#Also dont entirely know if it was the point but the character development redesign making him unrecognizable and therefore like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rogueshipagogo · 5 years

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ppl have been asking me my opinions on space channel 5 vr... and i guess since i bought a vr headset off craigslist just so i could play it and speedrun it before work the day it came out... i should talk abt it now... i dont rly think i’ll be able to separate it into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things i think i’m just going to do a rambly stream of consciousness bc i have a headache... but i DO have good things to say abt this game... so st.... sta stay t tune d

right off the bat, the thing i appreciate most abt this game- i like that space channel 5 vr doesnt have cash grab vibes. i Do genuinely believe that they Wanted to make this game For the people who are still obsessed with it, and that they ultimately did what they set out to do when they intended to scale certain aspects of the series up conceptually to match the way the fandom perceives it nowadays. but like i’ve said before... i’m not going to Disagree with the very common conclusion that it Needed to be longer, or at Least more intricate plot-wise. one of my fun and fresh excuses for sc5vr being as short as it is is because you arent really supposed to be playing vr games for too long anyways, its really disorienting and kinda painful, but even that doesn’t account for why so much of the game that we got is a rehash of old settings, concepts, songs, and characters. [i dont even have a problem with reusing old songs, i just think the ones they chose ended up being misleading]

for example i think it makes sense that the first report is a remake of the first games first report on the surface, it’s meant to take you back to the way the first game felt and give you an idea of what it means that the games classic scenery can be rendered in actual high quality detail now [same with the recurrence of events like encountering the space pirates in the asteroid belt/the last battle against a villain being singing to it about what it’s done wrong], but i really thought, like, report 1 was going to end up being a simulated scenario for the benefit of lou and kee’s training... which i dont think ended up being the case??? i think they really did write ‘ok here you are in the first game’s setting again, fighting the old enemies again, because... :^) ok have fun playing report 2!’

and then whats report 2... you fight another old boss from the first game... but theres Still no clear villain or motivation for anything thats happening... and there wont be until like... basically the end of the game...

like, glitter is a really cute character, but its kind of underwhelming that shes just a random citizen who was kidnapped by an entity that we NEVER LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT... like part 1 was extremely notable for being about corporate greed and corruption, part 2 honestly wasnt that political in comparison but at least made you do a think wrt purge’s motivation and his methods, and this game just has a plot device that feels like it’ll do smth but then ends up not doing anything beyond what we already learned about it from the information on its character bio before the game was out. if it turns out that cell x is actually relevant again in a future entry in the franchise and they do have a more developed concept for what cell x Is in mind, i’ll do an entire backflip, but for now its just chalked up to being the result of More Space Hijinks that dont need to be explained

ESPECIALLY WITH ALL OF THE ALLUSIONS TO CELL X BEING AN ENTITY THAT FEEDS OFF OF DANCE ENERGY... it had me thinking that there would have to be some New Method of fighting it off that didn’t just lend it more power in the process, but nah apparently just tacking on the disclaimer ‘*this dance energy is not for glitter’ is enough to turn it from smth it can consume for power into big attacks you can use to kill it... like honestly it sounds like im asking for a lot from a game that has Never made too much sense, but considering that in part 2 they could add details like ‘oh didnt you know purge can open pocket dimensions? ulala is capable of manifesting tangible dance energy and the only other person who can do that is purge???’, its not like they havent come up with weird new shit for dance energy to do within the plot before. they just didnt do it in this game fsr

like did anyone else think that cell x/glitter was going to be the result of tossing purge out into deep space and him encountering the sc5 universe’s equivalent of an eldritch alien creature, smth more bestial than morolians?? even if purge wasnt part of it, when you say ‘uh oh, this guy Eats this society’s only source of energy!!!’ i expect the stakes to get HIGH, and i want the ramifications of it to be kinda STARTLING, because blank wanted money and purge wanted to ritualistically end the world but something this near to an ecological disaster that would force an entire paradigm shift hasn’t occurred yet in the series?? its totally new!!! there’s a lot they could do with this but OH DONT WORRY ABOUT IT EVERYONE ulala knows how to make dance energy kill cell x instead of feed it she’s got this we’re good no need to investigate more into all that

