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Forums - Gaming Discussion - I don't like the direction Sony is taking

 

Do you only play narrative games?

Yes 162 39.61%
 
No 247 60.39%
 
Total:409
darkknightkryta on 22 June 2017

I don't really mean ill will when I say this, but are you young OP? Cause this has been Sony's direction since pretty much when they launched the playstation. I mean, go look at the commercial for Legend of Dragoon, it's literally a fake "Take x scene" all movie style. Most of their games are focused on story telling. This isn't anything new, on the contrary, this has been what Sony's been doing all along. It just seems like the execs finally realized and accepted this.



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Turkish on 22 June 2017
GOWTLOZ said:

This is an exceprt from an interview of Jim Ryan, courtesy of GameSinners:

This was revealed by Sony’s Jim Ryan in an interview with Glixel, with the article mentioning that the game’s “new, more narrative-focused, open-world approach with a grizzled, bearded Kratos coming as a direct result of Sony’s new global thinking.” Ryan adds that “It’s a franchise that has historically acutely under-performed in Europe. Hack and slash games tend to not do so well in Europe, so the narrative this time around will make a big difference. European gamers love narrative games.”

http://gamesinners.com/news/2017/06/05/god-war-ps4-will-open-world-narrative-focused/

 

Firstly, I thought the gameplay looked great, and the atmosphere was spot on. Also God of War has always been narrative focussed, just a very differnt kind of narrative from your typical Naughty Dog game. But still I disagree with his statement for a variety of reasons.

 

This is wrong fro a variety of reasons. First, its wrong to homogenise all of Sony's franchises into The Last of Us like games, because even with that game's success I'm sure gamers do want varierty of games and if trhey want The Last of Us they have The Last of Us Part II to look forward to.

With this line of thought its also clear that targetting just that segment of the market wouldn't actually benefit any of these games because that segment already has another game to look forward to.

We saw what happens when you have a homogenous set of games, when the market shifts to different kind of products all of your franchises lose appeal at once and you have no backup left to serve the new tastes of the market. I think to a degree that is what happened with Microsoft games outside of Forza this generation, Halo and Gears of War appeal toa fairly similar market and both heavyweight franchises lost their weight at once this generation, while Forza has continued to thrive and Forza Horizon has expanded its audience this generation.

Second, it limits developer's creativity. The reason The Last of Us succeeded in both reviews and sales was that Naughty Dog were allowed to do what the wanted to, given creative freedom, and so they had a passion to make the best kind of product in its niche with The Last of Us. Its success came as a result of that. This is something Sony were good with last generation, that is why we had a diverse lineup of games like Infamous, Uncharted, God of War, Gran Turismo, Resistance, LittleBigPlanet and The Lat of Us. Sony is going to lose the one thing that makes their games stand out from both other first party games and third party games, something that is a reason millions of people play on PlayStation.

Also eventually third parties will see the niche as being successful, make games in the niche and take over Sony's first party games in the niche with their bigger budget due to being able to serve a larger audience. Its an unsustainable business practice and should be left in the dust. Jim Ryan's comment on PS2 backwards compatibility also irked me, he has no right to talk about what gamers want, he didn't even take a sample of gamers to decide what they want, but just that he didn't like PS2 games. So what? I like some PS2 games. Many people do. I can even play them on my PC, so why not on its own family? It makes no sense Sony. If gamers ask for it, give it to them.

Narrative focused doesn't mean it's another TLOU, where did you get this from? Horizon is also narrative focused, is that another TLOU? Literally the only thing Sony said was that they'll continue putting stories in their games like they've always had, it's a shame you wrote a wall of text based on assumptions and misunderstandings. A follow up to this quote is here http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=229780&page=1#

And Sony does make more than cinematic/narrative games too, like Journey, The Last Guardian, Dreams, Gravity Rush 2, Everybody's Golf etc and putting all these remasters of their old non narrative IPs like WipEout and Patapon to see if there's still demand.

