What did Sucker Punch work on for 5 years?

ElFenomeno

ElFenomeno

Member
After watching the Yotei reveal, I was stunned as to what did this studio worked for 5 years? What NEW features required 5 years?

Lets break it down.
Game engine and graphics? No, same engine, graphics barely evolved
AI / Physics / Fire/ Fluids simulation - No
Art style - no, this was done.
Music/OST - this can't take so many years.
Story writing - its no Godfather right? Classic revenge story.
World/missions design - done in the 1st game. This barely adds anything truly meaningful. Repetitive open world grinding.

Does motion capture, voice acting take years upon years? What seriously happened?
 
ElFenomeno said:
After watching the Yotei reveal, I was stunned as to what did this studio worked for 5 years? What NEW features required 5 years?

Lets break it down.
Game engine and graphics? No, same engine, graphics barely evolved
AI / Physics / Fire/ Fluids simulation - No
Art style - no, this was done.
Music/OST - this can't take so many years.
Story writing - its no Godfather right? Classic revenge story.
World/missions design - done in the 1st game. This barely adds anything truly meaningful. Repetitive open world grinding.

Does motion capture, voice acting take years upon years? What seriously happened?
Click to expand...

You may be on to something. Time for you to download Unreal Engine 5 or Unity for free and make your own AAA game in 7 months.

The Office Reaction GIF
 
It's almost like they didnt have to build any content........

Outside of the cliche story which is almost identical to AC shadows the game looks great.
 
In your opinion, How long do you think a brand new AAA open world video game should take a studio of about 200 people to make?
 
They have created basically two different soundtracks for the same game with that Samurai Champloo mode, created like 4 or 5 different combat modes due to all the different weapons you can use, unlike Tsushima they also added Japanese lip-sync to this one.
Everything else does seem to be more of the same but bigger. The world design must've taken quite a while, don't forget that this game is set centuries after the first so many new assets had to be made.
I do think the 5 year cycle seems justified. Oh and they also had the director's cut for Tsushima with the new DLC and all so it's probably more like 4 years or so of production at 100% capacity.

Again I'm a bit sad we're not getting another chapter of Jin's story but I liked what I saw, it's probably a day one purchase unless the reviews negatively surprise me for some reason.
 
ElFenomeno said:
After watching the Yotei reveal, I was stunned as to what did this studio worked for 5 years? What NEW features required 5 years?

Lets break it down.
Game engine and graphics? No, same engine, graphics barely evolved
AI / Physics / Fire/ Fluids simulation - No
Art style - no, this was done.
Music/OST - this can't take so many years.
Story writing - its no Godfather right? Classic revenge story.
World/missions design - done in the 1st game. This barely adds anything truly meaningful. Repetitive open world grinding.

Does motion capture, voice acting take years upon years? What seriously happened?
Click to expand...
Dude c'mon every big games takes 4 to 5 years to make.

Not even asset reusing, dodgy framerate, janky gameplay, could shit out a turd and there fans would call it gold FromSoftware are immune from this.

The only game that released somewhat quickly and was impressive was FF7 Rebirth and that game still had a ton of issues.
 
Loomy said:
In your opinion, How long do you think a brand new AAA open world video game should take a studio of about 200 people to make?
Click to expand...
Existing IP: 2 - 3 years.

New IP: 3 - 4 years.

Game development cycles are far too long in general, especially with Western companies.
 
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ElFenomeno said:
After watching the Yotei reveal, I was stunned as to what did this studio worked for 5 years? What NEW features required 5 years?

Lets break it down.
Game engine and graphics? No, same engine, graphics barely evolved
AI / Physics / Fire/ Fluids simulation - No
Art style - no, this was done.
Music/OST - this can't take so many years.
Story writing - its no Godfather right? Classic revenge story.
World/missions design - done in the 1st game. This barely adds anything truly meaningful. Repetitive open world grinding.

Does motion capture, voice acting take years upon years? What seriously happened?
Click to expand...

Didn't they spend a long time on location in Japan to get the correct vibes? That must have been at least a year.
 
The artful mincer said:
Dude c'mon every big games takes 4 to 5 years to make.

Not even asset reusing, dodgy framerate, janky gameplay, could shit out a turd and there fans would call it gold FromSoftware are immune from this.

The only game that released somewhat quickly and was impressive was FF7 Rebirth and that game still had a ton of issues.
Click to expand...
Japnese games in general seems to be immune ( heck would even expand this and say, "asian games"). As an example, the last few yakuza games.
 
I dont think OP is crazy in thinking that 5 years to do a sequel game that looks basically exactly like the first game appears too mutch... it has basically the same graphics assets with a new story and some gameplay enhancements.

After seeing the trailer I thought exactly the same...

And If this sequel had come out 3 years after GOT.. NOONE would look at it and be surprised.
 
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Someone explain how this does NOT look like an expansion. Like they added more environments and its a new story, fine. Thats a fukin' expansion. These people can suck my left nut if they think I'll pay 80 dollars for their political game.
 
I watched a YouTuber who had an insider from Sony telling him that sucker punch was originally working on ghost of Tsushima 2 but because of DEI initiatives they had to cancel it after 3 years in developments so they didn't have much time to come up with something big in production so they came up with this garbage, it Sony fault
 
GudOlRub said:
They have created basically two different soundtracks for the same game with that Samurai Champloo mode, created like 4 or 5 different combat modes due to all the different weapons you can use, unlike Tsushima they also added Japanese lip-sync to this one.
Everything else does seem to be more of the same but bigger. The world design must've taken quite a while, don't forget that this game is set centuries after the first so many new assets had to be made.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don't know man , I am not seeing the new assets, what I am seeing is assets reuse gallore, from the settlements to the hot springs to the world. Putting a mountain in the middle of the map is not new world design. Hope you're right though.

