actually showed how the game plays.
As someone who does not care much about this IP, I thought the dynamic sword battles from the new Onimusha game, mixing the usual canned animations with pseudo-emergent situations, were by far the most exciting part of the show. They werenāt kidding when they said they aimed to reinvent sword fighting in action games.
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Fair play to be tired of franchises throwing a roguelike out and calling it a day (or just to be tired of franchises at all, really), but I do think the idea of a Dynasty Warriors rogue is pretty cool & I will probably try it when itās cheap
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Idk why yāall are calling yesterdayās Sony direct bad, after all we got a new fnaf!!
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RE: do gamers being ostensibly not interested in something genuinely new. I donāt think games and the game industry in particular is capable of envisioning something new. Games have been around long enough and have been experimented with enough for new ideas to make it through people funding and producing the game much like how Hollywood hasnāt been able to do that since probably the 60ās(iām not a hollywood expert so Iām open to criticism of this statement). all of my favorite films of the 70ās and 80ās have turned out of be lesser imitations of foreign films. I understand that film inspiration is a continuum and you wouldnāt have Solaris with out 2001 and you wouldnāt have alien with out Solaris but thereās a point where there is nothing new added to the remixing of a previous thing. I think we are at that point with games. Maybe, who knows.
David Lynch who only moments ago I could have called my favorite living director isnāt adding anything new to the remix except for the remix itself. For me his best and more profound ability is how he can use the codes of fim, the bits and pieces that comprise scenes and use out knowledge of them, out expectations of where they will take us against us. Those piece of his later movies are very familiar but the way in which he arranges them do not take us where we think they will and the feeling that gives in wondermentm mystery and ungounded horror and the imagery and sound he chooses to lean heavily into those feelings. If didnāt already invest all that I have into being a stupid visual artist and a game game designer instead I would try and do this with video games.
I hope this makes sense. I 'm not going to proof read it before submitting. That game is for suckers.
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I think part of the problem is the delivery. Iām much more likely to be interested in a game I stumble upon organically/on here vs something thatās put on a big Sony branded pedestal with a trailer cut to for the widest appeal possible. I wouldnāt be surprised if I end up interested in a few of those games but the 2-4+ min trailer with TikTok cut action is not going to hook me personally. Also being a hater is fun.
Honestly I just canāt bring myself to care about cinematic trailers from studios I donāt already follow or at least trust to deliver a real video game at this point. So much of this stuff just ends up being bland. Iāll give the cinematic trailer pass to a Death Stranding, but there are way too many Greedfall type underachieving open world games out there that Iām not convinced anyone actually plays.
There was some interesting stuff in there though. That new Onimusha thing looked promising. Dreams of Another has my attention. Mindseye looked stupid but, I mean, thereās some GTA pedigree there at least. Havenāt had a good GTA style game in a while so Iām not uninterested. Those Iāll probably all keep an eye on.
Hell is Us feels like a fake video game. I will be very surprised if that ends up being good.
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