Indieszero has 40 people on staff with prior experience developing on Unity so they built this game with what they were able to use.
News ► Gamekult interviews Hazama, Nomura & Suzui about KH Melody of Memory
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Indieszero has 40 people on staff with prior experience developing on Unity so they built this game with what they were able to use.
That just makes me even more sad at the likely possibility that this game will end up flopping.
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Well, I wouldn't say unheard of (Project Diva Future Tone, DJMAX Respect, even Theatrhythm FF Curtain Call come to mind), but certainly uncommon.
Yeah, same. Also I think it was a huge mistake to make this story-relevant. It created the wrong idea in people’s minds about this project on all sides.
That’s really what I meant. Not impossible, just not a frequent thing.
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Does how much money the developers spent on the game take precedence over the actual content? Personally when I look at graphics I care more about my own opinion on them than... I dunno, them reaching some arbitrary level of Money which is determined by the publisher/producer anyway. (Nevermind the fact that remaking every world from the whole series in KH3 style for a rhythm game was never gonna happen anyway, but that's besides my point.)
As someone who misses mid-budget development especially in Kingdom Hearts, the use of PS2 graphics is awesome IMO. I'd go as far as to say that KH3's style looks worse in comparison especially for dialogue cutscenes.
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Like...I know it's a negative post, but this news isn't good news.
•If there is a freeplay option (and there is, we know songs can be selected individually outside of the story mode), there isn't a good reason to not have a freely editable party. The work is already done animation wise, the game is literally on rails, so why in the world can't I have a Sora/Riku/Aqua party (just for example)? It'd be like forcing Mario to use the Mario branded cart in a Mario Kart game. It's needlessly restrictive.
© They don't need to even give us new costumes (I'd pay extra for KH2 Sora but we know it isn't gonna happen). Just do palette swaps. DDD and KH1 Sora use the same character model for example. KH1 and DDD Riku. Anti Aqua is just a palette swap of base Aqua. Terranort is literally Terra with gold eyes and silver hair. etc. It's RIGHT THERE, but SE says no because...reasons?
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indieszero is just working with what they got, dude.
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To SE: Give indieszero more. Give them more assets, more time, more of what they need. Look - If y'all want to celebrate the music of the series, then sell the OST. Preferably alongside the games instead of months to year after release. If y'all want to make a video game that celebrates the music of the series, then make a video game. Go all the way. You're not making this as a simple primer of what's happened from KH0 til KHReMIND -- we got that from Memory Archives and so on. This is a game for the fans (maybe SPECIFICALLY for the fans of the music?), but a video game nonetheless. Stripping basic features like free party and unlockable costumes, while also throwing the release of the game right next to the release of next gen consoles, is not good sense of your existing fans nor of making money for new players.
It's just not a good look. I'm not pinning any blame on the developers. This is just another example of SE mismanagement driving people away.
Yeah this is pretty much Limit Cut for $60 in terms of story progression which to be frank, is what we’re all chomping at the bit for. You’ll get a few intro cutscenes, then the hours you spend on completing the game, and a few cutscenes at the end that Nomura and co have openly said are not going to move forward much.
I’m gonna guess that the most that happens is Kairi is told by Ansem the Wise and co that they don’t know anything. Kairi analyzes her memories and Sora’s memories. Kairi and Riku follow their hearts to the Final World and get some clues from the Nameless Star about Sora and Yozora’s confrontation, and Kairi sees a hallucination/vision of MOM who probably takes off his hood to show he’s Sora, but it’s just a trick. Kairi gets a cutscene with Yen Sid and Mickey in which they agree they don’t really know anything and Yen Sid explains the Realm of Death or something?
Am I still getting it? Absolutely, it looks fun, and I do appreciate that Nomura is already telling us to check our expectations in terms of story progression. If there’s one wham moment I want from this, I want the Nameless Star to confirm which of the Secret Episode endings was canon. A part of me is really hoping that the bad ending was canon.
I’m gonna guess that the most that happens is Kairi is told by Ansem the Wise and co that they don’t know anything. Kairi analyzes her memories and Sora’s memories. Kairi and Riku follow their hearts to the Final World and get some clues from the Nameless Star about Sora and Yozora’s confrontation, and Kairi sees a hallucination/vision of MOM who probably takes off his hood to show he’s Sora, but it’s just a trick. Kairi gets a cutscene with Yen Sid and Mickey in which they agree they don’t really know anything and Yen Sid explains the Realm of Death or something?
