(video game music chimes) - [Falcon] Game announcements
are built around hype and making games look good. And generally I'm willing to
take that with good faith. But what happens when something that looks really good
turns out not to be? Hi folks, it's Falcon,
and today on Gameranx, 10 games with the most
wasted potential part two. Now if you're interested,
we did a part one to this. It's got Red Dead Online,
Anthem, Watchdogs Legion. We talked about Spore, Mass
Effect Andromeda, Epic Mickey, which holy hell, talk about
the mouse dropping the ball. We talked about Castlevania
Lord of Shadows 2, and we even talked about one that's, I mean, kind of a favorite
around these parts. Jake loves The Order 1886. I also do, but it's definitely not a game that lived up to what it could have been. And that's kind of really the point. Whether the game's good
or bad isn't necessarily what we're talking about here. It's if the game isn't as
good as it could have been, and that often means bad. Keeping that in mind,
starting off with number 10, we're gonna talk about Redfall. So by any metric, any metric at all, Redfall should have been good. It's from Arkane, the guys
behind Deathloop and Prey, both good games. But oh yeah, remember Dishonored? Not just a good game, but a
fricking iconic franchise. It established that Arkane
way of doing things. And Redfall was Arkane's first
game after their publisher and owner, Bethesda, was
acquired by Microsoft. So you'd think it'd be
in everyone's interest to make a good game. That's not Redfall though. It's at its best mediocre, which is frankly shocking
coming from Arkane. The potential was there. I mean, a vampire hunting
open world immersive sim. In a just world, this would
basically mean a longer, bigger, more immersive and interconnected Prey, but the whole thing's watered down into an online only
games as a service slog. Instead of a game that plays
to the developer's strengths, the final version is just a showcase of all of their weaknesses. Poor performance, mediocre gunplay, enemy AI dragged this game way down. Most of the immersive sim elements gutted. The game just feels empty, barren, and like even like in
terms of art direction, as cool as some things are,
you can find some lazy stuff. We talked about it in a recent video. The chimney. The chimney's pretty symbolic of a lot of what goes into Redfall. I have a theory, I think I
mentioned this elsewhere, that Arkane really wanted to
do Redfall a different way and had games as a service
sort of forced on it. And Arkane decided to say, "You know what? "We're owned by Microsoft now. "We're a beloved developer. "We're pretty safe. "Let's make it so they never ask us "to do games as a service again." Like, okay, and the reason I say that, there's some information out there about the original
design ideas for Redfall. They all sounded a lot more
ambitious and interesting, like an open world Dishonored, the thing that everybody
wants Redfall to be instead of this big pile of meh. Obviously there's no way
to ever prove this theory, and there's no way they
would ever cop to it because I mean, if it's
what they were trying to do, they can't say they were trying to do it. But yeah, let's hope the
next Arkane isn't a games as a service and is up to the standards that Arkane has
established for themselves. At number nine is Final Fantasy 15. Any game that has such a long and tumultuous development cycle is almost inevitably gonna be seen as having wasted potential. That's kind of the nature
of game development. And the ideas that get
abandoned are, I don't know. This game started as
Final Fantasy 13 Versus. It had to do with the
Final Fantasy 13 mythos, but it turned into its own
thing, took a full decade, and when it came out it
felt kind of unfinished. Story beats would come up and get dropped, entire areas would get introduced only to disappear from the story, entire chunks of the
adventure are just covered by a text crawl. It's kind of a mess,
which is disappointing. And you know what? I'm gonna say, this is kind of an example of what I was talking about in the intro that some of these are
actually pretty good, but pretty good is definitely not great. And Final Fantasy 15
could have been great, especially with the amount
of time it was in the oven. Like, I'll tell you what
really works about it. The classic RPG adventure recontextualized into a road trip, that works. - Ignis, pull over a sec. - Certainly. - [Falcon] There is a comradery and an interesting dynamic
that exists in this game that I don't think I've
ever seen in a game. And a lot of the time they nail the feel. Despite the fact you
basically have unlimited time to play the game, it does actually have that some horrible event
is looming feel a lot. Like, they really get a lot right, but they also just, wow,
it's such an unfinished game. First off, I mean it's
just blatantly unfinished. There was originally
gonna be a set of DLC. And if you do look into all of the DLC, there's a whole bunch of it. But the ones that they said
they were gonna put out to, you know, continue the
story, that didn't work out. It's kind of dumb because like they had already
released a whole bunch of crap like Cup Noodle helmets. And I'm pretty sure you
could buy a season pass for all that DLC, but only one of the season
two DLC got released called Episode Ardyn or Ardyn. I don't know. It was a prequel, and I don't
know if I played it or not. I literally can't remember. But like the main game is
