Alex78

Kinda surprised by all the "We had no way of knowing!" comments from people in the article. Like, yeah, we kinda did? You just had to be paying attention. I knew it'd be successful and I'm by no means an analyst. A LOT of people (many smarter than me and many probably dumber than me) knew the Switch would do well because A) Nintendo had never made an unsuccessful handheld and B) the Switch would combine Nintendo's handheld and console franchises into one library. The Switch played to Nintendo's strengths in every way. All the doomsayers and/or well-meaning critics doubting its ability to succeed were only looking at home consoles for historical context and ignored handhelds entirely or somehow deemed them irrelevant.

@I-U Did you miss the controversy over the closing credits leaving out people whose work was included in the game?

@HobbitGamer I see it as a quality-over-quantity thing. Yeah, you can beat Dread in a short amount of time but I had more fun over that time than I had playing much much longer games.

THAT BEING SAID... I took my sweet ass time on my first playthrough, backtracked a lot, explored a lot, tried to find as many items as possible and it ended up taking me around 18 hours to beat, which doesn't seem short to me. So I really think it depends on a person's play style.

Great demo. It's not quite a card game though in the sense of a deckbuilder (which I was confused about), it's a very traditional turn-based RPG, it's just visually represented as a tabletop card game. If you like old-school RPGs or D&D, try the demo! It completely won me over. I especially like how you even have a "game master" who narrates and guides you through the game. It's very charming.

Temper expectations by remembering that Nate was also one of the main people insisting a Switch Pro with DLSS technology would be announced BEFORE E3.

I don't think Nate is necessarily a liar, but he speculates a LOT, and fans and other outlets have a weird way of taking his speculation in particular very seriously even though he makes bad predictions all the time. I have no doubt he does have some insider info but he very clearly doesn't see the whole picture and anyone covering his rumors needs to remember that. It really doesn't help that he loves the attention and deliberately words his predictions in a way that implies he knows something even when he doesn't.

The disconnect between what Game Freak is and what people think it is never ceases to amaze me. No, it's not reasonable or even remotely logical to expect a company that's almost exclusively always made handheld games to suddenly make a photorealistic 60 fps open world game. If that's what you want, then maybe consider picking up DokeV and play that? Game Freak has neither the experience or inclination to make a game like that and Nintendo doesn't have the platform for it.

@Casco Jeff Grubb wasn't the one who started rumors about the Switch Pro. All he's ever said is that he believes there will be a Switch Pro at some point, but it was never HIS leak, he's only ever responded to it.

As for the trilogy, I get that people are annoyed with leaks and rumors, and if something doesn't come true right away, we just assume everything is false, but it's complicated, and leaks aren't always based on current information anyway. Remember that Prime 4 had to be restarted, and then the pandemic slowed everything down on top of that - especially in 2020 but even to this day. Just these two factors alone are enough to explain a delay. If we assume that Nintendo wants to use the trilogy to promote Prime 4, why would they release it years in advance? The fact that the leak IS so persistent is a pretty good sign that it's based on real information. It's just that the situation around it is messy and weird.

Eh, Nintendo has a history of releasing multiple hardware revisions for their handhelds, and even the Switch itself has already had a couple of revisions (the Lite and the new CPU that came out in 2018) so another revision coming out sometime between now and the end of the Switch's lifecycle (which will probably continue through 2024) isn't really outlandish. It's extremely likely.

Sure, it's tiring how everyone is constantly speculating about it and it'd be nice of journalists/youtubers/and fans stopped talking about it all the time, but let's also not be naive here about what Bowser is saying. He's not deconfirming anything. It's simply a "we're not ready to announce anything at this time" statement.

And if all these "pro switch" articles and videos really bother some of you that much, then just stop clicking on them. There's a reason people keep writing about it: it's the traffic you helped generate when you came here.

These comments are ridiculous. In all likelihood he had nothing to do with the decision to announce the game in 2017, take it up with Nintendo. Have some patience. Game development takes years even under optimal conditions, and we're (still) going through a global pandemic that set projects back by several months across the industry. Try to be reasonable. Find something else to enjoy in the meantime.

What if they added voice acting... 🤯

@falconlord5 Yeah, I think people have to remember that it's still Yuji Horii in charge, Akira Toriyama's art design, and the same director from XI bringing it all together. "Dark" is relative here. We've seen dark themes in DQ before. So it sounds like they're just going to lean into it, that's all. Dark by DQ standards, not Last of Us dark.

Personally I'm very excited about the idea of this. Likewise, the theme of choices really piques my curiosity. Until now, a superficial marriage option in V was about the most important choice you had to make in a DQ game's story. I love the idea that they're planning a choice-based story that can potentially have multiple endings depending on your decisions. XI kind of played with this idea very lightly by giving you the post-game content that lets you change things, but it sounds like with XII, you'll be influencing the story from the start. I like that a lot.

Also, it makes me think that vocations are coming back? Looking forward to that.

@Wilforce Yuji Horii did mention that the 1 and 2 remakes would undergo some changes, possibly referring to story changes but presumably other kinds of modernizations.

