Since the games that spawned this genre are effectively dead and the lores and tropes that carried them.. like Command and Conquer, Star Craft (eat me because its still 2D top down nonsense), Total Annihilation/SupCom.. I have to wonder what they would be like based on the amount of attention and refinement they are getting.
And then I mean there's the failed yet amazing Planetary Annihilation.. deep pained sigh.
I mean I appreciate that competition play and boiling the rts format to bare essentials means Mobas are the it thing for that crowd and that dolling it up with flare so you have something unique to sell makes sense.. But what's the point of these games?! For people that aren't into tournament play style PvP and just want to dick around base building and blowing shit up against AI? Thank god for Ark or I might have to be playing The Division or someshit.
The Moba genre honestly hasn't been interesting compared to RTS. Without the base building and deep tech trees even RTS got boring. The really interesting ones were the city building games like Rise of Nations and Age of Empires.
But again.. where are they? Microsoft shut down several such games over the years. Ubisoft's Anno series, which I'm glad they did 2070.. Imagine that game, or 1404 with each individual character as details as Paragon.
With the exception of Ark.. I don't see any point in upgrading my PC. When I said fuck this madness and said this is my last PC upgrade and decided to go parallel, PC and Xbox.. There's been no reason to look back. There's next to nothing to play on PC.. and console games have managed knuckle dragging and slobbering as they do.. to have just enough going on to ignore PC gaming.
Of course in the last couple of years that's a harder sell. But with the majority of big games launching on Xbox.. it is still almost possible to make do. There's still all kinds of room for an exciting console game that could match Paragon's visuals. I doubt it could happen. But I suppose what I'm after is another Burnout.. Somehow I see not just vehicles.. but the physics and weight and skill only Criterion (RIP) could bring to next gen consoles. Imagine Burnout but literally set in Paragon's world. Future vehicles and powerups and all that crazy shit with pure races and arena combat. It seems like so many years ago that the DLC vehicles in Burnout Paradise started to hint at would could be possible for the franchise.. but the franchise just missed out on Frostbite. And I mean it sucks that Criterion is dead and gone.. but what if.
What if something familiar and exciting like open world Burnout, pure racing and arena combat could be pitted against these boring tournament Mobas. The Paradise DLCs hinted at it.
And for a game that does exist like Ark. Rather... Unreal 4 Engine games. They are coming. Games that Xbox One just can't handle. Not when you look at the PC versions and then back at the eye sore console version. I'm told I need to wait and see what Ark will look like on Xbox one after it is polished for retail. What does it matter? I paid 35$ as is and I'm enjoying it.
It is had anything close the polish of Paragon.. it would still not have the character detail and eye popping visuals, unfortunately.
But again, it isn't just eye sore pre-retail and without polish. The console can't handle Ark. It wasn't built for it. Ark could be so much more than what it is.. but I can't help but wonder if the studio is holding it back because they have to have it run on consoles to make money.
Failing to wrap my mind around why Paragon is a worthless Moba.. I wondered.. has it just been so long that game development has to cater to the console crowd? or is it the boiled down to essentials aspect that makes Mobas so popular that they have replaced traditional RTS games?
It really isn't even the simplicity of having a handful of characters instead of an army, or the lack of campaign to co-op or solo through, like its just the focus on PvP that bothers me. Any type of backstory behind what you're fighting about would be fine aside from kill all the things... They all seem to be aimed at kids that want to move up from rip-strip spinning top card battle toys to Mobas. I can't see the point in them beyond that. Players that ultimately just don't care about full fledged RTS.
But along comes Paragon and says.. ok.. look, I might be a Moba but I'm mature. You can take me seriously because just look at these guns!
I'm SO torn! Is this means Moba can be better than .. or we have to Moba as in even Epic has to make one to make money? (obviously not? I hope? cries in a corner)
But why does it look so damn good
It's like game still looks really pointless.. but at least the visuals are there. The physics are there, the particle and lighting effects.. character detail and weight... But it's more than that. A few Unreal Engine 4 games lately look incredible (big asterix on Ark because it is not polished). Obviously this isn't just an upresed version of some dorky wanna be eSport money seeking Moba and it will probably still have to find a place in a very crowded market.. but Holy shit, Hi there, Hello how are you, why is this game so stunning?! Can it please set a bar so that other games can at least try to exceed it.
Because it hits a threshold for what several missing in action sequels to old RTS games should finally look like and play like I just wanna know that other games will look this good.
Even with modest PC system requirements.. the game looks stunning.
Even with a console version.. it still manages to look awesome. But.. it isn't an RTS. It is Moba.
