Hennig has to botch a lot more products in conceptual stages and pre-production before she reaches Del Toro levels.
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Jason Schreier: Visceral's game was not canned because it was single-player
- Thread starter mdubs
- Start date
Hennig has to botch a lot more products in conceptual stages and pre-production before she reaches Del Toro levels.
Maybe they should team up? Two Ls to make a W!
CassidyIzABeast
Member
So is this still intended to launch by March 2019 or is that off the table?
I feel like you might have read a little more into that statement than was actually on paper.
CecilRousso
Member
Off the table. Said so in the statement.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
It was cancelled.
Expect some game using a few of its assets to release in like 2021 or 2022 if it comes out.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
I can sorta understand why Naughty Dog thought the last of us wasn't going to be too hot.
Marketing was probably on their ass about how big of a role ellie had and that probably hurt some motivation.
The gameplay was fairly generic, like if you were just testing out various scenarios over and over the game really didn't do anything special at all and there wasn't honestly a lot of room for creativity which is a hallmark of stealth games.
What made The Last of Us good was the characters and world coming all together while you moved forward. The gameplay side of things may have been super average compared to other stealth games but the presentation and characters/va's carry the game super hard.
With all that said I really enjoyed my time with it, not as much as most people that rate it as one of the best things ever made since I feel it's a pretty average game at the end of the day, it's a good testament to a tv type / movie type story done well in a game, But I'm looking forward to part 2.
In response to the polygon thing, yeah Single Player games are going no where. Even if you are the type of casual player that jumps on whatever the current hot talk piece is there will always be a single player game that will pop up in that climate from time to time because people dont always want to play with someone else and want their own personal adventures, challenges, or a story they can interact with
Marketing was probably on their ass about how big of a role ellie had and that probably hurt some motivation.
The gameplay was fairly generic, like if you were just testing out various scenarios over and over the game really didn't do anything special at all and there wasn't honestly a lot of room for creativity which is a hallmark of stealth games.
What made The Last of Us good was the characters and world coming all together while you moved forward. The gameplay side of things may have been super average compared to other stealth games but the presentation and characters/va's carry the game super hard.
With all that said I really enjoyed my time with it, not as much as most people that rate it as one of the best things ever made since I feel it's a pretty average game at the end of the day, it's a good testament to a tv type / movie type story done well in a game, But I'm looking forward to part 2.
In response to the polygon thing, yeah Single Player games are going no where. Even if you are the type of casual player that jumps on whatever the current hot talk piece is there will always be a single player game that will pop up in that climate from time to time because people dont always want to play with someone else and want their own personal adventures, challenges, or a story they can interact with
stan423321
Member
From what I understand the project was started years before Mrs. Hennig joined it, and didn't roll particularly well. So regardless of how did she do there, it's quite inconceivable she was "the" problem.
SpinningBirdKick
Banned
Thanks to Jason, I mean, the Press Sneak Fuck, for clarifying. He really needs to start dishing more dirt on this though.
From my armchair analyst perspective this looks like a massive leadership failure at EA.
It's no wonder their games take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to make if they can only decide that a game isn't likely to meet expectations after "only" 3 to 4 years of development time!
WTF!? How are they running things over there? Monkeys on Dev kits and baboons acting as Project Managers?
Surely they're working to milestones or have KPIs to track development effectiveness? This could very well be the reason why they're shuttering that studio. It's beyond help.
Give a bad idea to a great team and they'll make a success out of it. Give a killer idea to a bad team and they'll find a way to fuck it up in ways that you'd never imagine.
You can't get much more of a killer idea than Star Wars. It's a license to print money. So...
I guess to leave a more pleasant taste in shareholders mouths it's easier to sell this bump in the roadmap as a pivot away from single player to GaaS. Instead of the real reason that a huge part of the leadership hierarchy are incompetent. Of course, as usual, the rank and file employees suffer for this. Instead of heads rolling in the C suite.
From my armchair analyst perspective this looks like a massive leadership failure at EA.
It's no wonder their games take tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to make if they can only decide that a game isn't likely to meet expectations after "only" 3 to 4 years of development time!
WTF!? How are they running things over there? Monkeys on Dev kits and baboons acting as Project Managers?
Surely they're working to milestones or have KPIs to track development effectiveness? This could very well be the reason why they're shuttering that studio. It's beyond help.
Give a bad idea to a great team and they'll make a success out of it. Give a killer idea to a bad team and they'll find a way to fuck it up in ways that you'd never imagine.
You can't get much more of a killer idea than Star Wars. It's a license to print money. So...
