Topic: Super Second Parties

[Dasmos]

This has been said to death. Metroid Prime is a First Person Adventure game, not a First Person Shooter.

[IceCold]

Camelot - works on incredibly redundant Mario sports games. Nintendo needs an original RPG, these guys are experts at that, but instead they work on Mario games EAD could have made themselves.
Namco - works on Star Fox and Mario Baseball.
Sega - works on F-Zero.

What's the point of making deals with other developers if they're not going to contribute any of their unique expertise to the project?

Slow down there, Ian... You're missing the key point - many of these developers wouldn't support the Cube at all if they weren't given Nintendo franchises. they were definitely wary of making their own games for the system, given the Cube's lack of success in sales with 3rd party titles. Nintendo's mascots would give them assured sales. And the reason Nintendo lent their characters to the 3rd parties was so that they could strengthen relationships with them, which would hopefully lead to more games on Nintendo systems, especially the Rev.

Also,

Camelot - making a Rev-exclusive RPG, presumably for launch
Namco - Gave us Tales and Baten Kaitos when no other dev would give the Cube RPGs
SEGA - Have repeatedly said they want to support the Rev, and that a Nintendo console is now Sonic's "spiritual home"

[animecyberrat]

thast only YOUR clasification, nintendo themselves refer to Metroid primeas a first person shoter WHICH IT FU$%^ING IS! Yu go aroudn and SHOOT PEOPEL IN FIRST PERSON! Its no different than Halo, it just has more to explore butits very similar gameplay. Yo see Samus's weapon most of teh time and you goa roudn and shoot enemies. Metroid was an action shooter on NES/SNES and Metroid Prime has always been called a 1st person shhoter by the peopel who make the game AND the media AND by people who know what the term means. knock it off peolple and give it a rest. I Knwo yu want Nintendo to stand out and whatnot but come on call it what it is.  

[Kairon]

Miyamoto calls it a First Person adventure. He was the reason that Retro took that direction, and they needed to consult with him every month on how the game was going along.

If he calls it an FPA, I will too.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Nosferat2]

Metroid/Geist is to 1st Person Adventure's as Medal of Honor/Call of Duty is to 1st Person shooter's.

To Odifiend:
To help illustrate what i was trying to say Compare the following:

Mature              Vs      Non mature
Baldures gate             Final Fantasy Crystal Cronicles

Elder Scrolls                Skies of Aracdia

L.O.T.R  Third Age        Tales of Symphonia


 Look at these and ask yourself what the distinctions are. Its NOT about the photorealism, Themes, or art style. Its about presentation, well at least thats the word i think i want to use. RPG means role playing game. Your playing the part of the character. Tell me whats the fun in a 30 year old man trying to save the world as a child? Look at Skies one character has pony tails and a boomerrang as a weapon. Tales, one of the characters is apparently 7 years old and 8 hours into the game i cant tell whether its a boy or girl! What satisfaction do i have playing as these characters. I do not connect with them which in my opinion is critical to an RPG experience.

But characters is not the only ingredient. Baldurs gate was a more mature game but it sucked just about as much as FFCC. I hated both. Marrowind i heard wasnt great and i liked Skies. I have yet to play The Third Age and only completed 8 hours or Tales( havent played that in over a month), so i cant comment on how much i like the two. Point is I want QUALITY Rpgs aimed at an Older demographic this generation. At least two. The Anime stuff is cool for the guys and gals who like it but Nintendo needs to give me and others like me what we want too. Microsoft is trying to please their customers with Oblivion why is it out of the question for me to ask the same of Nintendo. It shouldnt be asking much especially if Nintendo wants to prevent people to jump over to the 360.

Anyway Odifiend, if you cant see my point with the comparison of the above games i know not what else to say.

[The Omen]

Quote
I don't understand where you are coming from at all. What constitutes mature to you? I'm assuming photorealistic graphics. Tales of Symphonia was both better storywise and gameplay wise and had a complex story to boot. Skies of Arcadia though a port even surpasses the cliched Baiten Kaitos in all departments. You also keep making jabs at Fire Emblem where 'kids' are forced into battle by circumstance. It is fine if you can't get into that but if you are so juvenile that you can't appreciate anything but photorealism, stop throwing the word mature around. It offends the rest of us.

