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Ryuu96 on 25 December 2023
shikamaru317 said:
Ryuu96 said:

Really is nothing like journalists putting unnecessary and unrealistic pressure onto developers at Xbox, Lol. Journalists inventing their own hype and marketing, Xbox or Ninja Theory never said or even implied in the slightest that Hellblade II would be this. Can't wait to hear from IGN next being like "Hellblade 2 must be an 11/10! If it isn't then Xbox is doomed!"

And this is not to say it shouldn't be a good exclusive, all exclusives should deliver and be of a good quality but can journalists stop with this utterly stupid "This is the most important exclusive ever!" rhetoric for every game? It's unfair to the developers and just making up fake hype in order to drive consumers to disappointment and giving trolls the ability to label a game a failure because it wasn't "best/biggest ever"

I seriously question who actually played Hellblade I or remembers what it was when people push Hellblade II as being a huge project on the scale of God of War and it will be a mega blockbuster...That wasn't even anywhere close to what Hellblade I was and what I assume Hellblade II will be, Hellblade I was an intimate experience about mental health battles with a strong narrative but not overly flashy.

I believe Hellblade II will be bigger but it's still a 130ish team and I expect they'll still focus more on it being a intimate experience over some huge flashy experience. Improve the puzzles and combat, sure, but it's not going to be some big 20-30 hour experience with a blockbuster budget and on a massive scale, c'mon now.

Complete revisionist history to paint Hellblade I as important for Sony (as an exclusive) in the same year which Sony released/had Horizon Zero Dawn, Nioh, Nier Automata and Uncharted Lost Legacy. Hellblade was a great game, won a few awards and sold well, I expect the same for Hellblade 2. If anything though, I expect Avowed will be bigger than Hellblade II in almost every aspect (budget, scale, players, etc).

But I better keep that quiet otherwise they'll be articles saying "Avowed is Xbox's Most Important Exclusive Ever; Can It Surpass Elder Scrolls?" I can feel the "I'm disappointed by Hellblade 2" articles written up already, Lol. People just setting themselves up for disappointment. Can't wait for 2025, it'll be "Fable is Xbox's Most Important Exclusive Ever" and then in 2026 it will be Perfect Dark, then in 2027 it will be Blade, Lol.

Hellblade II to me would be better comparable to something like Alan Wake 2 or a Plague Tale Requiem, follow-ups to great titles with a strong narrative focus, Alan Wake 2 being more of an artsy game, Plague Tale being a more intimate experience, they both received strong critical receptions to their sequels but they don't hit mainstream appeal or have huge sales.

Yeah, people are definitely putting way too much pressure on Ninja Theory with these Hellblade 2 expectations. They are a small studio for a AAA (though they have supposedly like quadrupled the size of the dev team for the firet game), and Hellblade 1, though a graphics and audio design masterpiece, came up short in most other areas from the actual length of the game, to the combat, to the puzzles, to enemy variety. It also was only a moderate seller for an indie AAA game, selling 1m+ copies after the first 10 months and no sales updates since (which makes me think it never hit 2m).

People should not be going in expecting Hellblade 2 to be Xbox's next big killer app/system seller, or Xbox's counter to God of War Ragnarok.

Reasonable expectations for what Hellblade 2 will be are:

1. A gorgeous graphical showcase title for the capabilities of Xbox Series consoles and Unreal 5 (which so far hasn't been properly utilized by many devs)

2. Longer than the first game's 8 hour or so campaign, but likely not some 30+ hour open world game with tons of side quests and such

3. Moderate improvements to the weak areas of the first game, combat, puzzles, and enemy variety.

4. Continued strong audio design, showcasing Senua's psychosis through the hearing of voices, coupled with a strong soundtrack 

5. A moderate player count success. Probably at least 5m players lifetime, though probably less than 12m players lifetime.

I think all these expectations are reasonable 👍

Mostly mine would be the same, an amazing graphical showcase and audio design, a decent bit longer than the 1st (I'd say around 10-20 hours) and improvements to the combat and puzzles with a story which is again more of an intimate story rather than a full blown fantasy, crazy battle-fest. I actually thought the length was good for the 1st game.

Quality wise? Likely critically scores well, in the mid-80s region (1st was in the low 80s) but commercial I would expect around the same amount of players lifetime as the first game, it's more of an artsy game than a game with mass market appeal which is why I compare it to Alan Wake 2 in that respect. I fully expect Avowed to be bigger in every metric than Hellblade II.

But I wouldn't want journalists to suddenly hype Avowed up as Elder Scroll's killer so, Lol.



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konnichiwa on 25 December 2023

Xbox series was announced in 2019 with Hellblade II....

This was around the end of Xbox empire 2 thread plenty of still active users expected the game will be only a few years away:


The average expectations with xbox empire 3.0 from Hellblade II and MS game studios was basically

Xbox series will launch with Halo Infinite

2021 will be the year for Starfield (Bethesda acquisition in 2020)

2022 will be Hellblade, 

Games like Forza 8, Everwild/Next Coalition game/Initiative 's game etc will be all released around 2021-2022.


Obviously Halo Infinite did not made 2020, got delayed with a year and technically 3 years after it's supposed release youtubers like Mint Blitz would state 'it is finally in state that should have been at release'

Starfield did obviously not made it in 2021 but was announced for 11/11/2022 and that was a bit later than hoped, got delayed by almost 10 months and still had so many issues, the 2022 build could not have been great.