We've been seeing Unreal Engine 4 visual tech demos for ages and even Frostbite and CryEngine tech demos have promised games that could look like this. There are select dungeon crawlers with visuals that look great.. but nothing like this. Of course it is from Epic so it will if nothing else be a benchmark.. but ultimately for what? Shooters? Who cares about shooters.
I'm so torn at this point I'd be willing to give up hoping for a classic RTS that looks this good.. with some meaning.. or building aspect.. or tech tree.. just to enjoy this eye candy. Maybe Titan Fall wasn't wrong to have that big vehicle layer? Or I mean the other way to say it is.. why can't this share the same scope as Unreal Tournament even when Epic is making another Unreal Tournament game.... 12 years is a long time.. and for whatever reason the last game didn't do nearly as well... perhaps the market was already moving on from UT.. but it wasn't UT's fault for being UT.
But then again maybe UT is just ass and needs to evolve.
There doesn't seem to be any other way. The sizzle reel did show some good games.. UT wasn't one of them. But there really aren't any UE4 games that aren't mobile. I feel like quitting my job and making the half dozen missing games in UE4 myself.
Arguably online PvP crap is the only place left with money. Devs wanting to make games that aren't an Activision Annual Shooterpalooza have to do some kind of derivative tournament Mobas.. but.. I look at this game and I see so many other games. And like it isn't a bad thing. Maybe.
Chiefly I could see a game the scale of Mass Effect or Dark Souls, looking like Paragon. I mean imagine planets and space stations full of interactive characters that looked this good?
After one of the only videos available for Mass Effect Andromeda, the one with the super early renders of characters and vehicles.. was only kind of impressive.. I see Paragon and hope that a Frostbite 3.0 powered Mass Effect looks like this and not like the not so pretty Inquisition. Shit if only Inquisition had characters and game play like this. I mean at this rate it's almost a shame if Mass Effect 4 doesn't stick with Unreal.. but we'll see.
Coming from a long history of racing games though with weapons and power ups and all that jazz the other games I want to see that looks at least as good as this.. will probably never get made. There's so many.. but Quantum RedShift, PowerDrome, Fatal Inertia and SlipStream 5000 come to mind. I look want to see games like that with all the particle effects, and physics, and weight to everything but still be able to whip around a course on afterburners.
Why?
I mean racing games, especially combat focused games like Fatal Inertia.. and Mobas... are alike. Each character, track, race type, vehicle could have a tree for a variety of things like engine/boost speeds, types of shields, weapons etc that it would be pretty tough to make perfect 'builds' for any given situation.
After Oban Star Racers I've wondered what that would be like with a driver and co-pilot. You can have you build but if you aren't shooter and you're teamed up with a random player.. it would be really interesting to see how your combined abilities worked up for a race on a blind track.
I mean I'll just put this out there.. but Bungie's Destiny's Sparrow Racing League could do something along those lines and it not being a permanent feature is a big reason I stopped playing after forcing myself to play for 3000+ hours.
I really can't see why Moba's don't have vehicles. Or Titan Fall type mechs or whatever the fuck.. why is there such a distinct separation of player characters and minions? Can't yoy do anything to the Moba formula without breaking it that would allow you to make minions less robotic. Like there are mounts.. but everything is on foot. Minions spawn like cannon fodder in old RTS games.. but they seem to be fully automated.. why wouldn't you not want to control them at all? Rally around me and help me out instead of just being cannon fodder. It hurts my head to much to think about how mindless Mobas are in nature.
It isn't much to complain about but its an entire layer omitted for no good reason (vehicles).
I look at Paragon and ask.. how can this stand apart from other Mobas.. other that it appears to be slower-ish but more powerful-ly? Where's the vehicles? Same shit as everything else out there otherwise.
Is it too much to ask for to have bigger arenas, at least as large as old RTS games, vehicles, massive machinery, and such for a game like Paragon to stand out? And I'm not saying specifically Paragon.. I could care less about the genre.. but short of being nonsensically huge like Battlefield with dozens of players battling it out.. where's the games in between? In between itty bitty moba arenas.. and good for nothingly massive battlefields? even then.. if you're a single player on a team of two dozen and each side, of possibly multiple teams.. having control of more things and having optional vehicles can't hurt.
I mean like from what I've seen some games are slow to start because there's a progression system. Putting vehicles in to kind of mitigate that progression as something to fight over that won't necessarily tip a match one way or the other... just allowing arena's to be more open.. also means players can start out really weak or end up with characters that aren't really strong in an end game scenario because they depend on vehicles and weapons. If the class is engineer lets say sure at the end game that class is still weak but the minions are stronger, vehicles that spawn are more powerful etc. It is a missing layer that makes no sense to me at all.