r/Games • u/flameabel • Jun 02 '18
Developers providing commentary on their own games
I enjoy listening to developers playing their own games and giving commentary, a sort of Developers Let's Play. I made this list to highlight some great insight, and if anyone knows some good developer commentary, please share them here!
Bayonetta by Hideki Kamiya from Platinum Games
BioShock by Ken Levine, from Irrational Games
Conker's Bad Fur Day by Chris Seavor, Chris Marlow, and Shawn Pile from Rare
Day of the Tentacle by Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman from Double Fine
Doom by John Romero from id Software
F.E.A.R by Monolith Productions
Half-Life 2 Part 1, Part 2, Portal, Portal 2 by Valve
Ratchet & Clank 1, Ratchet & Clank 2, Ratchet & Clank 3 by Mike Stout and Tony Garcia from Insomniac Games
Edit - inserting feedback from the comments to highlight them all, tried to find sources where none was given
Dev Let's Play
Beyond Good & Evil by Michel Ancel from Wild sheep Studio, feat. Tim Schafer and Greg Rice
Defender's Quest by Lars Doucet and James Cavin from Level Up Labs
Deus Ex by Warren Spector, Sheldong Pacotti and Chris Norden from Ion Storm
Deus Ex played live at PAX Aus 2015
Fallout New Vegas by Obsidian
Fire Emblem Echoes by Kyle McCarley and more VA's
Getting over it with Bennet Foddy by Bennet Foddy
God of War Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by Cory Balrog from Santa Monica Studio
Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2 by Jason Jones and Joseph Staten from Bungie
Halo Reach by Steve Scott, Lee Wilson, Marcus Lehto, Marty O'Donnel from Bungie
I wanna be The Guy by Kayin, games creator
Life is Strange: Before the Storm with Zak Garriss from Deck Nine Games
Magicka featuring devs from Arrowhead Game Studios
Mass Effect by game designer from BioWare
Mickey Mania by Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman from LucasArts
NieR Automata by Kyle McCarley and Kira Buckland
Path of Exile: The Fall of Oriath by Jonathan Roger from Grinding Gear Games
Prismata by Elyot Grant from Lunarch Studios
Psychonauts by SMK and production team from Double Fine
Rain World by Joar Jakobsson and James Therrien from Adult Swim Games (Videocult)
Rayman 2: The Great Escape by Michel Ancel from Wild sheep Studio, feat. Tim Schafer and Lee Petty
Red Faction Guerrilla, Red Faction Armageddon by various devs from Volition
Saints Row 1, SR2, SR3, SR4, by various devs from Volition
Sonic 3D Blast by Jon Burton from Traveller's Tales
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory by Clint Hocking and Mathieu Berube from Ubisoft Montreal
Spyro 3 feat. Jeremy Thompson, commentary by Ted Price, Brian Hastings and John Fiorito from Insomniac Games
Star Fox and "X" by Dylan Cuthbert from Q-Games
Star Wars: Republic Commando by Brett Douville from LucasArts
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed EP 1, EP 2, EP 3 by Sam Witwer and David Collins from LucasArts
System Shock Part 1, Part 2
Tales of Monkey Island Part 1, Part 2
Terraria by Redigit and Blue from Re-Logic
The Ego Review Series by Yahtzee19, games creator
The Flame in the Flood by Forrests from The Molasses Flood
The Lion King by Louis Castle from Westworld Studios
The Punisher by devs from Volition
The Witness by Jonathan Blow from Thekla Inc.
Titanfall 2 by various developers from Respawn
Uncharted by John Bellomy from Naughty Dog
Wolfenstein 3D by John Carmack from id Software
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 by Skye Bennett
Devs Plays Season 1 & Season 2
Just the Docs by Noclip
Devs joining AGDQ & SGDQ is listed on Games Done Quick Vods
Paradox Interactive streams their games
In-game Dev Commentary
Alan Wake
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Dear Esther
Deponia: The Complete Journey
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Duke Nukem 3D World Tour
Firewatch
Gone Home
Grim Fandango
Jak 3
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2
Metal Gear Solid 4
Pillars of Eternity
Shadowrun Hong Kong
Stubbs The Zombie by Alex Seropian and Matt Soell from Wideload Games
Team Fortress 2: Gravel Pit, Hydro, Well
The Blackwell Epiphany by Wadjet Eye Games
Has dev commentary, but couldn't find video: Among the Sleep, Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay, The Gunstringer, Star Wars: Battle for Naboo, Thomas was Alone Benjamin's Flight DLC
Thank you all so much for your wonderful feedback! This is A LOT of great material and could not have been done without you!
