Force Unleashed 2 Is Too Much
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Caliostro said:
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.
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.Caliostro said:
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.
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.Ascarus said:
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.
Yeah, and I see an inability to understand theme and context in yours...=/Bobic said:
Not one to defend Yahtzee but he has a valid point here.
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...
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...
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.Bobic said:
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.Sir John the Net Knight said:
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.
Not reality. A reality. Fiction needs internal coherence.F-I-D-O said:
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you consider Naruto to be over the top, you may want to avoid Gurenn Lagann or Bobobobobo-Iforgethowtospellit.Caliostro said:
I understand what Yahtzee is getting at. I mean, think about it. What makes these scenes in The Lost Crusade and the like more impressive than anything we've seen in recent media? The answer is just like Yahtzee said: it's classic one-upmanship. It's like some one is proclaiming, "O Ya! Itz ubar-epic!!!!111! Leet haxxors!!! let me tries!" They don't really know why it's epic. They don't even try to understand; they just know it is and for that reason, they try make up the rough equivalent of their own digital penis and try measuring up.
We, on the other hand, are treating to a spectacle that is, in a metaphorical sense, the guy watching one man successfully perform an impressive feat along the lines of jumping five people on a bicycle without landing on any of them. He'll think he can do that, no problem! He has the intellect level of at least a fifth grader and the ability to ride a bicycle! So he'll try to jump seven people and of course, the whole event will leave his fragile male pride in a similar state as the broken bones of some of his poor hospitalized jumpees.
His failing point is that he didn't stop to think that maybe the reason WHY the first guy succeeded was because he practiced, and even then, no one likes a copycat. We'll sympathize with those hurt, but we feel nothing towards the idiot, if not some measure of scorn.
The main reason why these 'smaller' instances impress is because they deliver the kind of tension that drives us crazy. Yahtzee's hobo had him at an inch of his life, yet that God of War monster was already up against an even worse monster: Kratos. Even if they make these large monsters, unless you deliver some kind of tension, give us reason to perceive them as an overwhelming threat, the only response they merit is, "Okay. And?"
In Indiana Jones case, in relating to the tank, we feel tension because he's on the verge of suffering the same fate as a JRPG in Yahtzee's possession: to be flattened, tossed aside, and maybe shot full of holes, if Yahtzee and the Nazis have the time. It's why the whole event is remembered so clearly.
In the end, it's important not to try to show other people up, especially since other people's opinions are so subjective. If you want to produce something to impress people, try to forget everything you ever once thought of as epic and think of something you can do and focus on that. Don't be the guy who shattered four clavicles (yes, I know what a clavicle is) and two pelvic bones.
We, on the other hand, are treating to a spectacle that is, in a metaphorical sense, the guy watching one man successfully perform an impressive feat along the lines of jumping five people on a bicycle without landing on any of them. He'll think he can do that, no problem! He has the intellect level of at least a fifth grader and the ability to ride a bicycle! So he'll try to jump seven people and of course, the whole event will leave his fragile male pride in a similar state as the broken bones of some of his poor hospitalized jumpees.
His failing point is that he didn't stop to think that maybe the reason WHY the first guy succeeded was because he practiced, and even then, no one likes a copycat. We'll sympathize with those hurt, but we feel nothing towards the idiot, if not some measure of scorn.
The main reason why these 'smaller' instances impress is because they deliver the kind of tension that drives us crazy. Yahtzee's hobo had him at an inch of his life, yet that God of War monster was already up against an even worse monster: Kratos. Even if they make these large monsters, unless you deliver some kind of tension, give us reason to perceive them as an overwhelming threat, the only response they merit is, "Okay. And?"
In Indiana Jones case, in relating to the tank, we feel tension because he's on the verge of suffering the same fate as a JRPG in Yahtzee's possession: to be flattened, tossed aside, and maybe shot full of holes, if Yahtzee and the Nazis have the time. It's why the whole event is remembered so clearly.
In the end, it's important not to try to show other people up, especially since other people's opinions are so subjective. If you want to produce something to impress people, try to forget everything you ever once thought of as epic and think of something you can do and focus on that. Don't be the guy who shattered four clavicles (yes, I know what a clavicle is) and two pelvic bones.
My friend actually pointed something out akin to this last weekend. He said:Caliostro said:
"You know how Palpatine is constantly trying to replace Vader since Vader got all slow and cyborg-y?"
"Yeah."
