Not to anyone more mature than a five year old. The whole “wah wah, we aren’t getting the game we want, we are getting the game Bethesda wants to make and knows how to make” thing got tired about 19 seconds after Bethesda announced they had a Fallout game in dev. Give it up already, by this point the entire internet either agrees with that sentiment or is heartily sick of hearing it.
Nope - it also serves as an excuse to link his blog!
Shit-stirring comment: Blizzard’s last innovative game was Diablo 12 years ago. Everything since has been either a refinement of their own games (WC2, Starcraft, WC3, D2) or an improvement on someone else’s game (WoW). The two games which would’ve been a branching-out for the company - WC Adventures, SC Ghost - got canceled.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing per se: you don’t tamper with an addictively successful formula lightly. [New Coke, anyone?] But like Ashley, I’m a little disappointed that Blizzard - with all its resources and creativity - don’t take a few more risks with their game designs. If not with the mainline titles, then at least with a few spinoffs or new IPs.
What if they crossed Warcraft with Sacrifice? Or Starcraft with Battlezone? Or Diablo with an actual RPG?
I’m sure Diablo III and Starcraft 2 will be highly polished, addictive, and enjoyable. [In particular, I hope D3 will wash the lingering bad taste of HG:L out of people’s mouths.] I’m just a little sorry we probably won’t also be attaching “ground-breaking” or “innovative” to either.
That was really not my intent. I just don’t think that Ashley should be saying how he’s “disappointed” at Blizzard’s supposed lack of innovation when most of Bethesda’s games, games he’s worked on I might add, are more or less the same damn game, while he offers ‘reasons’ about why FO3 isn’t isometric anymore. I don’t see what was so innovative about their click wheel dialogue system in Oblivion. It was terrible.
It’s kind of boneheaded, not “slightly bad”. The industry’s history is littered with unsold copies of games that try and do the sort of thing he’s suggesting. Hell, Mario only pulls it off every now and again.
Blizzard’s development style being what it is, Diablo III should be Diablo III. There’s no good reason for it to be anything else when it’s coming together as is.
Yes, that might apply to people who care deeply about Fallout and what happens to it. I’m not one of those people. I love Fallout and its sequel, but I don’t feel the kind of attachment to it as I do to the Diablo series. I admit that sounds a little bit crazy, but I’m just responding to what I see as unwarranted criticisms of Diablo 3 (and Starcraft 2) from someone who’s not doing much to appease his own player base with the sequel he’s developing.
I think it would be unfair to a lot of hardcore Diablo fans if Blizzard decided to take the ‘innovative’ route by making Diablo 3 an MMORPG, a over-the-shoulder 3rd or 1st person game et al.
Hey now, for the limited frame that is console posery it was very innovative, give the man some credit.
Penis Envy, seriously it couldn’t be more obvious.
They bragged about all the innovative crap they’re making with fallout 3 and aside the banter about it from the Black Isle fans/RPG vault/NMA haters, no one gave a 2-bit shit about this game coming out (mistake/fail #1, bethsoft). Surely, it’ll sell well within the console crowd that paid off Oblivion’s development but that’s about all it’ll do - no one will write about it as how great a game it was a decade later or anything like that.
Blizzard, on the other hand, make the exact same game (only much better/improved) - without much innovation or anything too flashy to brag about - that works for their exact same die-hard fans (kind of like the Madden crew) and get huge raves on day 1 and throughout and to this very day people talk about the little company that took the world by a storm back in 94 and again with Starcraft and with a duzzling blow at WoW’s launch.
Penis envy.
In some ways, Blizzard is the same kind of victim of its own success as Sid Meier is. Both of them have come up with three or four insanely great franchises, so due to either size (Sid Meier is just one dude, and Firaxis isn’t a very large company, I think) or amazing slowness (how does Blizzard take so long to make games?), they are both very busy just remaking great ideas they’ve had before.
