vanguard333

Hopefully we will get that with the sequel. Part of me is still hoping we will get that in the sequel, as not getting that would be a real disservice after how Breath of the Wild ended. That would be nice to see. Explicit romance is unlikely to happen given that this is Nintendo, but it would be nice.

I don't think Zelda being physically over 100 years old would have helped with Breath of the Wild's story. She'd already gone through a lot, and I think it made sense for Breath of the Wild to end on the two of them reuniting and setting out together. My problem with the ending is that it creates too much expectation for the sequel; the game ends on the two of them reuniting and setting out together, so that creates the expectation that any sequel will show us the two of them adventuring together; the sequel going "Nope; they've been separated again" would undermine the first game's ending as a result. Unfortunately, Nintendo's track record with Zelda sequels has been to do exactly that; Wind Waker ended on Link and Tetra setting out together in search of new lands, and then Phantom Hourglass opened with Tetra getting turned into a statue and spending the rest of the game as a statue. That got more complaints than any other part of Phantom Hourglass, including the touchscreen controls and the temple of the ocean king. Personally, I think the solution to Breath of the Wild's thin story would be to have a spinoff focused on story. Since Breath of the Wild takes place in the aftermath of a calamity, a prequel game about said calamity would be ideal for such a spinoff as it would then complement Breath of the Wild greatly. Yeah; a prequel to Breath of the Wild that takes place during the calamity would be perfect for giving us the story that was lacking in Breath of the Wild. Nintendo should really make such a game. I mean, hypothetically, if Nintendo were presented with a way to make such a game, only for them to turn around and make something that isn't actually a prequel and instead gives some weird alternate-timeline where the calamity is prevented before it can begin, that would just be a massive waste of a perfect opportunity. Thankfully, it's just a hypothetical...

I never once even understood the complaints that Micaiah is a Mary Sue, especially since most of those complainers would turn around and complain that she got overshadowed. If she got overshadowed by other characters, then she's clearly not a Mary Sue! Anyway, I quite liked Micaiah and found her to be very interesting. A light mage lord that becomes something of a Joan-of-Arc for her homeland: a homeland that was the bad kingdom in the previous game, was very interesting and the story handled her character well for the most part.

I know this is a character from a video game, but I can't remember which one off the top of my head as I haven't played the game. For context, the girl can read minds, and the big guy is six-years-old like everyone else in the video; the absurdity of it is part of the comedy.

Funny enough, they aren't pushing a story either. The prequels, for all their faults in execution, had a clear message and story they wanted to tell. Disney, meanwhile, bought Star Wars for an insane amount of money and thought, "Here's a property we need to start making money from because of how much it cost" without having a story they actually wanted to tell using said property.

It's generally good at writing characters. Storytelling is wildly inconsistent; the most common problem being that, the more complex/ambitious stories tend to be less refined than their smaller counterparts. Basically, Fire Emblem has a tendency to bite off more than it can chew.

Why? The only reason they ever considered making the show was that, back when the sequel trilogy and the spinoff films were first announced (i.e. back before we knew all those films except Rogue One were going to stink), Disney did a poll asking fans which character they would most like to see get their own spinoff, and "Obi-Wan story set between episodes 3 and 4" was by far the most common answer. How did they look at the sheer amount of fan request for a story about Obi-Wan and go, "People clearly want a story that isn't about Obi-Wan but is instead about this new character we just invented"? That's so stupid. More evidence towards Boba Fett's competence in Episode 5 is that he's the bounty hunter who actually finds Han Solo and at the end of the film, he walks away with the frozen Han Solo. Plus, before Vader has Solo frozen, Boba Fett angrily points out that Han is no good to him dead (as there's a risk that the freezing process could kill him), and, rather than dismiss him or threaten to Force-choke him, Vader tells him, "The Empire will compensate you if Solo doesn't survive".

Four seconds in and I already want to make a correction: the game takes place in the Pokémon equivalent of the late Meiji era (around the dawn of the 20th century). The rest of the first four minutes is fairly accurate.

I have been afraid to watch the Obi-Wan series as every part of me figured they would mess it up and I really did not want them to mess that one up; it's a show about Obi-Wan Kenobi set between episodes 3 and 4; that should've been the easiest slam dunk. Given what you just described, they messed it up; didn't they?

