• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox |OT| Power Your Dreams

JLMC469

Banned
giphy.gif
 

Dee_Dee

Member
I will say the XSX looks like it has a bright future since a good chunk of their studio’s didn’t show anything but it’s pretty obvious Forza, Avowed, Hellblade, Fable aren’t coming for a looooooooooooong time. That may be a good thing though since Xbox one will hopefully be dead by then.

The show failed to show the power of the Xbox that they keep bragging about. Halo looks fun but graphically that was embarrassing. A Raytracing patch is a slap in the face.

I do like that they have a more diverse range of games compared to Sony. Sony definitely needs to step it up in that department. Would love for them to make some RPGs and horror games(hopefully silent hill is real).

Overall the show was very underwhelming to me though since they didn’t sale me on getting a XSX at this time. Will probably just wait until 2022/2023 and for Halo just pick up an Xbox One X for cheap.
 

Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief
My thoughts if anyone cares to read. Will save Halo for last since I have a good bit to say about that.

Thought it was a good show overall. Strong portfolio from MSFT. It was great to see Dragon Quest XI in the preshow. I really enjoyed playing that game earlier this year on Switch. Incredible announcement For Game Pass-should have saved it for the main show. Outer Worlds DLC, Tetris Effect, and Ori upgrade were nice announcements. State of Decay is a franchise that IMO has a ton of potential if it moves away from locally hosted coop to constant world. Everwild continues to interest me. The move to Forza Motorsport as a platform was great; wonder if we see another project from Turn 10 now? Their games are not my cup of tea but it was great to see Tim and Double Fine thriving-a really neat little studio. 40k and The Medium both looked interesting. I am really interested to see how Crossfire X fares in the west and I am excited to give it a go (missed the beta). This could really help Xbox in Korea; I see a lot potential in that market. PSO 2 in the west is great to see. STALKER 2, Fable, Destiny 2, and Avowed were all absolutely fantastic announcements. I think Destiny 2 and Avowed were my "moments of the show". The new MMO lite rumors about Fable have me a bit concerned as that is not the sort of game I am looking to play. Need more info on that but fantastic to see Fable alive-it’s been a long time since 3. Overall, a great show and liked the focus on Game Pass. Nicely done.

-----
Halo-where to start with this one? This one was tough for me a huge Halo fan.

Art+Graphics: Graphically the game was a wreck. I think the memes have done well to get that point across better than I could. It just seemed like it was a really old build which is odd for the end of July. Everything had this odd blocky action figure like appearance. This was immensely disappointing after the prior two trailers and the supposed return to the classic art style. Some designs looked really good but others just did not land with me. It was not the return to the classic art style that I had expected.

Gameplay: This was another miss for me with movement but I am interested in the open world. Sprint in campaign is fine but it means it will likely be in MP too. We've had three different takes on sprint and none of them have worked. I do not understand why they would try it a fourth time. If its campaign only, then great but I doubt it. Overall the movement looked similar to Halo 5 with sliding in as well. The grapple mechanic initially had me excited because I thought it suggested a Halo 3/Reach MLG approach to equipment being limited time use objects found on the map. Will have to see how it works in MP. It reminded me of Titanfall which relies on speed but seemed out of place in the slower Halo; will have to try it for myself. The guns all fired incredibly fast, seemingly tuned for sprint. Will need some time messing around with the sandbox to see what it has to offer. None of the new additions did too much for me and it was certainly not the return to form that I and other fans were looking for. Conversely the open world nature of the game with objectives looked fantastic and is something I have been hoping for. I really look forward to seeing what they can bring to the table with this new mission structure and world.

Music: It is incredibly hard to fill Marty's shoes. Was happy to hear the Ori composer, Gareth Coker, had joined the team. Ori has a fantastic soundtrack so I am interested to hear more. There wasn't a ton of music today but what I did hear sounded really nice and I have faith in Coker and Schweitzer.

Story: I think Halo did really well when the story stayed focused on this grand "save the universe" scale. Halo 4/5 had this weird juxtaposition of a "personal story" and the new forerunner "chosen one" mythos. The "personal story" in Halo 4 and 5 felt like more of a strange soap opera. This Brute vs Spartan is thankfully a step back from both of those but not quite far enough into the grand "battle for humanity's survival" from 1-3. That said, I was happy to see them move away from the strange forerunner lore they pushed for the past 10 years. There wasn't too terribly much to chew on here; I'll have to wait and see how the full story comes together in the final game.

Overall, setting my love for Halo aside, I think the game looked fun for the casual fan and it looked like the open world format could be a real win. That said, I have to wonder if it is enough to really wow somebody who is on the fence about jumping into the Xbox platform this gen. Is it "the game to play?" this fall? Does it stack up against Spiderman? I don't know. Personally the new Spiderman title didn't exactly wow me either. I also really struggle with how the game presented itself-it was certainly not the big power of next gen moment that people were hoping for. The graphics were incredibly rough and it looked like an early 2020 build of the game; not what I would expect this close to launch. I have to wonder if they are behind or if they made an odd choice to show a build that was several months old. Finally, as a Halo fan, I am just left wondering why they made this half step to return to the classic style-I don't think this is the game anyone really expected after 2 years of this "Chief is back", classic art style, soft reboot messaging. Will have to see more of it. Really the rough graphics and movement were what set it back for me. If they clean up the graphics and the multiplayer pushes a more classic style then I think it could be well received. I really want this to be a good game, I’d like to see Halo doing well again. 343 seems to be more stable now and Chris Lee seems like a good leader-always liked him and hope he can help them carry this over the goal line.
 
