Tokyo Game Show is still going on (I think, international time kills me) and I recently heard about Aragami, a shadow manipulation stealth game about an undead assassin, got a release date trailer. This game was first announced about 5 months ago in April.
This is one of the shortest hype cycles I've ever seen, and I think Aragami will be better for it. Aragami is shaping up to be a great stealth action game, allowing players to choose between Ghost or Demon playstyles; Ghost is all about absolute stealth, remaining unnoticed while traversing the area and slipping past foes undetected. Demon is all about going on killing rampages, taking out anyone and everyone in your path. The two paths can even be combined to whatever length the player chooses. It's a great mechanic that I believe will help the game be that much better.
The thing is, between the time Aragami was announced and its release date reveal yesterday, there has has been little to no hype surrounding this game at all. In fact, when I first saw the reveal trailer in April, I was sure this game would be out sometime early to mid 2017, but to see it coming so soon, to me, says that developer Lince Works is very confident in what they've created. And why shouldn't they be? They're taking what they know and love about the stealth games of old and bringing it into modern times, with an interesting twist on character abilities. They have all rights to be proud of what they've accomplished and I celebrate their bravery in announcing a game and releasing it less than a year later.
Sometimes, it's better to know nothing about a game going into it. Take the original Megaman games, for instance. When people played those games discovery was almost half the fun of getting through it. Or, more recently, Journey. We knew next to nothing about that game when it launch, other than it was coming from thatgamecompany, developer of both Flow and the excellent Flower, and Journey was a smash hit. Everybody raved about it, we all loved it.
Danny O'Dwyer, formerly of GameSpot, once made a video on his series The Point about The Price of Mystery and how hype is killing the joy of discovery of most new games these days. I must say, I entirely agree. While No Man's Sky expectations were set ridiculously high, this were no doubt because this game was shown off too often without telling gamers what the gameplay really was, but I've already written a thing about that...
So, maybe not knowing everything about a game before it releases and having shorter hype cycles can be more beneficial than detrimental. I'm sure there will be some gamers out there calling blasphemy but with all the ways we consume media now, it's easy to be swept into the hype and have our expectations bloated. If there isn't much steam driving the hype train for a specific game, expectations can stay more well grounded. And if a game is released less than a year after its announcement, we can do away with the ridiculousness of waiting three or more years for a game that was announced at an E3 or Tokyo Game Show too long ago to have realistic expectations.
