NowGamer spoke to Naughty Dog's Christophe Balestra, and asked him what he'd like to see from PlayStation 4.
Druckmann claims the tech could 'push the boundaries of storytelling in games.'
I’m more interested in what else he said.
“Neil Druckmann says new Naughty Dog title could ‘redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming’
Replies(6)
every time naughty dog make a game, you play it and get the feeling "this is not possible'
from the boulder running towards you in crash, on ps1,
to the massive open world of jak and daxter, on ps2,
to the QuickTime events sequences of uncharted on ps3/4
and now we will see what they do with ps5,
Arrogant asshole who sniffs his own farts bigs up next game…sounds like typical PR to me
You know what I find interesting? Almost every site reporting this as the main title where the REAL interesting bit of the interview is Neil praising AI and saying it will be used to help push story, characters, dialogue and more.
It’s super shitty to big up AI especially when it comes to story telling and other creative elements.
Just because someone says this type of stuff, it doesn't mean that it's guaranteed to be good news.
You can say this about microtransactions. MXTs revolutionised the gaming industry.
He also said it has "ethical issues we need to address" but of course that doesn't get the clicks.
I’m all for it. Cuts the time to make a game. Look, Hellblade 2 took 5 years to make, if AI can do that in half the time, as a consumer, I support it.
The Last of Us director’s next project is “perhaps the most thrilling yet.
When you start the game Neil will appear personally telling you about real world issues and call you all sort of names if you don't take action now and then you watch a whole movie and that's it
Too much credit.
A good dev doesn't need to announce how good his game is...he just shows it.
You don't see Kojima glorifying his ideas like this and you don't see successful developers glorifying their "great" ideas before release.
It's going to be a shit show...reserve some popcorn.
Its a hard pill to swallow but the naughty dog we once had is long gone. Most don't realize it but eventually just like with bioware and blizzard...it'll be hard to ignore.
Neil just wants to be Kojima so bad, meanwhile Kojima is just like a child enjoying the world, saying whatever comes to his mind and having so much passion, man I don't even like his games that much but the man is just passion incarnate!
And the popcorn is always ready for Neil
Ever since Bruce Straley left it was like Neil lost his leash and went on full ego trip, not unlike Kojima tbh but at least with Kojima you can see how much he loved video games and how he truly want to push the boundaries. Neil felt like he’s just strutting around..
Erm dude. Never played a kojima game before? He can absolutely come across pretentious to some people. He puts his name in the credits of every Mission you do in mgs5.
I mean...
Also naughty dog absolutely has the power to bring in people from a very different demographic unlike other gamecompanies. TLOU and Uncharted were absoolutely groundbreaking for gaming.
Also Druckman never said it "will" he said it "could"
Sounds actually very optimistic but also cautious to me.
Stop hating move on
@crow: “You don't see Kojima glorifying his ideas like this”
You mean like this👇👇
https://www.gamedeveloper.c...
ALL DEV HYPE THEIR NEXT GAME IDEAS so I call BS on your statement
Lmao please tell me this is sarcasm? Kojima is the epitome of a dev glorifying his ideas even worse than this.
Id like them to show something. Only doing 2 TLOU remakes this far into the PS5 life is disappointing.
I disagree. Whenever a developer knows he is working on something really good they will go out of their way to tell everyone. The Last of Us Part 2 was a well-made game even though the story could have been better.
I hope Naughty Dog grows from that and if they choose to kill off the main characters, they can execute it like in Game of Thrones where we are left in shock and it leads to a satisfying conclusion.
We don't know if the naughty dog of old is long gone since they were able to complete the Last of Us part 2 using fresh talent despite the challenges. Let's hope for the best
This all sounds like cope when ur greeted with the reality that Last of us is more popular than ever and last of us 2 was yet another critical darling.
I'm sorry but outside of a very vocal minority who loves to whine really really loudly Naughty Dog is nothing like those 2.
" You don't see Kojima glorifying his ideas like this and you don't see successful developers glorifying their "great" ideas before release."
Really?!
ND games now are a political battlefield, it's allegory as a game, according to him even, it's so easy to say you don't care about politics and then love games that are only made by and for politics
Games are not made “for” politics. Games are an expression of someone’s speech. There is NOTHING wrong with a developer expressing itself in its own creation. Whether that expression is deemed “political” or not, it does not make a difference.
This is the very foundation of the freedom of speech.
Where is the freedom of speech? Anyone center to right has to hide it or get kicked out of the industry. It's beyond one sided, no freedom allowed.
@itBourne
My friend, you are not informed about how freedom of speech works. I suggest that you inform yourself so that you understand where your rights begin and end. (Not a knock at you)
But to set you on a correct direction, I will explain it. Your freedom of speech is a right to be free from infringement by “State action”. In other words, it does not protect you from acts/repercussions by non-government actors. Therefore, if by “center to right” you mean you would like to insult other people, know that while you are free to do so (to a constitutional degree as there are limitations), you are not free from the public repercussions of your speech. So, if your place of employment deems your conduct to be such that they do not approve your speaking on their behalf, they have every right to stop you by terminating your employment. You are free to express yourself, and no government agency can stop your speech, but you are not free from public consequences of your act/speech. People often confuse these matters and then conclude that “we dont have freedom of speech because I get fired for saying highly offensive things that are my opinions.”
