legend

7 minutes ago, SaysWho? said:

I beat the game a day or two ago and I’m back in chapter 13 to do a lot of the higher level side quest and the side quest I never finished.

 

i’m still reading about the ending, but I have to say that emotionally, I thought it was a very strong narrative in that sense. Because of the length of the game, you were doing a lot of things that don’t relate to the main story, but a lot of that other stuff was character stuff, and it made me bond with the characters quite a bit more, and it made me like some of the new characters a lot, like Kyrie. 
 

I really love this group of characters, and I look forward to continuing their adventure in a few years. Now, I’m just going to enjoy the gameplay and other quests and the lovely world that the developers gave me. 103 hours or so and I’m still going.

Yeah I think taking this game to flesh out the character relationships was a really good narrative choice. I feel more attached to these characters than ever before and it makes everything that happens to them so much more meaningful. That said, I do also understand what @crispy4000 means. We have so much additional knowledge about this universe than we did the first time, and then there are game specific changes that soften something we otherwise took at face value in the OG. But I'm okay with that. I'm happy with them do a little bit of divergence and am interested to see where it goes, and the the character strengthening really helps with that.

Then on top of that, I just really like the gameplay loop of this series. I don't think any game has nailed mixing turn-based and realtime combat in a way that's as satisfying as Rebirth. I was already a big fan in Remake, but Rebirth evolved it in all the right ways. It's why if they ever do remake KOTOR -- another game I love that was real-time with pause -- that they do it Rebirth style. Starwars is such a good match for this approach.

Could be fun. What I really want though is a new Marble Blast Ultra.

I played a bunch today, but stopped when I ran out of battery. I should probably get a second controller at some point  

It's solid. Has some challenging, but not overly challenging fights and doesn't make you spend a hour getting back to where you were. 

The first two areas (excluding the very short prologue) are fairly linear, but then you get to a city with a bunch of sidequests and a much bigger open area. All around a good time!

And yeah, asserting that this game was "censored" is fucking nuts looking at some of these outfits  

I've put a bunch more time into it. It's absolutely good and I think they have the foundation to expand it even more than VS.  There are a surprisingly decent number of different character classes too. I've been spreading out playing them all which is probably not the best idea if I wanted to get through act 1 faster, but it's fun experimenting with the different styles.

2 hours ago, best3444 said:

Are we ever going to just talk about the game itself or is it going to be a cluster fuck again?

 

I'm playing soon so I'll post impressions. But jfc. 

I fully plan on discussing it once I get a chance to play it, much like I did for the demo  

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Looks like those "fans" who have been celebrating how "uncensored" this game is are now turning on the game and Sony because they are claiming censorship over some lace on the outfits. 🤦‍♀️

 

While some of the stuff is outrageous nitpicking it's hilarious these nuts didn't expect this. It's Sony, they cracked down on lewd games a long time ago. I'm surprised they even let this game be on their system. Sony must have been really desperate to get a game for this year.

It's not even clear it's censored instead of just an artistic choice. The lace is pretty and see through, and various other outfits still have all out cleavage. 

You know you're fucked when even this release of Stellar Blade isn't sexualized enough for you.

This is the best thread on the citadel.

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

Lara Croft wasn't in a bikini.  And if the best example people have is a game from 1996, I'm moving on.

Good Faith Discussion -- talking about things that are actually in games

Bad Faith Discussion -- coming up with fictitious examples and basing your entire discussion around it 

We should just drop it. Your life is going to be hard enough as it is when ChatGPT is already exceeding your reading comprehension and ability to grasp analogies.

6 minutes ago, Biggie said:

You can have both. Bear in mind this whole discussion started because I said I think in the context of Stellar Blade, Eve is fine -- the game is deliberately over the top in all aspects. It's not fine when it's demanded to be universal in all games and inserted into places it doesn't belong.

If only I could think of an analogy for it being inserted in places it doesn't belong...

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

You keep bringing up Bikinis, and I have no idea why.

If only there were a record of the conversation that would allow you find the context. Guess we'll never know.

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Someone brought up Arwen from LotR as an example -- my final thought on this entire discussion is that Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett were two of the most attractive women in Hollywood when those movies were filmed.  It was no accident that they were picked for two of the few key roles, in an otherwise male dominated cast, in those movies.

