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Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:Yeah, I think "X is actually main character's dying dream, and these characters represent..." is basically the worst kind of dumb theory. Especially if that person is trying to present it as real analysis. I have actually seen an instance where this is a good theory: John Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. It's an unabashed right-wing sex and power fantasy, and Ringo's well aware of how terrible it is. If I remember correctly, the theory comes from Ringo himself: that the entire series is just an elaborate dream the main character's having as he dies from a dangerous stunt early in the first novel.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:18
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Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:Yeah, I think "X is actually main character's dying dream, and these characters represent..." is basically the worst kind of dumb theory. Especially if that person is trying to present it as real analysis. The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!”
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Oct 8, 2014 21:38
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echopapa posted:The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!” There is one that is worse. When people claim that character A and B is the same one because they are played by the same actor.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:45
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echopapa posted:The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!” Didn't they also have "Character X is Haruhi Suzumiya!!!" thing as well for a while? I think that was a thing on TV Tropes before I concluded that the site was a bit rubbish, really.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:49
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Yessss. This pleases me.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:49
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watho posted:There is one that is worse. When people claim that character A and B is the same one because they are played by the same actor. "Guys, don't you realize that Star Trek: Enterprise is all about how Sam Beckett jumped into the body of a star-ship captain?"
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Oct 8, 2014 22:08
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 Shame about the lack of jump cuts until the end, but it was still great. The only "chracater x is the same as character y because they're both played by the same actor!" thoery that I've ever liked is that in The Prisoner, Number 6 is actually John Drake, the character Patrick McGoohan played in the earlier TV show Danger Mna, because both characters are spies. Most fan theories are pretty awful. There's "making an opinon on something left ambigous" and "forcing your stupid head canon into everything". It's up there with "what if this kids show.....was DARK AND SERIOUS reallt".
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Oct 8, 2014 22:11
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echopapa posted:The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!” I can't believe I'm defending TvTropes, but I think the intended purpose of the pages that have that Stupid Theory are the "Intentionally Stupid Theories" page. This is the point where someone points out that I'm mistaken and that TVT is worse than I thought. Unrelated: I'm not sure where I came across this guy (I kinda think it was this thread, but can't remember where), but is there a Goon Opinion of Your Movie Sucks? The guy tends to be a spergy with his complaints, but he's pretty self-aware of it and most of his complaints tend to be solid.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:13
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MisterBibs posted:I can't believe I'm defending TvTropes, but I think the intended purpose of the pages that have that Stupid Theory are the "Intentionally Stupid Theories" page. This is the point where someone points out that I'm mistaken and that TVT is worse than I thought. Yeah I was always under the impression the time lord thing was just a dumb meme/intentionally stupid theory as well. Though knowing the internet, I can absolutely see people taking it beyond that.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:25
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MisterBibs posted:Unrelated: I'm not sure where I came across this guy (I kinda think it was this thread, but can't remember where), but is there a Goon Opinion of Your Movie Sucks? The guy tends to be a spergy with his complaints, but he's pretty self-aware of it and most of his complaints tend to be solid. He kills a joke a bit too hard sometimes but I generally like his stuff. He falls a little on the pretentious side of things as well but again it's never too awful or anything. echopapa posted:The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!” Now I feel like an idiot because I used to just sort of off-hand joke that James Bond was a Time Lord. Am I a troper by accident? 
Tracula fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 22:43
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OldMemes posted:Am I the only one who is hoping Phelous does another Halloweenie video this year? The voice and the well timed jump cuts in those were hilarious.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:50
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Viewtiful Jew posted:I think JonTron not getting the underlining jokes and themes in Nuts and Bolts is up there. The game constantly references how it knows it won't do well at retail and that the vehicle esthetic would turn off a lot of people but he never even notices it. Like he never even really got to a bunch of problems you could criticize the game for and the review was mostly just him screaming about it being cars for a bunch of minutes. I'll refer you to the top SNES video, his arguments about AllStars version of SMB3 obscuring the NES version, the way he talks about the Donkey Kong Games and his afterword. I had to take a shot after attempting to process the logic behind it.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:53
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Tracula posted:He kills a joke a bit too hard sometimes but I generally like his stuff. He falls a little on the pretentious side of things as well but again it's never too awful or anything. Weelllllll 
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Oct 8, 2014 22:55
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watho posted:I hate that thing when people treat fictional worlds like living places. It's a very troper way to approach fiction. While I really hate to defend TVTropes-anything, some of the most prolific writers have taken that approach to their writings, and they did pretty well for themselves because of it. Hell, Tolkien even called his writings 'history' whenever the topic came up. It lends a certain conviction to their work that you don't really get otherwise. Now, acting like it's a real place, that's a bit different.
