Hear me out, we build suburbs that are isolating and far away from people, requiring a car. You can’t drive until you’re 16. Parents now schedule playdates and anything fun. What does this all mean? Kids are now more isolated and alone than ever.
Our parents talk about going out until the streetlights came on but would never allow kids to do that now, and even then kids friends live miles away. We punish kids who do get together with no loitering and calling them hooligans up to no good.
Literally what do these parents expect?
Here in Seattle we made public transit free for kids under 18, and it has honestly transformed the neighborhoods! I see kids out walking, biking, getting bubble teas and ice cream, and they’re all so happy now! I had a girl walk up to me and ask if the bus came in 5 or 15 minutes. They’re absolutely using it, meeting up with their friends, and loving it I overhear conversations of all the places they want to go now to hang out.
Mobility for kids has been a huge benefit for us, I hope other places take notice
Freaking YES. Movies need to spoon-feed a bit and so does TV, but you have a whole medium that lets people be as confused or not and that’s a great thing. If a player doesn’t care, there are options to not dive deep, if they do they will. My first playthrough I was confused what the genophage was. I heard bits and pieces but was genuinely confused. You know what I did? I walked over to my crew mate who mentioned it and asked him! Why is that so hard, the unknowns al_are_ the suspense! It’s what keeps me playing.
Compare that to mass effect Andromeda where they introduce it by having two characters explain it at length in front of the player. This event that would be on par with WW2. So natural. “Hey friend, I was just thinking about WW2. You know, that war that involved the acid vs the allies fought between 1939 and 1945 in which we saw a fascist leader march across Europe?”. Jesus hell have some respect for your players, stop fucking spoon feeding us.
Agreed. It could have been such an interesting concept if it was literally any other place. Zeta halo could have been so cool, but it felt so detached from the universe
Librarian, Didact, people they didn’t even take the time to introduce well and we were supposed to just jump on board with it. Buck was literally the only saving grace for Halo 5 in my opinion - and they introduced him in ODST
Watched a recent video on magic and writing and it applies for scifi too. Every time you add to the lore you now have to remember and support it forever. 4 just added so much that they clearly didn’t think through like that. Bungie dishes out lore in small bits from 1-3, and it was so exciting when you got just the small tiny bit of backstory. 4 and 5 then just dumped in on your plate in healing portions.
4 felt like such a cash grab to me. No deep lore or story telling like with 1 through reach. Exposition was just spoon fed to us rather than a great mystery. Still, I plugged through, hoping maybe it’d turn around.
Then 5 came out and I gave up all hope on the franchise. Spent more time playing as Locke than we did Chief, story was more compelling than 4 but the storytelling and pacing were clunky, and it was completely disconnected from 4.
Infinite just got worse. “We lost, chief” (but we have no frame of reference, we have no idea what that means , we don’t know how the rest of the world has been affected, and then we’re put against some no name character when we really just want to know what the hell is happening off world)
Completely get all of your points, and respect them. I think on the spectrum of bad to perfect systems, I see the UK as “good” - but a long ways from perfect too. The US however is just obviously bad, and I think moving towards the UK’s system would be a massive step in the right direction. Personally, I think the first step is that the private companies should not own the rails themselves, they have proven that they are not the proper stewards of those systems and should not own that.
That’s step one. After step one though, I completely see your points and that there would be a lot of details worth looking into.
And, as someone how has ridden the Azuma service from London to Edinburgh 4 times - I have seen it cancelled twice. Ridiculous that in my very very infrequent trips to the UK I have seen my train trips cancelled just as many times as I’ve ridden them.
Fully agree. In a civilized modern country the government would own the rails (because, I mean obviously it would) and operators would put out timetables and requests for trains - all managed by the government. Just like the UK and most other countries, the government is in charge of maintaining the rails, keeping them safe, and expansion, while the operators do what they do best - they manage their schedules and try to squeeze the most profit out of it.
It’s a win-win, private industry doesn’t have to worry about safety or maintenance beyond their own vehicles, they work with the government on scheduling, and passenger rail would get a resurgence because adding new train lines and stops would just be a matter of starting a new operator.
If you thought of a new commuter line that you think would benefit a region, it wouldn’t be trying to convince Amtrak to do it - you could literally raise the money and start your own operator, lease some vehicles, and then literally just start running your train line operated on government tracks. Just as the semis do on the interstate system, just like airlines do.