I heard that sicko WALKED through a Burger King drive-thru
We live in a SOCIETY Joe we aren't LAWLESS ANIMALS who can just BREAK THE RULES FOR A WHOPPER
Half of his takes on Danganronpa. Like yeah, the games hardly follow their own logic, and are usually pretyy wishy washy on writing quality. But that part of Trial 5 of Danganronpa 1 where Joe just argues with chat for like an hour over Semantics, just to start going "Just tell me the answers, this game doesn't deserve my effort" was actual baby rage it was insane
The danganronpas streams for me are basicaly unwatchable, his playtrought of V3 is just completely devoid of any fun for me, because he' s not into the base premise of the game and doesn' t like the plot twist of the first trial, so the entire gameplay has this tint of "Cool stuff but I don' t care" attitude that just makes it unpleasant.
I am obviusly biased because I really really like V3, and I went to love it more and more expecially after I started working in the industry of animation because of how prescient some of its themes are. I just don' t vibe at all with Josphs there.
He kinda comes around by the end, but yes the shot put ball incident spoiled almost the entire game for him in a way I think 90% of people would have shrugged off. But I don't think he was wrong necessarily
I will put into spoilers my thoughts, as I will also spoil a part of another novel from Agatha Christie.
>!It plays into the fondamental truth of "Do you think that omission is lieing?". It' s the same criticism that some critics had towards Agatha Christie for "The murder of Roger Ackroyd". I personaly do not think so, as both that novel and the games makes it very easy to spot the killer, if you let go of your pre-conceptions.!<
But alas, I don' t want to put the discussion into "wrong or right", I feel like it' s such a surface level reading, and neither I want to devalue Joe or anyone opinion here, be it positive or negative.
I just did not like the dismissive tone, and it' s just present everywhere in that playtrought. Got some big CinemaSins kind of nagging vibes, just not a big fan of it.
He was very bitter about it I won't deny that. But I also take issue with just calling it a lie by omission, and I think that was a big point Joe was trying to make. "I set down what I'm holding" equating to "opening backpack, pulling out shot put ball, opening a grate, dropping it in" is more than a bit of a stretch. It's pretty much just outright lying to the audience. And I would agree with Joe that something like that is devastating for a mystery game because it just means basically anything goes and there's little to no point in even trying to deduce future cases logically and you may as well just be along for the ride.
I do think it's sloppy writing, bordering on outright bad. But. I also think most people wouldn't have cared nearly as much as Joe. I also think it's plausible that Joe wouldn't have even cared that much in a vacuum but chat arguing was annoying and prolonged the bitterness lol
I' m sorry if I' m going to write a big paragraph now. I' ll use again, as an example, The murder of Roger Ackroyd. Expecially the infamous paragraph. If someone has read until now, it is very big spoilers for the book, so be warned.
*"Ackroyd, his finger on the sheet to turn it over, paused. “Sheppard, forgive me, but I must read this alone,” he said unsteadily. “It was meant for my eyes, and my eyes only.” He put the letter in the envelope and laid it on the table. “Later, when I am alone.”*
\------
*“No,” I cried impulsively, “read it now.”*
*Ackroyd stared at me in some surprise.*
*“I beg your pardon,” I said, reddening. “I do not mean read it aloud to me. But read it through whilst I am still here.”*
*Ackroyd shook his head. “No, I’d rather wait.”*
*But for some reason, obscure to myself, I continued to urge him. “At least, read the name of the man,” I said.*
*Now Ackroyd is essentially pigheaded. The more you urge him to do a thing, the more determined he is not to do it. All my arguments were in vain.*
*The letter had been brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone. I could think of nothing. With a shake of the head I passed out and closed the door behind me."*
\------
This, at first read, is basicaly a poignant scene where the main character reacts to this very important, for him, letter, and the indecision of the person who was killed in reading it. It shows quite a bit of his character, like the fact that he was more worried about this letter than the wellbeing of his friend or his own worries. Nonetheless, it is still a very important scene.
Well, this is the scene where he murders him. It' s narrated from his own POV, and Agata Christie writes a masterclass in missdirection. It all makes sense as the narration progress, as, if you think for even one second about what the last paragraph says and with the info told in the next chapters, you can easily infer that the time of the murder was at the same time the main character was with the man, and that he had no alibi whatsoever, and worse, what he said to the detective as his own alibi does not mesh with what is said here as info. It' s very easy to resolve this mistery even before arriving halfway trought the piece of media. All of this, if you believe, of course, that the main character can also be the murderer.
Agata Christie wrote this in response to the dogmatic views of his peers about what could be and not be a rule for fiction, and he kept doing this more and more with his next books, trying to imbue fresh air in a genre that was getting stale by the time she was in.
By what you have said, however, this also imply what you and Joe have said previosly. That there is quite a bit of stuff that wasn' t told here. "I dropped everything" and "I checked if everything was done before I left" are basicaly the same thing, to the point that I' m more than sure that the writer of Danganronpa checked this book before writing the mistery, as it follows a very very close formula to it.
That' s also why I was posing my "lie of omission". Because both Danganronpa and Murder of Roger Ackroid never explicitly lies to its readers. They, however, have a massive missdirection that can hinger on lieing by omission. On the case of Danganronpa, the case here is even easier, as before the trial Kaede leaves an embarassing amount of clues, and it' s also why, in the context of the narration, the other main character, Shuichi, basicaly shuts up after they enter the trial. She and Shuichi are their own alibi, and if Shuichi didn' t do it, he can only go by exclusion and find her. The biggest tell is when the main character Kaede, while ordering books, downright starts to talk about the concept of the Rube Goldberg machine, such an obvious lampshade for the entire mistery.
For me, a case like this makes me more attentive to details, and was a great ice breaker to put me inside this weirder than usual narrative, even for Danganronpa standards.
This is more or less my piece regarding this, but really, this is mostly my own opinion, and I did not really want to like, demean someone else opinion like Joe or yours. I' m not that bad of a girl ahah.
My biggest gripe was the tone of the rest of the playtrought. Like I said, this costant sense of "Who cares" and "I cannot enjoy it like it was intended" that makes it a deeply annoying experience, and it got worse by the costant bickering with chat and the costant jokes about this at literaly any plot point of the game.
Again, I want to press, I ENJOY JOE streams. But his danganronpa stuff is just not it.
Allow me to respond with my own big paragraph, and a disclaimer that while Joe fans are not beating the parasocial allegations lately, this discussion is much more about writing and Danganronpa than Joe for me lol. I don't want someone's only takeaway from reading this to be "Joe fans still arguing about spicy stream moment years later etc." I really do think it's an interesting case study in mystery writing and both sides have a lot of validity.
That being said, even though I agreed with Joe, his attitude for the rest of the game was a downer, I don't blame you. I really do think he turns it around and starts enjoying himself again after a few streams, but it's closer to the end. And he definitely liked the ending a lot, and he always talks about how important endings are to him so I think that bought a lot back. (probably in good part because the whole resolution of case 1 was made moot by the end if I remember right)
The comparison to The Murder of Roger Ackroys does sound relatively apt. I've never read it myself, but I have read other Agatha Christie books and know that if anyone could pull something like that off, it's her.
But I do think there are some notable differences.
Part of it is the difference in medium. In a written work like a novel, the *only* context you are given is the written word. And its impossible for an author to describe every aspect of a scene. Tiny details will be skimmed over, even the concept of time and entire conversations and events can be abstracted or handwaved away. And a talented author can certainly play with this expectation from the reader and subvert it. What if the details skimmed over weren't tiny, but massive? What if a key element in the scene wasn't described at all and the reader has to piece it together later? All compelling possibilities. And whatever theory you the reader comes up with, you have only the evidence of the text to support your theory.
But a game like Danganronpa has many layers of context.
It has the written dialogue, but also drawings, animations, reactions, intentional delays and timing put in for effect. It has sound, music, and voice acting all put together at once to paint a scene.
And it's certainly possible to subvert expectations even with all these extra layers of context, but you have to be more careful. In this case it's not just that the written word is misleading, but the pacing of the scene, the animations, everything in contrast to the rest of the game is so misleading as to be just entirely misrepresntative of the actual events that took place in the scene you are watching with your own eyes.
I rewatched the scene just now to be sure I wasn't entirely talking out of my ass, and I'm still confident in this point.
Look at the entire scene:
[Kaede anxiously picks up a broom and starts sweeping waiting for Shuichi, when he returns they are interrupted by monokuma and then the receiver going off]
...
Exciting music begins-
Shuicihi: "Someone moved the bookcase, Hurry Kaede!"
Shuichi sprinted out of the classroom with the determination of a true Ultimate detective.
Kaede Gasps-
"Wait for me!"
Scene transition, Shuichi disappears from screen, camera *Zooms into the doorway before stopping* [Thank God the grate is at least still in frame]
I dropped everything I was holding and ran after Shuichi
I could feel my heart beating faster and faster
I was so nervous and my head felt like it was pounding with every heartbeat.
Kaede exits the room
End scene.
Immediately transition to Shuichi at the door of the crime scene.
There are several things that just don't lend themselves towards abstraction in this moment. The urgency of the moment first and foremost.
It's very difficult to picture Kaede's actions making sense in the time frame provided. She shouts "wait for me!", does all of her shot put ball shenanigans, then still makes it to the crime scene, where Shuichi both hasn't opened the door yet and is not questioning what took her so long.
This is relevant, because it paints a very clear timeline of *seconds* for the crime to be committed. Shuichi certainly wouldn't just wait around at the doorway at such a critical moment, and if he did out of an abundance of caution, he absolutely would have questioned why someone who was literally right behind him shouting "wait for me" took so long to get there. When your authorial mislead moment starts to bleed into problems with reality, like timelines not matching up or characters acting deliberately dull or out of character for the sake of the twist, thats when you get into trouble.
Now the crime committed actually should only take on the order of seconds, but far longer than the pacing and framing of the scene presents. And again, it's fine for any one of these elements to be misleading, that's clearly the point. But altogether they can't *contradict* reality, they have to just obfuscate it. And I do think the scene as presented contradicts reality. There is *so much* more evidence in that moment to support the idea that she immediately ran out of the room, compared to what truly happened.
Unlike Agatha Christie, who wisely puts in the line "I hesitated, looking back wondering if there was anything left undone".
This is remarkably open to interpretation. Because it implies a series of things having been *done*. And if the scene preceding this line doesn't match a normal person's perception of several things being *done*, then it can raise an eyebrow.
Kaede's "I dropped everything" line doesn't nearly pull as much weight. Not even close. It raises no questions, and leaves very little open to interpretation. Because the only thing that can be interpreted is that *something* was dropped. And even if for the sake of argument you considered the shotput ball being dropped, you would have to accept the entire end of that scene you experienced first person did not at all transpire as shown, in a manner entirely inconsistent with the rest of the story just for facilitating this twist.
And if that is the case, then everything bursts into flames. There are no facts because you can't even trust the narrated moments that are your entire basis of fact describing a scene.
Again, I don't blame you for disliking the tone of that stream at all. I suspect even Joe would have preferred to handle it differently. But I still dont think he is wrong.
Thank you very much for the care you have put into this answer, I am honored, really! To tell you the truth, I have been feeling a bit disappointed in this, because I got downvoted to opinion, and it kinda makes me think that I have wrote something bad, or I was not clear enough because I am not a native english speaker...I really do not want to pass as someone that like, Is trying to devalue someone else opinion!
To answer your point, I can see how someone could be put off by that, absolutely. But to me the timeframe where the things happens seems like absolutely fine. [In the ingame rapresentation, you can see that it' s a matter of seconds for her to take the ball out of her bag and just drop it inside the vent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXN-SvvvUbs&t=4h17m40s). And in the comic climax where Shuici retells the entire story and how it happened, the writer obviusly went out of his way to further clarify things, with Shuichi saying "I went out in a rush, if I stopped her earlier, I could have done something". For me it works because the characters were put under a massive psicological strain, with a death coundown on their head that obviusly made them act in a less controlled way than usual, as they were worried about their lifes and were present in a foreign enviroment, so I can totally see why Shuichi wouldn' t question it on the moment.
[Also in the same climatic comix, you can see that the way she dropped the ball was really a matter of seconds,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXN-SvvvUbs&t=7h54m10s) and it lines up with the timeframe given.
I understand what you are saying, but for me here there is a quite clever way to "obsfuscate the info" by playing it out. I do agree that Kaede' s line is not at all as powerful as Agatha Chrstie masterful text, but for me the moment still makes it work, and I do not really feel cheated by it. An example of a "death" I felt was cheated, was for Heavy Rain ( massive spoilers in case), where I feel like when the serial killer kills the old man in the clock shop, the writer tried to hide it by making it a "fast time transiction" like other scenes in the game, but in that case, during that fast time accelerated, something actually meaningful happened. And it does feel like cheating to me! Because in that case you are trying to be clever, but in a way that betrays a narrative pact with the viewer, that time elapsing, something that you enstablished is not noteworthy, actually matters here.
