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Caphi posted:Sounds like it was a big development moment for Kouji and Shinji that I would not have registered as just "EVA fights Mazinger wow"! HitTheTargets posted:You know, Kanos, for a guy contending the games are essentially plotless, you know your poo poo. I feel like I'm being misrepresented a bit. I'm not saying that the plot isn't part of the product, I'm saying that the plot of SRW is only interested in plot in order to appeal to fans rather than to tell a real story. The plot in SRW is basically a vehicle to lead the viewer from cool anime crossover moment to cool anime crossover moment, with every single game ultimately leading to a climax of the human spirit triumphing over a big bad guy in a big robot fight while JAM Project kicks in and plays in the background. It's the anime crossover equivalent of a summer blockbuster popcorn action flick. It can be entertaining and memorable and you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it - I certainly do, otherwise I wouldn't be posting my takes about the franchise in wordy essays - but I don't think the games are ever interested in placing story quality over spectacle. Going back to OG1 is actually helpful here. OG1 is an aberration in the franchise because it's possibly the only game in the franchise that DOES subordinate spectacle to story. The story says you're outnumbered, outgunned, outteched underdogs and in possibly the only time in the franchise that's actually true. You spend almost the entire game working with mass production shitheaps that suck rear end for the majority of your forces, because the game is very committed to telling its story. There's almost no "rule of cool" moments where someone gets a rad upgrade and whomps a stage - the SRX is basically the only one when those kinds of things are usually rampant. Interestingly, OG1 is somewhat divisive specifically because most of the units you use are boring and the game is an unexciting spectacle. (thank you for the compliment, though, HitTheTargets) Kanos fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Nov 8, 2018 |
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Nov 8, 2018 03:00
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To bring it double back around, Z did prune the cast list between games, and it sucked and everyone hated it but that specifically wasn't the reason why. Really, it was the opposite of the reason why. No one was like "not playing Z3 because they ditched Gravion." e: I don't think anyone is arguing against that SRW isn't basically an extreme feel-good teamup crossover? But it feels like the goalposts have been moved because you've gone from "they won't take any toys away from the players" to "what I actually meant was the games are written like spectacle-offs." Caphi fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Nov 8, 2018 |
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Nov 8, 2018 03:04
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Samurai Sanders posted:Yeah, that's 100% what I want. A clean break and a new OG series centered around Z. Maybe a few fan favorite units from the old OG can appear as guests. Masaki is there. Nobody knows why.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:16
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Hunter Noventa posted:Masaki is there. Nobody knows why. I think Masaki not being there would be the biggest concern.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:28
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Caphi posted:To bring it double back around, Z did prune the cast list between games, and it sucked and everyone hated it but that specifically wasn't the reason why. Really, it was the opposite of the reason why. No one was like "not playing Z3 because they ditched Gravion." It's me, I'm the guy who was extremely mad about them ditching Gravion in Z3. Z2 is actually a pretty good example of them not wanting to take toys away from players. The ZEUTH people showed up in that game despite being utterly vestigial to the plot and doing absolutely nothing of meaning simply because people would be hella mad if they couldn't use any of those people from Z1 despite it being a sequel. People complained incessantly about stuff like Giant Robo disappearing from the Alpha series. People still complain incessantly when a unit has its attack list pruned despite most of those attacks having literally no mechanical purpose! The characters and robots are the toys that create the spectacle. They're inherently intertwined topics. They don't want to take toys away from players because there's always that guy who really loving loves putting Katina and Russel in the Grungust and having them beat poo poo up, or that person who enjoys shuffling Noin into the Wing Zero, or that guy who launches Banjo in every single game he's ever in. The thing is, licensed SRWs don't really need to worry about this as much because they're usually self-contained things and nobody expects much carry over from one entry to the next unless they're part of a numbered series so you don't get quite as much sedimentary buildup. OG has been a single ongoing continuity for a hojillion games now and has sort of collected additional cast members like a katamari of anime cliches.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:33
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They should have kept Gravion in Z3 but made Ultimate Gravion its own unit with an entirely made up move list.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:36
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I think a rebooted OG rise would include series mascots like Masaki and the SRX, they'd just get rid of the hangers-on. Maybe use the Huckebein and Grungust that appeared in V, but no Gespensts or any of the developmental variants OG1 featured. The MP unit of choice would be Setsuko's thing anyway, right?Kanos posted:OG has been a single ongoing continuity for a hojillion games now and has sort of collected additional cast members like a katamari of anime cliches. Wonderful image.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:45
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I’m excited for new SRW but I really want them to make more Compati Heroes stuff. Either a new Lost Heroes or Super Hero Generations. A new SD Knight Gundam RPG could be fun too.
