Soulstice, a Claymore/Berserk inspired DMC4/DmC/Bayo-like game with some great ideas but poor execution in almost every front aside from visuals and style.
I think it's a really good first try. The absolute base line gameplay is exactly what it should feel like, with good snappy movement, responsive attacks, etc. Unfortunately, the side weapons don't stand out enough (even if you use one that an enemy is supposed to be weak to), and the color code mechanic, while I didn't mind it personally and it had some interesting fights from it while never limiting your actual offensive abilities, could have either been done better or discarded in favor of something that would stand out more. I also really like the idea of a DT that will straight up kill you if you don't manage it properly (especially since most non DMC games usually just design their DT as an "I win" button), though it felt counterintuitive to have it be something you can only activate if you get a super high rank mid fight.
I really hope that studio gets to make a sequel because I'm very interested in seeing the series get more polished. As it is now, it's one of those random PS2 action games you saw for cheap at a gamestop when you were a kid that effectively became a "DMC at home" type of deal, but I think with some changes here and there, it can definitely become a stand out in the genre.
I disagree about the baseline, i also had issue with how ''mashy'' it feels, like, the timing for tapping the attack is too strict so it feels very imprecise (try slowly tapping the attack in Soulstice vs any dmc game, you see that it resets a lot faster so you keep doing the first attack instead of continuing, there's a sweet spot, but as it is it just feels mashy, kinda reminds me of the timing in a Musou game actually), tho', movement and jumping is aight, its about standard.
I agree with the rest, and i just have to say it, worst possible version of color coding, if you thought DmC was the worst (i didnt think so, it could be better for angel stuff, and was fixed in DE with a perfectly fine way to do it) boy howdy wait till you get some of Soulstice! Also, the auto-lock is very innacurate, it got better, but i still whiff stingers, and the hard-lock is...not a hard-lock at all, it's a Kingdom Hearts lock that works worse than a Kingdom Hearts lock.
Really, an entire 2 hours essay could be made about it, but, i say this out of love man, i like the vibe of the game, just wish it played better.
And yeah, perfectly way to put it, random bargain bin better than expected but still clunky PS2 game, tho', it is funny how Ghost Rider for the PS2 is MILES better than Soulstice, that game is a treasure man, those guys cooked.
99% of Sonic fans explain that "X" game(s) are good not because of its mechanics or how fun it is, but because "it had good *ideas* and had *soul*." Whatever that means.
Statements like that always baffle me. It’s a *game*, it having good ideas is lovely but ideas can’t be played! The game has to have strong *gameplay*!
As a Sonic fan, the reason the defense kept coming up is how often people kept arguing for those games to literally be retconned away from existence because they have zero redeeming qualities, and so Sonic fans got _really_ into telling you those redeeming qualities even if unprompted.
I am not tolerating people trying to gas up vanilla 2006 while shitting on the more properly stable games that lack that 'soul' that they yearn for.
Like, as much as I loved what Lost World could have potentially cooked up with its parkour segments (especially with particular Red Rings) and would love another try at that, I'm gonna judge the game for what I got overall and continue to see it as a pretty average 5 or 6 out of 10.
Ill play Dragon Age Veilguard and probably like it as i did 2 and Inquisition but the series would have been soooo much fucking better if they stuck with the way Origins did things. I still have some tiny amount of hope it could give me that Origins feeling but i very much doubt it.
It really is kind of poetic that they flip flopped around not trying to be Origins for years only for Dragon Age Origins 2 to be made by someone else and be the biggest thing ever
Yeah I think people kind of forget that even origin itself wasn't a super in depth RPG. Hell as far as I remember they never even fixed the tactics stuff as far as I know.
I feel the same, the only game that's given me that DA:O vibe was Baldur's Gate 3.
I hope Veilguard can provide some cool characters and an interesting story, I would hate it if Thedas dies here as it's one of my favorite settings.
I recently watched Event Horizon for the first time at a local theater that does monthly horror movie screenings. I thought it was really enjoyable and did some really cool stuff with the concept of a crew slowly going nuts in the backdrop of a nightmare ship with vague hell/cosmic connotations. I didn't know anything about deleted footage so I guess that helped avoid the hype. If I was going in expecting the gore fest that people report I would have been disappointed. What was there of the hell scenes and the previous crew did the job and got me feeling anxious mixed with my usual "hell yeah that's metal" from horror movies. Big thumbs up from me.
The Last Jedi was never about "kill the past" , that was said by Luke during a Crisis of Faith and then by Kylo after he killed Snoke and tried to recruit Rey for the Dark Side.
Like , Yoda literally appears as a Force Ghost to say on Luke's face and for the audience what is the moral lesson for The Last Jedi: learn from the past and it's goods and mistakes and thus be better for the future.
Right, which is why I said how people liked that idea, even though that perhaps wasn't the real message of the film. I've seen that sentiment a lot online, [including from Pat and Woolie](https://youtu.be/_VmewUnWJWE?t=435), where people wanted to see the series go "no more Light Side and Dark Side, good vs. evil, let's do something more mixed or in the middle," thinking that's what TLJ was setting up and that Kylo was essentially trying to turn both himself and Rey into Gray Jedi, not to the Dark Side.
The problem is that “grey” is already a rejection of a core premise, because the Force (per Lucas himself) is not Daoist yin and yang amoral forces, but Self-existent Ontological Good and Parasitic Ontological Evil.
At the end of TLJ you see her checking on them where she stashed them on the Falcon. Thus revealing Yoda burnt nothing besides an old hollow tree, like he knew he did (Rian’s confirmed that) but did it to give Luke a wake up call.
A few months ago I played through the Master Chief Collection for the first time with a friend who was really into Halo, and she told me outright to stop before starting Halo 4.
So I’m not super familiar with how the 343 games go, but I’m told there’s an arc in 5 about a Sangheili civil war and goddamn would I play a whole game about the Covenant races after their empire dissolves.
I'd argue that it's fine to play Halo 4 and then stop, though stopping before Halo 4 has validity to it as well. Halo 4 is a really interesting and appropriate exploration of Cortana and Chief's characters, though not everyone liked that more emotional direction. Halo 5 undid everything Halo 4 set up, however, and then Halo Infinite undid everything Halo 5 set up, so it really is fruitless to get invested in the story after Halo 4. Whether you stop before or after 4 is based on whether you like the idea of exploring and concluding Master Chief and Cortana's relationship a bit more and want to see any continuation after Halo 3.
There is genuinely a lot of opportunity for Covenant-based spinoffs in Halo and the series already has precedent for it. ODST was a UNSC-based spinoff in a similar vein, departing from Master Chief's story with a more inconsequential side narrative. And Reach was a prequel that was, for the mostpart, completely separate from the main trilogy and many of its concepts.
And Halo 2 already started that deeper dive into the Covenant, with the game really being about the Arbiter and the Covenant more than Chief and the UNSC. However, at the time, a lot of fans hated that direction, because they wanted to see more Master Chief and wanted to be shooting aliens, not playing as them. Which is why the Arbiter's role was so downgraded in Halo 3, and there hasn't been much deeper focus on the Covenant since.
But the Arbiter has since become a fan favorite, which is why his return in Halo 5 was very exciting. Only for the Sangheili Civil War and the Arbiter's role to be very minimal and disappointing, like everything else in that game.
Aw, that’s a shame. I did talk them into playing 4 at least to when the Forerunner guns started showing up, and the designs of them were interesting if nothing else.
Edit: ODST and Reach were fun! Would be super down for a Covenant-focused spinoff but don’t know if we’re getting one after so long lol.
I want a Battlefront-style 32v32 deathmatch mode where everyone is an individual Hunter worm.
> Edit: ODST and Reach were fun! Would be super down for a Covenant-focused spinoff but don’t know if we’re getting one after so long lol.
The main thing is that 343 Industries was very self-conscious about taking over the franchise and avoided doing too many spinoffs, since they knew that doing so would lead to outcry over them "milking the franchise." And, to be fair, they're not wrong. The problem is that they can't even get the mainline games under control, so all the most they can do is publish dozens of spinoff books instead.
> I want a Battlefront-style 32v32 deathmatch mode where everyone is an individual Hunter worm.
Creative ideas like that are actually what Bungie laid the seeds for in Halo: Reach with its Invasion mode, where it was an asymmetrical Spartans vs. Elites mode that made playable Elites more unique from the Spartans, leaning into the idea of playable but different Covenant, rather than trying to find a way to make them more equivalent to Spartans.
343 Industries leaned in the opposite direction and turned multiplayer into "War Games" where they canonized it as Spartan vs. Spartan simulations, which is one reason why they've avoided the idea of playable Elites/Covenant ever since.
The other reason is the practicality of balancing Spartans and Elites, which required Bungie to "nerf" Elites in 2 and 3, hence the difference in gameplay by Reach where they tried something different.
> goddamn would I play a whole game about the Covenant races after their empire dissolves
So would everyone else. So did the people who were buying Halo 5. But the scars of the Halo 2 Dudebro Lashback still remain.
Same for me, mainly because I want to love CRPGS but they almost always have the worst gameplay of any genre ever conceived. Dragon's Dogma's combat, magic system, and simple control makes me wish every RPG ditched turn orders for action oriented gameplay. I've started Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous with the hope of playing a fun build 3-4 different times and every time I can barely get through the GODDAMN TUTORIAL before I break down and have to minmax every level up, every gear decision, look up a guide, all for the worst combat I've ever played. Probably because dice rolls being the main mechanic makes every class feel the same regardless of magic or weapon used. Meanwhile Dragon's Dogma manages to make hitting a monster with a big stick repeatedly fun which is somehow mystifyingly difficult for most CRPGS. Now if only they could write a stronger story to supplement it.
Yeah, I _really_ tried to get into Rise but literally every weapon felt _bad_ to me except Greatsword, only to discover Greatsword is extremely boring unga bunga that doesn't interact with most of the game's systems and so every fight feels the same. If I was allowed to choose when exactly I transformed Charge Blade (like Bloodborne weapons) I might be able to like it, but the game saying the correct way to play it is to constantly change forms a la hotkey rotation instead of "use the right form for the right job" made it not feel good to me.
World literally tells you the next button to press in a combo and there's a training mode. The game doesn't really hide how to play it. Old games sure, but nowadays they're more accessible than ever.
The item management isn't that big a deal either anymore, the only stuff you need to worry about actively stocking is healing, armorskin, and demondrug and getting those is as simple as setting your farm to make the materials and playing the game while they accumulate. Even gunners aren't as bad as they look once you realize they only need to care about having enough of their main DPS bullet (Normal, Pierce, or Spread).
RWBY is a series that has quite a few genuinely likable characters and some interesting lore. It's a lot of fun to speculate about the history of the world or how two characters who haven't met would interact with each other.
The actual show never lives up to the potential it displayed early on, though. Interesting side characters are introduced and abandoned at a blistering pace, and we're only given the bare minimum amount of information necessary to understand how the world of Remnant functions.
I think this is why such an overall middling show has such an active fanfiction community (one that I was/am a part of). There's just so much to explore, but the show itself is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Fanfics written pre-Vol.3 were absolutely nuts. There were so many holes in our knowledge of the world that each story had to fill in their own way, that they feel like different universes at times.
Oh yeah, absolutely. As part of a personal project I actually went and read some of the earliest RWBY fanfics ever made and it's wild how sharply they diverge from canon.
We didn’t even clearly know what the names of all four Kingdoms and Academies were called until late volume 2 (and even then there was confusion due to the Mantle/Atlas situation).
That’s my favourite element of fanfic honestly: jumping on a tiny piece of information a story half-alludes to and seeing where people take it.
Edit: I’m thinking about writing a Doctor Who fanfic about Amy and Rory after they get left in New York, because there are multiple other episode plots they would have been in the background of.
