Former Dragon Age writer says Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 prove 'what's possible when a game is given time to cook'
Former Dragon Age writer says Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Baldur's Gate 3 prove 'what's possible when a game is given time to cook'
The reaction to Clair Obscur has been wild. I had a friend I haven't talked to since high school - when we were both big Final Fantasy fans - reach out to ask if I'd played it. A bunch of guys at work are talking about it who I didn't even know were gamers. I hope we see a lot more of these passionate, creative projects and the infrastructure to support them.
I was skeptical about it. I saw a lot of it being compared with Final Fantasy and I've been largely pretty disappointed with most Final Fantasy offerings since X.
Picked it up recently on the recommendation of another Lemming and, holy shit, this might be the best RPG I've ever played. Hands down, it's that good. God bless the French. This game is making me feel things I haven't felt since I was a teenager.
Seriously, I keep trying to get people to get a taste of it, to the point I've even gifted it. It's been fascinating and beautiful and devastating. Haven't finished it yet, but getting very close and I only regret it'll have to end soon.
I originally wasn't going to get it. I saw the Persona style combat menu and RPG... I have limited time to play games so I have to be picky.
I caught someone playing it... oh yeah, bought the game right away. The writing is amazing, and there's no "grind" you often find with many of the JRPG-style games
Last three Bioware games had plenty of time to cook. The chefs were just bad. They chose the wrong ingredients multiple times, had to start over and still ended up with something barely edible.
I know it's popular to go "developer good, publisher bad", but in Bioware's case, from what I've read, they were mostly just given the rope to hang themselves.
I know it’s popular to go “developer good, publisher bad”, but in Bioware’s case, from what I’ve read, they were mostly just given the rope to hang themselves.
Ever since ME Andromeda they've been outsourcing a lot of the work, and/or using smaller and inexperienced studios while promoting and launching them as if made by the main studio.
To be fair, I've read that Sandfall also outsourced a lot of work for Expedition 33, which is how they've kept the team small.
I see no issues with outsourcing if done right: not every small developer needs to have a motion capture crew, etc.
If there are companies out there that can provide that for you at a reasonable cost, then you just need to focus on the core gameplay and the artistic aspects of your game.
This way you don't bloat your headcount with hundreds of people that you'll have to sack after the project is done, seems like a win for everybody.
They've been trying to "Central Engineering" things.
I worked as a massive chip company, they thought they could fix things by moving a lot of engineering out of the groups and into a single place where different groups and products could borrow and plug and play tech from.
Which was a great idea, except the groups didn't really understand what they wanted, and central engineering just wanted to make what they thought people wanted, which often fit nobody but looked really cool.
Bioware looks like they've been trying to pull all the game engine stuff central, which would be fine but the frostbite engine didn't work for half of what they wanted, and more importantly the "divisions" ended up just being pushed to make "something" to show off their best new tech, even if there was 0 story or creativity behind it (I'm looking at you Anthem).
I dont think his point is 'These amazing games are what you get if you give devs tine' but rather 'you can only get these games from giving devs time'. Its no guaruntee by any means, but you are never going to get greatness from suits focus grouping decisions and crunching out a game.
It is one of the reasons. The major reason is that companies aim for maximum profit with low risk, and not best products.
So for them, 10 meh games that gonna sell is better than 10 risky and maybe exceptional games, because they treat games as a dose to junkies. Thats why you have 200 Call of Duty and 500 Assassins Creed, games.
Deadlines, pulling plugs, moving people to different games all the time to reduce costs are the results of gaming becoming an industry. And guess what, they will continue that, even if more BG3 and Expedition 33 come out to hit them.
Yeah it's pretty much the same whenever the Money People get involved in anything. It inevitably stops being about making something really cool, or even just making a living from making something, and becomes all about shipping the absolute minimum viable product and then strip-mining as much cash as you can out of it at all costs, and then dumping it when people stop buying it.
And the thing that gets me is that this makes nobody happy. The creators hate it because they're making trash, consumers hate it because they're being ripped off, and the Money People aren't even happy because they never are. They always want more.
Duke nukem forever would like a word.
Taking the pot off the stove, throwing away and starting again, then repeating it many times is not giving it time to cook
Yeah, and given this is coming from a dragon age writer that's pretty explicit.
A cancelation is a full stop and needs to be treated as such with any resources from it that can be carried forward needing scrutiny before being brought in, with them understood as a fortuitous situation. None of this 'we've spent 10 cumulative years on it" when this round is just one year
What's actually so funny about that one is it's actually kind of a fun game? Like don't get me wrong it's dogshit, but it's fun dogshit
Yeah, or keeping suits who aren't gamers away from making calls about the game's development.
That‘s the critical one. It‘s not about budget or outsourcing or whatever. It comes down to who makes the decisions and why. In a lot of cases it‘s people with a finance background who couldn‘t care less about the medium they‘re working with and that can be a major issue. Gaming being a bigger industry than music and film combined has attracted a lot of people who only think in dollar bills and it shows. Luckily however, there are still a lot of passionate teams with leaders who have a love for games.
Please give the new Mass Effect time to cook. I need another great space RPG.
I don't think it's just "time to cook", pretty sure the devs having actual passion behind it also helps a lil bit.
Big corpos going just for the numbers are really good at stomping out all of that
Agreed. They could have left Dragon Age in the oven for three more years and it would still be meh.
honestly though, the game is a complete package AND it doesn't come with a bunch of fucking microtransactions/live-service/etc. etc. Gaming is the one area where I think we would all like to see our games be made the same way they were 10-15 years ago, instead of the bullshit from today.
So with more crunch and no unions? It goes both ways, it's not a monolithic culture where passage of time simply makes things worse