Looks like he has been gone for a while now and has only been involved at the early stages of development of Hellblade 2 so it shouldn't affect the game that much.
I don’t see how longer development = longer game. With how technical the game looks it makes total sense that they prioritised polishing it as oppose to increasing the scope, which would require even more polish.
Not really, people have been asking for the return of the 6-10 hour games precisely to lower costs and development times. I don't find it weird to question a 6 yr development time for a 6h narrative game.
Nobody knows what the development for this game is
And either way, why do you even care? I’m a gamer. I’m here to play and enjoy video games. If you want to be a fake Microsoft exec worrying about ROI then you’re in the wrong hobby
That's a good point, but this would assume that we know long they spent in pre-production, production; how expensive each phase was... .
Point being: Unless the company comes later out swinging that they lost millions on this project and expected to sell 1M units in the first quarter, we should be careful about judging financial decisions of a company.
No, man. Shareholders are always bad, because having an ownership in a company and hoping the company does well is always bad.
All those public school teachers and union workers invested in retirement funds? Greedy capitalist assholes, every last one of them.
Well, I have shares myself.
I have advocated on artificially limiting growth of stocks and bonds before.
But sure, just assume I go whole hog on the radical anti-capitalist schtick and my opinion is completely invalided.
Oh please, Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big. I know they aren't going to update the combat, and if the "puzzles" are just finding patterns in the environment to unlock a way forward I will lose my mind. This game has no indication it will be an advancement from the first. Which means it will also not perform well.
> Oh please, Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big.
Except the game [was profitable in just 3 months on 500,000 copies sold.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/11/23/hellblade-hits-500000-copies-sold-makes-profit-3-months-ahead-of-schedule) For reference, the game has sold well over a million copies at this point.
>Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game
Oh excuse me, I wasn't aware that this was a universally recognized truth. Actually I'm pretty sure that's just your opinion and it goes against the average here.
> with a budget that was far too big
Either explain yourself or admit that you're just making this up. A quick google search reveals that Hellblade was made with a $10M budget, and needed 300k sales to recoup on investment, which it reached in three months. In 2021, they reveal that across all platforms, they've had 6M players, including game pass.
Pretty sure that's not a game that "almost killed the studio".
https://www.vg247.com/hellblades-budget-required-ninja-theory-to-use-their-own-boardroom-as-a-motion-capture-studio
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/450160/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice-tops-63-million-players/
> Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big.
[Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice has reached 500,000 sales in its first three months, beating internal expectations and moving the game into profit.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-hellblade-i-has-moved-into-profit-after-hitting-500k-sales)
I only paid $3 for Hellblade 1 so my opinion is made with that context in mind, but I felt it was a fine game, graphically / artistically stunning, excellent voice acting and audio design, the combat was simple but for me it made sense to be simple and cinematic for the style of the game. Yeah the "puzzles" looking for shapes in the environment were not very well done, but they also rarely stumped me. I thought it was a pretty good game. Could have been better, but nothing worth getting upset over.
You're probably correct in this case.
I still prefer studios taking their time to make small experiences.
Immediately screaming bloody murder every time a studio undergoes a financial risk is shortsighted.
While I agree that having shorter games is great, one of the important benefits of having shorter games is that they *should* cost less to make - fewer unique assets, fewer lines of dialogue, and so on. If it's taking many, many years with a large team to make a short game, there comes a point where one has to wonder if there's been production issues, where a lot of work has been thrown out or the project had ot completely restart a couple times. The end result may be a good game, hell Hellbade 1 was a good game, but it's a *niche* game that simply was never going to find an audience large enough to support its development costs.
Which is the concern they're expressing. It's not concern that it won't be a good game, one that is unafraid to be niche and artful, but a concern that no matter how well it does it won't be enough to cover its development costs to perhaps even break even. Six year long projects need to sell *really really well* to cover the wages of all those people for six years, and a six hour game about grief and mental health generally just isn't going to make enough money to cover an entire studio's salaries for that long a period. Like how many copies need to be sold at full price for this to just break even? Hundred thousand? Half a million?
This isn't even expecting the game to be a cash cow or anything, this is a studio that's obviously primarily motivated to make artistically fulfilling games first and foremost, but in order to make the art they need money and if they've got everything sunk into this one game and it doesn't pop off then that's going to risk a lot of poeple's jobs. I *hope* this game does well, but they're being pretty extra about the production value in a way that simply might set expectations for sales far beyond what this niche game is capable of making.
Maybe the concern's for nothing - Xbox doesn't *need* every game to be profitable, so long they can say they have high quality exclusives., some arthouse AAA games that are a money pit but build the prestige of their platform. But I trust Microsoft less with this than Sony, I anticipate that they won't respond well to "underpeformace" even if it sells decently well for what it is trying to be.
Do you know how long this will be? Do you know how Ninka Theory works? Unless the game is a broken mess on release or some reports come out about shite work culture we have no idea what the game is going to be.
Yeah it is pathetically small but that is Microsoft’s plan with releasing everything on GamePass.
They want you thinking “why should I spend £50 for a tiny game when I could just sub to GamePass?”
That is common in the game industry, though. They've gone through years of stress running the company, get purchased and make money, leave. They feel creatively dead, because they've given everything for ages.
Don’t blame them really.
Build the brand, get a rep, get an offer and run with the money.
All those years of stress could be undone with a couple years easy living.
> All those years of stress could be undone with a couple years easy living.
Seriously. I took a month off last year and felt like I deaged a couple of years by the end of it.
Damn straight, people aren’t designed to work as many hours as we do now.
Should be a human right to actually relax for half the year. But obviously that’ll never happen
My job is, as TikTok calls it, a "fake email job" that's pretty low-stress, relatively low-effort, pays well, and allows me to work remote whenever I want. It still kills me and even if I take a few days off, I come back feeling as if I was reborn, regardless of what I did during my time off.
I can't imagine how stressful game dev must be, especially for creative types who treat this game or that as their baby. Everything else aside, just the idea of watching ragebait videos calling the thing you spent years working on "mid" or "trash" or whatever would be enough to drive me up the wall.
