Naughty Dog so inspired by Elden Ring: Declares no more Movie Games per Neil Druckmannn

[MeachTheMonster]

Okay, explain to me like I'm 5.

What Sony games sacrifice gameplay and give me specific examples of this for a more "cinematic" experience.

To make a game feel like a movie the gameplay has to be presented with little resistance.

They want to make you feel danger but they don’t actually want you to fail.

It’s why you get the no fail QTE sections and the easy traversal stuff. Nobody wanna watch the same train explode 15 times cause you can’t make a jump. But that means the traversal has to be shallow and almost fail proof throughout the game.

Combat can’t be too difficult. Most games, especially difficult ones have a low completion percentage. Movie games are built for pretty much anyone who picks up the controller can make it through. That also means loot can’t be too significant, can’t have you get to a certain boss or enemy and not have the equipment/skills to win. Backtracking makes little sense in a “cinematic experience”

Level design is influenced by the need to funnel you to the next story beat. GOW devs said the squeeze through and forced walking sections were about pacing and controlling where the character can or can’t go. You said it yourself that open world games have a hard time telling a good story because the player can just walk off and do what they want to do. That goes both ways. In a movie game they can’t give the player much choice at all cause then it would fukk up the narrative.

Animations have to look realistic, but that doesn’t always make for the best gameplay. RDR2 was the worst for this. Yea the animations were cool and cinematic the first couple times, but it made the game a slog to get through.

Camera Angles. Moving the camera to close shoulder view changes mele combat profusely. You can’t see behind you so there will be less enemies and they will all be programmed to kinda wait and circle around to only attack you in the front. This makes spacing and positioning less important than the average mele action game.

There’s more, but this is the gist of it.

Movie games have very different design goals and priorities than other games. Same as an RPG is very different from an Action game.

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

Is anyone honestly going to read that ^

 

[The Mad Titan]

Okay, explain to me like I'm 5.

What Sony games sacrifice gameplay and give me specific examples of this for a more "cinematic" experience.

gow and gow rag are prime examples. One, two and three are pretty much hack and slash action games. Most people played those because of the grit, action, violence and finishing moves.


2018 and ragnarok are more so just action adventure games. Most people play this for the story over the gameplay.


As someone that has always been more into kratos story the shift to 2018 was perfect.

But if I remember playing gow 1 2 or 3... Then 2018 might take some getting use too.


Yeah story wise there is a reason why the game is like that... But
Again that goes back to story overshadowing gameplay.

This doesn't mean it's BAD it's just not what everyone wants all the time or what everyone prefers.

 

[The Mad Titan]

To make a game feel like a movie the gameplay has to be presented with little resistance.

They want to make you feel danger but they don’t actually want you to fail.

It’s why you get the no fail QTE sections and the easy traversal stuff. Nobody wanna watch the same train explode 15 times cause you can’t make a jump. But that means the traversal has to be shallow and almost fail proof throughout the game.

Combat can’t be too difficult. Most games, especially difficult ones have a low completion percentage. Movie games are built for pretty much anyone who picks up the controller can make it through. That also means loot can’t be too significant, can’t have you get to a certain boss or enemy and not have the equipment/skills to win. Backtracking makes little sense in a “cinematic experience”

Level design is influenced by the need to funnel you to the next story beat. GOW devs said the squeeze through and forced walking sections were about pacing and controlling where the character can or can’t go. You said it yourself that open world games have a hard time telling a good story because the player can just walk off and do what they want to do. That goes both ways. In a movie game they can’t give the player much choice at all cause then it would fukk up the narrative.

Animations have to look realistic, but that doesn’t always make for the best gameplay. RDR2 was the worst for this. Yea the animations were cool and cinematic the first couple times, but it made the game a slog to get through.

Camera Angles. Moving the camera to close shoulder view changes mele combat profusely. You can’t see behind you so there will be less enemies and they will all be programmed to kinda wait and circle around to only attack you in the front. This makes spacing and positioning less important than the average mele action game.

There’s more, but this is the gist of it.

