Force Unleashed 2 Is Too Much

[Wolcik]

I'm tunning in XD

 

[megalomania]

Now we see the point of the whole cloning nonsense. Boba Fett is a clone, Starkiller is cloned and reborn. Lucas has introduced cloning as freaking retcon white-out. And when these new Star Wars films come out supposedly set thousands of years in the future. What? Emperor Palpatine? They cloned him?

*facepalm*

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn't simply clone either an army of Starkiller or an army of Darth Vaders.

Why build an army of Jango Fetts when you could build an army of guy that can crush an AT-ST by waving his hand?

Probably because Batman: Arkham Asylum beat them to that idea.

Spoiler: Batman: AA spoilers

Joker's Army of Bane's.

I totally agree with you on this one. While I loved Batman: AA to bits, by the end of the game I fucking hated the 'boss encounters'. I got to the point where I was like 'I wonder what Joker has install now... could it be a Baneling (geddit?!) with MORE creeps than he had last time'... Imagine my (lack of) surprise at each consequent encounter!

 

[I forgot]

As usual another excellent article that isnt meant for mere laughs but to actually change the industry, a true observation of human fallacies.

Yahtzee Croshaw is the John Stewart of Gaming, give it a couple more years and I see Yahtzee leaving the simple internet media and branching out into the public's eye.

Actually, I kind of dread that day because he's still an amateur at game criticism. Almost all of his works are filled with fallacies, even now.
The problem with both of these cases is that they don't want to put fear, they want to empower. You're not supposed to be afraid with Kratos because he's a god killer with amazing strength. Plus, he's comparing this to Condemned, which is a Horror game. No duh you're more likely to be afraid. He misses the point of these games. I want to know what gave him the idea that a game where you beat up monsters, gods and titans wanted to instill fear?

If he's an amateur, you're not even in scratching distance of him.
Horror game or not, you want to feel your emotions evoked, to find yourself in front of a challenge that you may be apprehensive to approach. You have to be realistic and relatable if you want the player to feel even remotely connected to the characters and the process at hand. Games that pride themselves as ridiculous don't have to deal with this. Saints Row 2's reckless abandon of realism and Team Fortress 2's charming art style can attest to this. But any game that wants to have a semblance of realistic struggle needs to have some sense of scope. "Empowerment"? Hardly. Whatever empowerment God of War 3 grants is easily offset by the amount of detachment to the game you feel once you become to powerful.

To put this into perpective, can you imagine playing Grand Theft Auto 4 as the mayor of SimCity? No, you can't. You can't imagine that kind of gritty realism when you're conjuring up tornadoes. The struggles in Max Payne become laughable. When you're a god among men, there are no interesting men.

Seriously, I think you're just mad because of what I said about Yahtzee. In a way, I'm not even disagreeing with you (you don't get a sense of apprehension from Kratos because he's so damn strong) so I don't know who you're responding to. If this was about a game like Dead Space, I'd find nothing wrong with his point. I only found something wrong with his example and him insinuating that games should be more realistic.

 

[uguito-93]

He raises some interesting points but doesent anyone think its strange that he complained these bosses were too big but praised Shadow of the Colossus because of the huge bosses? I actually think that huge bosses or set pieces make things feel epic.

 

[T. S. Wolf]

i dont exactly understand how a game can be "too awesome" i mean, look at Saints Row 2, that was ridiculous in almost every way but people accept that
or inFamous or Prototype, both very ridiculous but also a spectacle to be enjoyed.

besides that, i always thought directors were trying to go for less "flash" and "bang" because of the rise of "realistic" games like Cash-In Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto 4.

Have you even played any of the most recent COD's? The graphics may be on the grey/brown/dull-side but I wouldn't call it's action (one squad saving the world) by any stretch of the imagination "realistic".

Personally, i don't see any problem with crossing the so called line of reality in video games (after all most video games like to base themselves in unbelievable situations as is) but i also agree that there is such a thing as going too far, such as what JoJoDeathunter was talking about. Games like COD or MW need to have some basis in reality or else it breaks the illusion. Of course, like Yahtzee said, this can also be done with games like Force Unleashed or God of War. Even if it is a fantasy story, you still need to have some sense of reality.

 

[ark123]

Wouldn't the opposite of "design by committee" be an "auteur game" of the sort that was rallied against in Mr. Crowshaw's "Too Human" review? It would seem to me that both approaches can easily produce both deeply flawed and excellent games.

Just like the opposite of a steak with way too much salt is a steak with no salt at all.

