The way loading screens and doors are handled in Starfield is identical to Skyrim. NPC approaches door; opens door and NPC fades through and that looks weird. The door never opens for NPCs but they fade into the room as if they teleported.
@@Marksman3434 Worst part is that modders have shown that seamless doors are possible, for example the open cities mod for Skyrim. So clearly Bethesda chose not to upgrade which makes it worse because people are often using "engine limitation" as a criticism which actually undersells how bad Bethesda has handled their tech.
in fallout 4 you would get in an elevator and it would be seamless. in starfield you get a black screen everytime you go in ffs, so immersion breaking@@Marksman3434
Honestly I'm suffering from some sort of game fatigue rn. It's like every game I touch Is either a copy of another game, or a game that really tries to steal your money...
Same. I played CP2077 and despite it being kind of immersive here and there it still wasn't a WOAH moment for me like it was back when Crysis 1 came out (just an example). Not saying I hated it but back then when the first presentation trailer dropped I thought that this would be the game of my dreams which I'll play for ever. I had my 500+ hours of Stalker GAMMA recently becaus it's doing something that I've not seen in a survival game to this day and for the love of god, give me a survival game with a huge learning curve, to get immersed in and a difficulty which has to be mastered. Add something new to this formula. Something that is not as common even if it's something people don't like. If it suits the gameplay and immersion, why the hell not? (No, Tarkov isn't what I'm looking for.) How comes that the enemy AI of FEAR 1 is not the common standard in Shooters these days? I think you get my point. If I open Steam at a sale I see a lot of interesting looking games but in the end it's just another copy of game X with a new spraypaint on it.
@@Rusty254 there is jump in elden ring, I have to give'em that (That's why it won game of the year I suppose cause I don't see any other reason for it)
Game Designer here: I talked with many other peers, mentors and read a lot of books about game design, and the consensus is pretty much what you summarised perfectly here: It's just fucking hard to invent new dynamics. The reason is simple: As much as designers can be considered smart people in general, we all struggle to understand the systems we are creating, until we finally test them with players. The reasons for that lie in the non-linear nature of system design, while the languages we speak are purely linear. I'm not gonna go into to much detail about this here, but the effect is that its almost impossible to predict where a gameplay idea is gonna evolve into 2 years later, which will have a devastating impact on all the content departments, which will probably waste their time on unused assets. And this is why big studios just simply can't afford to experiment with such concepts. However, that doesn't apply to the indie scene. I'm an indie dev and I do have a game in development which bursts boundaries. I would claim Outer Wilds was actually one of those games as well. It's not enough though, I feel like the whole indie scene should double down on its competitive advantage, namely, the ability to take risks...
@@adminluca Yeah, I would really recommend you Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester, one of my all time favourites, which goes also into this topic. Also The Art of Game Design, the classic by Jesse Schell, which is a good collection of best practices and how to build games from an experience on a rapid prototyping basis. And finally, when it comes to thinking of game design as a systemic language you actively engage with, I recommend Advanced Game Design by Michael Sellers
I think Sifu is a game that changes the way you think about progression and experience in games. Truly one of the most unique games I’ve played in a while
Dead Space also doesn’t have loading screens. Obviously the tram and elevators are suppose to be the loading screens, but they help immerse you into the world of Dead Space
14:11 This is why I loved the first part of MGS V back in 2016, you can approach the mission the fuck way you want, guns blazing, stealth, mixed, or even hiding in a bush and sniping everybody with Quiet while playing music from the chopper lol
that sandbox element of tools being a leverage in tackling hurdles was engaging in MGSV, might be even arguably considered as an immersive sim. i think games that respects players freedom do stand out since games all along were a form of escapism 🤔
MGS5 is really an awesome sandbox game (both ground zeroes and phantom pain, in different ways). I'll never forget my chopper flying in playing James Brown's "Paid the Cost to Be the Boss"
@@AvatarRoku-w8o Yeah, while the gameplay was fantastical, MGS5 got the second weaker story of the series with MGS4. It is even worse because it just a reanswer to questions that were already satisfyingly answered before in MGS 3 - 4 and Peace Walker, but the answers given in MGS5 are weaker when not directly in conflict with the rest of the series
High quality PC and console VR (not standalone) needs to take off. Half Life Alyx, Contractors and Resident Evil in VR truly feel like the "next step" in gaming.
It’s a lot cheaper to have Indy devs experiment and innovate on their own and find what the market likes or is interested in and copy it than to pay your own developers to see what works. Sad but true
Stardew Valley is another good example, while not completely original it basically rocketed a entirely new 'cozy games' genre into the mainstream for both hardcore and casual gamers alike.
Quite possible. But the big publishers don't even finance such indie projects in order to dare to experiment in this way. There is only a fixation on profit maximization and opportunism, and no ambition to advance video games as an art form.
Not exactly original a.k.a. being almost 1:1 clone of Harvest Moon: Back to the Nature outside of graphics and town layout xD That genre existed all the time but indeed this title got it more spotlight outside of Japan.
After watching this guy for 10 years it shocks me so much how different he is from his younger self. Watching the 3rd Birthday, Elf Bowling, and M&M Shell Shocked videos is literally a different person from these video essays. THAT'S what you call growth.
I'll still miss the occasional mega angry content he made back in the 2010's. Those were always funny and such an entertainment to watch whenever he had to bash a really bad game or anime. Still, his current content continues to be gold.
Yeah but you're being "playful" and having a good time with the video. It's not pure unadultered rage, it's script mad. (THAT'S STILL GOOD YOUR CONTENT IS AMAZING DON'T CHANGE ONGOD) @@DXFromYT
I think this is why Minecraft was such a great game and is still played to this day. It fully commits to its idea and allows for full player expression. You can go anywhere seemlessly the possibilities are endless. Imagine every time you wanted to go underground you had to pass through a loading screen to get to a fixed location. Mc wouldn't nearly be as fun and it would break the immersion. A lot of these open world games feel like a scam because they forget about these fine details that make the experience feel seemless.
I think more than that having both a random generating world that 90% of the time makes sense in how a world should be structured but different enough on each generation, and a save system that saves everything including every block you destroyed, every seed you planted, and every enemy you kept alive helps a ton to make this world feel like alive despite the fact that the game looks like a lot of other low budget indie games of the time.
This comment is brain dead af. Its such a fat leap in logic to natural game design. Minecraft was able to do that because it’s a very simple game with very simple assets, it’s not loading highly complex NPC’s or cutscenes, special effects, etc etc.
@hartfantom this comment is braindead because it misses the entire point and hinges on one example I made. Regardless of how complex the assets are the point was Minecraft was able to keep the immersion and give the player full access to the environment. Why it's able to do that is irrelevant and besides the point.
I so feel this after finishing Alan Wake 2 yesterday! That game is visually outstanding and it has some of the most unique storytelling I've ever experienced in gaming, but gameplay wise it feels like something that could have been achieved about a decade ago at least
I don't think GTAVI will stray too much from their established formula, they have toyed with the idea of more freedom in GTAO, there's an infamous heist where 4 players must enter a building without being detected, this is probably the most frustrating heist because of that, in later heists they made it so you plan a route with a certain aproach, including stealth, but when you are executing this plan it can all go to shit but you don't get a mission failed screen, but rather are encouraged to carry on and solve it, this is also true for the Cayo Perico heist, this was after the release of RDR2, which also allows more freedom in its online missions. There's also MGSV, probably one of the most well regarded open world games in the last decade because of this same reason Immersive sim elements introduced into more genres and more branching possibilities should be where we're headed imo, rather than mindlessly upgrading graphic fidelity, Baldurs Gate 3 seems like a step in the right direction and I'm glad the industry is paying attention.
Didn't Rockstar or Take Two recently buy the team behind FiveM? I can see them borrowing some RP gameplay elements for Vice City Online to turn it from simple lobbies to some kind of social platform with in-depth interactions between players
@@TacticalHawk34 That's right, and that's also a very important step in a deeper and more engaging set of features, even if GTAVI does benefit from RP features I'd love to see new iterations on the classic modes, I'd love to play gungame for example
RDR2 actually has many missions with a lot freedom I think they will do more missions like the home Robbery with Hosea or Random encounter quests like the killer woman. Rockstar could easily make an immersive sim if they wanted to but making unique missions and telling a good story with loads of freedom. With GTA6 it does not seem to be a story heavy as RDR2 and its not Prequel so things do not have to happen a certain way. Plus Rob Nelson said with RDR2 they tried out more procedural missions but they did not work well. I am not worried about mission design at all for GTA6 as they are great at quest design when they are not trying to tell a Specific story.
It won't deviate at all. It will be another crime storyline that takes from countless movies, and then it'll be an online mode where getting idiots to buy shark cards is the primary goal as opposed to putting forth something new and interesting.
I'd argue that overall, a big gameplay shift in major single player games this generation has been to implement more and more elements from the Immersive Sim genre, because it coincides with the added immersion of advancing tech & presentation, and it helps to fix repetition in copy-pasted activities by allowing players to do them in many different ways that evolve as you figure out its systems. This is most obvious in BG3, Cyberpunk 2077/Phantom Liberty, and Zelda TOTK. And because of that, Immersive Sims are seeing a huge revival in the indie scene cuz more ppl are getting a taste of em and wanting to see what the genre is all about. I don't expect full-on ImSims to go fully mainstream but many of their design aspects clearly are already
@@chromesucks5299 the way those mechanics enable the player to interact with their environment to come up with emergent and creative ways of overcoming obstacles that can sometimes even be described as game-breaking but that was the intent. The definition of ImSim and the name itself are kinda wonky. No one's found a good working definition, only examples and ppl argue over if some things are ImSims or just have ImSim elements. Like FarCry 2, Hitman, etc.
I remember upping the resolution on Half Life to 800x600 . First time it was an option for graphics for me. Brother and I just sat there staring at boxes and wall tiles for 10 minutes "Jesus look how clear it looks, that's almost like a photo" I wish kids today could have that immediate real-time leap from crappy old graphics to "whaaaat the fuuuuuck" graphics
I think Ultrakill is next-gen gameplay if not VERY close to it. Up until the point of its inception on Steam I’ve never heard of a game that: -Regenerates your health through blood splatters -Makes you perform absurd movement that definitely transcends every fast paced boomer and movement shooter (ride a rocket while shooting a coin with a railgun and then parrying your shotgun blast while then freezing rockets and then circling some saws around someone and-I could go on. I have never heard of a game that did all these crazy things that you could actively control and without losing momentum.) -Made a good water level (go to Hell, Dire Dire Docks) I understand that this feels like it’s “iterating” more than having an actual structural change as well as being in a familiar setting (name this popular shooter that has something to do with Hell!!!!) but it felt absolutely different than any other boomer shooter I had played. So unless it’s next-gen-iterating, I don’t know what to call it. I genuinely felt like it was a brand new genre I was playing for the very first time again and there wasn’t a single feeling of the game being old, restrictive, or outdated. It especially didn’t help with the MASSIVE genre hops that the secret levels provided.
Industry is afraid to take risks, it’s all board room created. There were 2 paths options a couple generations ago- Uncharted/Last of us or Far Cry 3- and those are still the paths being followed today. Pair that with control schemes that are a standard across genres, writing that is hired out to a third party, and you’ve got 9th gen.
why invent something new.... 1990s ultima online already caused life ruining addiction loops and now they have hard data to argue developer "gut feeling".
Damn, I remember playing Far Cry 3 like an absolute addict. Good days those were. The transition to Far Cry 4 was what told me something was already wrong because of how little it improved for a by then "next gen" game. Far Cry 5 was the final straw that made it explicit to me.
@@mekingtiger9095FC4 had potential but somehow felt lacked short of using it. FC3 too but it was improvement over FC2. So I get what you mean. FC5 had some things renewed which felt fresh but I cant help to think how they havent fixed story/player dissonance(same mechanics as FC3) in decade with those resources and talent. (FC5 setting is great and all but old fc formula wont cut it anymore, it conflicts and feels dumb). Granted FC3 had better characters than FC5.
No they just know they can deliver half a game and people will buy it and not only buy but then spend hundreds of dollars on digital clothes. Why would they do anything different.
@@mekingtiger9095well theres only so much you can do with the far cry formula. Fc3, blood dragon, primal and fc5 are the only ones worth playing tbh bc they are the only ones they tried to make different. those specific games were made to bring fans back into the already dying series btw. that's why they were the only good and different feeling ones.
The NPC interactions in Cyberpunk are like the animations in Half Life 2 but with a lot more complexity and Polish. Letting the player move around and having the npc’s look at you is nothing new but a lot of games didn’t do it in the past.
@@onepunch9416 I wouldn't hold my breath for Rockstar delivering a true "next gen experience", though. They've shown to not be this infallible AAA game studio that is incorruptible by corporate mindset that people praised so much over the last years. And RDR2 has shown that likely the only main thing Rockstar can improve by this point is small "flavor" details like "Animated Horse Balls" and "Wow, I am using a slightly different cloth and the NPCs numbers 37 to 40 have a single scripted line of dialogue reacting to that!". At this point *two* generations have come out since GTA5. They really, really *really* have to deliver a massive leap from their previous title to justify all the time that has passed by and their classical reputation. Maybe I will be proven wrong and be surprised when GTA6 finally comes out. But I am starting to get suspicious of their capabilities by now.
@@mrX666-s9p They used to say the same about CDPR and Blizzard Enterntainment. Look where we are now. Specially with Blizzard. CDPR may have redeemed themselves a little bit, but maaaaan, they were not untouchable by any means. But we'll see. I'm not saying GTA 6 will fail to deliver that kind of experience. I'm just in a "wait and see" mood, that's all.
Playing Armored Core 6 after spending a hot minute mostly playing the same few FPS games felt really refreshing and I ended up liking it so much it's currently the first and only game I've ever 100%'d
Modern gaming is great. Two hours to install the game and then four hours to install the update. There was once a time when you bought the game home, inserted it into the console and believe it or not....PLAY IT. I know it sounds crazy but it's true.
I only now realise how i played spiderman 3 and loved that game so much ... put in a disk small update and bam your playing it and the funniest part ..... it actually had combos unlike the new spiderman Hell all the old spiderman games seem to have combos and actually progressed Now its press this button to hit and this to dodge .... i just want delay button presses back .... kinda like starwars the force unleashed My god that was a game gem to me
This has got to be the silliest complaint. You can have several games installed at the same time allowing you to boot any of them at the drop of the hat. Not to mention Xbox has the quick resume function. Super weird you'd wanna go back to having the system read the media in real time constantly just so you can play.