"Why doesn't he just off the old fuck and clone a new Anakin?"
I was speechless for hours.
But yeah, I knew TFU2 was going to be shit as soon as I saw the commercials for it. This was one of the few times you could honestly judge the game by a cg-rendered commercial(s). The first I saw was the one where he does the big wave of death and disintegrates a good amount of stormtroopers, after he was force-choking them all with a simple gesture. It made me feel confused and irritated, but it has nothing on the second.
Of course, I am referring to the commercial where Vader is blown through, like, 5 foot-long, steel walls. He gets up, not a scratch on him, and shows to be no wear for worse. THIS WAS THE MOST HEINOUS BULLSHIT I'VE EVER SEEN. I actually hate it. Like, HATE it. Who thought this made any sense!? WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING!?
The fight at the end of RotJ was the best.
I'm as mad as you're pretending not to be, smartass.I forgot said:
And you're missing the point. A good struggle needs to be not only interesting, but understandable. You take down ships of unfathomable size in Force Unleashed 2, to the extent at which you just don't care anymore, and the kind of emotions you intended to evoke is missed completely as you take them down Star Destroyers like anything else. Where do you go from there? Lifting a star fighter out of a swamp looks pretty fuckin' wimpy in comparison. You just overshadowed an entire franchise's worth of scope just to impress someone for thirty seconds. It's called moderation, and that game doesn't have it. You don't need to pull a rabbit out of your ass to impress people. Jules from Pulp Fiction can do it with a gun and a random bible verse. He didn't kill a spaceship; he just showed complexity of character. There is a time and a place for everything. And that "everything" is not interchangeable with "Deus Ex Machina".
While I am of the opinion that people who think George Lucas 'hates his fans' and 'RUINED Star Wars' are joyless wankers, I did get what Yahtzee was saying about disconnect from the story. Disregarding any actual canon related to it, the Star Destroyer scene from TFU was bad because it was badly written and was a classic case of Gameplay and Story Segregation (ooh, TV Tropes reference, how awesome am I?)
This is absolutely true, and why the big action films aren't as endearing or endeared to people's hearts like older movies. I still remember wincing when watching Bruce Willis pulling glass out of his foot in Die Hard. It barely registered when he shot himself through a bullet hole he already had in Die Hard 4.0.
Things don't have to be realistic but they have be empathic. We need to "feel" some of what's going on in the game or up on the screen. Moving to bigger and bolder is all well and good but as Yahztee says if it goes beyond the mind's ability to empathise, it's wasted energy.
Another game that did multiple endings well was Alpha Protocol. I doubt many people saw more than one but I saw at least 4. None of them are good or bad, just different. Some had twists, others left you in the dark, but none of them broke continuity.
And if people hadn't noticed George Lucas lucked out. If you used the style of editing or script from Star Wars in any other context you would see how atrociious it is. He hit the magic formula once, hired a few brilliant people who made it something special and then he just wandered into the desert of his own imagination.
Things don't have to be realistic but they have be empathic. We need to "feel" some of what's going on in the game or up on the screen. Moving to bigger and bolder is all well and good but as Yahztee says if it goes beyond the mind's ability to empathise, it's wasted energy.
Another game that did multiple endings well was Alpha Protocol. I doubt many people saw more than one but I saw at least 4. None of them are good or bad, just different. Some had twists, others left you in the dark, but none of them broke continuity.
And if people hadn't noticed George Lucas lucked out. If you used the style of editing or script from Star Wars in any other context you would see how atrociious it is. He hit the magic formula once, hired a few brilliant people who made it something special and then he just wandered into the desert of his own imagination.
Ug. Just wow.Bobic said:
Couldn't agree more with this EP. I was surprised he never referenced DBZ, which, to my mind, really defines this particular problem. When sequences are so contrived, and actors are so impossibly lucky/strong, intelligent members of the audience just tune it all out. Spectacle only exists alongside the appropriately mundane. When everyone and everything is completely over-the-top, nothing matters.
I'm reminded of the many ingenious twists of a Metal Gear Solid game. When you've lost the trust of your audience in the first half hour, no future twists serve any real purpose. It's just masturbation.
Edit: read through the entire thread, and it's sad to see people missing the point so hard. It's not about objective realism with respect to our actual world. It's about adhering to the rules of the game or movie world as implied or defined by the author. If there's no internal logic, the action has no weight or merit. It's random bullshit for the sake of random bullshit - like Family Guy.