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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Has Monolith surpassed Retro Studio as new Nintendo elite studio?

 

Wich one?

I prefer Monolith 232 52.02%
 
I prefer Retro Studio 214 47.98%
 
Total:446
midrange on 08 January 2016
Pavolink said:
xwolf7 said:

But only for one vote now :(, what's wrong with people :(.

Opinions. Wrong opinions of course.

Opinions by definition can't be wrong, sorry not everyone thinks monolith is better than retro



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curl-6 on 08 January 2016
MTZehvor said:
curl-6 said:

That pretty sums it up, yeah.

Retro built a name for themselves as a studio who pushed hardware limits to create epic adventures that provided a more serious counterpoint to EAD's usual fare, and could stand toe-to-toe with the big guns of Playstation and Xbox.

Recently, they've strayed from this foundation by playing it too safe, while Monolith has usurped their position as the first party studio who pushes boundaries.

This seems like an incredible reach to me. Retro has been assigned one single project that was considered "too safe," and Monolith has produced a single game that pushes the boundaries of the hardware, and now we're ready to declare that Retro has gone astray and Monolith has somehow usurped this title?

As someone playing through X currently, I think what Monolith's done is certainly impressive, but this entire thread feels like a knee jerk reaction at best. One game does not a trend make. If Monolith continues to push the boundaries like they've done with Xenoblade X, and Retro continues to produce less ambitious titles, then yes, this would have some merit. But this is one, single game for both sides; Tropical Freeze for Retro and X for Monolith.

(to clarify, this isn't to say anything bad about the original Xenoblade Chronicles, just that it didn't push the limitations of the hardware in the same way the Prime games or X did)

Xenoblade on Wii pushed the system just as hard if not harder than X pushes Wii U, and harder than any Retro title pushed its respective hardware since Metroid Prime 3 back in '07.



Dulfite on 08 January 2016
MTZehvor said:
Dulfite said:
MTZehvor said:
Dulfite said:

2) That % from the lifehold goes down as you do missions, it's not like if you just stand around humanity is going to die. There should not be a rush or pressure feeling at all from this, I certainly don't feel pressure.

 

I don't want to drag an off topic conversation out too much longer, but the fact that you don't feel pressure is, to me, quite telling. The story is designed around the concept of pressure; consistently telling the player that they need to hurry or else humanity will die out. With a central narrative based around enforcing a sense of urgency, the gameplay should, ideally, set up in such a way to allow the player to play as if they are really in the story. While I wouldn't advocate an actual time limit (I'm more than aware of how the countdown works) that drops down like in Majora's Mask, I think the complete opposite end of the spectrum simply disconnects people from the main story.

To illustrate with an example, take something like the final bit of Skyward Sword, where Ghirahim has captured Zelda and is going to drain her soul (or whatever he does) to resurrect Demise. Now imagine that the game, instead of encouraging you to chase after him, forced you to go save someone's cat or paint someone's house. You'd probably reasonably assume, as the player, that Zelda couldn't be in that much trouble if you've got the time to go save cats or paint houses. It's the same sort of deal here. I'm all for games heavily based around exploration; some of my favorite games of all time, such as Super Metroid and Wind Waker, require a ton of exploration. Where the game starts to lose me is when a disconnect appears between narrative and gameplay. On one hand, the game implements a story that is based around creating a sense of urgency. On the other hand, the game implements mission design that requires a deep level of exploration. That disconnect is what I'm interested in knowing if you care about.

1) Zelda is intended to be a linear game. Yes, in recent ones, there have been side quests but they aren't really anything special or character developing like the affinity missions or quests you stumble upon in X.

2) I HATED Majoras mask time thing so much that I want nothing to do with any game even remotely like that. That was so stressful. I'm not saying it was a bad game or that people can't enjoy it, but it's not my type of game. My type of game is like X, where there is no stress. Yes, they occassionally make you think about the lifehold deadline (it isn't even that often), but afterwords they bring up random little things, implying that you as a gamer shouldn't be stressed playing this game. It is meant to be enjoyed.

3) Zelda, despite it's linear storyline and lack of major side quests that have nothing to do with that major storyline, does offer plenty of things to do, especially in recent games, that have nothing to do with the story; fishing, for example.

