Kacho
Gold Member
I thought it was the team that did Destruction AllStars. A quick Google says Sony moved development to Firesprite.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Rumor: New Twisted Metal Details Massive Change For Franchise
GymWolf
Member
Oh ok, they can waste that one.
Oddvintagechap
Member
The part where it’s not a significant franchise so they will make one out of it.
Basically Mad Max the game. A indie road derby arcade game isnt gonna sell shit, so they ain’t going to make it.
RoadHazard
Gold Member
I have zero interest in what this series used to be, so it could only get better I guess?
RadioactiveLobster
Member
If true this would be the first Sony first party game to launch day and date PS5/PC, right?
Nautilus
Banned
Since when it was a garantee that it would be a failure?
What do you think Rocket League is? lol
No one here is against of putting more story, or changing things up, but this seems more like its changing the genre completely, rather than its trying to reinvent itself.But hey, we could be wrong.
bitbydeath
Member
GTA set in the Twisted Metal world? Sign me up!
schaft0620
Member
I don't think it means Twisted Metal is VR, they are also working on a VR horror game, that was on the leaked Spreadsheet. They would be hired at a primarily a VR studio so that is why VR would be "helpful"
thismeinteil
Member
This. The reason the last one flopped is because it got away from the narrative/character focus, and instead focused on the cars. The story mode only had you play as 3 characters and either could drive any car. The whole appeal of the OG games were the crazy characters having their own vehicles and storyline. The reason people say Black was a darker take on the series was because of its story.
Perrott
Gold Member
Well, to be fair, there wasn't much of a team left by the time Sony ultimately pulled the plug on Evolution in March of 2016. Over the course of the past two years – in the months of March of 2014 and 2015, respectively – the studio suffered two major staff reductions, the latter of which impacted the jobs of 55 developers. So when Evolution was shut down, Codemasters only got to absorb the remainings of the skeleton crew tasked with maintaining DriveClub's live-service support, rather than the core team responsible for the main game or the MotorStorm series before it.
That said, one of the devs who moved into Codemasters' newly-established Cheshire location was Paul Rustchynsky. He became DriveClub's game director during its last six months of production – as Col Rodgers, the project's initial game director, had to quit Evo in February of 2014 due to his son facing a life-threatening medical condition – and then throughout the entirety of its live-service support. The popularity he gained by pretty much being the face behind DriveClub's redemption arc was likely one of the main reasons this narrative of "Codemasters taking over Evolution's talent" was first manufactured to begin with, but that statement couldn't be farther away from the truth – especially given how Rushy's following works had failed to lived up to his Evo reputation.
DriveClub's actual creator and the man responsible for the title's grand and, still to this day, unique vision was no other than long-time Evolution Studios producer and director Matt Southern, who left shortly before the game's release as part of Evolution's first round of layoffs in March of 2014, during a much greater restructuring of pretty much Sony's entire first-party studios organization – one that saw the cancellation of a new IP from Santa Monica Studio after four years in the making; the reboot of Uncharted 4 and the subsequent departure of Amy Hennig, among other Naughty Dog leads; as well as mass reductions in the workforce at nearly all UK-based Sony development studios.
And it is Southern who's currently sitting at the director's chair on the Twisted Metal revival. Per his LinkedIn profile, it is safe to assume that when he began work on the Twisted Metal project right away back when he joined Liverpool-based developer Lucid Games in August of 2019, as PlayStation Productions had already begun to develop Twisted Metal's TV adaptation earlier in 2019. The project also was (and likely still is) being co-developed by Wushu Studios, another Liverpool studio founded by former prime-day Evolution leads – Pacific Rift game director Nigel Kershaw, Pacific Rift creative lead Stuart Trevor, and MotorStorm series/DriveClub audio director and VR enthusiast Alan McDermott.
The project was eventually transferred in January of 2022 from Lucid to Sony-owned Firesprite, also based in Liverpool. The fact that Firesprite poached a lot of the Lucid talent involved with the Twisted Metal project – including Matt Southern, who retained his directorial position – tells me that the change of developers likely wasn't due to quality or direction concerns, but rather that, this being one of Sony's flagship titles in their venture into live-service territory, they didn't want Lucid's botched launch of Destruction AllStars to taint the enthusiasm and discourse around the return of Twisted Metal. Firesprite had also ceased development on one of its internal projects, an online shooter of sorts, so bringing Twisted Metal in-house perhaps was also a way to give a project to all those people at the studio who suddenly found themselves with little else to do – Horizon: Call of the Mountain development was already in full swing and heading towards its conclusion, while Firesprite's other project, an Until Dawn-style narrative adventure, was still very premature and not quite ready to receive dozens of people that early on.
In hindsight, it was a smart move to handle the project internally, as it looks to be Firesprite's most ambitious title currently in production and, if successful, it would help cement the studio as a powerhouse of Western racing game development among Sony's family of studios, opening the door for the return of beloved PlayStation racers such as MotorStorm, Wipeout or, hell, even DriveClub, without mentioning an open-world Forza: Horizon-competitor new IP.
