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M. Morgan posted:The more I think about this Evil Corp slavery plot, the less sense it makes. Wouldn't people prefer this to starving on welfare, praying their stacks don't fall down and murder hundreds, avoiding rapists and literal raiders? At least they get food, a bed to sleep in, clean clothes and security. They might get bored if Evil Corp Commissary is stupidly expensive for the internet or other poo poo, but I imagine you do the same things to keep you busy as in real life prison. The one aspect that's ignored is why is there indentured servitude when most processes would be automated anyway. Automated tech support lines are a thing that happens now, or the tech is so stable there's little need for it. In fact, it would be more appropriate for Evil Corp to make their corporate slaves into NPCs: before bots become commonplace in Second Life, this is what you had to do if you wanted NPCs like greeters, sex slaves, etc. And, even with third-party bots, people can usually tell a bot from a real person just due to interactivity and canned responses, so having some poor schmuck play at being a blacksmith or seamstress in the background, the virtual equivalent of Disney cast member or some sort of mook that hunts down players. Of course, this starts butting into the premise of Cory Doctorow's "Anda's Game"/"In Real Life" and "For The Win", which deal with digital sweatshops and gold farming in the developing world in a far better way. Also, why even bother with setting up an indentured servitude system where you have to pay for room and board when you can rig up some "gig economy" equivalent and the slaves pay you for the privilege of working for you?
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Apr 1, 2018 20:30
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Shark Sandwich posted:Given that “classic 80s” means to Cline “nerd poo poo I grew up with” I imagine there are plenty of things from that decade he hates. Like anything artistic merit from that decade. I've mentioned this before in other discussions about RP:O that Cline has the very shallowest of cultural familiarity with the subject of '80s pop culture. He's not like Quentin Tarantino, who revels in obscure miscellany like little-known grindhouse films, forgotten spaghetti westerns, then-unknown HK crime dramas, or the works of Enzo Castellari, digging them up from his memories and lovingly giving them a public viewing for mainstream audiences, Cline focuses on the well-tread path. Almost nothing he brings up is niche or cult hit, everything got a wide release and was shown on cable a billion times. You're not going to see Cline bringing up Castellari's 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Sergio Martino's 2019: After The Fall Of New York, Jean-Claude Lord's The Vindicator, Albert Pyun's Radioactive Dreams, or hundreds of the lesser-known B-movies that filled the airtime on UHF channels, populated late night cable, or crowded video store shelves, it's all going to be a Greatest Hits Of The '80s.
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Apr 1, 2018 23:59
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chitoryu12 posted:IOI is a multinational communications company, so they run ISPs but also stuff like taxis. I don’t find it really implausible that they would provide a third-party tech support option. It would have been hilarious if that got brought up in the ending: technically, Wade was working for GSS as a contractor and thus invalidated himself from the prize.
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Apr 2, 2018 01:34
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chitoryu12 posted:Also notice how the two main mechs in this final battle (Mechagodzilla and Leopardon) are from the 70s and Ultraman is from the 60s, so the most prominent artifacts we've seen aren't even from the 80s in a book that's exclusively about 80s nostalgia! The EVAs are the most egarious bit, since there's like 5-6 actually me has in the show, all basically prototypes. You can literally name them off and theyre distinctive enough to be described individually. Also, there's a major size difference, maybe not with Super Robots and Mechagodzilla, but with the Real Robots like Gundam and Macross. EVAs are about 60m tall, while Gundam mobile suits and the "Robotech" mechs are about 18m.
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Apr 2, 2018 17:22
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Poops Mcgoots posted:The hosed up thing imo is that Cline could've gone for another Hideaki Anno Mecha anime and brought in Gunbuster, but I guess that would've required doing research on a deeper reference and we can't have that! The Buster Machines are completely overpowered, too, and make the EVAs and many other Super Robots like dwarfs.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:30
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StonecutterJoe posted:If they did that, Cline would have to explain how anything gets programmed into the Oasis in the first place, who approves content, who runs the drat thing, how the game mechanics actually work, and a hundred other questions he completely ignores. "It's a magic quest drop that has arbitrary power levels because magic quest drop" is the best we're gonna get here. The whole thing should be Second Life, where anything can happen, in both the best and worst extremes of the phrase, but it seems like your generic MMO, which asks the question, whose building all of this? Not the players and I'm not sure if we've even heard of license holders, so I'm assuming that it was Halliday and GSS making unlicensed reproductions in OASIS.
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Apr 3, 2018 14:06
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:If it was just based of Haliday's apparently very narrow nostalgia yeah, but if it was just like nahh any mecha in history there would be plenty way stronger than anything listed there. I doubt there are even as many gunters as there are cool robots to pick from and that's not even including grunts. Oh hey, it's Buster Machine-3. To channel my inner Cline here, Gunbuster ends with the Earth nations building the BM-3, which isn't a robot but a giant bomb about a quarter the size of the moon, with the condensed mass of Jupiter at it's core, making it a barely-contained weaponized singularity. The heroes send it to the center of the galaxy and face off against the space bugs in one final battle, where they set off the BM-3, destroying 100s of cubic light years and killing the galaxy so humanity may live.
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Apr 3, 2018 17:19
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chitoryu12 posted:Oh yeah, he knows they're using hacked rigs and is now the CEO and superadmin. He can just boot IOI out of OASIS permanently and have his ideal anarchist cyberstate. Then IOI retaliated by throttling the GSS servers back to 56k bandwidth, because, tell you what, President Wil Wheaton has got a lovely domestic policy if he has corporations implementing indentured servitude and a Mad Max middle America. Also, OASIS is worth $260 billion, right? That's also in 2040 dollars, assuming inflation remains stable. That would make OASIS worth something like $130 billion in today's money, which makes it substantial but not like Amazon.
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Apr 4, 2018 00:44
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Hostile V posted:Easter weekend boost gave it roughly 60 million domestic, 125 international on a 175 budget. It might have another week of staying power considering that April is a hellscape for collecting mass audience profit until Infinity War comes out but it's possible another movie based on a game (Rampage) could handily dethrone it. It's not wholly unreasonable it could double its budget come the last week of April which is the bare loving minimum of "profitable" in Hollywood.  if you think that the Armada adaptation is going to be close to anything to the book. It's going to have the basic premise but everything else will be crafted by another screenwriter.
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Apr 4, 2018 03:13
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chitoryu12 posted:The will isn't entirely specific, but Halliday says that the winner earns his entire estate, including a fortune of more than $240 billion and his controlling stake of stock in GSS. So presumably Halliday's personal fortune is separate from the actual money and assets GSS has. Also, Wil Wheaton is only the VP of OASIS and Wade outright says he ignores real world elections because only reality TV stars and evangelists can get elected now. Going back to this, the rate of inflation by 2040 is expected to be about 195% of today's dollars. At approximately $240 billion 2040 dollars, that is about $123 billion in 2018 dollars, which is Jeff Bezos level. If they split it, it's approximately $31 billion each. Interestingly, Wikipedia maintains a list of wealthy historical figures, with their fortunes adjusted to 2010 figures. If you compared Halliday (and Wade) to them, he would occupy the 10th slot. His fortune would be eclipsed by the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller when their net worth is adjusted.
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Apr 4, 2018 05:40
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System Metternich posted:The various RP1 parodies floating around made me think: What would be the inevitable porn parody's name? Halliday's challenges would consist out of faithfully recreating famous 80s porn scenes, of course The main character is named Wade Wadd (taking the surname of John Holmes' detective character) and the whole thing is basically a trip throughout the history of porn, from Christy Mack mohawk starlets of the 2000s to the big fake tits of eastern Euro emigres in the 1990s, big hair and cocaine fueled pornstars of the '80s, etc. Also, there's a character whose basically Traci Lords, but, because of the underage controversy, she's whited-out like that episode of Black Mirror, White Christmas.
