this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Unfortunately this is the world we have because of capitalism. Whether it's sitting on real estate investments and hoarding housing from those that need it or hoarding IP it's the same shit.
And Metroid Prime, often put on lists of the best games ever, was made by a second party studio.
F zero was so fuckin rad. There was nothing that fast in the gamecube era on any platform. Racing game developers love to throw around the term white knuckle a lot but god damn was that it.
Cadence of Hyrule as well. We need more shit like that.
The issue with those games is what can you do with them that feels NEW?
Nintendo, for all its faults, doesn't want to drag IP through the mud unless it has a notable idea that actually improves and elevates the gameplay. FZero BR is the most notable example of this, an actually tangible addition to the gameplay that makes it feel new and different.
@Nakoichi@hexbear.net says this is capitalism but I'd argue that this is actually still a vestige of some of the executive people at Nintendo genuinely caring about making good content still, unlike western companies where the entire executive suites are now made of people who do not play games and are not interested in making good games but instead making money. They're sitting on these things because what you can add to "on rails shooter" and "sci fi racing game with crashes" is limited or already done.
Do they really NEED to make it feel new? Not only has there not been a new Star Fox, but there hasn't been any games really that similar to Star Fox in a long time, and its formula has hardly gotten stale. I think a lot of people would just like to see a new Star Fox with different levels.
I think so yeah. Everyone always says they just want more of the same, but when you actually just make more of the same you run up against the issue with Assassin's Creed games literally just being the same game over and over and over again. There's obviously a bunch of people that are ok with that but artists that actually care about what they're making generally have a problem with just making the same thing over and over with no real creativity. Which is precisely why I see this as something driven by the fact Nintendo does still have executives who care about that, unlike western companies that have rotated their executives very quickly the Japanese work culture tends to result in very old executives. What this difference in culture has resulted in is that some of the people from very early on in the industry are still in executive positions and those early members of the industry are people who genuinely cared about making good games. In the west it's much more common to change companies so executive positions have rotated much more quickly and business ghouls effectively fill every single position.
This is a rare circumstance where differences in japanese workplace culture have resulted in something mildly positive compared to the west.
There's a difference here though. And thats that we get a new AssCreed game every couple of years, but its been ages since we got a StarFox game. StarFox doesnt really need a game that "feels new" because we havent had a game like it in ages. Innovation for innovation's sake isnt always a good thing. JSS made a couple good videos about this (largely focused on StarFox actually). And I think the last few StarFox releases made the mistake of "Trying to do something new" in a way that was detrimental to the game. This isnt a universal opinion, some people liked those games. But for me, I'm perfectly happy having a StarFox game that just plays pretty much like 64 did but just with modern conviences and graphics.
Another game I always use as an example of this is Playstation Allstars Battle Royale. That game didnt want to be an exact Smash Clone so they put in the stupid "kill via finishers" stystem that everyone hated. The game I really think would have been better if they just straight up copied Smash just with Sony characters. I know this goes against a lot of things artistic types believe in but sometimes with video games its just the way to go. Like if they can think of something different thats actually good then thats great, but the finisher system wasnt that lol.
I don't really disagree that a new Star Fox can be popular just for the sake of it. With the way things have moved on they could just take Star Fox fundamentals and crank it up to 11. Same thing Ori did for the metroidvania style of game by taking a 2d genre and making it gorgeous.
With that said I'm not sure whether Nintendo is prepared to deal with the torrent of furry content any such game would unleash.
Playstation Allstars was probably right to try something different but just didn't really make a good game lol. The only smash clones that have succeeded have been Rivals of Aether, Brawlhalla (casual-only) and Multiversus (but fighting community support for it collapsed due top Warner Bros CEO's fuckery). All three of those games fundamentally carved out an identity for themselves that is different to Smash, whereas the games that just tried to emulate Smash the hardest actually failed.
I'll bite: For Star Fox at least, you could definitely take a page from spacesim lite games like No Man's Sky or Freelancer and do an open universe not-on-rails star fox game but it would be tough to pull off.
IMO the worst thing to happen to Star Fox was that game they shoehorned the IP into that came out decent enough but would have been cooler as its own thing.
They licensed the characters for that Starlink toys-to-life game, which is kinda in that genre
So like, totally veer off the established formula and into new territory then?