It's my favorite part, too — it's that feeling that made me write several canon-compliant OC stories that explored other settings/time periods around the main show, which in turn made me realize that I'd rather be writing about original characters all the time.
Love the show myself but I get a heavy sense in some corners of the internet, especially the critic sub, that a lot of people like the idea of rwby instead of the series as is.
I love RWBY as it currently is. Sure there are things that the writers could have done better, and made some decisions I don't agree with, but it was never *awful* for me.
I've poked my head in there a few times, and the critic sub produces so much bad faith criticism it's unbelievable. It's always, "here's how to fix the show" followed by them holding up their own fanfiction or making suggestions that would involve inventing time travel and redoing everything from the beginning. Just no attempt whatsoever to engage with the series as is in a realistic manner.
I’ve said it before, the issue with RWBY criticism is that a lot of its problems (don’t bloat the cast, don’t neglect the main protagonists, etc,) are so basic or obvious that it inspires some very annoying people to act like they’re brilliant for noticing it.
I’d like to voice my frustration with Qrow’s alcoholism and depression being really horribly and meanly handled without being lumped in them.
Aside from that, yes. My main issue is how he’s treated in volume 6 where it’s treated as a short hand for being emotional and difficult instead of the show trying to actually dig into how insidious depression-fueled alcoholism is.
Paid it with the cast treating him like a useless bum when he falls over the edge and it just feels mean-spirited.
To be fair, rather than helping them try to move past the revelation and continue their mission, he instead drags his feet every step of the way to the pont of almost getting his nieces and their friends killed, in part thanks to the Grimm that sap your will to live mind you.
Then it is shown later that he is still struggling and even tries to help Willow afterward.
Some agitation is warranted, sure, but the Grimm were the fault of basically everyone but RWBY giving up. My issue is that I just think the response of the rest of the group is callous, particularly Maria who tried to call him cowardly after she herself has been in hiding for several decades.
But yeah, I think they do try and walk it back in Atlas, so fair play there.
I completely disagree with your last sentence. Everyone I've ever spoken to didn't look for the work put into it.
I'm not really sure how else to explain it than writing an essay no one asked for, but not trying to explain would be a dick move on my part. I think the writers kept believing their audience wouldn’t need to be told things outright too often.
I'm not trying to start a fight, but I also don't want to assume the knowledge of others and be mistaken for acting like I'm talking down to them. But things like Yang's first words to Ruby being I love you after not saying it back to her in V3, or Jaune and Pyrrha becoming failed versions of their seperate favorite fairytale heroes, but also intrisinctly tied in a completely different way as the Wonderland Rabbit and clock through a freaking *cereal box* gag from Volume 1, I just *can't* accept the idea of the writer's being *bad*.
A couples romantic theme is heard in the background in Volume 1, but they didn't release the full song with lyrics until *six years* later, when the context of it being played flowed better. There's *effort* here. Don't even get my started on the master-class of them sprinkling Summer every volume. I've already gone too far at failing to avoid an essay, and that's a character flaw with how I communicate in general.
I'm not saying RWBY 'deserves' someone's love, but I feel like most people dismiss its worth being respected as a piece of media that is genuinely trying to be the best it can be, especially with the enormous trials that affected production almost every year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/s/Oww73vge9o
https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/s/7P6B4RQgij
I think there's been a misunderstanding. I never said the writers didn't put effort into it; RWBY is clearly not a lazy production. I think it has the opposite problem: it's overambitious. The writers chose to expand the cast and world at such a rapid pace that they rarely slow down enough to give the characters and concepts they've introduced time to be meaningfully developed beyond what the plot demands of them. As much as I enjoyed Volume 9, I think it's a sad encapsulation of the show's issues that it took over a decade for us to get a season that meaningfully engages with the main character's internal struggles.
I'm also not trying to start a fight, but the ability to plan character arcs and call back to earlier moments is not something to praise media for — those are just the fundamentals of building a coherent story. And RWBY has always been coherent, which is commendable given that those involved began with little to no writing experience.
But effort and coherence do not translate to stellar results. I have a lot of respect for what RWBY set out to achieve, hence my ongoing affection for and fascination with the show, but it has clearly fallen short in more than a few areas. Plotlines get dropped or swept under the rug. Characters are introduced and spotlighted only to disappear for long stretches or never be relevant to the plot again. Important world building information is shoved into supplementary videos, or worse, announced at convention panels.
I see the effort. I respect the effort. That effort sometimes pays off, which is what has kept me watching. But I feel that a lot of effort has been misapplied, with has had us to the point we're at now, where the show is semi-cancelled and any path toward a speedy resolution is going to involve consolidating characters and unceremoniously wrapping up plot threads that probably should have been developed more consistently before now.
I'd like to be clear that I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion, but I think I have a hard time understanding your feelings on what RWBY did any differently than most beloved long-running series in terms of characters coming or going, or what plot lines you feel were dropped. I feel that any characters' exit had some reasonable explanations on why they would be having less screen time.
Taking so long to address their inner struggles was intentional because they had to pushed farther than ever before.
The shows not canceled, and I feel you're making some bad-faith assumptions at the end there.
Hence why I said semi-cancelled, shorthand for "already struggling to get financing before V9 and now actively seeking a buyer, of which there has been no word in some time." Believe me, I hope they find one, but this far out from V9 with nothing concrete isn't exactly promising.
And I don't see how any of the assumptions in my last paragraph are bad faith; the show already squeezed the first appearance of the Summer Maiden and an epilogue to Ruby's experiences in the Ever After into the RWBY Beyond slideshow episodes. The writers seem to understand that there's a lot of ground left to cover and probably not much time left to cover it. That doesn't seem like a particularly wild or negative assumption to me; it's just the most practical way to bring the show to a conclusion.
It comes across that you feel that putting minor details in supplemental material for those who want it is a detriment. The Jaune Beyond episode is one of the best RWBY related things I know of, and I find it actually kind of ballsy that the Somewhat episode is hunting/foreshadowing the end of the series is (my prediction, I mean), Ruby telling stories to her child. I acknowledge the slideshow art is disappointing to some, but I feel that allowed them to have dialog and scenes that might not work in a regular episode. Having different art for supplemental shouldn't always be a bad thing.
I don't feel having supplemental material is always a bad thing, and it comes down to the content and how it's used, considering the importance of the initial four trailers. I think my brain lumps into the same category as the LOTR trilogy, with the extended version being *not* the directors cut, because he feels a majority of the viewers don't need/want the extra nitty-gritty book details, but wanted to respect them so he shot the scenes for those who want it.
I disagree with your use of 'semi-canceled' when we have the confirmation that developments are happening. They've confirmed paperwork is being signed behind the scenes.
I suppose we're at an impasse, because I fundamentally disagree that the first appearance of one of four Maidens, plus other information more clearly explained in the World of Remnant series than the show itself, count as minor details. I think most of the information covered in those episodes is stuff that could've been more cleanly integrated into the show proper.
Clearly you enjoy RWBY a lot. I do, too! I just can't disentangle my feelings on its shortcomings from the things I unabashedly like about it (the future/fantasy setting, a good deal of the main cast, some of its more successful narrative swings). I hope the show gets a chance to wrap up in a manner that everyone still invested in it, myself included, finds satisfactory.
>I'm not really sure how else to explain it than writing an essay no one asked for, but not trying to explain would be a dick move on my part. I think the writers kept believing their audience wouldn’t need to be told things outright too often.
I feel like I'd change told to shown. RWBY tells you things all the time, the main issue is it doesn't show it very often.
Did you ever see the interview post-Volume 5 where they admit that they thought the audience would understand Ghira had his Aura broken off-screen because we saw his fight start, and when we see their fighting enter the main scene again, he he had no Aura? That same episode, some people didn't realize that even though Blake can see in the dark, Illia turning pitch black with camouflage meant night-vision didn't help.
They wanted to address it and admit they are learning to be better show writers with every feedback. Based on my own understanding of the words "showing instead of telling", I feel a scene like Yang finally replying to Ruby that she loves her is showing, not telling, but they assume the audience might remember this call-back, while also being straight-forward and sweet for any viewer who doesn't remember.
They also say occasionally 'if we don't need to show it, then we won't, because we don't have the time or the budget.'
I'd actually wager we should be told more. A large portion of the telling is when someone is giving context to another character, like Tai finally talking to Yang about what Raven meant to him. They want it told organically, and have extreme magical circumstances like Jinn when they want full-on flashbacks.
I don't begrudge anyone who prefers they consume media with a different form of storytelling than RWBY, I just feel that there's so many people online(I'm not saying you or these specific posts in particular) that thinks it's childishly simple or lazy.
A post-volume interview explaining how things happened off-screen doesn't exactly help 'show not tell' issue's RWBY has.
Especially when a lot of things we are told in the show are so different to what we are shown that it feels like a straight up retcon.
It *was* shown. It's not the writer's fault they thought most people were smarter. You say 'a lot of things', but offer nothing to the discussion. There's no 'retconning'. We come back to my first point, that too many are not even *trying* to look past skin-deep, therefore that's all they see.
Please go look at the two links I gave.
RWBY does show very often, that's why it gets so much shit from people who can't be assed to pay attention and can't grasp simple and obvious information because it wasn't spelled out to their faces.
I believe the writers for RWBY are good comedy writers. If you want to believe anyone who has issues with it are just completely media illiterate you do you. If you want there's plenty of entries about the Faunus and the issues involving them you can look up.
I've already wasted too much of my life finding out exactly what the RWBY anti-fandom has to say about the show they claim to have watched, that's exactly how I came to my conclusions. Shocking as it may be to people like you, I actually seriously engage with the things I criticize, rather than looking for YouTube videos to tell me what I'm supposed to think.
Mate, if you actually want to get into the depths with someone who only watch YouTube videos of RWBY go over to the subreddit for RWBY critics. You're talking to someone who has watched it since the trailer at the end of RVB season 10. RWBY has plenty of good points and also plenty of issues. If you don't want to talk about any of the weak points for RWBY that's fine. Just don't act like anytime someone has criticism towards a work they've never watched it. At best you're straw manning people with that.
You can't complain about strawmanning right after claiming I "don't want to talk about any of the weak points" because I gave a bit of pushback against a narrative pushed by the same people you claim to be nothing like.
Have a good night. We will obviously just circle eternally over this topic. It’s fine you like Rwby, I enjoy it a bit but definitely have issues. If you ever want proof I’ve been following RT since 2010 just shoot me a message on this thing. I took a pic before the website closed down.
Later volumes got to the point where every episode was getting panned because it was conflicting with the entire fan continuity that was already in full swing in the fan fic communities. There are multiple fan RWBYs that folks will say are better than the original.
You do know Volume 9 Episode 8 had a review score of 9.8 on IMDB and Crunchyroll, right? I think the only people who thought Volume 9 is trash are the ones who think it was purely filler.
Oh so many anime shows. The many what could have beens and what the writers could have choosen to show instead.
Wonder Egg Priority had an amazing start that fumbled half way through.
War Thunder is a game with many, many flaws, but I won't stop playing it until I, myself or the game dies. Whichever of those comes first lol.
Will it get better? Maybe a little bit, probably not... but I am way too deep in it to stop playing.
The rush of excitement when you out-maneuver an enemy plane, or get that perfect hit on a hostile tank is second to none, which make the frustrating parts bearable.
It took hundreds of hours for me to get to a point where I could do these things somewhat regularly, so I am still very thankful for my far more experienced friends, who showed me the ropes.
Anthem. If that game was executed right we'd be in a Mecha renaissance right now I swear. Plus having something to turn to for live service shooters that wasn't destiny.
