Disclaimer: Even though the title of the video implies some long video essay, it's not. It's just 13 minutes long. Breakpoint just feels like a game that got rebooted in the middle of development....
Disclaimer: Even though the title of the video implies some long video essay, it's not. It's just 13 minutes long.
Breakpoint just feels like a game that got rebooted in the middle of development. The first glimpse of it we got with the survival and injury mechanics was seriously intriguing and got me excited. It felt coherent.
My best guess is that something happened after that first trailer hit, either Ubisoft's focus groups didn't respond too well to it or someone higher up flexed their muscles and made the game director implement the entire pseudo RPG system which is completely at odds with the rest of the game's mechanics. I think the implementation of such a huge addition probably at late stages in the game's development cycle shortened the time used for QA and polish (already awfully short these days), making the game launch in the state it launched in.
Because if the pseudo-RPG system was in from the start, why wasn't in the first trailer? Were they afraid of a negative backlash from the fans? If they were afraid of it, why put it in the first place if they knew that it wasn't what the fans wanted?
The MTX is par of the course for Ubi these days, so that didn't even surprise me that much, though they're obviously still egregious and still hurt the game as much as they did in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Also since's Ubisofts' CEO has stated that they want to implement these systems in all their games, basically turning them into hegemonous crap, isn't that going to eat into their audience at some point? Like, you can't place all your bets at live services with your games and support them for multiple years, but then also release basically the same game every year, or you'll cannibalize your own game audience.
It may have already started doing exactly that: Ubisoft delays Watch Dogs Legion, Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and dramatically drops financial targets
isn't that going to eat into their audience at some point?
Just read the news on reddit as well. At least finally the message got through to them. Now that the CEO said that their games need to be strongly differentiated, maybe we'll see a long-term shift...
Just read the news on reddit as well. At least finally the message got through to them. Now that the CEO said that their games need to be strongly differentiated, maybe we'll see a long-term shift away from making all their games open-world RPGs.
Disclaimer: Even though the title of the video implies some long video essay, it's not. It's just 13 minutes long.
Breakpoint just feels like a game that got rebooted in the middle of development. The first glimpse of it we got with the survival and injury mechanics was seriously intriguing and got me excited. It felt coherent.
My best guess is that something happened after that first trailer hit, either Ubisoft's focus groups didn't respond too well to it or someone higher up flexed their muscles and made the game director implement the entire pseudo RPG system which is completely at odds with the rest of the game's mechanics. I think the implementation of such a huge addition probably at late stages in the game's development cycle shortened the time used for QA and polish (already awfully short these days), making the game launch in the state it launched in.
Because if the pseudo-RPG system was in from the start, why wasn't in the first trailer? Were they afraid of a negative backlash from the fans? If they were afraid of it, why put it in the first place if they knew that it wasn't what the fans wanted?
The MTX is par of the course for Ubi these days, so that didn't even surprise me that much, though they're obviously still egregious and still hurt the game as much as they did in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Also since's Ubisofts' CEO has stated that they want to implement these systems in all their games, basically turning them into hegemonous crap, isn't that going to eat into their audience at some point? Like, you can't place all your bets at live services with your games and support them for multiple years, but then also release basically the same game every year, or you'll cannibalize your own game audience.
It may have already started doing exactly that:
Ubisoft delays Watch Dogs Legion, Gods & Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine and dramatically drops financial targets
Just read the news on reddit as well. At least finally the message got through to them. Now that the CEO said that their games need to be strongly differentiated, maybe we'll see a long-term shift away from making all their games open-world RPGs.