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[OGM_Madness]

All they had to do is make Destiny 3. Get your shit together guys. And fuck off Sony with your stupid GAAS bullshit.

Nah, too late for that.

They should have made Destiny 3 instead of Beyond Light. That could have been their Destiny 3: a new installation, a new vibe, a fresh marketing campaign.

Instead, they dragged out the D2 brand and gutted a ton of locations, activities, and even full campaigns and expansions. It was the lazy move. The "game got too big" excuse was always ridiculous. What they needed to do was sunset the current game (leave it in a "Complete" state forever) and start fresh. Give people the chance to catch up with the franchise and enjoy it again.

But no. They doubled down on the same old FOMO crap that's poisoning the gaming industry. You can only fear missing out so many times before there's no fear left, just a trail of missed experiences.

Marathon, unfortunately, looks like more of the same trend-chasing garbage. Maybe it seemed like a good idea six or seven years ago, but the devs didn't act and deliver on it to ship it before the trend went cold. And guess what? It is deeeeeeaaaaaad cold now.

And just to be clear, crunch is poison. I'm not saying they should have crunched. But if your big idea relies on chasing a trend, you damn well better act fast and launch before that trend dies. That's why viral hits are hard to be copied. Maybe Fortnite is an exception, but then again, they copied the Battle Royale trend quickly and ran away with it.

Big, less agile companies like Bungie have two real choices. They can come up with a bold, new, trendy idea that hits (set the trend). Or they can launch a solid, classic-style game with a proper experience and a long tail, like all the true greats.

I get it, everyone wants to be the next big viral thing nowadays. Why aim for millions when you can try for the billion? But instead of making Marathon their new Halo, this Tarkov Hail Mary might just collapse the once-great Bungie. Imagine Marathon as a Sony First-Party Exclusive Title with a proper campaign, Co-op and a "escape on a vehicle" last mission. That would make headliners "Bungie's back to form" or "Marathon is doing for Sony what Halo did for Xbox years ago". Now is all this depressing stolen art and boring game narrative. I bet the Halo-like Marathon game could have been made in 3-4 years. With the current Marathon budget, we could probably be looking forward to a Marathon 2 right now.

Damn.

 

[DavidGzz]

Goddamn, I imagine Sony thinking that this was going to be the second game to keep the momentum going after Concorde. Just when Concorde begins to slow down in sales and hype, boom! Marathon ftw. Lmfao!!

 

[cripterion]

Ii88888u

Now thats just silly ...Halo revolutionized console fps and every Halo was damn good in both single and multiplayer. Destiny did a lot well too.

Problem with this dev is the way they treat their audience, bad management, taking shortcuts and greed

I neither like Halo nor Destiny

 

[Little Chicken]

 

[Last Hearth]

Here is my theory on what happened. Art department given 3 month to come up with a design and theme to the game. Because of people working from home, the art department fucked around for 2 month and did nothing, other than going around the internet looking at other people's designs hoping for some inspiration, figuring they still had a month to come up with something. Then suddenly they get a call that the higher ups at Sony want to take a look at the current build, and to send over whatever designs they have so far. Suddenly in a panic and scrambling, they take one of the designs around the web one of them saw and liked and had very little time to alter anything given the short time frame, and just stole it whole cloth and delivered it.
They were probably hoping that the higher ups would have some objections to the design and ask for alterations, so they had time to make changes later so as to not get caught copying someone else's work. Unfortunately for the them higher up totally bought the design and loved it, and told them to not change a thing, and they were stuck. Some of the people responsible for this probably knew it would eventually come out and quietly left the company.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Here is my theory on what happened. Art department given 3 month to come up with a design and theme to the game. Because of people working from home, the art department fucked around for 2 month and did nothing, other than going around the internet looking at other people's designs hoping for something inspiration, figuring they still had a month to come up with something. Then suddenly they get a call that the higher ups at Sony want to take a look at the current build, and to send over whatever designs they have so far. Suddenly in a panic and scrambling, they take one of the designs around the web one of them saw and liked and had very little time to alter anything given short time frame, and just stole it whole cloth and delivered it.
They were probably hoping that the higher ups would have some objections to the design and ask for alterations, so they had time to make changes later so as to not get caught copying someone else's work. Unfortunately for the them higher up totally bought the design and loved it, and told them to not change a thing, and they were stuck. Some of the people responsible for this probably knew it would eventually come out and quietly left the company.

Very possible.

And because gaming is a very transient industry where people come and go on contract, what do they care? They did their work, got paid and they know they'll move to another company contract in a year or two anyway. So the company will be caught holding the bag.

And what does he (or a bunch of them?) care? I dont think any company can go after them years later. It's the company's responsibility going forward.

