Tiny, insignificant details in games that really bother you

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
I really love Assassin's Creed Odyssey but aaaaaaaarrglargh.

The chest armors. Bronze. Iron. Whatever. They're... they're like skins on the models, they bend, strech, twist as the wearer moves while talking. It's just, eek. Nightmarish. Feverish. Lovecraftian. Nauseating. Wrong.
Pretty much any game with armor has this issue, they never take the limitation of movement from the material into account with animation.
 
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immortalfrieza

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Any time a game has something small and tedious to do that another and especially most games have done away with.

Like... recently I've started playing Rogue Galaxy and something I've found irritating is that items have limit of 50 per item, but what I find irritating is what the game does when you go over that limit. In nearly all games when this happens the game will simply automatically discard said extra item and continue on without even notifying the player. However, with Rogue Galaxy when you go over that limit the game will stop everything and force you to manually throw away said item. It's very tedious and basically forces you to sell common items regularly so that this doesn't happen.

Another is the Golden Sun series. In nearly all games with turned based combat, when a party member defeats an enemy, the remaining party members who were set to target said enemy just automatically switch to attacking another enemy in the battle. For some reason throughout the whole Golden Sun series whenever a party member kills an enemy the rest of the party is waiting to attack, the remainder of the party just... wastes their turn defending for some reason. What's worse is Golden Sun is a series where no enemy has immunity or nor gets recovery from any attack, so there's not even a strategic reason to guard instead of just attack.
 
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Like... recently I've started playing Rogue Galaxy and something I've found irritating is that items have limit of 50 per item, but what I find irritating is what the game does when you go over that limit. In nearly all games when this happens the game will simply automatically discard said extra item and continue on without even notifying the player. However, with Rogue Galaxy when you go over that limit the game will stop everything and force you to manually throw away said item. It's very tedious and basically forces you to sell common items regularly so that this doesn't happen.
Transformers Devisation has this problem too. The only difference is it will let you carry 200 items max, and then tell you can't carry anymore, forcing you to sell. It's best to keep selling items you're never going to use, or gained and modified better variations. What sucks is that you can't sell in bulk. It has to be done individually. This a game from 2015, and Platinum has no excuse for using such a system.

A problem with RE4Remake's Ashley Armor costume is that enemies can still pick her up no problem, unlike the original. That makes no sense. I am glad no weapons can harm her, but it sucks they didn't carry that neat feature from the original. I get it's for balance purposes, but the game lets the player buy the Infinite Rocket Launcher for a high price, and receive no penalties for doing so.
 

Xprimentyl

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This doesn't really bother me per se, but Elden Ring has a lot of expansive "lakes" that are only ankle-deep, coast to coast. I mean, Florida has it worse than Liurnia right now. Just sayin', if you don't want to incorporate a swimming mechanic, perhaps leave the water out altogether insofar as traversable landscape goes. Funny how the end boss' arena is an ankle-deep puddle that a multi-story beast can dive into and disappear. But Souls games gave up explaining themselves pretty much from birth, so if I'm only bothered by this little detail now, then I should probably revisit my priorities.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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This doesn't really bother me per se, but Elden Ring has a lot of expansive "lakes" that are only ankle-deep, coast to coast. I mean, Florida has it worse than Liurnia right now. Just sayin', if you don't want to incorporate a swimming mechanic, perhaps leave the water out altogether insofar as traversable landscape goes. Funny how the end boss' arena is an ankle-deep puddle that a multi-story beast can dive into and disappear. But Souls games gave up explaining themselves pretty much from birth, so if I'm only bothered by this little detail now, then I should probably revisit my priorities.
What boss in Liurnia is multi stories that dives into water? There’s the Mariners in the boats but they’re pretty small. The “spirit” aspect seems to hand wave a lot of physics logic in these games though too.


Also I’m pretty sure most of Liurnia lakes were originally meant to be swampland, but FROM staff probably had to edit Miyazaki’s obsession somewhere.
 
