Starcraft: Ghost Discussion

[aledromo]

I'm confused.  I didn't go to E3 and have been relying on a steady stream of conflicting reports.  It looks good, it looks bad.  It's too stealth focused, it's too action focused.  Now the whole bit with Nihilistic either leaving or getting kicked from the project?  I was/am really looking forward to this game.  Can someone tell me how to feel right now?

[Lockdown]

Well, I have absolutely no evidence to back this up... but I wouldn't feel too good if I were you.

Blizzard strikes me as the kind of company that absolutely WILL NOT let something out the door unless they are damn-near sure the game will get excellent reviews and will sell well.  Let's face it, love 'em or hate 'em, Blizzard, as a game company, is one of the extremely few out there that has a nearly spotless record.  Granted, some people did not like WC3, but it kicked ass on reviews, and sold insanely well.

Blizzard seems to take tremendous pride in the fact that they always release major, major winners.  Personally, I don't blame them.  

I heard the PS2 version of SC:Ghost has some issues, and is not up to their standards.  They simply will not release the game until this is "fixed", and if they feel it can't be fixed in a reasonable amount of time, they would sooner not release the thing at all.  Again, this is how I perceive Blizzard, and have no evidence to support it.

Also, and please correct me if this is wrong, Blizzard did not spend nearly the amount of resources on this game that they usually do b/c they did not develop it alone... Nihilistic did alot of the work.  So, they have "less to lose" than they did with say WarCraft Adventures, or whatever it was called.

That is all conjecture, but seriously, how many times can you push back a release date and still be totally confident that you have a tremendous game on your hands?  Not sure.  

The other side of the coin is.... This is Blizzard we're talking about, so nearly anything is possible.   :wink:

LD

[AgtFox]

Yes, all we can do is guess around here.  Lockdown talks about Blizzard and their need to have everything "right" before a game is released.  There are few developers who can do that and most of them are PC-centric: id Software, Valve, Epic, Blizzard, Bungie.  Those are the big names I can think of off the top of my head that can delay things and still come out with fantastic games.

I don't know what is going on with Ghost.  I've heard conflicting reports from E3 as well.  I've heard the Xbox version looked excellent and looked "pretty much done", I've heard the PS2 version wasn't even there and also heard the PS2 version was there and didn't look so good.

As for Blizzard, World of Warcraft has been in development for many years and things (like story points) from the canceled WarCraft Adventures (sucks it got canned) went into WarCraft III.  I would also guess Blizzard has 1 or 2 other games in the cooker as well outside of WoW and now Ghost.

Nevermind that this was Nihilistic's first foray into the console games (as well as Blizzard's first for the newer generation systems) and that their last game, Vampire: The Masquerade wasn't well received.  Maybe Blizzard decided to take everything back and work on it themselves...who knows.

Blizzard has lost a lot of people back when VU Games was trying to sell off the divisions, then VU took it back and didn't sell anything.  Now there was the massive layoff and elimination of Sierra.  Could VU Games be setting itself up for another round of selling?  Who knows.

Anyway, all we can hope for is news that is less broad than this, but with Blizzard we probably won't get such word.

And for a good read (I know a lot of you don't like PA), today's strip has to do with StarCraft: Ghost.

[Graham]

I posted something similar to this at GG.

I did see the PS2 version of SC:Ghost.  It was right next to the Xbox version.  The jaggies were incredibly noticable.  It also had framerate issues.  It wasn't to the point where it was completely unplayable, but I wouldn't have wanted to play it for long periods of time.  I mentioned to the PR rep I talked to that I was surprised to see the PS2 version, but he mentioned that they basically wanted to show that it could be done, but the game wasn't as optimized as much as the Xbox version.  They still had more work to be done on it.  It looked really bad since it was side by side next to the Xbox version.

I didn't see the Gamecube version, because it was in the Gamecube area, and I didn't spend a whole lot of time in there.

[Lockdown]

As for Blizzard, World of Warcraft has been in development for many years and things (like story points) from the canceled WarCraft Adventures (sucks it got canned) went into WarCraft III.  I would also guess Blizzard has 1 or 2 other games in the cooker as well outside of WoW and now Ghost.

Loren, your point here is a good one.  Regarding what is in the cooker, I really don't care what anyone says, StarCraft II has to be under development as we speak.  Blizzard can deny it all they want, they can fly me personally up to their offices and show me concrete evidence that it isn't in production, and I wouldn't believe them.  

Why?

If there was EVER a potential game out there with the ability to make more money than God, it is StarCraft II.  What business out there would not take advantage of this all-but-certain knowledge?  Remember, the crowd that fell in love with (and for many are still in love with) StarCraft is getting a bit older now.  I say strike before the iron gets cold (if that's even possible with that title).  How that relates to SC:Ghost, I am not sure, but as to your point about stuff in the cooker other than WoW... most definately agree.

LD

[EddieA]

The last we heard, Blizzard reduced their number of unannounced games from two to one, as they wanted to concentrate on one "key title".  Presumably, this game is either StarCraft 2 or Diablo 3.  The game is being worked on by Blizzard North, who did the Diablo games, but I'm still guessing it's SC2.

As for Ghost, it looks like Blizzard is looking for another developer to finish work on the game.