Quantic Dream, the French studio behind story ’em ups from Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy to Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, wish to develop past the PlayStations they’ve completely been working with for 12 years. Quantic Dreams first two games got here to PC however since then their more and more fancy and clumsy wankathons have been restricted to Sony’s console. Now Quantic Dream have picked up funding from NetEase, the Chinese PC and cell megapublishers, they’re seeking to return to multiplatform. They haven’t but confirmed platforms for his or her subsequent game however they do point out PC in a threatening method. Be alert.
Quantic Dream are obscure about what they’re making subsequent, however co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière did speak about going multiplatform in an interview with VentureBeat. He famous that they’re constructing a cross-platform game engine, and do plan to maintain doing their factor and likewise “want to explore new grounds.” God, if solely it have been Newgrounds not new grounds.
“We will continue to work on PlayStation, which is a platform we love and that we know very well,” he continued. “But we will also consider other platforms as we want to make our creations accessible to as many gamers as possible worldwide, regardless of the platform. This is definitely a shift for us after 12 years developing exclusively for PlayStation. But at the same time we have developed engines on PC, Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS4 Pro. Thus, we are confident we can make a smooth transition while keeping the high level of quality that we target for our games.”
See! He mentioned PC. That’s a menace. You all noticed it.
“With a strong focus on in-house development, we are constantly looking for partners that complement us in the development and creation of the next generation games,” NetEase VP Ethan Wang mentioned in their announcement.
“Quantic Dream’s excellence in interactive storytelling and the valuable expertise it has built over the past two decades is exactly what we have been looking for.”
They want their eyes checked. Quantic Dream’s storytelling is unhealthy. Their games are hokey B-movies aspiring to be contemplative and emotional however falling to this point brief. I’ll say they do typically have sturdy, intriguing openings–Farenheit’s “Surprise! You done a murder. Now what?” continues to be ace–however they inevitably fuck it into the bin. Yet as a result of they’ve high-tech graphics and well-known actors, they idiot rubes.
Obviously I discover this infuriating, particularly when head honcho David Cage does issues like declare his clumsy racism allegory Detroit: Become Human isn’t about racism in any respect.
“The story I’m telling is really about androids,” David Cage told Kotaku. “If people want to see parallels with this or that, that’s fine with me. But my story’s about androids who want to be free.”
O-kay. Detroit, set in America’s Blackest metropolis, with its plot about sentient androids handled as property and compelled to endure typically brutal remedy, who attempt to escape to freedom via an underground railroad and spark protests demanding recognition and rights and who idly quote Martin Luther King Jr., is just not about racism in America. I don’t know if it’d be worse if he didn’t have the conviction to declare his intent or if he genuinely didn’t intend to touch upon racism and thoughtlessly channelled centuries of human distress and cruelty into window dressing for his drained sci-fi story.
They’re games for individuals who nonetheless assume “Are video games art?” is an attention-grabbing query, who prize photorealism, who mistake motion-captured Hollywood actors for well-written characters, who don’t know the excellence between elevating a problem and having one thing to say about it. All of which I object to, obvs. If I ever meet this straw man at an business occasion, I’ll pour my drink over his head.
Look, I’ve not been in a position to write about new Quantic Dream games throughout my years at RPS so I’ve so much to get out my system.
I’d say it is likely to be dangerous to put money into an organization which reportedly has a rubbish office tradition (right here together with Photoshopping colleagues into racist, sexist, and homophobic images for the bants) however hell, Google and Riot Games appear to be doing simply fantastic.
NetEase’s engagement with western gaming has principally been dealing with Chinese publishing duties of games together with Minecraft, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch, however in recent times they’ve began investing in making games with western builders. They bunged over $100 million (£76m) into Destiny builders Bungie in 2018, and are collaborating with Blizzard on cell spin-off Diablo Immortal.