I agree with Nosferat2 as well.  I can't stand the spiky haired, big smiled characters.  It just takes me out of it.  I love Tales of Symphonia, but even it had some cringe worthy moments for adults, especially within the voice work and character design.  I don't need blood and guts, but please, little happy children giggling with glee at the drop of a hat is quite annoying.  I don't mean photo realistic graphics either-there's a difference between anime, smiley faced characters and normal sized head characters that don't yelp and whine.  Give me a serious mood, with a deep and involved story aimed towards adults only.  

[jasonditz]

In all fairness Ian it's not like Nintendo's going around telling Namco: don't make anything original, just do Mario Baseball... or encouraging Sega to shelf an original game because we want another F-Zero.

Letting third parties cash in on a Nintendo franchise is a way of rewarding them for support and improving the relationship. Any idiot can throw money at Capcom to try to buy some support... but no one else can offer to let them make the next handheld Zelda.

The companies that are doing all these Nintendo franchise third party titles (Namco, Sega, Capcom, Hudson) are the same companies that provided virtually all of the meaningful original third party titles for the system.

[odifiend]

I guess, I was confused because you mentioned Baiten Kaitos earlier.  If Skies of Arcadia was disqualified from being 'mature' because of Aika, the boomaranged one, I don't see how you could keep Kaitos on there with the oar user and trumpet user.  If you mean Kaitos lacked any of the fun or intercharacter discussion that Tales had, I will agree with you - and I guess it is here we disagree.  Since in Tales you are role playing with a band of people, I like the way characters interacted because it game you a taste of their personality.
Elder Scrolls to me is more like an MMO.  You customize your character and then you take them out to join guilds and do missions or whatever.  I suppose that would be a true Role Playing Game because your character can be psycologically equated with the player.  But I personally can't stand this kind of RPG.  I still don't understand the logic you found your reasons in for what determines mature in nonmature, but I do understand our tastes differ.
Kairon, since we're back on the subject, what RPGs do you like?  It sounds like everything out there you wouldn't like...  

[jasonditz]

Quote
Originally posted by: MJRx9000
Somewhere early in the Cube's life Nintendo went sequel crazy and they haven't recovered from that yet. They started believing that brand names were more important then the game's behind them.

I think it was about the time that Eternal Darkness came out to rave reviews and almost nobody bought it.

[Kairon]

Wow, how'd we get back to the subject? LOL. That almost NEVER happens!... or DID we get back to the subject?

Well, I think you're a bit right Odifiend. I mean, I didn't like Skies of Arcadia, I didn't like Tales of Symphonia... but at the same time I didn't like Neverwinter Nights nor did I like Morrowind. Actually, I guess Morrowind is okay, I just can't survive in that game because it feels like a MUD in that it is really, really, not newbie friendly. But anyways, I'm not pining for Oblivion, if Morrowind is what an Elder Scrolls game is then I'm not concerned about missing anything.

In some ways I'm an old-school RPGer, but I refuse to leave it at that. I like RPGs that are focused on doing a few things well and on doing just that, without pretensions to anything else. I liked Earthbound's pure dependency on atmosphere and humor. I liked how FF6 handled it's story without the melodramatic pseudo-philosophistic clutter of anime-style cinematics and storylines and excesses. I liked how Secret of Mana wasn't really at all about story, it was about satisfying, simple action gameplay and adventure, which was only enhanced by multiplayer. I liked the original Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga because of their dependency on fun, innovative, viscereal gameplay as opposed to the time-eating story conventions of more complex RPGs.

In contrast, Skies of Arcadia promised a 3D sky adventure, but Wind Waker had more exciting minor Islands than that game, Overworks completely failed to capitalize on the possibilities of a 3D overworld. Tales of Symphonia waned us to believe in all the extras of the party, but the sometimes-long talking heads pseudo cut-scenes that were supposed to be extras just feature ripped-out-of-anime and cliche dialog. I was also eager to try to get into the cooking game, but not only did the game give me little direction to encourage me along said path, but it also didn't seem to integrate this aspect into the greater fabric of the title. And of course, the Story was predictably anime-ish from 10 seconds in onwards. Oh, and although I suspect that Nosferat2 will hate me for this, I hated Neverwinter Nights too. They should stop making games based on DnD rulesets and just MAKE GAMES! The ruleset and the playstyle of DnD bring too many artifactions into the game that just... may have as many negatives as positives. Not to mention I found the story uninspiring as well.

