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Explopyro posted:(Side note, while I'm thinking about it, does anyone else find Rose to look off in a kind of uncanny valley way? I'm not sure if it's that, exactly, but I think her proportions look too adult, she doesn't look nearly as young as the writing implies she is. It could just the a consequence of the shrunken-down perspective, I guess, but I keep noticing this.) Oh man I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed just how off putting Rose looks. However, in retrospect, I think all of the human characters look a bit off, even in the opening cutscene
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Feb 18, 2022 03:35
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The only way I can imagine this story being redeemed rn is if Dr. Hakim was revealed to be a Stand, who has cursed these awful parents to endless sidequests with Love Experience Requiem
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Feb 18, 2022 06:45
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Maybe they are both dead and in hell.
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Feb 18, 2022 13:47
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I've only seen the parts from here onward as a speedrun that skipped a bunch of stuff so I'm curious if we get a redemption arc so the people who come out the other side actually deserve it. I'm guessing no but hoping yes.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:55
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Robindaybird posted:It floored me seeing people who actually found this entire scene funny, and call it 'dark comedy' - including the writer of this game. That was supposed to be funny? I thought it was supposed to be shocking in order to produce reaction videos for viral advertising.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:07
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Feb 19, 2022 00:01
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Explopyro posted:(Side note, while I'm thinking about it, does anyone else find Rose to look off in a kind of uncanny valley way? I'm not sure if it's that, exactly, but I think her proportions look too adult, she doesn't look nearly as young as the writing implies she is. It could just the a consequence of the shrunken-down perspective, I guess, but I keep noticing this.) I'd say it's a combination of not doing her face quite right and also not making her emote in any way that isn't crying. I got really bad vibes from the dinner table conversation when she doesn't visibly react to the divorce news; a child acting that casual about that kind of poo poo is a sign of either not understanding what they've been told, or having previously existing severe emotional damage. The way the parents just let her run off and go about their own business, then the reveal that she totally did understand and is crushed about it, but I guess didn't want to show it in front of them, makes it pretty drat clear which of those it is and where it came from.
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Feb 19, 2022 00:27
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"Dark Comedy" is a fair assessment of the actual scene. While it's horrific in context, the actual actions are slapstick at the same level as the Black Knight in The Holy Grail. Team Parents of the Year chase this stuffed animal down with a crane game, then gleefully dismember and chuck it over a cliff. Within context though... what the christ. "Let's murder our child's favorite toy to make her cry magic tears" has got to be the shittiest leaps in logic - Magic book's been shouting at you to communicate and the best they could do was decide to crush their child's heart together?!?
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Feb 19, 2022 07:48
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...Cody and May live together, are married, have a child, and this has been the case for quite a few years. How is Cody apparently completely unaware that May's job pays the bills? How does he not understand that she works because she has to? Did he think the money appeared from thin air and that was completely separate from her just wanting to work a lot for free? That whole exchange would have been better coming from Rose, because small children often don't understand the whole concept of needing to work to pay for food and housing.
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Feb 19, 2022 09:10
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Black Robe posted:...Cody and May live together, are married, have a child, and this has been the case for quite a few years. How is Cody apparently completely unaware that May's job pays the bills? How does he not understand that she works because she has to? Did he think the money appeared from thin air and that was completely separate from her just wanting to work a lot for free? While I agree the way this game presents it is childish, of course something like this can actually cause friction. More on the level of "if your job requires you to be on the road so much, maybe it's better to look for something else to do?". But this game isn't very big on realism anyway.
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Feb 19, 2022 10:15
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Carbon dioxide posted:While I agree the way this game presents it is childish, of course something like this can actually cause friction. More on the level of "if your job requires you to be on the road so much, maybe it's better to look for something else to do?". But this game isn't very big on realism anyway. Oh sure, it's absolutely a problem for a lot of families, but Cody seems to have been genuinely unaware that she's the breadwinner. Him resenting it would be one thing, but him not understanding it and apparently only hearing the explanation for the first time now after they've been living together for years is a whole new level of stupid.