 

[A1]

You really seem to be talking about anime in too broad a sense. There is a tremendous amount of variety in anime and anime is by no means any one thing. It's many things. I'm pretty sure that even Yahtzee would agree with me on this one. And if you are describing Dragonball and Naruto as realistically inclined then I really can't say that I agree with you. For example in the very first episode of Naruto the very first thing we see is a giant demon fox and in Dragonball we have things like dinosaurs that still exist for no apparent reason and cars that you can carry around in tiny capsules. If you want realistically inclined then I would suggest titles like Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and Monster. Now THOSE are realistically inclined.

You misunderstood me.

Yes, I know anime is very broad, I watch a lot of it myself. But anime series tend to fall prey to this, particularly "run on series", or series that are "stretched" past their original script (e.g.: Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Dragonball, to a lesser extent, and despite remaining quite good, Rurouni Kenshi...etc). Anime already tends to start off on more loose interpretations of reality, and "run-on"/"never ending" series inevitably fall prey to power scaling... And an anime that started a "a bit over the top" quickly degenerates into "ridiculous super powers world-ending abominations".

Naruto is a good example. The ninjas in Naruto start out as your typical pop culture ninja: super fast, very strong, and with quite a few "tricks" up their sleeve. You had one of two "titans", but that was it.

...Halfway through the series we're dealing with monsters that can plough through an entire city in a hit, summon sand tsunamis and assorted monsters the size of mountains, to say nothing of Itachi and the Akatsuki freaks...

Dragonball is another text book example. You start with "bordering on super human" fighters, who are considered the very elite. Songoku is some sort of super human being for his capacities, and all the other "very strong" opponents he finds tend to be conquerors or leaders of armies of some kind. And these are the very, absolute, elite best. Mostly they can punch people through a wall or two, and a leap a few duzen extra feet in the air. At one point, Goku is considered some kind of absurdly rare "chosen one" for his capacity to shoot a basic fire ball (the Kamehameha).

Things quickly spin out of control after the Piccollo saga, and by the middle of DragonBall Z we're reached a ridiculous level of fighting where artists just decided "fuck it" and fights are essentially invisible, and everyone that can't fire a fireball without thinking is some kind of retarded failure.

By the depressingly bad ending of DragonBall GT, anyone that can't destroy an entire planet with a punch on a bad day is not even worth mentioning as anything other than comic relief.

It's the whole reason I've taken to watching animes that come with a predetermined beginning, middle and end. First, because the story is far more "focused", with basically no fillers, and second because there's a lower chance of running into absurd power scaling.

That said, you mixed up the "realistic" part. Things don't have to be realistic, they have to be coherent. Lightsabers aren't "realistic", but they make sense in the universe. Being able to pull down a Star Destroyer, which, by the way, is roughly a mile long by roughly 0.6 miles wide star ship that carries around an army, with pin point precision without even moving is not.

The problem isn't being realistic or not, it's when the world defines it's own realism, then fucks it right up in favour of giving everyone super powers.

But then again consistency really doesn't seem to be George Lucas's strong point. For example Leland Chee, the person in charge of maintaining the Star Wars continuity database called Holocron, at one point outright stated that George Lucas's view of the Star Wars expanded universe was "constantly evolving".

Let me break this to you, from one one former fan to another: George Lucas is a hack.

Yes, I said that. George Lucas by himself is a clueless fucking hack. He has some good ideas, but he hasn't the slightest idea what to do with them. His original 3 movies become the gold they did because he was constantly riddled by technical limitations and a team that constantly criticized his insanity. These people kept him in check. These people went away after the first 3 movies, and were substituted by brown nosing fucks who were afraid to tell Georgy "...Yeah, this is a bad idea". On top of that, the original Star Wars were such a colossal hit that George became the prodigal "golden boy" of movie making. Nobody dared criticize him, and he somehow got the idea that he owed it all to himself... And that he could write... And didn't really need anyone else...

To top it all off, Georgy went from "underdog" to "monopoly guy". He went from being the guy with ideas nobody gave a chance to, to one of the big boys that could do anything he wanted, no matter how stupid... He developed a taste for money, and lost his interest in artistic integrity and the like...

The result is what you see today: A creatively bankrupt franchise milking old whore.

To me, Star Wars is Episodes IV, V and VI. With maybe some room for Kyle Katarn and the Jedi Knight series, and the first KOTOR. Everything else I've personally relayed to the garbage bin of "half baked fanfic author masturbation".

