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[CentralScrutinizer]

Can I buy and play it for $60-$70 or do I have to play it for "free" and do all the stupid ass gatcha game timer and currency bullshit?

 

[jzbadblood]

F2P Anime slop

 

[Liopleurodon]

Can I buy and play it for $60-$70 or do I have to play it for "free" and do all the stupid ass gatcha game timer and currency bullshit?

It's not game for you.

 

[StereoVsn]

This is where the writing should be carrying. Creatives can work within boundaries to still make things feel dark and disturbing in theme regardless of the lack of blood or body horror.

It might be an odd example to bring up, but Courage the Cowardly Dog, a kid's show, left people of all ages highly disturbed at some of the episodes and themes presented throughout.

It's a game produced in China. Nobody is going to dive into very deep scenes as that can run afoul of the censors.

Which is why you see very bland stories and writing out of there once Xi tightened the censorship back in late 2010s.

 

[StereoVsn]

Do t care what anyone says, this game looks awesome. Its definitely the first of these style games that I actually want to play

I think Ananta is supposed to be mainly gatcha on cosmetics side of things so there are no stupid character grading and pulls.

This is kind of like "Where Winds Meet" that just released where you have a ton of content, all free, and the charges are mainly around cosmetics.

There is stamina for certain actions that can bring in currency, but questing is not governed by it.

So if Ananta takes the same route, it would be a lot better bet vs usual gatcha stuff.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Something to play on my iPhone. Genshin Impact is actually a decent time sink.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

where is the GTA STYLE?!

 

[MayauMiao]

Honestly I'm kinda disappointed in the gameplay. Seems too boring for a modern day HoYo game. I know they can do better than that. Also I don't like the uncanny valley character models, but it's still early, so there's a good chance they polish those.

I watched that whole thing and I was just waiting for the 'hook' that never actually came. Very derivative for a company that's pushed the envelope a lot in the past.

Shame that due to China regulations, there will be no blood or body horror or anything interesting despite the darker theme.

*edit*



This will 100% be censored for the release version. It's a classic HoYoVerse move to have these kind of designs in the Alpha/Beta and then change them on release. Happened for Genshin Impact, ZZZ, and Star Rail.

Eh, we'll see. Even if the covered up the characters, its still way better than what is given by the modern audience chasing western devs.

 

[Perrott]

This is where having money but no creative vision gets you...

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Some more info about Varsapura from DaWei's private WeChat/Weixin. The translation might be a bit rough around the edges since it went from CN to JP and then to EN.

Tagging you here Agent_4Seven as you might be interested in what's been said by MiHoYo's CEO.

[Translation]Dawei's comment and vision on Varsapura

We began challenging the urban open-world genre in 2020, which could be called the "crown jewel" of the gaming industry. We wanted to create an open-world work based on a real city, featuring high-quality story expression, a more unique art style, and new breakthroughs in gameplay. Its development codename was PJSH (Project SH).

However, our vision was too grand, and the team started out at full speed on a massive scale from the very beginning, going against the "How miHoYo makes games" principle we've always upheld of starting verification from the smallest prototype. The result was predictable: the PJSH project was disbanded at the end of 2022.

By the end of 2023, the vision for the urban open-world gradually became clearer in Cai (Haoyu)'s mind, and we finally organized not just "an amazing project," but what kind of work we truly wanted to create.

This time, we're returning to our original creative intent, enjoying the true fun of making games, and focusing on creating something we love. We hope you will like it too.

Source

 

[Pejo]

Also worth noting that the character models look like an evolution of the Lumi_N0va experimental virtual idol that HoYo has been messing around with for years now. Probably uses the same tech/modeling/engine.

 

[Zacfoldor]

Ahh yes GTA (Gooner Tits & Ass)

 

[Honey Bunny]

You had me fooled in the first half of that title ngl

 

[Danjin44]

The visuals looks someone modded anime character model to a realistic looking western game.

I don't think I would be interested in this game even if wasn't F2P gacha game.

 

[MayauMiao]

This is where having money but no creative vision gets you...

Like Black Ops 7 ?

