Cover Story
Issue
26
February 27, 2017
What the game industry thinks of Nintendo’s Switch
We talk with third-party developers and industry executives about what to expect.
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52 CommentsHere’s everything that’s new in Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age
Fans have a lot of reasons to be excited for Square Enix’s upcoming HD remaster of Final Fantasy 12, not least of all that the massive game hasn’t been widely available since its 2006 release. The publisher released an updated version of the game, titled Final Fantasy 12 International Zodiac Job System, in Japan in 2007, but it was never ported West.
The HD remaster is subtitled The Zodiac Age, and as that suggests, it will be based on the International Zodiac Job System version of the game. Polygon recently had a chance to speak with Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Ageproducer Hiroaki Kato, who walked us through the four major improvements that this version of the game contains.
1. Game Balance
Final Fantasy 12 was a difficult game. Kato believes part of this was due to presenting a...
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167 CommentsDeus Ex: Mankind Divided and the problem of 'mechanical apartheid'
When Square Enix began publicizing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the company used the phrase "mechanical apartheid" to illustrate and market a fictional world in which society is divided by governmental decree.
Apartheid (literally "separateness" in Afrikaans) was the brutal governmental system of political oppression and racial segregation used by white rulers in South Africa throughout much of the last century.
Some have questioned the use of a word like "apartheid" to sell a video game. And with more details of the game's story emerging, it looks like any similarities between its story and actual apartheid are fanciful, at best.
At the time of the game's first trailers in 2015, some objected to this allusion. The writer Austin Walker tweeted, "How might we feel if they called it...
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7 CommentsFriday the 13th: The Game may still get a single-player mode
Gun Media's new video game adaptation of Friday the 13th blazed through Kickstarter last year, pulling in an impressive $823,704 in funding. While that's a lot of money, it's almost $1 million short of the $1,625,000 stretch goal that would have seen a "single player survival challenge mode" added to the game.
However, according to Gun Media founder and Friday the 13th: The Game co-creator Wes Keltner, there may still be hope for said single-player mode.
"No questions whatsoever that we want to revisit single-player if the game does well," Keltner told Polygon. "We're taking pre-orders right now. Every single dime we get is going right back into the game to put that kind of stuff in there."
In the initial Kickstarter pitch, Gun Media described Friday the 13th's possible single-player...
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4 CommentsManifold Garden takes Inception's twisting architecture and turns it into a puzzle
William Chyr wants to know if I've seen the movie Inception.
Christopher Nolan's sci-fi thriller from 2010 isn't the first thing I think of when I look at Manifold Garden, Chyr's gravity-centric puzzler that is equal parts beautiful and dizzying. It has obvious touches of M.C. Escher's work; there's something undeniably artistic about its colors and architectural displays. Chyr is quick to explain where Leonardo DiCaprio fits — remember that scene where he and Ellen Page take a stroll through the city streets in a dream? The world folds in two, creating a perfect mirror on top of itself, and DiCaprio and Page casually walk up this new wall as though nothing is out of the ordinary.
"That was kind of the initial inspiration for this," he said. "If [DiCaprio] changes gravity and he drops...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
45 CommentsEpic's Sweeney and Microsoft still discussing monopoly concerns, 'no conclusion in sight'
Despite Microsoft's public vows, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney says he remains concerned that Microsoft's maneuvers for its Windows 10 store are a play for creating a monopoly, and ultimately bad for games.
Earlier this year, the Epic Games co-founder wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian in which he said that Microsoft is seeking to monopolize software development and distribution on Windows 10.
Sweeney wrote about the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) initiative that is part of Windows 10, calling it a "closed platform-within-a-platform" and Microsoft's "first apparent step towards locking down the consumer PC ecosystem and monopolising app distribution and commerce."
Microsoft's Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, refuted the claims, saying that UWP is a "fully open ecosystem, available to...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
6 CommentsYou can't finish The Surge without taking the time to explore
The Surge, Deck13's sci-fi followup to Lords of the Fallen, will challenge players in more than just its one-on-one combat. According to CEO Jan Klose, players who hope to finish the game will need to spend some time poking around its world.
"This game is a lot about exploration," said CEO Jan Klose. "If you don't explore, you cannot complete this game."
Deck13 showed a short demo of the pre-alpha gameplay at E3 2016. In the demo — which focused on exploring the outdoors, the first we've seen outside of The Surge's bloody compound — Klose explained that players need to salvage parts from enemies and the game's world. The scrap you find (or cut off of enemies) will help you improve your items and skill.
"you need to find secrets. you need to find out what's going on."
"It's a rather...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
9 CommentsVampyr focuses on the type of bloodsuckers we know best: the scary ones
With Vampyr, Dontnod is moving away from the contemporary, relatable world of Life is Strange to something much more sinister. The studio's new focus is a familiar exploration of genre fiction, where vampires are deadly enemies with powerful abilities.
Dontnod's tale stars a doctor-turned-vampire named Jonathan Reid. As Jonathan attempts to unravel the mystery behind his making, he's faced with moral dilemmas on how to survive and who to kill. A hands-off E3 2016 demo, lead by game director Philippe Moreau, demonstrated the ways players will take control of Jonathan and his newfound talents.
Early in the demo, Jonathan gets himself into a tussle with a group of hunters. His attacks are swift and vicious: melee attacks, shots popped off a gun and the ability to "embrace" and feed...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
48 CommentsWhy The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is getting voice acting and sci-fi elements
If you’ve been reading our E3 coverage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, then you already know that this is a game that really messes with the conventions of the series. It’s doing a lot of things very differently from what we’ve come to expect from 3D Zelda games, such as featuring a giant open world and allowing players to finish the game without finishing the story.
There are two tiny but important elements that many fans have been wondering about, though. First off, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be the first Zelda game to feature voice acting — though it will not be fully voiced.
"It’s really difficult to leave an impression on players with just text," Breath of the Wild producer Eiji Aonuma told Polygon. "It’s not that I made everything voiced. But I have...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
5 CommentsReCore's color-based gameplay forced its devs to rethink accessibility
With ReCore, longtime Mega Man producer Keiji Inafune's studio, Comcept, and Austin-based developer Armature are approaching colorblind accessibility differently.
The action-adventure game, due out on Xbox One and Windows PC Sept. 13, follows a young woman named Joule and her gang of robot companions. It's a game obsessed with colors; in its enemies, its gameplay, color is for more than show. It has a significant impact on how the game plays and how its story will unfold, according to game director Mark Pacini of Armature Studio.
"We realized very early on that, because one of our producers is colorblind, that relying so much on a color system, it's very important to keep [accessibility] in mind and have a solution," Pacini told Polygon.
ReCore appears to just be about color matching...
Electronic Entertainment Expo - E3 2017
9 CommentsHarvest Moon is no longer the game you grew up with
To the producer of the upcoming Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns (the latest Bokujo Monogatari, formerly known out West as Harvest Moon), playing Natsume's Harvest Moon games would be like hanging out with an ex: It's better not to.
"It's kind of the feeling that you have for an ex-girlfriend," Yoshifumi Hashimoto told Polygon during E3 2016. "You still love them but, at the same time, if you do play, maybe some people will see the same features."
Graham Markay of Natsume hasn't played 2015's Story of Seasons either, he told us — although Taka Maekawa, producer of this year's Harvest Moon: Skytree Village on 3DS, enjoys it. But where Hashimoto is concerned with consumers potentially mistaking the Story of Seasons series for the newer, Western-produced Harvest Moon games, Markay sees...
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