Haven't heard anything for ages so not too surprised

Anyone who was paying attention knew the project would have to be restarted last year. Ken Levine was really impressed by the Nemesis System from Shadow of Mordor. He wanted to build on that concept and find new, innovative ways to tell a compelling story. But Warner Bros. patented the system a year ago, stifling creativity in the process. After 7 years of work and experimenting, Ken can't even use the system he was building a game around.

This is one of the reasons I hate when publishers patent game mechanics/concepts, Sony recently patented the strand concept from Death Stranding for example. The entire industry was built on inspiration and building on other people's ideas. That's how progress is made. Doom and Wolfenstein 3D technically weren't the first FPS games, but they were extremely innovative and are largely considered the first traditional games of the genre. Imagine if id Software had patented the ideas and concepts they used to create both games.

Even Shadow of Mordor itself borrowed very heavily from the Arkham games and Assassin's Creed. If you're taking ideas from everyone else you have no business patenting anything.

I hate TakeTwo, and I’m not at all advocating for crunch but sounds like things would have been better with at least some form of deadline. Hate to see this turn into some perfectionist unfinished magnum opus.

Oh I’m sure the unplanned MS accusation and their wants/needs had nothing to do with it.
Their Cushy Comfort zone was crushed.

Honestly BS3 and especially the crap DLC was a mountain of “we are out ideas”. Slap a 5th grade science constant and variable spin it and go. It was lazy and amazingly enough they can’t figure out what they are doing next. Welcome to Duke Nukem Forever syndrome.

I worked with someone who was working with KEN LEVINE as a level designer 8 years ago . And he told me Ken Levine was a nice guy but....,,.

Well, I was wondering why we haven't heard anything in eight years.

Sad to see some people getting hysterical to the point that they mark as spam a simple opinion. Not surprising though. So go ahead and do it again.👍

"I'm not surprised. His game design has been getting worst and worst since the System Shock 2 days. Ever since the design has become more "story"-centric, the gameplay has suffered and gotten more simplified in order to accommodate the narrative.

Bioshock 3 was the culmination of this mandate. Where the gampley was nothing more than a simple FPS and having to play second fiddle to that cluster fuck of a convoluted story. The world was just window dressing and sterile were there was little input from the player when it came to interacting with the world, events, NPCs, etc. Even the Elizabeth's AI was a joke. Nothing advance about it. Just set her to be ignored by every other NPC in the game and presto. Magic baby!

I get confused as to how some of these people come from such amazing, forward thinking and gameplay-centric game properties, all to end up wanting to be Movie Directors. Chances are that since there is no longer an unlimited budget, these two philosophies are at odds once again and this is what causing this game to be in developmental hell.

And all this without getting into how he treats his employees..."

It not surprising. The foundation of the game sounded incredibly ambitious and complex. His example was a completely dynamic Skyrim world. Every branching story changes depending on your actions using something like the nemesis system. He said he was dreading writing the endless dialogue that would entail. He left to a smaller team so he could experiment and fail without having 200 people wondering what they are supposed to be doing.

So all in all, this is what he left to do. If he’s sitting on a pile of cash failing over and over then just know that’s where he wanted to be lol. When it finally does come out it will be awesome, I’m not worried in the slightest.

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau