Remove ads

Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Hykal94 said:
You know, witnessing Dark Souls 2 from Extra Credit's Dan's Playthrough of the game (Scholar of the First Sin edition), it reminded me a lot of the flaws of the original game.

But Dan's enjoyment and awe and wander (and dying a lot man that Fume Knight fight though) also reminded why I love the series to begin with. Dark Souls 2 may be the black sheep of the series, but like all Souls game, I'd replay it over most games.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Much as we like to rag on it, DS2 is a very solid game on its own. The main problem is that it isn't up to the very high standards that DeS and DS1 set, and so it sticks out regardless of its merits. Someone else - can't remember who, and I'm paraphrasing - said "DS2 is gold, but we're conditioned to expect platinum."
 
Hykal94 said:
You know, witnessing Dark Souls 2 from Extra Credit's Dan's Playthrough of the game (Scholar of the First Sin edition), it reminded me a lot of the flaws of the original game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Like how the first game fails utterly in providing anything approaching a personal stake in the events and forgets to let the player in on what is happening and why? Or how the game is a boring grind through samey levels and enemies that elicits the same emotions as being stuck in traffic? Or how most of the fan base is filled with sycophants and pendants that pretend the game is some masterpiece when really it's just a boring hack and slash with a pointlessly thin story?

Now if only they fixed those things later and they might have made a good game at some point.
 
VolantRedX said:
Like how the first game fails utterly in providing anything approaching a personal stake in the events and forgets to let the player in on what is happening and why? Or how the game is a boring grind through samey levels and enemies that elicits the same emotions as being stuck in traffic? Or how most of the fan base is filled with sycophants and pendants that pretend the game is some masterpiece when really it's just a boring hack and slash with a pointlessly thin story?

Now if only they fixed those things later and they might have made a good game at some point.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not today, Volant. Not today.

(also I was referring to the original Dark Souls 2 when it launched and was comparing it to the Scholar of the First Sin edition but I guess I should have made that more clear)
 
VolantRedX said:
Like how the first game fails utterly in providing anything approaching a personal stake in the events and forgets to let the player in on what is happening and why? Or how the game is a boring grind through samey levels and enemies that elicits the same emotions as being stuck in traffic? Or how most of the fan base is filled with sycophants and pendants that pretend the game is some masterpiece when really it's just a boring hack and slash with a pointlessly thin story?

Now if only they fixed those things later and they might have made a good game at some point.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Don't you start this shit again.
 
thesevenwielder said:
On the other, we have Saving Private Ryan, which shows what the beaches of Normandy were really like,
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Literally not.

What you see in SPR is specifically Omaha beach, specifically in the early morning, specifically of an American unit. The actual landings involved five beaches and close to 160.000 troops from twenty or so nations. Of these, there were ten thousand casualties; only four thousand or so of them were killed. Something like half of those casualties were taken on Omaha, mostly early in the day. By nightfall every beach was either completely secure or at least major points were taken. Even on Omaha beach, the Americans had gotten out of the shore by noon.

Imagine the movie opening with Utah beach. The Americans took 200 casualties (not dead, total) to land 21.000 men. All other points fell between the two extremes of Utah and Omaha.

Do people know this, just by watching Saving Private Ryan? No. It's not the movie's job to be a historical documentary. Do people assume that everything that day was exactly like this? Evidently yes. And it isn't the movie's fault, because the movie is excellent at what it wants to portray. It's the fault of people who forget that even the most realistic movie presents the viewer with a carefully prepared slice of reality, strictly confined to the time and space the movie is about.

Something can be realistic and entirely made up, just as something can be based on real events but portray them as the author sees fit. For example, we've talked about Braveheart, but that movie begins by telling you that what you see is not history. People can mock it for being a loose impression of medieval Scotland, but this is exactly you were promised going in. Gibson is a racist asshole, but he knows what he's aiming for when he makes movies.

This doesn't constitute a defense of Volant. I too agree that having a bunch of historical touches in your movie makes it better in a number of ways. I also know that people like things and would like to see them done well in movies. This is a defense of actually reading history, because teaching history isn't a filmmaker's job. It is also a defense of talking about fiction accurately.