19:22 i think also you have to consider the role of indie in breakout success. Independent games hold way less risk in crearion, so when one succeeds based on a unique mechanic or structure, it serves as a proof of concept that consumers find that attractive. I think over time simoly because of cost of production the role of triple A shifts from major innovators to best implementors. However, this is also why we need more double A studios, since currently the middle ground is severely lacking in games that arent the strongest, but they are willing to innovate.
Even in Skyrim, which is over a decade old now, fast-travel to a discovered city plops you down inside said city. The only time I see this issue there is with dungeons and buildings, because interior locations are specifically excluded from fast-travel.
In my opinion "next-gen" gameplay is like you said emergent gameplay, We get shiny new hardware and all we can do with it is turn up graphics, there should be a bunch of ways to interact with the world you are in. graphics are the only thing that gets marketed as "next-gen".
It should be better mission layouts more bosses more game modes more skills/abilities more lvls more space or bigger world this is 9th gen not 2nd or 3rd
Funnily enough many games from the mid to late 90s already somewhat achieved emergent gameplay, games like Thief, System Shock, Operation Flashpoint and so on. The problem is that hardware was severely limited, and knowledge regarding game engines where rather limited, so the gameplay itself was clunky and slow. If anything, modern designers need to get into their heads that player's discovering things for themselves is much more enjoyable than being told what to constantly do and overtly telling players how they should be feeling at any given moment.
Honestly TRUE "Next gen" gameplay won't be coming for a while. I'd wager another decade at least. Until VR is perfected and brought down to a more reasonable consumer price point and A.I is fully utilized to streamline game development It's gonna be a long wait before anything groundbreaking.
I think the funniest thing about the next gen conversation is that Nintendo, on a 6 year old console, made arguably the biggest step in innovating an open world style game with TOTK. The technical aspects of the rewind and fuse, as well as no loading screens on that old of a console is really crazy. I would take these types of innovations over the rocks on the ground looking a little more realistic than they did in 2014.
The finals is the first game in a while that felt "nextgen" because of the server side destruction. When we fought for the point and by the end just flattened a bigh story building for a first time, it was amazing. Last game i was blown away was cyberpunk with the immersive first-person dialog and cutscenes without breaking continuity. It was neat
This isn't anything new, battlebit remastered does the same thing with it's destruction, bad company 2 did that over a decade ago, same with the Red Faction series.
Finals is overhyped mid tier gameplay, cool idea though I’ll give it that. I think elden ring is the only game this generation that you could call next gen, not for any 1 thing but as a complete package.
@@fatrat92 not the same. It is actually next-gen destruction. Literally, it uses next-gen tech for it, it plays differently as a result. Battlebit and Bad Company 2 are amazing games, but the destruction they offer can only be done in predetermined places in predetermined manner, not so with the Finals. Although it's not the best game to showcase the tech.
The current gameplay formulas are known quantities, and the templates of success are easy to follow and profitable. Open world games for example, have no need to innovate when a game like GTA 3 nailed the formula over 20 years ago and GTA clones will make a bunch of money. It's all about the money, at this point. That's why were seeing a "remaster" of TLOU2 even though the original game isn't even 4 years old.
you are essentially saying game publishers are drunk on sweet sweet endless data those games offer(offering facebook like algorithmic endless possibilities and profiling).
yeah i had GTA3, SA, to 4 in mind when it comes to the GTA milestones. im literally waiting for GTA to finally be a culmination of its Rockstar, GTA6 might be? may had the same immersive detail as GTA4 and player agency writing of RDR2's reactivity.
The sad thing is that missions in GTA 3, VC and SA were often more open and reactive than recent Rockstar games. Just look at the many ways people finished the train mission in SA. If that mission was in GTA V or RDR2, the game would fail you the second you took the wrong turn.
@@matman000000RDR2 has missions with allot of freedom and are really well designed but others are more on rails for story telling. GTA3 lacked the variety of games like San Andrea's and Bully but gave more freedom. RDR2 has. Some unique quests that also give you lots of freedom The house Robbery with Hosea being a great example.
I totally agree with your point about the dialogues in starfield. It just feels so old to go back to this old presentation after Cyberpunk where the dialogues feel so real and immersive, with such an amazing quality and details in all of the character's animations, where there is never one camera cut and you enter and leave a conversation in such a fluid and natural way and also never lose control of your character. Its like the perfect mix of cutscenes and RPG dialogues but without any of the negatives. And after that when you go back to starfield where the game takes control away from you everytime you enter a conversation, zoom on the NPCs face, all of this with npcs fixed in the same spot who cant interact with anything and all of this with very outdated facials and body animations, man it feels like you've just went back 20 years in the past
Bethesda games' presentations have felt old since Obsidian's New Vegas showed everyone how much expressive storytelling could be done in their janky engine. That we have stuff like Disco Elysium, BG3, etc. at this point but they're still redoing fallout 3 is unfortunate.
That'd be less of a problem if writing wasn't Bethesda writing. Bethesda in general only makes engines for modding, not games. Their "games" are unplayable without mods.
I really tried to look past this when I was playing Starfield, but as soon as the camera started abruptly cutting between 2 characters, not even smoothly panning, I had to put my foot down and stop. It's awful
Cyberpunk destroyed other games for me. It had the best npc dialogues of all games and how they handled it imo. I just can’t play other games that won’t let me do anything while talking with npcs. Also the animations and quality of those npcs are something else man
As old as this video is at this point it is likely this has already been said and will also likely not get read, but I have to say it anyway: How did you not think of VR before or while scripting this video? Sure, it's cost restrictive for now to get into, and it's still in its teething phase for figuring out what to do with it. But it IS the "next gen gamplay" you're looking for.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Half Life Alyx, which I think was a tremendous game changer for VR games. Or Star Citizen and the incredible scope it is trying to achieve. Both of these games, I think, give us a taste of what that next generation could and should be.
I think the next big innovation in gaming will be interacting with AI. Nvidia has a demo right now albeit very limited, Where you can interact with the NPC on screen through voice. Can you imagine how fun it would be to have a game where you play as a Detective or an Investigative Reporter or a Politician or anything really. Breaking the Mold and Allowing Players to actually interact with the game in a Totally brand new way will be the next frontier in gaming IMO. I cant wait for it. I think it will be absolutely incredible!
@@jumbo9380 No it doesn't. Shadow of a Doubt is scripted multiple choice. He is talking about being able to have a unscripted conversation with an NPC where they react to what your are saying in real time and respond appropriately.
All the innovation is on indie and smaller studios. AAA companies are all run by people who don't play games and who make decisions based on market "analysis" forever trying to print money.
Well, I play video games since the early 90's, and despite the graphical advances, super realistic graphics, and so on, most of the AAA games feels like the same. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good games that you can have a lot of fun playing, but the stories, quests, or what you do in game having consequences, things like that, feels like the same in every game.
Games that truly felt next-gen for me: - Red Dead Redemption 2 - Detroit: Become Human - Titanfall 2 - The Witcher 3 (and its expansions) - Skyrim TESV
@@dynamicflashy Seems like you're just picking some games that you like lol, Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing and all but its known for its retro feel, and Rift apart has pretty much the same gameplay from the older games from the 2000s with flashier prettier graphics and some smooth new mechanics, great games for sure but dont think they really apply for that list
@@ShadowLegend300 I guess you misunderstood what next gen gameplay implies. BG3 took an established genre and gave us a next gen version of it. So much so that the industry said it set the standards far too high. Ratchet & Clank literally made the best use of a major selling feature for next gen consoles (PS5's SSD) that we've seen so far. Nier: Automata, for it's time, incorporated so many gameplay features while displaying the next gen visuals of its time. My list is no lesser than RDR 2 or Titanfall 2.
You’re not including VR. VR has had a revolution very recently, especially with games like Boneworks and Half Life: Alyx. VR is a fresh change in gaming that many people haven’t tried because “it’s too expensive,” yet people buy multi-thousand dollar computers when a modern headset is commonly less than half a thousand for an entirely different gameplay experience that you don’t get from a console or standard PC experience.
How many aren't built for glasses? Then you gotta buy inserts? What if it uncomfortable and you gotta buy a comfort mod? What if you don't have the space for it? What if the room is not lit well enough or you have too much lighting? Then you gotta buy or build a Zipline for the chord/s. Not to mention many people including VR gamers get motion sickness. You can't even try a VR headset at a store. Then you have to purchase from a retailer with a good return policy. I love VR. It's super fun. But it is far away from being a genuinely great experience.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was honestly the first, not only glimpse, but an entire look into the next-generation experience in gaming. It is actually unbelievable looking back at Red Dead Redemption 2 and seeing what Rockstar achieved, seriously. We always talk about "player choice" and branching, dynamic storylines that truly shift and completely alter as a result of your autonomous decisions based on a variety of factors, but no game has really achieved this, unlike Red Dead Redemption 2. The amount of changes that can be made to the world, characters and stories you encounter in Red Dead Redemption 2, purely based upon your attitudes and choices alone, is unfathomable. I'm not kidding - just look at all those trendy Red Dead Redemption 2 clips on TH-cam with the 'What If you make this decision in X' titles: NONE of them are fake, and the plethora, the diversity, of consequences for your actions and when you experience a certain event in a different timeline, is undeniably remarkable. The sheer enormity of that game is incredibly impressive, ESPECIALLY when you count for the fact that game wasn't even an attempt for the "next-gen" consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and was released two years prior in 2018, developed for years and years starting in (if not-before) 2013, and purely for what we now consider last-gen consoles. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a triumph, and stands above any other Triple A game sitting on shelves today. Cyberpunk 2077 attempted such a feat, but we all know how that ultimately turned out. We can see that, regardless of the hate people give the company for their PR and CORPORATE practices, Rockstar Games are absolutely the king of video-game developers, and likely always will be. Trust me when I state that GTA 6 will BE that next generation experience Red Red Redemption 2 provided a superbly surreal blueprint for, that we have all been waiting for.
I finished RDR2 maybe two years ago, so correct me if I'm wrong. Was there a huge part of the map that served no purpose and was a lot like the northern half of GTA V map? Those maps really don't need to be this huge. All those big budget games are too unfocused. They even made an open world game out of Mirror's Edge of all games (in Catalyst). I would also seriously cut down on rummaging through containers in search for crafting materials and other junk. Such busywork! Witcher 3, Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 were all really getting on my nerves because of that.
Given RDR2 is older than BG3, but BG3’s emergence is ten fold. Done by a studio with less to work with than Rockstar. It was still impressive you could great almost every NPC and have mini conversations, but it doesn’t mean much when nothing really comes of it. BG3’s characters are so diverse, have so much to say, and usually always give you an interesting tidbit of the world or a quest. What Rockstar really needs is emergent side quests, not collect-a-thon side quests. It’s fun to explore their giant worlds, but what’s the point to it all? There’s no interesting side quests (or maybe I missed them,) unlike BG3 where it feels like the game is guiding me into side quests which in turn guide me to the main story.
Until BG3 that is. BG3 pretty much beat a masterpiece like RDR2 in every single category, graphics, sound design, artstyle, voice acting, animations and most importantly game play. It truly is the greatest game of all time for now and until GTA 6 drops, BG3 will be remain the standard. I'm sure GTA 6 will be incredible just from the trailer alone. It looks even better than Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 while being a console game while the other 2 are PC games. But a game is more than graphics, and it remains to be seen if it can match BG3's next gen scope.
RDR2's actual gameplay was awful though and the on rails missions are outdated. Sure, the open world and how they made it feel alive is a technical masterpiece but the whole thing felt more like a simulator than an actual game. I got bored playing it. RDR1 is much better from a gameplay perspective.
Red Dead Redemption 2 will be turning 7 years old when Gta 6 releases. I'm very hyped. Have to disagree with DX here. I loved the mission design in V and RDR2. The actual points of the missions were extremely fun. The only bad design was when Trevor has to hop a dirt bike on a moving train in V. I failed that one a lot. When it comes to Ai and how the world reacts, Red Dead 2 has yet to be beat. Just how Npcs remember you and how helping strangers can yield rewards. Like helping a snake bite victim to the hospital and he got better. He saw me in town and flagged me down. He told me to buy anything I wanted from the gun store and he'd pay for it. I got an upgrade to my ammo belt for free. Stuff like that.
Absolutely excellent video. I have thought about similar issues like this, and it's nice to see someone display in such a great way. Personally, I feel right now that we have reached a point where that 'next gen' game might not happen anymore. Some games are so refined nowadays that's its insane to think about.
It doesn't really matter, only casuals gamers who only play AAA games care about things like graphics and resolution, art style and performance are far more important, considering most ps4 games ran at 30fps and most ps5 games run at 60fps, that's good enough for me, the actual games themselves in terms of gameplay and story are far more important
IMO the next Gen Gameplay u are looking for is simply locked behind the VR payment wall/ upgrade, next gen for me was playing Half life Alyx and as usual its valve setting the trend for next gen just like they did with half life ... the level of interactivity and Mechanics and puzzels in that game is mind blowing.
That would only be true if VR had no physical limitations. Which is to say, you didn't get a sweaty head, you didn't have potential eye problems, and you could use it sitting in your normal gaming chair with no space to move. So long as the basic physical act of using VR renders it different to normal gaming, it will never replace normal gaming, thus will never truly be "next gen"... rather, it will continue to be a side-branch to regular gaming.
It would be interesting to see how this channel would discuss Alan Wake II. It combines current game graphics with live action, but the transitions from one format to the other make the game function like a cohesive whole. In other words, it succeeded where The Quiet Man failed.
Alan Wake 2 was one of my favorite games of 2023, second only to Baldur's Gate 3, and felt distinctly "next gen". And to be fair to The Quiet Man, combining gameplay with live action is Remedy's shtick. They did it in Quantum Break and Control to great effect, and I feel like they've basically created their own genre at this point. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us with Control 2.
I'm so excited for gta6, I'm playing read dead 2 right now a lot and will say this game really feels like a true next gen game and a huge step up in complexity, mechanics, variety and narrative
Red dead 2 was the only 'wow' game I've played in the last 10 years, and the one that got me to upgrade since my 4-core CPU was hitching trying to play it lol.