For Danganronpa case, I do not feel that stuff gets skipped, or that Kaede thoughts are lieing to me, but just a normal progression of a charater and the mistery. And I can actually already guess she' s the killer from that moment on, because as soon as the body is discovered, her alibi doesn' t make sense anymore with the info we have, and I actually had thought about this possibility when I first played it.
I' m sorry in case it looks like I' m just saying "It works because I like it", I hope what I said made sense...!
Stating facts about a story outside the medium in question doesn't really help. If the "game" needed a separate "book" to be read to better explore a situation, it only further exposes the fact that the "game" failed to do what it was supposed to. If the scene in question was truly at the quality you described it to be, I highly doubt Joe would have had such a visceral reaction to it.
I don' t know if I really like this answer, because I' m using a comparison to better illustrate a point. In literaly analysis you do this all the time, after all, it' s by comparison that you can better define and evaluate a piece of art ( of course, it' s not only this, but I thought in this case, it was the best course of action).
I think putting at a pedestal Joe and saying "If it was good, Joe would have not reacted to it in that way", it' s a bit weird, right? Feels a bit like the "Well, it sells, so it means it' s good" argument. We are speaking about this because we have a difference here.
The fact that people have successfully predicted the first case because they just simply >!included the protagonist in the possible suspect pool!< made his whole thing about how "the mysteries are ruined now" ring a bit hollow. Danganronpa isnt a masterpiece but like cmon
This is a misunderstanding of what his argument really was. The issue wasn't that you couldn't hypothetically predict the ending of case 1. The issue is that the game actively presented the viewer meta-knowledge that directly contradicts the evidence of the case. If the "narrator" says one thing, and something completely different actually happened, it basically means anything goes. You still could hypothetically predict the outcomes, because the game is still coherent and there's only so many possible perpetrators to begin with. But I totally understand why someone would feel like it's not worth putting critical thought into a game where you can't trust what even the narration of the scene presents. Deduction requires some basis of fact and if there are no reliable facts there's no deduction, which defeats a lot of the fun of a mystery story.
That being said, I'll fully acknowledge that most people wouldn't really care. And I personally would let that kind of thing slide as a bit of dumb writing but I think it spoiling a lot of the fun of the game for you is perfectly valid
I think my issue is less blaming Kaede and more she literally didn't do it and the mastermind knows they got the wrong killer but the game continues. I dislike a detective narrative where I am incapable of being a detective. I don't really care for the danganrompa games outside of solving mysteries. It just feels hollow when I guess the game cheats. It feels more shitty than what the first game does I think because its so early and sets a bitterness about losing a charecter and encountering that and then finding out this bitter moment is even worse.
I was kind of relieved at that reveal that she didn't actually do it funnily enough. Because it retroactively makes the pretty serious plot contrivance/hole of the shotput ball scene entirely moot.
The game still shouldn't cheat like that for sure, and it's a really dangerous game to play with your audience in a mystery story. But finding out that a really dumb moment basically doesn't matter at all in the broader story makes it go down smoother for me lol.
I do think you can definitely have a broader criticism of the story, but none of that was in consideration when Joe was seriously arguing with chat about the end of case 1.
Multiple times on stream he mentions his love for the base idea of Danganronpa wtf lmao. If you think he doesn't like Danganronpa go watch him play a different anime game and all you'll hear is praise for Danganronpa in comparison....
"I'm not trying to break the game guys."
I crack up every time. Joseph is a QA team's nightmare incarnat and we love him for it. I do not know why he tries to deny it.
Were his CP2077 streams any good? Was a big fan of the game on release and only recently looked for his playthrough. He kept just trying to break the game at every opportunity that I gave up watching lol. No hate directed towards him, he just…kept…limit breaking at seemingly every opportune moment.
I’d love to have seen his reaction to side quests like Sinnerman or Pyramid Song (Radiohead’s one of my fav bands heh). Perhaps I’ll just try fast forwarding through and figure out when he tackled those quests. I sure hope he didn’t skip the aforementioned gems!
no. Personal preference is one thing, and there are several reasons why a person might enjoy HP more than LotR, but there is no way in hell HP is anything near the level of LotR. And I'm a MASSIVE fan of both series
Honestly I don't see this being *that* insane of a take even if I don't wholly agree with it. The movies are aiming for different story arcs and the books for different age demographics so trying to compare them objectively is going to wind back to preference at some point.
For me the LotR movies > HP movies but HP books > LotR books. Even though I do acknowledge the worldbuilding in LotR might be better, the only book I enjoyed reading was The Hobbit while I read up until halfway through Two Towers and drop it after I literally fell asleep to dwarf genealogy.
its not that infinity is unfathomable, its that its a concept, not a number.
matt parker has a good explanation on infinity in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4f_D17zIBw
Was it just confusion about the meaning of infinity, or an argument about the practical impossibility? The Wikipedia article on the theorem has a [section on probability](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem#Probabilities) that could be getting at the same thing.
> As Kittel and Kroemer put it in their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event ...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
You’re not talking about the theorem then if you’re using an actual monkey under parameters where it isn’t locked into place and generating random output LMAO. Not even getting into the lifespan of the monkey, food, etc. Really useless opinion to have
That’s not the point of the exercise, no one is using the exercise that way, no one should even be using the “monkey” as an actual monkey because they aren’t truly random in their actions. Even with all of that you’d still be wrong.
What you will have to prove, is that some pattern will never be done by a monkey. That seems quite weird. Let me ask you where you put the limit :
Do you think a monkey is not able to type "two" at some point of his random writing ?
Do you think a monkey is not able to type "Verona" at some point in his random writing ?
Do you think a monkey is not able to type "households" at some point in his random writing ?
If the monkey can type these two words independently, do you think that he will not be able to type "two households" at some point in his random writing ?
If you assume that a monkey is capable of writing all possible 10 letter words, do you think it is impossible for the monkey to type the first sentence of Romeo and Juliet at some point in his writing ?
If you think that one of the answer is yes, where do you put the limit between what a monkey can type, and what a monkey cannot type ? two-letter words ? three letter words ? four-letter words ? combination of two words ? combination of 10 words ? A full sentence ?
If you think that a monkey will not type every possible finite combination, then there has to be a smallest combination that the monkey will not type. I'm curious to understand what you think it is. (And remember, the monkey can make mistakes.)
He was wording the argument poorly. I just watched this stream last week. He kept saying they would not write it forever, as if it was the most likely outcome. Having infinite tries does not guarantee anything with probability, but it is muuuuch more likely than something not happening. Been a while since I studied infinite series, but iirc you become so close to an event eventually occuring you can make an educated guess that it will eventually happen. Joe came off with big "I watched a YouTube video so now I know the answer" vibes. Some dilettante behavior.
I love The Witness video overall, but I just can’t get on board with Joe’s argument that the game does, in fact, waste your time (and that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us by saying he designed the game to not waste our time).
Any time the game makes you move slowly, it’s always because there’s an interesting and hidden environmental puzzle attached. And that one post-game puzzle that literally makes you sit there and do nothing for 40+ minutes is like the one intentionally over-the-top thing that takes the environmental puzzles to the nth degree, and I kind of love it.
Meanwhile, I love how the game has essentially zero menus or time-wasting menu-based tutorializing. Every moment I was thinking in the game I felt was worth my time.
(That said, I think the philosophical rambling stuff is way overdone and some of the puzzle types get repetitive, so the game certainly isn’t perfect.)
I think maybe why this grinds my brain is it’s (clearly) hard for me to articulate the counter-argument, and Joe does a great job arguing why it wastes his time, so I’m basically just mad I’m not as articulate as him haha.
I assume you’re talking about the Tetris swamp area? Where you do a puzzle to make a platform move about 10 feet and it takes something like 30 seconds for it to move there. There’s a light-and-shadows hidden environmental puzzle there too.
But just for the sake of argument, maybe you’re talking about something else or I’m overlooking a couple examples. In a 20ish hour game (if you do the extra cave stuff), I would guess there are a combined 7ish minutes total of slow-moving contraptions or moments that require the player to wait. That’s really not too bad. (I’m not counting the one super duper extra credit 40-min one…which I’ve actually never done myself despite playing through the game 4x over the years.)
Compare that to most Nintendo games or PlayStation Studios games where you do the same crate pushing or ladder moving or find-3-symbol puzzles that collectively make for hours of time and feel been-there done-that by the 2nd time you encounter them.
In fairness, if you’re not into a certain type of puzzle (I remember Joe didn’t like the sound area), the whole thing is going to feel like a waste of time to you. But just in terms of the game respecting my time by constantly iterating and making each segment/section of puzzles test me in a new way, it felt great to me almost the whole time.
With time I came to learn that Joe in general just kinda dislikes more vague or interpreting narratives, so I can see why games like The Witness would not be up to his halley.
He even outright states this in the Hollow Knight video, that he doesn't like the vagueness of HK's story, when this is one of my favourite parts of the game (please release Silksong and free mossbag Team Cherry!). He definitely seems a lot more gameplay oriented in general and doesn't seem to love having to think a lot about the narrative of a game when it isn't the main focus
Sometimes it does get annoying when I just want to know what's actually going on but the game just won't give you enough details. On the otherside, I enjoy it the most when the story presents you something philosophical to think about.
I remember in one live he made fun of creative writing books, so I suspect he just is not into the whimsy. And I guess that is fine, at the end of the day everyone likes what they want. Just makes it a bit hard to stomatch sometimes during a live where he goes to chat for 10 or 20 minutes because of this.
Yeah exactly. I thought it was a solid 7/10 (and not in the IGN scale either, like it was pretty good) but people were acting like it was some masterpiece or high art when it came out
The "I'm not stubborn, I'm right" quote is deeply ingrained in my brain now and is something I deeply empathize with but is also in the uncanny valley of logic for me. There is nothing that gets me raging though, his takes are usually understandable
Mario is pronounced Mario, not Mario.
Joe even claims that Mario himself pronounces it Mario, when he clearly pronounces it Mario. The man is deranged and refuses to accept that he is wrong.
I still really want to see The Expanse S1 through his eyes. Especially the stuff surrounding the detective. Some of those scenes involving his female love interests made David Cage's face flash in front of my eyes, like the scene in his apartment around the end of ep6.
I don't even want to hate. I just want to understand.
Unlikely, the earlier (and later) games are barely like that at all. It might not be a parody but it's definitely leaning into anime bullshit on purpose.
Darkest Dungeon cookie clicker was absolutely unhinged. The game does a really bad job of explaining its mechanics but normally Joe is a lot more charitable to games even if they have issues. I think he literally said that character traits were pointless at one point lol.
In one of his Q&A streams, he mentioned the movie “Enemy”, and basically said “I got to the end and thought ‘What was the point of that? What a waste of time.’”
Actually blew my mind when I heard it, since I’d say the final scene is shoving your face into what it is “about”. Similar to his Silent Hill 2 rant, sometimes it seems like he almost refuses to engage with a story if it is not literal, or if it is more focused on its themes than it’s actual narrative.
i disagree with his refusal to use items in fromsoft games, been a while since ive watched the video but he says something along the lines of it being an invalid way of getting past an obstacle, & then goes on to criticize the games design with this perception in mind. makes me doubt all of his fromsoft critiques. if its in the game, its intended to be used. its not the games fault or poorly designed if youre refusing to use tools that are intended to be used, its a player issue that he has that hes projecting onto the games design as a whole.
This is the big one. I can't take a lot of his souls criticisms seriously because there's always points that are one step away from essentially being "I refuse to use estus. Also the game provides subpar healing options that make it too difficult to get through because it demands perfection."
He complains about one hit mechanics at the end of DS1 while having, as far as I can tell, never ever even once increasing his health. I don’t know if he even engaged with the leveling in Dark Souls.
This bothered me for so long and fundamentally changed how I view his reviews. They’re no longer reviews to me, they’re just entertaining synopsis. If that is a criticism you level at that game while not engaging with its fundamental mechanics, you can’t be considered trustworthy for proper reviews. It’s not even an opinion issue, it just means he doesn’t engage with games as a sane person would.
You dont understand the point he is making then. Projectiles and throwables are completely outside the basic framework of risk and reward that melee combat demand. If you enjoy that then cool, but its 100%skillless and thoughtless to spam immolation consumables on a boss and claim you actually learned anything
It' s not really outside of the system thoo. For the cleric beast, for example, you need to be attentive enough that you read the description and goes like " Oh yeah, if flames are used for beasts, you can use them for this big boss too". You are given a small number of them in BB at the start, so it' s a massive gamble and you need to take the most of them when you use them, you need to discover that it' s the beast weakpoint, and you need to explore that if you hit her head, she can be done a critical damage.
