I far prefer these podcasts over the actual show. I found this discussion rather interesting.
Also Yahtzee said the same thing I did about Immortals Fenyx Rising:
"They should probably be shot out of principle for the way they spelled 'phoenix'."
The Ubisoft vs Rockstar Sandbox Discussion | Slightly Post-War Podcast
- Thread starter Phoenixmgs
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I far prefer these podcasts over the actual show. I found this discussion rather interesting.
Also Yahtzee said the same thing I did about Immortals Fenyx Rising:
"They should probably be shot out of principle for the way they spelled 'phoenix'."
Rockstar has some deserved credibility from the PS2 era for establishing a lot of fun sandboxy standards. Then GTA 4 they became dourly concerned with some vague concept of realism and started thinking they had some kind of cinematic chops. Roll GTA5 around around and we suddenly got lots of fidelity and basically zero sandbox content. And none of the whole batch has ever exactly been mind blowing for its gameplay potential. Yes, some of the sandboxy funtimes have crept up in GTA Online (particularly once the "real" team went to RDR2), but thats its own horrible mess of microtransaction bait and fodder (whether that it is on Rockstar or TakeTwo is up for debate).
ITs funny in that video they mention AC having "Arkham combat", when it was AC's combat first. And the newer vague attempt at Souls combat they've tried I find kind of lackluster. The thing with the Ubisoft formula is more thats its over-saturated then it makes for an awful game (with some variance). And the fact that they leave a ton of their IPs to languish because they don't seem to be capable of making any other style (outside of their indie publishing wing). If Ubi was putting out Myst, Might and Magic, Rayman, Splinter Cell, and whatever all else they are sitting on alongside the stream of open world spectacles, they'd probably be better received.
ITs funny in that video they mention AC having "Arkham combat", when it was AC's combat first. And the newer vague attempt at Souls combat they've tried I find kind of lackluster. The thing with the Ubisoft formula is more thats its over-saturated then it makes for an awful game (with some variance). And the fact that they leave a ton of their IPs to languish because they don't seem to be capable of making any other style (outside of their indie publishing wing). If Ubi was putting out Myst, Might and Magic, Rayman, Splinter Cell, and whatever all else they are sitting on alongside the stream of open world spectacles, they'd probably be better received.
I honestly hate both modern design's philosophies and it's a case of pick your poison. I'd sooner go back Saints Row 2 and 3 than start with Ubisoft's and Rockstar's crap desgin. There are other open world games that do a better job like Sleeping Dogs, a spiritual successor to its prequel series to True Crime (itself a GTA clone from the PS2/GC/XBOX era). I'd sooner take Yakuza. The Yakuza Team know how to have fun and got better combat. Granted, I tried getting to the series, and it did not work for me, but I rather deal with that series when given the choice. Ghost of Tsushima would be more appealing to just go through it again compared to Rockstar and Ubisoft.
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Yakuza having good combat? Outside of story battles it was the same 4 assholes in different outfits trying to jump you as you built up enough meter for a very scripted execution move. The substories and the city may have been a living city but the combat is not what I consider top notch, only passable for the audience.
And hot take: GTA4's supporting cast for the protag beats V's by a long shot and the sandbox adds to that by making you feel at home in the city
FTR, I meant better by comparison. The combat in Yakuza I find better than any Ubisoft and Rockstar game. That said, Yakuza 0 (a game I did play) has the best combat in the entire Yakuza series. I have no problem admitting it. Hence why I said the combat does not do it for me. What works for certain people don't work for others and vice versa. On a rating scale, the combat for Y0 I would describe good and functional, but has its clear faults. I love the idea of multiple fighting style you can switch on the fly. As much as I am a brawler lover, I prefer arcade style brawlers and hack n slashers. Putting them in open world environments/metroidvania do little for me with certain exceptions. It's why I hardly ever play the Kunio-Kun/River City Ransom series. Hell, I tried getting in to Fist of the Northstar: Lost Paradise (done by the Yakuza) and I could not finish the game, despite being a big fan of the franchise.
Well, Ubisoft open world games are generally pretty boring overall, with nothing really of interest to do, outside of the main missions.
Rockstar games have much more interesting worlds, and generally more interesting side-content, but the missions themselves are so heavily restricted, that if you don't follow Rockstar's predetermined plan for how you are going to approach a situation to the letter, you get bounced back to a checkpoint.
Eh, open world games kinda suck anyway.
Rockstar games have much more interesting worlds, and generally more interesting side-content, but the missions themselves are so heavily restricted, that if you don't follow Rockstar's predetermined plan for how you are going to approach a situation to the letter, you get bounced back to a checkpoint.
Eh, open world games kinda suck anyway.
I will say (and can't really speak to if they carried this one) but Red Dead Redemption 1 did have the random world events you could run across. The lynchings the fake broken down carriage ambushes I think people running from gang attack etc etc. Those felt like they made the world more alive as even though you quickly saw them all it wasn't just some marker on a map that popped up you could run into them at almost any point.
Fixed that for you. Grand Theft Auto games stopped being fun sandboxes and became stupid bloated gritty bullshit the instant they made the move to full 3D.
Saints Row is probablt the natural evolution of where GTA started. They embraced the style, while GTA progressively seemed more abashed of their roots and kept getting progressively farther away from both fun and sandbox til you hit 5 and its all suddenly story missions and a handful of side missions and then absolute dead space.
I kinda hate both styles of sandboxes. There's a clear segregation between the sandbox and the missions. The sandbox is largely for collectibles, getting upgrades or 'level ups' and dicking about. The stories more or less function in their own 'areas'. When you fail, you game over. You're usually stuck in the mission until you abort it from a menu or finish it. And if the mission has some loopy fail conditions(like failing to follow someone closely enough) you get a gameover screen.
