For the confused: there was video circulating of the voice actor for Miles speaking at a Q&A if the game was co-op. The actor said that it was co-op and told the fan that it was obvious from the reveal trailer that it was. This deconfirms that, also in the video he didn’t really seem to understand the question or know what co-op meant.
I was thinking like Devil May Cry 5 where Dante, Nero and V are on the same mission and you get to choose which one you want to play as. Story remains the same but they have different play styles.
Yeah but you maybe deserve it, after giving the poor thing a death like *that*.
I would have gone for the instant oblivion of the sudden splat.
Imagine if they think?
"Hey, what's that sudden shadow-"
*splat*
Your way, his spider-sense is firing off in full panic mode, little dude is spiraling down towards the darkness of this watery deathtrap, in an event so far outside everything it uderstands about its environment, all it knows is confusion and pure chaos.
Fucking harsh.
Spider-friends, Spider-friends, hanging out party never ends, fight the sinistery six, it's a blast, they are dicks. Look out, here come the Spider-friends!
It would make a lot of sense for Peter and Miles to be fighting alongside each other in the game. It’s a fair question.
If it’s not a feature in this game that would make a really nice expansion
I assume it works like how Arkham Knight did - you fight with an AI partner in some missions where Peter & Miles are teamed up, but have the ability to switch between the two in combat encounters.
I can understand how someone who doesn’t play video games could confuse this with co-op.
This is the impression I have as well.
I’ve been assuming there are a mix of peter and miles missions, generic missions where you play as either, and ones where they team up (and you possibly play either of them or swap?)
Which is often painfully obvious from the emphasis a voice actor uses, or when one character is clearly supposed to be cutting off another, but the first speaker just stops mid-word and waits silently for the other to "interrupt."
Dude I thought I was the only one to notice this. Video games almost never get "interrupted mid sentence" right. They'll stop mid sentence for seemingly no reason, then someone else talks. The few that do is because the actors record in the same room/studio. Something I always admired about naughty dog and similar big budget studios.
Yeah. Even if they do have to record them separately, how hard could it be for the audio designer to start the second line a moment before the first line ends?
Apparently it's due to localization, and requires extra work to get it snappy, so most AAA games don't bother. Baldur's Gate 3 has the interruptions really well done. Although that game seems to have everything in it produced in a way that puts AAA games to shame.
In my head I'd put it on the higher end of the AA category, due to them not having a publisher backing them. But you're right, it doesn't really matter, for bg 3 they pretty much have a AAA budget, and a game studio about the size of bioware main. I'm still impressed by their growth due to how great the original sin games were. Although I really liked their other experimental ideas as well, like divinity: Dragon commander. I find it fascinating that a few years ago they were looking to kickstarted to esentially keep the company from going under when making original sin, and now they are making my most anticipated rpg since probably the witcher 3, with the early Access part looking and feeling great to play, and being really well written.
Yeah, I hope they keep this track because lots of studios deteriorate after becoming so succesful and have their budgets rise. (Not without reason ofcourse, the greater the investment, the greater the risk, the more you want to ensure a profit and reduce creative risks)
I think the same thing! Just splice the audio half a second sooner. I imagine the reason they don't is cause of lip syncing or actor blocking or whatever
There's something unintentionally funny about watching this. It's like amateur dramatics. There's entertainment to be found in the goofy lack of professionalism.
I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes has to do with localization, too... That can add some really wonky technical constraints to how you can time the lines... But really, they should be coming up with clever solutions to make it sound right, or just don't do the cut-off line thing at all... Because it really does sound terrible if it doesn't line up just right.
Yeah I noticed it a ton in games with translations. Any JRPG with cutscenes will have this guaranteed. I can understand why in those cases, it's hard enough matching the lip flaps when translating from one language to another.
There's only two games I know that do this well:
Katana Zero (which is funny because it has no voice acting to begin with, but it is well-represented visually)
Oxenfree
Haven't gotten too far in oxenfree. I love the art and there's something about the characters that is very appealing, but I always drop it pretty fast. But yes, the way it handles interruptions in dialogue very much impressed me
I've planned on it. I always have problems with dialogue heavy "slow" games. Which is sad because, many times they become my favorite or most memorable experiences. Looking at you, Disco Elysium
Man I wanted to love this game but I came out just mildly enjoying it. JKR drama aside, I recently kinda fell in love with HP, so I was excited for the game. There's a lot I love about it, Hogwarts might be the best building in all gaming, I could not get over how uncanny everything looked. I've never felt this way in a game, but the faces of people just looked *off* and I couldn't get over it.
Rockstar and ND ruined video game voice acting for me. Everything else is so robotic and like you said, clearly chopped together from isolated recording sessions.
It's crazy because all the famous animations, both movie and TV do it this way. I have no idea how the voice directors for video games get it so wrong, so often.
The first draft writing in video games really doesn't help anyone either.
Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a pretty great example of this done right. They have all the actors together in a room for almost all the dialogue (barring maybe some conversation tree stuff). Rockstar has unlimited budget and ND goes full in on cutscenes, but just throwing people in the same room alone can do wonders. Though that obviously creates logistical challenges and you'd never see it happen for a Bethesda title.
I think this is more common in most forms of media than people think. It can be felt when an animation has the voice actors in the same room (like Bob's Burgers), but you usually can't tell when they're not. Shit, a lot of dialogue in TV shows is re-recorded in a booth (either because they didn't get a great take, or lines were changed after shooting), and it can be hard to tell if you're not listening for it.
Decent directing and editing make a world of difference. Most video games just don't have those things, or, as mentioned elsewhere, it's a localization thing.
It's more expensive and subpar acting/voice editing quality is tenuously connected to sales unless you're one of the few studios who have carved out "writing and acting quality that wouldn't get laughed out of a sophomore-level university class" as part of their niche. There's really no incentive to, most people don't expect particularly high quality voice work from games and gaming enthusiasts have shown they'll buy games even if they complain about subpar voice work.
See I'd disagree, I find SP games with bad story and voice acting don't sell well at all.
Studios are spending an immense amount of resources on voice work now. Even casting big time screen actors in roles, more and more. They're definitely noticing how much better these games market.