The missions themselves kinda suck though. If you do anything that the developers don’t want you to, you fail the mission. The mission design is directly at odds with the gameplay systems of the open world
Missions sucks. Like those tomb raider missions where if you dont do this mission failed. Always kill 50 thugs, rude horse, repeat. Don’t lie you only want sims 10. Gta 6 will have next gen gameplay of being able to have a family. , cook, clean your room, plant for food, have a jobs/career, go to high school. Best sims version. Nothing wrong. Unless they change the settings to fantasy. Too much realism is killing their game. They forgot the fun part. I WOULD 200% buy multiple copies if GTA will just be a full blown AAA survival game like project zomboid, Day Z, Stardew valley, Rust, Green Hell, etc. THEY always aim for realisim but forgot what is fun realistic gameplay we always have in indie survival games.
@@bobbyjoalfonso3949 yeah they always aim for the realism. but they are forgot the fun part. I don't know what could they add in gta 6 that is different from gta v aside from more advance physics graphics/good NPC. not looking forward to play a game inside a game like chess, poker, gta 3, billiards. Maybe I'm just not a fan of worlds based on real world. I want fantasy like monsters, dragons, zombies, medieval world, samurai, etc. even just a DLC like zombie apocalypse will make it a goat game. Like Project zomboid realism. This isn't a replacement for real life it's a sandbox for you to piss about in, to escape your reality not become it.(hope they will not add animations on every mundane thing you do. )
I don't see how the restrictive design of GTA V's missions is "outdated". The reason it's frustrating is because much older games weren't as restrictive. A lot of older games were more open and gave you more choices to approach a problem. GTA and RDR feel restrictive because of more recent trends to make games more cinematic and scripted. I wouldn't care if Starfield had the graphics and game play and presentation of Morrowind if their was the amount of care and attention to detail Morrowind had as opposed to rushing out a minimum viable product, that's the important part.
I couldn't agree more, further more, as an Indie Game Dev myself there's another thing that I would like to be discussed when talking about "Next Gen" Games. and that it's ARTSTYLE. Yes, we've come to the point were computers and technology are highly advanced and we can play games at absurd resolutions, but that doesn't excuse Game Developers from using boring and bland "Hyper-Realistic" Artstyles... If You can even call them Artstyles at this point because they ALL look the same. I find it absurd that most AAA Games are Hyper-Realistic bullshit, man games don't need hyper realistic graphics and absurd lighting effects, what games really need is to have STRONG ART DIRECTION, Yes, ART DIRECTION and by extension a good, well thought-out ARTSTYLE. It's insane how many Developers are so fucking lazy, that they all use Unreal 5 for "dem realistuc graphincs" instead of actually putting effort into the game's visual art direction or overall artstyle to make it stand out and look apart from the competition. And yes, we have some games with Strong Art Direction these days, but those games are mostly small indie games, not AAA Games. Some Modern AAA Games with Good Art Direction would be for example: Psychonauts 2, TLOZ Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Persona 5, Hi-Fi Rush, Street Fighter 6. There's probably more examples out there that I missed, but it's sad that the industry has shifted away from Originality to "oh waos, look at dem graphiks, this game has 40% more grpahiks then other games" It's dumb. And that's not to mention that, these mediocre lazy Visual Directions come at the cost, of You guessed it, PERFORMANCE. Games run like ass, because developers only care about making the game look Hyper-Realistic, they don't give 2 shits about optimizing the game, so most AAA Games these days, run like ass at Launch. Great, mediocre Art Styles, at the cost of performance even in High-End Rigs. It's annoying. Not to mention that back in the day, developers managed to make both Stunning Games WHILE still delivering Top of the line performance. Remember when Bungie baked some shadows into their maps to save performance and it even made Halo 3 Look absolutely gorgeous in the process? Yeah, Me too, good times. Some Games even created or sparked unique Artstyles and strong visual direction out-of necessity. Artstyles that are born out of necessity are probably my favorites out there, because they all look so original and different from the rest. But well, I'm a Boomer. And them kids like playing their RTX Games at 20 FPS, my opinion doesn't matter.
Nah some games need it if Rockstar was ever going to make a Manhunt 3 Photo real Graphics would be perfect for a game like that same with unrecord. Kingdom Come 2 also needs Photo real Graphics as its grounded game. Some games can have more artistic design but there needs to be a good mix.
id say what gta interms of next gen gameplay is really the focus on little details and activities in the game. look at rdr2 and the details it presents. gta would just have to topple that, and why? because gta is more a "real life" simulator, it doesnt have giant robots, magics or futuristic world. its a game set in 2020s its limited in what it can do(unless its gta online), and whats perfect for them to do other then really perfecting the real life sim and the world it self inturn making their next gen feature in rdr2 be the new next gen in their new game. at least thats what i think.
These games have millions of man hours put into them to give you the scope of possibility they have. It's not like it hasn't occurred to them that it would be cool to allow more freedom. My suggestion is for YOU to make a sandbox game where every possible player action is designed for in every mission. And you must make it to the standard of a Rockstar game. You will quickly find out why restrictions are necessary.
If Valve ever releases a new mainline title, that'll probably be the actual next step. But who knows. Anyone have a particular Studio in mind who could be a candidate for making a true next gen experience?
I genuinely could not think of one. This whole video feels somewhat, unreasonable, unless i'm misinterpreting it. I think we're well past the point of drastic innovation (Though VR is still a slowly coming future to look towards). And all the little innovative things out there that might be left, as being done by indie games. So i think a more viable question is, what companies are more likely to take those innovative features that exist but aren't utilized by main stream/AAA games, like environmental destruction or increased instances of physics interactions, and polish them creating a game that might not be original in any specific way, but simply stand out by having something that's hardly ever seen in that space. There's not much need to innovate if there's already hundreds of ideas and mechanics out there for the taking and inspiration.
@@nickgarris2971it's a growing base, & is the future of gaming. Consoles will hit an apex with photo realism, maybe with PS6, or Ps7. When PS8 drops it'll probly be VR only, because whats the point of making a PS8 if it's exactly the same as a PS7, photo realistic? Once we are there that's it. I think Sony is the new leader in the VR industry because now that Quest 3 Startin price is $500, I don't believe it'll outsell PSVR 2. Once Sony hits 150 million PS5 sales, VR will take off. They'll have a better library in a few years. I'm definitely going to upgrade my headset one day. Love PSVR 1.
@@raychii7361Most games you can play sat on ur ass. Headsets not cheap, but the games are, i got physical copies gt7, RE8, RE4 and NMS for like 100 bucks all in. Ok, they arent new games. But they feel it in the headset!
The latter is definitely valid, but VR has massively become more accessible with the Meta/Oculus Quest lineup. You can at least start with a Quest 2 and play almost every game for under $300. With a big focus on Mixed Reality, it is better for those with smaller spaces. At least some of the content is doable. @@raychii7361
You're right about some of these games feeling ancient. Thing is, they still feel worse than what came before it. Look at Ubisoft; how can AC Unity look and feel better than their newest game? How can AC Black Flag have better pirate gameplay than their "AAAA" Skull and Bones?
This is definitely an interesting dilemma. While I do agree that the structure of something like a GTA game is dated and restrictive, the real question is what can be done to solve that? Personally, I think they have the working theory in GTA V, which is to take the heist system and apply it to more missions. But that's really going to depend on the kind of story they want to tell and how much agency they want the player to have when it comes to the telling of that story. Missions in GTA are restrictive because GTA V wants to tell a particular story with those missions. Writers and mission designers need to flex more creativity with how objectives can be completed by the player from mission to mission. That unfortunately will have to involve possibly writing deviations in the story several different times to the point where the story may not be what it was originally intended be. If you could just walk away from Simeon as Franklin in GTA V then how does Franklin meet Michael? Those are the types of questions the story writers have to ask themselves and the more you have to account for those player-driven decisions that aren't influenced at all by what the defined character in the game the player is playing as wants, the more the story may have to twist into something unintended. This is also a huge issue with something like Starfield and Cyberpunk as well, but I do think solving that dilemma is that next step. A game's story/campaign needs to become MUCH more flexible than that of a movie's, but it's harder to do that and still write a decent story than what is probably worth the effort, but maybe one day...
Yep, which is exactly why this guy in this video is not an actual game developer so he doesn't really understand what the actual writers and developers of GTA 6 are trying to do.
@@iraford5788 You...don't need to be a developer to understand that there are solutions out there to this problem that Rockstar themselves have implemented in their games before GTA 5. How could anyone understand what they're trying to do with a game that won't release for another year?
Yeah, that's exactly the problem. But people's solution for that is 'just give the player more freedom and agency' which they don't realise, will put a huge dent in the narrative of the game. Assassin's creed is the biggest example for this. They used to do decent narrative driven stories with pay-offs for the major Assassination missions. Then they pivoted into these open ended style missions where they prioritised 'player freedom' and suddenly everything became bland, boring and repetitive. which is exactly the opposite of what they tried to achieve. And now everybody criticizes AC for bland, forgettable missions and storyline..😂
When playing BG3 I was constantly surprised by the number of possibilities and choices you can as a player make...I think FarCry 3 was one of the first games that I remember to introduce multiple endings but BG3 felt really next gen for me in that regard
Far Cry 3??? Look, I love Far Cry 3, but it only has 2 endings and those are only really decided at the very, very end with a single 2 path choice. It had a very good story, but in no way "interactkve" or "dynamic" like an RPG.
@@mekingtiger9095Witcher 3 would be a better example, it's one of the few games that choices you make throughout it genuinely affect the ending versus most games that the choice is literally made at the end. Hell even telltale games, literally choose your own adventure games, mostly have the big choice at the end
I don't really think you've made your case, and highlighting Starfield doesn't do as much work as you think, it just highlights one bad game that made dated design decisions. You've already acknowledged that you're not saying there isn't a ton of unique gameplay out there once you stray from AAA games. New gameplay experiences are thriving with indies and small-scale devs. Given that, all I've heard you really describe here is the fact that gaming is super fleshed out and deep as of 2024 with hundreds of thousands of games in existence, and there is far less room to reinvent the wheel now than there was back when Half-life came out. In gaming's infancy, of course things were constantly being driven forward and innovated and improved on. Is it not possible that we've reached a point in gaming where we've tried so many things that we know what works for particular genres? For an open world story game, there is only so much you can do, and so the goal becomes to make such a game as fun and polished as possible while maybe making innovative tweaks here and there, and I think that happens all the time. Does the wheel get reinvented with every new AAA game? Of course not, but again there's far less room for that now than there used to be. I wanna hear you tell me what it would look like for GTA 6 to do what you're saying gaming doesn't do anymore. What would that look like? What kind of things would be different or new?
We just achieved the final level of gaming. Video games looks like real life, indies made every gameplay imaginable real. What do you want more? We'll just have new games assembling ideas together in a new way but I doubt a game will ever create a new genre like doom or gta 3 did
The Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077 are peak examples in rpg conversation animation but i'm currently playing Horizon Forbidden West and wow...Guerrilla did an amazing job with their conversation animations! It's so fluid and cinematic, almost like every cutscenes are bespoke and animated individually, the only problem in my opinion is, after a part of conversation is finished, the characters will move to their starting position and it can be a bit goofy in a long conversation.
If the level of leap we're talking about is like going from 2D gaming to 3D gaming, and maybe even to VR gaming, what's the next leap then? 4D gaming? What are you looking for cuz, other than new gimmicks, leaps like that literally are hard to come by at the stage the tech is at.
Has anybody seen Nvidia's new A.I. NPC technology? They showed off a tech demo shortly. NPCs will talk intelligently to each other like they were humans, they generate random conversations with context of what's happening in the game and you will be able to directly talk to them too, ask them questions etc. This will completely change how we play games. It's very likely that this is also how we interact with the world of GTA 6 for example. I think A.I. in whatever shape or form will revolutionize games and bring us into the next gen. I think there will be new ways to play games that we currently don't even think of. I'm excited to see what comes next.
14:22 The opposite of this reason is why I love Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It is because Nintendo and the Zelda team allows the player to go do whatever they want and come back to that activity once they are ready for it. Just wanna give out my two cents! Great Video!
Which happens to be what bethesda RPGs also do, yet it's more often seen as a point of ridicule or criticism. You can easily finish the intro tutorial in skyrim, walk a couple hours towards the opposite side of the map and make a deal with the devil or start a whole dlc without ever doing the first objective after leaving the cave.
you're entitled to your opinion and are free to enjoy what you want, but know that Nintendo are some of the scummiest devs around, they give you games that look worse than Ps2 games, with little to no voice acting and charge AAA prices, they will then re sell 25 year old pieces of games in increments while lying. They're pure scum.
I think a lot of the new iterations are coming from the indie scene. Would The Last of Us II or God of War gotten their rogue like modes if Hades hadn't done so well? I really like Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Galactic devs just released a vampire survivors clone set in that universe.
More like would Hades even exist if risk of rain had not been such a massive hit. (No) Super giant games even broke their word on never wanting to make sequels bcs in the end they also are aiming for the golden goose. only took them a while to realize that the goose is more important than innovation.
The Aughts saw a lot of experimentation. The Wii, Kinect, Wii U, even Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band. The problem with all of these was simple: the controller created wildly new gameplay, but was also limited by the controller itself. It was expensive to create the controllers, resulting in less profit. Meanwhile, VR has yet to do anything beyond put the player inside the screen and introduce a few new motion-based tricks. VR can be great, don’t get me wrong, but the burden on the player is onerous, starting with the price tag. I don’t know what new gameplay paradigm will emerge, but the two-stick handheld controller has a lot of inertia, and will most likely have to be a part of any future developments.
Every release is either an online competitive multiplayer game no one really asked for, or an action/adventure clone of Assassin's Creed/Arkham with a 5 hour forgettable story you won't want to replay. Tomb Raider, Horizon, Jedi, etc. The industry prioritizes microtransactions over gameplay and any game they can't fill with them gets put on the backburner. And don't forget the newest strategy of "make it open world" regarding new games. Diablo 4 and Halo: Infinite have some of the most pointless and dead open world content I've ever seen in a game, raising the question of why they even bothered in the first place.
I would say the only game that has felt next gen is Baldur’s Gate 3. The complexity of that game is something I didn’t think we could see and truly blew my mind
I see the next huge leap being AI integration like chatgpt of sorts into the games characters for dialogue. Could mean a Fallout type game has a text input that you type and a chatgpt type AI reacts.
AI integration could indeed be very interesting, as it basically is a way to automate the creation of variety. Every NPC even in smaller productions could have their own voice. They could have different moods and react differently to player behavior based on their character traits. Animation systems could be much more dynamic and reactive. In Cyberpunk for example (which is a great game), every of those fat NPC guys walks the exact same way. Use AI techniques to change those animations based on age, fitness, time of day, current activity, and so on, and the world would feel completely different.