I might be a bit out of the loop though. My experiences with these sorta games are GTA3, Farcry 3/5, Saint's Row 2-4, Sleeping Dogs and Just Cause 2. And they more or less share the same DNA even if the little details are somewhat different. I don't know how some of the newer Ubi/Rockstar games handle things but I kinda doubt they've gotten all too different. I have played Yakuza 0, Kiwami and Kiwami 2 too but I kinda consider them a 'different' sorta game.
I'd like for one of these types of games to be looser with how they handle story and missions. Why are they so divorced from the sandbox? Why can't they be more integrated into the sandbox? Like lets say I fail a story mission involving tailing, can't the guy just be in the sandbox world and at large? Then I have to figure out another way of getting to him? Like if I managed to tail him successfully, maybe the next part is easier cause I know where he is. If I fail to tail him, I gotta do some other legwork to find him(pay informants, detectivework or whatever) and now he's in a heavily fortified location with a harder fight lined up.
While a Bethesda RPG is not quite the right counterpart, it does let you basically take a quest. It's in your questlog. You're free to dick about, do the quest halfway and then do something else. Focus on it, not focus on it. You're usually not locked into anything unless the game physically prevents you from leaving due to locales. Which is a lot better than me taking a wrong turn on a road and getting an immersion breaking gameover screen cause "he got away".
I remember FC3 being absolutely derp with this, extending to the completely pointless side activities. I happened to enter a hunting zone and pick up the weapon, well now I gotta hunt the thing. Here and now with the designated weapon. I will get a gameover screen if I attempt to leave or use the wrong weapon and if I no longer wanna hunt the thing, I had to abort from the menu. It's completely whack.
Yakuza handles the substories a lot better than the usual side nonsense Ubisoft does. You're free to pursue them whenever, you're never really locked into anything.
I might be a bit out of the loop though. My experiences with these sorta games are GTA3, Farcry 3/5, Saint's Row 2-4, Sleeping Dogs and Just Cause 2. And they more or less share the same DNA even if the little details are somewhat different. I don't know how some of the newer Ubi/Rockstar games handle things but I kinda doubt they've gotten all too different. I have played Yakuza 0, Kiwami and Kiwami 2 too but I kinda consider them a 'different' sorta game.
I'd like for one of these types of games to be looser with how they handle story and missions. Why are they so divorced from the sandbox? Why can't they be more integrated into the sandbox? Like lets say I fail a story mission involving tailing, can't the guy just be in the sandbox world and at large? Then I have to figure out another way of getting to him? Like if I managed to tail him successfully, maybe the next part is easier cause I know where he is. If I fail to tail him, I gotta do some other legwork to find him(pay informants, detectivework or whatever) and now he's in a heavily fortified location with a harder fight lined up.
While a Bethesda RPG is not quite the right counterpart, it does let you basically take a quest. It's in your questlog. You're free to dick about, do the quest halfway and then do something else. Focus on it, not focus on it. You're usually not locked into anything unless the game physically prevents you from leaving due to locales. Which is a lot better than me taking a wrong turn on a road and getting an immersion breaking gameover screen cause "he got away".
I remember FC3 being absolutely derp with this, extending to the completely pointless side activities. I happened to enter a hunting zone and pick up the weapon, well now I gotta hunt the thing. Here and now with the designated weapon. I will get a gameover screen if I attempt to leave or use the wrong weapon and if I no longer wanna hunt the thing, I had to abort from the menu. It's completely whack.
Yakuza handles the substories a lot better than the usual side nonsense Ubisoft does. You're free to pursue them whenever, you're never really locked into anything.
Eh, there's a fair amount of tailing missions in BEthesda quests. They just tend to "game over" you. You either get guards called in and throw pocket change to get out of it, or even more liekly it just resets the next day for a do over.
Which is the problem with Bethesda. Nothing has even a vague sense of consequence. Things don't happen organically, they either sit in a paused state for you or loop constantly around the identical exercises. If you fail tailing that dude, it has no significance, you just do it again the next day and not a thing changes with that or any other segment. Half the NPCs and most certainly any story ones are immortal. Reputation is easily gamed back out of any negative hole it falls into. You get a metric ton of backstory (which is probably being churned out by unpaid writing interns or something) in books and shit, but the actual in the game world and story just sits there scratching its own taint.
Ignore Bethesda's quality in execution. I'm not going to claim they do it well and it's not really the point I'm trying to make. I just brought them up cause that's the closest example that came to mind. And it's not like these sandbox games have any sense of consequence anyway, it's completely binary. You keep trying until you succeed cause the alternative is a game over screen.
I'd like a more seamless structure when it comes to these sorta sandbox games regarding their mission or story content. It's like there are two separate games. Why can't there be mission design in sandbox games that keep you in the sandbox, rather than some weird compartmentalized mission area or some fenced off section of the sandbox? There has to be a better way forward.
When was the style really not that though? I mean, the style since GTA3 has been open world sandbox, where stuff like stunt jumps were a standout activity. I’m not sure what there was in 3 that later games didn’t have in the way of fun and sandbox gameplay. Maybe it’s because they’ve been adding more and more window dressing and world building (especially with RDR2) that the lack of Saints Row type of gameplay stands out more.
In any case, the direction they went would be pretty jarring with that kind of game design mixed in, so each IP seems pretty well suited unto itself as they are.
Basically the biggest difference between the two is Rockstar’s open worlds don’t need a bunch of icons to keep them perpetually interesting.