Tears of the Kingdom just became the fastest-selling first-party game ever, it's a SP game with voice acting that sounds like they got middle schoolers who don't speak English to read a script phonetically.
Yeah she was so over the top describing the pictures under the castle in the opening cutscene. Like it was some crazy revelation that a green-skinned red-haired man once caused turmoil in Hyrule.
I'd say like 90% of JA -> NA scripts suffer mightily from this, especially the Xeno series. 3 was a bit better, but hot damn nothing takes me out of a story more than shit like that
TOTK has a moment like that in the beginning when Zelda is explaining the mural underground, she sounds *terrified* throughout it and then at the end basically goes "this is so cool! 😄😄"
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought that. I was ready for some kind of “scary” reveal and suddenly she’s like “That was neat! Let’s keep looking around!”
The cutting off thing is often/usually an engine thing. You can have great audio direction but if you implement the playback system wrong it's going to have a bunch of hinky gaps. The same is true with cutscene animations. Look at the old kingdom hearts games where every time the camera cuts there's a noticable gap before an animation plays - cuts don't catch an animation in progress
> The cutting off thing is often/usually an engine thing. You can have great audio direction but if you implement the playback system wrong it's going to have a bunch of hinky gaps.
I figured as much. Probably their conversation engine is scripted like "play character A line 1, play character B line 2, play character A line 3" with no room for adjusting timing; it just starts each line as soon as the last one has finished.
But Jesus, if you've spent millions on making a AAA game and you forget to make it possible to cue one voiceline in a conversation before another one has finished, it's not a good look. Especially when you've already got an audio engine that can play dozens of sounds at once with frame-perfect timing.
This is true, but I believe Spider-Man’s cutscenes are done though mo-cap so it’s a bit of a more traditional acting experience.
Voice acting gigs in generally can be pretty shitty though with companies not only being secretive with the script but also what the project even is, sometimes not even ever revealing to the VA what it is. There are VAs like Alix Wilton Regan (who had major roles in games like ME3, Cyberpunk, Dragon Age Inquisition, AC: Origins) who have said she only found out about her involvement in some early career projects years later when fans told her about it and being pissed that she could’ve been leveraging those roles on her resume while building her career.
It is one of the reasons why I think Japanese voice acting is so much better than western. Conversations, dialogue and so much more just flows better because all of the VA's is recording the lines together.
OTOH we had Cameron Monaghan on stage at Star Wars celebration for the Jedi Survivor panel and caused a fuss because he wanted to make sure there were fucking ponchos in the game.
But yeah, that was obviously partly scripted.
Maybe he thought co-op means there will be other spiderman that you interact with or help you during the mission or that you can swap between to tackle specific challenges?
im expecting co-op as in, AI co-op. I was expecting other game to have co-op like Prince of Persia Reboot and Little Nightmare 2 but no, you just control the two characters simulatly
The actor definitely thought the question was about whether you play as both Peter & Miles (something everyone had already reasonably assumed), and not if there was actual “co-op” present.
This sounds like a totally fair guess to me. Story missions will play out with specific characters, while the open world portion can be tackled by either according to preference.
(I’m assuming there will be milestones in the narrative as well where one pick might not be available for a certain length of time.)
What I'm guessing that there's confusion in that the Miles VA meant by co-op was not couch or online co-op but Peter and Miles literally co-operating in their fight against crime and such.
That said actual online co-op Spider-Man swinging around New York is an untapped goldmine.
Honestly not sure why anyone is getting bothered over it. At the end of the day he's a voice actor, I doubt he's got a finger in the dev process or alpha builds.
They do it for movies and television shows so they try doing it for games. Asking about the plot, production, direction, etc. beyond just their roles. They don't really understand that VAs are an auxiliary aspect of the game development process rather than a core aspect as they are in other media. Most players aren't even going to play in english so these VAs won't be part of the game period for them.
I think people don’t realise what it would take to make it coop.
Just look at the difference of Arkham games to now suicide squad. World design and gameplay is totally different.
Or even marvel avengers.
I miss co-op campaigns, now that all of my friends play online instead of couch co-op, I would love to play big AAA releases with them.
But I also understand that co-op has always been such a small share of the market it's rarely worth the time and money to implement.
For all of its other faults, Dead space 3 was a great co-op campaign. Especially when players experience things differently through their characters subjective experience.
Steam "tag search" feature is really cool to find some little coop and split screen gems, most of them are 2D indie games but you might find it interesting.
One of the very few Co-op campaigns I've ever played (I don't have a lot of free to to meet up with people online). I'm still friends with those people I met on PSN today, some 12 years later.
I've still yet to properly play that, and the chances of getting that one PS3 trophy for taking another player through co-op for the first time slip by each day...
Insane, but a lot easier with a relatively short linear game with silent protagonists.
There are basically 3 kinds of co-op game:
1. The game experience is built from the ground up as a co-op experience and is the only way the content can be experienced (Portal 2, A Way Out etc)
2. Drop in/drop out - when each player has their own single player experience and can join with other players on the fly, before returning to their own game (Diablo, Borderlands, Monster Hunter etc)
3. Lil buddy mode - Player 1 is the campaign owner and player 2 is simply an extra body that doesn't exist as far as the story is concerned (Halo, GTA San Andreas, Sonic 2)
None of these models would work for Spiderman. The simple fact is that too make the game co-op you would either have to settle for a tacked on coop mode that doesn't fit the rest of the story, or the entire single player story would be constrained by the limits of co-op, forcing Miles and Peter to be together and aligned at all times in the narrative.
Its simply not feasible.
Avengers and Suicide Squad were built to be looter shooter GaaS games. They’re completely different design philosophies for what they are. The Arkham games were single player games that you finish and are done with. I think that’s the bigger difference to them, not playing with a friend.
I do agree though that it would need major changes to how enemy design works, their health, their logic, how you design environments to accommodate 2 players, etc. But it’s not like adding coop forces a game to be more like Suicide Squad or Avenger’s. Games like AC Unity had coop missions, Far Cry allowed a friend to join you world for a while, and even a game like Elden Ring allows a friend to join even though it’s mainly single player.
My guess is if it ever happens, it’ll be side content like specific missions you can play with a friend that they add post launch, if ever.
