You would be wrong.
I can say that confidently as someone who has never worked in anything related to software development.
Official Thread Fable IV
- Thread starter MosquitoSmasher
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You would be wrong.
I can say that confidently as someone who has never worked in anything related to software development.
Its just my opinion man. I dont mind others having a difference of opinion, but i definitely think it warrants discussion as to why an open world racer can be spun out in 24 months, but an openworld not racer takes double that for no real reason at all
It surely won't be done in 2 years, but I hope it won't take 5, either. I'm hoping they get it finished in 3 (by 2020). That's optimistic, but, from what I've heard, Playground is an efficient studio that meets deadlines and stays within budget. And they've already laid a lot of the groundwork.
Hopefully MS trusts them, gives them space, and lets them do their thing. Since Playground isn't owned by MS, I've got more confidence that will happen. If there is an area where MS needs to take "inspiration" from Horizon ZD, that's it. Trust the studio, and keep the corporate guys with bright ideas where they belong (far away).
Hopefully MS trusts them, gives them space, and lets them do their thing. Since Playground isn't owned by MS, I've got more confidence that will happen. If there is an area where MS needs to take "inspiration" from Horizon ZD, that's it. Trust the studio, and keep the corporate guys with bright ideas where they belong (far away).
I'm not saying either of you are wrong, but I will say that Forza Horizon is the closest thing to a car-based RPG out there. It's kind of like a CarPG. There is a huge map littered with missions, as well as a level up system, massive upgrade paths and random finds and many, many side quests. That in no way means that I think it takes the same amount of time to build the game, but they aren't wholly different, either.
Yeah, Forza Horizon 3 is the largest, most complex (not as in difficulty) car game I have ever played.
How long did it take Forza Horizon 2 to get spun out? How long did it take Forza Horizon 3 to get spun out?
Do you ever hear of any AAA open world RPGs that get developed in 24 months?
There's a very real reason why RPG's take longer than car based games. I think Guerilla Games took 6 years to make Zero Dawn?
I wanna say it took them four, or less, years. I could be wrong but I think they said they were working on another title, maybe another killzone, before taking it to full development. And I think the story changed twice, when they hired some major writer from Bethesda.
Ok. So what are they? if its real and tangible and quantifiable it would help to know. Valuable even.
What if the cars were horses? Would it still be a car game or would it be the horseback sections from Red Dead Redemption and Assassins Creed Origins.....isnt Assassins Creed yearly?!
They pitched it to Sony in 2011 and it was rejected because Killzone 4 was needed for PS4 launch and Enslaved Odyssey to The West bombed.
According to this interview they were working on KZ4 a couple of months before KZ 3 shipped and started work on HZD a few months before KZ Shadowfall shipped.
So about 3 and a half years with a 5 month delay.
Now...is it possible to intimate that it might have only taken 33 months instead of 41 months if Guerilla Games had a sister studio with 2-3 open worlds in their asset bank?
Or would they chuck them away?
I mean if New Zealand can be middle-earth, why cant Australia be New Albion?
I mean i presume Playground have thought about it. If they havent i can probably reduce the development time considerably.
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If nothing else, tne thing that should definitely take longer is the pre-production planning and concept art. I have no idea what their timeline looks like personally, but I'd be real impressed with 3-4 years and a quality game.
Now, I do believe that there is obviously something to be said for the efficiency of Playground Games, with regards to big scale games like FH3. 2 years time is extremely impressive for the huge maps where you can traverse nearly anywhere the vehicle can travel. The big question mark, it's how much time do they save by using assets from Turn 10? I am not sure that they would re-use assets from Fable Legends, but I do suppose that could be a possibility.
It seems pretty silly to look at other games and say "look how long it took to make X game". Not only does the size of these studios vary we have no idea what the scope of this game would even be or what the budget would be.
I'm shocked that someone thought this post was informative. There are so many bizaare and incorrect assumptions being made here.
One. Scroll up. Herman Hulst himself said he was working on Horizon Zero Dawn for "...more than six years." Of course game development ramps up and I could see large scale development taking about 3 years, but I don't think what he and his small team were doing in the three years prior was unimportant.
Two. If they were making a racing game with horses I could see it taking two years. If they were making their own Horizon Zero Dawn starring horse characters, I couldn't see anything less than three or three and a half years.
Three. I think you grossly overestimate the impact environmental creation has on a games development. Go watch some Unreal Engine 4 or Unity environmental creation videos. There are ameuture hobbyists who create super impressive looking topography using those engines tools in an unbelievably quick amount of time.
Four. Assassins Creed is made by 1,000+ person development teams. The first Assassins Creed took Ubisoft much longer than 12 months to get up and running. Once they have their tools and patterns set up, then they can churn them out at a quicker rate. Playground Games is at square one. I think one of the interesting aspects of this story is that a studio who makes racing games, is trying their hand at a genre so totally different.
Either way, I think if everything broke perfectly for Playground, you'd see a 3.5 year development time. More realistically, you're looking at 4+ years.
This seems strange to say a Fable game has been inspired by Horizon ZD.
