We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Hey, Supes, why do you play videogames? All I ever see you do is complain about them. Doesn't seem like you're having a very good time.

Far be it from me to presume you have forgotten that you are talking to a Japanese–English translator whose specialty is video games, but unless “action shooting” can accurately mean “a run and gun video game” in French, that phrase came directly from the Japanese version of the text.

Please don’t talk about how it’s “literally their only job and they fucked it up”. It’s not even that bad (and it might have been their tenth job that day besides); it’s a faithful effort from someone who seems to have understood that the original phrasing was hella awk. I’m not saying it’s a great translation, ’cause it isn’t, but there are good rea$ons and bad reasons for why these things happen. And one of them is that it was probably at some point presented to an agency’s (i.e. probably not specifically game-focused and done at the lowest bid) translator as a press release (to be reprocessed by, you know, the press), and then some PHB type decided that since the text said the same thing originally, it’d be good enough to slap on the storefront, too. Some sort of misappropriation like that.

It’s not often the translator’s fault, exactly, if the translation is a little strange (not everyone is in it for the art, for starters), and I often even find it easy to forgive people who cause these bad translations to get out because they simply don’t understand the craft or don’t have the resources to make it better.

At any rate, I’d still take this quality over the translations SNKP was putting out on a regular basis last decade, and I hope that one day they will treat bringing their A-game to English localization as a priority, but I can understand that they’re somewhat niche in the Anglosphere. It wouldn’t be cost effective for anything except their actual new releases, like when they had Atlus take care of KOF XIII.

@PyP: Being critical of things you like doesn't mean you dislike them.

@PyP: Being critical of things you like doesn't mean you dislike them.

I figured that too, which is why I haven't said anything yet. But all I ever see her do is complain about them and talk about how disappointed she is with them, with the exception of a few older games like Drill Dozer and Riven. Just floods of overwhelmingly negative criticism. She's either cutting out the positive parts or isn't finding any.

I suppose if complaining about things is what she finds fun then that's at least an understandable reason? I've just been getting slowly more baffled for a while here. I can't understand continually doing something you've only complained about in the past just so you can have something new to complain about.

its apparently also a spin off for a tv show and HONESTLY if it wasnt for small, awful details (knuckles where the fuck is your neck, why are you all wearing bandages, sonic what the fuck is with your lanky weirdness) i wouldnt be too fussed about the designs because it makes sense to make diverse shapes for this sort of thing, the most offensive one to me is top heavy muscle eggman

it was way worse when there were rumors that it was going to overtake the ~main canon~ but

actually no nevermind i hate this more now because i know it is probably going to be Successful Enough ahh ahahahahahhaa f

I honestly don't mind the new eggman design because


but yeah everyone seems a little "off"

Sadgi I can't help but place the feeling that your user title is intended to be extremely offensive

oh well I can change it back to "go eat a ham" if you want me to

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Spoilerwhile douglas adams was working on the hitchhiker's guide radio series he wanted to name one of the characters something that sounded very rude but would still be allowed to broadcast. he started with "phartiphukborlz" and chipped away at bits of it until the BBC would let him use it, so he ended up with "slartibartfast"

but this is off-topic for a videogame thread so uh

did anyone play the hitchhiker's guide text adventure
to solve one of the puzzles later in the game you have to pick up the pile of junk mail on your doorstep at the start
if you don't pick it up the game is unwinnable

Nah I'm just messing, I saw you having a laugh about it on tumblr. No need to change it.

Bandages = Parkour perhaps?

oh yeah uh, for parties interested: I tried playing a different modpack on FTB (the Mindcrack pack, as I had played it month ago with friends) and it works just fine
so I have a feeling my trouble with the direwolf pack might not entirely be on my end?