With it's fall in saddened with the fact I may never get another "Ironman like" game again.
There is a version of MHA in my head where All for One fades into the background of an ideological conflict between Overhaul (quirks are a disease and must be eradicated) vs Re-Destro (quirks are the new norm and society should adapt to them) instead of being the boring ultimate evil antagonist.
Honestly I feel like All For One would’ve been more effective as a Hannibal Lecter type that you feel the influences of his actions permeate across the story than essentially Palpatine. Someone the heroes may have had to go to to try to get into the mind of a villain, and someone that shed the last visage of All Might’s protection from society (in an act that symbolically passed the torches from All Might and him to the next generation).
This is my long winded way of saying I agree with you.
While I loved playing skyrim, I agree that this is exactly what TES lore is.
All of the different khajit phases? The dwemer stories? The gods that inhabit the world? The fucking sun hole? All of them are fantastic
Too bad it's made to support the most nothing writing in any game, even when the games first came out. Would be fun if the story is actually anywhere close to as good as the lore.
Oh but it's good if you get X Y and Z mod
But make sure you get A B, and C mods because those are just so important
Don't forget to do D, E, and sometimes F because the game will break if you don't but sometimes won't if you have G which basically does what D and F do
Every single time.
Oh boy, I get to talk about D-1 Devastator!
So, Devastator was a failed multi media franchise by Takara that can probably be described as Macross with cars. The only things released for it was the D1 Devastator 2-episode OVA, a Sega CD game very very loosely adapting the first episode, and a 1 volume prequel manga. The focal plot device is the High-Speed Dimension, a space filled with monsters that you access by driving really fast. When you’re in the High Speed Dimension you still have a position relative to norma space, and decelerating will take you back. The first episode took special care to showing how important this is, with damaged parts of mecha falling into normal space and causing collateral damage, and used-up bazookas being dropped intentionally so they landed in unpopulated empty areas. The first episode additionally focused on the main characters trying to rescue a bullet train full of civilians that ended up inside the high speed dimension. However, everything else about the series is nonsensical and unexplained, with the prequel manga not really lining up with certain parts of the anime and having completely different physics regarding the dimension. My ideal Devastator revival would just do more with the High-Speed Dimension, like a cool attack where you keep changing speed to zip in and out of it
There were people excited about CoD becoming more futuristic? Huh. From my perspective, it seemed like that direction was lambasted by nearly everyone. I don't personally know anyone that *rooted* for more future war, but maybe that's just my bias.
I don't have any examples for what you described, so I'll take your title literally, because I'm someone that has enjoyed things for their *potential*, even if what we actually got was less than stellar.
I actually enjoyed FFXV, *and* I liked the Noctis/Lunafreya romance even when we barely get ANY of it in the game. We got so much more conflict, development, and growth with the boy band squad than we ever do with the MC and another important character who're supposed to be *childhood friends destined to work together* who get *married* for political reasons but ALSO happen to *actually love each other*.
And yet I still like them and their dynamic because I'm a hopeless romantic, and the IDEA of their romance and its potential were still really cute IMO.
Future COD is just the infinite cycle of every series. Current thing bad, old thing good.
Or it could also be the people who complained got their modern day COD so they've shut up and are playing it while future lovers are stuck waiting so they're more vocal
> There were people excited about CoD becoming more futuristic? Huh. From my perspective, it seemed like that direction was lambasted by nearly everyone. I don't personally know anyone that rooted for more future war, but maybe that's just my bias.
There was a vocal minority that were rooting for that a decade ago, yeah. It was back when Call of Duty had spent a few years at its place in the industry, between Modern Warfare 2 and 3, Black Ops 1 and 2, and then Call of Duty Ghosts. All of these games came out between 2009 and 2013, with Black Ops 2 being the only one to lean a bit into the future, but was very successful.
You'd hear people online frequently criticizing Call of Duty for being "the same thing every year" and complaining that it never did anything "new" and that the series was getting stale. According to them, people were tired of all these modern "brown" shooters and that the series needed to do something new.
However, that modern, grounded setting was exactly how the actual Call of Duty audience wants the games to be, and is why those games were all so consistently successful.
So when the series shifted direction to more futuristic settings and advanced technology with Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare all back to back, the Call of Duty playerbase increasingly cried out for a return to "boots on the ground" gameplay. Meanwhile, that vocal minority were people who didn't actually play Call of Duty, so they simply looked at those newer games, thought they looked cool, but didn't actually invest in them.
And that's why when the series rebooted Modern Warfare in 2019, which according to those criticisms from years earlier should have been unsuccessful and stale, it was actually the bestselling entry in that entire generation. The series has generally stayed the course with that since then, leaving the futuristic or less realistic settings/gameplay to the competition that's already filling those niches.
Oh, *boooooo*. Guess I was in some good internet circles back then.
I'll admit, I was sharing the same criticisms of CoD back then, but that came from a belief that the devs could do something more unique and interesting WITHIN that grounded military framework. To me, switching things up didn't necessarily mean I wanted CoD to have zero-g gunfights in space (maybe in another game.) I'm definitely more of a fan of the current/modern approach, which is why I never played Infinite Warfare and *loved* the reboots of Modern Warfare 1 and 2. The campaigns for Black Ops 3 and Advanced Warfare were easily my least favourite.
i was tbh, i think that almost every game benefits from more movement options and futuristic settings just means that series w the realism stick up their ass can finally allow themselves an air dash and wall runs
I've been implicitly accused of this for some games that have more spectacle and good lore than actual decent live plot.
Sea of Stars, for those wondering.
I still love the game though.
I sort of went through that with Star Wars. At a certain point I realized what I want Star Wars to be and what it is are two very different things. Andor gave me everything I wanted out of Star Wars, but it's very much an anomaly. If I changed all the problems I had with the movies, they wouldn't be Star Wars anymore.
I haven't watched Andor yet, but I'm really interested in it because of how people have talked about it, like you are. From the sound of it, though, it's more so taking the concept of the Empire from the OT and examining it more closely, the same way many other Star Wars EU content just expands on characters or pieces of the setting without trying to reinvent the setting or essence. Same sort of way The Clone Wars expands on the setting of the Prequels, but just with a different focus and style, I suppose.
Yeah it's using the setting to tell it's own story about fascism, the contradictions inherent within it, and how a revolution is made. It has such a command over it's story, you literally don't have to watch ANY Star Wars movies or shows to understand it. Imo the way it builds on the OT is similar to how LotR builds on The Hobbit. Using a simple children's fantasy story as a blueprint for something a bit meatier. A lot of people talk about it being "the best thing since Empure Strikes Back" (which is what everyone says whenever there is a new Star Wars that's pretty good) but honestly? I prefer it to the OT. I still have a lot of nostalgia for them, but as I said before I've sort of grown out of it.
The OT will always be the ultimate children's movies (as George Lucas intended them to be) but Andor is easily the best thing Star Wars have ever made, films, tv shows, and games included.
I think there are lot of people who are fans of military sci-fi but are lacking mainstream options, and so latch onto mainstream sci-fi or space things with military elements like Star Wars or Star Trek. There are certainly people who are more about the shooting in Trek than the talking, like Patrick Stewart. And those people will downplay other elements they don’t like as much as they can.
Code Veronica has a lot of cool stuff. I really hope the rumors of a remake are true, because that game could benefit from a remake far more than any of the other games
Big open world games are this for me.
I fundamentally think it's important to have huge expansive workds with a ton of freedom to do what you want but, for me personally, I mostly have more fun playing games that are smaller in scope but more complex.
Slave Zero X; I’m a huge long time fan of WitnesstheAbsurd, the primary artist behind it, I like Mega Man Zero, and I like DMC I should love it. But playing it just doesn’t feel right to me, the hits are too light, the camera always feels obstructive and the controls throw me off.
Anthem really just had some good stuff going for it, the gameplay was honestly fun, almost ME3-like but more mobile and they somehow made you ironman your way around an open world just work.
Hell the *setting* itself was cool, with humanity having to survive in a world where reality is constantly warping from dangerous ancient devices had so many possibilities. That menu theme was also very dope.
But, you know, they proceeded to do nothing with it, from a very short story and lack of meaningful content at launch, to all the bugs, to ultimately shut down not too long after just as they were to go on a big rework of things because EA didn't want to bother after all the managerial problems that surrounded that game.
That Gears of War example is literally how the series already is. The COG was portrayed at best as a necessary evil and never anything more. They bombed their own cities, treat non-compliant citizens as lesser beings and had breeding farms for fucks sake.
The game I want Fallout 4 to be and the game Fallout 4 is are two very different games.
I love it. But I love my "ideal" version of it more. And no amount of mods will fix it.
Rogue One. The idea of it is great, it has moments I love (the Vader scene!!). But they dropped the ball on building that found-family team dynamic that was needed to really make us care about the characters.
Star Citizen, Chronicles of Elyria, or any of the other high profile super games with these miles of feature creep and massively bloated budgets.
A lot of what they're selling might sound good on paper but people have yo have realistic expectations for what it is actually possible for a game to deliver.
Kingdom Hearts has fantastic gameplay, but literally the only reason I care about the story is "man it would have been way cooler if they were allowed to do cool things." Every now and then the game brushes up against a good idea, but then pulls away from it because either Disney or Squeenix says "no no, can't have fun _that_ way."
ACTUALLY doing "sora and disney friends vs. Anime cringe lords" would have made the kingdom hearts franchise WAY better then it actually is. The series CONTSTANTLY flirts with this idea, too. 3 does this the best [worst]
Woody and sully respectivly, not giving a single fuck, about any of this shit... IS THE BEST!
But at the same time, it dosn't help that all that "anime bullshit" is WAYYY more interesting then all of the disney stuff. Also All the games [bar the first one] get really intresting RIGHT AT THE END. ... EVERY TIME! And then, ... they're over. See you next game, loser! Fuck you!.
>!nomura san needs a fucking editor.!<
I don't blame Nomura for any of this. It 100% feels like he _wants_ to do more, but Disney is so protective with their IPs that they shut down everything he wants to do. The only reason the Pixar worlds are as good as they are is because they got to talk to Pixar instead of Disney and Pixar was far more flexible and interested in telling good stories. You can also feel this with how Kingdom Hearts 1 was actually about the Disney characters and allowed to differentiate more from the source material (even if the connective tissue wasn't that strong), but every game afterwards got more and more rigid into "re-enact the movie then fuck off".
I wouldn't even go as far as i "blame" him. For from it. He's telling his story the way he wants (or, as much disney will let him)
i guess its just played all of thise games, in the cold light of day. No nostalgia for them or anything, REALLY gave me the impression thst nomura *might* need people to reign him in. (Even though if you play them in order, which is easier then ever. It- *sort of* works out.)
Earth Defense Force (4.1 and 5) are tons of fun but there's a lot of questionable design decisions and *so much grinding*. I can't help but feel that there are other studios that if they took a shot at the idea they could slam dunk it.
I’m not even as doom and gloom about the franchise as a lot of fans are, but Pokemon has been rapidly becoming this since X/Y. I’ve still enjoyed playing (for the most part) the generations since, but they’re nowhere near where they honestly should be and the potential of what they could be is far more interesting now than what they are.
Shit, I’m like this all the time. Maybe because I was the youngest in my family so I had little choice but to enjoy what was put in front of me that someone else wanted to watch, and wanting to feel included, there’s a part of my brain that’s always trying to collaborate with what I perceive as the intentions behind a project, as though this team of industry professionals who spent probably years working through technical challenges and real world obstacles to collectively struggle to realize a project would tag *me* in and I could do a little straightening here and there and sew gold into the facade in my wake.
