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Crystal Dynamics is working with The Initiative on Perfect Dark

Papacheeks

Banned
I think davidjaffe davidjaffe knows more about Xbox 1st party studio management than he is letting on. What’s this about photos??
I mean everything I've heard and we've seen from a lead leaving to go back to Insomniac and Crystal Dynamics now being used similar to how Coalition was used to help 343 speak that they are having issues. So 343, the initiative, and Rare all having development issues. Thats not good, and shows proof wise what I've been saying for years.

Same with Jaffe, they have a studio management issue. Phil sucked when he was behind the wheel of software, and I think this goes deeper than Phil to be honest.
 

kuncol02

Banned
Why people come up with conspiracy theories with every Xbox news?

Initiative was formed in 2018 officially. Perfect dark was announced last 2020 VGAs.

Team is around 100 which is not enough for AAA and development time for most AAA games are 5 to 6 years when building from scratch.

If Darren called people from his old studios then how its a bad thing? As gamers we intersted in end product not how its made.

Coliation took help of Splash Damage with Gears UE and 4. 343 took help from Saber and CA with Halo MCC and 5. Its not first time MS took helped from other 3rd party studios. This time Darren Gallagher pulled his old studios people, so people coming up with conspiracy theories.

Also people care about Chinese labour who makes your PS and Xbox in Chinese factory? No you care about end product that you bought not people working on it.
That was already posted there, but it needs to be said as many times as possible. They planned to base their work on outsourcing from start.

How is it trolling? Perfect Dark.
Fable.
Starfield.
Unavowed.
All announced way too soon,you'd think publishers would know not to do this anymore.
Literally no game from that list is in development hell, maybe outside of Avowed depending on how much you trust Avellone in terms of what is happening in Obsidian about which he wasn't objective and trustworthy from moment he was fired from it.
 

Loope

Member
How is it trolling? Perfect Dark.
Fable.
Starfield.
Unavowed.
All announced way too soon,you'd think publishers would know not to do this anymore.
Were they announced too soon or are they in development hell? I mean, it's not my line of work, but if i say to a client, i will do this project is different than saying, i'll do this project until November and do not deliver. The 1st is just an announcement, the 2nd is setting up a date and failing to comply.

It's good to see the usual sony fanboys stirring up shit, the same that later cry about any single thing said about a sony exclusive.
 
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Calverz

Member
I mean everything I've heard and we've seen from a lead leaving to go back to Insomniac and Crystal Dynamics now being used similar to how Coalition was used to help 343 speak that they are having issues. So 343, the initiative, and Rare all having development issues. Thats not good, and shows proof wise what I've been saying for years.

Same with Jaffe, they have a studio management issue. Phil sucked when he was behind the wheel of software, and I think this goes deeper than Phil to be honest.
I don’t think it’s Phil. But maybe he needs to put his foot down on someone and say enough is enough. This is what davidjaffe davidjaffe was hinting at in his video. And this “photo” thing sounds pretty interesting. I mean he could be bullshitting also lol
 

Corndog

Banned
Naughty Dog needed 14 studios and over 2000 people to make The Last of Us 2. I mean, let's not pretend as if this isn't common practice for the industry. You know how many games start out from a smaller subset of creative leads and senior designers initially and then ultimately goes on to receive serious manpower and support from various outside contractors and established studios? The key difference with The Initiative is they've been more heavily watched and followed from the start. Every new addition, every time they get some talent from Naughty Dog or Santa Monica Studio, whatever.

And what makes you think all those other studios aren't already pre-occupied with their own major projects? In some ways I understand going this route, as it might not be viewed as fair that another team that had a whole other vision for what they wanted to make, end up working on The Initiative's vision for a Perfect Dark reboot.

They already have a prototype because it's been played by Phil, by one of their previous lead designers who moved back over to Insomniac, likely to work on Wolverine no doubt. The goal is to bring that package together into something more complete and awesome that can be shown to the public and then eventually released to very positive reception. Time will tell, but I'm a whole lot more excited now in the direction of this game because it has a studio that's proven on it. A studio that is very, VERY good with system's based gameplay mechanics, immersive set-pieces, stealth elements, solid character progression, etc. You name it, Crystal Dynamics has done it in one form or another at a very high level with the Tomb Raider titles.
I wouldn’t waste your time with trolls. It’s the same people every time concern trolling anything Xbox.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
Not true. Most studios make games alone, with simple outsourcing for assets if and when needed. They rarely bring in other studios co-developers. There are dozens of support studios out there that literally specialize in outsourced work.

