E3 2016 Discussion + Press Conferences - June 14th - 16th

SettlementRichie10

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May 6, 2012
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So you think it's up there with Half-Life/Counter-Strike/Quake?

ok...

No, it was a departure from the classic Doom style FPS. MP transcended FPS, emphasizing exploration, platforming, and problem solving. Without MP, we never get something like Mirror's Edge, for example. MP was a unique game.

It's not on the level of something like Ocarina or Mario 64 in regards to shaping an entire technical style of game design. But it's use of music, atmosphere, and level design were all groundbreaking to the FPS genre. Moreover, MP completely re-shaped the speedrunning scene.

MP was a significant game. Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know their history.
 

FLYLine27*

BUCH
Nov 9, 2004
42,410
14
NY
No, it was a departure from the classic Doom style FPS. MP transcended FPS, emphasizing exploration, platforming, and problem solving. Without MP, we never get something like Mirror's Edge, for example. MP was a unique game.

It's not on the level of something like Ocarina or Mario 64 in regards to shaping an entire technical style of game design. But it's use of music, atmosphere, and level design were all groundbreaking to the FPS genre. Moreover, MP completely re-shaped the speedrunning scene.

MP was a significant game. Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know their history.

So we never get Mirrors Edge without MP?

It's ok, i'm sure I could have lived without it.
 

Emperoreddy

Show Me What You Got!
Apr 13, 2010
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No, it was a departure from the classic Doom style FPS. MP transcended FPS, emphasizing exploration, platforming, and problem solving. Without MP, we never get something like Mirror's Edge, for example. MP was a unique game.

It's not on the level of something like Ocarina or Mario 64 in regards to shaping an entire technical style of game design. But it's use of music, atmosphere, and level design were all groundbreaking to the FPS genre. Moreover, MP completely re-shaped the speedrunning scene.

MP was a significant game. Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know their history.

I'm a fan of the game, but you are overselling it. It absolutely has not changed the genre, and there are few if any games that owe their existence or mechanics to it. Hell Elder Scrolls was doing exploration in a FPS setting long before Prime was a thought.

Half Life redefined the way you told stories in a FPS. Half-Life 2 redefined it again. Games like System Shock, Deus Ex, Bioshock all showed amazing kinds of interactivity, world building, story telling, and atmosphere that changed the genre.

Team Fortress 2 changed the way team shooters were made. Overwatch owes so much to TF2 (always found it funny how many people thought a lot of Overwatch's features were original when TF2 has been doing it for years. Great game, but game reviewers need to be smarter).

Anyway Prime was a great game, but not influential. If it was we would of seen Metroidvania elements creeping into more FPS games.

It didn't even change speedrunning. Sequence breaking and speed runs was a part of Metroid from day 1 on the NES and was encouraged.
 

Do Make Say Think

& Yet & Yet
Jun 26, 2007
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I could be wrong but Metroid Prime was one of the first, if not the first, first-person open world game games on consoles.

The lead up to it's release had everyone wondering if doing a Metroid game, a game all about exploration and atmosphere, in first-person.

We did have Arena and Daggerfall on PC as first-person games built around exploration but they were fairly niche, Morrowind came out in 2002 as well.

It didn't have the impact of Half-Life but it was a pretty big event in terms of showing first-person games could be more than shooters and have mass appeal.
 

Emperoreddy

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Apr 13, 2010
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I could be wrong but Metroid Prime was one of the first, if not the first, first-person open world game games on consoles.

The lead up to it's release had everyone wondering if doing a Metroid game, a game all about exploration and atmosphere, in first-person.

We did have Arena and Daggerfall on PC as first-person games built around exploration but they were fairly niche, Morrowind came out in 2002 as well.

It didn't have the impact of Half-Life but it was a pretty big event in terms of showing first-person games could be more than shooters and have mass appeal.

Well it isn't really open world per say as it is a series of tunnels and big rooms. Morrowind is an open world.

Plus larger maps that you can explore was something Doom did way back in the beginning. The FPS genre just abandoned that for linear maps (feel like this is again Half Life's doing. Linear spaces allowed for the developers to keep the player's attention to tell their story and give them more set pieces).

Maybe Prime opened some people's eyes to the idea that the first person view point doesn't always have to be a shooter? That you can tell stories and have different kinds of games, something we see all over the place today, especially from indie developers. I'm not 100% sure you can say Prime is the reason you can make a first person game that isn't a shooter. Hell I'd give more credit to Portal in that regard.

Honestly I don't think Prime has any kind of legacy. It was an excellent game (want to stress that, the game is really good) that no one thought would work, but worked really well. It exists in its own bubble though.

It isn't the best in the series though. Super Metroid still reigns as king. I honestly can't think of a single flaw about Super Metroid. The game is as perfect as you can find IMO.
 