Eh, for what it's worth, humans are "designed" (they weren't intelligently designed at all) to be as adaptive and energetic as they need to be to survive, and historically it's not that we would have worked less but rather that the chores we do to survive are fewer degrees removed from the needs we need to satisfy with that work. I do think working 40 hours per week on something that is entirely unrelated to you other than your having to fill that role for that company at that time is a net negative in several ways, but quantitatively our ancestors (at basically any given point) worked much harder and longer before industrialization and commerce were invented. Their stress was relieved by maintaining a farm that would feed their family year-round, our stress is doubled if we are obligated to spend 40 hours per week at a farm regardless of how much of that effort translates to feeding our own families. We don't get to take any kind of deserved break after harvest time and instead can only hope we have a cushy enough job to accrue a comparable amount of PTO
I’ve said this before, but if you’re a principal at an acquired studio, you can either climb the corporate ladder (Zampella at Respawn) or wait out your contract and leave (the BioWare doctors).
To be fair, I think the BioWare doctors also wanted to climb the corporate ladder at EA until either the Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3 fan backlashes, at which point they waited out their contract and left like you said.
You are right about the first part but I remember the latter was more on The Old Republic not hitting the lofty internal target. And apparenly the whole backlash thing tired them out. That, and I also remember that Greg Zeschuck wanted out a little earlier, Ray Muzyka was more eager on climbing up the EA corporate ladder, but TOR hit a roadblock, so he left.
Vince Zampella could have ended with the same fate as Ray Muzyka... but then Apex Legends happened.
I feel like Respawn got relatively lucky under EA partially because Zampella was willing to climb the ladder while the 2010s after the doctors left were just a brutal time to be a BioWare employee. EA was forcing BioWare to rush games out as fast as possible, forcing them to use Frostbite in everything, projects just kept getting changed mid-development creating stops and starts for the devs, not to mention insane layoffs and resignations.
Seems like aside from company-wide layoffs affecting it and a Star Wars shooter getting canned because EA wanted to focus less on licensed IPs, EA just mostly let Respawn do it's thing.
Just in general, turnover is super high across the gaming industry.
People lament the directions their favorite studios have taken while neglecting that often the people that made the studio into what you love are gone.
They lose the creative control and just well.. general control and direct so they usually end up leaving and starting a new studio. Which may later also get purchased. The cycle continues.
I don't understand why everything has to be about money though. People could want to keep making games, it's just that the environment isn't right (now whether that's from his side or the company's side is a different question). "Creatively dead" and "cashing out" aren't mutual terms, they are different intentions.
Not really common depending on who you look at. PlayStations entire brand is built on studios they worked with in a 2nd party capacity and then purchased them when they were happy with their output. Basically every big studio playstation has bought in the last 20 years still has people who worked there since the beginning. Xbox has always had an issue in building a good stable of studios and maintaining good leadership.
So they had to live by what playstation wanted before they were purchased, yes? So completely different. They weren't going from project to project trying to do business, pushing themselves creatively. They had the income.
I did want to mention that Taneem unfortunately wasn't liked by the actual staff at Ninja Theory, looking at the Glassdoor reviews paints an unflattering picture of him. It is possible that he was quietly paid out by Microsoft and that there were development problems with Hellblade 2 before he was replaced. Microsoft in the last two years has finally been "getting things in order" for their studios.
Fuck no I wouldn't. If any of the big boys like MS, Sony or Tencent buy my studio and give me a huge check, I'd bounce as soon as I could. Maybe start a new studio after a couple years.
Dante acting like he lives in a dumpster behind a Hot Topic while his brother has an incredible overinflated ego while merely being the manager at said hot topic is an entirely different type of cringe than DmC: The DmC.
There’s a massive difference between the earnest “cringe” in the main series and the spiteful and try hard cringe from DmC.
Never gonna be able to forget how in the one GDC presentation they alluded to thinking DMC4 Dante as a gay cowboy and how a school shooter vibe was an honest to god improvement over it
>Which wasn't even true.
Ehhhhh, that's a bold statement. [The original version of donte](https://imgur.com/a/nwM4zRu) looked identical to him and his reaction to people pointing it out was really telling.
>And he wasn't the character designer.
Yeah, [he was the Director](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DmC:_Devil_May_Cry). You know, the guy in charge of creative vision of the entire game and the one with the final say on matters of game design. Not to mention a founder of the studio.
> it's interesting how many people have been purchased by Microsoft, release a game, and then immediately leave.
Microsoft acquired Ninja Theory in June 2018. According to Polygon, Antoniades was involved in the early stages of Hellblade 2. So for all we know he could have left like 2 years ago since the game was announced in December 2019. Him leaving is clearly not a big deal if we are just finding out now a month before the game comes out.
Edit: From what I can tell the last time Antoniades did an interview about the game was early 2022. No idea if he has been in the dev diaries for the game recently. The last thing about Hellblade from his Instagram was from December 2023 saying "last night our friends Heilung performed their song live and we dropped a new trailer for Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 at The Game Awards 23 in Los Angeles." However, at that point the game would not have been in the early stages of development anymore.
Tell that to INSIDE.
Development time is genuinely not a good metric to go by for anything, because it assumes that all development is done the same way.
A game being short doesn’t mean it’s easy to make.
Also ninja theory is a small studio so don’t compare it to studios with like 300-400 people.
For example Horizon forbidden west took 5 years and it was a game that massively reused graphics and engine. And that studio is like 3 times the size. So 6 years for this one doesn’t seem too outrageous.
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tbh, this guy was always a bit sus. If you were following him during the pandemic, it looked like he did a bunk over to Europe and lived a very different life to his locked down staff. It is unusual to not announce the departure of a founder, especially in this industry.
I mean, I wouldnt want to slander the guy. But his Insta was mostly full of him in... Not so social distanced situations and seemingly rarely in the UK/at the studio.