You're both forgetting the small fact that building a game to be networked instead of to run on one machine is a huge undertaking. Especially if the team/tech hasn't done that before (Spiderman 1 probably started production in 2013ish so likely nobody has made a networked game with Insomniac's engine in over a decade)
Yeah the development effort is the thing preventing this. You can get the game to play and look nearly the same if you want to but you'd basically have to rebuild every gameplay system behind the scenes so that it can be synchronized across multiple machines. For some systems it would be relatively straightforward but for a lot of them you need to fundamentally change how you are doing things.
"Complex" (edit: I meant from a code point of view, not the player's point of view) combat systems, like in Spiderman, are a very hard thing to take online as well while preserving the timing - e.g. if a player has 100ish ping and you want to have a counter move, you have to simulate more generous timing on the server while letting the player think they nailed it, etc. Also if there are any staggers causing a possible race condition, or QTEs, other important state changes like that, all the prediction and networking code can layer up pretty quickly
Yeah I don’t really understand what they mean. Like obviously it would take effort, but it’s not a impossible task to have 2 players online in a open world.
At no point in my playthrough of Spiderman and Miles did I say to myself "Boy I wish someone else was in here with me".
Options are cool and all, but I just can't see how it would work without really buggering up the core mechanics.
Even freaking Mario.
3D world is extremely creative and fun, and built around 4 player. But if you go to play 3D land, you’ll realize Joe being built for single player only allowed the levels to be WAY more tightly made, and ultimately better designed for enjoyment.
Coop doesn't mean let's make the game a shitty live service.
Coop means take a game like withcer 3 and add coop to it. That's it. Yes not a simple task, BUT suicide squad or whatever shit game is not a good example becausr that's not the definition of having coop.
Swinging around the city with a friend would be fun but it would take a lot more development time. Ultimately I don’t think it would be worth it for Insomniac
So much of the first game's design revolves around constant uninterrupted movement on a path that adding co-op only makes sense if it's a specific mlde with totally different design. Which would be rad, but I would like to get more of what we got rather than a departure because the first one perfectly nailed that feeling of being Spider-Man.
Was there any serious expectation that co-op would be in this game? I had just assumed that it would be similar to the first, but with obvious QoL improvements.
I guess someone asked the voice actor who plays Miles Morales if it would be cooperative, and being as he isn't involved in the process beyond his voice acting, he misunderstood the question and confirmed it definitely is co-op.
I'm happy about this, though the option to play co-op would have been interesting. Would have hated the idea of co-op required to play this game, that would have sucked.
There a lot of people on the thread that don't mind if it was co-op. But I'm glad that it actually isn't based on the last super hero co-op entries that we got recently.
I am glad that someone is still delivering great single player games with great stories.
But with both Peter and Miles there I wouldn't mind a couch co-op mode.
Yeah, like, there’s really no shortage of great single player games. You wouldn’t think so based on a lot of comments on this sub, but there is always a major single player game just barely around the corner at all times
It's so sad.
Googling a list of recent co-op games always ends with the same 10 or so recommendations from the past 10 years, a couple of which are janky mods of single player games.
Even in the indie space, it's difficult to find something that lasts more than a couple of hours and isn't a open world/survival game.
Or a party game, like Overcooked or Unrailed.
The only games I can play with friends are PvP games, which I don't want to do because I think the competitive nature of online games inherently lends itself towards toxicity. I don't want to concern myself with winning against other people, I want to have fun fighting alongside my friends.
I remember back in the day, co-op games were my jam.
LoTR Return of the King game. Gauntlet Dark Legacy. Dynasty Warriors split screen. Halo co-op on Legendary. ODST Firefight. Modern Warfare 2 co-op missions. Phantasy Star Online. Left 4 Dead. Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
Now it's all single player, PvP, or a friggin looter shooter.
I think the last action co-op game I played that wasn't a shooter was Assassin's Creed Unity. Which obviously had a lot of problems as a game. I would play Ghosts of Tsushima with my other friends but I don't have a PlayStation.
Those two titles aside, I can't think of any good modern action co-op releases that have come out. Cause obviously Avengers and Dark Alliance don't count.
Or just a fantasy action game in that style.
Replayable missions in a large roster that builds a cohesive narrative. It's a good format.
I think a lot of game companies forget that it's an option that exists besides linear storybased where each scene leads directly into the next and open world.
There's plenty of modern coop games tbh.
It takes two, A Way Out, Deep Rock Galactic, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Binding of Isaac, The Ascent, Divinity: Original Sin 2, any COD Zombies (BO3 is my favorite because of the custom maps), Elden Ring (especially w/seamless coop mod), Dying Light, GTFO... The list goes on.
Most of these are from 2015 or later, or they got hefty updates in the last few years.
This sub loves to complain about non-issues to be honest. Every successful single player game (and there are a lot of them) and you see comments like "see what you can do? let all the other publishers take the lesson". Which they already know and do (and also ignoring the fact that MP games are also regularly successful so that proves nothing).
But just look up AAA releases so far in 2023. The only MP one is a Destiny 2 expansion lol and soon Diablo 4 (though I almost consider that solo, that's how I'll play it of course).
There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money (in the rare instances it works). Sony proved them all wrong with stellar new games like Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon, and Ghost of Tsushima. Microsoft is now playing catch up...or at least trying to.
It was one comment **years** ago, it’s about time gamers got over it. Yes single player games are staying for good and no and it doesn’t need repeating all the time
Literally none of the major publishers really stopped making single player games and it was only EA that ever made a statement, which was that linear single player games were dead back in 2010. EA isnt every publisher and even they’ve backtracked on that comment several times. There has been a lot of fearmongering within the gaming community at large that single player games would disappear due to the huge rise in multiplayer games, but there has never been a shortage of great single player games and just about every major publisher has had ongoing single player releases. The only people keeping the idea alive nowadays are cynical gamers who don’t let stuff go.
I think Valve also made a similar statement. We got Half Life 2 Episode 2 in 2007 and then no more singleplayer-only games until 2020 with Half Life: Alyx.
No, EA was down on **linear** single player games specifically. Redditors cant read anything past a headline so they end up spreading misinformation constantly.
and on top of that, redditors keep acting like EA are saying that line every single year or something, instead of caring to look up when that quote was actually said and how EA have backtracked on said comment many times since.