Suxnet

Registered User
Jan 4, 2012
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I forgot to mention Thief: The Dark Project, but I think that's the game that really changed what first person shooters could be.
 

RandV

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Metroid Prime is one of the few games I consider a perfect 10, and one of my top 5/3 all top games.

...But unfortunately I don't see how it was influential in anyways. It got a lot of praise for sure, and we got two more Metroid Prime games, but no one else has ever made FPS'ers like that. Depending on how you want to define it usually 'influential' games spawn a bunch of imitators.
 

SettlementRichie10

Registered User
May 6, 2012
9,917
7,526
I could be wrong but Metroid Prime was one of the first, if not the first, first-person open world game games on consoles.

The lead up to it's release had everyone wondering if doing a Metroid game, a game all about exploration and atmosphere, in first-person.

We did have Arena and Daggerfall on PC as first-person games built around exploration but they were fairly niche, Morrowind came out in 2002 as well.

It didn't have the impact of Half-Life but it was a pretty big event in terms of showing first-person games could be more than shooters and have mass appeal.

I can count three, maybe four games that changed the medium as much as HL1 and 2. If that's the bar people are setting here, MP obviously isn't at that level. But it's close.
 

SettlementRichie10

Registered User
May 6, 2012
9,917
7,526
I'm a fan of the game, but you are overselling it. It absolutely has not changed the genre, and there are few if any games that owe their existence or mechanics to it. Hell Elder Scrolls was doing exploration in a FPS setting long before Prime was a thought.

Half Life redefined the way you told stories in a FPS. Half-Life 2 redefined it again. Games like System Shock, Deus Ex, Bioshock all showed amazing kinds of interactivity, world building, story telling, and atmosphere that changed the genre.

Team Fortress 2 changed the way team shooters were made. Overwatch owes so much to TF2 (always found it funny how many people thought a lot of Overwatch's features were original when TF2 has been doing it for years. Great game, but game reviewers need to be smarter).

Anyway Prime was a great game, but not influential. If it was we would of seen Metroidvania elements creeping into more FPS games.

It didn't even change speedrunning. Sequence breaking and speed runs was a part of Metroid from day 1 on the NES and was encouraged.

...you really don't see the difference between the early ES games and Prime?

And Metroidvania elements HAVE crept into FPS, from Bioshock to Call of Duty. Where do you think that came from? The Prime trilogy.
 

Emperoreddy

Show Me What You Got!
Apr 13, 2010
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...you really don't see the difference between the early ES games and Prime?

And Metroidvania elements HAVE crept into FPS, from Bioshock to Call of Duty. Where do you think that came from? The Prime trilogy.

Bioshock got most of its gameplay cues from the System Shock games. Unless you can produce a concrete linage from Metroid Prime to a bunch of modern games, than it just wasn't influential in that way, and honestly Metroidvania gameplay cues don't really count as they were around and made popular in the west by Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night.
 

Do Make Say Think

& Yet & Yet
Jun 26, 2007
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I can count three, maybe four games that changed the medium as much as HL1 and 2. If that's the bar people are setting here, MP obviously isn't at that level. But it's close.

Tangent

Did Half-Life 2 really have that much jnfluence? I loved that game (the section where you have to go under the bridge to turn off the forcefield remains one of my most cherished video game memories) but I think claiming it was anything but a refined Half-Life is overselling it.

Plus, as much as I adore Half-Life, you had games like the first Unreal which had very similar aims (the first Unreal game was really, really good) but didn't get the same kind of recognition even if Half-Life did a better job.

Basically, all I'm saying is that judging a game based on the influence it may have had (or not) is a bit silly. I maintain Metroid Prime was a huge deal when it released because it proved a ton of people, myself included, wrong. There was a ton of scepticism over it, hell I remember a whole group of friends coming over to see it when I told them it was in fact fantastic and all of them had played Half-Life.

Also, I might be wrong but I believe a bunch of people who worked on Half-Life worked on Metroid Prime.
 
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JA

Guest
The first Half-Life was unbelievable. I wasn't as much a fan of the second one, but it was an experience to traverse through Black Mesa and watch so many tragic things unfold before my eyes.
 

XX

Waiting for Ishbia
Dec 10, 2002
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Tangent

Did Half-Life 2 really have that much jnfluence? I loved that game (the section where you have to go under the bridge to turn off the forcefield remains one of my most cherished video game memories) but I think claiming it was anything but a refined Half-Life is overselling it.

Considering how many first person games (and a lot of third person games) have copied its style and features (just like the original), it was very influential. In fact, a large part of why it hasn't aged well is due to every game after it incorporating a lot of what made it special at the time. It comes off as "wait, what was so special about this?"

The impact of those games goes beyond just design and into things like mods, where a lot of games and developers got their start. It also ushered in the age of Steam.

The bar is so absurdly high, not just in terms of gameplay (it has to be great) but also overall impact on the industry, that I think Valve have simply decided it's not worth it to try HL3. HL2 was such a slog for the studio that it nearly killed Valve with all the drama, like the hack.
 