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Xprimentyl

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What boss in Liurnia is multi stories that dives into water? There’s the Mariners in the boats but they’re pretty small. The “spirit” aspect seems to hand wave a lot of physics logic in these games though too.
I said "end boss," talking about the Elden Beast.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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I said "end boss," talking about the Elden Beast.
Well there’s that, and he also can disappear into a black hole, so yeah. I’d expect that from a developer who still hasn’t fixed general clipping issues seven games in. Also this should’ve been a Torrent-able fight. Even if it meant having to destroy a force field or something first that prevented the whistle from working. It’d be better than chasing that fucker around as a melee build.
 
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This doesn't really bother me per se, but Elden Ring has a lot of expansive "lakes" that are only ankle-deep, coast to coast. I mean, Florida has it worse than Liurnia right now. Just sayin', if you don't want to incorporate a swimming mechanic, perhaps leave the water out altogether insofar as traversable landscape goes. Funny how the end boss' arena is an ankle-deep puddle that a multi-story beast can dive into and disappear. But Souls games gave up explaining themselves pretty much from birth, so if I'm only bothered by this little detail now, then I should probably revisit my priorities.
Having the same problem with Nier: Automata. It wouldn't have bothered me, because the bodies of water aren't that large, except for the fact that I'm pulling an infinite supply of huge fish out of them.
 
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Gordon_4

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In the beginning of Mass Effect 2, just before the Collectors come out and bug-fuck everyone, there's the dialogue exchange between Joker, Pressley and some random ensign about their ship. Now for players on release the Collectors and their ship are total unknowns and indeed Joker says the ship matches no known signature but as it comes in to intercept, Joker's expression seems to change to one of revelation as he says "It's not the Geth" and then the rest of the cinematic happens.

Now this is indeed a small thing and it has needlessly bugged me for years but I always got the impression that Joker recognised the Collector ship for what it was rather than what it wasn't and that there would be some kind of side mission or something involving him that would explain that. Now obviously by the end of the game, and the 14 years hence, the two have ZERO connection and its just a delivery and staging fuckup.

But it really does still give me the impression Joker knew more than he let on about their mysterious attackers.
 

thebobmaster

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In the beginning of Mass Effect 2, just before the Collectors come out and bug-fuck everyone, there's the dialogue exchange between Joker, Pressley and some random ensign about their ship. Now for players on release the Collectors and their ship are total unknowns and indeed Joker says the ship matches no known signature but as it comes in to intercept, Joker's expression seems to change to one of revelation as he says "It's not the Geth" and then the rest of the cinematic happens.

Now this is indeed a small thing and it has needlessly bugged me for years but I always got the impression that Joker recognised the Collector ship for what it was rather than what it wasn't and that there would be some kind of side mission or something involving him that would explain that. Now obviously by the end of the game, and the 14 years hence, the two have ZERO connection and its just a delivery and staging fuckup.

But it really does still give me the impression Joker knew more than he let on about their mysterious attackers.
I think his face is less revelation and more "Oh crap" because he realized that A) the ship has indeed turned into a course to intercept them, despite stealth systems being engaged, which is B) technology beyond what the Geth have, so C) they are pretty much fucked.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
In cut scenes or cinematics, when they end by having something fly at the camera and hit it. I've gotten irrationally sick of that technique of ending... anything. Destiny does it bad too since in the Lightfall cinematic does it twice.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Mighty No. 9 attempted something like Mega Man X did where stages will change somewhat depending on which stages you've previously finished. Though, when MN9 did it, it was a lot worse, since the changes to each stage are always done in the same pattern as the boss weakness order - finishing 3 will change 8, and 8 is weak to 3's weapon. Moreover, they actually show which stages have been modified and by whose defeat on the stage select screen, meaning there's basically no experimentation involved in figuring out weaknesses for the first time.
 
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Absent

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Yes the fact that everybody in AC Odyssey has the same face (or to be more specific, that there's three or four models being reused throughout the world, meaning that if a quest giver is an old lady she is the same one everywhere) does irritate me.

