Game musings and news

[nosimpleway]

[Friday]

Meanwhile, Lamar was dumber than a crate of bent hammers, but I gave ten times more of a shit about him than I did the protags. He got that Extremely Stupid Dog in him, and I can't hate that.

I only got about 2/3rds the way through the game before losing interest, but I have to say making all three protags unlikable was really something.

So you've got Trevor, a crazy psychopathic murderer so completely over the top that he makes the insane look sane. Some people find his antics entertaining, and I won't deny he can be funny at times with just how batshit bloodthirsty he is, but likable? Shit, I guess if you a real dumb sadistic motherfucker. He's a caricature and a critique on the average dipshit murderhobo player, as you noted. I suppose that lends him a degree of "art" core or whatever, but he's still a fuckface and I was actively rooting against him.

Micheal is a sleazeball. Like Trevor he's a caricature and a critique, but this time on both typical hypocritical gangsters and LA entitled rich boy culture. His wife is the same, only this time for gangster wives who give up their morality for material wealth. His son and daughter are useless dipshits, but really they were raised in a place that basically made them that way. Micheal pretends to be some kind of professional but in reality his life is a mess and he's about as sloppy as they come. He too is over the top but in a more sleazy way and a less "kill or fuck everything that moves" way.

Franklin isn't a caricature, and is probably the most likable of the three, but all his motivations are just greed. He just wants money, and out of the hood. I don't blame him for wanting out, of course, but it's not like he's a good person.

On the other hand, Lamar is like if Franklin was a true ride or die homie. He's a big idiot, and he's violent as fuck, but I can't hate him because Big Dog, Big Nuts. Really one of the only genuinely likable characters in the whole game.

It's really weird to me coming back to GTA5 after playing RDR2, and just seeing the stark differences in how the characters are written. But then, GTA has always been a parody series. The characters in RDR2 are, full stop, the most fully realized and best written characters I've ever seen in a videogame. There's some small elements of parody in the RDR series but for the most part it takes itself seriously. GTA does not, and the characters end up as stupid hollow pastiches because of it. GTA5 I think just pushes this angle far more than any GTA game beforehand. Tommy from Vice City was a criminal who spends almost all of his time killing people, but he's not really a joke character. He's more like Franklin in that everything he does is motivated by greed.

Meanwhile Arthur, the main character of RDR2 is a legitimate exploration of a human being. He's an outlaw and a killer who robs people, but he also likes helping people. His whole story arc is about that and him finding out who he truly is under everything else. The game asks "what is Redemption" and if it is even a thing that can be attained. And it doesn't answer the question for you.

And that's just Arthur. Every single gang member is almost as well fleshed out as he is. I have said to my friends before that you could take RDR2 and make it into a high quality TV show, and keep basically everything the same, characters and story. And I would lay 10 million dollars that all the sudden all the critics would fall all over themselves talking about what an amazing character study it was, how all the acting was top notch, etc. But because these characters and story are all trapped in a video game, 80% of humanity will never know that they even exist, much less their quality. It really is a shame.

People generally point to games like Shadow of the Colossus or Papers Please or Cosmology of Kyoto (if you're Roger Ebert) as proof games can be (or are) art, but for my money it's RDR2. Both because it has the best characters and story of any game, and it's also just a traditional game game where you shoot a lot of dudes and level up your skills and shit. It proves that you don't have to be all artsy fartsy or hyper-alternative to be really great art.

[Mongrel]

Yep.

Not much to add to that other than the one other characteristic which I feel makes Franklin and Micheal so dislikeable. They are so fucking whiny. Everything is oh boo hoo me, my life is so hard, why has everyone around me got to drag me dowwwwnnnnn? Bitch, you are a fucking GANGSTER. Even more than that, you are a main character in a game where you have the complete run of an entire city where you can commit nearly unlimited crimes with near total impunity! But even if the sheer dissonance of that somehow didn't put the player off, the grating of their endless complaining has got to eventually wear even the most sympathetic player down.

At least Trevor got that much figured out, even if any sane person just wants to murder him first. I wish they'd forgone the psychopathic murderhobo and leaned way harder into the warped batshit conspiracy Dale Gribble parody/homage elements he had, where your goal is is just be beholden to no authority (or at least to put yourself beyond their reach). Imagine how fun "Pocket Sand!"-ing your way through GTA missions could have been.

Like you say, at least Arthur wants to help people, and of course in RDR2 the player has a genuine option to either do that or just greet-greet-antagonize their way through the whole game. In GTAV, even though the gameplay basically embodies freedom of action, you're just one of three flavours of hopelessly self-centred asshole, and you really can't change that in any meaningful way.

[Brantly B.]

Started stress-playing through the GTAV Story Mode for the first time and honestly, it's such stream-of-consciousness writing that I can't really be too assed about the characterization. Every PC and NPC in the game will say whatever the writers thought was funny at the time; these quips will often be strung together into something that resembles a conversation the same way to chatbots talking to each other does. Of all these Trevor winds up working the best because it's not disorienting to see him randomly clowning his way through Clownworld. But the best joke about Trevor is the constant joke of his bullshit actually working because he, well, because he's a PC, and there isn't much that Clownworld can do about it.

Not to bring up Saint's Row again but it's interesting getting the impression that the various voices for The Boss - who are all literally the same character - end up feeling more diverse in personality than the three actual separate characters in GTAV. It might be because it's easier to contrast them, but it feels like the Bossen will sometimes have wildly different takes and views on a situation while all the GTA protags are, in the end, just bitterly resigned to the fact that game mechanics and plot railroading will make them out to be the worst psychopaths. That's why Claude is still my favorite; just a mute guy who's clearly a huge asshole. He's the guy you would expect to run five people down on his way to do a favor for the Yakuza. I don't know why Rockstar keeps insisting on making us play guys who normally wouldn't do at least one of those things.

