Support NeoGAF

[nial]

Reaseru In comparison, SIE staff only makes up 2,5% of the entire professional role credits of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (a moneyhatted game)!

Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth credits (PlayStation 5, 2024) - MobyGames

The official game credits for Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth released on PlayStation 5 in 2024. The credits include 3,463 people.

www.mobygames.com

3389 people and Hermen Hulst isn't even here.

 

[cash_longfellow]

It's like they combined two of the worst things in gaming together for one shit sammich.

No, that’s the Series S and Series X

 

[DryvBy]

I know someone that actually likes the story. He has horrible tastes.

 

[gamerEMdoc]

Someone could have told me Forbidden West was made by Ubisoft and I wouldn't have questioned it. For PS to make this its "big brand" is sad. The first game was good. The sequel, ok, kind of. But this is not a brand defining license. It's just not.

 

[OGM_Madness]

Astrobot might steal the spotlight soon.

LEGO Astrobot makes so much more sense.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Horizon looks great in marketing material and helps Sony PlayStation with its ESG score.

 

[DeepEnigma]

It's the only Sony franchise where LEGO itself saw the global appeal (they are ones to decide what will be made into a set) and LEGO Tallneck is selling like hotcakes.

Personal feelings aside (and I quite like Horizon, boo-hoo), this is the best broad appeal game by PlayStation in years and no wonder that Sony is capitalizing on it. Plus the MH-like gameplay formula without the complicated UI/UX is a huge selling point by itself.

People looking for some Hulst biased 'gotcha' should really look at HZD sales.

Stop making sense.

Horizon looks great in marketing material and helps Sony PlayStation with its ESG score.

At least she's a ginger.

 

[OuterLimits]

It sells quite well and has the potential to be amazing in my opinion. However, Aloy and the rather underwhelming narratives are a very glaring weakness.

 

[Aenima]

Because Horizon is one of the most sucessfull Sony IPs. The 1st game sold more than 20 million copies. Most franchises need multiple games to reach that mark, if they ever reach it.

 

[BattleScar]

This thread honestly is full of brain-dead takes. It's actually insane.
Just pure copium from people who don't like this franchise.

 

[EDMIX]

This thread honestly is full of brain-dead takes. It's actually insane.
Just pure copium from people who don't like this franchise.

True.

This is the same group of people always telling folks how Call Of Duty and Assassin's Creed is going to fail, only to disappear when it breaks a fuck ton of records.

Be like "loOk @ dA doWnz vOtez, DIZ IZ IT"!!!!!

We are talking about folks completely detached from reality.

 

[bender]

Guerilla Games is like the middling version of failing upwards. Their engine is nice though.

 

[BattleScar]

True.

This is the same group of people always telling folks how Call Of Duty and Assassin's Creed is going to fail, only to disappear when it breaks a fuck ton of records.

Be like "loOk @ dA doWnz vOtez, DIZ IZ IT"!!!!!

We are talking about folks completely detached from reality.

People just have to accept that most gamers don't play as many games as the average GAFer and definitely aren't as terminally online.
Most people who play Horizon probably aren't experiencing the fatigue that die-hard gamers have for certain tropes in gaming, so are happy to enjoy something that's a bit milquetoast. Leave them be. They're allowed to have fun too ffs. Do we want this industry to grow or are we content with it being a dumbass members club for the dweebs who have fuck all else to do with their lives outside of gaming?
If the council of ubergamers do not approve, it shall not be popular/successful...

 

[Griffon]

As long as it sells, it's the only metric that matters.

I'm not a fan of Horizon either, but it lives as its own self-contained IP and doesn't affect me in any way.

Let the people have their ubisoft-like with boring plots, there's no reason for us to care.
It'll sell what it sells, and if one day the well dries up and it stops selling, I still won't care enough to have an emotional reaction to it.

I don't give it any mind and I just play something else.

 

[Humdinger]

Well, they need a mascot, and the other options aren't good for this era:

Kratos? Too much toxic masculinity, reee.
Nathan Drake? He's an adventurer from a bygone era, now a retired family guy. Yawn.
Joel? Joel is dead. Not much of a mascot.
Ellie? Her lesbianism is a plus, but she's too lost and angry to be a mascot. Mascots have to be fun and make you smile. It's hard to imagine Ellie in a Lego game.
Ratchet & Clank? They're cute, but they seem more like side characters than main ones.

Given all that, Aloy is an excellent choice for a PS mascot in today's climate. She's a woman, which is a huge plus. She's strong and independent (yay!). She's attractive enough for women to want to dress up as her, but not attractive enough to be attractive to men. She's got a lesbian mother, multiculturally diverse companions, and is pretty much a lesbian herself, but without Ellie's downsides. Her game also sold pretty well, and her boss is in charge.

 

[nial]

Absolutely mindbroken.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Guerilla Games is like the middling version of failing upwards. Their engine is nice though.

Their last two games apparently sold 32.7 million copies.

"Failing upwards" is interesting phraseology.

 

[bender]

Their last two games apparently sold 32.7 million copies.

"Failing upwards" is interesting phraseology.

