KickStarter Bloodstained - Koji Igarashi's new metroidvania game

[nomask7]

It takes around 10 hours to play through SotN as a noob, certainly not much more than 15 hours of leisurely playtime. It's a short game. There's no excuse for making a game this short today when the expectation is 40-60 hours for a CRPG - not when you got 5.5 million from your kickstarter.

Short games in a popular series are a money grab. There's no other point to making short games than greed when you'd have the finances for something much better. And actually even a 40 hour CRPG is rather short if it's as easy as modern games. You can play through one in a week, because you never have to restart and you never get stuck. Remember the way you'd have to restart in Dark Omen because the long campaign had worn down your troops so much that you couldn't handle the last levels? Never happens in a modern game.

 

[Amn Nom]

Games cost more to make, between inflation and rising costs of technology. 5.5 million in 1997 would actually come out to $3,730,996.33 just with reverse inflation. You could make a fair mid-sized game with that, but corners still need to be cut.

Comparing an action platformer to an RPG is fucking absurd dude. To start with, RPGs cut so many corners to achieve that length. Wizardry 8 is 100 hours because enemies respawn if you look the other way it feels like. Drakensang is so long because the quests have you running to and fro on pointless shit when I would rather just skip. Skyrim (not an RPG, but a perfect example) is so long because its filled with empty space and copy/pasted environments. Dragon Age is so long because the combat moves at a snails pace. This is all cheap shit that adds nothing to the game. Drop it and the length is rather 'short'.

What is the appeal of Fallout boiled down to the very fundamentals? Its a short game, no fat, and built to be played 100 times.

Sure, there are a few RPGs that justify the length, but those are in the minority of the shitty bloat filled ones. How many have come out of the new incline wave? Wasteland 2 is supposed to be shit. Divinity lost appeal to me 40 hours in because it was the same thing over and over. Might & Magic X is supposed to be the same thing over and over, but being a blobber I can overlook that. Grimrock 2 is 20-30 hours of mostly puzzle gameplay, so there maybe a winner there. Pillars of Eternity is a game I loved, put 37 hours in over 3 days. Then I never picked it up again because I burned out over doing the same thing over and over. Blackguard had good length, and combat guys seem to like it. Blackguards 2 was supposed to be shit iirc. Serpants in the Staglands is 20ish hours by developer estimates and what I've skimmed from the thread has been positive. Feel free to correct me if I misrepresented the ones I haven't touched or ones I forgot about.

Action platformers don't need to be long. They just need to be replayable. Increase the length too much and we run into the problem that some RPGs have. How many times have you played Symphony of the Night? How about Super Metroid? Any of the Igavania titles? If you truly love the genre, more then once I'm sure. So take that 10 hours and multiply it by how many times you have played it. Do that for every single good action platformer and I bet you the playtime is pretty damn good on average.

 

[nomask7]

You're right, that was a comment made without due care. I wasn't thinking of classics like Might & Magic VI or Oblivion, those are 80-100 hour games. You're right they're not comparable.

However... Dark Souls II is something like 30 hours with the DLC for a fast, competent first playthrough without a lot of grinding or getting stuck having to redo an area. There's not really any filler in that game if you don't have to grind or redo areas. In content, the game is comparable with Symphony of the Night - minimal dialogue, compact game world, combat doesn't take long. SotN actually has some annoyingly long corridors and back-and-forth through the same areas even if you're superb at using the teleports. I'd say it has more "filler" in this sense than DS2. Now, 30 hours is still twice or thrice as long as SotN. And that game had TWO castles.

I'm also more likely to replay Dark Souls II than Symphony of the Night, although back in the day I did play through the latter a few times (but I was young and easily amused).

This new metroidvania I'm actually looking forward to due to the optional nightmare difficulty. I'm interested in the basic concept of these games - the RPG element of character progression, loot/equipment system, exploration - but it's all wasted if the game is too easy. While atmosphere can save any game, the metroidvanias I've played or tried were never as good with it as Super Metroid; I don't see them as good games and I don't expect this new one to be any better unless it can provide me with an interesting challenge.

 

[nomask7]

Increase the length too much and we run into the problem that some RPGs have.

I just want to point out that it's quite possible to make the castle huge and rather empty of enemies if you make it atmospheric and design it to be interesting in terms of platforming (something which none of these games are). As well as make the monsters challenging so that exploration becomes dangerous and exciting in that sense too...

So much could be accomplished by making the scale a lot bigger. Imagine a Super Mario level that seems to never end - that would be nerve-wrecking, in a good way.

