YOUR Most Disappointing Developers (Not Bioware Edition)

[Video Games Are Dumb]

-Dis·ap·point·ment
-noun
-sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one's hopes or expectations.
"to her disappointment, there was no chance to talk privately with Luke"

Let's make this soooooo fucking clear right of the bat. Just because a developer is a disappointment, doesn't mean they're bad. Heck, I think it's fair to say some of the most successful developers in recent history haven't quite lived up to the initial excitement they produced. And considering we are all experiencing a subjective version of reality, let's just give credit that every post here is totally and completely IMHO.

Likewise, let's recognize that even if it a developer made the right choices financially, doesn't mean they fulfilled the audience's creative hopes. In other words, no one is necessarily wrong here.

Bungie
Okay, so here's my version of events. I grew up in the dark ages of Apple computers. You wanna play games? Well too bad. They're all DOS or Windows. Not crummy old Mac OS 7. Well then there was Marathon. A fantastic trilogy of shooters than even made the VooDoo FX crowd jealous.

But in 2001 when Halo dropped on the Xbox, they became on of my absolute favorite developers. Completely changing the ways First Person Shooters felt and functioned on consoles. Followed by Halo 2, a not as good but still pretty neat game....then Halo 3, which was more of the same but bigger. At the very least Halo Reach really brought the franchise in some new and interesting directions.

FINALLY Bungie threw off the shackles of the Halo franchise! They would make a brand new IP, it could be anything! And it was Destiny. Which is a fine game. Destiny 2 is a much better improvement and all around a fun time. But still, it's just a shooter...

All these years later, a quarter of a century, they're still making First Person Shooter games. Back in 2001, I thought they could do anything! RPGs, racing games, something open world. But nope, they just make good shooters. I hoped they would have branched out into new genres and revolutionize them just as much as they had the FPS with Halo.

So, what were some of your favorite developers that never quite fulfilled your perceived potential? And what were you hoping to see from them?

JUST LISTING THE NAMES OF DEVELOPERS WITHOUT EXPLANATION IS BORING AND BAD.

 

[SofNascimento]

Biow...

Oh, then I go with Monolith. Those people made Blood, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 and FEAR. We're talking top tier FPS here. With NoLF 2 being the second best ever. Not to mention Claw!

FEAR2 was still good, but after it it went dowhill fast. Shadow of Mordor was good, and that's about it. But I want that old Monolith back.

 

[Z-Beat]

Konami. I understand the decision to effectively abandon every single franchise in favor of casino machines, but I hate it. I know they were technically just the publisher of a lot of those two but the point stands

Also yeah, Bungie

And Sonic Team. Everyone is doing right by Sonic except Sonic Team and it's depressing

 

[Chivalry]

Blizzard. Haven't made a game I enjoyed since Diablo 2. Had so much faith in them back in the day.

 

[Windows-PC]

I'm still disappointed at Nintendo for letting Rare go to Microsoft.

I still miss you Killer Instinct please come back to Nintendo :'(

Spoiler

But I would also buy an XBox Series X for Killer Instinct 2, wanted to let you know Phil Spencer ;)

 

[H.Cornerstone]

Blizzard. Haven't made a game I enjoyed since Diablo 2. Had so much faith in them back in the day.

Click to shrink...

I liked Overwatch,Wow, Half of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 but yeah them recently is really bad.

 

[Deleted member 864]

Blizzard. Haven't made a game I enjoyed since Diablo 2. Had so much faith in them back in the day.

Click to shrink...

Same for me.

 

[No_Face]

This gen?

Bethesda Game Studios

I adore Skyrim, but their recent output was lacking in comparison. Fallout 4 was fun, but 76 still hurts. Especially considering they could have worked on something else instead...
But at least I'm pretty confident they'll turn the ship around with Starfield and Elder Scrolls VI

 

[Holundrian]

Blizzard, Gamefreak and the FF divison of square are the trifecta of disappointment

 

[Z-Beat]

Biow...

Oh, then I go with Monolith. Those people made Blood, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 and FEAR. We're talking top tier FPS here. With NoLF 2 being the second best ever. Not to mention Claw!

FEAR2 was still good, but after it it went dowhill fast. Shadow of Mordor was good, and that's about it. But I want that old Monolith back.

Click to shrink...

TimeGate made the alternate universe FEAR games Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point, but Colonial Marines tanked them.