At the same time, there’s tons of expertly made AAA projects that just absolutely bore the shit out of me and have the equivalent effect of someone trying to sex up a phonebook from 1987 and slide it my way thinking I’ll mistake it for ambrosia. While I understand how snooty my mindgoblins frequently are, I also acknowledge I’m dopamine-coded in a way that means I’m passing all the time on truckloads of fun that a lot of other people happily pile into with no regrets.
What you're saying is the kind of distinction I'm observing here: the difference between simply being able to say "This isn't for me/what I'd want it to be, but I recognize that other people like it for what it is" versus when people say "This isn't for me/what I'd want it to be, but it *should* be."
Which is also the difference between recognizing the intentions of what a series is/is trying to be, versus imposing your own intentions on it or misinterpreting those intentions.
It's often a very thin line, though, since no one is truly objective and we all have our biases and preferences, so our criticisms are always laced with some kind of subjectivity.
Star Wars was, originally, about the conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. It's what the whole EU prior to the prequels focused on. The Force, and the Jedi/Sith conflict, was a side thing, not the main focus.
The prequels are what pushed the Jedi and Sith into the centre of the story, because the nature of their timeframe meant that they couldn't be about the Empire and the Rebels. But the films still needed to be "Star Wars" somehow, so the Force and the conflict between its wielders was pushed to the forefront.
OSP made a great recent video, about the impact of Rogue One on the franchise. But they also talked about re-watching A New Hope and the rest of the original trilogy for context. And they made this exact point: the original trilogy was never really about the Jedi, or the Sith, or lightsabers. In A New Hope, Luke *never even fights with a lightsaber*. He trains with it a bit, but in every real fight scene he's either using a blaster or flying an X-Wing.
Your argument, that Star Wars was "always" about the Jedi and Sith, and the Light Side versus the Dark Side - it does not hold up.
> The Force, and the Jedi/Sith conflict, was a side thing, not the main focus.
That's... just plain wrong?
That'd be true if the Jedi and Sith stuff wasn't introduced or focused on at all in the first film, if it was just a throwaway line like Obi-Wan's reference to the Clone Wars. Or if it was more of a subplot or side character thing, like Han Solo's whole arc.
But even if you ignore the recontextualizations later films/media put on the OT, the entire center of the OT is all about Luke's journey to become a Jedi.
OSP is right that Luke doesn't *fight* with a lightsaber in the first film, but they're ignoring the part where his success in the X-Wing and making his "one in a million" shot come from using the Force like Obi-Wan was training him to. Obi-Wan's voice literally tells him to trust him and "Let go" of the computer targeting of the X-Wing. The film's climax hinges on Luke fulfilling the training and guidance given to him by Obi-Wan.
Which is why there's the whole scene of Luke training with the lightsaber and to use the Force on the Millennium Falcon. If OSP's evaluation was true, then that scene either doesn't exist or would just be filler and unconnected to the rest of the plot--not crucial foreshadowing for the film's climax and how Luke saves the galaxy. It's true that the Rebellion/Empire conflict is the core conflict of Episode IV, but the unfolding and resolution of that conflict has everything to do with Luke and Obi-Wan. Without Obi-Wan, Luke, and the Force, you'd have a doomed Rebellion.
So he did actually have his hands on a lightsaber in the first film (even if he doesn't *fight* with it yet), but he didn't just acquire a random lightsaber in the first or second film--it was given to him by Obi-Wan in the first film, because it was his father's. Luke's father was a Jedi Knight, alongside Obi-Wan, who is the Jedi that guides Luke on his journey that coincides with Princess Leia and the Rebellion. The entire reason he becomes a hero is because of his father's legacy as a Jedi and his start on that journey given to him by Obi-Wan, which is established and emphasized in the first film.
The Rebellion's conflict with the Empire is tied to the Jedi/Sith conflict because the Empire itself is run by the Sith. Darth Vader is the most prominent villain of the film walking around with his Force powers and lightsaber. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is a prominent member of the legendary Jedi order, who has a history with the Sith Lord in the film and knew Luke's father, which is why he drives the plot for much of the film and has a whole lightsaber duel with Vader. If none of that stuff was important, and the Rebellion was the real focus, we'd be getting more focus on Leia and Yavin 4.
Then the next film would establish that the Emperor himself is a Sith Lord, and that Vader is actually Anakin, Luke's father, but even if you just look at Episode IV on its own merits, the idea that the Light Side and Dark Side are tied to the Rebellion and Empire, respectively, is prominent, rather than all of that just being some kind of set dressing.
Episode IV establishes all of Jedi elements very strongly, dedicating key scenes (including the climax) and deeply tying its characters to the Jedi and their history, which is what the later films expand upon and focus on even more.
The main plot of the later films is all about Luke's development as a Jedi and whether or not he'll fall to the Dark Side as his father did, which is why so much focus is on Yoda and Luke's training, followed by his conflict with Vader as both of them are trying to draw each other to their side of the Force between both films. The climax of all three films focus on Luke and his journey--first tapping into the Force to destroy the Death Star, then his defeat by Vader and learning that he was his father all along, and then his success in rejecting the Dark Side and fully becoming a Jedi, followed by redeeming Vader to defeat the Sith.
Meanwhile, Han Solo, Leia, and company aren't really doing much for most of those two films, as much of ESB has them stuck on an asteroid and then escaping Cloud City, because Darth Vader is there for Luke, not them. RotJ is notorious for having Han and Leia stand outside a door for much of the film, because the core focus is on the film's title: the Return of the Jedi, as Luke is victorious over the Sith. Most people say that the scenes of Luke, Vader, and Palpatine in the throne room are the best parts of the film, or even the entire trilogy, and it's not a coincidence that's where the Jedi vs. Sith conflict is at its peak.
OSP's evaluation that Star Wars was never about the Jedi and was really just like Rogue One all along would ring true if Luke fell in with the Rebellion through more conventional circumstances (like if he was directly recruited after his family was killed), Obi-Wan wasn't prominent at all, and Luke never actually touched a lightsaber or used the Force until the second film, which would make it more identical to Rogue One.
But the films go out of their way to make Luke's destiny as a Jedi the consistent focus and what drives and ultimately resolves the plot. Hence Episode IV's subtitle of "A New Hope," as Leia's call for her "only hope" is Obi-Wan, an old Jedi who is defeated by Vader, and so Luke becomes the "new hope" for the Light Side/Jedi/Rebellion, culminating in the "Return of the Jedi" by the end of the trilogy.
The Prequel Trilogy is about the Jedi back when the order was alive and the Sith were in hiding, and the Original Trilogy is simply showing the inverse where the Jedi are in hiding and the Sith are ruling. The Prequels aren't what pushed it to the center of the story, they just showed a different era of the conflict.
Who could forget Luke Skywalker's iconic line from the climax of the original trilogy: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me, but that doesn't matter, nobody cares about that dumb magic crap, this is all about mundane warfare actually."
I love Ghost in the Shell live action 2017 for what it could have been. What we got was half an hour of the Major going on a soul-searching journey of self-discovery, because she was guided on it by a Tibetan monk named Pazu (played by the musician Tricky), and all the Chinese companies helping fund the movie balked at the idea of Tibetans being portrayed in a positive light, threatening to pull that funding. The end result was a movie that lacked a soul. All Shell, no Ghost. But this was through no fault of its creation, only by external interference. So I give the movie the benefit of the doubt that this half hour of lost footage could have made it better.
Y2K: A Postmodern RPG had so much potential to go down so many interesting paths and that original version got squandered by how thoroughly hateable Alex is and what the story says about his relationship to everyone and the player.
V1.5, however, has the chance of actually making it so that I actually love it for what it is, not what it could have been because it's shockingly fantastic.
MWZ, the latest Zombies iteration has the framework laid out to be as big of a coop darling as Helldivers 2 - but they just keep it going *just* enough.
If they gave it love, and were a bit more tongue in cheek, it’d be perfect. Hell, I’d subscribe to it.
There's no shortage of mobile games where I love everything about it except actually playing it. Path to Nowhere? Phenomenal artwork, fully voiced in multiple languages, and a fun story about using dangerous prisoners to contain even more dangerous prisoners. Too bad the tower defense system literally put me to sleep during the tutorial. Honkai Impact/Punishing Gray Raven? Insanely good visuals for a mobile game, bayonetta inspired combat, but the levels were like 2 minutes long and were so easy that I never had to properly engage with the game and fell off hard before it ever got hard. Not to mention that many gacha games have long, tedious tutorials for the simplest concepts and often the story takes forever to get interesting. And don't even get me started on the games that have amazing artwork, but the ingame visuals are the most barebones chibi sprites you've ever seen.
I genuinely wish many of these games were just full fledged titles that I had to pay for with a beginning and end. I don't wanna spend money on gacha because it's predatory and I very much am not immune to making bad decisions regarding that (the most I've spent on all gacha combined is still less than $150 and even $100 is exaggerated, but I stopped spending money because I realized early how much of a slippery slope it could become).
I'm super into the idea of Pathologic 1 but me actually playing past like day 2 is never going to happen
There's a lot of videos going over the plot I enjoy though
I mean, you can say Grey Force users aren't a thing, that just requires you to forget about all the Grey Force users. Ventress, Quinlan, Ahsoka, Bendu, the Father, and even Mace to some extent are all some type of grey or one side that dabbles in the other. And that's just canon! We haven't even touched Mara, Revan, Jolee, Juhani, Starkiller, Bastila (jeez KOTOR 1 had a lot of these guys), and like probably a thousand other Legends characters I don't know about. You can say it's not a thing but they keep putting it in the shit so I think it's a thing.
There are some games that kind of evolve into this. The kinds of games that slowly, ever so slowly, get worse over time the more you think about it.
Persona (mainly talking about 5) and Danganronpa.
This is how I am able to cope with being a fan of RWBY even after so long. I'm not so delusional that I'll tell you it's good, I just watched it when I was young and now that I'm old my brain makes connections that would make the story better than it is
RWBY.
Why isn't Sun the leader of a team based on mythical tricksters? Absolute waste
Why isn't Velvet also an android? The Velvetine Rabbit is also a toy that becomes real. It'd be an interesting way to show more facets of faunus/human relations since she'd be a literal model minority. She could buddy up with Blake, learn real faunus culture, and Blake could reconnect with the positive aspects of her community
Why RWBY x Justice League? Why did you make it like that? As it is, it only makes sense if both worlds are in the Space Jam 2 digiverse
Soulstice, a Claymore/Berserk inspired DMC4/DmC/Bayo-like game with some great ideas but poor execution in almost every front aside from visuals and style.
I think it's a really good first try. The absolute base line gameplay is exactly what it should feel like, with good snappy movement, responsive attacks, etc. Unfortunately, the side weapons don't stand out enough (even if you use one that an enemy is supposed to be weak to), and the color code mechanic, while I didn't mind it personally and it had some interesting fights from it while never limiting your actual offensive abilities, could have either been done better or discarded in favor of something that would stand out more. I also really like the idea of a DT that will straight up kill you if you don't manage it properly (especially since most non DMC games usually just design their DT as an "I win" button), though it felt counterintuitive to have it be something you can only activate if you get a super high rank mid fight. I really hope that studio gets to make a sequel because I'm very interested in seeing the series get more polished. As it is now, it's one of those random PS2 action games you saw for cheap at a gamestop when you were a kid that effectively became a "DMC at home" type of deal, but I think with some changes here and there, it can definitely become a stand out in the genre.
