Topic: The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

@Ralizah I've never seen a mainstem theater (AMC, Regal) show anything but blockbusters. 12 theaters, 4 running the same film.

Then again I haven't set foot into a theater in 18 years and consider return of the king a new release.... Maybe it changed, but if so that's a new thing. The amcs are all dinner movies now which is beyond disgusting. Netflix exists for reasons.

Now that I'm saying big budget games should keep rising in price. I think they should budget to the market instead. But I also don't think mid budget should cost the same as blockbusters. Who would seriously justify $70 for GAA1 without even having 2? By the "one price" logic, that's what this should cost.

More fairly everything should continue the 3ds $50 model and if tlou is too make a profit they can make Boi a sprite.

@NEStalgia I go to AMC theaters all the time (didn't for a year or so for obvious reasons, but I've returned to the habit), and most of the screens aren't set-up for dine-in. I actually do mostly attend the dine-ins, but mostly because the seats in my preferred theater are comfy recliners. If I want real food, I'll usually just sneak it in. I buy popcorn and drinks anyway, so they still get money for concessions.

Anyway, more obscure stuff obviously doesn't get as many showings per day, but they're usually readily available. AMC theaters in the towns/cities near me (in rural Tennessee, mind you) show off anime films, Korean films, some Chinese films, all of the A24 stuff, etc.

I don't think games should cost $70 to begin with, so your example doesn't resonate with me. There are only a handful of games I'd pay that for (one of them being SMT V, which I'll probably end up spending around $200 on, since I'm getting the special edition and am heavily considering downloading at midnight of launch day as well). With that said, yes, I'd certainly be happier paying that insane price for GAA1 than, say... Halo, or God of War, or [insert big budget tentpole]. I don't think a big-budget game being designed for mainstream consumption (which is all a blockbuster really is) makes it worth more than other games. And, honestly, market pricing trends tend to agree with me. AAA stuff that's not made by Nintendo generally only costs full price for the first few weeks or months in the market, after which they rapidly decline in price thanks to steep dips in demand. The niche stuff I tend to prefer generally holds its value better after launch.

I take it back, Susato is low key snarky. Maya writing and Trucy model/animation. 3ds era for sure!

@ralizah shocked you'd be the kind of person actually venturing into public spaces yet. No chance I'd do it for at least another year. If ever.

Maybe much changed in 18 years but man, never seen those kinds of films in an Amc. Maybe it's after china bought them. It was always just the Paramount/Disney/Sony etc stuff. Sure transformers and You've Got Mail aren't the same budget but they're still big name celebrity filled hugely marketed expensive films.

The amcs are 100% dine in here though. Never. Regal isn't yet, but those prices.... No way.

I think we're on two sides of the opposite con on game prices. Yeah I agree they shouldn't be 70 to begin with. But if they're going to argue endless budgets means those prices then lower budget games shouldn't be those prices. You don't get to charge $100 for bugsnax just because naughty dog never met an expense line they dont love...

I absolutely loved Xenoblade Chronicles 1. And I didn’t think I would like it as much as XCX (my previous favorite) or even XC2.

I have never based value solely on development budget or genre. Some genres naturally require higher budgets. But that doesn’t make them “worth more” in my eyes, or games of genres requiring smaller budgets “worth less”. No doubt production values do factor in, and I think there is a minimum threshold of what’s acceptable for a $60 game. But at the end of the day, it’s a multivariate equation with countless variables, not the least of which is overall entertainment and fun factor, quality of animations and relative presentation.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is worth every last dollar. It meets the AAA standards for its genre and is easily the most fun and entertaining 2D platformer I’ve ever played. The quality of animations are top notch and gameplay mechanics refined to precision. I can’t think of a more worthy $60 game for its genre.

Likewise, Metroid Dread screams value in every respect. It meets the AAA standards I expect for a 2D Metroid game, The quality of animations are top notch and I’m quite confident the gameplay mechanics will be refined to precision. And of course, I am extremely confident the game will be more fun and entertaining than the majority of similarly priced games.

