The Initiative game could be not the game we are waiting for

It is when people treat something they don’t like in the gaming industry as some sort of personal attack on them somehow.

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I am ready to get grief for this but, I am honestly disappointed we haven’t had a glut of episodic story driven games from MS. They have the platform in Gamepass. Is like to see what they can do with it. I’m imagining short horror games that play like an anthology or short stories about major battle in Halo that follows individual ODST soldiers. I want to see what they could do with that.

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Yeah. When they revealed they have a 70% attach rate for Game Pass on the Xbox Series consoles sold, my reaction was “What the fuck is wrong with the other 30%?”

It’s baffling to have an Xbox and NOT Game Pass.

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That depends on what the person wants to play. For example, I’ll have the Series X by the 23rd but I won’t subscribe to Game Pass until I decide to play Gears Tactics and the Halo games and even then, it will just be a $10 monthly rental. Why would anyone pay for something that they’re not using on a consistent basis?

My plan is for every Microsoft first party game and games that go in Game Pass day one (like The Ascent) will all be a $10 monthly rental. Play, complete and move on to my next game.

Once I get Series X, I have Watch Dogs Legion, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Immortals Fenyx Rising to play so it wouldn’t make much sense for me to subscribe to Game Pass when im not going to use it at that particular time.

This entirely misses the point of the service, which is trying new shit. But I know, I know, you refuse.

Well, they have said it is not a standard model. I don’t think you should expect a story that stops right in the middle and says “see you next year.” I think its more likely we see fairly complete stories, likely in the same universe and with some degree of interconnection.

Think the equivalent of gaming short stories perhaps?

The point of a subscription service is to get you to subscribe and stay subscribed. Only problem is that if im not using it consistently, why would I stay subscribed?

Sigh

Ok, dude. Don’t.

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So just checking, the ones freaking out about this game possibly being episodic have zero interest in buying the FF7 Remake when it comes to the Xbox right? I mean that game is episodic too after all…

FF7 Remake is not a great example because each part is going to be like full game sized.

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But we still don’t know how their formula will work, it could be a whole entire season (like a tv show) with 10 episodes with a complete 15 to 20hs story that interconnects with the other stories in other seasons. This would be fucking amazing imo. The thing is we dont know yet, I don’t understand why some ppl is freaking out.

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Although I will hate if the game is episodic, it doesn’t matter because I was never counting on a new studio to make a must play game for me and I will just wait until all the parts are out because I have so many other things to play. If it ends up being a series of short, unconnected anthology type games, then I can just ignore it totally as that kind of structure would have zero appeal for me.

I mean it could go either way. That’s why it’s too early to be negative.

FF7R is an episodic game and each episode is a full blown game. Tell my Why is an episodic game that released all episodes in 3 weeks and it’s super short. Hitman is an episodic game that took a few months to be complete but in the end the whole package ended up being super complete. Quantum Break is an episodic game that launched with all episodes at once.

Only thing we “know” about Initiative game is that it’s going to have several self contained stories in the same universe. Anything about the size and release date of these episodes is just speculation with no evidence, so better to wait.

The framing of this and Ed’s comments are rather out of touch imho. People are expecting a hyper polished, next gen-only third person title set in the Perfect Dark universe with eye popping visuals/tech. Nobody will mind one bit if it is episodic. Most gamers want their third person action games to not last dozens of hours.

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They have Hellblade 2 and I’m sure it won’t stop there

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The only problem with episodic gaming is the release cadence. I played life is strange 2 after all the episodes had come out and found it to be a surprisingly moving experience. The game absolutely suffered from the long and more importantly unpredictable gaps between episodes where any emotional investment was long forgotten.

Tell me why on the other hand was a weaker game but by release it’s episodes on an absolutely fixed monthly cadence it was much better received.

I think episodic gaming could be great for game pass but it absolutely needs to be released regularly. A story driven action adventure game split into 12 2 hour episodes that release on the first of every month could be amazing if done right.

If we are talking AAAA, to me that means ambition. Imagine something like 24 with 24 1 hour episodes released weekly complete with cliff hangers each episode. Or something like Fortnite’s end of season events but released regularly. 15 million people took part in that . There is absolutely a massive desire for appointment gaming if it is done well.

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So length alone is enough to make a game have zero appeal for you?

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More like they added tons of filler that wasn’t in the original to pad out the run time and justify it being episodic. Not to mention we know next to nothing concrete about this game to say what it can and can’t be compared to.

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That could be cool. The episodes can’t be spread too far out tho.

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This is correct. Now I’m helped by the fact that I usually take twice as long as most people to finish a lot of games, but I’m really just starting to get into the story and characters of a game at about the 15 hour mark. I wouldn’t bash or say that it’s bad, but a 10-12 hours game would never draw me in enough for me to consider it a great experience. A shorter game then that would feel like a demo to me.