Okay, let's talk about "Lost Soul Aside"

So if you've missed it, I would say is one of the biggest thing going on in indie games right now:

That's a game that one (ONE!) guy is developing that he said is inspired from the FF15 trailers.

Personally, I think that the whole FF15 angle is to ride some coat tails and maybe he's on to something.

Looking at his videos it's hard to get a read on what he actually has made. I know that he's said that he's trying to make the game with as many purchased assets.

Still, kind of makes me wonder if maybe making an Elder Scrolls clone on my own is do-able.

What do you all think?

 

I was going to post this, imagined the Unreal Vs Unity arguments that would ensue, then changed my mind

 

Also take note that the 2 years he worked on it for were very stressful and lonely so he says

 

It's an interesting project, though hard to get real details about. But frankly I wouldn't even attempt a project of that scale using a normal approach, which, given the results of 2 years labor, seems to be what he's doing. He's obviously got skill and determination but it's like trying to build the titanic in your backyard. I'd rather build the robots that build it for me.

 

The combat system looks fun. The art is beautiful. I'm buying a copy on release.

 

If he decides to continue it, then I certainly will too

 

Same.

IF...

I would be very surprised if he can finish it before landing a job at a place like Square.

 

He's been offered funding and a team by Sony and epic, however he hasn't decided yet if it's worth years more of stress and loneliness

 

The rerendered cut scenes look alright. Not overly impressed by the actual gamplay though. Looks like a lot of controller button bashing.

 

Isn't there a good market for button bashing gameplay, though? (eg God of War)

I like how dynamic it is.

The art is very well composed, the whole design is a strong sell point, you wouldn't think it's an indie game much less a one man's work.

 

I have a feeling though that content is going to be the real issue - I didn't see all that much diversity, and the environments were sometimes a bit lacking imo.

I like how he's put a real effort into constructing the atmosphere. I also don't go for these 'swimming in particle effect' sorts of games, but it definitely comes across as having a strong artistic message.

 

There's nothing "rendered" there.
It's real time cinematic tool in Unreal.

Btw, he worked mostly on characters; everything else is largely purchased assets. Still, I think this game isn't even 10% complete and I don't he going till the end to finish it unless he give up personal life for more ~6 years.

 

It's hit the uncanny valley of indieness for me.

I enjoy indie games like Kerball or AI Wars or Factorio or Mushroom 11. These are games that do something that AAA games aren't doing. It's gameplay that simply hasn't been explored by the AAAs. The production values might not be there, but the gameplay is unique.

On the other hand I enjoy the mass market AAA games. The ones with high production values that wander down well established genre paths. The gameplay may not be all that innovative, but the production values are just amazing.

This game straddles that uncomfortable spot in the middle. The gameplay isn't exciting and the production values aren't great either.

Don't get me wrong. It's an impressive feat for one person to make. But I don't actually care how many people worked on a game. As a player, the number of devs on a game is totally irrelavant.

The scripted cut scenes had a much higher visual quality then the gameplay scenes. Call it whatever you like, but there were definitely two distinct qualities. The high quality one looked visually impressive. The gameplay one was not especially impressive.

 

That's definitely something to watch out for - I don't really see what it does that AAA competitors don't do, and the primary effect of the good graphics might be to make people compare it to games with orders of magnitude higher production value.

I'm not sure though, I've never paid attention to the genre and wouldn't have a clue what the fans expect/want or what the typical selling point for indie games of this kind are.

 

No doubt it's very impressive all around. If you hadn't mentioned it being a solo Indie and the video didn't have anything about him I'd have thought this was a preview for a new AAA game.

 

It's just a few unconnected demo scenes that have very nice art - there is nothing here that can be called a game. I speak from experience that what you see is probably the hard limit, ie there's no more to it than what is recorded. So at this rate he would need to work for another ten years, not even fibbing, to get something more than an hour's gameplay.

There's no mystery here: an AAA studio is merely 100 of these guys. So best thing for him is to be hired somewhere because he does have great talent.

But it is misleading - people should not be expecting to achieve this as an actual game. The author hasn't achieved it either - he has achieved impressive demos & deserves a high end job for it.

 

Well, I am really undecided about it.

