Cornell Otto

Warner Games has had a very bad fate in recent years. The consecutive failures of Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights have made them tighten their game business, and many games that are being developed or operated have announced their cessation. Wonder Woman, which was still in normal development some time ago, also received bad news.

Development Termination

Warner Bros. recently confirmed that Wonder Woman game produced by Monolith Productions has been canceled, and studios such as Monolith Productions, Player First Games and WB San Diego will be closed.

Warner said that this decision was based on “strategic direction adjustment” and that it would re-examine the development studios and investments in the future, focusing on core IPs - Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones and DC, to create better game content.

Player Reaction

The cancellation of Wonder Woman has sparked a lot of discussion among players. Vara Dark released a video commenting on the current status of Warner’s game business. She pointed out that Warner Games has been in a state of turmoil in recent years, with multiple projects performing poorly, including a loss of $100 million for Multiverse Battle Royale, and the huge losses brought by Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The total impairment of the entire game business has exceeded $300 million. She believes that the cancellation of Wonder Woman has undoubtedly made the situation worse.

Vara Dark also mentioned that many players, including herself, were disappointed with the decision, especially for Rocksteady’s Batman series. She believes that Warner has obviously allowed “suspicious people” to control these studios, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad has problems, and Monolith is facing a similar fate, and even the studio has been closed. This means that we may never see Monolith bring new works such as First Encounter Assault Recon or Middle-earth. She thinks this is both regrettable and sad.

Vara Dark also recalled Nemesis system introduced by Monolith in Middle-earth. This innovative mechanism gave the enemy a unique personality and behavior pattern, greatly enhancing the immersion and playability of the game. Although Monolith has applied for a patent for this system, this idea may now be buried by Warner.

Vara Dark also questioned Warner’s strategy of building games around core IPs. Because both Wonder Woman and Middle-earth are developed based on these IPs, the practice of shutting down Monolith seems extremely contradictory. She pointed out that since Wonder Woman debuted in 2021, Warner has hardly publicly shown any gameplay or character models, and the game has undergone multiple remakes. She speculated that Warner may have planned to transform it into a live service game from the beginning, but after seeing the poor performance of games like Multiverse Smash, it chose to return to the stand-alone mode. Frequent direction adjustments ultimately led to the game’s difficult birth.

Warner Bros.’ plan is to continue developing Batman series of games. This time the game will be set in the future and accepted by the studio that created the Batman Arkham series. The game is expected to be released after 2027. I hope this Batman will not suffer the same fate as Wonder Woman.

Every trailer of Phantom Blade Zero is impressive, so good that people can’t believe its authenticity, but its actual game demo is even better than the trailer, which makes players look forward to it more and more.

The producer of Phantom Blade Zero recently talked about the design direction of the game in an interview with VICE, saying that it “combines the exploration experience of soul-like games and the combat experience of traditional action games.”

What Kind Of Game Is Shadow Blade Zero?

The producer said that Phantom Blade Zero was not a soul-like game from the beginning, but it is not a traditional action game either. It is a new type of game structure derived and designed by S-Game itself, which may combine the exploration experience of soul-like games and the combat experience of traditional action games.

There are a lot of cultivation and collection elements in the game, and the plot is far more complicated than ordinary action games. Phantom Blade Zero’s predecessor Rainblood: Town of Death is even a turn-based RPG. It has side quests, multiple endings, weapon upgrades, skill trees, and complex three-dimensional maps. This is also different from the pure hack-and-slash games that players usually understand. S-Game does not follow the established pattern of any specific genre, but derives a new type of game from scratch.

The producer also talked about that Phantom Blade Zero has a simple difficulty suitable for novices and an extremely difficult difficulty suitable for experts (harder than Souls games). The amazing, high-speed battles in the promotional video can actually be completed with only a few buttons, no combination keys, no rubbing moves, but there is still a gradual learning curve and a very deep practice depth.

S-Game will try its best to ensure that the game runs at 2k 40~60fps on PS5, and it will be clearer and smoother if it is on PS5pro or PC equipped with high-end graphics cards. The producer confidently stated that according to the actual feedback from last year, Phantom Blade Zero is not only as smooth as it looks but also smoother than the visual effect in actual operation.

What Kind Of Combat Experience Can Shadow Blade Zero Bring?

When playing Phantom Blade Zero, players will fight at a very high speed, with fast movement speed and high attack frequency. Players can control the character to climb pillars, run horizontally against walls, and suddenly flash behind the enemy with ghostly movements. From time to time, a special execution will appear, causing the camera to suddenly pull to a wide angle or close-up.

