#1 example for me will always and eternally be Halo, though how much of that was the devs wanting to retire at 30 after cashing out, and how much was M$ 's launch window, will always remain a mystery. Though I'm certain Bungie wouldn't have felt the temptation to do such a hackjob on their swansong if professional game development weren't such a grueling crunch-time burden
not to mention the riskiness of being self-published that Bungie experienced in their brush with death during the "Myth CD recall" fiasco:
>huge open world, giant nonlinear levels>dynamic responsive nonlinear campaign>huge multiplayer popcap for coop and pvp>(then) typically sophisticated bungie story with rich presentation spanning beyond cutscenes & npc barks to reams of in-world texts>(then) typical bungie modding tools>another rare mac game<bought by M$
<dumbed down from ambitious genre experiment to ultra-linear fps with a few vehicle segments to fit in 64 megs of memory on console
<made console shooters even worse with introduction of auto-aim and regen health
<in-game story dumbed down with removal of all text and overall linearity
<story so dumbed down a tie-in advergame outdoes it
<tie-in novels also share the burden shirked by halo's storytelling
<multiplayer stripped to pvp cobbled together in a week by one guy and basic 2-player coop mode
<other game for rival console already in production, oni, rushed out to its detriment
And then the cherry on top, while I haven't played it (and most of the O.G. Bungie team were never involved), is Destiny's fumbling of what seems even more like Halo's original concept on paper, complete with a seemingly open world stripped of freedom or consequence, and a story totally separate from the actual game.
This also brings to mind a game series commonly cited as an example of the OPPOSITE OF capitalism killing it: Half-Life, and Valve's work in general. I'm still unsure as to whether this represents a genuine flaw of utopian conditions, or if Valve are just exceptionally undisciplined fags.
>>2777Agreed with your other examples, but
>the transition of Fallout to the abomination that is FO3 onwardsThat was textbook capitalism. Jefferson/Black Hound/BG3, Van Buren/Fo3, Troika's Fo3, FoOl, FoT, FoBoS, Lionheart, Bethesda's own internal dumbing down from Morrowind to Oblivion. Even Fallout itself is the result of greedy porkies, the screwing over of Wasteland.
Really the only thing I'd blame on the devs was biting off more than they could chew with LithTech for Torn.
>>2890Sure, Metroid Prime is an excessively easy kiddy game, just like everything Nintendo-branded since the SNES. But it still represents a great design compromising with the thumbsticks by making auto-aim explicit, integrating platforming better than the studio's previous Turok games, and has an awesome unique atmosphere of fierce warrior spirit tempered by serene spiritual wonder and a sense of longing.
>>2993Oh! Oh! What about its culpability in killing the original Blizzard North-authored Diablo 3 because the WoW team was jealous of them stepping on their toes!
>>2781>>3042>>3050Are you the anon that pointed to Exile/Avernum as an example of what cRPGs should be?