Btw, what's up with you posting old articles? This was posted here on the day the article was published. Use the search button, and I gotta ask what's up with bumping your old threads? Like you come back to your threads weeks later lol.



KLAMarine on 22 June 2017
aLkaLiNE said:
KLAMarine said:

Joel seems to be to Ellie what Kratos seems to be to the kid... On the surface anyways...


Even without knowing the context of each relationship I feel like you're being incredibly disingenuous. The themes are completely different, the gameplay itself is completely different, ones a stealth/survival game while the other is a hack and slash, and the connection between each pair is different as well - father/son and guardian/savior.

I didn't say the two were EXACTLY the same. They're definitely not. What I said was

KLAMarine said:

God of War 4 looks like it's inspired by The Last of Us....

The two are not as different as some may think: over-the-shoulder camera, companion NPC, paternal role played by player, segments in which the player walks through what are essentially cutscenes playing around them.

Past God of Wars were far more different than The Last of Us than this upcoming God of War.



NawaiNey on 22 June 2017
KLAMarine said:
aLkaLiNE said:


Even without knowing the context of each relationship I feel like you're being incredibly disingenuous. The themes are completely different, the gameplay itself is completely different, ones a stealth/survival game while the other is a hack and slash, and the connection between each pair is different as well - father/son and guardian/savior.

I didn't say the two were EXACTLY the same. They're definitely not. What I said was

The two are not as different as some may think: over-the-shoulder camera, companion NPC, paternal role played by player, segments in which the player walks through what are essentially cutscenes playing around them.

Past God of Wars were far more different than The Last of Us than this upcoming God of War.

All that sounds great. We kill things on our way to the next cutscene in pretty much every campaign of any game. 

We do that same thing in every uncharted game for example, the thing that makes it still fun to do after 4 uncharted games is having a guy like Sully or Sam or Elena with you. they make that journey more fun. If you don't like it go buy the games that don't have these things so the devs can make more of those games that you like and let people who like these games buy these. Don't try to tell people that your taste is superior to theirs and they should be supporting and therefore funding the type of games you like. It's obnoxious. 



KLAMarine on 22 June 2017
NawaiNey said:
KLAMarine said:

I didn't say the two were EXACTLY the same. They're definitely not. What I said was

The two are not as different as some may think: over-the-shoulder camera, companion NPC, paternal role played by player, segments in which the player walks through what are essentially cutscenes playing around them.

Past God of Wars were far more different than The Last of Us than this upcoming God of War.

All that sounds great. We kill things on our way to the next cutscene in pretty much every campaign of any game. 

We do that same thing in every uncharted game for example, the thing that makes it still fun to do after 4 uncharted games is having a guy like Sully or Sam or Elena with you. they make that journey more fun. If you don't like it go buy the games that don't have these things so the devs can make more of those games that you like and let people who like these games buy these.

I'm sorry, what are you referring to here?

NawaiNey said:

Don't try to tell people that your taste is superior to theirs and they should be supporting and therefore funding the type of games you like. It's obnoxious. 

I don't recall doing these things.



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NawaiNey on 22 June 2017
KLAMarine said:
NawaiNey said:

All that sounds great. We kill things on our way to the next cutscene in pretty much every campaign of any game. 

We do that same thing in every uncharted game for example, the thing that makes it still fun to do after 4 uncharted games is having a guy like Sully or Sam or Elena with you. they make that journey more fun. If you don't like it go buy the games that don't have these things so the devs can make more of those games that you like and let people who like these games buy these.

I'm sorry, what are you referring to here?

NawaiNey said:

Don't try to tell people that your taste is superior to theirs and they should be supporting and therefore funding the type of games you like. It's obnoxious. 

I don't recall doing these things.