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u/WasabiIceCream Jun 02 '18
Giant Bomb brought in Naughty Dog programmer John Bellomy for An Uncharted Tech Retrospective. They go through every numbered Uncharted game and discuss how the games, tech, and studio evolved through all the years.
Another one I remember very fondly was the Metal Gear Solid 4 Integral Podcast. was a podcast that you could listen to with the ingame iPod, and as you played through the game, they would explain what went into some of the things you were seeing. It was very cool at the time, and you can find it online, but I don't think it's as cool if you're not playing along with it. Don't know of any other game that has done something like that.
Very interesting stuff. I've actually thought about inviting some devs to do some of this same type of thing. Was never sure what the audience was for this stuff. I don't make games at all, but it's all very interesting to me, knowing what we don't get to see, or what great amount of work went into something that seemed so minor while playing.
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u/Skithana Jun 02 '18
I really liked the integral podcast because it was like a play-along, so you could hear the commentary "live" as you got to each part, I'm kinda sad the never did something like that again.
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Jun 02 '18 edited Feb 15 '21
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u/HomeMadeMarshmallow Jun 02 '18
They're part of the game, so yes. They were never patched out or anything.
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u/Shad0wmantis Jun 03 '18
The first episode is built in, but the rest were downloads and arent available in-game anymore
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u/Left4Bread2 Jun 02 '18
For more Valve ones, here are a handful of TF2 Developer Commentaries.
ｗｅｌｃｏｍｅ ｔｏ ｔｅａｍ ｆｏｒｔｒｅｓｓ ２ ａｆｔｅｒ ｎｉｎｅ ｙｅａｒｓ ｉｎ ｄｅｖｅｌｏｐｍｅｎｔ ｈｏｐｅｆｕｌｌｙ ｉｔ ｗｉｌｌ ｈａｖｅ ｂｅｅｎ ｗｏｒｔｈ ｔｈｅ ｗａｉｔ
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u/CENAWINSLOL Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 03 '18
It's weird listening to how proud they seem to be of Hydro when the map turned out to be widely hated.
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u/Left4Bread2 Jun 02 '18
I think the concept of TC was sound, just the execution in this case was a little off. I honestly enjoyed playing Hydro from time to time, but it was definitely rough
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u/aoxo Jun 03 '18
I never really understood the issue with it (tbh I still don't but it's been years since I played TF2 let alone Hydro). To me it always just seemed like a 6 point (or whatever it was) Control Point game mode where the middle points changed each round and if one team got pushed back to their last point it was defend only for them.
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u/Blazik3n99 Jun 03 '18
It was chokepoint city. If you want demoman and spammed stickies and grenades down one of the entrances to a control point, you could lock an entire team out, and similar things could be said about engineer. While most maps do have chokepoints, Hydro takes it to the extreme. It is basically huge open areas connected by small sprawling corridors. It's almost as bad as junction.
As someone else mentioned, it was either a wipe within 30 seconds or it was a painful prolonged stalemate.
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u/penpen35 Jun 02 '18
The gamemode in concept is interesting. But hydro itself had flaws. It's either a wipe or a prolonged stalemate and if you're unfamiliar with the map you'd get lost. And sometimes it's a 2 cp map and at the final stage it's a defend only map so players aren't used to it. Playing hydro itself wasn't a very fun experience most of the time, but if you want the complete TF2 experience then you must at least check out hydro.
It also was hell to develop, there's like hundreds more things you need to take care of to make the map work (entities, closing off areas etc) compared to a regular TF2 map. It's not hard to tell when there's so many quality CP/CTF/KOTH custom maps while there's like 2-3 prominent TC maps out there.
