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When you think you are enjoying something truly thoughtlessly, floating neutrally among harmless associations, you are deepest in ideology. An escape into a fantasy world is an escape into a horribly strong ideological narrative. Within the ideology of Half-Life, killing some people is allright. End of Shoelace fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 15:19
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:11 |
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Holy poo poo thread pull up. Here I’ll help. Here is a video of me loving around and then a surprise ending. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/576294487?collection=I2wnlgsCABbsgg Like. My brain had a misfire. I know I’m in a video game and I can’t be hurt. But my fight or flight and freakingoutness still kicked in. SabinBlitz fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 15:37
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oh my god
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Mar 27, 2020 15:45
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Uh yeah when the headcrabs jump on your head it’s not at all fun. Also the choking sounds Alyx makes when she gets lifted by a barnacle, implying it’s wrapped around her throat are truly just  For a game that has so much surface humor going on it’s truly terrifying.
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Mar 27, 2020 16:26
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I want to talk about a part of the ending, spoilers here: When you jump to the end of Episode 2 and time rewinds to your dad being held by the advisor, and then it jerks over to looks over at you suddenly because it can see time traveler Alyx, that poo poo owned. Why could it see you though? Do you think G-Man allowed it to see to prove a point? Can the advisors communicate between each other in such a way that they all know that G-Man has hosed with things?
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Mar 27, 2020 16:43
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SabinBlitz posted:Holy poo poo thread pull up. Twitch says I can't see this video because, ironically enough, I can't go back in time. What happened in it?
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Mar 27, 2020 17:17
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Al Cu Ad Solte posted:Twitch says I can't see this video because, ironically enough, I can't go back in time. What happened in it? Working for me even on incognito mode. A side step is try going to http://twitch.tv/psyonicreav and go to the videos section. It’s a highlight in there.
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Mar 27, 2020 17:21
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There are now methods for playing the game without VR, so expect idiots to buy the game, try to play it in 2D, realize it doesn't work that way, and then give it a bad review because of their own idiocy.
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Mar 27, 2020 17:52
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KakerMix posted:I want to talk about a part of the ending, spoilers here: Vision and sight is a running theme in Half-Life 2. Many of the species from Xen play with sight, best examples being the eyeless headcrabs that replace the vision of their host, and the Vortigaunts seeing multiple timelines at once being represented by having... lots of eyes. The Combine are no exception here, as their vision is filtered through their goggles. Where the Advisors come in is that their vision is also augmented by wearing an implant or headset or whatever it is. They cannot see without the aid of technology, but this allows them to see things you normally don't. VR technology allows you to look into the game, but it also allows things in the game to look at YOU. There is no canon reason for it, though, if that's what you mean.
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Mar 27, 2020 17:58
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Ending spoilers too: I wanna know how the time-fucky stuff happened, because we got a run through of a timeline where Eli died, which means that in that timeline, Alyx never freed G-Man. But we see G-Man in that original timeline as well, so he's probably not caught/contained (unless that containment is fake or something and G-Man was only pretending to be caught (but then why would he "reward" Alyx (although it's probably not *really* a reward, since he "hires" her afterwards, so it could've all been a setup))) Of course it's probably not that important but generally I don't like time travel because usually it ends up stupid, but I'm intrigued either way
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Mar 27, 2020 18:06
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Gamers are even worse than movie fans for being incredibly reflexively hostile to any sort of reading of their medium, coz if they wanted to be literate they wouldn't be playing games or watching movies seems to be the general thrust. Re: Russel Id say a cavalier attitude to human life and relationships is russels main characterisation considering his constant disregard for eli and unwillingness to partner with alyx. I was thinking that the combine are a decent metaphor for globalised capitalism and it made the game better, not worse. Engaging your brain isn't gonna ruin things. Though you do see it taken to silly extremes like in the WoW lore thread where people respond to orcs killing elves like it's a real life pogrom or something.
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Mar 27, 2020 18:16
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I also thought the combine cops were hybrids
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Mar 27, 2020 18:19
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Communist Thoughts posted:I also thought the combine cops were hybrids Nah, they're human It's Nova Prospekt where your humanity is completely stripped away and you become a Soldier Although the soldiers in Alyx aren't quite at the soulless level of HL2 yet, so the process is still a work in progress
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Mar 27, 2020 18:33
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Media analysis is great when done in good faith, but most of the criticism from the writing is unfounded and mostly comes off as trolling. Not to mention that armchair diagnosing a character as autistic when they clearly aren't depicted that way nor do they exhibit behaviors associated with it isn't particularly useful as criticism and if anything comes across a little offensive. Were they saying it's bad that the character is autistic? It came off as more a slur, as a shorthand for sociopath, which is interesting coming from someone who apparently values strong themes of empathy in their video games.