In this process, players will feel a little dizzy. Although we try to make everything on the screen pleasing to the eye, you still need to stay rational in this blood-pumping battle in order to deal with the enemy’s attacks again and again and fight back. You will constantly switch between rational observation and impulsive adventures, and everything happens very quickly. If you lose control, you will fail instantly and try again as soon as possible.

If you withstand the pressure, make a few beautiful counterattacks, and successfully break the enemy’s armor, you are likely to have a whim, continue to make crazy combos, and quickly kill the enemy within the time of this armor break.

Phantom Blade Zero Production

S-Game highly appreciates Unreal Engine 5. It saves S-Game a lot of basic work, so that it can focus on content creation. In the field of content creation, S-Game is also confident that it can participate in the top competition. They also mentioned some of their own advantages:

Since S-Game is a Chinese team, S-Game can use many martial arts stunt actors. S-Game often lets many extremely outstanding martial arts masters perform in one shot at the same time, which allows S-Game to accumulate a lot of animation resources, which will present amazing effects in the game.

S-Game and Game Science have conducted numerous physical scans. Whether it is a huge temple building, a smaller dwelling, or a weapon, a small prop, when a large number of high-precision objects obtained by scanning are combined in an original way and carefully lit, the models in the game will become more exquisite and charming.

The content of this communication with S-Game is undoubtedly exciting. S-Game is steadily advancing their work, and Phantom Blade Zero is being completed step by step according to their expected progress. People are looking forward to the day when players can really play it.

It Takes Two, the game of the year that won 2021 TGA Award, has left a deep impression on many players. Hazelight Studios has once again brought out their new work Split Fiction after three years.

Hazelight Studios seems to have a special preference for two-player cooperative games. From their first successful work, A Way Out to the annual award-winning It Takes Two, Hazelight Studios has always insisted on the goal of letting players play cooperative games. This time Split Fiction is no exception.

Split Fiction

The protagonists of this game are named Zoe and Mio, who are fantasy novelists and science fiction novelists, respectively. They are two strangers who don’t know each other, but they are trapped in their own novels. They have to work together to escape from their own novel worlds. In the process, the two began to get familiar with each other gradually. The names of the two protagonists come from the two daughters of game producer Josef Fares.

Split Fiction will be released on platforms such as consoles and PC on March 7, and the game is made by Unreal 5 engine. Compared to the themed levels of It Takes Two, the level design of Split Fiction will be more imaginative. Josef Fares’ pursuit is to keep players fresh and not get bored.

The art style of Split Fiction is somewhat different from It Takes Two. Compared with It Takes Two, Split Fiction’s style is more mature. Josef Fares explained that the game style should match the content of the game. The two protagonists are writers and adults, so they will naturally present a mature design style. And the fun of the production team is to try new things. They like to design games with different styles.

Although Josef Fares said that there was no special source of inspiration when he created it, there are indeed some tribute elements to classic games and movies in the game. In addition, Josef Fares said that he likes Half-Life 2, Uncharted 2 and Mario Galaxy 2 very much. Perhaps in Split Fiction, players can find tribute eggs to these works.

Gameplay Of Split Fiction

Josef Fares told the players that there are many side quests in Split Fiction. These side quests are for the players’ good participation experience and to explain the identity setting of the protagonist. The two characters are writers in the game, so the side quests need to be in line with their professional inspiration and creative ideas. Split Fiction contains a huge and rich side quest system. Players may even accidentally miss some of them when playing. This part needs to be explored and discussed by players after the game is released.

Split Fiction is more difficult than It Takes Two, Josef Fares admitted. But he believes that although Split Fiction is challenging, it will not cause players to be unable to pass the level. Even children can have fun in this game. Regarding the situation where some couples broke up after playing It Takes Two, he thinks that this is not caused by the game. In this case, these couples should seek the advice of a relationship counselor.

Hazelight Studios will not add AI players to the game, because the core of a two-player game is to allow two players to communicate frequently and experience fun together. If AI is added, it becomes a pure single-player game, which is inconsistent with the desired goal of Split Fiction.

As for online matching, although it has not yet been added, it may be the future development direction, and its implementation is relatively difficult. Of course, players can find like-minded people from Hazelight community to play games together.

This game will not have DLC because Hazelight Studios has focused their work on the development of new games. After It Takes Two, what kind of fun will Split Fiction bring to players? Let us wait and see.