The boss of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has ruled out a transmog system coming to the hit PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, insisting: “it doesn’t make sense.”
26.03.2024 - 16:31 / eurogamer.net / Nintendo
For many, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is still seen as a kind of Breath of the Wild 1.5 — a half-sequel that builds on 2017's revolutionary hit but, in using the same Hyrule as its overworld, doesn't fully transform it into something new.
The Zelda developers at Nintendo would probably disagree. In a packed-out talk at GDC last week — which may go down as one of the conference's great talks of the last few years — technical director Takuhiro Dohta, lead physics engineer Takahiro Takayama, and sound programmer Junya Osada explained the complexity and sheer scale of the task at hand.
The goal, they said, was to take the two central ideas of Breath of the Wild — the notion of a «vast and seamless Hyrule» as one; the other its «multiplicative gameplay», where physics and chemistry combine to give you new solutions in-game — and expand on them. (As well as, crucially, enabling you to «dig holes,» a much-memeddesire of the series' legendary producer Eiji Aounouma.)
The guiding principle here was that «vast doesn't necessarily make a game fun», however, and hence that desire to expand on «multiplicative gameplay» with a new concept: «sticking two things together to make something new».
«When I first saw the prototype, I thought this was going to be a great game,» Takayama said, before deadpanning, «But I also knew: this was going to be very, very difficult.»
«I said to myself: are we really doing this? Development is going to be chaos,» he continued. «The more I thought, the more I worried. I realised that sometimes, it's important to have the courage to push forward.» Takayama then showed a montage of chaotically buggy clips from Tears of the Kingdom's early development. «As expected, the world fell apart.»
Switching to Japanese to explain the more technical aspects of the challenges ahead for the studio's physics team, Takayama explained through a translator that the studio's solution to these Ganon-level collapses of the world was to create an «entirely physics-driven world» and, in doing so, «create a system where unique interactions occur, without dedicated implementation.»
During development, he explained, «when we say physics-driven, what we mean is objects have mass and moments of inertia — and they can be controlled using things like velocity and acceleration». The opposite, a non-physics driven object, is referred to as a «kinematic rigid body» which in comparison is easier to implement but still visually easy to understand — something the team used quite heavily in the early stages of Tears of the Kingdom's development.
However, kinematic objects had «infinite mass», and therefore wrought havoc with actual physics-based calculations — hence objects getting caught up and stuck
The boss of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has ruled out a transmog system coming to the hit PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, insisting: “it doesn’t make sense.”
One fan of Nintendo's beloved Animal Crossing franchise has come up with a bizarre but oddly plausible theory regarding Faith, one of the koala villagers from the series. The evidence for the theory in question might be hard for some Animal Crossing fans to unsee once they notice it for the first time.
Dokuysei: Bangin’ Summer for PlayStation 4 and Switch, and digital releases such as DAVE THE DIVER for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, Umurangi Generation for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR2, and Quest, and Tales of Kenzera: ZAU for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC are the highlights of this week’s Japanese video game releases.
Spike Chunsoft will release the MAGES.-developed The Quintessential Quintuplets visual novels The Quintessential Quintuplets: Memories of a Quintessential Summer and The Quintessential Quintuplets: Five Memories Spent With You in the west, artwork and screenshot leaks from PlayStation Store reveal.
While he may not be as well known as, say, Jim Ryan, longtime PlayStation fans will no doubt recognize the name Gio Corsi. As PlayStation’s former senior director of third party production, Corsi spearheaded a lot of initiatives – he was particularly noted as a booster of the PS Vita and was responsible for bringing a lot of Japanese Vita titles to a worldwide audience. He also was responsible for jumpstarting interest in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise worldwide after the series initially kind of sputtered out in the West.
With the world shifting from physical to digital game media, it would be nice if everyone could agree on how refunds work. Unfortunately while some companies are leading the charge in consumer friendliness, others seem to be more than a little behind the times.
Falcom will release The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II for Switch on July 25 in Japan for 4,800 yen, the company announced.
It is often a minor controversy whenever a new AAA game comes out and is capped at 30 frames per second. However, visual effects director Mark Slater-Tunstill says there is a good reason that is locked at 30 FPS on Xbox Series X/S.
When Ninja Theory was acquired by Microsoft nearly six years ago, many gamers expected Hellblade II to become Microsoft's own answer to the rebooted God of War franchise. To do that, Ninja Theory would have had to greatly increase the scope of the sequel, but they decided to stick to a short eight-hour-long game instead.
The price of Hero of the Kingdom II, the Point & Click Casual Adventure RPG, has dropped. Initially priced at $7.49, the game is now up for grabs at absolutely zero! Developed by Lonely Troops, it’s a sequel to Hero of the Kingdom. If you don’t know much about the game yet, let me give you a quick lowdown on it!
Uniqlo’s latest video game collaboration may be its best yet. It teamed up with Nintendo on six T-shirts inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and they’re coming to stores in late April. Each $24.90 T-shirt features iconography and characters from Tears of the Kingdom. Have a look at them below.
Nintendo is already making plans for developing more role-playing games, as suggested by one recently surfaced survey. Specifically, Nintendo currently appears to be brainstorming ideas for new RPGs based on the Super Mario franchise.