i can’t explain why the game is like this. and i dont expect grounding to address it in any meaningful way either. i’m sure they’re Aware of these complaints by now- the game reviewing community has Not been kind to sc5vr specifically due to all of these shortcomings [i didnt even touch on the issues with motion sensing and how many of the games mechanics were removed in favor of smth presumably easier to program yet much less satisfying, like Secret Moves just being mini quicktime events and Turning Your Ratings Into Stars just being replaced with the standard Three Strikes You’re Out method of scoring], but the pr team still seems very enthusiastic abt the game and is still promising dlc and potentially even more games in the series after this one- heres hoping that they’ll at least take these grievances to heart and consider making the experience not only more accessible [aka it will... go back to being a rhythm game with controller input.... and not... an exclusive vr experience...], but also as immersive and detailed as the old games, with less reused plot beats. i can let some of it off the hook in this game simply because i’m aware that it began its life as a tech demo that was only supposed to be that initial first report from the first game But Happening All Around You!, but i Really dont think they could get away with doing this little to expand upon the groundwork set by the first two games again. not with the way people remember part 2 being such a vast upgrade from part 1... the bar had been set so high that this just felt like a huge backslide into something even sillier and harder to take seriously than part 1 before we had any idea what kind of staying power the franchise would have as a hallmark of sega’s quirky antics. like... this game is what i think space channel 5 looks like to people who don’t understand the appeal of the first two games. and that scares me

but i guess for the most part, aside from wishing they had done more to revitalize the setting and the lore of the sc5 universe itself, im kind of glad it didnt do a lot to change the existing storylines the characters have kinda forged for themselves- here i was stressing out that they would pull out some plot development that would utterly and drastically change the way we talked abt the series for the rest of time, but so little happened and so little was added to the bank of sc5 lore that we can kind of all just carry on as usual and keep having the same headcanons we always had.

BUT!!! there ARE a lot of cute little details here and there that make the experience feel wholesome and like i said not an utter cashgrab- like so many of the character profiles referencing previous games [all of the references to npcs in this game being relatives of the npcs of the last games made me lose it] and how often ulala changes her expressions up and looks right at you and talks to you. the new music they wrote for the game also all slaps and everyones redesigns [if they got a redesign... rip pudding] are stunning

one of the most important things they did in this game was give a nice sort of Update to every character.... for example explaining that ulala isn’t a rookie reporter any more like she was in the first 2 games, that she’s moved up to being in charge of training new channel 5 reporters, and that while pudding is still somewhat stuck on her rivalry with ulala her career isn’t stagnant either, she was just cast in a romcom series as the lead... which is really nice considering how in the past she was portrayed as somewhat of a loser with almost no remaining fans left from her idol years

and you knew i was going to bring up jaguar at some point HES ALL OVER THIS GAME AND IT LITERALLY MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY LIFE WAS WORTH POWERING THROUGH THESE LAST FEW YEARS AND ALSO LIKE IM A GENIUS FOR SPENDING SO LONG POSTING EVERY SINGLE DAY ‘NO REALLY, HE’S THE SECONDARY PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY, ITS ABOUT CHANNEL 5 AS A COMPANY AND THEIR IMPACT ON EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER ENCOUNTERED THEM AND THAT INCLUDES JAGUAR AS WELL AS ULALA HES INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT BC SHE WOULDNT BE ALIVE IF IT WEREN’T FOR HIM’ i feel like it’s really incredible how in this game he has genuinely nice energy and doesnt withhold praise from ulala just to be helpful in a mysterious way later and he like HAS FRIENDS now. like consider how he went from disgraced former ch5 employee who got mad every time he saw them, to kidnapped robot henchman kinda humbled by the fact that now the turns tabled and ulala had to rescue Him, and now 3 years later his bio is all about how he has a new tv show thats super popular and he has a new entourage of ladies who he considers his '’’’’’comrades’’’’’’’ within the station he founded??? AND AFTER 20 YEARS THEY WERE FINALLY ABLE TO GIVE HIS MODEL JUICY ASS CHEEKS??????????????? NO MORE PANCAKE BOOTY???? THE BOY HAD A GLOWUP AND NO I WONT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

