So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim, and it has inhaled 80 hours of my life thus far. My progress is still minimal, and my completionist nature with this game has been effectively screwed by Heartfire, which is an absurdly constructed add-on for the game that was likely designed by the lowest tier of employees at Bethesda, as anything that lets you customize a home, but have no freedom with it aside from choices that cannot be undone, is a no-good piece of crap.
Roughly seventeen years ago, back in the dawn of our current era, I reported on Destiny housing a budget of half a billion dollars. Naturally this statement is one that very much should be addressed by Bungie, well Activision more so, but them as well. Well, it turns out that they did not see nearly as much money, and it is believed that it is the anticipated dollar amount that Destiny shall receive over the trilogy’s decade. Which is good, as game budgets are now big enough that a smaller studio could die with their first proper retail title, much like Airtight games did after Murdered: Soul Suspect. Why? It was a niche game that was not very good and would have supposedly been better if it had not been a game… Sorry guys, but hopefully your resumes will look sexy enough to survive in this industry of wolfmen.
I think Wolfmen were in Ultima, which is what I am using as my transition to how the Ultima Underworld duology is Ascending into anew through a spiritual successor with quite a few returning developers, as Underworld Ascension… Forgive me, but I was under the assumption the game was about entering and crawling through an underworld, as is the case most of the time, so could one explain to me how one ascends into an underworld? I guess they could be beneath it, but then it is not an underworld anymore, is it? Whatever, bad title aside, I’m sure the hip thirty year olds with large penises will enjoy their new toy coming… in 2016, I think. AlI can confirm is that Super Time Force is coming to PC/Steam before than, this “summer” as STFU: Super Time Force Ultra. Making anybody who played the game beforehand look like the got jibbed as their game was not Ultra enough.
Ultra, which is gearing up to be the level of trouble Crytek is in as, in addition to not being able to pay its employees, a lot of them are leaving because of it. It’s not clear if they are gone for good, but this does not inspire much confidence that the massive developer will be able to survive the lingering threat of bankruptcy… Assuming Deep Silver doesn’t have some money it can throw around, which I’m guessing they do if the weirdly interesting sounding Escape Dead Island is any indicator.
At least EDI looks to show flexibility with budget and be a single A game to go along with a double A franchise, allowing for it to do something interesting. As being able to use creative freedom is difficult for every single team when they are being hounded by publishers who are possibly being run by people who don’t know shit about video games as they don’t play it. What I’m saying is that AAA can be pretty poopie at times, and it’s nice how thee are, like, eight tiers of video games now. Heck, Shuhei Yoshida even agrees that sticking with just AAA sounds like something a Psycho Nutter would say. It’s not like being below AAA, AA, and A to just be a B level game means you can’t get, say, an animated series, like Mighty No. 9 is totally getting in 2016. It is also getting a second series of crowdfunding, which is where the game’s accumulated goodwill is nearing a toilet. Honestly, counting Paypal contributions, they got three million smackers!
Now I’m off to spend my weekends with something I feel obligated to complete despite how it should likely be put aside. Oh the curse of having the inability to play more than one game at a time.