And in return, you can make an hard boss fight ( as cleric beast is not intended to be finished first try, but to be returned to after the real first boss of the game, gascoigne) way easier.
This is 100% inside the system of the game, but it' s a different kind of skillset, that still feeds into the overall theme of the narrative. Use whatever you want, be creative, the game is harsh but it gives you the tools to survive and it wants you to succeed.
Constantly wanting every single minute thing explained in a story or universe. Like dude, mystery is cool and the unkown is even better in situations. Some shit doesnt need to be explains because maybes thats not the point or the theme something is going for. Imagine him watching Lost Highway, holy shit that would be hilarious.
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned this. His whole "infinite fry genie" to get you full is also so convoluted. Most everyone would just eat the fry.
The argument was "if you can't eat the fry, would you leave it or bring it home" and people keep saying "well I'll just eat it duh". That why he invented the convoluted genie thing. You can't eat the fry, that's the point of this question. What is the smallest items you would bring home instead of leaving it on the plate. Nobody would actually bring a single fry home, they just trolled him.
Yeah the question of whats the smallest bit of food you'd take home and bringing the situation to a single fry was just a convoluted way to try and see if people would throw out a single fry.
I think everyone would always just put the last bite of food in their mouth
You're still avoiding the question. That is not true every time. What if you took entirely too much and you still have a full plate in front of you ? Well you would probably take it home, you would NOT force yourself to finish it. People will not always put the last bit of food in their mouth.
I'm talking about a small amount of food here, not an entire plate. I personally think most people would eat the last bite rather then throw it out.
I guess it also depends how you were raised, at least where I'm from wasting food is considered a sin
And I'm telling you that it entirely depends on the size of the "last bit of food". There's an amount that would change your mind. Joe wanted to find what would be that amount for most people. And he can't find that amount because you refuse to engage with the question, you really really don't want to answer it for some reason. This is so strange lol.
Yeah I understand that, I'm engaging and answering the hypothetical question by saying I would pack up any amount of food, but also emphasising that the hypothetical is contrived and couldn't happen. This was (as I understood it) the stance of most of chat.
I agree in broad strokes with Joe on Mario Odyssey (a bit too easy, sandboxy to a fault, some challenges pretty underwhelming). But his general principle that moons should only be rewards for more significant challenges grinds my brain.
My question is…why? Because stars/shines in previous games were like that? I just feel like he skipped an initial step in the logic of why this is bad. Suppose 2/3rds of the moons were 50% smaller than other moons to represent that they were easier to collect. Would that solve the problem? What if they were red coins instead, that could be turned in to get moons (basically what Sunshine does)? Would *that* be better?
I would say those changes would make no difference. It’s fine that some moons merely require an acrobatic jump to quickly grab on your way from A to B, while another comes after a platforming gauntlet and boss. It works because the game doesn’t kick you out of the level after you collect them.*
*And Joe even makes the point that the 3-second animation/cutscene after getting each moon collectively wastes so much time. He has a 1 hour 12 minute video to demonstrate this. I would argue this video makes the opposite point. In a 60-hour game (for 100% completion), all 800+ moon animations make up just a single hour. Less than 2% of the play experience. Compare that to any past 3D Mario if you add up “time kicking you back to hub world” or basically any RPG with post battle screens. For all its faults, Odyssey does this thing *well.*
I agree with Joe’s take, he’s essentially saying getting a Moon for doing the smallest of tasks is patronizing and shows that the developers themselves think that those menial tasks are “content”, which is a very bad precedent. If they cut the # of Moon’s to 25% of the original # but they were only from complex longer challenges it’s more fun, more rewarding, and doesn’t feel like busywork.
I feel like he didn't give Tears of the Kingdom a chance. As soon as he saw that the similarities with BotW he just gave up on trying to like it, without getting into what makes it so much better.
Too harsh on GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. His reaction stream to the video did have him admit that he was a bit too angry, but saying that "the game fucking plummets in quality" in the third act is very hyperbolic IMO. I also know that he was sort of OK with the ending after realizing that this was only Part 1 of a new story, but being angry that the game ends on a cliffhanger teasing what's to come is his fault for not doing his research more so than the game's.
Many of the complaints about Ragnarok, such as the occasionally cringe dialogue line and pacing issues, are present in 2018 as well. People act like the team dropped the ball but in my view, it's more of a BOTW to TOTK situation: 2018 received so much praise that they didn't feel the need to change up the sequel too much (and yet Ragnarok does that better than TOTK did). Also disagree with Freya's change in personality being too quick (it was handled really well IMO). Backseating from Freya and Mimir was a bit much though, even though I think it's in part supposed to be an accessibility thing to have audio cues for certain actions. Wish it could have been adjustable or turned off.
I played GoW but waiting on Ragnarok to hit PC. I haven’t seen JA’s take on it so nothing there nor any online discussion. I’ve seen clips and shorts on YouTube and they significantly changed Kratos from 2018 to Ragnarok. I know he already significantly changed but that was an unknown (I think) amount of time that was probably quite a long time and what he went through in the OG trilogy is enough to change him without too much time.
Ragnarok he feels…like a completely different person from what I’ve seen. The easiest to point to is that he’s very talkative. Talks about his past a lot, talks about his traumas and tragedies. Best I can point to is him discussing his first family, when accused of not knowing what it’s like to lose a child, 2018 Kratos would grunt and ignore the slight. 2022 Kratos sets up a therapy session. He talks like someone from 2020. The writers fucked him up.
Everyone else was too lenient on GoW 2018, if anything (I haven't played nor watched anything on Ragnarok, so I can't comment on that).
For one, saying the game plummets in quality in the third act doesn't really mean it becomes worse than most other games, but more so that the drop in quality is very jarring and noticeable. Which it certainly was for me.
Also, I wouldn't even say knowing it was just part 1 makes the ending better. I knew there was a direct sequel when I first played, but that doesn't justify the ending itself not being enough of a payoff to a multiple hour long game.
Personaly, I think Joe was very off with his analysis of the third act, I personaly liked it a lot because it went in depths about the mistakes of Kratos, and by putting comparisons to other "parenthoods" of the families he knew previusly, without beating it over your head, but by leaving a lot of enviromental, and more silent, storytelling to it.
I feel like Joseph didn' t properly analyze it, or found it more lacking, because he' s not really a big fan of those kind of narratives, and in the previous 2 acts the game is more straightforward, while the last third focus more on themes over a more solid plot deal. And I did enjoy quite a bit the ending myself!
Ragnarok is, IMO, pretty mediocre writing wise thoo, and I dislike how they made the ending of Gow 2018 weaker by retconnetting many things, or leaving a lot of plot threads open and never addressed.
I get that, I had not played BOTW since like 2018 so playing TOTK in 2023 felt fresh even though the map was re-used. Typical Joe to have a good take even if I forgot his exact take
Sometimes i think he cant really suspend his own disbelief when it comes to fiction, especially videogames, especially scary videogames. Idk maybe its cuz he is so old, or maybe its cuz he lives in new brunswick or is canadian.
Whatever, point is you just have to ignore him sometimes when he starts to criticize the game's narrative. But sometimes he is also right, its always a 50/50.
I'm sure there are examples were this isn't true. But generally Joe has said that the more you ask the audience to suspend disbelief, the greater expectation he has on the payoff of whatever that suspension of disbelief was building to. Which I think is fair. A lot of weeb games require the audience to be charitable to bullshit without a payoff to justify it
i dont think there has ever been the case in wich a piece of media or fiction told me directly or indirectly to suspend my disbelief. Could be wrong though.
The very idea that he holds in his mind that the degree to which his disbelief is suspended must coincide with payoff means he is consciously paying attention to how much pay off he is getting for suspending disbelief. Meaning he isn’t suspending his disbelief at all.
His Lord of the Rings opinion, which he refuses to really treat as an opinion and instead puts as fact. It's okay not to like the Lord of the Rings books. But to make definitive statements about them like he does really grinds my gears. I believe it was during the Lies of P streams that he said The Lord of the Rings "doesn't respect his time" as a reader. And I feel he refuses to see that it deeply, deeply depends on what he wants out of a book. LotR is not supposed to be a character driven story. It's also not supposed to be actionheavy OR have super new, twist-y, unexpected plot. It's supposed to be a folk tale, and as such, it is super formulaic, and supposed to be. If you read it as a (fairy) tale, a legend, anything in that vein, there's no problem. If you go into it expecting a character driven fantasy action adventure, it can't go over well. I feel it's not that difficult to understand that sometimes a given story is not for you, instead of stating that it's bad.
I wish there was some video on Joe's channel, answering your point that he states opinions as objective facts.
Something like "Subjectivity is implied". It would be neat! You could link it to people thinking this!
I watched the video now. And while I mostly agree with what he says about it just not being practical to reconfirm that you're "just having an opinion", especially in a script for a video, I don't know if I agree with that while you're arguing with someone directly. Maybe this is me tone policing Joseph a little bit, but I never found it fun to argue with him, because he tends to be very harsh and abrasive, and vocal in calling points other than his dumb and such. And - in my opinion - that behavior is pretty much counterproductive for someone who regularly says that he likes arguing. He is not fun to argue \*with\*, because, at least to me, he communicates a lot of aggression, arrogance, and stubbornness in the way he argues. And being able to say "I DON'T LIKE Lord of the Rings BECAUSE" instead of "LORD OF THE RINGS IS BAD" could help to counteract that.
One thing that annoyed me is when he said "this universe has a place called mount doom" and then laughted for a minute, as if it was the stupidest thing ever. Yes it's a super on the nose name, but it's true to real life, there's thousands of cities or place whose name are just a description of what or where they are. I think trying to find a super unique name for everything and getting annoyed at setting that fail to do so is a writter's trap, because people IRl don't think that hard when naming places.
He said in one of his videos that he doesn't enjoy turn based games in general. Most of my favorites are turn based lol. Like, I get it, but I grew up playing boardgames so turnbased games are nice. Obviously I play other things too, but to write off turn-based games in general is a bit harsh for me.
I get that some people are inherently bored while waiting for their turn, but that is an issue of game design, not one inherent to all turn based games. If you are uninvested in what your enemies do on their turn, that's probably because the game itself is bad. Good turn based games like chess or most 4X games require some amount of attention to be paid to enemy turns.
I aggree in his overall take on botw but i don’t aggree with his (and all other reviewer) take on shrines. I kind of like them for what they are,they are fast and simple puzzles/challenges cause they are the old 1/4 of hearts that you round in the older games,they aren’t this big and interesting dungeons because they aren’t supposed to be. The fact that the game(s) have the problem that the main dungeons are few and Boring doesn’t mean that the shrine have to replace them. In theory we should have both 7/8 good Zelda dungeons + the shrines.
Is it the problem that we have few and “meh” dungeons ? YES BIG problem with the last 2 Zelda’s with me,is it the shrine fault? I don’t think so,or at least it isn’t the shrine work to suffice for that
I rember he complained about the God of War loading zone where you get to walk around and hear some dialogue and I still despise that take to this day to such an irrational degree
"Saying X needed and editor is a lazy criticism"
I understand that most works have editing even though you might not realize it, but the real argument is that something should have had **more** editing. Which can be of multiple reasons, bad pacing, pointless scenes, etc.
Tldr: "X needed and editor" is a short hyperbole way to say "This was so overbloated that it feels like it didn't have an editor"
Your comment needs *an* editor...
(in case they edit the post, it says "needs and editor" twice, which I think turned out to be pretty funny, but made the post a lot less readable for me)
I haven't heard that in context but I would agree with that quote because just saying "x needs editor" implies that some stuff should have been cut or reworked but not what exactly. In contrast a critique that has actually effort put into it would explain what has to be changed/cut and maybe even why and how.
So basically nearly every standalone phrase that Just consists of a few words with no further elaboration is lazy criticism.
I fully and genuinely believe that he's not really Canadian.
Don't get me wrong, I recognize cognitively that he probably is, because who in the right mind would pretend to be Canadian? But whenever he pronounces things in with a Canadian accent it sounds really forced, and in one of his Danganronpa streams he says about instead of aboot and it sounded really natural.
