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Late to the party as usual huh gx

Late to the party as usual huh gx

I'm not sure exactly why, but this post is strongly reminding me of the obnoxious COD dudebros at my old job who would mock other people for not being able to buy whatever terrible new shooter game on like the exact same week that it came out.

If playing Undertale less than a month and a half after it came out and before it's ever even gone on sale is considered coming late to the party, then can someone please help me destroy Video Game Culture™ forever?

If we can expand that to more generally Nerd Culture™ as a whole, I'm down to destroy with you. I can't tell you how sick I am of all the things I like being populated almost entirely by the kind of person who ruins everything with Conspicuous Consumption And Materialism As Group Status Identifier bullshit.

I can't afford to play anything new that costs more than dreams and a song right now so I have existed solely on people talking about how great Undertale is and pretending I know what they're talking about.

So yes I'm down to destroy whatever, as long as I don't have to pay.

Im sorry for making jokes, because apparently they're always offensive

Coldblooded, it was a barb aimed at me because the discussion of Undertale in this thread probably occurred multiple pages ago, not out of disdain for people who play games later than their release date. Thank you for looking out for me, but I feel like presuming malevolence on Red's part is going a bit far. I'm not offended at all.

That said, "gamers" are horrible and valuing oneself based on when you play a game and/or what you play (or, heck, apply this to any media) is bad and honestly a bit pathetic.

Surprisingly there wasn't really much undertale "discussion" in this thread at all apart from:
"Undertale's good"
"I'm not sure if I should play Undertale"
"You should"
"I did, and it's good"

but is undertale the new hsteven universe

No you're thinking of homestuck

Who else is mad about Life is Strange? I'm mad about Life is Strange.

I've seen a couple essays get passed around on tumblr, what kind of game is it and where did it eff up

well that was the joke

I've seen a couple essays get passed around on tumblr, what kind of game is it and where did it eff up

it was basically butterfly effect: the game? You play a girl who returns to her hometown to go to a prestigious art school, and you run into your old childhood friend who has changed a lot in between. Also hey! you can rewind time now, fun

and now we enter the spoiler zone

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SpoilerYour art teacher is also drugging and abusing the teen girls from your school; he's being helped+funded by resident richboy douchebag who really needs some therapy. Since you left, your galpal made a new bestie who has since gone missing, and you can guess where thats going :l

Anyway things get progressively gayer as they go on, and the game is clearly about choices and how small things we do can affect situations v differently. Its mentioned throughout that doing things like watering a plant or saving a bird from smacking into your window will have effects later. (to be fair the plant one did have an effect; i overwatered it and killed it. :c)

The game is divided into 5 parts and you learn more+the stakes get higher in each part. The first two were unremarkable, the 3rd and 4th were all whoa shit this is really good! and the 5th... Totally shit the bed. It left a lot of small mysteries and plotlines hanging. All your small choices were meaningless and led to one big choice at the end: kill your galpal or destroy the bay that you live in. (context: a storm is heading at the bay, probably caused by you getting a bit too eager with the rewind button). It doesn;t really make sense to rewind back to the start t not fuck with time any further, but whatever. If you pick that and have chosen romantic options with galpal before, you kiss her then go let her die. Its followed by a 9 minute cutscene. This is clearly intended to be the 'right' ending. If you destroy the bay, (implying everyone else dies, which doesn;t make sense b/c you saw people escaping) you don't tell chloe you love her, you get repeated music from earlier and a 3 minute cutscene of them driving through the wrecked town and away to wherever.

Basically: Kill your gays or no gay at all, and also you are horrible and selfish. Even though the whole game has been about you saving Chloe so far.

It also inexplicably keeps pushing you at your kinda awkward and weird male friend; despite your character being clearly not attracted to him and vaguely uncomfortable with people thinking that you are (including said friend who has a crush the size of jupiter) the game keeps trying to pair you with him. If you accept his invitation to watch a drive in movie that he's clearly excited for then it must be a date and another girl gives you the cold shoulder. Even though you kiss chloe and she texts the guy to step the fuck off. Your final meeting with him has you able to hug, kiss, or not do anything with him, which is more than you get with your best friend and actual love interest? Wtf.

I might have been a bit more annoyed about that last part because it reminds me a lot of my high school experience and various friendships with dudes i've had, ugh.

The ending thing sounds shitty but honestly is more or less the standard for 'we have a moral choice system' games.

