On the night the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel was announced to be delayed until spring 2023, several gaming chat groups were buzzing about the same thing.
Some speculate that the sequel will come with an enhanced version of the Switch; some believe this year’s game of the year will be “Ayrden Circle”; some people look for the details of the new work in the new footage of the delayed video for a few seconds; some people look at the apologetic Eiji Aonuma: Hey, the new hairstyle is nice.
What, you said there are still games that are not postponed?
As gamers, it’s natural to be unhappy to see the delayed release of your beloved game, but we’ve long been surprised by the fact that the game bounced. After all, game masterpieces are always postponed. Not to mention, the most famous one in the past two years should be the “yellow map” of “Cyberpunk 2077” which has been postponed again and again.
Whenever the scheduled release date of “Cyberpunk 2077” is approaching, players wake up in the morning and are afraid to see the picture with black characters on a yellow background, which makes the originally confused himself unable to fall asleep. The words can be seen in the crevices: “Extended” is written all over the picture.
▲ The pressure plate will still be postponed
From April to September to November and December, “Cyberpunk 2077” was repeatedly postponed, making the “yellow map” used to issue official statements synonymous with bad news, even without writing a word, it would also Make players feel uncomfortable.
On November 18, 2021, Capcom released a video announcing that Pragmata , which was originally planned to be launched in 2022, will be postponed to 2023. Compared with the one-sided scolding of “Cyberpunk 2077”, Capcom has It is peaceful, and the reason is because of the way it announced the extension:
In the video, a little loli with a vivid facial expression, with apologetic eyes, raised a sign that crossed out “2022” and replaced it with “2023” and “sorry”. Players’ lower expectations for this game and the previous “Yellow Image Crit” of “Cyberpunk 2077” have softened this unpleasant delay.
Moreover, this 4K-quality video, with delicate skin, slightly moving hair, shiny eyes, and nostrils contracted by breathing, has penetrated the hearts of every player who expects or does not expect this game. Heart – where is this delay, it is obviously a show of skills.
▲ Can… let her come out and apologize again?
Going back to the sequel to “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”, in fact, when the first promotional video stated that it would be released in 2022, everyone defaulted to pushing the release time to the last month of 2022. When it was announced that the ticket was delayed until 2023, the players did not have too much regret, but ridiculed the producer’s new hairstyle and the few seconds of the game screen announced in the video.
▲ A 2 and a half analytic video made by fans for the 8-second new scene
The delay means that the game requires higher development costs and a longer project cycle, and it will also increase player expectations, and even have to find a way to deal with the irritable temper of investors. With the announcement of the postponement of the release of the sequel to “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”, Nintendo’s stock price on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan fell 6% on the day. Big hit.
Delaying the release is not a good thing, so why don’t game companies reserve development time for the game from the beginning, or wait for the upcoming release to start the promotion cycle to reduce the risk of delay?
Probably…they can’t.
So, what is the total delay for the major?
The reset version of “Elden’s Circle”, “God of War: Ragnarok”, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”… may be affected by the epidemic, and game works in recent years seem to be delayed more frequently. But in fact, even without the impact of the epidemic, the game is still being postponed.
▲ “The Collection!” released in 2020 “Animal Crossing Friends”, the first announced release date is 2019
Since the recently announced postponement is the “Legend of Zelda” series, let’s take a look at the previous generation of “The Legend of Zelda” to see if it will be released on time. The first is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was closest to us, originally scheduled for release in 2015 and landed on the Wii U console, and ended up being released in 2017, landing on the Wii U and the new console Switch.
As the “Legend of Zelda” series 25th anniversary commemorative work, “The Legend of Zelda: Sword of Heaven” must be released in 2011, but even so, it was postponed from the first half of the year to November 18, 2011.
The first 3D version of the “Legend of Zelda” series game “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” was expected to be released in early 1997, and was finally delayed for nearly two years until November 21, 1998.
After coming to the 3D era, delayed release has become the tradition of almost every generation of “The Legend of Zelda”, but as Nintendo’s facade, the “Mario” series of games rarely bounced. What’s the difference between a game that bounces tickets and a game that doesn’t bounce tickets?
The first is the type of game. Although the game plots of the “Legend of Zelda” and “Mario” series can be summed up in the sentence “defeat the devil to save the princess”, compared to the “Mario” series of games with card chapters, “The Legend of Zelda” is more like “Cyberpunk 2077”: once developed, it is difficult to stop the pace, and once a new setting is added, it has to be revised throughout.
▲ Mario series game level map
If it is said that a “Mario” game is scheduled to design 10 major levels, but only 8 are completed near the release, then it can completely delete two levels, connect the beginning and the end in series, and become a game with 8 major levels. New Mario.
