Support NeoGAF

[In Cold Blood]

Games are constantly re-jigged, or revamped and have their scope changed, during construction.

If a game is just a basic reboot of an older game, like say Bluepoint with Bloodborne, there's fuck all to really consider.
If it's a basic add on, or DLC, like Spiderman 2, then all they really need is a new story name and some new character models for the new characters in the game, and away you go.

The Initiative was a brand new studio built from the ground up, to make a game with a totally new concept. No reusing old game assets or storylines.
They had a goal of having a boutique studio, made up of all the most talented devs from studios in that highly talented area.
They soon found out that they had too many chiefs and not enough Indians, and Gallagher had to pull rank and regain control of what the game was going to be.

As for "Unreal Engine 5" issues, CD has their own internal game engine called "foundation", so if they had to get to grips with using Unreal Engine 5, well the poor little guys. Literally every single support studio has to get to grips with whatever game engine the game they are working on uses. This is not some amazing revolution here.

Microsoft isn't going to abandon the game or the studio. Daryll Gallagher knows how to make a good game.
CD are a quality studio, and UE5 is a quality engine.
The game will come out, and the FUD being thrown around by fanboys will all be a forgotten

 

[Nothing1234]

Does anyone really care about this game? I get why people liked the first game for the time and the hardware but it never had a decent follow up and whatever made it special back then just couldn't seem less relevant today. I think the world has moved on.

Like it isn't a world or characters anyone cares about, it doesn't have any unique gameplay ideas anyone wants to see, like other than pure nostalgia what does this brand mean to anyone today?

I care about the game, the potential of the world on modern hardware could be something special.

 

[Vognerful]

What is so good about this game anyway? I mean why it is important?

 

[Nothing1234]

If a game is just a basic reboot of an older game, like say Bluepoint with Bloodborne, there's fuck all to really consider.
If it's a basic add on, or DLC, like Spiderman 2, then all they really need is a new story name and some new character models for the new characters in the game, and away you go.

This is how to destroy your credibility.

 

[Vognerful]

Does anyone really care about this game? I get why people liked the first game for the time and the hardware but it never had a decent follow up and whatever made it special back then just couldn't seem less relevant today. I think the world has moved on.

Like it isn't a world or characters anyone cares about, it doesn't have any unique gameplay ideas anyone wants to see, like other than pure nostalgia what does this brand mean to anyone today?

Did the game have huge following in the past?

I ask this because I sometimes feel out of touch with nostalgia. Like the same way people talk about how Sony should bring back SOCOM, which I feel weird because I can't remember if this game had any big influence back then.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Source?

common sense is my source, look at modern fps games with the exception of that new counter strike. You don't have to take my word though, just wait and see.

 

[In Cold Blood]

SonyToo!
NintendoToo!
BethesdaToo!

Yes, other companies have announced things far too early like Ubisoft’s BG&E2. But Microsoft has a very long track record of teasing games that aren’t coming out for 5+ years and continually teasing those games year after year for hype until they either end up cancelled or come out in shambles.

Telling the truth about your preferred plastic box brand isn’t having a “hate boner”. You just find the truth uncomfortable to hear because you know it’s accurate.

Name me the constant games that they announced, that are 5+ years away, and which they keep teasing year after year for hype, which then end up cancelled or in shambles.
Outside of the initial trailer of Perfect Dark, show me where MS have teased it again after that.
Tell me what MS games have been cancelled.
You going to go back to Scalebound in 2017? A game that Platinum Games has admitted they fucked up with?
Let's see that exhausted list that bothers you so.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Does anyone really care about this game? I get why people liked the first game for the time and the hardware but it never had a decent follow up and whatever made it special back then just couldn't seem less relevant today. I think the world has moved on.

Like it isn't a world or characters anyone cares about, it doesn't have any unique gameplay ideas anyone wants to see, like other than pure nostalgia what does this brand mean to anyone today?

I disagree, perfect dark zero wasnt as bad as some said. It just wasnt as good as the original. The game definitely had unique gameplay ideas, especially with the weapons and people like joanna dark as a character. I'm not a believer of leaving an ip dead. I do think that MS wont do it right so it might be pointless to bring back, if someone else had the ip it would have a better chance.

 

[Zuzu]

Does anyone really care about this game? I get why people liked the first game for the time and the hardware but it never had a decent follow up and whatever made it special back then just couldn't seem less relevant today. I think the world has moved on.

Like it isn't a world or characters anyone cares about, it doesn't have any unique gameplay ideas anyone wants to see, like other than pure nostalgia what does this brand mean to anyone today?