Also, if you look at the 3 remake trailer, you can see a bulletin board outside the castle. Looks like there could be a new side-quest system or something like that. In any case, I think it's safe to say these games are going to undergo a lot changes in the same way the SFC remakes made a lot of updates and changes at the time as well (the personality system, the bonus dungeon, animations, etc.)

@VoidofLight Personally I don't think a game has to be "innovative" in order to be good. And XI in particular is meant as a love letter to the series. It's intentionally calling back to past games, directly and indirectly. If you're a fan of the older games like me, XI resonates with you. I don't know if I'd call it the greatest RPG ever made (and seriously who cares, how do you even measure that in any objective sense) but it's certainly one of my favorite DQ titles.

@the8thark What are you talking about? Yuji Horii's tweet is from yesterday.

@JonComms Unfortunately it seems like the Builders team is currently working on something else so Builders 3 probably won't be announced any time soon:

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2020/01/17/dragon-quest-builders-2-producer-working-on-a-different-new-game/

@TheFrenchiestFry There's no good reason to make it a timed exclusive on the PS5, for any party. The Switch has dominated Japan, and the PS5 is never going to overtake it there. And while DQ XI found success in the West, it wouldn't surprise me if it ended up selling best on the Switch anyway. Making XII a timed exclusive on the PS5 when the audience just isn't there makes no business sense for Square Enix. And while Sony certainly does aggressively pursue exclusivity deals with developers, I doubt they see Dragon Quest as an important enough franchise for them since the fanbase just isn't as big in the West, which is the market Sony pays attention to. Unfortunately, Dragon Quest just doesn't have the appeal in the West that Final Fantasy does.

I expect a global release. Or at least an attempt at one.

@MrGawain The only thing it has in common with Labo is that it's a peripheral for the Switch. Labo is crafting-oriented and is intended for a much younger audience. This is fitness-oriented and targets an older audience.

@aznable you don't have to announce that you don't care about something. Just don't reply and that gets the message across.

In the presentation, they also announced some new "voice drama"/radio-play DLC meant to deepen our understanding of each character. They'll get into it more in the next presentation, but it sounds like very story-driven content. Sounds interesting. Hopefully it's at least a little interactive.

This is in addition to the new playable story content in the Switch version.

All this plus the 3DS quests is a crazy amount of content. Can't wait!

OK, this look absolutely ridiculous... but... uh... I might have to check out.

The show is stupid but addictive af.

@AirElephant I think Metroid Prime 4 WILL be a big seller simply by virtue of the Switch sales bump that every other 1st party game has gotten. And if the quality of their content recently is any indication, it could end up being one of the best Metroid games ever.

@Moroboshi876 It has a different story so no, it's not a "Dragon Quest Builders definitive edition". By "powered up", I assume he means that the graphics and mechanics have been improved rather than completely changed. Keep in mind, this quote is in reference to Yuji Horii wanting to keep the title feeling like a traditional DQ experience.

@Preposterous No one is saying sales equals quality, but as the article points out, it reviewed well with critics and seems positively received by people on social media. The reason user scores are low on sites like metacritic is because there was an orchestrated review bomb carried out by users that was designed to manipulate and artificially bring down the score.

And come on, let's not act like high sales are meaningless too. Yes, bad things sell well sometimes, but the notion that a majority of the people who bought the fastest selling Switch game to date regret their decision is laughable.

Guys, calm down. This doesn't mean less games. It's not like Nintendo only has hundred employees that have to be shuffled around every time they take on a new project. They're not going to re-assign programmers to work as managers at a theme park. The company is simply going to grow, you're not going to see less video games from them because of this.

OK, from now on, anybody who says that Labo is "just cardboard" [removed]

@QwertyQwerty It IS an electric wheelchair. The Labo ToyCon/Switch is simply being used to control it.

@Bunkerneath £40 is about $60. Are games usually more expensive in the UK?

@SmaggTheSmug Eh, South Park: The Stick of Truth was also banned in Australia. They have different standards there. Again, I think you're conflating social conservatism with feminists. Hotline Miami 2 was banned for an implied rape scene. I promise you it wasn't just feminists complaining about it.

@SmaggTheSmug Don't lump social conservatives together with feminists. You're conflating rationales and tactics and misrepresenting everyone.

Here's a good post (topmost) by a game developer about how feminists have improved the industry and I agree. Read the whole thing...

https://www.quora.com/What-video-games-have-feminists-tried-to-get-banned-changed-and-why

Important bit: "[M]ost modern feminists are anti-censorship but pro-discussion - they don’t believe in banning anything, but they do believe that open discussion about the topic of what works and what doesn’t work can move the state of the art forward.... So what do feminists want? Simple: more variety. They don’t want to see sexy male-oriented games disappear. They do want to see more variety on the shelves."

@SLIGEACH_EIRE There's plenty of reason to be optimistic. Every main line DQ game has been localized with the exception of X which was an exception due to its MMORPG nature.