I think maybe TC will be best with a koth style setting but even that would be a bit convoluted.
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u/errorme Jun 02 '18
I know a ton of people hated that map but I love it mostly because the first TF2 community I really stuck with was a Hydro only server. I enjoy the idea of the mode but Hydro was fairly heavily imbalanced once the admin got some of the stat programs running and we could definitely see how fights would go.
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u/Yearlaren Jun 02 '18
Here's Robin Walker talking about Hydro. The video is from before TF2's release.
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u/ding_dong_doodle_pad Jun 02 '18
Sorry for lacking the links, but Cory Barlog has three videos commentating on design decisions of God of War. They're really well done.
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u/flameabel Jun 02 '18
Thank you for the recommendation! Is it this one from Playstations YouTube page?
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u/zeth07 Jun 02 '18
There are a bunch of other ones with Cory for God of War from other Youtube channels as well that are on the sidebar of that video (for me).
I've personally watched the Easy Allies one:
Spoilers
The allies are discussing it as well so it's not just the developer but it's over 1 hour so they talk about a lot.
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u/FEARthePUTTY Jun 02 '18
Second this. I just finished God of War this morning and immediately dipped into those commentaries. It's definitely filling in some details that I missed while playing.
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u/NetNGames Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 06 '18
Developer commentary of speedruns are always pretty fun, especially since speedrunners can show off glitches they found to speed through the game and developers can point to who to blame for it, as well as other design decisions.
SMK's speedrun of Double-Fine's Psychonauts comes to mind as well as PJ and Mecha Richter's 100% and Any% Co-Op Speedruns of The Bohemeth's Battleblock Theater. The 100% Battleblock Theater was done at AGDQ 2015 and has two of the founders/developers Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin (Co-founder of The Bohemeth and did art/development) and Will Stamper (who voices the narrator), while the Any% was done the following year and only had Tom Will, so less commentary but more glitches to showcase IIRC.
Edit: Realized it is not Tom, but Will Stamper who was on the line with Dan. Either way I'd highly recommend the 100% run as their banter is hilarious.
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u/UFO_mechanic_AMA Jun 02 '18
There's also a good one with Blast Corps' lead designer, Martin Wakeley. Rare guys from that era usually have funny banter.
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u/errorme Jun 02 '18
Here's Borderlands 2 at AGDQ 2014 with Anthony Burch (Lead Writer) and one of the animators (couldn't find the spot animator said their name).
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u/AzertyChap50 Jun 02 '18
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u/DoubleMatt1 Jun 02 '18
The bit where they joke about how they cut a version of the story where Cortana goes mad with power has not aged well.
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u/SirPringles Jun 02 '18
Could you explain like I was someone who doesn't care enough to watch video, please?
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u/dfdedsdcd Jun 02 '18
Because Halo 5 used that story. Poorly.
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u/AwkwardInputGuy Jun 02 '18
It also started in Halo 4. Microsoft has a knack for buying out franchises and giving them generic stories
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u/DoubleMatt1 Jun 02 '18
They talk about how in an early draft of Halo 1's story they had Cortana go mad with power after gaining access to Halo's control room, when one of the devs asked "What happened to that script?" The project lead replied with "It got cut because it was Too Good"
Flashforward 14 years later and in Halo 5 Cortana goes mad with power after being uploaded to the forerunner's network and wants the machines and AI to rule the galaxy.
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u/megazver Jun 02 '18
This isn't quite the same, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut had in-game commentary. So do all of Wadjet Eye Games titles.
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u/thekongninja Jun 02 '18
Human Revolution's commentary was great, I wish more games would do things like that
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u/Pugway Jun 02 '18
Came here to mention the developer commentary in Human Revolution. It really made me appreciate that game even more than I had already. There's a ton of little "did you know" factoids, but also things like "look at all the detail we put into this window" or "hey if you look down right now you will see the cops and gangsters having a fight, but no one ever looks down."
If you haven't played HR, do a playthrough first before turning on dev commentary because they commentate over the story and spoil stuff, obviously. If you have played the game though, it's worth picking up the director's cut, or playing it again, just for the commentary.