WHEN I SAY MEOW MATCH THE POSE MOTHERFUCKERS THIS BLONDE BASTARD GETS TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE HUNDRED STAGE BATTLE NOW TOO THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE SPACE PIRATES BAYBEE

#its almost 4 am. idk i will probably have more to say tomorrow. my head still hurts #the galaxy depends on my funky moves

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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Chicago's own NetherRealm Studios is best known for its work on the long-running fighting game series Mortal Kombat, but in the space between Kombat outings the studio has also tried its hand at other projects.

One of those ventures, the 2013 DC Comics tie-in fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us, seems to have done well enough for the studio that it's now poised to release a sequel next year. But Injustice 2 is interesting from a game developer's perspective because it takes an established fighting game chassis (based upon the Mortal Kombat games) and bolts on an item system that players can use to change the way their characters work.

In brief, players basically get loot drops at the end of every match that they can then choose to equip on characters in their roster (everyone from Aquaman to Wonder Woman), changing those characters' stats. It's not totally unheard for a fighting game to include items that change characters' stats (see Street Fighter x Tekken's "Gems" system) but it is rare, and notoriously tricky to pull off without upsetting the game's balance.

NetherRealm's Adam Urbano served as lead producer on the original Injustice, and he's reprising his role for the sequel. At E3 this week, Urbano chatted with Gamasutra a bit about why, exactly, NetherRealm is making another Injustice game and what he's learned about how to build a balanced, tournament-grade fighting game.

Why are you making Injustice 2? What shortcomings did you see in the first game?

Urbano: One of the things is, we wanted the game to be accessible. We wanted Injustice to be something casual people could jump in and play. Thats why you saw the environments and the interactions and a lot of the one-button things you could do that just looked powerful. Unfortunately, it's extra difficult in just the short amount of time in the [training] mode in Injustice to really get good at things. So the gear system is a fundamental redesign to address things like that.

The goal is that you start out with a much more accessible easier-to-play character, and then you're going to grow with that character, over weeks and weeks and weeks if you choose, giving you a chance to customize it and make it play the way you want it. Actually getting to learn how to play, as well. Instead of just presenting you with 26 or so completed characters from the start, this is 26 sort of...character templates, for players to take and turn into what they want.

That sounds incredibly tricky to balance.

You correctly identified the core issue: we've been working on it for years. Throughout development of Injustice 1, really, because that's when we started thinking about how to do this. So this has been in development for a long time. You can expect a sort of arena system, like you'd see in something like a MOBA, that will give players a chance to use the gear but still keep everything balanced.

So balancing really involves the modes, the gear itself, and then making sure the changes players can do with gear and acquiring specials and all that are balanced. To do that, we have a dedicated little team that focuses on the tournament crowd. Because we love them; it's part of our studio culture at this point. And it's really hard, it's our great challenge.

Wait, how did studying MOBA design influence this game's development?

I think MOBAs, RPGs, this is a game where we've looked at all the genres we love to play and tried to integrate the elements in a way that makes sense for a fighting game, for the first time.

How do you adapt those elements to a fighting game?

So, itemization. It became something that....we had to hire experts, and it's really a core piece of the game and a whole new skillset.

Let's circle back to the tournament crowd for a minute. What is it, do you think, that defines a tournament-grade fighting game?

I think it has to be easy to learn and take a lifetime to master. I know that's kind of a platitude, but for the most part it's...can I get in there, can I learn my specials, can I beat up on somebody, if I I'm new to the genre. And then as I go, can I learn some of the enhanced moves, things like footsies, and other advanced elements of the game that probably mean nothing to most people.

