Have GG started an assault on ND's title as the Sony 1st party to beat?

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JPT

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Looking at HZD vs U4 and not just the technical achievements, but adding the gameplay + story etc.

ND "got" ICE Team that supports all Sony studios, but GG now got the Decima engine and might "license" it to more Studios than just Kojima?

I am not saying that GG is shooting for it, but is it setting the new gold standard in the Sony studio ecosystem?
 
Well, they have have ND firmly beat in the game department. That said, in terms of character animation and naturalistic banter (in an everyone is a character Alan Sorkin wrote and then dismissed kinda way) , ND is still king of the hill.
 
Will be interesting to see where GG goes from here and also what ND has up there sleeve for The Last Us 2 and beyond.

I got to give GG serious props, they made me play and enjoy playing an open world game for the first time in ages. I think it might have been Borderlands/Borderlands 2 was the last time, mostly due to the Coop. But this is single player and so much fun, Rockstar and Ubisoft have not been able to do that.
Well I did play a bit of Destiny and Division but not really the same....

Yes, the "cut-scenes" facial animations in HZD is very "poor" when you look at the rest of the game. But I DO NOT CARE, it's so much fun :)
 
Yes, shouldn't we wait and see ND's second title rather than comparing GG's second title to ND's first?
 
I think tech wise, Guerrilla has always been up there with Naughty Dog.

As far as judging games, Horizon is up there with Uncharted 2 and TLoU IMO, but ND still has the edge for consistency... they have been making solid games for decades.

But yeah, GG really stepped it up with Horizon, particularly with the writing/story and gameplay (which is not to say that they didn't step it up visually). It really is an amazing game. I have really grown to like the character Aloy.
Sigfried1977 said:
Well, they have have ND firmly beat in the game department. That said, in terms of character animation and naturalistic banter (in an everyone is a character Alan Sorkin wrote and then dismissed kinda way) , ND is still king of the hill.
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I would also add attention to detail... ND is the king of attention to detail.
JPT said:
I got to give GG serious props, they made me play and enjoy playing an open world game for the first time in ages. I think it might have been Borderlands/Borderlands 2 was the last time, mostly due to the Coop. But this is single player and so much fun, Rockstar and Ubisoft have not been able to do that.
Well I did play a bit of Destiny and Division but not really the same....
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Same... haven't enjoyed or even played an open world game since GTA Vice City on PS2. And this is probably one of favorite games of all time.
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Yes, shouldn't we wait and see ND's second title rather than comparing GG's second title to ND's first?
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It might not be fair, but it's what we got at the moment.

Then again ND did a remaster of The Last of Us and ICE team did the drivers and I think "middleware" stuff for the PS4.

But if we look at GGs games as an arc vs NDs games as an arc, are GG pushing into ND level of excellence now?
Because it basically been a defacto truth that ND is gold which ever way you looked at them :)

Love ND, but also love how GG really is pushing forward now.
 
JPT said:
It might not be fair...
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Then why do it? That's illogical.

But if we look at GGs games as an arc vs NDs games as an arc, are GG pushing into ND level of excellence now?
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I don't understand your query. Are you asking if GG are getting better? Uh, yes. Are you asking if GG are as a good a dev as ND? How are you measuring that? And why are you measuring that with what one dev is producing now with their second title having gotten to grips with the hardware versus the other's first title?

Because it basically been a defacto truth that ND is gold which ever way you looked at them :)
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Are ND somehow lessened because GG have improved??

Love ND, but also love how GG really is pushing forward now.
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But it's not enough to accept two awesome devs, and you need to position them against each other to put one on a pedestal above the other?

:???:
 
GG rebuilt their engine for Horizon (toolset wasn't capable of all the things they wanted to do). Afaik ND used the engine they had for TLOU and added a lot of stuff to it (they had a whole presentation about the transition for the TLOU remaster). Different approach, different results. I think at the moment Decima might be a better/more capable engine overall (Kojima picked GGs engine after all), and Horizon is more impressive to me technically for what it does than U4, but I wouldn't rule out ND just yet. With that said, I definitely prefer the gameplay systems in Horizon and I think ND are still unmatched in animation (gameplay/cutscenes).
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Yes, shouldn't we wait and see ND's second title rather than comparing GG's second title to ND's first?
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GG has been always better than ND technology-wise -do you recall the hype surrounding Killzone 1&2? not only as the Halo killer but allegedly as the referent in the PS3,X360 generation-, and they upped the ante with Horizon, while as for other talents I still think ND is the company to beat from Sony's 1st party teams.
 