Less than DC/Marvel comics though (or in the french/belgian world, Jacques Martin, EP Jacobs, Vance, etc). Frankly, artists who only know to draw one face should not be allowed to publish. Meaning, no US comic book should have ever seen the day.

It's not a pet peeve. It's a furious unhinged homicidal rage.
 

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Less than DC/Marvel comics though (or in the french/belgian world, Jacques Martin, EP Jacobs, Vance, etc). Frankly, artists who only know to draw one face should not be allowed to publish. Meaning, no US comic book should have ever seen the day.
Oh please, every country's respective animators, comic anime/manga artist, or video game creators are all guilty of this. The anime/manga industry can be even worse with this at times. It's not just a one country thing.

 

Absent

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Oh please, every country's respective animators, comic anime/manga artist, or video game creators are all guilty of this. The anime/manga industry can be even worse with this at times. It's not just a one country thing.

The manga convention is indeed typical of this. But I really gre up with comic books where faces were much more diverse, and where characters weren't recognized strictly through costumes or hairstyles. Franquin, Uderzo, Morris, Peyo, Lambil in their cartoonish styles. Hergé. But also a bit more more towards realism, Uderzo aswell, Pratt, Rosinski, Hermann (in his good days), etc.

So of course, it's easier when you can afford some amount of caricature, and accentuate traits differences. But on one hand, mangas show that stylized designs don't necessarily imply diversity, and on the other hand you can have realisty faces that are structured as differently from each others as, well, they are in reality.

But what it takes is to dare drawing outside of the readymade formulas of, say, obligatory chiseled rectanglular what-a-man-should-look-like faces. Superhero comics are just series of personality-void duplicates of "ideal physical shapes", drawn with no regard for a character. They're just the repeated copy of some sort of leonardo da vinci man archetype. It could be drawn by a machine. It's exactly what this post's video was about, but afflied to faces. Same with women. They are all the same carbon copies with different names or outfits, because they are drawn in a manara mindset, as opposed to a hugo pratt mindset (two artists that I absolutely oppose in terms of approaches to female beauty). In other words : absolutely soul-less. Industrial.

And that's the point, because it's an industry, more than anywhere else. The machine must vomit as many products as possible, by as many artists as possible, in a complete disconnect with authorship (a company's) or personality. Just like animated adaptations have to be simplified, codified, so that many artists can work on the cells' assembly lines, superhero characters have to be replicated (and thus replicable) by a quantity of artists, therefore come down to their lowest denominator (the prethought neutral comics face formula). The result is : whole books whose characters are distinguised only by outside markers. Certainly a symbiosis with the very concept of superheroes and spandex uniforms. Copy paste the same shapoe and paint it differently, a machine (mechanical, digital or human) can do it.

Even when left to their own designs, artists have styles, and can easily repeat their features simply because it's the one way they learnt to draw a realistic face (again, Vance, Martin, etc). They can be self-indulgent. But DC/Marvel companies make of this flaw a commercial virtue. And its public is used to it. I just find it cringey, whichever the country.

And I don't know where it's worse. Wherever it comes from the artist's own limitation or wherever it comes from its workplace constraints.

Anyway, videogames have more excuses - and it wasn't an issue before these high res, high fidelity graphics. It didn't make sense to complain about it in, say, the sierra-on-line parser or the lucasarts point and click era, where faces were pixelated rectangles. It became odd with portraits, sometimes randomly generaed without differing much from each others (thinking of Frontier Elite). It becomes really odd in modern 3D games that try to look like movies, have full design freedom (and a variety of handcrafted environments) and end up looking like a cheap with with the same extra re-used in every scene. Like the Plan 9 videogame adaptation.
 

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Even when left to their own designs, artists have styles, and can easily repeat their features simply because it's the one way they learnt to draw a realistic face (again, Vance, Martin, etc). They can be self-indulgent. But DC/Marvel companies make of this flaw a commercial virtue. And its public is used to it. I just find it cringey, whichever the country.
Look if it makes you feel any better, most comics or graphic novels from that are non-DC/Marvel either do their own thing and most are successful for it.

