It's true, his argument seems to be much more along the lines of "we should have preserved more of the NES and pre-NES era of game design that demanded players figure things out and explore on their own", which itself was a very brief trend, largely concluding with games like Zelda and Metroid. After those games, the trend pretty much completely disappeared from console gaming, and was only seen in more open-ended PC games like the Elder Scrolls series.
It probably would've made more sense to make a more general argument, and just use Zelda as a primary example, than to structure the whole piece around Zelda, but evidently the author has a particular adoration for the first two Zelda games.
Surely there must be some sort of in-game encyclopedia that has a profile on all of the game's characters, including the measurements of female characters because Japanese games are super skeevy that way.
Seriously? I mean, it looks like she's wearing a g-string with the strings riding really high like some trashy 20-year-old in LA, but then it appears those strings are actually just part of the weird frilly short shorts she's wearing. And hey, garter belt. Why not?
I'll admit, I'd totally be into it if I was at a bachelor party and a stripper was wearing it, but I've never been able to use these kind of overly sexy costumes on characters, or download nude mods, or any of that nonsense. Seeing characters wear it while going about their regular business just seems degrading instead of titillating, and I'd feel like a bad person for doing it. Sure, I can appreciate it in a game that is campy as hell, like No More Heroes, but seeing a Final Fantasy character who generally takes themselves pretty seriously dressed up like a stripper would just make me feel sad.
I at least understand arguing about games. Games can lead to memorable emotional experiences, either with a great moment in a story-based game, or the time you turned around a multiplayer game you thought was hopeless, or having the high score on an arcade machine for months, or getting an achievement that seemed impossible. If people badmouth a game involved in one of those memories, it hurts, because that's attached to a fairly strong emotional high.
But how in the hell is there anything similar in tech? "Hey man, shut the fuck up about Google! I...have a few email addresses with them...and I use them to subscribe to RSS feeds...and I made some docs." I know people like to defend the choices they've made in life, but Jesus. Games, film, literature, etc., can tell compelling stories that move you to argue. And I get why people argue about things with real world implications, like politics, religion, foreign aid, global warming, etc. But tech? It's a tool. It doesn't define who you are. Use whatever tool you think is best. Move on with your life. Also, sorry for the mass of words; I put the text in proper paragraphs, but the comment system is busted right now and removes them.
And yes, I cry, when angels deserve to die.
The headline seemed really familiar, and I was driving myself crazy until I finally found this article:
[io9.com]
[io9.com]
It was shorter than I remembered.
"Major League Gaming and Mad Catz Team Up for A Xbox 360 Controller With Some Pros and Some Cons"
So the controller was designed for professionals AND convicts? I'll take 10!!
I think he HAS to be secretly referencing the 1966 film. The Arkham Asylum/Arkham City Batman has a fairly small set of gadgets. For Sefton Hill to say "Yo, and then he pulls shark repellant out of nowhere", it has to be related.
Yes, the interview very directly acknowledges that scene: "One of the ideas we originally had is the shark comes out and grabs the raft. And then Batman pulls out shark repellent and he opens it up, and inside the shark repellent was a massive knuckle duster. And he just smashes the shark on the nose." It's too bad they took that out, though yeah, it really doesn't match the tone of Arkham City.
Fair enough. I see now that I was extrapolating on your position, instead of responding to what you had actually said.
I agree with most of Thompson's criticism, but take issue with this:
"One of the greatest offenders occurred early on with A Link to the Past: most bomb-able walls became visible. What had been a potential site of mystery in the original Legend of Zelda (every rockface) became just another job for your trusty keyring. Insert here. Go on about your business."
The reasons Thompson likes the original Zelda are mostly well-founded, but not this one. Sorry, but I did not like trial-and-error bombing every conceivable wall, then having to go grind for more bombs. I'm on his side that I wish they weren't plainly visible, but I'm really not a fan of the inevitable "now I have to buy more bombs/kill enemies to grind for bombs" step.
