Game News 2.0

ERG89

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1407992481204027399

Konami have released a demo for this years football game from them, they didn't call it PES. They've switched from the FOX Engine to Unreal. They haven't really advertised it on social media beforehand or since it went up.

Markitron

pixelburp wrote: »

One of the two Skyrim community backports, Skywind, released a recent update. They're still plugging away, but still miles off a release. The Beyond Skryim team seem a little more advanced, maybe they have more bodies on their work. Wonder which will be finished first; this or Star Citizen :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_K7Kpt7X84

Is it wrong that I just instinctively dismiss these massively ambitious fan projects? The latest being that fallout London thing. They just never ever seem to come out. I got excited for that RE4 fan remake when they announced it, but here we are about 18 years later and all we get are sporadic updates a couple of times a decade.

pixelburp

Markitron wrote: »

Is it wrong that I just instinctively dismiss these massively ambitious fan projects? The latest being that fallout London thing. They just never ever seem to come out. I got excited for that RE4 fan remake when they announced it, but here we are about 18 years later and all we get are sporadic updates a couple of times a decade.

I don't think it's entirely wrong; ambition is often the downfall of these kinds of mods. Underestimating just how complex the source game was under the hood. Fallout London possibly stands a better chance though, 'cos at least it's its own entity; the devs in a position to define the extent of the final game's scope. Maybe even release in stages if they modularised the experience. A 1:1 port of Morrowind to Skyrim feels a bit more constrained by the scale of the original version. I doubt there's much room to define a sandbox.

Beyond Skyrim are recreating all of Tamriel so are even more ambitious; last I checked though, they were polishing up their first releases, intentionally taking the smallest regions of Tamriel (which as it happens, haven't featured in any official game IIRC). No doubt like everyone else, CoVid threw a spanner into the works.

I'll say one thing: looking at footage of that Creation Engine toolkit, rather them than me. Thing looks a nightmare.

Retr0gamer

As some one that follows fan translation projects, when it comes to fan projects don't get excited about them until they are out. A lot of the do get made but these fans are basically building these games in their spare time with none of the developer tools and support. Fan translators often have to solve the compression algorithms for text and graphics while finding a way to extract assembly to modify. It's amazing they get made at all.

JimBurnley

Ghost of Tsushima standalone expansion rumour. Bring your own wheelbarrow of salt...

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/06/rumour_ghost_of_tsushima_standalone_expansion_to_be_announced_at_incoming_playstation_event

Vicxas

So with the state of World of Warcraft i decided to go elsewhere and tried FFXIV.

Its a bit of an adjustment but i found it weird that i didn't raise my weapon in anger for nearly 90 mins.

Anyone else playing it?

Zero-Cool

JimBurnley wrote: »

Ghost of Tsushima standalone expansion rumour. Bring your own wheelbarrow of salt...

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/06/rumour_ghost_of_tsushima_standalone_expansion_to_be_announced_at_incoming_playstation_event

Rumour's as well saying 8th July for the summer PlayStation event where this will be revealed. Hope that's true.

Potential-Monke

If true, it's day 1 for me! More Ghost is not a bad thing. And I do like the idea of playing a different character on a different set of Islands at the same time as the main game. Hope it's true!

quokula

Markitron wrote: »

Is it wrong that I just instinctively dismiss these massively ambitious fan projects? The latest being that fallout London thing. They just never ever seem to come out. I got excited for that RE4 fan remake when they announced it, but here we are about 18 years later and all we get are sporadic updates a couple of times a decade.

A lot of people massively underestimate the amount of work and expertise that goes into making games. Fan projects almost never live up to their promise, especially when they're overly ambitious.

quokula

JimBurnley wrote: »

Ghost of Tsushima standalone expansion rumour. Bring your own wheelbarrow of salt...

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2021/06/rumour_ghost_of_tsushima_standalone_expansion_to_be_announced_at_incoming_playstation_event

Uncharted Lost Legacy and Spiderman Miles Morales have won me over on these sorts of titles. When a developer already has the tech and assets in place, has all the feedback and learnings from the original game, and is able to put all their attention on a tightly focussed experience, the outcome can often be fantastic.

