🎮 Ubisoft on changing Far Cry, Marvel Rivals on role queue demand and Rebel Wolves announces a new game...
Ubisoft wants to change the Far Cry, Marvel Rivals on role queue demand, Rebel Wolves announces The Blood of Dawnwalker, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Game Canceled and more!
Hello friends,
Today is December 26th 2024 and I hope you’ve had a Merry Christmas! 🎅
In today’s news:
🎮 Ubisoft wants to change the Far Cry
🎮 Marvel Rivals on role queue demand
🎮 Rebel Wolves announces The Blood of Dawnwalker
🎮 Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Game Canceled, allegedly
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Ubisoft wants to change the Far Cry
Insider Gaming recently shared exclusive news that Ubisoft wants to rethink and change a formula for the Far Cry series.
According to Insider Gaming, both games were overhauled and this applies to the movement system, inventory system, looting and a lot of other systems to make sure that from now one all the games are different from one another.
Good timing too, as there are two games currently in development for this particular franchise. One of them is the next installment in the main series and the other is an extraction shooter. If you are a fan of the series, don’t get your hopes up just yet as both games are planned for release in 2025 and/or 2026.
The extraction shooter, which takes place in the Alaskan wilderness, will see players fight one another, animals, and the harsh weather to survive. And the next main game will now see the player have to rescue his family, who have been kidnapped by a conspiracy cult who have been performing hallucinogenic experiments on animals and children. It’s said that the player has 24 real-life hours (72 hours in-game) to rescue their family, and the timer is reflected in-game by the player wearing a watch on his wrist.
It’s an interesting turn of events as I’ve stopped playing Far Cry games mainly because all the games are very similar. It’s like playing the same game with a different skin over and over again. So, I’m glad Ubisoft are at least trying to do something different and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out to be (despite the fact that the plot for the next main game feels like a mix between Far Cry 4 and 5 😅).
🎮 Marvel Rivals on role queue demand
This comes as a little bit of disappointment, but recently the creative director of Marvel Rivals addressed the community's demands for a role queue system and… The development team is not considering a role queue system at the moment.
Let me share some context if you are not familiar with these types of games. Currently, there are 3 types of heroes in the game: tanks, DPS and supports. With no role limitations (and this is my personal experience), the game is allowing everyone to play whatever they want leading to teams containing 5 DPS heroes and 1 support/tank, 6 DPS heroes and other unholy combinations that just don’t work. Leading to a very unsatisfying experience, to say the least.
The creative director of the game shared that they don’t want to limit the heroes that players can select with a role queue system and that they want to maintain the freedom players have with hero selection. However, the team will continue to monitor team compositions and how they impact Marvel Rivals.
As a person who played a lot during the past few weeks, I have to say, I’m very upset by this decision. I know that the game is new and that in the past games like this faced a lot of criticism when they introduced a role restriction system. This thing leads to a very long matchmaking (because 70+% of people want to play as DPS) and other unpleasant stuff. But it’s even more unpleasant to a player (and this is my perspective) to be completely annihilated by the enemy team that’s playing a balance composition while you can’t mind-control your teammates to stop picking Spider-Man and other very skill-dependent heroes. I’d rather not play this game at all then play it like this…
Are you a fan of hero shooters? What do you think about a role queue system?
🎮 Rebel Wolves announces The Blood of Dawnwalker
If you don’t know who that is, this is a recently formed studio of CDPR veterans and now they are sharing their new title!
So far it’s just a small teaser, but the studio already partnered with Bandai Namco as a publisher and announced in a teaser above that The Blood of Dawnwalker will officially be revealed on the game’s official Twitch channel on January 13, 2025, at 4 PM EST.
This is very exciting as this studio has Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz as Creative Director and this person is one of the people responsible for the amazing quest-based storytelling in The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 with over a decade of experience. Previously they shared that they are working on an AAA dark fantasy story-driven open-world game, built with Unreal Engine 5, so this has to be it.