Last edited:

I 100% agree with this and it's as clear as day that none of these games were ready to be shown. We're seeing the results of too many years of MS not having enough 1st party catching up here. Unfortunately, this is going to cost XSX tremendously the first couple of years. Had Halo Infinite wowed us, XSX could have rode the back of Halo Infinite through out the holiday and 1st quarter of next year.

However, the future of XSX looks very bright with Hellblade 2, Forza, Avowed, SoD3, Fable, and The Initiatives game in the works.
 

Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief

I hope he is right. Great news if true!

I want a good single-player experience. That’s what Fable is to me and with Game Pass there is a need for a mix of traditional MP, pseudo MMO/MMO Lite, and traditional SP titles across a wide variety of lengths, budgets, and genres.

Not to mention I think the pseudo MMO/MMO lite market is saturated with some great games that developers have really stuck with as they’ve pioneered the genre-Sea of Thieves, Destiny, Division, ESO, FO76, Warframe, Anthem 2.0 (maybe). I play a pot of Destiny and struggle enough to balance that with my backlog. Can’t imagine balancing Fable too.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
I hope he is right. Great news if true!

I want a good single-player experience. That’s what Fable is to me and with Game Pass there is a need for a mix of traditional MP, pseudo MMO/MMO Lite, and traditional SP titles across a wide variety of lengths, budgets, and genres.

Not to mention I think the pseudo MMO/MMO lite market is saturated with some great games that developers have really stuck with as they’ve pioneered the genre-Sea of Thieves, Destiny, Division, ESO, FO76, Warframe, Anthem 2.0 (maybe). I play a pot of Destiny and struggle enough to balance that with my backlog. Can’t imagine balancing Fable too.
I wont mind Jeff Strain doing a MMO for Microsoft
 

Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief
I wont mind Jeff Strain doing a MMO for Microsoft
I imagine that was the original State of Decay pitch. I assume to changed over time to become the third person partially open world survival title we got to play. Personally I’d like to see them adopt a Minecraft realms approach there; let me drop in and out of a constant world that my friends and I share.

I do think there is room for a proper MMO from MSFT though. Between Crimson Skies, Mech Assault, and Shadowrun they should absolutely look into seeing about taking on a MMO. Strain and the Blizzard talent at Undead would be a good place to start.

Also after seeing DQ XI and PSO I couldn’t help but think that Phil might consider talking to SE to about a DQ X port and western localization.
 
Last edited:

Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief
Yeah, Microsoft should make something like Amazon's New Light.
Didn’t realize they we working on an mmo. Interesting.

Speaking of Japanese support for the Xbox...

 

Madjako

Member
Just watched the show and I have to say that I liked it. I would give a 7/10 which is the same as Sony show for me .
I was more impressed with the graphics than with the PS5's.
But that didn't change my mind, I'll go with Sony again because MS don't have interesting exclusives (halo seems boring as hell). Interesting games will be multi-console.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
So with The Medium I imagined it switching between the two "worlds" via a transition effect - but it looks like it actually splits the screen and you get simultaneous movement in both? Interesting stuff though.
I wasn't clear if that was for the trailer or if that's how the game actually is.
 
Last edited:
So with The Medium I imagined it switching between the two "worlds" via a transition effect - but it looks like it actually splits the screen and you get simultaneous movement in both? Interesting stuff though.

I always imagined it would play like the time skip part of Titanfall 2 where you instantaneously flip timelines. Or another way of looking at it is the Halo Anniversary games, where hitting Y instantly switches between OG graphics and the updated visuals.

I think the two screens running at once was just to demonstrate both sides at once, but I think it was a terrible idea that was just confusing to a lot of people.

I'm not sure how you would play both at once as there are often impassable obstacles on one side of the screen.
 
Did anyone else think Fable Legends despite being in beta, was a gorgeous looking game for its time? The lighting and environments in particular were great to me.

I really hope Playground keep Fable XSX a traditional RPG with improvements and perhaps a fully voiced character and dialogue choices.
 

DrDamn

Member
I always imagined it would play like the time skip part of Titanfall 2 where you instantaneously flip timelines. Or another way of looking at it is the Halo Anniversary games, where hitting Y instantly switches between OG graphics and the updated visuals.

I think the two screens running at once was just to demonstrate both sides at once, but I think it was a terrible idea that was just confusing to a lot of people.

I'm not sure how you would play both at once as there are often impassable obstacles on one side of the screen.

It was perfectly synced in the video though which made me think it was being played out that way. There were also bits where one side of the screen took precedence which would maybe work around the impassable obstacles. Either way it's definitely intriguing.
 
Top Bottom