This is a long time coming, but they'll always be the studio that made Freespace 2, the 6DoF combat sim GOAT
Good luck, Alpha...
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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They had some kickass developer streams on YouTube. I still remember when they were playing Saints Row 3 and (I think it was the lead designer) being amazed that a helicopter had an interior texture for the cargobay even though 99% of the time you wouldn't see it. Also skinballs and how they used markers to determine NPC behaviour out in the world.
Also the horror story of how they spent weeks compiling visibility volumes for Saints row 1 and having to satisfy silly requirements set by Microsoft such as having a game trailer play on the title screen if no input was detected for a set period of time. They just played a video of them playing the fucking game so they didn't have to do any cinematics lmao.
The Red Fraction Guerilla stream was extremely interesting. How they managed to make destructible buildings and the limitations of that system. They used a stress mechanic that used key parts of a buildings frame to determine how stable it is (can't remember if they used vertex weighing or not).
But unfortunately the most talented on the team didn't get much of an input of where the IP went
As someone who loved their older games, this sucks; but as someone who has played their newer games, this was expected.
The remake was so boring that I uninstalled the game before I even finished the first mission.
SR2 was the peak of the series for me. I played 3 and 4 but they already felt like they were being constrained by budget even back then. They were mostly copy pasted mini games with far fewer missions.
Yeah there's always a lot of divided audience feedback. SR2 was too serious for me still, it felt like a low-budget GTA clone and I wasn't even a GTA fan in the first place.
But SR3 and 4? They were so ridiculously over the top, they parodied the whole genre. A genre I love to see made fun of, so they were perfect for me.
SR2 just felt like the crazy Vice City sequel that Rockstar refused to give me at the time.
San Andreas, GTA4 felt too serious. SR3 and 4 felt too silly, to the point of turning into Crackdown.
GTA5 felt back on track though, and that's probably mostly down to Trevor. You can cause utter mayhem without breaking character.
This game had all kinda of problems, but problem #1 was releasing on epic games with 0 hype. At least with a wider release they could have secured a decent launch.
Epic was the least of the problems here.
SR2022 is free on PS+ next month and all the advice I've seen says "save your bandwidth and time".
Raise a glass to a fallen comrade, and maybe play Red Faction Guerrilla again, but the Volition of old was gone a long time ago.