First let me mention that for the first part of this response I'm going to be referring to the anime stuff and not the Star Wars stuff. When I'm referring to the Star Wars stuff I'll let you know.

You still seem to be talking about anime in too broad a sense. You said "But anime series tend to fall prey to this" but a more appropriate and more accurate thing to say would have been "But SOME anime series tend to fall prey to this". And I know what you mean by "run on" series. You're talking about the ongoing, long-running titles that don't really have any predetermined length. But as far as I can tell these titles actually constitute a small minority of the anime world, hence the importance of the "SOME" I mentioned. And you also said "Anime already tends to start off" but this is also too general.

And I really don't think that describing these titles as "stretched beyond their original script" is a particularly accurate way to put it, if at all. Some time ago, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto stated that he had a very clear picture of how he would end the story, but he also said that it would be quite some time before he could even think of ending the story.

Furthermore, more recently One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda stated "The story is mainly about only 5 characters, but there are so many things I want to do that it ended up being the way it is now.". He also mentioned that from the beginning the ending of the story hasn't changed.

These stories don't really seem to have any "original script" at all.

And I'm also not sure saying "halfway through the series" with regard to Naruto is accurate either. If memory serves Kishimoto did mention a while ago that the story was about 20% finished. With regard to that statistic I'm not sure where we would even be today.


I'm really not exactly sure what your problem with power-scaling is. I don't see how it's incoherent. For instance in the case of Dragonball one of the main themes in that title was, by all accounts, getting stronger. Something that Goku in particular was always trying to do. Therefore the increasingly incredible feats performed by him and the other characters would seem to be a perfectly understandable result, especially considering that realism was apparently never much of a concern to begin with.

And with "At one point, Goku is considered some kind of absurdly rare "chosen one" for his capacity to shoot a basic fire ball (the Kamehameha)." I'm not sure where you're getting this from as Master Roshi was the one who first used the Kamehameha wave and Goku learned it afterward. Furthermore, not long after that Krilin and Yamcha both learned it with relative ease. And Master Roshi did indeed marvel at the rise of this new and more powerful generation of fighters. And of course in the story of Naruto Kakashi did at one point outright state that it's natural for newer generations to surpass older ones.

With regard to the ANIME part of this conversation, I'm not really sure where this incoherence you speak of is. Master Roshi obliterated a mountain, and even the moon itself, early on in Dragonball. In Bleach, super powerful characters like Byakuya Kuchiki, Captain Yamamoto, Sosuke Aizen, Kisuke Urahara, and others were all introduced early on. It's the same with Naruto with the early introduction of the super powerful nine tailed fox as well as Naruto's ability to tap into it's incredible power. It's also established early on that Naruto has exceptionally large Chakra reserves. There were also the early introductions of super powerful characters like Kakashi Hatake, Hiruzen Sarutobi (the third Hokage), Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Gaara, and Kimimaro.

Needless to say becoming stronger does by all accounts seem to be a common theme in shounen manga. Or in other worlds going from zero to super. Therefore in that vein there wouldn't seem to be any real incoherence because the high levels of power later demonstrated serve as an understandable result of the paths that the characters set themselves on. And of course the possibilities or potentials are established early on.

I realize that this may come off as rude and I'm sorry about that. But I'm not so sure if the issue is "the world" defining it's own realism so much as it is you yourself defining the world's realism. Or in other worlds in the case of at least most of the shounen manga titles mentioned it seems that it doesn't seem to be that things go too far to fit into the established universe, just that they may go too far to fit into the way that you personally see, or perhaps would like to see, the established universe. That being said I get the impression, partially from your use of words like absurd and ridiculous, that "the ultimate problem" (which would essentially seem to be the problem that you personally have with the aforementioned titles) that you mention actually is essentially that things simply go too far. Or at least too far for some people.


HOWEVER. All of this is with regard to all of the anime stuff and not the Star Wars stuff.

With regard to the Star Wars stuff the incoherence notion does seem to be at least a bit more plausible. Specifically, to the best of my knowledge no formal in universe explanation has yet been given for the Starkiller's incredible power that seems to surpass most (although arguably not all) of the other characters in the Star Wars Universe. And that is a problem.

But enough about that. I'm not going to argue with you about George Lucas and those who work under him because I'm not as knowledgable about Star Wars as I am about anime. Who knows? You may very well be right about him. But I will say that I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a former fan, or at least not yet. But if George Lucas and those who work for him keep dishing out the same kind of crap as The Force Unleashed II then I might just get there someday.