 

[Asbsand]

Rocksteady.

Not just that they haven't released a game in ages, but going from Arkham City to Arkham Knight was close to being another Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3 move.

The stuff that just screams "we lost some kind of key guy that used to the game as good as it was."

And true enough, Paul Dini the main writer left for one but the game design is also really weird, and turns out a guy named Paul Crocker used to be their narrative designer and did not work on AK. Can't tell how that fits the equation but overall it looks like a lot of corporate bullshit happened gradually after Arkham Asylum and by the time AK was getting made significant people were either leaving or the company was just growing so large that it became a "too many cooks" situation, and design by committee, like the overly repeated side quest steps and cop-out for boss battles at every turn.

I liked AK but it was a huge disappointment too.

 

[Philippo]

Level-5.

 

[SofNascimento]

TimeGate made the alternate universe FEAR games Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point, but Colonial Marines tanked them.

Click to shrink...

Extraction Point was ok, but Perseus Mandate was quite bad.

 

[Arcana Wiz]

NIS (Nippon Ichi Software)

I really liked the earlier disgaea games humour, La Pucelle, Makai Kingdom, the Prinny Plataformers, Soul Nomad... (Even if they had some problematic elements)

But this entire generation we are hearing reports of the japanese branch being tight with the money. This translates into the few releases they had in these past years.
And regarding these few games... to me they were most meh. Doesnt help that began to feel more of the same.

 

[Salty Rice]

Besides Bioware easily Bethesda and Blizzard.

There is a reason why there is now a seal of disappointment called Triple B (BBB) after the three.

 

[daybreak]

Bethesda Game Studios.

Not because I'm angry at their recent outputs (Fallout 4 was fine, Fallout 76 wasn't the core EGS team), but because of the lack of titles on this generation.

Also because Oblivion hasn't been remastered yet and I want it.

 

[Nairume]

Atlus

Look, yes, they still make good games, but they went from being a highly prolific developer and publisher in the 2000s to struggling with console development while relying more on shortcuts with their portable offerings and slowly dialing back up on their publishing deals in the 2010s. They spent nearly a decade following up one of their best titles and turned in something that was undeniably great but was nowhere near as great as it should have been after all that time. All while they've mostly shown themselves to be pretty fucking blind to what's going on in the world around them and have to have their own localization studio fight them over making changes to things that should be really fucking obvious to not do anymore.

Atlus used to be on fire if you were into the kind of stuff they worked on. That feeling is just gone now.

 

[$10 Bagel]

Zipper

The first two Socom games were great. Then it was just a steep decline after that. Socom 3 was such a departure and felt more like third person Battlefield so they released Combined Assault which tried to go back as much as possible to traditional gameplay. Then they released MAG which was ambitious, but I wasn't a fan of. Then came Socom 4 which let's not even speak about. Then came Unit 13 for the Vita and that was the last we ever heard from them.

 

[Nugnip]

The three Bs. Blizzard, Bethesda, BioWare.

 

[Lucreto]

Bethesda for lack of Elder Scrolls

Insomnaic for lack of Ratchet games.

 

[Anoregon]

Yeah it's definitely Blizzard for me. I've definitely spent more time playing their games over the past 20 years than any other developer, but they just aren't that company anymore. I've gone from knowing a Blizzard game was going to be great, to hoping it doesn't suck.

 

[lexony]

Level-5.

Click to shrink...

I agree. Their recent output is nothing for me. I just want a new Fantasy Life and I would be happy.

 

[Proven]

Bungie

 

[BanetteAndBaguette]

Gamefreaks

 

[Sotha_Sil]

Biow...

Oh, then I go with Monolith. Those people made Blood, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 and FEAR. We're talking top tier FPS here. With NoLF 2 being the second best ever. Not to mention Claw!

FEAR2 was still good, but after it it went dowhill fast. Shadow of Mordor was good, and that's about it. But I want that old Monolith back.

Click to shrink...

This is the correct answer. Monolith had one of the greatest decades of development ever (NOLF, NOLF2, FEAR, FEAR2, Condemned, Condemned 2, Alien vs Predator 2, and Tron 2.0 all in 10 years... they even had time for a few flops along the way too lol).

I haven't even attempted their Lord of the Rings games. It's just not the same.

 

[Iori Fuyusaka]

Bethesda for lack of Elder Scrolls

Click to shrink...