The cutscenes are meh... they fall into the uncanny valley were a cutscene looks to real to get away with mistakes in models, animation and voice acting, but is not well done enough to crawl out of that hole.

I found the voice acting crap. Really, a shout out for Indies to stop trying to imitate the voice acting shenigans of the big boys and just go with text boxes. Your players can read, and a good bunch enjoy reading more than hearing badly recorded voice acting. ESPECIALLY if paired to stiff facial animation.
Just take the money spent on voice acting (I hope you DID spend something on it ), and re-invest it where it has a better impact.

I find the combat animations quite cool. Distinctively japanese anime style, but well done. Which is quite a feat with 3D animations. Dunno about the gameplay, I am not into button mashers.

I HATE the FF Costume design. Its the one thing that really killed the series for me after FF7 (besides dumbing down the explorative aspects and the stories becoming more and more baroque). So I do not really dig the character design. Besides the crappy costumes, that would also be the sameish looking faces. I mean come on, not every hero and villain has to look like a supermodel. Just - make - the - characters - look - distinct! If that means adding some ugly characters, I am all for it.

The trailer as a whole, IDK... it just doesn't seem to communicate anything that well. Gameplay looks repetitive, though the cool animations do stand out. Could have been cut to fewer highlights, or instead with added text blurps hinting at the gameplay features included.
The cutscenes do not really tell any meaningful story... I know, its the current fad in movie trailers to just show a cut together bunch of highlights that just show action and explosions, without giving the viewer ANY hint of the story unfolding... but I don't think that is a good thing to do.
I went to two Pixar movies lately because the Trailers looked hilarious, only to find out the trailers were actually just the only good part of the movie ripped out of it and shown in whole, while the rest of the movie followed an extremly boring cookie cutter story. Well, I will from now on wait for reviews before watching a Pixar movie.
Same here. Seems like the cutscene moments of the trailer were just there to show off the visual quality of the cutscenes. Which kind of made me wonder if there is any substance behind the cutscenes in the game, or if it is just showing off.

I am not saying the trailer is BAD, especially once you read the "one guy made all of this" narrative. But it clearly is to long for a simple show off trailer, and to badly structured and "narrated" to be a very informative story or gameplay trailer.


Really, I applaud the dev for getting this far on his own. Its impressive.
There are parts of what is on show that I thouroughly like. Its clearly not my game both because of gameplay and visual styling, and I question wheter some decisions when it comes to quality especially in the cutscenes were wise given that you still can clearly see the limitations, and if the trailer really does a good job on selling the title.
I still hope the dev gets a good return on his tremendous efforts and wish him good luck.

 

I was quite impressed by the obvious work that he put into it, but I mostly agree with hippo that there's not much more to this "game" than was in the trailer. I expect combat to mostly work, and maybe he's got some plot and locations... But it likely isn't anything close to being ship-worthy.

But yeah, super impressed by the work he's put into it in 2 years.

 

It's a prototype. The author said it himself. I really do hope he takes the offers and finishes it

 

You never played Ninja Gaiden games (it's combat gameplay only), perhaps crappy flappy bird are real games ?

All graphics and effects looks AAA grade, lot of people have been impressed by the game and i didn't seen lot of solo guys making as deep gameplay as Platinum games are doing.
He has done the harder part that is to make a strong base game, now he can iterate to bring more ennemies and hire a good level designer so he could get a complete game.

 

If you say so.

 

The art and visual effects look to be good quality, but as a result the bad facial animation, and bad voice acting jump out even more. Also that video was not cut together in a very good way either.

 

Its indie Final Devil May Cry Fantasy!

We have discussed this before - could be if he scaled down and compacted everything down while retaining the mechanics and making a vastly smaller game world - the game could be a cool 2-4 hour jaunt.
Although - why not play ninja gaiden, or dmc, or final fantasy, or God of War instead?
That's why we don't try to compete with AAA visuals. And I don't see any mechanics that are innovative - in other games that will always have more polish. Unless he finishes and puts it up for under 10 bucks. Or gets a cult following from UE devs.

Great demo reel though.

 

I don't think everyone is realising hard enough, that visuals are the least of your problem when doing a full game. It's still going to be all the little things that create a complete experience, and all the tech issues, and all the actual problem solving issues, along with actual content. You can't just "make some content". You have to iterate over that content and throw half of it away repeatedly - unless you want to make something that plays badly.