 

[A1]

You really seem to be talking about anime in too broad a sense. There is a tremendous amount of variety in anime and anime is by no means any one thing. It's many things. I'm pretty sure that even Yahtzee would agree with me on this one. And if you are describing Dragonball and Naruto as realistically inclined then I really can't say that I agree with you. For example in the very first episode of Naruto the very first thing we see is a giant demon fox and in Dragonball we have things like dinosaurs that still exist for no apparent reason and cars that you can carry around in tiny capsules. If you want realistically inclined then I would suggest titles like Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and Monster. Now THOSE are realistically inclined.

You misunderstood me.

Yes, I know anime is very broad, I watch a lot of it myself. But anime series tend to fall prey to this, particularly "run on series", or series that are "stretched" past their original script (e.g.: Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Dragonball, to a lesser extent, and despite remaining quite good, Rurouni Kenshi...etc). Anime already tends to start off on more loose interpretations of reality, and "run-on"/"never ending" series inevitably fall prey to power scaling... And an anime that started a "a bit over the top" quickly degenerates into "ridiculous super powers world-ending abominations".

Naruto is a good example. The ninjas in Naruto start out as your typical pop culture ninja: super fast, very strong, and with quite a few "tricks" up their sleeve. You had one of two "titans", but that was it.

...Halfway through the series we're dealing with monsters that can plough through an entire city in a hit, summon sand tsunamis and assorted monsters the size of mountains, to say nothing of Itachi and the Akatsuki freaks...

Dragonball is another text book example. You start with "bordering on super human" fighters, who are considered the very elite. Songoku is some sort of super human being for his capacities, and all the other "very strong" opponents he finds tend to be conquerors or leaders of armies of some kind. And these are the very, absolute, elite best. Mostly they can punch people through a wall or two, and a leap a few duzen extra feet in the air. At one point, Goku is considered some kind of absurdly rare "chosen one" for his capacity to shoot a basic fire ball (the Kamehameha).

Things quickly spin out of control after the Piccollo saga, and by the middle of DragonBall Z we're reached a ridiculous level of fighting where artists just decided "fuck it" and fights are essentially invisible, and everyone that can't fire a fireball without thinking is some kind of retarded failure.

By the depressingly bad ending of DragonBall GT, anyone that can't destroy an entire planet with a punch on a bad day is not even worth mentioning as anything other than comic relief.

It's the whole reason I've taken to watching animes that come with a predetermined beginning, middle and end. First, because the story is far more "focused", with basically no fillers, and second because there's a lower chance of running into absurd power scaling.

That said, you mixed up the "realistic" part. Things don't have to be realistic, they have to be coherent. Lightsabers aren't "realistic", but they make sense in the universe. Being able to pull down a Star Destroyer, which, by the way, is roughly a mile long by roughly 0.6 miles wide star ship that carries around an army, with pin point precision without even moving is not.

The problem isn't being realistic or not, it's when the world defines it's own realism, then fucks it right up in favour of giving everyone super powers.

But then again consistency really doesn't seem to be George Lucas's strong point. For example Leland Chee, the person in charge of maintaining the Star Wars continuity database called Holocron, at one point outright stated that George Lucas's view of the Star Wars expanded universe was "constantly evolving".

Let me break this to you, from one one former fan to another: George Lucas is a hack.

Yes, I said that. George Lucas by himself is a clueless fucking hack. He has some good ideas, but he hasn't the slightest idea what to do with them. His original 3 movies become the gold they did because he was constantly riddled by technical limitations and a team that constantly criticized his insanity. These people kept him in check. These people went away after the first 3 movies, and were substituted by brown nosing fucks who were afraid to tell Georgy "...Yeah, this is a bad idea". On top of that, the original Star Wars were such a colossal hit that George became the prodigal "golden boy" of movie making. Nobody dared criticize him, and he somehow got the idea that he owed it all to himself... And that he could write... And didn't really need anyone else...

To top it all off, Georgy went from "underdog" to "monopoly guy". He went from being the guy with ideas nobody gave a chance to, to one of the big boys that could do anything he wanted, no matter how stupid... He developed a taste for money, and lost his interest in artistic integrity and the like...

The result is what you see today: A creatively bankrupt franchise milking old whore.

To me, Star Wars is Episodes IV, V and VI. With maybe some room for Kyle Katarn and the Jedi Knight series, and the first KOTOR. Everything else I've personally relayed to the garbage bin of "half baked fanfic author masturbation".

