Dennis Dyack Sucks

Maybe you played Eternal Sonata/Sunshine? What was the name of that Gamecube game w/ the girl w/ the blonde hair? I'm sititng here trying to use my mind and not the internet to remember it. I played the first level. Eternal something. Had elemental based magic.

Made by Silicon Knights, who, in keeping w/ the royalty theme, is king of overrated game developers (i'll get to that)

Eternal.... Sanity's Requiem.... ETERNAL DARKNESS? Right?

/checking internet

Boooyaaa

So Dennis Dyack is the owner or something, and in the past year has been known for two things: talking about how revolutionary his game will be, and about how the industry is screwed up.

Second issue first. Apparently Dyack and crew showed their game Too Human (originally intended to be a N64 title) at E3 or some other big game show and everyone said it was unimpressive. The result of that being endless podcasts, interviews and other web media whoring about how E3 and other conventions are ruining game development.

This little gem sums up his view nicely.

"We in the videogame industry need to take a lesson from Hollywood in the way we market our products. We should not start the PR and marketing campaigns until after a game is complete."


Right. The Hollywood Model. Like how Jurassic Park was doing CG dinosaurs up to a week before the print went out? Like how most trailers I work on have dudes running around on greenscreened sets for half the shots because the effects aren't even done yet (the trailer shots!). Yeah. The Hollywood model. Spoken like a true kid who once read a book on film making.

The problems w/ his game are two fold. The first is that it's a vanity project. It has to be if it started life as an N64 title. Maybe he was waiting tor technology to improve, same way George Lucas said he was waiting for visual effects to catch up to his imagination, and once they had, he promptly shit into his hands. But I don't think so. I think this is a straight up vanity project. A Spruce Goose.

I've seen some video of the game, which leads to it's second problem. It's a run around slasher w/ the design sense of Halo (purple + green = alienz). God of War in space, with space stuff. I think it might even be a trilogy of games, which is the most inexcusable thing i can imagine, but that may have to be another post. This one's already like, stalker long. The unoriginal gameplay idea makes sense though. in 1998 or whenever that was, a God of War type game would have been super innovative. But this is games. Games are the most rapidly evolving commercial entertainment. TV, Books, Movies and Music are all pretty well established. New processors = new opportunities for games. Portal would have been impossible 10 years ago (I think?). So 8 year old brilliance is as stale as the loaf bread you were munching on when you had the idea.

Now, I don't wanna hate overly, but this guy super pissed me off when I played Metal Gear Twin Snakes, which for a game that came out after MGS 2, and on a technically superior system, looked and played way worse. I stopped playing it shortly after Revolver Ocelot lost his hand. I love me some Metal Gear.