What The N. Sane Trilogy Would've Been Like If Naughty Dog Was In Charge Again. ?

[Crzy Minus]

So as we all know, the N Sane Trilogy was developed by Vicarious Visions, who've had some history with Crash before including a gameboy game and etc, as well as some work for Skylanders. While in the meantime Naughty Dog who developed the original Crash trilogy, are currently working on Uncharted The Lost Legacy as well as the mostly anticipated The Last of Us Part II.

 

What would've been like if Naughty Dog was in charge of Crash again? Including the N Sane Trilogy? Just like how Insomniac who developed the original Ratchet & Clank on PS2 were also in charge for it's remake on PS4.

 

Would've looked different? Would the quality had been the same? What are your thoughts?

Edited July 14, 2017 by Crzy Minus

[Kuro-Okami]

Is there really such a huge difference between the ND now and VV? I mean... the team which developed the crash series isn't working for ND anymore like they did before. So even if ND would take care of the game series it wouldn't be the same team in the end.

 

So...  Tlou and Uncharted are somewhat similar in their design and some of their mechanics. Developing Crash would have been a work from scrap for them also. VV has even more experience thanks to other crash games. I think they never would have made a crash that feels much like the ps1 games. They would want to create something new while staying true to the original. So developing more levels, making them bigger and especially change the controls from the past games.

 

At the end ND is extremely competent. While i don't think they would deliver the same work as VV did i am sure they would deliver a great game - especially when it comes to the technical aspect.

[Shadiochao]

Probably the same, except they'd have found a way to incorporate a bunch of tedious multiplayer trophies.

[Kapika96]

About the exact same?

[Conker]

Probably one difference the jumping would have been more like the original, I wonder if they'd have kept the the 1st games saving and how you get gems.

 

trophy wise probably the same, maybe they'd have been even tougher on us and wanted plat relics

[TheArcadeKid]

They'd have possibly taken more liberties with the original games, which doesn't necessary bode well for fans of the series. I think Vicarious did a fantastic job - and I'm pleased Activision had a company working on something other than COD or its DLC. 

[Platinum_Vice]

It depends on who owns the original code. I don't know how Activision's current ownership of the rights to Crash affect the ownership of the original games.

 

These games aren't remastered by taking the original games and adding a new lick of paint, they are remade to be as accurate as possible having access to only the level geometry and the actual finished product from the 90s. That's why the jumping mechanics are different (for example), because it's not the exact same game at it's core.

 

An ND remaster will have been more accurate than VV, but VV went above and beyond by adding functions in the spirit of the games.

 

ND's Jak and Daxter Trilogy Remaster (PS3) was just a HD port. The Uncharted Trilogy and Last of Us Remasters barely added any new functions. 

[rdhight]

Would it really make any difference? The third game in the trilogy was released in 1998. How many people who worked on those projects in the late '90s are still at Naughty Dog? And even if a few of them are, how much help are they going to be? They're not duplicates of the people they were ~20 years ago. If you were suddenly called back to revisit some kind of technical project you did in 1998, would you be stepping right back in or mostly re-learning as you went?

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

2 minutes ago, rdhight said:

Would it really make any difference? The third game in the trilogy was released in 1998. How many people who worked on those projects in the late '90s are still at Naughty Dog? And even if a few of them are, how much help are they going to be? They're not duplicates of the people they were ~20 years ago. If you were suddenly called back to revisit some kind of technical project you did in 1998, would you be stepping right back in or mostly re-learning as you went?

I was right about to say something along the lines of "How many employees from then are likely to still be there now anyways?" and you beat me by a god damned minute.

[rdhight]

3 minutes ago, Super-Fly Spider-Guy said:

I was right about to say something along the lines of "How many employees from then are likely to still be there now anyways?" and you beat me by a god damned minute.

 

Hahaha, don't be sad! You'll get another chance to make this point against one of the thousands of posts saying "Oh, I want a new Spyro so bad, but only if Insomniac makes it!"

[Elvick_]

Meh, Naughty Dog doesn't have the "heart" to make games like this anymore. They're in a different space with different people. Their terrible Jak concept art before deciding to make The Last of Us is a great example of how out of touch they are from their former PSone/PS2 era. I wouldn't want them to touch them now. Just do what you're passionate about, and that's things like Uncharted and TLoU, cinematic TPS. Which is fine with me. I love those too.

 

 

1 hour ago, GonzoWARgasm said:

It depends on who owns the original code. I don't know how Activision's current ownership of the rights to Crash affect the ownership of the original games.

 

These games aren't remastered by taking the original games and adding a new lick of paint, they are remade to be as accurate as possible having access to only the level geometry and the actual finished product from the 90s. That's why the jumping mechanics are different (for example), because it's not the exact same game at it's core.