Of course, these aren't meant to be interesting games. They're the Harry Potter of games, and they're not supposed to challenge or shock you or give you any lasting impressions. (Probably the last TES game that did that was Daggerfall. Can you imagine a metroidvania that was made with the same passion and ambition as Daggerfall? I can, and I think it would be great.)

 

[Trodat]

I'm not expert but almost $6M seems like a huge amount of money for a side scroller.

 

[nomask7]

I'm not expert but almost $6M seems like a huge amount of money for a side scroller.

They could make a Lars von Trier movie with that money. They're instead making a little side-scroller.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The thing everyone seems to forget/ignore about the Igavania games, is that you can't have high difficulty AND an open world. If the game lets you branch off 5 different ways right from the get go, obviously only the first 2 paths are going to offer any real challenge, and the rewards in the later ones will be significantly less relative to what you already have. This is the nature of an open game. You can have fun because you're facing challenges and acquiring power, or you can have fun because you're using that power to dominate challenges easily, but you can't have both in the same place in the same run through, unless you put in some level scaling or something, but that would seriously deflate any satisfaction for exploring, because there's no point in finding the secret hidden gear if it's level scaled so it won't actually matter in 10 minutes.

 

[evdk]

I'm not expert but almost $6M seems like a huge amount of money for a side scroller.

They could make a Lars von Trier movie with that money. They're instead making a little side-scroller.

Does IGA no longer get additional funding from actual publishers? Because that means he gets even more money than that. You may commence you belly aching now.

Spoiler

Why do we have to go through this same exact song and dance on every fucking high profile KS ever, after 4 years? War, war never changes.

 

[Infinitron]

Kz3r0 Cool - Bloodstained has been added to the Google Docs table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q9n4N7Pr4hjtn7LZWFYT_0tRFCK6Mox1f87iL11PMgw/edit#gid=14

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

 

[nomask7]

The thing everyone seems to forget/ignore about the Igavania games, is that you can't have high difficulty AND an open world.

You've obviously never played Night of the Raven.

Of course, in games where success in combat is 100% based on player stats rather than even partly on player skill, that sort of problem does arise.

In metroidvania games though, it wouldn't be an issue in a well-designed game: you just have to be really good at the game if you want to venture too deep into some of the harder areas.

Wait, rereading your message, what are you even complaining about? Do you really believe something piss-easy like SotN would be preferable to any form of partially hard that you could imagine?

 

[Kz3r0]

Kz3r0 Cool - Bloodstained has been added to the Google Docs table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q9n4N7Pr4hjtn7LZWFYT_0tRFCK6Mox1f87iL11PMgw/edit#gid=14

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

The guy is running out of colors.
Iga really seems to have tapped into a new pool of backers while old schhool PC gaming seems to have reached its maximum potential at the moment.

 

[Morality Games]

It takes around 10 hours to play through SotN as a noob, certainly not much more than 15 hours of leisurely playtime. It's a short game. There's no excuse for making a game this short today when the expectation is 40-60 hours for a CRPG - not when you got 5.5 million from your kickstarter.

Short games in a popular series are a money grab. There's no other point to making short games than greed when you'd have the finances for something much better. And actually even a 40 hour CRPG is rather short if it's as easy as modern games. You can play through one in a week, because you never have to restart and you never get stuck. Remember the way you'd have to restart in Dark Omen because the long campaign had worn down your troops so much that you couldn't handle the last levels? Never happens in a modern game.

... what is the urgency for a 40-60 hour game when 10% of people finish the games they start?

 

[Damned Registrations]

SotN was definitely too easy all around. It picks up a little bit when you enter the second castle and have nova skeletons and those moving spike traps everywhere, but generally it is indeed far too easy. They needed a different way of handling armour so attacks couldn't be reduced all the way to 1 so easily, and they needed to really soften the scaling on XP so going to an out of depth area didn't skyrocket you by 5 levels after you made a single kill.

But even if you did things perfectly, you'd end up with like, 30-40% of the game being a challenge, at most. If you're not in it for the exploration, you're playing the wrong genre. Go play spelunky or cave story or something.

 

[SCO]

I know people bitched about bosses being too easy and predictable and overpowered late game abilities in Order of Ecclesia, but i liked the challenge of that game well enough. Just the right amount of decline for me, with some cool optional challenge zones.
But yes, metroidvanias invariably turn 'easy'. Metroid less than castlevania admittedly.