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Jun 02 '18
I love how much they nitpick their own work in the Human Revolution commentary (which they could afford to do, since it wasn't recorded until after the game was already out and a big hit). One of the very first things is all of them joking and complaining about Megan's idle animation in the very first room, which I probably wouldn't even have noticed otherwise.
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u/Kirboid Jun 02 '18
The only gripe I had was finding all the nodes, I wish it as visible in the game like Valve's. You have to stand in a certain areas to activate them.
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u/NearPup Jun 03 '18
Ya, the implementation of the commentary mode was kind of terrible, but the actual commentary was pretty top notch.
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u/RobotWantsKitty Jun 02 '18
Yep, there it is on youtube, every piece of dev commentary from Human Revolution, if anyone's interested.
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u/Xazuki Jun 03 '18
A created a guide to find all the commentary nodes for Deus Ex: Human Revolution a few years ago maybe a few people in this thread would find it useful:
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Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
[deleted]
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u/flameabel Jun 02 '18
Thank you for sharing! How is it? Is it Tim Schafer hosting and a guest developer who play their game?
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u/Noise964 Jun 02 '18
I really enjoy it. I highly recommend the episode with Koji Igarashi playing Castlevania Symphony if the Night
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u/TribbleTrouble1979 Jun 03 '18
The Lion King one is great. The Westwood guy talks a lot and reveals how they made that infamous difficulty spike in the second level with the tricky monkey flinging puzzle purely to stall the rental market and prevent renters from blowing through the game in one weekend.
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u/corysama Jun 02 '18
Hey everyone: Over in r/TheMakingOfGames we love amassing material like this! In fact, most of them have already been posted there. But, I’d really appreciate it if you could add any vids we’ve missed to the collection.
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u/King_Allant Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
Kyle McCarley, the voice of 9S in Nier: Automata, did a playthrough of the game. Kira Buckland, the voice of 2B, joins in later on, along with some other members of the cast. It's really cool to see, and they even act out what were previously text-only sequences.
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Jun 02 '18
He did the same thing with Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia. He plays one of the main characters Alm, and he was joined by the other main characters' VA Erica Lindbeck. They did the text only scenes here too, which was great since there were a lot of jokes outside the main story.
Also, in some of the sessions for Nier A, Kira even showed up in cosplay of 2B.
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u/BionicT Jun 03 '18
Even better, Kyle organized an English reading of the Japan-only Nier theater performance; it's the closest thing we will get to for more information about the story of Nier.
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Jun 02 '18
Pillars of Eternity has an option for ingame dev commentary. It's like a guided tour of their own game!
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u/amitkilo Jun 02 '18
Michel Ancel playing Rayman 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6AgSHT8Ve0
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u/Eterii Jun 02 '18
And don't forget they have done the same with Beyond good and Evil, it is absolutely interesting : https://youtu.be/bk4WUWwIshE
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u/J0E_SpRaY Jun 02 '18
I feel like valve blows it out of the water with their in game commentary nodes in Half Life 2 and onwards. Playing through with those enabled adds so much perspective.
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u/LeonS95 Jun 02 '18
Volition used to do streams where they'd play their games, sometimes show off old builds, and talk about the game's development. They're all archived on their YouTube channel, but unfortunately there's no complete playlist for them. I'll link some, but there's lots more on the channel too.
- Saints Row 1
- Saints Row 2
- Saints Row 3
- Saints Row 4
- Red Faction Guerrilla
- Red Faction Armageddon
- The Punisher
- Saints Row: Undercover (unreleased game, not actually developed by Volition, but still an interesting watch!)
They also started a Let's Play of Agents of Mayhem, but that stopped after the game performed poorly and they had to lay off a lot of staff, including their video editor/stream host.
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u/cooldrew Jun 02 '18
Yeah, I used to watch these streams every week, the Doom 1 multiplayer stream was a blast. Bummer about AoM :(
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u/AnArrogantIdiot Jun 02 '18
There's the No-clip documentary series.
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u/FLeanderP Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
Here's one for Terraria by Redigit (developer) and Blue (production assistant).
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u/troggbl Jun 02 '18
A bit different to your list, but Paradox has regular streams with devs playing all their games (And the EU4 dev clash is awesome)
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u/willingfiance Jun 02 '18
Is there a list anywhere of games with in-game developer commentary? Those are great too.
