This is all pretty big news, albeit not surprising. I'm curious if any of the sunset content (like Red War) will return, and how will 10 years of seasonal content behind paywalls fit into everything. I've not played D2 since shortly after Light & Dark wrapped up, but I would love to come back and play through with friends that have never played. But if they can't access most of the game without dropping major bucks, well...I guess we won't.

You had to be there. 🫡

Hopefully it was the friends we made along the way. All you HBOers and DBOers keep in touch okay?

Sparrow Racing League Returns! Nothing else matters! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I think a lot of it can be put at the feet of the game leadership, but a lot of it is them not being allowed to do their vision too.

I'm go glad that through whatever way I am living my life I only am just now learning by proxy of this online "Discourse". (See also Pragmata)

The less you know about the weird Pragmata takes, the better.

I missed SE Spider a lot today…

As people have said, this wasn't all of Bungie's only work so it's hard from the outside to know how efficient that work was (Just like it's hard to know from the outside if the financials can work.

The general sense I get from the games industry is that there is a massive amount of wasted effort in a lot of these high profile games. Think about how expensive reshoots are for a film. If you nail the script the first time and shoot what you need, you're going to save tens of millions of dollars.

And yet it seems totally normal for games to be completely reworked and rebuilt. Bioshock Infinite was the most expensive game when it was made, and sure enough almost the entire game was scrapped and made again.

People are blaming the costs of western workers, but all and all it seems like it's just a lack of direction. When you mess up and have to completely redo so much, that's a massive hit when you have to pay everyone to rebuild it. I don't think it's the executive leadership, but the game direction leadership.

I think this is a good analogy in that it can take a lot of people doing their jobs well for things to work out, and even then there's a good bit of luck and inspiration involved. I think of it as a little miracle when a movie or game is able to suck you in and demand your full attention.

I don’t even know that it’s necessarily lack of direction. It’s not like I know personally, but it seems like it’d be pretty difficult to tell if a game even works as a game and is fun until there’s a significant portion of it that’s nearing some stage of completion.

I think this is it. By the time you've dialed in what works or doesn't work, you've probably started and stopped a million other things with an engine built (frankenstein-ed) to accommodate those other things. At that point, engine efficiencies probably are more easily resolved with a rebuild that focuses on the fun parts while eschewing the others.

Its a little like playing with legos and building something new. Your first take might involve tons of starts and stops as you figure out what pieces fit and create the shape you're going for. Along the way, you may learn some better techniques that can get to that final shape that you didn't know at the beginning. It's too late to rebuild the core, but you at least know the basic target you're aiming for. At that point, you can rebuild the whole thing more efficiently for your second draft and it will likely come together much more quickly.

I can't imagine many video games have a complete picture of the end product in view before the code is started.

On the other hand, the cost of figuring out what's fun along the way must be insanely expensive for AAA studios today (vs rewriting Halo CE as an FPS for the XBOX before launch for example).

Yeah. I agree with all of that. My guess is that the PvE experience will be lots of very hard UESC calibrated for difficulty with multiple squads and a button-press-y mechanic that requires teamwork (like simultaneous activation or something) Possibly with an opportunity for betrayal.

Now would be a great time to add some aliens and fire! They've already got the 3D and the guns.

As people have said, this wasn't all of Bungie's only work so it's hard from the outside to know how efficient that work was (Just like it's hard to know from the outside if the financials can work.

The general sense I get from the games industry is that there is a massive amount of wasted effort in a lot of these high profile games. Think about how expensive reshoots are for a film. If you nail the script the first time and shoot what you need, you're going to save tens of millions of dollars.

And yet it seems totally normal for games to be completely reworked and rebuilt. Bioshock Infinite was the most expensive game when it was made, and sure enough almost the entire game was scrapped and made again.

People are blaming the costs of western workers, but all and all it seems like it's just a lack of direction. When you mess up and have to completely redo so much, that's a massive hit when you have to pay everyone to rebuild it. I don't think it's the executive leadership, but the game direction leadership.

I'm go glad that through whatever way I am living my life I only am just now learning by proxy of this online "Discourse". (See also Pragmata)

The less you know about the weird Pragmata takes, the better.

And then you have Mixtape, where the “gameplay” exists to just give you something to do so you don’t get bored while you are fed a movie. I’ve seen it described as “jingling keys”, which isn’t too far off the mark. Still, it’s technically a game, but there isn’t really a point to its interactivity outside of triggering nostalgia for certain things, as the kids, story, and your understanding and level of context will continue exactly the same, regardless of your input.

They should have put in a rudimentary RNG determined interstitial game about dispatching police and firefighters to deal with the events. Then it would be a GOTY contender!

They’ll have to do a lot of work. The PvE in Marathon is not engaging enough to hold up on its own. Without the risk of other players, the PvE isn’t difficult at all. Marathon with nothing but its current PvE design would be boring.

I’m totally here for them to experiment, but there’s a not insignificant part of me that worries they’ll be chasing more players and turn this into a game I just don’t like anymore. The Arc Raiders community is already insufferable because of people complaining about PvP, and PvP players tell them to fuck off if they don’t like it. Marathon has been refreshingly free of that. I just hope they don’t change the game too much, because it’s goddamn fun as is.

Yeah. I agree with all of that. My guess is that the PvE experience will be lots of very hard UESC calibrated for difficulty with multiple squads and a button-press-y mechanic that requires teamwork (like simultaneous activation or something) Possibly with an opportunity for betrayal.

Also, kinda a shame that even with that understanding he still keeps reinforcing the narrative that the game is "Only for hard-core PVP players". It's simply not true and has become less and less true over the first season. One piece of evidence now available is that none of the hard-core pvp players are playing Marathon.

Anyway, Bungie is (being forced to?) make literal PvE modes, so maybe that will disrupt the narrative.

As for why the game took so long…Because it's a modern Bungie game? Why did Destiny take so long for what we got? The rumors were that the Gabe had to be re-built fairly close to launch, and Marathon had similar rumors. We saw the last months of development happening essentially in the open, and we know why they had to do a survey of all the art assets. Also, with the PvP game narrative, I wonder if people think of "4 maps" like 4 crucible maps or something. There is a lot of stuff in these maps. layers and tunnels and hidden rooms. I'm still finding new stuff. At this point Arc Raiders just launched the 6th map, right? I think Tarkov is only at 10. Apex has 6.

As people have said, this wasn't all of Bungie's only work so it's hard from the outside to know how efficient that work was (Just like it's hard to know from the outside if the financials can work.