Platinum Games announces Astral Chain for Nintendo Switch. Supervisor: Hideki Kamiya, Director: Taura Takahisa (Nier Automata). Launches August 30.
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Those character designs are pretty basic looking, but everything else looks interesting. Platinum hasn't made anything noteworthy since Bayo 2, so I'm hoping this and Bayo 3 knock it out of the park.
I think I'll have a better time with this than Metal Gear Rising. I could never get into that one because its approach to storytelling within its established universe frustrated me to not end. This game won't have that issue. I'm excited to learn more.
It's gonna get weird Evangelion shit where the Legions are themselves demons, trapped in armour, and chained to the cops as they're technically slaves.
The trailer made it seem like they're actually making an effort with the plot, so that's nice to see.
Really curious what Taura might bring from his experience with Automata into this.
I honestly think that they do it on purpose because they want you to learn the game systems yourself
Just because it looks similar doesn't mean it's on the game engine. That's not how it works.
It looks like Nier: Automata's rendering engine, namely the particle effects towards the end of the trailer. Wouldn't make sense for Platinum to abandon their own internal engine updated for modern hardware, with toolsets they're familiar with, for a foreign engine anyway.
K people, my bad. Let's move on!
Nah, easy assumption. Sometimes devs contracted to work with first parties will take on technology from first party studios. Death Stranding is using Guerilla's engine from Horizon. It's an exclusive to PlayStation 4, but Kojima Productions isn't a Sony first party studio. So that's an example of what you thought.
Platinum made the smart move to invest pretty heavily in their own technology from early on. Even when they took on development of Metal Gear Rising, salvaging KojiPro's mess, they didn't adopt FOX Engine despite the game originally being built on such.
In fact, nearly every game they've ever worked on has utilised their own inhouse engine. It's a good idea, especially for an independent dev, as it ensures technical consistency across all staff and titles. Allows for asset and code reuse pretty easily. Speeds up the production pipeline as programmers are familiar with the toolset.
Funnily enough, Scalebound was I think the first major detractor from this pattern, as they were making it on Unreal Engine 4. And...well, we know how that ended.
I can't imagine it's in active development. If it is, either Babylon's Fall or Bayo 3 isn't.
Why would you say that? Platinum has a ton of people. As of mid last year, they would have been working on Bayonetta 3, World of Demons, Babylon's Fall, Astral Chain, and Granblue Re:Link actively. That's how big they are. They're no longer working on two of those titles, and Astral Chain is probably almost done, given how it's shipping in August, so I don't see why they wouldn't be working on more games which aren't announced yet.
Sounds like few voices from Nier. The terrorist lady is definitely the commander from Nier.
Maybe I missed something. What other game looked and played like this?
Well, they weren't trying to make Bayonetta with a Nier skin, though. They were making a Nier game.
Maybe I missed something. What other game looked and played like this?
He's obviously talking about Ice Climbers in smash, same gameplay.
Maybe I missed something. What other game looked and played like this?
God this game just looks so satisfying. I can't wait for more footage - I think the tweet for the game mentioned we would have more info on it "soon." Wonder how long that will be.
Pink-Haired Terrorist Lady is my terrorist-fu. The evil-looking scientist dude is pretty neat design too. Getting some Shinji's dad in Evangelion vibes.
Everything looks awesome. I'm the slightest bit iffy on the grittiness, but overall it's an awesome aesthetic.
Everything looks awesome. I'm the slightest bit iffy on the grittiness, but overall it's an awesome aesthetic.
But what's a Nier game? We only had the first one before Automata, and well yeah, the bad things about Nier are indeed in Automata: bad bullet hell sections, bad enemy design, bad balance, mediocre attemps at doing multiple genres in one single game...
Automata is far better than the first Nier thanks to the elements Platinum brought from their other games: faster combat, better use of shooting mechanics for the ship sections (the first game had that awful attemps at the mine cart, let's try to forget the section), aerial combos...
