I'd love to see how the game looks now. Particularly would like to see the visual improvements, specially in exteriors.
I assume they didn't change the appearance of the characters, but would like to see them to make an effort to appeal non woke male players.
Apparently they can't support anything lately that isn't a Last of Us rerelease.
You are talking as if Death Stranding 2, Astrobot, Stellar Blade, Helldivers 2, Wolverine, Intergalactic, Cory's new IP, Marvel Tokon, Destiny Rising and so on wouldn't exist.
Who asked them to support a Fornite clone live service game?
We don't have any news of Sony working in any Fortnite clone or having plans to do so.
I have to be honest, i've always loved how this game appears in those CGI renders.
If they manage to make it look like that in-game, then it could be actually cool to look at
CGIs are CGIs, gameplay can't look like this.
Specially competitive multiplayer games like this one, because need to ensure high and stable performance in lower end devices to cover a big enough potential userbase. Which means visuals need to be toned down to ensure a proper 60fps in decent hardware.
Probably, but it always seemed like Factions just happened to turn out way bigger than they expected and then when Bungie came into the picture they discussed what would be necessary to really support it long-term and after carefull consideration they decided they should focus on Intergalactic.
After all, Factions initially was supposed to be part of TLOU2 just like Factions 1 was, but their ambition required a seperate release.
It just seems like somewhere along the way, it's gotten way too big and Bungie's expertise made them realize it wouldn't work.
The only question is how big of a deal it really is to Sony, something none of us knows the answer to.
They originally were working on Factions 2, and online mode for TLOU2. Seeing that they weren't on time to ship TLOU2 on time, ND decided to delay TLOU2 and release it as a SP only game, and spinoff the MP mode to reboot it as a standalone game.
ND's post TLOU2 plans were to work in TLOU Online in addition to multiple new SP games like Intergalactic and an unannounced game they have been working on since over a couple years ago.
The concept of the standalone project, TLOU Online, was way more ambitious and bigger than the original ideas they had for the TLOU2 MP mode, was basically a different project. Nowadays standalone MP game equals GaaS.
When the project was reviewed by the Sony Live Services Center of Excellence, which is a SIE team with the experts on the different GaaS related areas from all the different SIE/PS Studios teams (not just Bungie), it was highlighted that TLOU Online would require way more ND resources for the post launch than the ones they had planned, which wasn't compatible with ND also working on multiple new big SP games at the same time after having growth a lot.
So ND instead of deciding to cancel some of their SP games to put these resources in TLOU Online, decided to cancel instead the GaaS and focus instead on SP only games going forward.
Which is mind boggling to let a game go to almost completion ($$$) to then say "You know what.. we cant really support this game.. so fuck it" ... it sounds like the type of thing that should come up around the brainstorming session and or pre-production.
I've been working on games for two decades, and there are many reasons to cancel a project in all its stages when the company detects that they won't be able to save the game and are very sure that the game is going to be a failure.
A lot of these reasons aren't related to predictable internal reasons, stuff not related of the team doing a bad job. Quite often things sound good and promising on paper and during development, but as the project keeps getting shape and things are able to be tested it's when the issues are detected, specially when the team is doing something different or new.
Other times some resouces that originally were going to be spent on a project later goes moved to something else so the project has to be shut down, or some key staff or team that was needed for later get in other project and finally aren't available. Or sometimes the market changes during development and even if when started there was a market for it, later the player preferences change and that type of game gets outdated.
Making games is very hard, specially to predict and plan for the long term. Even for the top teams. But yes, as Hermen recently said it's important to detect as soon as possible that a project won't work and can't be fixed, because if a project has to be cancelled it's important to detect it as fast as possible because that means to throw less money to the garbage bin.
Sony now has a powerful GaaS lineup of teams and staff, but back when TLOU Online was greenlighted didn't. ND did great MP modes and TLOU is a top IP, so on paper a TLOU MP idea looked good. But a GaaS involves many specific things that required dedicated experts that Sony didn't have back then.