[Upthorn]

Just got linked to this on the hellsite:

This is truly amazing. Playing Link's Awakening at 1:1 pixel scale with 120 fps scrolling - you can zoom the map alllll the way out and the entire world is active.

https://linksawakeningdxhd.itch.io/links-awakening-dx-hd

Cool looking fan remake of a Nintendo IP.
Grab it before it gets nuked

And it's been nuked.

[Yoji]

I haven't tried it yet, but I downloaded it anyway. Just got a feeling it was something I should hang on to.

ETA: I took a quick peek. My computer's not the best for playing much of anything, but man it's weird seeing a seamless screen like this.

[Brantly B.]

Started stress-playing through the GTAV Story Mode for the first time

I'm sure it's been said already by approximately 13 million people, but man is it disorienting to drive around in this game if you're familiar with actual Los Angeles. Especially when you go to landmarks like the Not Getty Museum and Not Santa Monica Pier and are like wait, no, that's next to where that would normally be.

[Thad]

[Esperath]

as desired by approximately 3 people around the globe

[Niku]

Somehow Kayin is responsible for this.

[Metal Slime]

So NCSoft granted a limited license for a group to officially host City of Heroes.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/47223-ncsoft-homecoming-license-announcement/

[Thad]

Why this dev made a spiritual sequel to the infamous CD-i Zelda games

[Seedy Eye Software's] debut game, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, proudly draws inspiration from Link: Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, both by Phillips Interactive Media. These two games for the short-lived CD-i system are well-known for their clunky gameplay and notoriously awkward animated cutscenes with over-the-top voice acting. With, Arzette, creator Seth “Dopply” Fulkerson has faithfully replicated that look and sound, going so far as to bring in artists and voice actors who worked on the original games.

[...]

As a result of his research, Fulkerson gained a newfound respect for the developers at Phillips Interactive Media. “The limitations the games suffered thanks to the hardware, budget and time constraints became painfully obvious,” he says, “I found it very inspiring to see how much [director Dale DeSharone] and his team accomplished with so little. There is a handcrafted charm to the games. They are hand animated, hand drawn, with brilliant music, designed in a surprisingly non-linear way that encourages you to explore them.”

“Maybe the artwork on display wasn’t always the highest quality, but more than anything, I think the games are memorable experiences that stick with people,” he says. “Though they have many, many flaws, I truly believe there is innate potential in the games. Making a new game in the same style, with improvements to the core gameplay, was an irresistible idea.”

Making a high-quality spiritual successor to such titles meant capturing their charms while jettisoning their negative elements. Thankfully, Fulkerson knew immediately what was worth retaining and what to discard for Arzette. “I wanted to keep the same core art style and gameplay loop—hand painted level backgrounds, traditional animation produced in a similar style, linear levels with non-linear exploration that depended on power-up acquisition, and an appropriate soundtrack—while getting rid of anything that was too obtuse or a result of hardware limitations,” he explains.

[...]

It was important, he says, to not be cynical in the development process. “Part of it was writing the game earnestly, with no overtly-winky references or cynicism, and the other part was treating the game like it was a lost ‘third game’ for a non-existent, slightly more graphically advanced ‘Philips CD-i 2’, with artwork, animation, and music contributed by people who were just as passionate for the source material as I was.”

(links and italics not included in copy-paste)

I love this. It hits me in my "MST3K (but one of the episodes where they clearly have genuine affection for the movie)" spot.

[Thad]

Capcom adds new DRM to old PC games, raising worries over mods

But it appears that Capcom is ramping up its efforts to block mods in its PC games, with Steam users reporting that at least eight titles have implemented Enigma Protector. An unconfirmed list of Capcom games that use it includes Resident Evil 5, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, and multiple Mega Man Legacy Collection titles.

The motherfucking Mega Man Legacy Collections, for Christ's sake. 20-to-35-year-old single-player games. Added after purchase.

And apparently without notifying Valve, because none of these games' Steam pages list any third-party DRM.

I think this is the craziest DRM story I've heard in years.

[Mongrel]

Wow... Fuck Capcom, I guess.

[Thad]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to say don't buy anything from Capcom for the time being. Definitely not on PC because you don't know what you're actually getting, and maybe not on console just on principle.

And if you've already bought PC games from them...well, if you've had Steam open in the past few days you've probably already automatically downloaded the updates, but if you haven't, maybe open it in offline mode and disable automatic updates for any Capcom games you have in your collection. At least, the ones you don't intend to play online.

[KingRoyal]

Execs must have looked at all the positivity a lot of their recent releases were getting and decided it was time to put an end to that

[Mongrel]

Their doing it to Mega Man games from the last century is still blowing my mind a bit.

[Thad]

It's a cultural thing. They really hate mods. I'm sure that people making custom skins that (hypothetically) compete with their paid DLC is a factor, but clearly it's not the only factor, because again, they're doing it with frickin' Mega Man games.

[Yoji]

I wonder, is this about... (reads through a bit) ...mm-hm, the naked Chun-li incident. Like, sure, it's not given officially as a reason, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.

Tell me why we shouldn't pirate things again?

[Thad]

I wonder, is this about... (reads through a bit) ...mm-hm, the naked Chun-li incident.

"If you're going to show Chun-Li's titties, you'd damn well better have our permission first!"

Tell me why we shouldn't pirate things again?

I'll answer just as soon as I finish downloading the last few Discworld books. That first torrent was a few years old.