If it is said that a “Legend of Zelda” game is 80% completed and is about to be released, it can’t leave a large blank in the scene, or give up the design of some values and package it for sale – to welcome it, only is an extension.
▲ Wii U would have been the Shika Stone of the Links
The second is the old-fashioned project management issue. We all say that “the deadline is the primary productive force”, and the same is true in the game industry. Game developers are a group of people with rich imaginations. If there is no time limit, the game can’t be finished. For example, “Hollow Knight: Song of Silk”, which has not announced the release date, has been publicized for 3 years, and the release date is still a mystery.
▲ It is reported that “Song of Silk”, which will be released in January 2022, is still on “Pigeon”
However, the longer announcement cycle will lead to various accidents. Even if there is no black swan like the epidemic, today’s expanding game production scale has made game production much longer than before.
▲ “Suicide Squad: Killing the Justice League” announced that it will be postponed to 2023
At the E3 electronic entertainment exhibition in 2017, Nintendo announced “Metrood Prime 4”, although there is only one logo, it also attracted players from all walks of life.
But in January 2019, Nintendo officially announced that the game was ready to be overturned due to poor development results and poor quality. This is the third reason for the delay of the game: a major problem in the development cycle. Today, “Metrood: Survival Fear” has been released, but “Metrood Prime 4” is still a long way off.
▲ The orthodox sequel “Metrod: Survival Fear” will be released in October 2021
Similar to the problem of delays in the development cycle, there are also cases of bugs in the test game near the release. In 2018, Bethesda Studios announced the extension of beta testing because a serious bug was discovered that would cause PC players to delete the game by mistake; in 2020, “Watch Dogs: Legion” announced that the network mode was postponed because it was a priority to fix game bugs ;The 2022 season of Call of Duty: Warzone has also been delayed by a few weeks, again due to bug fixes…
Regardless of the game type, project management or various problems encountered in the development process, these are forced to postpone, and the losses caused by this are unwilling to see the developers. But there is also a case of deliberate delays, in order to avoid major releases released at the same time, in order to ensure the commercial success of the game – of course, this reason will not be publicly acknowledged.
In 2011, Runic Games announced that its work “Torchlight 2” was postponed to 2012. In addition to expressing the desire to spend more time to improve the game, the developers also said something interesting: “Everyone should be playing “The Elder Scrolls”. 5: Skyrim or Battlefield 3… When Torchlight 2 comes out, we’re going to make it one of those great titles.”
Although it is not stated explicitly, the behavior of “Torchlight 2” avoiding the masterpiece and choosing to postpone has become the consensus of everyone.
Actually, it’s good to postpone
No matter if you look forward to another game, players don’t want to play games with countless bugs and unfinished development on time. Delays will always bring us a better gaming experience. Of course, this refers to games that have been developed after the delay. A game that is delayed and still cannot achieve the promotional effect, has a large number of bugs, and can be played normally after multiple updates is not included, such as “Cyberpunk 2077”, this Delayed many times is still a game full of rush marks.
A longer development cycle will bring greater development costs, but it also gives developers more time to polish the game. Delayed games usually mean better quality and lower work pressure.
High intensity and high pressure are almost everyone’s inherent impressions of the game industry. The producer of “Red Dead Redemption 2” once complained that his team worked 100 hours a week for many times in 2018 (7 days a week, an average of 7 days a week) 14 hours). But there are exceptions. In Nintendo’s 2020 new employee school recruitment plan, we can see Nintendo’s working hours: 7 hours and 45 minutes a day, 125 days of vacation a year.
Lower work pressure will naturally give developers more time to think about how to improve their work.
In 1983, Warner asked Atari game designer Howard Scott Warshaw to develop ET’s eponymous game “ET Aliens” in 6 weeks. Although Howard completed the task , but the huge gap between the shoddy game and the classic movie has become the last straw that overwhelms Atari.
A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.
This sentence comes from Japanese video game designer, “Father of Super Mario” Shigeru Miyamoto. Although game developers come from different countries, everyone is the same in terms of wanting players to experience perfect works.
The rushed “ET Alien” “destroyed” the North American game industry and postponed to the 2020 “Assembly!” “Animal Crossing” made players feel the warmth of the game world; “Anthem”, which was rushed to work, attracted a lot of scolding from domestic and foreign players; “Death Return”, which was delayed for one month, won the title of the best action game of the year.
The release time has never been a criterion for judging a game. If I can, I hope to meet the long-awaited game earlier. If not, I hope that when I meet it, it is good enough.
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