 

[CyberP]

Order of Ecclessia was a brilliant challenge. if only it had the depth and style of SOTN. That's what this new game should be, but even bigger in scale (25 hour game at least). That 6 million better be used effectively.

... what is the urgency for a 40-60 hour game when 10% of people finish the games they start?

Because that 10% appreciate it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I honestly can't remember much of any of the Igavanias besides SotN. I recall that they were generally far less open though, which is really painful in that sort of game. What is the point of having a double jump if there is only one new area I can reach with it? What the fuck, game? Why not just put another fucking door there instead.

 

[Morality Games]

Order of Ecclessia was a brilliant challenge. if only it had the depth and style of SOTN. That's what this new game should be, but even bigger in scale (25 hour game at least). That 6 million better be used effectively.

... what is the urgency for a 40-60 hour game when 10% of people finish the games they start?

Because that 10% appreciate it.

It's psychotic. Between thirty years of game development, mods, emulators, Steam/GOG sales, etc, you have more high quality gaming content than any human being could hope to play in 10 lifetimes. Yet a certain demographic of gamers insists that every game needs to be 70 hours despite evidence that the quality of content and features diminishes when you can't focus on adding depth to the experience. Also, they can't be bothered to play that 10 lifetimes worth of backlog because of graphics, so every new game has to have the best graphics as well as maximum length. 30 bucks at release or pirated.

 

[nomask7]

But even if you did things perfectly, you'd end up with like, 30-40% of the game being a challenge, at most. If you're not in it for the exploration, you're playing the wrong genre. Go play spelunky or cave story or something.

I'd be OK with 40% of the game being a challenge. The fun is in the freedom to choose how fast you want to attempt to beat the game (always harder than exploring and leveling up), how soon you want to try a harder area, and cool stuff like that which is only possible in an open world game that isn't too easy.

The game also doesn't have to just give you three paths, each leading to a series of levels, and then force you to decide which you'll spoil by leaving it for the last (as in Dark Souls II). It could instead have (A) short cuts for those who can handle them and/or the rest of the game at a lower character level, (B) a few early-game and late-game bonus areas that are hard and rewarding to explore, (C) overall high difficulty for the game so that exploring every nook and cranny can feel useful in building up your character.

Exploration was meaningless in SotN because other than one optional boss in the whole game, there was absolutely no use for the better equipment and better character level unless you count getting a better story ending.

 

[nomask7]

It's psychotic. Between thirty years of game development, mods, emulators, Steam/GOG sales, etc, you have more high quality gaming content than any human being could hope to play in 10 lifetimes. Yet a certain demographic of gamers insists that every game needs to be 70 hours despite evidence that the quality of content and features diminishes when you can't focus on adding depth to the experience. Also, they can't be bothered to play that 10 lifetimes worth of backlog because of graphics, so every new game has to have the best graphics as well as maximum length. 30 bucks at release or pirated.

I think you and I have a different idea of "high quality gaming content". I've tried pretty much every type of game I could think of. I barely play games, but there's just not that much to play if you have any standards beyond pop culture.

Length diminishes quality - gimme a break. I've heard the DLC for Dark Souls II adds 10 hours of content and makes the game tons better. You think they couldn't have made it even better if they had planned it to have all that extra content from the beginning and then some? I don't think you know what you're talking about, you just seem to have stumbled on the wrong forum. This is RPGCodex, where we complain about popamole publishers and lazy developers.

 

[Morality Games]

It's psychotic. Between thirty years of game development, mods, emulators, Steam/GOG sales, etc, you have more high quality gaming content than any human being could hope to play in 10 lifetimes. Yet a certain demographic of gamers insists that every game needs to be 70 hours despite evidence that the quality of content and features diminishes when you can't focus on adding depth to the experience. Also, they can't be bothered to play that 10 lifetimes worth of backlog because of graphics, so every new game has to have the best graphics as well as maximum length. 30 bucks at release or pirated.

I think you and I have a different idea of "high quality gaming content". I've tried pretty much every type of game I could think of. I barely play games, but there's just not that much to play if you have any standards beyond pop culture.

Length diminishes quality - gimme a break. I've heard the DLC for Dark Souls II adds 10 hours of content and makes the game tons better. You think they couldn't have made it even better if they had planned it to have all that extra content from the beginning and then some? I don't think you know what you're talking about, you just seem to have stumbled on the wrong forum. This is RPGCodex, where we complain about popamole publishers and lazy developers.

I disagree with you therefore I don't belong here. Always a fine argument.