EoinMcLovin

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1408427745399427073?s=19

Vicxas

EoinMcLovin wrote: »

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1408427745399427073?s=19

Does anyone have any more context on this?

Mr Crispy

Vicxas wrote: »

Does anyone have any more context on this?

The conspiracy in question (reddit).

CatInABox

Must be absolutely gutting to slave away on a game for years, announce it, and then watch as the gaming world speculates that it's not you, but some other dude that's doing it. What's worse is the backlash that these guys will face when people finally realise that they've been telling the truth all along, and it really does have nothing to do with Kojima. People can be idiots.

ERG89

CatInABox wrote: »

Must be absolutely gutting to slave away on a game for years, announce it, and then watch as the gaming world speculates that it's not you, but some other dude that's doing it. What's worse is the backlash that these guys will face when people finally realise that they've been telling the truth all along, and it really does have nothing to do with Kojima. People can be idiots.

They threw a fair bit of that fuel on the fire themselves. Once they tweeted hinting about it being Silent Hill they were fùcked if it wasn't that. Then they started doing media interviews which just made them look clueless.

A lot of their story doesn't add up. They are claiming to have a budget of around 250k for a native 4k, 60fps PS5 game which really doesn't add up in in the slightest. They are outsourcing to a few studios and they delayed their app twice last week so it seems increasingly likely they tried this viral marketing campaign which seems to have backfired badly as they went about it in the worst way.

johnny_ultimate

The internet tends to exaggerate and blow things out of proportion: sending abuse or nastiness to someone over something as trivial as this is ludicrous.

There’s definitely a sketchiness to the project, though, albeit not necessarily in the ‘Kojima prank’ way. The vagueness of the details about development; the patchy history; the too big promises; the trailer which looks like a montage of pre-prepared forest assets; a mysterious ‘app’ to reveal the game (what does that even mean?). Not hard to see why people are wondering if something more is up (not to mention the funny coincidences / possible trolling). It’s all just gone a bit too far.

Penn

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

The internet tends to exaggerate and blow things out of proportion: sending abuse or nastiness to someone over something as trivial as this is ludicrous.

There’s definitely a sketchiness to the project, though, albeit not necessarily in the ‘Kojima prank’ way. The vagueness of the details about development; the patchy history; the too big promises; the trailer which looks like a montage of pre-prepared forest assets; a mysterious ‘app’ to reveal the game (what does that even mean?). Not hard to see why people are wondering if something more is up (not to mention the funny coincidences / possible trolling). It’s all just gone a bit too far.

In fairness, they really didn't help themselves, especially with the tweet about the game's name starting with S and ending with L. Either it's a new name no one would likely guess which means the letters mean nothing, or they wanted people to think it was Silent Hill to get people talking about it, and it horribly backfired.

At this stage, if it's not Silent Hill with Kojima, people aren't really going to give a f*ck about the game.

Robert ninja

I don't know why anyone gives a feck about it even if it was a SH game. The IP is dead and any actual SH fan ought to be content with the core games as good memories and solid titles to go back to. To continue worshipping the IP no matter who buys it is just dragging a corpse around like Pyramid head.

EoinMcLovin

https://twitter.com/hermenhulst/status/1409818077349306374?s=19

Penn

Sony has bought Housemarque.

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/06/29/welcoming-housemarque-to-the-playstation-studios-family/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Makes a lot of sense given they mostly made PS exclusives anyway, and after Returnal would be very excited to see what they do next.

Penn

Reddit saying that one of the Japanese Sony twitter accounts posted an image welcoming Bluepoint to the PS family, before deleting and replacing it with the Housemarque one. So possible announcement that they've bought Bluepoint incoming too.

johnny_ultimate

Always have mixed feelings about this sort of announcement. We need more mid-tier independent studios, rather than ones owned by one of the big corporations. The track record of such acquisitions isn't always a cause for hope either - too many good studios disappeared at the whim of their corporate parent.

