Microsoft is closing down The Initiative, after 7 years. The partnership with Crystal Dynamics will end, and "Perfect Dark" will be cancelled.
  • commander@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Fables got to be far along enough to not get cancelled but my expectations are incredibly low. Nothing against Forza Horizon but giving a studio that has only ever made Forza Horizon games a AAA RPG reboot where the original game was known for it’s super endearing and fun writing along with a hodgepodge of promised god game mechanics in a third person RPG is a bad idea. Also using the Forza engine

    So they need writers, they need game designers that do third person combat, level/creature/etc designers since racing simcades replicate real world stuff, I imagine them even needing a different voice acting director rather than whatever they do with Forza Horizon.

    It’s pretty much a startup studio with a huge budget that has to upgrade the Forza engine to make content creation for quest/gameplay designers/non-programmers easy. Also studio heads have to learn how to manage the staff and content pipeline for a huge RPG game. Recipe for terrible growing pains. Should have never pushed almost all their studios towards Kinect and then live service. Maybe then Lionhead wouldn’t have atrophied and been shut down

    • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Deus Ex IP being shelved before it’s final trilogy getting cancelled

      Vampire the masquerade being rushed and a shell of it’s original idea

      Vampire 2 being rebooted from immersive sim to linear action game.

      Prey 2017 getting killed

      Redfall being the worst game of the year it released… resulting in Arkane Austin being killed

      Fortune’s Run developer going to prison

      Perfect Dark 2026 cancellation

      Yeah. It’s definitely cursed.

  • simple@piefed.socialOPEnglish
    0·
    6 days ago

    I can -sort of- understand cancelling games that have been in development hell but it’s insane than they cancelled the Perfect Dark remake. It looked very far along when they showed it last year.

    • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      Anytime I see super-smooth transition animations in a demo, or even just gameplay mechanics that seem to work out way too conveniently, it tells me it’s an animated “pre-viz” demo of the game they want to make. That’s kind of the impression I got from Perfect Dark.

        • Chronographs@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          I think eat they’re saying is that those type of demos are less a representation of the current state of the game development and more a bespoke product to represent what they hope to eventually make, which in fact likely took time away from developing the actual game