The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 game director Bruce Straley has shipped enough AAA blockbusters to know that triple-A gaming is getting tired.
“I think the verbs and experiences we’re delivering in the triple-A space are…” Straley tells Edge magazine for issue 428, as part of a feature that’s now been republished in the Knowledge newsletter, “I wanna say boring.” The former Naughty Dog lead has had a hand in shaping multiple major franchises since 1999, and he stopped being impressed at some point in that journey.
“Just, across the board in triple-A,” says Straley, “it feels like there’s no opportunity to inject fresh, innovative ideas.” He admits that there’s a AAA game idea he’s been holding onto, but he knows, “I will probably never make it.”
Instead, Straley runs the studio Wildflower Interactive, which is – as it says on its website – devoted to making “‘small-ish,’ creatively-charged, uniquely-stylized games.” Its debut title Coven of the Chicken Foot is about an old, chicken-footed witch’s adventure after heroes leave her land, and she finally has the forests littered with dropped shields and clean skeletons all to herself – and her hairy, otherworldly companion creature.
The game provides what sounds like the opposite experience to most AAA games. In Coven of the Chicken Foot, you’re not inhumanly beautiful, you don’t play the hero, and you never get to find the buster sword. You move slowly in a semi-open world.
That concept is exciting to Straley, who suggests he has no interest in making commercial catnip like the next The Last of Us. He also names Sony Santa Monica’s next title, God of War Laufey, as what not to do.
“God Of War Laufey,” Straley says, “I look at that game, and every pixel is mindblowing. The amount of work and skill that’s gone into every single frame… I’ve made those kinds of games, and I’m still blown away.”
Who doesn’t love expensive visuals? “But when I actually look at what you’re doing in the game,” Straley continues, “I’m not excited. And that’s nothing against the God Of War team. Just, across the board in triple-A, it feels like there’s no opportunity to inject fresh, innovative ideas.” Consider him another passenger on the slowly filling AA game bandwagon.
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