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So, with E3 already here, are any of you excited for any of the announcements? Personally, I was, because of Detroit: Become Human and TLoZ: Breath of the Wild

That new Kanye West game. Flames.

I liked Heavy Rain, but I probably won't get Detroit because I find the AI wanting to become human trope extremely aggravating. I did an AI focus in college for my computer science degree, and everyone who writes about it in fiction gets it maddeningly wrong.

Anyway, I only watched the Sony press conference because I was at work during the Microsoft one. I will almost definitely buy Death Stranding because I'm a Kojima fan. That trailer was weird as fuck, but somehow I'm not remotely surprised. I got strong Silent Hills vibes from it, at least, which is definitely a good thing.

Nothing else really caught my eye. Last Guardian, maybe? The setting of Horizon looks cool (I like the cavemen + robots thing), but it seems like a generic action/adventure thing, so I'm probably not gonna get it. I'm also mildly aggravated by the existence of yet another terrible-looking generic zombie game, which I've already forgotten the name of.

I'm also gonna get FF15, but I didn't see whatever they did at MS's press conference.

I was excited for 15 until that damned explanation for why they have an all male party. "Men can't be open around women" "all male parties are more approachable for players" seriously... I wouldn't care about not playing as a girl, but wtf? Where did this even come from?

What happened to "look! We finally have a female protagonist!" And how did we get from that to "women ruin male relationships and all men are compelled to lie and change for them while they're around. Also, players can't handle boobs, lady bits scare them." I don't find it more "approachable" to be told that cooties would ruin my gaming experience. 

I was initially skeptical when I heard about the all-male party, since I tend to prefer female protagonists and pay attention to how women are portrayed in media, but after playing the Episode Duscae demo I came around to it. It's hard to describe, but there are a lot of little things about the way the characters interact that would either need to change or have mild unfortunate implications in a mixed gender group. It's things like the way they talk to each other, the way they touch each other, sleeping in the same tent, etc. I don't think it would be worse with female characters, but the dynamic would definitely be different, so I feel like they made a legitimate creative decision. I'd like to see more stories about male intimacy, so I'm hoping they take the opportunity to have deep emotional relationships between the men in the party, but the jury's still out on that one.

Honestly, I'm way more annoyed about Cid's character design than the lack of women in the party.

What does Cid look like? I stopped being able to put faces to names when every character became a blandsauce anime character swaddled in 18 trench coats and ten pounds of shiny plates and hood ornaments.

http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Cidney.jpg

https://38.media.tumblr.com/9b651b1650270c26b14d93b8fb760bf9/tumblr_ngwfdc4ElJ1qllwn8o1_500.png

Please note that she's a mechanic and this outfit is ridiculous.

http://www.dualshockers.com/2015/03/17/final-fantasy-xv-real-identity-of-the-sexy-cidney-revealed-in-episode-duscae-spoiler-warning/

Well, Tifa Whatserface didn't exactly look like an eco-terrorist either, so I'd hardly be piqued that Cid the Mechanic is only the stripper version of a mechanic. If I had a reason to be upset, it'd certainly be that she or someone else can't be on the team on account of having tits. Does she have to have tits? Does she have to be attractive to the point where the guys can't be "real" around her? Does she even have to be attractive? Hell, I know FF is a magical anime universe where fucking everyone has to be at least a 6, but look at the fucking uggos that make it onto game covers these these days. Kane and Lynch, everyone except the Black guy in the new GTA, all the gorilla-ass Gears of War guys. Girls aren't allowed to be grizzled and badass-looking. No Vasquez for us. Fuck, not even any Ripley.

Utter douchiness that the reason she can't be one of the prots is because everyone would hit on her, because that's literally the only thing a guy would ever do around one of his accomplished co-workers... The FF team are just a bunch of twats trying to make up excuses for their inability to write a good story, just like that time when the guy tried to pass off one of the other boring FF games' flaws by saying "You can't have empathy until graphics are photo-realistic! But we try!"

Tequila in the avp 2011 game

Yep, because "even the presence of one female character will change their behavior" and he wanted a "boys will be boys" feel to the whole thing. Not like it's possible in this day and age to show sincerity around women-folk. Nope, we're all shallow, lying bastards who can't be ourselves in the stifling presence of sizeable boobs, so "to make them feel sincere and honest," the party had to be all guys. 