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Nov 8, 2018 03:56
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I'm a big OG fan and yeah, it's just way too bloated. I've been waiting for my faves to get some attention for three games at this point, which is over a decade in real-world time. Even I'm ready for a cast pruning, but at the same time, it really is impossible to decide who to cut. I can only hope they somehow pull Alpha 3 off well, despite the massive cast increase that's coming with that game. Honestly, OG1 is probably my favourite OG game and possibly my favourite SRW game for all the reasons already mentioned. It's grounded, the story makes sense, and it all hangs together. Everything after that just gets more and more ludicrous until it's hard to suspend disbelief for the game world anymore. Which is really sad, because OG started off with a pretty solid setting, all things considered. Sure it was pretty much just UC Gundam, but it wasn't constant alien invasions and random superweapons.
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Nov 8, 2018 04:48
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I think the major issue is that they're very reluctant to do new things with existing characters which kinda sucks because it's the thing OG should be best at. They wave their hands at it some time but 3/4ths of the Alpha protagonists might as well not exist let alone lesser characters like Radha.
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Nov 8, 2018 04:58
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Sometimes characters stick around too long. Like Kyosuke, to be blunt, he's long outstayed his welcome. Other times I'd be mad if like... we lost Ryusei, because even though he's been around since forever, outside of OG1 I feel like they've slow burned the SRX stuff so much that you could have done it all in one game. And I think it's fine if characters take a game off being playable so long as they can still hang around as NPCs. Maybe we don't need the Hiryu cast one game, because they're doing a deep space exploration, so that takes a chunk of robots and pilots from the earthsphere. That can wind up being an entire alternate story, or just an excuse to pair down the cast. Both of those seem fine to me. I love SRW's ability to mash so many series together, but we are getting to the bloat of losing focus. Like Hokuto said, I'd consider that to be around when OG2 happened.
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Nov 8, 2018 05:12
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Speaking of OG characters that have been around I'm curious what they'll do with Excellen, since her voice actress died around the time of the Moon Dwellers release. Will they recast her, write her off or just do what normal SRW does and reuse all her lines? Also I'm just sick of the SRX team in general and wish they'd go away, they've slow burned their plot for like 5 games.
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Nov 8, 2018 05:27
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Yeah, I love the Hiryuu cast but I'd be okay with them taking a break for a game and coming back later (with upgrades). Especially if they can figure out something to do with them besides the same personality jokes we've been getting since OG1. I'd be first to vote Kyosuke and Excellen into retirement but they're just too popular to actually kick out. EDIT: I'd have been fine with letting the SRX team sit out Moon Dwellers or something and they're my favourites. Dragging the Alpha plot out this long was a mistake. That said, if we're finally doing Alpha 3 they have to hang around because I've been waiting over a decade for OG Banpreios and I will not be denied. MarsDragon fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Nov 8, 2018 |
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Nov 8, 2018 05:28
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Just give me DaiRaiOh already. And as I've said before, the return of Folka.