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SpoilerThey build up to whatever and then throw it all away in one last choice that basically boils down to sacrificing loved ones or the faceless masses (or some variation on that, sometimes an evil option is even included). The pointlessness of earlier things is also somewhat epidemic if you've played similar interactive story games as well (which more or less only show up with MCS but might as well differentiate them). It never really affects the end at all outside of maybe one or two people saying that they now hate/appreciate you. It's no excuse for an annoying lie of a choice system, but most of them in the first place only use said system to justify being called a game instead of a story.

Bit with the guy friend is supremely awkward if he isn't supposed to actually ever be a love interest like you're saying, I mean why give those as parting options at all?

There were a lot of other things hinted too? One of the main 'villains' as far as you can call him that dies offscreen, and there were suggestions other people knew about the storm, and how the fuck did Max get her powers etc etc

It felt very, very rushed.

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SpoilerHe's sort of presented as a potential love interest but the read i got from main character was v much yeah dude, we're just friends. I mean, you could push her into it and avoid all of Chloe's obv gay if you wanted to be aggressively straight but it was really bizarre.

I loved the first four episodes.

I hated pretty much everything about the fifth episode.

games about choice should just be like undertales neutral endings instead of making the final choice literally the only important thing in the end, imho

I wouldn't be so annoyed by it if it didn't heavily imply that being a happy lesbian was the bad, selfish path to choose

I get enough of that baggage from real life thank you very much

I feel like maybe you're reading into it a bit much?

I think the real takeaway from the game is that being a happy person in general is selfish and bad, which is incredibly stupid and a dumb (if not-uncommon) moral, but also doesn't assume that the designers presented a lesbian relationship as a the primary option and then decided, after depicting it as a positive thing, that it's now bad.

I'd assume they're idiots instead of bigots, or they wouldn't have put the relationship in there in the first place, you know?

E: I'm really, really against the concept of "your choices don't matter at all" in a game about choices, unless it's explicitly metaphorical and/or a meta-commentary on gaming/life.

Dead and/or tragic lesbians are a huge, super common trope. Media doesn't like us being happy! It doesn't mean that the creators necessarily disapproved of the relationship, but that doesn't mean it isn't upsetting and damaging.

All I'm saying is that I have severe doubts that the ending or intended message would be any different if the primary relationship was a straight one, because tragic relationships are an even more common trope than tragic specifically lesbian relationships.

I don't disagree that it would be better from a societal/media perspective for the relationship to work out, mind.

Most straight tragic relationships in media are at the start or halfway, to motivate the (often male) survivor and raise the stakes. The Bury Your Lesbians trope is often part of the mid to end game.

Not to mention, non-tragic straight relationships are still way more common and to have this relationship built up over several episodes end this way is really playing into the trope.

Edit: also, the trope was born out of straight-up homophobia from the censor-boards that controlled a lot of US media for ages because one of their guidelines was literally that non-straight relationships weren't allowed to work out or result in lasting happiness for fear that it would "encourage" girls to be into girls.

I guess it's not so bad (the romance thing) if you could actually choose. What's bad is that, like you said, you get to do more with some random side character than with the vital major character the entire plot is based around presumably because straight is great and gay is not okay (I do actually agree with GX in the sense that the choice would almost certainly be to let her or everyone die regardless of gender/sexuality but I just couldn't help myself).

As for the tragedy I mean looking into it it's definitely Butterfly Effect (and thus had a 0% chance for a happy ending) but I do agree that they could have handled it way better. Both you (Plaid) and Ren are more or less spot on.

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SpoilerAs a completely pointless side note I thought the trope was actually Bury Your Gays in general though in recent years you do seem to see it more often with girls than guys.

It is indeed bury your gays, but there's this weird perception thing about the desperate selfish lesbian that plays into it too. I think its a general misogyny/patriarchy thing overlaid with homophobia for a double whammy of feelings punching.

But again, wouldn't have been so bad if the entire epsiode wasn't poorly written and rushed as shit. It was the easy out and it was bad.

Oh no doubt to either.

When you're doing a thriller (especially about goddamn time travel) you have to have that shit figured out in its entirety before you even begin, and it sounds like they were just putting it together as they went over only the loosest of shells. Which really sucks, because it sounds like the rest of the game was actually pretty good.

Also missed Solaris' comment. I have technically seen good (or at least better) moral and/or choice systems in games than the Telltale or Bioware standards so I don't entirely mind the concept, but it is something that you need to put extra thought and care into instead of just sort of tacking it on. Though maybe that's what you're saying, since I have not yet played Undertale and have no idea what the neutral ending is.