Sheikah

There's really no need to be automatically defensive/dismissive. The fact I'm on Ronnie's side here goes to show this isn't a clear cut case of people just hating on a Sony game for the sake of it. As someone who has played a shit tonne of open world games, this was really disappointing for me. I appreciate this side discussion happened after sales figures were posted, but in my case this such a weird game that to this day I can't fathom its popularity. It's such an enigma! In my opinion it's really just such a bad game.

Completely agree. All style no substance this game, easily one of the most overrated games in years. It was like open world design from 2012.

This sounds really neat, like an extra incentive to do challenges. Sounds right up your street @Hero-of-Time.

It really does look great. I'm super excited for it.

If it doesn't sell too well I suppose they can always flog it to Sony to be included as a Plus game.

I just played and finished Minit. What a charming little game, felt very much like a concise Link's Awakening. Probably the quickest platinum trophy I've ever earned.

I know, I know. I wanted to give it another chance, view the game from a different perspective and all that. The trouble is that after playing a bit more, I realised I hated everything about the game on a really fundamental level. It's like they combined the absurd story of Kingdom Hearts with a walking simulator, with a sprinkling of QTEs on top. It's fine though, I've moved on to I am Dead now, which is a pretty charming indie game.

Does a game count as "backlog" if you played 4-5 hours of it and never want to go back to it?

Ah, here was me thinking we could all have a good bitch about it. Well, seeing as you guys liked it it's making me think I should give it one more chance. I know you're telling me to do exactly the opposite but I'm stubborn like that. [emoji14]

Well I played maybe about 3-4 hours of Death Stranding and came away feeling it was a crock of garbage. Honestly, I'm struggling to think of a game more dull than this! So much visual clutter and information overload in menus/mission select screens, a seriously convoluted story (I know it's Kojima, but still), but worst of all - delivering packages. Whyyyy. Why is this a thing? Running along repetitive terrain while pressing L2 or R2 periodically to balance is so very boring. Maybe you guys who've played it all the way through can rebuff me here but what I actually played makes me never want to go back!

Yeah, was shocking when I heard that at the time.

Absolutely, it was a really silly decision to change Aeris's fate, in my opinion, as well as complicating the story and rewriting it. People love FFVII's story so why change it? Her death was a very significant moment and greatly affected Cloud's personality and the rest of the story. The rewriting and complexity has Nomura all over it. You only need to look at the story of Kingdom Hearts to know the man shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the remake, or any game for that matter.

I actually read his IGN interview and he makes the procedurally generated planets sound quite dull, rather like those in No Man's Sky. I still don't get the point of spending time adding boring content into a game, but I guess we will see when the game launches how that plays out.

Let's give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it has 4 or 5 worlds that everyone will visit through the course of the story and are designed with care. My question is, what is the point of those 1,000+ extra optional planets that they procedurally generated? I'd argue they'd be better off spending their time and resources on more of those hand-designed planets than working on an algorithm. I'm all for more curated experiences these days - going back to Outer Wilds, it completely floored me in terms of its design. You simply can't beat hand-designed worlds. No Man's Sky has thousands of lines of dialogue too. In fact, millions! Because you can bet your ass it uses procedural generation in creating those lines. [emoji14]

Not when it comes to the boast of there being "over 1,000 planets". We can immediately understand that there will be limitations that come with hitting that number. You don't need a lot of procedural generation at all. Look at Outer Wilds, easily one of the best games ever made, IMO. All the planets were intricately designed, and by a tiny team. There's certainly not 1,000 planets in that game, but there really doesn't need to be, which is my point. It's not that I necessarily mind that there'll be some procedural generation, it's that there'll be a lot of it in order to hit that 1,000+ planets. You're quite right that people were excited by the prospect of NMS, but then they got burned by the reality of it. In fact, them saying there's "over 1,000 planets" makes me immediately think of NMS and the repetitive planets (and strange computer randomised creatures).