 

[thatsafakewebsitebro]

Do t care what anyone says, this game looks awesome. Its definitely the first of these style games that I actually want to play

Yep. This is the game I'm most excited for to drop. It looks insane and a lot of fun.

 

[Agent_4Seven]

Some more info about Varsapura from DaWei's private WeChat/Weixin. The translation might be a bit rough around the edges since it went from CN to JP and then to EN.

Tagging you here Agent_4Seven as you might be interested in what's been said by MiHoYo's CEO.

Source

Oh, so they canceled it at first and gone back to it later? See, now I'm really curious as to where they're going with this.

I'm sure you've played Control and know what the game is and what you do there, it doesn't have huge open world or the usual urban setting from Persona for example or ZZZ, but it does have some lite RPG elements as well as a fully working and really cool conversation system, but it's not based on stats so you don't have highlighted or locked ones based on them, but in this new HoYo game it's clearly different.

Also, design-wise Control is more like Max Payne if it wasn't level based, meaning that you have a huge map with way different branches and location based on their purpose and so even though the overall design is sort of similar, each location has something unique to it and you feel like you're in a different world doing different things, and visuals along with narrative playing huge part in this too. So I wonder, are they going with similar design philosophy here too? I mean, similarities to Control is unmistakable, they even have the same intro of a character going to a building which has this X-Files-like feel to it and abstractness of Twin Peaks the deeper you go into this vertical slice demo. I think they should stick to what Control did so no Persona-like design from ZZZ and MCs, just this strange and weird af building with lots of shit going on for you to find and discover, new agents to recruit with different abilities and moreover, the possibilities are endless.

I mean look, they really need to drop the outside world thing here and everyday live shit completely, it's boring, it doesn't need to be a part of what this ends up being, it wasn't in Control and this is exactly why it was so good. So they can have say 4-5 floors of the building with different branches and shit like in Astral Chain but with more supernatural and abstract stuff like in Control, that's all they need to do when it comes to the world of the game. They can add more lore and stuff just like in control and look, they already did it and you can see it in the demo already - with absolutely excellent facial and other life-like animations - they clearly mo-capped all this and it works and looks great!

Now, when it comes to what you do... we already saw it in the demo, there's Control-like places where your can open door-portals into other worlds / locations (in Control it were save and fast travel points) and that's why they've endless possibilities here cuz they can design whatever they want and not be confined and restricted by real world urban-like setting limitations, they can Stargate the shit out of it, create unique worlds, locations and stories, cool character intros where banners go live and if it'll be of the same quality as in this demo... dude, we'll have something really special and unlike anything they (or anyone else) did before.

So yeah, if they do everything right and not go with ZZZ / Persona-like core design and embrace fully what Control did and a bit of what old Platinum did in Astral Chain... Uh, but I don't want to get my hopes up so early, so let's wait and see. I think in a year or so from now we'll probably get more info and see more of the game.

Also, Pejo do you see now what I meant by proper lighting, light sources, shadows and stuff when it comes to how all of this should affect characters? Well here you go. The problem with WuWa though is that they chose very artistic way of designing and coloring characters when it comes to art, outfit designs, faces, hair etc. But it's not just that, the skin is different too and it's flat unlike in GFL2 for example, so the light can't interact with it much to highlight different features, imperfections or skin oil. He-he, I'm probably getting to nerdy here, but the point is I don't think it'll be that easy to do in WuWa unless they'll somehow find very clever ways for the lighting and shadows to work with what they have and not compromise existing character model designs, or overhaul it completely and make it look similar to Infinity Nikki when it comes to skin, hair and character model rendering

 

[Wonko_C]

The visuals looks someone modded anime character model to a realistic looking western game.

I don't think I would be interested in this game even if wasn't F2P gacha game.

Personally it reminded me of the Kingdom Hearts games: Anime style but without cel-shading. Making it look like moving Figmas or something similar.

 

[Danjin44]

Personally it reminded me of the Kingdom Hearts games: Anime style but without cel-shading. Making it look like moving Figmas or something similar.

No in Kingdom Heats the environment match the artstyle but in this games its not.

Also Kingdom Hearts artstyle change based on world your in.