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Oct 8, 2014 22:58
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Kunster posted:I'll refer you to the top SNES video, his arguments about AllStars version of SMB3 obscuring the NES version, the way he talks about the Donkey Kong Games and his afterword. I had to take a shot after attempting to process the logic behind it. As bad as Jon gets I don't think it holds a loving candle to Arin and the stupid spergy bullshit he starts to spew once he has a microphone.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:04
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Nah, they're two different kinds of beast. Arin's Sequelitis/Game Design rambles go to poo poo as soon as you see him play in a heavily edited video series, Jon's fuckedness is more conceptual, with poo poo like Nuts And Bolts, what I elaborated and "Tetris is not a videogame". It's "Huh, this would be better if there wasn't a lot of footage showing that maybe a lot of this wouldn't work" vs "These are the worst videogame opinions. There's nothing worse. This would have killed Nintendo in the 1980's. This would have gotten Yamaguchi to snap and turn his face into paste with a Mr. Fanicom shaped doorstop."
Kunster fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 23:12
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Arin Still top that with making a whole video about how the intro stage in megaman x is the best thing ever. jon is just doing the whole "non-game" bullshit people been spewing since the launch of the wii.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:24
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S-Alpha posted:While I really hate to defend TVTropes-anything, some of the most prolific writers have taken that approach to their writings, and they did pretty well for themselves because of it. Hell, Tolkien even called his writings 'history' whenever the topic came up. It lends a certain conviction to their work that you don't really get otherwise. Maybe that writing style just isn't for me. 
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Oct 8, 2014 23:31
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Cyron posted:Arin Still top that with making a whole video about how the intro stage in megaman x is the best thing ever. jon is just doing the whole "non-game" bullshit people been spewing since the launch of the wii. He did this with MotherFucking Tetris. I'm amazed he can even work out Ms-Dos after that particular line.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:34
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99.99% of the time it's safe to disregard someone as a pretentious gently caress when they say "X is not a game". Although I am curious to see the whole "Tetris is not a game" thing if you have it readily available.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:39
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He seems like a really nice guy and I've tried watching a ton of his different videos, but for the life of me I just don't get the appeal of Phelous.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:44
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OctoberCountry posted:He seems like a really nice guy and I've tried watching a ton of his different videos, but for the life of me I just don't get the appeal of Phelous. I'm in the same boat. I honestly and truly can't imagine him actually enjoying any horror movie because his complaints are so absurd at times. "Ugh, these people are at a party? They're having sex? God, I HATE THEM ALREADY. Ugh why aren't they doing this exact thing to save themselves? What a bunch of dummies" Like, 90% of the movies he hates are really bad so this isn't a problem, but any Eli Roth movie review he does is unbearable especially since he'll use that stupid "FACED" joke 6000 times per video. poo poo that came out really negative. His Halloweenie stuff is fun as is his looks at bootleg toys and stuff and he seems like a cool dude, I just can't get into his reviews no matter how I've tried. OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 23:50
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OctoberCountry posted:He seems like a really nice guy and I've tried watching a ton of his different videos, but for the life of me I just don't get the appeal of Phelous. While I think that Phelous is the best of the tgwtg style of reviewers, I can't blame people for not getting it. It's really stupid, meta and stupid. He simultaneously parodies Internet movie reviews while making good ones. It's weird.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:50
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Phelous's sense of humour is weird. He's making fun of himself, internet reviewing and the movie all at the same time, and he has a lot of obscure call backs and in-jokes and references, but it's just so surreal and strange that its funny. He once made fun of the Irate Gamer's ramblings about breakfast cereal. Why? Dunno, but it was funny. I didn't like him at first, but then he clicked with me, and he's one of my favourite internet video makers now. He is ok at film criticism, but I don't think you're meant to see him as a critic, but a guy who makes videos that are somehow very stupid and smart at the same time. His stuff is pretty surreal - I think its his presentation that makes me laugh a lot of the time. Trying to describe Phelous's style of humour is hard, but I'm actually laughing while typing this because I'm remembering bits from his videos that I like, even if I don't know why I like them.
