curl-6 said:
freebs2 said:
With that i can partially agree. It's true you don't need a big budget to make a conceptually ambitiuos games, also yes a great part of Prime praise was also due to its great design (that quality though wasn't lost in recent DK games). In fact I believe we should still expect Retro games to stands out for gameplay, originality, level design quality and artistic design quality.
On a technical level, on the other hand, it's quite hard to directly compete with AAA games without a comparable budget. Take Zelda U for example. It looks great because it doesn't try to mimick what a standard wrpg look like. If they opted for more realistic visuals it would have looked outdated compared to, say, The Witcher 3 or Dark Souls 3. Same goes for indie developers, they always go for exotic or artsy graphics because it's their only option to make their games visually stand out. Fast Racing Neo is not really a good example because Shinen purposely tapped a genre with no competition on a console with no competition, the same game on PC or Ps4 would have likely gone overlooked.
I remember I read some time ago someone suggesting Retro should be making a 3rd person shooting game, like Uncharted or Tomb Raider. But how can that possibly work out? When Tomb Raider (2013) was released Square Enix admitted the game failed to meet sales target at 3.4 million copies sold. How can they aim to make a game that needs to sell more than 3m copies on a single platform, only to break-even? Yes, you can cut corners, cut voice acting and all, but in the end the more you detract the more customers will notice. Also what would be the point? Would it move consoles? I believe players on Ps4 wouldn't really care much about it since they can play Uncharted already. If ever they would downplay it - and we have already seen this happening with Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity on Xbox One; it was pointless. It's not nice to say it but this is one specific situation in which Nintendo should be going multiplatform in order to be successfull.
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Fast Racing Neo may not have competition from other futuristic racing games on console, but it still managed to be one of the most technologically accomplished Wii U titles despite being made with literally a handful of people. You can make great graphics without breaking the bank.
I would agree that it would be folly for Retro to spend a fortune trying outdo Uncharted for example. But I don't think that has to preclude them making ambitious titles. I don't think it's necessarily a matter of all or nothing; there's a sizeable middle ground between Tropical Freeze and Rise of the Tomb Raider, Retro could find a balance somewhere in between.
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On Fast Racing Neo, I don't want to downplay the amazing job that Shinen did, but the main 'wow' factor of the game is the engine. They have done a great job on low-level optimization in order to run shaders and effects that are otherwise can't run properly on WiiU. At the same time though the content of the games is pretty minimalistic. In order to make a game that's impressive on a larger scale, expecially if you are looking more into the realistic looking western AAA realm, you'll need much more than that. You'll need a lot of high-quality games assets (models, textures, animations, etc.), and that's where the bill goes up.
I agree Retro should be looking for a middle ground, but you make it look like DKTF is not ambitious at all. On a conceptual level I agree, It's not ambitious - it's basically more of the same of the remake of a 1995 concept . On the technical side, we could argue probably it was a bad idea to make an HD 3D sidescrolling platform in the first place - since indies have proved that, with a good art style, you can make a good 2D game for cheap . But, if you look at the effort that went into creating the game assets, DKTF is pretty much on par with Nintendo's other highest standard productions.
