Today’s post is a switch up from the norm .
Before I start, Happy New Years, and happy first post of the year! This week will be a double post with today being the first and Thursday bringing my first “review”.
When I started my blog, I used to cover gaming news more frequently, but due to my utter laziness and the fact that I try really hard to put out good written content, I slowed down with the news coverage. Today, I’m going to switch up the norm and cover some gaming news that has come out over the past couple of days. I might start doing this again to fill in the gaps between my “review” pieces and esports coverage. It just depends if any news comes out that interests me throughout the week.
Eventually, I’d love to get a podcast setup to do this because I feel like it’d be a thousand times more fun and interactive. If anybody knows any good starter podcast setups, please let me know!
Enough jibber jabber, we have some news to cover some of it which really surprised me.
Square Enix starts the year off with a No Fucking Thanks (NFT) bang
Square Enix’s CEO Yosuke Matsuda started January off with some big news about how the company will embrace NFTs, the Metaverse, blockchain-based gaming and will look to explore their options in regards to implementing these systems in their future. He claims something about self sustainability, 5G coverage, and threw in a COVID shoutout at the end, all of those “hype” words to get people buzzing. Well, he did a good job.
Look there’s a lot of stuff here that I don’t understand, and as I mentioned in my recap of gaming for 2021, this is going to be the way forward whether we wanted it or not (I only use this phrase for this reference). I don’t like how companies are trying to justify it, and I don’t like which companies are trying to implement it. Maybe I’m old and senile, but I’m of the mindset where if you just make a good game it’ll sustain itself.
I think what’s even more shocking is the fact that this came out on January 1st. He couldn’t even wait until the 2nd day of the year or the first Monday of the year to pull this stunt.
The Last of Us Remake could release this year
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
I don’t think The Last of Us is Naughty Dog’s best work.
While I liked the story the first game gave us, I did not like the gameplay at all. It was slow and uninteresting compared to what ND (Naughty Dog) gave us in the Uncharted series. The second game flipped the formula backwards and traded off story for better gameplay, in my opinion.
My personal opinion aside, I covered a story back in April about how Sony didn’t want to green light a sequel to zombie apocalypse/motorcycle mashup, Days Gone (more on this later), and was instead interested on remaking The Last of Us for PS5. Well, it seems like this remake could see a potential release this year according to multiple reports across the industry.
However, that’s not the only part of the rumor. Along with this remake, we could be getting a Director’s Cut for The Last of Us: Part II and a standalone multiplayer title which could be based off of the Factions mode from the first game. The reports go on to say that this all could be a way to build up hype for The Last of Us TV series that is coming to HBO.
Couple of things I want to point out:
- This is supposed to be a remake not a remaster, and there is quite a difference between the two. Remaster usually signifies that the game is just getting a graphics pass and some cool new features for the current generation of consoles while a remake usually means the game could see some significant changes. The reports are pointing this to be a remake, but I’m going to assume they’re using that word lightly because I don’t see them changing a lot, maybe a bit in the gameplay category, but who knows.
- A Director’s Cut for TLOU2? I could see this being a package deal where you get the rumored remake, the second game and maybe even the rumored MP title included? I don’t know what else a Director’s Cut would contain since I don’t think they did much for the game after it launched as far as content goes.
- The rumored MP title… to me has to be free. If it’s based off of Factions from the first game, that’s a great idea since it was actually a solid experience. No way I could see people paying for it though.
Again, my honest take is I don’t think this is a need at all. I’m sure we’ll get plenty of news as the year progresses so I won’t completely shut off my eye to this, but I don’t know about this.
Days Gone devs pitched a new Resistance game
I don’t know about you, but I enjoyed the Resistance games. I thought Resistance 2 was the best out of the series as far as gameplay and story, but Resistance 3 definitely shined on a technical aspect.
Former Bend Studio director Jeff Ross has been pretty vocal about everything and anything related to Days Gone for the past year. In the above article that referenced The Last of Us remake, there were also details about how a potential Days Gone sequel was pitched but denied by Sony despite it selling very well. We got some more juicy news, and I mean really juicy (okay that sounds weird I’m sorry) from Mr. Ross through another guest appearance on David Jaffe’s (God of War, Twisted Metal) live stream.
I’m going to break down the above paragraph in two parts, and I’ll also provide a link to a summary article for any other pieces I may have missed.
Part 1
After the pitch for a sequel failed, Bend Studios brought up an idea for a new potential title: an open world Resistance game. Ross sounded pretty excited about it saying “There were all of these open-world loops that we figured out. It almost wrote itself with Resistance. There were so many aspects of that property that lent itself to open-world gameplay.” Sony denied the idea due to the performance of the last Resistance game. Sony suggested that the team work on a reboot of Syphon Filter, but the way it was presented seemed like it was “busy work” not a sincere pitch according to Ross.
Now, in my opinion, who knows how that would’ve worked out. I did an article way back when talking about Resistance and how I felt it deserved another entry/reboot because the story wasn’t told that well until the final game. That being said, the open world genre has been severely over saturated since Resistance went dark. I could see it happening since I guess Halo Infinite campaign did it and has received some good feedback. My perfect formula for the series would be something like semi open world with the good multiplayer/co-op aspects from Resistance 2.