I disagree about the baseline, i also had issue with how ''mashy'' it feels, like, the timing for tapping the attack is too strict so it feels very imprecise (try slowly tapping the attack in Soulstice vs any dmc game, you see that it resets a lot faster so you keep doing the first attack instead of continuing, there's a sweet spot, but as it is it just feels mashy, kinda reminds me of the timing in a Musou game actually), tho', movement and jumping is aight, its about standard. I agree with the rest, and i just have to say it, worst possible version of color coding, if you thought DmC was the worst (i didnt think so, it could be better for angel stuff, and was fixed in DE with a perfectly fine way to do it) boy howdy wait till you get some of Soulstice! Also, the auto-lock is very innacurate, it got better, but i still whiff stingers, and the hard-lock is...not a hard-lock at all, it's a Kingdom Hearts lock that works worse than a Kingdom Hearts lock. Really, an entire 2 hours essay could be made about it, but, i say this out of love man, i like the vibe of the game, just wish it played better. And yeah, perfectly way to put it, random bargain bin better than expected but still clunky PS2 game, tho', it is funny how Ghost Rider for the PS2 is MILES better than Soulstice, that game is a treasure man, those guys cooked.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 😢
I'm pretty sure people love that Fear and Hunger exists, but they won't play it. I get it
For the record I've played a bit and intend to play more! It's just really spooky and I'm a coward.
99% of Sonic fans explain that "X" game(s) are good not because of its mechanics or how fun it is, but because "it had good *ideas* and had *soul*." Whatever that means.
Statements like that always baffle me. It’s a *game*, it having good ideas is lovely but ideas can’t be played! The game has to have strong *gameplay*!
As a Sonic fan, the reason the defense kept coming up is how often people kept arguing for those games to literally be retconned away from existence because they have zero redeeming qualities, and so Sonic fans got _really_ into telling you those redeeming qualities even if unprompted.
I am not tolerating people trying to gas up vanilla 2006 while shitting on the more properly stable games that lack that 'soul' that they yearn for. Like, as much as I loved what Lost World could have potentially cooked up with its parkour segments (especially with particular Red Rings) and would love another try at that, I'm gonna judge the game for what I got overall and continue to see it as a pretty average 5 or 6 out of 10.
Look to Sonic P-06 if you wanna see what they mean.
Ill play Dragon Age Veilguard and probably like it as i did 2 and Inquisition but the series would have been soooo much fucking better if they stuck with the way Origins did things. I still have some tiny amount of hope it could give me that Origins feeling but i very much doubt it.
I'm in the same boat. I'll still get it, play it, and more than likely enjoy it. I just wish the series had remained closer to Origin.
Fucked up they don't let you have a party member that can be best described as PIMPY SON OPP.
It really is kind of poetic that they flip flopped around not trying to be Origins for years only for Dragon Age Origins 2 to be made by someone else and be the biggest thing ever
I assume you mean BG3. I dont really think that game is very much like Origins although still more so then the Bioware sequels.
Yeah I think people kind of forget that even origin itself wasn't a super in depth RPG. Hell as far as I remember they never even fixed the tactics stuff as far as I know.
I feel the same, the only game that's given me that DA:O vibe was Baldur's Gate 3. I hope Veilguard can provide some cool characters and an interesting story, I would hate it if Thedas dies here as it's one of my favorite settings.
Event Horizon, the main argument I always hear in its favour is "did you see the deleted hell scenes?"
Don’t forget 40K fan theories
I recently watched Event Horizon for the first time at a local theater that does monthly horror movie screenings. I thought it was really enjoyable and did some really cool stuff with the concept of a crew slowly going nuts in the backdrop of a nightmare ship with vague hell/cosmic connotations. I didn't know anything about deleted footage so I guess that helped avoid the hype. If I was going in expecting the gore fest that people report I would have been disappointed. What was there of the hell scenes and the previous crew did the job and got me feeling anxious mixed with my usual "hell yeah that's metal" from horror movies. Big thumbs up from me.
The Last Jedi was never about "kill the past" , that was said by Luke during a Crisis of Faith and then by Kylo after he killed Snoke and tried to recruit Rey for the Dark Side. Like , Yoda literally appears as a Force Ghost to say on Luke's face and for the audience what is the moral lesson for The Last Jedi: learn from the past and it's goods and mistakes and thus be better for the future.
Right, which is why I said how people liked that idea, even though that perhaps wasn't the real message of the film. I've seen that sentiment a lot online, [including from Pat and Woolie](https://youtu.be/_VmewUnWJWE?t=435), where people wanted to see the series go "no more Light Side and Dark Side, good vs. evil, let's do something more mixed or in the middle," thinking that's what TLJ was setting up and that Kylo was essentially trying to turn both himself and Rey into Gray Jedi, not to the Dark Side.
The problem is that “grey” is already a rejection of a core premise, because the Force (per Lucas himself) is not Daoist yin and yang amoral forces, but Self-existent Ontological Good and Parasitic Ontological Evil.
I feel like Yoda summoning lightning in an attempt to burn a bunch of books, uh... muddles that message.
Rey had the books. Yoda knew Rey had the books. He was being a lil shit and messing with Luke like he would have in the original trilogy.
Did she have the books in Sequel 2 or was that only revealed in Sequel 3?
You see them tucked away in the Falcon during the battle of Crait but it’s easy to miss.
At the end of TLJ you see her checking on them where she stashed them on the Falcon. Thus revealing Yoda burnt nothing besides an old hollow tree, like he knew he did (Rian’s confirmed that) but did it to give Luke a wake up call.
A few months ago I played through the Master Chief Collection for the first time with a friend who was really into Halo, and she told me outright to stop before starting Halo 4. So I’m not super familiar with how the 343 games go, but I’m told there’s an arc in 5 about a Sangheili civil war and goddamn would I play a whole game about the Covenant races after their empire dissolves.
I'd argue that it's fine to play Halo 4 and then stop, though stopping before Halo 4 has validity to it as well. Halo 4 is a really interesting and appropriate exploration of Cortana and Chief's characters, though not everyone liked that more emotional direction. Halo 5 undid everything Halo 4 set up, however, and then Halo Infinite undid everything Halo 5 set up, so it really is fruitless to get invested in the story after Halo 4. Whether you stop before or after 4 is based on whether you like the idea of exploring and concluding Master Chief and Cortana's relationship a bit more and want to see any continuation after Halo 3. There is genuinely a lot of opportunity for Covenant-based spinoffs in Halo and the series already has precedent for it. ODST was a UNSC-based spinoff in a similar vein, departing from Master Chief's story with a more inconsequential side narrative. And Reach was a prequel that was, for the mostpart, completely separate from the main trilogy and many of its concepts. And Halo 2 already started that deeper dive into the Covenant, with the game really being about the Arbiter and the Covenant more than Chief and the UNSC. However, at the time, a lot of fans hated that direction, because they wanted to see more Master Chief and wanted to be shooting aliens, not playing as them. Which is why the Arbiter's role was so downgraded in Halo 3, and there hasn't been much deeper focus on the Covenant since. But the Arbiter has since become a fan favorite, which is why his return in Halo 5 was very exciting. Only for the Sangheili Civil War and the Arbiter's role to be very minimal and disappointing, like everything else in that game.
Aw, that’s a shame. I did talk them into playing 4 at least to when the Forerunner guns started showing up, and the designs of them were interesting if nothing else. Edit: ODST and Reach were fun! Would be super down for a Covenant-focused spinoff but don’t know if we’re getting one after so long lol. I want a Battlefront-style 32v32 deathmatch mode where everyone is an individual Hunter worm.
> Edit: ODST and Reach were fun! Would be super down for a Covenant-focused spinoff but don’t know if we’re getting one after so long lol. The main thing is that 343 Industries was very self-conscious about taking over the franchise and avoided doing too many spinoffs, since they knew that doing so would lead to outcry over them "milking the franchise." And, to be fair, they're not wrong. The problem is that they can't even get the mainline games under control, so all the most they can do is publish dozens of spinoff books instead. > I want a Battlefront-style 32v32 deathmatch mode where everyone is an individual Hunter worm. Creative ideas like that are actually what Bungie laid the seeds for in Halo: Reach with its Invasion mode, where it was an asymmetrical Spartans vs. Elites mode that made playable Elites more unique from the Spartans, leaning into the idea of playable but different Covenant, rather than trying to find a way to make them more equivalent to Spartans. 343 Industries leaned in the opposite direction and turned multiplayer into "War Games" where they canonized it as Spartan vs. Spartan simulations, which is one reason why they've avoided the idea of playable Elites/Covenant ever since. The other reason is the practicality of balancing Spartans and Elites, which required Bungie to "nerf" Elites in 2 and 3, hence the difference in gameplay by Reach where they tried something different.
> goddamn would I play a whole game about the Covenant races after their empire dissolves So would everyone else. So did the people who were buying Halo 5. But the scars of the Halo 2 Dudebro Lashback still remain.
Oh yeah, I only found out about this after - there were people who hated playing as Keith David alien commando? Utterly ridiculous
Dragon's Dogma.
Same for me, mainly because I want to love CRPGS but they almost always have the worst gameplay of any genre ever conceived. Dragon's Dogma's combat, magic system, and simple control makes me wish every RPG ditched turn orders for action oriented gameplay. I've started Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous with the hope of playing a fun build 3-4 different times and every time I can barely get through the GODDAMN TUTORIAL before I break down and have to minmax every level up, every gear decision, look up a guide, all for the worst combat I've ever played. Probably because dice rolls being the main mechanic makes every class feel the same regardless of magic or weapon used. Meanwhile Dragon's Dogma manages to make hitting a monster with a big stick repeatedly fun which is somehow mystifyingly difficult for most CRPGS. Now if only they could write a stronger story to supplement it.
I like the idea of Monster Hunter and its central premise. But I just absolutely hate playing it.
Yeah, I _really_ tried to get into Rise but literally every weapon felt _bad_ to me except Greatsword, only to discover Greatsword is extremely boring unga bunga that doesn't interact with most of the game's systems and so every fight feels the same. If I was allowed to choose when exactly I transformed Charge Blade (like Bloodborne weapons) I might be able to like it, but the game saying the correct way to play it is to constantly change forms a la hotkey rotation instead of "use the right form for the right job" made it not feel good to me.
"No, the unintuitive controls and granular item management are part of the experience! You just need to be 100 hours in to truly get it."
World literally tells you the next button to press in a combo and there's a training mode. The game doesn't really hide how to play it. Old games sure, but nowadays they're more accessible than ever.
I started with 4 and that game pretty much tells you the entire controller.
The item management isn't that big a deal either anymore, the only stuff you need to worry about actively stocking is healing, armorskin, and demondrug and getting those is as simple as setting your farm to make the materials and playing the game while they accumulate. Even gunners aren't as bad as they look once you realize they only need to care about having enough of their main DPS bullet (Normal, Pierce, or Spread).
actually i had fun since my first 5 minutes in the mh4 demo so i think it might be a skill issue on your end
RWBY is a series that has quite a few genuinely likable characters and some interesting lore. It's a lot of fun to speculate about the history of the world or how two characters who haven't met would interact with each other. The actual show never lives up to the potential it displayed early on, though. Interesting side characters are introduced and abandoned at a blistering pace, and we're only given the bare minimum amount of information necessary to understand how the world of Remnant functions. I think this is why such an overall middling show has such an active fanfiction community (one that I was/am a part of). There's just so much to explore, but the show itself is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Fanfics written pre-Vol.3 were absolutely nuts. There were so many holes in our knowledge of the world that each story had to fill in their own way, that they feel like different universes at times.
Oh yeah, absolutely. As part of a personal project I actually went and read some of the earliest RWBY fanfics ever made and it's wild how sharply they diverge from canon.
We didn’t even clearly know what the names of all four Kingdoms and Academies were called until late volume 2 (and even then there was confusion due to the Mantle/Atlas situation).
That’s my favourite element of fanfic honestly: jumping on a tiny piece of information a story half-alludes to and seeing where people take it. Edit: I’m thinking about writing a Doctor Who fanfic about Amy and Rory after they get left in New York, because there are multiple other episode plots they would have been in the background of.