And The Initiative was literally built to make a AAA game. Everything -- from project planning to hiring -- was done to achieve that goal. To say that they couldn't make a AAA game alone (without roping in another studio as a co-developer) is an insult to that vision and efforts.
yes u talking about studios who have 200 300 persons and then outsource. stop acting like 70 person can make a modern AAA it's no how it work and never did. The initiative stated from the start they prefeer to stay agile with a small group of person ..probably they're trying to work like this. there's nothing wrong doing it and nothing is going bad
 
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assurdum

Banned
WTF it's the point of Bethesda acquisition if they can't use their studios for something like Perfect Dark? :messenger_neutral: Crystal Dinamics collaboration for a FPS?
Rupauls Drag Race All Stars Season 3 GIF by RuPaul's Drag Race
 
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assurdum

Banned
Character driven games. That sounds damn near "cinematic". Great to see more of these character and story driven games being developed. Perfect Dark is definitely a game I'm looking forward to.
Yeah CD is the master of the character driven games :messenger_neutral: TR reboot is a fucking mess from this point of views, nice choice MS.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
Yeah CD is the master of the character driven game🤣 TR reboot is a fucking mess from this point of views.

I disagree. Their Tomb Raider games were awesome character driven games. At least they were when Darrel Gallagher was at the helm. And now Gallagher and CD are working together again on Perfect Dark. I don't see this as a bad thing at all.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
Hopefully get the game in 2024 now it has such a large team.

2021 Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5
2022 Starfield, Forza Motorsport
2023 Fable, Gears Of War, Avowed
2024 Perfect Dark, Elder Scrolls VI

Looks good to me.
I suspect those Gears and TES estimates are terribly optimistic. I’m expecting Gears in 2024 and TES in 2026. Still though, good schedule and not including things like Redfall and Everwild.
 

assurdum

Banned
I disagree. Their Tomb Raider games were awesome character driven games. At least they were when Darrel Gallagher was at the helm. And now Gallagher and CD are working together again on Perfect Dark. I don't see this as a bad thing at all.
I find Lara of the TR reboot one of the most annoying character ever made. And I don't think I'm the only unfortunately. I really don't get it how useful can be the CD collaboration if not in a bad way. Another fragile/humanise revisitation of a VG character? God help us.
 
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assurdum

Banned
TR reboot is best Uncharted game on market.
In terms of gameplay? Could be. But we are talking of the supposed character driven games ability of CD, which looking at TR isn't it exactly gold standard. ND is in an another league. Heck even Cabala in The Avengers is insufferable for my tastes.
 
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Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Yeah CD is the master of the character driven games :messenger_neutral: TR reboot is a fucking mess from this point of views, nice choice MS.

Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider were a fucking mess?

Legit question cuz I pretty much only ever see you post how much you hate something or how shitty something is.
What games do you actually like?
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
I mean everything I've heard and we've seen from a lead leaving to go back to Insomniac and Crystal Dynamics now being used similar to how Coalition was used to help 343 speak that they are having issues. So 343, the initiative, and Rare all having development issues. Thats not good, and shows proof wise what I've been saying for years.

Same with Jaffe, they have a studio management issue. Phil sucked when he was behind the wheel of software, and I think this goes deeper than Phil to be honest.

Looks to me that MS has a lot of studios but building the network between them to create an efficient production pipeline will take time.

Its the only explanation for MS to hire a Square Enid developer to work on a project they have been hyping up for a while now.
 

plushyp

Member
Lol the team behind the Reboot Lara is "helping". If the half-shaved hairstyle redesign of Joanna wasn't enough of a warning, then this should be like the alarm blaring.
 

assurdum

Banned
Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider were a fucking mess?

Legit question cuz I pretty much only ever see you post how much you hate something or how shitty something is.
What games do you actually like?
In terms of characters humanisation? Yes they are. Now tell me they are brilliant in that.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
Does Mojang really have 688 employees?
That’s pretty crazy for a dev house that does so little, they should be able to shed 600 of them and still be overstaffed for what they do.
Only thing I can think of is they have full teams for merchandise, maybe that school project thing, advertising? I don’t know. As you say, the actual game shouldn’t need that many people to expand and maintain.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
In terms of characters humanisation? Yes they are. Now tell me they are brilliant.
But are Crystal Dynamics here to write the story or to humanize characters?
Id assume they are working with TI in a technical respect...dunno what they are actually doing they might be writing the game or whatever.

And to my earlier question.
What games do you actually like?

Just so I can rest my mind knowing you do actually like something, cuz it comes off as you hate everything yet are on a gaming board and enter multiple multiple threads purely to vent about how much you hate everything.
If i know there are things out there you like Ill atleast assume you are NOT one of those basement dwellers with pent up rage just waiting to shootup a developers studio and for now you have a mini outlet that is hating on games and game developers on this forum.
 

Topher

Gold Member
In terms of gameplay? Could be. But we are talking of the supposed character driven games ability of CD, which looking at TR isn't it exactly gold standard. ND is in an another league. Heck even Cabala in The Avengers is insufferable for my tastes.

So if they are not at ND's level then what? They are shit? Plenty of studios don't meet that standard, imo, including other Sony studios.