I just finished playing through Clan O'Conall and the Crown of the Stag. Overall, it was very fun. The gameplay is great, with each of the three characters having really cool abilities and with swapping between each character being very quick and seamless. The level design was very good, and it has the player make use of all three characters' unique abilities while also often having the player swap between the three characters a lot towards the end. The story is very basic, but it's serviceable and provides all the necessary context for what's going on. Personally, I just would've liked to see more sibling banter between the three main characters. But the game easily makes up for its story with its visuals: the art style is fantastic and, when combined with the music, the game has a ton of atmosphere; it really does capture the idea of a world of Celtic Myth, even if the faeries are completely wrong. My first playthrough was about eight hours, and that's with 100% completion. That's about right for a 2D action-platformer that is about $8 (and I bought it when it was on sale at $5). I have seen people criticize the game's short length, but given that it's $8, the length doesn't really bother me at all. That said, I wouldn't have minded a bit of replayability. There is an upgrade system where you spend the collectibles to level up the characters, and that could've provided some replayability, but one can easily have all the characters reach the maximum level near the end of the game if they collect everything. Overall, if you like 2D action-platformers, then this is definitely a good example of one.

That is very sad to hear. Definitely prayers for his family. I know voice actors in video games don't typically get much credit, but I hope that Three Hopes has a little "In memory of Billy Kametz" or something like that.

I suppose that using Shaft could work. Still, there is so much that they'd have to explain. Yeah; I was really disappointed with how Hector was handled. I haven't played any of the games, but I knew that Hector is the protagonist of his own game set after Trevor Belmont's game, and that he worked for Dracula before betraying him for moral reasons and then had to stop Isaac from reviving Dracula, so when I saw him in the trailer for season 2, I was interested in seeing all that play out; seeing him torn between his morals and his friendship with Dracula until it reaches the breaking point and he betrays Dracula. They seemed to be setting it up, with episode 1 giving his backstory with his family and having it be just like in the game, as well a later flashback showing him pleading with Dracula to try to consider something more merciful than killing all of humanity, and then... the season just had him get tricked by Camilla and beaten to a pulp, he spent all of season 3 being imprisoned and continuing to be betrayed, and while season 4 tried to correct things, it was too little too late, and they wrote it that he, and not Isaac, was the one wanting to revive Dracula. That was really disappointing.

I see. Thanks for the info. I could maybe see that. My question then would be this: is he enough of a threat to be able to effectively essentially replace the role that Dracula and Death had?

Who is Orlox? I must admit that I'm not very familiar with Castlevania lore (I haven't actually played any of the games; I just read about them around the time season 1 of the show released).

When Castlevania began, I figured that spinoffs/sequels about Trevor's descendants would be inevitable. Then season 4 ended the way it did, with Dracula and his wife alive again and with the other main villain: Death, ironically dead (they even rewrote him as an elemental spirit rather than an embodiment of death in order to make him killable), and I figured, "Never mind then; I guess they really want it to end". Of course, the obvious answer for them making more Castlevania would be that it was well-received and very popular, and Netflix is desperate for any reason to renew people's interest right now; it's a matter of money. My question is: will this follow the show's canon, or the games' canon? I ask because, with how Castlevania ended, I cannot see the events of Sympathy of the Night happening within the same timeline as the show; Dracula got his wife back so he can't still be angry at humanity over her execution, anyone who would want to make Dracula a villain again is dead, and Death: the one who brainwashes Richter in Sympathy of the Night, is dead.

…I honestly didn't find it that funny.

I can honestly say that I was not expecting the Ashen Wolves to be playable in the base game. The demo being available now is neat. I'd probably try it, but I'm busy with other games; ironically, I'm still trying to complete my first Azure Moon playthrough.

I can honestly say that I did not expect the Ashen Wolves to be playable in the base game. I was certain that they would be DLC.