Which is great, in some ways, because each refinement of these great games modernizes the graphics while (usually) improving the gameplay. But on the other hand, who wouldn’t like it if Blizzard or Firaxis took the gloves off and did something totally crazy and new again? Blizzard did that with Starcraft (with three highly asymmetric race (at least I think that was new there)) and Diablo (well, perhaps “totally crazy and new” is an exaggeration)). I think that’s just the sort of disappointment the cruel hate-baron of Bethesda is referring to.
I’d say that if the original concept works and can bear another iteration, then there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Quake 4 (arguably one of the worst single player FPS experiences in my life) is a good example of a game that had run its course.
X-COM: Terror from the Deep (the sequel to UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense) was criticized for being the exact same game with different (underwater-themed) content, and released quickly (6 monthts later) simply to capitalize on the success of the original. I never understood why that was a problem. The game was brilliant and could easily bear a near-identical sequel.
Discussions about making a different type of game based on an existing theme (like a Starcraft shooter) inevitably end up being a discussion of either or, which is just plain silly. Why should one game preclude the other? Why should, say, a Warhammer 40k first person shooter automatically disqualify another Dawn of War RTS?
Respectfully
krise madsen
Oh, I’m going to hang this over my bed.
TFTD had some clunks.
The ship and end-boss maps kind of bugged out, due to AI not moving much if they go/spawn onto a corner, for one.
But otherwise, it was very fun game to play.
I also liked X-Com: Interceptor, hate me as you would I don’t get the negativity towards these two from X-Com fans.
Diablo was certainly no more innovative than Blizzard’s other titles. It was a fancy graphical nethack/rogue. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and I think people who dismiss Blizzard’s enormous contributions to the art of game design by noting how they borrow from others a lot are retarded, but picking Diablo as their last innovative game is a very odd choice.
SC : Ghost was never in development by Blizzard, AFAIK, it was always outsourced (to Nihilistic most of the time, though I think it bounced around to a few other places as well).
In any case, in reference to the quote that started this thread and the person who made it, I’d like to point out that Ashley is totally a chick’s name. lulz.
hey now, as an evil dead fan, i find ashley the most awesome guy name ever
CocaZero, I wanted to point that out but I felt it would be inappropriate for some way.
By the by, how do you feel about it now that there is a Cola Zero product?
I really can’t wait to enjoy the hell out of Fallout 3.
Given that it’s been around since 2005 I’m guessing his opinion would remain unchanged.
Are you on your summer holidays? This whole thread reads like school’s out and you’ve got directionless energy to burn.
That’s a ridiculous stretch. Certainly there are similarities in the basic goals, but going from ASCII graphics to a real-time game is a much bigger leap than, say, from Dune 2 to WC1.
What they’ve proven to be really good at is taking an established successful formula and innovating within it - adjusting and incorporating ideas from other sources in a way that is polished, balanced and fun. Why would you want them to do anything else? There are tons of companies that come up with innovative ideas. The problem with truly innovative ideas is that they are always half-formed. It is almost impossible to come up with the best form of an idea the first time out of the box. Blizzard has shown an ability to take those ideas that seem promising but don’t quite work and make them shine, and I hope they keep doing that because its something the industry needs and which few if any other studios can do.
Nobody wants Fallout 3 to be a bad game. Well, no one except for a few people who have their hats on too tight. If it’s a good game, then we’ll see it for what it is, and enjoy it. But if it’s a bad game, then all the doubts the naysayers and ‘haters’ had will evidently be true.
Needless to say, it’s a precarious time for someone like Ashley to be making boneheaded comments about a title that everyone else is holding in such high esteem for sticking to its roots as an isometric action RPG. Especially since Fallout 3 is an unproven product, given the near-total information blackout on it this close to release.
No such luck, I’m afraid.
Did Bethesda have sex with your dead grandmother’s corpse or something? I mean, trying to make yourself out to be some kind of prognosticator of the doom of Bethesda over Fallout 3 is just retarded.
[URL=“http://www.markbehm.com/blogger/2007/08/rasputin.html”]
“Hi, my name is Foxstab and I’d like to tell you about your future.”
Which explains Oblivion’s popularity on the PC. OH WAIT.