The Tuesday Inbox comes out in support of Dead Space and EA’s rumoured remake, as one reader asks why Nintendo games rarely have voice-acting.
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Denial phase
So it’s really looking like we’re not getting GTA 6 until 2025, eh? With the next gen versions this autumn it was pretty obvious they weren’t going to start the hype for a while yet. Why give people a reason to think twice about buying the same game for the third time, right?
So no GTA 6 till 2025, by which point GTA 5 will be 12 years old. The readers worrying that big developers are going to end up making only one game a generation are looking dead on the money. No wonder there are so many indie developers nowadays, it must be like being on the factory line working at somewhere like Rockstar. Except it takes over a decade to even see what you’re building!
I can guarantee hardcore fans are going through the denial phase right now, seeing ‘obvious hints’ in the background of some screenshots or some such nonsense, but the truth is Rockstar has never done anything to suggest a sequel is coming out any time soon and given there are now two good sources saying 2025 I think we’ve got to resign ourselves to the fact that GTA 6 is not coming out for another four years.
Worse than that, as far as I’m concerned, is that that probably means no Red Dead Redemption 3 until 2031, tops, based on the previous speed of work. That’s probably optimistic too, considering the last game will end up being only six years old by that time.
Baker
Secret success
I largely agree with the Reader’s Feature at the weekend, about Ratchet & Clank, and I was going to back up my points by saying it doesn’t seem to have done that well in the charts. Then I realised that means nothing because it’s tied completely to whether there’s any stock of the console at the moment or not.
So not only will we have no idea which console is most popular until they’re both consistently in stock we’ll have no clue about the games either. That’s going to be at least a year or two at the current reckoning and by that time digital downloads will be so prevalent that the retail sales chart will be completely useless.
Why don’t companies want us to know whether their games are successful or not? Returnal looked like a flop until Sony turned round and bought the company, which I guess means it wasn’t? Not releasing sales figures I can get but not even having a top 10 that is in anyway accurate is madness. Although even that is going to mean much less with the popularity of Game Pass.
Zumat
GC: The US and Japanese charts both include digital sales, with only a few exceptions (usually Nintendo) so it’s really only the UK and Europe that we have no clue about.
Secret Santa
So if these Donkey Kong (and Switch Pro) rumours are still going on does that mean we could be looking at a mini Nintendo Direct this Friday on the 40th anniversary? I don’t see anything else that makes sense and yet it seems so unlikely. If they don’t at least announce the game on the anniversary then that means they don’t acknowledge it all and/or have a new game coming out in the near future anyway.
It is funny how completely unreadable Nintendo are, while simultaneously being really frustrating. After Metroid Dread in early October, which isn’t really going to be that mainstream, the only major game they’ve got this year is the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl remakes, which I’m sure will do well but I don’t think are that big. So there is definitely space for a big announcement that turns out to be the main Christmas game.
Am I going to predict that’s what’s going to happen? Hell, no! People far more in the know than me have got it wrong already so I’m not even going to true. I will say I’d be happy if it did turn out to be true though.
Tabris
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Body horror
I’d disagree with the reader that didn’t like Dead Space. I’d put the first two games as near classics. Sure, they ripped off other games and movies but I thought the atmosphere was creepy as well.
The noises coming from the vents, as well as some of the monsters, was unsettling. The part in 2 in the nursery got to me in a way no other game had before.
Should they do a remake I hope most stuff stays the same, with the exception of the enhanced necromorphs. They can be consigned to hell for real. I am looking forward to the newer more graphic body transformations.
Really turn up the body horror, Cronenberg style.
Bobwallett
New player
I played through the first Dead Space over the weekend and, while I found it to be a bit linear and wish it would’ve borrowed more from early Resident Evil, I’m definitely a convert and will play the rest of the series. I’m also cautiously optimistic for this reboot/remake that’s heavily rumoured, but I’m more interested in The Callisto Protocol. Does anyone remember this announcement from last year?
