Game Awards hopes and predictions

[Lord_Brand]

I still don't like the live action approach that the Sonic film took, but it's impressive how they were able to fix Sonic's design and actually make it look kinda serviceable by the time the film debuted, and in response to fan outcry no less. Nintendo should take notes.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Lord_Brand

[Fabulously Olivier]

55 minutes ago, Lord_Brand said:

I still don't like the live action approach that the Sonic film took, but it's impressive how they were able to fix Sonic's design and actually make it look kinda serviceable by the time the film debuted, and in response to fan outcry no less. Nintendo should take notes.

Take notes? Nintendo has had what? One live action movie in the last few years, and it was stellar.

 

And we haven't seen a single frame of the Mario movie yet to actually judge it. The outcry is nothing more than "Chris Pratt bad."

[vanguard333]

…I vaguely remember this thread having been about the Game Awards at one point, but it's been so long that the memory's very fuzzy.

I kid, but I'm not really the person to make that joke, since I'm the one that went off-topic in the first place by asking about the Sonic sequel.

Anyway, when I said earlier that I consider the Game Awards to be a joke and that I just hope to get some good laughs out of it, I was mainly talking about the awards themselves. But now, with the knowledge about the Sonic 2 trailer, I can easily say that I hope to get some laughs out that as well, and who knows; maybe the trailer will surprise me and have me laugh at something intended to be funny.

 

6 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Take notes? Nintendo has had what? One live action movie in the last few years, and it was stellar.

 

And we haven't seen a single frame of the Mario movie yet to actually judge it. The outcry is nothing more than "Chris Pratt bad."

Yeah; Detective Pikachu was actually really good.

Pretty much, although the outcry about the Mario movie is more than just "Chris Pratt bad"; it's also, "Illumination bad", which I actually agree with. Illumination made one decent film: the first Despicable Me movie, and that's it.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

There will ALSO be a trailer for the next Sonic video game. Presumably whatever the heck this was teasing  

Y'know, I like this surprise Sonic domination of The Game Awards. Sonic doesn't deserve half the chances we've given him over the years, but let's roll the dice a few more times anyway.  Life's good when you're thirty and flirty. 

[Fire Emblem Fan]

13 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Willing to settle for Sonic? Because that is what we are already confirmed to be getting.

I'm happy for all the Sonic fans excited about the sequel movie, but for me, I just...have never liked the Sonic games. At all. I do not like them and I do not think they are good video games. Hot take: Big the Cat (as in the character, not the gameplay) is the best thing to ever come from that franchise.

[Fabulously Olivier]

8 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'm happy for all the Sonic fans excited about the sequel movie, but for me, I just...have never liked the Sonic games. At all. I do not like them and I do not think they are good video games. Hot take: Big the Cat (as in the character, not the gameplay) is the best thing to ever come from that franchise.

I should not have been surprised that Big is your favorite character. 

 

Also I agree. Sonic was never that good, and he has more bad games than good ones at this point.

12 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

…I vaguely remember this thread having been about the Game Awards at one point, but it's been so long that the memory's very fuzzy.

I kid, but I'm not really the person to make that joke, since I'm the one that went off-topic in the first place by asking about the Sonic sequel.

Anyway, when I said earlier that I consider the Game Awards to be a joke and that I just hope to get some good laughs out of it, I was mainly talking about the awards themselves. But now, with the knowledge about the Sonic 2 trailer, I can easily say that I hope to get some laughs out that as well, and who knows; maybe the trailer will surprise me and have me laugh at something intended to be funny.

 

Yeah; Detective Pikachu was actually really good.

Pretty much, although the outcry about the Mario movie is more than just "Chris Pratt bad"; it's also, "Illumination bad", which I actually agree with. Illumination made one decent film: the first Despicable Me movie, and that's it.

You know, the funny thing about games as a medium is that they encapsulate all other art forms. So what is on-topic for a games award show is pretty broad.

 

For instance, if you veered into discussing what OSTs could be the concerts for this year's TGA, that would still be on topic.

[Etrurian emperor]

12 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

…I vaguely remember this thread having been about the Game Awards at one point, but it's been so long that the memory's very fuzzy.

I kid, but I'm not really the person to make that joke, since I'm the one that went off-topic in the first place by asking about the Sonic sequel.

Anyway, when I said earlier that I consider the Game Awards to be a joke and that I just hope to get some good laughs out of it, I was mainly talking about the awards themselves. But now, with the knowledge about the Sonic 2 trailer, I can easily say that I hope to get some laughs out that as well, and who knows; maybe the trailer will surprise me and have me laugh at something intended to be funny.

 

Yeah; Detective Pikachu was actually really good.

Pretty much, although the outcry about the Mario movie is more than just "Chris Pratt bad"; it's also, "Illumination bad", which I actually agree with. Illumination made one decent film: the first Despicable Me movie, and that's it.