Do Make Say Think

& Yet & Yet
Jun 26, 2007
51,157
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True, Half-Life 2's mods and the introduction of Steam (did Steam start with Half-Life 2? I know that's when I got it first but maybe Counter-Strike was already using it?) were game changers for sure.

You make a good point that it's influence goes beyond just the gameplay.
 

RoadDoggFL

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Mar 15, 2007
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If Steam didn't launch with HL2, it at least was first made mandatory with HL2. I still remember the hate Steam got at first. People were threatening to get Xboxes and ****. It was funny seeing people react to Origin, saying it would never compete with Steam because of its rocky start.
 

vdB

Registered User
Dec 28, 2006
4,302
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Toronto
Half Life 3 would be a complete disaster. It would be competing against COD. I hate COD, but COD always wins.

Valve is smart to give up.

Valve should focus on Portal 3, Portal 4, Portal 5 and Portal Prequels and Portal Spinoffs.

That's how you make money.
 

irunthepeg

Board man gets paid
May 20, 2010
35,289
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Ditto. I could never bring myself to give a damn about the Prime series, but the originals and Fusion? Oh man oh man oh man.

For me Super Metroid and Metroid Prime stand at the top. Fusion was okay, but because they had the map marker built in I found it lost that element of exploration and made it more like a platformer. I felt Metroid Prime kept tot he spirit of classic Metroid really well.

I replay Metroid Fusion about once a year. My favourite in the series and one of my favourite handheld games of all time. Absolutely love it. The one that came after it (Zero... Gravity, was that it?) was okay too but it didn't come close to Fusion, IMO. I'd say almost a perfect game.
 

XX

Waiting for Ishbia
Dec 10, 2002
54,886
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If Steam didn't launch with HL2, it at least was first made mandatory with HL2. I still remember the hate Steam got at first. People were threatening to get Xboxes and ****. It was funny seeing people react to Origin, saying it would never compete with Steam because of its rocky start.

It doesn't compete with Steam at all in terms of market share. It just exists so EA doesn't have to give Valve a 30% cut on every title and DLC. Microsoft is now doing the same thing with Xbox games. If Sony and Nintendo were smart and progressive, they'd do the same thing.
 

syz

[1, 5, 6, 14]
Jul 13, 2007
28,862
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Valve makes enough money on DotA to be able to do whatever the **** they want.

But the fact that they left Half-Life for dead just sort of confirms to be my belief that those games were poorly written and that they were making it up as they went along. It's like they just reached a point in the story where they were like

"Now what?"
"I dunno."
"**** it then."

I got to HL2 a bit late and found it entirely underwhelming, but I was still busy playing Quake 3 when it came out. The fact that the World of Warcraft beta existed didn't help its case either.

I thought Metroid Prime was great, on the other hand. But I also barely consider it a "shooter."
 

SK13

non torsii subligarium
Jul 23, 2007
32,758
6,367
Edmonton
"Half-Life games were so poorly written..."

Michael-What-the-office-10400786-400-226.gif


Not even gonna bother reading the rest of that opinion.

Valve didn't necessarily "leave the franchise" behind. Clearly their focus has been elsewhere, but if you think for two seconds that game hasn't existed in some form or another for the last ten years, you are delusional. Half-Life 2 didn't take form until they had the engine technology to do what they wanted with it and we KNOW that Source 2.0 has been in a constant state of development since 2010. It'll happen eventually and when it will come when Valve has the technology and ambition to do it.
 

XX

Waiting for Ishbia
Dec 10, 2002
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It'll happen eventually and when it will come when Valve has the technology and ambition to do it.

I don't think they have the ambition to do it anymore. Everything I've read in recent years points towards money-hungry Valve being real. Projects that focus exclusively on making money with minimal risk. Over a third of the company is working on VR alone. There's no team hidden away working on HL3, and a lot of the key developers, artists, and writers from the HL teams have left, probably due to their being no timeline for another game.

Valve is all about multiplayer games with transactions now. It's kind of disgusting.
 

SK13

non torsii subligarium
Jul 23, 2007
32,758
6,367
Edmonton
I don't think they have the ambition to do it anymore. Everything I've read in recent years points towards money-hungry Valve being real. Projects that focus exclusively on making money with minimal risk. Over a third of the company is working on VR alone. There's no team hidden away working on HL3, and a lot of the key developers, artists, and writers from the HL teams have left, probably due to their being no timeline for another game.

Valve is all about multiplayer games with transactions now. It's kind of disgusting.

There's a team working on Half-Life 3 like there was a team working on Half-Life 2 in 2000. Engine building, theory-crafting, technology work.

I would bet my life on the game being inevitable. VR is only more fuel on that fire since Half-Life 2 has been central to their tests with Vive.
 

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