Information originally from MinnMax’s Ben Hanson. There is an existing game used to describe this new game to Hanson as a point of reference, and all we know is that that game is not Hitman.
Expecting an empty, repetitive open world game. Hoping to be wrong.
For Naughty Dog? They have a solid track record of great games. I’m more enthusiastic than pessimistic, but it sucks it’ll likely be a PlayStation exclusive for a while.
I’m mixed on it. They just cancelled their multiplayer game because it wasn’t their ballpark, now they want a studio known for linear story-driven experiences to make an open world game (I assume). Could go either way.
Player freedom doesn’t mean open world. Crysis for example spoke a lot about player freedom because it gave you a ton of different tools to go through the levels as you wanted. But it was still a linear single player game
I feel like when developers have a good pedigree, they can apply their concepts elsewhere.
Blizzard hadn’t made a shooter before Overwatch, but definitely got it right in so many respects. Bloober team had some mediocre horror games, but was steadily getting better before they made the Silent Hill 2 remake. Valve made just shooters before Portal and then DOTA 2. Heck, easy to forget The Talos Principle, an existential puzzle game is made by the people who made “Uber DUMB MACHO SHOOTER Serious Sam”.
Oh yeah, and survival horror team Tango Gameworks making cartoon rhythm combat game Hi-Fi Rush.
Counter point: it’s a studio who made a groundbreaking open world series (jak and daxter) who only later became known for linear games returning to their roots
People like you said this same nonsense shit take for Zelda before BotW was released.
“Let’s give them lots of player freedom this time!”
Play testers continually don’t look at a set piece vista the developers and artists spent 400 hours creating.
“Well, that’s enough of that. Back to the rails.”
Every WoW developer ever.
Ironically I looked at shit far more when I (finally) got a flying mount in each expansion than I ever did while stuck on the ground.
I’m reminded of the techniques Valve used for this type of thing in the Half-Life episodes.
Say, for instance, they have a bit of destruction physics that they think looks memorable and they want people to see. They’ll have a Combine soldier shoot at you from that direction, to force your attention that way. They may also set the event on a “Look Trigger” so that it will only happen while the player is looking at it.
Yeah. Valve invented most of the attention direction techniques for Half-life (light, motion, etc, etc.) Trailblazers.
Alright, can’t really get hyped without anything else to go on.
I was pretty fine with the way Last of Us 1 and 2 were handled, did a pretty good job at telling a story, without making it feeling like a linear corridor game. More freedom in a similar type of game would be nice, but generally it just seems to mean more downtime traveling between objectives occasionally interrupted by random encounters. If that is what they mean with more freedom, and not something else like character creation or branching storylines or whatever.
Reading the article, he refers to Elden Ring. I personally hate that kind of story telling though. I know a lot of people are absolutely lyrical about the game, but that’s probably more thanks to the gameplay. The story in that game is just being dripfed without much context and they are being intentionally vague about so many things. It’s more like a passive way of revealing little bits of the world without ever fully explaining anything.
There are certainly people that specifically like that kind of storytelling that puts the onus on the audience to do some digging. It’s why Malazan Book of the Fallen is popular, for example.
It didn’t do as much for me in Elden Ring, but I enjoyed it in Dark Souls 3 and it’s why Demon’s Souls has one of my favorite moments in gaming. Wouldn’t have worked with more explicit narrative.
Open world slop nr 1648371625 les gooo
Players: Can we have more co-op with a sturdy storyline, and maybe offline play?
Game Developers: lol fam 💀
Truthfully, all sorts of players are asking for all sorts of things, and you’ve got co-op story-driven games still coming out from other sources. Systems-driven games are way up my alley, and I’ll happily take one of those even without co-op. Besides, if a PlayStation game came out with co-op, it wouldn’t be offline co-op.
Yeah. I personally love open world games. Obviously does not mean that every open world game is good but a good open world game can hook you for a much longer time than a linear story based game.
There are a lot of interpretations of “player freedom” that don’t mean open world.
They said “a lot” of player freedom, so I’d definitely expect quite a bit more than just some dialog choices or whatever. ND also kinda tried to get into more open worldy stuff through their failed multiplayer projects, so it would not surprise me if they took that into a new format.
There are still a ton of ways to allow for a lot of player freedom without being open world. In fact, I’d say lots of open world games lack the freedom that a much smaller game like Streets of Rogue has, for instance. But yes, Naughty Dog has toyed with open world-ish designs in the Uncharted 4 era and Jak before that.
Last of Us 1: “You have the freedom to kill this doctor, or you can just shoot him in the leg or something.”
*Player shoots him in the leg*
Last of Us 2:
I wish TLoU 1 gave you the option to sacrifice Ellie. Have an alternate ending where they find a vaccine and everyone lives happily ever after (except Ellie).
Considering the fact that when I think of naughty dog I think of great story-driven games this is just sad.
They’re not opposites. Baldur’s Gate 3 is both of those things, for instance.
Did you mean to reply to someone else?
No, I meant to reply to you. “A lot of player freedom” is not at odds with a great story-driven game, and I gave an example of a game that fits both criteria, so I think it’s unfortunate that the perception is that you can only have one or the other.
News news news, it may also be using a game controller to translate user input into character actions.
Naughty Dog did some solid storytelling in TLoU. It would be great if they could figure out how to apply that well to a game that isn’t on rails.
“I think some of the best storytelling in The Last of Us – yes, a lot of it is in the cinematics – but a lot of it is in the gameplay, and moving around a space, and understanding a history of a space by just looking at it and examining it.
I do appreciate this in game worlds, although this alone is not a substitute for storytelling, and not enough to make an open world fun. The world has to be interesting and diverse, full of unique things, characters, places, and situations to discover, so players will want to spend their time exploring it. Evidence of the world’s history is great for adding background depth, but I’ll be bored quickly if that’s all there is.
Here’s hoping Naughty Dog makes something brilliant in this genre that they aren’t known for (have they ever done an open world?) rather than repeating the mistake other studios have made by churning out another open world of monotony.
The freedom to make a PNS account maybe?
:(
Will it be fun though?
