Nice video. 
With the current state of GZ, i agree. To me, there is way too much “hand holding/spoon feeding” currently in the game. I liked the launch day setting, where you needed to use your brain to figure out where to go and what to do next.
Completely sums up my thoughts and feelings re: GZ and the turn it took after Alpine Unrest.
It honestly felt like you’d been listening in on the party chat between my regular team mates & I.
Great video.
Excellent video.
More or less sums up why I have a hard time liking this game anymore. I think GZ has been losing it’s original concept/identity with how much hand-holding and lack of diversity despite the new content. Honestly the game has more grinding and RNG than Destiny 2, and that game has ALOT of grinding. And IMO I’m not a big fan of how the story past Alpine Unrest is either happening off screen or is told with more cheesy dialogue than a cheese factory.
I wonder - did a new product owner had a completely different idea about which way should GZ go? Or was this planned earlier, when Paul was still around?
Haha, thank you my guy!
I’ve got no idea, I guess it’ll remain one of mankind’s greatest mysteries xD
My sincerest thanks! Unfortunately, I really share your opinion here.
Completely agree here, and big thanks!
Great video! In my opinion you have pinpointed the soul of the original game.
I don’t necessarily agree on all of the points you bring up in the video, but I do think it’s well-structured, and brutally honest. It’s true that GZ is not the game it was, but at the same time you need to take into account that the game needs to evolve, sometimes along paths that won’t favor everybody.
It’s also possible it became this way because of the times, the lack of resources, personnel etc.
I can only hope more time and effort can be garnered for GZ in the future, and that more feedback like this is offered along the way.
In that sense, games that are completed and then released for the public are better. Since you’ll get finished product and devs don’t change the game along the way.
On the other hand, the “live service” games, bring more content to the game and can give game more value to play, especially if players are bored by the existing content.
Between the two, i’m preferring the 1st example. 
I like my game to be finished and remain in the state i bought it. Some additional DLCs, for added content is nice, especially since i have a choice if i want to play vanilla game or with additional content.
I agree with that, however I kinda feel that GZ is more in the early access territory, even though it’s advertised as a “complete” game. Mainly because the features and content though IMO flawed, has made the game feel more complete then it being optional content. If all GZ got was bug fixes and story dlc like Alpine, so no crafting, no rivals etc etc, then personally I would have stoped playing it a long time ago.
It’s hard to call it a live service game, considering that it doesn’t really follow that definition. It doesn’t have seasonal content like what Destiny 2 and Fallout 76 are doing for example. GZ is really just a game that gets updates every now and then, like most games. Now Destiny 2 and Fallout 76 also has a lot of flaws, especially their overpriced cash shop items. But really, those games has far more content and diverstry than GZ has now. Yes I understand, that both games has far more devs and resources then what GZ has. But honestly the bar has been set of quality both in free and paid content. Looking at you FINX RISING…
GZ to me has become a game with more grinding than a skating game, the story has just been filled with off-screen lore and generic cheesy dialogue. The nato sending weapons, the supposed “resistance”, bunker 666, world revamps etc are all really cool ideas and concepts. But considering how it’s currently handled the games very interesting story before FNIX RISING has lost the hook for me. Considering how much GZ was advertised for its story, it really stings when the said story doesn’t get the treatment it deserves and instead has become disconnected from the game. Now it only servers the purpose of loosely explaining major plot elements and events through store pages and random letters. We are always hinted at great things, but they either never happen or they not given depth in their playable presentation.
This is something devs are making intentionally. In the FNIX Rising release dev stream, it was explained that devs don’t want to push the story on the player. Instead they are making the GZ like a book, where you read (or see) some of the lore while you need to use your imagination to fill in the rest.
I get it that this way of telling the story is different from conventional game and can be hard to cope. Especially since it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. But for players who like to use their imagination to add to the lore, this method of telling the story is preferred. From which, fan fiction with different paths can be easily created (e.g like my theory of player char being a machine).
Could devs have made the story telling better? Yes.
There are still several aspects in the game that doesn’t get explained in lore any way (e.g Rivals). Weapon DLCs would also need explanation in the game itself. Telling the lore within DLC description (when buying it), isn’t, IMO, the best way. And there are other aspects as well.
I am not necersily against this, however I dont belive it’s done in a justified way. At least post alpine unrest. The reaper for example had a really good tease in FOA4, honestly FOA4 and Himfjäll brought that spooky and dreadfull atomosphere and tone I wished the game used more of, but when the reaper came it was just a another boring grind with the only lore being. “oh hey the reaper spanwed”. My personal dislike is when the writing went some cheesy but it worked. To just cheesy, constantly making fun of it self for being cheesy, the recent example being the intro mission for the home base.
The trailler, the letter you find. They both think something big and hype is gonna happen, but then is just blow up base random truck apperas. There’s no involment from said resistence, not even an explnation on how the truck got there in the first place. So many important events that happen off scren, that we could have played instead. Finding pices of a story is fine, but GZ is pulling a OG Destiny 1 when things where just told not shown. Finding the picies and theorizing about GZ story is fine for teasing new things that’s coming, so the player feel like they got it when new thing is shown. But when it’s all happening of thin air with writing that makes more fun of it self then giving depth, it’s IMO really hard to care.
EDIT: Fallout 76 tried doing this with having the story be like what GZ is, however for the majority of players this wasn’t a good move because eventually it got stale. Because it so much it ended up all melding together to a forgettable story, so they introduced human nps. Visual story telling isn’t bad, Deus Ex Mankind Devided does this perfectable. However there it ends up adding to the overall lore and not just be the games vocal point. Plus the games world is smaller but extremely dense
Yeah, i agree that some of the lore could’ve presented better. Then again, i don’t think any dev likes to release half-finished product but my guess is that the upper-management has set such a restrictive timeline for the dev team, where devs can’t finalize the product completely with the manpower they have.
Currently, we get one update per month, more-or-less. And i don’t know how much time devs have with each region revamp + all the lore that goes with it. It could be the single month they have between updates or it could be 2 months. I don’t know.
But what we know, is that Alpine Unrest DLC was in the works for a long time. If i remember correctly, in one of the dev streams (probably Alpine Unrest release stream, can’t recall that well), devs said that they have worked with the Alpine Unrest since the GZ’s launch. Or a bit even before that. This makes 8 months of development. That shows nicely since Alpine Unrest is a well made DLC.
Unknown. But Zach has brought some changes. Most apparent one is teasers, to show what devs are working on and that, in turn - generates hype.
Thanks a lot my man!
Super-glad to hear it my guy! Thanks for the feedback!
I think many appreciate the direction Generaton Zero has headed in. I’m one among them. But people who are content often don’t make their voices heard.
Regarding the atmosphere of how the game was before, most of it felt like it belonged to the Archipelago Region. It was deliberately designed to be a slow burn, as you started to investigate what was going on.
But once you started to get better gear and delve into the other regions, action sequences became more common. You could still sneak around and pick your fights (and very much still can) but at some point the game had to evolve in a direction that was fresh for the setting, especially since the story told was continued.
But I believe that GZ has always, in it’s core, been about shooting Machines with friends. All the other stuff, the sound design, the immersive environments and to some degree the storytelling were all part of the larger whole, but to spice the formula up a bit.
I believe the game is headed in the right direction. Could it be better? Of course it could. But that’s still ahead. What’s been done so far has been impressive for such a small and dedicated team.