Square-Enix's New Episodic Formula May Be a Good Thing

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

There is precisely 0% chance that this latest trend can be good. When was the last time publishers did something that benefits the consumer? Never. And even if they start off with a somewhat good business model they quickly find a way to ruin it. This is just the latest example. For the love of whatever you hold sacred, don't fall for it this time.

 

[sXeth]

I'll be honest, I'm willing to let FF7R slide on the episodic thing cuz that game is fucking HUGE. I think skipping text my shortest play through was like 50 hours? Every time I think back on it I remember a new part to it. And it's going to be fully animated, voiced etc. Thats like a 5 year project.

The same can't be said of Hitman or Tomb Raider. They're like 12 hours max if I'm being generous, which means episode will be really short. Like maybe 2-3 hours? I don't feel that $5 an hour is worth it.

I posed the question elsewhere as to how they'd divide FF7 episodes, because if Episode 1 was until the Plate Collapse. Episode 2 was the attack on Shinra HQ, then what would Episode 3 be? (since thats about 16 hours of the game that boils down to "Find the next car or boat to proceed linearly through the map and does little to advance the main story).

Perhaps proving the point, most replies jumped straight from Midgar to the North Continent/Crater, and then the final battle, making 4 episodes.

Sure, they could do all their effectively irrelevant side-junk, but that'll shoot them in the foot as far as keeping people invested in the story over a period of months(years?)

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The same can't be said of Hitman or Tomb Raider. They're like 12 hours max if I'm being generous, which means episode will be really short. Like maybe 2-3 hours? I don't feel that $5 an hour is worth it.

Tomb Raider has me doubting too, but Hitman is actually rather logical. The fun in Hitman, at least for most of the fans, is not the convoluted excuse-plot, but the way each Mission is both a sandbox and a puzzle. Remember how Absolution had like 3-5 different unique ways to dispose of targets, apart from the usual "shoot/stab/strangle"? That's the potential sweet thing with Hitman episodes; that they can be large enough to allow multiple playthroughs where you can test all manners of approaches and find semi-hidden "special" assassinations and what not. That'd easily get a fan some 5-15 hours of play out of each episode, at least if IO keeps their promise to have all the episodes as large as the Paris mission they keep showing.

 

[pookie101]

AAA publishers cant help but fuck up everything they touch and while it can work , hell it worked well with life as strange the fact they are chopping up developed games to make them episodic means they dont understand it.

i suspect it will lead to more rushed releases and games being released half finished.. why continue to release episodes for game x if its not selling well. just wrap it up and start another.

never forget these publishers only do things to benefit themselves not the customer

 

[CaitSeith]

I posed the question elsewhere as to how they'd divide FF7 episodes, because if Episode 1 was until the Plate Collapse. Episode 2 was the attack on Shinra HQ, then what would Episode 3 be? (since thats about 16 hours of the game that boils down to "Find the next car or boat to proceed linearly through the map and does little to advance the main story).

Perhaps proving the point, most replies jumped straight from Midgar to the North Continent/Crater, and then the final battle, making 4 episodes.

Sure, they could do all their effectively irrelevant side-junk, but that'll shoot them in the foot as far as keeping people invested in the story over a period of months(years?)

Episode 3 would be reliving Cloud's past and it would end when they find the impaled Midgar Zolom. That's a pretty dramatic end for an episode. This would be the episode where we establish how bad ass and fucked up Sephiroth is.