Re: Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town announced!

[Kikki]

I wouldn't worry too much about the town looking empty. I've seen it a few times on other games, that people complained that a location looked abandoned or dead, because no one was walking around it at all...it was just buildings (Ys IX comes to mind as the last game I remember this being a complaint for...a very empty town) but once the game was released, it wasn't like that...there were NPCs wandering around freely. I don't know much about game development, and I think this game is actually already quite close to done and not a lot will be different in the final release, but having characters wandering around the towns seems to be one of the very last things they add to a game. At least, I've run into this situation a few times and it always turned out okay, that they just hadn't added it yet.

I love makers, but having 8 of every type is a bit much even for me. I'm curious why they've added so many; hopefully there's a good reason, and they work smoothly and thus are not a burden.

[keenocuous]

I did notice when the character was walking through the town, you could see a character on the far right for just a second, so I think that some are added in, but that doesn’t mean all are. I’m sure that there’ll be more characters running around the town, but without them... very barren. I think it’s also the detail and clutter that’s usually in a town that makes it look less empty, but this doesn’t seem to have much. It’s not a big thing and I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I did like that it looked like there was a clothing store and a salon, though! It seems like it’s next to that flower shop, which had construction signs previously next to it in the first video they shared. Meaning that we probably won’t get it from the jump, and we’ll have to ‘earn’ it somehow.

[nongo]

I wouldn't worry about the town looking empty as well. The town being showcased in the trailer looked like it was meant to look empty because they wanted to emphasize the vibe of it.

Considering there is a museum, Olive Town is probably a tourists site. Meaning it will be filled with npc's to give more life to the town. The only thing that bothers me is I won't be able to tell who is a random npc from a main villager, since nobody has portraits. Over time I'll know but stepping into the game at first, it will be tough to differentiate the two.

[Cherubae]

Victor was asking Jacob about the tourist boats in the Nintendo mini-direct, so the tourism-aspect may be quite valid.

[JustABeautifulGuy]

This has to be the most uninspiring bachelors line up in quite a while. 3 of them look pretty much the same and it seems there will be a common laid back theme personality wise except for Emilio and Damon. Bachelorettes on the other hand seem comparatively diverse. And somehow, this art style actually suits their design more as well.

I did expect a fixed camera for the movements but the angle is too overhead that it makes it feel like a handheld game.

[MaiIsMe]

This has to be the most uninspiring bachelors line up in quite a while. 3 of them look pretty much the same and it seems there will be a common laid back theme personality wise except for Emilio and Damon.

What do we know about the bachelors even? Emilio seems fiery, Damon seems grumpy, Iori seems "proper," we have one line of dialogue from Ralph where he talks about a sandwich and haven't seen any dialogue or even a name for the other bachelor. How are these "laid back"?

[nightshade2010]

some thoughts I have after reading everything :
gameplay-wise al I want is an AP style mine and the tool upgrading system from MT

About the graphics what people have to remember is the switch is pretty much a souped-up Android tablet so the graphics are going to be higher quality mobile graphics because the tablet part has to be able to run them (although in general, I haven't seen a switch game that couldn't be done on a wii u with the classic controller in my opinion)

And also people have to remember like someone mentioned any gameplay/style choices are for and decided by the Japanese fans who dictate what gets put in and taken out ....like the whole rival debacle in the mineral town remake which was done for the Japanese fan base ......

And in the video, i think those are exp points when you pick the crops

And the reason it took so long is no one wanted to make games for the switch because of the wiiU failure they wanted to wait and see if it was going to be worth it

[ilikecookies94]

About the graphics what people have to remember is the switch is pretty much a souped-up Android tablet so the graphics are going to be higher quality mobile graphics because the tablet part has to be able to run them (although in general, I haven't seen a switch game that couldn't be done on a wii u with the classic controller in my opinion)

From someone who studied computer coding before pharmacy school, I agree with this. There’s only a certain level of power the switch can handle. Don’t ask me how much power because I do not know.

[Bluie]

I mean, it really all depends on the developer and how much they're willing to push the Switch. It has some great capabilities and there's already several games that are highly impressive for a 'souped up tablet'. See; Warframe, the Xenoblade duology, Breath of the Wild, Astral Chain, Atelier Ryza, and more on the way like Immortals Fenyx Rising and Monster Hunter Rise - all of which run directly from the system with no cloud. The Switch 100% can handle more graphically challenging games and it's silly to pretend it can't.

Pioneers of Olive Town's graphics are a stylistic choice, not a result of the Switch not being powerful enough to go beyond what's been shown. Marvelous chose this route, period.