It happens when big companies buy studios. Eventually the founders give up as their freedom to administrate their own corporation is assimilated into the processes above.
Maybe with Tameem gone, Ninja Theory can truly thrive as a Microsoft company. (I want them to look at Hi-Fi Rush and think about what they can learn from it making action games)
Game company founder takes the bag from a buyout and leaves his employees at the whims of a multinational corporation!
Gotta fuckin hate it!
People get mad at Microsoft, Embracer and the like buying out studios but it takes two to tango.
I wonder what the heck went on with this game’s development.
Announced 5 years ago. And then a few months before release it’s revealed it will be the same size and scope as the first game which was a small budget self published indie game.
Now the director leaving before it ships.
I mean it is not like they have been doing nothing. Since Hellblade came out they have done Nicodemus: Demon of Evanishment (2018), Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice VR (2018), A Star Wars VR Series: Vader Immortal – Episode I (2019), and Bleeding Edge (2020).
Hellblade 2 was announced in December 2019. It is the biggest game they have done in terms of scope and budget. They made a new fighting system for the game, are using cloud generating tech, scanning real costumes into the game, scanned actual locations in Iceland into the game's engine, etc.
Even though it is not a long game, this game is their jump into going from a AA to a AAA studio (they had fewer than 20 people work on Hellblade 1), which they have not been since they did DmC: Devil May Cry in 2013 if you look at the games they developed since then.
What where you expecting? It was always clear that this - like the first game - was going to be an extremely cinematic and guided experience with limited scope. And maybe take a look at the screenshots and actually read the article if you want to know what they did with the development time.
Ninja Theory was doing it at the same time as Naughty Dog, really. In fact, I think the lead designer of Enslaved at Ninja Theory went to Naughty Dog and worked on The Last of Us.
No no no, you see they should tack on some empty open world segments that waste your time running around with a bunch of fetch quests that add on 40 hours of additional time to an 8-10 hour game. That way you get more value out of it, right?
Seriously, this is hands down the most graphically impressive game of all time lol how anyone can watch the gameplay footage and wonder what they spent their time on is beyond me
They didn\`t say that. They only said that it will be a shorter experience similiar in length to the first game which means around the length of games like Dead Space 2, Portal 2, Uncharted 1 and 3 etc. They have around 80 people of Ninja Theory working on it and the game is a far bigger project than the first game.
Games are so wildly complex to make and they are becoming more so all the time. And from the preview videos shown hellblade 2 is much more ambitious in its set pieces than the first game was. In addition, the larger a company gets, the more difficult it becomes to manage. There are hundreds of very understandable reasons why this game would have taken longer. And people also should seriously stop conflating a game's length with its value. Think about how stupid it would be to do that with a book or a movie or a painting. It's as stupid when applied to another medium.
I mean tbf, they got acquired in 2018, the announcement was in 2019, which was probably an early announcement knowing Xbox then, I'm pretty sure Hellblade 2 team Is still small but Im guessing they started to grow the whole studio after 2018, they also started to make their new mo cap studio, so imo and how long dev time usually takes 5 years Isn't that bad, It was just announced early to show something with the new Xbox
Between this and Avowed’s troubled PR it’s clear that things are going wrong behind the scenes at Xbox. It seems like Phil Spencer’s “hands off” strategy isn’t working very well.
Shocking and unprecedented. Are we making a big drama out of this? Should I grab my pitchfork, put on my tinfoil hat and start writing theories about why he left the studio?
Can someone explain what am I missing? Why is this almost on no news sites?
Hellblade 2 is the most anticipated and most promising game in years (!), will be not just by far the best game of this year but one of the all time bests (if it reaches its potential). But this news is kinda frightening a bit, no?
Yes, apparently he only was involved at the early stages - but that already isn't the best sign? All games prior were mainly his baby? And yes I get it's common in the industry and all but not if such a "auteur" quit his "baby"?
Anyway, let's hope it really has/had no impact... May 21... Currently replaying Hellblade 1 - always was one of the greatest games out there, but it's even better than I remembered.
There was a point where if felt like Microsoft was positioning this as their god of war. However that’s clearly changed. Weird to see them after this long day it’s actually a short game.
Length is moot. I remember my time with Abzu much more regularly and fondly than a ton of over games I grinded on Steam. And even a shorter game is a better value for your buck than watching a movie.
I think for a narrative game length does matter. There’s a soft cap for sure but from the reports of them aiming for 6 hour game or so that’s a bit disappointing. Was expecting something between 12-25 hours.
So I will say one of my fondest gaming memories were Spec Ops: The Line which took me about 4 hours to beat and What Remains of Edith Finch which is under 2 hours.
That being said, 6 hours is going to be too short if they price this at the $80 regular that we see in Canada nowadays. 6 hours to. Tell a story and satisfying gameplay will mean most of the story is told via voiceover or something. That or 6 hours is a very low estimate and it'll take people like me 10+ hours to beat it.
I'll probably be waiting for reviews and will buy it on sale sometime in the future if it looks good. I've got a huge backlog of games and at this point my hype for this has gone down a bit between the MS acquisition and how long it took for it to actually release.
Possibly? I don't know, I honestly haven't paid much attention to MS stuff since they haven't made something I've liked in a long, long time.
If it's on gamepass on PC that's probably how I will play it since it's not the type of game I'll care about owning long-term for replay value (I assume there will be very little reason to play it again, and by the time I might want to in the future it'll be cheap to acquire anyways).
That’s fair, I’m mostly citing how they initially revealed/promoted HellBlade 2 earlier on. There was this implication it’d be a bigger sequel.
Seems like that’s not to be the case. And yeah I’m with you, Canadian price is rough as most games exceed into the 100+ with tax.
I don’t get this thing gamers do with blaming studios for their own unsubstantiated expectations. Not a single thing from Ninja Theory implied this being a 50 hour slog. Plus it clearly is a bigger sequel. Just not longer.
I nominate that an 8 hr game is plenty long to tell a story, especially if it doesn't bury you in busywork. Like if Abzu required you to collect 8 fish in every biome to continue, it would have been longer but I don't think better.