Clukos said:
GG rebuilt their engine for Horizon (toolset wasn't capable of all the things they wanted to do). Afaik ND used the engine they had for TLOU and added a lot of stuff to it (they had a whole presentation about the transition for the TLOU remaster). Different approach, different results. I think at the moment Decima might be a better/more capable engine overall (Kojima picked GGs engine after all), and Horizon is more impressive to me technically for what it does than U4, but I wouldn't rule out ND just yet. With that said, I definitely prefer the gameplay systems in Horizon and I think ND are still unmatched in animation (gameplay/cutscenes).
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I think GG are right to put emphasis on gameplay systems and not on animations, particularly cutscenes animations. I wasn't very hyped by the gameplay (or lack of) seen in their next Uncharted trailer. Reminded me the Order 1886 gameplay.

So my answer to OP is yes, definitely, and they might have (temporarily) succeeded.
 
I would hope that Sony's studios are collaborative rather than competitive ... sharing technology freely and helping all studios raise the bar.
 
I don't understand the point of this thread. I don't think anyone at Sony is putting GG and ND against each other, in fact seeing the kind of agreement GG have with Kojima - a completely new face at Sony - there is literally no evidence that ND and GG are anything but very friendly and willing to share experiences, if not necessarily technical expertise.
 
I kind of get what the OP is after, a friendly competition between in house studios. Who's the current cream of the crop etc. But GG have always been cutting edge when it came to the tech and ND were always the master of the story. Now, with the hardware to support them, they're both showing their chops when it comes to doing both. I'm just happy that the PS4 has two of the best studios in the world producing games exclusively for it. That's what makes having a console worth it. :D
 
Well, Zero Dawn was outsold by Ghost Recon Wildlands first week vs first week in UK. The latter a game that regardless of being on two platforms, probably got 1/100th the online hype (being generous).

I suspect SD will sell decent but not great. Also, it has to be said, politically correct or not, I suspect the female hero may tamp down sales vs what they could have been. Or may not I suppose, it's not like Guerilla has ever made a gangbuster seller. I cannot think of a lot of female led gaming successes except Tomb Raider, IN TR's case it's just kind of an accepted/entrenched thing.

So that's a preliminary look at the sales aspect of the question, maybe.
 
Rangers said:
Well, Zero Dawn was outsold by Ghost Recon Wildlands first week vs first week in UK. The latter a game that regardless of being on two platforms, probably got 1/100th the online hype (being generous).
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Ghost Recon launched out on all three platforms unless the Xbox version slipped. It's was available at the time time on Steam and PSN.
 
Rangers said:
probably got 1/100th the online hype (being generous).
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"Ubisoft reveals today some interesting stats about their beta phase of Ghost Recon Wildlands. The beta, which was ended on February 27th, attracted 6.8 million players, breaking any previous beta Ubisoft have held before."
So the online hype for the game was rather large, though perhaps not on this forum
 
I like Horizons graphics and the game engine which I find better compared to Uncharted 4.

But the world of Horizon is very static and has little physics. Now I'm still not so sure whether it is the technically best of the PlayStation 4. Uncharted 4 has much more physics. The Division and Ghost Recon Wildands also have much more elements that can be influenced by the player.


Some of the missing elements such as not reacting with water, vegetation or AI when it is targeted/shot interfere greatly when it comes to a believable world.
 
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Not to mention that machines can destroy the terrain around them: http://imgur.com/st4UVJR
Or that foliage moves and is affected by wind/weather: http://imgur.com/eSJVqWl http://imgur.com/ru4EzJg
Or that machines fall believably when killed: http://imgur.com/CccXZSt
Or that Aloys equipment/hair moves realistically: http://imgur.com/8tYWE0S

These are more important in this game than water interaction, which don't get me wrong, it would have been great, but is not a core element in the gameplay like machines destroying cover is for example. But I'm sure you can find all sorts of ways to make a game look bad by comparison, If it's not physics it's something else :p
 
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