Fingers crossed it’s a good one 🤞
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🎮 Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Game Canceled, allegedly
A rumour was recently shared by Game Rant suggesting that a sequel to Tiny Tina's Wonderlands that was in development by Gearbox was quietly cancelled.
While the game originally started as a DLC, it gained a lot of momentum and recognition that Gearbox wanted to capitalize on, but it looks like it wasn’t meant to be. The company recently went through a lot of layoffs and an acquisition by Take-Two Interactive. So the cancellation doesn’t seem to be very far-fetched.
Though neither Gearbox nor Lost Boys Interactive (a subsidiary that was developing the game) confirmed or denied it.
Even though I’m not the biggest fan of Borderlands and related products, I still think it’s sad when companies quietly cancel their games. If I were a fan, I’d be upset as hell when the developers don’t even acknowledge that the game existed and they discontinued it for whatever reason. Oh well, I guess it’s just another notch on the belt of 2024 in terms of closed projects.
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet gets a lot of hate
So, apparently, a new project from Naughty Dog got a little harsher reception than I thought.
The game was one of the projects revealed during The Game Awards and while some were excited about a new game, a lot of people were quite disappointed by the main character appearance. Shortly after the release of the trailer, Naughty Dog disabled the comments on the trailer, but the number of dislikes still continues to pile up.
The main point of contention was the main character's appearance and the fact that they were bold. It remains a mystery for me as to why it generated so much hate for the otherwise interesting idea…
What do you think about the trailer?
🎮 GTA 6 may be the most expensive game in history (so far)
Another interesting piece surfaced recently on the topic of the game budget. According to Insider Gaming, the newest installment in the GTA franchise might be the most expensive game of all times.
So far multiple sources have pieced some rumours together and it looks like the development of this game cost Rockstar something around 1-2 billion dollars 🤯
To put things in perspective, here are some estimated numbers of the previous games:
Grand Theft Auto (1997) – $1 – 2 million
Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) – $3 – 4 million
Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001) – $5 million
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) – $5 million
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) – $10 million
Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) – $100 million
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) – $250 million
I hope it’s going to be worth all that investment 😅
🎮 Sony becomes the largest shareholder of Kadokawa
Sony finally pulled the trigger on FromSoftware’s parent company and recently announced the formation of a strategic alliance with Kadokawa, taking over 10% of the company’s shares. The transaction, scheduled for January 7, will cost Sony approximately $320 million.
Also, Sony announced that they are not going to buy any more shares after it, effectively giving up on the idea of acquiring the company and its subsidiaries for the time being.
Through this capital and business alliance, we will become the largest shareholder of KADOKAWA, which consistently creates a wide variety of IP, including publications and books, such as light novels and comics, as well as games and anime. By combining KADOKAWA’s extensive IP and IP creation ecosystem with the strengths of Sony, which has promoted the global expansion of a wide range of entertainment, including anime and games, we plan to work closely together to realize KADOKAWA’s ‘Global Media Mix’ strategy, aimed at maximizing the value of its IP, and Sony’s long-term vision, ‘Creative Entertainment Vision.
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
and of the recent episodes of the amazing podcast!
Even yours truly got the privilege to be featured there 😅 But even besides that,
has a lot of great content and the podcast is top-notch!😄 Personal Update
I already forgot how much I miss vacation 😅
I already have some decent progress with my side articles while maintaining my routine with the news and stuff, so that’s going well.
First of all, I started working on a bunch of articles related to my experience in game production and hopefully, that might be useful to someone who’s just starting their journey in game development!
Secondly, I’m working on a bunch of content exclusively for the Inner Circle to serve as a sort of knowledgebase and a bunch of other activities coming in 2025!
And lastly, I’m in the middle of a couple of collaboration projects with other creators and let me just say that it’s a privilege and a joy to work with other creators, especially on Substack. Every collaboration brings such joy to my heart, that it’s hard to express with words!
I hope that two weeks of vacation will be enough to wrap everything up! 😄
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.