I guess to leave a more pleasant taste in shareholders mouths it's easier to sell this bump in the roadmap as a pivot away from single player to GaaS. Instead of the real reason that a huge part of the leadership hierarchy are incompetent. Of course, as usual, the rank and file employees suffer for this. Instead of heads rolling in the C suite.
panda-zebra
Member
It's never that black & white.
Well I don't think GAF is shy of or affraid of a little speculation, especially when there looks to be potential similarities. It looks like EA gave this project every chance, but staff falling over themselves to leave the studio in recent months tells its own story.
Put it this way, I have a hard time imagining a clamouring for studios looking to Hennig to helm their AAA projects any time soon.
You really think EA is going to throw people under the bus by saying that their game was a complete mess and potentially stop these folks from getting a new job?
I never understood the attitude GAF has against PR. Its PR, because it needs to be.
How about a dream team of Amy Hennig and Patrice Desilets lmao
Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew
Banned
All those meltdowns and assumptions about the game being turned into a MP focused GAAS tho.....
You know it will.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Eh a little more complicated than that. Parts of ME:A were working really well in FB, (driving and large environments). others weren't, (animation systems) and had to be built from scratch by an inexperienced team. So it wasn't just the testing of procedural generation that screwed the project.
The more you know.
The crunch on the game was kind of insane. The documentary they released around the launch of the game showed them making massive gameplay changes late in development that vastly improved it. I think prior to the changes, the comments based on the team was that the game was competent, but just not fun.
Game development is hard and crunch is a nightmare.
Hmm, could it be that because of Mass Effect Andromeda, EA just got cold feet when things weren't moving smoothly and wouldn't even give them a chance to finish? Or was the game just bad? Because, Sony's publishing side never showed any reservations when it came to The Last of Us regardless of what people at Naughty Dog themselves thought.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
The bioware games, that clone wars fps, the old jedi academy and dark forces games. The insanely hard snes games, the rouge squadron stuff. The star wars arcade game from the early 2000's
Boy Wander
Member
This issue and the way it has been reported the past few days highlights the difference between a quality journo like Schreier and a shock jock like Sterling.
_/¯
Necron
Member
Knights of the Old Republic?
Theslammer
Member
Completely agree. It was impossible to tell people to chill out and wait for more information rather than create a narrative they can't prove is related to this story. It's okay to not have an opinion right away.
Olengie
Member
I really enjoyed the Jedi Knight series. Dat Kyle Katarnn. And Jaden Korr. But MP was also great
Some Nobody
Junior Member
All those meltdowns and assumptions about the game being turned into a MP focused GAAS tho.....
I normally tend to agree with you because you usually have a good point but...this is needlessly smug. There's no reason to be this confident when we actually don't know WHAT the game will eventually become.
Papacheeks
Banned
That is untrue. Well some of it.
Their issue was management, and the talent they had were all green. And instead of having the management physically there, they had long distance management instead.
The veterans of Mass effect were on ANthem not Andromda. You can tell straight up from the animations of that game.
Them trying to do the animations in phases didn't help them either.
In a seemingly comparable situation Microsoft had no problem saying Platinum "missed milestones" in regards to Scalebound. Generally "Missed Milestones" is the buzzword for a troubled development.
Every indication from EA's PR speak was that they cancelled a perfectly good game because they felt it was a poor buisness proposition. Maybe the "Focus Groups" section was meant to indicate a rocky development. However "Focus Groups" especially when in regards to big AAA titles are usually seen as a negative source of feedback and often blamed for good games becoming generic. So to say focus groups hated a game inspires the idea that it had an original idea that was not compatible with focus testing. Combine this with no talk of missed milestones or other problems and you in PR speak have just said "we cancelled a fun innovative game with a unique voice because it was creative and we didn't think it would make us money"
NoPiece
Member
I'd add Republic Commando as well. There have been a lot of great single player Star Wars games. It's just been an unfortunately long time since we got them.
stan423321
Member
Okay, someone explain me how does that work, because my understanding was that Shadow of War got the vast majority of its loot crate criticism because it is a basically single player game with loot crates in the single player mode, as compared to other games doing it like Mass Effect 3 and having them in multiplayer modes... so a generic open world game without multiplayer but with loot crates actually isn't that generic of an idea?
Verchod
Member
Yes, some of those were good. I did enjoy Dark forces
That too. But not all are great, even if they were successful.
I don't know what the idea for this latest Game was, but a third or first person version start wars game in the style of uncharted does sound excellent. I'd love that. And maybe you could add Co-op too. You don't need multi player as they already have that.
I think open world would be much harder to pull off, even if the universe is there to pick from.