I kinda agree. By the time this comes out most of the people who played the original will be in their late 30s and 40s. The younger generation won't care about it at all from a nostalgia perspective. Many might not even know what it is. And it's not like Halo which while it's first game is old it had a number of good sequels released over numerous years which kept the franchise relevant and probably brought in new players with each successive sequel who also became attached to the franchise.

With that said I think it does have a unique world which could make for an interesting new game. A futuristic, spy focused fps with a British female protagonist is something we don't see much of. Could be a fun world to reboot.

 

[Vognerful]

Name me the constant games that they announced, that are 5+ years away, and which they keep teasing year after year for hype, which then end up cancelled or in shambles.
Outside of the initial trailer pf Perfect Dark, show me where MS have teased it again after that.
Tell me what MS games have been cancelled.
You going to go back to Scalebound in 2017? A game that Platinum Games has admitted they fucked up with?
Let's see that exhausted list that bothers you so.

I think they are mainly scalebound (by platinum) and fable (legends?) by lion studios. I can't remember other examples.

Other games that were released after loooong delays are maybe Halo infinite (I could be totally wrong) and crackdown 3.

 

[Syphon Filter]

Did the game have huge following in the past?

I ask this because I sometimes feel out of touch with nostalgia. Like the same way people talk about how Sony should bring back SOCOM, which I feel weird because I can't remember if this game had any big influence back then.

Maybe you are young in your early 20's but perfect dark was big for the N64 and consoles. Also SOCOM was huge for PS2 and it single handily carried PS2 online especially when xbox live was being innovative and having big titles online.

 

[Loomy]

Xbox is "remarkably" hands off with the project.

There's hands off and then there's whatever the fuck Matt Booty's team does. There's nothing wrong with telling a team to get their shit together or move on to a different project if they can't crack the one they're working on. Microsoft's approach seems like they're trying to be the "cool parents" that go around talking about how they're "friends with their kids". Sometimes you have to fucking parent.

They started the game from scratch in in Unreal 5 in 2022.

Curious if rebuilding a project and assets from scratch in UE5 is simpler than migrating an UE4 project to UE5.

 

[SmokedMeat]

True. I wish Initiative was still independent!

Why? They’re incapable of putting a game together.

 

[Sleepwalker]

No worries, just top up gamepass for 5 years amirite.

 

[Vognerful]

Maybe you are young in your early 20's but perfect dark was big for the N64 and consoles. Also SOCOM was huge for PS2 and it single handily carried PS2 online especially when xbox live was being innovative and having big titles online.

hi man, I am actually in my mid 30s. But ps2 online and original xlive were not big in the middle east, or so I believe. also never had an N64.

appreciate your explanation.

 

[hinch7]

Makes no sense annoucing stuff so far away. 2-3 years is fair.. any more and its pointless.

 

[akaFullmetal]

Really almost every new game Microsoft announced back in what 2019/2020 won't show up till about 2024 to 2026 and beyond.
We're still waiting on hell blade, everwild, and forza to be released. The only games released have been Bethesda games.

 

[6502]

Glad CD have taken control and are using UE5. Its the quickest route to get a competant game out.

As an armchair expert with zero experience in the field, I do wonder what MS are doing with these studios. If I was in charge I would be tasking them with remakes / dlc for their first projects, certainly not giving them the keys to a once great ip and letting them change things up.

It's a stealthy fps, mostly corridor based with a story about aliens and corporate conspiracy. How fucking hard can it be To churn that out in a couple of years?

 

[balls of snow]

Quad A game at its finest.
After Starfield and Forza it will be very interesting what first party ms games gonna hit their 4 games per year quota.

 

[bxrz]

I suspect that unless anything changes at Microsoft, you will probably read another article like this in another 2 years time too.

This article says the game will be out in 2 years (or 3)

 

[SF Kosmo]

I disagree, perfect dark zero wasnt as bad as some said.

"Not as terrible as they say" is faint praise for an 18 year old game that came and went without much notice. What little this IP is worth is based more on nostalgia for the original, and you know it.

The game definitely had unique gameplay ideas, especially with the weapons and people like joanna dark as a character.

I think that's a case you could make (though not sure I'm convinced) in 1999, but a quarter century later? We have plenty of way more compelling characters and shooter mechanics.

It's like asking for a sequel to Crusader of Centy or something. No shade, I adored Crusader of Centy, but the world has moved on and that IP hasn't, so why bother?

 

[MarkMe2525]

With no real hype for the game, they are wise to take their time. They need to bring the heat with this game to justify the huge investment made.