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Feb 19, 2022 11:40
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The gameplay in this game looks great. The story...I can't recall the last game I had this strong a negative reaction to. The whole elephant sequence is just...why? gently caress you people. Don't do that.
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Feb 19, 2022 21:08
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Ah yes, the Elephant Scene. I remember being absolutely horrified by it, and how the narrative kind of brushes off this horrible traumatic incident. Cue me looking up to see if the writer ever talked about it....and finding out that he absolutely defended it calling it dark comedy and was very adamant about it being an important scene. Which, uh. wow. As someone that treasured their stuffed toys pretty deeply as a child, that entire scene just completely killed any remaining interest I had in the game.
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Feb 20, 2022 01:43
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In a better written game, the elephant scene should've been a realization point that they're letting their toxicity and selfishness hurt their child but It Takes Two is not a well written game.
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Feb 20, 2022 02:09
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I have some anecdotes of stuffed animal injuries that I hope will balance out the cruelty we're seeing from It Takes Two. I've had some of my critters since childhood, including Jaws and Stripes here respectively. Kid NGDBSS had a bad habit of swinging Stripes around by the tail. Over time the tail got more and more loose until it broke clean off, and I was rather embarrassed. Luckily my mother was able to patch things up with some thick black thread, and I felt chastened enough to stop inflicting injuries like that.  Jaws on the other hand just...got old. (As seen above they would be old enough to legally drink.) They ended up with some holes behind the dorsal fins and right pectoral fin - not immediately worrisome, but a problem in need of fixing nonetheless. As An Adult it was now my responsibility to perform surgery on my critters. The result isn't perfect, as you can see from the loose threads and exposed stitching in the first picture, but it's been effective nonetheless.  I feel like in a just world May and Cody would have decided to read a charming bedtime story to Queen Cutie instead of perpetuating this grotesque mess.
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Feb 20, 2022 22:08
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That is the single greatest post I've ever had on any of my LPs. Oh my god your cuddly toys are the best and I want to give them all the hugs.
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Feb 20, 2022 22:43
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You had great taste in stuffed companions! Sharks are perfectly designed for cuddling.
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Feb 20, 2022 23:08
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Thanks! In addition to those critters I asked my parents for a dogfish this past Christmas based on a local brewing company, but as it turned out we could only find a listing for an actual dogfish intended for dissection in a biology lab. Oof. Instead I went with Cassandra the tiger shark, seen podcasting here.  
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Feb 20, 2022 23:25
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Feb 22, 2022 00:30
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I really like the clock tower level, and it just convinces me more that the game should have started off in the shed, then skipped all the other levels and went straight into the "couples counseling with 4 pieces of the letter" back half when Rose went inside, and the game would still have the same impact except for the anger we all feel when we as the players were forced to destroy Rose's favorite toy. It's almost like they had all these ideas and just wanted to keep showcasing more and more co-oping levels in a "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" way.
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Feb 22, 2022 03:50
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Miz Kriss posted:I really like the clock tower level, and it just convinces me more that the game should have started off in the shed, then skipped all the other levels and went straight into the "couples counseling with 4 pieces of the letter" back half when Rose went inside, and the game would still have the same impact except for the anger we all feel when we as the players were forced to destroy Rose's favorite toy. Yeah? Co-op platforming was clearly the core idea here, the story is a (poor) excuse to get that idea going. You're not going to cut two thirds of your game in service of a story that's secondary. E: Lmao, on the other hand I guess they're trying to make a movie out of it? Fantastic Foreskin fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 06:43
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Miz Kriss posted:It's almost like they had all these ideas and just wanted to keep showcasing more and more co-oping levels in a "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" way. It's 100% this based off of A Way Out which similarly went wild with settings to justify tons of varied co-op stuff and minigames. Kinda makes me wonder what'd happen if they weren't chained to the idea that games have to have a plot.