There's 2 areas I see for advancement, the biggest is adding AI similar to ChatCPT except trained for the confines of the game world (this could possibly include literally talking to NPCs with your mic). The second is VR/AR interfaces replacing monitors, and many more games allowing you to still play regular PC games on them and at least allowing you to look around. We're still 10 years away at least no the AR/VR side from getting there for the average consumer.
I expect for games to incorporate some kind of AI for NPCs, in a way that they wont exist on some sort of loop , but would feel like actual characters with their own lives, that way it would actually be virtual world.
So you literally describe waiting for VR. It’s literally the only thing that will change as much as you are waiting. (I’m not criticising) The problem with « outdated » games is not that much that they did not improve enough, many times. Starfield for example is even LESS interesting than Skyrim or even oblivion. Literally. And many games are like that nowadays. Less quests, less features, not always THAT MUCH better written (which could, maybe, justify some flows), less weapons, less features generally speaking… even the next Test Drive looks so shallow from what we know compared to TDU2, that is so old. Unless most of the market accepts VR (still pretty unlikely for at least two years I think), which even the studios do not seem to aim for, we wont break any walls. Maybe small new very original gameplay features, at best. Same for GTA6, you’ll see. That’s still a game in a 3D environment played on a flat screen. I’m quite persuaded we won’t have that much choice, probably a little but not much. That’s their core gameplay : it’s not a RPG, a game with many choices and consequences (still there were some in GTAV and RDR2, pretty decent ones even for that kind of games). For me it’s not even a question of risks not taken, just so less features than before… or almost no new ones, and lack of old ones we loved. Interesting video ! :)
I wanna see fixed/uncontrolable cameras make a comeback! So much potential for truly cinematic presentation and having a stick free for other things than camera controls sounds potentially great to me
I think Cyberpunk is the closest. A cinematic game without cinematic, without loading screens, only "disruptions" are when time skips while you wait in place or sleep, or get knocked out. Every dialogue is active, and engaging. If it had some drastic innovations it would be even further from The Witcher 3's impressive quest "cohesion", since both would take insane amounts of work. I would say CP2077 would be "next gen" if it just had Witcher 3's quest structure and interwoven, cause and effect, and was otherwise the same as it is today.
The million dollar question is... what actually is next-gen gameplay? What would you define it as? It's interesting to think about, but at some point, we have to be reductive to recognise where to go next. What's best to do? What isn't? Yes, the early 2000s birthed new genres - contemporary open worlds with the GTA trilogy, or third-person shooters with RE4 - but what has changed since then on a mechanical level? Half-Life was still fundamentally a shooter, the story or standing around watching NPCs monologue ≠ any tangible difference in gameplay. The sequel was the same, physics puzzles didn't change the FPS nature of the game. Quake was in full 3D, but still the same mechanically as Doom and, to a lesser extent, Wolfenstein before it. Health packs, point and shoot, armour... does that make Call of Duty and its ilk fundamentally different for adding health regen? Unlimited ammo? Because they're still the same on a fundamental and, most importantly, mechanical level. Well, what about something more contemporary like Prey? It's an immersive sim. The level design is phenomenal, sure, and something like the Gloo Cannon alone gives a tonne of freedom to navigate environments. But what's actually changed mechanically compared to Dark Messiah? Thief? Dishonored? System Shock? Deus Ex? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue any particular point, it's just that we need to define what new or groundbreaking gameplay would even look like. How different would it must be to shake conventions? Take FEZ, for example. Interesting gimmick, but one could easily argue that it's still a side scroller puzzle game. Yes, we're conflating gameplay/genre to a degree, but these loose associations of what a game is about defines how players perceive them. Is Cyberpunk 2077 really that different from Half-Life or Deus Ex? Is next-gen gameplay in this day and age now just cross-pollination of different genres? Is it even possible to add completely new gameplay? Maybe. Breaking conventional thought or design ethos isn't easy, but look at something like Vampire Survivors. Pizza Tower, you could argue that its mechanics aren't any radical departure from similar titles. Shadows of Doubt, maybe? A procedural investigation sim. The free-form nature of it is interesting, but again... does it have any fundamental departure in gameplay? Was Far Cry 3 really that different from 2, adding in progression system flavour? You could even argue that the hack-and-slash nature of Soulsborne was iterating on its predecessors like King's Field. Progression systems, XP, weapon animations, armour, magic... this is essentially "flavour" but what we're looking at is actual mechanical changes. What fundamentally defines gameplay? Does Red Dead's horse traversal counterbalance the rigid, cinematic nature of its main story missions? Is Death Stranding that much of a departure from a walking sim or survival game like The Long Dark? Assassin's Creed brought in parkour, that alone is different gameplay, but the series didn't really doing anything with it after the first. What Remains of Edith Finch is a good example, but given the vignette nature of its story, does the gameplay changing provide something genre-defining like these classic titles from the late 90s to early 2000s? Is the game industry fundamentally about iteration - not that I'm trying to argue everything owes its existence to Space War or Pong - and developers being taught through existing processes means the media we consume has to stand in the shadow of what's come before? Good video, by the way. I'm not criticising your video, I just think you could've gone a bit deeper.
I was thinking this back when the PS4 launched. GTA5 for example is still the best open world crime game, going on 11 years later. Games really haven’t changed since 2011-2013 in terms of gameplay
Me too. I became utterly shocked so few people noticed it back then with how little games have changed from one gen to another. How is it that we both could tell immediately something was off even back then but not pretty much almost 98% of gamers, even the non-casual ones?
@@mekingtiger9095Because there is actually a difference from 7th to 8th gen. Just compare AC Unity, Arkham Knight and Uncharted 4 to its predecessors. 8th gen wasn't as crazy as other generations. The 7th gen was rather refined so there wasn't much to be done compared to previous generations. It's sort of like the difference between 16 bit and 32 bit games.
Finally. A video that addresses the issues I've had with gaming for an *entire decade* by now. Glad to know I'm not the only one and that I'm not crazy here.
I for one, think we've lived through a huge growth and hit peak "traditional gaming" and now nothing excites us anymore. But there is something we need to keep in mind, VR and AR can become more than just a way to experience games, I really do believe that, as soon as we have full body handsfree tracking, those bulky goggles will be the next gen that we really need.
the full body tracking is just a pipedream that just wont be proffiteable. People dont wanna exercise to play. They just want to sit on their couch. Its why VR is still stuck with joysticks and teleport movement. On top of the fact that its almost impossible to avoid problems from the outside. You cant infinitely walk on your room you will smack against the wall or furniture no matter what. The only way VR could ever advance to something beyond that would be going full brain injection mode that puts your body in a come and transfer your conciousness into a virtual world and that just gets way too hard on sci fi when to this day scientist still struggle with understanding human brains.
@@MokoES I all in for full brain gaming. But there is use for VR specially for tactical shooters, which don't need CoD levels of moronic movement. And yeah, we mostly want to be sitting, but walking with arm sway is an elegant solution.
@@luciano12sa the big problem is the price though... The cheapest headset is around 300$... and you of course need a good PC to sctually play those games too so its the price of the PC + 300 or more from the headset... and you can just avoid buying the headset just play any other game on your pc or console.
@@MokoES yeah. But as it gets more popular and evolved it does get more affordable or at least worth it. Which is fine, if it's reasonable and worth it
The next big thing in gaming might be AI. Especially for more in-depth NPC's, even the random NPC's that populate the game. You can talk in real life through a mic and talk to an NPC. Or AI that 'knows' what you prefare more and the game will provide it. The first steps are already taken, the video's about it are very intresting.
While i agree with the general thesis, your own video demonstrates how, as you move away from the simplicity of the fundamental building blocks of gaming structure (things like the introduction of 3D, or open spaces or cutscenes or voice over or the ability to save), it becomes harder and harder to separate iteration from innovation. Is Oblivion really a point of change, or just an iteration of Morrowind? Is Last of Us a point of change, or just an iteration of Uncharted 2's storytelling techniques? As you become more and more complex in your structure, changes will look more and more granular, and big design revolutions will be harder to achieve, without destroying decades of progress. It's not a coincidence that most daring design choices and experimentation comes from the indie world, not only because budget (ie: risk) is lower, but because the complexity of a project is usually greatly reduced to its essentials, from a design standpoint.
I think it's because the games matured as a medium. It's like with movies - they have changed very little from 80s and 90s. Sure, we have better CGI now than we did back then, and the content of the movies changed, but if you break it down it's all the same kind of shots and performances. Similarly in games we've simply found what works, discarded what doesn't and are sticking with it.
I think the next real generational leap will be with the use of AI. The best example of this currently is the Mantella mod in Skyrim. It sounds insane, but you can actually talk to each npc freely talking about whatever and they will respond to you in character, fully voiced by ai. This allows you to essentially build your own story as the AI summarizes and keeps up with past events. It’s implemented surprisingly well for a community backed mod in a game over a decade old. If triple A developers were to build their games around this concept, it will no doubt be a “new standard” in an immersion and a true generational leap in videogames. Then there’s VR but that’s much further away in my eyes.
The idea of a game that changes the industry also relies on the rest of the industry being able to run with an idea. Take a look at Tears of the Kingdom. The way in which you can interact with everything seems very “next gen”. The whole world in the game has systems that interact with each other in ways nobody is doing. Creating something like that could be very costly and time consuming. Especially since only 1 developer has figured it out. So if nobody tries it then it doesnt become the next transformative thing. Maybe AI/machine learning will end up being the thing that does it. When the game can seemingly generate new quest lines and you can shape your world completely differently from anyone else’s. But we are a long ways off from that. Odds are like many big game changes revolutions it may come from a small indy team. That make a game they is fun and then suddenly it’s an entirely new genre that all the AAA studios and publishers are trying to copy. The last time it was battle royale.
unrelated to the video but in an era of everyones thumbnails being weird AI shit its really cool you have a dedicated artist you credit in the description
The way loading screens and doors are handled in Starfield is identical to Skyrim. NPC approaches door; opens door and NPC fades through and that looks weird. The door never opens for NPCs but they fade into the room as if they teleported.
That is so... embarassing. Like, this is how it was in Oblivion too. Bethesda has honestly not evolved in 18 years.
@@Marksman3434 Worst part is that modders have shown that seamless doors are possible, for example the open cities mod for Skyrim. So clearly Bethesda chose not to upgrade which makes it worse because people are often using "engine limitation" as a criticism which actually undersells how bad Bethesda has handled their tech.
afaik its the same engine, they are working on the new engine where TES6 is going to be made in
@@sharkpyro93don't defend them
in fallout 4 you would get in an elevator and it would be seamless. in starfield you get a black screen everytime you go in ffs, so immersion breaking@@Marksman3434
Honestly I'm suffering from some sort of game fatigue rn. It's like every game I touch Is either a copy of another game, or a game that really tries to steal your money...
Try chivalry 2, my favourite game up until now. you can always play it
It's your problem.
The indie scene is always going crazy. You could try library of ruina, or en garde, which was saberfighting game in this video.
Same. I played CP2077 and despite it being kind of immersive here and there it still wasn't a WOAH moment for me like it was back when Crysis 1 came out (just an example). Not saying I hated it but back then when the first presentation trailer dropped I thought that this would be the game of my dreams which I'll play for ever.
I had my 500+ hours of Stalker GAMMA recently becaus it's doing something that I've not seen in a survival game to this day and for the love of god, give me a survival game with a huge learning curve, to get immersed in and a difficulty which has to be mastered. Add something new to this formula. Something that is not as common even if it's something people don't like. If it suits the gameplay and immersion, why the hell not? (No, Tarkov isn't what I'm looking for.)
How comes that the enemy AI of FEAR 1 is not the common standard in Shooters these days?
I think you get my point.
If I open Steam at a sale I see a lot of interesting looking games but in the end it's just another copy of game X with a new spraypaint on it.
Or a game that doesn’t let you play how you want to play
My brother Elden Ring has a dedicated jump button, how much more next gen can you get?
Do you think that from Dark Souls to Elden Ring there was no progress?
Nope, just being sarcastic for a joke.
@@ViceZone was there? they cut all the positive changes they put in Sekiro so Elden Ring is just dark souls with a big map
@@lukasor9936 and a jump button
@@Rusty254 there is jump in elden ring, I have to give'em that
(That's why it won game of the year I suppose cause I don't see any other reason for it)
Game Designer here: I talked with many other peers, mentors and read a lot of books about game design, and the consensus is pretty much what you summarised perfectly here: It's just fucking hard to invent new dynamics. The reason is simple: As much as designers can be considered smart people in general, we all struggle to understand the systems we are creating, until we finally test them with players. The reasons for that lie in the non-linear nature of system design, while the languages we speak are purely linear. I'm not gonna go into to much detail about this here, but the effect is that its almost impossible to predict where a gameplay idea is gonna evolve into 2 years later, which will have a devastating impact on all the content departments, which will probably waste their time on unused assets. And this is why big studios just simply can't afford to experiment with such concepts.
However, that doesn't apply to the indie scene. I'm an indie dev and I do have a game in development which bursts boundaries. I would claim Outer Wilds was actually one of those games as well. It's not enough though, I feel like the whole indie scene should double down on its competitive advantage, namely, the ability to take risks...
This is super interesting, can you reccomend some good books and/or videos about it?
@@adminluca Yeah, I would really recommend you Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester, one of my all time favourites, which goes also into this topic. Also The Art of Game Design, the classic by Jesse Schell, which is a good collection of best practices and how to build games from an experience on a rapid prototyping basis. And finally, when it comes to thinking of game design as a systemic language you actively engage with, I recommend Advanced Game Design by Michael Sellers
I think Sifu is a game that changes the way you think about progression and experience in games. Truly one of the most unique games I’ve played in a while
if you like Sifu you may like Overgrowth. The game is kind of barebones but the movement and combat is excellent
@@ralkia I will check it out!
Dead Space also doesn’t have loading screens. Obviously the tram and elevators are suppose to be the loading screens, but they help immerse you into the world of Dead Space
You could say Tony Hawk American Wasteland has no loading screens then
@@kylespevak6781 tbf that was actually advertised as a selling point when American Wasteland came out
God of War on ps2 (2005) has no loading screen.
Not needing a loading screen to walk into a building has been normal in most games for well over 10 years now.
@@OrangeNash since ps2 to be exact
14:11 This is why I loved the first part of MGS V back in 2016, you can approach the mission the fuck way you want, guns blazing, stealth, mixed, or even hiding in a bush and sniping everybody with Quiet while playing music from the chopper lol
that sandbox element of tools being a leverage in tackling hurdles was engaging in MGSV, might be even arguably considered as an immersive sim. i think games that respects players freedom do stand out since games all along were a form of escapism 🤔
MGS5 is really an awesome sandbox game (both ground zeroes and phantom pain, in different ways). I'll never forget my chopper flying in playing James Brown's "Paid the Cost to Be the Boss"
Somebody needs to go back to school and learn some more proper English! #LMFAO!