1) If you're going to classify Zelda as a linear game, then X is right up there with it. Both allow for exploration and player freedom, with certain objectives vital to the main story that need to be completed in a certain order (dungeons for Zelda, story missions for X), and both allow for side quests that can be done whenever the player desires after a certain point in the game (after obtaining certain items in Zelda and after reaching a certain level or point in the story for X). The inclusions of affinity missions doesn't make X less linear; all it does is simply change the type of sidequest you're doing or how long the sidequests take to accomplish.

2) I'm not advocating Majora's Mask as something this game should seek to emulate; I'd advocate anything but for something like X. With that said, if the goal of the game isn't to make people feel rushed, then choosing a storyline revolving around the entirety of the human race dying out if a certain object isn't found in enough time was a really, really poor decision.

3) Zelda offers plenty of things to do, and this is where we come to the crux of the issue. Well, two cruxes, actually. The first is offering versus forcing. It's fine if a game wants to allow its player to screw around and completely ignore the story, it's another thing entirely if the game forces the player to do so. If X didn't require the player to, say, save people's cats before going off to search for the lifehold, then I wouldn't have a complaint. The forcing of the sidequest upon the player is what drastically changes things.

The second crux, however, and what I'd argue is the most important one, is that in the case of most Zelda games, you're really in no rush for most of the time. In Ocarina of Time (with the exception of the last bit where Zelda gets captured) the world is already fucked. Can't get much worse. In Majora's Mask, everything's just getting undone anyway, so there's no reason to not screw around. It's not like any good you do will matter much. In Wind Waker, Ganondorf isn't really in a position to do anything harmful at the moment. In X (again, speaking purely from a narrative standpoint), if you don't hurry, everyone dies. That's the difference.

 

1) The amount of side quests and things you can do in X compared to Zelda is insane. There are probably thousands of quests in x, where as there aren't probably even a dozen in most Zelda games. By this logic, Zelda is a far more linear game than X. I could spend a month just doing side quests everyday in X without even touching the main storyline. I could spend maybe 20 minutes doing the same thing in a Zelda game without having to advance the main story.

2) I think you are complaining about something that no one else cares about. The game is fun and a lot of people are buying it. I don't view it as a poor decision and, based on sales and most people's opinions of the game, I many else care.

3) I'm not on Chapter 11 yet, but no quest I've done so far feels pointless in the main storyline. Also, Zelda forces you to do some pretty dumb things things in many games, especially early on. And Zelda offers virtually nothing for you to do unless you enjoy doing meaningless fishing things or getting chests of 50 ruppees even though you have max wallet space or 1/4 heart pieces which you don't even need to beat the game (you could easily beat zelda games with just the main heart ups after bosses).

We also don't even know how much the % goes down each day, since it only updates after each chapter, so it could literally be months or even longer in game time. Yes, there is pressure to get it done, but they don't, as far as I'm aware, suggest that they need the lifehold to be found in a certain amount of time, indicating that we really don't know the rate it drops per day. Your assuming it's dropping quickly because you probably went through the chapters quickly, but you could be incorrect.



xwolf7 on 08 January 2016
curl-6 said:
Jumpin said:

no one who worked on Metroid Prime is even still at Retro.

That's straight-up incorrect. Many of the staff behind the original Metroid Prime remain in the credits of Tropical Freeze, including artists, animators, engineers, audio crew, and producers.

Well to be fair a lot of the key members that worked on Prime Trilogy has left the studio, that includes Mark Pacini the director of the trilogy, the Lead Game/Level Designer and the Director of Technology, that now are working on Recore for Xbox one.

But what i  truly want from Retro is them working on a new ip, i know there is still talented people at the studio, and i want to see an original take from them of any genre, i hope that Nintendo gives them the chance to create a new western oriented ip.







PSN ID: xwolf7 / NNID: xwolf_07 

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curl-6 on 08 January 2016
xwolf7 said:
curl-6 said:
Jumpin said:

no one who worked on Metroid Prime is even still at Retro.

That's straight-up incorrect. Many of the staff behind the original Metroid Prime remain in the credits of Tropical Freeze, including artists, animators, engineers, audio crew, and producers.

Well to be fair a lot of the key members that worked on Prime Trilogy has left the studio, that includes Mark Pacini the director of the trilogy, the Lead Game/Level Designer and the Director of Technology, that now are working on Recore for Xbox one.

Some key figures have left, true, but that's normal for any studio over a 12 year period.

The oft-repeated myth that "no one" who worked on Prime is still with the studio is false though.