That said, Housemarque seemed to really struggle to find a market with games such as Nex Machina (fantastic though it is), so there's something to be said for some financial security in this particular case. Ditto Double Fine and Microsoft.

OptimusTractor

If you try to be a smartass & get caught out using viral marketing w*nkery. Sympathy for you I do not have.

Retr0gamer

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

Why do we need this though?
Also, regarding the bad track record. I would agree if we were talking about Konami or EA or the awful, awful Activision but Sony? Sony's catalogue is very diverse and they seem to have a great relationship with their studios hence their success.

Because that can change. This is also the same Sony that just killed Sony Japan Studio and killed The studio Liverpool/Psygnosis teams. I know there's a feeling going around that sony are the saviours of videogames and can do no wrong but they've done some pretty scummy things recently as well and have only gotten away with it since MS were messing up way worse. They're aren't pushing videogames as an art or medium. They are making money and pleasing shareholders.

For an example look at what's happening with Sony Bend.

quokula

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Because that can change. This is also the same Sony that just killed Sony Japan Studio and killed The studio Liverpool/Psygnosis teams. I know there's a feeling going around that sony are the saviours of videogames and can do no wrong but they've done some pretty scummy things recently as well and have only gotten away with it since MS were messing up way worse. They're aren't pushing videogames as an art or medium. They are making money and pleasing shareholders.

For an example look at what's happening with Sony Bend.

You're really stretching things there with the Sony Bend reference, because one guy had a bit of a moan in a Bloomberg article.

Sony Bend have been part of Sony for over two decades now, they were always a smaller tier dev mostly working on portable games prior to developing Days Gone - the game got a mixed reception and didn't sell well, so ended up not getting a sequel which is hardly a crazy decision. The studio is working on another new IP now and is currently hiring and expanding. What a disaster!

johnny_ultimate

The Phantom Pain wrote: »

Why do we need this though?

I always want, wherever possible, studios to be run independently rather than owned and operated by a major parent company. Not a particularly controversial opinion, I hope: I simply prefer a plurality of people to be making and releasing games, rather than a centralised approach by a few mega-corps. This doesn't apply just to games, of course: same with tech firms, film studios etc...

As I said, though, Housemarque is one of the very few studios where there's at least some case to be made for an acquisition, simply because they've struggled to make the games they want to make financially viable (no fault of the games).

Also, regarding the bad track record. I would agree if we were talking about Konami or EA or the awful, awful Activision but Sony?

Sure, Sony can fairly ruthlessly close or downsize studios when they want to as well. Liverpool Studio; Japan Studio just recently; Evolution Studios back after DriveClub... They haven't bought up too many smaller studios so far, so will watch how this plays out anyway - open mind and all that.

Retr0gamer

quokula wrote: »

You're really stretching things there with the Sony Bend reference, because one guy had a bit of a moan in a Bloomberg article.

Sony Bend have been part of Sony for over two decades now, they were always a smaller tier dev mostly working on portable games prior to developing Days Gone - the game got a mixed reception and didn't sell well, so ended up not getting a sequel which is hardly a crazy decision. The studio is working on another new IP now and is currently hiring and expanding. What a disaster!

It's not a stretch. They've lost more than just two leads on the days gone team. Plenty of others left Sony bend recently. And they've had their license to make their own IP and games and are now doing contract work on someone else's IP. Not exactly a disaster but definitely a big downgrade on the studios ability to be creative which has cost them some talent.

sniper_samurai

PS5 directors cut of Ghost of Tsushima leaked via ESRB rating.

https://www.esrb.org/ratings/37845/Ghost+of+Tsushima%3A+Directors+Cut/

JimBurnley

sniper_samurai wrote: »

PS5 directors cut of Ghost of Tsushima leaked via ESRB rating.

https://www.esrb.org/ratings/37845/Ghost+of+Tsushima%3A+Directors+Cut/

Maybe packaged with the rumoured new standalone expansion?