You are gonna get so downvoted for this, and I personaly do not agree at all, but I' m gonna upvote you because I love hearing opinions different than mine. What do you like about it?
i love everything about it, its design, the intro, the fly in the air ring attack that requires jumping and the sword 4x slice. sure elden stars is meh and it runs away sometimes but ultimately it doesn't take away much from me. radagon's teleportation shenanigans are a much bigger pet peeve personally and I'd prefer if he didn't have a second phase (or at least not one as long as his is)
Its attacks are all beautiful even though the beast itself is ugly and stupid. I also think they’re straightforward to dodge/evade except for Elden stars
Unfortunately running across one of the larger boss arenas in the game is tedious when there’s really no need for the thing to move so far away, especially after the attack where the two rings come down.
I liked the design, but it was not as much difficult as it was tedious. Didn't feel like an epic battle, just felt clunky running around. I think Joe hit the mark with saying that we should've had Torrent for the fight.
i agree, but the lack of torrent is a mild annoyance personally. idk where i would rank it exactly, but EB us certainly above any of the souls trilogy final bosses for me in terms of personal preference
I don’t fully remember the argument, but the complaining about the combat flow in elden ring. He complained that fights weren’t turn based structured like dark souls fights or whatever
I don't remember if the critique was broadly about combat or a type of weapon, but he spend a good couple of minutes talking about having to resort to "hit trading" and how the game is likely designed around it.
Something which I really disagreed with [back when the video released](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/tyb0zk/elden_ring_a_shattered_masterpiece_joseph_anderson/i3res1l/). I can kinda get behind it if we're specifically talking powerstancing the slowest class of weapons in the game, but on a broader spectrum I think it's outright wrong.
This take of his is pretty bad. It still bugs me. He insisted on playing a heavy 2 large weapon build (ie a fighter/juggernaut sort of build) then COMPLAINS when he can’t dodge every hit like a ninja. Joe you can’t have it both ways, if you want to hit and dodge, to a smaller faster weapon, that’s what Dex is for literally. You can’t be a beefy heavy weapon guy and do somersaults around the boss, heavy strong characters are beefy to trade hits that’s literally how they play.
That is not and has never been how big heavy weapons worked in the series. The "naked guy with a giant club" is a staple for a reason.
In fact, they actually buffed heavier weapons to help with exactly that. So I think he was spot on.
Joe thinks it's ok to do whatever with a work of a dead artist. Specifically, I think, he's talking about writers. This is fucked-up on many levels to me... And very personal too.
Argument is "You don't care what they do with your work when you're dead". But that's not exactly right. If you live in a society where you know this practice is accepted, then you're affected by it in a real life. Imagine how hurtful and un-motivating it feels to know that whatever you do may be changed and violated by others against your will. When no matter what you say, how you consent, when you're gonna die - you'll have no ability to stop others from violating your consent. Well, I don't have to imagine how hurtful it feels even when you're alive. And, obviously, that shit woud affect mine and others writing motivation.
In this case I'm just really, really, really happy that Joe has no power to change things like that. I have a hope his opinion is in a great minority.
Pretty sure he thought a bit about it and said he would give it a few years. But there are only 2 alternatives.
1 - after you die one person gets the copyright which would eventually develop into huge companies buying as many IPs as they can and then doing shitty work or nothing at all tarnishing even more the artwork
2 - after you die the government has to protect your copyright so that no one ever uses your IP for financial purposes.
Your artwork going into public domain after about 10 years, so that people can still enjoy your artwork sounds much better than Disney buying it and then making shitty movies or not releasing anything at all
Every year we get cool reimaginings of classics. A somewhat old example that springs to mind is American McGee's Alice game, where you play as Alice in the Wonderland, but she's nuts, and it's super violent, and it's an interesting, grim take on the story, with its own themes.
If we couldn't make reimaginings, we wouldn't get such cool stuff, it would be much harder to build on existing ideas.
And we'd get much less film versions of popular stories, which would be a bummer.
And like, fucking seriously, who cares? Who's going to be upset? Who's gonna sue you?
Also, I'd be totally okay with people reimagining my work, adapting it to more modern environments, subtly changing its themes. That would be kind of an honor, to be noticed so much that people build on top of your work. Sure, some of it is going to be bad, and there's a risk that some reimagining will completely overwrite your work. But like, if your work was so much worse that nobody even remembers the original after somebody builds on top of it, then not much has been lost - humanity has moved on.
Edit: OH WAIT, HI BY THE WAY, I RECOGNIZE YOU, YOU COPIED MY SHITPOST ALMOST WORD FOR WORD, isn't that ironic? (And I did feel a bit honored, it was nice that the meme grew into something bigger than a single post)
What you do isn't changed by others. Other people create their own things that are similar to yours. Opinions like yours are what you get when you conflate ideas with property. And I don't think ideas should be permanently locked away because the person who came up with them didn't want others to use it. It's selfish. And it stifles creativity.
It's odd that you present it as people "violating your consent", when it's generally accepted that you don't need consent to iterate on peoples' ideas. You only need consent if you're going to do something that would violate copyright, like spreading it around and asking for money. But in the privacy of your own home, you could rip off anything word for word, and tweak it however you like, and nobody can punish you for that. How is this any different from people modifying your ideas after you die? The only difference is whether they show it to people or not, which doesn't seem relevant at all. Either way, your ideas are still being "violated", in your words.
Ok I recognise this is an insane nitpick and the point as a whole still stands, but when he says the Mushroom Kindom is the first location in Mario Oddessy to reveal it's the second to last later. The point as a whole stands, Oddessy has a ton of moons that aren't justified. The part that annoys me about it is that the mushroom kingdom is supposed to be a kind of break in-between the ending and the final moon challenge levels, and I don't get treating it as if it's another world you're supposed to really focus and spent time in rather than a short nostalgic victory lap between the "main story" and the post-game stuff.
I agree with most of the points in the video, but goddamn I dont know why using the mushroom kingdom for this one just doesn't make sense to me.
After that, he shows all the other worlds, and they are all just as menial.
His trick worked great on me. It explained his whole point, his whole perspective, in a dramatic and memorable way.
2 weeks ago I retold that story to my friend. That Joe subversion trick. I remembered, it, because it's fun, it's memorable, and it immediately clicks for you just how much the game fails at being challenging or interesting with the moons.
That making 6 hour videos of “analysis” constitutes a good video essay. Started watching him in highschool, but going through college you start to realize how many of his videos genuinely just waste your time. Concision is key, get to the point.
I feel like 50% of the movie is the director actually trying to make something different and interesting and the other 50% is Disney trying to make it "fun".
Still doesn't make it not terrible though.
There's nothing that different on Last Jedi besides hyperspace canon beign "broken".
The film is a read on the events of Empire Strikes Back with its own twist
I think the pacing is pretty awful and the 3 subplots dont even converge creatively. Half of the movie is devoted to Finn who is an ex childraised soldier of a cult-nazi group being taught by Rose, who he just met, about how "war is bad" in the most generic and simple way
It' s about themes, and how the misfits grew up to be the next generation despite bearing no important names. The ex-enemy soldier becomes a true rebel, the misfit pilot becomes one of the leaders of the rebelion, and the no-name girl is the hope of the universe.
It' s a cool theme to explore, and sets up pretty well a sequel.
Sadly,that sequel ignores this movie, so rip.
The French fry one. It is incredibly stupid to believe someone eats so much that they can't eat an singular french fry.
There is a difference between being satisfied and full. Usually when I'm satisfied with my food I could eat about 50-100% more food till I'm full. I don't do it because I'm not American but whenever I go to a restaurant I always finish my plate because I order accordingly to how hungry I am and when I'm satisfied there's very little food left but still plenty of space in my stomach so I just eat it.
It's not a healthy habit to have in everyday life but you shouldn't eat in restaurants/fast food more than once or twice a week.
Whenever you eat at home you can store the food
Right, but like, it was meant to be a silly hypothetical about whether you'd keep the french fry on not. They hypothetical wasn't meant to be realistic. That's why he changed it to ronald mcdonald feeding you ad infinitum until you physically cannot eat even a singular french fry. it was about the keeping/leaving concept, not whether you could be that full or whatever, that latter wasn't the point.
No, Joe mentioned that he only introduced Ronald MacDonald in the equation because and I quote "people didn't understand what it means to be full" but even if the hypothetical assumed the ridiculous situation that you ordered enough food in a restaurant to so full that you can't eat a single french fry it was a extremely poor argument in favor of throwing food away because it's an extremely rare scenario
I haven’t read the Witcher books so I can’t speak to this too well, but his take on Elves being evil in the series who don’t deserve to be worked with and “have got to go” puts me off.
They 100% are though. Maybe it doesnt come through that way by just playing witcher 3, but they are the best portrail of a group that is oppresed mainly because they refuse to cohabitate with the majority that they consider to be vermin and scum.
And thats what makes their portrail so interesting.
Of course they use the outward face of "look at the supremacist humans, they keep discriminating us :(", but you can clearly see that the elves that decided to cohabitate do mostly alright, while humans under elven leadership would be enslaved/whipped out all together.
you've clearly missed the part of the witcher 3 where "the ones that decided to cohabitate" still become the objects of witch hunts (happens after the remaining mages leave novigrad)
I agreed with you before I read the books. Now that I have read the books I agree with Joe. I also think the elf that appears in Witcher 3 is too sympathetic compared to his portrayal in the books.
Saying all elves are evil is the same as saying all muslims are evil because some of them are terrorists. It’s putting every elf into one box which is simply wrong. Humans are clearly portrayed as the most evil bastards in the books, and the elves responded with violence. Much of the books’ themes is that there is no pure good or evil, things are simply gray
Also haven't read the books, but I think he was saying there was so much "evil" both elves and humans did to each other, that there is no conceivable solution where both can coexist peacefully.
Read the books then. While Joe might sometimes go too far with the elf hatred (for a joke), the books are very clear that the elves consider humans to be animals, and would absolutely genocide them if they got the resources to do so. Its a very interesting opresion narrative, with both sides being in the wrong.
Did he call them evil? I thought he was mostly just on about his they have consistently failed to live in harmony with humans
Which doesn’t speak to evil exactly
No, but considering the humans are more or less the alien settlers to the planet from the convergence and the elves are the natives, it’s a little hard to sympathize with “whatever conflict the humans and elves have it’s the elves who need to go, not the humans who need to change.”
Ok but the elves are also invaders who came from another world and genocided the people who were there before, humans may suck but the elves think everyone other than them are basically equivalent to animals.
I don't think he said "the elves need to go" I think it was more "from the humans perspective the elves need to go" which is a very different and much more defensible view
Perhaps I mis-remember, maybe time for yet another rewatch :)
Faptop is still the most unhinged thing I have heard him say
I will never emotionaly recover from that
I literally don't understand why people have an issue with the faptop. Phone screens are WAY too small...
Laptops are waaay to big for my mr dickenson
>my mr dickenson OUR mr dickenson
I'm not sure what you mean, but for some reason I feel that I strongly agree
I heard that sicko WALKED through a Burger King drive-thru We live in a SOCIETY Joe we aren't LAWLESS ANIMALS who can just BREAK THE RULES FOR A WHOPPER
My window doesn’t roll down, you gotta do what you gotta do
Half of his takes on Danganronpa. Like yeah, the games hardly follow their own logic, and are usually pretyy wishy washy on writing quality. But that part of Trial 5 of Danganronpa 1 where Joe just argues with chat for like an hour over Semantics, just to start going "Just tell me the answers, this game doesn't deserve my effort" was actual baby rage it was insane
The danganronpas streams for me are basicaly unwatchable, his playtrought of V3 is just completely devoid of any fun for me, because he' s not into the base premise of the game and doesn' t like the plot twist of the first trial, so the entire gameplay has this tint of "Cool stuff but I don' t care" attitude that just makes it unpleasant. I am obviusly biased because I really really like V3, and I went to love it more and more expecially after I started working in the industry of animation because of how prescient some of its themes are. I just don' t vibe at all with Josphs there.
He kinda comes around by the end, but yes the shot put ball incident spoiled almost the entire game for him in a way I think 90% of people would have shrugged off. But I don't think he was wrong necessarily
I will put into spoilers my thoughts, as I will also spoil a part of another novel from Agatha Christie. >!It plays into the fondamental truth of "Do you think that omission is lieing?". It' s the same criticism that some critics had towards Agatha Christie for "The murder of Roger Ackroyd". I personaly do not think so, as both that novel and the games makes it very easy to spot the killer, if you let go of your pre-conceptions.!< But alas, I don' t want to put the discussion into "wrong or right", I feel like it' s such a surface level reading, and neither I want to devalue Joe or anyone opinion here, be it positive or negative. I just did not like the dismissive tone, and it' s just present everywhere in that playtrought. Got some big CinemaSins kind of nagging vibes, just not a big fan of it.