That game was trash in my opinion that games no where near as good or impactful as metal gear snake eater sons of Liberty or the original
@@AvatarRoku-w8o Yeah, while the gameplay was fantastical, MGS5 got the second weaker story of the series with MGS4. It is even worse because it just a reanswer to questions that were already satisfyingly answered before in MGS 3 - 4 and Peace Walker, but the answers given in MGS5 are weaker when not directly in conflict with the rest of the series
next gen will clearly be bubsy 4D
Naw its gonna be super Mario 128
I just want bubsy 3d in vr. samsung gear vr.
Lol now this is a great joke. Bubsy is a classic example of not taking new tech in a proper direction.
Are we ready to understand 4d?
extremely cursed comment.
True next gen gameplay is being able to pull the trigger with your feet
High quality PC and console VR (not standalone) needs to take off. Half Life Alyx, Contractors and Resident Evil in VR truly feel like the "next step" in gaming.
Absolutely agree, Quest 3 is more of a new experience than my Series X / gaming laptop (which I now use for PCVR).
It’s a lot cheaper to have Indy devs experiment and innovate on their own and find what the market likes or is interested in and copy it than to pay your own developers to see what works. Sad but true
Just like PUBG. Look at all the clones now.
Stardew Valley is another good example, while not completely original it basically rocketed a entirely new 'cozy games' genre into the mainstream for both hardcore and casual gamers alike.
Quite possible. But the big publishers don't even finance such indie projects in order to dare to experiment in this way. There is only a fixation on profit maximization and opportunism, and no ambition to advance video games as an art form.
Not exactly original a.k.a. being almost 1:1 clone of Harvest Moon: Back to the Nature outside of graphics and town layout xD
That genre existed all the time but indeed this title got it more spotlight outside of Japan.
After watching this guy for 10 years it shocks me so much how different he is from his younger self. Watching the 3rd Birthday, Elf Bowling, and M&M Shell Shocked videos is literally a different person from these video essays.
THAT'S what you call growth.
Thank you!
I'll still miss the occasional mega angry content he made back in the 2010's. Those were always funny and such an entertainment to watch whenever he had to bash a really bad game or anime.
Still, his current content continues to be gold.
@@mekingtiger9095 Have you seen a video I did last year called Games I Strongly Dislike? You may enjoy it if you haven't already seen it :)
Yeah but you're being "playful" and having a good time with the video. It's not pure unadultered rage, it's script mad. (THAT'S STILL GOOD YOUR CONTENT IS AMAZING DON'T CHANGE ONGOD) @@DXFromYT
@@AmiriHipHop Nooo, I read all comments and have read many of yours in the past! They've all been appreciated.
I think this is why Minecraft was such a great game and is still played to this day. It fully commits to its idea and allows for full player expression. You can go anywhere seemlessly the possibilities are endless. Imagine every time you wanted to go underground you had to pass through a loading screen to get to a fixed location. Mc wouldn't nearly be as fun and it would break the immersion. A lot of these open world games feel like a scam because they forget about these fine details that make the experience feel seemless.
I think more than that having both a random generating world that 90% of the time makes sense in how a world should be structured but different enough on each generation, and a save system that saves everything including every block you destroyed, every seed you planted, and every enemy you kept alive helps a ton to make this world feel like alive despite the fact that the game looks like a lot of other low budget indie games of the time.
The only thing keeping Minecraft alive is mods bro, what if Minecraft realised today, it'll die really quick
@@alexzander1142I mean if they spruced up the presentation but maintained the same concept I think it would do really well
This comment is brain dead af. Its such a fat leap in logic to natural game design. Minecraft was able to do that because it’s a very simple game with very simple assets, it’s not loading highly complex NPC’s or cutscenes, special effects, etc etc.
@hartfantom this comment is braindead because it misses the entire point and hinges on one example I made. Regardless of how complex the assets are the point was Minecraft was able to keep the immersion and give the player full access to the environment. Why it's able to do that is irrelevant and besides the point.
they way that cyberpunk treat the relationships that you can have, and the way that the world communicates with you felt a bit like next gen for me
That was some next gen writing for sure.
I so feel this after finishing Alan Wake 2 yesterday!
That game is visually outstanding and it has some of the most unique storytelling I've ever experienced in gaming, but gameplay wise it feels like something that could have been achieved about a decade ago at least
funny. That's what reviews said about Alan Wake 1 as well.
A truly stagnant industry.
@@Senumunu How tf do you expect to improve whats so core to the game and is like 95% perfect??
Somehow the dialogue and facial animations in Oblivion are less uncanny than Starfield.
The better the character models look, the more bad animations will stand out.
Bethesda is sinking further and further into uncanny valley
in order for them to be uncanny they have to be close to human. oblivion is not.
I don't think GTAVI will stray too much from their established formula, they have toyed with the idea of more freedom in GTAO, there's an infamous heist where 4 players must enter a building without being detected, this is probably the most frustrating heist because of that, in later heists they made it so you plan a route with a certain aproach, including stealth, but when you are executing this plan it can all go to shit but you don't get a mission failed screen, but rather are encouraged to carry on and solve it, this is also true for the Cayo Perico heist, this was after the release of RDR2, which also allows more freedom in its online missions.
There's also MGSV, probably one of the most well regarded open world games in the last decade because of this same reason
Immersive sim elements introduced into more genres and more branching possibilities should be where we're headed imo, rather than mindlessly upgrading graphic fidelity, Baldurs Gate 3 seems like a step in the right direction and I'm glad the industry is paying attention.
Didn't Rockstar or Take Two recently buy the team behind FiveM? I can see them borrowing some RP gameplay elements for Vice City Online to turn it from simple lobbies to some kind of social platform with in-depth interactions between players
@@TacticalHawk34 That's right, and that's also a very important step in a deeper and more engaging set of features, even if GTAVI does benefit from RP features I'd love to see new iterations on the classic modes, I'd love to play gungame for example
RDR2 actually has many missions with a lot freedom I think they will do more missions like the home Robbery with Hosea or Random encounter quests like the killer woman. Rockstar could easily make an immersive sim if they wanted to but making unique missions and telling a good story with loads of freedom. With GTA6 it does not seem to be a story heavy as RDR2 and its not Prequel so things do not have to happen a certain way. Plus Rob Nelson said with RDR2 they tried out more procedural missions but they did not work well. I am not worried about mission design at all for GTA6 as they are great at quest design when they are not trying to tell a Specific story.
It won't deviate at all. It will be another crime storyline that takes from countless movies, and then it'll be an online mode where getting idiots to buy shark cards is the primary goal as opposed to putting forth something new and interesting.
@@thescourge6989 Yikes
I'd argue that overall, a big gameplay shift in major single player games this generation has been to implement more and more elements from the Immersive Sim genre, because it coincides with the added immersion of advancing tech & presentation, and it helps to fix repetition in copy-pasted activities by allowing players to do them in many different ways that evolve as you figure out its systems. This is most obvious in BG3, Cyberpunk 2077/Phantom Liberty, and Zelda TOTK.
And because of that, Immersive Sims are seeing a huge revival in the indie scene cuz more ppl are getting a taste of em and wanting to see what the genre is all about. I don't expect full-on ImSims to go fully mainstream but many of their design aspects clearly are already
AKA: ppl are starting to see that ImSims offer so much that mainstream gamers have been wanting out of big open world & Roleplaying games
What 'immersive sim' elements are there in totk? Do you mean just the physics building mechanic of it?
@@chromesucks5299 the way those mechanics enable the player to interact with their environment to come up with emergent and creative ways of overcoming obstacles that can sometimes even be described as game-breaking but that was the intent. The definition of ImSim and the name itself are kinda wonky. No one's found a good working definition, only examples and ppl argue over if some things are ImSims or just have ImSim elements. Like FarCry 2, Hitman, etc.
I remember upping the resolution on Half Life to 800x600 . First time it was an option for graphics for me. Brother and I just sat there staring at boxes and wall tiles for 10 minutes "Jesus look how clear it looks, that's almost like a photo"
I wish kids today could have that immediate real-time leap from crappy old graphics to "whaaaat the fuuuuuck" graphics
GTA 4, BF3 & Race Driver GRID were the last games to have that effect on me
I think Ultrakill is next-gen gameplay if not VERY close to it. Up until the point of its inception on Steam I’ve never heard of a game that:
-Regenerates your health through blood splatters
-Makes you perform absurd movement that definitely transcends every fast paced boomer and movement shooter (ride a rocket while shooting a coin with a railgun and then parrying your shotgun blast while then freezing rockets and then circling some saws around someone and-I could go on. I have never heard of a game that did all these crazy things that you could actively control and without losing momentum.)
-Made a good water level (go to Hell, Dire Dire Docks)
I understand that this feels like it’s “iterating” more than having an actual structural change as well as being in a familiar setting (name this popular shooter that has something to do with Hell!!!!) but it felt absolutely different than any other boomer shooter I had played. So unless it’s next-gen-iterating, I don’t know what to call it. I genuinely felt like it was a brand new genre I was playing for the very first time again and there wasn’t a single feeling of the game being old, restrictive, or outdated. It especially didn’t help with the MASSIVE genre hops that the secret levels provided.
Industry is afraid to take risks, it’s all board room created. There were 2 paths options a couple generations ago- Uncharted/Last of us or Far Cry 3- and those are still the paths being followed today.
Pair that with control schemes that are a standard across genres, writing that is hired out to a third party, and you’ve got 9th gen.
why invent something new.... 1990s ultima online already caused life ruining addiction loops and now they have hard data to argue developer "gut feeling".
Damn, I remember playing Far Cry 3 like an absolute addict. Good days those were. The transition to Far Cry 4 was what told me something was already wrong because of how little it improved for a by then "next gen" game.
Far Cry 5 was the final straw that made it explicit to me.
@@mekingtiger9095FC4 had potential but somehow felt lacked short of using it. FC3 too but it was improvement over FC2. So I get what you mean. FC5 had some things renewed which felt fresh but I cant help to think how they havent fixed story/player dissonance(same mechanics as FC3) in decade with those resources and talent. (FC5 setting is great and all but old fc formula wont cut it anymore, it conflicts and feels dumb). Granted FC3 had better characters than FC5.
No they just know they can deliver half a game and people will buy it and not only buy but then spend hundreds of dollars on digital clothes. Why would they do anything different.
@@mekingtiger9095well theres only so much you can do with the far cry formula. Fc3, blood dragon, primal and fc5 are the only ones worth playing tbh bc they are the only ones they tried to make different. those specific games were made to bring fans back into the already dying series btw. that's why they were the only good and different feeling ones.
The NPC interactions in Cyberpunk are like the animations in Half Life 2 but with a lot more complexity and Polish. Letting the player move around and having the npc’s look at you is nothing new but a lot of games didn’t do it in the past.
NPC interaction/AI is something I hope that GTA6 goes all out on
Looking on how they dumbed down physics and the ai from GTA 4 to 5, I would not expect too much. Rockstar is declining. @@onepunch9416
@@onepunch9416 I wouldn't hold my breath for Rockstar delivering a true "next gen experience", though. They've shown to not be this infallible AAA game studio that is incorruptible by corporate mindset that people praised so much over the last years. And RDR2 has shown that likely the only main thing Rockstar can improve by this point is small "flavor" details like "Animated Horse Balls" and "Wow, I am using a slightly different cloth and the NPCs numbers 37 to 40 have a single scripted line of dialogue reacting to that!". At this point *two* generations have come out since GTA5. They really, really *really* have to deliver a massive leap from their previous title to justify all the time that has passed by and their classical reputation. Maybe I will be proven wrong and be surprised when GTA6 finally comes out. But I am starting to get suspicious of their capabilities by now.
@@mekingtiger9095 Stop smoking crack rockstar is the top dog in games and next gen ai gameplay and so on
@@mrX666-s9p They used to say the same about CDPR and Blizzard Enterntainment.
Look where we are now. Specially with Blizzard. CDPR may have redeemed themselves a little bit, but maaaaan, they were not untouchable by any means.
But we'll see. I'm not saying GTA 6 will fail to deliver that kind of experience. I'm just in a "wait and see" mood, that's all.
Playing Armored Core 6 after spending a hot minute mostly playing the same few FPS games felt really refreshing and I ended up liking it so much it's currently the first and only game I've ever 100%'d
It honestly felt great not feeling the pressure to loot and scavange every square inch of the map for ingredients to rare potions I don't use.
that os also not next gen but ps2 era gameplay
its nothing new tho
@@doltBmBShut up, no one cares, it's still amazing anyway.
@@doltBmBPlus the PS2 is the best console ever made.
Modern gaming is great. Two hours to install the game and then four hours to install the update. There was once a time when you bought the game home, inserted it into the console and believe it or not....PLAY IT. I know it sounds crazy but it's true.
I only now realise how i played spiderman 3 and loved that game so much
... put in a disk small update and bam your playing it and the funniest part
..... it actually had combos unlike the new spiderman
Hell all the old spiderman games seem to have combos and actually progressed
Now its press this button to hit and this to dodge .... i just want delay button presses back
.... kinda like starwars the force unleashed
My god that was a game gem to me
I have fiber optic internet it won't take more than one hour to install most games, update take a few minutes
This has got to be the silliest complaint. You can have several games installed at the same time allowing you to boot any of them at the drop of the hat. Not to mention Xbox has the quick resume function.
Super weird you'd wanna go back to having the system read the media in real time constantly just so you can play.
19:22 i think also you have to consider the role of indie in breakout success. Independent games hold way less risk in crearion, so when one succeeds based on a unique mechanic or structure, it serves as a proof of concept that consumers find that attractive. I think over time simoly because of cost of production the role of triple A shifts from major innovators to best implementors. However, this is also why we need more double A studios, since currently the middle ground is severely lacking in games that arent the strongest, but they are willing to innovate.
Even in Skyrim, which is over a decade old now, fast-travel to a discovered city plops you down inside said city. The only time I see this issue there is with dungeons and buildings, because interior locations are specifically excluded from fast-travel.
In my opinion "next-gen" gameplay is like you said emergent gameplay, We get shiny new hardware and all we can do with it is turn up graphics, there should be a bunch of ways to interact with the world you are in. graphics are the only thing that gets marketed as "next-gen".