Let's say I do a big spreadsheet and leave it with the company. If it turns out they used it for years after I left and found out today there was a big formula error in there the whole time fucking up business, I dont think they can come after me 3 years later looking for retribution. Thats on them to handle. I'm long gone.

 

[Rickyiez]

I usually roll my eyes whenever I hear someone talk about the "corporate greed" but I think this right here is probably the best example of it. Sony spent 4 billion on Bungie, 400M on Concord, and who knows how much on Fairgame and Factions and all their other GaaS projects thinking they were gonna 10x their money and pop out another Fortnite. 5 years later and billions of dollars wasted and they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

They could've made a dozen single player games for franchises that millions of people everywhere love and adore and yeah I know they would've made only a fraction of the money they hoped to make with their GaaS ambitions but they would've still been in the green. Instead of that they're now billions in the red and outside of Helldivers 2 every single project failed. And HD2 alone won't come anywhere close to justifying the billions they spent.

Corporate greed.

And the only thing saved them was the fact that Xbox is a dumpster fire that's been burning for ages and Nintendo switched focus to the handheld market and cornered it. If the core market starts to migrate away from consoles to handhelds, Sony is cooked. A PlayStation handheld has no chance competing with Nintendo in 2025.

Well said , exactly my thought . All those money could have gotten us so much incredible new IP if not for the chase of the GAAS money . Fuck Sony is dumb .

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Have they not thought about maybe hiring the guy who did the art?

This will solve the problem with this art in particular, but legal now needs to vet every single piece of asset for the game to make sure Bungie is in the clear. It's a nightmare.

 

[powder]

Just put the game out for free, fuck it. It feels like they made it in 2 years anyway.

 

[Fess]

Was the stream recorded and is available to watch somehow today?

 

[Hudo]

Good. They haven't made anything good since Halo: Reach.

Sony need to make a decision here, imho. Either step in, fire all management people and try to steer Bungie back from the brink, or shut the studio down.

 

[TheRaidenPT]

They should really consider F2P at this stage, I doubt Sony will allow to move them the date even further now… Crazy situations that Bungie gets themselves into in the last couple of years.

Personally I'm not a fan of Destiny after the first game and Marathon as an extraction shooter doesn't really appeals me.

I wish Bungie went back and focused on arena shooters

 

[Tomeru]

I neither like Halo nor Destiny

That doesnt make your opinion less wrong though.


Yes, there are wrong opinions.

 

[Cakeboxer]

I don't think they can turn this into a success. The game is already the laughing stock of the internet. Streamers and their viewers love to shit on it and won't stop even if it somehow becomes a good game in 4 months.

 

[Liopleurodon]

I don't think they can turn this into a success. The game is already the laughing stock of the internet. Streamers and their viewers love to shit on it and won't stop even if it somehow becomes a good game in 4 months.

Yeah, at this point people WANT this game to fail, regardless of stolen art.

 

[clappedcheeks]

You're defending blatant plagiarism of an artist's entire work from a company that has a history of stealing others' work with "you haven't even played it" and blaming it on the nebulous "console war"?

That's quite a take. I'd say it's a clownish one but it's so bad you've blown past clown and straight to being the whole circus.

The feedback from the alpha tests from those who did play it was poor. ARC Raiders looks like they're light years ahead of what Bungie is offering with Marathon. Bungie has been a mess for years. They have been pissing on the good will of their Destiny fan base for at least the last 4-5 years, and Marathon looks like a hurried rip off of a project trying to leech off some of those precious GAAS dollars.

I'm not defending blatant plagiarism and my post made no reference to it. Most of the posts in this thread don't reference the plagiarism and neither does the thread title. Paul Tassi is using it as a jumping off point to drum up some drama for clicks.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

Was the stream recorded and is available to watch somehow today?

 

[clappedcheeks]

This vocal minority has been right a lot of times this gen... from suicide squad to concord ... but hey than again if its just a minority the game will be perfectly fine nothing to worry about.

A lot of games have had a messy development cycle and ended up ok. If memory serves I think halo 2 was a shit show during development but they managed to turn it around upon release. Marathon may very well end up a dumpster fire and it'll not find an audience if that's the case. I want to see what happens when the play testing is opened up to a larger group of players and I actually get to try it for myself.

 

[mdkirby]

The artstyle that was stolen is dogshit, it is hilarious that they thought that was a good thing to rip off. Bungie gonna go the way of the dodo errrm firewalk, just watch. Haven, same.

The artstyle and vibe of the game in the original teaser from years ago was great. The game itself tho look absolutely crap.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Imagine all the awesome Sony single player games we could have had instead of watching all these dumpster fires.

Japan studio died while Sony went all retard with GAAS

I'm not sure it can ever be forgiven

 

[MiguelItUp]

It's pretty wild to see everything Bungie has become. People loved their studio so much, hell, some still do I'm sure. Somehow.

It's just really sad watching this all pan out, it's a slow train wreck that's impossible to look away from.