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Nov 8, 2018 06:24
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I remember them addressing why they haven't used two entries from the same franchise which shares the same characters with Getter by saying they didn't want to just recreate Getter Robo Daikessen. Whether or not that's a good excuse for it not happening is up to you. In regards to X-O the Mobage not doing Fate Grand Order gangbusters, that's true but I would like to note that it's not actually doing significantly poorly than the actual games as far as I can tell - it probably isn't a good indicator but the Twitter followers for both the actual games and the mobage are fairly close to each other, so really it's just another symptom of Robots Are Old Fashioned. Interesting that it basically took just one game in Moon Dwellers for "OG is bloated" to take root as the common consensus, since I think morale was still pretty high before that. Guess they really dropped the ball there. This talk about continuity bloat in SRW made me think of my old idea about a mainline set of series (as in Alpha / Z-like) where the idea is that each game would have as little returners as they can get away with and the continuity / sequel factor is based around continuing thematic explorations, just to solve the issue of "Well we blew the plot of all these series in the first game so now they hang around doing nothing" or the alternative of "these guys are hanging around at the start doing absolutely nothing because their importance is planned to come later, except it doesn't happen 90% of the time and they usually just disappear with no warning hello Giant Robo, Gainer and Daitarn" Of course I realized that's kind of a really stupid idea from a financial viewpoint since it loses the people who buy series just to see their favourites come back and because they wouldn't be able to reuse a huge amount of assets... ah well, capitalism for ya. Speaking of writing in SRW games, I suppose I will have to somewhat agree that it's less meant to "tell a story" and just a chassis to deliver "memorable moments" for a lot of them, but given that SRW is in dire straits gameplay wise and animation wise - it's a bit unfortunate that during the Alpha 3 and Z1 era that they chose to push graphics as a huge source of appeal, as dwindling sales means they are unable to keep it up and just kind of put themselves in a death spiral in that regard... Oops, veered off course there, back to the writing - since it's getting harder to try to sell SRW series using gameplay, animation and even just the core concept of robot crossovers (once again due to the Robots are Old Fashioned factor), could it be time to really ramp up the writing quality, something that in theory should not cost much over attempts to improve the other factors? You take something like UX and while there are still spectacle moments and leading everyone to bash the big boss at the end, there seems to be an actual genuine attempt to answer thematic questions like the nature of justice. (But then, perhaps they could only accomplish that because UX has a completely eccentric cast list that isn't bound to UC Gundam - if you have to build your cast list mostly dominated by marketing concerns, this is likely going to be a Herculean task.) I guess it's complicated. And I guess on the topic of writing and on a tangentially related note, I think it's kind of interesting that a lot of "dream fan/games" tend to have a huge focus on trying to sell a super detailed setting, when it always strikes me that this series is supposed to be a character-based work and most beloved SRW games actually have some pretty poor setting coherency (which isn't really surprising given license requirements). I suppose it's probably much easier to discuss things like how Dr Hell and Zeon are working together than character interactions, which doesn't really work when you're telling people about it rather than actually seeing it play out in front of you.
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Nov 8, 2018 06:48
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As much as I would love to have my favorite OG characters showing up again I'm not gonna hold my breath since I'm sure nobody else gives a poo poo about Nico and Rico with their Kyomei units.
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Nov 8, 2018 07:00
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If W gets into the next OG, more ships gives them a narratively convenient way to do 3- or 4-way route-splits and divide the cast into manageable chunks. Obviously, they've already not been using the Kurogane for this and it'd be more work, but I'd rather have shorter OG games with the replay value of seeing the other routes than longer ones where I have to decide between 50 characters to deploy every map.
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Nov 8, 2018 08:33
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1st Stage Midboss posted:but I'd rather have shorter OG games with the replay value of seeing the other routes than longer ones where I have to decide between 50 characters to deploy every map.
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Nov 8, 2018 08:47
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I mean, the average player doesn't even finish the game.
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Nov 8, 2018 09:28
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No poo poo xo isn't as big as fgo. Fgo is literally making billions of dollars a year, more than the entire srw studio probably.