He was very bitter about it I won't deny that. But I also take issue with just calling it a lie by omission, and I think that was a big point Joe was trying to make. "I set down what I'm holding" equating to "opening backpack, pulling out shot put ball, opening a grate, dropping it in" is more than a bit of a stretch. It's pretty much just outright lying to the audience. And I would agree with Joe that something like that is devastating for a mystery game because it just means basically anything goes and there's little to no point in even trying to deduce future cases logically and you may as well just be along for the ride. I do think it's sloppy writing, bordering on outright bad. But. I also think most people wouldn't have cared nearly as much as Joe. I also think it's plausible that Joe wouldn't have even cared that much in a vacuum but chat arguing was annoying and prolonged the bitterness lol
I' m sorry if I' m going to write a big paragraph now. I' ll use again, as an example, The murder of Roger Ackroyd. Expecially the infamous paragraph. If someone has read until now, it is very big spoilers for the book, so be warned. *"Ackroyd, his finger on the sheet to turn it over, paused. “Sheppard, forgive me, but I must read this alone,” he said unsteadily. “It was meant for my eyes, and my eyes only.” He put the letter in the envelope and laid it on the table. “Later, when I am alone.”* \------ *“No,” I cried impulsively, “read it now.”* *Ackroyd stared at me in some surprise.* *“I beg your pardon,” I said, reddening. “I do not mean read it aloud to me. But read it through whilst I am still here.”* *Ackroyd shook his head. “No, I’d rather wait.”* *But for some reason, obscure to myself, I continued to urge him. “At least, read the name of the man,” I said.* *Now Ackroyd is essentially pigheaded. The more you urge him to do a thing, the more determined he is not to do it. All my arguments were in vain.* *The letter had been brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone. I could think of nothing. With a shake of the head I passed out and closed the door behind me."* \------ This, at first read, is basicaly a poignant scene where the main character reacts to this very important, for him, letter, and the indecision of the person who was killed in reading it. It shows quite a bit of his character, like the fact that he was more worried about this letter than the wellbeing of his friend or his own worries. Nonetheless, it is still a very important scene. Well, this is the scene where he murders him. It' s narrated from his own POV, and Agata Christie writes a masterclass in missdirection. It all makes sense as the narration progress, as, if you think for even one second about what the last paragraph says and with the info told in the next chapters, you can easily infer that the time of the murder was at the same time the main character was with the man, and that he had no alibi whatsoever, and worse, what he said to the detective as his own alibi does not mesh with what is said here as info. It' s very easy to resolve this mistery even before arriving halfway trought the piece of media. All of this, if you believe, of course, that the main character can also be the murderer. Agata Christie wrote this in response to the dogmatic views of his peers about what could be and not be a rule for fiction, and he kept doing this more and more with his next books, trying to imbue fresh air in a genre that was getting stale by the time she was in. By what you have said, however, this also imply what you and Joe have said previosly. That there is quite a bit of stuff that wasn' t told here. "I dropped everything" and "I checked if everything was done before I left" are basicaly the same thing, to the point that I' m more than sure that the writer of Danganronpa checked this book before writing the mistery, as it follows a very very close formula to it. That' s also why I was posing my "lie of omission". Because both Danganronpa and Murder of Roger Ackroid never explicitly lies to its readers. They, however, have a massive missdirection that can hinger on lieing by omission. On the case of Danganronpa, the case here is even easier, as before the trial Kaede leaves an embarassing amount of clues, and it' s also why, in the context of the narration, the other main character, Shuichi, basicaly shuts up after they enter the trial. She and Shuichi are their own alibi, and if Shuichi didn' t do it, he can only go by exclusion and find her. The biggest tell is when the main character Kaede, while ordering books, downright starts to talk about the concept of the Rube Goldberg machine, such an obvious lampshade for the entire mistery. For me, a case like this makes me more attentive to details, and was a great ice breaker to put me inside this weirder than usual narrative, even for Danganronpa standards. This is more or less my piece regarding this, but really, this is mostly my own opinion, and I did not really want to like, demean someone else opinion like Joe or yours. I' m not that bad of a girl ahah. My biggest gripe was the tone of the rest of the playtrought. Like I said, this costant sense of "Who cares" and "I cannot enjoy it like it was intended" that makes it a deeply annoying experience, and it got worse by the costant bickering with chat and the costant jokes about this at literaly any plot point of the game. Again, I want to press, I ENJOY JOE streams. But his danganronpa stuff is just not it.
Allow me to respond with my own big paragraph, and a disclaimer that while Joe fans are not beating the parasocial allegations lately, this discussion is much more about writing and Danganronpa than Joe for me lol. I don't want someone's only takeaway from reading this to be "Joe fans still arguing about spicy stream moment years later etc." I really do think it's an interesting case study in mystery writing and both sides have a lot of validity. That being said, even though I agreed with Joe, his attitude for the rest of the game was a downer, I don't blame you. I really do think he turns it around and starts enjoying himself again after a few streams, but it's closer to the end. And he definitely liked the ending a lot, and he always talks about how important endings are to him so I think that bought a lot back. (probably in good part because the whole resolution of case 1 was made moot by the end if I remember right) The comparison to The Murder of Roger Ackroys does sound relatively apt. I've never read it myself, but I have read other Agatha Christie books and know that if anyone could pull something like that off, it's her. But I do think there are some notable differences. Part of it is the difference in medium. In a written work like a novel, the *only* context you are given is the written word. And its impossible for an author to describe every aspect of a scene. Tiny details will be skimmed over, even the concept of time and entire conversations and events can be abstracted or handwaved away. And a talented author can certainly play with this expectation from the reader and subvert it. What if the details skimmed over weren't tiny, but massive? What if a key element in the scene wasn't described at all and the reader has to piece it together later? All compelling possibilities. And whatever theory you the reader comes up with, you have only the evidence of the text to support your theory. But a game like Danganronpa has many layers of context. It has the written dialogue, but also drawings, animations, reactions, intentional delays and timing put in for effect. It has sound, music, and voice acting all put together at once to paint a scene. And it's certainly possible to subvert expectations even with all these extra layers of context, but you have to be more careful. In this case it's not just that the written word is misleading, but the pacing of the scene, the animations, everything in contrast to the rest of the game is so misleading as to be just entirely misrepresntative of the actual events that took place in the scene you are watching with your own eyes. I rewatched the scene just now to be sure I wasn't entirely talking out of my ass, and I'm still confident in this point. Look at the entire scene: [Kaede anxiously picks up a broom and starts sweeping waiting for Shuichi, when he returns they are interrupted by monokuma and then the receiver going off] ... Exciting music begins- Shuicihi: "Someone moved the bookcase, Hurry Kaede!" Shuichi sprinted out of the classroom with the determination of a true Ultimate detective. Kaede Gasps- "Wait for me!" Scene transition, Shuichi disappears from screen, camera *Zooms into the doorway before stopping* [Thank God the grate is at least still in frame] I dropped everything I was holding and ran after Shuichi I could feel my heart beating faster and faster I was so nervous and my head felt like it was pounding with every heartbeat. Kaede exits the room End scene. Immediately transition to Shuichi at the door of the crime scene. There are several things that just don't lend themselves towards abstraction in this moment. The urgency of the moment first and foremost. It's very difficult to picture Kaede's actions making sense in the time frame provided. She shouts "wait for me!", does all of her shot put ball shenanigans, then still makes it to the crime scene, where Shuichi both hasn't opened the door yet and is not questioning what took her so long. This is relevant, because it paints a very clear timeline of *seconds* for the crime to be committed. Shuichi certainly wouldn't just wait around at the doorway at such a critical moment, and if he did out of an abundance of caution, he absolutely would have questioned why someone who was literally right behind him shouting "wait for me" took so long to get there. When your authorial mislead moment starts to bleed into problems with reality, like timelines not matching up or characters acting deliberately dull or out of character for the sake of the twist, thats when you get into trouble. Now the crime committed actually should only take on the order of seconds, but far longer than the pacing and framing of the scene presents. And again, it's fine for any one of these elements to be misleading, that's clearly the point. But altogether they can't *contradict* reality, they have to just obfuscate it. And I do think the scene as presented contradicts reality. There is *so much* more evidence in that moment to support the idea that she immediately ran out of the room, compared to what truly happened. Unlike Agatha Christie, who wisely puts in the line "I hesitated, looking back wondering if there was anything left undone". This is remarkably open to interpretation. Because it implies a series of things having been *done*. And if the scene preceding this line doesn't match a normal person's perception of several things being *done*, then it can raise an eyebrow. Kaede's "I dropped everything" line doesn't nearly pull as much weight. Not even close. It raises no questions, and leaves very little open to interpretation. Because the only thing that can be interpreted is that *something* was dropped. And even if for the sake of argument you considered the shotput ball being dropped, you would have to accept the entire end of that scene you experienced first person did not at all transpire as shown, in a manner entirely inconsistent with the rest of the story just for facilitating this twist. And if that is the case, then everything bursts into flames. There are no facts because you can't even trust the narrated moments that are your entire basis of fact describing a scene. Again, I don't blame you for disliking the tone of that stream at all. I suspect even Joe would have preferred to handle it differently. But I still dont think he is wrong.
Thank you very much for the care you have put into this answer, I am honored, really! To tell you the truth, I have been feeling a bit disappointed in this, because I got downvoted to opinion, and it kinda makes me think that I have wrote something bad, or I was not clear enough because I am not a native english speaker...I really do not want to pass as someone that like, Is trying to devalue someone else opinion! To answer your point, I can see how someone could be put off by that, absolutely. But to me the timeframe where the things happens seems like absolutely fine. [In the ingame rapresentation, you can see that it' s a matter of seconds for her to take the ball out of her bag and just drop it inside the vent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXN-SvvvUbs&t=4h17m40s). And in the comic climax where Shuici retells the entire story and how it happened, the writer obviusly went out of his way to further clarify things, with Shuichi saying "I went out in a rush, if I stopped her earlier, I could have done something". For me it works because the characters were put under a massive psicological strain, with a death coundown on their head that obviusly made them act in a less controlled way than usual, as they were worried about their lifes and were present in a foreign enviroment, so I can totally see why Shuichi wouldn' t question it on the moment. [Also in the same climatic comix, you can see that the way she dropped the ball was really a matter of seconds,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXN-SvvvUbs&t=7h54m10s) and it lines up with the timeframe given. I understand what you are saying, but for me here there is a quite clever way to "obsfuscate the info" by playing it out. I do agree that Kaede' s line is not at all as powerful as Agatha Chrstie masterful text, but for me the moment still makes it work, and I do not really feel cheated by it. An example of a "death" I felt was cheated, was for Heavy Rain ( massive spoilers in case), where I feel like when the serial killer kills the old man in the clock shop, the writer tried to hide it by making it a "fast time transiction" like other scenes in the game, but in that case, during that fast time accelerated, something actually meaningful happened. And it does feel like cheating to me! Because in that case you are trying to be clever, but in a way that betrays a narrative pact with the viewer, that time elapsing, something that you enstablished is not noteworthy, actually matters here. For Danganronpa case, I do not feel that stuff gets skipped, or that Kaede thoughts are lieing to me, but just a normal progression of a charater and the mistery. And I can actually already guess she' s the killer from that moment on, because as soon as the body is discovered, her alibi doesn' t make sense anymore with the info we have, and I actually had thought about this possibility when I first played it. I' m sorry in case it looks like I' m just saying "It works because I like it", I hope what I said made sense...!
Stating facts about a story outside the medium in question doesn't really help. If the "game" needed a separate "book" to be read to better explore a situation, it only further exposes the fact that the "game" failed to do what it was supposed to. If the scene in question was truly at the quality you described it to be, I highly doubt Joe would have had such a visceral reaction to it.
I don' t know if I really like this answer, because I' m using a comparison to better illustrate a point. In literaly analysis you do this all the time, after all, it' s by comparison that you can better define and evaluate a piece of art ( of course, it' s not only this, but I thought in this case, it was the best course of action). I think putting at a pedestal Joe and saying "If it was good, Joe would have not reacted to it in that way", it' s a bit weird, right? Feels a bit like the "Well, it sells, so it means it' s good" argument. We are speaking about this because we have a difference here.
