Loved stray but with each chapter being so different it was 3 different games to me. Hopefully they make another.
I have theories about the game that are neither proven nor disproven by what is in the game.
I hope another is made simply to quell my curiosity on those theories and see whether I was right or not.
Stray is such an amazing game. Real work of art. I love how we discover more and more of the story of this world.
I can’t wait to play Expedition 33.
I desperately want to play through it but they seem to have made some weird technical decisions with the sound system and I don’t get half the sounds on any of my devices.
Meanwhile Ubisoft itself continues to pump out digital slop
Anno games
AC Odyssey
Immortals Fenix Rising
Mario x Rabbids games
Prince of Persia TLC
Rocksmith is great for learning guitar
Real talk. Ubisoft in general have made some great games. Their current business model is to pump out repeats of things that worked, and so earn our scorn for them ‘as of right now’.
Who played AC 1 and didn’t want more. That we’re now up to AC 76 doesn’t diminish that they made something fun before they beat it to death.
Even their primary accomplishment of making every open-world game follow their formula of ‘1000 sidequests, item hunts and mini-puzzles’ doesn’t detract from the fact that those were really fun the first few times.
I wish the best to all the ex-Ubisoft developers. Go make cool shit without the $business oversight$. In an ideal world, the publisher should be there to cover the gaps when a new concept falls flat, not to force developers to keep doing the same profitable thing and otherwise stifle innovation.
I stopped playing AC when zero punctuation pointed out that the game was entirely useless gofer quests. Go over there and listen to x lines of dialog only up go back and listen to y lines of dialog only to return to the first person and listen to more… And these locations were not near eachother. It was a time sink that had little point to it.
Other games use similar mechanics at times but often not with characters that are so far apart and/or not without some kind of fast travel system that can make the whole process faster.
I get what they were trying to do; that specific game had new movement mechanics that I completely ignored and just wanted to get on with it. The idea was that you were supposed to learn the new mechanics while traveling between places…
The whole thing just set me off and I stopped playing any and all AC games beyond that point. I’ll probably go back and play AC 1, maybe 2 again… But the rest… Idk if I’ll ever touch them.
Go over there and listen to x lines of dialog only up go back and listen to y lines of dialog only to return to the first person and listen to more…
Other games use similar mechanics at times but often not with characters that are so far apart and/or not without some kind of fast travel system that can make the whole process faster.
IMO the problem is character writing.
As an example, AC Odyssey had some great gems, like the underworld, that island intrigue quest, anything involving Phoebe, though many “mundane” quests had quirky characters too. Kassandra’s VA killed it through the whole game. I still remember all that, and I remember enjoying the in-between because I loved the characters and scenery. It was such a compelling reward.
It did have filler quests though.
…If talking and exploring itself feels like a chore, then that’s the problem IMO. It shouldn’t be a low point between gameplay.
Mario/Rabbids is the game nobody asked for or expected anything from, and it turned out great. Instead of just a knockoff silly minions game, it was an amazing XCOM-lite with fun environments and suprisingly-deep tactical gameplay.
Too bad they shut down the prince of persia team :(
AC Odyssey is 7 years old though. I don’t know any of the other titles, but I suspect they are not exactly recent either.
PoP was last year
never knew Stray was made by a ex-ubisoft employee
Ever notice how the best games out there are either indie games or made by ex-devs formerly from a big developer?
Capitalism does away with ingenuity and creativity. Look at the biggest developers, like Ubisoft or Activision or EA, and their most flagship product(s), and you’ll see that none of them are inventive in any way, they’re all just regurgitated forms of whatever sells.
No wonder ML text and image generators are so popular with large corporations.
I had the same thought. They just want cookie cutter shit. The same as they’ve gotten previously and generic enough to appeal to most.
That’s basically what ML is all about, catering to the average.
You realize that game devs tend to work at many studios over the course of their career? Don’t you?
It’s not capitalism’s fault. The games made by former developers also sell great and are financially viable, the audience also loves them.
What you’re looking at is pure greed.
What you’re looking at is pure greed.
It’s the same picture.
The unfortunate truth is there are likely a lot of very talented developers at most big studios who ultimately don’t have a say on what goes into the game.
Many don’t turn around and try making a start-up game though, most just burn out of the industry forever.
Many don’t turn around and try making a start-up game though, most just burn out of the industry forever.
I think a big reason for this is because they need to have some kinda airtight clandestine OPSEC if they want to work on anything themselves that they plan to show anybody.
It’s been common practice for AAA’s to say “Anything you make while you’re employed here at all is ours.” Sometimes even if you’re not AT the studio when you do it.
They just simply assume entitlement to your creativity.
So, quit and make that indie darling, right? But then you need a financial “runway” set up, which sets a hard time limit on production and adds a ton of stress, and you’d better hope it sells well enough to make back the lost income.
The indie successes we’ve seen are nothing short of extraordinary, but also a textbook example of survivorship bias in action. For every success, there’s a million projects that never got off the ground, much less sold successfully.
Facing all this…I celebrate the efforts that beat the odds, and love genuinely good games that simply didn’t sell enough to keep the ball rolling.
But I don’t fault anybody for just going into something more stable before burnout hits, and they would be destroyed from the inside out.