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Oct 9, 2014 00:10
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echopapa posted:The only theory that’s worse is the one that TVTropes loves the most, “Character X is a Time Lord!!!” Kunster posted:Nah, they're two different kinds of beast. Arin's Sequelitis/Game Design rambles go to poo poo as soon as you see him play in a heavily edited video series, Jon's fuckedness is more conceptual, with poo poo like Nuts And Bolts, what I elaborated and "Tetris is not a videogame". It's "Huh, this would be better if there wasn't a lot of footage showing that maybe a lot of this wouldn't work" vs "These are the worst videogame opinions. There's nothing worse. This would have killed Nintendo in the 1980's. This would have gotten Yamaguchi to snap and turn his face into paste with a Mr. Fanicom shaped doorstop."
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Oct 9, 2014 00:42
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Hbomberguy posted:Something that needs addressing: Arin purposefully lies about Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of loving Time to make himself an edgy opinion-haver on the internet. Huh, more info about this?
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Oct 9, 2014 01:12
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Mokinokaro posted:Yeah that was a gag/sketch that really worked and it didn't distract from the review itself like a lot of NC sketches did. I kept losing it after Malcom walked off screen and then did a jump scare of him just walking the other way. I don't know why but it just works. BigRed0427 fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 01:32
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Yeah, I really enjoyed this one. Haven't laughed at Nostalgia Critic like that in a little bit. Not that his recent reviews have been awful, but this one was just a lot of fun. Delightfully weird movie.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:35
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Looks like SFDebris is looking at Justice League Unlimited now. Also he's gonna be doing Escaflowne - finally a decent anime for him to check out. Watching that JLU review makes me pine for more DC animation. I think it's high-time WB starts making cartoons of their flagship characters again. Its been too long and, quite frankly, if they want to stay inside the public mind they need to get out there. Marvel is completely dominating right now.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:51
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Jimbot posted:Escaflowne Oh thank christ. That's a good palate-cleanser after poo poo like Kannazuki no Miko.
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Oct 9, 2014 01:55
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Jimbot posted:Looks like SFDebris is looking at Justice League Unlimited now. Also he's gonna be doing Escaflowne - finally a decent anime for him to check out. Watching that JLU review makes me pine for more DC animation. I think it's high-time WB starts making cartoons of their flagship characters again. Its been too long and, quite frankly, if they want to stay inside the public mind they need to get out there. Marvel is completely dominating right now. Still miles better than Marvel has been doing since canceling Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. drat you Jeph Loeb 
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Oct 9, 2014 01:59
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achillesforever6 posted:For some reason DC has really been making GBS threads the bed lately with cartoons, except Teen Titans Go of course. Didn't Bruce Timm leave DC around a year or so ago?
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Oct 9, 2014 02:06
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Huh, more info about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0 Go hog wild. He legitly gets angry and rails on about how long it takes to open chests and that you actually have to wait for a few seconds for platforms to raise and lower or an enemy to drop their guard. Edit: Always classy too to open with making GBS threads on your fans. Tracula fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 02:19
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Tracula posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0 Go hog wild. He legitly gets angry and rails on about how long it takes to open chests and that you actually have to wait for a few seconds for platforms to raise and lower or an enemy to drop their guard. That doesn't explain the lying accusation. Dumbass complaints, though.
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Oct 9, 2014 02:22
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Spiritus Nox posted:That doesn't explain the lying accusation. Dumbass complaints, though. Oh, missed that bit  . That's something Hbomb will have to cover since I'm curious about the lies as well.