Incidentally, I haven't played Baiten Kaitos yet, hehe. I gotta grab that game before the sequel comes out.

Wow...see all that complaining above? Actually, I got a better explanation for why I don't like so many RPGs. I'm not really a regular RPGamer. I'm a Nintendo gamer whose favorite genre aside from Miyamoto games is RPGs. As thus, I expect my RPGs to be as polished as Nintendo games. They need to control as smoothly as a Nintendo game, they need to be as fully integrated as a Nintendo game(meaning story, gameplay, settings and features should all feel like natural pieces of the game, instead of seperate modules being tacked together), and they need to do something magical if at all possible.

So after such a critical rant, I have no question that I'm in the minority of modern RPGamers. I love the genre, I think it's the genre that I'd work best in, but I hate most of its titles. Heh. Go figure. Thats why the Revolution, even if it isn't the second coming, gives me hope. It tells me that maybe sometime, these genres will break out of their current molds and evolve into games that... perhaps, may feel more "complete" to me.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: jasonditz

Quote
Originally posted by: MJRx9000
Somewhere early in the Cube's life Nintendo went sequel crazy and they haven't recovered from that yet. They started believing that brand names were more important then the game's behind them.

I think it was about the time that Eternal Darkness came out to rave reviews and almost nobody bought it.

Even considering that the game wasn't nearly as good as the reviewers and fans and hype made it out to be, it didn't even sell well taking all those into account.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Kairon]

Incidentally, my guess is that the true spirit of RPGs in the future will move farther from the simulation/battle system structure they're currently tied into and move slowly into a more cinematic action game. Not an action game, not a cinematic game, but something in between. I don't complain with the cinematic quality coming into RPGs. I just think that if they can capture cinematic viscerality in gameplay, that'd be 100 times better than merely having cinematic cutscenes.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[kirby_killer_dedede]

It's official, Carmine M. Red has meat loaf for brains.

[Kairon]

HEY!

...I happen to like meatloaf...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[odifiend]

Kairon, you also have to consider it was the second mature game on the cube, with the first being an updated port of a 7-8 year old game.  I really think ED was all that and a bag of chips, but maybe I'm biased since it had no real competition in the Gamecube lineup at the time.

Re K's RPG:  Alright, I was just curious.  I only have issue with this which I guess you could say is grounded in opinion as well:
"In contrast, Skies of Arcadia promised a 3D sky adventure, but Wind Waker had more exciting minor Islands than that game, Overworks completely failed to capitalize on the possibilities of a 3D overworld."
You've got to be joking...  The comparison really isn't even fair, considering WW was released afterwards on improved hardware, but I found the hunt for discoveries was more enjoyable than sailing in WW's empty ocean.

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: odifiend
Re K's RPG:  Alright, I was just curious.  I only have issue with this which I guess you could say is grounded in opinion as well:
"In contrast, Skies of Arcadia promised a 3D sky adventure, but Wind Waker had more exciting minor Islands than that game, Overworks completely failed to capitalize on the possibilities of a 3D overworld."
You've got to be joking...  The comparison really isn't even fair, considering WW was released afterwards on improved hardware, but I found the hunt for discoveries was more enjoyable than sailing in WW's empty ocean.

Lol, okay.

But this is what I mean by completely failing to take advantage of a 3D overworld. This is what I mean about games having pretensions. Skies of Arcadia had us sailing in the sky, yet it didn't do a quarter of the things of the things that Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece "Laputa: Castle in the sky" suggested could be done with a sky world. At least Wind Waker kept it all to a 2D plane, and still provided with actual islands that offered more interaction than a simple text box.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Nosferat2]

. Oh, and although I suspect that Nosferat2 will hate me for this, I hated Neverwinter Nights too. They should stop making games based on DnD rulesets and just MAKE GAMES! The ruleset and the playstyle of DnD bring too many artifactions into the game that just... may have as many negatives as positives. Not to mention I found the story uninspiring as well.

Na i dont hate you for that. Havent Played Neverwinter nights. For some reason it never interested me. I would only hate you if you said you hated Wizardry 8 and certaintly for the Greatest RPG ever Wizardry 7 (both PC). If you havent played Wiz 8 i suggest you check it out. its about 5 years old now so hopefully you can find it somewhere.