It should be better mission layouts more bosses more game modes more skills/abilities more lvls more space or bigger world this is 9th gen not 2nd or 3rd
I think it should improved in ways us and NPC's interact with the world
@@KevinM88TR11 what?
Funnily enough many games from the mid to late 90s already somewhat achieved emergent gameplay, games like Thief, System Shock, Operation Flashpoint and so on. The problem is that hardware was severely limited, and knowledge regarding game engines where rather limited, so the gameplay itself was clunky and slow. If anything, modern designers need to get into their heads that player's discovering things for themselves is much more enjoyable than being told what to constantly do and overtly telling players how they should be feeling at any given moment.
We're living in a golden era of emergent gameplay RIGHT now, you're missing the forest for the trees.
Rdr2, while a bit slow and clunky, looks more next gen than these "so called" next gen games
And also runs better.
RDR2 is proof graphics aren't everything.
@@ServusDeiSmithrdr2 has great graphics
But plays almost exactly like every gta ever
@@ViceZone yeah plays just like GTA 5. Are you serious 😭
Honestly TRUE "Next gen" gameplay won't be coming for a while. I'd wager another decade at least. Until VR is perfected and brought down to a more reasonable consumer price point and A.I is fully utilized to streamline game development It's gonna be a long wait before anything groundbreaking.
I think the funniest thing about the next gen conversation is that Nintendo, on a 6 year old console, made arguably the biggest step in innovating an open world style game with TOTK. The technical aspects of the rewind and fuse, as well as no loading screens on that old of a console is really crazy. I would take these types of innovations over the rocks on the ground looking a little more realistic than they did in 2014.
The finals is the first game in a while that felt "nextgen" because of the server side destruction. When we fought for the point and by the end just flattened a bigh story building for a first time, it was amazing. Last game i was blown away was cyberpunk with the immersive first-person dialog and cutscenes without breaking continuity. It was neat
This isn't anything new, battlebit remastered does the same thing with it's destruction, bad company 2 did that over a decade ago, same with the Red Faction series.
@@fatrat92Sometimes it's a return to something which is "old" that ends up feeling new.
Finals is overhyped mid tier gameplay, cool idea though I’ll give it that. I think elden ring is the only game this generation that you could call next gen, not for any 1 thing but as a complete package.
@@marshallbeck9101 it's a great game mate, but it is just open world dark souls, it hardly reinvents the wheel
@@fatrat92 not the same. It is actually next-gen destruction. Literally, it uses next-gen tech for it, it plays differently as a result. Battlebit and Bad Company 2 are amazing games, but the destruction they offer can only be done in predetermined places in predetermined manner, not so with the Finals. Although it's not the best game to showcase the tech.
The current gameplay formulas are known quantities, and the templates of success are easy to follow and profitable. Open world games for example, have no need to innovate when a game like GTA 3 nailed the formula over 20 years ago and GTA clones will make a bunch of money. It's all about the money, at this point. That's why were seeing a "remaster" of TLOU2 even though the original game isn't even 4 years old.
you are essentially saying game publishers are drunk on sweet sweet endless data those games offer(offering facebook like algorithmic endless possibilities and profiling).
yeah i had GTA3, SA, to 4 in mind when it comes to the GTA milestones. im literally waiting for GTA to finally be a culmination of its Rockstar, GTA6 might be? may had the same immersive detail as GTA4 and player agency writing of RDR2's reactivity.
Tlou2 bloatware is such a joke
The sad thing is that missions in GTA 3, VC and SA were often more open and reactive than recent Rockstar games. Just look at the many ways people finished the train mission in SA. If that mission was in GTA V or RDR2, the game would fail you the second you took the wrong turn.
@@matman000000RDR2 has missions with allot of freedom and are really well designed but others are more on rails for story telling. GTA3 lacked the variety of games like San Andrea's and Bully but gave more freedom. RDR2 has. Some unique quests that also give you lots of freedom The house Robbery with Hosea being a great example.
I totally agree with your point about the dialogues in starfield. It just feels so old to go back to this old presentation after Cyberpunk where the dialogues feel so real and immersive, with such an amazing quality and details in all of the character's animations, where there is never one camera cut and you enter and leave a conversation in such a fluid and natural way and also never lose control of your character. Its like the perfect mix of cutscenes and RPG dialogues but without any of the negatives. And after that when you go back to starfield where the game takes control away from you everytime you enter a conversation, zoom on the NPCs face, all of this with npcs fixed in the same spot who cant interact with anything and all of this with very outdated facials and body animations, man it feels like you've just went back 20 years in the past
This stood out to me about Starfield like crazy!
Bethesda games' presentations have felt old since Obsidian's New Vegas showed everyone how much expressive storytelling could be done in their janky engine. That we have stuff like Disco Elysium, BG3, etc. at this point but they're still redoing fallout 3 is unfortunate.
That'd be less of a problem if writing wasn't Bethesda writing. Bethesda in general only makes engines for modding, not games. Their "games" are unplayable without mods.
I really tried to look past this when I was playing Starfield, but as soon as the camera started abruptly cutting between 2 characters, not even smoothly panning, I had to put my foot down and stop. It's awful
Cyberpunk destroyed other games for me. It had the best npc dialogues of all games and how they handled it imo. I just can’t play other games that won’t let me do anything while talking with npcs. Also the animations and quality of those npcs are something else man
As old as this video is at this point it is likely this has already been said and will also likely not get read, but I have to say it anyway:
How did you not think of VR before or while scripting this video?
Sure, it's cost restrictive for now to get into, and it's still in its teething phase for figuring out what to do with it. But it IS the "next gen gamplay" you're looking for.
Next gen is offline windows 7 installation emulating/running your roms/repacks library in peace
@@anwarxv9279 NGL; You've got a point. Video games largely died with MTX and GaaS models. But at least some good games are still coming out.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Half Life Alyx, which I think was a tremendous game changer for VR games. Or Star Citizen and the incredible scope it is trying to achieve. Both of these games, I think, give us a taste of what that next generation could and should be.
I think the next big innovation in gaming will be interacting with AI. Nvidia has a demo right now albeit very limited, Where you can interact with the NPC on screen through voice. Can you imagine how fun it would be to have a game where you play as a Detective or an Investigative Reporter or a Politician or anything really. Breaking the Mold and Allowing Players to actually interact with the game in a Totally brand new way will be the next frontier in gaming IMO. I cant wait for it. I think it will be absolutely incredible!
Of course, except a game like that already exist. The game is called shadow of doubt. But people will refuse to look pasts it's graphic.
@@jumbo9380 Hmmmm... I didn't know about it. I'll look into it.
@@jumbo9380 No it doesn't. Shadow of a Doubt is scripted multiple choice.
He is talking about being able to have a unscripted conversation with an NPC where they react to what your are saying in real time and respond appropriately.
All the innovation is on indie and smaller studios. AAA companies are all run by people who don't play games and who make decisions based on market "analysis" forever trying to print money.
🎯
Just like the current animation industry
Ridiculous take from someone with no real world dev experience or knowledge.
Well, I play video games since the early 90's, and despite the graphical advances, super realistic graphics, and so on, most of the AAA games feels like the same. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good games that you can have a lot of fun playing, but the stories, quests, or what you do in game having consequences, things like that, feels like the same in every game.
Games that truly felt next-gen for me:
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Detroit: Become Human
- Titanfall 2
- The Witcher 3 (and its expansions)
- Skyrim TESV
To add a few more:
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Baldur's Gate 3
Nier: Automata
@@dynamicflashy Seems like you're just picking some games that you like lol, Baldur's Gate 3 is amazing and all but its known for its retro feel, and Rift apart has pretty much the same gameplay from the older games from the 2000s with flashier prettier graphics and some smooth new mechanics, great games for sure but dont think they really apply for that list
@@ShadowLegend300 I guess you misunderstood what next gen gameplay implies.
BG3 took an established genre and gave us a next gen version of it. So much so that the industry said it set the standards far too high.
Ratchet & Clank literally made the best use of a major selling feature for next gen consoles (PS5's SSD) that we've seen so far.
Nier: Automata, for it's time, incorporated so many gameplay features while displaying the next gen visuals of its time.
My list is no lesser than RDR 2 or Titanfall 2.
Are you joking? Seems to me like you've lived under a rock for more than 10 years and just woke up.
You’re not including VR. VR has had a revolution very recently, especially with games like Boneworks and Half Life: Alyx. VR is a fresh change in gaming that many people haven’t tried because “it’s too expensive,” yet people buy multi-thousand dollar computers when a modern headset is commonly less than half a thousand for an entirely different gameplay experience that you don’t get from a console or standard PC experience.
How many aren't built for glasses? Then you gotta buy inserts? What if it uncomfortable and you gotta buy a comfort mod? What if you don't have the space for it? What if the room is not lit well enough or you have too much lighting? Then you gotta buy or build a Zipline for the chord/s.
Not to mention many people including VR gamers get motion sickness.
You can't even try a VR headset at a store. Then you have to purchase from a retailer with a good return policy.
I love VR. It's super fun. But it is far away from being a genuinely great experience.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was honestly the first, not only glimpse, but an entire look into the next-generation experience in gaming. It is actually unbelievable looking back at Red Dead Redemption 2 and seeing what Rockstar achieved, seriously. We always talk about "player choice" and branching, dynamic storylines that truly shift and completely alter as a result of your autonomous decisions based on a variety of factors, but no game has really achieved this, unlike Red Dead Redemption 2.
The amount of changes that can be made to the world, characters and stories you encounter in Red Dead Redemption 2, purely based upon your attitudes and choices alone, is unfathomable. I'm not kidding - just look at all those trendy Red Dead Redemption 2 clips on TH-cam with the 'What If you make this decision in X' titles: NONE of them are fake, and the plethora, the diversity, of consequences for your actions and when you experience a certain event in a different timeline, is undeniably remarkable.
The sheer enormity of that game is incredibly impressive, ESPECIALLY when you count for the fact that game wasn't even an attempt for the "next-gen" consoles such as the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and was released two years prior in 2018, developed for years and years starting in (if not-before) 2013, and purely for what we now consider last-gen consoles. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a triumph, and stands above any other Triple A game sitting on shelves today. Cyberpunk 2077 attempted such a feat, but we all know how that ultimately turned out.
We can see that, regardless of the hate people give the company for their PR and CORPORATE practices, Rockstar Games are absolutely the king of video-game developers, and likely always will be. Trust me when I state that GTA 6 will BE that next generation experience Red Red Redemption 2 provided a superbly surreal blueprint for, that we have all been waiting for.
I finished RDR2 maybe two years ago, so correct me if I'm wrong. Was there a huge part of the map that served no purpose and was a lot like the northern half of GTA V map? Those maps really don't need to be this huge. All those big budget games are too unfocused. They even made an open world game out of Mirror's Edge of all games (in Catalyst).
I would also seriously cut down on rummaging through containers in search for crafting materials and other junk. Such busywork! Witcher 3, Divinity Original Sin 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 were all really getting on my nerves because of that.
Given RDR2 is older than BG3, but BG3’s emergence is ten fold. Done by a studio with less to work with than Rockstar. It was still impressive you could great almost every NPC and have mini conversations, but it doesn’t mean much when nothing really comes of it. BG3’s characters are so diverse, have so much to say, and usually always give you an interesting tidbit of the world or a quest. What Rockstar really needs is emergent side quests, not collect-a-thon side quests. It’s fun to explore their giant worlds, but what’s the point to it all? There’s no interesting side quests (or maybe I missed them,) unlike BG3 where it feels like the game is guiding me into side quests which in turn guide me to the main story.
Until BG3 that is. BG3 pretty much beat a masterpiece like RDR2 in every single category, graphics, sound design, artstyle, voice acting, animations and most importantly game play. It truly is the greatest game of all time for now and until GTA 6 drops, BG3 will be remain the standard. I'm sure GTA 6 will be incredible just from the trailer alone. It looks even better than Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 while being a console game while the other 2 are PC games. But a game is more than graphics, and it remains to be seen if it can match BG3's next gen scope.
RDR2's actual gameplay was awful though and the on rails missions are outdated. Sure, the open world and how they made it feel alive is a technical masterpiece but the whole thing felt more like a simulator than an actual game. I got bored playing it. RDR1 is much better from a gameplay perspective.
Red Dead Redemption 2 will be turning 7 years old when Gta 6 releases. I'm very hyped. Have to disagree with DX here. I loved the mission design in V and RDR2. The actual points of the missions were extremely fun. The only bad design was when Trevor has to hop a dirt bike on a moving train in V. I failed that one a lot. When it comes to Ai and how the world reacts, Red Dead 2 has yet to be beat. Just how Npcs remember you and how helping strangers can yield rewards. Like helping a snake bite victim to the hospital and he got better. He saw me in town and flagged me down. He told me to buy anything I wanted from the gun store and he'd pay for it. I got an upgrade to my ammo belt for free. Stuff like that.
Absolutely excellent video. I have thought about similar issues like this, and it's nice to see someone display in such a great way. Personally, I feel right now that we have reached a point where that 'next gen' game might not happen anymore. Some games are so refined nowadays that's its insane to think about.
It doesn't really matter, only casuals gamers who only play AAA games care about things like graphics and resolution, art style and performance are far more important, considering most ps4 games ran at 30fps and most ps5 games run at 60fps, that's good enough for me, the actual games themselves in terms of gameplay and story are far more important
AI models similar to ChatCPT and VR/AR interfaces are the future of gaming.
Next gen is where the gameplay is dumbed down so much you only need 1 button to control you character.
@TCELL24 next gen is live services, subscription models and gamers not owning a damn thing.
IMO the next Gen Gameplay u are looking for is simply locked behind the VR payment wall/ upgrade, next gen for me was playing Half life Alyx and as usual its valve setting the trend for next gen just like they did with half life ... the level of interactivity and Mechanics and puzzels in that game is mind blowing.
That would only be true if VR had no physical limitations. Which is to say, you didn't get a sweaty head, you didn't have potential eye problems, and you could use it sitting in your normal gaming chair with no space to move.
So long as the basic physical act of using VR renders it different to normal gaming, it will never replace normal gaming, thus will never truly be "next gen"... rather, it will continue to be a side-branch to regular gaming.
@@NicholasBrakespear I'll consider VR next gen when I can hook it up to my brain and play it as if it were a second life. 😅
Rockstar mission design is indeed restrictive... but it's not that bad
It would be interesting to see how this channel would discuss Alan Wake II. It combines current game graphics with live action, but the transitions from one format to the other make the game function like a cohesive whole. In other words, it succeeded where The Quiet Man failed.