Ori Blind Forest and Ori Will of the Wisps… both of these games, IMO, are worth $60, every bit as much as DKC:TF and MD. Which only made them that much more appealing when they were sold for $40 instead. Hollow Knight, on the other hand, isn’t a game I’d value at $60. More than $20 that’s for sure, but not $60. Maybe if it included the upcoming sequel as a bundle pack.

On the other hand, I have a long list of $60 AAA games I’ve purchased which, despite having a far superior budget and graphical prowess, even had quality animations, but weren’t even remotely the best of their genres, offered average fun and entertainment, and the gameplay mechanics were cookie cutter copies of every other similar game.

That’s not to say there aren’t great AAA graphical showpieces or mediocre 2D games. We have examples from everything of the sort. But ultimately, what determines the games value is not its budget. Unless it’s a $15 pixel indie- that I’m not going to pay $60 for no matter how good it is. Then again, look at Octopath Traveler. That game literally had pixel graphics and yeah I felt it was worth the $60 price tag. As I feel toward Project Triangle Strategy. Because the overall production value is much higher than that of your run-of-the-mill $20 indie game. And that’s really the only tier of game where I would categorically reject it at full price- when production values are clearly in the “extreme-amateur” camp. Doesn’t mean a game can’t still be a masterpiece- look at Celeste, or Dead Cells… but I wouldn’t value them at $60.

The fact 2D fighters are routinely sold for $60 with half a dozen season passes for $30/ea and nobody bats an eye, yet other more worthy (imo) games are sold for $60 without any additional pricing tiers and everyone gets in an uproar, really twists my knickers. “AAA” budgets and the race to bottom discounts after release has tarnished many gamers’ perception of value. Budget is now everything, and anything without a Hollywood firm funding the project is now deemed “of lesser worth”.

I just reached the 4th chapter of Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, and… wow. If I wasn’t completely and utterly sold as a newborn Ace Attorney fanboy, I certainly am now. That 3rd chapter was incredible.

@JaxonH I honestly thought Xenoblade 1 was better than 2.. but then again, I like more serious stories, and not just a collection of over-done anime tropes, with bosses that destroy the tones of scenes.

@VoidofLight
XC1 story just landed better with me than XC2. Which, I still love XC2, but the antagonist was just so… one-note. That’s my biggest criticism against that game. Overall both were still very enjoyable though.

@JaxonH I just didn’t like how 2’s tone really went all over the place. For example At one part of the game, you have this assassination plot, and it’s supposed to be incredibly serious. They have a serious “death scene”.. but the boss that causes this is a robotic maid and Nopon. So they tried to have an incredibly serious moment, but then you can’t take it seriously due to what killed the character in question.

I can bring the topic full circle, since literally Xenoblade 2 is the reason I haven't played GAA yet.

Yes, I’m having a lot of fun with The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I’m almost done with the last case of Adventures. Can’t wait to play the sequel afterwards!

There’s what, 5 cases per game, right? So going into the 4th case is well over the half way mark of the first game, I presume?

I take it there’s an overarching story spanning both titles with continuity?

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 frequently made me laugh and (almost) cry. It's a very emotional experience. I also loved the vivid, imaginative landscapes, and the heart-to-heart sequences were a treat throughout.

Comparatively, I had to largely force my way through XC1. I didn't care much about Shulk or most of the supporting cast. The revenge story framing goes on for way too long (the plot becomes WAY more interesting after Prison Island, IMO). Many of the landscapes are dull and kind of a slog to get through overall. Heart-to-hearts require obnoxious character affinity requirements that slow the game down to a crawl if you care about activating them, because there's no quick, easy way to rapidly increase affinity between characters that I've found. And, where XC2 nails the last act of its story, XC1 becomes too... metaphysical.

I also way prefer the setting of XC2. Living landmasses that become the focal point of wars over land and resources are immediately more intuitive and engaging to me than the mythical environment of the first game.

I'll try it again, though, and see if my opinion of the game doesn't improve with the DE. At least it doesn't look like a PS2 game anymore.

@JaxonH Yep. The first Great Ace Attorney game is largely just set-up for the second game in the duology, as I understand it.

