This is why I consider difficulty scale essential game design. Sure, there are good and bad ways of implementing it, but a game should both be able to appeal to casuals and hardcore gamers and easy, normal, hard is the simplest way to execute it. Level scaling and smarter AI is another, harder way.
A related problem is what's not copied. I'm far from the first to wonder why there's no big open world action RPGs with mod support to compete with Skyrim. Especially when companies will spend 300 million to make shit like Spiderman 2 and Suicide Squad, but won't pay a less than a third of that to make a Skyrim knock off.
Oblivion also has one of the dumbest leveling systems ever conceived. A lot of Oblivion's charm is in the side-quests, as nearly all the guild questlines are much better in Oblivion (Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood clears nearly every questline in both games).
Soulslikes killed the Hack & Slash.
wouldn't surprise me, Oblivion was the only Bethesda game I didn't enjoy (I even liked Starfield in spite if its flaws), as far as leveling goes Oblivion had the worst, not that Skyrims was perfect either, I just hope with TES VI they make it more difficult to say level up your ability with a sword if you have already committed to using Spells as your main way of doing combat, Morrowind was good in that regard as it didnt let you just become a god of everything.
Dark Souls was in a way the last truly innovative game which is shocking cause its not even that innovative, its stamina based combat system was just a unique staple of Fromsoft going back to KingsField 1. A lot of other things were not new but just inspired content, the metroidvaniaish n64 world structure, the corpse run mechanic from WoW, dark fantasy aesthetic, weapon class specialization, secrets and trolls, lack of handholding among many other things. It was also the last successful what Jim Sterling calls mid tier game which was made on a modest budget and for a niche audience, something like Painkiller or God Hand. Once the bad habits of the industry crystallized, stuff like big budgets, mechanic recycling, shitty art design etc, the industry closed its doors after Dark souls and proceeded to fellate fromsofts innovations constantly, especially after Bloodbornes success. I think things will be better once the industry crashes cause people will be willing to experiment more and take more risks instead of just recycling mechanics and making shit games. People really need to look more towards the games released from 89-2005 for mechanical inspiration or take nintendos approach where they create prototypes on paper before committing to the mechanics. Also the cult of personality around current thing and mass psychosis of the modern gaming community doesnt help with how pozzed shit is.
I think it was Jim Sterling of all people (so likely not his original thought) who I first heard that company heads like taking the risk of the big thing and try for a piece of the big pie rather than a smaller narrower one. Others elaborated more on it: the game industry is kind of like the movie industry now where CEOs come in, go for the biggest pile of money possible, get people hyped to preorder things and see investors put money into their company for future good-looking products that seem like a safe bet, then continue to expand as much as possible until you're at the breaking point and run away on the golden parachute while the studio employees hold the bag and the customers hold a shit product. Other companies in different fields experience the same thing and I'm sure I'm getting details wrong, but the point isn't to exist as a company forever but to use the company as a temporary short term gamble for maximum investment and take the next stepping stone whether it does or doesn't pay off in 5 years. It's trying to see a big increase in short term profits NOW NOW NOW NOW than to keep a stable audience or industry, especially if the company has any higher ups who have no experience developing, just doing business. It's SOMETHING like that but I just woke up to use the bathroom and check the farms and am about to go back to bed so if a smarter Kiwi corrects me I won't be upset.
Nintendo recently announced investing more into mid tier gaming and the studios behind them, and Ubisoft released a mid budget Prince of Persia (that I haven't been looking at sales-wise but might be good) as an attempt to start capitalizing on at least part of this. I agree, I hate to call for a collapse of things since not all developers are pozzed leeches with paper skin and it sucks to be out of work, but it likely will help restructure things from the crazy structures we have now (and take a while before the next cycle of pain solidifies).
