And I mean, that's maybe where the problems lie. This game is all jank and all generics, with no specific thing to present except "OMG LOOK AT OUR GRAPHICS!!!!". Which are also pretty unoptimized, so you end up with:

Only a tiny tiny fraction of players can even play it.
Then, the game is utterly generic. Despite how it might look to someone not knowing about it, DOOM 2016 and Eternal are quite unique games and have a very well-designed gameplay flow that even differs divisively between the two.
The writing is horrible and would make even an MCU movie/series writer question their decisions in life.
The magic is still just guns with replaced graphics. They didn't lean into the very premise of the game at all. And all they had to do is play Lichdom Battlemage from 2014 to get some ideas and that game already struggled with the concept. But at least it pulled it off.

Can't really say I'm surprised the game flopped hard. But unlike the dev I would call the underlying idea solid, just not anything about the execution.

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[–] [email protected] 134 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The development cost was around $85 million, and I think EA kicked in $40 million for marketing and distribution.

Apparently, $40 million doesn't buy you much in today's market, because I've literally never heard of this game until now.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Probably spent it all on cable TV ads, where their audience ain't at.

Or just blow and hookers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

"I'm telling you, the cocaine and hooker market is ripe for a AAA single player FPS game."

[–] Decoy321 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It was actually quite fun! I rented it off Gamefly and enjoyed it for about 30-40 hours. It's basically an action-adventure shooter like Metroid. It's a decent game, not groundbreaking, but definitely doesn't deserve the hate people give it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It has Denuvo, and runs like crap even on $1500 hardware.

I don't know what kind of sales they expected when they don't test it on lower spec PCs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

We should expect more of that with the upcoming UE5 titles. The devs that have devoted to releasing those seem to have very hard time optimising - they'll likely expect us all to just own 4090s and still run their game with DLSS ultra performance or other fake frames.

STALKER 2 will have the janky soul we expect from the series, but this mostly, mostly due to engine choice and apparent attempts to visually impress the player. Or the investors.

[–] guacupado 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

but definitely doesn’t deserve the hate people give it.

I don't think it's getting hate. I think it's getting indifference because no one knows what it is.

[–] DrQuint 2 points 10 months ago

Nah, I've seen hate. But mostly from people who hate Wesdon-Like quip writting and, well, women-haters who can't handle the characters being ugly (and they are ugly, admittedly), so I just dismissed the hate.

[–] Zahille7 6 points 10 months ago

I saw one YouTuber that I follow play it. It looked kinda interesting from his video, but he also has the same criticisms.