Movie games have very different design goals and priorities than other games. Same as an RPG is very different from an Action game.

Exactly this!

And it's the reason gow rag npcs don't give you more than 5 seconds before they are telling you how to complete a puzzle you just walked into a room for, or why you can no longer fail qte events.

To create the cinematic experience that Sony does so well they have to present the world and things in certain bits and pieces.

TLOUS 2 did a great job at that imo. They even started you off in a simi open world like area. But overall all you had a sense of freedom.

Gow rag, everything was presented to you in a certain way they doubled down on it from 2018... It wasn't until the end and in particular one area that I was like man I wish I could have gotten a whole game like this.

 

[Fatboi1]

To make a game feel like a movie the gameplay has to be presented with little resistance.

They want to make you feel danger but they don’t actually want you to fail.

This would be true if said movie games had no difficulty settings. Try playing any of the alleged movie games on their hardest difficulty and come back adn say that there's little resistance to the gameplay. Hell, even basic things like aiming stability is affected by your stats when you start up TLOU 1.

It’s why you get the no fail QTE sections and the easy traversal stuff. Nobody wanna watch the same train explode 15 times cause you can’t make a jump. But that means the traversal has to be shallow and almost fail proof throughout the game.

This is exaggerated because off the top of my head, I can barely think of situations in the games you'd mention as "movie" games having no fail QTEs or easy traversal. UC4 for example had the final boss as basically one long QTE, the majority of the game you're fighting against a bunch of henchmen and soldiers that on higher difficulties prove very difficult. Heck, even the game has battle scenes selectable from the main menu when you finish it.

Combat can’t be too difficult. Most games, especially difficult ones have a low completion percentage. Movie games are built for pretty much anyone who picks up the controller can make it through. That also means loot can’t be too significant, can’t have you get to a certain boss or enemy and not have the equipment/skills to win. Backtracking makes little sense in a “cinematic experience”

Cap, the average player isn't playing TLOU 2 or 1 on grounded mode in a breeze.

Hell, grounded mode is literally the opposite of an experience that's accessible to everyone.

Level design is influenced by the need to funnel you to the next story beat. GOW devs said the squeeze through and forced walking sections were about pacing and controlling where the character can or can’t go. You said it yourself that open world games have a hard time telling a good story because the player can just walk off and do what they want to do. That goes both ways. In a movie game they can’t give the player much choice at all cause then it would fukk up the narrative.

GOWR is literally opposite of that. I'd finish a main story beat and the game literally lets you do whatever until you want to continue. I'm literally going over an hour of gameplay since I last played GOWR where I have to return back to the house to continue but I can go to other realms, do other side quests and explore without the game moving me forward.

Horizon is even more so open. UC4 Lost Legacy gave you more wide-linear level designs where you could go off the story path to do something else but when done you'd continue to the main path. Those games I say that have weird narratives are typically games that have a bunch of story missions that end on some high urgency only to let you go look for a cat in a tree right after lol.

Animations have to look realistic, but that doesn’t always make for the best gameplay. RDR2 was the worst for this. Yea the animations were cool and cinematic the first couple times, but it made the game a slog to get through.

RDR2 was just a slog period to play. Max Payne 3 had excellent animations and felt godly to play. Cinematics and animations don't gameplay have to suffer which we see with many of Sony's titles that play and look excellent.


Look how smooth the gameplay is. Nothing is holding the player's hand here. He's free to play out this level how he wants and it looks beautiful down to the small details. THIS is the beauty of some of Sony's 1st party titles. You get games that look so good, while playing as good. Imagine a GTA game that played like this?

Camera Angles. Moving the camera to close shoulder view changes mele combat profusely. You can’t see behind you so there will be less enemies and they will all be programmed to kinda wait and circle around to only attack you in the front. This makes spacing and positioning less important than the average mele action game.

LOL what game are you playing that's like this? In GOWR, Mimir or whoever is with you calls out danger that's behind you and there's even warning indicators letting you know an enemy is attacking you from behind. This is completely counter to positioning not being important. Positioning is VERY important in these games.

