I'm not a hardcore Dragon Ball Z fan, I enjoy the series and buy any games that are good (like the Budokai HD Collection, Raging Blast 1, or Burst Limit) but I've been following Xenoverse's pre-release discussion and what not since at least November. They revealed a lot more about the game over the last few months (maybe even a little too much in terms of story spoilers) and it looks like it might be a return to form for Dragon Ball games. I mean, it has to be, right? Dimps is making it!
Even though Dimps is making it, which is what the fanbase has wanted since Raging Blast 2 (or you could even argue since Ultimate Tenkaichi), the fanbase for these games is still extremely displeased with some of the decisions the developers made for the game. I've been trawling/lurking boards like Kanzenshuu and the GameFAQs Xenoverse PS4 board and there's tons of nitpicking going on with the game. The nitpicking has showed up since it was revealed that the roster only had 47 characters, excluding Mira, Towa, and Demigra (the new characters in the game that the story centers around), and after it was discovered only one stage (the World Tournament stage) is available for local multiplayer.
Basically, after people came to terms with the above flaws with the game (the roster size is debatable as an actual flaw given the fact that each character is mostly unique and Dimps isn't known for making large rosters) more smaller issues started to get pointed out. These issues don't even impact the quality of the game but just nag at people who are, by and large, trying to have their cake and eat it too. An example of this is: a full roster that focuses on just Z with every major or supporting character playable, a deep custom character creator, and a well balanced game. You can't have all of those whatsoever, character creators in fighting games wind up making the game imbalanced because everyone wants to just use their overpowered custom character and online, typically, doesn't restrict those in ranked. Something has to give, in terms of its breadth and depth.
That's what's happened with this game, Dimps chose to focus on creating a new story that involved our created characters -- something fans have been pleading and begging for... for years -- and Dimps' priority was rightly focused on those two aspects primarily. Those were the aspects of the game they're selling people on, not the combat, not the graphics, not the online multiplayer (though co-op is something they've been advertising, not so much PvP), and so on. Yet the fanbase wants everything to be just as polished and good as everything else for a game that likely wasn't given the budget or time to do that. It's fine to want it but to expect it is the issue and these people cry "lazy developers!" for it when that's farrrr and away from the truth.
The fact is, developers are given a certain amount of money and time to work on and make a game for a publisher. They do not have infinite time and money to do everything correctly for a single game, that's why sequels exist. Bandai Namco is, essentially, taking a big risk with this game because they've allotted Dimps more time than most DBZ games are given -- one can assume that also means they gave them more money to accomplish their goals for it. This means if this game doesn't meet their expectations then they won't budget the developers to do a sequel for next year or in 2017.
While the fanbase/community might be sick of not getting the full Z cast for a roster for any DBZ game since Budokai Tenkaichi 3, this is the way game development works. A first game is not going to get the full Z roster.
That also applies to the issue with respect to how local multiplayer has been handled in this game. My theory is that due to the backlash of Battle of Z last year Bandai Namco pushed/pressured Dimps to put in local multiplayer so they have that checked off -- even if it meant only one stage was possible for use. They didn't design the game for local multiplayer in the beginning, it clearly wasn't in their plans as evidenced by how the other stages are designed. Their priority had always been the story, online (co-op Parallel Quests and PvP), and the custom character system. So they did a half-baked local multiplayer to try and please/attract the players who only play or who do play local multiplayer. Unfortunately, it's not enough and is a legitimate flaw with the game.
What isn't a legitimate flaw, however, are things like Saiyans lacking fully animated tails as customizable options, Another nitpick that isn't an issue is lack of customizing auras (Dimps isn't known for allowing players to do this). The lack of beam struggles or "larger explosions" are also among the smaller issues with the game that, in the long-run, don't even matter and have legitimate reasons for their exclusion for this first game. They can figure out how to do beam struggles in a sequel and "larger explosions" can be put in when the game is solely on current gen consoles.
At the end of the day, the fanbase is far too divided and expects too much from game developers for DBZ games, which are basically low-budget games to begin with. They're not AAA games therefore to expect AAA polish is kind of ridiculous. The only way a DBZ game would get that is if DBZ games sold a lot more than they do now which... they won't. The pinnacle for DBZ will always be Budokai Tenkaichi 3 because of the PS2 and Wii's install bases allowing them to sell 4 million copies.
Again, this game was focusing on new things therefore features fans come to expect had to take a backseat (it's really clear if you just look at the game and see how much was put into the custom character stuff versus other aspects of the game).
Regardless of the pre-release circus and nonsense that's been going on since the Japanese release of the game, I am looking forward to picking it up next week and enjoying the new features that haven't been done in a DBZ game before in this way as well as the fighting engine Dimps has crafted.
No comments:
Post a Comment