I really think the existing publishers are the main problem, publishers should really just die. Back in the day there were a couple dozen mainstream developers and a million non mainstream partially cause the consoles were open to new blood and experimentation, you could be Suda51 and make some shit like Killer7 or Cave Story or Katamari Damacy and have it published for the Gamecube or PS2. For the SNES and PS1 there were a billion different developers and couple publishers, I dont even know if Atlus or SNK still make games. At some point of time publishers got too much power and consolidated into 3 or 4 behemoths which is something which has to go. After the Crash of 82 83, no game dev or publisher survived and those who survived like Atari didnt make it to the Millennium. We need that kind of nuke right now cause letting Actiblizz Sony Microsoft Tencent and whoever else puppet this dead horse we call an industry is just leaving wounds open till the end of time. Nintendo can stay though, Nintendo as a publisher is really good at taking care of their studios like EPD, Browniebrown, Gamefreak, Hudsonsoft et al and theyre careful about what they put out unless its mobile gacha shit.
You got it close enough. That's been a problem with a lot of things. Why I (and other people) are now against publically traded companies.
Ignoring the woke shit the Japanese have a different flavour to their games, not just aesthetically but also in game design. Theyre also pretty homogenized but Nintendo has a separate design, Square has a separate design, Capcom has a separate design, From has a separate design yet theyre all somehow uniquely Japanese, even when they imitate the amerimutt aesthetic like in Resident Evil or eurofag shit with From. In the 90s every game Nintendo developed published or to some degree hosted on their systems was chibi colorful and goofy on the NES and SNES even when it was supposed to be serious subject matter (Ghosts and Goblins, Adventure Island), every Square game was steeped in colorful euro fantasy ala Alice in Wonderland/Grimm brothers, every Capcom game was very comic booky and exaggerated be it Strider SF Final Fight or King of Dragons. Nintendo games were always toyish with easy to learn tough to master mechanics, Square games always had complex progression and item/build variety, Capcom always had arcadey mechanics which relied a lot on muscle memory. That kind of diversity in aesthetic and game design died with the XBOX and PS2 verging on PS3, coincidentally when the industry was starting to develop bad habits like online multiplayer and "SP is dead" and the west was starting to gain the upper hand on the game industry. Its fair to say Japs do Jap shit in their own way, Gunpei Yokoi and Miyamoto back in the day used to develop game prototypes on paper to gauge how fun the mechanics would be before they committed to development. Western games were always about the explosive showpieces exhibitionism literature and whatever else, they were never about the mechanics or how fun the game was which is why they were and still to an extent extremely static. At the risk of sounding racist, both should be kept very very separate. Publishers especially people like Embracer and Blackrock, people fellating China and Israel should stay the fuck away and let the Japs do Jap shit their way cause its something very endangered and at risk of extinction.
![LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]](http://uploads.kiwifarms.st/data/avatars/l/61/61177.jpg?1699571951){kind=avatar}
Japanese games sucked during that era for the opposite reason . They were all trying to appeal to westerners and adopting western bland game design which blew. Capcom had a bunch of stinkers in a row because of it. When jap devs started going back to jap style games they started doing a lot better and started seeing hits like Persona or Yakuza series that are weeb as hell and were well received in the west because of it . Problem is Sony in particular never learned and are fully commited to their Californian overlords.
Which games? I'm guessing Bomberman, but I struggle to think of others. Maybe Resident Evil 6 or Lost Planet? There was that one Gears of War clone, but I remember that being seen as insane with you literally throwing women at your enemies or riding on the back of a rock dragon.
By "western games" you mean "Call of Duty clones", or maybe "Ubisoft games" at a stretch.
I mean everything from Garriotts Ultima to today. Theyre at best reactive and at worst extremely static. Maybe the sim genre gets some exception but theyre all very very static mechanically compared to japanese games cause theres no real mechanical depth in any western game (unless its a sim ofc). Theres a reason why only japanese games get the kaizo level creator treatment, theres a reason why people only are drawn towards japanese game speedrunning compared to like western games.
Remember me, Bionic comando, DMC, The aforementioned bomberman.
That Bionic Commando reboot was made by Grin, a western studio. DMC was also a western reboot.
You might like #BLUD
I get where you're coming from, but glimpses and blurry looks is what makes the monsters interesting.