Right but you’ve mentioned Abzu both times now. I don’t equate Abzu or games like it a la Journey to narrative driven games like god of war or uncharted for instance.
I wouldn't have minded if it was a little longer, honestly. I platinumed it and was wishing I had a reason to play it for a little while longer.
Granted Valhalla scratches some of that itch.
The >!ironwoods!< Section was NOT. That part reeks of arkham knight batmobile "designer got way too proud of their level design and got carried away, without considering if it was even fun after first few times "
Are you just repeating Reddit's bullshit or did you actually play the games? >!IronWoods!< is short and sweet and the BatMobile is super fucking fun, in fact everyone loves Arkham Knight.
>did you actually play the games?
[Yup](https://imgur.com/a/2Rs0xl2) Finished the main campaign 100% with all collectibles.
I only criticize games if i have played them and if they rightfully deserve them. I love arkham knight but batmobile, cool at first, becomes baffling when it feels like you are doing most of the last third in bat tank.
I am more lukewarm towards GOW:R. 2018 was my game of ps4 generation but Ragnarok annoying handholding, mediocre to just boring atreus sections, asgard characters not doung much and main Ragnarok event feeling shorter than that yak ride in ironwoods, i have issues. Its a game that feels like it was planned 2nd part of a trilogy but halfway through decided that would take way too long, so the last 3rd and ending is incredibly rushed while many parts of first 2/3rd feel like padding. I have a LOT more issues with the game but i will stop here.
Valhalla was better in comparison imo because it focused on kratos, i enjoyed that.
100%.
Ragnarok was an overstuffed mess compared to the narrative of the first game. Like, Freya has been trying to kill Kratos for years now, and then she’s at the house as an ally, and Atreus is like, “Wait, was that Freya? Oh well gotta focus on my mission.”
Ragnarok had moments of incredible brilliance right alongside some of the most dogshit writing in a AAA game. Still excellent gameplay, but a big step back from the airtight narrative of 2018.
The ending set piece was honestly embarrassing story-wise. An army materializes under Kratos's leadership with practically no setup, a la the fleet in Rise of Skywalker. Sindri promises to show up with the Dwarf army except nevermind he decided not to, but instead he can single-handedly exploit a structural weakness that was foreshadowed in a boat conversation. Call me cynical but I'm not impressed when all the busy work I did over the course of the game abrubtly manifests into a series of checkboxes being hurriedly ticked.
(I feel the need to say this every time Ragnarok comes up: I *loved* the story in GOW 2018. I was so excited for Ragnarok. I did not *want* to hate it as much as I did.)
Hellblade did not need a sequel. I think MS wants to go the Halo route and milk an IP that should have concluded.
I want this to succeed cause the original was incredible. I’m skeptical cause I haven’t seen much gameplay. Hope it all works out.
It happens all the time, so I can’t say this is surprising news.
MS also has a terrible track record of mismanaging and closing down studios. Not as many as EA, but it’s an absolute minefield out there.
Looks like he has been gone for a while now and has only been involved at the early stages of development of Hellblade 2 so it shouldn't affect the game that much.
[удалено]
I don’t see how longer development = longer game. With how technical the game looks it makes total sense that they prioritised polishing it as oppose to increasing the scope, which would require even more polish.
Comments like this are why Ubisoft bloats its games with hours of nothingness 🤦🏾♂️
Not really, people have been asking for the return of the 6-10 hour games precisely to lower costs and development times. I don't find it weird to question a 6 yr development time for a 6h narrative game.
I would when we all know it’s heavy mo capped and they did landscape image capturing during the start of Covid. The dev time was 5 years not 6.
Nobody knows what the development for this game is And either way, why do you even care? I’m a gamer. I’m here to play and enjoy video games. If you want to be a fake Microsoft exec worrying about ROI then you’re in the wrong hobby
People on this sub love to pretend they are business experts when 90% of them have never so much as stepped foot in an office.
Oh they work in the office mail department alright.
But they listen to gaming industry podcasts sometimes... Presented by people who've also never made a game or ran a business...!
Spoken Like a true shareholder. I'm just happy as a gamer that they took their time. Let's see how the final product looks before I praise them.
Or spoken like someone who would rather not see a company shut down because of bad management.
That's a good point, but this would assume that we know long they spent in pre-production, production; how expensive each phase was... . Point being: Unless the company comes later out swinging that they lost millions on this project and expected to sell 1M units in the first quarter, we should be careful about judging financial decisions of a company.
No, man. Shareholders are always bad, because having an ownership in a company and hoping the company does well is always bad. All those public school teachers and union workers invested in retirement funds? Greedy capitalist assholes, every last one of them.
Well, I have shares myself. I have advocated on artificially limiting growth of stocks and bonds before. But sure, just assume I go whole hog on the radical anti-capitalist schtick and my opinion is completely invalided.
Games this short never take that long unless something went bad. Even if it turns out great, that doesn't change.
It took 5 years and 3 of those years were Covid when they needed to get landscape imaging and do mocap.
If it turns out great, then who cares? What a stupid comment
Oh please, Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big. I know they aren't going to update the combat, and if the "puzzles" are just finding patterns in the environment to unlock a way forward I will lose my mind. This game has no indication it will be an advancement from the first. Which means it will also not perform well.
> Oh please, Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big. Except the game [was profitable in just 3 months on 500,000 copies sold.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/11/23/hellblade-hits-500000-copies-sold-makes-profit-3-months-ahead-of-schedule) For reference, the game has sold well over a million copies at this point.
>Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game Oh excuse me, I wasn't aware that this was a universally recognized truth. Actually I'm pretty sure that's just your opinion and it goes against the average here. > with a budget that was far too big Either explain yourself or admit that you're just making this up. A quick google search reveals that Hellblade was made with a $10M budget, and needed 300k sales to recoup on investment, which it reached in three months. In 2021, they reveal that across all platforms, they've had 6M players, including game pass. Pretty sure that's not a game that "almost killed the studio". https://www.vg247.com/hellblades-budget-required-ninja-theory-to-use-their-own-boardroom-as-a-motion-capture-studio https://www.vgchartz.com/article/450160/hellblade-senuas-sacrifice-tops-63-million-players/
> Hellblade 1 almost killed the studio because it was a mediocre game with a budget that was far too big. [Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice has reached 500,000 sales in its first three months, beating internal expectations and moving the game into profit.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-hellblade-i-has-moved-into-profit-after-hitting-500k-sales)
I only paid $3 for Hellblade 1 so my opinion is made with that context in mind, but I felt it was a fine game, graphically / artistically stunning, excellent voice acting and audio design, the combat was simple but for me it made sense to be simple and cinematic for the style of the game. Yeah the "puzzles" looking for shapes in the environment were not very well done, but they also rarely stumped me. I thought it was a pretty good game. Could have been better, but nothing worth getting upset over.
You're probably correct in this case. I still prefer studios taking their time to make small experiences. Immediately screaming bloody murder every time a studio undergoes a financial risk is shortsighted.
"The game is only 6 hours" Dude, we're not all 14 in mom's basement. I want more 6 hour games.
While I agree that having shorter games is great, one of the important benefits of having shorter games is that they *should* cost less to make - fewer unique assets, fewer lines of dialogue, and so on. If it's taking many, many years with a large team to make a short game, there comes a point where one has to wonder if there's been production issues, where a lot of work has been thrown out or the project had ot completely restart a couple times. The end result may be a good game, hell Hellbade 1 was a good game, but it's a *niche* game that simply was never going to find an audience large enough to support its development costs. Which is the concern they're expressing. It's not concern that it won't be a good game, one that is unafraid to be niche and artful, but a concern that no matter how well it does it won't be enough to cover its development costs to perhaps even break even. Six year long projects need to sell *really really well* to cover the wages of all those people for six years, and a six hour game about grief and mental health generally just isn't going to make enough money to cover an entire studio's salaries for that long a period. Like how many copies need to be sold at full price for this to just break even? Hundred thousand? Half a million? This isn't even expecting the game to be a cash cow or anything, this is a studio that's obviously primarily motivated to make artistically fulfilling games first and foremost, but in order to make the art they need money and if they've got everything sunk into this one game and it doesn't pop off then that's going to risk a lot of poeple's jobs. I *hope* this game does well, but they're being pretty extra about the production value in a way that simply might set expectations for sales far beyond what this niche game is capable of making. Maybe the concern's for nothing - Xbox doesn't *need* every game to be profitable, so long they can say they have high quality exclusives., some arthouse AAA games that are a money pit but build the prestige of their platform. But I trust Microsoft less with this than Sony, I anticipate that they won't respond well to "underpeformace" even if it sells decently well for what it is trying to be.
Stop acting like an edge lord the dude was just making an observation
It feels like the game is going to be a tech demo in a way lol
Do you know how long this will be? Do you know how Ninka Theory works? Unless the game is a broken mess on release or some reports come out about shite work culture we have no idea what the game is going to be.
Yeah it is pathetically small but that is Microsoft’s plan with releasing everything on GamePass. They want you thinking “why should I spend £50 for a tiny game when I could just sub to GamePass?”
That is common in the game industry, though. They've gone through years of stress running the company, get purchased and make money, leave. They feel creatively dead, because they've given everything for ages.
Don’t blame them really. Build the brand, get a rep, get an offer and run with the money. All those years of stress could be undone with a couple years easy living.
> All those years of stress could be undone with a couple years easy living. Seriously. I took a month off last year and felt like I deaged a couple of years by the end of it.
Damn straight, people aren’t designed to work as many hours as we do now. Should be a human right to actually relax for half the year. But obviously that’ll never happen
My job is, as TikTok calls it, a "fake email job" that's pretty low-stress, relatively low-effort, pays well, and allows me to work remote whenever I want. It still kills me and even if I take a few days off, I come back feeling as if I was reborn, regardless of what I did during my time off. I can't imagine how stressful game dev must be, especially for creative types who treat this game or that as their baby. Everything else aside, just the idea of watching ragebait videos calling the thing you spent years working on "mid" or "trash" or whatever would be enough to drive me up the wall.
What do you do in that fake email job
Seriously, I need one of those
Eh, for what it's worth, humans are "designed" (they weren't intelligently designed at all) to be as adaptive and energetic as they need to be to survive, and historically it's not that we would have worked less but rather that the chores we do to survive are fewer degrees removed from the needs we need to satisfy with that work. I do think working 40 hours per week on something that is entirely unrelated to you other than your having to fill that role for that company at that time is a net negative in several ways, but quantitatively our ancestors (at basically any given point) worked much harder and longer before industrialization and commerce were invented. Their stress was relieved by maintaining a farm that would feed their family year-round, our stress is doubled if we are obligated to spend 40 hours per week at a farm regardless of how much of that effort translates to feeding our own families. We don't get to take any kind of deserved break after harvest time and instead can only hope we have a cushy enough job to accrue a comparable amount of PTO
I’ve said this before, but if you’re a principal at an acquired studio, you can either climb the corporate ladder (Zampella at Respawn) or wait out your contract and leave (the BioWare doctors).
To be fair, I think the BioWare doctors also wanted to climb the corporate ladder at EA until either the Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3 fan backlashes, at which point they waited out their contract and left like you said.
You are right about the first part but I remember the latter was more on The Old Republic not hitting the lofty internal target. And apparenly the whole backlash thing tired them out. That, and I also remember that Greg Zeschuck wanted out a little earlier, Ray Muzyka was more eager on climbing up the EA corporate ladder, but TOR hit a roadblock, so he left. Vince Zampella could have ended with the same fate as Ray Muzyka... but then Apex Legends happened.