pretty much unfinished, and the DLC story is forever incomplete. The only possible way to explain all of it is it had an extremely
dysfunctional development cycle. There's people obviously
who wanna make the game as good as it can be, and there's people that
tried to fix the game after it came out. But I mean, remember the fishing DLC or that weird multiplayer mode, you could make your own character and import them into the main game? They kind of just really
threw whatever they could at this game to see what sticks. And there's stuff about the main game, in my opinion, that did stick. But I don't know. It's probably a necessary sacrifice for something like Final
Fantasy 16 to exist, 'cause wow, they really hit
it outta the park with 16. And hell, 7 Remake. Like, everything that was learned from 15 definitely is seen in 7 Remake and 16. But 15 could have been a lot better if they had just sort
of paired things back and decided to make a game
from the start to beginning. At number eight is
Splinter Cell Conviction. Another one that we got
that really wasn't bad, but it just could have been a lot more. Maybe not to the extent
that Final Fantasy was. But also Splinter Cell
Conviction wasn't intended to be as big of a game as Final Fantasy was. So on some level the disappointment might be a little bit more, even if the game is on the
whole a little bit better. Kind of contradictory. But I don't think it's too
hard to have played both and come up with that opinion. Conviction was intended to be kind of an entirely
new Splinter Cell game where you're exploring
an open world environment and engaging in social stealth, sort of a modern day take on
the Assassin's Creed series. There was also intended to be
a big focus on physics objects that Sam could pick up and throw around as weapons and stuff. The story would've been Sam on the run trying to uncover a conspiracy
within a third echelon, which is basically what
happens in the final game, but it looks like the original version would've been a lot more Jason Borne than the standard Splinter
Cell antics of the full game, which not bad, again. And open world games feel
kind of played out now, but to me, an open world Washington DC where you're playing as a spy on the run could have been extremely cool and unique. Apparently Ubisoft
canned the original idea for being too close to Assassin's Creed. But we're in 2023 and there still hasn't been a modern day
Assassin's Creed game, so I don't know why people
really would've cared. The original vision for Conviction
would've taken the series in a whole new direction. Maybe it wouldn't have
worked, I don't know, but it would've been more interesting than the mostly safe choices that Conviction finally landed on. At number seven is PlayStation
All Stars Battle Royale. It's Smash Brothers but
for PlayStation characters. That's it, that's the potential. Could have been great, right? Other than Nintendo, PlayStation has some of
the most iconic characters in the entire video game medium. Like, think about it. Classic PlayStation characters
like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Cloud from Final Fantasy 7, Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider
with impossible proportions. Hell, even Tony Hawk. All these characters were at
one time closely associated with the PlayStation brand. So what did Sony do when they made their own
great value Smash Brothers? They put in such iconic
characters as Fat Princess and Nariko and the guy from Star Hawk. Like, seriously? It's not like there are
no recognizable characters in this game. You got Jak and Daxter,
PaRappa the Rapper, Kratos. You even have like a few tier two memorable
PlayStation characters like Sir Daniel Fortesque from Medieval. And I realized that Sony
doesn't own Crash Bandicoot or really any of those characters and that was part of the problem. But if they were gonna do that, they really needed to get the rights to those characters for it. Like, forget gruff clone
spy and boobs McGee, not having Crash Bandicoot in this, it's basically like saying
why do we have this? Like, imagine Mario Kart
is called Nintendo Kart and has everybody but
Mario and Luigi in it. People would be like, "What?" Yeah, PaRappa and Kratos
are PlayStation icons, but Crash Bandicoot was the thing that made the PlayStation
legit when it happened. They needed a mascot and he was that guy. Even though he wasn't legally
that guy, he was that guy. And then you start to tie
in these other problems, like game play modes and how
it feels to play the game and how bare bones it kind of is. Perhaps having a few more of the real A tier PlayStation all stars in your PlayStation All
Stars Battle Royale game would've given them a little bit of time to patch the game with some updates because that was a new thing back when PlayStation 3 happened. You could do that. It probably also would've
made people super excited as opposed to irritated because it was a new thing back then. Like, oh, this game could be made better. At number six is Dante's Inferno. The hell described by Dante
sounds like a fascinating place to explore. There's a reason why this story
has inspired so many artists throughout history. And the possibility of somebody putting out a true alternative
to the God of War series is pretty exciting. But while Dante's Inferno
isn't a terrible game, again, this is one of the
pretty decent entries to this, it still feels like there's
a lot of wasted potential. The premise itself is absolutely