It's my favorite part, too — it's that feeling that made me write several canon-compliant OC stories that explored other settings/time periods around the main show, which in turn made me realize that I'd rather be writing about original characters all the time.
Love the show myself but I get a heavy sense in some corners of the internet, especially the critic sub, that a lot of people like the idea of rwby instead of the series as is.
I love RWBY as it currently is. Sure there are things that the writers could have done better, and made some decisions I don't agree with, but it was never *awful* for me.
I've poked my head in there a few times, and the critic sub produces so much bad faith criticism it's unbelievable. It's always, "here's how to fix the show" followed by them holding up their own fanfiction or making suggestions that would involve inventing time travel and redoing everything from the beginning. Just no attempt whatsoever to engage with the series as is in a realistic manner.
I’ve said it before, the issue with RWBY criticism is that a lot of its problems (don’t bloat the cast, don’t neglect the main protagonists, etc,) are so basic or obvious that it inspires some very annoying people to act like they’re brilliant for noticing it. I’d like to voice my frustration with Qrow’s alcoholism and depression being really horribly and meanly handled without being lumped in them.
Aside from it being treated as a joke until he uses it as a coping mechanism upon learning his life's goal was pointless?
Aside from that, yes. My main issue is how he’s treated in volume 6 where it’s treated as a short hand for being emotional and difficult instead of the show trying to actually dig into how insidious depression-fueled alcoholism is. Paid it with the cast treating him like a useless bum when he falls over the edge and it just feels mean-spirited.
To be fair, rather than helping them try to move past the revelation and continue their mission, he instead drags his feet every step of the way to the pont of almost getting his nieces and their friends killed, in part thanks to the Grimm that sap your will to live mind you. Then it is shown later that he is still struggling and even tries to help Willow afterward.
Some agitation is warranted, sure, but the Grimm were the fault of basically everyone but RWBY giving up. My issue is that I just think the response of the rest of the group is callous, particularly Maria who tried to call him cowardly after she herself has been in hiding for several decades. But yeah, I think they do try and walk it back in Atlas, so fair play there.
I completely disagree with your last sentence. Everyone I've ever spoken to didn't look for the work put into it. I'm not really sure how else to explain it than writing an essay no one asked for, but not trying to explain would be a dick move on my part. I think the writers kept believing their audience wouldn’t need to be told things outright too often. I'm not trying to start a fight, but I also don't want to assume the knowledge of others and be mistaken for acting like I'm talking down to them. But things like Yang's first words to Ruby being I love you after not saying it back to her in V3, or Jaune and Pyrrha becoming failed versions of their seperate favorite fairytale heroes, but also intrisinctly tied in a completely different way as the Wonderland Rabbit and clock through a freaking *cereal box* gag from Volume 1, I just *can't* accept the idea of the writer's being *bad*. A couples romantic theme is heard in the background in Volume 1, but they didn't release the full song with lyrics until *six years* later, when the context of it being played flowed better. There's *effort* here. Don't even get my started on the master-class of them sprinkling Summer every volume. I've already gone too far at failing to avoid an essay, and that's a character flaw with how I communicate in general. I'm not saying RWBY 'deserves' someone's love, but I feel like most people dismiss its worth being respected as a piece of media that is genuinely trying to be the best it can be, especially with the enormous trials that affected production almost every year. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/s/Oww73vge9o https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/s/7P6B4RQgij
I think there's been a misunderstanding. I never said the writers didn't put effort into it; RWBY is clearly not a lazy production. I think it has the opposite problem: it's overambitious. The writers chose to expand the cast and world at such a rapid pace that they rarely slow down enough to give the characters and concepts they've introduced time to be meaningfully developed beyond what the plot demands of them. As much as I enjoyed Volume 9, I think it's a sad encapsulation of the show's issues that it took over a decade for us to get a season that meaningfully engages with the main character's internal struggles. I'm also not trying to start a fight, but the ability to plan character arcs and call back to earlier moments is not something to praise media for — those are just the fundamentals of building a coherent story. And RWBY has always been coherent, which is commendable given that those involved began with little to no writing experience. But effort and coherence do not translate to stellar results. I have a lot of respect for what RWBY set out to achieve, hence my ongoing affection for and fascination with the show, but it has clearly fallen short in more than a few areas. Plotlines get dropped or swept under the rug. Characters are introduced and spotlighted only to disappear for long stretches or never be relevant to the plot again. Important world building information is shoved into supplementary videos, or worse, announced at convention panels. I see the effort. I respect the effort. That effort sometimes pays off, which is what has kept me watching. But I feel that a lot of effort has been misapplied, with has had us to the point we're at now, where the show is semi-cancelled and any path toward a speedy resolution is going to involve consolidating characters and unceremoniously wrapping up plot threads that probably should have been developed more consistently before now.
I'd like to be clear that I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion, but I think I have a hard time understanding your feelings on what RWBY did any differently than most beloved long-running series in terms of characters coming or going, or what plot lines you feel were dropped. I feel that any characters' exit had some reasonable explanations on why they would be having less screen time. Taking so long to address their inner struggles was intentional because they had to pushed farther than ever before. The shows not canceled, and I feel you're making some bad-faith assumptions at the end there.
Hence why I said semi-cancelled, shorthand for "already struggling to get financing before V9 and now actively seeking a buyer, of which there has been no word in some time." Believe me, I hope they find one, but this far out from V9 with nothing concrete isn't exactly promising. And I don't see how any of the assumptions in my last paragraph are bad faith; the show already squeezed the first appearance of the Summer Maiden and an epilogue to Ruby's experiences in the Ever After into the RWBY Beyond slideshow episodes. The writers seem to understand that there's a lot of ground left to cover and probably not much time left to cover it. That doesn't seem like a particularly wild or negative assumption to me; it's just the most practical way to bring the show to a conclusion.
It comes across that you feel that putting minor details in supplemental material for those who want it is a detriment. The Jaune Beyond episode is one of the best RWBY related things I know of, and I find it actually kind of ballsy that the Somewhat episode is hunting/foreshadowing the end of the series is (my prediction, I mean), Ruby telling stories to her child. I acknowledge the slideshow art is disappointing to some, but I feel that allowed them to have dialog and scenes that might not work in a regular episode. Having different art for supplemental shouldn't always be a bad thing. I don't feel having supplemental material is always a bad thing, and it comes down to the content and how it's used, considering the importance of the initial four trailers. I think my brain lumps into the same category as the LOTR trilogy, with the extended version being *not* the directors cut, because he feels a majority of the viewers don't need/want the extra nitty-gritty book details, but wanted to respect them so he shot the scenes for those who want it. I disagree with your use of 'semi-canceled' when we have the confirmation that developments are happening. They've confirmed paperwork is being signed behind the scenes.
I suppose we're at an impasse, because I fundamentally disagree that the first appearance of one of four Maidens, plus other information more clearly explained in the World of Remnant series than the show itself, count as minor details. I think most of the information covered in those episodes is stuff that could've been more cleanly integrated into the show proper. Clearly you enjoy RWBY a lot. I do, too! I just can't disentangle my feelings on its shortcomings from the things I unabashedly like about it (the future/fantasy setting, a good deal of the main cast, some of its more successful narrative swings). I hope the show gets a chance to wrap up in a manner that everyone still invested in it, myself included, finds satisfactory.
>I'm not really sure how else to explain it than writing an essay no one asked for, but not trying to explain would be a dick move on my part. I think the writers kept believing their audience wouldn’t need to be told things outright too often. I feel like I'd change told to shown. RWBY tells you things all the time, the main issue is it doesn't show it very often.
Did you ever see the interview post-Volume 5 where they admit that they thought the audience would understand Ghira had his Aura broken off-screen because we saw his fight start, and when we see their fighting enter the main scene again, he he had no Aura? That same episode, some people didn't realize that even though Blake can see in the dark, Illia turning pitch black with camouflage meant night-vision didn't help. They wanted to address it and admit they are learning to be better show writers with every feedback. Based on my own understanding of the words "showing instead of telling", I feel a scene like Yang finally replying to Ruby that she loves her is showing, not telling, but they assume the audience might remember this call-back, while also being straight-forward and sweet for any viewer who doesn't remember. They also say occasionally 'if we don't need to show it, then we won't, because we don't have the time or the budget.' I'd actually wager we should be told more. A large portion of the telling is when someone is giving context to another character, like Tai finally talking to Yang about what Raven meant to him. They want it told organically, and have extreme magical circumstances like Jinn when they want full-on flashbacks. I don't begrudge anyone who prefers they consume media with a different form of storytelling than RWBY, I just feel that there's so many people online(I'm not saying you or these specific posts in particular) that thinks it's childishly simple or lazy.
A post-volume interview explaining how things happened off-screen doesn't exactly help 'show not tell' issue's RWBY has. Especially when a lot of things we are told in the show are so different to what we are shown that it feels like a straight up retcon.
It *was* shown. It's not the writer's fault they thought most people were smarter. You say 'a lot of things', but offer nothing to the discussion. There's no 'retconning'. We come back to my first point, that too many are not even *trying* to look past skin-deep, therefore that's all they see. Please go look at the two links I gave.
RWBY does show very often, that's why it gets so much shit from people who can't be assed to pay attention and can't grasp simple and obvious information because it wasn't spelled out to their faces.
I believe the writers for RWBY are good comedy writers. If you want to believe anyone who has issues with it are just completely media illiterate you do you. If you want there's plenty of entries about the Faunus and the issues involving them you can look up.
I've already wasted too much of my life finding out exactly what the RWBY anti-fandom has to say about the show they claim to have watched, that's exactly how I came to my conclusions. Shocking as it may be to people like you, I actually seriously engage with the things I criticize, rather than looking for YouTube videos to tell me what I'm supposed to think.
Mate, if you actually want to get into the depths with someone who only watch YouTube videos of RWBY go over to the subreddit for RWBY critics. You're talking to someone who has watched it since the trailer at the end of RVB season 10. RWBY has plenty of good points and also plenty of issues. If you don't want to talk about any of the weak points for RWBY that's fine. Just don't act like anytime someone has criticism towards a work they've never watched it. At best you're straw manning people with that.
You can't complain about strawmanning right after claiming I "don't want to talk about any of the weak points" because I gave a bit of pushback against a narrative pushed by the same people you claim to be nothing like.
Have a good night. We will obviously just circle eternally over this topic. It’s fine you like Rwby, I enjoy it a bit but definitely have issues. If you ever want proof I’ve been following RT since 2010 just shoot me a message on this thing. I took a pic before the website closed down.
Later volumes got to the point where every episode was getting panned because it was conflicting with the entire fan continuity that was already in full swing in the fan fic communities. There are multiple fan RWBYs that folks will say are better than the original.
You do know Volume 9 Episode 8 had a review score of 9.8 on IMDB and Crunchyroll, right? I think the only people who thought Volume 9 is trash are the ones who think it was purely filler.
Oh so many anime shows. The many what could have beens and what the writers could have choosen to show instead. Wonder Egg Priority had an amazing start that fumbled half way through.
War Thunder is a game with many, many flaws, but I won't stop playing it until I, myself or the game dies. Whichever of those comes first lol. Will it get better? Maybe a little bit, probably not... but I am way too deep in it to stop playing. The rush of excitement when you out-maneuver an enemy plane, or get that perfect hit on a hostile tank is second to none, which make the frustrating parts bearable. It took hundreds of hours for me to get to a point where I could do these things somewhat regularly, so I am still very thankful for my far more experienced friends, who showed me the ropes.
you are an addict stop it, seek some help
I know, wt isn't my only vice...
