Games Inbox: Is Xbox multiformat for all games now?

The Thursday letters page tries to work out what the next Zelda game might be, as readers claim to be put off from buying an Xbox Series X/S.

Dreamcast moment
People have been saying for months now that Phil Spencer can’t be trusted but his latest non-interview about Indiana Jones And The Great Circle really puts a bad taste in my mouth. Not only does he know that we know that he’s lying but we all know he’s going to keep doing it and that nothing he says can, or probably ever should have been, trusted.

What was the point of earlier in the year saying Indiana Jones definitely wasn’t going multiformat, only to change his mind a few months later. Were Xbox console sales really so shocking in the middle of summer that they suddenly had to change plans? Obviously not.

It’s clear now that Xbox as a brand has already gone multiformat, behind the scenes, and it’s just a case of announcing each individual game. People are already trying to run damage control on this, but this is basically when Sega gave up on the Dreamcast. Except Microsoft isn’t making a clean break and is going to drag this slow death out for years.

Sure, Xbox might make money being multiformat but they won’t be a format holder then, they’ll just be a big publisher like EA or Tencent, not someone you’d owe any loyalty to or want to support outside of specific games.
Grant

Keep them guessing
Microsoft announcing Indy on PlayStation 5 is just bizarre. I think of Microsoft Gaming as trying to be like Disney. Disney make a film and then it goes to cinema, rental, Disney+, competitor streaming platforms, and then broadcast TV. I can see the logic in this working for games to: Xbox, PC, and Game Pass Ultimate first, followed by regular Game Pass, and PlayStation 5/Nintendo, maybe even Amazon’s thing.

But Disney don’t announce the dates for everything at the beginning. They leave you to guess if it will be six months till something’s on Disney+, and for other streaming platforms it’s even more random on when it will happen and which one it will be on. They don’t announce six months in advance of it hitting Disney+ that it’s going to Netflix three months later. The incentive of getting something early is worth far more when you have no idea how long you’ll have to wait.
Tim

Same old story
So we’ve gone from people acting in denial about the Xbox rumours to all of them being proven right, eh? It’s funny how people are always absolutely convinced a rumour isn’t true, and will shout about it being fake, if it’s something they don’t want to be real. But if it’s something they’re okay with, suddenly those anonymous trusted sources are very reliable.

Obviously, not all rumours are true, but I think it’s pretty easy to spot the ones that are. Nothing big in gaming ever stays a secret for long, and the old saying about no smoke without fire is almost always true. Although the problem with Xbox is they have twice as many rumours as anyone else anyway.
Gantry

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Schedule planner
I also thought that Gamescom Opening Night Live was more entertaining than usual for this sort of thing. The Indiana Jones stuff was nothing if not interesting and it had a good reveal at the start. But why do all of these events have a boring bit two or three before the end that’s always about games that already exist, usually on PC? Why has that become part of the formula?

Last time it was Valorant and this time it was Blizzard and whatever they were droning on about for too long. Diablo 4 and Warcraft, I think? I guess it makes sense though, you want to start strong then, you have ups and downs, then you get the really boring stuff out the way, and then finish strongly. I guess in reality it probably isn’t easy to organise these things, and I appreciated that they got it right this time.
Trepsils

Unknown creator
So, we know that the next Zelda is going to be the one where you play as Zelda but what’s everyone’s guess for what’s next after that? I think it’s got to be a remaster or remake. I don’t see how they can have another new game next year, even a spin-off, unless they’re getting someone other than Nintendo to make it, which they haven’t for ages.

Or have they? I checked and there doesn’t seem to be any information on who is making Echoes Of Wisdom, which seems strange to me. Maybe it’s Capcom again? Or some other Japanese developer that Nintendo trusts. As long as the quality is high, and the games imaginative, I am fine with others getting a chance to make them.
Enzio

GC: Nintendo has been purposefully withholding information on developers lately, which is really bad of them. The Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake, which shares the same art style, was by Grezzo, so it’s more than possible Echoes Of Wisdom could be by them.

Trust issues
I know Peter Molyneux has been widely discredited years ago but that showing at Gamescom Opening Night Live was laughably bad. Everything he was showing was just every janky idea he’s ever had, shoved into one place. He talked about originality and all I could see was old ideas from Black & White, Dungeon Keeper and all the rest. I’m not sure there was even one actually new thing, unless you count making sandwiches.

I can’t help but compare Molyneux and the various untruths that have been flowing from Xbox’s direction lately, and it’s no surprise to me that that’s where Molyneux used to work.

With everything else going wrong in the games industry at the moment it seems like one of the main ones is we can’t trust what anyone is telling us. I know I should just worry about the games and forget the rest but when all this news is going around and the big events are nothing but ego boosts for individuals it’s hard to ignore.
MartyJ

Good news
I woke up this morning and GC made me smile, and I mean a full blown smile, saying that Indiana Jones is coming to PlayStation 5.

It’s the one game I’m most looking forward to and it’s coming to PlayStation. Yes, five months after Xbox but who cares, it’s coming. That’s just saved me some money on getting an Xbox or Game Pass just to play that game.
David

Apples vs. oranges
When I first saw the gameplay trailers for Black Myth: Wukong years ago I was hyped. Everything about the game, such as the combat, enemy designs, aesthetics, and graphics looked great.