It’s basically a horror game that’s set, for some bizarre reason, in the PUBG universe and is being made by several ex-Visceral employees. It’ll be interesting to see how different or similar they are and laugh/sigh when they’re both released within a month of each other. It could be Dante’s Peak and Volcano all over again.
ANON
GC: Ha, we bet you’re right about the release date.
Team Dead Space
I am really pleased to hear Dead Space is coming back. I loved the first two games, and even bought a PlayStation Move just to play the Extraction spin-off, which I also loved. The third game was good too, but I didn’t like the way some of the content was gated behind a co-op wall. By that I mean you only got to see certain things as the second character. If there was an option to be the other character in single-player it wouldn’t have been an issue to me.
It’s such a shame that Visceral Games are gone. They seemed to be EA’s skunkworks of sorts. But maybe another talented team can be assembled and make this new game a success too.
In the first game there is a section down on the planet, near the end, where you walk through a door and suddenly you’re in a Zero-G tunnel. What’s that all about? Can anyone explain that to me?
Chris
GC: We were pretty impressed by EA Motive’s work on Star Wars: Squadrons, if they are the ones working on it.
Light entertainment
In response to LoRd SiNn’s question regarding lightgun games.
I don’t know if this counts or not but the Nintendo Labo VR gun game was pretty good. Although technically not a lightgun game in essence, it still has that on-the-rails arcade feeling you get from such games.
It’s not the biggest, most in-depth game in the world but when you consider the time it takes to build and the added extras you get for £30. It’s an absolute steal.
I hope this helped.
freeway 77
GC: That’s a good call actually, and the Labo sets are often discounted – unlike most Nintendo games.
Internal voice
At the weekend I started playing Drake Hollow. It’s still too early to tell if it’s a good game or not, but it’s clear that it would have benefited from the main character talking occasionally. I guess the budget didn’t stretch to that though.
However, this did get me thinking. While I understand a small indie games like this not having the budget (localisation being a real issue vs. just changing some text) why don’t Nintendo games? Luigi’s Mansion 3 has sold about 10 million copies, yet we’re subjected to irritating garbled noises.
Maybe there’s some I’ve yet to play that do have an actual human voice, but for a company that typically has a very high attach rate for their own games, other than maximising profit I don’t understand why they don’t hire some voice actors.
Tim
GC: Some Nintendo games do but Mario and Zelda traditionally don’t, and when they have experimented it’s often not welcomed by fans – most obviously in Super Mario Sunshine but also the questionable voice-acting in Breath Of The Wild’s cut scenes. Nintendo’s approach to storytelling and immersion, which you can see mirrored in some other Japanese games, depends much more on the player’s imagination than most Western games, and giving characters a definitive voice interferes with that. However, we would say that in some cases they have got lazy and the more recent Pokémon games, for example, have certainly suffered from having no voice-acting. We strongly disagree about Luigi’s Mansion 3 though. Charles Martinet as Luigi was one of our favourite voice performances of that year.
Inbox also-rans
I really struggle to understand why anyone would pay £80,000 for almost-but-not-actually first edition of a video game. It’s not like a book that might have differences in the text or illustrations; all you’re getting is a trademark symbol or the logo moved slightly to the left. I don’t know how much money I’d have to have to think that was worth that much.
Skiller
Going free-to-play sounds like a sensible move for PES 2022, the only way it can really stay relevant, but what are the microtransactions going to be considering they’ve got so few official licences?
Wrangler
This week’s Hot Topic
The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was inspired by reader Grackle, who asks what one feature would you add to the next sequel in your favourite franchise.
It doesn’t matter whether the sequel has been announced already, or how likely it is, but we want to know what you’d do to improve your favourite game. It can be something small, like a change to the control system, or something like a change of perspective from third to first person. Or perhaps a change of art style, story, or combat system.
Is your choice something relatively trivial, that’s only meant as a bit of fine tuning, or something that will fundamentally change the nature of the franchise? How likely do you think it is that your idea will make it into a future game?
E-mail your comments to: [email protected]
The small print
New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.
You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader’s Feature at any time, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot.
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