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Mar 27, 2020 18:38
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The other problem is that the thread is lovely when one clown is like half the posting by volume and half the rest is people telling him to shut up. There isn't a productive discussion happening here.
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Mar 27, 2020 18:39
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eh thats very typical, one goon posting media critique everyone else personally critiquing that goon lol
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Mar 27, 2020 18:44
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Communist Thoughts posted:Gamers are even worse than movie fans for being incredibly reflexively hostile to any sort of reading of their medium, coz if they wanted to be literate they wouldn't be playing games or watching movies seems to be the general thrust. Russel has disregard for life in general. Throwing a grenade in the APC, not making sure the gun is unloaded, cheering with Alyx when a Combine or Zombie gets splattered... Alyx and Eli are simply a part of this disregard. The Combine force is a metaphor of global capitalism in the accelerationist sense, speeding up the natural process of destroying natural resources for product. It is very easy to see them as humanity from 10,000 years in the future. Metrocops are not true Combines yet. They have riot gear and are connected to Overwatch, but it can all be removed. The mask is just a mask. If being a Metrocop entailed irremovable implants or 24/7 connection to Overwatch, Barney couldn't have infiltrated them like he did, with just a costume. Going through proper brainwashing and being injected with Combine goo makes you a true Combine drone, like was happening to the guy in Nova Prospekt. It can be seen from the Zombines that there is, literally, nothing in their heads anymore. Also, the discussion in the Half-Life thread is otherwise so lively I had to fish it out from the bottom of the 2nd page.
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Mar 27, 2020 18:44
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Communist Thoughts posted:eh thats very typical, one goon posting media critique everyone else personally critiquing that goon lol Lol lurking in this thread has been a trip. The initial excitement over an actual good VR game completely dampened by the one goon just absolutely sucking the air out of the room End of Shoelace posted:Hype is dead. All that remains is the game. Lmao it never ends Ichabod Tane fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 18:50
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Hype is dead. All that remains is the game.
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Mar 27, 2020 18:51
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End of Shoelace posted:Russel has disregard for life in general. Throwing a grenade in the APC, not making sure the gun is unloaded, cheering with Alyx when a Combine or Zombie gets splattered... Alyx and Eli are simply a part of this disregard. agreed on russel i interpret the combine as pretty directly mirroring irl imperial colonists with a distant metropole, "global capitalism" is just the colonising force we live under IRL. they attack indirectly, use the population as soldiers so any violence done to them is actually done to the local population, use propaganda and soft power etc, absorb technology and culture that helps them colonise more. they dont seem to use the vortigaunt magic poo poo possibly cause the vorts have successfully resisted absorbtion but also maybe the togetherness timey wimey stuff doesn't really help you subjugate a galactic empire. so you could see this as similarly casting aside socially useful native culture and networks that doesnt support the whims of the metropole irl. none of this is really subtext though, imo, its pretty much just text. just fairly well realised for a videogame, at least as of HL2. is there enforced famine too? i dont really know how the city dwellers fare. been a long time since I played HL2 and so far Alyx doesn't have a huge amount of background material e: you could also see the vortigaunt poo poo as an actually pretty dumb imperial fiction trope. they're clearly magical shaman native archetypes, the new one even has an african accent for some reason??? their mysterious savage magic has the potential to defeat the empire, but only as carried out by a human saviour who walks between both worlds etc is quite standard Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 18:53
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I'm taking it nice and slow, seeing the sights etc but I gotta say this darkness / torch /claustrophobic bullshit is putting me right off, what happened to sunny fun times drawing on windows? How long does this go on for? I am not good at dark, pant shittingly oppressive rooms, I've known this since before VR was even a thing IRL and reaffirming this in my down time seems more and more ridiculous as I tip toe forward, each step more harrowing than the last
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Mar 27, 2020 18:59
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Alyx has quite a bit of background material, it's not something easily conveyed through a video recording and can be missed if rushing through the game. There's rations scattered across the place, a newspaper with a bunch of articles you can read, most locations, but particularly the zoo, have lived-in detail and echos of the effects of the 7 hour war. The Combine do use Vortigaunt magic, it's what is keeping the vault afloat. Everything else you're saying isn't really textual analysis, it's just text. The reason why everyone finds it annoying is because everyone already knows.