Am I still getting it? Absolutely, it looks fun, and I do appreciate that Nomura is already telling us to check our expectations in terms of story progression. If there’s one wham moment I want from this, I want the Nameless Star to confirm which of the Secret Episode endings was canon. A part of me is really hoping that the bad ending was canon.
It does when a significant amount of the developer's expense gets pushed onto the consumer. Again, as far as enjoying the series music, like cumguardian said, we have soundtracks for those. Having those be a big chunk of the price is a bit of a ripoff when we already have extraneous products that supply more of the same material. And the devs having to spend so much for song rights takes away from budget that could have been used to make more of an actual game. And if it's more of an issue with the devs just being too few in number to handle a true triple A title, I get that, but then it shouldn't be getting billed as one.
My problem is this game doesn't really seem to understand where it fits commercially. On the one hand, it's a simple rhythm game with budget assets being made by a handful of developers, but on the other hand, it's story-relevant and charges the price of a full AAA game. They can't have it both ways. And I think the result of this is that this game is probably going to tank, because few people outside our fanzone are going to be willing to pay that much for a product that a) reuses assets b) has only 10 hours of main game content, c) lacks customizability, and d) isn't even a fully fledged JRPG game.
Again, the game would be fine if not for that price tag. If there was no way to make a game like this with all these tracks without paying so much for the music rights, then the idea was conceptually flawed from the beginning—it either should have been a cheaper game on a simpler console with NO story relevancy to compensate for the soundtrack costs, OR there should be MUCH more story relevance to justify the expenditures and the consumer cost. It feels half-assed, and particularly unwise considering we're living in a time right now when most people are losing their sources of income, and frivolous expenditures like video games are beyond most people's capacities right now even for games that deserve their price tags.
For this game, I foresee only an incredibly niche pool of people who will be willing to shell out their wallets for it: KH loyalists who don't MIND a rhythm game, and people who love rhythm games so much that they'd happily splurge for this instead of MUCH cheaper alternatives in the market. But most people who even have the luxury of affording video games to begin with—an increasingly dwindling percentage of the population—are likely to save that $60 for something much more like a full-fledged game. All in all, this just seems like a very poorly conceived title from a business perspective. I'm sure the game will be fine for what it is, I just think $30 would have been a much more reasonable price, or they could justify $60 if they had $60 worth of story content and not just a measly 10 hours. One or the other, but assuming people will put up with both is asking too much, even for the most ardent KH fans OR the most hardcore rhythm game fans.
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Time and money isn’t going to change the fact that Disney asked if SE could make a music-based game, SE went to a trusted musical game dev company, and that’s what SE is delivering.
They’re still making the big budgeted action games y’all want, but those take time to make. It sounds like some of y’all would rather a games drought for a couple of years, like we had from 2007-2009. While we knew we had games to look forward to, we didn’t have anything to actually enjoy for the 3 years between KH2 and Days. At least this time we have MoM to pass the time while the next Osaka game and the mysterious project gets developed.
I know this idea gets shit on but seriously... if you’re not happy with the game and you’re not happy with the price then you do have the option to not buy it. Wait for a discount or just watch the cutscenes online.
Yes, every single person in here would love options. I would have loved to mix and match characters and I’d have loved to be able to use KH2 Sora but while I’m disappointed I can also accept the reality that, with less than 2 months until launch (which includes going gold in about a month), they’re not going to really add in that kind of stuff while they’re in the final stages of development.
They’re still making the big budgeted action games y’all want, but those take time to make. It sounds like some of y’all would rather a games drought for a couple of years, like we had from 2007-2009. While we knew we had games to look forward to, we didn’t have anything to actually enjoy for the 3 years between KH2 and Days. At least this time we have MoM to pass the time while the next Osaka game and the mysterious project gets developed.
I know this idea gets shit on but seriously... if you’re not happy with the game and you’re not happy with the price then you do have the option to not buy it. Wait for a discount or just watch the cutscenes online.
Yes, every single person in here would love options. I would have loved to mix and match characters and I’d have loved to be able to use KH2 Sora but while I’m disappointed I can also accept the reality that, with less than 2 months until launch (which includes going gold in about a month), they’re not going to really add in that kind of stuff while they’re in the final stages of development.
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@AR829038 are you going to format that for human eyes or...?
It's really not that simple.