 

An ND remaster will have been more accurate than VV, but VV went above and beyond by adding functions in the spirit of the games.

 

ND's Jak and Daxter Trilogy Remaster (PS3) was just a HD port. The Uncharted Trilogy and Last of Us Remasters barely added any new functions. 

Naughty Dog didn't make the J&D Collection [Mass Media], or the Uncharted Trilogy [Bluepoint]. TLoU Remastered is the only remaster they've actually done themselves. And lolwat, Bluepoint added tons of things to Uncharted. Visual improvements, time trials for every game, new difficulty... they just didn't need to do as large of a graphical upgrade since they were PS3 games, rather than PSone games.

Edited July 21, 2017 by Elvick_

[Platinum_Vice]

3 hours ago, Elvick_ said:

Naughty Dog didn't make the J&D Collection [Mass Media], or the Uncharted Trilogy [Bluepoint]. TLoU Remastered is the only remaster they've actually done themselves. And lolwat, Bluepoint added tons of things to Uncharted. Visual improvements, time trials for every game, new difficulty... they just didn't need to do as large of a graphical upgrade since they were PS3 games, rather than PSone games.

 

I think it's a little off topic now but I disagree with you...

 

Tbh I wasn't even aware that ND themselves remastered TLoU, I assumed it was third party like most remasters have been in the last five years, however, the code to J&D, Uncharted and TLoU are all still readily available at ND for use in their recent remasters. 

 

VV's Crash is not a remaster, it is a remake based on level geometry only.

 

The rose-tinted, nostalgia-based, great additions in this remake FAR outstrip the 'touch ups' for all of the above mentioned remasters.

 

Adding a Speedrun clock, a clearly-untested new difficulty and porting the same core product to a new system with beefier hardware for a smoother resolution isnt in the same ballpark as VV's N. Sane remaster.

[rdhight]

And the other thing is, I don't think being the hallowed and respected original creator — coughLucascough — automatically makes you the most desirable person to do a remake like this that is very based on minutae and tiny details.

 

The creators of most games would probably get destroyed by pro players, people who looked in from the outside and figured out exploits and tricks the creators didn't even intend to put there. Sometimes that person who has the mind that's better suited for breaking down details from the outside should be in charge, rather than the person with the creative vision who did it in the first place decades ago. Like, big franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars hire people specifically to police continuity and canon; they don't rely on highly-paid writing talent to keep all those things straight, because that's a different skillset.

[Elvick_]

On 2017-07-20 at 10:53 PM, GonzoWARgasm said:

 

I think it's a little off topic now but I disagree with you...

 

Tbh I wasn't even aware that ND themselves remastered TLoU, I assumed it was third party like most remasters have been in the last five years, however, the code to J&D, Uncharted and TLoU are all still readily available at ND for use in their recent remasters. 

 

VV's Crash is not a remaster, it is a remake based on level geometry only.

 

The rose-tinted, nostalgia-based, great additions in this remake FAR outstrip the 'touch ups' for all of the above mentioned remasters.

 

Adding a Speedrun clock, a clearly-untested new difficulty and porting the same core product to a new system with beefier hardware for a smoother resolution isnt in the same ballpark as VV's N. Sane remaster.

Disagree with what? Reality? lol

I wasn't comparing the two. I was saying the Uncharted remaster had effort put into it. Because it did, you aren't disagreeing with that now. You're just acting like I said "It had more effort put into it than Crash". You weren't comparing the two either, originally. Bluepoint always go above and beyond as a port studio. They're the best in the business. It's not their fault Uncharted Trilogy wasn't a PSone series so their graphical improvements didn't fully remade. The only comparison I did was to explain the context of visual upgrade of a remaster vs a remake. Because, that's *reality*. You don't need to remake a game from PS3 when you put it on PS4, because it's not decades old.

J&D Remasters also had a ton of problems for Mass Media to overcome, because the way Naughty Dog developed them. ND employees even addressed it in a kind of making of/bts video for the remaster interviewing the team  remastering it and some of the original ND staff. ND used the PS2's b/c chip to achieve what they did with their games on PS2. Which they weren't "supposed" to do, but did anyway. Which made the process difficult for Mass Media.

Feature wise, you can say the same for Crash 1 & 2. "Adding a speedrun clock, clearly untested difficulty [time requirements] and saving is in the same ballpark"

Edited July 22, 2017 by Elvick_

[yellowwindow7]

if naughty dog was in charge then it's obvious that the graphics and performance would have been even far much better, probably all three games will run with no loading times too, but again it won't be a naughty dog game if it didn't have an insanely difficult DLC trophies.

and even if you did got them all, you sleep well tonight then you wakes up the next day to notice that your hard earned 100% got dropped to 40% because they released the new online trophies DLC'S for $5 or $6 which all of them are near impossible to earn.

