Wow, it's the first game I ever worked on professionally! I'm marking this game as "mastered" considering I spent 2 years of my life working on it.

Look, there are other former Volition coworkers of mine that have guested on podcasts and talked about some of the issues this game's development went through. This game was supposed to be doing a lot more, originally. The ideas were too lofty to be pulled off by a team of Volition's size, poor management and meddling from the publisher damaged team morale, and a whole host of other things contributed to the poor final product.

The game was originally more of a loot-based, co-op action RPG with three open world cities that would update over time. The map updates were kind of like Fortnite's, but smaller and on a more frequent basis. New events would happen every so often that featured community goals, the kind you currently see happening in Helldivers 2. The ideas were neat, but it all felt very pie-in-the-sky.

The newly updated engine and tools Volition was using at the time were designed with this original game in mind... which means the tools needed to make a single player open world game with linear missions did not really exist. There were no cinematics tools and no tools for linear, checkpointed missions. So that's why the game launched with a shitload of bugs that would break mission progression.

Also here's a nitpick I have with the game that no one has ever pointed out. There are multiple areas in the game where way more scientist NPCs spawn than any other type and it's really jarring. Also all of the civilian NPCs look like they were built on a slightly different scale than the player characters. All of the civilians are kind of tiny looking, even when put next to the playable characters that are also on the small side.

I'm both annoyed that it took me so long to get into this franchise, but also glad that this is the game that I started with. Yakuza 0 is a perfect starting point, especially with how the remakes of 1 and 2 incorporated new elements from 0 into them to make the prequel game feel more natural.

Yakuza is what the later Saints Row games wish they could be. It nails the delicate balance of a mostly serious crime story with over-the-top action and extremely wacky side stuff.

Kiryu is one of the greatest game protagonists of all time. He's up there with Solid Snake.

It's a really good game where you can tell Naughty Dog wanted to take the game in a slightly different direction. It felt like the game was sometimes responding to the criticism of Uncharted games having you fight way too many guys. There are a lot more sections in this game where you are just walking around and platforming.

I think the biggest flaw for me is that these platforming segments are a little too long for how mechanically simple they are. They add a grappling hook and eventually a tool you can use to dig into certain surfaces to climb them, but it's just not enough.

It's a miracle that this game came out okay. It's a game made out of tons of scrapped ideas that were not fully formed. There's a ton here to love. The game nails the "dudes on a road trip" vibe. The opening scene of them pushing their busted car down the road is an all-timer. The way the game uses Prompto's photos that he randomly takes during gameplay in the ending bits of the narrative is inspired.

It's too bad that this is also a game with mushy, vague combat where you mostly hold down the attack button and chug hundreds of potions to brute force your way through every combat encounter. I love that there's a block and counter mechanic where a giant BLOCK NOW prompt appears in the center of your screen because all of the enemy's attack animations are almost impossible to read.

Final Fantasy XV is also a game where your can very easily see all of the stables, tape, and glue that is barely holding it together. I hear it's a little better now after all of the updates and DLC, but I finished this game way before any of that stuff came out. I should go back to this some time to check that stuff out.