johncalmc

It's absolutely comical we haven't had an Elder Scroll in 16 years. Truly ridiculous.

And as for the other stuff, well, yeah. Tedious fanboys might have been trying to argue that Xbox was doing well, Gamepass was sustainable, and all that tackle, but a basic grasp of numbers is all you need to see otherwise. I honestly can't believe they're still trying.

I liked 16 but I did spend an awful lot of it thinking "this would be so much better if it was a turn based RPG". It has the world, the story, the characters. But it's just not an RPG really, the combat is rubbish, and the lack of a true party robs it of one of the series' greatest charms.

Still, one day I'm sure they'll wise up and just make a proper Final Fantasy again. God knows when, but I'm sure they will.

I didn't even know anything about this game. Sounds like exactly the kind of nonsense I like.

Unless they're doing something incredibly drastic behind the scenes - unlikely - by the time this comes out it is going to look and feel absolutely ancient. I love a Bethesda game, but what they do has been surpassed and lapped by other studios. The huge wait between titles only further exacerbates the problem.

Who knows, maybe they're reinventing the wheel back there. I don't really care. I like these games and I'll play this. But I can't imagine a world where you put Elder Scrolls 6 and Witcher 4 side by side and Elder Scrolls comes out of it looking good.

See, Ueda gets it.

You can't post the video because Asha made it exclusive to Xbox sites so Colt Eastwood will say nice things about her.

The last week in Xbox Land has been absolutely wild. Things like this make it even more incredible to me that they seem like they're actually trying to compete in consoles again, or at least, they're saying it on the surface. They could be a huge publisher without any of this heartache. What is keeping them in the hardware game? As someone with no skin in the game, it's quite fascinating to watch it all unfold.

There it is. The "try" there is big. They did this to appease the fanboys, but there likely won't be (m)any more exclusives because it makes no sense.

They clearly pulled Gears at the last minute. I wonder if the other one they hadn't started a PS5 port yet so they went with that. I don't know. Either way, running your business by listening to what the biggest idiots on the internet say... doesn't bode well.

The minigames were absolutely miserable in Rebirth. I started totally ignoring all side-content except the card game once I got about half way through. Unfortunately, as someone who cares more about customisation options than stat buffs or materia the news that those are minigame rewards is bleak news.

Cloud wakes up on the train to the reactor. He's dozed off. He puts his game face on. Jumps off the train to meet Barrett. The events of the three remake games were all a terrible dream. The real Final Fantasy VII Remake begins. Crowd goes wild.

If Aaron Greenberg wished me a happy birthday I'd check my birth certificate to make sure.

Xbox alienated its own fanbase by telling them it was just four games don't worry, and then releasing everything on PlayStation. Now they're alienating the PlayStation fanbase by saying every game is a case by case basis, so why would you buy Halo on PS5 if the next Halo is going to be Xbox exclusive? There's no consistency, nothing set in stone, nothing you can rely on. They're so bad at this it's actually laughable. The entire management of this brand should be studied in a lab.

I have to say, the original title of the game bothered me a great deal. Far more than it should have. Just looks wrong.

I will probably end up buying this because my fiance loves Fable. I've never even played Fable. She keeps telling me to play it but I keep thinking it's going to get ported to PS5 at some point so I've been holding off so I don't have to break out the 360. These are my troubles.

Everyone seems to like this game now but I played it at the time and it was cobblers.

I'm fine with them making the dungeons not procedural or whatever. I'm also fine with them leaving the dungeons. All I really care about is them updating the game to make it look pretty and maybe throw a few new things in there.

They should make the main character a man but he wears all the outfits Eve can get just to mess with internet weirdos.

Oh that's who that was. It was bugging me that I recognised her but couldn't place it.

I said it on the first article we had here about potentially going back on the exclusivity thing and I'll say it again. I firmly believe they don't have a solid plan and are instead are making certain titles exclusive to see if it helps the fortunes of their next console. Consoles need exclusives, or so the conventional wisdom goes. They're going to cherry pick games to be exclusive. Release the console. If sales are in the toilet, they'll go multiplatform - if somehow everyone buys an Xbox they'll do exclusives again.