I brought up Arwen. Liv and Cate are indeed beautiful. The point being made in that comment wasn't that they were not beautiful, it's that it would look stupid if they were running around in bikinis. It was contrasting the difference between have attractive characters and having overly sexualized characters in a setting that doesn't make sense. That they are beautiful, but not sexualized and that the former works but the latter doesn't in that story was the point.

This game is awesome and only $7. It's in early access, but it plays completely fine from my couple of hours.

Its' a rogue like, but it has persistent Diablo-like loot you collect. You also get what are effectively boons from different gods who have short chats with you ala Hades. And finally, the mobs feel very Vampire Survivors-like.

Get this game.

$350 for a 42" is fucking nuts. Making me wonder if I should get one as a work screen!  

36 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

Fair enough, I didn’t realize that it was just speculation that Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2 was modeled from the insomniac employee because they definitely look a lot alike. But regardless she does look somewhat different and less attractive (IMO) compared to how she looked in the first Spider-Man game, and I don’t know why they changed her.

I appreciate the concession!

36 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

I didn’t make baseless accusations about the motivations of developers, I just gave my personal opinion on how things somewhat appear from my perspective. If others disagree then that’s fine.

Your statement was "Some examples of western developed games with female characters in them that seem to have been deliberately made less attractive looking" which claims a motive of the developers to make their female character less attractive. That's simply not it in any meaningful capacity (I'm sure we can find *some* games where the character by design is unattractive, but that's not a meaningful trend and not the case for many of the games you cited). There are far more benign reasons than an intent to make characters less attractive, such as some of the things I enumerated in my earlier response.

36 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

As for developers they usually only get treated like absolute shit when they do things that go against what their fanbase wants, a good example is Volition and Saints Row. They doubled down during the development of the Saints Row reboot despite fans voicing their dislike with the direction that they were going with it, and look where that got them. Developers don’t always do the right thing, and when they don’t they should be called out on it.

Ooph. My man, you have no idea. The amount of shit developers get is legendary. And to top if off, they work incredibly long hours, for often comparably low pay to other fields, and then get laid off when the game they put the whole lives into was successful, because the execs need to report "growth" every quarter for shareholders over the people who bled for it and laying people off is the easy way for them to do it.

3 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2 looks almost exactly like that Insomniac employee that worked on the game, it has to be more than a mere coincidence because Mary Jane didn’t look like that in the first Spider-Man game. She was prettier, and looked more like the real life model that she was modeled from. With that said, I wasn’t aware that the real life model received backlash. It’s not her fault that Insomniac altered her look in the game.

Looking like the character is not proof.

1. Writers don't direct the art, nor create the character models.

2. There is a credited model for  the actual character, who is so much the actual model, she got toxic attacks for it.

3. Insomniac directly confirmed that they used the same model for the appearance as the first, because of the false accusations.

All facts point to it not being the writer. Clinging to "no, it has to be her because she looks like her, all official sources must be lying" is not proof of anything. It's conspiracy theory. 

That's the essence of the whole point: you're leaping to a false accusation on flimsy grounds for this belief in general, although this instance is particularly acute.

You can prefer characters to look however you want, but making baseless accusations about the motivations of developers just because you don't like it really isn't cool. Especially not when developers are treated like absolute shit for all the hard work they put in. Don't pile this nonsense on top.

14 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

My problem isn't even legroom so much as seat width. United has a 3-4-3 economy on some of its transcon flights, I was in one of the 3s and this huge guy (not fat just a brick shithouse) sits down next to me and it was impossible for me to sit without contorting (broad shoulders). Managed to snag an aisle on the 4 seat a row up that was open, then that guy boarded and sat down in my seat instead of making me switch back. Doubly surprising because I had what must have been the only open seat on the flight next to me by sitting in this guy's seat. That flight would have been torture, I'm still traumatized.

Both width and length are a problem. Sit at window and lack of length makes it a major pain to get out. Sit on aisle and the attendants will smash into you all the time from lack of width. Put a bag under the front seat, say good bye to stretching your legs assuming you can fit it in. 

1 hour ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

It’s on purpose to ensure the flight is full. 
 