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Nov 8, 2018 12:31
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1st Stage Midboss posted:If W gets into the next OG, more ships gives them a narratively convenient way to do 3- or 4-way route-splits and divide the cast into manageable chunks. Obviously, they've already not been using the Kurogane for this and it'd be more work, but I'd rather have shorter OG games with the replay value of seeing the other routes than longer ones where I have to decide between 50 characters to deploy every map. The Route splits and early levels are my favorite parts of SRW games. You’ve got a smaller cast so attention is spread more evenly between characters and your unit list is smaller so each level feels more unique. The last 10 or so stages of a game where I just deploy all the same heavy hitters which Zerg rush the enemy are an unfun slog to play 90% of the time.
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Nov 8, 2018 13:00
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ImpAtom posted:I think the major issue is that they're very reluctant to do new things with existing characters which kinda sucks because it's the thing OG should be best at. They wave their hands at it some time but 3/4ths of the Alpha protagonists might as well not exist let alone lesser characters like Radha. Yeah, the OG series is weirdly risk averse for what you'd assume is the sub-series they have more creative control over. OG2 heavily tied SRW A and Impact together with "Beowulf" but even that kind of thing is falling away, isn't it?
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Nov 8, 2018 23:24
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Honestly, I'm gonna be the weirdo here. I actually kinda like the OG bloat, and I think that I probably like the OG games more than the mainline stuff in a lot of ways. Admittedly, I'm kind of stuck and find myself getting lost in a lot of places because I'm only really capable of playing stuff in English, but I absolutely love the fact that OG has a huge cast so that at the very least there's enough people to make up a full squad of people I really like in suits I really like no matter what, even on routesplits. And the 'put anyone in anything (mostly), and chances are they'll have some unique lines in it to boot' factor really helps out there. I mean, yeah, sure, putting Haken in the Vysaga and Latooni in the Gespenst Haken and so on and so forth probably isn't optimal by any means, but I honestly kinda enjoy micromanaging pilots and stuff like that, and just playing around to try different voice tracks and stuff is fun. What I'm saying is OGs3 needs Jyaki-GUN-Oh piloted by Suzuka in a G Gundam style cockpit.
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Nov 8, 2018 23:58
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For me, more so than any cast issue or anything, it's about making the beginning and ends of SRW games fun at all. The first 15 stages and the last 5 or so are always a drag. I'm in the end of X and feeling it again. I assume the final boss will be somewhat interesting like it was in V, but trudging through all the anime series resolutions back to back is rarely much fun.
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Nov 9, 2018 00:02
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I liked the bloat until MD and then it got to be a little too much. Like why were we reprising part of D's plot again and stuff like that? Ho hum. Then again I have a hard time fairly judging MD as a buyer of its "English" version.
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Nov 9, 2018 00:15
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OG2nd made the bloat work somehow but MD really made it stick out. Maybe because MD was the SRWJ show with guest appearance by GC? 2ndOG tied a lot more plots into it.
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Nov 9, 2018 00:46
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There have been general complaints about OG cast bloat since OGG. I think MD was just the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of people, plus it's just not a very interesting entry. 2ndOG took forever to come out but it did a lot of stuff. We finally got to Alpha 2, which means that a lot of plots started in OG2 wrapped up, we got F, we got Euzeth as the final boss to polish off that last bit of Alpha, it generally felt like the plot was moving forward. Then when everyone's hyped up for the finale and bringing it home, we get a game that's just J with a bit of GC and polishing off Alpha + Classic are "someday". It doesn't help that J and GC don't have really big, popular Originals. So instead of getting new characters everyone's hype for (we've been waiting for Cobray for how long?), we get...Touya. So Banpresto is stretching J across a full game because they had the dumb idea to do every handheld game in release order, they don't have anything interesting to do with the older cast because either their stories are finished or they're stuck in plot holding pattern until Alpha and Classic wrap up, and the easiest solution the fans can see is to be to cut the cast and make a more focused game. A better one would be to do something interesting with all the characters that are falling by the wayside, but OG is stuck in a weird position of being both too off the rails and not off the rails enough. They remixed stuff heavily for OG1 and 2, but then started pulling back, but they'd already made decisions that wildly changed the really popular, foundational games. I think the reasoning is that fans complained when OG1 and 2 remixed too heavily (lord knows I've complained about how Kusuha was screwed over) but now they're stuck re-treading the same ground for characters they could do something new with. I think if the next entry does finally wrap up the Balmarians and the Zuvork fans will be a lot more generously inclined towards it. A lot of popular characters fans have been waiting for are slated to appear, old favourites will have something to do again, and maybe they'll finally give Leona and Tasuku an upgrade.