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Apr 4, 2018 14:12
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chitoryu12 posted:There's a brief mention of stubble growing back after escaping IOI, but yeah he should have less than 2 weeks of hair growth on his entire body, including eyebrows. Need of the biggest problems I have during this thread is trying to figure how much time has passed. It feels like at least a year have passed but it sounds like everything was over the span of a month. Also, I was laughing at his weight loss program. You aren't getting cut by counting calories, in fact cutting calories is like going cold turkey with an addictive substance: you get cravings to eat more constantly and it's real easy to relapse. I lost something like 40 pounds over the past 6 months, but I lost 30 over the first three months. My final goal is 160-170, and I've plateaued with just counting calories that I've been trying to decrease my intake and increase my exercise to get past 190. In order to lose that much weight in that short of time, Wade really would be cutting out everything, including his not-Soylent, save water and he'd be going crazy from the starvation.
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Apr 4, 2018 19:58
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Choco1980 posted:Wait, nobody can figure why Mt Shasta is on the paranormal/conspiracy world? Have they ever researched ANYTHING about Mt. Shasta? If you're from NorCal, literally every story you have about it is that it's Weird Stuff Central, everything from weird lights in the sky to bigfoot to shady MIB reports there. Cameron cut his teeth as a production designer: he worked on Galaxy Of Terror, which looks impressive compared to other Alien ripoffs like Creature and Inseminoid. As well, Cameron made the iconic Aliens dropship, having kitbashed the initial design before handing over to Ron Cobb to polish. Word was that the Syd Mead design was too futuristic and not the "space Vietnam" look that Cameron wanted, so he basically did it himself. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 21:52
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chitoryu12, if we're seriously doing a rewrite, I'd try the following things: A third faction that actively fucks with the gunters and Sixers by giving out false clues and rumors, luring out hunters into traps and ambushes, and dry-gulching them, coercing them into giving them coin or gear, piracy, etc. Doesn't have to be Goonfleet, although I'm guessing people have already jump to that conclusion.  Unpleasant poo poo that makes OASIS not perfect cyberutopia. Absolute freedom enables absolute horror. In the dark corners, there's.all manner of prostitution and sexual vice, including simulated rape and snuff. In sequestered parts, real-world guerrillas and terrorists act out training with virtual representations of real world weapons systems and stage simulated attacks on real world targets. Racist sims where all the offensively-caricatured NPCs act in grossly stereotypical manners, with no consequences if you abuse or kill them. More original avatars, or at least remixed ones. Part of the fun of having the big sandbox is making your own stories, and that doesn't seem to happen in Cline's vision for anyone other than Wade. Even with licensed properties, people will find ways to play with them in new ways. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 00:51
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Robot Style posted:Wade's mom was an OASIS prostitute, so this is actually already in there (though like anything else that could make the setting interesting, it's forgotten after being mentioned once). Yeah, it's there as a throw-away line and it's largely to demonstrate how pervasive OASIS is, not how horrible. What I'm thinking is more Head In The Clouds from Altered Carbon, where anything goes means anything goes.
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Apr 5, 2018 01:04
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Something that I thought of: has anyone actually rewatched some of their childhood faves and be disappointed by some of the content. For example: I have friends do a rematch of the first Ace Ventura movie and somehow forget about how transphobic it is. What I'm getting at is Wade internalizing a lit of the '80s racism, sexism, and homophobia that is latent in a lot of films and media, skewing his worldview.