 

[Topher]

Japan studio died while Sony went all retard with GAAS

I'm not sure it can ever be forgiven

I'd love to be able to forgive it all and see things turn around, but I'd bet it gets worse before it gets better (if it gets better).

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I'd love to be able to forgive it all and see things turn around, but I'd bet it gets worse before it gets better (if it gets better).

I recall you and I having these very talks long before Spiderman 2 even launched that we were entering this period, the getting worse part

 

[ProtoByte]

Imagine all the awesome Sony single player games we could have had instead of watching all these dumpster fires.

Yeah, well I remember a lot of whining bitching and moaning about their "interactive movie games" and the Soyny template. Gamers are not entirely in the clear for this shit.

 

[DannyDanger]

Just don't get how Sony keeps greenlighting the same damn asthetic. We don't want this shit, Jesus... Concord, Fairgames, Marathon all have the same vibe

Why are there no consequences for the higher ups?

 

[Topher]

Yeah, well I remember a lot of whining bitching and moaning about their "interactive movie games" and the Soyny template. Gamers are not entirely in the clear for this shit.

There were plenty of us defending those "interactive movie games" though so depends on what "gamers" we are talking about.

 

[cormack12]

The artstyle and vibe of the game in the original teaser from years ago was great. The game itself tho look absolutely crap.

Reminds me of those mobile game ads you see on YouTube and the game is radically different

 

[Topher]

I recall you and I having these very talks long before Spiderman 2 even launched that we were entering this period, the getting worse part

I remember that as well. Two years later and we've had one game released from Sony's first party studios. Things have definitely gotten worse from that standpoint. We going to get one game a year from these guys from now on? I could just game on PC and wait for the ports if that is the case.

 

[Mattyp]

There were plenty of us defending those "interactive movie games" though so depends on what "gamers" we are talking about.

There's honestly nothing wrong with those games. I take issue with it's the only thing Sony seems capable of, they used to have such a variety.

Sony needs more A and AA games.

What's Naughty Dog going to deliver this generation, 1 game? For 12 hours of game play through an entire generation that will be playable on PC? It can't keep going like this.

Even their hit studios don't know what the fuck they're doing it's been 5 years now since their last release and we've had a 30 second generated trailer showing us nothing.

1 new game for an entire generation from their top studio.

 

[Hypereides]

Japan studio died while Sony went all retard with GAAS

I'm not sure it can ever be forgiven

I still recall when some of us were calling this shit out only to get shouted down by some servile fanboys. As a PS fan, it was baffling to watch.

 

[Cakeboxer]

Sony needs more A and AA games.

And they have to give those "smaller" games some more love. Still can't believe they didn't give Astro Bots more marketing.

 

[Topher]

There's honestly nothing wrong with those games. I take issue with it's the only thing Sony seems capable of, they used to have such a variety.

Sony needs more A and AA games.

What's Naughty Dog going to deliver this generation, 1 game? For 12 hours of game play through an entire generation that will be playable on PC? It can't keep going like this.

Even their hit studios don't know what the fuck they're doing it's been 5 years now since their last release and we've had a 30 second generated trailer showing us nothing.

1 new game for an entire generation from their top studio.

Agree. Hard to believe that Naughty Dog had three games released last gen. Which is why many of us find it incredibly hard to believe this notion that this live service push has not hindered single player game development from Sony's studios. As HeisenbergFX4 pointed out, we've been talking about this for some time now. Used to be Sony didn't muck around with the games these studios wanted to make. There was a pride in the amount of freedom they had. Now we've got Guerilla making gotdang Lego games. It is bizarre.

 

[DirtInUrEye]

Hostile environment sounds about right.

What were they thinking with this?


That said, Bungie is a studio with enough institutional knowledge (which includes their own coding) that it needs to be "saved" in some capacity. The console fps gameplay is still absolutely outstanding.

Objectively speaking, Concord played extremely well, too. Mechanically, as in how it actually felt move and shoot, the game felt every bit the ex Bungie dev Destiny hybrid.

It won't make any difference.

 

[The_Observer]

I think they should hire more diverse people and develop another gaas for the modern audience

 

[mdkirby]

Reminds me of those mobile game ads you see on YouTube and the game is radically different

Yah pretty much. Which is a real shame, the original teaser, vague tho it may be, was visually striking, unique, and full of mystery and intrigue about its world, it was a world i wanted to explore. Then when it was actually revealed, looks like shit and has all the intrigue mystery and narrative depth of a puddle.

 

[DragonNCM]

This game might be able to beat Concord....

 

[proandrad]

Agree. Hard to believe that Naughty Dog had three games released last gen. Which is why many of us find it incredibly hard to believe this notion that this live service push has not hindered single player game development from Sony's studios. As HeisenbergFX4 pointed out, we've been talking about this for some time now. Used to be Sony didn't muck around with the games these studios wanted to make. There was a pride in the amount of freedom they had. Now we've got Guerilla making gotdang Lego games. It is bizarre.

