Saints Row V
- Thread starter Nallim
- Start date
I don't wanna be sceptical but I guess chances on new Saints Row game are almost zero. Current gen AAA sandbox is so expensive so only two companies can handle it, there are Ubisoft and Rockstar. Current Volition publisher Deep Silver\THQ Nordic games looks like this. Indie\niche games with 50-100k+ sold copies expectation.
Well, Darksiders is an AAA game ... that gives a bit of hope ... but it's true, that kind of games are already too laborious and expensive
What always surprises me is that I think there's not enough reuse of things from older games in newer games. I'm not saying to COPY older games, but any game company has a library of stuff they should be able to reuse. Yes, graphics assets may need to be redone for higher resolutions, but there are many other things that can be reused. Seems like they keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and it's frequently not as good as the older games. For example, in my opinion, the pedestrian AI in SR1 and SR2 was much better than any of the subsequent games. That's something that's independent of graphics quality, so it should be able to be ported. And why did we lose water and boats? They already had that down really well in SR3. And where did the weather go? They had that best in SR1! Basic things like that. And Volition should have a pretty big library of assets they can reuse by now. I think clever reuse is something that the really successful games do very well. I'm not saying to make a map that just rubber stamps everything, but there's more that can be done to save labor.
I think another mistake I see is that game studios expend a huge amount of effort trying to make the graphics so high resolution and extremely detailed with an ultra powerful game engine, and they forget about making the game fun! I'm not saying this is only Volition -- I've seen it happen with other game studios too. So you end up with a beautiful looking game that's boring as hell because they've removed all the actual fun features that made their older games so popular. I love realistic games, but there's a point of diminishing returns, and I think we've reached it.
I guess my point is, they can leverage the old stuff and expand upon that. It will take less effort (if done properly) and people will be happier.
Yeah in some cases is possible. For example Yakuza team has fantastic productivity. They extremely reusing assets from game to game and have very flexible approach to money management, main missions always have voice over and cutscenes but minor missions sometimes have only text dialogs. I guess Gat outta hell was some attempt to make cheap Saints Row and I like it more than SR4 but it feels totally unfinished like when 30-40% of work was done someone said publish it immediately or we close it. Deep Silver always had reputation of tricky bidder not a good publisher.
In the eyes of the average consumer (see: idiots), if everything isn't new, it's lazy or cheap. SR4 was called SR3.5 before it was even out for people to (somewhat-accurately) come to that conclusion solely because it reused the same graphics as 3.
Hopefully now that THQ Nordic owns everything, they'll handle things better than Deep Silver did by themselves.
Wow, I thought I was the only one who really appreciated GOOH more than SR4 because of the completely new and original map, and it was a good deal at the price point they set for it. To be perfectly honest, I think Agents of Mayhem was more like GOOH than it was like any Saints Row game, and the price should have been set accordingly.
Ah, but if done right, that is not necessarily true. Look at Saints Row 2, probably Volition's most popular game. They did reuse a ton of stuff from SR1, but they built significantly upon it, and the game did extremely well. On the other hand, SR4 did just the opposite. They took virtually the same map as SR3 and blew up almost all of the enterable buildings, removed all the cribs, garages, helipads, boats and water, removed weather and rain -- basically made it totally boring and uninteresting. So, while SR2 added a lot to the previous game, SR4 subtracted a lot from the previous game. I think the only thing that made SR4 a success was the campaign.
SR2 shows how to apply reuse very well.
SR4 shows how to apply reuse poorly.
When I use the term "reuse", I'm talking more about things that people don't notice. Not entire maps! For example, pedestrian AI is the way people behave and interact, and not necessarily how they look. People do notice when they behave like robots, which was a common complaint in SR3 and SR4. However, in SR1 and SR2, I never heard that complaint because they behaved more realistically by interacting more with both other pedestrians and the player.
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Of course, but SR4 was getting shit for it the moment it was shown off. We didn't know yet that they had reduced Steelport even more, but people were still complaining that Volition dared to do another game in the same city with the same graphics, despite SR2 showing it could be done well.
If they had done it properly, like they did with SR2, I'm sure people wouldn't have complained after they played it. People may have even initially complained that SR2 was in the same city as SR1, but when they saw it, I'm sure they stopped complaining. I remember the first time I saw the city in SR4, all I felt was disappointment. Yet I was surprisingly delighted when GOOH came out and I actually liked that city so much better, yet it was only 1/3 the price! Granted, it had no customization, but for $20 I thought it was a good deal.
If they had taken the city of SR3 and expanded upon it in the same way they did with SR2, I would have LOVED it, and I'm sure there would have been much less criticism.
I guess my whole point is: Build upon what you have. Don't always restart from zero.
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i just had to deal with a moron telling me i'm dumb for liking saints row 4 and that sr2 is this impossible standard of game design.
i'm glad no one on the forums are that stupid. no game is ever perfect, and theres always flaws... glaring ones.... sr2 is no exception.
and, despite the map being unchanged, i absolutely think sr4 is the best in the series. even though i can admit it is flawed.
part of why we're not getting srV is due to just how vocal the sr2s fanbase are. never mind the fact that their pickiness probably damned the franchise they love so much.