Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[Remij]

'We're running at a f**king wall, and we're gonna crash'—CD Projekt's lead quest designer on big budget RPGs

During an RPG designer roundtable organized by PC Gamer, Cyberpunk 2077 quest director Pawel Sasko and other veterans talk about the "staggering" complexity of triple-A games.

www.pcgamer.com

Nah, everything they mentioned is easily solved by two simple letters:

AI

 

[iroboto]

Nah, everything they mentioned is easily solved by two simple letters:

AI

I was going to say this. But, you’re going to have to accept that you won’t have any control over the players experiences.

But using AI for text to speech, and using AI to respond to changing events and scripts, would reduce the pressure of rewrites since it will just adapt.

 

[Remij]

I was going to say this. But, you’re going to have to accept that you won’t have any control over the players experiences.

But using AI for text to speech, and using AI to respond to changing events and scripts, would reduce the pressure of rewrites since it will just adapt.

Honestly though, it really is as you joked about your post above.. developers have to reign in not only expectations, but themselves as well. You get a big cheque to go out and make something incredible and complex.. and what ends up happening is you get a bunch of half-implementations of things which don't ultimately pan out correctly because it's hard to predict how well everything will scale... and how to keep that quality across the entirety of the game. We've seen it time and time again where certain areas/levels clearly don't get the same amount of time and budget as others.

What devs need to focus on is brining down the scale and improving what's actually important. The recent Assassin's Creed games are perfect examples of this... just way too physically big with the same gameplay loop across everything. You basically end up getting completely bored of the game before you've seen even half of all the content they put in..

I think we need to drastically cut back on the scale of certain things, and start focusing on more interesting core gameplay concepts, better physics for everything.. more reactive game worlds.

 

[iroboto]

Honestly though, it really is as you joked about your post above.. developers have to reign in not only expectations, but themselves as well. You get a big cheque to go out and make something incredible and complex.. and what ends up happening is you get a bunch of half-implementations of things which don't ultimately pan out correctly because it's hard to predict how well everything will scale... and how to keep that quality across the entirety of the game. We've seen it time and time again where certain areas/levels clearly don't get the same amount of time and budget as others.

What devs need to focus on is brining down the scale and improving what's actually important. The recent Assassin's Creed games are perfect examples of this... just way too physically big with the same gameplay loop across everything. You basically end up getting completely bored of the game before you've seen even half of all the content they put in..

I think we need to drastically cut back on the scale of certain things, and start focusing on more interesting core gameplay concepts, better physics for everything.. more reactive game worlds.

Yup. Agreed. It’s a bit like watching people try to use technology to solve every problem we created with technology. No amount of technology is going to solve climate change because the inherent problem is growth not technology. We consume more than we restore, no technology will ever be able to grow more than we consume. You want a game with branching storylines that has the best graphics and feedback? Is there really an end to this? If not, why bother when we have something called life.

Go out there and find out what happens.

I think the rest of us can appreciate a good game with some thoughtful skill and decision making combined with a good curated story.

Ie: indie and AA scene is just doing that so much better. Hades and Disco Asylum

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yup. They are absolutely right.
So stop?


Make the game linear and no branching storylines, pour all your money into cinematics and graphics, art and voice actors and you’ve got the Sony formula; and it proven to work very well.

But then that leaves gamers like me who don't like playing the Sony formula games out in the dark. Fun to watch? Yes. Fun to play? Meh. Of course, I also feel the same about the UBIsoft open world formula games.

The best games, IMO, are ones that go heavy on gameplay and setting and light on heavy handed storytelling. So, something like Elden Ring where the story has to be discovered rather than constantly being used to hammer you in the face. Or System Shock 2 which is similar in having to find the story rather than having the "story hammer" slap you constantly with characters that never shut up.

Although now that I say that, I do like RPGs with heavy storytelling like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, etc. Perhaps because those are more of a laid back experience where the game is so incredibly large that it still feels like you are discovering a story rather than having a story shoved in your face.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

But then that leaves gamers like me who don't like playing the Sony formula games out in the dark. Fun to watch? Yes. Fun to play? Meh. Of course, I also feel the same about the UBIsoft open world formula games.

