Journey, new game from thatgamecompany (flOw, Flower)

Changes at Thatgamecompany: Santiago departs, new game underway
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ompany_Santiago_departs_new_game_underway.php

Just off a wave of critical acclaim for Thatgamecompany's newest PlayStation Network title, Journey, big changes are afoot at the studio: As the studio begins work on a new game, co-founder and president Kellee Santiago departs.

Gamasutra sources say that other key staff departures may be forthcoming as well. Santiago declined to confirm or to speak to her colleagues' plans, but suggested future announcements are 'likely.' As for her own departure, it's entirely amicable, Santiago tells us, explaining that it's simply time to seek new challenges.

...
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Thatgamecompany's executive producer also leaves, joins Tiny Speck
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ive_producer_also_leaves_joins_Tiny_Speck.php

Robin Hunicke, executive producer at Journey developer thatgamecompany, is the latest to leave the studio, as she joins Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi at Tiny Speck.

Hunicke's resignation follows several other recent departures from Thatgamecompany right after it released critically acclaimed and commercially successful PlayStation Network game Journey -- this morning, co-founder and president Kellee Santiago revealed that she was leaving the Los Angeles-based company.

Two other veterans from the team, producer/designer Chris Bell and "feel engineer" John Nesky, also recently left the developer to form The Willderness. Thatgamecompany's creative director and co-founder Jenova Chen remains at the studio, which is already working on a new project.
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Hm.. it was a small team to begin with, if most of them leave, I'd be more inclined to follow their next game than whatever comes of the entity still known as thatgamecompany.
 
Yep seems like they just imploded. I guess we'll get to find out if Genova Chen was the real talent there or if he's full of himself.
 
Now we hopefully get more games like Journey from 3-4 different sources.... japp thats my positive spin on it :)
 
upnorthsox said:
Yep seems like they just imploded. I guess we'll get to find out if Genova Chen was the real talent there or if he's full of himself.
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Heh heh, I'm thinking about the same thing. Their community manager posted on GAF that development of their next game has already started.
 
upnorthsox said:
Thatgamecompany?
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I think he was at least 50% of that,

"So much of my work at Thatgamecompany was really supporting Jenova's visions for the types of games he wanted to make, and I felt like I have done everything I needed to do there, and that he's in a great place now to go on and continue with some of the other people at Thatgamecompany, to take that to a whole new height."
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Well the credits are over 80% Sony Santa Monica, that's another big group of very talented people he's losing.

Hey, he may be the visionary we all hope he is, but when that many leave so abruptly it makes you pause and think.

It could just be that they don't share his dream of playing with the big boys and would rather work "Indie".

It could also be that his next project is a FPS and they'd rather just not.
 
I think it sounds more likely that they all just wanted freedom to create their own projects, rather than stay just supporting one vision.
 
Back to the game itself, the ending was not what I expected.

The game is beautiful but I It felt like I was playing something written by Wisdom Tree with its "You will get all the virgins you want when you die" go to Heaven ending. I guess it could have been worse, they could have gone with "Oh, what a terrible dream" as the finale.

If you aren't religious then this is a rather bleak game - your Journey is progressively more difficult, ultimately pointless and doomed to failure. What makes it stranger is that even though you have been resurrected you still end up alone. Could have been written by Lars Von Trier.

=)

Post mortem discusses the religious nature of the game and management problems. . .

http://www.gamespot.com/features/religion-friendship-and-emotion-a-journey-post-mortem-6367138/

Cheers
 
Last edited by a moderator:
deathindustrial said:
Back to the game itself, the ending was not what I expected.

The game is beautiful but I It felt like I was playing something written by Wisdom Tree with its "You will get all the virgins you want when you die" go to Heaven ending. I guess it could have been worse, they could have gone with "Oh, what a terrible dream" as the finale.

If you aren't religious then this is a rather bleak game - your Journey is progressively more difficult, ultimately pointless and doomed to failure. What makes it stranger is that even though you have been resurrected you still end up alone. Could have been written by Lars Von Trier.

=)
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I liked the ending.

Even though I'm not very religious. It's like that old cliché "the journey is more important then the destination". The game managed to bring that across very well. That last bit when you're walking through the blizzard, the top of the mountain disappeared out of view, and all you're left with is your buddy, before both collapsing in the snow. I wouldn't have minded if the game ended there. But I was also quite happy to be brought back together with my buddy to play that very last bit, and walking side by side into that bright light together. I fully expected to be dropped back at the beginning, alone again. I was still happy about it because I looked back on a pleasant journey.
 
I think there is basically no "game" to Journey, but walking/flying/swimming through the world with another person felt pretty good. Not anywhere near the quality that Flower has, but an interesting experience anyway. The ending is pretty pretentious though.....
 
I was underwhelmed. Not worth $15.

The best part of the game was wandering through what felt like a fully architecturally realized world with a real history. The last time I felt that way was in PoP: SoT. Metroid Prime and SotC are also examples of this. Particularly interesting is the history of the world revealed in the mosaics you find throughout the journey, especially how what they represent is very much open to interpretation. There's a lot of sad, melancholy history hinted at in the glyphs dotting the landscape.

The worst part is how little game there actually is. It shows occasional flashes of quality when it is clearly drawing from the PoP well of 3D platforming, but it does it all too infrequently. I'm just not really into this idea of "art games" not really needing to be games as long as they are pretty and moody. There's just no reason to not have more of the kind of puzzling there was early on...especially since the game's lack of text or instructions really lends itself to that kind of gameplay.

The ending left me wholly dissatisfied. I just felt like there was no real conclusion at all.
As many times as the camera focused on that mountain, I was expecting some kind of grand denoument to my journey through the wasteland. One of the murals appeared to prophesy my journey to the mountaintop, so I was expecting it to mean something. The impression I got from the sages and murals is that getting to that mountain is really really really crucial, but I just hadn't found out why. Maybe I was rejoining the other Desert Kitties in the last remnant of civilization. Or maybe I was going to sacrifice myself to regenerate the world. Or stop the war machines. Or pick up a pizza to take back to my family back home. Something. Instead, I got...some yellow sparklies floating around the sky while the credits rolled, that may or may not be my avatar, and restarting from the beginning. I don't buy "It's called Journey, not Destination." Sorry, when the camera and setting clearly emphasize an intriguing, mysterious, clearly very important destination over and over again, the title of the game isn't a valid excuse for a completely anticlimactic arrival.
 
I have not gone back to the game yet. Left at the fifth level. At that time I felt that I was progressing too fast.

I suspect it's the sort of game where I need to clear my mind and explore leisurely.
I also bumped into a dragon and lost a large chunk of my scarf. -_-

fearsomepirate, did you play Demon's Souls or Dark Souls ?
 
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