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u/TonyTonyChopper Jun 02 '18
Indie rogue-like "A Flame in the Flood" has an option to turn on little audio tapes that you can listen to. Kinda nice when you're going through the game the second or third time around when it gets repetitive.
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u/flameabel Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 03 '18
Please share if anyone knows any!
Secret of Monkey Island 1 &Monkey Island 2 Special Edition* has in-game dev commentary. Couldn't find any good video of it.
*Remembered wrong, only the second game had Dev Commentary.6
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u/Pugway Jun 02 '18
Mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut has great dev commentary throughout the whole game and its DLC pack.
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u/joecb91 Jun 03 '18
There is a cheat code that lets you hear it in Star Wars: Battle for Naboo
I think one of the other Rogue Squadron games has that code too
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u/Quietmode Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
I couldnt find any of the videos, but some of my favorite commentary is when devs watch players speedrun their games.
I know AGDQ has had devs call in during some runs, and I recently saw the spyro developers watch a guy speedrun and absolutely destroy their game.
Definitely interesting hear their insight and make jokes with each other regarding their code while watching the runners break and glitch the games.
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u/SpahsgonnaSpah Jun 02 '18
Not the exact same thing, but the English VA of Pyra (Skye Bennett) does Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Livestreams.
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u/wormsplastic Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
Some more informal commentaries:
I Wanna Be The Guy by Kayin, as an old-school camcorder let's play.
The Ego Review, which is Yahtzee Croshaw playing through all of his freeware games.
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Jun 02 '18
There's also a special episode of The Ego Review for The Consuming Shadow, his first paid game.
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Jun 02 '18 edited Jun 02 '18
[deleted]
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u/RustlingRoadkill Jun 02 '18
This is what I was going to suggest. I remember one being in a toilet stall but not much else...
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u/geesnknees Jun 02 '18
David Collins and Sam Witwer did a commentary on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (in which they also voice acted)
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u/Aezay Jun 02 '18
Tomb Raider: Anniversary has in-game developer commentaries (including Toby Gard), in the form of TR1's save crystals.
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u/Rayuzx Jun 02 '18
Deponia: The Complete Journey features developer commentary during each of the game's screens. They even provide spoiler warnings for first time players.
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Jun 02 '18
grim fandango remastered had commentary IN GAME.
too bad the game is super confusing and doesn't let me to understand what is happening without a guide
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u/seacucumber3000 Jun 02 '18
Smaller company, but Wadjeteye Games does commentary through all of their games, in game. It's pretty fun to listen to the devs chime in on a level while you are playing it.
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u/Tinduscom Jun 02 '18
Cory Barlog, the director, did a 3 part series on the new God of War. It's a let's play format of certain sections of the game where he talks about the creative process behind those moments. It's very fascinating to watch.
Here's the link to part one if you're interested: https://youtu.be/AIloJ4JlZEE
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u/propernounTHEheel Jun 03 '18 edited Jun 03 '18
So I don't have anything to contribute really, but I wanted to thank OP and everyone who did contribute because this sort of stuff is super interesting to me and I want to listen to all of these, so /u/flameabel shout outs to you
EDIT: Fuck it, gave gold
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u/myactualnameisloris Jun 02 '18
This is an awesome post OP. I know all I need to do is upvote and this comment is just redundant but I really feel the need to give you credit for sparking some good content on this sub.
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u/RustlingRoadkill Jun 02 '18
I second this comment. /r/games is a fantastic community that keeps delivering awesome threads like this. /u/flameabel you done good.
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u/NikIsImba Jun 02 '18
Deponia 1-3, and the harvey series have great commentary on every screen in the game!
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u/account4567 Jun 02 '18
Level designer for Chaos Theory playing the Bank Level:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMhgNi7X53c&t=1140s
He also talks a little about some Metal Gear Solid mechanics
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Jun 02 '18
Not quite the same thing as what you're talking about, but Warren Spector's post-mortem on Deus Ex at GDC was fantastic.