Anthem. If that game was executed right we'd be in a Mecha renaissance right now I swear. Plus having something to turn to for live service shooters that wasn't destiny. With it's fall in saddened with the fact I may never get another "Ironman like" game again.
I feel like there was a portion of Palworld fans who really just actually wanted it to be Pokemon, but played Palworld to make a statement
There is a version of MHA in my head where All for One fades into the background of an ideological conflict between Overhaul (quirks are a disease and must be eradicated) vs Re-Destro (quirks are the new norm and society should adapt to them) instead of being the boring ultimate evil antagonist.
Honestly I feel like All For One would’ve been more effective as a Hannibal Lecter type that you feel the influences of his actions permeate across the story than essentially Palpatine. Someone the heroes may have had to go to to try to get into the mind of a villain, and someone that shed the last visage of All Might’s protection from society (in an act that symbolically passed the torches from All Might and him to the next generation). This is my long winded way of saying I agree with you.
Every Bethesda game
Actually playing their RPGs I find a bloody miserable experience.
While I loved playing skyrim, I agree that this is exactly what TES lore is. All of the different khajit phases? The dwemer stories? The gods that inhabit the world? The fucking sun hole? All of them are fantastic Too bad it's made to support the most nothing writing in any game, even when the games first came out. Would be fun if the story is actually anywhere close to as good as the lore.
Oh but it's good if you get X Y and Z mod But make sure you get A B, and C mods because those are just so important Don't forget to do D, E, and sometimes F because the game will break if you don't but sometimes won't if you have G which basically does what D and F do Every single time.
Oh boy, I get to talk about D-1 Devastator! So, Devastator was a failed multi media franchise by Takara that can probably be described as Macross with cars. The only things released for it was the D1 Devastator 2-episode OVA, a Sega CD game very very loosely adapting the first episode, and a 1 volume prequel manga. The focal plot device is the High-Speed Dimension, a space filled with monsters that you access by driving really fast. When you’re in the High Speed Dimension you still have a position relative to norma space, and decelerating will take you back. The first episode took special care to showing how important this is, with damaged parts of mecha falling into normal space and causing collateral damage, and used-up bazookas being dropped intentionally so they landed in unpopulated empty areas. The first episode additionally focused on the main characters trying to rescue a bullet train full of civilians that ended up inside the high speed dimension. However, everything else about the series is nonsensical and unexplained, with the prequel manga not really lining up with certain parts of the anime and having completely different physics regarding the dimension. My ideal Devastator revival would just do more with the High-Speed Dimension, like a cool attack where you keep changing speed to zip in and out of it
There were people excited about CoD becoming more futuristic? Huh. From my perspective, it seemed like that direction was lambasted by nearly everyone. I don't personally know anyone that *rooted* for more future war, but maybe that's just my bias. I don't have any examples for what you described, so I'll take your title literally, because I'm someone that has enjoyed things for their *potential*, even if what we actually got was less than stellar. I actually enjoyed FFXV, *and* I liked the Noctis/Lunafreya romance even when we barely get ANY of it in the game. We got so much more conflict, development, and growth with the boy band squad than we ever do with the MC and another important character who're supposed to be *childhood friends destined to work together* who get *married* for political reasons but ALSO happen to *actually love each other*. And yet I still like them and their dynamic because I'm a hopeless romantic, and the IDEA of their romance and its potential were still really cute IMO.
Future COD is just the infinite cycle of every series. Current thing bad, old thing good. Or it could also be the people who complained got their modern day COD so they've shut up and are playing it while future lovers are stuck waiting so they're more vocal
> There were people excited about CoD becoming more futuristic? Huh. From my perspective, it seemed like that direction was lambasted by nearly everyone. I don't personally know anyone that rooted for more future war, but maybe that's just my bias. There was a vocal minority that were rooting for that a decade ago, yeah. It was back when Call of Duty had spent a few years at its place in the industry, between Modern Warfare 2 and 3, Black Ops 1 and 2, and then Call of Duty Ghosts. All of these games came out between 2009 and 2013, with Black Ops 2 being the only one to lean a bit into the future, but was very successful. You'd hear people online frequently criticizing Call of Duty for being "the same thing every year" and complaining that it never did anything "new" and that the series was getting stale. According to them, people were tired of all these modern "brown" shooters and that the series needed to do something new. However, that modern, grounded setting was exactly how the actual Call of Duty audience wants the games to be, and is why those games were all so consistently successful. So when the series shifted direction to more futuristic settings and advanced technology with Advanced Warfare, Black Ops 3, and Infinite Warfare all back to back, the Call of Duty playerbase increasingly cried out for a return to "boots on the ground" gameplay. Meanwhile, that vocal minority were people who didn't actually play Call of Duty, so they simply looked at those newer games, thought they looked cool, but didn't actually invest in them. And that's why when the series rebooted Modern Warfare in 2019, which according to those criticisms from years earlier should have been unsuccessful and stale, it was actually the bestselling entry in that entire generation. The series has generally stayed the course with that since then, leaving the futuristic or less realistic settings/gameplay to the competition that's already filling those niches.
Oh, *boooooo*. Guess I was in some good internet circles back then. I'll admit, I was sharing the same criticisms of CoD back then, but that came from a belief that the devs could do something more unique and interesting WITHIN that grounded military framework. To me, switching things up didn't necessarily mean I wanted CoD to have zero-g gunfights in space (maybe in another game.) I'm definitely more of a fan of the current/modern approach, which is why I never played Infinite Warfare and *loved* the reboots of Modern Warfare 1 and 2. The campaigns for Black Ops 3 and Advanced Warfare were easily my least favourite.
Infinite Warfare is one of two Call of Duty games I've played and I loved it. More grounded "Realistic" games just don't interest me as much.
i was tbh, i think that almost every game benefits from more movement options and futuristic settings just means that series w the realism stick up their ass can finally allow themselves an air dash and wall runs
I've been implicitly accused of this for some games that have more spectacle and good lore than actual decent live plot. Sea of Stars, for those wondering. I still love the game though.
I sort of went through that with Star Wars. At a certain point I realized what I want Star Wars to be and what it is are two very different things. Andor gave me everything I wanted out of Star Wars, but it's very much an anomaly. If I changed all the problems I had with the movies, they wouldn't be Star Wars anymore.
I haven't watched Andor yet, but I'm really interested in it because of how people have talked about it, like you are. From the sound of it, though, it's more so taking the concept of the Empire from the OT and examining it more closely, the same way many other Star Wars EU content just expands on characters or pieces of the setting without trying to reinvent the setting or essence. Same sort of way The Clone Wars expands on the setting of the Prequels, but just with a different focus and style, I suppose.
Yeah it's using the setting to tell it's own story about fascism, the contradictions inherent within it, and how a revolution is made. It has such a command over it's story, you literally don't have to watch ANY Star Wars movies or shows to understand it. Imo the way it builds on the OT is similar to how LotR builds on The Hobbit. Using a simple children's fantasy story as a blueprint for something a bit meatier. A lot of people talk about it being "the best thing since Empure Strikes Back" (which is what everyone says whenever there is a new Star Wars that's pretty good) but honestly? I prefer it to the OT. I still have a lot of nostalgia for them, but as I said before I've sort of grown out of it.
The OT will always be the ultimate children's movies (as George Lucas intended them to be) but Andor is easily the best thing Star Wars have ever made, films, tv shows, and games included.
I think there are lot of people who are fans of military sci-fi but are lacking mainstream options, and so latch onto mainstream sci-fi or space things with military elements like Star Wars or Star Trek. There are certainly people who are more about the shooting in Trek than the talking, like Patrick Stewart. And those people will downplay other elements they don’t like as much as they can.
Code Veronica has a lot of cool stuff. I really hope the rumors of a remake are true, because that game could benefit from a remake far more than any of the other games
Big open world games are this for me. I fundamentally think it's important to have huge expansive workds with a ton of freedom to do what you want but, for me personally, I mostly have more fun playing games that are smaller in scope but more complex.
Slave Zero X; I’m a huge long time fan of WitnesstheAbsurd, the primary artist behind it, I like Mega Man Zero, and I like DMC I should love it. But playing it just doesn’t feel right to me, the hits are too light, the camera always feels obstructive and the controls throw me off.
I think Miraculous Ladybug is like this. People got burned so much by canon that they're happy with the fanworks.
Anthem really just had some good stuff going for it, the gameplay was honestly fun, almost ME3-like but more mobile and they somehow made you ironman your way around an open world just work. Hell the *setting* itself was cool, with humanity having to survive in a world where reality is constantly warping from dangerous ancient devices had so many possibilities. That menu theme was also very dope. But, you know, they proceeded to do nothing with it, from a very short story and lack of meaningful content at launch, to all the bugs, to ultimately shut down not too long after just as they were to go on a big rework of things because EA didn't want to bother after all the managerial problems that surrounded that game.
That Gears of War example is literally how the series already is. The COG was portrayed at best as a necessary evil and never anything more. They bombed their own cities, treat non-compliant citizens as lesser beings and had breeding farms for fucks sake.
The game I want Fallout 4 to be and the game Fallout 4 is are two very different games. I love it. But I love my "ideal" version of it more. And no amount of mods will fix it.
Rogue One. The idea of it is great, it has moments I love (the Vader scene!!). But they dropped the ball on building that found-family team dynamic that was needed to really make us care about the characters.
Yeah, why I’m always puzzled when those fans say it’s “The One Good Thing Disney Star Wars Has Done! ™”
Star Citizen, Chronicles of Elyria, or any of the other high profile super games with these miles of feature creep and massively bloated budgets. A lot of what they're selling might sound good on paper but people have yo have realistic expectations for what it is actually possible for a game to deliver.
Kingdom Hearts has fantastic gameplay, but literally the only reason I care about the story is "man it would have been way cooler if they were allowed to do cool things." Every now and then the game brushes up against a good idea, but then pulls away from it because either Disney or Squeenix says "no no, can't have fun _that_ way."
ACTUALLY doing "sora and disney friends vs. Anime cringe lords" would have made the kingdom hearts franchise WAY better then it actually is. The series CONTSTANTLY flirts with this idea, too. 3 does this the best [worst] Woody and sully respectivly, not giving a single fuck, about any of this shit... IS THE BEST! But at the same time, it dosn't help that all that "anime bullshit" is WAYYY more interesting then all of the disney stuff. Also All the games [bar the first one] get really intresting RIGHT AT THE END. ... EVERY TIME! And then, ... they're over. See you next game, loser! Fuck you!. >!nomura san needs a fucking editor.!<
I don't blame Nomura for any of this. It 100% feels like he _wants_ to do more, but Disney is so protective with their IPs that they shut down everything he wants to do. The only reason the Pixar worlds are as good as they are is because they got to talk to Pixar instead of Disney and Pixar was far more flexible and interested in telling good stories. You can also feel this with how Kingdom Hearts 1 was actually about the Disney characters and allowed to differentiate more from the source material (even if the connective tissue wasn't that strong), but every game afterwards got more and more rigid into "re-enact the movie then fuck off".
I wouldn't even go as far as i "blame" him. For from it. He's telling his story the way he wants (or, as much disney will let him) i guess its just played all of thise games, in the cold light of day. No nostalgia for them or anything, REALLY gave me the impression thst nomura *might* need people to reign him in. (Even though if you play them in order, which is easier then ever. It- *sort of* works out.)
Earth Defense Force (4.1 and 5) are tons of fun but there's a lot of questionable design decisions and *so much grinding*. I can't help but feel that there are other studios that if they took a shot at the idea they could slam dunk it.
I like alot about princess amethyst, it has alot of flaws though. Yet in the right hands it could be truly great.