The best games, IMO, are ones that go heavy on gameplay and setting and light on heavy handed storytelling. So, something like Elden Ring where the story has to be discovered rather than constantly being used to hammer you in the face. Or System Shock 2 which is similar in having to find the story rather than having the "story hammer" slap you constantly with characters that never shut up.

Although now that I say that, I do like RPGs with heavy storytelling like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, etc. Perhaps because those are more of a laid back experience where the game is so incredibly large that it still feels like you are discovering a story rather than having a story shoved in your face.

Regards,
SB

Agreed, but then I would suggest that developers cease scaling out and focus on scaling down into something they can actually manage and enjoy doing.

BioWares formula was great. Kept it simple. It’s like a mini branching linear story game, but it still worked. People got to choose their dialog, it didn’t have any major implications, but you still felt like you had some control over the experience.

Unsurprisingly, as many dungeon masters will attest to, even though players can do “anything” in a role playing game, we still ultimately end up having players still complete the actual campaign that was designed. Very few DMs allow players to just do anything, and if when they do we just architect their responses to go back to where we want them to go anyway.

Ie: I tell players there is a. Fork in a road and they tell me they want to swim in the lake, I just tell them they arrive on the back side of the castle instead of the front, regardless of which path they take they still end up at the castle, LOL. Illusion of choice.

If we’re talking open world sandbox titles, that’s fine. But usually the story is not existent and you don’t have all these impacting storylines. That doesn’t really exist in Elden Ring.

If you’re trying to make games like Cyberpunk and Fallout, it just keeps getting heavier and heavier for the developers, I hope “fingers crossed” Starfield works lol. I am really worried it won’t.

 

[Phantom88]

^ Like i said before, Stalker Call of Prypiat has the answer to every complaint gamers have about modern open worlds. Devs just need to play it so they learn and actually want to implement the stuff. It might not be possible since modern game making has them scarred of the slightest difficulty a player might have. They're focus testing games into oblivion until the very last play tester nails it.

Regarding the sony "formula", which is not really a sony formula, cause they're just doing the cinematic style of gaming that a lot of us were dreading in late 00s. Their open world games are systems lifted 1:1 from majority Far Cry 3, which the entire industry is doing (open world, skill tree, gather loot, crafting, discover the map, enemy tagging, towers, side activities plastered over the map, etc.) Their linear games like last of us 1 which im slowly going through, id give up gaming this instant if this was the mold. Quite possibly the worst type of gamedesign i can think of.

 

[iroboto]

^ Like i said before, Stalker Call of Prypiat has the answer to every complaint gamers have about modern open worlds. Devs just need to play it so they learn and actually want to implement the stuff. It might not be possible since modern game making has them scarred of the slightest difficulty a player might have. They're focus testing games into oblivion until the very last play tester nails it.

Regarding the sony "formula", which is not really a sony formula, cause they're just doing the cinematic style of gaming that a lot of us were dreading in late 00s. Their open world games are systems lifted 1:1 from majority Far Cry 3, which the entire industry is doing (open world, skill tree, gather loot, crafting, discover the map, enemy tagging, towers, side activities plastered over the map, etc.) Their linear games like last of us 1 which im slowly going through, id give up gaming this instant if this was the mold. Quite possibly the worst type of gamedesign i can think of.

I don’t love it. Don’t get me wrong. But man they feel designed to win awards, the equivalency of Oscar bait. I think the first clue was when Plagues Tale Requiem was nominated a lot on their second attempt and it’s largely, TLOU model.

I love traditional RPGs, but I’d rather have them scale back and do it right, then to scale out and do it wrong. The customer isn’t always right, and I always hated the criticism that BioWare games their decisions had no impact; they had impact in customizing the experience, not seeing how far we could break the game.

 

[Phantom88]

I don’t love it. Don’t get me wrong. But man they feel designed to win awards, the equivalency of Oscar bait. I think the first clue was when Plagues Tale Requiem was nominated a lot on their second attempt and it’s largely, TLOU model.