You don't have to like the TR reboot, but it was received extremely favorably by most. Like I said, that was when Gallagher was running things and I agree they have fallen off since his departure. But Gallagher is running this and so I'm expecting great things.
 

kuncol02

Banned
Don’t know about the best but it’s on par with 2,3 and 4. The second 2 games in the trilogy are shit though.
Rise of the Tomb Raider has similar problem as Doom Eternal had. They extended scope of a game greatly and in process kinda lost their eyes from what made first one great. That don't means that it's bad game, but it lost that spark that made it great game. Third one was made by different devs so it's irrelevant to that discussion.
I will also add that I think TR reboot had best bow in whole gaming history.
 

bitbydeath

Gold Member
Only thing I can think of is they have full teams for merchandise, maybe that school project thing, advertising? I don’t know. As you say, the actual game shouldn’t need that many people to expand and maintain.
Yeah, unless they have some secret projects going on but it’d need to be multiple big projects for those numbers. Anyway, just thought it was interesting.
 

reksveks

Member
Does Mojang really have 688 employees?
That’s pretty crazy for a dev house that does so little, they should be able to shed 600 of them and still be overstaffed for what they do.

Only thing I can think of is they have full teams for merchandise, maybe that school project thing, advertising? I don’t know. As you say, the actual game shouldn’t need that many people to expand and maintain.


Yeah, Mojang is a weird one. Windows Central has said that they are working on 2 new games so let's see if they make those numbers make sense. I think they probably still make a decent roi as a studio.
 
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Withnail

Member
They can spin the announcement but putting news out in the evening on Twitter at the end of the week is the MO for MS when they're not too sure how some news is going to go down.

Sounds like development is not going too well and instead of cancelling it they're effectively rebooting it with a more experienced team. This isn't standard outsourcing like calling in some Chinese sweat shop to generate assets lol.

Can wait for the leaks from disgruntled devs in The Initiative, gonna be juicy.
 

Three

Member
This kind of reminds me of Crackdowns dev hell. There is actually a shortage of developers nowadays too.

Edit: I don't know why you're laughing Bernd Lauert Bernd Lauert . I mean in the sense that the studio/MS was talking about AAA and in this case AAAA and not producing anything for years then in the end they had to get another dev like Sumo and Crystal Dynamics in to cross the finish line.
 
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THEAP99

Banned
They can spin the announcement but putting news out in the evening on Twitter at the end of the week is the MO for MS when they're not too sure how some news is going to go down.

Sounds like development is not going too well and instead of cancelling it they're effectively rebooting it with a more experienced team. This isn't standard outsourcing like calling in some Chinese sweat shop to generate assets lol.

Can wait for the leaks from disgruntled devs in The Initiative, gonna be juicy.
Maybe we can get some input from Jason to cover this story from insider sources?
 
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Papacheeks

Banned
Honestly this seems like a false equivalence


I think the bigger question is if this was suppose to be a thing from the start we would have heard in PR a long time ago Crystal Dynamics was collab with Initiative? So to me there 3 things going on.

  1. Crystal Dynamics is being used as support capacity by Square because of them being on the shit list and needing to stay busy, i dont think square is going to give them new IP's to work in internally for a while
  2. Square is not happy with WESTERN output as of last couple years, so a shift in how they use them is happening
  3. Initiative has so far shown nothing to anyone outside, they lost lead talent who ended up going back to Insomniac.
Honestly if this is not red flags that the game is not where it needs to be milestone wise I dont know what to say. Jaffe is right outsourcing is very common, Naughty dog used a ton for Last of us part 2, GT7 uses a shit ton for content like cars, tracks, assets shit like that.

Something is definitely off.
 

Ezekiel_

Banned
Honestly this seems like a false equivalence

So... It's worst than outsourcing? They didn't just hire CD to make assets or some small consulting job, they hired them to help develop fondamental parts of the game? How can this be spinned into something positive?

The Initiative exists for many years, and they still require the hiring of a talented dev studio to make the game.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
It standard practice here take a look at this even the mighty GOW need help.



It is, and that studio specifically is aiding in asset creation, not game designing. Thats obviously being done in house. ANd we've seen a good amount of gameplay from God of war.

What have we seen from Perfect dark? And why were leads leaving? Maybe they are at a good milestone and now are ramping up?

I don't know? Just seems odd of just hearing about it now. Valkyrie Entertainment worked on original god of war as well for assets.
 

skit_data

Member
This kind of reminds me of Crackdowns dev hell. There is actually a shortage of developers nowadays too.

Edit: I don't know why you're laughing Bernd Lauert Bernd Lauert . I mean in the sense that the studio/MS was talking about AAA and in this case AAAA and not producing anything for years then in the end they had to get another dev like Sumo and Crystal Dynamics in to cross the finish line cross the starting line.
FTFY
 
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