I want to believe this. And I have a very high regard for the MS team that has worked on this game. But I have very little confidence that MS (as a whole) will make smart choice or choices that I like. Looking forward to being proven wrong.
I mean, the last three years have been a series of big announcements and then big cancellations. And the message they are sending is “yes we have learned our lesson. No more announcing stuff so early.” That’s good, but what about lessons which lead to, you know, games actually coming out? Cancelling late stage development games that you just haven’t announced solves the PR problem but it doesn’t solve the problem of not having games.
Same here. I really want MS to turn KI in to a franchise rather than a one and done, but man… There’s a LOT of past history working against this. Unless you’re Halo, Gears, Fable or Dance Central, you may get one sequel or you may get none.
MS exclusives that I’ve really enjoyed that fall in to this category include Rallisport, MechAssault, Conker, Kakuto Chojin, Quantum Redshift, Tao Feng, Crimson Skies, Jade Empire, Phantom Dust, Knights of the Old Republic, Blood Wake, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, several Sega exclusives including Gun Valkyrie, House of the Dead 3, Jet Set Radio Future, Shenmue 2, Panzer Dragoon Orta and that’s just the original Xbox.
360’s one (or two) and done graveyard includes Infinite Undiscovery, Ninety-Nine Nights, Kameo, Perfect Dark, Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Alan Wake, Banjo and on Xbox One we already have Dead Rising, Killer Instinct, Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, Ryse, Sea of Thieves, Ori, Crimson Dragon and ReCore.
Now, commentary on how much less the 360 and XB1 have had in terms of exclusives versus the original Xbox aside, the main takeaway for me is that there are an obscene amounts of exclusives that never became reliable franchises for MS. I mean, outside of Halo, Gears and Forza, we’ve had stints where Fable was a big deal and Dance Central was reliably good, but other than that?
So when some people say “oh KI’s dead, can’t wait for the next one…” I kinda shudder a bit because the “next KI” is by no means certain, and this list is a testament to that. I’d LOVE to see Adam Isgreen work his magic and get another KI game out of MS, but if the long wait ensued, would I be surprised? Can’t say that I would.
I think this E3 2018 will be pretty huge for MS. After the high profile cancellations of Scalebound and Fable Legends (along with the closing of Lionhead) as well as canning the next gen sequel to Phantom Dust, all within a relatively short time period, plus Crackdown and Sea of Thieves getting bumped out of their original release dates, 2017 was an absolute graveyard for Xbox owners looking for exclusive reasons to play their system.
It also happened to coincide with one of the best years for Sony as far as that category is concerned, which made it an even more bitter pill to swallow. My hope is that MS has several aces up their sleeves and they’re simply hard at work shepherding games from several developers, just waiting for the games to be unveiled at E3 with the catchphrase “coming in 2018” attached to them. However, I remain cynical.
I think MS purchasing this studio or that studio are just flights of fancy type rumors at this point; they seem logical because MS hardly has any studios anymore, but that doesn’t mean EA or Valve or anyone else is actually in MS’ crosshairs by any stretch of the imagination.
I also don’t think that there’s a ton of games in development partly because of that lack in studios, but also they simply haven’t been one to push a ton of big exclusives out in a single year or even half year, not since the original Xbox.
I really hope they surprise me. I want them to come to E3 with an all MS character racing game, an all MS character fighting game, a new Killer Instinct, a new Conker, a new Banjo, a new Kameo, a new Fable, new MechAssault, new Crimson Skies, new Lost Odyssey, a few new IPs, a new deal with Sega for several exclusives, an announcement that they’ve purchased Capcom and a bunch of other aesome surprises. But none of this feels even remotely realistic right now, sadly.
I think they did well in the first few years of Xbox One in terms of games, but after the last few years, they’ve really fallen back in to the “I’ll see it when I believe it” camp.
Speaking of unrealistic E3 happenings, I’d love it if they talked with Crystal Dynamics and got them working on a new Legacy of Kain game. That could be a solid exclusive. I know the series has been dormant for a while since Defiance came and went on the 360 and Dead Sun was cancelled, but that series is still fondly remembered and could greatly benefit from getting a modern western RPG makeover ala Witcher or Dragon Age Inquisiton.