Look, none of us like these decisions, but this is the result of the circumstances and we can't change that. We wouldn't be getting this game at all if Disney didn't randomly remember a proposal had been made for a KH rhythm game 5 years ago and was actually willing to greenlight it this time.
Game development comes with numerous terms and conditions, especially when you're dealing with one of the biggest media companies in the world. There isn't like a fund anyone can freely dip into when something that tickles their fancy. You're going to have to deal with a lot of moving parts and different people who each want to have their own say, and ultimately all of this will impact the end product. Nobody woke up one day and said "Hey, let's make a low budget rhythm game with extremely limited options, clearly the money is going to rain down from the heavens."
You say you're not pinning the blame on the devs but we've literally watched you do it for weeks. You've been desperately looking for a single party to blame for any misgivings you have with the game, but I don't think you're going to find that.
It's one thing to be disappointed; it's another thing to constantly make false accusations and scream that you've been wronged and robbed.
Be reasonable. If you can't, make your peace with it and move on. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and bitching for the sake of bitching, and frankly, we're all tired of the latter.
It's really not that simple.
Look, none of us like these decisions, but this is the result of the circumstances and we can't change that. We wouldn't be getting this game at all if Disney didn't randomly remember a proposal had been made for a KH rhythm game 5 years ago and was actually willing to greenlight it this time.
Game development comes with numerous terms and conditions, especially when you're dealing with one of the biggest media companies in the world. There isn't like a fund anyone can freely dip into when something that tickles their fancy. You're going to have to deal with a lot of moving parts and different people who each want to have their own say, and ultimately all of this will impact the end product. Nobody woke up one day and said "Hey, let's make a low budget rhythm game with extremely limited options, clearly the money is going to rain down from the heavens."
You say you're not pinning the blame on the devs but we've literally watched you do it for weeks. You've been desperately looking for a single party to blame for any misgivings you have with the game, but I don't think you're going to find that.
It's one thing to be disappointed; it's another thing to constantly make false accusations and scream that you've been wronged and robbed.
Be reasonable. If you can't, make your peace with it and move on. There's a fine line between constructive criticism and bitching for the sake of bitching, and frankly, we're all tired of the latter.
IIRC, the next big budget game is already being developed as we speak.
Yeah! It is
Two teams separate from 3 (Osaka) and UXDR (bitgroove). The title Nomura was hinting at here was MoM, developed by Indieszero (not a team started up for game development, just a new team working on the series) so there’s still an unknown team working on something.
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Yeah! It is
Two teams separate from 3 (Osaka) and UXDR (bitgroove). The title Nomura was hinting at here was MoM, developed by Indieszero (not a team started up for game development, just a new team working on the series) so there’s still an unknown team working on something.
Oh nice. So there is one title worked by the main team and one title worked by one last mysterious team.
I am a bit sad, because I wanted the melody of memory team to be a proper KH team so that they could make more games after MoM.
Why am I getting SWSH controversy flashbacks? Like you guys can't deny some of these decisions feel weird? I mean this is the perfect game for DLC! Like this fanbase bought keyblade add-ons for KH3? Its easy money with little effort. Also we know this game is going to sell for like 5 bucks in the future so why not maximize profits while you can?
I think everyone understands this was a mid budget game, which is why there's quite a decent amount of people miffed at the clearly non mid-budget price, whether you find that to be valid or not.
There's nothing really in this interview that I didn't already expect but the lack of KH2 Sora *does* hurt, it feels like a vendetta at this point.
As for the argument over graphics, while there's plenty of places where I think the previous style looked better than the new one, having that AAA price tag just puts expectations in people's minds, rightly or wrongly, because everyone has a bias and what they personally deem as a baseline to pay for such and such things, and one of those things is "Huh well why are the graphics not as "good" as KH3s?".
Anyway, that's just what I think about it, I don't think the complaints regarding this are super puzzling, which is the feeling I seem to get from your posts regarding this topic, I think they're pretty understandable at the baseline
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It's sunk cost + stockholm for a franchise that has done dirty at every turn. The status quo is set and any attempt to vocalize dissent is seen as hate and misinformation. Same as for PKMN SwSh. The writing was on the wall, Masuda came out and said not to expect certain things when examples of those certain things already existed in the franchise, then the pro-SwSh folks had a collective confused Pikachu face when SwSh came out to be lackluster at best. The same is going to happen with KH MoM, only the ride or die KH fans won't admit that MoM was unfairly priced - they'll eat it up and keep defending decisions because the music (that was recorded and paid for ages ago) is so good.