perfect for a video game. I mean, as described by Dante, hell is just about the perfect setting. It's got nine circles, so hey, nine levels or maybe nine worlds with
three levels, I don't know. You could apply that to
video game conventions as easily as possible. In this case, we got nine levels. Each one has its own unique theme associated with the
worst vices of humanity. The punishments get more severe as you go down further and
further in the depths of hell. Seems like there should be dozens of games already about this, but this is the only one I can remember that really seriously
attempted it in the AAA space. And unfortunately the
results are kind of middling. Yeah, you can tell the
developers were having a hell of a lot of fun. (chuckles) Badum cha. With the second circle, lust, which I don't know if
you've played this game and you've seen that boss, but I don't know what people would think of that intro animation nowadays. Anyway, they enjoyed the third
circle, gluttony, as well. They're kind of just being
as disgusting and shocking as they could, but they
kind of ran out of ideas. And by the end it kind
of feels like you're just exploring some
slightly demonic caves. It's kind of a real
failure of imagination. Combat in Dante's Inferno really solid, but the lack of set pieces and interesting new levels
that separate themselves from the previous one in some
way, it really hurts the game. The God of War games would
hit you with big moments and exciting events that
keep things interesting and really change stuff up, so you feel like you're at
least in different places. Dante's Inferno pretty stingy with that, and it gets kind of boring. In this case, it's not
that the devs' plans for the final game were
just so much bigger. It's that the concept
alone is a great idea, and the final product feels
lacking compared to that. Again, not a bad game, just really didn't live up
to what it could have been. At number five is Fable 3. All the Fable games feel
like missed opportunities in a lot of ways despite
actually being great. I really enjoy the Fable
games, including Fable 3. That being said, the third
game had an opportunity that was totally squandered. Halfway through the third
game, your hero becomes king. Normally this kind of thing
happens at the end of the game and is like a reward. But the idea here is
that now you're the king, you've deposed the previous tyrant, and it's up to you to decide
if you'll do things differently or if you'll just be
as bad as the last guy. Being king would add complexity to the moral choices of the game, which are normally a bit black and white. At least that was supposed to be the idea. Instead it basically boils
down to a money check. Do you have enough money to afford whatever somebody asks for? Then you're good. If you don't though, it's bad. That's what it really boils down to. A few binary choices between
obviously good and bad things that you may or may not have money for. Now that does not mean
that Fable 3 is not good or any of the Fable games 'cause they all have
similar issues honestly. Actually, no, these are really fun games that I really enjoy. The problem is that they were promised to be about 1,000 times
more than they are. I don't think if that had ever happened, we'd have been saying stuff like this. Like, this was a really ambitious idea that ended up kind of being
just regular story fair that we've seen in a million RPGs just the situation's a little different. - You are looking well today, my lord. (character mimics chicken) Your majesty? (character mimics chicken) - [Falcon] At number four is Dragon Age 2. Another day, another BioWare
game that wasted its potential. In this game's case, at least most of the blame
doesn't really fall on BioWare. EA is the real bad guy here, as is usually the case with
stories that mention EA. But they gave the studio only 16 months to make the sequel to a game
that took 'em nearly a decade. Dragon Age is a, I mean it's a culmination
of a large amount of work. There's no way this game could have ever lived up to it either. There are good ideas. The concept of an RPG where you're following
the life of one character in a specific city that changes
over a long period of time, it's a good idea. If it was properly explored, probably could have been interesting 'cause your choices could have
affected the overall makeup of the city, your companions could change
and evolve over the years. Like, think about this. Characters could become friends
then enemies then make up. Some place could be
destroyed thanks to a choice. Some magic could be used
that shouldn't have been or maybe could have been
sealed away forever. Who knows? There's a lot of unique
storytelling opportunities, but unfortunately it seemed
to kind of be an excuse to just reuse as many assets as possible because they had to make
a game in 16 months. (knight grunts) It's hard to get too mad about the story. You could call it a lazy,
both sides are bad plot, but both sides usually
are bad in some way. You just have to develop
that kind of a plot to be something nuanced and
interesting for it to work. And rather than doing that, they kind of had to speed run development, and they ended up with a lot
of really annoying characters. The Dragon Age setting, super fascinating. There's like really cool stuff
that happens in that world, but in this particular game, most of the interesting
