TGO Daily | October 11, 2021 | GTA: The Trilogy Announced
✏️ From the Author
Hey folks! It’s Canadian Thanksgiving, so I’ve got a few days of family dinners ahead of me. I am so ready to eat some great food!
In the mean time, we have some gaming to talk about. Today, we’ve got one major announcement, plus a slew of controversies…for some reason. I usually try to avoid covering negativity in the industry, but my entire feed this weekend was dominated by companies running into some kind of issue, and sometimes having to backtrack!
Hope you’re well :)
Adrian
📰 In The News
1. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition Announced
Rockstar have announced that three Grand Theft Auto games are being bundled and remastered into what they call Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. It collects the landmark release of Grand Theft Auto III with Vice City and San Andreas — available on PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One / Series X, and Nintendo Switch later this year. A mobile version will release in early 2022.
In regards to the games themselves, this is all they had to say:
“[The games] will feature across-the-board upgrades including graphical improvements and modern gameplay enhancements for all three titles, while still maintaining the classic look and feel of the originals.”
A number of content updates are heading to GTA Online in preparation. They provided a ton of details in their blog post.
💭Adrian’s Thoughts: I think it’s super cool that they are doing this, considering the amount of nostalgia there is for the games. I really hope that they are just single-player experiences, and that they don’t have some kind of multiplayer component. With GTA Online being their main business for nearly a decade, its easy to be scared. Red Dead 2 helps offset some of that fear of course, which still delivered a solid single-player experience.
2. Controversy? Controversy.
As mentioned in the preamble, there was a staggering amount of controversy and walk-backs this weekend! I figured it would be most efficient to just lump them all into one segment here.
GOG and Hitman
I previously wrote about how Hitman was listed on GOG.com as a DRM-free game, which was technically but not completely true. While it was possible to play through the main campaign completely offline, the player needed to be connected to the internet in order to make progress and unlock equipment. A core principle of the newest Hitman games is that they are very replayable with new stuff, which wasn’t possible offline.
As such, the GOG team have announced they have de-listed the game:
“…we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.
We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.”
Konami & eFootball
I also previously wrote about the latest release of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series, now called eFootball. It quickly became the worst rated game on Steam thanks to its technical bugs and poor gameplay.
Konami have now addressed the issues on Twitter:
A transcript of the image:
“Dear followers,
Thank you very much for playing eFootball 2022.
We apologize for any inconveniences you may have experienced with the game. We are preparing to release version 0.9.1 of eFootball 2022 on 28th October. This will focus on fixing the issues already reported and those you continue to report. We will update you with more details as we move forwards as well as address your feedback and requests in future updates.
Thank you again for your continued support of eFootball 2022.
The Konami Team”
Back 4 Blood Progression System
Early access players of Back 4 Blood have taken issue with the fact that the game does not have any progression system if playing the game solo. Specifically, you can’t unlock achievements, track stats, or earn in-game points. Conversely, absolutely everything is unlocked for solo players from the start, making some of that progression unnecessary. Eurogamer explains:
“So, you don't need Supply Points to play solo campaign. But why disable earning Supply Points from solo campaign? Players suspect this is an attempt to prevent players from farming Supply Points in solo play to then spend outside that mode.
The block on earning progress towards accomplishments (the game's name for achievements) is probably in place for the same reason. Turtle Rock no doubt wants to prevent players from earning accomplishments with full decks used in solo campaign.”
The developers have responded:
Amazon U-Turns on New World
During the fiasco that was New World’s launch (hundreds of thousands of people trying to get into servers at once), Amazon promised players that they could choose any server they wanted, and transfer their character later. This was important, because it allowed players to start the game on lower-population server, then move to the server their friends were using later.
In a forum FAQ post, Amazon reverted their stance on multiple confirmations:
“So the “transfer to any server” statement issues earlier was not true?
Unfortunately the original information provided was incorrect.”
As you can imagine, not a lot of people are happy about this one.
Square Enix U-Turns on Marvel’s Avengers
After repeated confirmations that they would not add pay-to-win elements, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have added paid XP boosts to Marvel’s Avengers.
They told gamesindustry.biz in 2019 that microtransactions would only ever be cosmetic
During E3 2019, they said “Our promise to the community is that we won’t have random loot boxes or pay-to-win scenarios.”
💭Adrian’s Thoughts: Of course, they’re probably doing this because the playerbase plummeted after release, and they figured the recoupment was more important than the PR disaster. It’s still super disappointing that developers will make such a pro-consumer statement before a game’s release, only for it to be a false trust.
🔥 Thank You!
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