Like many, I purchased the game on release, and I can say it delivered on the hype. The gameplay, like any action role-playing game, is centred around combat and the game absolutely delivers in providing enjoyable combat. The combat not only looks good with its smooth and slick animations, but it feels good too. It’s responsive, attacks feel weighty, and the controls are tight. There’s no input lag either.

Black Myth: Wukong has been at times mislabelled as a Soulslike by some. It isn’t and for me it plays more like a traditional action role-playing game. Maybe the difficulty could have been inspired by the Souls games but then again, it could have been inspired by the Ninja Gaiden games.

But considering it gets brought up, I’d have to say that Black Myth: Wukong has definitely set another gold standard for action role-playing games going forward and has put the likes of Dark Souls and Elden Ring to shame. Like I said earlier, it plays great and doesn’t suffer from any of the flaws of FromSoftware’s games, like input lag, bad camera issues during boss fights, or weightless dodging.

It also has vastly superior bosses, level design, and the combat is much better. The combat systems in Soulslikes are too lacking, repetitive, and basic in comparison.

Wukong features combos, skills, jump attacks. and mechanics like transitioning mid-combo to another or being able to cast a spell, use a special attack or jump attack mid-combo. Stamina works different too, in comparison to Soulslikes. You can keep attacking when stamina runs out but with reduced effectiveness. All this combined gameplay-wise, leads to a much more in-depth and enjoyable gameplay experience than the two button attacks of Soulslike, where you only ever need to use the light attack. In Wukong, you really are required to utilise most things in combat to beat a boss with ease and in that sense it creates a better experience.

The combat doesn’t have the same level of depth as games like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, or even an action role-playing game like the Nioh games, which is another series I’d say has set a gold standard for action role-playing games. It shows too, in that both Ghost Of Tsushima and Black Myth’s stance systems were inspired by Nioh, with Black Myth even having its own take on Nioh 2’s Yokai abilities. But the combat still is deep enough that I’m learning new things even 10 hours into the game.

The bosses, meanwhile, are absolutely amazing. Their attacks are beautifully animated and the design behind every boss I’ve encountered thus far has been unique. This is again, another area where Wukong blows all Soulslike games out of the water as they have a tendency to reuse bosses and even make them regular enemies that you encounter.

I’ve been truly impressed with the boss fights in Wukong. The way they respond to your attacks with dodges, the way you can dodge their attacks, counter, knock them about or be knocked about just makes these fights so much fun. It almost feels cinematic when you can perch atop Wukong’s staff in his pillar stance just before a boss charges you and then drop down with a smack attack on their head. Or my favourite is using Wukong’s double-charged focused attack in his smash stance, at the right time through a horizontal slash attack and having Wukong leap before it gets him to perform an aerial slam attack on the boss.

And that’s the amazing thing about the combat, it’s not just about learning how to perfect dodges but learning when to use Wukong’s focus attacks, spells, and skills at the right time. Many can, if timed right, be utilised to counter as well as dodge. When you master a boss correctly, you learn to go toe-to-toe against them aggressively, just performing these perfect strikes, combos, and dodges in what looks like a dance.

And in that, Wukong’s fighting style is perfectly animated and befitting of how you’d think an agile monkey should fight like, or the Monkey King I should say.

That’s another area I think Wukong delivers on. The story (based on Journey To The West) is told in many ways, through direct cut scenes with a diverse range of human and non-human characters, environmental storytelling, and the artistic cinematics you get at the end of each chapter. Chapter 2 ended with a brilliant stop motion cinematic that was very lovingly made, and it truly shows. The dialogue is also very well written and characters are animated perfectly in both facial expressions and body language.

The level design is also good. Not only well designed in terms of how player progression works but also well designed in all the detail in the environments you explore and, yes, there’s exploration. Contrary to some things I’ve seen online, the game isn’t just a boss rush game. The first half of Chapter 1 feels like that but afterwards, there’s a fair bit of exploration between bosses including optional areas to explore, regular enemies to fight and loot to find.

I think the idea of the game just being a boss rush is something being repeated by people who haven’t bothered to play the game and in fact, the only negatively I’ve seen to the game thus far has come from fanboys of other games upset about Black Myth’s success or people who only watched 30 minutes of the game on YouTube.

The game has clearly been a success. It’s currently boasting a 10/10 player review score on Steam from over 160,000 reviewers and has the second highest concurrent player count on Steam of all time, after clocking in with 2 million players, surpassing the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring, and this year’s Palworld.

So, I hope its success tells other developers that we want more traditional action role-playing games again with a combat system with combos and not more boring unoriginal Soulslikes. If Nioh, Rise Of The Rōnin, and Steller Blade couldn’t tell them that because they didn’t end up insanely popular, well Black Myth definitely should.

In any case, for me, Black Myth, so far has absolutely delivered on the hype.
Johnathan

GC: You obviously liked it more than we did but why do you keep comparing it to Soulslikes if you insist it isn’t one? Especially as Nioh is a Soulslike.

Inbox also-rans
I remember emailing in at the start of the year to say how the Indiana Jones game being an exclusive might be the tipping point for me to get an Xbox. Well, I can say there is definitely one less Xbox being sold now!
Pigfish2 (PSN ID/NN ID)

When is your Black Myth: Wukong review going up? Want to see your take on it before committing!
Lizardpudlian

GC: Right about now.

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