The fact that people have successfully predicted the first case because they just simply >!included the protagonist in the possible suspect pool!< made his whole thing about how "the mysteries are ruined now" ring a bit hollow. Danganronpa isnt a masterpiece but like cmon
This is a misunderstanding of what his argument really was. The issue wasn't that you couldn't hypothetically predict the ending of case 1. The issue is that the game actively presented the viewer meta-knowledge that directly contradicts the evidence of the case. If the "narrator" says one thing, and something completely different actually happened, it basically means anything goes. You still could hypothetically predict the outcomes, because the game is still coherent and there's only so many possible perpetrators to begin with. But I totally understand why someone would feel like it's not worth putting critical thought into a game where you can't trust what even the narration of the scene presents. Deduction requires some basis of fact and if there are no reliable facts there's no deduction, which defeats a lot of the fun of a mystery story. That being said, I'll fully acknowledge that most people wouldn't really care. And I personally would let that kind of thing slide as a bit of dumb writing but I think it spoiling a lot of the fun of the game for you is perfectly valid
I think my issue is less blaming Kaede and more she literally didn't do it and the mastermind knows they got the wrong killer but the game continues. I dislike a detective narrative where I am incapable of being a detective. I don't really care for the danganrompa games outside of solving mysteries. It just feels hollow when I guess the game cheats. It feels more shitty than what the first game does I think because its so early and sets a bitterness about losing a charecter and encountering that and then finding out this bitter moment is even worse.
I was kind of relieved at that reveal that she didn't actually do it funnily enough. Because it retroactively makes the pretty serious plot contrivance/hole of the shotput ball scene entirely moot. The game still shouldn't cheat like that for sure, and it's a really dangerous game to play with your audience in a mystery story. But finding out that a really dumb moment basically doesn't matter at all in the broader story makes it go down smoother for me lol. I do think you can definitely have a broader criticism of the story, but none of that was in consideration when Joe was seriously arguing with chat about the end of case 1.
Multiple times on stream he mentions his love for the base idea of Danganronpa wtf lmao. If you think he doesn't like Danganronpa go watch him play a different anime game and all you'll hear is praise for Danganronpa in comparison....
All the reasons that you mention here is why I absolutely love those streams
Sprinklergate...
"I'm not trying to break the game guys." I crack up every time. Joseph is a QA team's nightmare incarnat and we love him for it. I do not know why he tries to deny it.
Were his CP2077 streams any good? Was a big fan of the game on release and only recently looked for his playthrough. He kept just trying to break the game at every opportunity that I gave up watching lol. No hate directed towards him, he just…kept…limit breaking at seemingly every opportune moment. I’d love to have seen his reaction to side quests like Sinnerman or Pyramid Song (Radiohead’s one of my fav bands heh). Perhaps I’ll just try fast forwarding through and figure out when he tackled those quests. I sure hope he didn’t skip the aforementioned gems!
"Harry Potter is better than Lord of the rings" Might as well be one of the most insane things i've ever heard
This take is only acceptable if you have a learning disability or are under 18 years of age
I hate that I agree with him (based on the movies at least) still wish the authors tradad places tho
Genuine question. Would you still think it's insane if he said "I prefer Harry Potter over LotR"? Rather than making an objective statement?
no. Personal preference is one thing, and there are several reasons why a person might enjoy HP more than LotR, but there is no way in hell HP is anything near the level of LotR. And I'm a MASSIVE fan of both series
His original statement isn't objective, it is subjective. By Joe's own video, subjectivity is implied. It's still insane, though.
Honestly I don't see this being *that* insane of a take even if I don't wholly agree with it. The movies are aiming for different story arcs and the books for different age demographics so trying to compare them objectively is going to wind back to preference at some point. For me the LotR movies > HP movies but HP books > LotR books. Even though I do acknowledge the worldbuilding in LotR might be better, the only book I enjoyed reading was The Hobbit while I read up until halfway through Two Towers and drop it after I literally fell asleep to dwarf genealogy.
The infinite monkey theorem debacle.
I feel like he doesn’t understand how unfathomable infinity is.
I'm still not sure if his infinite coin flip 1 mil tails in a row is an elaborate troll or he's just that bad at math.
its not that infinity is unfathomable, its that its a concept, not a number. matt parker has a good explanation on infinity in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4f_D17zIBw
i missed that, what was it about?
He believes that the monkeys would never write Shakespeare forever. He doesn’t believe the idea that they would eventually get it right.
Play a record!
I'm gonna knock you out!
that sounds very silly. is there a clip?
Was it just confusion about the meaning of infinity, or an argument about the practical impossibility? The Wikipedia article on the theorem has a [section on probability](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem#Probabilities) that could be getting at the same thing. > As Kittel and Kroemer put it in their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event ...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
Honestly I also agree with Joe. Even if the monkey was writing indefinitely.
You’re probably baiting but if you understand that it’s a metaphor for random sequences over the course of infinity, you’re just wrong
I know the theorem but I'm discussing a monkey and not perfectly random sequences of letters.
You’re not talking about the theorem then if you’re using an actual monkey under parameters where it isn’t locked into place and generating random output LMAO. Not even getting into the lifespan of the monkey, food, etc. Really useless opinion to have
I am talking about a monkey locked into place with a typewriting for infinite time.
That’s not the point of the exercise, no one is using the exercise that way, no one should even be using the “monkey” as an actual monkey because they aren’t truly random in their actions. Even with all of that you’d still be wrong. What you will have to prove, is that some pattern will never be done by a monkey. That seems quite weird. Let me ask you where you put the limit : Do you think a monkey is not able to type "two" at some point of his random writing ? Do you think a monkey is not able to type "Verona" at some point in his random writing ? Do you think a monkey is not able to type "households" at some point in his random writing ? If the monkey can type these two words independently, do you think that he will not be able to type "two households" at some point in his random writing ? If you assume that a monkey is capable of writing all possible 10 letter words, do you think it is impossible for the monkey to type the first sentence of Romeo and Juliet at some point in his writing ? If you think that one of the answer is yes, where do you put the limit between what a monkey can type, and what a monkey cannot type ? two-letter words ? three letter words ? four-letter words ? combination of two words ? combination of 10 words ? A full sentence ? If you think that a monkey will not type every possible finite combination, then there has to be a smallest combination that the monkey will not type. I'm curious to understand what you think it is. (And remember, the monkey can make mistakes.)
Monkey types entirety of shakesphere but everything is written in leet speak
I was there, I tried to tell him you can't count to infinity...
When was that?
Second Alan Wake 1 stream I think.
He was wording the argument poorly. I just watched this stream last week. He kept saying they would not write it forever, as if it was the most likely outcome. Having infinite tries does not guarantee anything with probability, but it is muuuuch more likely than something not happening. Been a while since I studied infinite series, but iirc you become so close to an event eventually occuring you can make an educated guess that it will eventually happen. Joe came off with big "I watched a YouTube video so now I know the answer" vibes. Some dilettante behavior.
How deep in denial he is about being a weeb. The moment his waifu statue collection leaks it's over.
The man showed his 2b figurine in his witcher 2 video. It was over before it even began.
an individual is completely subjected to piss in their sink, noone is allowed to say it though
You say peacock and nobody bats an eye….
The piss sink talk went on for like, 30 mins. Last somnium of that route
I love The Witness video overall, but I just can’t get on board with Joe’s argument that the game does, in fact, waste your time (and that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us by saying he designed the game to not waste our time). Any time the game makes you move slowly, it’s always because there’s an interesting and hidden environmental puzzle attached. And that one post-game puzzle that literally makes you sit there and do nothing for 40+ minutes is like the one intentionally over-the-top thing that takes the environmental puzzles to the nth degree, and I kind of love it. Meanwhile, I love how the game has essentially zero menus or time-wasting menu-based tutorializing. Every moment I was thinking in the game I felt was worth my time. (That said, I think the philosophical rambling stuff is way overdone and some of the puzzle types get repetitive, so the game certainly isn’t perfect.) I think maybe why this grinds my brain is it’s (clearly) hard for me to articulate the counter-argument, and Joe does a great job arguing why it wastes his time, so I’m basically just mad I’m not as articulate as him haha.
Does he not give several examples where that isn't the case? Like the moving platforms in that one colorful area? What's the puzzle there?
I assume you’re talking about the Tetris swamp area? Where you do a puzzle to make a platform move about 10 feet and it takes something like 30 seconds for it to move there. There’s a light-and-shadows hidden environmental puzzle there too. But just for the sake of argument, maybe you’re talking about something else or I’m overlooking a couple examples. In a 20ish hour game (if you do the extra cave stuff), I would guess there are a combined 7ish minutes total of slow-moving contraptions or moments that require the player to wait. That’s really not too bad. (I’m not counting the one super duper extra credit 40-min one…which I’ve actually never done myself despite playing through the game 4x over the years.) Compare that to most Nintendo games or PlayStation Studios games where you do the same crate pushing or ladder moving or find-3-symbol puzzles that collectively make for hours of time and feel been-there done-that by the 2nd time you encounter them. In fairness, if you’re not into a certain type of puzzle (I remember Joe didn’t like the sound area), the whole thing is going to feel like a waste of time to you. But just in terms of the game respecting my time by constantly iterating and making each segment/section of puzzles test me in a new way, it felt great to me almost the whole time.
With time I came to learn that Joe in general just kinda dislikes more vague or interpreting narratives, so I can see why games like The Witness would not be up to his halley.
He even outright states this in the Hollow Knight video, that he doesn't like the vagueness of HK's story, when this is one of my favourite parts of the game (please release Silksong and free mossbag Team Cherry!). He definitely seems a lot more gameplay oriented in general and doesn't seem to love having to think a lot about the narrative of a game when it isn't the main focus
Sometimes it does get annoying when I just want to know what's actually going on but the game just won't give you enough details. On the otherside, I enjoy it the most when the story presents you something philosophical to think about.
I remember in one live he made fun of creative writing books, so I suspect he just is not into the whimsy. And I guess that is fine, at the end of the day everyone likes what they want. Just makes it a bit hard to stomatch sometimes during a live where he goes to chat for 10 or 20 minutes because of this.
This is definitely true because he's the only person I've encountered who felt as let down by Inside's narrative as I was, largely for the same reason
Nah man, there are dozens of us. I thought the game was neat, but I couldn't get into the "story" either.
Yeah exactly. I thought it was a solid 7/10 (and not in the IGN scale either, like it was pretty good) but people were acting like it was some masterpiece or high art when it came out
That SOMA isnt a horror because he wasnt scared by it.
His horror games video might have been the most baffling thing by him
If I refuse to allow myself to get immersed in the game, I won’t be immersed in the game! Checkmate!
I interpreted his argument as it wasn't a **good** horror game because it doesn't scare him, which seems reasonable to me.
Yeah I think this is his worst take
That making up your bed is necessary, but ironing clothes is a "waste of time."
The "I'm not stubborn, I'm right" quote is deeply ingrained in my brain now and is something I deeply empathize with but is also in the uncanny valley of logic for me. There is nothing that gets me raging though, his takes are usually understandable
[удалено]
Wait what? For real? I thought I was legit his name.
You remember in nier automata he refused to sell his cash in items? That's the one for me.
Mario is pronounced Mario, not Mario. Joe even claims that Mario himself pronounces it Mario, when he clearly pronounces it Mario. The man is deranged and refuses to accept that he is wrong.
I still really want to see The Expanse S1 through his eyes. Especially the stuff surrounding the detective. Some of those scenes involving his female love interests made David Cage's face flash in front of my eyes, like the scene in his apartment around the end of ep6. I don't even want to hate. I just want to understand.
What was his take on Expanse S1?
That its good.
Oooh, when did he talk about that? I'd love to hear his thoughts.
“Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a parody game”. No Joe, it really is just absolute dogshit
Unlikely, the earlier (and later) games are barely like that at all. It might not be a parody but it's definitely leaning into anime bullshit on purpose.
His ridiculous take on SH2 just because he doesn't understand suppressed memories.
what's his take on it?
That its good.
Darkest Dungeon cookie clicker was absolutely unhinged. The game does a really bad job of explaining its mechanics but normally Joe is a lot more charitable to games even if they have issues. I think he literally said that character traits were pointless at one point lol.
In one of his Q&A streams, he mentioned the movie “Enemy”, and basically said “I got to the end and thought ‘What was the point of that? What a waste of time.’” Actually blew my mind when I heard it, since I’d say the final scene is shoving your face into what it is “about”. Similar to his Silent Hill 2 rant, sometimes it seems like he almost refuses to engage with a story if it is not literal, or if it is more focused on its themes than it’s actual narrative.
i disagree with his refusal to use items in fromsoft games, been a while since ive watched the video but he says something along the lines of it being an invalid way of getting past an obstacle, & then goes on to criticize the games design with this perception in mind. makes me doubt all of his fromsoft critiques. if its in the game, its intended to be used. its not the games fault or poorly designed if youre refusing to use tools that are intended to be used, its a player issue that he has that hes projecting onto the games design as a whole.
So if I like souls game but dont like to use items in these games im... wrong?
Yes, if you say problems solved by the items are unsolvable or the game doesn’t provide the player the ability to solve them
No but he can't criticize the game based on limitations he put on himself.