First let me mention that for the first part of this response I'm going to be referring to the anime stuff and not the Star Wars stuff. When I'm referring to the Star Wars stuff I'll let you know.

You still seem to be talking about anime in too broad a sense. You said "But anime series tend to fall prey to this" but a more appropriate and more accurate thing to say would have been "But SOME anime series tend to fall prey to this". And I know what you mean by "run on" series. You're talking about the ongoing, long-running titles that don't really have any predetermined length. But as far as I can tell these titles actually constitute a small minority of the anime world, hence the importance of the "SOME" I mentioned. And you also said "Anime already tends to start off" but this is also too general.

And I really don't think that describing these titles as "stretched beyond their original script" is a particularly accurate way to put it, if at all. Some time ago, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto stated that he had a very clear picture of how he would end the story, but he also said that it would be quite some time before he could even think of ending the story.

Furthermore, more recently One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda stated "The story is mainly about only 5 characters, but there are so many things I want to do that it ended up being the way it is now.". He also mentioned that from the beginning the ending of the story hasn't changed.

These stories don't really seem to have any "original script" at all.

And I'm also not sure saying "halfway through the series" with regard to Naruto is accurate either. If memory serves Kishimoto did mention a while ago that the story was about 20% finished. With regard to that statistic I'm not sure where we would even be today.

I'm really not exactly sure what your problem with power-scaling is. I don't see how it's incoherent. For instance in the case of Dragonball one of the main themes in that title was, by all accounts, getting stronger. Something that Goku in particular was always trying to do. Therefore the increasingly incredible feats performed by him and the other characters would seem to be a perfectly understandable result, especially considering that realism was apparently never much of a concern to begin with.

And with "At one point, Goku is considered some kind of absurdly rare "chosen one" for his capacity to shoot a basic fire ball (the Kamehameha)." I'm not sure where you're getting this from as Master Roshi was the one who first used the Kamehameha wave and Goku learned it afterward. Furthermore, not long after that Krilin and Yamcha both learned it with relative ease. And Master Roshi did indeed marvel at the rise of this new and more powerful generation of fighters. And of course in the story of Naruto Kakuzu lamented being defeated by "kids" and Kakashi responded by saying that it's natural for a previous generation to be surpassed by a new one.

With regard to the ANIME part of this conversation, I'm not really sure where this incoherence you speak of is. Master Roshi obliterated a mountain, and even the moon itself, early on in Dragonball. In Bleach, super powerful characters like Byakuya Kuchiki, Captain Yamamoto, Sosuke Aizen, Kisuke Urahara, and others were all introduced early on. It's the same with Naruto with the early introduction of the super powerful nine tailed fox as well as Naruto's ability to tap into it's incredible power. It's also established early on that Naruto has exceptionally large Chakra reserves. There were also the early introductions of super powerful characters like Kakashi Hatake, Hiruzen Sarutobi (the third Hokage), Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Gaara, and Kimimaro.

Needless to say becoming stronger does by all accounts seem to be a common theme in shounen manga. Or in other worlds going from zero to super. Therefore in that vein there wouldn't seem to be any real incoherence because the high levels of power later demonstrated serve as an understandable result of the paths that the characters set themselves on. And of course the possibilities or potentials are established early on.

I realize that this may come off as rude and I'm sorry about that. But I'm not so sure if the issue is "the world" defining it's own realism so much as it is you yourself defining the world's realism. Or in other worlds in the case of at least most of the shounen manga titles mentioned it seems that it doesn't seem to be that things go too far to fit into the established universe, just that they may go too far to fit into the way that you personally see, or perhaps would like to see, the established universe. That being said I get the impression, partially from your use of words like absurd and ridiculous, that "the ultimate problem" (which would essentially seem to be the problem that you personally have with the aforementioned titles) that you mention actually is essentially that things simply go too far. Or at least too far for some people.


HOWEVER. All of this is with regard to all of the anime stuff and not the Star Wars stuff.

With regard to the Star Wars stuff the incoherence notion does seem to be at least a bit more plausible. Specifically, to the best of my knowledge no formal in universe explanation has yet been given for the Starkiller's incredible power that seems to surpass most (although arguably not all) of the other characters in the Star Wars Universe. And that is a problem.

But enough about that. I'm not going to argue with you about George Lucas and those who work under him because I'm not as knowledgable about Star Wars as I am about anime. Who knows? You may very well be right about him. But I will say that I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a former fan, or at least not yet. But if George Lucas and those who work for him keep dishing out the same kind of crap as The Force Unleashed II then I might just get there someday.