Alan Wake 2 was one of my favorite games of 2023, second only to Baldur's Gate 3, and felt distinctly "next gen". And to be fair to The Quiet Man, combining gameplay with live action is Remedy's shtick. They did it in Quantum Break and Control to great effect, and I feel like they've basically created their own genre at this point. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us with Control 2.
The order 1886😂😂
dx actually back with another banger, and just by topic alone i assume this will blow up and damn man you fucking deserve it, loving you for years
Thank you!
I'm so excited for gta6, I'm playing read dead 2 right now a lot and will say this game really feels like a true next gen game and a huge step up in complexity, mechanics, variety and narrative
Red dead 2 was the only 'wow' game I've played in the last 10 years, and the one that got me to upgrade since my 4-core CPU was hitching trying to play it lol.
The missions themselves kinda suck though. If you do anything that the developers don’t want you to, you fail the mission. The mission design is directly at odds with the gameplay systems of the open world
Missions sucks. Like those tomb raider missions where if you dont do this mission failed. Always kill 50 thugs, rude horse, repeat.
Don’t lie you only want sims 10. Gta 6 will have next gen gameplay of being able to have a family. , cook, clean your room, plant for food, have a jobs/career, go to high school. Best sims version.
Nothing wrong. Unless they change the settings to fantasy. Too much realism is killing their game. They forgot the fun part.
I WOULD 200% buy multiple copies if GTA will just be a full blown AAA survival game like project zomboid, Day Z, Stardew valley, Rust, Green Hell, etc. THEY always aim for realisim but forgot what is fun realistic gameplay we always have in indie survival games.
@@Katniss0000 zombies dlc would be sweet in gta 6. Like how red dead had zombies in first they should do that in gta 6 at some point.
@@bobbyjoalfonso3949 yeah they always aim for the realism. but they are forgot the fun part. I don't know what could they add in gta 6 that is different from gta v aside from more advance physics graphics/good NPC. not looking forward to play a game inside a game like chess, poker, gta 3, billiards.
Maybe I'm just not a fan of worlds based on real world. I want fantasy like monsters, dragons, zombies, medieval world, samurai, etc.
even just a DLC like zombie apocalypse will make it a goat game. Like Project zomboid realism.
This isn't a replacement for real life it's a sandbox for you to piss about in, to escape your reality not become it.(hope they will not add animations on every mundane thing you do. )
I don't see how the restrictive design of GTA V's missions is "outdated". The reason it's frustrating is because much older games weren't as restrictive. A lot of older games were more open and gave you more choices to approach a problem. GTA and RDR feel restrictive because of more recent trends to make games more cinematic and scripted. I wouldn't care if Starfield had the graphics and game play and presentation of Morrowind if their was the amount of care and attention to detail Morrowind had as opposed to rushing out a minimum viable product, that's the important part.
What's the game at 20:22? Assuming that it looks like this out of cutscenes as well, I think the art style here is phenomenal.
Stray Gods: A Role-playing Musical.
When you think about it the title should be where is LAST gen gameplay, a decade really is a long time
I couldn't agree more, further more, as an Indie Game Dev myself there's another thing that I would like to be discussed when talking about "Next Gen" Games. and that it's ARTSTYLE.
Yes, we've come to the point were computers and technology are highly advanced and we can play games at absurd resolutions, but that doesn't excuse Game Developers from using boring and bland "Hyper-Realistic" Artstyles... If You can even call them Artstyles at this point because they ALL look the same.
I find it absurd that most AAA Games are Hyper-Realistic bullshit, man games don't need hyper realistic graphics and absurd lighting effects, what games really need is to have STRONG ART DIRECTION, Yes, ART DIRECTION and by extension a good, well thought-out ARTSTYLE.
It's insane how many Developers are so fucking lazy, that they all use Unreal 5 for "dem realistuc graphincs" instead of actually putting effort into the game's visual art direction or overall artstyle to make it stand out and look apart from the competition.
And yes, we have some games with Strong Art Direction these days, but those games are mostly small indie games, not AAA Games. Some Modern AAA Games with Good Art Direction would be for example: Psychonauts 2, TLOZ Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Persona 5, Hi-Fi Rush, Street Fighter 6.
There's probably more examples out there that I missed, but it's sad that the industry has shifted away from Originality to "oh waos, look at dem graphiks, this game has 40% more grpahiks then other games" It's dumb.
And that's not to mention that, these mediocre lazy Visual Directions come at the cost, of You guessed it, PERFORMANCE. Games run like ass, because developers only care about making the game look Hyper-Realistic, they don't give 2 shits about optimizing the game, so most AAA Games these days, run like ass at Launch. Great, mediocre Art Styles, at the cost of performance even in High-End Rigs.
It's annoying. Not to mention that back in the day, developers managed to make both Stunning Games WHILE still delivering Top of the line performance.
Remember when Bungie baked some shadows into their maps to save performance and it even made Halo 3 Look absolutely gorgeous in the process? Yeah, Me too, good times.
Some Games even created or sparked unique Artstyles and strong visual direction out-of necessity. Artstyles that are born out of necessity are probably my favorites out there, because they all look so original and different from the rest.
But well, I'm a Boomer. And them kids like playing their RTX Games at 20 FPS, my opinion doesn't matter.
Also yes, Gameplay needs to evolve somehow, sometime... otherwise the gaming industry is going to get more and more boring.
No one plays games with RTX at 20 FPS, when upscaling and frame generation exists, lol. You are a boomer.
@@ForOne814 "aktually dlss 3 ☝️🤓"
Nah some games need it if Rockstar was ever going to make a Manhunt 3 Photo real Graphics would be perfect for a game like that same with unrecord. Kingdom Come 2 also needs Photo real Graphics as its grounded game. Some games can have more artistic design but there needs to be a good mix.
@@ooospaceooo well, yeah, who the hell enables RTX if they aren't playing on the top-tier cards?
id say what gta interms of next gen gameplay is really the focus on little details and activities in the game. look at rdr2 and the details it presents. gta would just have to topple that, and why? because gta is more a "real life" simulator, it doesnt have giant robots, magics or futuristic world. its a game set in 2020s its limited in what it can do(unless its gta online), and whats perfect for them to do other then really perfecting the real life sim and the world it self inturn making their next gen feature in rdr2 be the new next gen in their new game. at least thats what i think.
A critical video about modern gaming that is not overly dark & pessimistic? WoW!
These games have millions of man hours put into them to give you the scope of possibility they have. It's not like it hasn't occurred to them that it would be cool to allow more freedom.
My suggestion is for YOU to make a sandbox game where every possible player action is designed for in every mission. And you must make it to the standard of a Rockstar game.
You will quickly find out why restrictions are necessary.
Next gen gameplay is something like SUPERHOT imo
not sure if this is a joke or not
Facts. Tbh I don't know why people sleep on actual innovation just because it didn't cost 40 billion dollars or isn't using realism for it's visuals.
@@ResidentStumpMax payne did it in 2001
@@Imnotsemi I mean that was literally over 20 years ago tho lol We only get innovation 5 times a century?
@ResidentStump if it was done on the ps2 it being redone in 2016 isnt really innovative
If Valve ever releases a new mainline title, that'll probably be the actual next step. But who knows. Anyone have a particular Studio in mind who could be a candidate for making a true next gen experience?
I genuinely could not think of one.
This whole video feels somewhat, unreasonable, unless i'm misinterpreting it.
I think we're well past the point of drastic innovation (Though VR is still a slowly coming future to look towards). And all the little innovative things out there that might be left, as being done by indie games.
So i think a more viable question is, what companies are more likely to take those innovative features that exist but aren't utilized by main stream/AAA games, like environmental destruction or increased instances of physics interactions, and polish them creating a game that might not be original in any specific way, but simply stand out by having something that's hardly ever seen in that space.
There's not much need to innovate if there's already hundreds of ideas and mechanics out there for the taking and inspiration.
To be honest I won't see the change coming from valve, they are known to bring masterpieces, but look at counter strike 2, everyone disliked that
Takes one not-banger to completely lose any faith in something huh. @@Voskos
@@Verchiel_ in 2024 yes it takes one I am tired of giving every company the benefit of the doubt just to be proven wrong each and every time
Naughty Dog, Rockstar. Silent Hill 2 Remake will be disgustingly good.
I wish more people supported VR, that's a truly next gen experience.
People don't have the money for expensive gear plus expenselive realstate to make a safe vr zone
@@raychii7361 I know man, its not cheap and you gotta know a little about tweaking settings
@@nickgarris2971it's a growing base, & is the future of gaming. Consoles will hit an apex with photo realism, maybe with PS6, or Ps7. When PS8 drops it'll probly be VR only, because whats the point of making a PS8 if it's exactly the same as a PS7, photo realistic? Once we are there that's it. I think Sony is the new leader in the VR industry because now that Quest 3 Startin price is $500, I don't believe it'll outsell PSVR 2. Once Sony hits 150 million PS5 sales, VR will take off. They'll have a better library in a few years. I'm definitely going to upgrade my headset one day. Love PSVR 1.
@@raychii7361Most games you can play sat on ur ass. Headsets not cheap, but the games are, i got physical copies gt7, RE8, RE4 and NMS for like 100 bucks all in. Ok, they arent new games. But they feel it in the headset!
The latter is definitely valid, but VR has massively become more accessible with the Meta/Oculus Quest lineup. You can at least start with a Quest 2 and play almost every game for under $300. With a big focus on Mixed Reality, it is better for those with smaller spaces. At least some of the content is doable. @@raychii7361
"This year we are proud to announce that we have added a tenth extra stroke of "E" to all our button mashing segments."
You're right about some of these games feeling ancient. Thing is, they still feel worse than what came before it.
Look at Ubisoft; how can AC Unity look and feel better than their newest game? How can AC Black Flag have better pirate gameplay than their "AAAA" Skull and Bones?
This is definitely an interesting dilemma. While I do agree that the structure of something like a GTA game is dated and restrictive, the real question is what can be done to solve that? Personally, I think they have the working theory in GTA V, which is to take the heist system and apply it to more missions. But that's really going to depend on the kind of story they want to tell and how much agency they want the player to have when it comes to the telling of that story. Missions in GTA are restrictive because GTA V wants to tell a particular story with those missions. Writers and mission designers need to flex more creativity with how objectives can be completed by the player from mission to mission. That unfortunately will have to involve possibly writing deviations in the story several different times to the point where the story may not be what it was originally intended be. If you could just walk away from Simeon as Franklin in GTA V then how does Franklin meet Michael? Those are the types of questions the story writers have to ask themselves and the more you have to account for those player-driven decisions that aren't influenced at all by what the defined character in the game the player is playing as wants, the more the story may have to twist into something unintended. This is also a huge issue with something like Starfield and Cyberpunk as well, but I do think solving that dilemma is that next step. A game's story/campaign needs to become MUCH more flexible than that of a movie's, but it's harder to do that and still write a decent story than what is probably worth the effort, but maybe one day...
Yep, which is exactly why this guy in this video is not an actual game developer so he doesn't really understand what the actual writers and developers of GTA 6 are trying to do.
@@iraford5788 You...don't need to be a developer to understand that there are solutions out there to this problem that Rockstar themselves have implemented in their games before GTA 5. How could anyone understand what they're trying to do with a game that won't release for another year?
RDR2 has missions that give you loads of freedom and others that on rails for story telling purposes and for mission variety purposes.
@@iraford5788BuT MuH ExPeRt
Yeah, that's exactly the problem. But people's solution for that is 'just give the player more freedom and agency' which they don't realise, will put a huge dent in the narrative of the game.
Assassin's creed is the biggest example for this. They used to do decent narrative driven stories with pay-offs for the major Assassination missions. Then they pivoted into these open ended style missions where they prioritised 'player freedom' and suddenly everything became bland, boring and repetitive. which is exactly the opposite of what they tried to achieve.
And now everybody criticizes AC for bland, forgettable missions and storyline..😂
When playing BG3 I was constantly surprised by the number of possibilities and choices you can as a player make...I think FarCry 3 was one of the first games that I remember to introduce multiple endings but BG3 felt really next gen for me in that regard
Far Cry 3??? Look, I love Far Cry 3, but it only has 2 endings and those are only really decided at the very, very end with a single 2 path choice. It had a very good story, but in no way "interactkve" or "dynamic" like an RPG.
@@mekingtiger9095Witcher 3 would be a better example, it's one of the few games that choices you make throughout it genuinely affect the ending versus most games that the choice is literally made at the end. Hell even telltale games, literally choose your own adventure games, mostly have the big choice at the end
What was the game showcased at 2:17?
En Garde!
Thank you! @@escarche9753
I don't really think you've made your case, and highlighting Starfield doesn't do as much work as you think, it just highlights one bad game that made dated design decisions. You've already acknowledged that you're not saying there isn't a ton of unique gameplay out there once you stray from AAA games. New gameplay experiences are thriving with indies and small-scale devs. Given that, all I've heard you really describe here is the fact that gaming is super fleshed out and deep as of 2024 with hundreds of thousands of games in existence, and there is far less room to reinvent the wheel now than there was back when Half-life came out. In gaming's infancy, of course things were constantly being driven forward and innovated and improved on. Is it not possible that we've reached a point in gaming where we've tried so many things that we know what works for particular genres? For an open world story game, there is only so much you can do, and so the goal becomes to make such a game as fun and polished as possible while maybe making innovative tweaks here and there, and I think that happens all the time. Does the wheel get reinvented with every new AAA game? Of course not, but again there's far less room for that now than there used to be. I wanna hear you tell me what it would look like for GTA 6 to do what you're saying gaming doesn't do anymore. What would that look like? What kind of things would be different or new?
We just achieved the final level of gaming. Video games looks like real life, indies made every gameplay imaginable real. What do you want more? We'll just have new games assembling ideas together in a new way but I doubt a game will ever create a new genre like doom or gta 3 did
Your videos are consistently well done. Props!
Thank you!
The Witcher III and Cyberpunk 2077 are peak examples in rpg conversation animation but i'm currently playing Horizon Forbidden West and wow...Guerrilla did an amazing job with their conversation animations! It's so fluid and cinematic, almost like every cutscenes are bespoke and animated individually, the only problem in my opinion is, after a part of conversation is finished, the characters will move to their starting position and it can be a bit goofy in a long conversation.
Criminally underrated channel that actually offers original insights
If the level of leap we're talking about is like going from 2D gaming to 3D gaming, and maybe even to VR gaming, what's the next leap then? 4D gaming? What are you looking for cuz, other than new gimmicks, leaps like that literally are hard to come by at the stage the tech is at.