@S1ayeR74 That's not the same. Sony put games on PC, then stopped. Xbox said case by case basis, then its just four games, then it was more games, then it was all games because exclusives are antiquated, and today they announced that they're honoring PS5 releases that are already announced but bringing back exclusives (console exclusives, not exclusives exclusives) to build the Xbox brand while simultaneously announcing PS5 releases for games they hadn't already told us were getting PS5 releases.

They do not have any idea what they are doing.

They don't have a clue what they're doing, do they?

@Krlozgod Yeah, but I hate the Final Fantasy VII remakes so it just annoyed me. Code Veronica was a big surprise for me and I love that game so that was my favourite.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

@8th_Observer God of War Ragnorok.

Summer Game Fest > Xbox > PlayStation

Persona 6 is what I want most but it was a nothing reveal. Still nice to know it exists at least. Veronica was the best reveal. So excited for that. State of Play was fine but relied too much on previously announced games and the big reveal was spoiled and even if it wasn't... I just don't care.

I already bought Persona 4 on PS2, PS Vita, and PS4. Might as well buy it again on PS5. Looks absolutely lovely.

Love that shade of green. Brilliant green. Well, see you next year I guess.

I don't care about Gears unless it gets announced for PS5 and then I love Gears

@Matroska You get the highwind from Junon which is after reunion/black materia shenanigans/escape from shinra. So if they're skipping straight to highwind access and meteor in the sky, they're missing out all that stuff. Unless they're doing it out of order or doing something weird. Also, even though they said you'll have the highwind from the start, they might have just meant early, not right away. I don't know. I'm probably not going to play it anyway 😂

@Matroska Rebirth ends at the end of disc one so we have the entirety of disc 2 and then the little bit of 3. Next would be the snow fields wouldn't it? Then I guess the reunion etc. which leads to Junon and the meteor reveal. So we're skipping straight to meteor - unless I'm forgetting stuff. It's been a few years. I might have the order wrong in my head. But there's still loads of story to pack into one game.

@J2theEzzo It bothers me how close these games are to what I want but they're ruined by the multiple timeline whatever the hell is going on they've added. It's so lame, because none of it even matters. They barely alter the story and the party keeps ending up in the same place. I could at least appreciate it if they took a wild swing and did something totally different. Here it's the worst of both - neither a true remake or something new. Still, it's nearly over. Then everyone can go back to asking for a proper remake for the next 20 years and maybe next time they'll make it a musical or something.

I'm not into these wink wink remakes at all but as a Final Fantasy VII enjoyer it looks like - unless I missed something, or misunderstood what they said - they're either skipping a bunch of stuff or meteor is coming early in this? I wouldn't be surprised if they were skipping stuff - at this point they probably just want to get the thing done and move on, and they've got over half the story left to go in one game. Still, it's weird.

Anyway, nice seeing the gang and it looks cool. Just can't do the kingdom hearts alternate timeline anime nonsense again. Everyone seems happy about it though, so good!

Pretty good. Code Veronica was a banger opening. Stellar Blade looks amazing. Wolf Among Us is a personal favourite. If you cut an hour of nonsense out of the show it would have been top tier. But the highs were high enough to make it worth it.

What does she mean when she says Xbox is increasingly becoming a platform, when in fact the exact opposite is true? How are they going to reconcile having exclusives with aiming to reach as many people as possible?

I'm utterly convinced this lady is just saying things and actually has no idea what Xbox is going to do.

The Dominos comment is kinda weak honestly. Like, their one job is making pizza and they're rubbish at it. So wading into this all bigging up the pepperoni passion... nah. It's not even a joke really. Just trying to capitalise on angry, tedious, sweaty men on the internet and their anger at seeing a lady in a game. Big "I farted once on the set of Blue Lagoon" Brooke Shields in the South Park movie energy to that one.

The Santa Monica response I actually like. The all lower case "dominos pizza corporate account" at the end with no punctuation is really doing it for me for some reason.

Overall I rate this spat 4/10 but Santa Monica comes out of it looking better.

It's probably one of those "in the conversation" games but I find it hard to believe it's game of the year. It's mine so far, but then I can't remember a single other 2026 game I've played off the top of my head.

Final Fantasy VII Really Sorry About The Last Two Games

This is the only PlayStation online live service multiplayer whatever game that I would actually consider playing and it's the only one not coming to PS5. Top work, lads.