McDonalds sold a lot of hamburgers and New Kids On The Block sold a lot of albums.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

McDonalds sold a lot of hamburgers and New Kids On The Block sold a lot of albums.

McDonalds is a middling franchise that fails upwards.

Also, served 99 billion customers...

 

[JerryinSoCal]

True.

This is the same group of people always telling folks how Call Of Duty and Assassin's Creed is going to fail, only to disappear when it breaks a fuck ton of records.

Be like "loOk @ dA doWnz vOtez, DIZ IZ IT"!!!!!

We are talking about folks completely detached from reality.

I loved the first game, that's why I found the second one so disappointing. I was hoping they'd fix the issues with the melee combat but it wasn't touched, the main story was terrible and what little personality Aloy had was gone. She started every other conversation with a sigh lol.

The side characters were great for the most part and the side missions had meaning that was well done but the main villains were terrible and it just made the whole thing seem stupid.

When anyone talks about forbidden west the only thing they talk about is how good it looks and that's a problem.

 

[bender]

McDonalds is a middling franchise that fails upwards.

Also, served 99 billion customers...

People enjoy slop. Look how much money you've dumped into v-bucks.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

People enjoy slop. Look how much money you've dumped into v-bucks.

"Fortnite keeps failing upwards"

 

[ShirAhava]

Horizon is a game I had zero reaction to while playing it just ran around
with a blank stare not enjoying or hating it just going through the motions
ended up uninstalling it after a while

Nothing particularly dreadful, Nothing remotely amazing

It has a lot in common with Barney's Hide & Seek Game on the Sega Genesis

Sense of adventure, very little challenge, big purple/red mentally delayed protag

Kind of a 'lobotomy sim' (maybe a new genre) makes you want to eat some paste and just veg out

 

[David Ricardo]

It´s the woke fundational myth. Perfect if you want to teach woke politics to children:

white greedy evil heterosexual men destroy the world as we know it.

Strong lesbian saves it with the help of her racially diverse friends from matriarchal neosocieties


Even though I´m not politically woke, I liked the first game. I think it had great graphics, great gameplay, interesting story of how they got to that point, interesting enemy types and mechanics... pretty good. But I didn´t care about the tribes and don´t care what happens in that world after that game. I started the sequel, and a few minutes in Aloy reunites with a black friend, and then they go somewhere and a hologram of a white guy doens´t allow them into somewhere and they both say "this guy doesn´t like me" or something to that effect, and that was it for me. If it´s going to be "white men bad everybody else good" all the time, I don´t want to play it.

It´s just not true that people are good or bad because of their sex or the color of their skin. There are good people and assholes of every kind.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Because it sells well, has a cool concept, and appeals to a wide variety of demographics.

Aloy is kinda boring, tbh, but the game itself has a very distinctive and interesting theme to it

Pretty much. I’m not sure where all the horizon hate comes from. The game sells lots of copies.

 

[Woggleman]

Some people still resent this game for not being Elden Ring.

 

[Halo2redvsblue]

Is it sad that Lego Alloy has more energy and appeal in that trailer than actual Alloy from the actual franchise?

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Sony missed an opportunity to make this a 4 player co-op game and I'm guessing that was because the game is already going to struggle on the Switch.

I think we need more 4 player couch co-op games on PlayStation.

 

[nial]

Sony missed an opportunity to make this a 4 player co-op game and I'm guessing that was because the game is already going to struggle on the Switch.

I think we need more 4 player couch co-op games on PlayStation.

I was thinking on mentioning you since I wasn't seeing you recently, hi.
Remember when I told you that Hermen was looking to expand PSS into more family-oriented stuff? I guess we're now seeing the results with this and Astro Bot.

 

[{insert code here}]

Horizon Zero Dawn selling over 25m copies probably has something to do with it.

How many of those were from bundles? Does that number include the free copies that were handed out during lockdown?

 

[nial]

How many of those were from bundles?

Numbers from January 2020 (November 2019 for Europe, as you can see), digital sales are 6.2M as of June 2023.

Does that number include the free copies that were handed out during lockdown?

It does not.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I was thinking on mentioning you since I wasn't seeing you recently, hi.
Remember when I told you that Hermen was looking to expand PSS into more family-oriented stuff? I guess we're now seeing the results with this and Astro Bot.

I didn't doubt that they would get back into it, I just said that they had left that space for sometime. They largely gave up on them.

Probably a decent reason why Media Molecule wasn't closed down because they can always make another LittleBigPlanet game.

Astrobot and Lego Horizon Adventure are the two clearest investments in family oriented gaming we've seen from Sony since LittleBigPlanet 3. That's a decade.

I don't think Ratchet and Clank really hits that mark either, especially the last two installments.

Although less likely now, I think Sony still has an outside shot at landing Paramount, which comes with a lot of family friendly and kid friendly IP.

 

[blue velvet]

Mid franchise made by a mid developer. It sold well and the former head of Guerilla is now in the higher ups of SIE that's why.
It's like industry plant but for videogames. Mediocre products getting a massive pushed from investors.