 

[CGNoire]

""We didn’t even really know what type of game we were making""



Then you should have never been given control of Perfect Dark to begin with.

Like did you even play it?
Anyone who has actually played Perfect Dark knows exactly what type of game it is.

 

[Moses85]

I still love PD 64.
Timeless Classic.

Microsoft and Most of their Studios are a bunch of amateurs.

 

[Nydius]

Quad A game at its finest.
After Starfield and Forza it will be very interesting what first party ms games gonna hit their 4 games per year quota.

Like I said earlier, they're pretty set for 2024 if they can get their big teased projects out: Avowed, Hellblade, Fable. Fable is the most iffy of those three because they didn't commit to any kind of date or even time frame, but it seems they're shooting for holiday 2024.

2025 is going to be the question mark year. It's increasingly looking like Indiana Jones isn't making it until late 2025 at best. Perfect Dark and Everwild appear to be stuck in development hell. No news on Gears 6; I supposed that could possibly be a 2025 game announced next year. I would expect a new Forza Horizon franchise in 2025, but that might be delayed due to all-hands-on-deck to get Fable shipped. TES6 is years out and we've got no earthly clue about Outer Worlds 2.

What I always circle back to is the fact that if Microsoft hadn't bought Bethesda, their entire 2023 would hinge on Forza Motorsport. A pretty sad state of affairs given their abysmal 2022.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Guys, I think I see the problem.

This reminds me a game named "Red" something, I forgot.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Not gonna lie, this constant stream of bad news from MS is starting to piss me off. Still holding onto my XSX. Let's see for how long.

 

[Ristifer]

Annoying, but I think the writing has been on the wall for this project for quite some time. I feel like everyone actually knew this, but to hear it makes it more real. I’d be shocked if this ever actually comes out.

 

[Js562]

I'll play it whenever it's ready. The original Perfect Dark was the most fun I had in shooters in awhile. The local multiplayer and challenges was the shit hopefully they keep that.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

 

[Banjo64]

especially after their showcase was so good

The rest of your post isn’t even worthy of a response (laughter aside).

I’ve seen a few Xboi’s parrot this same line (maybe it’s just been you a couple of times?) but I feel like I must say the showcase was poor to average at best, and it could only be considered ‘good’ if in direct comparison to PlayStation’s.

That’s all.

 

[Banjo64]

If staff from The Initiative aren’t being replaced I think this studio is going to be shuttered shortly.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Insomniac say hi with Wolverine.
Lots of companies announce games years before they are ready to be shipped.
Bethesda announced Starfield 5 years before it was to be released.

Alot of studios do announce it to get people to join their company and help develop the game.
Let's not forget that prior to them releasing the trailer, there was a ton of rumours that it was Perfect Dark they were doing, so they just came out and announced it.

I don't understand why people like you don't want to know what a studio is working until a year or two before it's ready to be released. I want to know what games are in the pipeline. I don't know what game id are working on yet, but I would rather know. Same goes for all studios.

But, we know the hate Bonner that some have here for MS and Xbox, and so any "bad news" that comes out, especially after their showcase was so good, would be jumped on here by the regulars.

Me thinks you're huffing some of that good stuff. Be sure to pass it on to the others as well lol.

 

[Horseganador]

The MS management disaster with his studies is epic, what a smoke sale... 3 years later and he has done almost nothing, getting Insomniac in this thread is a LOL, 2020 Spiderman: miles morales, 2021 Ratchet Rift apart, 2023 Spiderman 2, 2024-2025 Wolverine, if there is a study that has earned trust, it is them.

 

[abacab driver]

After seeing how brilliant Fable looks, I don't give articles like this any more clicks.

 

[DeepEnigma]

After seeing how brilliant Fable looks, I don't give articles like this any more clicks.

What does that have to do with The Initiative and the clusterfuck that has been going on there?

 

[analog_future]

It was a mistake to announce this so early, before they even started development.


It's like Metroid Prime 4 or CyberPunk 2077 or The Last Guardian or Final Fantasy XV all over again.

 

[DeepEnigma]

The MS management disaster with his studies is epic, what a smoke sale... 3 years later and he has done almost nothing, getting Insomniac in this thread is a LOL, 2020 Spiderman: miles morales, 2021 Ratchet Rift apart, 2023 Spiderman 2, 2024-2025 Wolverine, if there is a study that has earned trust, it is them.

Picking Insomniac is the most idiot fantard shit to try and whatabout or compare to. Total clown show.

