Is it too much to hope for a sandbox mode in the game. Me and my kid loved just taking over Dino’s, trying to get them to fight and stuff. Would be great to just be able to experiment with the game, set up cool scenarios etc.
Either way, im day one but I will stay with February 2022.
This being Horizon is one thing but this being a deep-dive into a game that represents a next-gen open world game is another. This is a must watch even for folks that aren’t fans of the game.
I also like how this is announced just days before the event. I think that’s smart from a marketing angle in terms of managing expectations and hype to allow the product to do all the talking.
Why do you say next-gen when it’s on PS4 as well?
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Oh jeez I forgot about that, thanks for the correction.
That’s kind of why I’m tempering my expectations around the gameplay mechanics. It’ll be a nice looker, but I’m not expecting mind blowing sequences. I doubt they’ll have any PS5 only segments.
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Sony is honestly doing great right now wrt first party I can’t complain at all. Their roadmap has been very well planned and there are very few fuck ups happening (outside the Returnal launch issues and GOW Ragnarok simply not happening this year). If Horizon indeed lands this fall, it’s gonna be monumental. They shall have had a phenomenal two years and it’s perhaps gonna get better when the big stuff starts coming, GOW:R, next Insomniac game, the FF Soulslike/Nioh style game, gonna be real interesting cuz that’s when I think we all know Xbox shall actually start showing the fruits of their investment.
I’m similarly hoping Halo Infinite and FH5 are amazing as well and are coming ready and banging this holiday, it’s about damn time.
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it’s gonna be a crossgen game, even a next-gen only game like Ratchet I feel shows very little gameplay innovation happening, I see Rift Apart and I see the 2016 remake and the gameplay still seems to look very very similar, nothing wrong with it, but the most next-gen aspects of R&C is NOT mechanical or gameplay based. Even the whole portal stuff only happens during on-rails sections with very little control on the grand world changes. The one good part is the super fast terrain changes which can introduce some real dynamic level design goodness.
We’ll get absolutely zero games for a few years that actually show any gameplay innovation as a result of the matured tools and new paradigms in AI and level design, etc, basically anything that doesn’t come off contrived or tech-demo-ish will only happen a year or two down the line. No game from any publisher is gonna release anything truly innovative in the crossgen period, it’s simply expected imo.
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Eh, I’m not real impressed with their roadmap at all tbh. Somehow everyone already forgot Demons Souls came out and I’ve never been impressed much by Spiderman. R&C looks great tho. I’m confident Horizon will too. GT7 looked like a legit PS4 game when showed. I’m in same boat as @BRiT wrt tempering expectations somewhat with Horizon and GoW too. I do think cross gen games can still blow us away but they won’t be Hellblade level visuals most likely.
Ultimately I am yet to be blown away but eager to see more 1P games from Sony/MS. I agree entirely with your 2nd post though. 2022 will be when we see first glimpses of real next gen game design and who knows how soon we can play that stuff.
Hmm I’m talking in terms of having planned things and actually succeeding at releasing them in a regular pace for the most part, nothing to do with the perceived quality of said games. Like they released several first party games in 2020 alone and shall still be releasing enough games in 2021 with the indie/AA partners like Kena, Stray, whatever to fill out the gaps.
Having the first showcase for next gen being 7 months post launch isn’t ideal timing though, regardless of the small games they released alongside PS5, and as ya noted R&C’s next gen prowess is largely superficial. They have already had 2 pretty major delays that we know about (GoW and GT7 both 2022 games). Hell even R&C was unofficially delayed a bit (it was intended to come out several months earlier w/in 6 months of launch). Returnal was delayed once too. Their presentation of their roadmap has also repeatedly been sketchy even, with FF16 and Demons Souls marketing suggesting they aren’t really exclusives, super misleading marketing around ‘we believe in generations’, the obviously bogus ‘GoW 2021’ tease, the whole ‘Miles Morales is on PS4 and oh so are all these other games’ stuff…
So I’d still disagree that their presentation of their roadmap has been stellar as well as disagreeing with the view that the roadmap itself even behind the scenes is looking all that impressive. I actually think MS has done better in the latter’s regard, as last year the outlook for 2021 on Xbox was doom and gloom. By year’s end, we will have had The Medium, The Ascent, The Gunk, 12 Minutes, Tunic, Stalker 2, Psychonauts 2, FlightSim, CrossfireX, Halo, Forza Horizon, Scorn, AoE and maybe others I forgot about or stuff we dunno about yet. For XGS specifically, and ignoring anything Bethesda can put out (Wolf 3 please!) that seems damn solid to me and the cadence is gonna be real tight in the back half of 2021 too.
MS should do a literal roadmap image to showcase this stuff at E3 to make it clear that every single month we will get multiple notable games landing from here on out.
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If you’re mentioning indies and AA as part of the Xbox roadmap, I don’t know why one would ignore similar lineup for Playstation that have already released (Oddworld, Maquette, etc) or yet to (Kena, Stray, Solar Ash, Little Devil Inside, etc).
Sure, include those too. Those do not really stack up great against Xbox’s 2021 roadmap imho. Not just in terms of expected quality, but in terms of diversity and cadence. Oddworld came and went. Nobody noticed. Kena will be potent tho, and Stray might be too.
Love the world and general vibe of this series
yeah I hope the gameplay gets better especially the melee plus story get improved game started out great then fell off a cliff but I thought the world was pretty cool tho
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Horizon is the "I don’t like Naughty Dog game"
I still need to give the first one a shot, I had feedback that the main activity is killing robo dinos which sound boring and primitive. Seeing how i snagged a copy with play@home I will give it another shot.
Most cross gen games have opted for higher res+fps on current gen, I wonder if FW will take that route or the more ambitious route of M:EE?
I dont have to high hopes for FW, 3.5yrs is not enough time to add the detail, content and interactivity open world games need. Its why GTA5 is still more fully fledged then nearly all open world games this gen, depite it being a ps3/360 game.
That’s true. Cross-gen restricts how the world is designed and so on. It’s interesting to see this and Halo Infinite in the same circumstances. Really smart though because that 120+ million PS4 userbase is going to be who will buy the most copies of the game.
I’m also interested in how Sony pulls off this demo. They’ve done a good job of marketing their big games, we’re still in an era where COVID impacts how things like this are done, and right now PS5 owners are excited about what this Fall offers (not unlike Xbox and Switch fans) and I want to see how this addresses that excitement.
And if this is successful could we see this with more games? I’d love to see this with Gran Turismo 7, or Kena. My ideal E3 format is to show the games briefly during a conference and then following up the main conference with deep dives into each game. I realize Sony won’t have an E3 showing, I’m speaking in general with 3rd parties and even MS.
Stream is live, 5 hours of landscapes until the gameplay.
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Is anyone else watching this?
I’m beginning to wonder if I tuned in to the wrong stream or something. These are some nice looking locations but… is anything going to happen?!