OTwo Co-Editor Joshua McCormack compares Sony’s First Party Exclusives to see if they really are carbon copies.
Here, we’re diving into a sensitive subject in the gaming sphere: are Sony's much-lauded Playstation Exclusive titles little more than the same game repackaged with a different splash of paint, aimed at tricking the unwitting consumer into buying the same product again and again?
For those unfamiliar with the world of gaming, I'm not talking about the tiresome, year-on-year remakes of FIFA, Assassins Creed, and Call of Duty, where even the most industry-illiterate of gamers is aware of the “repackaging”, and yet is perfectly happy to fork out money for a copy of the very game they bought not twelve months ago– rant over, I swear. Here instead, I'll delve into a comparison of Sony's Triple-A titles; think games like Spider-Man, God of War, the Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima. Games that certainly want you to believe they are different … but are they?
However, before we venture into the minefield of this debate, a clarification: what exactly is a Triple-A videogame, and how does it differ from other releases? The precise criteria is somewhat vague, but at its heart these are games that boast large budgets, widespread name recognition and are supported and distributed by prominent studios like Square Enix, Sony Interactive Entertainment or Ubisoft – consider them the Blockbuster of gaming. At the opposite end of the scale are Indie Games; titles released by small, independent studios which embrace a more 'left-field' approach to traditional games.
Should you wish to experience this debate firsthand, a quick scroll down the right Reddit pages will give you a crash course in this chapter of the Console Wars (For example: 'Is it just me or do all modern Sony games feel the same? Majority of PS4 exclusives are bland and boring, Sony hasn't made a single first party game with any truly unique gameplay mechanics all generation.') If doom-scrolling Reddit doesn’t appeal to you, here are the most common points of contention.
a Norse-inspired saga of revenge and fatherhood, a post-apocalyptic zombie-fuelled road trip, superhero capers through the tangled streets of New York, are at the core of what makes each of the games unique.
The camp praising the diverse, and entirely distinct nature of PS exclusives argue that the originality of the stories told in each game; a Norse-inspired saga of revenge and fatherhood, a post-apocalyptic zombie-fuelled road trip, superhero capers through the tangled streets of New York, are at the core of what makes each of the games unique. Furthermore, they believe that these PlayStation exclusives also boast a distinct set of gameplay mechanics –how a player interacts with the world of the game– art designs, philosophies and character progression systems that are fundamentally different to the other.
Naturally, Camp 'They’re All the Bloody Same,' believes the opposite; chief among their gripes are the following: world design, gameplay mechanics/progression, and funnily enough, the aspect of the PS exclusives that Sony are most praised for by the other side - their approach to storytelling.
When examining game design, the distinctions between the following three terms: Platformers, Metroidvania, Open World, are important to remember. Platformers are level-based, where progression hinges on the completion of the previous level. OWs have multiple avenues of progression, allowing players to explore wherever they please. Metroidvania are fusions between the two; where meeting certain parameters allows you to explore an entire area; God of War, the Horizon series, both prominent PS exclusives, borrow heavily from this later format, and have often been criticised for their derivative worldbuilding. Furthermore, many Sony Exclusives are crammed to the teeth with other traditional elements of Metroidvania; NPCs crucial for narrative progression, the gathering of special items and tools, loopback structures, and more.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, the similarities are far harder to ignore. The most glaring example of design copy-and-paste is the Camera Perspective used within the game; be it Ghost of Tsushima, the Last of Us, or Horizon, each of the games uses a third-person ‘over-the-shoulder’ perspective for the entirety of the gameplay, and there is almost no variation in this trend across PS exclusives. Beyond that, there are the Skill Trees to consider; a kind of map which allows you to level your characters skill and attributes; they are ubiquitous throughout Sony Triple-As like GOW and Spider-Man. XP grinding systems with crafting elements necessitate a myriad of fetch-quests and enemy farming, especially on higher difficulties.
These third-person cinematic epics often feel as though the studios, with their focus on lengthy cut-scenes, lifelike graphics, emotional voice-acting, and cinematography, resent the fact that they are a gaming studio and not a Hollywood one.
Finally, there is their storytelling approach to tackle; arguably the most notable element of Sony exclusives, their cinematic storytelling. These third-person cinematic epics often feel as though the studios, with their focus on lengthy cut-scenes, lifelike graphics, emotional voice-acting, and cinematography, resent the fact that they are a gaming studio and not a Hollywood one. As a result, the gameplay in a Sony Game often comes across an after-thought. Strip away the gameplay, and the story is unaffected. To make things worse, the stories of these games usually don’t allow many deviations from the script –you could stitch all the cutscenes together and upload them as a film to YouTube, and in-game decisions or combat wouldn't matter. There is a severe lack of gameplay-story integration. Beyond that, there are undeniably common narrative themes throughout many PS exclusives; God of War, the Last of Us, Spider-Man all explore elements of found family, fatherhood, Man against Nature, mentorship and Passing the Torch – notably both GOW and TLOU play into the gruff-lone-ranger-softened-by-the influence-of-an-unwanted-child trope.
Overall, it's undeniable that there are strong similarities in Playstation Games … but so what? Just because most PS exclusives bear a striking resemblance to one another doesn't mean they are reductive of another. Yes, the Studio has funelled common traits and mechanics into its work, but isn't that the same in all creative endeavours? Paintings can not escape the hand that brushed them anymore than an author can avoid weaving elements of their own psychology, beliefs, preoccupations, attitudes and interests into their books. Would we dismiss all subsequent works of a writer because they bore certain similarities to their previous work? No. So why should games be any different? Why hold them to a different standard? There is nothing wrong with two creative projects fashioned by the same source sharing superficial similarities if they are different enough at their core.