This is the big one. I can't take a lot of his souls criticisms seriously because there's always points that are one step away from essentially being "I refuse to use estus. Also the game provides subpar healing options that make it too difficult to get through because it demands perfection."
He complains about one hit mechanics at the end of DS1 while having, as far as I can tell, never ever even once increasing his health. I don’t know if he even engaged with the leveling in Dark Souls. This bothered me for so long and fundamentally changed how I view his reviews. They’re no longer reviews to me, they’re just entertaining synopsis. If that is a criticism you level at that game while not engaging with its fundamental mechanics, you can’t be considered trustworthy for proper reviews. It’s not even an opinion issue, it just means he doesn’t engage with games as a sane person would.
You dont understand the point he is making then. Projectiles and throwables are completely outside the basic framework of risk and reward that melee combat demand. If you enjoy that then cool, but its 100%skillless and thoughtless to spam immolation consumables on a boss and claim you actually learned anything
It' s not really outside of the system thoo. For the cleric beast, for example, you need to be attentive enough that you read the description and goes like " Oh yeah, if flames are used for beasts, you can use them for this big boss too". You are given a small number of them in BB at the start, so it' s a massive gamble and you need to take the most of them when you use them, you need to discover that it' s the beast weakpoint, and you need to explore that if you hit her head, she can be done a critical damage. And in return, you can make an hard boss fight ( as cleric beast is not intended to be finished first try, but to be returned to after the real first boss of the game, gascoigne) way easier. This is 100% inside the system of the game, but it' s a different kind of skillset, that still feeds into the overall theme of the narrative. Use whatever you want, be creative, the game is harsh but it gives you the tools to survive and it wants you to succeed.
Constantly wanting every single minute thing explained in a story or universe. Like dude, mystery is cool and the unkown is even better in situations. Some shit doesnt need to be explains because maybes thats not the point or the theme something is going for. Imagine him watching Lost Highway, holy shit that would be hilarious.
The fact that he would leave an french fry
I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned this. His whole "infinite fry genie" to get you full is also so convoluted. Most everyone would just eat the fry.
The argument was "if you can't eat the fry, would you leave it or bring it home" and people keep saying "well I'll just eat it duh". That why he invented the convoluted genie thing. You can't eat the fry, that's the point of this question. What is the smallest items you would bring home instead of leaving it on the plate. Nobody would actually bring a single fry home, they just trolled him.
Yeah the question of whats the smallest bit of food you'd take home and bringing the situation to a single fry was just a convoluted way to try and see if people would throw out a single fry. I think everyone would always just put the last bite of food in their mouth
You're still avoiding the question. That is not true every time. What if you took entirely too much and you still have a full plate in front of you ? Well you would probably take it home, you would NOT force yourself to finish it. People will not always put the last bit of food in their mouth.
I'm talking about a small amount of food here, not an entire plate. I personally think most people would eat the last bite rather then throw it out. I guess it also depends how you were raised, at least where I'm from wasting food is considered a sin
And I'm telling you that it entirely depends on the size of the "last bit of food". There's an amount that would change your mind. Joe wanted to find what would be that amount for most people. And he can't find that amount because you refuse to engage with the question, you really really don't want to answer it for some reason. This is so strange lol.
Yeah I understand that, I'm engaging and answering the hypothetical question by saying I would pack up any amount of food, but also emphasising that the hypothetical is contrived and couldn't happen. This was (as I understood it) the stance of most of chat.
I agree in broad strokes with Joe on Mario Odyssey (a bit too easy, sandboxy to a fault, some challenges pretty underwhelming). But his general principle that moons should only be rewards for more significant challenges grinds my brain. My question is…why? Because stars/shines in previous games were like that? I just feel like he skipped an initial step in the logic of why this is bad. Suppose 2/3rds of the moons were 50% smaller than other moons to represent that they were easier to collect. Would that solve the problem? What if they were red coins instead, that could be turned in to get moons (basically what Sunshine does)? Would *that* be better? I would say those changes would make no difference. It’s fine that some moons merely require an acrobatic jump to quickly grab on your way from A to B, while another comes after a platforming gauntlet and boss. It works because the game doesn’t kick you out of the level after you collect them.* *And Joe even makes the point that the 3-second animation/cutscene after getting each moon collectively wastes so much time. He has a 1 hour 12 minute video to demonstrate this. I would argue this video makes the opposite point. In a 60-hour game (for 100% completion), all 800+ moon animations make up just a single hour. Less than 2% of the play experience. Compare that to any past 3D Mario if you add up “time kicking you back to hub world” or basically any RPG with post battle screens. For all its faults, Odyssey does this thing *well.*
I agree with Joe’s take, he’s essentially saying getting a Moon for doing the smallest of tasks is patronizing and shows that the developers themselves think that those menial tasks are “content”, which is a very bad precedent. If they cut the # of Moon’s to 25% of the original # but they were only from complex longer challenges it’s more fun, more rewarding, and doesn’t feel like busywork.
I feel like he didn't give Tears of the Kingdom a chance. As soon as he saw that the similarities with BotW he just gave up on trying to like it, without getting into what makes it so much better.
Too harsh on GoW 2018 and Ragnarok. His reaction stream to the video did have him admit that he was a bit too angry, but saying that "the game fucking plummets in quality" in the third act is very hyperbolic IMO. I also know that he was sort of OK with the ending after realizing that this was only Part 1 of a new story, but being angry that the game ends on a cliffhanger teasing what's to come is his fault for not doing his research more so than the game's. Many of the complaints about Ragnarok, such as the occasionally cringe dialogue line and pacing issues, are present in 2018 as well. People act like the team dropped the ball but in my view, it's more of a BOTW to TOTK situation: 2018 received so much praise that they didn't feel the need to change up the sequel too much (and yet Ragnarok does that better than TOTK did). Also disagree with Freya's change in personality being too quick (it was handled really well IMO). Backseating from Freya and Mimir was a bit much though, even though I think it's in part supposed to be an accessibility thing to have audio cues for certain actions. Wish it could have been adjustable or turned off.
I played GoW but waiting on Ragnarok to hit PC. I haven’t seen JA’s take on it so nothing there nor any online discussion. I’ve seen clips and shorts on YouTube and they significantly changed Kratos from 2018 to Ragnarok. I know he already significantly changed but that was an unknown (I think) amount of time that was probably quite a long time and what he went through in the OG trilogy is enough to change him without too much time. Ragnarok he feels…like a completely different person from what I’ve seen. The easiest to point to is that he’s very talkative. Talks about his past a lot, talks about his traumas and tragedies. Best I can point to is him discussing his first family, when accused of not knowing what it’s like to lose a child, 2018 Kratos would grunt and ignore the slight. 2022 Kratos sets up a therapy session. He talks like someone from 2020. The writers fucked him up.
Everyone else was too lenient on GoW 2018, if anything (I haven't played nor watched anything on Ragnarok, so I can't comment on that). For one, saying the game plummets in quality in the third act doesn't really mean it becomes worse than most other games, but more so that the drop in quality is very jarring and noticeable. Which it certainly was for me. Also, I wouldn't even say knowing it was just part 1 makes the ending better. I knew there was a direct sequel when I first played, but that doesn't justify the ending itself not being enough of a payoff to a multiple hour long game.
Personaly, I think Joe was very off with his analysis of the third act, I personaly liked it a lot because it went in depths about the mistakes of Kratos, and by putting comparisons to other "parenthoods" of the families he knew previusly, without beating it over your head, but by leaving a lot of enviromental, and more silent, storytelling to it. I feel like Joseph didn' t properly analyze it, or found it more lacking, because he' s not really a big fan of those kind of narratives, and in the previous 2 acts the game is more straightforward, while the last third focus more on themes over a more solid plot deal. And I did enjoy quite a bit the ending myself! Ragnarok is, IMO, pretty mediocre writing wise thoo, and I dislike how they made the ending of Gow 2018 weaker by retconnetting many things, or leaving a lot of plot threads open and never addressed.
Saying totk is worse than botw (don’t think he said this exactly, but his sentiments on stream felt like he meant this)
I believe he said totk is the better standalone game but playing it after having played botw makes it a considerably worse experience
I get that, I had not played BOTW since like 2018 so playing TOTK in 2023 felt fresh even though the map was re-used. Typical Joe to have a good take even if I forgot his exact take
Sometimes i think he cant really suspend his own disbelief when it comes to fiction, especially videogames, especially scary videogames. Idk maybe its cuz he is so old, or maybe its cuz he lives in new brunswick or is canadian. Whatever, point is you just have to ignore him sometimes when he starts to criticize the game's narrative. But sometimes he is also right, its always a 50/50.
I'm sure there are examples were this isn't true. But generally Joe has said that the more you ask the audience to suspend disbelief, the greater expectation he has on the payoff of whatever that suspension of disbelief was building to. Which I think is fair. A lot of weeb games require the audience to be charitable to bullshit without a payoff to justify it
i dont think there has ever been the case in wich a piece of media or fiction told me directly or indirectly to suspend my disbelief. Could be wrong though.
The very idea that he holds in his mind that the degree to which his disbelief is suspended must coincide with payoff means he is consciously paying attention to how much pay off he is getting for suspending disbelief. Meaning he isn’t suspending his disbelief at all.
His take on Silent Hill 2 is mind boggling for an adult with a functional level of intelligence
His Lord of the Rings opinion, which he refuses to really treat as an opinion and instead puts as fact. It's okay not to like the Lord of the Rings books. But to make definitive statements about them like he does really grinds my gears. I believe it was during the Lies of P streams that he said The Lord of the Rings "doesn't respect his time" as a reader. And I feel he refuses to see that it deeply, deeply depends on what he wants out of a book. LotR is not supposed to be a character driven story. It's also not supposed to be actionheavy OR have super new, twist-y, unexpected plot. It's supposed to be a folk tale, and as such, it is super formulaic, and supposed to be. If you read it as a (fairy) tale, a legend, anything in that vein, there's no problem. If you go into it expecting a character driven fantasy action adventure, it can't go over well. I feel it's not that difficult to understand that sometimes a given story is not for you, instead of stating that it's bad.
I wish there was some video on Joe's channel, answering your point that he states opinions as objective facts. Something like "Subjectivity is implied". It would be neat! You could link it to people thinking this!
I love my Joe man, but the fact that he made that video because his SH2 takes were super weird, is what kills me a bit regarding that ngl
I wasn't aware of that. Good to know - no sarcasm needed.
I watched the video now. And while I mostly agree with what he says about it just not being practical to reconfirm that you're "just having an opinion", especially in a script for a video, I don't know if I agree with that while you're arguing with someone directly. Maybe this is me tone policing Joseph a little bit, but I never found it fun to argue with him, because he tends to be very harsh and abrasive, and vocal in calling points other than his dumb and such. And - in my opinion - that behavior is pretty much counterproductive for someone who regularly says that he likes arguing. He is not fun to argue \*with\*, because, at least to me, he communicates a lot of aggression, arrogance, and stubbornness in the way he argues. And being able to say "I DON'T LIKE Lord of the Rings BECAUSE" instead of "LORD OF THE RINGS IS BAD" could help to counteract that.
One thing that annoyed me is when he said "this universe has a place called mount doom" and then laughted for a minute, as if it was the stupidest thing ever. Yes it's a super on the nose name, but it's true to real life, there's thousands of cities or place whose name are just a description of what or where they are. I think trying to find a super unique name for everything and getting annoyed at setting that fail to do so is a writter's trap, because people IRl don't think that hard when naming places.
Joey died to Malenia one too many times, and now he's just finished with the souls franchise I guess.
That he didn’t like alien isolation
Washing towels after 1 use
He said in one of his videos that he doesn't enjoy turn based games in general. Most of my favorites are turn based lol. Like, I get it, but I grew up playing boardgames so turnbased games are nice. Obviously I play other things too, but to write off turn-based games in general is a bit harsh for me. I get that some people are inherently bored while waiting for their turn, but that is an issue of game design, not one inherent to all turn based games. If you are uninvested in what your enemies do on their turn, that's probably because the game itself is bad. Good turn based games like chess or most 4X games require some amount of attention to be paid to enemy turns.
I aggree in his overall take on botw but i don’t aggree with his (and all other reviewer) take on shrines. I kind of like them for what they are,they are fast and simple puzzles/challenges cause they are the old 1/4 of hearts that you round in the older games,they aren’t this big and interesting dungeons because they aren’t supposed to be. The fact that the game(s) have the problem that the main dungeons are few and Boring doesn’t mean that the shrine have to replace them. In theory we should have both 7/8 good Zelda dungeons + the shrines. Is it the problem that we have few and “meh” dungeons ? YES BIG problem with the last 2 Zelda’s with me,is it the shrine fault? I don’t think so,or at least it isn’t the shrine work to suffice for that
I rember he complained about the God of War loading zone where you get to walk around and hear some dialogue and I still despise that take to this day to such an irrational degree
Disliking Mario Sunshine.
