Your video game hot take(s) thread

Jun 11, 2023
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But still, he's between the lines. Man, those parking spots are huge!
When you think of it though, that’s how big they should be, to account for both driver and passenger being able to open their doors without dinging adjacent vehicles. But nope, gotta pack as many people into whatever place is selling shit.
 

Old_Hunter_77

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Please don't respond to this by lecturing me about how AAA gaming is all bad or whatever.

I just heard about the whole Halo rebranding thing and while I personally am not into Halo at all, I was interested in how they're moving away from their own game engine to Unreal 5.

Then I remembered that CD Projekt Red is doing the same for their next Wicher games (yes, plural, because there's going to be a mainline "Witcher 4" thing but not called that a full remake of the first Witcher game, which is a cRPG).

And while I understand these companies not wanting to support a whole tech stack and just focus on the games, I'm hoping this doesn't take away interesting differences between games. One of the things in Halo's announcement said something not wanting to be a "tech company" but video game companies are tech companies! For many years, futzing with tech design impacted the games- yes often in bad ways creating jank but it contributes to the unique "feel" of games we love, too.

This also came up in Firelink yesterday when they were talking about games that "feel" like Halo and wondering if Unreal 5 will take away from that. We'll see, of course, but imagine Halo kind of "feeling" like Witcher- I don't want to live in that world!
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I just heard about the whole Halo rebranding thing and while I personally am not into Halo at all, I was interested in how they're moving away from their own game engine to Unreal 5.
I'm not a fan of the unreal engine. At least unreal engine 3 and 4 always ran hot. Not sure if 5 also runs hot, probably does. But it also signals more and more control of the big gaming space of epic and they are assholes.
 
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Please don't respond to this by lecturing me about how AAA gaming is all bad or whatever.

I just heard about the whole Halo rebranding thing and while I personally am not into Halo at all, I was interested in how they're moving away from their own game engine to Unreal 5.

Then I remembered that CD Projekt Red is doing the same for their next Wicher games (yes, plural, because there's going to be a mainline "Witcher 4" thing but not called that a full remake of the first Witcher game, which is a cRPG).

And while I understand these companies not wanting to support a whole tech stack and just focus on the games, I'm hoping this doesn't take away interesting differences between games. One of the things in Halo's announcement said something not wanting to be a "tech company" but video game companies are tech companies! For many years, futzing with tech design impacted the games- yes often in bad ways creating jank but it contributes to the unique "feel" of games we love, too.

This also came up in Firelink yesterday when they were talking about games that "feel" like Halo and wondering if Unreal 5 will take away from that. We'll see, of course, but imagine Halo kind of "feeling" like Witcher- I don't want to live in that world!
Wonder if the next Halo will feel like UT. Which might not really be a bad thing depending on how far back they reach (no pun). Anyways this ties into why I’ve always defended the PS3 era of exclusives. Sony had so many things being put out there and they all felt different; a lot of which boiled down to the fact that technically they were all different from the ground up engine-wise. Insomniac, ND, GG, SMS, Kojima, PD, etc. all used their own and it led to a really distinctive era of games.
 
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BrawlMan

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After looking at the TGS gameplay trailers for Double Dragon Revive and Rushing Beat X, DDR is going to crush it. RBX does look like they improved the gameplay by a huge margin, but it has that early 360 XBLA look, even with the improved visuals. They should've just went for pixels on this one or do the SOR4 method. While DDR looks like it's a throwback to Sammy's Demolish Fist, but better visuals and gameplay. The environmental interaction is off the chain in DDR! Similar to RBX, DDR does have juggles too, but slightly grounded. Top Hat Gaming was "concerned and worried" over nothing. Exactly why I don't bother with his shit anymore.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Please don't respond to this by lecturing me about how AAA gaming is all bad or whatever.

I just heard about the whole Halo rebranding thing and while I personally am not into Halo at all, I was interested in how they're moving away from their own game engine to Unreal 5.

Then I remembered that CD Projekt Red is doing the same for their next Wicher games (yes, plural, because there's going to be a mainline "Witcher 4" thing but not called that a full remake of the first Witcher game, which is a cRPG).

