midrange said:
Please don't take my comment as an insult to xenoblade, as I am a huge fan of monolith soft (had the wii version before it was cool :P). 1. as an open world game, xeno x looked good during the transition of generations (2012-2013) but now that we recieved the witcher 3, will receive fallout 4 a month before xeno x, and have Guerilla's Horizon on the horizon (pun intended), I view xeno x as technically "semi-decent" by today's standards set by those games. Of course I do not mean gameplay wise since the game has not come out in the US, but even then, fallout seems to have a more interactable world. 2. In the HD regard, Monolith's effort is truly admirable, but in the end, it is the results that matter the most (unfortunately). The shift to hd gave ps3 developers a lot of flak and pretty much the only way to escape that flak is to produce amazing results on your first attempt (this is way easier to do on the ps4 than the wii u) 3. Again, regardless of the background of each developer, it is the results that matter, and there is no denying that monolith could have made a truly amazing game in a shorter amount of time had they worked on the ps4 than the wii u. Why? Because the ps4 was designed for developers to use and not as an attempt to create a fad. Monolith does not need to be better than Guerilla games, but it is really telling that they are producing less results than they are, and that I believe is not a matter of their abilities, but more a matter of the hardware they are on |
1. The Witcher 3 isn't fully open world . I love the game, but I can't see how the "hub worlds" which all add up to much less landmass and are far less seameless exceed Xenoblade X's seamless truly open world in all three spatial dimensions. Fallout 4 seems to be more of the Elders Scrolls/Fallout (Bethesda) formula, probably a bigger and more detailed world than Skyrim - much like Xenoblade X. If Xenoblade X was top-tier three years ago, Fallout 4 isn't going to change that. Elder Scrolls/Fallout(Bethesda) games are sandboxes, Xenoblade Chronicles X is not. So obviously Fallout would have a more interactive world, but that says nothing about the open-world and whether it is seemless and much more about the detail of said world and the interactions that can be had with it. From that perspective Xenoblade X was outpaced by Daggerfall. As for Horizon, we have to see more of it. I was impressed with what we saw, but we have no idea of the size of the world and whether or not transitions will be seameless or my major concern - diverse. Which I think is Xenoblade's best trait, the diversity of its environment. The graphics and art-style of Horizon are very pretty though.
2. You were talking about the means though (how long it took) rather than the ends. I explained why it took that long.
3. I'm not buying it. Monolith Soft is having trouble with the budgets of 7th generation level development, so it would make no sense that they'd produce games faster when the graphical and asset quality standards are also higher (1080p and 2k textures, for example.) Sure, if Monolith Soft were creating the same exact game on PS4 they'd have an easier time, but the assumption is made that they need to improve the quality of assets with the addition power. And this of course disregards other aspects of development and planning like story, unique gameplay elements, and so on. It is quite easy to output many games when you've had experience with modern tools and you are using a modern engine (rather than having to build one yourself.) A better comparison would be Square-Enix and Monolith Soft. It took/will take Square-Enix ten years to finish FFXV, while Monolith Soft finished their game in five. Heck, it took Square-Enix ages to make the much less ambitious Final Fantasy XIII and it wasn't like they were encumbered with that one.