There’s more, but this is the gist of it.

Movie games have very different design goals and priorities than other games. Same as an RPG is very different from an Action game.

This is not an example of what I asked for. You just incorrectly named some things about some unknown game that has zero fail QTE's, constrained camera with enemies that don't attack from behind and combat mechanics that are dumbed down because they want you to be able to finish it.

 

[Fatboi1]

gow and gow rag are prime examples. One, two and three are pretty much hack and slash action games. Most people played those because of the grit, action, violence and finishing moves.

Okay.

2018 and ragnarok are more so just action adventure games. Most people play this for the story over the gameplay.

You just stated this as if it's a fact when you have zero proof of this. Most people play this because the gameplay is still largely hack and slash, with rpg lite elements(upgradeable weapons and armor, side quests) and then to top it off they revamped the gameplay system and made the narrative much stronger. Franchise fatigue was setting on the original trilogy.

As someone that has always been more into kratos story the shift to 2018 was perfect.

But if I remember playing gow 1 2 or 3... Then 2018 might take some getting use too.

Huh?

Yeah story wise there is a reason why the game is like that... But
Again that goes back to story overshadowing gameplay.

So... examples?

This doesn't mean it's BAD it's just not what everyone wants all the time or what everyone prefers.

So... I ask for examples and you just go off about some vocal group of people that does not prefer some game that you didn't mention.

 

[Fatboi1]

Exactly this!

And it's the reason gow rag npcs don't give you more than 5 seconds before they are telling you how to complete a puzzle you just walked into a room for, or why you can no longer fail qte events.

To create the cinematic experience that Sony does so well they have to present the world and things in certain bits and pieces.

TLOUS 2 did a great job at that imo. They even started you off in a simi open world like area. But overall all you had a sense of freedom.

Gow rag, everything was presented to you in a certain way they doubled down on it from 2018... It wasn't until the end and in particular one area that I was like man I wish I could have gotten a whole game like this.

You are out of your mind if you're saying GOWR is dumbed down for story purposes and then saying TLOU2 did a great job at that as if GOWR isn't leaning even heavier into the open-world aspect. Like what?

I will agree with the puzzles thing, they(npcs) are helpful as hell. The minute you walk into an area and "Dad, you can move that boulder right there!" immediately comes out of Loki's mouth. It doesn't seem to happen with sovling chest puzzles though for some reason. Some areas it didn't do it for me so IDK if it's random occurrence or not. Either way, the few puzzles in this game is hardly something worth mentioning of the overall game being a hand holding experience for moving the story along.

 

[ORDER_66]

This makes no sense... wasnt most of the games that put them on the map with critical acclaim movie like video games??? they dont have to toss away a winning formula and do new shyt just keep what works and build new shyt on it???! :heh;

 

[Brandsdale]

cut scenes aint that big a problem. Its just games like Assasins Creed Valhalla that make you skip literally everything

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

This would be true if said movie games had no difficulty settings. Try playing any of the alleged movie games on their hardest difficulty and come back adn say that there's little resistance to the gameplay. Hell, even basic things like aiming stability is affected by your stats when you start up TLOU 1.



This is exaggerated because off the top of my head, I can barely think of situations in the games you'd mention as "movie" games having no fail QTEs or easy traversal. UC4 for example had the final boss as basically one long QTE, the majority of the game you're fighting against a bunch of henchmen and soldiers that on higher difficulties prove very difficult. Heck, even the game has battle scenes selectable from the main menu when you finish it.

GOW2018-Rag did eliminate real platforming & jumping altogether from its gameplay. So I guess that could constitute as easy traversal and/or limiting player control, etc. I'm here or there about that decision really, but that's about the only thing that I can see folks either from the original games standpoint or just in general as "gameplay governor". It doesn't feel like a narrative/story affected decision tho, but just for....reasons.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

This would be true if said movie games had no difficulty settings. Try playing any of the alleged movie games on their hardest difficulty and come back adn say that there's little resistance to the gameplay. Hell, even basic things like aiming stability is affected by your stats when you start up TLOU 1.

