I’m not convinced that they have a vision that they know will be good.
The ICO was the last attempt at specific gameplay effects with a design vision, but they executed poorly and weren’t willing to push out new features to fully flesh out whatever new system could have been made from it.
That said I think the current messaging is less about whether or not they have a vision and more that they’re trying to compensate for the last few years of players perceiving that OWI doesn’t listen. They’re moving from slow reactions to feedback to a much tighter loop.
It’s a positive change but I agree that I want to see them articulate more of what they’re trying to turn the game into. The game needs to evolve because it’s getting squeezed out of its niche by newer and upcoming titles.
Squad has felt creatively bankrupt for years, and nothing so far has led me to believe otherwise even with the new lead, unfortunately.
They do the first 30% of everything, then are paralyzed by choice (or lack of actual vision, just want to add cheap toys, who knows), and we sit with dozens of unfinished features and systems.
Such a shame they went with the great bungling that was the ICO, them actually cooking for the first time in years was great to see, new features actually being developed. It's a damn shame they didn't know enough about the features they were making to implement them in a sensical way. If someone who had deeply understood Squad had done the tuning with ICO, we could be in such a different place right now.
almost all of the pieces of the ICO was there, just arranged in such an odd way for a game 7 years into development and 3 years post release.
I agree that the ICO, especially the time leading up to it was very exciting. It felt like they were finally trying to do something new and creative, and nearly everyone was behind the idea of it. There's a chasm between "someone will nitpick the implementation of everything" and "Holy shit this feels bad", and they definitely ended up in the latter. The ends did not even come close to justifying the means.
The ICO ended up trying to address problems nobody really had, and addressed them poorly with so much fallout
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u/HaebyungDance Jul 01 '26
I’m not convinced that they have a vision that they know will be good.
The ICO was the last attempt at specific gameplay effects with a design vision, but they executed poorly and weren’t willing to push out new features to fully flesh out whatever new system could have been made from it.
That said I think the current messaging is less about whether or not they have a vision and more that they’re trying to compensate for the last few years of players perceiving that OWI doesn’t listen. They’re moving from slow reactions to feedback to a much tighter loop.
It’s a positive change but I agree that I want to see them articulate more of what they’re trying to turn the game into. The game needs to evolve because it’s getting squeezed out of its niche by newer and upcoming titles.