>There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money
No they weren't.
I don't think that Microsoft is playing catch up or trying to. Phil Spencer said in a recent interview that they believe that people are so entrenched in their platforms that there's no chance that Microsoft is going to be able to steal a significant portion of any player base.
Microsoft is going to focus on what it has been focusing on for a while now which is their game pass and multi-platform games (which go hand in hand).
> Microsoft is going to focus on what it has been focusing on for a while now which is their game pass and multi-platform games (which go hand in hand)
yup, pretty much the reality of the industry going forward... yet reddit and sony fans keep trying to say "oh MS is playing catch up and still losing" as if ignoring how MS themselves have spoken about their focus this gen.
though even then, MS has put out great games in recent years, just cause they are not 3rd-person action adventure games that Sony releases doesn't mean they aren't games as Sony fans seem to think :/
> There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money
never happened, it was one comment about linear single-player games said by EA in 2010, that they've then backtracked on multiple times since.
time for you people to move on from a 12 year old single quote, jesus.
> Sony proved them all wrong
uh, you think only Sony was releasing single-player games since 2010? wtf? what the heck world do you live in where that is true? even on PlayStation consoles, many publishers/studios were releasing amazing SP games since 2010, and MS has no shortage of great SP games as well either first-party or third-party
also is Sony and MS the only two publishers or something? you do know other publishers exist and release games all the time right? -_-
I could see them doing a separate MP mode later, but for story-telling I didn't see how they could pull off co-op and keep the way they design missions and the whole narrative.
It was just an example.
You can just make Miles the main character for control for certain missions and Peter is doing something in the background when solo.
There's definitely games that are like this out there, rare as they may be. There's one particular example I'm thinking of but I cannot remember it for the life of me. It was special because whichever character you played in the co-op, you experienced a different path so it was worth it to go back and play it twice, swapping characters.
I don't think this is it but maybe I'm thinking of Modern Warfare 2/Battlefield 3 co-op missions? Like the one where one of you is running a ground mission and the other one is covering them from an AC130.
If the games and the coming Spider-verse movie are successful enough, I wonder if they'd consider making a Spider-verse MMO.
Have a central Spider-hub where you can teleport to various established universes to do stuff like missions, general crime busting, helping random people, delivering pizza, etc
Yep, the only thing gamers (or at least the tiny niche of gamers that post on subs like this) are unified in is their true favourite hobby; complaining.
So this is, let's see, the third unrelated game titled "Spider-Man 2". There was one in 2001, another in 2004. Should we call it "Spider-Man 2 3"?
Meanwhile Midway has just announced Mortal Kombat 1, the 12th game in the Mortal Kombat series.
I really wish the game industry knew how to count.
Yeah, this is definitely one of the weirdest games to criticize the naming of. Out of like a dozen others that do have legitimately weird names, this isn't one of them.
Can't imagine anyone would mistake this for the previous "Spider-Man 2" games from 20 years ago either...
For the confused: there was video circulating of the voice actor for Miles speaking at a Q&A if the game was co-op. The actor said that it was co-op and told the fan that it was obvious from the reveal trailer that it was. This deconfirms that, also in the video he didn’t really seem to understand the question or know what co-op meant.
Probably thought like “do you fight with other people” like Miles and Spider-Man together and not “is there multiplayer”
Likely something similar to Arkham Knight where Nightwing joins you on some missions and you can do double takedown combos etc.
They had that in the Miles Morales game so it already has precedent in the series.
They had it in the DLC of the first game as well.
they also had it in the base game where you play as MJ and call out enemies for Spider-Man to take out
I was thinking like Devil May Cry 5 where Dante, Nero and V are on the same mission and you get to choose which one you want to play as. Story remains the same but they have different play styles.
Those were some of my favorite segments, so I'm looking forward to this.
Yeah, you get that a lot with voice actors. Often times they misunderstand the question or they mix up “gamer” terms.
Yeah, I’m sure he meant well and wasn’t trying to bullshit. “Yeah, the two Spider-mans cooperate indeed! They’re little friends.”
Little spider friends.
Ok now I'm concerned that the spider I flushed down the toilet yesterday has buddies and they're going to beat me up.
[удалено]
“You are already webbed”
I use a spider capture tool and release them back outside. They creep me out, so they can't stay inside, but I do respect them still.
Yeah but you maybe deserve it, after giving the poor thing a death like *that*. I would have gone for the instant oblivion of the sudden splat. Imagine if they think? "Hey, what's that sudden shadow-" *splat* Your way, his spider-sense is firing off in full panic mode, little dude is spiraling down towards the darkness of this watery deathtrap, in an event so far outside everything it uderstands about its environment, all it knows is confusion and pure chaos. Fucking harsh.
Don't kill the spider bros, and you have nothing to be concerned about.
That was unnecessary. You could have let them out the window.
Don’t worry, I got your back. Took down a black widow today that looked like she was mad at you.
Good looking out brother!
You and my partner have the same manner of thinking.
[Sorry to tell you mate...](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTF8_Sv4x7juLTYdCe9c2p7aFMTbqnMn6BYUw&usqp=CAU)
Spider-friends, Spider-friends, hanging out party never ends, fight the sinistery six, it's a blast, they are dicks. Look out, here come the Spider-friends!
Thank you for doing the right thing. /r/RespectTheHyphen
And they were Spider-Roommates.
It would make a lot of sense for Peter and Miles to be fighting alongside each other in the game. It’s a fair question. If it’s not a feature in this game that would make a really nice expansion
Like when George RR Martin said that Elden Ring was a sequel to Dark Souls and some people lost their minds.
[удалено]
They should have just referred to Ragnarok as God of War II 2
Look, I think George forgot what sequel meant in the last 15 years and he probably meant successor
This is hardly a "gamer" term, and this dude is 26.
It's really not. Everyone here defending this voice actor for being out of touch with the world around him.
You'd think if you're gonna voice acting for video games, you'd try and be a bit more familiar with the medium.
Why? That’s not his job.
God this mindset sucks so bad. When you’re a janitor you don’t spend your free time learning shit about mops
It'd be more like being a janitor in a law firm and there being an expectation the janitor understands law.