What I mean is you bitching about what games devs are making on VGC isn't going to change anything, all you can really do is buy the type of games you want more of so devs can make more of those games. Just like  I will be buying this new GOW even though I've never liked GOW games till now cause Kratos is kind of drag but I feel like his son being a constant companion will make this game a more enjoyable experience. It sucks that the type of games you want aren't as liked by most people and hence aren't sustainable in the AAA space, perhaps try some indies, or Knack 2 looks like a good replacement for the old GOW type of game.



mjk45 on 22 June 2017
JRPGfan said:
I dont get the vote, why NO is winning.
Sony thinking globaly with game design, so games appeal to more markets... is somehow bad?
Yep who wants them listening to consumers anyways right?

there is a difference in listening to consumers and thinking you know what consumers need, GOW has since it's inception been strong in the NA market just because it was not so strong in europe doesn't point to it being because of narrative , lets remind ourselves that Kratos was created as a counterpoint to all those upstanding heroe architypes out there enabling us to play at being an angry brutal protagonist , so we might be losing the essence of what made GOW popular, and the diversity it gives to the Ist party portfolio, just by looking at demographics.

Many jrpg's are far worse off when it comes to European versus NA sales same with FPS , what about the other way do we lessen narrative in games that do worse in NA than Europe , or do we simply allow our writers and designers to decide whether their game needs more or less narrative  based upon the creative process and rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole .



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aLkaLiNE on 22 June 2017
KLAMarine said:
aLkaLiNE said:


Even without knowing the context of each relationship I feel like you're being incredibly disingenuous. The themes are completely different, the gameplay itself is completely different, ones a stealth/survival game while the other is a hack and slash, and the connection between each pair is different as well - father/son and guardian/savior.

I didn't say the two were EXACTLY the same. They're definitely not. What I said was

The two are not as different as some may think: over-the-shoulder camera, companion NPC, paternal role played by player, segments in which the player walks through what are essentially cutscenes playing around them.

Past God of Wars were far more different than The Last of Us than this upcoming God of War.

Yes and the main characters all have a nose, two eyes and skin. I do see some parallels but it's the same exact parallels I see in pretty much any game ever. Master chief and Cortana. Main character of recore and her robot friend. Scalebound dragon and dragon rider dude. Ratchet & clank. Jak & Daxter. Donkey kong, Diddy Kong. God of war has been third person about a decade before the last of us was even released, so I'm not sure how the later inspired the former on that one. 

 

"Segments in which the player walks through essentially cutscenes". 

 

Let me ask you this. In a video game, would it be better to be able to interact during heavily thematic moments or would you rather all control stripped from you while you observed the story unfold from a fixed perspective? Sonys devs have gotten good enough to forgo cutscenes, and instead render everything in real time while allowing the player to still have at least a certain degree of control. If that's not for you, whatever but It's hard to see how that's a flaw.



NawaiNey on 22 June 2017
mjk45 said:
JRPGfan said:
I dont get the vote, why NO is winning.
Sony thinking globaly with game design, so games appeal to more markets... is somehow bad?
Yep who wants them listening to consumers anyways right?

there is a difference in listening to consumers and thinking you know what consumers need, GOW has since it's inception been strong in the NA market just because it was not so strong in europe doesn't point to it being because of narrative , lets remind ourselves that Kratos was created as a counterpoint to all those upstanding heroe architypes out there enabling us to play at being an angry brutal protagonist , so we might be losing the essence of what made GOW popular, and the diversity it gives to the Ist party portfolio, just by looking at demographics.

Many jrpg's are far worse off when it comes to European versus NA sales same with FPS , what about the other way do we lessen narrative in games that do worse in NA than Europe , or do we simply allow our writers and designers to decide whether their game needs more or less narrative  based upon the creative process and rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole .

Again the new GOW direction has nothing to do with Sony assuming what people want. Corey (the director), he also directed the second one, said he's not in the same place he was when he made GOW2, and being a dad himself wanted to make something that's in line with his current feelings and what not. This is the purest expression of artist making the type of art they want to make. 



Mr_No on 22 June 2017

I do like a focus on gameplay, but a focus on storytelling and narrative is important for a game so it doesn't seem or feel transparent or superficial; like it lacks substance. Not all games need strong narrative, yeah. But Sony games focusing on narrative is not necessarily a bad thing.