And while I understand these companies not wanting to support a whole tech stack and just focus on the games, I'm hoping this doesn't take away interesting differences between games. One of the things in Halo's announcement said something not wanting to be a "tech company" but video game companies are tech companies! For many years, futzing with tech design impacted the games- yes often in bad ways creating jank but it contributes to the unique "feel" of games we love, too.

This also came up in Firelink yesterday when they were talking about games that "feel" like Halo and wondering if Unreal 5 will take away from that. We'll see, of course, but imagine Halo kind of "feeling" like Witcher- I don't want to live in that world!
The real reason for this is that Microsoft loves contractors and hates hiring full time employees.

Their plans are that 343 will no longer actually be making the Halo games, they're going to be in charge of things like story and lore consistency (you know, those things that they're bad at), and the actual games will be made by third parties.

Using a proprietary engine means having to train people in using that engine, and if someone is contracted with the company for 12 months and it takes them 3 months to get up to speed on the game engine then they're actually only getting 9 months of work out of that person.

Switching to Unreal means having a larger pool of people to hire from who already have experience with the game engine and can hit the ground running when Microsoft needs to add headcount, and there won't be a major lose in institutional knowledge to Microsoft when those people's contracts aren't renewed.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Please don't respond to this by lecturing me about how AAA gaming is all bad or whatever.

I just heard about the whole Halo rebranding thing and while I personally am not into Halo at all, I was interested in how they're moving away from their own game engine to Unreal 5.

Then I remembered that CD Projekt Red is doing the same for their next Wicher games (yes, plural, because there's going to be a mainline "Witcher 4" thing but not called that a full remake of the first Witcher game, which is a cRPG).

And while I understand these companies not wanting to support a whole tech stack and just focus on the games, I'm hoping this doesn't take away interesting differences between games. One of the things in Halo's announcement said something not wanting to be a "tech company" but video game companies are tech companies! For many years, futzing with tech design impacted the games- yes often in bad ways creating jank but it contributes to the unique "feel" of games we love, too.

This also came up in Firelink yesterday when they were talking about games that "feel" like Halo and wondering if Unreal 5 will take away from that. We'll see, of course, but imagine Halo kind of "feeling" like Witcher- I don't want to live in that world!
Well AAA gaming is all bad. What do you expect?
 
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Counterpoint: [apologies for broken embed, I can't make it work any better]
Erm…having a bit of trouble deciphering which one he’s talking about, as there are, well…certainly more than *the one* and most look different feature-wise. Either that or deliberately vague/misleading camera angles were used to make the point.

1728648089542.jpeg
Which
1728648157434.jpeg
one
1728648187830.jpeg
is
1728648209019.jpeg
*it*
?
🤷‍♂️
 
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Old_Hunter_77

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The real reason for this is that Microsoft loves contractors and hates hiring full time employees.

Their plans are that 343 will no longer actually be making the Halo games, they're going to be in charge of things like story and lore consistency (you know, those things that they're bad at), and the actual games will be made by third parties.

Using a proprietary engine means having to train people in using that engine, and if someone is contracted with the company for 12 months and it takes them 3 months to get up to speed on the game engine then they're actually only getting 9 months of work out of that person.

Switching to Unreal means having a larger pool of people to hire from who already have experience with the game engine and can hit the ground running when Microsoft needs to add headcount, and there won't be a major lose in institutional knowledge to Microsoft when those people's contracts aren't renewed.
This all makes sense except that the name will change from 343 to Halo.. something. So if the "new" "Halo" company is just supervising lore they're gonna cut like most of their staff? I mean, the TV show got canceled, so what's left besides making games- books? How many people they need to supervise book lore?
 

Dirty Hipsters

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This all makes sense except that the name will change from 343 to Halo.. something. So if the "new" "Halo" company is just supervising lore they're gonna cut like most of their staff? I mean, the TV show got canceled, so what's left besides making games- books? How many people they need to supervise book lore?
Half the studio's staff has already been cut in the most recent round of Microsoft layoffs, and I imagine it will be cut further once they fully stop supporting the current game (they're still building out and supporting forge, but apparently other post launch content support has mostly stopped).

Depending on how many Halo projects are going to be worked on concurrently (apparently they're planning multiple spin-off games to be worked on simultaneously) they may need a significant number of people to supervise the story writing, coordinate between the studios, and make sure that it's all consistent between games and the "Halo Bible" that Bungie provided to them.


 
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