Merus

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Merus

  5. Posted

    Now, I'm entirely convinced this is a cash-grab

     

    but I can't help thinking about how I'd structure Final Fantasy VII as an episodic game. Its story is legendarily garbage strung together between cutscenes anyway, and with the amount of changes you'd need to make to bring the game up to par, why not do major surgery on the plot? Keep Midgar as a central location that every episode touches on - it's easily the most interesting location in the game, and everyone resents it when you leave a third of the way through and don't come back. Make it your home base, and as you progress through the game Midgar changes to suit, both through your plot actions and through some kind of base-building mechanic.

    • Put a lot more meat in the middle ('pursue Sephiroth' can't be the driver for two thirds of the plot)
    • move Gold Saucer into Midgar
    • don't kill Aerith in the same place because the fact that she dies probably shouldn't be her most important characteristic
    • fuck with some things just to keep the shock factor up

  6. Posted

    I think there's something very interesting going on with groups that form as a reaction to totalist groups - New Atheism has something similar, I think, where what is ostensibly an independent movement ends up being so thoroughly consumed by the idea that they are the e.g. anti-fundamentalist Christian that they end up inverting many of the tenets but keeping the harmful operation. There absolutely is a cadre of people who are consumed with cataloging and challenging GamerGate to the point where they're incensed that most of the people closely affected by it would rather move on. Apple Cider's been attacked by one of them in the past for being insufficiently strident.

     

    I don't know what causes it, but there's definitely something funny going on.

  10. Posted

    You define the goal for your playthrough at the start of the game, I forget the terminology but I think it's Ambition.

     

    In terms of actually getting going, you want to explore until you find islands, work out what good routes are for your map layout (because you want to be getting Port Reports at a regular clip) and push east to find new stories and opportunities to advance stories back west.

  14. Posted

    I had advice until I realised I was talking out of my ass, but I think she absolutely should take the job. If she stays, her resentment is going to ruin the relationship, so hopefully it'll make at least one person happy.

  15. Posted

    Presto is still my favorite short but on the other hand, "lava" sounds a lot like "love" with the right accent, so good on Pixar for recognizing that and then only doing that for an entire short.

     

    I want to change my answer, Presto is the best Pixar movie.

  16. Posted

    Honestly I cannot see Psychonauts 2 being anything other than a mediocre-to-bad platformer that has great concepts they don't quite manage to execute on. At the budget that Double Fine's working with these days, I can't see it being anywhere near as meaty or as interesting as the first one.

     

    I'd disagree that they bottled lightning, though; I can imagine Double Fine being able to come up with a ton of crazy concepts.

  19. Posted

    I'd try and seek out more of the last day's interview; it's not clear what triggers the IM message, but I was in a similar situation and got it by stumbling across the first video of the last day.

  21. Posted

    I also finished Shantae and the Pirate's Curse. I too thought there was an uncomfortably large amount of boobs, but then saw Paul Robertson and Joakim Sandberg in the credits so I guess I can't be surprised.

     

    There was a lot more to it than I was expecting, and while it doesn't have the map design or ability diversity of other games in the genre, it managed to stave off predictability through fairly well-implemented gameplay shifts. I also appreciated that the game just took the kid gloves off towards the end.

  23. Posted

    (random fact: the founder of conversion therapy is deeply sorry and advocates for LGBT acceptance in the evangelical Christian community, which is hazardous because they're basically a cult built around hating the gays, abortions, libruls and climate scientists)