Kiel, don't be stupid. Girls have cooties. Cooties are gross. What do you think boobs are? They're huge tumors from long-term cooties exposure. Can you imagine how reduced your stats would be if you were constantly around chicks?

Wait, we’re supposed to act different around girls?

Note: I worded that very poorly. Vasquez and Ripley were really nice-looking, but women in video games aren't allowed to have that sort of rugged appeal like men, only "feminine" appeal. Even when they're portrayed as "Manly" or "Badass", it's still with a girly tank and a ponytail.

Though I will say, Cidney certainly looks more manly than the guy standing behind her. To think they can be this forward-thinking in the design of their male characters but not the roles of their female ones is kind of baffling. Methinks they're trying to hide Team Sonic Syndrome.

... It's not about the creative decision, it's about their excuse for it, which is loaded with "unfortunate implications." I think the nature of my grievance may have flown over your head, but it's irrelevant. If it doesn't bother you, therefore allowing you to enjoy the game, good for you. 

I understood your point perfectly well, but I chose not to address it because a cursory Google search didn't turn up the interview in question. Do you have a link to it handy?

The entire interview, no, sadly I do not. I didn't deign to keep the link that was originally sent to me, but I'm not sure why you had trouble finding any of it, I found no less than 12 sites quoting it. http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/new-reply?postId=696648

It's interesting that he acknowledged that there are female players in the same answer as claiming an all-male cast would be more approachable, and that he feels all players will feel connected to them. Has the implication that male characters are relatable to men and women (the attitude that male is the default sex / gender) but female characters on the other hand...

(To be frank, knowing what I do about Japanese culture and history, this attitude does not surprise me. Doesn't mean I like it.) 

Prey 2 is finally coming out.

It's like the Half-Life 3 of Sony.

Interesting.

I find it funny that the last video game set in Detroit (Deus Ex:HR) also had a cyberpunk/android/cyborg/AI theme when it would be a pretty unlikely city where tech advances like that would be taking place.

Guess Robocop really did clean up the place.

Kratos had a beard.

And he can build up his Spartan Rage whenever that kid pisses him off.  Fucking hilarious.

Don't forget the dragons. Or the vikings. Or the fact that we'll (probably) see Kratos beat the ever living shit out of Thor.

But what if he was raising Thor?

JK betting he'll still punch the kid's teeth in one day or another

it is

Thus far, I have no hype for the Resident Evil thing everybody's creaming themselves over. It's like PT, except way less cool, and, worst of all, not even remotely surreal.  It's like a generic haunted house Indie, complete with moving mannequins, except there's NPCs other than the bad guy. Ooh. Spooky. Triple-A industries are now doing things that everyone with Unity and a week of free time has been doing for several years now. Listen to my enthusiasm. I am so excited about this. Inflate your hype balloons because they are right and you would be right to be hyped and excited for this.

It was, overall, a mediocre, uninteresting experience. Where P.T. had an interesting, self-contained story with dreamlike symbolism surrounding it, Resident E-VII-L had a standard, poorly explained haunted house rumor with nothing surrounding it. Where P.T. had incredible buildup to a single, tasteful jumpscare that you could blatantly see coming but were still pants-shittingly jumpscared by, RE has them all over the place. There's even randomly generated house sounds for that explicit purpose. It becomes cheap, boring, and stupid.

What really killed it for me most of all, though, was when the title "Resident Evil" showed up. That one broke my heart. Really now? Zombies? That's your explanation for this? How did fucking zombies move the mannequins around and drop babies out of nowhere? How do fucking Zombie hillbillies move down a hallway and suddenly appear behind you when there is LITERALLY FUCKING NOWHERE TO HIDE!? Nope. There aren't any Resident Evil monsters that do this. This is fucking Silent-Hill ghosts and you know it, Game Developers! This isn't Resident Evil, this is some company deciding to try really hard to rip off PT so that people will buy their shit next year. Yes, it does look like the RE team is starting to almost understand how horror and story works, but I assure you, there are cooler, scarier games with even better understanding on Indie sites for free, and I assure you, there are better sneaky psychopaths and mannequins that murder you in cutscenes in Outlast, which undoubtedly come on systems you already have and I can almost guarauntee are going to cost you much less than the $70 next-gen game and the $20 a piece DLC that's bound to come out afterward.