[Champ147]

Well in my opinion, I think if ND did the remake we would be looking at a similar product that VV made. Sure there would be some differences between them, such as visuals may get altered slightly and I'm sure they would have tried to keep the jumping mechanics true to the original.

 

But I'll try throwing a different idea in the mix. Given what VV has made, what would ND do, if they could which obviously they can't, change now? With adding running shoes to the second game, would they do the same for the first? Would they adjust these sometimes crazy platinum relic times? Would they add more levels altogether? I'm sure there were many level ideas that were never actually made, so revisit the drawing board sort of speak there. 

[James_Tonto]

I don't think the N-Sane Trilogy would be the same three games we got, but I don't know if they would be better or worse. Naughty Dog didn't feel like they could take Crash Bandicoot any further in the first place, hence why they sold the license. I can't really see the Naughty Dog staff being overly excited to completely rebuild the series from the ground up. Ift hey did, they would probably have made a lot of new levels and scrapped some of the older ones. VV did a good job, when remaking the original games. There's obviously a lot of love put into them, but I think it maybe needed a little tweaking, like not including time trials for certain levels or even making those levels more fair, like Native Fortress, High/Old Road, Slippery Climb etc. 

[Kapika96]

57 minutes ago, James_Tonto said:

I don't think the N-Sane Trilogy would be the same three games we got, but I don't know if they would be better or worse. Naughty Dog didn't feel like they could take Crash Bandicoot any further in the first place, hence why they sold the license. I can't really see the Naughty Dog staff being overly excited to completely rebuild the series from the ground up. Ift hey did, they would probably have made a lot of new levels and scrapped some of the older ones. VV did a good job, when remaking the original games. There's obviously a lot of love put into them, but I think it maybe needed a little tweaking, like not including time trials for certain levels or even making those levels more fair, like Native Fortress, High/Old Road, Slippery Climb etc. 

They never owned it in the first place though. They were contracted by Universal to make the games, so Universal owned the licence.

[James_Tonto]

7 minutes ago, Kapika96 said:

They never owned it in the first place though. They were contracted by Universal to make the games, so Universal owned the licence.

I only knew the license was sold, I figured they owned the license too. The more you know I suppose.

[Lonemankane]

My take on it is maybe ND would of just left everything alone and made it look better and that is that, I mean who thought it was a fun idea to put time trials in crash 1? I never played them games and I can tell ya not having the slide or running shoes or any of that in one pissed me off and the road to nowhere and high road and the climb levels are just flat out bs for time trials as taking your time is key in crash 1, not speedrunning, I mean sure it is good for real big time speedrunners but for trophy hunters like me I think it is bs because it is just annoying to get, I mean you need to be near perfect for the first level's time trial.

 

I mean just getting gold is hard as it is but to get plat time is just crazy, I think they could of just left them out of the games and maybe had given the player like some kind of art or something for 100% the game, like behind the scenes stuff of how the old games were made, like how they did it in crash twinsanity or the remasters of dmc 1 to 3 on ps3 small but fun things to have then time trials if you ask me.

Edited July 31, 2017 by KANERKB

[RHGSniperFox]

On 7/28/2017 at 9:08 AM, James_Tonto said:

I only knew the license was sold, I figured they owned the license too. The more you know I suppose.

The license actually wasn't sold, either.

It ended up at Activision due to the merger with Vivendi through a slightly convoluted series of events.

 

The series (Along with Spyro) was initially owned by Universal Interactive. Universal Interactive was then purchased by Vivendi when they bought Seagram's (Yes - THAT Seagram's) entertainment properties. That would then go on to become Vivendi Universal Games. VU Games would then later become Vivendi Games - who also owned the rights to pretty much all of Blizzard's IPs, as well as Sierra Entertainment.

 

Vivendi would then go on to merge with Activision, forming Activision Blizzard - which has led to the former Vivendi subsidiaries becoming divisions of Activision, with the exception of Blizzard, who stayed their own company.

 

So, all of the IPs that once belonged to Vivendi, Fox Interactive, Universal Interactive and Sierra are all now Activision products.

 

-----------------

 

As far as the topic at hand is concerned - there likely wouldn't be a huge difference. There's only so much you can do for a remastering/remake like this. There would probably be a different art style - maybe they wouldn't have gone for a realistic fur look for Crash, and would have gone for more of a look like what the easter egg in Uncharted 4 was like.

 

And they may have done a better job tweaking the original game to be more conducive to Time Trials, given that Crash 1 was never built with speedrunning in mind, let alone having the jumping mechanics of Crash 3. Tweaks to pits/ledges likely would have happened to make the game feel like it was meant for the new(er) mechanics.

 

Other than that, though - probably not a lot of differences.

Edited July 31, 2017 by RHG-SniperFox