Crazy how creatively bankrupt modern sony devs are, they added robot dinosaurs set in the distant future, they thought that would be enough to differentiate it from a typical ubisoft open world game but nope. Once you play the game, the core mechanics were stolen from Ubisoft games but even more soulless.

 

[Icymanipulator]

They try too hard to make her stoic.

Sounds like she’s always exasperated with everyone and everything around her.

 

[PixelatedBeast]

The writing worked well in the first game. The second game just doesn’t have such a strong premise to build upon.

It honestly shouldn’t have had a direct sequel.

The first game ended on such a cliffhanger, the sequel basically wrote itself. Where HFW missed the biggest opportunity compared to the first game was not making Ted Farro a bigger deal when he was central to the whole plot of Horizon.

 

[RyRy93]

I wish GG would move onto something else, the combat and open-world loop is so boring

 

[eerik9000]

Character of Spiderman isn’t owned by Sony but the movie and video game rights certainly are. And they pimp him out probably more than any other IP since 2018.

Gears of war wasn’t owned by Xbox until the 4th or 5th game. And most people definitely connected gears to Xbox. Feel Sony has done the same thing with Spiderman at this point.

I know, I know. I am not arguing that.

I'm saying Sony has given their other successful PlayStation IP very similar treatment in the last decade, Horizon is not an exception to that.

 

[DeathGuise]

An obese queen kicking ass is a PR goldmine

 

[Edgelord79]

Huge open world - check
High potential as a GAAS - check
Modern times protagonist - check
Sold a lot of copies - check

Aloy is a corporate-safe choice as a figurehead for PS5 and one to invest money in.

I say this with complete apathy for the franchise. I should love this game, but the characters and quests are pretty vanilla. Could be so much more I feel. Very very overrated games.

 

[Edgelord79]

An obese queen kicking ass is a PR goldmine

Are we talking about the same game lol? Aloy is not obese in any way. Have you even played the game?

 

[Rain432]

 

[TheKratos]

So who are the alternatives? Serial killer Kratos and Drake? Butffuck'd Abbey?

Astrobot is a contender in the future.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

So who are the alternatives? Serial killer Kratos and Drake? Butffuck'd Abbey?

Astrobot is a contender in the future.

The problem with having narrative-driven flagship IPs is that you can't extend them without impacting quality so an everlasting mascot is not workable.

Astrobot would be a safe choice, since it's a metaconcept that represents Playstation's hardware. However, the brand is too much positioned towards a type of game that's not well represented by it.

 

[eerik9000]

So who are the alternatives? Serial killer Kratos and Drake? Butffuck'd Abbey?

Astrobot is a contender in the future.

Again, these franchises already got the same treatment.

Kratos/God of War:
numerous sequels/spin-offs
ports to newer platforms/PC
appearances in other games
TV show in development at Amazon

Drake/Uncharted:
numerous sequels/spin-offs
ports to newer platforms/PC
appearances in other games
big Hollywood adaptation with Marky Mark and Tom Holland

The Last of Us:
sequel
cancelled multiplayer spin-off
ports to newer platforms
rebuild of the first game/PC port
big screen adaptation was planned for a while until it ended up getting a prestigious HBO show adaptation

Some people are just in denial that Horizon is a successful francise for Sony.

 

[RickMasters]

Once Hulst took over as CEO of PS Studios, it was expected. There's an obvious bias

I’m wondering if that’s why they have two CEOs now…. Maybe the Japanese one is there to keep herman from making Playstation, too german……. Hey that rhymed!

 

[EverydayBeast]

Sony killed Killzone for this Horizon franchise and that was a BIG risk that I think paid off.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

I’m wondering if that’s why they have two CEOs now…. Maybe the Japanese one is there to keep herman from making Playstation, too german……. Hey that rhymed!

He's Dutch.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

He's Dutch.

Germans that speak with a potato in their mouth.

I’m wondering if that’s why they have two CEOs now…. Maybe the Japanese one is there to keep herman from making Playstation, too german……. Hey that rhymed!

It's actually something along those lines. One is in charge of first party (which are 99% western) and the other, a Japanese, is head of third party, which nowadays is Asian (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian).

 

[K' Dash]

Hulst obvious bias but not totally without good reason

The first game is decently mediocre and provides a blueprint for greatness… but they made the sequel even worse.

It sells because there’s nothing like it in the PS library.

I acknowledge the game is one of the most impressive looking this gen, but looks alone will get you so far. I gave up after 5 hours.

 

[Astral Dog]

They found the golden goose, its super succesful,its open world, has a 'strong female character' pretty much appeals to everybody. so Sony has every intention to treat Horizon as one of their big hits

I found it as boring as the Ubisoft games i have played tbh, but its clear why Sony wants it

In some way, its like when Nintendo had very poor expectations for Fire Emblem Awakening, they thought it was a risk at first and it did end up becoming one of their most successful 3DS games, so they funded new games like crazy, put many more FE characters on Smash(to the annoyance of the fanboys), and made a big deal out of it

FE being way more niche and not AAA but still it worked out for them