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MTZehvor on 08 January 2016
Dulfite said:

1) The amount of side quests and things you can do in X compared to Zelda is insane. There are probably thousands of quests in x, where as there aren't probably even a dozen in most Zelda games. By this logic, Zelda is a far more linear game than X. I could spend a month just doing side quests everyday in X without even touching the main storyline. I could spend maybe 20 minutes doing the same thing in a Zelda game without having to advance the main story.

2) I think you are complaining about something that no one else cares about. The game is fun and a lot of people are buying it. I don't view it as a poor decision and, based on sales and most people's opinions of the game, I many else care.

3) I'm not on Chapter 11 yet, but no quest I've done so far feels pointless in the main storyline. Also, Zelda forces you to do some pretty dumb things things in many games, especially early on. And Zelda offers virtually nothing for you to do unless you enjoy doing meaningless fishing things or getting chests of 50 ruppees even though you have max wallet space or 1/4 heart pieces which you don't even need to beat the game (you could easily beat zelda games with just the main heart ups after bosses).

We also don't even know how much the % goes down each day, since it only updates after each chapter, so it could literally be months or even longer in game time. Yes, there is pressure to get it done, but they don't, as far as I'm aware, suggest that they need the lifehold to be found in a certain amount of time, indicating that we really don't know the rate it drops per day. Your assuming it's dropping quickly because you probably went through the chapters quickly, but you could be incorrect.

1) The amount of side quests in a game does not determine linearity. If you want to claim that X has more sidequests than Zelda, then I'll grant you that. But referencing sidequests as an example of non-linearity simply doesn't work.

2) I'm certainly not the only one complaining about it. Here's a couple quotes from various website reviews of X that reference similar complaints.

"(Story) progression sometimes slows to a halt because you're required to complete a seemingly unimportant mission" -Gamespot

"Story pacing itself is also skewed due to each in-game chapter requiring prerequisites to initiate. These can be anything from completing a certain side quest, to raising your completion rating in a specific area. While playing the game normally can generally complete these prerequisites without you realizing it, some of the more demanding ones can halt your game progression completely, potentially for hours if you weren’t properly prepared." -Brash Games

"Unfortunately, the game often demands that you exhaustively analyze swaths of the planet before progressing to the next story mission, leading to the first of many barriers to a natural narrative flow. It doesn't matter if you want to progress the plot; you could be spending hours grinding to meet the arbitrary requirements to keep the narrative rolling." -Game Informer

And these are just a couple examples I found while scrolling through the Metacritic critic review section. I know of a couple of friends who are playing through the game now and have had similar complaints, and I'd bet money I could easily find another 5-10 reviews that mention these same complaints if I went and did any sort of thorough check.

All that to say; this isn't a complaint that only I am voicing. Plenty of reviewers are, and X's not terrible but not great sales might be communicating that this type of game isn't something that tons of people want, if we're using the pretty arbitrary measure of sales as a yardstick for whether a game mechanic is flawed or not.

3) I agree, Zelda often does (particularly in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword), and I've called out those games for doing that as well. Just because someone else does something dumb, though, doesn't mean others get a pass for it.

And yes, I'm aware that the game clock doesn't actually drop in relation to actual passage of time, or anything but how often you complete story missions. My point is that if you want to get engaged in the story, it's hard to do that in any way besides playing how you would if you were a character there. And X's story makes it so that that's impossible.



Lucas-Rio on 16 January 2016

As it stands, Retro Studio won by such a small margin it can be called a draw.



Lucas-Rio on 14 January 2018

So, we got another really great and amazing game from Monolith Soft, with Xenoblade 2, while there are still absolutely no news of what Retro is doing (maybe a release this year end?).

Maybe some people who voted for Retro have changed their opinions 2 years later? I finally bought DKTF and it's a great game, but the output of Retro has diminished so much compared to Monolith.



ninson95 on 14 January 2018

I'd go with Monolith. Metroid prime was incredible but so was Xenoblade chronicles on the Wii. But Monolith soft has established their own franchise whereas Retro hasn't done that yet. That might change with the Switch but Monolith, to me at least, is the more ambitious and creative game studio overall.



Flilix on 14 January 2018

Assuming that Retro hasn't just done anything at all the past few year, we will probably get a new game soon. I'm curious to see what it will be, since it's not Metroid or Donkey Kong.