I am a huge fan of the first page PlayStation offers. They arrived to embody the type of film adventures that I always sought, sitting with the controller in my hand, feeling like real hit events that are to be pleased. But where in the past this brand of shiny stories seemed to be fatigue of the recent earth, I can’t resist the feeling that she has recently become a well -worn road. It is not only about the fact that all the main PlayStation editions come to the third person, cinema-styles of programmers, seemingly obsessed with stories that examine exactly the same topics: regret and revenge. And I’m starting to bother. As a rule, all these games are impeccably made, but I start to miss this era when the playstation range seemed wider and the things were a bit “fun”.
Realizing that so many PlayStation games have examined the same gloomy story, hit me during the game through the recent spirit of the punker. Although I liked it very much and I admired his consistently stimulating approach to the fight and a real sense of discovery that he creates through exploration, I could not resist the feeling that I was told her story. As an ATS, you are designed to avenge the death of parents during the blood-soaked travel through the 17th-century Japan when you hunt “The Yotei Six”. This story is unfortunately not only similar to the story of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which I also played at the beginning of this year, but in recent years it is the same combination of fiery revenge with meditations about what can be saddened, which has become something in recent years.
2020. It was of course the continuation of the original from 2013, which studied how Joel fought for the death of his own daughter. At that time, the last of us was seen as a wave of “sad dad” games, including God of War in 2018, but in retrospect, they were components for dealing with regret.
2022 God of War Ragnarok is a story driven by the loss of mothers and sons and anger that accompanies them. The Spider-Man Insomniac series follows both Peter Parker and Miles Morales when they try to overcome the threat of supervillain, and also struggle with their demons resulting from dead parental forms. Return 2020. This is a looped science fiction nightmare born of the family trauma associated with the regret of the hero Selene. And then there is another exclusive exclusive plastic 2025, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which may not technically not be the game of the first page, but it is certainly a verifiable feast of the torment of mother and father.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a fan of all the above -mentioned games, each single in the performances of the characters and each of them offers very different experiences with the game. But perceived as a whole, it is straightforward to hear that all their stories are sung from the same anthem sheet. Family regret is in the center of all these stories and although I certainly feel that mature motifs take place in games, it all begins to feel on the head with the same ideas at this moment. The “violence cycle” is very real that it becomes a loop of decreasing phrases.
Of course it is true that not everyone The PS5 game follows this pattern – Astro Bot is not an exploration of generational trauma in a deep space – but you will catch my drift. I think that by the way, I liked the Odie Team Asobi to PlaySoba Stara, with his joy and color standing out from the otherwise the handicapped crowd. I felt rarity. But it was never like that.
PS3 gave us the undisputed era of a naughty dog, which, although eventually ventured to a more melancholic territory, finally planted the flag with an adventure adventure with a tone broken from the fiction of the pulp. I will always have a weakness for the resistance of Insomniac and Mashup in the World War 2/Science Fiction, as well as Littlebigplanet, which, at the other end of the tonal spectrum, celebrated creativity and community. Yes, all these games contained different levels of character nuances, but all were essentially different things: hunting for treasures, foreign invasions and personal expression. Not everyone tried to serve the same story, and I can’t resist the feeling that if a recent game appeared and Daxter appeared, it would be about the desire of Ottsel revenge on the kilondae his blond hair of a friend.
I hope that future PlayStation switches can look at this more diverse, intriguing past of inspiration, even when choosing more “serious” topics. The classic Shadow of the Colossus Team ICO took a funeral tone, but found something really special and poignant in it, at a time when such ideas were much less common in games. To this day, it is a unique masterpiece, telling your story through a whim and minimal cutscenes – far from the film sign, which we now expect from PlayStation games. What we did not have in mid -2000 were five more PS2 publications, which undertook right contemplations about love and loss and told the same story in a different package. Every time you played something recent with Sony’s Studios at a 25-year-old console, it seemed a completely recent experiment with a different story to tell, not just a variety of the topic.
This brings me back to Ghost of Yotei, a game that is better than his predecessor in almost every aspect, except for its central history. Although I connect with ATS more than ever Jin Sakai – it is a much warmer presence to spend several dozen hours – Ghost of Tsushima’s National is investigating another, fresh land. History balances Jin’s personal struggle against the background of the invasion of the nation, with the topics of honor, betrayal and belonging to the chord and distinguished when appeared on the heels of the last part 2 part 2 in 2020.
Perhaps the interest in PlayStation regret is a reflection of the state of the world. Looking through the lens, when the exclusive switches of PS5 were written, such as the ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2, this melancholy is somewhat understood. Kovid Pandemic was unacceptable to our planet in 2020 and 2021, and as such topics surrounding the unexpected loss and mass trauma would undoubtedly be at the forefront of many minds. Therefore, it will be intriguing to check whether this pattern will continue much further, now that the world (a bit) returns to what it looked like before. Do the stories told in projects that began production after 2022 reflect a different state of the planet or continue to look at each other in our darkest moments? Of course, these are all essential stories to tell, and I am a great supporter of art, which are the reflections of the forming it, but I can’t resist, but I wish you a bit more diversity.
There is a reason to hope and skeptical, considering what Sony has come. Wolverine Insomniaca seems to realize all the bloody and decapitation you hoped to see, but will this mature assessment be reflected in its topics? Logan is certainly a figure absorbed in revenge; Will we see a known path to bury previous demons by ultraviolence, or will we get another story that falls into another part of his psyche? Logan James Mangold has already told us a story that would be nicely in the canon of “Sad Dad” PlayStation, because X23 knocked in the gentle side of his body Adamantium, so I hope that we will not get this idea here.
We also know that Saros is on the way with Housemarque in March and certainly looked impressive in the latest state of Play Stream. As for the naughty dog, zero zero of this long era of regret, we know that the studio will continue to science fiction with an intergalactic: heretical prophet. The first trailer was promising, providing more fun tone than we ever dreamed of seeing from the last of us. Of course, we barely outlined the surface here, but it would be fantastic to see how Naughty Dog discovered here part of this unexplored levitation. By the way, both these upcoming PS5 games are stories about people studying lost colonies outside the world. I hope that due to the fact that they will find extremely different stories to tell about each of them, instead of discovering the reminder of the regret they left.
Simon Carda is a senior IGN editor, who can be found primarily in the open world, in the Korean cinema or despair in the state of Tottenham Hotspur and New York Jets. Follow him to BlueSky O @cardy.bsky.social.
