Okay, so MS, EA, and Ubisoft had conferences today, and now the day ends with Sony... and... uh, yeah, they're going all out.
They started with a gameplay video of The Last Guardian. Yes, it's real, and dated for "2016". It looks like a PS3 game, really. Could be decent, but I'll need to see more actual gameplay.
Then they showed a new shooter / monster (robot) hunting game, or something, from Guerilla. It's a new IP called Hunt-something and looks good; female protagonist, far-future post-apocalyptic setting with humans with swords and bows and stuff fighting against robots.
Then after a while... Final Fantasy VII Remake. Yes, it's real. It's not Sony-exclusive, though; it's "first on Playstation". There's a trailer, but I don't know about a release date, so this could take a while...
On a less interesting note, they also showed another FF game which is called "World of Final Fantasy" and has chibi characters. It is apparently "console only on PS4 and PS Vita", which makes me think... mobile game. Or at least PC. Who knows.
Then... Shenmue III Kickstarter. Yes, a kickstarter, not an actual game, no game company will fund the game. $2 million goal, with stretch goals up to $4 million, so it's asking a lot of money...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3 but it's amazing that this is actually a thing.
They've promised more, but we'll see.
... And then the second half of the conference was weaker. There were no more major announcements, just stuff about games we already knew about, and then it finished with... a Uncharted 4 demo that didn't work. They had to reboot it right at the beginning (controller wasn't working), and maybe just play it as a video, instead of play it live? Heh...
- To talk about a few more of the things shown, No Man's Sky was at the conference too. It looks like a product that is not for people who want to play a game... it is for people who want to experience life, explore, find things, and shoot at them if you want. It's massive with no real clear gameplay hook unless you LOVE near-purposeless exploration, a 100% procedurally generated world, and such. Is it a game? Yes... but there's barely any point to it. This is not a game for me design-wise, that's obvious. Also no date was mentioned for release, for those who are interested in the game.
- Street Fighter V is shown. The game apparently will be a true exclusive on the PS4, but it looks SO much like SFIV, will this really be worth a full new number?
- They also spend quite a bit of time showing third-party multiplatform games -- Battlefront, Disney Infinity 3.0 (with an overly-excited guy), CoD: Black Ops 3, etc.
- For issues, the biggest one is that Sony has almost nothing this year, and they did not fix that issue at ALL in this press confrence. TLG is 2016. FFVII Remake is date unknown. Shenmue III is years away. Sony showed almost nothing that's actually releasing this year, which is their biggest issue -- they showed great stuff, but most of it is third party, and most isn't exclusive.
The "big three" from Sony are clearly the FF7 remake, Last Guardian actually being confirmed as something that still exists, and Shenmue 3.
As for Shenmue 3, I'd say it's a done deal at this point. Yes, it's a kickstarter, but I'm confident it'll meet it's goal. (Note: Just checked, it did. At this rate I'm confident it'll end up the most successful gaming kickstarter in the history of the site. Then "Silent Hills" will get kickstarted as "Quiet Mountain" and it'll smash through that.) By the way, the original game cost $70 MILLION, so there is NO way that a mere $2 Mil is going to fund a sequel made to the same level of detail as the originals. That's just not going to happen. However, I think there's a big reason this was a Sony announcement. I believe the reality is that Sony has agreed to fund the game so long as Sega and Yu can use Kickstarter to establish that there's still a desire for it (the same situation with Bloodstained, actually).
People have been saying "Just kickstart Shenmue" for years now, but even as successful as Kickstarter has been, I think it's a pipe dream for any of them to hope for $70 Million from donations alone. No Kickstarter has even approached numbers like that. I think the reason it's taken them so long to decide to do a kickstarter is because they've been looking for a group to help fund it, and they finally found it.
Great news at any rate, even if I feel a little less than inclined to donate money myself since they've already met their goal and I'm pretty confident the real purpose of the kickstarter was just proving interest.
The graphics are obviously getting a big jump if that trailer is any indication. I just hope they spend some of that money on better voice actors. Shenmue's voice acting is just painful now. It was somewhat excusable at the time, because most video game voice acting sucked back then, but wow is it distracting listening to Ryo saying "yeah" to those monotonous questions in that trailer. It made me think "oh.... right...".
The original Shenmue cost as much as it did for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they scrapped it well into development and started over. If you were going to make something exactly like the original Shenmue today, it would cost far less than $70 million, definitely.
I don't know about that, it was a game with an insane budget, far larger than most games of its time. Who's to say the game still wouldn't go crazy? I mean, it could be made for a lot less today to make a game like that that looks like Shenmue 1, but people expect more now...