That's EXACTLY what they're doing. They found a formula that resonates with critics and they're designing their games in a way that will extract the most praise from them. Jonathan Cooper said as much in a twitter feed couple years ago. That they focus test the shit out their games until they reach the intended result. They're games designed to get high scores on metacritic in whatever current climate we're in when they make said game.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1238199242256052224

Also, reading one of his tweets: "While super-talented, they lacked the technical/design knowhow to assemble scenes. Similarly, the design team ballooned with juniors to make up for the attrition of key roles. Every aspect of finishing this game took much longer due to the lack of game experience on the team."

That's exactly one of the things im seeing in last of us, while playing. They have no ideea how to actually stitch together a game in order to be exciting and having actual engaging gameplay for the player. You're going hours on end in straight lines, doing nothing at all other than moving forward, ocasionally listening to npc talk. Moving crates and ladders. Who in their right mind designed this and then said "yeah, this is so awesome, so exciting to play. Look at me, placing ladders on walls". You're moving forward executing prompts when they apear on screen. And in every area you have to go through the enviroment to pick up all the crap that you need. Its an extremely poorly designed game and the reception it has makes me feel cinematics and the sony logo is everything needed for a certain segment of the gaming audience.

 

[trinibwoy]

I am a big fan is tightly scripted and “short” games with great presentation values. I don’t want the responsibility of choosing my own adventure in every game. It’s exhausting and always leaves you wondering how much content you missed based on the choices you make. There are way too many games out there for any one game to demand so much of your time. It’s fine for folks who are willing to devote lots of time to a few big sprawling games but it’s not for me. Don’t get me started on the dumb Ubisoft fetch quest formula. They have no respect for your time and there’s barely any actual gameplay involved. They’re just preying on people’s OCD to keep them playing long after they should.

I could be wrong but I don’t think gamers’ expectations have changed that much. Most people don’t want 100 hours of content in every game. People will pay for quality and innovation in a more refined package.

 

[davis.anthony]

Who in their right mind designed this and then said "yeah, this is so awesome, so exciting to play. Look at me, placing ladders on walls".

I didn't watch King Kong vs Godzilla for the story, I watched it because I wanted to see two CGI monsters kicking the shit out of each other.

I didn't play TLOU for it's mind blowing game play and mechanics, I played it for it's story.

 

[Phantom88]

Come on, that's not an excuse. A game is an interactive medium. Its defined by its interactivity. Story complements the gameplay, makes it more engaging. Last of us, as is uncharted 4, and pretty much their entire catalogue is just developers not having a clue how to make the actual game outside the cinematics. You can have everything, its not a question of one or the other. You can have a good game to actually play that also has a killer story. The biggest fault i see in how they designed tlou1 is how poorly spaced out everything is. How long the crushingly boring bits are and how hilariously uninteresting they are. Its difficult to imagine grown people brainstorming ideas in meetings and testing levels, playing this crap and not seeing anything wrong with it.

 

[iroboto]

We should probably split to another thread called game designed Oscar bait and in the OP we should ask players to indicate their favourite type of game so we aren’t just fighting over what people like and dislike.

we’ve fallen off the technical side, the only thing that makes this discussion technical is that linear is much easier than the path others are taking. So that was sort of my rebuttal here to developers who feel like they are running into a wall, they’ve chosen a harder path in which they’ve failed to achieve their goals and all the accolades are going to Oscar bait which is easier to make.

I appreciate the attempt, but narrowing scope earlier than later is probably a better thing.

 

[Inuhanyou]

"Sony not knowing how to make a game" just seems like weird fanboy nonsense.

If "Oscar bait" is just "have the game focused on story and cutscenes instead of combat and open up world" it's probably the silliest critisism one could have. That's just the kind of games they like making and are comfortable with designing as they can control the variables a lot more with the fixed hardware they are utilizing.

It has nothing to do with technical competency or "aiming at reviewers". So it probably doesn't belong here. Whether you personally like those types of games or not has nothing to do with the thread

 

[Inuhanyou]

Apparently the physical versions of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on PS5 and XSX will require additional downloading.. meaning that the entire game isn't resident on discs.

(Download Required above the blue box at the bottom)

Seems like some PS fans aren't happy and expected PS5's superior compression to make the game much smaller than it is on PC and Series X.. which isn't the case. All 3 versions are ~150GB.