The studio choice definitely implies that artistic merit isn't high on the priority list. 

[Lord_Brand]

21 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Take notes? Nintendo has had what? One live action movie in the last few years, and it was stellar.

I was referring to the Online Expansion Pack and its ridiculous price, though I also hated the fact Detective Pikachu went for live action.

16 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I'm happy for all the Sonic fans excited about the sequel movie, but for me, I just...have never liked the Sonic games. At all. I do not like them and I do not think they are good video games. Hot take: Big the Cat (as in the character, not the gameplay) is the best thing to ever come from that franchise.

I personally like the classic Sonic games, though the minimalist gameplay mechanics are a bit limiting. Why do you think the Sonic games are not good?

I'd argue Rouge the Bat is the best character to come out of the Sonic franchise, but her potential as a spinoff protagonist has thus far been untapped.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Lord_Brand

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Okay I'm coming into this show late this year but ummmm there have been TWO references to Silent Hill in the last twenty minutes? Keighley, if you don't deliver now, we're putting you in jail again. He has to know the stakes.

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Fabulously Olivier]

I am really impressed with the Suicide Squad. Definitely going on my wishlist for next year. The confirmation that it's 3rd person was important for me, and the gameplay looks slick.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

8 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

I personally like the classic Sonic games, though the minimalist gameplay mechanics are a bit limiting. Why do you think the Sonic games are not good?

This is gonna be another hot take, but I don't think they're designed particularly well. And I think they're simply not very fun to actually play.

16 hours ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

I should not have been surprised that Big is your favorite character.

What can I say? I'm predictable!

[Lord_Brand]

3 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I don't think they're designed particularly well. And I think they're simply not very fun to actually play.

Any more specific examples? Like issues with the core mechanics, level designs, game flow, etc.? And are there platformers you do enjoy playing that you can use for comparison? I recall that you're a Crash and Spyro fan, so perhaps you can point to instances of how those games succeed where Sonic does not?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

7 hours ago, Lord_Brand said:

Like issues with the core mechanics, level designs, game flow, etc.?

The absolute best and most clear answer I can give you is "yes." Yes to all of this.

[Benice]

The ER trailer looked fantastic, and I'm hoping that it spreads the word that Elden Ring is coming out in just under a few months! I've been trying to keep myself from watching all of the Network Test footage, and I'm kinda glad I did. The game seems like it's gonna be kino, and I only tend to form negative opinions on games when I hear negative opinions about them.

Aside from that, the new Sonic game actually looks really good, the new Horizon game looks really good, lots of other games look good.  I am very excited about the gaming yea to come!

[Fabulously Olivier]

So can we move the general discussion to everyone's favorite announcements from the awards? 

 

I already said mine. Suicide Squad. Also Evil West and Babylon's Fall.

[vanguard333]

I completely missed the Game Awards as I had no idea when it was going to happen, so I ended up having to read the awards on Wikipedia, and I still have yet to see all the announcements.

I will say that I did get some laughs; not nearly as many as I got in 2020 when every award was given to The Last of Us 2, but I did get some laughs: 

1. Seeing that the voice actress for that giant lady from Resident Evil 8 got the best performance award got a laugh; I admittedly haven't played the game and I'm sure she probably deserves the award, but I'm almost certain that they gave her the awards simply because of how famous the character became for a while thanks to all the memes.

2. It was kind-of funny seeing the list of nominees for Best Family Game consist entirely of Nintendo games except for one, with that one being the game that won (It Takes Two). I didn't play It Takes Two, and it won Game of the Year, so of course it was going to be given every award they nominated it for, but it is still funny.

Seeing Halo Infinite win Players' Voice award was surprising rather than funny; I admit that I know next-to-nothing about the Halo series, but I thought every new Halo game made after Reach gets tossed into the garbage bin. I honestly expected Metroid Dread to win Players' Voice.

 

EDIT: I have now seen the Star Wars Eclipse announcement. Let me get this straight; there's an upcoming Star Wars game being made by the same studio that made Detroit: Become Human among other David Cage games?! That is hilarious! Easily funnier than the awards somehow. A David Cage Star Wars game; just the concept sounds like a hilarious recipe for disaster.

I also have now seen the Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak trailer. The werewolf monster looks really cool, and I am definitely interested in this expansion of Rise.

I also saw the Sonic Frontiers trailer. So, the next phase of Sonic is to take some notes from Breath of the Wild like everyone else? I've never been interested in Sonic; I hope for the fans' sake that the game is good, but precedent gives me reason to doubt that it will be.

Edited December 10, 2021 by vanguard333

[Florete]

49 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I didn't play It Takes Two, and it won Game of the Year, so of course it was going to be given every award they nominated it for, but it is still funny.