Cases 4 & 5 are the first ones that really feel like full-fledged Ace Attorney cases in terms of their structure. Case 5 is also pretty long, as it spans 4 investigations segments and 4 trial segments. It's one of the longer cases in the series.

The game ends in a way where it's explicitly teasing bigger developments in the sequel. Will definitely be getting back to it soon.

Huh, so the game is literally one game split into two then? Also I just got my copy off the eshop!

@VoidofLight Yeah. I mean, both of the previous trilogies had story threads that carried over into subsequent games, but these really are just two halves of one huge story.

@NEStalgia Go get vaccinated and live your life. Covid isn't going anywhere at this point, so trying to wait it out isn't really a viable option.

Anyway, theaters are still pretty dead right now if you're not seeing Disney flicks, so they're pretty safe as far as public venues go.

Now, I'm not saying some games aren't more worth $60 to me than others, of course. Nobody wants to pay as much for Undertale as they do for Breath of the Wild. But I also don't think it's desirable to price games purely based on the amount of money that was pumped into their development budgets.

In general, I'm cool with paying up to $20 for good looking indies, $40 for smaller experiences that are more premium than indie experiences tend to be, and $60+ for full retail releases.

The two part story across both games is definitely a new one to me. Like all the AA sequels connected and expanded on stuff from previous games in some way, and the original three games are clearly a trilogy, but they're still largely self-contained stories despite that (and a lot of the cases work similarly compared to other cases in the same game).

I almost wonder if maybe its a Golden Sun situation where it started as one game, and realized they couldn't or didn't want to pull that off and it made more sense to make two games.

@kkslider5552000 The fact that it seems like these were originally supposed to be one, reminds me of how old Final Fantasy games came on multiple disks, and each disk was a part of the same game, but had their own respective "final boss" in a way.

@Ralizah Considering the variants, mutations, and the fact that the vaccines are already not doing quite what they thought they would (not preventing infection or spread, just (usually but not always) mitigating severe symptoms, thus them having idiotically opened everything has created the biggest live-fire pitri dish imaginable to generate new resistant mutations as fast as possible) and the fact they're still learning/making it up as they go along, it will be at least a year minimum before I trust there's enough data to show that it's actually an adequate protection enough to be even remotely willing to enter visual range of any human being. For now I'm assuming it's just pre-symptomatic treatment for necessary incidental exposure - and temporary at that - not a "real" vaccine as originally believed. Which would be fine if they didn't tell everyone what they wanted to hear and that everything is just fine now. Useful prevention, but not not time to go licking everyone in a crowded place yet until they get the "real" one that actually halts infection & transmission like this was supposed to. Just shocked that you'd be with the Herlock Sholmes-ing masses in believing the first deduction that snaps to mind. I thought you were the cautious/cynical type as well. Oh well. One should never meet their heroes....

It's good to hear at least some people in your neck of the woods are staying out of such spaces though

What defines "full retail release", though? Dread = full retail for $60 and Skyrim is $60 full retail. But if not budget, that's a weird detail. I really like Mercury Steam games. I love AA. Are they worth $60? Not a chance. While good for what they are, there's a simplicity about them that clearly isn't in the same price category. If AA were fully voice acted would it be worth $60? Not while it's still really a novel with a slideshow animation motif. It's very possible for a product to be best in class but still not "worth" as much as a high production value product. Similar to how I could be a really nice porcelain dinner plate set of the highest quality in plan, round, white for $50. It's worth more to me than fragile painted-rimmed bone china with a scallop lip. The latter clearly costs more to make but it has lower value to me. It deserves to be a higher price because it costs more to make and is a higher end product, even if it's less functional for my use. Dread, Ace Atty, etc, are fantastic for what they are, and personally more desirable to me than the latest Naughty Dog opus, but it doesn't mean I don't recognize those are worth more as a product. (Capcom/Ace Atty recognizes this, for the argument, Nintendo does not.) If these games were more than $30/ea they'd be deep in "eh, wait for a sale" camp rather than insta-buy.

Played a little bit of TGAA last night, and I had to go into the settings to turn off the flashing, since it was getting to be too much, and while I don't have epilepsy, I just have eyes that are sensitive to flashing effects like that.

