- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Honestly, after totk I just want more zonai. Literally Satan (they're basically someone slapping a coat of paint over a satanic panic depiction of the devil, it's great) being on your side is a neat twist for the setting.
Best character design to come out of the zelda series in years, they should let us follow them back home somehow.
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- Do you really care?
They don't look like goats at all, though. I mean, I look at that and I think "weird, stretched-out rabbit," not Baphomet.
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- Nunya, Arizona
It's more than them just rocking the goatshark look, though they totally do. Inscrutable, powerful knowledge that brings disaster, claiming to be some kind of higher power come from distant places, subverting the local power structures, breeding with the nubile young women -- those guys are 1:1 a bog standard depiction of the devil. Just 'cause the horns've been knocked off don't mean that ain't satan 
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- Do you really care?
I mean, I guess I can kinda see it, but that's getting a bit close to "the trees were epileptic" levels for me. You have to want to see it for it be there in any way, is what I mean.It's more than them just rocking the goatshark look, though they totally do. Inscrutable, powerful knowledge that brings disaster, claiming to be some kind of higher power come from distant places, subverting the local power structures, breeding with the nubile young women -- those guys are 1:1 a bog standard depiction of the devil. Just 'cause the horns've been knocked off don't mean that ain't satan
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
So to change topics for a bit . . .
For all that Mass Effect Andromeda got a LOT of guff for it's . . . frankly awful graphics . . . It really was a step up from the previous mass effect games in terms of gameplay responsiveness and flexibility, and I did like the open explorable environments.
It's biggest problem, by far, was that it took an interesting premise, traveling to an entirely new Galaxy . . . and then proceeded to try as hard as it could to recreate the Mass Effect Milky Way in Andromeda, right down to the Andromeda Initiative dragging their own mini-Citadel across the depths of Interstellar space.
Even that wasn't a terrible idea, but they didn't do anything interesting with it. Like, it's a command center, and that's it.
Nor did they really do a good job with the first contact culture shock. This was ME's chance to show what first contact is like with civilizations that are entirely disconnected from the Reaper Cycle and the inheritance of Prothean technology and it was just kinda a big 'shrug'.
For all that Mass Effect Andromeda got a LOT of guff for it's . . . frankly awful graphics . . . It really was a step up from the previous mass effect games in terms of gameplay responsiveness and flexibility, and I did like the open explorable environments.
It's biggest problem, by far, was that it took an interesting premise, traveling to an entirely new Galaxy . . . and then proceeded to try as hard as it could to recreate the Mass Effect Milky Way in Andromeda, right down to the Andromeda Initiative dragging their own mini-Citadel across the depths of Interstellar space.
Even that wasn't a terrible idea, but they didn't do anything interesting with it. Like, it's a command center, and that's it.
Nor did they really do a good job with the first contact culture shock. This was ME's chance to show what first contact is like with civilizations that are entirely disconnected from the Reaper Cycle and the inheritance of Prothean technology and it was just kinda a big 'shrug'.
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- Do you really care?
The graphics weren't even that bad, honestly. It was the mostly the animations (particularly the facial animations) that made it laughable to look at. I mean, I sincerely giggled every time someone tried to make a human-like facial expression and failed in a way that was humorously reminiscent of someone who only knows them from reading about them.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The facial animations are still pretty bad, they're not memeworthy any more but playing it there's this very strange uncanny valley effect where people's faces don't seem wrong in any obvious way but are subtly weird. It's deeply distracting and really hurts the experience. Especially if you're playing it after Legendary Edition which is miles better (it's not perfect but even the worst of 1's remaster are still better).
Even after multiple patches it's very easy to see that Andromeda was not made by the A Team or with sufficient time.
Even after multiple patches it's very easy to see that Andromeda was not made by the A Team or with sufficient time.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
If it had been produced by some Indie or A grade studio, rather than a studio with Bioware's reputation, I don't think people would have given it as much shit.
And honestly . . . Really good facial animations are one of those places that even with all the shiny new image capture/generation tech, I will gladly accept limitations so long as the writing, gameplay, and scenario design are good.
Edit : But I mean, this was likely, a huge opportunity to have a lot of interesting things happening all at once, and really shaking up the political reality of the Mass Effect races.
Everyone is, after all, basically on equal footing here, compared to the Citadel -
The Asari couldn't bring any of their secret Prothean tech caches with them. The Turians don't have their vast fleets. The Salarian's don't have their intelligence networks. The Krogan could culturally select for clans willing to giving not being hyper expansionists dicks, and rebuilding their species, an honest go.
At the same time, they all still have their unique advantages. The Asari are insanely long lived founts of diverse experience. Every Turian is an army reserve trooper. Salarian's are still genius scientists. And Krogan's are so durable they can live practically anyplace.
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- Do you really care?
Yeah, it's not comically bad anymore, but it's not exactly good, either.
Probably not, no, because you just can't expect the same production values, but they'd have been bad by anyone's standard. A competent mid-range studio would've known better than to try and just used some canned animations that are known to look decent. A downgrade in technical terms, but with better aesthetics... and less ridiculous.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
In any case, I do wish more games would do the limited open world thing like Andromeda and Inquisition did. I'd much rather have more settings where we get 'zones of interest' rather than trying to make an entire over world interesting.
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- Do you really care?
Yeah, I can relate. I mean, I like open world games, in principle. I honestly do, because having the freedom to move around the game world at my leisure just makes it feel less confined and stifling. I cannot play games that have a hard, linear progression of levels anymore, where you can never revisit anything. It feels primitive. I do wish more games had the good sense to go for quality over quantity, though. Bigger is not always better and even Inquisition's zones were already verging on being a bit too big, in my opinion. Do you know how many people gave up on that game because they tried to do the first, proper zone all at once and found it just too damn much? It's quite a few, based on what other people have told me. Although I suppose that's partly because Bioware did not make it adequately clear that you are supposed to leave and come back later, not handle the whole thing right away.