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Nov 9, 2018 04:24
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For the record, I was hype for Calvina. That being said,MarsDragon posted:maybe they'll finally give Leona and Tasuku an upgrade. I wouldn't be against this, either.
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Nov 9, 2018 06:30
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When will Katina get her weird OG robot from the card game?
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Nov 9, 2018 14:18
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I will say that they put more effort into Alpha's Plot than other games that came after it
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Nov 13, 2018 03:35
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MarsDragon posted:and maybe they'll finally give Leona and Tasuku an upgrade. Sieguarlion is still a drat good, if not particularly exciting mech. The Gigan is really showing its age though. I'm still salty they didn't give a heroic version of the Turtle + Phoenix mech to one of the other Alpha pairs. It was RIGHT THERE.
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Nov 13, 2018 03:56
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They didn't even leave room for Yuuki and Carla to upgrade. It shoulda at least been a basic Ashsaber and a Randgrith, then they both get better units.
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Nov 13, 2018 04:08
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I'm still mad we never got brainwashed Bullet, Kusuha’s never going to get to do anything is she?
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Nov 13, 2018 04:57
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Tribladeofchaos posted:I'm still mad we never got brainwashed Bullet, Kushina's never going to get to do anything is she? Well, if you ask me, she got to do a lot for a post-humous character, but I guess being the protagonist's mother in a magic ninja setting helps a lot. Kusuha.
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Nov 13, 2018 16:33
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Infinity Gaia posted:I'm still salty they didn't give a heroic version of the Turtle + Phoenix mech to one of the other Alpha pairs. It was RIGHT THERE. I mean its just a bunch of magic bullshit, they could always pull something out if they want. (which will probably be combining them with Ryukooh into some kind of super eastern zodiac mech)
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Nov 13, 2018 18:19
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KoB posted:I mean its just a bunch of magic bullshit, they could always pull something out if they want. (which will probably be combining them with Ryukooh into some kind of super eastern zodiac mech) Which should be happening when they cover Alpha 3.
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Nov 13, 2018 18:45
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If there's one thing I want for any upcoming OG title, it's for the staff to pull the trigger and actually age the cast up. You're now approaching 6 straight games where you've employed a time skip of only several months between the games, with no sign of aging. The Masoukishin games could get away with the cast not aging a lot because of how differently time flowed in La Gias (3 full games occurred between 2nd OGs and Moon Dwellers, for the record). OG doesn't have that luxury, and it's getting silly as to how people still look exactly like they did roughly 2-3 years ago*, given everything that's happened in-universe. *=this is assuming every time skip has been 6 months between each game.
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Nov 14, 2018 01:49
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AradoBalanga posted:If there's one thing I want for any upcoming OG title, it's for the staff to pull the trigger and actually age the cast up. You're now approaching 6 straight games where you've employed a time skip of only several months between the games, with no sign of aging. The Masoukishin games could get away with the cast not aging a lot because of how differently time flowed in La Gias (3 full games occurred between 2nd OGs and Moon Dwellers, for the record). OG doesn't have that luxury, and it's getting silly as to how people still look exactly like they did roughly 2-3 years ago*, given everything that's happened in-universe. Most of the OG people are adults though, they wont necessarily be changing that much every six months. Would be neat if some of the clearly-children would age up though. Latooni, Arado/Seolla/etc
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Nov 14, 2018 01:52
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The real question is if they have the guts to kill off Excellen instead of recasting.
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Nov 14, 2018 09:43
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KoB posted:Most of the OG people are adults though, they wont necessarily be changing that much every six months. Ryoga posted:The real question is if they have the guts to kill off Excellen instead of recasting.
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Nov 14, 2018 09:59
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