CD Projekt RED announced in a tragic press release that cyberpunk 2077 it will not be released, as previously planned, on April 16 this year. Unfortunately we will have to wait a few more months to see it in action, but there is a large portion of users who did not take this decision well. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it happens even after the slippage of games like Doom Eternal, The Last Of Us Part II, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Marvel's Avengers and much more. In order not to miss anything just a few days ago too Techland joined the waltz with the postponement of Dying Light 2. But what's going on ?!
The most attributable faults are certainly due to the launch of the new consoles, with some of these games most likely going cross-gen, and the adaptation may have taken longer than expected. This does not mean that the current generation will be remembered forever as the one of postponements and cancellations, which, I fear, we will necessarily have to get used to in the future as well. As the power increases, the qualitative bar is raised, which leads the developer to always have to add something more to each production. For this, the time required for the creation of a game has increased enormously compared to the past, with the related problems that follow (such as design difficulty or, more commonly, bugs).
If the problem is the first we have seen the solution before our eyes: you play as Scalebound have been eliminated for this very reason, while in other cases such as in Final Fantasy XV they came out particularly incomplete. In the second case, however, that is the one that concerns small errors that undermine the experience, the teams usually take a few more months to "clean the code", or eliminate any surrounding defects.
Here we are faced with two completely opposite schools of thought, but in some ways both understandable. Is it better to get a refined game later than the initial promises or better to publish it with some defects and fixed in the course of work? Quoting Shigeru Miyamoto "A game that is postponed eventually becomes good, but a rushed game is always bad." Let's take an example: you all remember Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines true? Its conditions at the debut were very bad, from the raw animations to the bugs that prevented its completion, technical problems of various kinds and so on and so forth. However, these problems became a particular sign of the title, which also offered fans well-written dialogues, dense atmospheres and brilliant ideas. This meant that the product became a cult, but only for an exclusive niche, while we could have enjoyed a complete work that was also appreciated by the general public. To give another example of broken dreams, it seems legitimate to mention too Knights of the Old Republic 2. Obsidian Entertainment had everything needed to create a successful work: the script was great, the atmosphere of Star Wars was notable and improvements over the formula of BioWare a few years ago made sense. Unfortunately, the release was rushed, which resulted in technical shortcomings, bugs and cut content. It took years to patch - not even from the developers, but by desperate fans - to bring this game to near normal conditions.
Simultaneously with the above, there are games whose extra time has helped make the game enjoyable and well done. Another great example we can give is that of the known The Last Guardianexclusive PlayStation 4 which has found many appreciations. The work of the game designer Smoking Ueda it took more than a decade and the risk of it getting canceled was pretty great. However, when the game finally came out, many users were remarkably satisfied (despite some obvious critical issues). In most cases, games are released prematurely, for this then we find ourselves with GB of patches already from day one. This often happens also due to financial reasons, given that the publisher, or even the software house, they cannot always afford to drag development too long. For this then one needs to draw on the money from pre-orders or collector's editions ... but this is another discourse that would mislead too much on the main topic.
So let's go back to talking more specifically about CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt it was a title capable of taking home the GOTY in 2015, despite competition from heavyweights of the caliber of Bloodborne. Regardless of the undisputed quality proposed by the Polish studio, the adventure of Witcher he limped, and quite a lot, in the first months of his life cycle. It was evident that some things had not been calculated well in the general ecosystem, both in terms of the game world, and the management of the menus and the internal economy. These aspects, as well as a too rigid combat system, inevitably led fans to debate. The third installment of this series came out after three postponements, despite being CD Projekt RED carrying out this type of development at the time was still too large an economic outlay. The software house undoubtedly stood out in the months to follow, up to the last and giant update that raised the level of the entire production. Now the adventure of Geralt it's almost perfect, but it could have been that way from the start if, perhaps, the hype-hungry fans had let the team work more calmly.
Also for this reason we would have to open a brief parenthesis on the culture of hype regarding games, which has now become a real double-edged sword. If on the one hand this kind of enthusiasm moves the market from the ground up, on the other it takes very little to find yourself with your legs on the ground. It happened to Square Enix after the last Kingdom Hearts, happened with Death Stranding and it will continue to happen with ever-changing games. This is because users, at the sight of often deceptive trailers, get too much enthusiasm, which leads to both a higher percentage of disappointment and to excessive pressure for studies, maybe still not ready to take the plunge. The fault of this, however, is also of the same houses, which incite the masses by proposing final products that do not meet expectations (an example we can do in this area is that of No Man's Sky, which at the release turned out to be much lower than expected).
As already mentioned at the beginning, another great disappointment for many was the postponement, albeit by only one month, of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which will no longer arrive in March but will debut on 10 April. In addition to the technical issues, perhaps not to create too much competition in April CD Projekt RED he opted to postpone production, but above all to avoid falling back into the mistake he made with The Witcher 3 and give what they promised to the fans… or maybe more.
The main fear is therefore that all these postponed works will come out just before the debut of the new consoles, which could lead players to wait for a definitive porting of the works in nex gen (hype and spoilers permitting). Unfortunately, at the moment we have no further information, we know thanks to rumors PlayStation 5 could be presented in February, but we do not know how the third-party development houses have decided to address this situation since, as of now, all the games mentioned, with the addition of Ghost of Thushima, have been promised spouses of this generation, and their arrival is not yet expected on the new consoles.
