Emulation seems neat to me, but I know behind every comment on it there’s a whispered implication: Piracy. Very few people are imaging their own game discs. That unfortunately makes it less appealing to me, especially as trustworthiness shifts at many of those sites.
Best way of handling this is to load the environment with random events that can occur on various return trips. Sea of Thieves and Red Read Redemption 2 do this, though it doesn’t work for every game.
The other good way to handle it is a fun movement system, eg Insomniac games.
Something I tried to do earlier to help with it, in this very channel, was a “Downvote any game you’ve heard of before” thread. It was a nice exercise to help people post odd games no one had heard of.
I’m a sucker for Zenless Zone Zero. I recognize it’s often catering to male gaze, but I appreciate there’s some uniqueness and interesting themes to the designs.
Basic example, “Corin” being on first blush just a cute maid cut, but also following a Frankenstein design theme with the bolts/chainsaw and hair color.
They’ve also had a “bunny-girl”, Alice, who much like real bunnies is skittish and easily frightened (and is thankfully not nearly as sexualized as the theme often carries)
The worst part is, I consider myself a bit of a gooner; I like alluring, attractive characters. But that was meant to be a story-based game, and yet it designed so many jokes around attractive women dressing in rags, being clueless, easily offended, and seemed to design the story around an intense contact between a shonen hero and a large-breasted woman.
At least in something like Stellar Blade, they evade the subject because they know there’s nothing constructive to say.
Apollo is out there in Kuh’rain, wondering if Ace Attorney will ever pick up on an old story so his boss can tell him something important and he can say back “Yeah, Mr. Wright, I figured that out because I’m not an idiot.”
What’s sad is, I also had a silly web project like this, but had to abandon it since browsers (logically) decided to mute webpages on load until you interacted with them.
It was basically just user selection of image and audio, and then you pick a spot to forever zoom into. A little like YTMND.
Wonder if H4 will really continue off WOA’s ending; or if it’ll be some weird reboot.
Tap for spoilerFor those who don’t know, the ICA, signature org 47 follows, was dismantled in WOA’s story since it was basically a servant of Providence. Providence itself was too large to destroy, so Diana still runs it, basically just dismantling as much as she can.
I might even be interested in some form of main character switching for Hitman if they can invent someone that has most of 47’s capability with some interesting nuance. (No, the spoiler is not that 47 dies)
Take a look at Half-Life 2’s old Face Poser software. I feel like you don’t see that sort of action-level control much anymore.
Indie studios are evading the need for lipsync entirely, by making simple models, giving people masks, putting them on radio overlays, etc. AAA studios are overengineering it, putting a $4,000,000 actor in a motion capture suit for each of their cutscenes to capture every fine detail as they stare in wonder at the white ping-pong ball in the studio with the sign written; “LOOK HERE”.
Face Poser was a good median; it’s where the director gets control, but you don’t need a vast technical setup beyond animations, some vowel extraction, and some basic know-how. It means that if the director wants to add a criticism “No, character B should give a dubious, unsure look when character A says that”, it’s something they can apply directly rather than ask the animators to do by hand.
For some reference, old machinima like Clear Skies, or my own “AS” made use of Face Poser.
Don’t forget, “Turns out it was a losing bet to back DEI and Trans people”.
This is something scared, pathetic, loser, feral, spineless, sociopathic, moronic fascists come up with to try to win a crowd larger than an elevator; Assume the outcome as a foregone conclusion and try to talk around it, or claim it’s already happened.
Respond directly. “What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve never even seen ANY AI that I liked. Who told you it was going to pervade everything?”