Crystal Dynamics is helpin' out with that there Perfect Dark game

You know I don't think I ever played any of the original Perfect Dark games, but I really liked Perfect Dark: Zero and I even read the two novels that Greg Rucka wrote based on Joanna Dark, but I haven't really thought too hard about the new games they're pushing out. I hope it's great! I dunno if I want them to be more Tomb Raider-y, but Crystal Dynamics obviously has some technical chops to play around with, so more's the merrier. Wonder if they'll ever announce a release date. I'm assuming Fall 2022 at this point?

I'm curious as to what this is going to be, I don't see Microsoft putting Perfect Dark back on the playing field if it's just going to be another techno-spy First Person Shooter. With Crystal Dynamics working on it now I wonder if they really are moving towards that third-person Uncharted-esque game Tomb Raider was or if perhaps see a more RPG focused game like Matt Rorie's Alpha Protocol?

Weird, Crystal Dynamics are far too good to be a support studio. Original developers must have run into some pretty big trouble.

As for Perfect Dark coming back, I feel like we are already living in a dark dystopian future that the original game was warning us about. Also it's being published by one of the companies who are partly responsible for that dark dystopian future. I don't know if that's something that I'm looking for in my entertainment right now.

Well Darrell Gallagher basically hand picked the leads from crystal to start the initiative. The studio was always meant to be "small and agile" so while Im sure they laid the foundation for the game (its already been play tested by Phil Spencer) It seems Darrell and his leadership group are reaching out to crystal specifically to help with the straight up man power for a project of this caliber.

Im sure the on boarding process and collaborative effort will go over much smoother than if Microsoft was to insert another one of their first party studios. The Initiative is still a very young studio that started a massive project before covid hit the industry, so that definitely played a part up until now.

We also know Square hasn't been too pleased with they western development in the past so this could be a good reset project for Square. Money changing hands and the dev keeps busy as well. It seems like a perfect storm of circumstances that it turned out this way.

Its unfortunate that the first game we see from the Initiative wont be their own project front to back but this could lead to something much bigger. I dont want to say acquisition but there is a good chance a lot of the ground level devs from crystal move over to the initiative after this project.

In the end, I dont think this partnership will make the game worse, it will probably just find its legs a lot sooner. Excited to see where it goes from here.

Crystal Dynamics can make a perfectly decent action game but, for whatever reason, I really can't stand their character dialog. It's just the most melodramatic bullshit. I mean, normally I'm OK with that, but something about Rise and Shadow really rubbed me the wrong way for whatever reason. So I hope Perfect Dark has a different writer.

Is it just me or is pretty weird to have a Square Enix owned studio doing support for a Microsoft first party studio?

Perfect Dark remaster is still worth playing today.

And I love CD so this is great news.

This is really weird the key word in the tweet is 'partnering' the Initiative could have chosen dozens of support studios, but to partner its very unusual especially to do this 3 years into development.

Development might have been quite rocky, hiring for a new studio during a pandemic was probably tough.

The Initiative are only ~70 people that means Crystal Dynamics are going to be doing some really heavy lifting on key parts of the game like story, writing and level design.

Not so stoked about this, the best way i can describe CD games is flawed.

Isn't The Initiative supposed to be MS' big "quadruple A" studio with nothing but the best of the best talent developing the game? Yet they have to bring in a partner studio for help? Don't get me wrong, I actually like a lot of Crystal Dynamics games, but this move is...strange.

More like Imperfect Dark.

@thepanzini: I guess they're pretty good at level design when it comes to the Tomb Raider games. In my memory Perfect Dark has really memorable levels and settings. Tomb Raider kinda does too, although I enjoyed the first of the reboot the most. I always thought the adventuring was more interesting than the combat, which is probably why I haven't finished the third one.

Anyways I'm okay with this.