Even if it's just a one on one fighting game, with one level and 4 moves each, there is still endless balancing, tweaking and so on. Now extrapolate that out by a game of this scope and you've got some sort of suicidal bent.

 

Well I think that more important than the flaws is that profane don't see them, I think we can learn from THAT instead of nitpicking stuff.
1. he focus on character, especially the face, with a style people can immediately recognize and an audience immediately relate to. You might hate the design but then it's a culture on his own, it does not change the benefit.
2. He used ready made asset he bought, but he also used some visual accent that break the genericness. That's why I think people don't register it as generic too much, it rather subliminal. Even I see the accent first before the sparse composition and thought he did it himself.
3. People focus less on environment than character. In his scene, the environment is never "intimate", it's always the ground and 2 or 3 meter away from focus, bringing character front and center (where the detailed character pop) while the environment became just a setting signifier.
4. He build around "cliché", if you familiar with manga and asiatique production you see a certain number of tropes that he reused, the scene where buried hand start to glow, I must have seen that 10x before. However, originality is not what audience look for, they look for a twist on familiar stuff.

CONCLUSION:
He is attracting attention, which is the main problem of indie in flooded market, so it was a good strategy. It also show that can give the illusion of punching above your weight with some trick, he might tempt over qualified artist to do the same and improve upon what he did. Finally He is not a big studio, he clearly don't need the same number of sales to be fine, so even though it might not be state of the art, it might still be worth the investment to rise above competitor in the same weight league.

 

Depends on his goals. He's basically drawn a lot of eyes to a pretty sweet game trailer he made by himself. At this point he may have enough hype to draw some funding and make something with a proper team or just shelf it and keep it around as a demo reel.

Either way, he has done something worth commendation regardless of where he decides to go with it.

 

Well if he takes up Sony and epics offers the raw manpower aspect of it shouldn't be a problem anymore

 

The only bad moment in the video is where camera shows ground from a very high attitude. At this moment you sorta see that huge blurred texture that forms the ground.

Aside from that it reminds me of "R'ha" (short movie made by two people)

Spoiler

Because there was similar amount of effort.
-------

If anything, it reminded me of Devil May Cry 4. To be specific, this:

...and this:

batttle.

 

Couldn't agree more

 

It looks like it would be a fun game. It looks a JRPG storyline with a devil may cry like combat system. Maybe what he needs t do is like sell it episodic fashion, so instead of trying to create the whole game, he could just sell the first few levels (and he could actually have money to hire more people).

 

I agree that this kind of stiff "Barbie / Ken" characters draped in ridicolous clothing is kind of a japanese gaming trope of the last decade, with Final Fantasy doing it for many of the later games, and many a JRPG with "realistic" looking characters that are non-chibi, and non-sprites ending up with the same thing.

But that does not make this a good decision. I am not sure how many people buy/watch Final Fantasy, or some of the more ridicolous animes for the over the top character design, in games often paired to stiff animation and featureless faces. AND HOW MANY BUY/WATCH DESPITE OF IT, because under the surface of this ridicolousness, the game/anime features a rather enjoyable story or gameplay.
And then as you say, its an Indies job to stand out. If you just stand out by delivering an AAA-like expierience done by a single guy, you are NOT standing out. You just moved yourself into a VERY BAD position to be in.
99.9% of potential buyers will not know that this game has been produced by a single guy Indie outfit. Even if they do, they will compare the game to real AAA games. I bet all my money that as much as this Indie dev tries, he will never be able to compete with 100+ sized teams from the likes of Ubisoft or EA on their home turf.
And I don't think just undercutting these games on the price will help much.


Recently bought some old JRPG for my PS2, among them a series I never heard about, but based on reviews must be good (shadow hearts)... not far into the game, and I am already appalled by the character design. At least if you are TRYING to set your story in the realworld europe, go easy on the fantasy clothing! And the soulless characters and stiff animations, oh god! Yes, cannot expect too much from a PS2 era game... but other games did better than that.


The facial animations, and the style of the characters are arguably a personal taste thing. I dislike it, there MUST be people that like that as I know a ton of japanese games have the same "features" (I guess it is mostly down to not investing the money needed for better animations or better character designs, but that is now again a very personal opinion).
The decision to attack the AAA Games on their hometurf is IMO a bad idea, unless he just did it for the kicks, or to land a job.
Or he can capitalize on the buzz his trailer has generated, and gets the funding to REALLY build a game around that trailer.