From my experience nothing is more nerve wracking than having the first reserved seat and hoping someone misses the check in so that you don’t get stuck in fucking Tulsa Oklahoma on a Friday because of a work trip

Maybe a side benefit is if this discourages them from these tactics to always get completely full flights we will not have to run into the nonsense about there not being enough room for carry on luggage.

Airplanes are so fucking cramped it's a nightmare.

23 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I'm so glad to hear it's polished and performs well. Goes a long way for an action game like this.

Wade beat me to the reviews! Looks good! Coupled with the demo which I enjoyed, I'll definitely be picking it up.

38 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

First of all I never used the term ugly since I don’t think that most of the examples that I gave are ugly per se, just less attractive IMO. Secondly, I do think that in some cases what you’re saying may be correct but it didn’t seem to be a problem for the devs who made the attractive female characters that I mentioned.

 

Yes, I did go back edit that in to acknowledge that you said "less attractive," but too late it seems! I realize that's softer, but it is still is a wrong claim for the exact same reasons.

38 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

 

And it’s been proven that Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2 was partly modeled from a female employee working on the game:

 

Holy crap man, that video *is not* proof! That is a person speculating, speculation that goes directly against the actual facts. This is conspiracy level nonsense. The developers have already come out and said it's the same model and that same model publicly stated that she *quit* because of the backlash She's not a make believe person.

7 hours ago, Phaseknox said:

Some examples of western developed games with female characters in them that seem to have been deliberately made less attractive looking (IMO) include: Control, Deliver Us Mars, The Division series, Fable reboot, Ghost Recon Wildlands/Breakpoint, The Last of Us Part II, Mass Effect Andromeda, Outriders, PGA Tour 2K21/23, Rage 2, Returnal, Scars Above, Spider-Man 2, Star Wars Outlaws and Wolfenstein: Youngblood. And look what they recently did to the preexisting female characters in Pokémon GO:

 

 

Perhaps it’s more noticeable to me since I primarily like playing as female characters in games, but as someone who does it seems to be more blatant and often from my perspective.

This is too long a list go down one by one, but let me give you a general response that covers a lot of it: these devs are not deliberately making characters ugly, but here are some things you may be conflating with that belief:

• The industry much more regularly uses scanning tech for characters for actual actors/models. Most real world people are not the hyper exaggerated female appearance like we agreed is less prolific. Furthermore, we both agreed they're not as sexualized as previously; they're not wearing night party making all the time nor wearing skimpy clothing. So you *do* get a difference there. But that doesn't make them *ugly* (I realize you've made the softer "less attractive" claim) and saying as much is pretty gross. 
• Coupled with the above, some of the issues you have may be due to immaturity of technology not translating well. It's more of a tech problem from games than a deliberate effort to make models ugly, especially if you cherry pick scenes since in games it's incredibly difficult to make sure every scene lights and renders well. If you know game developers or at least follow game developers on social media, you will find them commenting about these problems and challenges. Some studios are better at it than others or invest more time and money into it. Games are expensive and despite working insane hours, developers *still* don't have enough time and get readily laid off anyway. You need to give people some slack instead of forming a conspiracy that they're deliberately making characters less attractive.
• When you scan models, sometimes those models change in appearance while the developers still want to keep the same person. MJ in Spider-man 2, who you listed, is the same model as in Spider-man 1. But the gaming community yelling about studios "deliberately making female characters ugly" just assumed they got someone different because they're woke or something. They didn't. There's rumors that she did have some facial surgery from an accident, I don't really know and it doesn't really matter. The point is, the claim "deliberately making characters ugly" from this crowd was a completely false accusation (so is "less attractive" because although softer is still peddling the same negative conspiracy) and the result of that gross behavior is the model quit modeling and working for games because it became so toxic.

5 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

More charitably, if a company invests a lot of resources in training its employees, I can see the argument that a non-compete clause is necessary to ensure that their investment doesn't suddenly pick up and walk out the door to a rival the day after training ends.  Is that enough justification for their existence as a constraint on an employee's ability to fully participate in the market?  I'd say it that it's not at all, but I'm not completely unsympathetic to that justification, as flimsy as it may be.

 

This is probably the only non-corrupt reason for it and I am somewhat sympathetic to it. If people regularly joined a company inexperienced, were trained, and then quickly left for another company, the outcome would be that companies would stop hiring inexperienced workers, which would be an absolutely awful defect-defect equilibrium for society.