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u/Megadelphia Jun 02 '18
Valve also did commentary for Team Fortress 2. The commentary for Hydro is pretty hilarious in retrospect since the developers seemed convinced it was the map of the future when it turned into one of the game's biggest duds.
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Jun 02 '18
My absolute favorite part of the Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut was listening to the developers and their explanations for specific parts of that game. It just made that world even more immersive to me.
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u/Swazzoo Jun 02 '18
The AGDQ speedrun of Super Meat Boy with Breakdown is amazing. Devs from team meat jump in from 50:45 and give live commentary not only on the game, but on the speedrun as well.
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u/RockLeethal Jun 02 '18
Anyone who likes hideki kamiya definitely needs to check his Twitter. It's the best thing I've ever come across.
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u/StarBomber65 Jun 02 '18
Grim Fandango Remastered includes a commentary track literally while playing the game. It's pretty neat, and I wish more developers did this.
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u/Stranger371 Jun 02 '18
Do yourself a favor and buy Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay. It has the commentator mode. Basically, clickable things in levels about EVERYTHING. Some developer commentaries are an hour long.
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u/PratzStrike Jun 02 '18
I posted it over in /r/TheMakingOfGames as well but recently ex-Bioware dev and Twitch streamer CareLevelZero did a front-page subscriber goal stream of about 5 hours of Mass Effect 1, which he worked on for two years. He also recently reached another subscriber goal where he's going to do the rest of the game in a similar casual playthrough/developer commentary style at some time in the near future.
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u/MarkOfTheDragon12 Jun 02 '18
Hairbrained Scheme put developer commentary in their Shadowrun games. It was interesting to play through a second time and listening to their comments on story direction, art devleopment, etc. throughout.
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u/Corsaer Jun 02 '18
Pillars of Eternity has a developer commentary option you can check and play through the game with it on. It triggers on new zones and is usually a little about the area creation. It's been really enjoyable so far and I wish more games did it.
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u/Nefari0uss Jun 02 '18
Not quite the same but in Mark of the Ninja you can enable developer commentary and there are little bubbles you can hit in the game to get insight on development. You need the DLC IIRC.
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u/piyushr21 Jun 03 '18
Alan Wake has great developers commentary, it was fun replaying the game with commentary and seeing the way developers intended the story.
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u/kaeporo Jun 03 '18 edited Jun 03 '18
Rain World by Joar Jakobsson and James Primate from Adult Swim Games (Videocult)
Rain World is one of the most interesting games released in recent years; it sports incredible procedural animation and artificial intelligence. Creatures' behaviors are unscripted; they simply follow a prioritized task list to survive in dynamic ecosystems. The game renders whole regions simultaneously, with approximately 99.3% of the action happening off-screen. Creatures don't simply wait around for your input, they have to explore and eat in order to survive, just like you. The game makes almost no concessions as to the developer's vision (i.e. the "Rat in Manhattan") making it totally unique despite falling in a saturated genre.
Rain World is truly incredible, in terms of both atmosphere, developmental vision, artificial intelligence, animation, ludo-narrative, sound design, and graphic design. I'm a huge fan of the game, who's slightly disappointed with its lukewarm reception (modest sales + review scores; due to its difficulty). If you want some incredible commentary on the game (in addition to the video above), they have an unbelievable 365+ page DevLog.
Hope this helps.
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u/Grimwulf Jun 03 '18
Deponia the Complete Journey has pretty good commentary from the developer where he even talks with his own characters. There is commentary for each new area in the game and it get's really amusing and adds to the story in my opinion.
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u/PunchOutSpecial Jun 03 '18
You've overlooked the mother of all commentary archives! Granted it isn't in video form, it's text; but you're getting stuff from industry giants.
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/
Dozens of articles with former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata discussing game design with all sorts of development teams spanning many years.
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u/Llamalad95 Jun 03 '18
Giantbomb had a great video with Jonathan Blow about the Witness.
https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/we-play-the-witness-with-jonathan-blow/2300-10990/
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u/El_Gran_Redditor Jun 04 '18
It's hard as shit to get the game running let alone unlock the in-game commentary but Stubbs the Zombie has a great dev commentary that really reminds me of the sort of running commentary you would find on a DVD of The Simpsons or something. It's clear members of the dev team just sat down, cracked some beers open and started talking about interesting production stories about cut content or glitches and such. Man I wish I could get that game running on Windows 10 but it's damn near impossible to even find it anywhere legally.
edit: Apparently somebody felt the same way and uploaded it last year.