(Man, even when I read this to myself, it sounds kind of like innuendo...)
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's one thing I really like about modern God of War, it has the openness and exploration of open world games but with the curated nature of a linear mode. It's still more linear then open but it has enough open elements to have a similar gameplay experience. It's essentially the best of both worlds.
Not every open world game needs to be like it (Elden Ring, to use one example, would be worse if it did that) but it's a good experience I'd like if more games replicated.
Not every open world game needs to be like it (Elden Ring, to use one example, would be worse if it did that) but it's a good experience I'd like if more games replicated.
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Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
I'm rather fond of Horizon's open worlds. Opinions about the games may be mixed, but in general they embrace the idea that the open world is actually an abstraction of an area the size of multiple US states.
This also gives Horizon the freedom to make most of it's world a series of stitched together 'zones' where interesting combat scenarios can occur rather than trying force the conceit of everything occurring in, like, a microstate.
Horizon is kind of like the best version and refinement of the now tired Ubisoft formula.
This also gives Horizon the freedom to make most of it's world a series of stitched together 'zones' where interesting combat scenarios can occur rather than trying force the conceit of everything occurring in, like, a microstate.
Horizon is kind of like the best version and refinement of the now tired Ubisoft formula.
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- Russia
I think that transition to 3D damaged the ability of Open Worlds to abstract distance away. It is much more difficult to file the shrunken world under suspension of disbelief when in 3D, and especially when in first person akin to Skyrim.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't really buy this tbh, I don't see how this can be correct when literally all open world games compress their size. Including Skyrim! People make jokes about it but that doesn't stop open world games from being widely enjoyed. Clearly it's not stopping people from enjoying open world games.
I guess it's not impossible that there is a group of people who thinks it feels unimmersive but I've never seen any evidence that they're a major group.
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- Location
- Do you really care?
Well, I don't think I can personally agree with that, at least not where Zero Dawn is concerned, which is the only game of the series that I have played so far. I found it very conventional. Not necessarily generic, per se, since its techno-barbarian aesthetic made it interesting at times, but it had nothing special about it that made it different from any other open world with decent aesthetics and level design to me. I suppose you could say that is damning with faint praise, but all I mean is that it felt like something I've seen before, in the broad strokes.
No one was saying that it can't still be enjoyable, just that 3D (as opposed to, I assume, classic top-down sprite graphics with an overworld map) feels less like a downscaled version of a big place. Which I would call subjective, but I have to say that it's not entirely wrong, either. Skyrim certainly does not feel like a whole country. It certainy does not feel small, but it just never quite gets to that point. Morrowind, which explicitly takes place on only the relatively small island of Vvardenfell, arguably feels bigger for it, because there's more of a sensation that you are exploring a relatively small part of a much greater world.
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- The Old Dominion
The Zonai were certainly interesting and it certainly would be interesting to see more of them in another game though I do have a soft spot for the Yiga clan and sort of think it would be interesting to see them not working for Ganon but doing their own thing in another game.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
Like I said, it's the best refinement I've seen of the Ubisoft Formula, so I enjoy it in isolation. The problem is Ubisoft has cranked out at least three of those games a year for almost a decade. Thus wearing out the welcome mat.
They look a bit like a cross between a humanoid dragon and a rabbit. Which I think is deliberate given the whole 'rabbits from the moon' mythology that Japan sometimes does and how their pop culture will sometimes depict them as technologically advanced.
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- Do you really care?
...they would build a banana-shaped rocket ship and try to paint the moon yellow or something similarly asinine, wouldn't they? That's exactly the kind of "weirdly omni-capable yet incompetent cartoon villain" vibe they give.
In rather the same way that Western popular consciousness sometimes depicts the moon as being legitimately made of cheese, yes. My favourite take on it probably Bravely Default, which decided that the moon is apparently a high-tech fortress populated entirely by French people.
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The thing that puzzles me about a number of modern games (not ME Andromeda directly because I never went there) isn't that they don't overcome the hardest problems in graphics, but how often they slam those failures in your face instead of recognizing and mitigating them.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Honestly, I just want the Twili to come back to Zelda. I'll admit I'm biased as Twilight Princess was my first Zelda as a kid, but they're cool and have a lot of potential.
Oh also, my controversial opinions is that BotW is a downgrade as far as story goes. It has the potential, and it's idea of points of interest unlocking lost memories is incredibly clever, but it fails to actually do anything with them other than set up ideas it never follows through on.
No opinion on TotK's story as I haven't played it yet.
Oh also, my controversial opinions is that BotW is a downgrade as far as story goes. It has the potential, and it's idea of points of interest unlocking lost memories is incredibly clever, but it fails to actually do anything with them other than set up ideas it never follows through on.
No opinion on TotK's story as I haven't played it yet.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
The games industry is riddled with desperation fueled trend chasing. So is every other industry, but unlike a lot of films and TV, you have no choice but to actively engage with a game to make them progress.
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- Do you really care?
Without spoilers, I think you will feel rather similarly about it as about BOTW's. They're similarly competent-but-perfunctory.
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
Well yes, they launched that giant cannon shell full of people up their to colonize it over a century ago.
The moonlandings were not faked, we Americans refused to go back once we learned who we'd have to share the moon with.
I don't think there's any other type of Nintendo story. The plot is simply a scaffolding to glue everything together and the game is carried mostly by whimsy and good game design.
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