I haven't started playing it yet (as I haven't finished that Blue Lions playthrough of Three Houses), but I recently decided to buy a Canadian indie game called Clan O'Conall and the Crown of the Stag. It's a 2D action-platformer, and the reason it caught my eye is that it takes heavy inspiration from Celtic Mythology, which is something that greatly interests me. EDIT: I decided to try the game (I have no intention of stopping my Blue Lions playthrough; I just thought I would give this game a try). The gameplay is fun: you control three different characters by switching between them at any time. The first character is a melee fighter with a spear and a sword, and he uniquely can glide and cut vines. The second is a brute that fights with his fights and he can shove and destroy blocks. The third is an archer, and she can double-jump and roll under narrow obstacles. The three characters complement each other well, and both the action and the platforming is pretty fun so far. The art style is also great; apparently they took a lot of inspiration from Celtic art, and it does show in more ways than just using Celtic symbols; I'm often reminded of various artworks I've seen at highland games festivals. The story is interesting; the premise is that, after a gruesome battle, the king of the O'Conall clan and the king of the Otherworld (the home of faeries in Celtic myth) decide to stop the slaughter and become allies & friends, only for someone to be disappointed by the peace and kill the Otherworld king and abduct the king of the O'Conall clan, leaving the king's three children to save the day. It's a simple premise, but it works. It's especially neat that the cutscenes have zero dialogue; the premise is conveyed entirely through visuals. I have only one problem with the game so far, and it is admittedly a very small one: one of the main collectibles in the game are stray faeries... and the faeries are depicted as tiny butterfly-winged creatures. The idea of faeries as tiny benign butterfly-winged creatures was an invention of the Victorian English; faeries in Celtic myth were wingless, human-sized, and properly scary.

Interesting, but can the robot mouth say, "I'll be back"?

Honestly, for a lot of games, I do think that that is the best option. For instance, I do not think the pre-BOTW Zelda games would be improved with full voice acting; the limited voice acting those games used was for the best, and I honestly think that that's what Legends: Arceus needed; not full voice-acting, but limited voice-acting instead to fill the silence. I'd say a sigh counts as an expression, not a word.

I'm not sure what you mean by this; are you referring to stuff like what Awakening did (actual words/phrases), or what a lot of the Zelda games did (voice grunts and such)?

I agree and disagree. Voice acting has its pros and cons, and I think people tend to forget the cons. Voice acting has to be localized, and the localization is generally constrained by all the problems dubbing usually has; I distinctly remember a lot of people who wanted voice acting in Zelda games changing their tune when Breath of the Wild released and the quality of its localized voice acting was... mixed. Another major con is that voice acting takes up a lot more space than people realize; that isn't as much of a problem nowadays thanks to greater space being available, but it's still something that has to be considered from the developers' perspective. Voice acting needs to be a big enough improvement to the user experience to outweigh the costs; that I do agree with, and it does generally need to fit the rest of the presentation. However, one thing I think people tend to forget when discussing voice acting: people tend to act like voice acting must be all or nothing, and that's just not true. The presentation in Pokémon games for example has reached the point where complete silence + text is off-putting, but it isn't to the point where full voice acting would be better. The solution I think for Pokémon would be to introduce partial voice acting like Fire Emblem Awakening: enough to give the characters a voice without the voice actors reciting the whole text.

Gen 3 was definitely fun. My older brother had a copy of Sapphire and sometimes let me play it, though I didn't get very far in it (not because I couldn't, but because Diamond & Pearl released by that point), and I later got Omega Ruby. They were definitely fun games, and Omega Ruby was a decent remake. Looking back on them, Gen 3 and Gen 4 are definitely foils of each other, and I think that was intentional. Gen 3's region was based on one of the warmest regions of Japan and had a strong environmental theme, with the antagonistic groups being well-meaning extremists who have no idea what they're messing with. Gen 4, meanwhile, is based on the cold island of Hokkaido (the island that the anime Golden Kamuy takes place in) and instead has strong themes of history and mythos, with the villain team being the first one to be a serious intentional threat to the Pokémon world much like, well, a villain straight out of an epic (in the literary sense of the word) narrative, and there are a lot of other ways in which the two generations contrast each other. Interesting; I'll admit that some of those evolutions definitely looked ugly, but I honestly didn't think the new Pokémon designs were phoned-in. I honestly thought that a lot of them had plenty of character to them; Porygon Z being a good example.

Final Fantasy 16 Definitely looked really good... when I could actually see it. I found myself having to turn up the brightness on my computer quite a bit so I could clearly see the trailer, which is odd as the game has a ton of bright effects and a lot of vibrant colours; the latter of which I find a great relief, as the first trailer made it look like it was going to be a lot of dull grey and muted & washed-out colours. I really don't understand this trend; what's the point of great visuals and effects if you're then going to make it that the audience can't actually see it? Other than that though, the game looks great; the action gameplay looks fun and the story looks like it'll be interesting. The apparent lack of party members is a bit strange, but a Final Fantasy protagonist not having a party of allies, if done well, could be a really unique deconstruction. Let's just hope that FF16 is actually FF16 and not an alternate timeline of FF7 with weird plot ghosts. The rest of the games didn't really catch my attention that much; I'm not really interested in VR, street fighter, or zombie games, and the game about a stray cat looked a bit boring.