It might possibly still be on your end
Mindcrack is only for 1.4.7 (aka pre redstone update)
I'm..fairly certain they changed some pretty important things around between that and 1.6.4
Try seeing if you can run the current Vanilla Minecraft version first

If vanilla crashes then, from what I've read, you should only need to update your drivers
I'm assuming that because it's an atioglxx.dll issue you have an AMD card sooo
https://support.amd.com/en-us/download

if you don't know what card you have just launch dxdiag (you can get to that by just searching for it in the start menu) then clickign over to the display tab on the top of that window

Oh
OH
oh I SEE
I managed to completely ignore the "hey you need to manually download 1.6 update" reminder
for like half a year

(vanilla works btw. I think maybe I am just supposed to apply the direwolf pack to the most updated vanilla version. That miiiiiiiiight have been the problem.)

e: still can't get modpack to work though. I don't know if I have to do something specific to tell ftb to use newest vanilla minecraft. Might end up trying the drivers thing in the end. I'm going to bed now.

1.6.4 is automagically downloaded when you download the modpack, you don't need to worry about that.

Oddly enough, this might actually have 3 solutions
1.Update to a non beta video card driver
2.Update java
3. in a very VERY distant third for desirability
.
..
...

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SpoilerDisable the ars magica 2 mod
(yes you may have been right at first, sorry)
If that fixes it...well you won't be able to play without us resetting the world and there has already been a significant time investment into it

but thats just an if! it could very well be the first two!
also: add me on steam so I can help in realtime

edit: tested the world save on single player without ars magica, nothing seems to be broken? this might work...

Re: Sonic

I can't wait to see what new directions the wub team takes wub this new wub wub Sonic wub wub wub

Relevant fun fact: The Landlord's Game, upon which Monopoly was based, was invented by a woman, Elizabeth Magie.

Re: Sonic Boom, it looks like they took the original character designs and stretched them like taffy. But I don't even care anymore. I agree with Supes w/r/t franchises that have overstayed their welcome.

I think the last Sonic game I really liked was Sonic Rush for the DS, and even that doesn't measure up to the originals IMO. I've heard Sonic Colors is good but I've never had a chance to try it.

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Spoiler

(courtesy weirdee)

I love this

_{of course those creators who care about substance and storytelling and originality wouldn't do sequels anyway, because a sequel is 1. either admission that the first thing is not a complete story in itself, needs continuation and you therefore fucked up in implementation of your original vision in that you didn't say all you needed to say or 2. a redundant addendum to the same vision plopped atop point you already made for the sake of money/not leaving your comfort zone, and comes at the opportunity cost of creating a whole new story}

no no no no no wheat I was with you up until that point but no

By definition no work of fiction is perfect, and that means that generally it will leave room to expand. A good sequel can build on the themes that existed in the prior work, or look at things from a previously unseen angle, or explore aspects of the setting that the creator didn't have the time or resources to look at before.

Take Star Wars,* for example. If you packed all the events of the original trilogy into one film you'd, at best, need to cut out a lot of character development and rush the ending; at worst, it would be an absolute mess from start to finish. Could A New Hope have worked as a standalone film? Absolutely; but Empire gave a lot of character development to Luke, threw in a couple well-executed twists, and added a theme that the first movie totally lacked (i.e., the fear of turning to the dark side, or in more applicable turns "what if I turn out like my dad").

That's without even getting into sequels that follow completely different events/casts of characters, but exist in a world that's already fleshed-out and thus can be more easily made to feel real, living, breathing.

I'll give you originality, but saying "if you care about substance and storytelling you wouldn't do sequels" is ludicrous.

It depends on the type of sequel imo
There are plenty of cases where an author plans out that their full story will take x distinct parts to tell, either because of length or because it's best conveyed through disparate pieces rather than one whole. In that case, it's just really uncharitable to complain about not finishing things the first time. I don't think anyone really wanted Game of Thrones to be a single volume.

But even disregarding that, even if a sequel is only called into being because fans wanted more of the same, it's totally possible to just be a good writer and write another work with new themes/motifs and a new story arc. MGS2 comes to mind, since I played it recently. Metal Gear Solid stands alone perfectly fine and is pretty tremendous, but MGS2 takes the ideas of the first game and goes in a different direction. It uses concepts, characters and plot elements, and calls back to the first game's thematic elements, but it's ultimately making a different point in a different way. Each one is doing its own thing but they're better when considered together is what I'm saying.
Whether a sequel is lazy is ultimately about whether it goes somewhere new. It's perfectly possible for a work to be "complete", but to have new value when reconsidered in a separate light, which sequels are great for. You can't look at something from every angle the first time, because it's just too much.