One of our goals is to get people to learn and understand that throughout their play experience, so that they can do those sorts of things. Because there are a ton of people that play our games that don't know it's there, and we spend years designing all these intricate details that are so fun once you get them. But we have to start teaching people that they're there. We have to give people progression.

How do you ease players into the deeper intricacies of your fighting game, as a developer?

So...it's time. Time is the variable we've never had before. We've tried training modes, as many have; we've tried many different things, as many other developers have. But we tend to be asking people to go into a separate mode, that's typically a short experience, to learn to play, and then we say "okay now here's the actual game."

So with Injustice 2 we'ev taken that time variable away and we're designing it so that people can play characters for weeks, through all sorts of different single-player and multiplayer experiences, and you'll progress. You'll be able to try out different things. You'll be able to spend the time that other genres give you to train, finally, in the fighting genre. Without the time, it's a very hard problem to bring players up speed on a decade of evolution in the fighting game genre.

Fair enough. What's one key piece of advice you'd give to fellow developers looking to build a great fighting game?

My generic answer is risk. One of the things that developers tend to do, as time passes, is assume things are the ways they need to be and never go back and rethink them. A good example of that is like, holding back to block in the first Injustice. It was unthinkable for us at the time; it seemed so weird for us!

Yeah, if you're coming from Mortal Kombat you're supposed to have a block button.

Right! And so that was a decision where we said okay we've done this forever, let's change it up. And that worked out, so on Injustice 2 we were like okay, anyone who makes assumptions on this team, you have to go take a time out and come back. Because everything is up for debate. So we started talking about things like back to block, that came up again, but also things like the new tech roll, how and why we wanted characters to evolve. Every single thing in a fighting game, we went back and said...do we have to have blocking? Do we have to have running? What do we have to have? And then we rebuilt from there.

That sounds like it could turn into a self-destructive loop at some point. Like, you have to eventually ask yourself what you're even making.

Yeah. Well, it is Injustice, to begin with. So we wanted to have similar gameplay: transitions, super moves, all those core elements. Because those are the things people loved, when we went back and looked at it.

But to be a fighting game, competitively, really what you need are: the basic attacks, two people one on one, with semi-equal health bars. And we did experiments from there. And at the end of the day we still loved how Injustice played, but we wanted to incorporate an entire new overarching system that kind of tweaks and pokes and changes all that basic stuff.

So if there really were no sacred cows during development, you must have been trying to distill the core elements of a fighting game. Why add in a whole new overarching system of gear?

The item system is essentially choice. In a fighting game, people always ask "what's the roster?" It's a valid question, but in this particular instance it's way more than that. There's the roster, but it's more than that: it's your roster. Batman could play a million different ways -- with some balance built into the overall equation -- so if you love Batman, you could just play Batman a million different ways, forever. Characters have completely different gear, different styles, different classes.

Seems like a handful of god-tier builds would bubble to the top. How do you keep players from clustering around a small number of optimal builds?

We have a balance team for that. We're also going to have a live team in place, and their job is to sit there throughout the lifespan of the game and do nothing but work with pro players, listen to the community, and make adjustments on the fly.

So we've actually increased the frequency with which we can update, even from what we could do with Mortal Kombat X, so we can make changes to these thousands and thousands of pieces of gear, the special abilities, and so forth.

We're at a point now where microtransactions and post-launch DLC are an expected part of big-budget game design. How do you balance a gear-based fighting game, knowing you might add additional paid gear options down the road?

The idea is the game is going to have thousands, tens of thousands, of pieces of gear on disc at launch. The thing we've always done is try and get as much content as humanly possible, up until the last second we have to submit. So at this point, we're not even thinking about that sort of microtransaction DLC stuff. There's going to be enough content. There's stuff to level up, change your character, customize your build, for weeks and weeks and weeks.

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