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Mar 27, 2020 19:01
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peter gabriel posted:I'm taking it nice and slow, seeing the sights etc but I gotta say this darkness / torch /claustrophobic bullshit is putting me right off, what happened to sunny fun times drawing on windows? How long does this go on for? I am not good at dark, pant shittingly oppressive rooms, I've known this since before VR was even a thing IRL and reaffirming this in my down time seems more and more ridiculous as I tip toe forward, each step more harrowing than the last i was terrified of just putting on the helmet the first time i tried VR, for some reason since I got this headset for real I now just do not feel fear in VR, I think maybe cause i feel way more capable in VR than in normal games? havent tried RE7 though. But i'm 5 hours in and i'd say 4 of those hours have been trying to be spooky e SCheeseman posted:Alyx has quite a bit of background material, it's not something easily conveyed through a video recording and can be missed if rushing through the game. There's rations scattered across the place, a newspaper with a bunch of articles you can read, most locations, but particularly the zoo, have lived-in detail and echos of the effects of the 7 hour war. The Combine do use Vortigaunt magic, it's what is keeping the vault afloat. yea i have seen the rations and the newspaper lol. thats what got me hyped for environmental lore and jokes, but thats it as far as i've gotten. the newspaper is a text dump from HL3 stuff iirc and i was expecting more of that. havent got to the zoo though. russels lab was a massive dissapointment tho 
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Mar 27, 2020 19:02
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Communist Thoughts posted:i was terrified of just putting on the helmet the first time i tried VR, for some reason since I got this headset for real I now just do not feel fear in VR, I think maybe cause i feel way more capable in VR than in normal games? havent tried RE7 though. I just want it to be over, last night I found myself stood dead still, hands by my side, I've got meaty walls with gas cans poking out all over the place so I can't shoot anything, I've got barnacles to the left and right of me and I can hear a zombie stumbling around somewhere near me but I can't see the fucker and I've got like 3 bullets left, gently caress this noise 
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Mar 27, 2020 19:05
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I wish there were more nice VR games, the atmosphere is cranked up to 11 and doing horror in VR is basically cheating and it just makes me feel stressed out and awful. I quit playing Saints and Sinners entirely because I hated the constant zombie breathing that makes it feel like something is always right behind you I was able to handle Alyx better, maybe because you can blast everything pretty easily even on hard, and they are also pretty respectful about not having zombies just sneak up behind you
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Mar 27, 2020 19:06
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peter gabriel posted:I just want it to be over, last night I found myself stood dead still, hands by my side, I've got meaty walls with gas cans poking out all over the place so I can't shoot anything, I've got barnacles to the left and right of me and I can hear a zombie stumbling around somewhere near me but I can't see the fucker and I've got like 3 bullets left, gently caress this noise the ammo scarcity sucks, it does add tension though so i guess the game would be worse without it but i was extremely disappointed when i killed my first combine, who are just as mag-dumpy as the zombies, and his gun just vanished in front of my eyes as soon as it hit the floor
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Mar 27, 2020 19:07
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Communist Thoughts posted:the ammo scarcity sucks, it does add tension though so i guess the game would be worse without it Guns are genetically coded, they disintegrate They're definitely beefed up, but it works to keep combat encounters less trivial so you aren't just popping each one in the head from a distance every time.
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Mar 27, 2020 19:14
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I don't understand why in Ep 2 or what ever there was such a big deal made about "zombines", like it was the first time anyone had encountered one, yet they're so common in this game set 5 years earlier? I think you even peep at some adviser pods as well, but again they're a big never-before-seen deal later on. Or is there some time poo poo going on?
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Mar 27, 2020 19:17
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Vortigaunts can be, and easily are, subjugated by the Combine. Remember the floor-sweeping Vortigaunt at the very beginning of HL2, clad in restraints. And the Combines do use Vort energy, atleast in HLA. There's green lightning traveling through the power lines to the G-Man's floating prison. Concept art for HL2 reveals pod prisons that host Vortigaunts, using them like living batteries. A very common theme in sci-fi is the use of alien races as a metaphor for minorities. Droids are slaves, hives of scum and villainy like Mos Eisley are suspiciously full of weird-looking aliens, and so on. The same applies to the Vortigaunts: they are the only people seen doing menial labor in Combine occupations, Alyx complains that they talk weird nonsense, they don't speak English so well... Combines realise the true power the Vortigaunts posses: humans and Vortigaunts together, solidarity with the marginalized, would be the end of their occupation. There isn't famine, but the quality of the food is not great. HLA features water-flavor Combine rations, and things like cheese seem to be a rarity (although chinese takeout, strangely, is plentiful).
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Mar 27, 2020 19:18
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Lemming posted:I wish there were more nice VR games, the atmosphere is cranked up to 11 and doing horror in VR is basically cheating and it just makes me feel stressed out and awful. I quit playing Saints and Sinners entirely because I hated the constant zombie breathing that makes it feel like something is always right behind you I stopped playing Alien Isolation because I was stood inside a locker making GBS threads my pants and had a moment of clarity, like, WTF am I even doing?
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Mar 27, 2020 19:20
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just want to say the ammo scarcity and limited inventory actually own and the game designers did an amazing job balancing everything out. finally beat the game last night and it's legitimately one of the greatest games I've ever played.
