Sony Japan Studio closed down and rolled into Astros Playroom team as support

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Because Rennadrel can't handle that TLOU2 was a successful game, so he's lying to himself and others about it to cope.

It would defiantly seem that way given that he keeps making up new lies.

[Graeham]

Eh, the game never came across as particularly 'progressive' to me. Very few, if any, of the characters came across in a pleasant or flattering manner.

[Rennadrel]

Eh, the game never came across as particularly 'progressive' to me. Very few, if any, of the characters came across in a pleasant or flattering manner.

It was never about the game being "progressive". It was about the game being trash. Horribly dated combat and gameplay mechanics, every character having the same depressed, angsty attitude and the game doing dumb shit like forcing you to kill a dog only to make you feel bad for doing something it forces you to do. What kind of idiot wants to play something like that? They also did quite literally the worst job humanly possible of introducing Abby into the game and her overall role.

[Tech614]

Horribly dated combat and gameplay

It has the best third person shooter gameplay period. It's absolutely hilarious that a guy who stans for CDPR that has some of the blandest and stale gameplay on the planet is trying to shit on a game that has some of the most creative combat the genre has ever had. You can argue some bullshit all you want about the story but claiming the gameplay is bad proved you didn't play the game, or you're bad at shooters and thought your terrible gameplay was representative of the game.

[RobertoCarlos]

Yeah the sequence where you're going through like the massive hotels that are near the start of the outbreak and you're first introduced to the wall zombies is one of the best experiences ive had in gaming

not to mention the variety in how you want to tackle different situations or how smooth the gameplay is compared to other "current" games, one I wont mention because it doesnt deserve to be uttered in the same breath as a naughty dog game where driving cars turn into exploding bombs or randomly start to fly.....

[Kallisto]

Fact is TLOU2 was being attacked by groups during the E3 gameplay reveal well over two years before it came out. Ellie kissing Dina already had people screaming on the internet and forums. Somehow forgetting Ellie's sexuality was pretty much apparent as they were leaving Boston by car "Eww gross." as she threw out the naked male porn mags.

Since then certain groups (who seriously overlap with gamergate types and keeping anything not "traditional groups" out of games) just decided to latch onto anything which they could get their hands on. Leak "Abby is trans." hurr durr attacks. "Abby, not trans" lies (Turns out she isn't but another character is.). Abby sex scene "Duckman self insert REEE!" turns out again it is a lie about the self-insert. Abby Killing Joel is a personal insult for some reason, even though Joel fucking deserved it. You know you kill someone's dad who was close to saving the world, yeah people are going to come for your head.

People forget that all the way through TLOU 1 Joel (and Tess at the start) were pretty clear that they were not likeable heroes, "We're shit people." straight up from Tess. They were basically the same level as the groups in Pittsburg. Joel openly states as such. The only group he's morally better than is David's group and that's because they are cannibals. Also, let's not forget the death threats Laura Bailey endured because she played Abby.

Then let's come to how it plays compared to Cyberpunk. Well it's like chalk and cheese. TLOU2 was pretty much bug-free, played smoothly and if there was a bug you quite literally had to go out of your way to find it. Cyberpunk (which I found enjoyable) if you said you had a bug free full working experience I'll call bullshit on you. Because that game needed another year at least to be stable and when people talk about features removed, that game should be the poster child of removed features.

As for CDPR bringing out more than 1 good game before Witcher 3. It is true. But TLOU wasn't the only good game from naughty dog. We have the Uncharted games, and games dating back to the original Crash. So not like CDPR is exclusive in good games. But for CDPR try to play Witcher 1 today. It has not aged well.

[Santti]

Never played TLOU2 myself. Seemed like a bad game to me (thanks Yahtzee).

[Femininity]

RIP Japan Studio. Sad news indeed. Greatly enjoyed several games they developed/contributed to.

I gave up on Playstation years ago. I only cared for their Japanese games, and when Sony started focusing on the West at the expense of Japanese devs (who upped and moved to the Switch or mobile), and started heavy censorship of their games, I bailed out. I have no interest in Sony's exclusives.

Sony Santa Monica and Guerrilla Games are both great.

Naughty Dog is overrated.

[dope_danny]

An update to this has come out with more people quitting or entering voluntary retirement from the company. Most confirmed so far from this wave are people like Masami Yamamoto best known for No Heroes Allowed series, Tokyo Jungle, Rain, Bloodborne, Soul Sacrifice, Freedom Wars and Tenchu to name a few. Most have tended to be people who worked with Fromsoftware and were reported the other week as being rolled into the astros playroom team.

On top of that the japan studio stuff has been scrubbed from all the sony and playstation websites too. At least their games are still out there.

[OokOok]

is this a rip for any potential hope for a legend of dragoons remaster still..... i've been waiting like 25 years.

- - - Updated - - -

Japan has joined the west in being terrified in taking chances. And when no one is taking chances and only producing games with popular IP's then we'll not have much innovation and new fun games to discover. Just more of the same same, same and same.

Blizzard is big on that. The last time blizzard made a new game and not just an expansion was overwatch in 2016 which was a copy of several other shooters and Hearthstone in 2014 which once again is just a copy of magic the gathering basically using warcraft characters. Why make something new that might flop when you can just....rip off your own game in some fashion or others, put on some new skins and keep your original fan base

[dope_danny]

is this a rip for any potential hope for a legend of dragoons remaster still..... i've been waiting like 25 years.

This is the extensive list of stuff they had a hand in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Studio

Most of which Sony holds Ip rights over so could technically revive them but it appears the astros playroom team is all thats left so unless they want to go against their current western AAA third person cinematic action trend and want to start outsourcing and gamble with these IP's i doubt anything is coming for a good long time.

[OokOok]

This is the extensive list of stuff they had a hand in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Studio

Most of which Sony holds Ip rights over so could technically revive them but it appears the astros playroom team is all thats left so unless they want to go against their current western AAA third person cinematic action trend and want to start outsourcing and gamble with these IP's i doubt anything is coming for a good long time.

Yup, there it is, 1999. Thanks Dope_Danny you made me sad

[dope_danny]

At least their games are still out there.

Maybe i spoke too soon.