This really sucks for many reasons... I know it's not the first game, and wont be the last.. but still.

My question is why is it that big to begin with on consoles or pc. What we are seeing doesn't justify the size unless unreal engine 4 is just that inefficient at scaling assets?

 

[iroboto]

"Sony not knowing how to make a game" just seems like weird fanboy nonsense.

Agreed. The definition of what a game is, has expanded greatly. They certainly know how to make a game.

But I am highly biased in the idea that Sony have a developed a formula designed for critical reviews that most of their titles follow. I can’t help but feel most of them feel the same even though I’m playing completely different titles.

But that doesn’t mean the formula is bad. Lol. It clearly works, do what you are capable of succeeding at - narrow and deep appears to resonate a lot more than wide and shallow.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

My question is why is it that big to begin with on consoles or pc. What we are seeing doesn't justify the size unless unreal engine 4 is just that inefficient at scaling assets?

The quality of assets isn't the only thing that governs the size of the data.

Do we know how many biomes/worlds/settings there are? The more locations, the more potential for more data to be needed.

Do we know how many unique assets there are? A lot of lower quality but highly varied assets can easily take up more space than higher quality but less varied assets.

Neither of those things would be visible in limited PR shots and footage of a game.

Regards,
SB

 

[Silent_Buddha]

But then that leaves gamers like me who don't like playing the Sony formula games out in the dark. Fun to watch? Yes. Fun to play? Meh. Of course, I also feel the same about the UBIsoft open world formula games.

The best games, IMO, are ones that go heavy on gameplay and setting and light on heavy handed storytelling. So, something like Elden Ring where the story has to be discovered rather than constantly being used to hammer you in the face. Or System Shock 2 which is similar in having to find the story rather than having the "story hammer" slap you constantly with characters that never shut up.

Although now that I say that, I do like RPGs with heavy storytelling like Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, etc. Perhaps because those are more of a laid back experience where the game is so incredibly large that it still feels like you are discovering a story rather than having a story shoved in your face.

Regards,
SB

Replying to myself here since it's the easiest way to reference this whole side track. Man did it blow up in unexpected ways.

I wasn't commenting on the quality of Sony's game development or the quality of their games. They make great games with very high production values.

It was specifically to address a comment that was made that suggested (lightly) that perhaps the best way forward to is to focus on one type of proven formula that does well.

But while that might make development more streamlined, it doesn't address that all gamers don't like the same types of games or the same game "formulas". Lots of gamers love the current "Sony formula" games. Lots of gamers don't, as evidenced by the fact that not all PS owners buy all Sony produced games.

I think too many people got too focused on the "Sony formula" just because it was mentioned as a suggestion for other studios to follow, when the point wasn't anything specific to any particular game development "formula" or style. Pick any one style, formula or genre (I heard FIFA's formula is quite popular, maybe have all studios focus on that fomula? ) and the point remains the same.

Regards,
SB

 

[chris1515]

I didn't watch King Kong vs Godzilla for the story, I watched it because I wanted to see two CGI monsters kicking the shit out of each other.

I didn't play TLOU for it's mind blowing game play and mechanics, I played it for it's story.

TLOU2 gameplay, AI and level design is great much better than TLOU 1. If it wasn't the case I would not like the game at all. If make linear and cinematic games means being good. The Order 1886 would have been GOTY in 2015.

 

[techuse]

^ Like i said before, Stalker Call of Prypiat has the answer to every complaint gamers have about modern open worlds. Devs just need to play it so they learn and actually want to implement the stuff. It might not be possible since modern game making has them scarred of the slightest difficulty a player might have. They're focus testing games into oblivion until the very last play tester nails it.

Regarding the sony "formula", which is not really a sony formula, cause they're just doing the cinematic style of gaming that a lot of us were dreading in late 00s. Their open world games are systems lifted 1:1 from majority Far Cry 3, which the entire industry is doing (open world, skill tree, gather loot, crafting, discover the map, enemy tagging, towers, side activities plastered over the map, etc.) Their linear games like last of us 1 which im slowly going through, id give up gaming this instant if this was the mold. Quite possibly the worst type of gamedesign i can think of.

Other than the Stalker game you mentioned, what are some examples of good game design?