I'm not sure if you're just exaggerating or not, but It Takes Two was nominated for - and didn't win - Best Game Direction and Best Narrative.

[vanguard333]

7 hours ago, Florete said:

I'm not sure if you're just exaggerating or not, but It Takes Two was nominated for - and didn't win - Best Game Direction and Best Narrative.

It was actually a case of me misreading the awards list. Thanks for pointing that out.

Edited December 11, 2021 by vanguard333

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Alan Wake is one of my favorite horror games of all time, but I am a little conflicted on the announcement of a sequel. It's a very Stephen King brand of horror story with an ambiguous ending. Some people might see that as "leaving the door open for a sequel", but I don't think you can do anything else with the particular story of Alan Wake, the character, that wasn't already done in its DLC. Also they DID do a schlocky Alan Wake sequel with a totally different tone and universe. I don't want to remember it either, but it happened. 

I have some friends that loved the Warhammer 40K Space Marine game on Xbox 360. So the sequel came as a delightful surprise. 

The Sonic movie trailer looked neat! Maybe I'm just in the right (wrong?) state of mind for this but that was an unusually good trailer for a family friendly action adventure comedy. And their little skits before it were fun too. As for the new game trailer umm, does it count as "gameplay" when we see game assets but no playable character, enemies, or NPCs? I'm going to rule this under "cinematic trailer". An open world Sonic game has actually been passed around on forums since the late 2000s to my recollection. Or at least the idea of open levels where you the player need to negotiate fast landscapes at high speeds in a manner calling back to the branching paths of the original Genesis games. I wouldn't say I'm cautiously optimistic on this new game announcement, but cautious certainly.

I am very happy to see Metroid Dread take the Best Action Adventure award. As erroneous of a category as that is every year. It's always a kind of minaturized version of the GOTY lineup. I do wish we could have had some MercurySteam developer to accept the award instead of Doug Bowser. A little sad to see the Psychonauts 2 and RE8 snubs. Both wonderful games who tie for the fourth most nominations in the show, and neither got anything. But I do think It Takes Two winning GOTY is kind of cool. Cool that an indie game can win the most biggest of awards. And especially cool that it means Josef Faris will be presenting 2022's Game of the Year. Love that guy. 

16 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Okay I'm coming into this show late this year but ummmm there have been TWO references to Silent Hill in the last twenty minutes? Keighley, if you don't deliver now, we're putting you in jail again. 

Geoffrey Keighley I hereby sentence you to Six months of gamer prison for the tease of a Silent Hill announcement while not being in possession of a trailer. Your sentence IS being cut in half because you yourself did not tease the game, but there will be no chance of parole until Summer Games Fest. The Court DOES take into consideration how hard it would be to push back against Guillermo Del Toro. 

[Lord_Brand]

5 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

The absolute best and most clear answer I can give you is "yes." Yes to all of this.

But that doesn't explain what the exact issues are. Perhaps you can describe what your first experience playing Sonic was like? Which game did you play first? Did you play a Classic game, or a Modern one? First impressions often make or break one's interest in a particular game or series, and if you started with, say, Sonic 06, well that's going to color your opinion of the franchise very differently than if you started with Sonic Adventure or the Genesis Classics. How many games of the series have you played?

Me, my first exposure to the franchise was in the form of Game Gear titles like Sonic & Tails and Sonic Triple Trouble. Years later, I picked up Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for GCN, which marked my official investment into the series as a fan. Then came Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Riders, the Genesis classics via Virtual Console, Sonic Mania...I'm not nearly as avid a Sonic fan as I am a Mega Man Classic/X fan, but I do enjoy the Classic Sonic style of gameplay. The emphasis on momentum distinguished Sonic from his contemporaries back in the day, and the Spin Charge served as a useful tool for reaching top speed.

It's unfortunate that the developers lost sight of that with the transition to 3D, which is where the Sonic series' gameplay quality started to decline. However, the Homing Attack was a legitimately good addition for 3D Sonic for much the same reason Z-Targeting was a good addition for 3D Zelda; it gave the developers and players a tool for improving accuracy in a format where it's much harder to line up a jump or shot properly. If the Spin Charge was 2D Sonic's most important asset, the Homing Attack was 3D Sonic's.

Sonic Frontiers looks promising as an open world setting will make good use of Sonic's speed. I hope the game makes good use of Sonic's extended cast as well; Tails' flight and Knuckles' wall climbing will flourish in the 3D setting. I daresay Sonic Frontiers might be positioned to pull off 3DOW better than BotW did. Depending on how well they designed the game, Sonic Frontiers might even be the most innovative 3DOW game yet.

Edited December 10, 2021 by Lord_Brand

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Lord_Brand said:

Sonic Frontiers looks promising as an open world setting will make good use of Sonic's speed. I hope the game makes good use of Sonic's extended cast as well; Tails' flight and Knuckles' wall climbing will flourish in the 3D setting. I daresay Sonic Frontiers might be positioned to pull off 3DOW better than BotW did. Depending on how well they designed the game, Sonic Frontiers might even be the most innovative 3DOW game yet.