GaaS are strangling studios. They demand so many resources that studios can't focus on anything else, and the massive manpower needed dilutes talent across the board. Naughty Dog could've dropped one, maybe two games by now if they hadn't sunk years into that mess. It's why I'm rooting for Nightreign to crash and burn, From software needs to steer clear of that time and money black hole.

 

[SILKYSMOOTH30FPS]

Good. Just like Ubisoft, it's real hard to feel bad for a studio that thinks of nothing else but how to sell you mtx.

I hope Arc Raiders comes out within a week, it'll be funny to watch Bungie trying their hardest to daamge control on why their game is the way that it is.

 

[StereoVsn]

Actually depressing

Isn't it? They spent almost $4billion on Bungie and probably at least another $billion on MP games going up in smoke.

$5billion could get a lot of AAA games developed and better yet a mixture of AA and AAA. And there is no need to spend $250mil on each Spider-Man 2 style either.

 

[SpokkX]

Bungie is in the same bucket as Blizzard for me

They used to make stuffi cared for but that was 15+ years ago now

I think bungie, unlike blizzard, could actually shut down though

 

[StereoVsn]

There were plenty of us defending those "interactive movie games" though so depends on what "gamers" we are talking about.

Another issue is that Sony has a ton of different IP, but they basically concentrated on the "cinematic" games for the most part and killed off most of their smaller studios.

 

[Topher]

Another issue is that Sony has a ton of different IP, but they basically concentrated on the "cinematic" games for the most part and killed off most of their smaller studios.

Sucks too. If anything, I think games like Astro Bot and Ratchet and Clank proves that older IP such as Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper can help fill the void between AAA releases and broaden the overall library. Not every game needs to be Uncharted, clearly. Invest in A and AA within your existing studios. Team Asobi rose out of Japan Studio's ashes, but in many ways that highlights how neglected Japan Studio really was. Really is too bad.

 

[Hypereides]

Isn't it? They spent almost $4billion on Bungie and probably at least another $billion on MP games going up in smoke.

$5billion could get a lot of AAA games developed and better yet a mixture of AA and AAA. And there is no need to spend $250mil on each Spider-Man 2 style either.

If I recall correctly, the Insomniac data breach indicated they've conducted an internal analysis/research and are well aware of the massive budgets being, or becoming, a concern. Their slides even suggested that they question whether or not people even notice those extra millions going into the final product.

I hope the business side finally will start to pay attention to these devs' internal observations and thoroughly consider their insights they deduced within those docs.

 

[RCX]

Yet another case of a studio thats too far disconnected from its origins.

The real bungie people are long gone. This aint the Halo devs, its largely not the Destiny devs. It's a shell with a name that wants to evoke good memories in you so you'll buy their GAAS shite.

It's over for them. BTW I found a picture of their art director:

 

[Trilobit]

Are all the Latines and Latinxes ok?

I used to be active on 9Gag a while back and people are pretty hardened there, but I managed to rile quite some feathers just by using the word 'latinx'. Good times! Latinas and latinos have lots of humor, but calling them anything else than -a or -o comes with certain risks. I now understand the pleasure Jamie Kennedy derived when he X:ed people.

 

[MMaRsu]

Are all the Latines and Latinxes ok?

Does this mean I can be latin because I feel like it?

 

[EN250]

they havent made anything good since halo reach. just shut them down already.

If that were true, D2 wouldn't even exist, they got too big, too greedy and too stupid with their social justice nonsense

They just needed to do D3, but at this pace, it's not gonna happen and not for lack of interest, but because there will be no Bungie studio to develop anymore

 

[Ceadeus]

The day Fortnite will add a fully fledged extraction mode the competition will become obsolete.

People would go absolutely addiction mode in their brain

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Does this mean I can be latin because I feel like it?

Of course you can. It's your identity, that means you can pick whatever you want and everyone else is obligated to go along with it.

I myself used to identify as Latinx. Then one day I was eating at Taco Bell and I realized I'm truly a Latine but with some Latinx leanings. It's really a spectrum.

 

[CosmicComet]

Still laughable that MS managed to snag Zenimax/Bethesda for 7 billion (an entire PUBLISHER who has several big IPs) and Sony turned around bought a past prime Bungie (a single studio who only owns Destiny and the ancient marathon ip) for 3.5 billion. All the while having to ensure any Bungie developed titles have to stay multi-plat.

Lmao I've been saying for years on this forum that it was the most aggregiously overpriced gaming acquisition in history and I keep being proven wise.

This thing is going to go Concord and then Sony will own the two highest profile flops in gaming history. Sony has been absolute trash at acquisitions and releases the last several years lmaooo