The way business is structured in the modern day completely strangles progress and innovation by ignoring and sometimes even punishing workers trying to improve. Companies should be run by workers not businessmen so that there’s a focus on the product rather than profit
I worked at a company run by a SWEngineer.
He was code-smart for code, but really bad for business.
You need to get a real CEO who does management, but keep that person in firm check by mandating half the board be stacked by engineers. Even as advisory roles, like if your company makes widgets you should have some Serious Fucking widget people dominating the board for big decisions.
“You make one thing” is like “you had one job.”
(And if you make two things so disparate, spin one off into a sub)
My argument is not “have someone better in charge” rather it’s “we should have less hierarchy in the workplace”
What is the point of this post?
Ubisoft has been releasing games half-assed over the last 10ish years also, they turned Rainbow 6 Siege from a $60 first-person shooter with lootboxes into a free-to-play with “Premium” membership.
Also neglect & ban Linux/SteamOS users who want to play their games.
This post shows that Ubisoft devs have real potential if they aren’t constrained by corporate greed and bureaucrats.
All in all, fuck Ubisoft.
Damn right! Also, fuck those extra launchers and their buggy shit too. Crashing asses!
Also neglect & ban Linux/SteamOS users who want to play their games.
Neglect, Thats almost every studio on the planet, linux gaming is being held up by steam through proton. Tell me more about the banning end of that comment though?
Played through stray for the first time recently
The game was great, especially for how relatively small the team was, but honestly the reveal of the largest mystery in the game was very underwhelming.
It’s still a good game though, I do recommend it.
Hey, your cat thinks you’re underwhelming as well, but she’s fine with that as long there’s food and scritches.
scritches
🤎🤎🤎
Awww, and here I thought only my family uses that word.No, no… It’s the proper denomination favoured by our kitten overlords. They whisper it into our ears as we sleep so that we may subconsciously start using it without getting suspicious.
It usually happens only when they plan for long-term associations.
Scritches and snoot are words to identify people who love their pets
The reveal that
Tap for spoiler
there’s a dedicated meow button
? I thought it was incredible.
Ubisoft is the sexual abuse place right?
…or is that Activision Blizzard?
…or Rockstar Games?
Ubi is one of them but sadly not the only one. The industry is toxic af.
…mmm, Riot maybe?
Is there a funny GIF that says “why not all three of them?”?
it isn’t Ubisoft to thank, it’s the “ex”. suddenly not having to waste your life peddling more assassin’s gray sludge can do wonders for your creativity.
It’s a sarcastic thank, like thank you for firing them, or thank you for driving them away from AAA studios.
Like thanking that dude for breaking up with Adele since her breakout album was basically a breakup album. If you’re into Adele. Lol
Highly recommend Expedition 33. The game play is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a game, and the story and world are both amazing.
I want to get into it, I even own it and I’ve enjoyed the like 4 hours I’ve played already, I just can’t get back into it for some reason.
I am concerned about expedition. Everyone I know that’s played it, finished it in 3 days. That is a lackluster amount of gameplay. And that’s with a job. It’s not like they were no lifeing it or something. It’s on Gamepass though so I’ll play it soon
Oh, that makes me wanna play it even more. Every single time I play a big RPG like witcher, cyberpunk, Baldur’s Gate, kingdom come, etc. I enjoy the first half and then I just speedrun the rest to finish the story. There’s nothing wrong with a 10-30hour game, honestly. Hell, a short hike is like 1-3 hours and I don’t feel bad at all for buying it.
Story is about 30 h and side content another 30, I think that’s pretty solid 🤷♂️
I’ve got 30 hours into it and haven’t finished it yet. I feel like it’s got a decent amount of gameplay so far. Plus I am already planning a replay once with different party members. I’ve also heard the story is better in the 2nd playthrough (you don’t really figure out wtf is going on until pretty far into the game). Definitely worth checking out, especially if you have Gamepass.
Stray was so mid… If it didn’t have cute cats it would have been forgotten instantly.
I was most flabbergasted by the fact that you never hunt anything!! What a miss! How do you make a game where you play as a cat without any stealth stalking of prey??
I remember when the first screenshots for it came out years ago as a cat game inspired by Kowloon Walled City and thought it would be this profound game where you play as a stray cat who weaves itself in and out of all the lives and stories of the people there…and then it turned out to be this really basic linear game. I was so disappointed.
Yeah, but it did have cute vibes and a lot of people love things just for cute vibes
So… you found it mid because it didn’t have more robust stealth mechanics than dealing with the Sentinels? It wasn’t GOTY material, but it was one of my top games that year. Do you also find games like Destroy All Humans, Portal, and Firewatch mid?
Disclaimer: I’m not mad if you find all those mid, just want to know what your baseline for a “good” game is.
If all the games didn’t have the stuff that made them enjoyable then they’d be mid.
I loved it. Even bought a plush of the cat, backpack and all
Damn it, I bought this game. I was hoping it would be like Endling but less sad. That game made me cry like a bitch and I haven’t played it since.
I can’t wait for upper management to stop trying to make games.
You’re gonna be waiting a long time lol
Already have been. Embark (The Finals & Arc Raiders) is an amazing studio that I hope disrupts the industry.
Ahahahah embark of all places 🤣
I mean Ubisoft has probably tens of thousands of ex employees
And growing!
Don’t forget about Outlast, Astroneer and Sifu!
