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Rumor: Sony Santa Monica failed game was codenamed "Darkside"

Corpsepyre

Banned
I don't know about you guys, but I would have liked to see Ascension being remastered more than 3. The game's visuals are fucking awesome on the PS3, but the framerate had a lot of ups and downs + the audio needed a bit of work.
 
It's a real shame. Santa Monica is such a talented studio, but it always feels like forever between their releases. And although I love God of War, I'd really like to see then do something else as well.

I wish them the best of luck on future endeavours and hope to see them grow.
They're talented at making a game like God of War, but might not be talented at making an open-world rpg involving shooting-malee. Being talented doesn't apply universally to all types of games they're trying to make.
 
I don't know about you guys, but I would have liked to see Ascension being remastered more than 3. The game's visuals are fucking awesome on the PS3, but the framerate had a lot of ups and downs + the audio needed a bit of work.

I think the reason 3 rather tha Ascension got the remaster is due to Ascension being a side story and people skipping PS3 last gen, but maybe having a PS2, to get them caught up on the main story.
 

Ricky_R

Member
How is GOD:A a spin off? The game's a prequel to the whole series and it features Kratos.

I mean, it isn't a numbered entry and they may have treated as a spin off, but it isn't one by definition. Unless I don't understand what a spin off is.
 

Drek

Member
Yeah, for some reason it REALLY does feel like forever between their releases. Ascension came out in March 2013, but it feels like it came out a lot earlier.

Chalk it up to late last gen release always seeming further off than they really were. New hardware taints perception.

He's not wrong saying the sales are unimpressive. GOW3 did 1.1m at launch in the US. 500k is a huge drop. Esp. for a game, that's not a yearly release, with a 3 year gap.

There's a reason why Sony rather remaster GOW3 and "gaveaway" Ascension as a PS+ "freebie".

Ascension was turned out by only part of SSM's main team while another portion had already moved onto Darkside. It was never going to stand up to the numbered entries on sales and it came late in a very long generation, so many gamers were already set to jump to the next platform.

You could argue that Sony should have shifted Ascension to the PS4 and made it as a launch day release however. A spin off/prequel would have been better received and the visuals could have have been more mid-gen than next gen with a nice framerate and people would have gone nuts because SSM's modeling is top tier. Sony made some real first party mistakes chasing late generation sales in 2013. Maybe Gran Turismo 6 was too large scale a project to shift, and The Last of Us was riding on a lot of hype resulting in great sales, but the writing was on the wall for Ascension before it even released, Puppeteer would have greatly benefited from that "new gen" hype while also being a locked 60 fps, and probably should have bumped one of R&C Into the Nexus or Sly Thieves in Time onto the PS4 as well.
 

msdstc

Incredibly Naive
A game got cancelled on the grounds of being a bad video game. I don't see the problem here.

Because Sony's going bankrupt, so they couldn't fund it. If it was ubisoft they would've seen it through and had unlimited money to make it happen. Just like they did with all there other bug free, feature rich games.
 

Alo0oy

Banned
How is GOD:A a spin off? The game's a prequel to the whole series and it features Kratos.

I mean, it isn't a numbered entry and they may have treated as a spin off, but it isn't one by definition. Unless I don't understand what a spin off is.

If it's not about the main storyline then it's not a mainline entry, it's a spinoff in every sense of the world, development was handled by the new staff while the GoW3 team worked on Stig's game, and the game didn't get anywhere near the same marketing push GoW3 got.

If Ascension isn't a spinoff, no other game out there is.
 
They're talented at making a game like God of War, but might not be talented at making an open-world rpg involving shooting-malee. Being talented doesn't apply universally to all types of games they're trying to make.

No, but there's only one way to become talented at other genres.
 
This deserves its own thread.

139349537212mds20.jpg


Back in February of 2014 mere months after PS4 launched, Sony Santa Monica has hit with big layoffs and restructuring of the entire studio. 2nd team that was led by the GoW3 director Stig Asmussen was disbanded, many devs were laid off [Stig also left to join Respawn Entertainment] and rest were transferred to the core team that worked on several GoW games in the past. The exact nature of the failed project was never unveiled, with some hints pointing to the highly ambitious open world game that had some ties to the structure of Destiny.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-02-26-god-of-war-developer-sony-santa-monica-suffers-layoffs
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/25/layoffs-hit-god-of-war-studio-sony-santa-monica
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03...-layoffs-asometimes-a-project-needs-a-reboota


Our own Shinobi just posted a update on the project, with many joucy details that were previously unknown:


All this sounds very interesting. Hopefully in the future we will get more insight into this famous failed project.

so they were making mad max?
 
If people as talented as the folks at SSM couldn't bring it together, then it was probably a lost cause. They are one of the best and brightest dev teams in the industry.
 

Ricky_R

Member
If it's not about the main storyline then it's not a mainline entry, it's a spinoff in every sense of the world, development was handled by the new staff while the GoW3 team worked on Stig's game, and the game didn't get anywhere near the same marketing push GoW3 got.

If Ascension isn't a spinoff, no other game out there is.

But isn't Ascension a prequel to GOW1? Admittedly, I didn't play the game enough to actually follow the story, but I always thought it was supposed to retcon with the main story.

The game was referred to as a prequel, not a spin off, iirc.

I may be mistaken though.

Edit: I believe you're right. Don't mind me.
 
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