Struggling fantasy RPG will sally forth
In a new interview with the game’s own publisher, Square Enix, directors Kenji Saito and Takahisa Sugiyama have admitted to feeling dismayed at the reception to their epic fantasy RPG Babylon’s Fall, but remain committed to producing new content and in-game updates for the live service title.
Launching in March 2022 following a lengthy development cycle, Babylon’s Fall found itself swiftly subdued due to poor critical reception and a busy month of top-tier game releases. In a standout, (and heavily publicized moment), the Steam player base for the RPG reportedly fell from a meager 1,000 players to just one single player in early May.
Addressing the less-than-stellar launch in the new interview, Saito and Sugiyama expressed their intention to continue building upon Babylon’s Fall‘s launch build, and have already rolled out several patches and updates to tweak visual, technical, and gameplay-based issues. According to the duo, Babylon’s Fall today has “twice as much content” as it did at launch, and the team will continue to roll out new weaponry, quests, and challenges as the year progresses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ZktpmoGrg
“There are still many areas we have not done enough with yet, and many aspects that will be hard to change unless we focus our efforts, so I feel there is a great deal of room left for us to meet player expectations as we diligently continue to develop and improve the game,” notes Sugiyama.
“For all the issues that are brought to our attention, we have strived to carry out as many emergency fixes and improvements as possible and get them out as early as possible. We do understand that these measures are still far from enough and will continue to push on with further fixes and improvements alongside all the new content we will be releasing going forward.”
While many online titles that stumbled out of the gate would go on to perform incredible comebacks (the best example perhaps being Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege), Babylon’s Fall is undeniably in trouble. For a game that was designed as a long-term live-service title, the situation is looking bleak. Bleaker even than Square Enix’s other foray into live service, Marvel’s Avengers, an equally epic project which today limps on weakly from month to month.
