This universe came about because they would design fun gameplay first and then write an absurd story around it.
The “reasons” for things were usually dictated by gameplay and the stories reflected that.
It’s why Katamari Damacy is one of my favorite games, because it took that notion and really ran with it. It’s story is as absurd and over-the-top as the gameplay of rolling up objects to make stars in the sky. The gameplay is absurd and not in any way reflective of any reality except the reality of the game world itself.
The Mario series has always kept that ethos as well. The stories have grown and changed as long as the Mario gameplay has, each a response to a new set of moves, and at one point the move from 2D to 3D, all of it forever changing the path forward and the details of the canon Mario universe.
Super Mario Land also gave birth to Wario as an enemy and then eventually his own gameboy Spin-off Warioland (subheaded as ‘Super Mario Land 3’), which went on to have more installments than Super Mario Land itself!
Wario is one of Nintendo’s best characters and deeply underutilized (along with Waluigi).
Official Microsoft controllers were absolute peak with the Xbox 360…
…but modern Microsoft Xbox controllers have absolute dogshit build quality. Just the worst, constantly breaking for no reason. I’m just done with Xbox controllers because old DualShock 4’s are cheap and quality.
You know, you bring up a really good point, honestly.
My friend had a similar complaint about Baldurs Gate III.
“Why so much body horror and gore? When I was growing up and playing DnD, we were never exploring that kind of stuff. DnD can be so much more than just body horror and gore.” Not verbatim, but you get the idea.
As much as I love BG3, I don’t actually disagree with his sentiment at all.
There should be an opportunity for people to play similar style of games that aren’t so gory or depressing or both. Not every stealth game needs to be cyberpunk and depressing.
System Shock 2 is begging for a remake with actually functioning netcode for multiplayer way more than the original.
Bioshock would eventually iterate on this, but the RPG systems of System Shock 2 are so, so deep, and I always appreciated that you could still get attacked by enemies while trying to hack machines. It made doing things like hacking feel very dangerous. Bioshock literally pauses time for you it’s so weak by comparison.
Top-tier writeup. The original will always hold a special place in my heart but Mankind Divided was an excellent modern interpretation of similar systems of gameplay.
This is one of those things where Valve actually actively sucks and is actively ignoring a growing problem because the old game just isn’t profitable anymore.
Expect this to get zero interest or time spent on it from Valve because they’re knee-deep in trying to release a Hero Shooter (rolls eyes).
I have a lot of respect for Valve, but situations like this really need to make people step back and question how much Valve care about the community that uses the Steam service, or do they really care more about how much money they make?
The fact that they keep creating micro-transactions for a game that’s been completely taken over by bots says “They don’t give a shit, they just want the money.”
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Let’s not let Valve get away with shit just because they’re “good guys” compared to other businesses.
Anti-consumer is anti-consumer is anti-consumer. Valve doesn’t get a pass for being Valve.
EDIT: To be clear, I understand that they aren’t required to keep supporting a nearly-two-decade-old game, but letting it become a place where outright abuse happens is a different story. If you can’t control the abuse and you don’t want to do anything about it: do the thing nobody will like but will solve the problem: kill the damn game already if you don’t want to support it. That’s what I expect to happen before they face this issue, they’ll shut down official servers and make the game unavailable before they try to solve the bot problem for a game so old. Valve has made it clear for years that they don’t listen to or give a flying fuck about the TF2 community.
Seriously, good writing doesn’t happen with “lifehacks,” that’s how you get worthless shit like Max Landis writing Bright. (Don’t you love white people trying to write about racism… without writing about racism? Just plop in any old fantasy race and it works, right? Right!?)
I recall almost two decades ago I got into it with a woman who was going to school at Digipen, and she told me what Digipen taught students about writing a game.
She said the point was to create the most everyman main character, so you could have the most customers identify with them, and be able to sell more units.
Which I basically said “They’re teaching you the worst writing techniques possible. Literature students would faint at this idea.”
She didn’t care, she claimed this was “good writing.”
No wonder so many games have such dogshit writing if this is how we’re teaching game writers to write for fucks sake. Pick up a god damned book and get thoughtful, people.
Like seriously, let’s get game adaptations of weird, interesting books like Steppenwolf or Naked Lunch.