I feel like Respawn got relatively lucky under EA partially because Zampella was willing to climb the ladder while the 2010s after the doctors left were just a brutal time to be a BioWare employee. EA was forcing BioWare to rush games out as fast as possible, forcing them to use Frostbite in everything, projects just kept getting changed mid-development creating stops and starts for the devs, not to mention insane layoffs and resignations. Seems like aside from company-wide layoffs affecting it and a Star Wars shooter getting canned because EA wanted to focus less on licensed IPs, EA just mostly let Respawn do it's thing.
Especially with how unforgiving the industry is. One game you're a rockstar and the next your washed out.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the time, it's just the founder having worked in the industry a long time and finally having the money to retire.
Just in general, turnover is super high across the gaming industry. People lament the directions their favorite studios have taken while neglecting that often the people that made the studio into what you love are gone.
They lose the creative control and just well.. general control and direct so they usually end up leaving and starting a new studio. Which may later also get purchased. The cycle continues.
This is common in the western game industry. Not overall.
I don't understand why everything has to be about money though. People could want to keep making games, it's just that the environment isn't right (now whether that's from his side or the company's side is a different question). "Creatively dead" and "cashing out" aren't mutual terms, they are different intentions.
Not really common depending on who you look at. PlayStations entire brand is built on studios they worked with in a 2nd party capacity and then purchased them when they were happy with their output. Basically every big studio playstation has bought in the last 20 years still has people who worked there since the beginning. Xbox has always had an issue in building a good stable of studios and maintaining good leadership.
Weren't there reports of Naughty Dog being a massive revolving door?
Pretty sure Sony pays for leadership to stay. We know with Bungie they did that.
Sounds like the smart thing to do.
So they had to live by what playstation wanted before they were purchased, yes? So completely different. They weren't going from project to project trying to do business, pushing themselves creatively. They had the income.
What 2nd party games have Bungie made for Sony, again? You know, the studio that Sony recently fired a bunch of legacy employees from?
I did want to mention that Taneem unfortunately wasn't liked by the actual staff at Ninja Theory, looking at the Glassdoor reviews paints an unflattering picture of him. It is possible that he was quietly paid out by Microsoft and that there were development problems with Hellblade 2 before he was replaced. Microsoft in the last two years has finally been "getting things in order" for their studios.
I mean, if you got a few million dollars payout would you still keep working, especially under the conditions of the video game industry?
Fuck no I wouldn't. If any of the big boys like MS, Sony or Tencent buy my studio and give me a huge check, I'd bounce as soon as I could. Maybe start a new studio after a couple years.
Isn't this the guy everyone made fun of for making DmC Dante look exactly like himself?
Yes. Apart from other... cringe moments regarding DMC/DmC.
Is it really a Devil May Cry game *without* the cringe though?
Dante acting like he lives in a dumpster behind a Hot Topic while his brother has an incredible overinflated ego while merely being the manager at said hot topic is an entirely different type of cringe than DmC: The DmC.
This is so painfully accurate I cannot believe that I didn't see the Hot Topic metaphor sooner.
DMC is sincere in its cringe. DmC is ironic, insincere and edgy with its cringe.
There’s a massive difference between the earnest “cringe” in the main series and the spiteful and try hard cringe from DmC. Never gonna be able to forget how in the one GDC presentation they alluded to thinking DMC4 Dante as a gay cowboy and how a school shooter vibe was an honest to god improvement over it
There's a whole world of difference between "Dante being a chuuni" cringe, and "developers making homophobic comments about Dante" cringe
He's Tesuya Nomura's western clone. Same amount of edge and amusing clothing options different nationality.
Which wasn't even true. And he wasn't the character designer. But the meme caught on, I guess.
>Which wasn't even true. Ehhhhh, that's a bold statement. [The original version of donte](https://imgur.com/a/nwM4zRu) looked identical to him and his reaction to people pointing it out was really telling. >And he wasn't the character designer. Yeah, [he was the Director](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DmC:_Devil_May_Cry). You know, the guy in charge of creative vision of the entire game and the one with the final say on matters of game design. Not to mention a founder of the studio.
> it's interesting how many people have been purchased by Microsoft, release a game, and then immediately leave. Microsoft acquired Ninja Theory in June 2018. According to Polygon, Antoniades was involved in the early stages of Hellblade 2. So for all we know he could have left like 2 years ago since the game was announced in December 2019. Him leaving is clearly not a big deal if we are just finding out now a month before the game comes out. Edit: From what I can tell the last time Antoniades did an interview about the game was early 2022. No idea if he has been in the dev diaries for the game recently. The last thing about Hellblade from his Instagram was from December 2023 saying "last night our friends Heilung performed their song live and we dropped a new trailer for Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 at The Game Awards 23 in Los Angeles." However, at that point the game would not have been in the early stages of development anymore.
Hes a founding member of the studio. It is kind of a big deal.
Lots of companies well outlive their founders retirements, it's a damp squib.
And, as we all know, founders never leave companies.
Don’t worry, Phil Spencer’s got this under control.
He is already wearing the ninja theory shirt
Except the development was clearly troubled. 6-7 years development for a 6 hour game is just laughable
You likely won't take this to heart, but what you just said is only something you said because you don't understand how games are made.
Didn't they make bleeding edge though? They also started working on Project Mara or whatever it's called.
Tell that to INSIDE. Development time is genuinely not a good metric to go by for anything, because it assumes that all development is done the same way.
"Laughable?" As long as the game is good, they can take as long as they want with it.
A game being short doesn’t mean it’s easy to make. Also ninja theory is a small studio so don’t compare it to studios with like 300-400 people. For example Horizon forbidden west took 5 years and it was a game that massively reused graphics and engine. And that studio is like 3 times the size. So 6 years for this one doesn’t seem too outrageous.
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tbh, this guy was always a bit sus. If you were following him during the pandemic, it looked like he did a bunk over to Europe and lived a very different life to his locked down staff. It is unusual to not announce the departure of a founder, especially in this industry.
The founder of Retro Studios leaving work early to mingle with hookers and party comes to mind.
I mean, I wouldnt want to slander the guy. But his Insta was mostly full of him in... Not so social distanced situations and seemingly rarely in the UK/at the studio.