But granted, maybe he still gets a nice RoI no matter what, given he does not have to pay anyone besides himself.

EDIT:

Well, rereading my post sounds kinda harsh to the dev of the game, which is not intended at all. So let me just add 2 things:

1) I am not saying going for AAA like visuals as an Indie is inherently bad. Its kinda overreaching, but if you can manage it, its certainly nice to have. As long as "AAA visuals" are not your games only hook. Not so sure about this game, still undecided from this one trailer. The concentration on glitz and cutscenes can leave the impression that the visuals are the games main hook, but then again its just a trailer.

2) I really like to stress that the dislike for some styling decisions are my own personal opinion. And I am not REALLY complaining about stiff facial animations in an Indie game done by a single guy... just pointing out what I think could have been improved, and might still be improved.

 

OKAY, let's have a direct visual comparison

Finally it's not so bad that little game lol

 

Yeah it's just the garage scene and talky bits alone are 6 months+ work for one person depending if they have to do all that work themselves, from textures, animations, cutscenes, ui, data management.... if I was wrong then everyone would be doing it / have done it to those standards.

No chance in hell of any comparison.

 

Yeah I know, but lambda will look at both and see which one is better, that's how the lambda think lol.

More seriously, The situation is totally not the same, even factoring change in scope (remember he still have to buy asset to make his game outside of character), he design with small scope in mind and quality is concentrated specifically in key area, leaving other strategically less . FFXV was design with a higher fidelity target and didn't met them, they had to downgrade because they didn't meet the right performance. AT TIMES it look worse that this solo game because the quality was uniformly decrease as it was designed as uniformly hi quality. The idea is to show that strategical focus help a lot in broadcasting an idea of quality. The ffxv one as a lot of signifier of bad quality (low rez texture, absence of shadow) that would have been design around with a proper target, especially compared to AAA (witcher) or even some indie (pamela if we ignore characters). However they have their feet firmly planted in their distinctive visual design.

Also this is a specific case, the main FF division at square enix have a documented very messy production pipeline, very wasteful. It's notable that the game was in production during 10 years and has been redesign from the ground up multiple time (see change in character design), and they don't seem to have much luck with their engine (luminous) which don't perform as great as they would want.

So in the end, sure your garage took 6+ month, but if it does not contribute to a perception of quality was it worth it?

The question ask here is one of perception and how we can cash on it! Not that it can TRULY compare to ffxv We all know there is no direct comparison possible in any way, only to provoke thoughts.

 

Gamers want a high quality, very polished experience and wont really care if its made by 1 man or 500 so choosing a game like that was kind of absurd.Unless you want to work on it by yourself for the next decade

 

Except if he decides to continue it chances are he wont be on his own anymore, I honestly think we should just wait to see what he decides on before jumping to conclusions

 

If he gets a team and funding, I think that would be a great reason for us all to attempt more AAA style games.

After all, that's how business works - as soon as a small company starts having a little bit of success, a larger company usually scoops them up, and there's nothing wrong with that. It enables individuals or small companies to create something new and get as far as they can, and rewards them for their efforts without them having to do things they simply don't have the resources for.

 

Just look at what happen to no man sky, they had a great presentation and sony cash on them, allowing to get very big (in coverage).

 

What happened is they're probably going to get half a billion or so at an estimate in total. At minimum. Steamspy says they've already earned 43,020,000 and that's just a few days on one platform. It's wildly popular. Wildly successful. Screw the reviews, the casuals love it.

Even after taxes, cuts, refunds, anything - it's a ridiculous success.

 

LOOOL
at 0:21 that door sound effect is like exactly AIMs sound effect when someone logs on

LOL ive modded for elder scrolls games ALOOTT
and even that takes forever loool (lol not really, but yeah sorta haha)
i mean like adding a new town.. takes like 2 months or so to make look like the stock game ..but yeah when i was doing that i was a kid, not in a hurry of any type at all
and yeah thats using Bethesda's assets, not making assets or code at all... but yeah, just having fun.. and i did it like maybe 8 or more hrs a day lol

 

Jap, the hype worked for them. At least shortterm.