ENJOY!

The Elder Scrolls | Blades

From Bethesda Game Studios, the award winning creators of Skryim, comes The Elder Scrolls: Blades.

elderscrolls.bethesda.net

 

[nrtn]

Bethesda - I liked Fallout 4, but even so, they need to get their shit together and bring us quality titles from the start. Enough the recicled engine, dlc's, ports, etc...I really hope that Starfield can deliver in the next generation.

Blizzard - I haven't been into anything they released recently, and been more into Diablo than any other of they IP's, I can't say I'm not disappointed on how they are handling things. D4 looks good, but it's going to take a while before been released and I don't have anything from them to keep them out of this list.

 

[Grouch Douglass]

Bethesda Game Studios.

Not because I'm angry at their recent outputs (Fallout 4 was fine, Fallout 76 wasn't the core EGS team), but because of the lack of titles on this generation.

Also because Oblivion hasn't been remastered yet and I want it.

Click to shrink...

Does Prey and the Dishonored series fall under this umbrella? Those games are some of my favorites this gen. Almost forgot Doom 2016

 

[maabus1999]

If the developer's name starts with the letter "B", you have a good candidate.

 

[Misterhbk]

Whoever owns the Suikoden IP

 

[Nightfall]

Konami and Blizzard. Two synonyms for great gaming experiences and franchises. And while they both went into different directions they both disappointed me in so many ways....

 

[doof_warrior]

Tango Gameworks
after capcom dropped clover, we got platinum games and tango (well, first mikami made vanquish with platinum)
we all know how things went with platinum
but now mikami has his own studio, too, fuck yes. first project? mikami's return to survival horror. dream come true
the final product was, good but not great. i honestly enjoyed it a lot more than i think the general audience did. but then they just made a sequel? one thats worse than the first one
...and thats it?
shinji mikami opened his own studio in 2010 and has only put out 2 games (1 he directed).


edit: i know about ghostwire tokyo, so hey we'll see how that one goes when it comes out

 

[BioDigital Jazzman]

Gamefreak

 

[PeskyToaster]

At the moment, I think EA and DICE haven't really given Battlefield V the support they gave past Battlefields. I think they had the potential for something really special but I kind of feel it's been abandoned when I see the support that Battlefront II is getting. They gotta go where the money is and there's a lot of really awesome work put into the game but a lot of weird decisions as well. I think the next one shouldn't be afraid of returning to an older style of Battlefield. AKA put the vehicles on the map.

On a related note (and one of the issues I see with Battlefield V), I am disappointed in the free map + microtransactions model. It has led to extremely slow and content-starved releases. Even successful games that use the model like Rainbow get like 1 map a quarter. Sometimes just a remake, sometimes you just get Operation Health. During the Premium era Battlefield 4 was getting like 4-5 map expansion packs with new weapons once a quarter on top of free maps and free weapons added throughout. I guess my disappointment is with the entire implementation of the system. I think people thought they would be getting the same type and amount of DLC maps but for free. Even Call of Duty right now gets like one remake map and one tiny troll map. I will gladly pay. You can't tell me that Battlefield V is making more money than 4 or 1 did.


I'd be disappointed in Blizzard if I didn't have that sweet sweet bubble of WoW Classic to live in like the halcyon glory days never left us.

 

[KernelC]

Bethesda is fucking terrible. Their only good games this entire fucking generation have been Doom and Prey. And the latter was kinda whatever to me. I didnt expect much from them but this gen they have made trash after trash, and the unremarkabke Dishonored 2. The first Wolfenstein and DLC are last gen, right?

343i, they have made two games. Both have sucked ass. They JUST fixed MCC in 2019 but the game came out in 2015.

Monolith Soft. Now these guys have been getting bigger and busier, they helped Zelda BOTW and are working on Zelda BOTW2. BUT... wtf is up with xenoblade 2? It feels like a completely different studio from the first game. Xenoblade 2 is an okay jrpg but Xb Chronicles is a masterpiece, dunno what happened there. It took them an entire year to make XC2 an acrually good JRPG

 

[Rumenapp]

Codemasters recently with Grid, game is bland. They also launched Dirt Rally 2.0 last year (from a different team) which for me is the best rally ever so double edged sword.

Redlynx with Trials Rising, game is a fine trials game but Ubisoft hands are all over this with micro transactions and whatnot. They used to be very communicative with the community but not anymore.

