I’m ambivalent on it, but definitely not negative. I hate that everyone watching big game shows is hoping to see “Ratchet & Kratos 7” or “Dark Lore 5” or “Metal Gear Sonic 11”. Especially since, as you know, every decent mid level game developer these days has been fired at least once by morons with MBAs, and so the industry must make new IPs from the scattered devs.
Its art doesn’t speak for itself, I think on multiplayer it usually doesn’t. We’ll have to see how it feels later.
I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.
I will say that even then, it was missing a bit of “acknowledgment”. Kleiner and Alyx don’t even question where you came from or what you should be doing now you’ve suddenly arrived.
Some of that could be as simple as, if Gordon was non-silent, have him wonder questions while wandering C17: “What the…how long have I been gone? What the hell happened to Earth?”
I think the pistol and SMG are intended to feel weak, to push you into other weapons that take more interesting use. For instance, half an SMG clip into a soldier could instead be one launch of a barrel from the gravity gun. Notably, you only see those soldiers after getting the gravity gun.
If you’re referring to the early cops, about half of them are around some tricky environmental kill, like an explosive barrel. But, I’ll grant there are times you’d desperately spend a magazine to land headshots with the pistol. So, I guess you’re not wrong.
Something I just realized is that this fits exactly with the “Only happens in production” issues many coders run into.
Anyone in the studio would obviously install all the DLC, since they need to test its contents. They’d also run habitual tests without the DLC to verify it’s not necessary, and that it passes basic checks. But, they wouldn’t do that often. Same with how, say, many webapps run internally without the 80 MB of tracking scripts.
Good games tend to be made by big teams. That’s why when you hear about some auteur recruiting his own random team for a game, it ends up being a failed venture usually.
AI is often an effort to replace large teams with small ones, churning someone’s half-baked thoughts into code and art. The result is rarely human and inventive; and in a lot of ways, it tends to show in the end product.
There’s an unfortunate dilemma there. When someone makes a Darth Vader or Joker character, many people like them, but some like them without a trace of irony, and genuinely feel that the Empire should kill those horrible rebels and that chaos should reign in Gotham. And that gestures America.
I avoided that game based on the name, but from what I gather, it was misleading; pretty much every sect of that school is full of jerks (sadly including the nerds, who often cater to their own victim complex), and your character is just facing the larger of them.
Totally agree with this one. I just posted about Quake Brutalist Jam 3, but it still annoys me that any use of the multi-missile launcher cuts into my time with the grenade launcher, and so on.
Dead Space 3 gave me an aneurysm because they just have one resource: “aMmO”.
I don’t even mind the oft-irritating “Ammo full for Pufferfish Launcher” notification, because it’s at least a reminder I should use the Pufferfish Launcher more often.
As long as people are able to stay civil, I’m definitely happy to dive into this subject, because it interests me a lot and I’m eager to see if anyone feels they learn something from it.
if the creator wants his characters to look a specific way then so what?
Valid sentiment, but it gets weird when “the creator” is not just one auteur, but a big network of interconnected developers. One may “really want a hot springs scene with detailed looks at the female lead’s boobs”, while much of the rest of the devs are uncomfortable with it, think it will hurt narrative pacing, or even think it could hurt sales.
I do think it’s hard to argue that sex un-sells, but there’s at least some slight data to suggest it. Two games come to mind. One is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the other is Nier Automata. Both games sold well and had dedicated fans - but both also had a decently large number of players that saw what they viewed as “cringey anime hornbait” and decided to ignore it - even if the game would’ve readily contained other features they might have enjoyed - intricate JRPG mechanics and DMC combat. I don’t even view that audience as “prude” - they just generally held the sentiment that the sexiness was so out of place, it was distracting from the core themes of those games. In N:A’s case, it was a much smaller minority, but you could see in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it kind of toned sexualization back.
if you’re upset that there’s an unrealistically attractive male or female in a game, respectfully, go fuck yourself. There’s millions of video games that you can also enjoy without your weird preconceived notions that video game characters need to be as attractive or less attractive than you personally are. Video games are a fantasy for a reason.
THIS, I think, is the biggest misconception. Although this is hard to cite with data, I feel reasonably confident in positing a theorem: Aside from an absolutely tiny, vanishingly small base, many of whom don’t even play games, I don’t think anyone * is upset at game characters being “too attractive”*. I watch quite a few female streamers, and by and large, they’re happy and eager to play games with gorgeous women in them. On many occasions, they don’t even care too much about sexualized outfits.
Where I think there’s the most silent sensitivity, and perhaps game publishers haven’t quite parsed this thought, is in objectification. captainlezbian kind of covered the thought - how sex should be humanizing and treat the sexy characters as people, with agency. When an attractive character is an “award”, or never speaks, or their decisions/actions have no effect on any story events, that can go from losing people’s attention to even making them feel uncomfortable - like their gender is “not allowed” in the medium.
Dead or Alive: Sexy, not always quite objectifying. The large-breasted characters range from master assassins on missions, to secret weapon projects, to girlboss CEOs bent on world control.
Bayonetta: Quite the opposite of objectifying. Bayonetta’s domineering personality, even when she’s stripping nude, evokes control over the characters and space around her.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: VERY objectifying - would be even if Pyra had smaller breasts. Pyra is cute, but she’s incredibly subservient, and basically relies on Rex, the male lead, to take charge as leader and protect her. She’s constantly oblivious to the more pervy characters in the cast. A lot of classic anime at least skirted the latter issue by having female leads highly aware, and beat up the lechers near them (even if the viewer benefited from their exploits). I don’t mind saying this was too much for even me. Again: Agency.
get some massive bodonhonkaroos in there, give that guy a massive bulge and a 18 pack, who fucking cares it’s a video game.
I think where this can get confusing is that, by and large, women aren’t quite seeking the same overtly excessive appearances in games as men. If you want some examples, search on Steam for what “Otome” games look like, and picture your male leads in a superhero game looking like that - complete with open button shirts and pensive, slightly-girly attitudes. Uncomfortable? Yeah - that shows what you said, about how not everything will appeal to everyone.
We’re lucky in that women generally are not sorely offended by women in games having breasts (Le Gasp!) but there’s neat ways of making them attractive for all players that don’t instantly produce an “ICK” from a sizable number of players.
The real silver bullet I’ve seen is customization, which is often a win-win. I often point to Stellar Blade as a good example; the default outfit for Eve fits the sci-fi fantasy very well. Then, you unlock a LOT of extremely sexualized, even objectifying, outfits, as well as other “cute, functional” outfits. I don’t mind saying I dived into the former, while many people less interested in sexualization enjoyed the latter. Generally, all parties involved appreciate Eve’s attractive figure and long hair.
I’d really like to see a set of publishers/creators that take a hard line stance on this, and reject contracts with, eg, Speedtree, if they insist on a dedicated startup video.
Kudos to Arc Raiders. When I boot it up, aside from an EAC launcher logo, it goes straight to Speranza.
In a world with a bit more trust, I feel like this is what blockchain/certificates would be for. Basically someone would make a signed statement from a lawyer or witness that “This user with email address xyz is over the age of 18.” Contains no other data, and the notary would be trusted not to collect any more than needed. Then, websites could verify the signature against a public key from the firm.