RE7 isn't outstanding. It's barely above mediocre. And if The Last of Us is any indication, I guarantee you won't see half the polish or atmosphere in the completed game that you see here. Nothing on E3 ever turns out to be as good as it's cracked up to be, (Unless it's MGSV, but Kojima goes fucking H.A.M. in everything he does, so that doesn't count.) and no, you can't even trust gameplay and demos anymore.

I think I can trust how angry I'll be with Breath of the Wild mechanics.

Why so? I didn't see it. I've only seen the RE teaser because my friend insisted I play it.

*How so

While you're given a variety of weapons, they have durability meters before breaking.  There doesn't seem to be a crafting system besides cooking to properly compensate for that, but there are puzzle dungeons filled with chests that do occasionally drop weapons, as well as certain enemies.  The world feels pretty empty, and pretty much every other action other than walking now runs on stamina (I think a bit moreso than Skyward Sword did).

Fire will probably one of the most annoying hazards to deal with, since a lot of the wooden equipment is burnable.  Shields and bows will have to be replaced, and even some of the better bows will risk being burned.  Damage is not guaranteed to be consistent or optimal when you want it.

Immersion for health recovery is pretty broken, especially when you have to cycle through multiple menus to find food items.

While weapon and item variety is good, I highly doubt there are enough quick-slots to get an item for every occasion.  More cycling through menus, more blegh.

My biggest concern is that questing could be interrupted by the constant need to replace and improve weaponry if there are enemy-area scalings.  While side activities are fun in the form of minigames in other Zelda games, grinding the same enemy camps for replacement bows and arrows and having a whole system based on that need might detract from the actual story itself.  Twilight Princess was pretty low on the tolerance level for replacing potions and the like between dungeons and temples already.

Ah, that's bulsch. Zelda items shouldn't have durability, you get the items you need, and then you fight things and solve puzzles with them, you shouldn't have to diddle around to build a goddamn arsenal over and over again. You shouldn't have to replace anything other than a wooden shield, which was nothing but a tutorial-level gag anyway. And they should bring back rolling, I'm tired of this sprinting bullshit. Sure, rolling is ridiculous, but it's way better than fucking sprinting around and forcing you to stop playing the game every 15 seconds. Same thing with making Link only able to climb vines or hold onto ledges for a limited time. It is Link's god-given right as a descendant of jungle-dwelling primates and ancestor of Ezio Auditore to climb on shit, don't gyp us with this half-assed time-limit bullfuck. Either let us run fast and climb walls or don't, stop chopping up the gameplay and robbing us of the goddamn flow.

I swear, Link gets worse at his job every fucking game. In the beginning, he could've beat Gannon to death with a stick. Now? He's twatting around with shitty items that break all the time, he hasn't been able to find a decent shield since Skyward, and he can't even hold on to a goddamn ledge for more than 15 seconds when his life literally depends on it. It's sickening. What happened to the days when Link could climb up an entire tower because there was vines all over it? The only thing the stamina bar should factor into is how far you can free-run up walls and shit, nothing else. Fuck everything else. The only thing a durability bar should be attached to is armor or some other new shit that we aren't supposed to rely on for the entire fucking game. This is bad. Really bad. This is literally the worst fucking thing. It would be an amazing game if these bars weren't fucking ruining the entire goddamn thing! Hurry, somebody slap Nintendo before they fuck up their only chance at getting a GOTY in recent memory!

I'm just very excited to play Spiderman on PS4! Oh, and then there's also Telltale's Walking dead season 3 as well! ^^ It's truly good to be alive in these times.

I thought this one looked interesting even if it does seem a little like “BioShock: England Dystopia”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSqOgDhinYI

Not sure if I'll ever get to play it since it apparently isn't coming to the PS4 at the moment.

Everyone keeps going on about No Man's Sky, but it doesn't look all that interesting. Then again I didn't see what the big deal was about Destiny either. Guess you have to be into the whole multi-player online gaming thing though.

I surely would like to play it, even though I probably won't

Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus stole the show.

The triple a games industry always maddens me. They have made a game almost unrecognizable from its origins with Fallout 4, they have pretty much ruined mmo's for me. Whenever something good comes out like The Witcher 3, that is awesome, don't get me wrong, but they are so far and few between. Now, I play Payday 2, Factorio, EU4, and most of the people I know do too.