for the reasons we've been over multiple times. for have 4 "major" studios we're still seeing nothing really playable in the real sense of a game, not sure what the mocap is doing, seems to be bits on various trailers for new ships etc and various comments about crap-looking animations that i can't comment on but which shouldn't even be raised as a commetn if mocapping is being used, i'd think - unless they're mocapping rubbish actors.
as for all this alien languages, this is all the unutterable ***** that is wasting time and effort. some fanboys bleat about wanting to be able to speak Vanduul or whatever [oooh, let's be like the trekkies who speak klingon!!] and time, money and effort is wasted coming up w/ unecessary rubbish like that instead of putting that time money and effort into hitting targets.
and as for "looking for more money", goog suggests [as a random example] that Skyrim cost, including marketing, $90m, Battlefield 4 cost $100m ~ SC has $172m you say and still "needs more". and you ask why i think there's an issue.
The animations are excellent in 3rd person and well structured. The parts around them are having issues now because other tools and similar are not in place which is why the animation video up above was linked to show what they was working on. There are things that they are tweaking but generally other than honestly in this forum and stuff from DS I haven't seen any critics really hitting the animations apart from when they break but that is Alpha.
The running, walking, general movement of the players and subtle differences to facial animations and similar are very well executed. Rubbish actors aren't the problem unless your calling out Gary Oldman and similar
A lot of people backed the game because they wanted something that does more than other games in terms of lore, alien races with languages and similar offers for them. No it isn't for everyone but there is dozens of other games for that. It isn't unnecessary rubbish though to a lot. Just because it isn't what you want doesn't mean others shouldn't be able to have something they would like. I mean I am not bothered by it myself but I appreciate that something is being done in the gaming industry that doesn't happen often and there is a different level of detail being produce that does not always happen.
Skyrim
Skyrim is fine but it is a limited game built of an engine and features that was set up to do what it wants. I pointed out that SC & SQ42 are separate fully fledged games so at the current $172 million when brought up that would be $86 million for making the game and all their marketing to date. So so far it is about at level of Skyrim in terms of cost for SC in that terms assuming that they have spent every penny to date. If they have $22 million left then so far they have spent $75 million to getting here. And tbh assuming 3.1 drops with the mechanics in game for mining that would offer as much as Skyrim offers in pure gameplay loop terms (of course there a story line there etc) however the game-loop for Skyrim is explore and have battles, technically you can do that in the PTU of 3.0 so when 3.1 drops and you get mining added then you have twice as many game-loops as that of Skyrim.
Not to mention the scale of Skyrim, we know it fits in one crater on one asteroid in one system of what SC is trying to produce. Hopefully Stanton when done during the 3.X loop over the next 12 months will show the large variation of what we can expect from 115+ systems. I would say that there is a way to go of course but creating tools to produce this take 3+ years to create. It is why licencing an engine used to be so expensive. The money spent doing such things is huge, the time outlay is as well. Skyrim didn't have any of that to really content with due to how it was developed in that they used the Havok system for all the animation side and plugged it into their engine which although new was built of their own internal previous engine.
There are some nice things in Creation engine though like weight to tree branches and waterflow which add subtleties but is that any different to an alien language or lore? Does it for instance add to the main gameplay loop, no but do we praise games for details, of course.
Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4 is a rehash of Battlefield 3 and expanded on, nothing wrong with that, but not something you can really compare in my opinion. The fact it cost so much with so little added between 3 & 4 shows the cost of what a new IP with new lore, new completely custom assets need especially when you have to concept a lot more. Battlefield 4 for instance has so many real world references that they needed much less time and budget to work through their concept assets. It is a completely different game again.
You are really not comparing anything close in terms of what the games are to what the budgets are. It is pretty hard to nail down a game that has been developed like this in terms of new IP on such a large scale in such detail whilst trying to offer such variance in gameplay loops for all players.
A True Example to Compare - SW:TOR
So let's take a game that is as close to SC as we have seen and where it stands with that to at least get somewhat relative comparison. SW:TOR if you include all the expansions in terms of gameplay loops is the closest that has been produced.
That cost between $150-$200 million + $65 million in marketing
(or $164.5 - $219 million + $71 million in marketing in today's monies) to produce from an established studio with known targets, had all the assets, lore and similar to fall back on since it of course a massive IP.
It started development in terms of writing in 2006 and released in 2011. Patches have been released right up to 2016 to get it to what it is now. That would equate to 10 years development and of course more funds coming in via subscriptions. This is what SC is trying to be on day one of release whilst also producing a second game along side it and not having the need for subscriptions later. They will need a pot from something with tens of millions in to keep servers going for SC and that is what SQ42 should provide them.
Let's take the fact that development started 2011 with CR and a few mates initially, that is fine. I am not going to suggest it started 2014 or anything. So we are 6 years in however just like Star Wars first two really being working out what is going on and getting the base gameplay loops figured out, the basics for lore, aliens and similar.
End Conclusion
With that we can see the requirements, time and cost to do such a game are huge because of the game type that it is. Comparing them to other games doesn't work if they are not at least holding true to the main gameplay loop of what SC is doing.
And we really need to consider there 4 studios working on 2 games here rather than 450 people working on one game.