This is my contribution to the debate on historical accuracy.




PS: Immortals (2011), directed by Tarsem Singh, has fuck-all to do with Greek mythology, and its script is shit. You could call it a bad movie. It still deserves a viewing because it looks dope as hell (literally a moving oil painting), and Mickey Rourke is a complete boss in it. I also give it props for having actual lines spoken in ancient (medieval?) Greek, because even though they're kinda badly pronounced they are actually there.
 
Sufficient Juice said:
What you see in SPR is specifically Omaha beach, specifically in the early morning, specifically of an American unit. The actual landings involved five beaches and close to 160.000 troops from twenty or so nations. Of these, there were ten thousand casualties; only four thousand or so of them were killed. Something like half of those casualties were taken on Omaha, mostly early in the day. By nightfall every beach was either completely secure or at least major points were taken. Even on Omaha beach, the Americans had gotten out of the shore by noon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Even something directly based off of real life stories like Band of Brothers or the Pacific tend to specifically focus on really interesting anecdotes from the war, and seriously compress time and space to make things look far more hectic and dynamic than they actually were.

Daniel Estacado said:
Multiplayer as a concept in video games needs to die.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Somebody's never played Planetside 2.
 
Daniel Estacado said:
I don't get why people want to interact with other players. I have never been interested in interacting with other players, single player games are what hold my interest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's fine, I can understand that, but what you said was "Multiplayer as a concept in video games needs to die" which isn't equivalent to "I don't like multiplayer", which probably isn't a terribly unpopular opinion. There's a difference between saying "I don't like football" and "all football must be banned!" yanno?
 
Strunkriidiisk said:
Much as we like to rag on it, DS2 is a very solid game on its own. The main problem is that it isn't up to the very high standards that DeS and DS1 set, and so it sticks out regardless of its merits. Someone else - can't remember who, and I'm paraphrasing - said "DS2 is gold, but we're conditioned to expect platinum."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I would argue that it is, it's just that people didn't like change and so they found a bunch of baseless reasons to shit on the game. Going through the game and actually doing tests on the mechanics, DS2 improved upon a lot of what Dark Souls set in place. One of my main gripes were that the attack animations of enemies are a bit too awkward (long wind up followed by super fast attack). Also fuck Adaptability. I mean, I learned to roll with it, but it's still an annoying mechanic that made the game inconsistent at times.

Reveen said:
The fuck?

Those are all primarily multiplayer games, as intentionml. They don't need single player. Maybe they'd benefit from having an option for bot matches, but a campaign? No. They don't need it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They could have all benefited from a singleplayer campaign, and frankly making multiplayer features at the expense of singleplayer invites a standard of laziness where it becomes okay to skip out on the singleplayer.
 
Last edited:
Kokurokoki said:
I would argue that it is, it's just that people didn't like change and so they found a bunch of baseless reasons to shit on the game. Going through the game and actually doing tests on the mechanics, DS2 improved upon a lot of what Dark Souls set in place. One of my main gripes were that the attack animations of enemies are a bit too awkward (long wind up followed by super fast attack). Also fuck Adaptability. I mean, I learned to roll with it, but it's still an annoying mechanic that made the game inconsistent at times.



They could have all benefited from a singleplayer campaign, and frankly making multiplayer features at the expense of singleplayer invites a standard of laziness where it becomes okay to skip out on the singleplayer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Battlefield 1942 didn't even have a campaign. Overwatch was made to be Blizzard's TF2. Titanfall did goof there though.

But the fundamental premise of many games is the multiplayer, and players are much better off with a more polished MP mode than a SP they'll touch once and forget about
 
Though for me, it's that I've literally never done Multiplayer. For some reason, back when I had a PS3, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't connect to the internet.[1] This also meant, by the way, that I've never actually played through most of Skyrim because I got hit by bugs that they 'fixed online' or whatnot.

So back when I actually played console games a lot, something like all-multiplayer basically meant I'd never touch it.

[1] On the PS3, I obviously can connect to the regular internet.[2]
[2] It's broken now, so no point giving too-late tips.
 
