When asked if he was sure that Albion couldn’t be copyrighted due to its historical context, he replied: “I don’t know if I’m honest, I don’t really know… I hope so. I mean you would think that the responsible person I should be, I would’ve spent the last six months in lawyers’ offices…”
I don’t like this at all, and I’m going to tell you why.
Because this, like many changes in the remaster, does not respect Dead Rising as a work of art.
Let me explain something for people who either didn’t play the original or don’t analyze games as deeply as I do.
A big part of Dead Rising is Frank’s morality or lack thereof. Frank West is not a hero, he’s not a villain either.
I can’t even say that Frank is “Just trying to stay alive” - He has a place to hide out, plenty of food and a solid escape plan. If he wants to he can just stay in the bunker until the helicopter comes (You can actually beat the game and not even get the worst ending by simply staying in the security room for around six irl hours)
So, what is Frank doing? Well he is the protagonist and winds up doing a lot of good for a lot of people, but it’s all transactional.
Frank West is a photo journalist who gets paid the big bucks for sensationalized media. He’s not here to beat the bad guys, he’s here to make money off of click bait.
Frank West only saves people because he can get witness testimony and dramatic pictures of people hunkered down in a bunker. It just helps sell his story, that’s all.
Frank West only works with Brad and Jessie to stop Carlito because by doing so he can learn more about what’s going on in Williamette with all the zombies. Heck when you miss or fail a story beat, you don’t get a message talking about how the bad guys won or a game over screen, you get a message saying “The truth has vanished into darkness”, because that’s all Frank cares about. Getting a story he can sell for a large amount of cash.
We see this expanded upon with the side-quest “Cut From The Same Cloth”,
Here Frank meets Kent, a fellow photo-journalist who feels he’s beyond Frank’s level. This quest takes place over three days
On the first day, Frank is asked to take pictures of Kent to showcase his photography skills and prove it by getting a sexy shot of a pretty lady. This is our hint that Kent isn’t quite on the up and up, but Frank does it anyway because he’s no better than Kent. This is what the mission’s name is referring to… That Kent and Frank are both of low moral fiber.
However, in the remake, this is changed to Kent asking for a “Funny Shot” instead of a “sexy one” due to the lack of an erotica category… Which kinda kills the whole point.
The quest climaxes on day 3 when Kent is caught trying to kill a man in order to get a shot of it, forcing Frank to take down Kent who has clearly lost his god damn mind. However we are left with cold bitter reminder that if circumstances were only slightly different, Frank could have been the one doing snuff shots.
The game’s infinity mode confirms this further, as it takes place in an alternate set of events where Frank isn’t working with anybody and the helicopter isn’t coming. In it you are actively meant to kill characters who in the main game would be survivors or allies, all for the purpose of securing food and resources.
The game’s ending theme is a song called “Justified”
tl;dr - The Erotica Pictures don’t exist to tantalize the player, they’re there to remind of what kind of man Frank West really is. A scumbag in the right place at the right time.
By removing this category, they’re not “Bringing Dead Rising to a wider audience”, they’re outright spitting on the narrative.
PS: The term “Erotica” is misleading, as the most explicit this gets is a scene of a large breasted woman in a low-cut shirt leaning over an injured man. You see more “erotic” scenarios on prime time cable television. The point was NEVER to provide eye candy for the player, it was simply to remind the player that Frank is an opportunist not a hero.
I am not fond of this Dead Rising Remaster, it does not preserve or improve upon the original game, it’s simply trying to make a quick buck off of a famous name in gaming. There are other forms of censorship beyond the ertoica tag, such as Larry The Butcher being made white instead of Chinese (I agree the original Larry was a racist stereotype, but they couldn’t have just toned him down while keeping him asian? Why does he have to be white? Almost every other boss fight is with a white guy! This is the exact opposite of creating diversity!) and the boss fight with Clint no longer having references to the Vietnam War…
Because of this, the ugly character designs (New Frank looks straight up uncanny valley) and the shameful decision to throw out an all-star voice cast in favor of a sub-par one all to save a few bucks (The new voice cast is non-union, the old one was not)
I can’t in good conscience support the remake, and recommend people just get the 10 Dollar original version, already on Steam.
I believe it. There was a steamcommunity post last year detailing all the cut content. I believe some of it has been added back through the patches (I only played through the game once, around launch).
To me the tadpole consequences is the most egregious, as the whole system and decisions connected to it feel so hollow when they end up not mattering at all.
Yeah, stuffing more worms into your brain being purely a beneficial mechanic with no drawbacks is a very weird choice. This whole system was honestly better in early access than it ended up being, having the tadpoles be just a dialogue option with a very easy check but consequences the more you used them. The ring that Omeluum gives you was even supposed to help, only to get changes into a boring Charm resistance ring on release.
I don’t know if it’s been culled by now in patches, but when I played there were still lines by the narrator talking about the consequences and “if you do this, there’s no going back” regarding the brain worms. All lies, it turns out.
I have no clue why they cut it, but having it actually impact your potential choices and your endings would be thematically appropriate and make for fun and difficult gameplay choices, I would have thought.