Bernardougf said:
If this sequel had come out 3 years after GOT.. nobody would be surprised.
Click to expand...
Exactly, 2.5 - 3 years ..yeah makes sense. More of the same.
But 5 years for a reskin? These guys worked part time all this time.
 
ElFenomeno said:
Yeah, I don't know man , I am not seeing the new assets, what I am seeing is assets reuse gallore, from the settlements to the hot springs to the world. Putting a mountain in the middle of the map is not new world design. Hope you're right though.


Exactly, 2.5 - 3 years ..yeah makes sense. More of the same.
But 5 years for a reskin? These guys worked part time all this time.
Click to expand...
I guess you can discount some COVID rebound for the team...2020 still was a turbulent year...
 
Ghost of Yotei looks more like an expansion pack, than a new game.
There is still work to be done, writing story, characters and quests.
Graphics seem very similar, just with a longer draw distance.
This is the kind of thing that one would expect to be done in a couple of years.
 
They had to make the dog and that big mountain. Plus everyone had their feet up for a year or two.

Rebirth is quite significantly different from Remake, compared to how this looks vs GoT.
 
Are people here really forgetting that with Tsushima they released Legends months after release and then a year later they released a complete new DLC and optimizations for PS5?
Yotei was in full production for 4 years at most, in 2021 SP were still very active in developing new content for Tsushima so no way they had all hands on deck for Yotei yet at that time.

But oh well, if the graphics are not 10 times better than the previous entry then I guess the rest of the game should've been made in 1 year, 2 at most.
 
The entire studio hasn't been working on this game for 5 years. Did everyone forget that Ghost of Tsushima: Legends was released after the game came out? Then a year later, the Director's Cut edition came out, which was updated for PS5 and included a rather meaty expansion with Iki Island.

I swear some of the expectations these days are getting a bit ridiculous.
 
The graphics indeed looks underwhelming and the story doesn't seem much interesting.


But what I am really curious about is the gameplay.

On the samurai combat, I wonder if they actually made improvements or just swapped the stances for different weapons and kept the rock paper scissors system of the first game, if so I will be extremely disappointed.


Ghost of Tsushima was beautiful and the animations were top notch. However, compared to games like Way of The Samurai and Nioh, the combat was just serviceable.

The dual swords gameplay showed and the ability of making the enemies drop their weapons, plus being able to pick them up, gives me hope that they improved the combat.


While on the stealth/shinobi side, Yotei unfortunately doesn't seem to have improved much, specially now after AC Shadows, which is the closest thing that we have to a modern Tenchu/Shinobido game.

I am still interested in the game, but from what they showed so far, I am kinda disappointed.
 
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The artful mincer said:
Dude c'mon every big games takes 4 to 5 years to make.

Not even asset reusing, dodgy framerate, janky gameplay, could shit out a turd and there fans would call it gold FromSoftware are immune from this.

The only game that released somewhat quickly and was impressive was FF7 Rebirth and that game still had a ton of issues.
Click to expand...
FromSoftware didn't do a 80$ expansion pack or version 2 of Elden Ring.
They reused assets to make a completely different half priced game, that was never sold as being a sequel, they were very upfront on what Nightreign is.
 
Graphics, animations and simulations look substantially better than the first game. The acting also looks great.

Also, you're criticizing story/missions from a 20m video as if you've seen all 20-30h.

You're delusional.
 
TheMule1983 said:
Yakuza games don't take 5 years to come out.
Click to expand...
They don't. It's just that the 3-4 full price games they do release in the 5 year time frame, all have the same graphical fidelity and heavily reuse assets and animations. There was a thread over here a few months ago, praising yakuza devs for the same and people commenting how smart they are for doing so and asking why other devs don't do the same.
 
ricardo_sousa11 said:
Graphics, animations and simulations look substantially better than the first game. The acting also looks great.

Also, you're criticizing story/missions from a 20m video as if you've seen all 20-30h.

You're delusional.
Click to expand...
Graphics, animations part - no comment.
On the missions side, do you actually think they are hiding their awesome story missions? You are delusional.
Follow npc, follow tracks, fight , then back home. Thats the recipe plus clearing out outposts.
 
ElFenomeno said:
Graphics, animations part - no comment.
On the missions side, do you actually think they are hiding their awesome story missions? You are delusional.
Follow npc, follow tracks, fight , then back home. Thats the recipe plus clearing out outposts.
Click to expand...

They literally showed you a 20m trailer full of content, most than more content than games even have nowadays. Im sure the story will be awesome, as the 1st game was.

You will be able to see how wrong you are on the DF comparison.

Graphically this game only loses to DS2, and this is judging by a compressed video, I wouldnt be surprised if it was on par with DS2 on release.
 
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That's actually embarrassing how blind you people are.
We don't know what's going on at the studio. What concepts they were testing and what other games they are working on.
To me, it's way better if studios focus their development on the game and features, rather than wasting their time on chasing latest graphical trends.

But at the same time l;aunch up the first game and then stop fucking complaining that "it looks the same".
So called experts, who see the same style and go with "looks the same". No it's not lol.
Even if it was true.. so what? looking similar to one of best looking games is great.

I played got this year on pro. yotei looks vastly better.

We've reached diminishing returns where it takes 90% of dev time to look good but other 90% to look amazing. it;s not worth it.
This is how GOT1 looks. Look at the yotei trailer again
You can't fucking look at this and say yotei looks the same. this is embarrasing
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