 

[Foxnull]

Why not BioWare though? They ruined two of their great IPs in the same generation.

If that really doesn't count, then I'm going with Blizzard. They ruined both Diablo and World of Warcraft.

 

[Detective]

343
*Halo* 4 and 5.

 

[Deleted member 45765]

Harmonix, they've lost their way:

Frequency/Amplitude peak uniqueness -> Karaoke fad games -> ripping off guitar freaks -> ripping off guitar freaks AND drummania -> general 15 years of rock band license packages, the same dance game filled with whatever pop songs are popular and just generally repacking the same experiences.

They exist so hipstery Central Square kids have something to do during the day before The Middle East opens.

 

[DrFunk]

Maxis

But it wasn't their fault, was it EA?

 

[XVerdena]

Square Enix, I can't believe how bad FFXV is, and am about to start KH3, but words are not good about this game either

 

[Deleted member 543]

Bethesda Game Studios.

Last gen for me was defined by their games. I came into this gen expecting the same but Fallout 4 barely held my attention and I had little interest in 76 even before it turned out to be awful.

I still have hope for Starfield and TESVI but time will tell if that's misplaced or not.

 

[Akronis]

Biow...

Oh, then I go with Monolith. Those people made Blood, No One Lives Forever 1 and 2 and FEAR. We're talking top tier FPS here. With NoLF 2 being the second best ever. Not to mention Claw!

FEAR2 was still good, but after it it went dowhill fast. Shadow of Mordor was good, and that's about it. But I want that old Monolith back.

Click to shrink...

is Jace Hall even still at Monolith?

 

[Castor Archer]

343 industries.

Sloppy remaster of a classic, not including its beloved multiplayer. Halo 4 wasn't awful but it didn't take the franchise in to any interesting territory. A botched release of the MCC that took years to correct. And Halo 5 which... yeah lol

Expectations are always low with them.

 

[Miniature Kaiju]

Bethesda, Blizzard et Bungie.

And Bioware.

 

[Deadpool_X]

I'm gonna get crucified for this, but here we go:
*sigh*
Naughty Dog.
I fell in love with Naughty Dog back with Jak and Daxter. I loved that trilogy, and Uncharted took the playfulness of the Jak series and added Indiana Jones into it with Uncharted, and my love expanded for them. A true chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter situation. I loved the Playstation 3 trilogy, and Amy Hennig quickly became one of my favorite story-tellers.

Then she left/was forced out/whatever. Naughty Dog was put under Neil Druckmann's supervision, and they lost their sense of humor. Everything became deathly serious. I got The Last of Us and hated it. Uncharted 4 is one of my biggest disappointments ever. The studio is now dead to me.

 

[Deleted member 49535]

Apart from Bioware:

Square Enix. I really cannot express with words how great I think FFVI, VII, VIII and IX are. It's mind blowing to me how they went from that to the mediocrity they are now.

Atlus. After being disappointed by Square Enix output in the PS2 era I found Atlus and they gave me some of my favorite JRPGs ever (Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1&2 and Persona 3&4). These days they barely seem to make games by comparison, and most of what they do is Persona fan service I have zero interest in.

The Sims Studio. Don't know what's going on there but I was a huge fan of the sims up until TS4 dropped. I dislike it a lot, it doesn't feel good to play imo, and every day I'm sad there's no competition for this series. I miss playing a life simulator but every time I give it a chance I feel extremely disappointed.

 

[Deleted member 1839]

For an Armored Core fan? The current state of FromSoftware is disappointing.

 

[shinobi602]

Valve

Half-Life, its sequel and subsequent episodes were GOAT tier. Nothing they've done since 2007 has interested me.

I'd have been day one on Alyx if it wasn't VR.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

Zipper

The first two Socom games were great. Then it was just a steep decline after that. Socom 3 was such a departure and felt more like third person Battlefield so they released Combined Assault which tried to go back as much as possible to traditional gameplay. Then they released MAG which was ambitious, but I wasn't a fan of. Then came Socom 4 which let's not even speak about. Then came Unit 13 for the Vita and that was the last we ever heard from them.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, I read that they were pressured from above to make Socom 4 more like COD, and they probably just needed to get Unit 13 out quickly for the Vita launch. MAG was great but it had quite a steep learning curve and it arrived a few years too early on the wrong platform.