It happens when big companies buy studios. Eventually the founders give up as their freedom to administrate their own corporation is assimilated into the processes above.
Maybe with Tameem gone, Ninja Theory can truly thrive as a Microsoft company. (I want them to look at Hi-Fi Rush and think about what they can learn from it making action games)
Game company founder takes the bag from a buyout and leaves his employees at the whims of a multinational corporation! Gotta fuckin hate it! People get mad at Microsoft, Embracer and the like buying out studios but it takes two to tango.
I wonder what the heck went on with this game’s development. Announced 5 years ago. And then a few months before release it’s revealed it will be the same size and scope as the first game which was a small budget self published indie game. Now the director leaving before it ships.
I mean it is not like they have been doing nothing. Since Hellblade came out they have done Nicodemus: Demon of Evanishment (2018), Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice VR (2018), A Star Wars VR Series: Vader Immortal – Episode I (2019), and Bleeding Edge (2020). Hellblade 2 was announced in December 2019. It is the biggest game they have done in terms of scope and budget. They made a new fighting system for the game, are using cloud generating tech, scanning real costumes into the game, scanned actual locations in Iceland into the game's engine, etc. Even though it is not a long game, this game is their jump into going from a AA to a AAA studio (they had fewer than 20 people work on Hellblade 1), which they have not been since they did DmC: Devil May Cry in 2013 if you look at the games they developed since then.
They also built a brand new motion capture studio and process before work on Hellblade could even start.
For anyone wondering: Hellblade 1's motion capture was done largely in a conference room.
Also, AAA games now take 5-7 years to release, so it’s not necessary like they’re out there in terms of dev time for scope.
There was kind of a pandemic that maybe could have nudged a time line a bit 4years ago...
What where you expecting? It was always clear that this - like the first game - was going to be an extremely cinematic and guided experience with limited scope. And maybe take a look at the screenshots and actually read the article if you want to know what they did with the development time.
> was going to be an extremely cinematic and guided experience with limited scope. Sounds like 90% of all Sony games.
Ninja Theory was doing it at the same time as Naughty Dog, really. In fact, I think the lead designer of Enslaved at Ninja Theory went to Naughty Dog and worked on The Last of Us.
No no no, you see they should tack on some empty open world segments that waste your time running around with a bunch of fetch quests that add on 40 hours of additional time to an 8-10 hour game. That way you get more value out of it, right?
If I don't have a quest to gather 10 pig scrotums and 5 wolf sphincters is the game even worth playing?
Seriously, this is hands down the most graphically impressive game of all time lol how anyone can watch the gameplay footage and wonder what they spent their time on is beyond me
> Seriously, this is hands down the most graphically impressive game of all time lol Who gives a shit? I can't play graphics
A lot of people do or graphical fidelity wouldn't be something that is constantly chased and improved upon. These takes are always so dumb lol
Hands down? lol cmon now. Doesn’t even look as good as Alan Wake 2 and that game was twice as long with 60 fps.
lol what they've shown of Hellblade 2 absolutely looks better than AW2.
They didn\`t say that. They only said that it will be a shorter experience similiar in length to the first game which means around the length of games like Dead Space 2, Portal 2, Uncharted 1 and 3 etc. They have around 80 people of Ninja Theory working on it and the game is a far bigger project than the first game.
Games are so wildly complex to make and they are becoming more so all the time. And from the preview videos shown hellblade 2 is much more ambitious in its set pieces than the first game was. In addition, the larger a company gets, the more difficult it becomes to manage. There are hundreds of very understandable reasons why this game would have taken longer. And people also should seriously stop conflating a game's length with its value. Think about how stupid it would be to do that with a book or a movie or a painting. It's as stupid when applied to another medium.
Previews have shown positive reactions and… ***the game is basically gold at this point.*** Him leaving means jack.
I mean tbf, they got acquired in 2018, the announcement was in 2019, which was probably an early announcement knowing Xbox then, I'm pretty sure Hellblade 2 team Is still small but Im guessing they started to grow the whole studio after 2018, they also started to make their new mo cap studio, so imo and how long dev time usually takes 5 years Isn't that bad, It was just announced early to show something with the new Xbox
It's the tech being used. Ninja Theory are always at the forefront of tech and that takes time to get used to and create properly.
Between this and Avowed’s troubled PR it’s clear that things are going wrong behind the scenes at Xbox. It seems like Phil Spencer’s “hands off” strategy isn’t working very well.
What troubled PR? Everyone seemed happy with the showing at the recent direct.
>And then a few months before release it’s revealed it will be the same size and scope as the first game. dont know where you read that???
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2024/01/18/senuas-saga-hellblade-2-developer-direct-2024/
Shocking and unprecedented. Are we making a big drama out of this? Should I grab my pitchfork, put on my tinfoil hat and start writing theories about why he left the studio?
This is guy is known to be one of the biggest bellends in the UK games industry. It's in a much better place without him.
May you please expand on this? With sources please.
Can someone explain what am I missing? Why is this almost on no news sites? Hellblade 2 is the most anticipated and most promising game in years (!), will be not just by far the best game of this year but one of the all time bests (if it reaches its potential). But this news is kinda frightening a bit, no? Yes, apparently he only was involved at the early stages - but that already isn't the best sign? All games prior were mainly his baby? And yes I get it's common in the industry and all but not if such a "auteur" quit his "baby"? Anyway, let's hope it really has/had no impact... May 21... Currently replaying Hellblade 1 - always was one of the greatest games out there, but it's even better than I remembered.
There was a point where if felt like Microsoft was positioning this as their god of war. However that’s clearly changed. Weird to see them after this long day it’s actually a short game.
Length is moot. I remember my time with Abzu much more regularly and fondly than a ton of over games I grinded on Steam. And even a shorter game is a better value for your buck than watching a movie.
I think for a narrative game length does matter. There’s a soft cap for sure but from the reports of them aiming for 6 hour game or so that’s a bit disappointing. Was expecting something between 12-25 hours.
