Astro Bot Could Change PlayStation's Future

This artic🍰le is part of a directory: Astro Bot❀: Complete Guide And Walkthrough

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Astro Bot roaring to success while Concord dies an unmourned death after less than two weeks of life feels like a damning statement of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation's priorities, and it’s tempting to compare the two. Astro Bot is a single-player, decidedly not live-service, relatively short platformer that prioritises inventive approaches to game design. Concord is a copy of a copy of a copy of other games designed to be played forever while raking in money from mindless microtransactions. It's tempting, but I'm not sure it's true. I'm more interested in comparing Astro Bot to something like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2.

There’s been a lot of hyperbole in the wake of Astro Bot that this is what video games should be like. And I understand the sentiment, even if there is temptation to pick it apart. Video games shouldn't all be one thing - they're art, and should spin in all sorts of directions. A game focussed on wholesome fun and enjoyment like Astro Bot is a welcome salve, but it's not the only thing video games should be concerned with. Then again, it's not a statement we need to think too deeply about either.

Does Astro Bot Shift Sony's Priorities?

Games are as much art as movies, as thus should encompass a range of genres, directorial styles, and emotional reactions. And yet you get people coming out of the theatre after 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Into the Spider-Verse saying "This is what movies should be!", and they don't really mean every movie should be an animated superhero adventure about radioactive spiders in the multiverse. They mean, just as people do with Astro Bot, that games should be this unbridled in their vision and creativity.

That's why comparing it to Concord on any level higher than the ‘PS5 is back to zero games after Concord made it minus one’ is a waste of time. Astro Bot is good and Concord is bad. Of course games should be more like Astro Bot. And yes, it does feel as though the live-service horse has bolted and Sony has 1♉68澳洲幸运5开奖网:badly gotten its gaming priorities wrong of late in attempting to chase it. That's been 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:written about many times before, and continues to be true. But Astro Bot being great is not evidenc🌃e of that. This is where The Last of Us Part 2 comes in.

It's difficult to split Astro Bot and The Last of Us Part 2. Both feel, in very different ways, like the apex of gaming. Both push technical limits, both are critical darlings, and both sum up, in their own way, what gaming should be. Astro Bot has a throwback feeling for Sony, more in line with modern Nintendo games, prioritising player discovery, enjoyment, and showcasing the creative potential of gaming. The Last of Us Part 2 represents PlayStation's most recent ethos (prior to the live-service rabbit hole) of prioritising immersion, cinematic scope, and showcasing the narrative potential of gaming.

No one is going to make another game like Concord again, at least not on purpose. And if they do it by accident we'll all know it was a bad idea and there's not too much more we could possibly say about it. Astro Bot is interesting, because we may see more games chase that rainbow, and for a while, it could be interesting. We certainly saw that with The Last of Us.

Has The Last Of Us Become Too Influential?

Joel arguing with Ellie in The Last of Us Part 1.

Dating back to the first game in the series that arrived in 2013, it feels like that was the moment PlayStation started to move in a new direction. Until then, it had been a system that prioritised gameplay and exploring new ideas. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted (also from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Naughty Dog) bridged the gap, mixing cinematic visuals with high octane gameplay, but The Last of Us felt like the first step in a decade that saw Sony focus on narrative-driven, gritty sad-dad affairs both stoic and nihilistic. A place where the Sony stardust was born. The first game to chase, and earn, the descriptor 'prestige'.

The Last of Us was, aside from the endless sections grabbing planks of wood, an excellent game to play in its own right. The sequel improved on this. Several other games made under TLOU's influence were also not lacking for gameplay - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War and its sequel Ragnarok being the best examples. But there was a clear decision, either mandated by Sony or pseudo-voluntarily undertaken by studios, to chase TLOU's reception and make it the archetype of what a PlayStation exclusive game was supposed to be.

Ulala, Ore no Ryouri, and Arc the Lad in Astro Bot

Astro Bot: 10𒊎 Most Obscure PlayStatꦺion Cameos

We all know about Kratos, Ellie, and Aloy. But who is tha🦩t chef guy, or the kid wꦓith the bug net?

Posts 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 𝓀

Some of those games were great. But many were only okay and some fell short of that. A few didn't even get to gasp for breath, cancelled or retooled in the womb. This way of making games, as Concord discovered with its mocap character models and bizarre decision to prioritise narrative through fully acted and captured cutscenes each week, is prohibitively expensive and can be highly restrictive. A focus on realism brings with it a more grounded design philosophy, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a narrow window for art style, and an overly formulaic feeling. As development time and cost♕s continue to soar, Sony cannot continue to have every studio either spending The Last of Us money on a The Last of Us-like or failing to make a profitable live-service game in order to pay for it.

The solution is not to have every game be like Astro Bot, of course. That formula would grow stale even faster. But seeing how successful Astro Bot is (though figures have not been released, the wide conversation even among casual gamers suggests this is a massive commercial hit), perhaps the solution is to stop having every game be like anything. PlayStation used to set trends, and now it chases them. That it is chasing its own trends internally is no better - in fact, it may be a little worse. Astro Bot has little in common with Concord, but shares a lot of similarities to The Last of Us. It has to break TLOU's formula, not replace it.