I would correct the longterm estimates down though. I would expect sales to slow down way faster than with other games, BECAUSE reviews are mixed, performance seems dodgy and the game generally is not as good as expected, AND it was hyped to be the best thing since sliced bread.

If they have earned 50m$ by now, they might make 100-150m$ by years end. Maybe get 250m$ over the whole lifetime. Most probably NMS2 will sell considerably less units, if they ever make a successor to this game.


Don't forget, the casuals might like it NOW. They might tire of it quicker than expected. Many people hyped for it were bored just watching the vids. Some say they were entertained for some hours.
Its clearly not the 50+ hours of fun for most people it was hyped to be.

If the Casuals move on after 10 hours in average (IF), they might not be so keen to pay another 60 bucks for another no mans sky, and they might tell other people to only buy on sale. Or not at all.


Of course, either way, a big success for a 15 man strong team. And clearly at least on a technical level an impressive achievement. MIGHT buy it just for that, not at full price though.

 

That's pc only and I'm guessing they're doing better on PS4.

 

Many casuals will not play a gampe that story needs 50+ hours to complete.
They will play shirter games and move on to another game.

 

They need to make a large chunk of money. Remember their use of the trademarked word "sky" cost them $40 million. At least I read someplace that was the settlement. Sky tv or whoever it was actually wanted closer to a billion IIRC.

 

I have a hard time believing that anyone related to the lawsuit released details about it after they were so closed-mouthed for so long. Without a good source, I'm betting that's just some fan's ridiculous numbers that they made up.

 

Would take some digging again to find it. IIRC that number came from one of the developers twitter accounts or maybe team twitter account. You're right though it was secondhand. Came from a website covering it showing a pic of the tweet/message. And of course could be manufactured. It wouldn't surprise me at all that it would be for a fairly large sum. After 3 years of legal battle I doubt they will settle for some token fee like $10k but anything is possible I suppose.

 

If they weren't likely to win, they'd take whatever they can get. And that seemed like a rather dumb lawsuit to me. A simple word, unrelated industry, and zero chance of mistaking it for each other.

 

I don't think there was ever any question of them having a solid legal case though, was there? They have the word "sky" trademarked. They sued Microsoft and won in the same manner over the use of that word previously.

EDIT: I mean I don't think it is right in any way. I don't think any entity should be able to trademark something like "sky" to begin with. But someone somewhere thought it was okay. It makes no more sense to me than a game company trying to trademark the word "game" and then going after everyone who uses the term in their game's title or description.

Unfortunately this the level of quality of the people making the big decisions in the world. Money could have something to do with it.

 

No, but this games main selling point was "vast size, almost unlimited amount of different worlds you can explore, a whole galaxy to discover".

Might be that SANE casuals will just take the game for what it is. A niche expierience that most people will tire of quickly. They will take the 10-ish hours of fun they get with the game, which for a casual player might fill their gaming slots for two weeks, and then move on to the next big game coming out. Compared to the movies, 6$ per hour of entertainment doesn't sound so bad, at least where I live (20$ for a cinema ticket).

But we know how many player are actually acting sane and rational when it comes to "bang for the bucks". Some will complain that they were only entertained for 8 hours even though they wouldn't have gotten above the 10 hour mark anyway given the next game they ordered just arrived in the mail.
Some will complain about missing gameplay even if they would chuck the game into a corner even quicker if they were actually challenged by gameplay.
I mean, I have seen complaints about the start setup sometimes being unfair to the player, with missing resources on the starting planet and all... does that suck to have to restart the game after, dunno, 2-4 hours? Of course. Is that REALLY something to complain about as long as the problem is limited to the starting planet, when we are talking about a game you could play for 100s of hours (if you like repetitive gameplay)? No.


Really, I am not saying that the game is not a big success. I am just wondering if all that bad press, and seemingly quite a lot of early adopters being dissapointed with the game might come back and hurt their sales in the long term, that is all.

 

I think it's possible that people could think "SkyDrive" was a product made by "Sky". So I could see some brand confusion there, and that's what Trademarks are supposed to prevent. But "No Man's Sky" doesn't suffer from that same confusion problem. I think it's much less lucky they would have won that lawsuit, and they'd know it.