I know that the music, world, writing... are from Nier, but the gameplay elements are a mix of good Platinum design and bad Yoko Taro decisions. Thankfully a third Nier will have even less fixated camera sections, minigames, and less half-assed mechanics that Yoko Taro is obsessed at including at his games even if we all know that his idea of gameplay design is more focused on quantity than on quality.
I wish I was as excited about this game as a lot of people seem to be. It just looks really boring to me.
It's an action RPG. It has good action RPG combat that doesn't require the precision of playing straight-action games like Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising. And as much as Automata cleaned up the wonkiness of the gameplay from the original Nier, it was also reverent toward it, maintaining crazy bullet-hell sequences, camera shifts, odd sidequests, and even fishing, despite you never having to fish for any reason in the game at all, ever. You can just do it, get the lore from those crazy fish you catch, and then maybe go for one of the game's many alternate endings that's just there for a joke.
As a Nier fan, Automata is more Nier, but better executed on a mechanical front. That's all I'd want or expect from it, regardless of the developer behind it.
Well it depends on personal preferences for sure. My opinion is that when you have a solid gameplay foundation, you can start adding mechanics and "special" sections, but IMO the first Nier, and to a lesser extent Automata lack the solid gameplay foundation.
The first one had a mediocre mix of the worst platforming I've ever played, one of the worst combat systems on a ARPG, really bad riding sections, lots of backtracking to the same 3/4 areas (the platforming section in the bridge is maybe one of the worst ideas ever in a videogame, considering that you'll need to traverse the same sections multiple times), a bad bullet-hell implementation, a magic system that requires some aiming in a game that is not prepared to offer good aiming...
Thankfully Platinum/Taro decided to reduce the focus on implementing more things in Automata and decided to polish some of the elements from the first game.
Director left mid-way.
I play Nomura games and wait for them just fine =) I'm used to not seeing any new visual for a game for ~2 years.
Would they say something else?
I'm chill but I don't like to see games changing directors mid-way. Bad memories from Nomura > Tabata I guess.
It'll be at least, like, 45ish, knowing Platinum. They'll target 60.
what makes you say that ? Most PG games try to reach 60 fps, don't they ?
When things got really bad for Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo produced an apology video explaining the situation.
I think the same, the trailer looks clean for a Switch game. I can see them locking the framerate to offer more appealing visuals but we'll see.
Also, I noticed that all the combats in the trailer were 1 vs 1 (technically 1 vs 2), so maybe that helps too.
The trailer being locked 30fps is what clues me in
Same with Kirby Star Allies and Doom. Wanted to believe those were 60 too, but alas.
I think that was because things had gone really really bad they changed the whole development studio. They also started from scratch
The difference with Bayonetta 3 here is that even if there was a massive retooling and the new director has a very different vision/direction from Hashimoto, as long as they get to finish the game, we wouldn't know the difference because they have shown nothing of the game so far. The biggest challenge for Tabata is that he was forced to keep certain things because of fan expectations from years of trailers and teasing, while he also want to do things his own way, leading to mish mash product that made a lot of people have weird expectations and perceptions, leading to disappointment. The comparisons will never end because S-E opened themselves up to that by showing Versus for years on drip feed, then announcing that it had become FFXV and claiming it was the same product at first, before announcing Nomura being dropped entirely and things clearly switching gears.
Nier Automata lost me at the demo. I own the game because I buy all things Platinum (and I had Amazon cash as a credit card reward), but I still haven't played through it all because I found the top-down sections and shooting stuff in the demo to be rather dull.
That is true yes. many reasons of my hate were the changes! but it felt like Tabata didn't really know how to make a game out of those remnants of Versus.
Not yet I believe. I think how well the game will turn out to be depends on the replacement. This may not be bad actually.. maybe the new director can shake up the gameplay and formula. Especially that as Duckroll said, we haven't seen anything.