Jimmyisback
Banned
Is this the fourth time Sony has tried to revive this series. Just let it go.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
I love that it'll be playable with PSVR2. I hope that version will be crossplay with 2D TV screen people.
-MD-
Member
Huh? It's one of their longest running franchises, only the last one (2012) didn't do well because it launched with a stripped down campaign and numerous technical problems online.
Trogdor1123
Gold Member
I always expected it to free to play with the paint jobs and stuff being the micro transactions to pay for it.
Essentially an arena game with different cars with different specs
Essentially an arena game with different cars with different specs
CamHostage
Member
Come on, you really STILL feel this way? Saying this was the whole appeal of Twisted Metal is like saying people play Street Fighter to see Zangief dance with Gorbachev...
Twisted Metal is a multiplayer game, made for multiplayer play. Single player was a fun extra activity to tide players over while they waited (or hoped) for friends to come over. (And people forget that the TM stories really didn't get good until Black; Calypso was always a fun character with mean tricks to play, but TM 1 famously cut its FMV endings cut for just crummy text, and TM2 did use cool animated finales but people didn't like the sequel characters as much; TM3 and TM4 probably had endings, I guess...)
The PS3 game transferred that multiplayer experience from split-screen on-the-couch play (remember that Black was still before online, and TMBO was a patched version released later which still didn't catch on despite being free; the PSP TM Head On had online but neither it nor the PS2 re-release dominated netplay) to the modern multiplayer landscape of 2012. Online by that time had become more squad-based than VS, and players were used to deeper options for their "loadout" or in-battle switch-out choices by then. TM PS3 adapted the core concept to modern playstyles by allowing players to switch their cars depending on the conditions of the battlefield and opponent, and it used a team system (kind of more gangs or acolytes) for the factions structure. It was different, but it still had a story and it still had single player mode (with complexity in options/battle scenarios which welcome variety to the TM formula, though unfortunately there were only 3 "storylines" to play through) and it still was fun with TM's rich car combat mechanics.
Twisted Metal PS3 has nearly an hour of FMV and story content, which is close to what TMB has for all of its combined ending footage.
Unfortunately, TM PS3 suffered during an ugly period of bad Sony online service, and word-of-mouth about the new concept for story mode gave it a bad rep it could not recover from. (I would have loved if if it had been a success and they could have done DLC for like an Arcade Mode, but we'll never know. Ironically, it might have been a better release if they had gone the Warhawk route and had NO single player, as intended, as at least fans would have known it wasn't supposed to satisfy the normal TM itch and could have been judged just as an online experience.) Some unfortunate choices in online play (nobody seems to like the flying vehicles) did douse down the fire of online enthusiasm even for those who could get online to play, but it's mostly a game people should have played while they had the chance.
Last edited:
CamHostage
Member
You might be able to do it now, with there being a wider range in demands for what gamers expect in terms of online structure and pricing and tourney play, but it's still hard to get people to play $70 for an online game with basic deathmatch mechanics. Players want persistent records, they want perks to earn, they want squads so that they're more likely to be on the "winning team" than they would if only 1 player in 8/16/## can be the victor... they want CoD, not Street Fighter. (Even Street Fighter and other fighters have had difficulty selling copies despite absolute timeless and all-ages gameplay, and have tried to adapt to the modern multiplayer landscape in different ways, including commentary in SF6.)
Maybe a straight-forward, old-school TM might be a formula that players are hungry for again, but even if it was amazing technically, most buyers would still be looking for something unique and compelling about it that makes it more than a 1995 game (even though a lot of those buyers weren't alive to play the original 1995 game...)
There's a reason why "Car Combat" is really not a thing anymore... though oddly, "Car Soccer" is absolutely a thing, so go figure.
Last edited:
anthraticus
Banned
A mainstream release these days needs to draw in a lot more people than just vehicular combat fans unfortunately.
Oddvintagechap
Member
They are going to need to make significant changes. That bunch of people here are going to cry about them.
Badlucktroll
Member
anothertech
Member
93xfan
Banned
Could be a AA game. Doesn’t have to be AAA just because it’s 2023
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
What's the most popular arena shooter in 2023?
{insert code here}
Member
It's going to be a 3rd person, over-the-bumper car driving game isn't it.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
TM Black on PS2 was fantastic. AI cheated ganging up on you, but it ran at 60 fps. Slick.
DemonGamerTTT
Member
I played a absolute metric ton of Twisted Metal 1, 2 and 3 back in the day....
I have to say that although the history mode was cool and all the focus was always in the multiplayer... Do I don't know if this new one is going to do well..
I have to say that although the history mode was cool and all the focus was always in the multiplayer... Do I don't know if this new one is going to do well..