@VoidofLight Interesting, I haven't noticed it so much. I actually couldn't sleep one night and just stayed in a 100% dark room playing, trying to wait until I got too tired to sit upright.....switch brightness all the way down, and it didn't bother me. At least it's not the OLED!

I agree with Ralizah's assessment personally but I do ultimately think you can't use subjective elements such as "this is better than this other thing" as a reasonable excuse to charge more. Sometimes that does work, but more because enough people agree and the publishers knows that they can get more money because of that. Price should not inherently indicate quality in the first place. Shovel Knight (even before updates) was a top tier game but most would not want it to cost as much as (insert 7/10 Ubisoft open world game here). Also it'd be self-sabotage.

Now there's certainly a lot of issues that come from that in terms of what games "are allowed to" be full price that I question, but I do also think there's difference between "this game is 5 hours and made by 10 people and is great" and "this games is 20 hours and made by 60 people and is slightly less great" where its far more understandable that the latter is more expensive, even if the former is "better". The quantity of game you get, and the amount of money put into it.

But at the end of that day, it largely just comes down to what people are willing to buy more than anything. I personally think Link's Awakening at 60 was too far but will buy Metroid Dread (which will probably still be notably longer, its not like Metroidvanias have stayed as short as the GBA games in the past 15 years :V), but I still imagine Link's Awakening will have sold more no matter what. The only definitive logic about pricing is what actually sells, fair or not.

Edit: lol thanks for making my whole point feel redundant :V

@NEStalgia We can see, in real world terms, the effectiveness of the vaccines, because 95%+ of the people who are currently getting hospitalized by covid are unvaccinated. That doesn't mean some fully vacced people don't sometimes draw the short straw, of course, but you're never going to get some magical vaccine that protects you from all current and future variants of the disease, and there's no guarantee that future variants won't be more dangerous than current ones are.

So I think your approach is less "cautious" and more "paranoid" unless you're severely immunocompromised or something. Of course, humans are bad about risk-assessment in general, because if you really wanted to avoid the possibility of injury or death as much as possible, you'd never use a car or turn on anything in your kitchen. To live is to be at risk.

Granted, I wouldn't go attend any gigantic in-door parties right now, as so many people seemed eager to last year, but hunkering down in a bunker somewhere because a bunch of unvaccinated people are making each-other sick and eating horse paste seems like an extreme reaction as well.

BTW, even once the pandemic is eventually over, I recommend not going into crowds and licking random people unless you're trying to get arrested or something.

I still don't understand the argument that consumers should be expected to subsidize the exploding budgets of AAA game development. Production budgets of AAA games are the way they are because major publishers surmise that games with more advanced visual effects will catch more eyes and, subsequently, sell more copies overall.

Premium dinner plates are a niche product, and more in line with... oh... say... special editions of video games. Or those limited run releases that come with manuals and whatnot. High-end releases catering to a specific audience.

I also object strongly to this notion that bigger-budget video games are "higher-end" products just because they have more money involved with their production, as it reduces the value of a video game down to how much money it took to make. Going back to film, imagine arguing that the Michael Bay Transformers films are "high end" products that should cost more to purchase or watch in theaters than, say, the latest Scorcese drama. It's an inherently absurd notion.

EDIT:
With that said, this is largely a redundant argument. From a business perspective, games "should" cost whatever maximizes profits without significantly lowering demand for the product and/or alienating audiences. And that simply reduces to the mass perceived value of a product. If audiences were willing to buy millions of copies of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for $100 a pop, that would be the "correct" price to launch the game at. Ditto with any other game out there.

On a personal value level, it's just up to the individual. Metroid Dread is worth more to me than a God of War game. You can go on all day about how GoW should cost more because it's a "higher-end" product, but, ultimately, I don't feel obliged to subsidize the gigantic budgets of AAA games.

EDIT AGAIN:

@kkslider5552000 I deleted my post and reposted it so that it'd come after yours. So now, from the perspective of the casual forum observer, my post is the one that's redundant. I got your back, homie!