And I don't know where it's worse. Wherever it comes from the artist's own limitation or wherever it comes from its workplace constraints.
Depends. Sometimes it's limitations. Sometimes it's a workplace and industry problem. Sometimes it is both. Art doesn't exists in a vacuum for better and worse.

It becomes really odd in modern 3D games that try to look like movies, have full design freedom (and a variety of handcrafted environments) and end up looking like a cheap with with the same extra re-used in every scene. Like the Plan 9 videogame adaptation.
Note how whenever it's a game that tries hard to being realistic as possible or "realism", the more noticeable and obvious it is. It's why I prefer games like Viewtiful Joe, Hi-Fi Rush, DMC, etc., or games with either a unique art style or graphic design. I'm not saying it can't happen in those type of games, but it's usually less obvious. Going full realistic takes 1000s of man hours, and if you don't fully commit or cut corners, even the average consumer who focuses "DA GRAFIXS" and nothing else, will notice. It's especially why Ubisoft can fuck off. Them abusing their employees, and many of them leaving/going on strike is why part of the reason all of their games' quality has dropped.

Speaking HF Rush, this is more an audience reception example, than the game itself. The Japanese players do not like the main character Chai.

Americans Hate Tingle: Actually, Americans like Chai. It's Japanese players who don't. While Chai suits the Shōnen hero archetype at first glance, his outward disrespect towards his opponents is seen as problematic in Japanese media, where even the most despicable villains are typically given some form of respect or understanding by the hero.
This makes no sense and the Japanese players who have a problem with him need to screw their head on tight. I get Chai is an irresponsible idiot that needs to better and improve himself. He does and that the point, but the enemies he faces are more disrespectful than he ever could be. Barring somewhat Korsika, none of the bosses respect Chai back, and look down on anyone not themselves, or in their little special group. Even amongst themselves, most of them don't get along or hate each other. Take Chai out of the equation and put any person in his position, and the results would be the same. Why should Chai respect any of them, when almost none of the bosses or mooks do the same thing? I wouldn't. Even characters like Joe, Dante, Kratos, Sonic, or Bayonetta wouldn't respect any of the main villains from HF Rush. The most respect you would get from them is Mimosa dresses fabulous and that's about it. I know it's a country with different values, but it seems hypocritical for Japanese players to be upset about this, but won't cry or raise a fuss with certain characters in other Japanese media that act way worse than Chai, or more disrespectful than him. Characters we are supposed to like or find sympathetic mind you.
 
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Absent

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Look if it makes you feel any better, most comics or graphic novels from that are non-DC/Marvel either do their own thing and most are successful for it.
Yes. I love the whole of the Walking Dead (comics) but I was particularly fond of the early art by Tony Moore. It was perhaps a little less good, professional-looking, polished than Adlard, but it was walking an interesting line between cartoonish and realistic. Matthew Roberts' work on Manifest Destiny, in the same vein, is great. And of course there's Mignola (curse him and curse him again for having dropped the pen on Hellboy), and... well, yes, there are several goldmines. And need, I think it often depends on the artists being the owners of their own characters (although even some highly personalized characters like Lucky Luke or Spirou have been drawn by new artists after the death of their creators, with various levels of conformity to the original style).
 

immortalfrieza

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Yes the fact that everybody in AC Odyssey has the same face (or to be more specific, that there's three or four models being reused throughout the world, meaning that if a quest giver is an old lady she is the same one everywhere) does irritate me.
Especially in this day and age when randomizing clothes, facial features, and even body shape for NPCs has been around in far simpler games for like... a decade.

I suppose that's another thing that urks me, games especially AAA games that still have problems that had already been solved in other games years ago despite the fact that it would take only very minor work to fix the issue.
 

Absent

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Whether in a game or movie, I don't know how having fake water/blood droplets stuck on the glass of my screen is supposed to increase immersion ? What at they supposed to represent ? The camera crew getting wet ? A hovering glass pane following the protagonists everywhere ? God's eyeglasses needing a sweep ?

What am I supposed to see, feel, infer ?