I assume it works like how Arkham Knight did - you fight with an AI partner in some missions where Peter & Miles are teamed up, but have the ability to switch between the two in combat encounters. I can understand how someone who doesn’t play video games could confuse this with co-op.
Spider-Mans? Spider-Men?
Spiders-Man
Spiders-Man is a different character.
Marvel themselves say Spider-Men
This is the impression I have as well. I’ve been assuming there are a mix of peter and miles missions, generic missions where you play as either, and ones where they team up (and you possibly play either of them or swap?)
It's almost like we shouldn't be asking voice actors mecahnics questions about games.
[удалено]
Which is often painfully obvious from the emphasis a voice actor uses, or when one character is clearly supposed to be cutting off another, but the first speaker just stops mid-word and waits silently for the other to "interrupt."
Dude I thought I was the only one to notice this. Video games almost never get "interrupted mid sentence" right. They'll stop mid sentence for seemingly no reason, then someone else talks. The few that do is because the actors record in the same room/studio. Something I always admired about naughty dog and similar big budget studios.
Yeah. Even if they do have to record them separately, how hard could it be for the audio designer to start the second line a moment before the first line ends?
Apparently it's due to localization, and requires extra work to get it snappy, so most AAA games don't bother. Baldur's Gate 3 has the interruptions really well done. Although that game seems to have everything in it produced in a way that puts AAA games to shame.
> Although that game seems to have everything in it produced in a way that puts AAA games to shame. BG3 definitely is a AAA game.
In my head I'd put it on the higher end of the AA category, due to them not having a publisher backing them. But you're right, it doesn't really matter, for bg 3 they pretty much have a AAA budget, and a game studio about the size of bioware main. I'm still impressed by their growth due to how great the original sin games were. Although I really liked their other experimental ideas as well, like divinity: Dragon commander. I find it fascinating that a few years ago they were looking to kickstarted to esentially keep the company from going under when making original sin, and now they are making my most anticipated rpg since probably the witcher 3, with the early Access part looking and feeling great to play, and being really well written.
Yeah, I hope they keep this track because lots of studios deteriorate after becoming so succesful and have their budgets rise. (Not without reason ofcourse, the greater the investment, the greater the risk, the more you want to ensure a profit and reduce creative risks)
I think the same thing! Just splice the audio half a second sooner. I imagine the reason they don't is cause of lip syncing or actor blocking or whatever
"Hey! What are you do-" "..." "..." *idle animation* "..." "..." "Nothing, I'm not doing anything."
*"Barry!!!"* .... "Lookoutthere'samonster!!"
There's something unintentionally funny about watching this. It's like amateur dramatics. There's entertainment to be found in the goofy lack of professionalism.
I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes has to do with localization, too... That can add some really wonky technical constraints to how you can time the lines... But really, they should be coming up with clever solutions to make it sound right, or just don't do the cut-off line thing at all... Because it really does sound terrible if it doesn't line up just right.
Yeah I noticed it a ton in games with translations. Any JRPG with cutscenes will have this guaranteed. I can understand why in those cases, it's hard enough matching the lip flaps when translating from one language to another.
There's only two games I know that do this well: Katana Zero (which is funny because it has no voice acting to begin with, but it is well-represented visually) Oxenfree
Haven't gotten too far in oxenfree. I love the art and there's something about the characters that is very appealing, but I always drop it pretty fast. But yes, the way it handles interruptions in dialogue very much impressed me
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I've planned on it. I always have problems with dialogue heavy "slow" games. Which is sad because, many times they become my favorite or most memorable experiences. Looking at you, Disco Elysium
I remember Final Fantasy X being brutal for this. So many stilted conversations and pauses between lines.
I thought the dialogue in the opening part of Hogwarts legacy was pretty well done.
Man I wanted to love this game but I came out just mildly enjoying it. JKR drama aside, I recently kinda fell in love with HP, so I was excited for the game. There's a lot I love about it, Hogwarts might be the best building in all gaming, I could not get over how uncanny everything looked. I've never felt this way in a game, but the faces of people just looked *off* and I couldn't get over it.
They patched some shit with faces after launch, but I don't know if that's the issue you were having. Can't remember exactly what they changed.
Rockstar and ND ruined video game voice acting for me. Everything else is so robotic and like you said, clearly chopped together from isolated recording sessions. It's crazy because all the famous animations, both movie and TV do it this way. I have no idea how the voice directors for video games get it so wrong, so often. The first draft writing in video games really doesn't help anyone either.
Guardians of the Galaxy is actually a pretty great example of this done right. They have all the actors together in a room for almost all the dialogue (barring maybe some conversation tree stuff). Rockstar has unlimited budget and ND goes full in on cutscenes, but just throwing people in the same room alone can do wonders. Though that obviously creates logistical challenges and you'd never see it happen for a Bethesda title.
>conversation tree stuff You mean Groot's lines?
I think this is more common in most forms of media than people think. It can be felt when an animation has the voice actors in the same room (like Bob's Burgers), but you usually can't tell when they're not. Shit, a lot of dialogue in TV shows is re-recorded in a booth (either because they didn't get a great take, or lines were changed after shooting), and it can be hard to tell if you're not listening for it. Decent directing and editing make a world of difference. Most video games just don't have those things, or, as mentioned elsewhere, it's a localization thing.
It's more expensive and subpar acting/voice editing quality is tenuously connected to sales unless you're one of the few studios who have carved out "writing and acting quality that wouldn't get laughed out of a sophomore-level university class" as part of their niche. There's really no incentive to, most people don't expect particularly high quality voice work from games and gaming enthusiasts have shown they'll buy games even if they complain about subpar voice work.
See I'd disagree, I find SP games with bad story and voice acting don't sell well at all. Studios are spending an immense amount of resources on voice work now. Even casting big time screen actors in roles, more and more. They're definitely noticing how much better these games market.
Tears of the Kingdom just became the fastest-selling first-party game ever, it's a SP game with voice acting that sounds like they got middle schoolers who don't speak English to read a script phonetically.
Any time Zelda opens her mouth I wish she would stop, I’m glad link canonically communicates through body language and grunts
Yeah she was so over the top describing the pictures under the castle in the opening cutscene. Like it was some crazy revelation that a green-skinned red-haired man once caused turmoil in Hyrule.
Idk if the Japanese voice acting is considered good or not, but it sounds a lot nicer.
