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Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori game director takes serious jabs at lying developers

No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 are two of the titles Thomas Mahler points to.

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As gamers we're no strangers to developers overpromising before a game is launched and underdelivering once it is out. There are some prime examples of this, where known creators like Peter Molyneux have been straight out lying about what their upcoming games will be, which hurts those who are being honest about their games.

One person who clearly has had enough of this is Thomas Mahler, game director at Moon Studios (Ori and the Will of the Wisps), and in a very lengthy post over at Resetera, we get a much more frank and even aggressive tone than we are used to from developers. Mahler writes:

"It all started with Molyneux. He was the master of 'Instead of telling you what my product is, let me just go wild with what I think it could be and get you all excited!" - And that was fine, until you actually put your money down and then the game was nothing like what Peter was hyping it up to be."

He continues by calling the No Man's Sky director Sean Murray out and accuses him of lying:

"Then came Sean Murray, who apparently had learned straight from the Peter Molyneux handbook. This guy apparently just loooooved the spotlight. Even days before No Man's Sky released, he hyped up the Multiplayer that didn't even exist and was all too happy to let people think that No Man's Sky was 'Minecraft in Space', where you could literally do everything."

CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077 is next in line to be easily criticised, as Mahler says:

"Here the entire CDPR PR department took all the cues from what worked for Molyneux and Murray and just went completely apeshit with it. Gamers were to believe that this is "Sci-Fi GTA in First Person". What's not to love? Every video released by CDPR was carefully crafted to create a picture in players minds that was just insanely compelling. They stopped just short of outright saying that this thing would cure cancer."

Mahler claims that he has been personally hit by this and explains how he has missed out on having Ori and the Blind Forest on magazine covers because of lies, as the media preferred to hype No Man's Sky instead of a game being presented in an honest way:

"But then I really felt bamboozled once No Man's Sky came out and it became clear that all this hype was really just built on lies and the honest guy who just showed his actual product really got kicked in the balls because the lying guy was able to make up some tall tales that held absolutely no substance."

He ends his rant by saying that he is not shitting on other developers, but specifically liars, and says this kind of behaviour would be totally unacceptable in other businesses:

"I know this whole thread might come off as me sounding bitter and I'm sure there'll be some people that see this as me shitting on other devs. No, I'm not. I'm shitting on liars and people that are okay with openly deceiving others. I'd argue that we should all agree that this shit is not okay. If I go and buy a car and the car salesman sells me a car that supposedly has 300 horse power, but on the drive home after the purchase I notice that he switched out the motor when I wasn't looking, I'd be rightfully pissed off, cause I was deceived."

We would recommend you check the post out in the link above as it makes a case that does have some very valid points. Do you think Mahler is on to something here?

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

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