-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
SbF: Super Best Friends Play Thread: ReBoot
- Thread starter RecursiveFault
- Start date
skLaFarebear
Member
Just finished it myself. It was honestly much better than I was expecting. They talk about the things they liked and the stuff that was obviously bullshit/bad. I'd honestly recommend it, even if there's things you don't agree with and bunnyhop got to say his piece as well in case anyone was wondering if they just tune him out.
They don't talk much about the FOB/microtransaction stuff though since they're all in agreement that it sucks.
Romars202129
Member
skLaFarebear
Member
Megaten in general is the epitome of power fantasy.
Romars202129
Member
I'm hesitant to come up with anything that even treads the path lightly.
Wait, Metal Gear Solid 4, there you go. That's full on male 'lack of power' fantasy.
Gentle Rodriguez
Member
You're right, but I'm talking more specifically about the games in which the main character basically has no personality and is not likable at best.
At least games with character creation I can create a female and get SOME variety. Also 99.9% is a bit much.
skLaFarebear
Member
Kind of generalizing here for the people who don't wanna listen to the MGSV spoilercast, but in case anyone was wondering for impressions from them.
Gameplay:
Story/Characters:
Overall:
Gameplay:
Fantastic gameplay, but too much filler in the mission list. They all love the missions that don't feel like side ops, but there isn't enough of them.
Story/Characters:
They liked a lot of elements of it. They all love the deeper analysis of the story beats, and all thought the twist and the tarnishing of the legend of big boss was fantastic. They especially love the story beats around Huey "maybe" being a traitor and think that Miller is a great character, albeit an asshole. They also are all in agreement that the Truth tapes with Zero is the best part of the story and help completely justify the end of MGS4 with Zero being revealed as the creator of the Patriots. And they really like how they twist the knife in with the Paz side plot by making Venom look crazy. But they felt some of the execution on things like Quiet, both of the crawls through the hospital, and Ocelot's lack of character, were all lacking and really flawed.
Overall:
Seems like they all really like the game, but are in agreement that it feels unfinished and bloated in spots it didn't need to be. As for Kojima himself, the quote they used to describe him is "He's a God at making shit up as it goes"
skLaFarebear
Member
Well I'm playing Trails in the Sky First Chapter and Second Chapter and the MC is a female in a really well done coming of age story, where you're just a small deal in a big world. Its really different compared to your typical bland male power fantasties.
Romars202129
Member
I don't know that game, but I want throw out there that I don't think a game with a female lead is truly the opposite of a male power fantasy.
I mean, the idea of controlling a woman can be a male power fantasy in itself. Just saying.
I guess what saying is every game is kinda shooting to give you some kind of power fantasy. To me, it's more how they use it. Story wise, you got to try to be more than just that, I'd say.
skLaFarebear
Member
Granted the game builds up towards you tackling the larger issues in your country, but its a completely believable and long path that doesn't have you raining on shit like a god and you're constantly getting outclassed by the powers above you.
Its something similar to Valkyria Chronicles, but even on a smaller scale than that.
Gentle Rodriguez
Member
Having some power isn't a power fantasy though, power fantasies imply your character essentially being flawless and the universe revolving around you and your actions, which is not the case in plenty of games.
Romars202129
Member
I didn't mean to roll over your point, I just really wanted to call that out specifically. That said, sorry, I don't remember VC too well. Been awhile.
Like what? Cause I gotta say, I have seen some games that are TOTAL male power fantasy, but the cutscenes and writing don't really acknowledge that. Like Nathan Drake not being the world's greatest killer gorilla man outside of gameplay, lol.
skLaFarebear
Member
Its fine lol. You're totally right with that point though as Bayo is just as much of a power fantasy as any super badass dude. But I think there are enough games, especially today to where there's a decent mix of power fantasy and just regular people getting strong.
Megaten is still a total power fantasy, but its always been like that, even in its multiple spin-offs like Persona is. Though I'd argue the power trip in Megaten is one of the biggest selling points in where you're 80% of the time some kind of chosen one that's supposed to kill all gods and end the world.
DXLelouch153
Banned
took a break from Fallout to watch Jessica Jones
not as good as Daredevil imo but i enjoyed it
Tennant killed it as Kilgrave(get it?)
Luke was done justice as well catchprase and all
not as good as Daredevil imo but i enjoyed it
Tennant killed it as Kilgrave(get it?)