It's still incredible to me that they show these games off at Xbox... sorry, XBOX showcases. Still, presumably they're getting money out of it so that's good for them. Take the big Microsoft dollars I say.

Seems like a good call. I'm at least 10% more interested in this now I know it's just a good old fashioned linear adventure.

It's really funny to me that Bungie has made an astonishing looking, visually stunning video game, and their first big update is to turn the lights out so you can barely see it.

I think the problem is, and why the audience seems perpetually disappointed, a disconnect between what people want from these things, and how people measure whether its a good show or not.

Sammy said it here - there's lots of games shown at the State of Play that he's interested in. That's one way to measure how good a showcase is. But that's not how I measure it, and it never has been.

I think a lot of people are tuning in for the show, the pomp and circumstance, the wow factor. The switch to pre-recorded video robs these things of a big chunk of the showmanship of the whole thing. But also it's what's shown.

Does Phantom Blade 0 look good? Yeah. But it's also been at ten State of Plays. We've seen it and it looks every bit the same as it did the first nine times. Wolverine looks exactly as expected from the last time it was shown. Marvel fighting game, again.

A lot of people aren't tuning in for another trailer for a game they've already seen trailers for. If I wasn't watching The State of Play I wouldn't have even clicked a YouTube link to see most of these.

I really think it depends on what you like about these things as to how much you enjoy a State of Play. And it's not just a simple case of the PlayStation audience being moaners. Some are, undoubtedly. But many just want to be wowed by the things they were hoping for, the things they weren't expecting, and the things they didn't even know they wanted until they saw it. And yet another look at a superhero fighting game isn't going to move the needle for those people.

Let these people out of God of War prison so they can make something new. They've served their time, Sony.

Probably Until Dawn but I also liked the game I can't remember the name of that was like open world yokai hunter something, at least until they said multiplayer. Also I liked the sushi man game but I've never played dave the diver. The big games really did nothing at all for me.

@8th_Observer There's good cause to be cynical to be fair. You only need to look at the response to some games. Lady God of War for example. I thought it looked whatever, but there's people crying about everything from playing as a woman, to one post I saw complaining that people weren't complaining enough in comparison to Forspoken, which is probably down to racism. Nobody can just be normal and talk about stuff properly 😂

@8th_Observer I agree. But the end result is the same regardless of who is to blame which is usually negativity. More clarity going into these things might mitigate some of that.

The only thing they really need to nail is managing expectations. Or at least trying to. You can't help it if people are hoping for Bloodborne 2 despite all evidence to the contrary. But announcing this one two weeks early and putting it in theatres creates hype, and then if you've got nothing to show except a God of War that already leaked and updates for games we've seen a bunch of times, it can disappoint people.

Personally, I'd tell people up front what to expect but be more explicit than they currently are. Just say, "this one is a bunch of new looks at things you've already seen and a couple of new games". Set expectations so people aren't crying because Final Fantasy VII 3 didn't get announced.

Otherwise, I think these things are fine. They're never going to be as fun as a live conference, but the videos are largely well done, and they're rarely bad. I just don't think they're ever very good either.

There's so much blood in Wolverine, if you turn it off the game runs at 120 frames per second.

This is what you get for locking the butler in the freezer all those years ago. You brought this on yourself.

Obviously, I'm not as viscerally upset by it as David Jaffe seems to be, but I largely agree with him. I do think the trailer had Forspoken vibes, but moreso for the dialogue than the visuals particularly when they introduced the cube. Then again I also think the hate for Forspoken was over the top so I don't think it's a huge deal, but the tone is certainly weird.

Otherwise, I find it hard to get excited about this at all. And I liked God of War and the second one. It just looks uninspired, more of the same, going back to same old well. I'd much rather they'd moved on and they could take a chance on something new. Without them doing that, Guerrilla would still be making Killzone, we'd never have gotten The Last of Us, and that rubbish ninja Assassin's Creed would be the closest we'd have gotten to Ghost of Yotei.

And then here's God of War Studio making another God of War. Same camera style, combat looks the same except there's jumping, and we've got a quip merchant cube sidekick. It's God of War, again, only this time with a full head of hair. Okay.

Also, final note, the discourse around this game already sucks.