I just miss the old Might and Magic and Wizardy days of old. The sad thing is that traditional rpgs are dieing out if not extinct.  

[denjet78]

Let's see, Sony second parties include... um... Does Sony even have any second parties? Is that a big fat no? How about first parties. I don't even know the names of any Sony first party development groups. We know Microsoft has Halo... I mean Bungie, and now Rare, whatever they're worth now. The only reason anyone knows Bungie though is because they were a big developer BEFORE MS bought them. Same with Rare. Sad thing is, look at what Bungie's making now. Halo 3? And do you have any idea what the next title on their docket is going to be? Can you say Halo 4? Microsoft isn't going to let them work on anything else as long as the franchise is such a cash cow and by the time it dies down, which will probably be after this next sequal when everyone starts to realize that they've been playing the same game for years, it's going to be too late for them to work on anything else as they would have been bread to be so specialized that all they're going to be capable of making will be Halo titles.

I'm just wondering what market Rare is going to get forced into. Could be another FPS house like Bungie or they could make adventure games or... well, they've only released 3 games in the past 4-5 years and so far none of them have really been a success. Don't worry though, as soon as they put out anything with any real level of promise MS will lock them into it.

Sony started that whole mind set. Look what happened to the developer behind Grand Turismo when Sony got ahold of them. Same with the developers of Ratchet and Jax. Have any of them made anything different in years? And that's been passed on to 3rd parties. Square=Final Fantasy, Konami=Metal Gear, Capcom=Resident Evil, Rock Star=GTA. No one seems to be able to rise above it, except Nintendo, and even they've been falling into it lately as well. Retro=Metroid anyone?

I don't care about second parties, I don't care about 3rd parties. No one wants to be second party anymore anyway. They either want a hit franchise they can milk themselves or they want to be snatched up lock stock and barell by a larger developer.

I want new. I want fun. I want original. Those types of games can and HAVE been made internally by Nintendo for generations. I know a lot of people want Metal Fantasy Evil XXVIVIX but my god, do you reallly believe that that's all there is out there?

Come on people... you've got to have more imagination than that, or has homoganization sapped it all?

[animecyberrat]

Sony has Psygnosis and they have 989 Studios, Insomniac, Polyphony, Square-Enix, Naughty Dog, just to name the most popular ones.

EDIT, these companies all are eitehr 1st or 2nd party companies to some degree, sony even has money in Square Enix.  

[denjet78]

Quote
Originally posted by: animecyberrat
Sony has Psygnosis and they have 989 Studios, Insomniac, Polyphony, Square-Enix, Naughty Dog, just to name the most popular ones.

Psygnosis is responsible for Wipepout and Colony Wars among other titles, Insomnican is Ratchet and Clank, Sqaure-Enix is DUH thier biggest 2nd party developer, Naughty Dog does Crash Bandicoot and Jax and Dexter, Polyphony does Gran Turismo.

Dude... CALM down. First off, you have no idea what the difference is between first, second and third party. Sony has no second parties. Every developer you mentioned there is first party, now that I have a few names and remember a little, other than Square-Enix who happen to be THIRD PARTY, or are you living in a cave? They've always been third party. They were never even a Nintendo second party back when they were still aligned.

Then everyone else you list is mediocer at best and not only that, they were BOUGHT by Sony and not built up internally. Again, they saw a good developer and BOUGHT them out, and now they all really only make one game. This is FAR too much specialization and is dragging the industry down the wrong path.

And I would say that it's laughable that you'd even mention most any of their names in the same sentence as Nintendo. They bring only slightly more variety than Nintendo themselves anyway. There's Grand Turismo and some sports titles. As you can see, Sony did NOT "came out and matched everythign Nintendo had and then some". That is mearly your perception of the surface. I don't see one Nintendo franchise killer here. Sure, a lot of them have been hyped to the extreme but have any one of them delivered?

Or would you prefer a larger library of mediocer games to a smaller library of incredible ones?

Beyond that, everything Nintendo has they developed themselves from the ground up. Sony BOUGHT all of their support. If they want a new game, they buy a new developer for it. They really have no idea how to develop anything themselves. Microsoft is the same way, and it hurts gaming.