Sorry to go off topic here, but I was looking at the list of cancelled Xbox One games and that’s one that still stings.
switching developers didn’t help… IG was given, what DH was working on after two years or so. Had IG or DH ran the game the whole time, i think the game would be more “complete”. But IG’s decision to call it a wrap, so to speak, was a good idea… now that i’ve read alot of comments
I was thinking about this game literally a day or two ago. Controls were weirdly unintuitive (until that magical moment when it just “clicked”), but the game was slick and a lot of fun!
I mean the game is complete in terms of the important things in fighting games like roster, balance, modes, online etc.
KI is in a good spot but there are some small things that are ‘incomplete’ but are not necessities to the overall game just nice additions
big examples include
.Arcade mode for character other than season 1
.Ultimate’s for all characters
there are other things which would make the game feel better to me but they are not important enough to need a change at this point (e.g. Omens look, some character animations, classic costumes)
True the only real thing that needs to be fixed other than a few bugs, is the glitch that allows Rash to exist… er um, tweak his +9 after Combo breaker (I think Infil mentioned that it had to be a bug), and there was another bug where Rash was able to do some sort of attack that he wasn’t supposed to do.
@Infilament explained recently why more costumes weren’t a thing. I can’t remember the details but it has to do with how the game was built.
The game is complete. Not having a stage for every character doesn’t mean a game isn’t complete. Most fighting games don’t have that many stages. Even ones with rosters closer to ki’s size. More ultimates would be nice but people also forget. They weren’t originally on the table for development in the 1st place and were made with whatever was left over in the budget.
I had a theory about it, but it’s just a theory so I wouldn’t say it’s definitely true. Unless the devs come out and talk about it at one point, best to just treat it as a guess.
Even if it’s right, this just means that having the ability to add costumes wasn’t in the specifications for the original agreement with DH. So the poor decision making occurred earlier rather than later but it doesn’t change the fact that it was poor decision making.
As far as stages - I didn’t say anything about that. Nor did I say the game was not complete.
I can recall speaking to @TempusChaoti briefly at KICup last year and the subject of costumes came up and while paraphrasing of course, he said something along the lines of they were trying to get around some technical challenges surrounding making costumes. Not sure what that exactly means but he could always come in and clarify.
If they built the foundation for the game without costumes in mind, I find that crazy to believe; mostly on basis that they launched the game with the S1 retro costumes. The only thing I can think of is that they were making entire character models each time instead of just creating new meshes/textures which probably became to expensive or time consuming if that did in fact end up being the reason.
That’s incredibly unfortunate. Cosmetics are what keep games well funded as is shown with LoL, OW, DOTA2, MK, etc. I bought every Gold pack I could just to support the game even more than just buying the Ultra Edition every season, as well as buying the Definitive Edition on Xbone, and Steam, and I supported Shago being a real boy, as well as bought Kilgore for the Tournament Fund. Hell, I even spent money on KI Gold to level faster before the S3 permanent boost.
Easily the 3rd most money spent on a single game. The first 2 being LoL and WoW. If there was anything else tangible I could spend my money on for KI, I would have done so. If the Ultimates were being sold, I would have been kind of leery, but I would have purchased them to help encourage further development.
The way assets are stored and loaded in the engine is the reason we’ve never been able to easily release costumes. This was a fundamental issue that we didn’t have time to address when first getting the game up and running in 2013, and we’ve been working around it ever since. This is also why models load slowly in character select - IG are wizards in that they managed to improve it, but they’re working against a system that wasn’t built around the idea of modular character components.
To fix it would require a complete rebuild of the art asset pipeline and asset packaging for the entire game, which is non-trivial work. Believe me when I say that if it was easy to fix, we would have fixed it long, long ago.
You can be sure if/when there’s ever a new KI, we’ll certainly address this issue. It’s been frustrating for us as well.
Ah, engines. I’ve been a member of a Total War mod and dealing with how the M2TW engine handled models and cities was a nightmare. It just is what it is. My fingers crossed for a second modern KI. I also fully support IG handling it and keeping all these things in mind.
Oh, there’d better be one. Otherwise, I’ll call PHILL SPENCER on his PRIVATE phone. Seriously though… there’d better be one down the line. Heaven forbid Microsoft not investing into their exclusives after going all out on Project Scorpio.
. No way can you call this done… unless your making another game:thinking:
