Homefront Dev Will Make Sequel's Campaign Longer if Fans Want It

[Rednog]

Make the damn single player interesting, length is important but if it is a linear "hey look an enemy bam bam bam" then I don't need 10 hours of it. While people complain the CoD series has short single player campaigns at least the campaigns have different set pieces that makes each mission interesting. Homefront you get to use the "goliath", ooo great just like the darn thing from MW2, but it gets obscenely old fast. And then you get to use a chopper, yay....and that is pretty much it. The rest of the came is pretty much running down linear paths and shooting enemies. Seriously how do you screw up the basic of the basics? Lack of set pieces and linear paths? You try to be a CoD competitor and you actually have less features?

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I have an even better idea. Rather than sinking all the money and development time into a sequel we won't get because your studio is moving to Montreal, you should take the time and current assets and expand the campaign with DLC.... wait for it.... But make the first one free! If you can add another 3 hours onto the campaign for the current cost of the game with current assets, then people will buy the game. And if you release this within the next 4-6 months (before the price drops), then you can sell more copies at full price. Then, when your game is a success and gamers everywhere love you to death because you fixed a problem with your game (something some companies can't bring themselves to do), create more expansions. Multiplayer maps, perhaps further extended campaign ad-ons. The sky is literally the limit.

At the same time, you don't need to worry about trying to update the multiplayer. You can keep what you have now, and still pull what you need to pull with some hard work. And I know hard work is a dirty word for some companies, but really, what is your job worth?

Also, while your working on that, you can squash some of the few deficiencies with the multiplayer that aren't core problems.

Or, at very least, release the development kit before you die so the community can fix your game.

Since most of the sales are on the 360 a dev kit or even giving it away would cost money.(MS charges devs for putting nearly anything up for download).

If they want to save this game they need to overhaul it but I think making a mediocre MP game with little SP content was the death toll for it.

 

[Jaeger_CDN]

I'm playing it right now too and I'm pretty sure I'm just about at the end. I've taken around 4 hours so far but I'm scouring everywhere that doesn't have invisible walls for those emp irradiated glowing newpaper clippings which I've found more interesting than the main character and his sidekicks.

I haven't tried the MP side of it yet but from what I'm reading on the Steam forums, they've already got wallhacks and aimbots galore.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

It was good, but short. Seriously, who were your "really good" players that it took 5 hours to beat? I'm decent at shooters and it only took me 3, and that was with looking for the newspapers. It would have been a lot better if there was more time for the story to develop instead of just leading to the last battle the whole time.

 

[danhere]

That logic is so faulty. I don't think anyone expected Homefront to be "the next big FPS" to begin with, so how did they expect their multiplayer to compare with that of, say, Black Ops? The reason why every FPS game turns out mediocre is this exact focus on multiplayer that does not, or will not, exist in a few months. This is why World of Warcraft has also been so successful. Every other game attempts to offer players what they already have on WoW, so they have no incentive to move away (provided building up your character in an MMORPG is probably more time consuming). People who play for multiplayer do not care so much about the single player aspects. Some of these people, I'd wager, do not even play through the campaign unless they really feel they have an afternoon to kill. If you admit that you wanted your game to be held up strictly by its multiplayer, why even focus development on single player? The end result looks watered down and uninspired, case in point. The single player portion of the game should exhibit some sense of quality in its own right, otherwise it is almost certainly doomed to fade into mediocrity. Even with the example of Black Ops, Russ Pitts declared it mediocre. Whether or not that is true, Black Ops WAS able to be held afloat strictly by its multiplayer mode. For every game that does so, unfortunately, are another dozen that don't really make too much impact on the genre or gaming in general. I fail to understand how game studious still lack foresight and hide behind the same focus-on-multiplayer excuse when someone calls them out. Then again, I guess when their audience is so ready to forgive, forget, and accept these conditions, the process is more likely to repeat itself.

 

[Scrythe]

I love how the major selling point was that it was "from the writer who brought you Red Dawn". This wasn't really that impressive to begin with. Don't get me wrong, Red Dawn was an awesome movie, but how fucking hard would that have been to right?

"Patrick Swayze punches Russian. Russian falls over. Patrick Swayze kicks another Russian. Patrick Swayze screams "Wolverines! PAtrick Swayze dies at the end."

What THQ's real problem was that they were trying to sell it as this grand epic story, when in reality they pissed it away and focused on multiplayer. What they should have done is put all the emphasis in selling the multiplayer to begin with. There's no shame in it, it's the reason why people still buy Unreal Tournament, Gears of War and Halo games.

