Here’s a hot take: if I need a Visio diagram to understand your timeline then your series has gotten out of hand and must be stopped. Make something else instead.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
- Start date
"Color-Changing Tingle's Love Balloon Trip"
...aight, I'm out.
One could take issue with the fact that an entire timeline(or 3) that stems from "Link dies in OoT" but not in any of the others, when if you're playing with "YOU DIED" as an offshoot point, we could ask "Why not any of the other games?".
I thought BotW2 was going to be a prequel. That might jam up the works
One could, and has. People had theorized about OoT splitting into two timelines for ages, but no-one guessed about the existence of the Fallen Hero Timeline. And why would they?
The Doylist explanation is that Nintendo pulled it out of their arse, slapped it on, and went "here's your timeline, are you happy?!" Unfortunately, there's no Watsonian explanation. The only explanation is that time travel was involved at some point because every other timeline divergence (or by the timeframe of BotW, re-convergence) has involved actual time travel/timeline hopping.
Not sure where that's from. I mean, BotW has already got a prequel as I understand in Age of Calamity. But far as I'm aware, it's a sequel.
Final Fantasy X is a really cool concept brought down by poor writing and world design that wastes much of it's premise. For a game that focuses so much on a world where the dominant religion disdains technology(except for massive underwater sports arenas, for some reason), it spends very little of it's runtime actually giving us insight into this religion other then the whole Summoner Pilgrimage, despite visiting their holy city(which is also mostly wasted despite being one of the few actual places of habitation on the continent) and like 6 of their temples(which are glorified puzzle boxes which don't even have symbolism or any particular spiritual importance built into them).
There's also the issue of the twist that the summoner dies when fighting SIN and everyone knows this but Tidus, mostly because Everyone keeps it a secret from him. It becomes really awkward considering Tidus spends a lot of time hitting on Yuna and everyone else just stands by and watches it happen, despite Wakka or Rikku having no reason to let him continue to make an ass of himself for most of the journey. Considering they spend most of the time together, you'd think one of them would eventually pull him aside and tell him "Dude, seriously. Cut it out. She's gonna die at the end" but the fact nobody does until far into the journey implies they're all in it to keep him in the dark(even Rikku, who has no reason to do so).
There's also the issue of the twist that the summoner dies when fighting SIN and everyone knows this but Tidus, mostly because Everyone keeps it a secret from him. It becomes really awkward considering Tidus spends a lot of time hitting on Yuna and everyone else just stands by and watches it happen, despite Wakka or Rikku having no reason to let him continue to make an ass of himself for most of the journey. Considering they spend most of the time together, you'd think one of them would eventually pull him aside and tell him "Dude, seriously. Cut it out. She's gonna die at the end" but the fact nobody does until far into the journey implies they're all in it to keep him in the dark(even Rikku, who has no reason to do so).
I don't think that's an issue. The first blitzball ring we see is in the intro, where the water is 'zapped' into the arena. In contrast, in modern day Spira, it's simply poured in. It's quick, efficient visual storytelling that the world Tidus has found himself in has apparently regressed from his time - same game, less tech. We can later infer that it might be due to anti-tech views, and/or a case of bread and circuses, but even if it isn't, the scene tells us a lot just by itself.
That aside, I'm mixed on FF10 - very solid gameplay, very sketchy story. I don't think it even properly explains Yu Yevon inside the game itself for instance, let alone how the game seems to have a "weirdness for weirdnesses' sake" thing going on. Why yes, blitzballs ARE deadly weapons, thanks for asking.
- The Call of Duty games are not all bad but they're definitely the most boring. Especially the ones in the mid-2010s and after. They're all generic slop. That just makes it worse in my eye.
- I find most of Sega's IPs more interesting than Nintendo's.
- DmC (2013) fails as a Devil May Cry game, but it is better than most western hack and slash games by a long mile. It's better than some Japanese ones too, but that's a very short list.
- Quantum Break is not a bad game, but it is really mediocre and is Remedy's worst game. The crappy live action "tv show" segments do nothing and do not add to the overall experience.
- I necessarily don't mind Sony's "cinematic" approach to its games, but they need to cut out the forced walking sections. They never add anything. Even Gravity Rush 2 had them. Just because your characters do in a slow walking does not add any immersion at all. Just make it a skippable cutscene.
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Metal Gear Solid 3 's whole thing between Snake and The Boss is fucking weak. It's supposed to be this big, emotional connection that makes Snake (and the player as well) fearful and anxious in finally confronting her, but the game never bothered to properly establish this connection. The moment The Boss is introduced as a back-up for the intro mission she goes on this spiel about how a soldier shouldn't be loyal to anyone but their country, but we don't even know who this fucking lady is yet - She signals her betrayal within the first 3 minutes of her introduction. We don't get to know her or what her relationship was like with Snake even a smidge for her betrayal to mean one iota. All we have to go on is Snake getting misty-eyed when he hears her voice again after what I assume was a few years. And at that point the game is still busy introducing this Snake and what he's all about; How am I supposed to feel any sort of powerful, emotional bond between this guy I barely know and this woman I barely know, and than feel the sharp sting of betrayal when she goes turncoat?