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Apr 5, 2018 01:28
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nine-gear crow posted:In order to make Lacero square with Ready Player One, you would need to turn Sorrento into, and pardon the obvious video game term, it's just one of the few examples I have in my grab-bag so readily available, a Kefka character. Not some loopy deranged clown, but a guy you shrug off initially because you think he's just some schmuck who's sticking to Corporate's plot and plan, when actually he's just using the system he's been brought into and given control of the leavers of until his perfect moment arrives and he can enact his own plan and destroy everything and screw over everyone. Only his master plan has a bit more of a righteous edge to it. There's another take on Lacero that I've heard, and that Sorrento is Wade's uncle, his dead sister being Wade's mother. That might be a little too Empire Strikes Back, but, given the source material, would completely fit within the conventions of the media being homaged. Proteus Jones posted:* Throw out the blowing up the stack, since that’s just ‘fridging and a lazy way to motivate Wade to “I MUST WIN”. He already has that knowing Sorrento wants to destroy the OASIS. I would turn the attack on the stacks into a counting coup by IOI. Have during the negotiation, Wade hears a loud, audible tap from somewhere close. When he rejects the offer, he finds his body being moved forcefully (at first he thinks it's an avatar glitch, since he's disconnected mentally while in OASIS, being that messed up) when he realizes he's feeling pressure around his arms and neck. He pulls up his visor and finds him in a choke hold with two crew-cut athletic men in tracksuits (think the cleaners from Michael Clayton) who force him back into OASIS for Sorrento to deliver a final ultimatum and a 24 hour timeframe to make a decision. At that point, he's left alone and decides to bug out lest end up like Tom Wilkinson's character from Michael Clayton. Proteus Jones posted:* Sorrento should actually be someone that the general OASIS user admires or at least respects. Sort of a corporate celebrity. Wade and the reader are the only ones that know his end-game. That kind of turns Wade into a Cassandra trying to convince everyone of his true agenda. Agreed, Sorrento should be a Char: a likeable antihero that has a grudge so massive that he goes to psychotic lengths to find recourse. Proteus Jones posted:I feel this is ground trod by other, darker works. Remember this is supposed to be an adventure novel at its heart. True, and while I don't want that to take a forefront, I'd want to have it lying in wait under the surface, like a worm in an apple. It's all fun and games until the group takes a wrong turn and BAM! it's Judgement Night as they confront some unpleasantries first hand. Or, at least, some tense moments of cringe as they navigate through someone's "magical realm" while on the hunt. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 05:43
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nine-gear crow posted:This ^^^ Then just to sell the reference completely instead of MechaGodzilla, have him whip out an obscenely hacked version of Red Comet at the mech battle to tool everyone with. I think you meant to say "Sazabi". Seriously, that's what he should be using and not the red Char-Custom Commander's Zaku II in the climatic final battle, especially considering that it's the mobile suit Char finally dies in Char's Counterattack (uh-oh spoilers for a 30-year-old anime). Plus, it's super-powerful in it's own right. Give Wade the RX-78 Gundam versus something that's 15 years down the line in the franchise, with all the advanced technology and Newtype exploits. If using WW2 tanks, Zakus would be German Panzer II while the Gundam and GM is something like the T-34 or the Sherman. But, the Sazabi, in that analogy, would be something like the Leopard 2A6 with drone support, it completely blows analogy. Actually, that would be a great bit: Wade's Gundam defeats a Char-Custom Zaku II, thinking that's the final boss Sixer, until Sorrento shows up in a Sazabi and Wade shits bricks. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 06:03
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Darth Walrus posted:Sounds like a cue for me to get on that list of giant robot suggestions. This might take a little while, but then again, I've got a lot of material to work with. One of those things that should happen is that any mecha should not be described just by name. It's probably the biggest issue I have with the book. Unless a character blurts out "It's a Gundam" Gundam Wing style, I think there should be at least given a description whenever introduced.
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Apr 5, 2018 13:57
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chitoryu12 posted:As a Gundam fan, I am all about that Karen Joshua Custom. It may not be a super robot, but I can see Aech not giving a single gently caress as she pulls a "Get some!" on a bunch of IOI foot soldiers and tanks with a beam rifle and the chest Gatling. Given both the grunt nature and the eliteness of getting the Keys, I would give them something like elite variations on grunt mechs, like the Mobile Suit Variations custom mobile suits (Johnny Ridden-, Shin Matsunaga-, etc.), one-offs like the Kampfer or the Norris Custom Gouf, or maybe include the EVAs but not the hero ones, more like the Mass Production Model or the EVA-03. For Super Robot mechs, I'd think about the Big O bad guys, like Big Duo or Big Fau.
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Apr 6, 2018 03:11
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Jenny Nicholson's back and talking about RPO again, this time the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07w3u8iLa-s The spoiler is that it's basically preaching to the choir here. She comes across the same conclusions many have had.
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Apr 8, 2018 11:57
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Tunicate posted:total destruction of your cybercar might be risk enough I see that OASIS is built around Star Citizen’s insurance scam and not simply rerezzing a car like just about every other MMO and online game out there.