Now, if someone is fired for non offensive opinion/speech, they may have a claim for unlawful termination.
I hope this clears things up.
Better yet, you start the game, go through what you just said, and then your PS is bricked, and your account is permanently banned!!!!!
Druckmann doesn't really beat you over the head with the message of the game. The only thing he said about The Last of Us Part II prior to launch was that it was commentary on the cycle of violence.
In reality, it was also commentary on the decades long Israel-Palestine conflict, which he doesn't really mention until after the fact and is a reflection of his own lived experiences. In fact, I would not be surprised if it was difference of opinion on this issue that led to him and Straley parting ways. Extremely contentious issue, moreso now than when the game launched.
However, I do find it extraordinarily fascinating that, following 6 October, Druck missed the entire message of his own work.
That aside, Naughty Dog is an incredible studio that has made incredibly memorable titles every generation since PS1... But that said, Naughty Dog (Druckmann, specifically) needs to reel it in. Neil went on about how ambitious Factions II was with years of silence otherwise, only to have it unceremoniously cancelled in a letter to the public.
Temper the hype, Neil. We'll see when it's time to see it.
please shut up and release a game, Naughty dog has not released a single title apart from Remaster on PS5...
People like to ignore reality because they dont like this guy. I really wish people could just accept that we all have different political leanings, and that is ok, we are not enemies. Especially now that people have already learned how social media algorithms prevent us from seeing eye to eye with people who have different opinions from us.
Personally, ND is my favorite developer, and I can’t wait to see what they are working on.
Neither have released anything by themselves. This weird Neil hate is wacko. It reads like thinly veiled antisemitism tbh.
People that don't like Neil give him all the hate and Straley and Henig all the love...it's a very easy to read sign of hate beyond what they have actually contributed.
I think you more accurately want it to be antisemitism to convince yourself instead of considering any sort of nuance for whatever multitude of reasons may actually be for others. Just cause he's jewish doesn't make him exempt from criticism, and considering current events that's not a hill I'd advise to die on.
I don't think it's mostly antisemitism.
I think some people genuinely hated the direction the story took and instead of being adults and saying man I just didn't like that story, they're being weirdos and saying neil sucks, even though Last of us 2 is objectively from a gameplay perspective some of naughty dog's best work.
Then a small minority of those people are the transphobes, homophobes, and racists.
That being said the neil haters either way are definitely weirdos.
He's gaslighting us to want something that doesn't exist yet. This fool got demoted back to janitor status where he belongs for destroying the last of us franchise.
Speaking on what’s coming next for Naughty Dog, which could be either their new IP or The Last Of Us Part III, Druckmann gave what he seems to feel are realities of the project he’s talking about. That it’ll both be “really ambitious” but also “really hard.”
Neil Druckmann talks about Naughty Dog's Next Game which is really ambitious and parts of it are hard to make! pic.twitter.com/IqY2KEI1Gb
— DomTheBomb (@DomTheBombYT) March 1, 2024
"I’ve really surrendered to knowing it’s going to be really hard, knowing it’s going to stress members of the team out"
As if crunch wasn't stressing them enough
So the people who remained in a studio that had tons of workers quiting and others laid off said that they don't have to crunch, and you are just believing that
They absolutely will wind up having to crunch. Happens at the end of almost every software project development cycle, especially with release date pressures. It's part of the job. Obviously they aren't in a crunch when they aren't in that late phase. But it's wishful thinking if they think they won't see that stress again. Druckmann himself seems to be aware of that.
Yes I believe them. The people who want to crunch can do it. The people who mentally and physically can't, don't actually have to. Some have young babies at home. Things have changed since the Schreier report.
@helicoptergirl
It wishful thinking to think some workers can choose to crunch or not to do so. That’s akin to people you work with saying they don’t have to do work they don’t like and you’re the one that has to take up the slack. That’s not how things work. Especially if your the person assigned to a specific task that has to be completed for the development to move forward. It’s a team sport when it comes to making a game. As with most things in life. Now that they are a smaller group, it’s even more important for everyone to pull their weight. Peace
@rlow that was exactly the mentality before the exposure and it was talked about and reported on. It's different now. You know, sometimes things and attitudes just change for the better. They knew they needed to change and they have and they're not stopping trying to make the creative environment as good as it can be.
When someone pays another person to do a specific job in exchange for a certain rate of pay, it's called work.
They didn't sign to crunch and neither were they paid for it, people were hospitalized in Naughty Dog
Exactly most of these people wouldn’t last a season in the trades.