It depends on the type of sequel imo
There are plenty of cases where an author plans out that their full story will take x distinct parts to tell

Did you even read wheat's second post

Like I said, that comes at the opportunity cost of creating a whole new story (or world)!

I could turn this around and say that creating a whole new story/world comes at the opportunity cost of further developing your existing world.

Guess what? Neither of us is wrong! It turns out both options have costs, which is why sometimes creators will pick one and sometimes they'll pick the other. You have not explained why you seem to think creating a new world is inherently better. I don't think either option is; a given creator considering a project will sometimes decide that further development of the world they've got is a better option and sometimes decide that making something completely new is.

Also, there's no reason why you can't do both over the course of your creative career. The opportunity cost, whichever direction you point it in, only applies to "the project I am currently working on".

It depends on the type of sequel imo
There are plenty of cases where an author plans out that their full story will take x distinct parts to tell

Did you even read wheat's second post

Oh, sorry about this, I took a long time writing stuff out and didn't look
The second part of what I said is the point anyway

If the Final Fantasy Tactics games were not set in the same worlds as the previous installments and also a mainline Final Fantasy game, would they really have been improved by mandating additional development time be put towards creating fresh character, creature and job class concepts or would the creation of a new setting for the sake of having a new world be worth the loss of development time?

My money's pretty firmly on "no". They already had frequent reuse of art assets, not having the luxury of drawing from the past would have made the game even more repetitive in looks. You'd be talking about one sprite per playable race, not one sprite per job per playable race.

Taking video games purely as a medium of storytelling is a bit of a mistake I think. I can understand the argument "you should not extend settings after they have already encompassed their entire narrative arc" when applied to novels and other works where the fiction is the entire thing (though I still don't think recurring characters such as Batman experiencing more than one adventure before being thrown in the garbage is really a bad thing, just because someone's finished their story doesn't mean they die and stop interacting with anyone else's).
This isn't true of gaming though, in fact often the setting and storyline take a back seat to everything else and aren't the largest part of the experience at all.

Maybe you would get a fresher narrative if they set Final Fantasy Tactics Advance somewhere else (although as the theme is entirely different to the first game I'm not even sure that's true), but you'd get a more uniform and boring look and as the writing is tied into the character classes they'd have had to restyle how those worked too rather than allow a building upon the mechanics of the previous game, allowing less tactical depth.
What narrative is there to keep at all in Angry Birds, that necessitates you either replace them with weasels or never release any more content at all for people who finished everything available in the first?

Games development is fraught with deadlines and few games ship feature complete as originally envisaged, people are not going to want to front load any more work on top if they can avoid it, to avoid shipping products that miss their dream entirely.
"Do we want additional sets of NPC buildings or the art assets for an entire additional dungeon" are not isolated decisions.

Would cutting off a level from Metroid Prime in order to give it its own setting have made it a better game? Would Super Metroid have been superior if there had been no Brinstar, but it featured the exploits of Rachel Franklin, Ace Cavern Explorer instead of Samus Aran? Would Super Mario Sunshine be improved if some of the level variety was reduced so that we could facilitate the replacement of Mario with Dominick the Waste Disposal Expert and Bowser with Lord Graffiti?
I'm not confident the answer to any of these questions is yes either.

Also just on the subject of Batman, I would like to point out that he is 75 years old. If you experienced all of the Batman media that has existed up until this point all day, every day, I imagine it would take several years to get through it. I have my doubts that anything fresh or original could be squeezed from that dessicated lemon half at this point.

I'm, uh, not entirely sure why you're bringing that up, mainly because I highly doubt you or anyone else here wants to consume every bit of Batman media made in the past seventy-five years.

As for whether anything original could be made, well, I guess that depends on what you define as 'original'.

If we really want a Batman expert someone could ask LP, I'm confining my area of discussion to video games because, well... that's what this topic is .u