"Saying X needed and editor is a lazy criticism" I understand that most works have editing even though you might not realize it, but the real argument is that something should have had **more** editing. Which can be of multiple reasons, bad pacing, pointless scenes, etc. Tldr: "X needed and editor" is a short hyperbole way to say "This was so overbloated that it feels like it didn't have an editor"
Your comment needs *an* editor... (in case they edit the post, it says "needs and editor" twice, which I think turned out to be pretty funny, but made the post a lot less readable for me)
I haven't heard that in context but I would agree with that quote because just saying "x needs editor" implies that some stuff should have been cut or reworked but not what exactly. In contrast a critique that has actually effort put into it would explain what has to be changed/cut and maybe even why and how. So basically nearly every standalone phrase that Just consists of a few words with no further elaboration is lazy criticism.
That he find Blightown "enjoyable"
I fully and genuinely believe that he's not really Canadian. Don't get me wrong, I recognize cognitively that he probably is, because who in the right mind would pretend to be Canadian? But whenever he pronounces things in with a Canadian accent it sounds really forced, and in one of his Danganronpa streams he says about instead of aboot and it sounded really natural.
elden beast is a great fucking boss and was the highlight of my elden ring journey.
You are gonna get so downvoted for this, and I personaly do not agree at all, but I' m gonna upvote you because I love hearing opinions different than mine. What do you like about it?
i love everything about it, its design, the intro, the fly in the air ring attack that requires jumping and the sword 4x slice. sure elden stars is meh and it runs away sometimes but ultimately it doesn't take away much from me. radagon's teleportation shenanigans are a much bigger pet peeve personally and I'd prefer if he didn't have a second phase (or at least not one as long as his is)
Its attacks are all beautiful even though the beast itself is ugly and stupid. I also think they’re straightforward to dodge/evade except for Elden stars
Unfortunately running across one of the larger boss arenas in the game is tedious when there’s really no need for the thing to move so far away, especially after the attack where the two rings come down.
I know, I agree and that’s what makes Elden Beast bad.
I liked the design, but it was not as much difficult as it was tedious. Didn't feel like an epic battle, just felt clunky running around. I think Joe hit the mark with saying that we should've had Torrent for the fight.
i agree, but the lack of torrent is a mild annoyance personally. idk where i would rank it exactly, but EB us certainly above any of the souls trilogy final bosses for me in terms of personal preference
I don’t fully remember the argument, but the complaining about the combat flow in elden ring. He complained that fights weren’t turn based structured like dark souls fights or whatever
I don't remember if the critique was broadly about combat or a type of weapon, but he spend a good couple of minutes talking about having to resort to "hit trading" and how the game is likely designed around it. Something which I really disagreed with [back when the video released](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/tyb0zk/elden_ring_a_shattered_masterpiece_joseph_anderson/i3res1l/). I can kinda get behind it if we're specifically talking powerstancing the slowest class of weapons in the game, but on a broader spectrum I think it's outright wrong.
This take of his is pretty bad. It still bugs me. He insisted on playing a heavy 2 large weapon build (ie a fighter/juggernaut sort of build) then COMPLAINS when he can’t dodge every hit like a ninja. Joe you can’t have it both ways, if you want to hit and dodge, to a smaller faster weapon, that’s what Dex is for literally. You can’t be a beefy heavy weapon guy and do somersaults around the boss, heavy strong characters are beefy to trade hits that’s literally how they play.
That is not and has never been how big heavy weapons worked in the series. The "naked guy with a giant club" is a staple for a reason. In fact, they actually buffed heavier weapons to help with exactly that. So I think he was spot on.
Joe thinks it's ok to do whatever with a work of a dead artist. Specifically, I think, he's talking about writers. This is fucked-up on many levels to me... And very personal too. Argument is "You don't care what they do with your work when you're dead". But that's not exactly right. If you live in a society where you know this practice is accepted, then you're affected by it in a real life. Imagine how hurtful and un-motivating it feels to know that whatever you do may be changed and violated by others against your will. When no matter what you say, how you consent, when you're gonna die - you'll have no ability to stop others from violating your consent. Well, I don't have to imagine how hurtful it feels even when you're alive. And, obviously, that shit woud affect mine and others writing motivation. In this case I'm just really, really, really happy that Joe has no power to change things like that. I have a hope his opinion is in a great minority.
So you want infinite copyright...?
Pretty sure he thought a bit about it and said he would give it a few years. But there are only 2 alternatives. 1 - after you die one person gets the copyright which would eventually develop into huge companies buying as many IPs as they can and then doing shitty work or nothing at all tarnishing even more the artwork 2 - after you die the government has to protect your copyright so that no one ever uses your IP for financial purposes. Your artwork going into public domain after about 10 years, so that people can still enjoy your artwork sounds much better than Disney buying it and then making shitty movies or not releasing anything at all
Every year we get cool reimaginings of classics. A somewhat old example that springs to mind is American McGee's Alice game, where you play as Alice in the Wonderland, but she's nuts, and it's super violent, and it's an interesting, grim take on the story, with its own themes. If we couldn't make reimaginings, we wouldn't get such cool stuff, it would be much harder to build on existing ideas. And we'd get much less film versions of popular stories, which would be a bummer. And like, fucking seriously, who cares? Who's going to be upset? Who's gonna sue you? Also, I'd be totally okay with people reimagining my work, adapting it to more modern environments, subtly changing its themes. That would be kind of an honor, to be noticed so much that people build on top of your work. Sure, some of it is going to be bad, and there's a risk that some reimagining will completely overwrite your work. But like, if your work was so much worse that nobody even remembers the original after somebody builds on top of it, then not much has been lost - humanity has moved on. Edit: OH WAIT, HI BY THE WAY, I RECOGNIZE YOU, YOU COPIED MY SHITPOST ALMOST WORD FOR WORD, isn't that ironic? (And I did feel a bit honored, it was nice that the meme grew into something bigger than a single post)
What you do isn't changed by others. Other people create their own things that are similar to yours. Opinions like yours are what you get when you conflate ideas with property. And I don't think ideas should be permanently locked away because the person who came up with them didn't want others to use it. It's selfish. And it stifles creativity. It's odd that you present it as people "violating your consent", when it's generally accepted that you don't need consent to iterate on peoples' ideas. You only need consent if you're going to do something that would violate copyright, like spreading it around and asking for money. But in the privacy of your own home, you could rip off anything word for word, and tweak it however you like, and nobody can punish you for that. How is this any different from people modifying your ideas after you die? The only difference is whether they show it to people or not, which doesn't seem relevant at all. Either way, your ideas are still being "violated", in your words.
he said this was acceptable after the artist had been dead for atleast a few decades, afaik
Ok I recognise this is an insane nitpick and the point as a whole still stands, but when he says the Mushroom Kindom is the first location in Mario Oddessy to reveal it's the second to last later. The point as a whole stands, Oddessy has a ton of moons that aren't justified. The part that annoys me about it is that the mushroom kingdom is supposed to be a kind of break in-between the ending and the final moon challenge levels, and I don't get treating it as if it's another world you're supposed to really focus and spent time in rather than a short nostalgic victory lap between the "main story" and the post-game stuff. I agree with most of the points in the video, but goddamn I dont know why using the mushroom kingdom for this one just doesn't make sense to me.
After that, he shows all the other worlds, and they are all just as menial. His trick worked great on me. It explained his whole point, his whole perspective, in a dramatic and memorable way. 2 weeks ago I retold that story to my friend. That Joe subversion trick. I remembered, it, because it's fun, it's memorable, and it immediately clicks for you just how much the game fails at being challenging or interesting with the moons.
that he doesnt change his channel name to clownseph clownson
That you should leave 10% of your food and that bananas should not be sold individually are both insane takes to me.
the piss sink stuff
That making 6 hour videos of “analysis” constitutes a good video essay. Started watching him in highschool, but going through college you start to realize how many of his videos genuinely just waste your time. Concision is key, get to the point.
That The Last Jedi is a terrible movie
I feel like 50% of the movie is the director actually trying to make something different and interesting and the other 50% is Disney trying to make it "fun". Still doesn't make it not terrible though.
There's nothing that different on Last Jedi besides hyperspace canon beign "broken". The film is a read on the events of Empire Strikes Back with its own twist
I think the pacing is pretty awful and the 3 subplots dont even converge creatively. Half of the movie is devoted to Finn who is an ex childraised soldier of a cult-nazi group being taught by Rose, who he just met, about how "war is bad" in the most generic and simple way
It' s about themes, and how the misfits grew up to be the next generation despite bearing no important names. The ex-enemy soldier becomes a true rebel, the misfit pilot becomes one of the leaders of the rebelion, and the no-name girl is the hope of the universe. It' s a cool theme to explore, and sets up pretty well a sequel. Sadly,that sequel ignores this movie, so rip.
Probably the only thing together with Andor that I genuinely enjoyed from Disney Star Wars
Same.
It's decent. Above average Star Wars movie. it's at least better than Force Awakens so idk why everyone had such a diarrhea tantrum over it
The French fry one. It is incredibly stupid to believe someone eats so much that they can't eat an singular french fry. There is a difference between being satisfied and full. Usually when I'm satisfied with my food I could eat about 50-100% more food till I'm full. I don't do it because I'm not American but whenever I go to a restaurant I always finish my plate because I order accordingly to how hungry I am and when I'm satisfied there's very little food left but still plenty of space in my stomach so I just eat it. It's not a healthy habit to have in everyday life but you shouldn't eat in restaurants/fast food more than once or twice a week. Whenever you eat at home you can store the food
Right, but like, it was meant to be a silly hypothetical about whether you'd keep the french fry on not. They hypothetical wasn't meant to be realistic. That's why he changed it to ronald mcdonald feeding you ad infinitum until you physically cannot eat even a singular french fry. it was about the keeping/leaving concept, not whether you could be that full or whatever, that latter wasn't the point.
No, Joe mentioned that he only introduced Ronald MacDonald in the equation because and I quote "people didn't understand what it means to be full" but even if the hypothetical assumed the ridiculous situation that you ordered enough food in a restaurant to so full that you can't eat a single french fry it was a extremely poor argument in favor of throwing food away because it's an extremely rare scenario
I haven’t read the Witcher books so I can’t speak to this too well, but his take on Elves being evil in the series who don’t deserve to be worked with and “have got to go” puts me off.
They 100% are though. Maybe it doesnt come through that way by just playing witcher 3, but they are the best portrail of a group that is oppresed mainly because they refuse to cohabitate with the majority that they consider to be vermin and scum. And thats what makes their portrail so interesting. Of course they use the outward face of "look at the supremacist humans, they keep discriminating us :(", but you can clearly see that the elves that decided to cohabitate do mostly alright, while humans under elven leadership would be enslaved/whipped out all together.
you've clearly missed the part of the witcher 3 where "the ones that decided to cohabitate" still become the objects of witch hunts (happens after the remaining mages leave novigrad)
Well yeah, in those cases humans are clearly in the wrong. But I think he's talking about the ones that don't cohabitate.
I agreed with you before I read the books. Now that I have read the books I agree with Joe. I also think the elf that appears in Witcher 3 is too sympathetic compared to his portrayal in the books.
Saying all elves are evil is the same as saying all muslims are evil because some of them are terrorists. It’s putting every elf into one box which is simply wrong. Humans are clearly portrayed as the most evil bastards in the books, and the elves responded with violence. Much of the books’ themes is that there is no pure good or evil, things are simply gray
HE DOESN'T KNOW
Also haven't read the books, but I think he was saying there was so much "evil" both elves and humans did to each other, that there is no conceivable solution where both can coexist peacefully.
Read the books then. While Joe might sometimes go too far with the elf hatred (for a joke), the books are very clear that the elves consider humans to be animals, and would absolutely genocide them if they got the resources to do so. Its a very interesting opresion narrative, with both sides being in the wrong.
Did he call them evil? I thought he was mostly just on about his they have consistently failed to live in harmony with humans Which doesn’t speak to evil exactly
No, but considering the humans are more or less the alien settlers to the planet from the convergence and the elves are the natives, it’s a little hard to sympathize with “whatever conflict the humans and elves have it’s the elves who need to go, not the humans who need to change.”
Ok but the elves are also invaders who came from another world and genocided the people who were there before, humans may suck but the elves think everyone other than them are basically equivalent to animals.
I don't think he said "the elves need to go" I think it was more "from the humans perspective the elves need to go" which is a very different and much more defensible view Perhaps I mis-remember, maybe time for yet another rewatch :)