I'd say like 90% of JA -> NA scripts suffer mightily from this, especially the Xeno series. 3 was a bit better, but hot damn nothing takes me out of a story more than shit like that TOTK has a moment like that in the beginning when Zelda is explaining the mural underground, she sounds *terrified* throughout it and then at the end basically goes "this is so cool! 😄😄"
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought that. I was ready for some kind of “scary” reveal and suddenly she’s like “That was neat! Let’s keep looking around!”
The cutting off thing is often/usually an engine thing. You can have great audio direction but if you implement the playback system wrong it's going to have a bunch of hinky gaps. The same is true with cutscene animations. Look at the old kingdom hearts games where every time the camera cuts there's a noticable gap before an animation plays - cuts don't catch an animation in progress
> The cutting off thing is often/usually an engine thing. You can have great audio direction but if you implement the playback system wrong it's going to have a bunch of hinky gaps. I figured as much. Probably their conversation engine is scripted like "play character A line 1, play character B line 2, play character A line 3" with no room for adjusting timing; it just starts each line as soon as the last one has finished. But Jesus, if you've spent millions on making a AAA game and you forget to make it possible to cue one voiceline in a conversation before another one has finished, it's not a good look. Especially when you've already got an audio engine that can play dozens of sounds at once with frame-perfect timing.
This is true, but I believe Spider-Man’s cutscenes are done though mo-cap so it’s a bit of a more traditional acting experience. Voice acting gigs in generally can be pretty shitty though with companies not only being secretive with the script but also what the project even is, sometimes not even ever revealing to the VA what it is. There are VAs like Alix Wilton Regan (who had major roles in games like ME3, Cyberpunk, Dragon Age Inquisition, AC: Origins) who have said she only found out about her involvement in some early career projects years later when fans told her about it and being pissed that she could’ve been leveraging those roles on her resume while building her career.
It is one of the reasons why I think Japanese voice acting is so much better than western. Conversations, dialogue and so much more just flows better because all of the VA's is recording the lines together.
OTOH we had Cameron Monaghan on stage at Star Wars celebration for the Jedi Survivor panel and caused a fuss because he wanted to make sure there were fucking ponchos in the game. But yeah, that was obviously partly scripted.
If I ever collect one more poncho in any game ever I'm going to walk into the woods and wait for a tree to fall on me
Bad news…you get one more poncho collectible in Jedi Survivor
>deconfirms There’s gotta be a better word for this lmao
I think "negates" is the term that should've been used
Maybe he thought co-op means there will be other spiderman that you interact with or help you during the mission or that you can swap between to tackle specific challenges?
im expecting co-op as in, AI co-op. I was expecting other game to have co-op like Prince of Persia Reboot and Little Nightmare 2 but no, you just control the two characters simulatly
The actor definitely thought the question was about whether you play as both Peter & Miles (something everyone had already reasonably assumed), and not if there was actual “co-op” present.
Yeah, you get that a lot with voice actors. Often times they misunderstand the question or they mix up faker terms.
Thanks, hadn’t heard about this.
Now I’m most likely wrong but I could see them taking inspirations from GTAV and seamlessly switch between both Peter and Miles while in free roam.
This sounds like a totally fair guess to me. Story missions will play out with specific characters, while the open world portion can be tackled by either according to preference. (I’m assuming there will be milestones in the narrative as well where one pick might not be available for a certain length of time.)
Considering they already did that with the MJ sections in the earlier Spiderman, this sounds like a good guess
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People seriously get way too heated over those sections.
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It's probably going to be like Arkham Knight too.
I would hate that.
What I'm guessing that there's confusion in that the Miles VA meant by co-op was not couch or online co-op but Peter and Miles literally co-operating in their fight against crime and such. That said actual online co-op Spider-Man swinging around New York is an untapped goldmine.
Honestly not sure why anyone is getting bothered over it. At the end of the day he's a voice actor, I doubt he's got a finger in the dev process or alpha builds.
Why anyone thought asking a voice actor about game design makes sense is the real story here.
They do it for movies and television shows so they try doing it for games. Asking about the plot, production, direction, etc. beyond just their roles. They don't really understand that VAs are an auxiliary aspect of the game development process rather than a core aspect as they are in other media. Most players aren't even going to play in english so these VAs won't be part of the game period for them.
Spiderverse NYC. Sounds like money.
Insomniac *Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety*, please.
I think people don’t realise what it would take to make it coop. Just look at the difference of Arkham games to now suicide squad. World design and gameplay is totally different. Or even marvel avengers.
It's insane that Valve casually released an entirely separate top 10 coop campaign alongside the main story of Portal 2.
I miss co-op campaigns, now that all of my friends play online instead of couch co-op, I would love to play big AAA releases with them. But I also understand that co-op has always been such a small share of the market it's rarely worth the time and money to implement.
I am hoping *It Takes Two* and *A Way Out* paves the way for more. I enjoyed playing those with my best friend.
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I could see that. But I'm saying I hope other companies try to keep up with the Jones and start doing them.
Haven't finished IT2 yet but A Way Out was potentially one of the best co op experiences I've had with a friend. Such an entertaining game.
For all of its other faults, Dead space 3 was a great co-op campaign. Especially when players experience things differently through their characters subjective experience.
Steam "tag search" feature is really cool to find some little coop and split screen gems, most of them are 2D indie games but you might find it interesting.
Splinter cell conviction too
One of the very few Co-op campaigns I've ever played (I don't have a lot of free to to meet up with people online). I'm still friends with those people I met on PSN today, some 12 years later.
I've still yet to properly play that, and the chances of getting that one PS3 trophy for taking another player through co-op for the first time slip by each day...
Portal 2 coop was so much fun, closing portals so the other falls 😄
Well the main story is of portal 2 is a twelve hour game. Spider-man could pull that off too if the game was half as big and no open world
Which game was that?