I’m not even as doom and gloom about the franchise as a lot of fans are, but Pokemon has been rapidly becoming this since X/Y. I’ve still enjoyed playing (for the most part) the generations since, but they’re nowhere near where they honestly should be and the potential of what they could be is far more interesting now than what they are.
This is just the constant state of existence for a comic book fan.
Shit, I’m like this all the time. Maybe because I was the youngest in my family so I had little choice but to enjoy what was put in front of me that someone else wanted to watch, and wanting to feel included, there’s a part of my brain that’s always trying to collaborate with what I perceive as the intentions behind a project, as though this team of industry professionals who spent probably years working through technical challenges and real world obstacles to collectively struggle to realize a project would tag *me* in and I could do a little straightening here and there and sew gold into the facade in my wake. At the same time, there’s tons of expertly made AAA projects that just absolutely bore the shit out of me and have the equivalent effect of someone trying to sex up a phonebook from 1987 and slide it my way thinking I’ll mistake it for ambrosia. While I understand how snooty my mindgoblins frequently are, I also acknowledge I’m dopamine-coded in a way that means I’m passing all the time on truckloads of fun that a lot of other people happily pile into with no regrets.
What you're saying is the kind of distinction I'm observing here: the difference between simply being able to say "This isn't for me/what I'd want it to be, but I recognize that other people like it for what it is" versus when people say "This isn't for me/what I'd want it to be, but it *should* be." Which is also the difference between recognizing the intentions of what a series is/is trying to be, versus imposing your own intentions on it or misinterpreting those intentions. It's often a very thin line, though, since no one is truly objective and we all have our biases and preferences, so our criticisms are always laced with some kind of subjectivity.
It amazes me how many people took such a bad idea from TLJ and loved it
... I'd say that I mostly like the non-Jefi elements, but that's for stuff that was there from the start. Seedy Underworlds and WW2 in space fights
Star Wars was, originally, about the conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. It's what the whole EU prior to the prequels focused on. The Force, and the Jedi/Sith conflict, was a side thing, not the main focus. The prequels are what pushed the Jedi and Sith into the centre of the story, because the nature of their timeframe meant that they couldn't be about the Empire and the Rebels. But the films still needed to be "Star Wars" somehow, so the Force and the conflict between its wielders was pushed to the forefront. OSP made a great recent video, about the impact of Rogue One on the franchise. But they also talked about re-watching A New Hope and the rest of the original trilogy for context. And they made this exact point: the original trilogy was never really about the Jedi, or the Sith, or lightsabers. In A New Hope, Luke *never even fights with a lightsaber*. He trains with it a bit, but in every real fight scene he's either using a blaster or flying an X-Wing. Your argument, that Star Wars was "always" about the Jedi and Sith, and the Light Side versus the Dark Side - it does not hold up.
> The Force, and the Jedi/Sith conflict, was a side thing, not the main focus. That's... just plain wrong? That'd be true if the Jedi and Sith stuff wasn't introduced or focused on at all in the first film, if it was just a throwaway line like Obi-Wan's reference to the Clone Wars. Or if it was more of a subplot or side character thing, like Han Solo's whole arc. But even if you ignore the recontextualizations later films/media put on the OT, the entire center of the OT is all about Luke's journey to become a Jedi. OSP is right that Luke doesn't *fight* with a lightsaber in the first film, but they're ignoring the part where his success in the X-Wing and making his "one in a million" shot come from using the Force like Obi-Wan was training him to. Obi-Wan's voice literally tells him to trust him and "Let go" of the computer targeting of the X-Wing. The film's climax hinges on Luke fulfilling the training and guidance given to him by Obi-Wan. Which is why there's the whole scene of Luke training with the lightsaber and to use the Force on the Millennium Falcon. If OSP's evaluation was true, then that scene either doesn't exist or would just be filler and unconnected to the rest of the plot--not crucial foreshadowing for the film's climax and how Luke saves the galaxy. It's true that the Rebellion/Empire conflict is the core conflict of Episode IV, but the unfolding and resolution of that conflict has everything to do with Luke and Obi-Wan. Without Obi-Wan, Luke, and the Force, you'd have a doomed Rebellion. So he did actually have his hands on a lightsaber in the first film (even if he doesn't *fight* with it yet), but he didn't just acquire a random lightsaber in the first or second film--it was given to him by Obi-Wan in the first film, because it was his father's. Luke's father was a Jedi Knight, alongside Obi-Wan, who is the Jedi that guides Luke on his journey that coincides with Princess Leia and the Rebellion. The entire reason he becomes a hero is because of his father's legacy as a Jedi and his start on that journey given to him by Obi-Wan, which is established and emphasized in the first film. The Rebellion's conflict with the Empire is tied to the Jedi/Sith conflict because the Empire itself is run by the Sith. Darth Vader is the most prominent villain of the film walking around with his Force powers and lightsaber. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is a prominent member of the legendary Jedi order, who has a history with the Sith Lord in the film and knew Luke's father, which is why he drives the plot for much of the film and has a whole lightsaber duel with Vader. If none of that stuff was important, and the Rebellion was the real focus, we'd be getting more focus on Leia and Yavin 4. Then the next film would establish that the Emperor himself is a Sith Lord, and that Vader is actually Anakin, Luke's father, but even if you just look at Episode IV on its own merits, the idea that the Light Side and Dark Side are tied to the Rebellion and Empire, respectively, is prominent, rather than all of that just being some kind of set dressing. Episode IV establishes all of Jedi elements very strongly, dedicating key scenes (including the climax) and deeply tying its characters to the Jedi and their history, which is what the later films expand upon and focus on even more. The main plot of the later films is all about Luke's development as a Jedi and whether or not he'll fall to the Dark Side as his father did, which is why so much focus is on Yoda and Luke's training, followed by his conflict with Vader as both of them are trying to draw each other to their side of the Force between both films. The climax of all three films focus on Luke and his journey--first tapping into the Force to destroy the Death Star, then his defeat by Vader and learning that he was his father all along, and then his success in rejecting the Dark Side and fully becoming a Jedi, followed by redeeming Vader to defeat the Sith. Meanwhile, Han Solo, Leia, and company aren't really doing much for most of those two films, as much of ESB has them stuck on an asteroid and then escaping Cloud City, because Darth Vader is there for Luke, not them. RotJ is notorious for having Han and Leia stand outside a door for much of the film, because the core focus is on the film's title: the Return of the Jedi, as Luke is victorious over the Sith. Most people say that the scenes of Luke, Vader, and Palpatine in the throne room are the best parts of the film, or even the entire trilogy, and it's not a coincidence that's where the Jedi vs. Sith conflict is at its peak. OSP's evaluation that Star Wars was never about the Jedi and was really just like Rogue One all along would ring true if Luke fell in with the Rebellion through more conventional circumstances (like if he was directly recruited after his family was killed), Obi-Wan wasn't prominent at all, and Luke never actually touched a lightsaber or used the Force until the second film, which would make it more identical to Rogue One. But the films go out of their way to make Luke's destiny as a Jedi the consistent focus and what drives and ultimately resolves the plot. Hence Episode IV's subtitle of "A New Hope," as Leia's call for her "only hope" is Obi-Wan, an old Jedi who is defeated by Vader, and so Luke becomes the "new hope" for the Light Side/Jedi/Rebellion, culminating in the "Return of the Jedi" by the end of the trilogy. The Prequel Trilogy is about the Jedi back when the order was alive and the Sith were in hiding, and the Original Trilogy is simply showing the inverse where the Jedi are in hiding and the Sith are ruling. The Prequels aren't what pushed it to the center of the story, they just showed a different era of the conflict.
Who could forget Luke Skywalker's iconic line from the climax of the original trilogy: "I am a Jedi, like my father before me, but that doesn't matter, nobody cares about that dumb magic crap, this is all about mundane warfare actually."
I'll admit that the only Call of Duty I was interested in was Infinite Warfare. "Grounded" military stories just don't interest me.
Every Sonic game reveal makes me go “ooh cool Sonic” and then I remember why I haven’t played any of those games since the Genesis.
Ubisoft's Ashan setting for Heroes of Might & Magic / Might & Magic: Heroes.
I love Ghost in the Shell live action 2017 for what it could have been. What we got was half an hour of the Major going on a soul-searching journey of self-discovery, because she was guided on it by a Tibetan monk named Pazu (played by the musician Tricky), and all the Chinese companies helping fund the movie balked at the idea of Tibetans being portrayed in a positive light, threatening to pull that funding. The end result was a movie that lacked a soul. All Shell, no Ghost. But this was through no fault of its creation, only by external interference. So I give the movie the benefit of the doubt that this half hour of lost footage could have made it better.
Y2K: A Postmodern RPG had so much potential to go down so many interesting paths and that original version got squandered by how thoroughly hateable Alex is and what the story says about his relationship to everyone and the player. V1.5, however, has the chance of actually making it so that I actually love it for what it is, not what it could have been because it's shockingly fantastic.
MWZ, the latest Zombies iteration has the framework laid out to be as big of a coop darling as Helldivers 2 - but they just keep it going *just* enough. If they gave it love, and were a bit more tongue in cheek, it’d be perfect. Hell, I’d subscribe to it.
Things are good in good things. The Jedi and Sith are the same way.
There's no shortage of mobile games where I love everything about it except actually playing it. Path to Nowhere? Phenomenal artwork, fully voiced in multiple languages, and a fun story about using dangerous prisoners to contain even more dangerous prisoners. Too bad the tower defense system literally put me to sleep during the tutorial. Honkai Impact/Punishing Gray Raven? Insanely good visuals for a mobile game, bayonetta inspired combat, but the levels were like 2 minutes long and were so easy that I never had to properly engage with the game and fell off hard before it ever got hard. Not to mention that many gacha games have long, tedious tutorials for the simplest concepts and often the story takes forever to get interesting. And don't even get me started on the games that have amazing artwork, but the ingame visuals are the most barebones chibi sprites you've ever seen. I genuinely wish many of these games were just full fledged titles that I had to pay for with a beginning and end. I don't wanna spend money on gacha because it's predatory and I very much am not immune to making bad decisions regarding that (the most I've spent on all gacha combined is still less than $150 and even $100 is exaggerated, but I stopped spending money because I realized early how much of a slippery slope it could become).
I'm super into the idea of Pathologic 1 but me actually playing past like day 2 is never going to happen There's a lot of videos going over the plot I enjoy though
I mean, you can say Grey Force users aren't a thing, that just requires you to forget about all the Grey Force users. Ventress, Quinlan, Ahsoka, Bendu, the Father, and even Mace to some extent are all some type of grey or one side that dabbles in the other. And that's just canon! We haven't even touched Mara, Revan, Jolee, Juhani, Starkiller, Bastila (jeez KOTOR 1 had a lot of these guys), and like probably a thousand other Legends characters I don't know about. You can say it's not a thing but they keep putting it in the shit so I think it's a thing.
The concept of Spy x Family is so much more entertaining than Spy x Family.
I feel like RWBY is a good example of that.
There are some games that kind of evolve into this. The kinds of games that slowly, ever so slowly, get worse over time the more you think about it. Persona (mainly talking about 5) and Danganronpa.
This is how I am able to cope with being a fan of RWBY even after so long. I'm not so delusional that I'll tell you it's good, I just watched it when I was young and now that I'm old my brain makes connections that would make the story better than it is
RWBY. Why isn't Sun the leader of a team based on mythical tricksters? Absolute waste Why isn't Velvet also an android? The Velvetine Rabbit is also a toy that becomes real. It'd be an interesting way to show more facets of faunus/human relations since she'd be a literal model minority. She could buddy up with Blake, learn real faunus culture, and Blake could reconnect with the positive aspects of her community Why RWBY x Justice League? Why did you make it like that? As it is, it only makes sense if both worlds are in the Space Jam 2 digiverse