The difficulty levels are there to ad more challenge but the game design remains the same. Giving you less bullets and/or making you shoot an enemy more times doesn’t change the game design.

This is exaggerated because off the top of my head, I can barely think of situations in the games you'd mention as "movie" games having no fail QTEs or easy traversal. UC4 for example had the final boss as basically one long QTE, the majority of the game you're fighting against a bunch of henchmen and soldiers that on higher difficulties prove very difficult. Heck, even the game has battle scenes selectable from the main menu when you finish it.

The climbing/traversal in all the aforementioned games is pretty much automatic. You hold up, the character goes. You don’t have to care about the route you follow or stamina or spacing/timing with your jumps.

Cap, anyone isn't playing TLOU 2 or 1 on grounded mode. Hell, grounded mode is literally the opposite of an experience that's accessible for everyone.

Yes grounded mode offers a challenge, but that’s not the way the game is ment to be played and the game wouldn’t score nearly as well as it does or have nearly as many fans if grounded mode was standard.

As a person that does enjoy a challenge. Grounded mode was still shallow to me. Cause all it ment was that i needed to use less bullets and scavenge more. Felt like a cheap challenge to me.

GOWR is literally opposite of that. I'd finish a main story beat and the game literally lets you do whatever until you want to continue.

I'm literally going over an hour of gameplay since I last played GOWR where I have to return back to the house to continue but I can go to other realms, do other side quests and explore without the game moving me forward. Horizon is even more so open. UC4 Lost Legacy gave you more wide-linear level designs where you could go off the story path to do something else but when done you'd continue to the main path. Those games I say that have weird narratives are typically games that have a bunch of story missions that end on some high urgency only to let you go look for a cat in a tree right after lol.

Gow does the same thing Gears of war did before it.

The story stuff is extremely linear but at certain points they give you large areas to explore, but the actual story sections play out like every other movie game.

Problem is, in Both GOW and Gears. The loot/equipment/upgrade system is very shallow, so the exploration stuff felt worthless just for the sake of doing it. It’s not like you are gonna find a weapon or skill that profusely changes or upgrades your gameplay experience. So all of it feels worthless. You might as well just follow the story path.

RDR2 was just a slog period to play. Max Payne 3 had excellent animations and felt godly to play. Cinematics and animations doesn't mean gameplay have to suffer.

Max Payne animations were not realistic at all. Nobody can contour their body like that in slow mo diving shooting. You don’t have to watch him clean and dechamber and reload each gun everytime. Don’t take 8 seconds to open doors etc. Max payne is a very videogamy game.

Look how smooth the gameplay is. Nothing is holding the players hand here. He's free to play out this level how he wants and it looks beautiful down to the small details.

They literally have you gated off through most of the game. You don’t get to “do what you want”

Again refer to your own words. You said open world games can’t tell a good story cause the player can just walk away and do what they want. So there must be an opposite side to that right?

LOL what game are you playing that's like this? In GOWR, Mimir or whoever is with you calls out danger that's behind you and there's even warning indicators letting you know an enemy is attacking you from behind. This is completely counter to positioning not being important. Positioning is VERY important in these games.

They warn you and wait to give you a chance to react, but most of the attacks will come from in front of you. Kratos is kinda sticky like Batman so he will kinda slide toward enemies so you very rarely will you miss by swinging from too far away or at the wrong angle. Positioning is not very important at all. You can pretty much just hit your combos and expect to hit something.

Compare combat in the new GOW games to the old. They play out very differently. Enemies behave very differently. Less enemies on screen, etc.

There’s clearly a very big difference in the combat between the two styles of game.

This is not an example of what I asked for. You just incorrectly named some things about some unknown game that has zero fail QTE's, constrained camera with enemies that don't attack from behind and combat mechanics that are dumbed down because they want you to be able to finish it.

I gave you some specific examples of design decisions that drive movie games. My post was not about any one specific game.

And you just described GOW with the bolded.