I f******* love how many people are doing a complete 180 on their views of crunch culture despite the awful stories reported on over the many years just because we’re talking about NaughtyDog
You can’t just cherry pick what to be mad about
“They signed a contract…it’s called work…that’s life…it’s a job”
I mean really guys, if this was EA you’d be having a field day
I bet you any money if any of these guys regardless of studio went in and said to their superior “Listen, don’t feel like the over time tonight, I’ll just stick to my normal contracted hours if that’s alright” I highly doubt they’d be given a warm response
@Tristan1982: The problem is crunch is because of the inefficient management and sudden changes in projects. ND made major story changes based on some feedback, that results in months of rework, redesign, etc. And none of those changes were built into the project from the get-go, so they still have to meet a deadline.
@H9: One person. And they did sign up for crunch, ND is notorious for hiring people who don't mind it. That's the problem, they tell you who they are, people just aren't listening. And, they did get paid, just their QA level of people are paid shit, which is an industry issue for something so freaking important. And people wonder why we have such broken games at launch. Because companies don't want to pay to deliver as long as people will buy enough to get them past first few months of patches and then re-release a major patch with an expansion to get people to come back.
@-Foxtrot " You can’t just cherry pick what to be mad about " -- N4G home of 'hold my beer' on that alone.
The kindda guy to guilt trip others into overwork or tell them to be better slaves ('employees'). Exactly what corps like. How does it taste?
Assuming you have a job, how would you feel working 80 hours a week for the same pay? You’ve not experienced crunch otherwise you wouldn’t be speaking like this.
As somebody who has crunched before. No, it wasn't my choice, no, you couldn't handle it, and no, you don't work in a better industry than I do.
exactly, get the game out before PS6 and if it takes crunch, or over time which you get paid for, get on with it
"Assuming you have a job"
Assuming I haven't worked more for less, I suppose. And yes, I do.
"Shh... your in the era of feeling sorry for people."
I feel awful for the people that fought for the workers and got stuck holding the bag and lost everything.
"no, you couldn't handle it, "
You mean "I"
I really hope this isn't management BS stress. I get wanting to put the best out, finding the best new ways and concepts, and ensuring your design is just top notch and not wasteful and fulfilling, but when I hear some manager talking about this my first thought is "Are these jerks changing paradigms on a regular basis that's making people play catch up and redo work to meet their new goals?"
That it’ll both be “really ambitious” but also “really hard.”
Not 'is' but 'will be', kinda suggests that they haven't started yet, hope not.
Come on ND, a game PLEAAAAASSSSEEEE. Desperate this gen.
From the article:
“Working on this new game, it’s really ambitious, parts of it are really hard,…”
That is the actual quote. They are already working on it.
Yeah, a lot of people push fake narratives about NaughtyDog and misquote things. That quote is very straightforward.
https://twitter.com/MitchyD...
Above is the complete debunking of a false story that still gets spread around all the time. And the bad faith actors doing it also only pin it on Druckmann for some reason and ignore Straley. They want to portray Druckmann as an evil schemer, even when the false story they're spreading doesn't align with their narrative. They don't care about reality ...
SuckerPunch doesn't get even 1% of this criticism and they haven't provided any update whatsoever on their next game, and it's a sequel not a new IP, so turnaround would be quicker. That's not logical.
Also, just off-topic slightly but..
Does anyone think that layoffs now may well be making space for AI integration of game development, and 'crunch-time', 'unsustainable', 'big budget' are all terms been used to butter us up to receiving the news that AI integration will help and maintain the level of AAA games that were accustomed to? Perhaps the layoffs were the devs that didn't join a union quick enough and if only they had the smarts of SAG members and strike while the time is right, before its too late?! Imagine DEV's on strike at a time like this, there's already a game drought.
I work in manufacturing. Layoffs here to. Especially people with no skill. I feel bad for them more then anything.
I work in advertisement, Im being laid off in may despite being the 3rd best on my team of 15 just under the team lead and assistant team lead, and the assistant team lead is out next week. Yet the last two years we've all been congratulated for record numbers. Times are weird.
Game drought. Lol what. I can't keep up. There's so many dope games releasing. I gotta ask what do you play
Not Naughty Dog games, not this gen. You know, Naughty Dog? Who the article is about?
Is this supposed to be a big gotcha after Microsoft laid off 1,900 and we're ignoring that? Let alone the over 16,000 other layoffs from Microsoft in 2023?
This is an article talking about Sony, no one said anything about Microsoft
And we should always be reminded of it like people are doing with Microsoft, Sony shouldn't get a free pass either
Yes, and this article is 100% about Sony firing people.
ND says new game is ambitious - until Sony lays off 900 more staff to save costs!
Sony publishes new gameplay video - until Sony lays off 900 more staff to save costs!
Sony announces weekend sale deals - until Sony lays off 900 more staff to save costs!
all I know is that PlayStation 4 won't be the final name
lets hope its not PS PINATA or something like vita god help us
I want the PS4 to come out when I get bored of my PS3 and feel like it's last gen...So not now
Hopefully the social experience in the PS4 won't take away the advancement in tech and power that it should/must/need to have.
LOL this isn't news!