DLC proves my point because it demonstrates developers can (can not will) produce better content when they can focus on developing a shorter, concise experience (using systems that are now fully developed) and plugging it into the rest of the game during a period where the issues of balance and pacing or release dates are no longer relevant. The entire focus of development changes 100% when profits have been made and every single priority except creating detailed content is no longer a concern.

It almost seems trite to mention that games with a steep increase in playtime (MMOs, Elder Scrolls, DA:I, etc) suffer a sharp decline in the quality of content by reputation. This is the case even in longer games that have a good reputation on the Codex. No level in Morrowind (or New Vegas, for that matter) is more detailed or better designed than one in Deus Ex or Bloodlines.

Length / Production Resources = Content Quality is a cornerstone principle of game development.

All that's happening is that IGA is skipping Part 1 (make bloated plain vanllia game) and going directly to Part 2 (make detailed focused experience).

 

[nomask7]

I disagree with you therefore I don't belong here. Always a fine argument.

DLC proves my point because it demonstrates developers can (can not will) produce better content when they can focus on developing a shorter, concise experience (using systems that are now fully developed) and plugging it into the rest of the game during a period where the issues of balance and pacing or release dates are no longer relevant. The entire focus of development changes 100% when profits have been made and every single priority except creating detailed content is no longer a concern.

It almost seems trite to mention that games with a steep increase in playtime (MMOs, Elder Scrolls, DA:I, etc) suffer a sharp decline in the quality of content by reputation. This is the case even in longer games that have a good reputation on the Codex. No level in Morrowind (or New Vegas, for that matter) is more detailed or better designed than one in Deus Ex or Bloodlines.

Length / Production Resources = Content Quality is a cornerstone principle of game development.

Grimoire will prove you wrong.

The problem isn't what talented people can or can't do. The problem is ... as long as gamers lap up shit, shit is what they'll be served. As long as they're bitches to the market dynamic and their little vaginas accept tiny dicks, tiny dicks is what they'll be fucked with.

Their lives are already so shitty - all these nerds and deadbeats - do they really deserve anything less than epic as their computer gaming experiences? No, no they don't.

I didn't criticise you for disagreeing with me, I criticised you for trying to moderate an aspect of discussion that has been the core of the codex soul for several years.

 

[Luka-boy]

Even if the main mode lasts 20-30 hours, there are plenty of things adding replayability thanks to the stretch goals.
- 3 playable characters
- Nightmare difficulty mode
- Speed run mode
- Boss rush mode
- Classic that turns the game into a linear experience like the original Castlevanias
- Co-Op
- Asynchronous multiplayer
- Online challenge mode
- Roguelike mode
- Boss revenge mode where you play as a boss and eventually face the good guys
I'd say that's a lot of bang for your buck and it seems reasonable to me in this kind of game that they use the extra budget to add all those modes and other stuff like orchestral soudtrack etc.. There's only so much more you can do to improve the main game. Of course for someone who only cares about the main story and the normal Metroidvania experience those might matter less or nothing, but you can always buy the game at a big discount later if you're only interested in the normal mode.

Though it would be nice if they told us about their total budget and the breakdown of how it will be spent so we don't have to speculate.

One thing that just crossed my mind, though, is the possibility of using that budget to make the whole game 2D with HD sprites, which would be expensive as fuck in a game with so many enemies. But I think that in the end as long as the 2.5D doesn't look terrible I prefer having more variety and game modes.

 

[Gozma]

How is Axiom Verge, I watched some short gameplay and it looked really good

Let me be frank I am gonna get Axiom Verge even if u say it is bad Codex

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you liked super metroid you'll like Axiom Verge as well. My only complaint is that the weapon balance is shit, theres like 20 different weapons and maybe 5 of them are ever worth using. Ah well. Game is solid in pretty much every other way though.

 

[Jasede]

It takes around 10 hours to play through SotN as a noob, certainly not much more than 15 hours of leisurely playtime. It's a short game. There's no excuse for making a game this short today when the expectation is 40-60 hours for a CRPG - not when you got 5.5 million from your kickstarter.

Short games in a popular series are a money grab. There's no other point to making short games than greed when you'd have the finances for something much better. And actually even a 40 hour CRPG is rather short if it's as easy as modern games. You can play through one in a week, because you never have to restart and you never get stuck. Remember the way you'd have to restart in Dark Omen because the long campaign had worn down your troops so much that you couldn't handle the last levels? Never happens in a modern game.

Are you retarded?

Axiom has boring boss fights, though.