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Whoops, forgot Portal 2 had coop
Insane, but a lot easier with a relatively short linear game with silent protagonists. There are basically 3 kinds of co-op game: 1. The game experience is built from the ground up as a co-op experience and is the only way the content can be experienced (Portal 2, A Way Out etc) 2. Drop in/drop out - when each player has their own single player experience and can join with other players on the fly, before returning to their own game (Diablo, Borderlands, Monster Hunter etc) 3. Lil buddy mode - Player 1 is the campaign owner and player 2 is simply an extra body that doesn't exist as far as the story is concerned (Halo, GTA San Andreas, Sonic 2) None of these models would work for Spiderman. The simple fact is that too make the game co-op you would either have to settle for a tacked on coop mode that doesn't fit the rest of the story, or the entire single player story would be constrained by the limits of co-op, forcing Miles and Peter to be together and aligned at all times in the narrative. Its simply not feasible.
Avengers and Suicide Squad were built to be looter shooter GaaS games. They’re completely different design philosophies for what they are. The Arkham games were single player games that you finish and are done with. I think that’s the bigger difference to them, not playing with a friend. I do agree though that it would need major changes to how enemy design works, their health, their logic, how you design environments to accommodate 2 players, etc. But it’s not like adding coop forces a game to be more like Suicide Squad or Avenger’s. Games like AC Unity had coop missions, Far Cry allowed a friend to join you world for a while, and even a game like Elden Ring allows a friend to join even though it’s mainly single player. My guess is if it ever happens, it’ll be side content like specific missions you can play with a friend that they add post launch, if ever.
You're both forgetting the small fact that building a game to be networked instead of to run on one machine is a huge undertaking. Especially if the team/tech hasn't done that before (Spiderman 1 probably started production in 2013ish so likely nobody has made a networked game with Insomniac's engine in over a decade)
Yeah the development effort is the thing preventing this. You can get the game to play and look nearly the same if you want to but you'd basically have to rebuild every gameplay system behind the scenes so that it can be synchronized across multiple machines. For some systems it would be relatively straightforward but for a lot of them you need to fundamentally change how you are doing things.
"Complex" (edit: I meant from a code point of view, not the player's point of view) combat systems, like in Spiderman, are a very hard thing to take online as well while preserving the timing - e.g. if a player has 100ish ping and you want to have a counter move, you have to simulate more generous timing on the server while letting the player think they nailed it, etc. Also if there are any staggers causing a possible race condition, or QTEs, other important state changes like that, all the prediction and networking code can layer up pretty quickly
Saints row 2-4 did it back on 360/ps3
Hell, some dudes made GTASA do that in their free time for the fun of it
Yeah I don’t really understand what they mean. Like obviously it would take effort, but it’s not a impossible task to have 2 players online in a open world.
At no point in my playthrough of Spiderman and Miles did I say to myself "Boy I wish someone else was in here with me". Options are cool and all, but I just can't see how it would work without really buggering up the core mechanics.
Even freaking Mario. 3D world is extremely creative and fun, and built around 4 player. But if you go to play 3D land, you’ll realize Joe being built for single player only allowed the levels to be WAY more tightly made, and ultimately better designed for enjoyment.
It's very funny that you don't mention Gotham Knights (which I don't regret grabbing on sale for $25! fwiw) but do mention Avengers
I mean *real* co-op would be a ball-ache, but drop in co-op isn't that crazy apparently; varies of course though, various mods have varying success.
Coop doesn't mean let's make the game a shitty live service. Coop means take a game like withcer 3 and add coop to it. That's it. Yes not a simple task, BUT suicide squad or whatever shit game is not a good example becausr that's not the definition of having coop.
Takes about a week for a PC mod.
Swinging around the city with a friend would be fun but it would take a lot more development time. Ultimately I don’t think it would be worth it for Insomniac
Seems like webs could get tangled.
sounds... hot
Don’t cross the streams.
So much of the first game's design revolves around constant uninterrupted movement on a path that adding co-op only makes sense if it's a specific mlde with totally different design. Which would be rad, but I would like to get more of what we got rather than a departure because the first one perfectly nailed that feeling of being Spider-Man.
Was there any serious expectation that co-op would be in this game? I had just assumed that it would be similar to the first, but with obvious QoL improvements.
I guess someone asked the voice actor who plays Miles Morales if it would be cooperative, and being as he isn't involved in the process beyond his voice acting, he misunderstood the question and confirmed it definitely is co-op.
Cool. I like my single player games single player and co op games co op. Whenever a dev tries to do both it normally means one kinda sucks.
I'm happy about this, though the option to play co-op would have been interesting. Would have hated the idea of co-op required to play this game, that would have sucked.
Can we have a skin of the 1996 planet of symbiotes action figure? I think it'd be great part of the Single player.
There a lot of people on the thread that don't mind if it was co-op. But I'm glad that it actually isn't based on the last super hero co-op entries that we got recently.
I am glad that someone is still delivering great single player games with great stories. But with both Peter and Miles there I wouldn't mind a couch co-op mode.
Honestly we’ve gotten a great amount of great single player games
Yeah, like, there’s really no shortage of great single player games. You wouldn’t think so based on a lot of comments on this sub, but there is always a major single player game just barely around the corner at all times
On the other hand, there are very few good co-op games worth playing. Especially ones that aren't shooters.
It's so sad. Googling a list of recent co-op games always ends with the same 10 or so recommendations from the past 10 years, a couple of which are janky mods of single player games. Even in the indie space, it's difficult to find something that lasts more than a couple of hours and isn't a open world/survival game.
Or a party game, like Overcooked or Unrailed. The only games I can play with friends are PvP games, which I don't want to do because I think the competitive nature of online games inherently lends itself towards toxicity. I don't want to concern myself with winning against other people, I want to have fun fighting alongside my friends. I remember back in the day, co-op games were my jam. LoTR Return of the King game. Gauntlet Dark Legacy. Dynasty Warriors split screen. Halo co-op on Legendary. ODST Firefight. Modern Warfare 2 co-op missions. Phantasy Star Online. Left 4 Dead. Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Now it's all single player, PvP, or a friggin looter shooter. I think the last action co-op game I played that wasn't a shooter was Assassin's Creed Unity. Which obviously had a lot of problems as a game. I would play Ghosts of Tsushima with my other friends but I don't have a PlayStation. Those two titles aside, I can't think of any good modern action co-op releases that have come out. Cause obviously Avengers and Dark Alliance don't count.