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Apr 9, 2018 17:29
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Vintersorg posted:MechaG in RPO looks nothing like any of the MechaG's in the past. What the gently caress is that supposed to be? Seriously, it looks like they went to the concept artists responsible for the Bayformers stuff and they "reinterpret" Mechagodzilla instead of just "look at this already established Toho character design and copy it" that they should have done. It's way too fiddly bits and opened armored that I can barely tell it's supposed to be Mechagodzilla.
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Apr 9, 2018 22:17
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Idran posted:Then why no Sega references either, though? Master System might not have been huge, but it wasn't nothing. I think I've joked that we should be seeing at least one [Your Name] The Hedgehog OC character. I'm pretty sure that would be considered parody and wouldn't actually be infringement because it's not actually Sonic.
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Apr 10, 2018 04:54
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Also, the movie actually did really poorly in America, home of the source of its pop culture references. So hardly anyone was clapping*. In on a phone right now, but you should see the Japanese posters. One of them makes it look like a live action Gundam movie, with all the anime stuff front and center and Wade and crew all small at the bottom.
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Apr 10, 2018 14:02
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Young Freud posted:In on a phone right now, but you should see the Japanese posters. One of them makes it look like a live action Gundam movie, with all the anime stuff front and center and Wade and crew all small at the bottom. Here's the poster I'm talking about... 
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Apr 10, 2018 15:04
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chitoryu12 posted:Honestly, the movie could have been a lot better than it was. Drop the shaky "I'm part of the resistance" bit for Art3mis that goes away within 20 minutes because IOI raids them in their second scene, don't use weird pandering dialogue like "A real fanboy knows a hater", and make Sorrento an actually intimidating villain instead of a bumbling comedy executive who gets kicked in the balls. I pretty sure that there's some legal issues incorporating Weir's fanfiction but they really should have added some of that into the film to make Sorrento a more motivated villain.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:21
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Darth Walrus posted:I mean, that would be a pretty cool idea to show how the world outside is decaying around the game. I think the above scenario was more online, but with OASIS as big as it is, I'd suspect offline robbery and murder to get game money or props would be commonplace. You have it happen in the book with Daito, but we've seen that happen in our world, too, with poopsockers killing one another over virtual goods. The biometrics required to log onto OASIS even remind of that short "Hyperreality", where its an augmented reality POV that ends with the subject getting shivved by a AR-disguised assailant, who then uses her blood to fool the security protocols and steal her identity. On a related note, how does player inventories work? I suspect all objects are "physical" objects that require hangars and chests instead of just being kept on an asset database and rezzed out of a menu interface. Like, Wade shouldn't be using virtual magic to hide his Delorean, he should just call it up over his phone, Saints Row style, and it just drops from the sky or delivered by a valet.
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Apr 13, 2018 14:16
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chitoryu12 posted:The most that's covered is that you have an inventory that you can put any appropriately sized items into like in any RPG, but the writing is ambiguous about how you actually access it (Wade opens a menu and clicks on items initially to equip them, but several times he puts items in his "pocket" instead and that works too). Presumably the inventory isn't bound by realistic space and is only restricted by weight or slots, since Wade loads himself up with armor and weapons when going to the Distracted Globe despite wearing a suit. I really started wondering about this when he's shooting the Tyrell guards and he's describing the ammunition being added to the gun's magazines as they're being fired, so it made me think that the gun is a fully functional simulation of a firearm, with working, moving parts, instead of just a prop that holds code and values, a simple database of shots to be fired, and instances bullets at the muzzle velocity with some particle flash and smoke for visual effects for gunfire. Also, we have a scene were he's wandering a hangar, instead of spinning through a menu, although that more reminded me of Star Citizen so I could see that.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:32
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Roadie posted:. Dawn Of The Dead might not be '80s but Return Of The Living Dead as sure as he'll is. Also, RotLD is where the whole "Brains" trope comes from: it's the Tar Man's signature line and there's a part where Burt & Ernst interrogate a zombie which reveals they eat brains to relieve them of the pain of death.
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Apr 17, 2018 01:15
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