Currently playing Narita Boy before it gets removed from Game Pass later this month. Seems pretty good thus far.

More on The Initiative and Perfect Dark from Jez Croden https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D4JNedgYAVQ&feature=youtu.be

There was a disagreement over how to proceed and staff perfect dark

-There were two train of thoughts at The Initiative. One group believed that “we hire the people” and the other group believed in “We stay small”.

-Second group wanted to bring in CD like other studios would bring in support studios.

Jez says that TI was structured to be no crunch and flat-lined, like Valve (of course which is an issue).

Jez mentioned to me that Crystal dynamics was brought in to save time, meet their ambitions and our new expectations. The decision was made that this was the best way forward. This caused friction of course, which is why people left. Jez says that the people who stayed believed in this method

IMO I think that they should have gone more traditional, what is the the point of staying small if you can’t retain the top talent that you recruited?

This also once again points to the problem that could happen down the line if MS doesn’t buy Crystal Dynamics then they will have to find another partner for the potential sequel to this game if Square Enix decides not to “lend” them to MS for a second time.

The only other way I can see this go down is that one of the other studios under Activision is put to help them out or MS decides to buy Certain Affinity and have them take a bigger role in the sequel.

Well, people may come and go but the show must go on I suppose. Seems like a most of the real work is getting done at CD like we assumed and decision makers are at The Initiative.

I would say it depends.  Early on they probably really hired way to much senior developers which is a waste if they are not actually doing work.  If they want to build the initial project then send it out to a studio to do the actual work then they probably need to stay small.  Bring in multiple studios who specialize in different aspect of what you are trying to do can be a faster way to development then trying to build from the ground up.  I guess we will see once the product is showcased.

I wonder if there's anything behind this

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/goldeneyes-software-trademark-has-been-renewed-amidst-remaster-reports/

Hmm, this is unexpected but Ghostwire: Tokyo and Deathloop will be launching on Epic Games Store. Makes me wonder if additional Bethesda games will be available on EGS down the road? But then, why would they be porting all their services from Bethesda Launcher to Steam? So far Starfield and Redfall don't appear in EGS.

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/deathloop
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/ghostwire-tokyo

I guess it would mean Microsoft would get PC revenue from 3 different sources.

They'll soon have to change the studios name to Ubisoft Compulsion with how many Ubisoft devs they're hiring

Yeah, I've been waiting to finally get a proper glimpse and it's managed to realise some of what I imagined. They also seem to be aiming for 2022, though that might be more of a hope. Unfortunately they've separated Xbox One and Series releases this time, so unless it's really at the high end of expectations, I might hold back after release until I finally jump to Series X.

On that note, I really hope the june show will have something on either Avowed or Fable, two of the games that could signal the right time to upgrade, though Fable is unlikely to be far in production.

And the spell casting...if I have to hear my character say the name of every spell you cast...bro...unplayable if you can't toggle that shit to mute lol