A game of that size and scope (namely, the FREE system, giving intricate realistic handling to every single object on every shelf in every house) would be expensive to make even today. From what I've read, modern graphics didn't make older graphics less expensive to make, it just made making better graphics even more expensive. (Flat colored polygons in Star Fox are easier to make than more details single-layer textured N64 games, which are easier to make than 8 layered Gamecube games, which are easier to make than 12 layered bump mapped 360 games... etc... Modern toolkits only get so far in simplifying this from a man hour perspective.) The more detail, the more money goes into it. It's been a factor in exactly why modern games have such ballooning budgets. Making use of the capabilities of modern hardware starts to become prohibitively expensive the more powerful consoles get.
Consider Bloodstained. That's a 2D sidescrolling game, and that game STILL is costing over 5 million dollars to make (who knows how much more, since it's been established that outside interests were going to fund beyond the kickstarter amount).
But, you don't need my speculation. It's been confirmed. Yu Suzuki wasn't just allowed to pitch a kickstarter in the middle of Sony's conference out of Sony's good will and charity.
http://kotaku.com/sony-is-helping-make-s...1711819045
Now, to what degree is this confirmed? They're keeping tight lipped about exactly HOW much money Sony themselves are offering, but I'm going out on a limb and saying it's the lion's share of development cost. There's basically no way on earth a game like Shenmue could EVER be funded by donations alone. (In actual fact, I wouldn't WANT THAT much donated money going towards a game. Once it hits the $45-70 million, the cause better involve feeding orphans or something, or humanity's got some serious priority issues.)
Street Fighter V (PS4/PC) – Based on the first reveals I basically had thought of this as ‘SFIV but with better graphics’, but after watching people play the game, there is a bit more to it than that. Capcom have mixed up the game system a bit here — parries seem to be back in for example, and movesets are different. The art is also a bit different. Still, the game is very much based on Street Fighter IV. Just like that game it is a 2.5d fighting game, with polygonal graphics but gameplay strictly on a flat plane. The graphical design is also similar to SFIV, but with better graphics. SFIV is a good game, but never has grabbed me like KOF XIII. Still, I’m sure this game will be good. It’s already very playable, clearly.
In other news, it seems that Shenmue 3's kickstarter has kinda... stalled out.
http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/06/22/t...ather-sad/
It seems there's a rather strong push to say that this kickstarter is somehow "wrong". The first argument is they didn't reveal their connection to Sony "immediately" enough. Now, I knew pretty much from the start Sony was likely funding the lion's share of the costs, simply because Sony PUT this guy on stage to make this announcement. They weren't just doing it out of generosity. However, how is this any different than Bloodstained? I had noted how weird the notion of "kickstarting" a game other developers were putting up the funds for when that involvement wasn't entirely clear, but that involvement is clear as it's going to get now. Further, Bloodstained is talking about shadowy rather unknown groups of investors, but Shenmue 3 is referencing one very big name and thus very reliable investor. I'd say Shenmue 3 looks better for it.
The next argument is that they are being too "vague" in their promises. I'm not sure I get that. Every kickstarter I've ever seen that is for a game so early in design is just as vague, except maybe Mighty No. 9. Torment, for example, only made promises in vagueries like "it'll be like Planescape" and "has good writing" and "will be choice driven". It's becoming more crystallized at this stage, but people donating to that game didn't even know if it was going to be turned based or real time (a decision which eventually caused a lot of drama on the development forums).
Having pointed that out, the last argument is "I'm not talking about OTHER kickstarters, I'm talking about THIS one, I don't care what the others did!". I mean, how do you address where expectations should be without knowing the general way things are typically done? I can understand if you don't think ANY of these kickstarters should be so vague, but then WHY are you harping on THIS one alone instead of kickstarter culture as a whole? It just seems like when things like this happen, the hatred takes on a mind of it's own and won't stop until it achieves it's goal. The sad truth is, the internet is becoming a good tool for destroying lives. Heck, when someone made a racist comment on a plane, people got upset. That's fine. Use it as an example of a systemic problem. However, what they ACTUALLY did was make that ONE person a target of destruction instead of just an example of wider issues. She got fired by the time her plane landed. Was that REALLY necessary? Did that one racist comment really need to be taken to THAT extreme?
As a side note, I used to not want to share my real world identity because of fears I'd get my identity stolen, or mere privacy concerns. Now I don't want to share it because I've said some stupid and ignorant things in the past and I don't really feel like having my boring real world life scrutinized like I'm some sort of celebrity for however long it takes to destroy it so that the righteous can "win".
Quote:In other news, it seems that Shenmue 3's kickstarter has kinda... stalled out.
This is what virtually every Kickstarter goes through. 80%+ of the total take is likely to come in during the first two days and the last two days.