The lack of consequences for the brain worms - and lack of rewards or even mentions for abstaining! - was part of why Act 3 soured me on the game quite a bit. Come on, not even a silly achievement for not using any Illithid power all playthrough?
Yeah, I was very dissapointed by that as well. As far as I’m aware, the only time it matters is when
Act 3 spoilerThe Emperor offers you the Astral tadpole, if you used any worms you have to pass a check that grows harder the more worms you consumed to resist using it, if you abstained you can just say no.
Yeah but even that is pointless because there are literally zero consequences to accepting the Astral Tadpole! Even though you’re half Illithid supposedly it all kinda just goes away in the happy ending. I don’t get it.
As I recall there are two decisions. First you get the choice of the Astral Tadpole, which opens the outer ring of mindflayer powers and gives you black veins in your face and the status “half-Illithid”.
Later - as part of the ending - you can decide to become a full on mindflayer, because for some arbitrary narrative reason the mcguffin can only be operated by one.
Furthermore, there is an option to destroy the special “gift” if you can resist accepting it. However, all you get for doing so is a few brief lines from the Emperor. Your companions don’t seem to notice, and there isn’t even an quest log update.
“This is a really random tidbit, but Moonrise Towers used to be two towers,” Vincke explained. “And now, we shipped with only one tower. And for a long time, there was actually the ruins of the second tower, and then we removed that also.
I was wondering about this all through that part of the game. I scoured every path I could figure out how to reach, inside and out, but ultimately found no second tower. Welp, that explains it.
This mod was hyped previously. DMCAing it right before its release date is a different kind of dick move; especially considering the game is vulnerable to an RCE exploit and the mod would likely patch it to have things move more securely.
The timing of this move makes me want to never buy another game from Activision (or Microsoft, by extension). Just such a blatant exploitation of the community.
I think that’s been the move for awhile now. I have not or will not buy anything Activision or Blizzard, I would rather pirate if I wanted it that bad. But I’m finding that their games now a days are just copy and paste someone else’s usually. This really was a dick move though.
Tbh, as importent as they were to the nacent development of the games industry, based on past and recent behavior towards fan games, I kind of hope they eat their hats on this.
Nintendo said they will announce/reveal something this fiscal year, that’s it. No word about launch.
The rest are just rumours and just a bunch of dudebro’s who replaced 2023 with 2024, and now have to scribble in 2025 pretending they never said they were 99% sure it was releasing earlier.
They’re waiting that the tech is becoming the past gen. They can’t launch something from the current gen, it must be 3-4 gens behind and compensate that with their coding geniuses that can still make masterpieces with the limited resources available. Maybe it’s going to be something as powerful as an iPhone 11 would be mind-blowing 🤯
If it’s still 9 months away, there’s no real reason to announce it publicly before the Christmas season. The fact that the original Switch’s sales are flagging is not a reason to announce, since it’s not launching in time for the holidays. Its announcement isn’t going to spurr Switch 1 sales.
When it’s announces will be entirely deoendent on when retailers need to know launch details. Once it’s outside of Nintendo, they’ll have to announce things publicly or risk losing control over the narrative.
Such a dumb move. This won’t help sales, but it certainly will hurt them (though, to be fair, probably not much). Sex sells. And the people who are offended by this wouldn’t have bought the game in the first place.
I’m just so annoyed by this recent resurgence of Puritan-esque prudishness. Humans are sexual beings! We shouldn’t be ashamed of or offended by sexuality; we should embrace it! And if people are worried about unequal representation, the solution is simple: put sexy men in the game, too, and maybe an option for players to toggle either. Everybody wins.
Yeah, I think the people arguing for this don’t understand the full context. You get extra points for taking the equivalent of upskirt photos of women who are being attacked by or in fear of being attacked by zombies. It’s textbook exploitation.
I can’t immediately think of a context where it would be better, but… it isn’t this.
I don’t know the game well - never played its original release and I likely won’t play this remake - but from what I understand, the women in question are zombies, so consent isn’t really a factor.
If anything, removing this feature slightly reduces immersion and significantly changes the main character’s personality. I can understand why someone who was a fan of the original would be hesitant to get the remake, since the main character is a different person, morally speaking.
It’s like Star Wars - Han shot first, and changing that doesn’t change the story in any real way, but it significantly changes Han’s character.
“So what you’re saying is: You like what my friends and I do with our Borderlands video games even more than you like what some of the biggest and best cast and crew of film makers on the planet have done,” he wrote. “I’m super flattered! We’re working extra hard four you on what’s next….”
…what? Lmao.
Having the best crew doesn’t matter if you’re trying to race the Daytona 500 with a box car with a monkey that was only trained to turn right and to have an actress in her late 50s play a character in her early 20s.
Is it me or has the term remastered been changed to remake/redesigned?
To me it’s always meant that its just a visual fidelity and maybe audio updating. The rest of the game mechanics remain. Only extreme bugs should be fixed that would lead to corrupted saves or something.
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Aktywne