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Oct 9, 2014 02:27
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He takes an approach to game design that attempts to be more measured and aware of the player's experience, rather than objective elements of the design. Which is a good thing. Sequelitis gets a lot right as a critical work and I look forward to being called a ripoff when I finish this video I'm working on. But it purposefully looks for reasons the experience wouldn't be fun in order to call it bad. Like he REALLY exaggerates the waiting around in the game and actively lies about the way the spike traps work. He sets it up like you literally can't see them coming and they suddenly unfairly hit you out of nowhere. But in literally every single appearance of those traps, you can SEE them and usually their entire path. The point is to plan around their movement. Getting hit by them is a failure of memory or timing or spatial awareness, which the game's really good with. But all that is ignored because he's trying to make the game look bad on purpose by nitpicking it in the most dumb way possible to supplement his other, actually really good observations. He's really spot on about the feeling of adventure disappearing in later Zelda games but doesn't recognise that other things have taken its place and made the games into their own interesting mini-genre in of themselves. Also, having a purposeful set of goals within a simulated adventure-world is really cool and interesting - but since he defines true adventure as essentially being in a world with no direction whatsoever, it turns out you're actually being RAILROADED when someone tells you where to go in a world. As someone who actively enjoys travelling the actual planet, I can tell you first-hand that having a loving map or directions doesn't make your experience feel handholdy. You are still 'exploring a world' even though you know where you're headed. His opening argument is 'okay we all KNOW what makes a Zelda game, but WHAT IS A ZELDA GAME?' and then claims the centrally good part of the original first game from 1987 is essentially the only thing that Zelda games are or should be trying to achieve, and they have failed to do so. That's not a lie but it's so off the pulse in terms of actually criticising the games in question that he appears to be doing it on purpose to be The Guy Who Said Zelda Ocarina Of Time Was Bad. Which seems really disingenuous to me. Also he goes from enjoying incomplete information in the form of the original Zelda's weird world you had to figure out yourself to not enjoying it when it requires simply looking around a room to find things you might miss on first glance. In early videos he has NO END OF PRAISE for games that make you stop and think, but Ocarina of Time makes an UNGODLY mistake by making you stop to observe things like door-opening switches on the walls - or, maybe even, those traps he complained about not seeing! Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 03:46
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The thing about the game focusing on switches and opening doors and such is bizarre because the game would be a massive pain in the rear end to play if it didn't. It's a basic quality of life feature to ensure the player always understands what is happening in response to their actions, but apparently even basic navigational cues are too hand-holdy. In 2D Zelda games a lot of that information is available at a glance because of the top-down view and size of the rooms allowing you to always see what's going on. In OoT, there's no guarantee the player will be pointing the camera in the right place at the right time. One could draw a comparison to modern games need to draw the player's attention to pretty graphics or bombastic scripted events, but in OoT's case the game is simply relating important gameplay information to the player as directly as it can. I feel like it displays his basic inability to to examine the game(s) in context - it was the first 3D Zelda and one of Nintendo's first 3D games in general. Making sure the player isn't going to get completely lost in the three dimensional space is not a bad thing, especially considering the core audience is children. It'd be like getting pissy that the minimap is nice enough to show what door you entered the room from. The crux of his argument seems to be that OoT has moment-to-moment pacing problems, ultimately, but it's actually a fairly methodical, slower-paced game at heart, despite having action elements. So instead his complaints sound like whiny impatience mixed with a bit of "shut the gently caress up owl, I know to go to Hyrule Castle Town, I've played this game before ". The video is frustrating because I feel like there's a lot more you could say about LttP (and for instance, its overall pacing) or even the original LoZ, but he mostly uses them to smugly try and poke holes in OoT as if they're perfect games themselves, and with the assumption that, being both Zelda games, you can easily directly compare them, right?  And as I've said before, it's hilarious that he acts like LoZ is a perfect, directionless open world masterpiece, because anyone who bothered to crack open the manual would have that ruined by a bunch of backstory and plot and goals and item spoilers. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 04:23
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achillesforever6 posted:For some reason DC has really been making GBS threads the bed lately with cartoons, except Teen Titans Go of course. I still like the DC animated movies. Sorta.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:03
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John Murdoch posted:And as I've said before, it's hilarious that he acts like LoZ is a perfect, directionless open world masterpiece, because anyone who bothered to crack open the manual would have that ruined by a bunch of backstory and plot and goals and item spoilers. This is something I'm trying to focus on. Adventure isn't just freedom, it's the sense of exploration, growth, scale and so on. In a nonlinear game you're actually LESS likely to experience this because the game is a tiny sandbox. Superior NES adventure games felt like bigger worlds by having a sense of progression and scope to them.
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Oct 9, 2014 05:06
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Hbomberguy posted:This is something I'm trying to focus on. Adventure isn't just freedom, it's the sense of exploration, growth, scale and so on. In a nonlinear game you're actually LESS likely to experience this because the game is a tiny sandbox. Superior NES adventure games felt like bigger worlds by having a sense of progression and scope to them. I largely agree. "Linear" has, at least to some extent, gained negative connotations, which I've always felt was unfair. There's also a looooot to be said about a game's goals versus a player's goals, and how that relates to developer-crafted narratives verses player-generated ones. Probably outside the scope of this thread though...I can and will ramble about this kind of stuff if left unchecked..  Definitely looking forward to the video. 
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Oct 9, 2014 08:43
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