stuff happens off screen. So what's the point? (characters grunt) - Can't take much more. - [Falcon] At number three is Left Alive. Easily one of the worst games of 2019. Kind of baffling to think that Square Enix would
release the game in the state that it was released in. Like, do you remember this? Most conversations about this game revolve around how unplayable it was. And yes, it is terrible. It was not fun to play at all. But the thing that bugs me the most is how it probably could
have been really good. Basically a game that's
like Metal Gear Solid 5 where you explore urban environments and scrounge for resources,
taking on giant mechs. You know, that sounds awesome. It sounds so awesome. - [Character] This is
what I was born to do. - [Computer] Full status check. Legs are badly damaged
and unable to function. - [Falcon] But it was a mess. A drab, ugly, badly controlling mess. The AI, mess. The art direction, mess. So much is just a mess. It's even set in the awesome
Front Mission universe, which is just completely wasted. There's three characters
you end up playing as, and they all have their own goals. So think about a version of this game where it plays like Metal Gear Solid 5, you can switch between the characters like Grand Theft Auto 5,
you can fight enemies, take command of giant
mechs in an open world. That sounds incredible. And given the right team, this could have been an incredible game. In fact, if I were Square Enix, my priority would be to make
that game again but good. It has that much potential. (gunshots) At number two is Marvel
Versus Capcom Infinite. Marvel Versus Capcom 2, one of the best fighting
games of all time. Pretty amazing follow up. In 2017 both Capcom and the Marvel brand, riding pretty high,
seems like a no-brainer that the fourth game would be amazing. But it was not. Oh, oh, it was not. The roster was weak. The graphics were, I mean, weirdly ugly. The whole gem system was an ugly holdover from Tekken Versus Street
Fighter that nobody wanted. I mean, I had to take a second here to highlight how bad the
roster was though, you know? Compared to the massive cast
of Marvel Versus Capcom 3, which had 50 characters,
25 Marvel, 25 Capcom, Infinite has only 36, and a lot of them at release
were just obvious reskins of the characters from the previous game, which was by the way on last gen consoles. Instead of a vital and interesting roster of popular characters mixed
with some obscure ones that make you go, "Oh, who's that?" It's just a parade of
characters you know from Capcom, characters from recent Marvel movies. Like, Disney really got their
hooks into Capcom this time. Even though mutants like
Wolverine are extremely popular, they were not in Marvel
Versus Capcom Infinite 'cause Disney didn't have the
rights to those characters. And it's not like Disney
doesn't have the resources to get the rights. Disney is huge. Thing is gameplay's still pretty good. It's slower and more deliberate compared to the pace of fights from 3, and teams are now just two
rather than three fighters. And it could have worked if the context of the fighting was better. But if you know what
Marvel Versus Capcom is, there's a lot more to it than
just like the fighting's good. At number one is Metal Gear Solid 5. What we did eventually get was good, but it could have been a lot more. It's hard not to play Metal Gear Solid 5 and feel like there's something missing. The opening is strange and exciting, but then you get to the rest of the game. Gameplay absolutely fantastic, but the story completely flatlines, and it struggles to recover. It feels like huge swaths of
the story are just missing. And it doesn't help that
Snake barely ever speaks, especially since they
got Kiefer Sutherland, an A-list actor, to be Snake. And like people put out
videos of every time he talks that take like four or five minutes, I don't remember exactly,
but they're not long. You go from this type of
voice to this type of voice. It would matter a lot
more if he talked more, but man, he didn't. That's not how the game went. I mean, can you remember
how mad people were about leaving David Hayter behind? And then like they also
kinda left Kiefer Sutherland behind a little too. But anyway, many clearly set up features of the story never materialize. You build the battle
gear as part of the story and then never see it again. Eli steals the metal
gear from mother base, and it never gets followed up on. Cipher's role in the story is
told entirely in audio logs. The list goes on. So much of what is implied in the trailers just never happens. People complain about
the amount of cut scenes in Metal Gear Solid games, but
this is the total opposite. At this point, the breakup
between Konami and Kojima is pretty well documented. The game may have gotten too ambitious. It was taking too long
and went way over budget. So they basically were like, "Yeah, you need to release the game." It wasn't like a buggy mess or anything, but it did feel like
a lot of its potential was never utilized. The fact that the game
is still as good as it is is really a testament to
the quality of the gameplay, 'cause the story is, I mean, I hesitate to call it total mess because there's just not
barely anything there compared to what's
clearly meant to be there. And so many of the major features that could have pushed the game into legendary status are just MIA. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let
us know what you think. If you like this video, click like. If you're not subscribed,
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right here on Gameranx.