The problem is some games go open world and lose the story aspect. Could it have been done? Sure. It seems like Sony wasn’t sure if the former team at Bend Studios could’ve done it which leads up to the next piece of the puzzle.
Part 2
As of January 5th, 2022 Ghost of Tsushima just managed to sell over 8 million copies. Ross took to Twitter to share that across PlayStation and Steam that Days Gone managed to pull those same numbers but management managed (lul) to make them feel that the game was a disappointment. I managed to find that pretty interesting so I went back and did some research.
When Days Gone released, critics bashed the game hard for its “empty open world” ,”story being too long while not resolving a lot of plot lines” and a lack of polish. However, if you looked at the user score of players (who aren’t critics), people seemed to really enjoy the game, myself included.
I hate what this news has done because it’s created a weird sort of rivalry between the two titles with people citing how Ghost of Tsushima released nearly flawlessly across the board versus the state of Days Gone at release and how it doesn’t warrant a sequel. I think Days Gone deserves another shot because I’m confident a lot of the issues the first game faced would be figured out. However, it seems very unlikely now that the majority of the staff have left and Bend Studios is also working on a different title.
Fallen Order 2 reveal and KOTR combat rework?
More Star Wars news has hit the galaxy far, far away (did you like that reference?).
The potential Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel might see an announcement this year before E3 2022. This one speaks for itself, but I’m super stoked for any type of news regard a sequel. I thought the first one was so dang good, and it sold very well all but guaranteeing it’ll get a sequel.
Along side that, we got some potential rumors for the KOTR remake. The upcoming Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake might be seeing additional combat modes come to the game with a source citing that the combat might focus on more action a la God of War and Nioh. The original game featured a turn based style of combat, but it’s been years since we’ve seen a game that features that kind of combat so this change seems exciting. I think those changes are fascinating especially since I’m assuming they’re aiming to modernize the remake to appeal to a newer audience, and if true, that’s a good way to do it.
Outside of that, if any of this is true, I do hope they allow players to switch between the different combat modes. Some of the OGs may be fans of the original’s turn based combat and want that feeling back, some of the newcomers may want to try it out no strings attached. It might be a lot of work, but it’d be nice to give players options to experiment with.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human will take the rest of your life to complete
Okay the title is a joke.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human is right around the corner, and the devs are coming out with more and more info. Over the weekend they dropped this bomb, and fans were quick to ask for some clarification.
After the initial tweet, the social media manager was really quick to clarify what this post meant (probably had this in the drafts) saying that it would take 500 hours to full experience everything in the game including the different endings, exploring the whole world and quests. It would take a “regular” player less than 100 hours to do quite a bit and finish the game.
Personal opinion, I’m not super upset about this. They seem to be going for a more RPG like approach with this game as far as side quests and how your choices impact the world/characters. People were more than happy to sink all their time into other titles like The Witcher 3 or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with The Witcher supposedly taking around 173 hours complete everything, and Skyrim taking around 100-300 for 100% completion (I googled these stats).
I’m more concerned about the overall game not living up to the hype versus how long it takes to finish it. At the end of the day, if it’s not good, who cares how long it takes?
Edit: as of Monday the 10th, they went on to further breakdown the time to play.
Battlefield subreddit is about to explode
Battlefield 2042 has all but almost fell apart, and the subreddit is in shambles with the mods threatening to close it down to due to “toxicity”. The top post is a warning from the mods stating that they will close the sub if the users don’t clean up their act.
In case you’re out of the loop, Battlefield 2042 has been pretty damn disappointing. Poor performance, questionable design choices, “legacy features” missing and much more have made players very very sad. I wrote a post about it, and nothing has changed since then. If you head over to the subreddit, it’s full of posts of players questioning what’s going on, memes full of wants versus expectations and glitch montages. It’s actually kind of funny to me, but the mods don’t seem to like it one bit.
I will say that I have not seen the super toxic posts so my experience on the sub has been pretty chill, but any form of toxicity is not okay. Yes the game is a dumpster fire, but we as gamers need to be better and not insult or belittle the team working on the game. As we’ve come to learn, a lot of choices aren’t dev based with publishers forcing nonsense into games. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s fair to completely shut down the sub as it’s important to voice concerns and opinions which is the point of said sub. Again, what I have seen has been concerns and questions about the state of the game, if there are toxic posts, I feel like it should be pretty easy to close it and move along. Don’t just threaten a shut down because a few bad apples are stupid.
Red Dead Online players rightfully demand attention
I haven’t played Red Dead Online since Red Dead Redemption, but there is a dedicated fan base for the online experience, and they’re getting fed up.
The “Save Red Dead Online” movement has been getting a ton of traction as players are demanding that Rockstar give the game some attention especially since GTA V and GTA Online have been getting significant updates and content for the past 25 years (hyperbole I know).
Again, I haven’t played it in awhile, but nonetheless it’s severely disappointing to see this shift in Rockstar. I feel like we held them to high standards for so long, and they’ve since gone through and changed their ways to match the changing market in gaming. Basically, they’ve been shifting their focus to microtransactions and milking GTA as best as they can while shafting their target audiences.
I hope Red Dead players get what they deserve, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.
Alright I think that’s all I’ve seen. I’m actually surprised because I didn’t plan on covering that much so that was a nice change up of the norm.
With a start like this, 2022 could be a very bussin year!
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