Until I see MS and/or Sony actually TRYING to make games themselves and not simply pandering to other developers or fanboys by throwing out "me too" games or buying developers once they already have a hit on their hands, that's the day that I'll actually accept them as part of the video games industry. Until then, they're just hardware developers and hardware developers have no soul. Afterall, how could they if they don't even make what this industry is built on:

VIDEO GAMES

[Ceric]

Time to weigh in after reading everything... Long read...  I'll work my way backwards, like tests.

1.  I own both a PS2 and all Nintendo Systems.(Literally I think now the only thing lacking are some Pre-NES stuff though I just got an SNES for the first time.)  I tend to avoid getting games for my PS2 for two reasons:  I find the GCN versions better and there is too much junk to wade through.  When I buy a game for my Nintendo System for the most part I'm getting some quality gaming.  They all have there bad games but I find it easier to avoid them on Nintendo products.  Also Monster Rancher and KoH.  Yeah Love Monster Rancher.  I hope they make one for the Rev it would be glorious.  Especially if they could take the tournaments online. But I digress...

2.  I wish I could link that article but it's been a while.  They discussed what was a second party game maker anyway.  In the end it is so lously defined that it doesn't actually exist.  Your either third party or first and thats about it.

3.  I do have to agree that RPGS are the same old same old.  I mostly play for the battle system.  Which I really like in Baten Kaitos.  It was well thought through and not sparkling innovationy,  In fact it's the only use of cards in a non-card game that the creators shouldn't be mamed for.  (Though the FF that used them did a good job they should just be disfigured but the people who did KoH: Chains of Memory should be horribly deformed and there arms removed to prevent future coding debauchery.  I hate to see how Square would explain that. Wait I know... "This is what you get for taking the best part of a game and butchering it.")

4.  I like more variety myself.  Even though all "Jock" genre, sports 1st person shooter Fighters etc., that are missing on the GCN I really don't play except for some variations new ideas are always welcomed... Like Monster Rancher.

5.  IF the Camelot RPG is how Golden Sun was for the GBA I will go hunting and buy it at launch.  It will have graphics that will make you swear that your looking out the window, even if they go cartoon style.  It will have a clever system to deliver emotions.  The voice acting will either be not present or used only when appropriate and be unarguably excellent.  Your character will be transferrable to the next one, like in Hero Quest (I think it got rename to Quest for Glory, yeah I'm old school like that yo).

6.  Mentioning Hero Quest.  Dr. Brain for Revolution.  Excellent game back in the day.  Great puzzles made you think.  The original is the best though, besides Brain Drain game and a select few from some of the others.

These are my thoughts I know that some of them should probably be posted in other threads too but I'm to lazy for that right now.

[animecyberrat]

EDIT, you know what your not worthy of tiem so I retract my arguments and am elaving this thread.  

[BlkPaladin]

About the Square-Enix thing. Just because they have money in the company doesn't make them a second-party developer. Sony use to have a little vested interest in Square before the merger. Afer the merger that litte interest changed into almost non-existant. (i.e. not big enough to hold any weight in the company. The interest vested in Square orginally was something alonge the line of 10%, in the merger most of it was bought by Enix who was the stronger company. Square-Enix is a console "exclusive" (I put exclusive in qoutes because there are exceptions) third party, who chooses only to program for the most popular console.

The interest Sony had (oh interest is share ownership) in Square was much like the interest Nintendo has in Bandai and Bandai is no where even considered a Nintendo second party.

A working definition of a second party is were the console manufacture has a majority interest in the company but not total ownership, or there is a contractual arrangement that prevents the entire company from making games for anyone else.

Examples of this are:
Silicon Knights - My guess is they were only contractually bound to Nintendo because of a "loan" that Nintendo made them, once something better came up Silicon Knights disolved the contract.

Game Designers Studio - This was a second party that was desolved after the Square-Enix merger. I was created by Square and Nintendo to circumvent any problems Sony might of caused when the Developer needed to not be exclusive to one company. Since the merger negated any weight Sony carried, the studio was no longer needed.

EDIT: Sorry my mistake.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

*Game Des!gners Studio.

[animecyberrat]

What i meant was its not worth my time to argue sorry for misudnerstadning what I meant was it doesnt matter enough to me. Didnt mean to offend anyone.