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Feb 22, 2022 06:46
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:
Imagine the critics eviscerating this - there's a reason why "Oh no, we can't let these people divorce - think of the kids!" movie plots largely died out after the 90s
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Feb 22, 2022 16:32
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:It's 100% this based off of A Way Out which similarly went wild with settings to justify tons of varied co-op stuff and minigames. Kinda makes me wonder what'd happen if they weren't chained to the idea that games have to have a plot. Or even without an over-arching plot. Hell, make it a series of vignettes with the stupid book as the narrator/driving force and have different couples in various stages of relationships and strife: best friends moving away, a couple going through divorce, siblings fighting, you name it. Then they can go even more hog wild on the settings because this dumb book is magical and has apparently sold "millions of copies." I don't mind the game. It's very beautiful, and I'm sure my critique is minor (despite what my posts say), but the main thing is that seeing this past level feels like a loop of the emotions and lessons Cody and May were supposed to learn from the first part of the game makes me wonder "was adding the elephant murder necessary?" Robindaybird posted:Imagine the critics eviscerating this - there's a reason why "Oh no, we can't let these people divorce - think of the kids!" movie plots largely died out after the 90s It was stupid when I was a kid with divorced parents and it's stupid now that I'm an adult with divorced parents and a dead stepparent.
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Feb 22, 2022 20:43
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Miz Kriss posted:Or even without an over-arching plot. Hell, make it a series of vignettes with the stupid book as the narrator/driving force and have different couples in various stages of relationships and strife: best friends moving away, a couple going through divorce, siblings fighting, you name it. Then they can go even more hog wild on the settings because this dumb book is magical and has apparently sold "millions of copies." Ooh that's a good idea. Even ignoring the characters being so awful, it does feel a bit tiring for them to keep going so long just dragged over and over from one magically extrapolated world of imagination to another. Having some variety in the characters would make them a lot easier to live with. And having each be a short isolated scenario, like just an introductory therapy session that gets them started talking instead of acting like they're gonna solve all their problems in real time, that would frame things in a more healthy way too. The elephant scene might actually finally be darkly funny if that was our first introduction to these two, in comparison to other characters before, and the book gets to yell at them wondering why that was the first idea they went with.
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Feb 22, 2022 21:33
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Bifauxnen posted:The elephant scene might actually finally be darkly funny if that was our first introduction to these two, in comparison to other characters before, and the book gets to yell at them wondering why that was the first idea they went with. I would have actually laughed if the book popped in with his finger guns and exaggerated accent just to ask what the gently caress. "WHAT did the ELEPHANT ever do to YOU?"
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Feb 22, 2022 22:56
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I guess you don't have to talk about the elephant in the room if you brutally murder her instead?
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Feb 22, 2022 23:04
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Explopyro posted:I guess you don't have to talk about the elephant in the room if you brutally murder her instead? 
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Feb 22, 2022 23:11
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 In this episode: Tea's laptop burning itself through a table.
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Feb 24, 2022 00:12
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I guess this is what they call a clock and bull story.
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Feb 24, 2022 01:09
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anilEhilated posted:I guess this is what they call a clock and bull story. You are a worse person than May and Cody.
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Feb 24, 2022 01:13
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Feb 25, 2022 23:56
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This episode inspired me; a feature to port into other games. See, I know another couple that could use some counseling... 
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Feb 28, 2022 06:10
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Melaneus posted:This episode inspired me; a feature to port into other games. You will never defeat me, co-op-er-a-tion is key!
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Feb 28, 2022 06:34
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Melaneus posted:This episode inspired me; a feature to port into other games. It takes tooie?
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Feb 28, 2022 12:24
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Mar 1, 2022 00:07
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Mar 2, 2022 23:58
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Can you imagine how amazing this game would be if the writing was as good as the gameplay? Hot drat, it'd be one of the best goddamn games ever. Thanks for making it fun to watch!
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Mar 3, 2022 07:04
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Shei-kun posted:Can you imagine how amazing this game would be if the writing was as good as the gameplay? Episode 22: Video Rental Store
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Mar 3, 2022 10:40
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Bifauxnen posted:Episode 22: Video Rental Store Episode 23: IKEA
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Mar 3, 2022 23:31
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