 

[Fatboi1]

The difficulty levels are there to ad more challenge but the game design remains the same. Giving you less bullets and/or making you shoot an enemy more times doesn’t change the game design.

That's actually NOT how it works in grounded mode. In grounded mode, the enemy AI is smarter and they flank you more aggressively and are much more lethal. It also doesn't make the enemies become bullet sponges, they actually die much quicker due to it being even more realistic.

The climbing/traversal in all the aforementioned games is pretty much automatic. You hold up, the character goes. You don’t have to care about the route you follow or stamina or spacing/timing with your jumps.

Uncharted 4 isn't a platformer though. You just go where you need to go. Exploration is more so what's emphasized in UC4. Traversal is more so just a means to an end, not the sole focus of it. Stamina bars, timing and stuff would be as pointless as adding a stamina meter in a Mario game.

Yes grounded mode offers a challenge, but that’s not the way the game is ment to be played and the game wouldn’t score nearly as well as it does or have nearly as many fans of grounded mode was standard.

What? The mode literally has changes made around it to even be "grounded" mode.

As a person that does enjoy a challenge. Grounded mode was still shallow to me. Cause all it ment was that i needed to use less bullets and scavenge more. Felt like a cheap challenge to me.

...

Gow does the same thing Gears of war did before it.

The story stuff is extremely linear but at certain points they give you large areas to explore, but the actual story sections play out like every other movie game.

Yes, if you're looking for a game where the story plays out differently then most games available on the market will disappoint you.

Problem is, in Both GOW and Gears. The loot/equipment/upgrade system is very shallow, so the exploration stuff felt worthless just for the sake of doing it. It’s not like you are gonna find a weapon or skill that profusely changes or upgrades your gameplay experience. So all of it feels worthless. You might as well just follow the story path.

We're gonna stop comparing Gears and God of War and act like they're similar. I have no idea why you're even putting the two together lol. Finding items in GOW does affect your weapons. Light and heavy runics are mostly optional. That along with finding certain armor/weapon parts allows you to create upgraded weapons/armors. I don't feel like that's worthless.

Max Payne animations were not realistic at all. Nobody can contour their body like that in slow mo diving shooting. You don’t have to watch him clean and dechamber and reload each gun everytime. Don’t take 8 seconds to open doors etc. Max payne is a very videogamy game.

That's a Red Dead problem. Max Payne 3 has very smooth, realistic looking animations in certain moments. It's not completely "gamey". TLOU isn't like RDR at all. It feels smooth while looking smooth. Everything makes sense. You're not moving realistically while enemies just charge at you at inhuman speeds.

They literally have you gated off through most of the game. You don’t get to “do what you want”

So how am I able to do what I want right now in the game if I'm gated off? If I was gated off, there wouldn't be any side quests or other realms for me to explore early on.

Again refer to your own words. You said open world games can’t tell a good story cause the player can just walk away and do what they want. So there must be an opposite side to that right?

Not all open world games. I said some open world games suffer like Ubisoft games sometimes.

They warn you and wait to give you a chance to react, but most of the attacks will come from in front of you. Kratos is kinda sticky like Batman so he will kinda slide toward enemies so you very rarely will miss by swinging from too far away or at the wrong angle. Positioning is not very important at all. You can pretty much just hit your combos and expect to hit something.

So now they wait? Lol they attack you relentlessly from all sides. Breh come on now I'm guessing you don't even play GOWR to be saying this lol.

Compare combat in the new GOW games to the old. They play out very differently. Enemies behave very differently. Less enemies on screen, etc.

There’s clearly a very big difference in the combat between the two styles of game.

I gave you some specific examples of design decisions that drive movie games. My post was not about any one specific game.

And you just described GOW with the bolded.

They play out differently just like how Resident Evil 4 plays out differently because of how the camera system changed from the old ones. Of course it will be different, it's new.