Forza motorsport did not made it before 2023 but also not made its spring 2023 announced release shedule and while it got the longest dev cycle of all forza games it still missed some features,

We are still waiting for Everwild/Coalition/Initiatives's game...

So yeah expectations should be high for a game that is announced a long time ago, was shown with the announcement of the Hardware and since then got a bunch of trailers and its own small live concert performance at the TGA's...with maybe its own direct in 2024...

MS studios clearly have/had some issues it is time they show what they can do..

Personally I am just glad that after years of complaining MS finally got its own Japanese studio and that they made basically one of the best games of the year =p






BasilZero on 25 December 2023
konnichiwa said:



Personally I am just glad that after years of complaining MS finally got its own Japanese studio and that they made basically one of the best games of the year =p

Which game is that?



Ryuu96 on 25 December 2023
konnichiwa said:

-Snip-

"Xbox series was announced in 2019 with Hellblade II...."

Cause it was a graphical showcase, not sure why that is so hard to understand...Did all the games revealed alongside Xbox 360 and Xbox One turn out to be massive blockbusters? Graphical showcase =/= Most important exclusive ever, I mean honestly, we're expecting Hellblade 2 now to be bigger than Forza Horizon 5, Starfield and Halo Infinite? Lol.

"This was around the end of Xbox empire 2 thread plenty of still active users expected the game will be only a few years away"

Announced in 2019, users expected the game to be around 3 years away, that means 2022. It is releasing in 2024. Those users were apparently only 2 years wrong and what happened in 2020? Hmm. I can't quite put my finger on it...Something major happened to the world but I can't remember what! Something that may explain why the users could be a little off.

"The average expectations with xbox empire 3.0 from Hellblade II and MS game studios was basically. Xbox series will launch with Halo Infinite. 2021 will be the year for Starfield (Bethesda acquisition in 2020). 2022 will be Hellblade"

So those expectations by your claim were wrong by 1 year, 2 years and 2 years, Lol. Again, COVID can easily explain the inaccuracy of our predictions in many cases or just overly optimistic on our part as videogames nowadays are taking longer than ever to develop. We have Insomniac saying a Spider-Man takes 5 years to develop now and that's a sequel and established IP and Insomniac are a huge studio and one of the most efficient.

"Games like Forza 8, Everwild/Next Coalition game/Initiative 's game etc will be all released around 2021-2022."

I have quite a lot of doubt on this statement that anyone in Empire expected The Initiative to release their game in 2021-2022 when we knew back in 2018 that The Initiative had only just physically set up their studio and started hiring for their project, Lol. Even if back then we assumed the average development time was 3 years, why would you apply that to a new studio created from the ground up?

"So yeah expectations should be high for a game that is announced a long time ago, was shown with the announcement of the Hardware and since then got a bunch of trailers and its own small live concert performance at the TGA's...with maybe its own direct in 2024..."

So Hellblade II should be considered Xbox's most important exclusive (more important than Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, Starfield) because it was announced alongside hardware (as a graphical showcase), had a few trailers (like basically every game in existence) and had (by your own admission) a "small" live concert performance at TGAs. Got it...Makes sense, Lol.

Honestly I'd say Avowed is more likely to get its own Direct simply because Avowed will offer WAY more content to show than Hellblade.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 25 December 2023

konnichiwa on 25 December 2023

@BasilZero  Hi-Fi rush

@Ryuu96

It is not about being an 'important' exclusive, but if you make the decision to show off the Series with Hellblade II, have multiple trailers of the game and choose Hellblade II to be the game to have a life performance concert then yeah you create Hype and expectations. 

It is also not about Users expectations being wrong but about 'fair' expectations not being met. At some point the covid excuse also has run his course... Playground also developped a game during that time and FZ Horizon 5 released ages ago.







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Ryuu96 on 25 December 2023
konnichiwa said:

@BasilZero  Hi-Fi rush

@Ryuu96

It is not about being an 'important' exclusive, but if you make the decision to show off the Series with Hellblade II, have multiple trailers of the game and choose Hellblade II to be the game to have a life performance concert then yeah you create Hype and expectations. 

It is also not about Users expectations being wrong but about 'fair' expectations not being met. At some point the covid excuse also has run his course... Playground also developped a game during that time and FZ Horizon 5 released ages ago.

"Hellblade 2 could be Xbox's most important exclusive"

You aren't even debating the point why we think VGC's article is stupid and going off on another tangent so w/e.

Creating hype =/= Most important exclusive ever, massive difference in those two statements.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 25 December 2023

BasilZero on 25 December 2023

@konnichiwa

Oh I keep forgetting about that one, keep thinking its a FPS and a western developed game for some reason lol.



Dulfite on 25 December 2023

When is The Outer Worlds 2 coming?



smroadkill15 on 25 December 2023
Dulfite said:

When is The Outer Worlds 2 coming?

No release date, but 2025 or 2026 seems likely. 



shikamaru317 on 25 December 2023
Dulfite said:

When is The Outer Worlds 2 coming?

All we know is that it is in development simultaneously alongside Avowed at Obsidian, that it began development Summer 2019 even before The Outer Worlds 1 released in October 2019, and that an Obsidian developer said in an interview that it would release sooner than some might expect based on it being announced with a CGI teaser that made it look like development had just begun like a month before the trailer was made. Considering that Avowed began development in 2018 and is releasing in 2024, while Outer Worlds 2 began development 1 year later in 2019, it stands to reason that release could be 1 year after Avowed as well, 2025. But it could also be 2026.

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 25 December 2023