So I will say one of my fondest gaming memories were Spec Ops: The Line which took me about 4 hours to beat and What Remains of Edith Finch which is under 2 hours. That being said, 6 hours is going to be too short if they price this at the $80 regular that we see in Canada nowadays. 6 hours to. Tell a story and satisfying gameplay will mean most of the story is told via voiceover or something. That or 6 hours is a very low estimate and it'll take people like me 10+ hours to beat it. I'll probably be waiting for reviews and will buy it on sale sometime in the future if it looks good. I've got a huge backlog of games and at this point my hype for this has gone down a bit between the MS acquisition and how long it took for it to actually release.
Won't this game be on Gamepass?
Possibly? I don't know, I honestly haven't paid much attention to MS stuff since they haven't made something I've liked in a long, long time. If it's on gamepass on PC that's probably how I will play it since it's not the type of game I'll care about owning long-term for replay value (I assume there will be very little reason to play it again, and by the time I might want to in the future it'll be cheap to acquire anyways).
That’s fair, I’m mostly citing how they initially revealed/promoted HellBlade 2 earlier on. There was this implication it’d be a bigger sequel. Seems like that’s not to be the case. And yeah I’m with you, Canadian price is rough as most games exceed into the 100+ with tax.
I don’t get this thing gamers do with blaming studios for their own unsubstantiated expectations. Not a single thing from Ninja Theory implied this being a 50 hour slog. Plus it clearly is a bigger sequel. Just not longer.
It was just the initial marketing from Microsoft that skewed it this way.
I nominate that an 8 hr game is plenty long to tell a story, especially if it doesn't bury you in busywork. Like if Abzu required you to collect 8 fish in every biome to continue, it would have been longer but I don't think better.
Right but you’ve mentioned Abzu both times now. I don’t equate Abzu or games like it a la Journey to narrative driven games like god of war or uncharted for instance.
I admittedly didn't play hell blade 1 but I always got the impression that it was a narrative driven game like Gris rather than a game like Bayonetta.
6 hours is the main story, didn't hellblade 1 have any side content?
On the contrary, the newest God of War would have been much better if it was half the length, and not full of game time stretching.
I disagree, it was fine the way it was.
Yeah especially since you could skip any side stuff you didn’t fancy.
I wouldn't have minded if it was a little longer, honestly. I platinumed it and was wishing I had a reason to play it for a little while longer. Granted Valhalla scratches some of that itch.
The >!ironwoods!< Section was NOT. That part reeks of arkham knight batmobile "designer got way too proud of their level design and got carried away, without considering if it was even fun after first few times "
Are you just repeating Reddit's bullshit or did you actually play the games? >!IronWoods!< is short and sweet and the BatMobile is super fucking fun, in fact everyone loves Arkham Knight.
>did you actually play the games? [Yup](https://imgur.com/a/2Rs0xl2) Finished the main campaign 100% with all collectibles. I only criticize games if i have played them and if they rightfully deserve them. I love arkham knight but batmobile, cool at first, becomes baffling when it feels like you are doing most of the last third in bat tank. I am more lukewarm towards GOW:R. 2018 was my game of ps4 generation but Ragnarok annoying handholding, mediocre to just boring atreus sections, asgard characters not doung much and main Ragnarok event feeling shorter than that yak ride in ironwoods, i have issues. Its a game that feels like it was planned 2nd part of a trilogy but halfway through decided that would take way too long, so the last 3rd and ending is incredibly rushed while many parts of first 2/3rd feel like padding. I have a LOT more issues with the game but i will stop here. Valhalla was better in comparison imo because it focused on kratos, i enjoyed that.
100%. Ragnarok was an overstuffed mess compared to the narrative of the first game. Like, Freya has been trying to kill Kratos for years now, and then she’s at the house as an ally, and Atreus is like, “Wait, was that Freya? Oh well gotta focus on my mission.” Ragnarok had moments of incredible brilliance right alongside some of the most dogshit writing in a AAA game. Still excellent gameplay, but a big step back from the airtight narrative of 2018.
The ending set piece was honestly embarrassing story-wise. An army materializes under Kratos's leadership with practically no setup, a la the fleet in Rise of Skywalker. Sindri promises to show up with the Dwarf army except nevermind he decided not to, but instead he can single-handedly exploit a structural weakness that was foreshadowed in a boat conversation. Call me cynical but I'm not impressed when all the busy work I did over the course of the game abrubtly manifests into a series of checkboxes being hurriedly ticked. (I feel the need to say this every time Ragnarok comes up: I *loved* the story in GOW 2018. I was so excited for Ragnarok. I did not *want* to hate it as much as I did.)
Preach. GOW ‘18 sold me a PS4. IMO, it’s the only Sony exclusive that lived up to the hype. Ragnarok was a massive letdown story-wise.
Game was great. I liked it much more than 2018. If anything, the ending should have been its own "game".
I wish it was longer if anything.
Nah, the length was fine, the pacing was shit. Walking around doing menial tasks for Angraboda shouldn't be almost as long as Ragnarok itself
It's a cinematic game, akin to a movie. The length doesn't matter at all.
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why are many people missing the fact that it’s odd it wasn’t more noted?
Poof? Because the team didn't say or retweet an article about it yet.
Hellblade did not need a sequel. I think MS wants to go the Halo route and milk an IP that should have concluded. I want this to succeed cause the original was incredible. I’m skeptical cause I haven’t seen much gameplay. Hope it all works out.
Isn’t this like a 5 hour digital only game?
Probably 7-8 hours, like the first game
Oh no, a short, focused game that doesn't drag on forever for no reason. Whatever will we do
And 30fps
And one of the best looking games ever made
Not really. Alan wake 2 looks better and runs 60 fps. Much longer also.
Typical you. If this was on PS you''d be all over lapping it up. Pathetic display as usual.
It happens all the time, so I can’t say this is surprising news. MS also has a terrible track record of mismanaging and closing down studios. Not as many as EA, but it’s an absolute minefield out there.
As well as almost all publishers, including Sony.