{"id":125993,"date":"2020-06-26T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/25yearslatersite.com\/?p=125993"},"modified":"2020-06-26T00:00:36","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T04:00:36","slug":"call-of-juarez-gunslinger-and-the-importance-of-mid-budget-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tvobsessive.com\/2020\/06\/26\/call-of-juarez-gunslinger-and-the-importance-of-mid-budget-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Call of Juarez: Gunslinger and the Importance of Mid-Budget Games"},"content":{"rendered":"
Game development has come a long way during the art form\u2019s life span. We\u2019ve reached the point where games have little room for improvement from a visual standpoint thanks to huge leaps in rendering technology, and because of that, AAA games cost more than ever to develop. While the tech involved in such games is quite impressive, it can<\/em> lead to times where it feels like developers are creatively stifled. It makes sense for, say, Activision to try and have a new Call of Duty<\/em> game ever year, and the sales numbers are tough to ignore. But there\u2019s something to be said for times when a developer is given total creative control over the game they\u2019re creating, and often times, these games are slightly cheaper to make. The smaller budget means it\u2019s less of an investment from the publisher, which in turn means they won\u2019t be as controlling with the end product. I was reminded of all of this a while ago when I was playing through Call of Juarez: Gunslinger <\/em>on Switch.<\/p>\n For a brief history lesson, the Call of Juarez<\/em> franchise popped up some time during the mid-to-late 2000s, and was billed as a first person shooting franchise set in the old west with a focus on storytelling. In the interest of full disclosure, Gunslinger<\/em> is the only game in the series that I\u2019ve played, so I can\u2019t speak too much to the franchise\u2019s overall quality, but a brief search of the internet will tell you that the series had two generally well received games set in the 1800s, the eponymous first installment and its sequel Bound in Blood<\/em>, before developer Techland followed those up with a game set in the modern day subtitled The Cartel.<\/em> From what I\u2019ve read of the latter, it seems to be a half-baked cooperative shooter with none of the storytelling chops of the first two games, and it basically killed the franchise, because when the scaled-back Gunslinger<\/em> was released, it didn\u2019t do well enough to warrant any more sequels. Gunslinger<\/em> brought the series back to the 1800s and puts players in the shoes of Silas Greaves, a fictional gunslinger telling his life\u2019s story to a small group of people at a bar, regaling them with tales of his gunfights and brushes with famous outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James.<\/p>\n