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Mar 27, 2020 19:24
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If I had lots of ammo, I'd just blast everything that moves and wouldn't care. Having to actually conserve ammo and mete out the few bullets I have, and regretting every missed shot adds a lot to the game.
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Mar 27, 2020 19:27
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Weee it seems this thread has gone full open spoilers. Thanks for saying the content of the vault...
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Mar 27, 2020 19:47
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Lemming posted:Ending spoilers too: This was exactly what I was wondering. The only possibility I can think of is HLA is an entirely different dimension/timeline, and G-Man shows her the natural progression of events if he doesn't intervene. Communist Thoughts posted:Gamers are even worse than movie fans for being incredibly reflexively hostile to any sort of reading of their medium, coz if they wanted to be literate they wouldn't be playing games or watching movies seems to be the general thrust. It's not literate to apply the same 2 hacky arguments to every shooter. "What if shooting fascist collaborators is actually bad?" "What if the player killing dozens of people for necessary gameplay reasons means they're a mass murderer and actually bad?" This poo poo is from 2007 and it wasn't interesting back then either. Scissorfighter fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 19:57
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Scissorfighter posted:It's not literate to apply the same 2 hacky arguments to every shooter. "What if shooting fascist collaborators is actually bad?" "What if the player killing dozens of people for necessary gameplay reasons means they're a mass murderer and actually bad?" This poo poo is from 2007 and it wasn't interesting back then either. This will seem like a "gotcha!", but I really did not say that fighting against fascism, or even killing oppressors if necessary, is bad or makes you a bad person. Killing every living creature in HL2 is certainly possible, but doing what the game presents to you as an option does not make you a mass murderer in real life. Please don't go down this hyperbole victim complex path where you feel mild criticism means you are not allowed to enjoy anything. If the two same hacky arguments keep popping up in regards to every shooter game for 13 years, does that mean there truly isn't any more depth than those two arguments for discussing FPS games? I think this is false. That's why I keep talking about Half-Life. Unfortunately I cannot afford one thousand dollars to play HLA, so I'm watching a playthrough and cannot talk about some concepts as accurately as I'd like yet. I think the same arguments about videogames circulate because the basic ideological framework for discussing videogames has not been established. End of Shoelace fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 20:25
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Scissorfighter posted:
Yep. And well, there is a saying that you need extraordinary evidence to do an extraordinary claim. fake edit: found it. It's for science but I think it applies here too. If you are going to say that x thing in this game, movie, book isn't really whatever literal thing they are, but they represent/symbolize an abstract concept, sometimes going very at odds with the literal meaning, then you really need to present your evidence and make a solid argument. And not say instead "the bad guys are a representation of global capitalism" and leave it like that.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:31
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When i said "what if you could talk to the monsters" i was quoting a critical review of the original Doom back in 1993. It's been discussed to death and only seems to come up when hacky writers want to provoke a reaction. This is something you don't seem to be understanding, the reactions to your criticism are mostly about your intent, not that of the game.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:32
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SCheeseman posted:When i said "what if you could talk to the monsters" i was quoting a critical review of the original Doom back in 1993. It's been discussed to death and only seems to come up when hacky writers want to provoke a reaction. This is something you don't seem to be understanding, the reactions to your criticism are mostly about your intent, not that of the game. It seems very easy to provoke gamers if a question as naive as that is still haunting them 26 years later. No wonder Undertale is megapopular with players and developers. What is my intent? What is the intent of the game? You seem to atleast know what the intent of the game is, but you can sidestep guessing mine if you want to talk about Half-Life instead.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:38
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End of Shoelace posted:Vortigaunts can be, and easily are, subjugated by the Combine. Remember the floor-sweeping Vortigaunt at the very beginning of HL2, clad in restraints. And the Combines do use Vort energy, atleast in HLA. There's green lightning traveling through the power lines to the G-Man's floating prison. Concept art for HL2 reveals pod prisons that host Vortigaunts, using them like living batteries. Game “criticism” has yet to grow past the level of a goddamn Hot Topic t-shirt saying “THIS PRINCESS RESCUES HERSELF,” it has only become exponentially more verbose and sure of itself. This thread is living proof.
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Mar 27, 2020 20:44
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:11 |
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It isn't haunting, it's an answered question. You can unravell how different games answer and provide context for it, but conceptually the idea of there being bad people that you empathize with less than the hero, as well as the subversion of that, are absolutely ancient. Stories have used that as a device for as long as they have existed. I'm not sure of your intent, but you don't strike me as someone who is honest, either with others or themselves. You dig media analysis, but lack self reflection. You just kinda suck, dude. SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Mar 27, 2020 |
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Mar 27, 2020 20:45
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