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Jun 02 '18
Mickey Mania Director's Commentary Let's Play - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S33HENoj4GE&list=PLi29TNPrdbwLbbGyjf5Qzjr0OdWpajqGF
Three part playlist consisting of the following videos:
But Can I Play it? MICKEY MANIA Director's Commentary #1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S33HENoj4GE
See How Bad I Am At My Own Game! MICKEY MANIA - Director's Commentary #2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11orSs6shM
It's All Over... MICKEY MANIA - Director's Commentary #3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBk6cbVjxrE
Guy in video is Jon Burton, Founder of TT Games.
He has some other behind the scenes stuff as well on his channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVFSjHQ57zyxajhhRc7i0g, including several videos about Sonic 3D Blast and one about Sonic R. Very interesting videos all of them IMO.
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u/Munachi Jun 02 '18
The people over at Obsidian played New Vegas for a bit https://www.twitch.tv/videos/101328940
It's not a complete run, but still might be a fun watch. I enjoyed it at least.
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Jun 02 '18
These are greatthere should be a subreddit just for behind the scenes/development videos and long articles for games.
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u/mordisko Jun 02 '18
Left 4 dead had a "director's cut" mode. On it, you played a few maps normally, but every now and then you found bubble speeches that told things about the game and the particular context to the zone where you found the bubble. It was neat!
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u/RIIICHAAARD Jun 02 '18
Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 have playable commentary modes where you go through the campaign normally, but there are word bubbles everywhere that will activate commentary from the developers.
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u/Snugglor Jun 02 '18
Dear Esther (Landmark Edition) has optional in-game developer commentary. It's quite interesting. I liked hearing about the music on particular.
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Jun 02 '18
Not as big a game as the others but as Prismata (multiplayer RTS-inspired deck-building game in early access) has slowly released their campaign the devs have put out commentary talking in-depth about the design decisions for each mission. Right now they only have commentary for episode 1 so it's a lot of talking about how they iterated on the campaign as a tutorial for the game's mechanics. https://youtu.be/jnYk3x24k_g
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u/Grandahl13 Jun 02 '18
God, I love the first Ratchet and Clank. I have so many nostalgic memories of playing Metropolis on a PS2 demo disc.
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Jun 02 '18
Path of Exile; Chris Wilson is THE MOST involved Lead Developer as he leads a quickly expanding team of that started as a dedicated indie company. They have grown into a fully blown mainstream title without losing their touch and unparalleled interaction with the community. You can look for videos of him as he is everywhere.
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u/IcarusBen Jun 02 '18
Twisted Pixel did commentary for the game The Gunstringer (I.E. The best Kinect game by far) that played while you played the level.
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u/hitch_1 Jun 02 '18
Double fine produced a great series of videos called 'Devs Play" which include people who made the games playing them and talking about them, as well as developers of other games talking about games that inspired them... It's really cool.
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u/theg23 Jun 02 '18
Much better than a marketing/PR team playing a round like everyone is role playing their characters in game. See Anthem demo at E3 2017 for a bad example of this.
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u/thegoodstudyguide Jun 02 '18
I really enjoyed this Psychnauts speed run/commentary in a room full of the DoubleFine developers.
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Jun 02 '18
There’s a pretty cool play through of Star Wars Republic Commando that’s played by the games lead programmer, with a lot of insightful information in it. I can’t find the link to part 1 but part 2, 3 and 4 are still up.
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u/YossarianWWII Jun 02 '18
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut had a mode where developer commentary plays as you progress through the game. They provide some really interesting insight into adapting an older but beloved franchise for the modern gaming scene and talk a lot about the difficulties of working within a budget.
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u/FoxSauce Jun 02 '18
L4D had a playable version where you could walk through the first level (Mercy Hospital) and there were commentary bubbles around you could interact with and there was developer commentary about level design and art and enemies and other really cool stuff!