EDIT: Sorry about the double post. My mistake.

 

[KarumaK]

Fuck you George, you mentally bankrupt whorehopper.

Ladies and gentlemen I present the quote of the week.

i like to say that nobody hates their fans quite as much as george lucas does.

I'm of the opinion that people who talk about Lucas have some inappropriate vision of him. Like he used to be some large visionary with artistic goals to span the ages or something. Personally, I think he was always a business man. I don't think he ever really cared about Star Wars aside from how profitable it could be, and every action he's taken since has been to capitalize on that profitability.

So yeah I don't think he gives a shit about fans, he only cares about customers. Pretty sure he was like that to start and will be that way to the end.

 

[Nomanslander]

You complain that those bosses are too big yet a few weeks ago you praised shadow of the colossus. I see a little inconsistency in your ramblings.

Yeah, and I see an inability to understand theme and context in yours...=/

Not one to defend Yahtzee but he has a valid point here.

 

[thenamelessloser]

No such thing as characters or events being too awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann

That anime goes way beyond any video game I played for sheer awesomeness and yet is still awesome. If something seems to be too awesome then it truly isn't awesome.

But come to think of it, this may not apply to already established franchises such as Star Wars but whatever...

 

[Frostbite3789]

You complain that those bosses are too big yet a few weeks ago you praised shadow of the colossus. I see a little inconsistency in your ramblings.

Yes, but you do feel insignificant fighting those giant objects. They feel massive. The ground shakes when they walk. They try to shake you off like a bug pestering them. They are given scale within the world.

 

[F-I-D-O]

You know what I miss? Dark Forces. You know the one star wars game that doesn't have any Jedi nonsense. Where you shoot stormtroopers with blaster rifles and throw thermal detonators at them? Seriously, that was a fun game. Why has the "non-Jedi" aspect of the Star Wars universe been so dismissed? Where are the stories about Han, Chewie, Lando, Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt?

Wait, don't do that Lucas. You'll just f**k it up.

Ever played Republic Commando/read the Republic Commando books? No lightsabers, only you, three squad mates, and a whole lot of droids and trandoshans to kill. In the game, there's a hidden lightsaber, which the player character scoffs at. The books go so far as to paint the Jedi into a gray area, lending a VERY needed air of ambiguity to the Star Wars canon.
But, Lucas did a retcon to better fit the new TV series, so nothing in the books happened and the series can't continue.
But I agree, there needs to be more games that focus on people other than lightsaber weilders.
Dark forces and republic commando (maybe the original Battlefront). That only makes 3 out of Lucas knows how many jedi games.

OT: Things can be over top awesome. Branching out things= okay. Destroying canon to make him(her) completely dominate? Fun, but not okay. Things need an anchor to reality.

 

[ark123]

OT: Things can be over top awesome. Branching out things= okay. Destroying canon to make him(her) completely dominate? Fun, but not okay. Things need an anchor to reality.

Not reality. A reality. Fiction needs internal coherence.
The problem I've always had with Dragonball is that characters that can literally punch through a planet always seemed to be scared of guns or get hurt by getting hit over the head with a piece of wood. They could move from place to place almost instantly, and yet there were several times where they took forever to get somewhere. Not to mention shit like "The planet is going to explode in five minutes!", then you get to see three episodes of filler/fighting that's supposed to happen in those five minutes.
It's fine to have dragons in your book, but you have to decide if they're biological beings or magical creatures.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Was the part about an Italian violinist a reference to something I've never heard of, or just a general reference to the Italian-waiter-with-a-violin archetype? 'Cause I thought that only works if you're supposed to be in an Italian restaurant.

 

[chromewarriorXIII]

While I do agree with most of your points (and I haven't even played the game, this is just going off of what I've read and seen of them) I can't believe that nobody has commented on something I remember seeing on G4 a year or so before TFU came out.

There was this interview with someone from the Dev team and he talks about how something caused the Force to go out of control. That was their justification as to why Starkiller is so strong. I know it's not a very good reasoning (considering, why didn't the Sith just use this opportunity to crush the rebels or vice-versa) but it is at least a reason.

Also, for GOW3, while what Kratos did may not have been believable, I still had a lot of fun killing that giant horse/scorpion thing.

 

[Levethian]

Couldn't agree with this article more.
Films & games media are always finest when grounded in reality.