Here's the thing - you can judge whenever you want, that's fundamentally how it works. They show footage or reveal information, and people judge it. And they want you to judge it - that's why they're telling us about these things (like having over 1,000 planets). They want you to make a positive judgement based on the information they reveal. It was basically a backfire - they thought it would come across as a good thing. Negative reactions can also help though - you'd think they'd rather hear now what people don't like then change their game accordingly, than nobody say anything and for the game to later bomb. Remember when 343/Microsoft got negative feedback on Halo Infinite? They delayed the game and made it better. In this case where they've said there's "over 1,000 planets", you seem adamant that we should "wait and see" the finished game before making judgement. I disagree there. How can there be over 1,000 fully unique, handcrafted planets? We're not talking small levels here - planets. It's impossible. There will be either repeated sections, textures, creatures, quest types, etc., or some kind of algorithm (think No Man's Sky) to make variations in content, in a pretty see through way. Whichever way they go with it we're not going to see the same quality as if there we just a few planets that were entirely handcrafted.

I will absolutely judge it when they've - 1. Shown gameplay for the purpose of judging (they're hoping people judge favourably), and 2. Made the claim about 1,000 planets, coupled with showing gameplay and visuals on some of those planets. Even if they've made the planets interesting enough to visit, why make 1,000? There's going to be repeated elements to achieve that, and it's not like people are going to visit 1,000. Feels like they're sacrificing quality game design here just to boast of a high number. I'm not the only to have thought this, there's an article on Kotaku saying much the same thing. Interestingly they point to a similar situation with Dying Light 2, where the devs boasted about the main game taking 500 hours to complete. Similarly that was a boast of a large number that backfired - the devs obviously thought that sounded good but it was not well received, since it suggests bloat and/or repetitive design. They then had to issue a series of clarifications to make the number sound smaller!

"No Man's Sky resource farming" is a very specific description, not something broad simply like "racing cars". And you know what - resource farming in NMS, particularly at launch, was very dull. I believe you've mistaken the point I was making. I don't care if a game copied/resembled another, I care whether what it's resembling was something that was fun. Well there's explosives, which is how modern mining is done. Not gonna lie, I was confused/amused by this bit of your post. The way you typed this, it's we though you're suggesting that using a "mining laser" (think Dr Evil air quotes) is more or less the obvious, default way you'd ever think to mine, with a pickaxe being little more than a curiosity. I mean, you rarely mined like this in games before No Man's Sky, on account of this not reflecting how mining is done in reality. Most of all though it just wasn't very fun to do in No Man's Sky. So it's ok that part of it doesn't look fun because of its stated genre? Don't derend this. Boasting about having 1,000 planets is something devs might have done in the 2000s or early 2010s. It's very Skyrim-esque, actually (the whole "See that mountain? You can go there!"). You can't make 1,000 planets have the same level of detail and craft to them as a small cluster of fully hand-designed ones. Elements will be randomised and procedurally generated to reach that 1,000 number. And to what end? Not like anyone is ever going to travel to 1,000 planets anyway. Is it purely to wow people with a large number?

Well I wasn't exaggerating. To me the facial animations and visuals looked very outdated, while the gameplay on planets (particularly in terms of mining resources) looked a lot like No Man's Sky at launch. The combat also looked very lacking. And the promise of a thousand planets means that there's going to be procedural generation in place of properly handcrafted content. You may think I'm overexaggerating but we've seen games like Anthem and No Man's Sky fare very badly for having these sorts of issues. Don't get me wrong, I can see this game appealing to some people but it really didn't look great to me.

We must have been watching something else, Starfield looked extremely ropey to me. Those facial animations in particular looked extremely basic, like 360-era basic.

I know you were joking but the others weren't. It's a comparison that has been made a few times before, and not jokingly!

Exactly. I mean, you couldn't be more correct about the overworld in BoTW being more like Zelda I than Skyward Sword's was.

Well I didn't say that. I said that Zelda prior to BoTW had already changed dramatically from Zelda I. So to state that BoTW was no longer "Zelda" doesn't make sense. I get that some people didn't like BoTW but you can hardly state it's not a true Zelda game.

Yeah, it was clear they didn't. It just didn't make sense to call out BoTW for not being "authentic" Zelda when the series had already changed from what it originally was.

That's the point I was hoping you'd make - it's not a case that Zelda is "no longer Zelda", it's that it isn't what you personally wanted it to be. Zelda prior to BoTW wasn't like Zelda I either.