 

[CamHostage]

I don't understand why people like you don't want to know what a studio is working until a year or two before it's ready to be released. I want to know what games are in the pipeline. I don't know what game id are working on yet, but I would rather know. Same goes for all studios.

I personally like information being out earlier rather than targeted for a marketing boom late in the cycle (though the early announcement isn't just a kindness of info disclosure for fans, it is also a marketing or financial move,) and I lament how much of the history of game development gets erased if a product fails in production. (I have friends who worked on projects that I will never see any work from because their project died and nothing leaked.) We know things about the history of some major game development projects which we never would have been privy to if the company hadn't put it out there early, and the value for us of knowing about things we can't have is questionable, but it's a weird stance to be 'anti-information'.

However...

...there are obviously huge downsides to information being out in the public too early. People set a clock on their expectations and get angry when the timer goes off. Or they put stock in the publisher (sometimes literally) for announcing an important product that they actually only have the barest of sketches of and are nowhere near being ready to produce. MS disclosed a ton of games in the Xbox Series launch timeframe with CG trailers and some hype over new engines and production values, yet much like Sony's PS3 hardware announcement of CG and promises, none of the products actually existed when they made those announcements and the resulting projects have been much longer in development than expected and generally lesser in quality (with exceptions) than initial indications. They sold you a new console on an idea of what was coming up, but those things were just IOUs for things they really couldn't make an honest promise for you at the time.

But, that's the shell game of marketing. Fake it 'til you make it!

And since it somehow seems to work out better than the public knows, (the amount of duct tape and bubblegum-coding tricks involved in making E3 demos look like real working games can be pretty astounding if gamers were ever let in on the actual status of in-production game works,) it can be for the better that announcements get out there to fire a team up for an awaiting fanbase. But it can go very wrong too...

 

[The Pleasure]

Never forget:

The Initiative shows off Xbox boss Phil Spencer playing its unannounced first-party game

He looks like he's having a good time, at least

www.gamesradar.com

Is that phil playing Street Fighter?

 

[CamHostage]

Maybe you are young in your early 20's but perfect dark was big for the N64 and consoles. Also SOCOM was huge for PS2 and it single handily carried PS2 online especially when xbox live was being innovative and having big titles online.

Ah yes, the perfect age demographic for video games and digital entertainment: 40/50-year-olds.

Once-popular brands can still catch on with the actual desirable demographic of interactive entertainment. (And yes, there is value in targeting old farts like you and I who are nostalgic for game consoles from generations ago. We're dwindling in influence, but we're still a huge percentage of the gaming audience, and selling us back out childhoods has proven a successful way to release product.) A game can be successful if it uses a recognizable brand to introduce new game systems, or it can bring back a play style forgotten for some reason over time which now has appeal in a new era and can fill a void gamers didn't know they had in their gaming diets.

However, if you just bring out a product with a name that hasn't been on the market in 20 years and expect <18-34 year-olds to care because their dad is on Facebook boasting of how kewl these N64/PS2 hits were to him as a kid... good luck?

 

[HL3.exe]

This complaining about 'hand-off approach' is such a stellar difference from the mentally of 10 years ago or more.

When everyone was complaining that publisher where ruining gaming because they're meddling to much with the process, shoving MTX in, not giving devs enough time/budget, etc.

 

[Raziel]

Joanna Dark's next mission is so top secret, it's unknown to even the developers.

 

[simpatico]

Abort this mofo and move on. Shit show extreme.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Just incompetence. How long does it take to get things going on anything? I'd like to see more than just fluff and hype over 1 game from them.

 

[Katatonic]

This complaining about 'hand-off approach' is such a stellar difference from the mentally of 10 years ago or more.

When everyone was complaining that publisher where ruining gaming because they're meddling to much with the process, shoving MTX in, not giving devs enough time/budget, etc.

The narratives can't keep up with the realities.

 

[lh032]

well based on Microsoft current "strategy" in the gaming market now, i doubt Microsoft cares about Perfect Dark.

 

[Del_X]

Really wish we could just not announce shit more than 24 months out. Hell, keep it to 12-18 months maximum

 

[Varteras]

I'm guessing The Initiative will get closed or relegated to a small support studio, like they pretty much are now. Gallagher will slink back to Crystal Dynamics. The game won't come out until the tail end of the generation, assuming it doesn't get canceled. For some stupid fucking reason, Matt Booty will still be soaking up a paycheck while the shit he's in charge of burns to the ground because he couldn't be bothered to pick up a goddamn fire extinguisher. Re-watching the Master Cheeks sex scene he always dreamed of for the 343rd time.

 

[Katatonic]

Damn XBOX still on Phase 0.