Do they want GTA online in space instead? Maybe that's the change in direction.
WaterAstro
Member
It was canned because it is an EA game.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
idontbelieveyou.gif
Right. It's possible that it was both in dev hell and also that they don't want to do linear SP games too. That said, their initial message said little to nothing about development troubles, so forgive me for thinking this just seems a damage control excuse.
"Oh did we say that? Sorry we shitcanned it because... dev troubles, game was a mess! Yeah that's it." *cue everyone posting gifs about vindication*
e_e
Right. It's possible that it was both in dev hell and also that they don't want to do linear SP games too. That said, their initial message said little to nothing about development troubles, so forgive me for thinking this just seems a damage control excuse.
*fans protest*
"Oh did we say that? Sorry we shitcanned it because... dev troubles, game was a mess! Yeah that's it." *cue everyone posting gifs about vindication*
e_e
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
All these posters shouting about how people jumped the gun and assumed the game was going to be re-tooled into a MP GaaS lootbox-fest... the OP's quote from Jason doesn't disprove that at all.
Even if the game wasn't canned because it was a linear SP game, you can bet your ass that EA is going to use this opportunity afforded by a reboot to turn it into one.
There's no way a Star Wars game from EA, essentially starting development from scratch at this point, doesn't get turned into a MP GaaS game.
You can pretty much bank on it.
Even if the game wasn't canned because it was a linear SP game, you can bet your ass that EA is going to use this opportunity afforded by a reboot to turn it into one.
There's no way a Star Wars game from EA, essentially starting development from scratch at this point, doesn't get turned into a MP GaaS game.
You can pretty much bank on it.
... Thanks for reminding me. Just bought it. God bless you, you Press Sneak Fuck!
... I'll never get tired of writing that. ;-D
Ml33tninja
Neo Member
The gameplay was straight forward and allowed you think think qiuck on your feet or use tactics to advance. I wouldn't call it generic(seems people use that as a negative) imo but rather simply. I could never understand the response to the gameplay. When you mean special what do you mean? over the top? balls to the wall? I can never get a example of what people wanted gameplay wise.
Olengie
Member
Oh yeah. I absolutely loved Republic Commando. It is unfortunate we never got a follow up game besides some tie in novels
dukeoflegs
Member
"Project was a mess" doesn't really clarify anything. It was a mess in what context? From an investor, from EA management, from Visceral's point of view, from a consumer view, or an end user perspective?
I've worked at studio where a project was a mess from the beginning to end from the view point of quality and an end user experience, but it was finished, shipped, had high praise, and sold well.
I've worked at studio where a project was a mess from the beginning to end from the view point of quality and an end user experience, but it was finished, shipped, had high praise, and sold well.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
Just more options to do and handle things. Like more creative things with the environment and so on, rather than shoot bang, throw rock, stealth grab, sneak. The game is super linear so the enviroments should have let you be a bit more creative.
It's simple and people can view that as a negative I guess but it's solid for me so it's more of a neutral. At the end of the day a game's strengths comes down to the part where you are playing it, if it doesn't really stand out in how you play it then it's just another game on the shelf that doesn't stand out as a game to me, it could still be fun and I can enjoy my time with it but it's not something I will bring up with friends at the end of the day. But I have way too much freaking free time and play practically everything under the sun to a lesser degree so I'm a bit jaded
That's what I'm wondering. Battlefront and Battlefront II both coincide with Episode VII and Episode VIII respectively. The emphasis, scope, and target releases ... it's just two games vs. the LucasArts years where it felt or there were a half dozen+ releases around a film release. There's really a lot of more emphasis for these things to release on time, be good, and make everyone a ton of money + tie into other merchandising and a theatrical release.
It goes from "Well, that's one less game on our Star Wars release slate for that year" to "That's literally all we had going for us in 2019-2020.
Random question: How is merchandising coping with these nearly annual Star Wars releases? Abrams taking over Episode IX and the delay to December 2019 felt less creative and more like no one could feasibly get their shit together in year with Solo releasing in May.
Not to muddle the argument but you could speculate on Marvel vs. Capcom and wanting characters like Black Panther and Captain Marvel be there in order to gain awareness of their theatrical debuts in 2018.
No way do I think the success of the movies rely on video games. More or less question the approach and cutting down or reorganizing an already gutted/more cancelled than released video game license. There's not much more to widdle down.
Tertullian
Member
Did anybody think it was canned because it was single player? A game doesn't have to be multiplayer to require an internet connection, trap you in a Skinner box, store your lootbox loot server-side, exploit gambling addicts, etc.