Has anybody seen Nvidia's new A.I. NPC technology? They showed off a tech demo shortly. NPCs will talk intelligently to each other like they were humans, they generate random conversations with context of what's happening in the game and you will be able to directly talk to them too, ask them questions etc. This will completely change how we play games. It's very likely that this is also how we interact with the world of GTA 6 for example.
I think A.I. in whatever shape or form will revolutionize games and bring us into the next gen. I think there will be new ways to play games that we currently don't even think of. I'm excited to see what comes next.
Is the next gen in the room with us?
14:22 The opposite of this reason is why I love Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It is because Nintendo and the Zelda team allows the player to go do whatever they want and come back to that activity once they are ready for it. Just wanna give out my two cents! Great Video!
Which happens to be what bethesda RPGs also do, yet it's more often seen as a point of ridicule or criticism.
You can easily finish the intro tutorial in skyrim, walk a couple hours towards the opposite side of the map and make a deal with the devil or start a whole dlc without ever doing the first objective after leaving the cave.
you're entitled to your opinion and are free to enjoy what you want, but know that Nintendo are some of the scummiest devs around, they give you games that look worse than Ps2 games, with little to no voice acting and charge AAA prices, they will then re sell 25 year old pieces of games in increments while lying. They're pure scum.
I think a lot of the new iterations are coming from the indie scene. Would The Last of Us II or God of War gotten their rogue like modes if Hades hadn't done so well? I really like Vampire Survivors and Deep Rock Galactic devs just released a vampire survivors clone set in that universe.
More like would Hades even exist if risk of rain had not been such a massive hit. (No)
Super giant games even broke their word on never wanting to make sequels bcs in the end they also are aiming for the golden goose. only took them a while to realize that the goose is more important than innovation.
The Aughts saw a lot of experimentation.
The Wii, Kinect, Wii U, even Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band.
The problem with all of these was simple: the controller created wildly new gameplay, but was also limited by the controller itself.
It was expensive to create the controllers, resulting in less profit.
Meanwhile, VR has yet to do anything beyond put the player inside the screen and introduce a few new motion-based tricks.
VR can be great, don’t get me wrong, but the burden on the player is onerous, starting with the price tag.
I don’t know what new gameplay paradigm will emerge, but the two-stick handheld controller has a lot of inertia, and will most likely have to be a part of any future developments.
Every release is either an online competitive multiplayer game no one really asked for, or an action/adventure clone of Assassin's Creed/Arkham with a 5 hour forgettable story you won't want to replay. Tomb Raider, Horizon, Jedi, etc. The industry prioritizes microtransactions over gameplay and any game they can't fill with them gets put on the backburner.
And don't forget the newest strategy of "make it open world" regarding new games. Diablo 4 and Halo: Infinite have some of the most pointless and dead open world content I've ever seen in a game, raising the question of why they even bothered in the first place.
I would say the only game that has felt next gen is Baldur’s Gate 3. The complexity of that game is something I didn’t think we could see and truly blew my mind
not sure if i would say its next gen it seems very possible on previous systems
I see the next huge leap being AI integration like chatgpt of sorts into the games characters for dialogue. Could mean a Fallout type game has a text input that you type and a chatgpt type AI reacts.
I saw videos of that mod for Skyrim, it was insane seeing AI react to stuff like the currently occurring sunset as you asked them about it.
AI integration could indeed be very interesting, as it basically is a way to automate the creation of variety. Every NPC even in smaller productions could have their own voice. They could have different moods and react differently to player behavior based on their character traits. Animation systems could be much more dynamic and reactive. In Cyberpunk for example (which is a great game), every of those fat NPC guys walks the exact same way. Use AI techniques to change those animations based on age, fitness, time of day, current activity, and so on, and the world would feel completely different.
NVIDIA generative AI will go far beyond just dialogue Imagine the physics engines and worlds AI could create in no time
There's 2 areas I see for advancement, the biggest is adding AI similar to ChatCPT except trained for the confines of the game world (this could possibly include literally talking to NPCs with your mic). The second is VR/AR interfaces replacing monitors, and many more games allowing you to still play regular PC games on them and at least allowing you to look around. We're still 10 years away at least no the AR/VR side from getting there for the average consumer.
I definitely agree with this. There are still evolution's in gameplay in certain genre's like botw and totk or elden ring and a few others
I expect for games to incorporate some kind of AI for NPCs, in a way that they wont exist on some sort of loop , but would feel like actual characters with their own lives, that way it would actually be virtual world.
Gameplay have become similar in a lot of games since PS3 / 360.
It's hard to find games that have different gameplays nowadays
Then downgrade from AAA games and play some indie games
So you literally describe waiting for VR. It’s literally the only thing that will change as much as you are waiting. (I’m not criticising)
The problem with « outdated » games is not that much that they did not improve enough, many times. Starfield for example is even LESS interesting than Skyrim or even oblivion. Literally. And many games are like that nowadays. Less quests, less features, not always THAT MUCH better written (which could, maybe, justify some flows), less weapons, less features generally speaking… even the next Test Drive looks so shallow from what we know compared to TDU2, that is so old.
Unless most of the market accepts VR (still pretty unlikely for at least two years I think), which even the studios do not seem to aim for, we wont break any walls. Maybe small new very original gameplay features, at best. Same for GTA6, you’ll see. That’s still a game in a 3D environment played on a flat screen. I’m quite persuaded we won’t have that much choice, probably a little but not much. That’s their core gameplay : it’s not a RPG, a game with many choices and consequences (still there were some in GTAV and RDR2, pretty decent ones even for that kind of games).
For me it’s not even a question of risks not taken, just so less features than before… or almost no new ones, and lack of old ones we loved.
Interesting video ! :)
I wanna see fixed/uncontrolable cameras make a comeback! So much potential for truly cinematic presentation and having a stick free for other things than camera controls sounds potentially great to me
I think Cyberpunk is the closest. A cinematic game without cinematic, without loading screens, only "disruptions" are when time skips while you wait in place or sleep, or get knocked out. Every dialogue is active, and engaging. If it had some drastic innovations it would be even further from The Witcher 3's impressive quest "cohesion", since both would take insane amounts of work.
I would say CP2077 would be "next gen" if it just had Witcher 3's quest structure and interwoven, cause and effect, and was otherwise the same as it is today.
Next-gen gameplay is stuck in an alternate timeline where gamers didn't buy incomplete trash
The million dollar question is... what actually is next-gen gameplay? What would you define it as? It's interesting to think about, but at some point, we have to be reductive to recognise where to go next. What's best to do? What isn't?
Yes, the early 2000s birthed new genres - contemporary open worlds with the GTA trilogy, or third-person shooters with RE4 - but what has changed since then on a mechanical level? Half-Life was still fundamentally a shooter, the story or standing around watching NPCs monologue ≠ any tangible difference in gameplay. The sequel was the same, physics puzzles didn't change the FPS nature of the game. Quake was in full 3D, but still the same mechanically as Doom and, to a lesser extent, Wolfenstein before it. Health packs, point and shoot, armour... does that make Call of Duty and its ilk fundamentally different for adding health regen? Unlimited ammo? Because they're still the same on a fundamental and, most importantly, mechanical level.
Well, what about something more contemporary like Prey? It's an immersive sim. The level design is phenomenal, sure, and something like the Gloo Cannon alone gives a tonne of freedom to navigate environments. But what's actually changed mechanically compared to Dark Messiah? Thief? Dishonored? System Shock? Deus Ex? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to argue any particular point, it's just that we need to define what new or groundbreaking gameplay would even look like. How different would it must be to shake conventions?
Take FEZ, for example. Interesting gimmick, but one could easily argue that it's still a side scroller puzzle game. Yes, we're conflating gameplay/genre to a degree, but these loose associations of what a game is about defines how players perceive them. Is Cyberpunk 2077 really that different from Half-Life or Deus Ex? Is next-gen gameplay in this day and age now just cross-pollination of different genres? Is it even possible to add completely new gameplay? Maybe. Breaking conventional thought or design ethos isn't easy, but look at something like Vampire Survivors.
Pizza Tower, you could argue that its mechanics aren't any radical departure from similar titles. Shadows of Doubt, maybe? A procedural investigation sim. The free-form nature of it is interesting, but again... does it have any fundamental departure in gameplay? Was Far Cry 3 really that different from 2, adding in progression system flavour? You could even argue that the hack-and-slash nature of Soulsborne was iterating on its predecessors like King's Field.
Progression systems, XP, weapon animations, armour, magic... this is essentially "flavour" but what we're looking at is actual mechanical changes. What fundamentally defines gameplay? Does Red Dead's horse traversal counterbalance the rigid, cinematic nature of its main story missions? Is Death Stranding that much of a departure from a walking sim or survival game like The Long Dark? Assassin's Creed brought in parkour, that alone is different gameplay, but the series didn't really doing anything with it after the first.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a good example, but given the vignette nature of its story, does the gameplay changing provide something genre-defining like these classic titles from the late 90s to early 2000s? Is the game industry fundamentally about iteration - not that I'm trying to argue everything owes its existence to Space War or Pong - and developers being taught through existing processes means the media we consume has to stand in the shadow of what's come before?
Good video, by the way. I'm not criticising your video, I just think you could've gone a bit deeper.
You were hoping for next gen games commentary 😂 great comment btw, could be a video on its own
I was thinking this back when the PS4 launched. GTA5 for example is still the best open world crime game, going on 11 years later. Games really haven’t changed since 2011-2013 in terms of gameplay
Me too. I became utterly shocked so few people noticed it back then with how little games have changed from one gen to another. How is it that we both could tell immediately something was off even back then but not pretty much almost 98% of gamers, even the non-casual ones?
@@mekingtiger9095Because there is actually a difference from 7th to 8th gen. Just compare AC Unity, Arkham Knight and Uncharted 4 to its predecessors. 8th gen wasn't as crazy as other generations. The 7th gen was rather refined so there wasn't much to be done compared to previous generations. It's sort of like the difference between 16 bit and 32 bit games.
Finally. A video that addresses the issues I've had with gaming for an *entire decade* by now. Glad to know I'm not the only one and that I'm not crazy here.
I for one, think we've lived through a huge growth and hit peak "traditional gaming" and now nothing excites us anymore. But there is something we need to keep in mind, VR and AR can become more than just a way to experience games, I really do believe that, as soon as we have full body handsfree tracking, those bulky goggles will be the next gen that we really need.
the full body tracking is just a pipedream that just wont be proffiteable. People dont wanna exercise to play. They just want to sit on their couch. Its why VR is still stuck with joysticks and teleport movement. On top of the fact that its almost impossible to avoid problems from the outside. You cant infinitely walk on your room you will smack against the wall or furniture no matter what.
The only way VR could ever advance to something beyond that would be going full brain injection mode that puts your body in a come and transfer your conciousness into a virtual world and that just gets way too hard on sci fi when to this day scientist still struggle with understanding human brains.
@@MokoES I all in for full brain gaming. But there is use for VR specially for tactical shooters, which don't need CoD levels of moronic movement. And yeah, we mostly want to be sitting, but walking with arm sway is an elegant solution.
@@luciano12sa the big problem is the price though... The cheapest headset is around 300$... and you of course need a good PC to sctually play those games too so its the price of the PC + 300 or more from the headset...
and you can just avoid buying the headset just play any other game on your pc or console.
@@MokoES yeah. But as it gets more popular and evolved it does get more affordable or at least worth it. Which is fine, if it's reasonable and worth it
The next big thing in gaming might be AI. Especially for more in-depth NPC's, even the random NPC's that populate the game. You can talk in real life through a mic and talk to an NPC. Or AI that 'knows' what you prefare more and the game will provide it. The first steps are already taken, the video's about it are very intresting.
While i agree with the general thesis, your own video demonstrates how, as you move away from the simplicity of the fundamental building blocks of gaming structure (things like the introduction of 3D, or open spaces or cutscenes or voice over or the ability to save), it becomes harder and harder to separate iteration from innovation.
Is Oblivion really a point of change, or just an iteration of Morrowind?
Is Last of Us a point of change, or just an iteration of Uncharted 2's storytelling techniques?
As you become more and more complex in your structure, changes will look more and more granular, and big design revolutions will be harder to achieve, without destroying decades of progress.
It's not a coincidence that most daring design choices and experimentation comes from the indie world, not only because budget (ie: risk) is lower, but because the complexity of a project is usually greatly reduced to its essentials, from a design standpoint.
The skill ceiling in Spidey 2's web swinging is probably the closest thing to next gen feel I've experienced so far
I think it's because the games matured as a medium. It's like with movies - they have changed very little from 80s and 90s. Sure, we have better CGI now than we did back then, and the content of the movies changed, but if you break it down it's all the same kind of shots and performances.
Similarly in games we've simply found what works, discarded what doesn't and are sticking with it.
I think the next real generational leap will be with the use of AI. The best example of this currently is the Mantella mod in Skyrim. It sounds insane, but you can actually talk to each npc freely talking about whatever and they will respond to you in character, fully voiced by ai. This allows you to essentially build your own story as the AI summarizes and keeps up with past events. It’s implemented surprisingly well for a community backed mod in a game over a decade old. If triple A developers were to build their games around this concept, it will no doubt be a “new standard” in an immersion and a true generational leap in videogames. Then there’s VR but that’s much further away in my eyes.
The idea of a game that changes the industry also relies on the rest of the industry being able to run with an idea. Take a look at Tears of the Kingdom. The way in which you can interact with everything seems very “next gen”. The whole world in the game has systems that interact with each other in ways nobody is doing.
Creating something like that could be very costly and time consuming. Especially since only 1 developer has figured it out. So if nobody tries it then it doesnt become the next transformative thing.
Maybe AI/machine learning will end up being the thing that does it. When the game can seemingly generate new quest lines and you can shape your world completely differently from anyone else’s. But we are a long ways off from that.
Odds are like many big game changes revolutions it may come from a small indy team. That make a game they is fun and then suddenly it’s an entirely new genre that all the AAA studios and publishers are trying to copy. The last time it was battle royale.
Another great video DX, great analysis.
Thank you!
If big titty goth schizo vampires are next gen, then sign me up
unrelated to the video but in an era of everyones thumbnails being weird AI shit its really cool you have a dedicated artist you credit in the description
Totally agree. Nice video. Haven’t thought about some of the games in a long time. Nice nostalgia with the analysis.
By this POV, Tears of The Kingdon is the only real next-gen game that i ever played!
This video is well put together and tackles the issue that gaming is currently facing. Well done DX 👌