However, I don't think this is all that regular. If you're good to your employee, they will probably want to stay with you because consistency is convenient. If you treat your employee badly (bad compensation, bad management), then you really only have yourself to blame.

11 minutes ago, Phaseknox said:

I do feel that some western devs have been deliberately making female characters less attractive to thwart the so-called “male gaze” and to prevent the characters from being objectified and sexualized, but attractiveness and sexualization are not one and the same.

 

I almost exclusively like to play as female characters in games these days, and I admit that part of the reason why is because I personally find them to be more aesthetically appealing than male characters. And I’m talking about realistic looking athletic badass female characters, not overly sexualized ones. I prefer playing as acrobatic, agile, fast and quick female characters as opposed to big bulky muscly slow tank male characters. I also tend to prefer their attitudes, personalities and voice actors to their male counterparts as well. 

 

Some examples of female characters that I like from the past decade include: Aloy (Horizon series), Aveline de Grandpre (Assassin’s Creed Liberation), Evie Frye (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate), Kassandra (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey), Dani Rojas (Far Cry 6), Katharine (King’s Bounty II), Amicia de Rune (A Plague Tale series), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider survival trilogy) and Chloe Frazer (Uncharted: The Lost Legacy). They’re all realistic looking, naturally attractive (not super models) and not sexualized in any way.
 

With that said, I don’t have a problem with occasional sexy anime style female characters like Bayonetta, 2B and Eve because I like anime. Stellar Blade is an over the top AA Asian developed fantasy horror sci-fi action adventure game that’s not meant to be realistic in any way, so I don’t feel that the characters in it are out of place for what it is.

I do agree with sexualization deliberately being less overt. I do not agree that they're deliberately making the characters less attractive in any meaningful capacity. I mean, you just named a lot of attractive female characters! But the argument from a certain community that I'm referring to is much stronger than even that. These people are saying western developers are deliberately making their female characters *ugly* because the standard that they demand is oversexualized women like Eve.

Hence why I think  Stellar Blade is a victim of people associating their distaste for this community with the game. I think the game is perfectly fine (at least from what I've played and seen so far!) and it shouldn't be knocked just because a distasteful community likes it.

15 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I am disagreeing with the "serious game" point.  Aloy is a fucking mass murderer.  Very few games aspire to be on the level of a mediocre drama movie.

Okay. I answered that separately. Your points about Horizon character attractiveness doesn't seem like you responded to that though. Does the analogy I made to you not make sense to you?

15 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I think the industry has significantly changed the female characters (as well as male) in games.

I noticed you cut this out.  You asked me to specify what I meant, then immediately strawmanned me.

I cut it out to highlight for you that you were repeating exactly what I said. Here's the full quote which we can read in context:

4 hours ago, legend said:

You're going to have to qualify what you specifically mean. Fewer women with completely oversized boobs in tiny armor in an otherwise "serious" game? Less out of place fan service? Yes, I agree with that and yes I think that's a good thing. But no, I don't think the industry is otherwise lacking attractive female characters.

Notice how following my request to qualify what you meant I provided possible interpretations you could have meant? This is indicated by ending them with questions marks. I then state "Yes, I agree with that and yes I think that's a good thing." 

Following that I described what interpretation I wouldn't agree with. Specifically "But no, I don't think the industry is otherwise lacking attractive female characters."

If in fact, you actually meant the thing I said I agreed with, you could can just say "yes, that's what I meant." You also wouldn't need to tell me "but let's not pretend it hasn't happened" if in fact you agreed with my description, because clearly I wouldn't be pretending something was true that you disputed.

But you did say that, indicating you didn't agree with what I said.

And here we are.

28 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

A significant majority of the female characters were young (in their 20s or late teens), with large breasts (and revealing clothing.  That is for the most part no longer happening.

 

So then were you not disagreeing with my original point where I said just that then? If you agree, great! But then I'm not sure what contrasting point you were trying to make.

3 hours ago, legend said:

Fewer women with completely oversized boobs in tiny armor in an otherwise "serious" game? Less out of place fan service? Yes, I agree with that and yes I think that's a good thing. But no, I don't think the industry is otherwise lacking attractive female characters.