 

[Jumplion]

I am not afraid to say this;

What a load of idiots.

They go on and on and on about how their story is so real or something, that it'll really hit close to home. They kept going "Hey! We've got the writer of Red Dawn writin' this thing!", hell the Escapist wrote an article about the guy a little bit ago.

And then the game sells, the story is meh, and they go "Oh, we were focusing on multiplayer, guys!"

Bullshit. Either your marketing is terrible, as I have barely seen anything on the multiplayer, or your big fat heads couldn't be supported by your shoulders. I'm guessing both.

And then they go "Oh, if you guys want we'll make the single player campaign longer for the sequel if we get one."

No, Kaos Studios. In the sequel, I want decent storytelling nextime. You can have all the Hollywood consultants, CIA operatives, and novelists (really? Novelists?) in the world and still not know how to write for a game. Don't let Hollywood consultants, CIA operatives, and novelists, all of which who have no idea how to write for a game, get in the way towards the story that you were trying to tell. Which, evidently, you weren't trying to tell a story because you focused on multiplayer instead.

Now, to be fair, I have yet to play the game. I might pick it up at a STEAM sale, but this has left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth for the studio. It's gonna take some innovation to get them back up to standard in my eyes, and somehow I doubt they're up to the challenge.

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

The sad thing is, and we all know that it's true, that if this game was called COD:Homefront none of the reviewers would be complaining about the campaign that is comparative in length to the recent outings.

 

[Zhukov]

I think it would be obvious that people wanted a longer campaign and I'm wondering how they plan on sequeling up the game. I thought

Spoiler

the golden gate bridge was captured, rebels cheered and rainbows were falling from the sky at the end of the game

Nope. Never quite gets there. The game fizzles out when you're still halfway across the bridge.

No epilogue, no resolution, hell, not even any sequel bait. It just slaps you in the face with a giant cliche then rolls credits.

 

[joes]

Yeah, I agree, seems like they were a little confused in their approach. Like the marketing and design teams were at it. What sells? What's our objective here? I gotta admit, a FPS with a focus on showing the atrocities of a modern military occupation had me interested...but a new military multiplayer FPS, sorry, no.

 

[Bags159]

"It's hard to gauge if it really was too short, or people expected too much"

Sorry, it's too short. I've played through on normal so far and that only took four hours. I got to the end and was like... "oh that's it? I thought we were just getting started..."

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

AHAHAHAAHAA! That is one HELL of an awesome idea for a game!
Just imagine what the "Idea Board" for Homefront 2 says:

Mass Effect 3 Idea Board: Finish the Story in an epic believable way!

Minecraft Idea Board: An open ended vast world with ultimate freedom!

Homefront 2 Idea Board: Make it longer.......

XD

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

The sad thing is, and we all know that it's true, that if this game was called COD:Homefront none of the reviewers would be complaining about the campaign that is comparative in length to the recent outings.

It's not sad, it's reasonable. From COD people expect multiplayer, that's what they get and they all go home happy to play the game.

People expected single player from Homefront, because that's how it was being advertised.

"Korea attacks North America!" "Writer of Red Dawn!" "Heart-wrenching story!", is all I saw in the ads. I have the fucking right to expect a game like this to have good single player. Length included. Multiplayer should be a nice bonus at best. I'm not going to badmouth the game or its content as I haven't played it but I think the guys at Kaos Studios are morons.

 

[ksn0va]

With Battlefield 3 and another CoD coming later this year I don't think they can really rely on multi-player to bail them out. They should focus more on the single-player, I mean that's what they've been hyping up all this time.

 

[samsonguy920]

They spend all these advertising dollars building the hype around the game's story, and then give gamers the equivalent of a Reader's Digest submission, and express surprise that gamers are miffed about this?
Frankly I would be surprised if THQ gives the go ahead for a sequel considering the money they are still bleeding out over this. What a waste.

The sad thing is, and we all know that it's true, that if this game was called COD:Homefront none of the reviewers would be complaining about the campaign that is comparative in length to the recent outings.

Because the originator is always forgiven for clone-stamping its games while anybody else gets branded with zero originality and being a copycat. Both cases, however, are both equally atrocious. One reason why we eagerly await Duke Nukem Forever to come and break the mold. Turn it into a fine dust, even. Of course right after that there will be clones coming out of DNF. It's a sad circle.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Maybe if the devs hadn't spent all of their time telling us how amazing and emotional the single player would be, we wouldn't be dissapointed that it's only as long as COD. They built our hopes up and then didn't deliver.