Basically the same thing they ended up doing with Zelda when they felt like they'd hit a wall with the formula no longer having tangible new things that you could add to it.
This still I think has the issue of leaving the original fanbase feeling like they haven't gotten a "new star fox" because what they want is a new on-rails shooter.
Don't get me wrong I obviously think that there's problems with capitalism in this whole industry but I can definitely see how these two franchises are incredibly difficult to do something new with.
The one franchise that they've genuinely got no excuse for is Metroid. Metroid is PERFECT for updating with modern open world stuff. I mean fuck, what is a metroid-vania game if not same concept as an open-world game but in 2d? The fact they've slept on Metroid for so long is genuinely baffling. The only reason I can come up with for sleeping on it is that they're worried that it would compete with Splatoon as a shooter on their system. But that still feels wrong because Metroid is not an action shooter it's about exploration more than shooting.
Metroidvanias are defined by gaining new equipment or powers to open new routes - trying to make that experience open world would end up like the new Zeldas, where all the puzzles are kind of flat because the game's designed to allow you to access them in any order. Metroidvanias work best with semi-linear exploration, either the 2d of earlier games and Dread, or the seperated biomes design of Prime.
You can have open worlds where parts of the world are gated by unlocks. That's a feature of a lot of open world games. Even things like GTA have gated the player from parts of the city by having things like the bridges being out until reaching a specific story beat. It's the same principle requiring a specific ability or skill to gain access to a region.
Sure, but you have similar problems of flatness - Look at Arkham Asylum Vs City and onwards - Asylum has a really tight biome-type map that opens up more and more as you get new gadgets, whereas in city you're travelling between different spots on the open map to enter smaller, linear sections that make use of the gadgets you currently have in the story, but don't generally have a reason to be revisited later once you have more gear.
Yeah I agree and don't really have a solution to that.
I think gaming is particularly interesting in how different genres originated from technical limitations as much as anything, and so have maintained designs that simulate situations we now have the technology to just depict in order to preserve the genre - you were kind of right in that metroidvanias are designed to create that perception of a big, open, connected world, and we now have the technology to make open world games, but metroidvanias are actually designed as very tightly developer controlled experiences that steer you through a maze along an ultimately linear path between upgrades and/or bosses. The connection between exploring the maze and unlocking more ways to explore it are really the core gameplay loop, so dropping either part changes the most important parts of the game.
I think open world games can pull some ideas from metroidvanias, but I can't see a way to square the circle of making a maze without the maze.
I don't think they're all linear. Only linear along segments that are strictly limited to requiring a specific tool. Sometimes you can have more than one way to access areas, and thus allow many different routes through the game. In a way BotW 2 enables this kind of approach to breaking the game with the utterly janky physics shit you can pull of in it.
I want to point out that i've never played F-Zero, but i assume it's "just" a racing game:
Why not just make another? They are constantly making new Mario Karts and everyone loves those. Same thing with Street Fighter (yes, a different genre, i know). Just make some cool characters with cool designs, fanartists will do the rest.
New mario karts have consistently had new ideas and gimmicks. The fundamental formula of "battle racing game with karts" is the same but they've added in things like duo-karts or flying karts or bikes and very different race track design to give it a fundamentally "different" element from game to game. You can see a different gimmick in each one.
With F-Zero it's literally just ultra high speed racing with damaging walls that inflict car damage over time until your car explodes. The goal being to race as hard and fast as possible while getting heals each lap and managing your endurance to not blow up.
Street Fighter isn't Nintendo it's Capcom, but they do add a new core mechanic to each game to fundamentally change the game in a way that makes it fresh each time, the current one being Drive Rush.
they haven't made a new mario kart in a decade :<
cries in pokemon
I wish they had heeded that approach sooner with New Super Mario Bros. It got tired fast
Fair, they do seem looser with mario. As if they MUST release new mario regardless of whether they're bringing something truly new or not. With that said you can still see some element of "make new stuff" with him through Galaxy's ball worlds or having a talking hat that gets thrown and so on.
not much but people are paying $70 yearly for latest sports game and pokemon games are all the same anyways and they keep releasing those so why not release an fzero and starfox every 5 years?
I agree with the essence of your point, but F-Zero 99 is new, and really good!