[Kikki]

I was thinking the same thing, Bluie. The Switch is not powerful, compared to other current consoles...but it has plenty of graphically gorgeous games on it all the same. It being on the Switch means it'll never have sky-high FPS rates or resolution, but that doesn't dictate the style. So, I also don't think that this style is a result of the Switch limiting what they could do. This is just what they went with.

[greensara]

I couldn't tell from the clips, but I wonder if they are going to include the "faceless" NPCs again like in the last couple of 3ds games. I liked how they made the towns look more lived in and visited instead of having an even smaller small community. Although, if there are no portraits this time I guess everyone is faceless now, lol.

[Mikodesu]

Optimization is kind of a lost art in game dev these days, unfortunately. :/ Looking at the limitations of early PCs and consoles and what devs were able to get out of them vs what we see now, getting 'bang for your buck' is just not on the minds of a lot of programmers these days. (A couple failed attempts at game development is the only personal experience I speak from.)

I tend to forgive smaller studios on that basis. Art style is chosen by limitations, be it the skill of your modelers/animators/programmers or what gameplay you find necessary. Or even just...flat out, time. (Organized, beautiful code is incredibly time consuming.)

I'm curious to see more clips of actual gameplay in the coming months, and I won't make any hard judgments on the graphical quality until then. From the outside, having played neither, the Doraemon SoS game is undeniably more beautiful than Olive Town. Why isn't as simple, though. Maybe they had better programmers or artists, or maybe the gameplay was simpler to animate, leaving them more time/money to make other assets prettier.

Time will tell. Just gotta manage to sit tight till then.

[Kikki]

There seems to be a persistent, wide-spread impression that Marvelous is a small company, but that's really only true if you're comparing them to a giant gaming house like Nintendo, imo. Marvelous is a multi-million dollar company with 500+ employees and about 100 games under their belt, company-wide. Their net income in back in 2014 was about 18 million USD. I definitely don't feel like they can qualify as a smaller studio that we shouldn't expect too much from due to lack of resources.

Personally, to me the style seems to show that it's their first new Bokumono for Switch and are trying out a new style to fit the console, and they're probably dealing with a fair number of team members who may never have worked on a Bokumono team before, since a bunch of the existing ones were portioned off to Hakama.

People who already like this style are well off; they already think it looks good. It's not that it doesn't look like Bokumono, either...it looks quite classic, in some ways. But in others, for me, it looks awkward, and there are parts that just don't feel quite right. I don't think much will change between now and release (there isn't all that much time before the game has to head off to the printers, so to speak, since it's going to be available to buy in physical format in 3.5 months) but I do think a few things will be improved between now and then, including adding more people wandering around town, and probably a bit more optimization and/or enhancement of small details.

Well, unless there ends up being a delay, of course. I'm not anticipating one, but if there were, all bets are off.

[Katze]

I'd just like to back up what others have already said. The Switch's hardware may explain why most of its games aren't graphical powerhouses, but it isn't an excuse for lackluster art direction which, imo, is the main problem with Pioneers of Olive Town. Of course it wouldn't be fair to compare it to something like Breath of the Wild, because Marvelous doesn't have the budget that a first party Nintendo franchise does, but just look at screenshots of Rune Factory Frontier. That's a Wii game with an undoubtedly modest budget, yet to me it looks 10x more appealing than Pioneers of Olive Town because of how they worked with the hardware limitations in order to produce a color palette and environment that still looked pretty good (and if I'm being honest I think that game looks way better than RF5 too). PoOT doesn't look bland because they had no choice, it looks that way because they DID have one and that's what they decided to go with. Frankly I just don't think it was a good decision, and they're going to remain a niche series forever while indie titles like Stardew Valley rake in the money because the developers refuse to make any significant changes or improvements to the series despite more and more competitors cropping up.

One could of course argue that Bokumono doesn't need to evolve and it's fine the way it is, but if a significant amount of longtime fans like myself are starting to lose interest in the franchise then maybe it's not fine. Hell, I've stuck around for way longer than most of my friends.

[nongo]

I think a huge reason why the graphics aren't as amazing as we expected is due to the farm customization. The customization feature looks much more detailed compared to previous games. Marvelous probably chose to go with a simplistic graphic style in order for PoOT to function smoothly. The game already has framerate issues but if the graphics were on par with RFF or even AWL, it would not play at even 30fps. Frontier itself is a beautiful game that I would also agree looks better than RF5, but it has framerate issues for a reason.

What I don't understand is if RFToD, RF4, and RF5 are all games that run smoothly, why are the bokujou games still experiencing frame-drops sometimes? With that being said, I wish marvelous would take time or money to invest in a system that will prevent frame-drops so they can truly create a bokujou game that both they and fans want.