Kokurokoki said:
They could have all benefited from a singleplayer campaign, and frankly making multiplayer features at the expense of singleplayer invites a standard of laziness where it becomes okay to skip out on the singleplayer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not laziness to know where a games strengths lie and to focus on them, rathe than throwing out a shitty campaign to appease people who won't want to play the game as the developers intended.

This is ass backwards mid 2000s logic. The prevailing problem now is games having pointless and stupid campaigns that drain resources from making sure the multiplayer is polished and actually playable.

Again, there's an argument for bot modes. But campaigns just force the developer to divert resources away from where their strengths lie.
 
Reveen said:
It's not laziness to know where a games strengths lie and to focus on them, rathe than throwing out a shitty campaign to appease people who won't want to play the game as the developers intended.

This is ass backwards mid 2000s logic. The prevailing problem now is games having pointless and stupid campaigns that drain resources from making sure the multiplayer is polished and actually playable.

Again, there's an argument for bot modes. But campaigns just force the developer to divert resources away from where their strengths lie.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not actually sure how good a business idea this is. Judging by Street Fighter V, people just care that you have a half assed single player, not that it's any good. It makes for a worse game, but increases sales.
 
Sufficient Juice said:
Literally not.

What you see in SPR is specifically Omaha beach, specifically in the early morning, specifically of an American unit. The actual landings involved five beaches and close to 160.000 troops from twenty or so nations. Of these, there were ten thousand casualties; only four thousand or so of them were killed. Something like half of those casualties were taken on Omaha, mostly early in the day. By nightfall every beach was either completely secure or at least major points were taken. Even on Omaha beach, the Americans had gotten out of the shore by noon.

Imagine the movie opening with Utah beach. The Americans took 200 casualties (not dead, total) to land 21.000 men. All other points fell between the two extremes of Utah and Omaha.

Do people know this, just by watching Saving Private Ryan? No. It's not the movie's job to be a historical documentary. Do people assume that everything that day was exactly like this? Evidently yes. And it isn't the movie's fault, because the movie is excellent at what it wants to portray. It's the fault of people who forget that even the most realistic movie presents the viewer with a carefully prepared slice of reality, strictly confined to the time and space the movie is about.

Something can be realistic and entirely made up, just as something can be based on real events but portray them as the author sees fit. For example, we've talked about Braveheart, but that movie begins by telling you that what you see is not history. People can mock it for being a loose impression of medieval Scotland, but this is exactly you were promised going in. Gibson is a racist asshole, but he knows what he's aiming for when he makes movies.

This doesn't constitute a defense of Volant. I too agree that having a bunch of historical touches in your movie makes it better in a number of ways. I also know that people like things and would like to see them done well in movies. This is a defense of actually reading history, because teaching history isn't a filmmaker's job. It is also a defense of talking about fiction accurately.

This is my contribution to the debate on historical accuracy.




PS: Immortals (2011), directed by Tarsem Singh, has fuck-all to do with Greek mythology, and its script is shit. You could call it a bad movie. It still deserves a viewing because it looks dope as hell (literally a moving oil painting), and Mickey Rourke is a complete boss in it. I also give it props for having actual lines spoken in ancient (medieval?) Greek, because even though they're kinda badly pronounced they are actually there.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm not saying A aving Private Ryan is totally100% historically accurate. Few movies are. I'm saying it is more accurate than a movie like 300.
 
I'm sick of Shonen anime/manga where only the main character's efforts to improve their skills in what ever they are mastering prove to be the only thing that matters in the long run.
 
VolantRedX said:
Like how the first game fails utterly in forcing me to actually use my brain and do anything but listen to cutscenes and press 'F' to progress? Or how the game is actually difficult and doesn't let me move forward because I have no capability of learning and my thinking process is ten times slower than yours so I can't push buttons in time? Or how most of the fan base is filled with people who don't suck at what I suck at, put effort and thought into exploring the world and mock me for projecting my personal failures onto everything but myself like a baby that blames the floor for hurting him when he falls on his butt?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, like that.
 
Oh yeah, almost forgot.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a masterpiece in terms of story and drama, and every screenwriter should strive to be at least 1/4 as good as George Miller is.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top