The combat system feels heavier with more emphasis on enemy attack patterns, dodging and whatnot. In the older game, it was basic hack and slash with a few bells and whistles. There's far more complexity in GOWR than say GoW3.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

That's actually NOT how it works in grounded mode. In grounded mode, the enemy AI is smarter and they flank you more aggressively and are much more lethal. It also doesn't make the enemies become bullet sponges, they actually die much quicker due to it being even more realistic.

Yes they die quicker but you get much less bullets so you have to scavenge more.

Uncharted 4 isn't a platformer though. You just go where you need to go. Exploration is more so what's emphasized in UC4. Traversal is more so just a means to an end, not the sole focus of it. Stamina bars, timing and stuff would be as pointless as adding a stamina meter in a Mario game.

Plenty of “not platformer” games have more skill based traversal.

You do this every time. You ask for specific examples, then you hand wave them shyts away and say “well the game ain’t supposed to do that”

Well that’s what I said. The game specifically wasn’t built to do that. It would fundamentally change the game.

They don’t want traversal to provide much resistance. Just a break in pacing on the way to the next story beat.

What? The mode literally has changes made around it to even be "grounded" mode.

...

And it’s an extra DLC mode.

If they truly made the game under that “Grounded” mindset and really made it like hardcore survival with choices and all that. With their usual high quality production values, The game would probably be amazing. But it probably wouldn’t sell as much

Yes, if you're looking for a game where the story plays out differently then most games available on the market will disappoint you.


We're gonna stop comparing Gears and God of War and act like they're similar. I have no idea why you're even putting the two together lol. Finding items in GOW does affect your weapons. Light and heavy runics are mostly optional. That along with finding certain armor/weapon parts allows you to create upgraded weapons/armors. I don't feel like that's worthless.

None of it really changes your experience through the game. A person that chooses just to do the story isn’t gonna have a very different experience playing through the story sections than someone who does more exploration. None of the bosses or enemies are gonna challenge you in a way that you need a weapon or skill you could only get by exploring.

That's a Red Dead problem. Max Payne 3 has very smooth, realistic looking animations in certain moments. It's not completely "gamey". TLOU isn't like RDR at all. It feels smooth while looking smooth. Everything makes sense. You're not moving realistically while enemies just charge at you at inhuman speeds.

I didn’t say TLOU was like RDR. But Max Payne animation is still more snappy/gamey than TLOU. In the TLOU everything feels more weighty and animations are more complete. That looks good, and makes sense for the narrative, but it doesn’t always feel the best to play.

So how am I able to do what I want right now in the game if I'm gated off? If I was gated off, there wouldn't be any side quests or other realms for me to explore early on.

Don’t do this dumb shyt. You know some/most games not movie games give the player lots more agency on where to go, how and when. In any other context you say how you appreciate that this style of game is more focused. Now you wanna pretend you don’t understand the difference

Not all open world games. I said some open world games suffer like Ubisoft games sometimes.

Naw you were pretty clear that it was a problem inherent to open world games.

So now they wait? Lol they attack you relentlessly from all sides. Breh come on now I'm guessing you don't even play GOWR to be saying this lol.

The A.I. works very differently based on what you can see on the screen. That’s basic video game design. Not even sure what you are arguing here.

If the enemies attacked you from behind in the same way they would a game you could see them that shyt would not fun at all

They play out differently just like how Resident Evil 4 plays out differently because of how the camera system changed. The combat system feels heavier with more emphasis on enemy attack patterns, dodging and whatnot. In the older game, it was basic hack and slash with a few bells and whistles. There's far more complexity in GOWR than say GoW3.

So why you acting like i’m speaking foreign when i said the shyt changed

And I disagree on the complexity thing. The OG games had more weapons and more different types of enemies that made you switch up your strategy, weapons or attacks to be successful. The new games not so much.

 

[The Intergalactic Koala]

I would prefer game play that didn’t hold my hand.

I’m cool with cutscenes. I don’t like dark souls way of story telling.

Eh, I love the approach that Dark Souls bring as far as lore. Letting the gamer tell the story, instead of reading rambling bullshyt like many video game stories.

 

[Rain]

There was nothing in this article that said ND was changing their gameplay style or cinematics.