If they said Breath of the Wild it would make perfect sense but HZD has about as much in common with Fable as a Porsche and a banana.
If they said Breath of the Wild it would make perfect sense but HZD has about as much in common with Fable as a Porsche and a banana.
Well my take is Sony rejected it. Forced them to Make Killzone 4 instead and once it was obvious KZ was not going to be competitive in the FPS market, greenlit HZD. I dont really care if the idea came to Herman in 1997 while watching the credits for the fifth element. It wasnt 20 years in production.
Well to split hairs. Forza Horizon is only a racing game when you're racing. When your not its an openworld game where the default method of transport is by emboding a metal box on wheels or a dronecopter. In assassins creed its a horse or an eagle. I dont really ascribe philosphical difference between which model they use.
Without describing subquests, how would you describe progression in HZD?
So basically an open world Fable world could in fact be done in hours. But it takes 3 years (nothing less) to make 80 fetch quests, 10 hours of cutscenes, 200 puzzler trophies and rerecord Danny Elfmans theme.
I think that seems excessive.
And this is the 4th mainline fable or fifth openworld game by Playground. As we can agree Albion can be made in days, whats to prevent them from simply copying from Assasins Creed, Mordor, Red Dead, GTA, Far Cry and previous Fable games and why specifically this cannot be accomplished in less than 36 months but can in 37 or more.
Or basically the same game only as a person instead of a car. I think its generally accepted Fable IV wouldnt have much racing.....but that just means Playground would spend that much more time on RPGing.
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Fixed due to time warp to 1997...but honestly I dono what I’m trying to prove whilst eating pizza. Just hope it doesn’t become a simplistic take on what the genre represents *cough*omegaboost*cough*
Re. Horizon ZD, the total time from inception to end was 6 years, but it's important to realize that after inception, the idea was put on a shelf for a while, because they were worried about too much overlap with Enslaved (strange to think that, but apparently on paper the two games sounded similar).
Guerilla then shifted their resources to work on a different game concept entirely. They worked on that for a long time (not sure how long), before they eventually abandoned it and returned to the concept of Horizon.
So it wasn't 6 straight years of work. After inception, it was placed "on hold" for quite a while.
Guerilla then shifted their resources to work on a different game concept entirely. They worked on that for a long time (not sure how long), before they eventually abandoned it and returned to the concept of Horizon.
So it wasn't 6 straight years of work. After inception, it was placed "on hold" for quite a while.
It takes a lot longer to make and rig those cars with proper physics and handling specifically to each of the hundreds of cars than to make and rig a human character and npcs, I'd think.
The real hurdle is prototyping new tech and executing an interesting story and world.
Yeah, I just can't agree with most of your assumptioms here.
You seem to want to annoint Playground Games as this prodigious RPG studio when they haven't made a single character driven RPG. I think the transition from Forza Horizon to Horizon Zero Dawn is bigger than you think but admittedly it's a murky area.
I will leave you with this though...
Persona 5 took 5+ years to develop.
The Witcher 3 took 3.5 years to develop.
Horizon Zero Dawn took 3 to 6 years to develop.
Breath of the Wild took 4 years to develop.
The Phantom Pain took 5 years to develop.
Red Dead Redemption 2 still isn't out yet.
CyberPunk 2077 is most likely a 4+ year game.
Maybe Playground Games is just a better, more efficient studio than the ones who made the games above. Or maybe, creating open world RPGs take longer than you think?
I agree. I have to wonder if they are conflating two entirely different games.
Here's a link to the story about Microsoft hiring for what even they even admit to being ZD-like: https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-making-horizon-zero-dawn-like-game/
The problem is, if this is Microsoft saying they are hiring for a game like HZD, then where does that leave Playground Games? How can Fable also be like HZD? Hmm. It's not like Microsoft could possibly be working on two different RPGs or anything... It's not also like these video game journalists get confused very often or anything like that, right?
Well that game wouldn't have to be an RPG plus they could be recruiting for Playground
Could be. Maybe they are looking at a HZD-like game, but set in the Fable land of Albion? Though, why not just start over, at that point? Of course, maybe that's how they plan on rebooting Fable, with a more modern style. I dunno. I keep coming back to thinking these might be two different games.
Another explanation might be that they're not talking about the game design, but just about the art style. The journalist claims the ad says MS is working on a Horizon-like game, but I don't think that's actually what the ad says.
The ad is for a lead environmental artist, and it then says the style is similar to Horizon's. I think it's talking about the environmental art style (e.g., realistic, detailed, lush, natural, beautiful, etc.), not necessarily the game design. That's what the position is they're hiring for: lead environmental artist. So, I think they may be talking about the art style being similar to Horizon's, but not necessarily the rest of the game design. The game might not have anything in common with Horizon besides the environmental art.
This new fable better have superior stealth mechanics to the past games and let me be a deadly stealth assassin... Hopefully there are no guns and we're back to bows & cross bows and the bows are implemented more similarly to horizon than fable 1...
It only took 6 months for Genital Jousting, with a much smaller team, and I think that game will be a lot more penetrating for the market...