I will admit that I'm not a Sonic fan and I haven't played any of the games, but I seriously rather doubt this. Don't get me wrong; in the hands of a competent and creative team that's given the time that they need, theoretically, a good 3D open-world Sonic game could be made. However, at best, an open-world Sonic game would only really be better than Breath of the Wild at movement across the map; I don't see how it could be a better overall open-world game than BOTW.

Not only that, but the precedent for 3D Sonic games being well-received in any lasting way, shape or form is... not great. It's still a game being made by Sonic Team, and the last Sonic game to get decent reviews was Sonic Mania, which was made by someone else entirely.

Finally, it can't exactly be more innovative than BOTW if it's using BOTW's template, and, from the look of the trailer, that's exactly what it's doing. The towers even look almost identical, just now with rings.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

Finally, it can't exactly be more innovative than BOTW if it's using BOTW's template, and, from the look of the trailer, that's exactly what it's doing. The towers even look almost identical, just now with rings.

You are aware that BotW did not invent the Ubisoft Tower, right? Those 10-15 large structures that update your map when you reach the top? That's from Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. BotW can only seem innovative if your only frame of reference is other Zelda games.

You're right to doubt Sonic Team's capabilities though. There hasn't been a Sonic game that is comparable to this genre. Not a lot of Japanese studios are pumping out this style of game year after year like the rest of the world does. Nintendo couldn't do it either, that's why they got Monolith Soft to help. So it's not just a matter of how much development time/resources, but a lack of R&D that they need to contend with as well. Development on this game reportedly began in March 2019, which means most of its development time occurred during COVID, and it's slated to release on all current and next gen platforms. That's more versions than Cyberpunk 2077 had to make. And they couldn't even release a port of Sonic Colors that ran perfectly on any of them. If Sonic Frontiers releases as a functioning video game in 2022 like they're planning, it will be a nice surprise. If it releases as a good video game, that's a miracle. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Zapp Branniglenn

[vanguard333]

58 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

You are aware that BotW did not invent the Ubisoft Tower, right? Those 10-15 large structures that update your map when you reach the top? That's from Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. BotW can only seem innovative if your only frame of reference is other Zelda games.

You're right to doubt Sonic Team's capabilities though. There hasn't been a Sonic game that is comparable to this genre. Not a lot of Japanese studios are pumping out this style of game year after year like the rest of the world does. Nintendo couldn't do it either, that's why they got Monolith Soft to help. So it's not just a matter of how much development time/resources, but a lack of R&D that they need to contend with as well. Development on this game reportedly began in March 2019, which means most of its development time occurred during COVID, and it's slated to release on all current and next gen platforms. That's more versions than Cyberpunk 2077 had to make. And they couldn't even release a port of Sonic Colors that ran perfectly on any of them. If Sonic Frontiers releases as a functioning video game in 2022 like they're planning, it will be a nice surprise. If it releases as a good video game, that's a miracle. 

I know that BOTW did not invent the idea of using towers as a gameplay mechanic in an open-world game as you described, but you have to admit that BOTW towers are different from Ubisoft towers in terms of mechanics (for instance, to find things on the map, you have to look for them, whereas Ubisoft games automatically fill the map section with icons indicating things). Plus, when I said that the Sonic Frontier towers look a lot like the BOTW towers, I was largely meaning in terms of aesthetics; they look like BOTW towers with stone rings attached to them. The towers were also just the one example I decided to give of the game looking like it's copying Breath of the Wild's template, with the intended implication that there were others I could easily point to.

That is an excellent point. If they had said something like, "To help make the game, we partnered up with [insert dev team that knows how to make a 3D open-world game here]", then that would've been at least somewhat reassuring. And that Cyberpunk comparison is an interesting one, as that game was made by a team that had previously made a semi-open world game in The Witcher 3, and we all know how Cyberpunk 2077 worked out.

[Lord_Brand]

I'm curious to know how they'll capitalize on the OW layout. Will there be items to collect? NPCs? Sidequests? I just hope this doesn't turn out to be another Sonic 06.

[vanguard333]

10 minutes ago, Lord_Brand said:

I'm curious to know how they'll capitalize on the OW layout. Will there be items to collect? NPCs? Sidequests? I just hope this doesn't turn out to be another Sonic 06.

I keep hearing from many different people about Sonic 06 being essentially the terrible Sonic game; the worst of the worst; the one that not even the biggest defenders of the more recent Sonic games would ever even try to defend. But I've never heard anyone say why that is; what it was about the game that made it so terrible. I don't know anything about the game other than its reputation, so I am curious.

Edited December 11, 2021 by vanguard333