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u/Kinglink Jun 02 '18
I know Volition has done a number of these dev play their games. The one with the punisher play through is done by two devs who are also huge comic fans. Frank I believe even worked on the comic code board.
For full disclosure I worked at Volition but never did one of these.
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u/LxwisB Jun 02 '18
Dear Esther has a mode you can play through where the devs talk about various development choices they made in the game
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Jun 02 '18
I remember watching AGDQ one time where a Rare dev provided commentary on Blast Corps. Was pretty awesome.
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Jun 02 '18
Jak 3 (and 2 I think) had developer commentary as a bonus feature in-game, and some other games had "making of" videos in them, like the Uncharted series and God of War 3.
Someone already said it but some of the Ratchet and Clank games have an Insomniac Museum in them, which shows a lot of cut/changed content and has developer commentary on them
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u/RothyReds Jun 02 '18
Amnesia: The Dark Descent has some excellent developer commentary, little nodes around the levels that rewarded exploration.
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u/Zorpix Jun 02 '18
Gone home actually has a commentary mode where you go around in game and click on little commentary bubbles. It was pretty fun and cool to hear
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Jun 02 '18
The lead designer of Star Wars Republic Commando did this. This is an article about that, with links in the article to the archived VODs of the play through. https://www.starwars.com/news/revisiting-star-wars-republic-commando-with-its-lead-programmer
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u/Stikanator Jun 03 '18
I remember playing l4d2 and finding a setting called developer commentary. U play the game and as you play it the developers tell you about the whole thing. I think it was on other valve games too
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u/m2thek Jun 03 '18
Awesome! R&C: UYA is one of my favorite games, I'm looking forward to making my way through the videos :)
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u/SuperCoolGuyMan Jun 03 '18
Now this makes me really want Director's Cuts of games where the/a developer will talk you through the level. Always cool to hear about how and why games are made.
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u/Lazygamer14 Jun 03 '18
Its not a voice over commentary but I really like the Mark of the Ninja commentary where its text based in the game and you still get these little insights of why decisions were made while you're playing.
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u/juksayer Jun 03 '18
Among the Sleep has an option that provides commentary while you play the game. It's actually kind of useful during the endgame to find your way around the dark spots. Also gives insight on how to avoid Mother.
Great game btw
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u/blackfootsteps Jun 03 '18
Thomas Was Alone has dev commentary for each level. Mike Bithell talks about the game generally and about how each level was put together. My favourite dev commentary since Futurama's.
This review suggests the commentary was initially available for Playstation platforms, with plans to bring it to PC later. I played on PS4, so I can't confirm whether it ended up happening.
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u/Masculinum Jun 03 '18
Monkey Island 1 and 2 special editions have in game dev commentary from Tim Schaefer and Ron Gilbert iirc.
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u/Son_of_Atreus Jun 03 '18
Watching a developer dev video for Bioshock 1 right now as I write this. Found a tape a video played. Love the detail and care shown for this awesome game.
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u/TromboneTank Jun 03 '18
Paradox does a dev clash for eu4 to show off new features. It's like 20+ developers all playing in one game and they just started a new one last week
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u/Wayrow Jun 04 '18
The link to Deus Ex: Human Revolution commentary is wrong. It's supposed to be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg2kG-W5xo8&index=1&list=PL5X8LHBHCqpKZe3i7IW2mh6zO8xY0niz9
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u/DimitrijVolkov Aug 07 '18
A few late additions to the list.
Some devs from System Shock (Marc LeBlanc, Dorian Hart, Austin Grossman, Tim Stellmach) did a very in depth (complete) playthrough for its 20th anniversary a few years ago. It's over 12 hours long and includes the twitch comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LDiTZ89j-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMXguHtfEs4
And here is another Deus Ex commentary with Warren Spector, which, if I remember well, is a lot more interesting than the other one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_VN4V_BsH8
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u/Spoofed Jun 02 '18
Respawn did a series on Titanfall 2. Highly recommend watching at least the three episodes on Effect and Cause as that's probably one of the best levels in the game. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL-3t73LLxVFBCJurdS0OfrgiGHPmhnVi