Yeah, I felt nothing shooting The Boss in the face in that final moment. The stupid James Bond tone that occasionally worms its way through doesn't help much either. 'I'm stiiiiiiiiiil in a dreeeeeam, Snake Eater' while I'm battling my "mother" to the death in a highly emotional, character defining moment.
Yeah, I felt nothing shooting The Boss in the face in that final moment. The stupid James Bond tone that occasionally worms its way through doesn't help much either. 'I'm stiiiiiiiiiil in a dreeeeeam, Snake Eater' while I'm battling my "mother" to the death in a highly emotional, character defining moment.
While I disagree with the impact of the Boss on Snakes arc, I do take issue with how the Boss increasingly got sanctified the more she was talked about to the point I expected to see a damn halo over her head at some point. She goes from "Snakes Mentor and mother figure" to "The greatest soldier who ever lived and damn near won WW2 by herself" to "almost completely invincible with saintlike patience and a bizarre sense of optimism considering everything she'd been through". The fact she's cannoically:
-Given birth on D-day because she went into combat 9 months pregnant and apparently performed a C-section on herself on the battlefield.
-Was the first human in space, because she volunteered to test the untested mercury capsule, almost died and spent months in recovery, only to be completely fucked out of the credit of even being in the program(because Gagarin got to space a few hours earlier then she did).
-Took a bullet to the head and willed herself back to full recovery(apparently).
-Convinced everyone she meets she's amazing but totally gets no credit for anything she does right despite her dad being a primo member of the illuminati....er, philosophers.
-Became the template for the first functional AI(Peace Walker) in the Metal Gear world, which gave rise to the Patriot AI's a couple decades down the road.
And of course, her "The world used to be united" because Russia, China and the US were briefly on the same side during WW2 due to a common enemy, except that really doesn't count at all. It was mainly that 3 future superpowers(the UK got left out of this weirdly, because China future rise was more important to the philosophers then the UK's world spanning empire for a century or so prior to WW2) were very briefly fighting the Axis powers(and the US was late to that particular party).
But man, the entire MG universe is built around people being fucking enamoured by her "One world without borders" musings except nobody really agrees on how that would work and considering Snake(and EVA) is the only one who knew she wasn't actually a traitor and war criminal makes it bizarre that Zero and Co would care so much.
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You spend plenty of time with the religion. In the temple you can see they worship past summoner, if you talk to NPC you can get a pretty long history of the religion (how it came from the conflict between Bevelle and Zanarkand and so on). There's even an history you meet a few time throughout the game that goes over most of the history. Now the religion doesn't have a pantheon and an holy text, but it doesn't need those things since Sin is always around to remind people that it exist and that the religion is the only things that can defeat it. It's kinda like if God/Jesus was around, you wouldn't need the bible to remind people about it.
Everyone consider Titus to have lost his memory temporarily, so they don't bother explaining how the summoner system work because they assume he'll get his memory back. It's obviously an awkward conversation to have, especially with Yuna within earshot so they'd rather not do that. Plus it's stated many time than one of the main reason Yuna even like Titus is specifically because he doesn't know, ultimatly they care more about Yuna than Titus and if Yuna is happier this way they're okay with letting Titus unwittingly play along even if they know it's gonna break his heart.
That is God Mode Purity Sue levels of bullshit. It's almost like how the Gungrave anime treated Big Daddy like he was the Gandhi equivalent of the mafia/crime syndicate. Talk about being far up your own ass. I don't know how people manage to take MGS3 that seriously.
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You forgot '- Looking like David Bowie; the coolest rockstar ever.'
I can't be the only one who sees that, right? An androgynous looking character with an angular face, swooped back blond hair, dessed in flashy silver, in a game by a pretty big egomaniac who is a crazy fan of David Bowie.
I mean, taking Metal Gear seriously is the wrong approach to start with. It's a series that has a lot of stupid parts with the occasional brilliant one. It's just some people seem to forget all the stupid ones because of the occasional brilliant bit.
And I say that as someone who adored MGS3.
"I"M STILL IN A DREAM...........SNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR!"-Me climbing a ladder.
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You be surprised how many people I've met at a game store, that took Metal Gear 100% seriously. Some of them were teenagers, but you had dudes in there 20s and 30s that love the series unironically. One Game Stop employee threw a biatch fit, because Rising had a more goofy tone than what it was originally going to be when Platinum games took over. Oh, and he hated Raiden a lot.
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Rising had a more goofy tone? The series that has a villian team named for emotions and has a guy whose COVERED IN BEES? Where one of the main characters of the series was possessed by the disembodied hand of a dead Big Boss clone(until he wasn't but then kept on faking it anyway because reasons)? The series that unironically has characters named BIG BOSS and HOT COLDMAN?
I mean....okay, I guess.
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And there's a character who literally just shits his pants all the time on every mission.