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An Open Letter to GungHo America
First off, I just want to say that, like many others visiting the Discussions page forGrandia II: Anniversary Edition, Grandia II happens to be one of my favorite games that I've played, let alone my favorite RPG.
That being said, you should be ashamed of yourselves, regardless of how much I happen to enjoy this game and regardless of the current efforts to fix things. Now, I don't know how involved of a process porting 15-year-old code from a Dreamcast game running on a custom Windows OS (CE) actually is or what Game Arts's original code even looked like (how "hacky" it was, whether stuff was documented, etc.), but the fact that two pinned threads and a "semi-pinned" bug list thread were needed as a response to the finished product speaks volumes.
I'm sure that the last thing that you wanted out of this release was negativity and bad PR amongst the gaming community, but, frankly, at this point, it is what it is, and you've basically owned up to the fact that mistakes were made. But, as a gamer, if the President of GungHo America goes on the record saying "With the rise of digital downloads, it is especially important that classic games continue to remain available to play in some form," and this is the product that you release, why should we ever consider trusting you in the future?
I happened to be looking forward to the results of the survey that you initially released, and when Grandia II was announced as the first fruit of that endeavor, I was excited. Heck, I was excited for what might follow it, too. But now, I don't know what to feel, even if you were to announce some kind of blockbuster title that I adore as the next game in this line of re-releases. I'm willing to give people a chance and not pigeonhole or typecast them, but the negative PR caused by this release makes me seriously have to push back the thoughts of, "Well, they do 'mobile'-type games like Puzzle and Dragons, so why did I expect anything different, quality-wise?"
Once that negative stigma is attached, it's very hard for it to go away. Much as I want to wash it away and look ahead to what might happen down the road, I simply can't, at least at this time. It's wonderful that you're addressing the problems that have arisen, but the point of the matter is that they never should have been there in the first place. I shudder just thinking of how buggy future re-releases could end up being.
Frankly, that doesn't make you as a publisher look very good, and that's bad foreveryone. We want to be able to enjoy classic titles that some people might not have access to as it stands, but if one bad release has us questioning titles that you're porting and re-releasing, then it makes you look bad, makes you consider not giving other games this same treatment, and then prevents gamers from experiencing those games, leading to an unfavorable outcome for everyone involved.
Those previous two paragraphs are especially important in the case of Grandia II: Anniversary Edition, when you consider why so many people had it high on their list and why they called out a specific version of the game. To once again directly quote the President of GungHo America, "Grandia II was chosen for a PC re-release because it represents both a hallmark of the Grandia series and an example of how great JRPGs can be." There is a caveat with his quote, however - in most everyone's minds, only the Dreamcast version is a hallmark of the series, and the previous ports are worth avoiding at all possible costs.
We were adamant about using the Dreamcast version as what to use as a base - no, as what to strive for, because, of the three, it was the optimal release. As someone who owns the Dreamcast version and has played through it many times, I honestly cannot think of a single time where I experienced any issues with it whatsoever. We (or at leastI) didn't just want a port of the game that could run on PC, we wanted what the Dreamcast release of the game represented, a port that ran as smoothly and flawlessly as the version that we were putting up on the pedestal. The community of fans that loves the game had been forced to bare through two ports with issues and imperfections strewn about them - we didn't want that to be the case for a third time. Apparently, unless you own a Dreamcast, you're still out of luck on that front, and that's an utter disappointment.
The fact that this game appears to be the amalgam of a compressed release schedule and no QA testing only gives way to more reasons to be ashamed of yourselves. Yes, I recognize that you are not an EA or an Activision, or any of the other "AAA" Publishing Studios of the world and that budgets and time frames must fall within your means, but releasing a poorly-finished product is not going to garner any favor or sympathy from gamers. I'm not even going to throw SkyBox Labs under the bus, because, with the information I have right now (i.e. none), for all I know, they were given the outlandish task of understanding the original Dreamcast code, porting it to work on modern hardware, and deal with the "HD" aspect of the game, all in a four month timespan! (And that's if you decide that you don't want it done early to do QA testing!)
The fact that this project was announced in the middle of May 2015, saw its first set of screenshots two months later in July, and then was announced just one month later to be releasing at the end of August, is very telling of the timetable that this game was given. Could development have been started before the May 2015 announcement? Quite possibly, however the press release sent to GameSpot for that announcement would seem to indicate that development had barely begun at that time. Unless SkyBox Labs bent the truth and claimed that the port was fine and would be ready for the deadline, surely there must have been internal communications raising red flags about the problems with the release. Look, I come from the era of gaming where, unless you printed a new master to fix a really broken game, once the game was released, that's how it stayed. And, to quote Mr. Miyamoto, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
Lastly, there is the "HD" aspect of this release, especially picking a few phrases from that same, original GameSpot press release announcement: "Grandia II for Steam is being remastered using the game's Dreamcast version" and "In addition to an HD visual upgrade". Outside of resolution options (widescreen complaints excluded, as, having played the game previously, I already know that the spells and FMVs are prerendered at a 4:3 ratio), the extent of this "remaster" and "HD visual upgrade" is, what, a percentage of textures that were up-ressed?
I wasn't expecting the game to be rebuilt from the ground up to give all of the characters full models, give each weapon unique textures, and so on and so forth - in fact, I don't want that, as Grandia IIs graphics are part of its charm for me. However, I think it's fair that people are raising points about the various UI elements in the game and the nonuniformity of the new textures. If this game was still running in 640x480 like it does on the Dreamcast, the UI would be fine; however, you have increased the possible resolutions that players are rendering the game in and are simply scaling the graphics to match that ratio, leaving those assets looking wildly out of place. Surely some basic image-manipulation could have at least gussied the graphics up to the point where they still "were" the original graphical elements, but looked much cleaner? "Maintaining the original experience" has nothing to do with anything in regards to this, as all that needed to be done was make the original graphics look better, not replace them with completely new ones.
Was it determined midway through development that "remastering" the game with "HD visuals" was a problem, facilitating the name change to the current Grandia II: Anniversary Edition? I have yet to play this release (and will not consider purchasing it or making good on my promise to a dear friend to gift him a copy so that he can enjoy the version of the game that I have for so many years), so I cannot judge the actual acuity of the game for myself; however, everything I have seen in the released screenshots leads me to wonder what exactly is being considered "remastered" and "HD visuals" beyond the defined concept of HD in terms of displayable resolution.
As I said previously, I'm appreciative of the fact that steps are being taken to improve upon this release, and I will certainly keep my eye on this discussion page for updates to the game, waiting, hoping for the day when the game matches the version that it is supposedly a port of. Until then, this release will not find its way into my Steam Library and I will personally recommend to anyone that I talk to about this title to do the same. I certainly do not want to do that, because Grandia II is something that I cherish and I want more people to experience it as I have. I was also very pleased at the concept of the original survey and what it might produce, so I truly want to support this release to ensure that future titles may be re-released, but I cannot, in good conscience, support a product that has as many issues as this at this time. I enjoy video games, but I very strongly believe in the principle of "voting with my wallet", especially in regards to consumer activism.
Thank you for reading.
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发表于 2015-8-29 10:21
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