Awesome news, sports gamers! It’s time for the latest installment in SIE San Diego Studio’s baseball series that is beloved for its attention to detail, and this one looks like a real doozy! A recent announcement from developers revealed that every baseball game in the upcoming MLB The Show 20 will feature a frustrated father sitting in the stands next to his husky son who is playing a Nintendo DS!
Wow, what an incredible display of realism in gaming!
“We’re really trying to give players a fully immersive experience of what it’s like to be at a Major League Baseball game, so we knew we had to include a dad who’s deeply annoyed at his inability to bond with his handheld gaming-obsessed son,” said senior programmer Andrew Campbell, stressing that this nuanced portrayal the son’s utter apathy toward America’s favorite pastime in favor of playing Dragon Quest IX helps gamers lose themselves in the world of professional baseball. “Players might notice the frustrated father making general observations about the game to get his son’s attention—commenting on good hits, bemoaning foul balls, what have you—before starting to nudge his disinterested, pudgy son to turn off that damn video game for once.
“What’s incredible is that even though the father and son’s seating location is randomly generated game-to-game, if you look closely using the Stadium View camera setting, you’ll always see the father’s annoyance level will be directly relative to how much money he threw away on good seats that his kid isn’t even appreciation,” he added.
Further noting the game’s impressive attention to detail, Campbell described events in which the father attempts to bribe his son with food from nearby vendors to draw him away from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, before the father finally admitting that he should have brought the boy’s little sister instead. What will really immerse gamers in the authentic simulation, though, are graphical engine’s ability to realistic father-son interactions, such as the portly child briefly looking up to correct the father after he calls the Nintendo DS a “Game Boy,” before returning to his game in a morose silence.
Campbell also hinted at hidden mid-game cutscene in which the father angrily confiscates the Nintendo DS and marches his crying, plump son out of the stands after the seventh inning.
Now that’s the type of incredible true-to-life detail that we all love about MLB The Show! Between the game’s features allowing players to create their own franchise from scratch and true-to-life addition of a frustrated father and his overweight son playing Nintendo DS, anyone booting up SIE San Diego’s latest is sure to feel like they’re really sitting in the stands at a big league game!