I think Link to the Past (and Link's Awakening and a few other 2D Zeldas) had the right idea, in that you could hit walls with your sword to tell if there was something behind them. It makes you explore/experiment, without making it blatantly visually obvious.
While I'd be interested to play the game that Thompson wants, and I do think the Zelda series is extra conservative and resistant to change since Ocarina of Time, the problems he talks about are in most modern games. The current paradigm is to be very hand-holdy. Thompson sounds like he wants nonlinear games, but at present, the levels in your game are either strictly linear like most modern FPS games, or your game is open like Zelda/Metroid but gated with obvious hookshot-like keys.
In the current climate, I imagine it's very hard to pitch to a publisher the sort of open-ended game Thompson wants. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls got made, and they're quite interesting, but they're the exception to the rule, and guided experiences have been shown to be immensely profitable, unfortunately.
I don't think this falls under nostalgia. This isn't some guy going "New Super Mario Bros. isn't as good as Super Mario Bros. 3". He's saying that at a certain point, they fundamentally changed what the Zelda series is actually about, and have since followed that model very closely for all of the 3D Zeldas, and largely in Link to the Past.
I agree that the author doesn't do much to address linearity vs. non-linearity. Though I'll disagree about Wind Waker's sailing being tedious; it was interesting that you could just explore in whatever direction you want, and you had to keep a keen eye, sometimes in the instances where the island was small, and for all of the things not marked on the map, like the wooden submarines, the watchtower platform things, etc. (though you can eventually get charts that tell you roughly where those are located). It was nice that you had to do a lot of that exploring on your own. The ability to warp was mandatory because as the game went on, you had to revisit certain useful locations. Sailing to already-discovered locations would have been tedious, but I had no issues with requiring you to discover islands and fill in the sea chart yourself as you found them.
I doubt that happened, but I do imagine that most of the people who coughed up the $100 were probably heavily involved in the TF2 community, either in a clan, running a server, involved with a fansite, whatever. That way you could talk to a bunch of TF2 people later and say "That one was me". That's the only way I can imagine people justifying the $100.
You're entitled to your opinion, but you're really not being fair to the game at all.
It wouldn't be the first time a video game developer redesigned a character because they didn't like the old look. Besides, the number of people who actually saw the ending where unmasked HUNK is shown is quite small, relative to the number of people who are vaguely interested in buying RE6. Capcom knows it wouldn't damage sales in a noticeable, because not enough people care.
This is "word of God". The people involved in conference calls aren't low level employees who don't know what they're talking about. They're important people at the developer who are well-informed of all the major aspects of the game's development, announced and unannounced. You might accidentally let something slip on a conference call, forgetting who might be listening, but you certainly don't accidentally claim something is happening if it isn't actually happening.
Waiting to to see the reaction of the PS3 version? I am incredibly skeptical.
The 3DS launched, what, 10 or 11 months ago? If they wait ANOTHER 10-11 months for the release of the PS3 version before even deciding whether to start producing the DS version in English, then the earliest they could release it would be something like early 2013, a full 2 years after the launch of the 3DS.
I mean, Devil Survivor 2 for the DS is coming out quite soon, and I think it will have a hard time being profitable. Ni No Kuni is just as niche, so I can't imagine a publisher thinking it is worth the effort to release it in 2013.
Are they? I know that's the common position, but unless you can fluently speak Japanese as well as English, it seems like it would be hard to give an accurate appraisal of the delivery of the lines in Japanese.
The way negotiations are done for Xbox Live Arcade, I think you basically NEED a publisher for Microsoft to consider your project. This project is effectively self-published, since a bunch of random people are giving Double Fine a big lump sum and saying "Here, this money is yours now, but you have to promise to make a game with it". Since they're making a documentary of this game, getting a publisher involved would be awkward because the publisher would want to restrict how much the documentary shows prior to release. At best, they could put this game on Xbox Live Indie Games, except you can't charge as much money there, and also nobody really pays attention to it.
I think the implication is that there will be a way to download a DRM-free PC version. I highly doubt he is guaranteeing a DRM-free version for iOS or Android.