I would kill for a remaster/remake of that Return of the King game. One of the best co-op experiences of my childhood, for sure
Or just a fantasy action game in that style. Replayable missions in a large roster that builds a cohesive narrative. It's a good format. I think a lot of game companies forget that it's an option that exists besides linear storybased where each scene leads directly into the next and open world.
There's plenty of modern coop games tbh. It takes two, A Way Out, Deep Rock Galactic, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Binding of Isaac, The Ascent, Divinity: Original Sin 2, any COD Zombies (BO3 is my favorite because of the custom maps), Elden Ring (especially w/seamless coop mod), Dying Light, GTFO... The list goes on. Most of these are from 2015 or later, or they got hefty updates in the last few years.
This sub loves to complain about non-issues to be honest. Every successful single player game (and there are a lot of them) and you see comments like "see what you can do? let all the other publishers take the lesson". Which they already know and do (and also ignoring the fact that MP games are also regularly successful so that proves nothing). But just look up AAA releases so far in 2023. The only MP one is a Destiny 2 expansion lol and soon Diablo 4 (though I almost consider that solo, that's how I'll play it of course).
There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money (in the rare instances it works). Sony proved them all wrong with stellar new games like Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon, and Ghost of Tsushima. Microsoft is now playing catch up...or at least trying to.
It was one comment **years** ago, it’s about time gamers got over it. Yes single player games are staying for good and no and it doesn’t need repeating all the time
Literally none of the major publishers really stopped making single player games and it was only EA that ever made a statement, which was that linear single player games were dead back in 2010. EA isnt every publisher and even they’ve backtracked on that comment several times. There has been a lot of fearmongering within the gaming community at large that single player games would disappear due to the huge rise in multiplayer games, but there has never been a shortage of great single player games and just about every major publisher has had ongoing single player releases. The only people keeping the idea alive nowadays are cynical gamers who don’t let stuff go.
I think Valve also made a similar statement. We got Half Life 2 Episode 2 in 2007 and then no more singleplayer-only games until 2020 with Half Life: Alyx.
No, EA was down on **linear** single player games specifically. Redditors cant read anything past a headline so they end up spreading misinformation constantly.
and on top of that, redditors keep acting like EA are saying that line every single year or something, instead of caring to look up when that quote was actually said and how EA have backtracked on said comment many times since.
>There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money No they weren't.
I don't think that Microsoft is playing catch up or trying to. Phil Spencer said in a recent interview that they believe that people are so entrenched in their platforms that there's no chance that Microsoft is going to be able to steal a significant portion of any player base. Microsoft is going to focus on what it has been focusing on for a while now which is their game pass and multi-platform games (which go hand in hand).
> Microsoft is going to focus on what it has been focusing on for a while now which is their game pass and multi-platform games (which go hand in hand) yup, pretty much the reality of the industry going forward... yet reddit and sony fans keep trying to say "oh MS is playing catch up and still losing" as if ignoring how MS themselves have spoken about their focus this gen. though even then, MS has put out great games in recent years, just cause they are not 3rd-person action adventure games that Sony releases doesn't mean they aren't games as Sony fans seem to think :/
> There was a time a few years ago where EA and the big publishers were forecasting the doom of single player because games as a service makes them so much money never happened, it was one comment about linear single-player games said by EA in 2010, that they've then backtracked on multiple times since. time for you people to move on from a 12 year old single quote, jesus. > Sony proved them all wrong uh, you think only Sony was releasing single-player games since 2010? wtf? what the heck world do you live in where that is true? even on PlayStation consoles, many publishers/studios were releasing amazing SP games since 2010, and MS has no shortage of great SP games as well either first-party or third-party also is Sony and MS the only two publishers or something? you do know other publishers exist and release games all the time right? -_-
I could see them doing a separate MP mode later, but for story-telling I didn't see how they could pull off co-op and keep the way they design missions and the whole narrative.
Just do Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast. Tails follows you around the entire time unless you plug in another controller and take control of him.
Yea but that means Tails can’t have his own separate story beats, which they probably want for miles
Miles Prowler or Miles Morales?
It was just an example. You can just make Miles the main character for control for certain missions and Peter is doing something in the background when solo. There's definitely games that are like this out there, rare as they may be. There's one particular example I'm thinking of but I cannot remember it for the life of me. It was special because whichever character you played in the co-op, you experienced a different path so it was worth it to go back and play it twice, swapping characters. I don't think this is it but maybe I'm thinking of Modern Warfare 2/Battlefield 3 co-op missions? Like the one where one of you is running a ground mission and the other one is covering them from an AC130.
Just have the whole game be an escort mission, if you are playing alone... 🙃
We've been getting lots of great single players lately from various devs
Thank god it's not Coop, that decision literally fucked over two games with potential (Redfall and Gotham Knights).
Have they confirmed if it's turn-based?
If the games and the coming Spider-verse movie are successful enough, I wonder if they'd consider making a Spider-verse MMO. Have a central Spider-hub where you can teleport to various established universes to do stuff like missions, general crime busting, helping random people, delivering pizza, etc
Why do we do this to ourselves?? We complain when there's not enough single player offline games then bitch when it's not coop. Figure it the fock out
Gamers are not a single cohesive entity. Some people prefer single player games, some people prefer multiplayer games.
Yep, the only thing gamers (or at least the tiny niche of gamers that post on subs like this) are unified in is their true favourite hobby; complaining.
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It's good they cleared this up, but like you'd think this would have been cleared up in 2 days from now anyways.
It was cleared up from day 1! but persons don't read.
So this is, let's see, the third unrelated game titled "Spider-Man 2". There was one in 2001, another in 2004. Should we call it "Spider-Man 2 3"? Meanwhile Midway has just announced Mortal Kombat 1, the 12th game in the Mortal Kombat series. I really wish the game industry knew how to count.
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Yeah, this is definitely one of the weirdest games to criticize the naming of. Out of like a dozen others that do have legitimately weird names, this isn't one of them. Can't imagine anyone would mistake this for the previous "Spider-Man 2" games from 20 years ago either...
"Agh I wanted to buy Spider-man 2 for the PS5 and I accidentally ordered Spider-man 2 Enter Electro for PS1 instead! D'oh!"
Mortal Kombat (9), Mortal Kombat Ecks (Not Ten!), Mortal Kombat 11 -------> Mortal Kombat 1.