Luke was done justice as well catchprase and all
Gentle Rodriguez
Member
A game is more than just the gameplay though, when I say a character is flawless I'm including their personality. If you're only going to look at gameplay of course a lot of games will look like power fantasies since you have to beat all enemies to finish the game.
Christ Liam is an insufferable menace when guests are on the Podcast.
I mean credit where it's due, he HAS been better. He use to just be intolerable period over a year ago, and then he got better about his more generally infuriating habits.
But when a guest is on, he either becomes the biggest blatant goddamn kiss-ass or he just becomes extra fussy over nothing details.
The amount of times in this podcast I have had the thought "Shut the hell up, I know what Pat/Woolie/George were trying to say, you're not adding anything.".
I mean credit where it's due, he HAS been better. He use to just be intolerable period over a year ago, and then he got better about his more generally infuriating habits.
But when a guest is on, he either becomes the biggest blatant goddamn kiss-ass or he just becomes extra fussy over nothing details.
The amount of times in this podcast I have had the thought "Shut the hell up, I know what Pat/Woolie/George were trying to say, you're not adding anything.".
VidulaSaix
Member
I can't explain why, but I feel like this image is relevant to this.
God that guy still creates salt just by existing.
I feel like he's getting waaaay better than previous casts.
That debate about censorship in games.
My take is simple, I want ALL the content. For example, if you replace a headress with a cowboy hat, no, screw you just give me both instead, I want it all.
In the argument of localization, that's a little trickier, but honestly if a game is in Japanese, all I want localized is text and literally nothing else.
Playing Persona 3/4 in English is a good time, you know what's an even better time? Playing Persona modded to restore all it's Japanese Audio, leaving only English text and subtitles.
As I said, that's a little trickier a concept, if you want to dub a game that's fine, but don't go turning rice balls into Hamburgers.
I get there are very real cultral reasons why these things happen, but strictly speaking for myself, I couldn't give less of a shit, give me all the original content, period.
My take is simple, I want ALL the content. For example, if you replace a headress with a cowboy hat, no, screw you just give me both instead, I want it all.
In the argument of localization, that's a little trickier, but honestly if a game is in Japanese, all I want localized is text and literally nothing else.
Playing Persona 3/4 in English is a good time, you know what's an even better time? Playing Persona modded to restore all it's Japanese Audio, leaving only English text and subtitles.
As I said, that's a little trickier a concept, if you want to dub a game that's fine, but don't go turning rice balls into Hamburgers.
I get there are very real cultral reasons why these things happen, but strictly speaking for myself, I couldn't give less of a shit, give me all the original content, period.
Gentle Rodriguez
Member
This some next level weaboo shit
It's just because I didn't want to hear the dub voices, I really like the dub versions of things, it's not a dumb universal rule that it has to be sub over dub or anything.
It's purely just everyone but Kanji being shit in the P4 dub.
Romars202129
Member
I know that feel. First loading up P4; Johnny Yong Bosch and Yuri Lowenthal are the main characters. Had me thinking how's the french dub?
But no, english unless anime.
VidulaSaix
Member
I like the part where you're literally wrong about everything.
But the persona dub is actually amazing
Gentle Rodriguez
Member
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of dubs but ATLUS games are mostly fine imo.
E_Darkness
Member
But now it has got to the point where they're just reusing VAs in other games. And some of the post-P4 VA changes are awful. Then again that was because the busy and popular VAs were busy.
If P5 is using the same pool of VAs then I won't be excited for it, it'll be safe sure but eh.
Haven't listened to the podcast but wooooahhhhh 4 hours long. Also I don't even care anymore about MGSV, I got bored of it, I have no motivation to finish chapter 2 at all. So gonna listen to the spoiler cast.
pat rhymes with matt, so
Welp, short podcast for me then.
I was gonna say. After reading more posts I understand Rodriguez seems to just not like overt balls deep Male Power Fantasy like the new LP game, but I still think it's kind of an underlying thing of a lot of male lead games where I'm a super cool guy.
On your own there, pretty much. I don't care for half the dub VA changing over the years, but I wouldn't call any of them shit besides Ashly Burch in DAN and Erin Fitzgerald as Chie sort of.
I haven't listened to any podcasts since their very first one, but I figured I'd give this one a shot since I'm a big fan of George.
I've flicked through it to the Metal Gear section at the end, and multiple times now, the Best Friends have let Woolie talk and lay out his point in full, but when George tries to make his point, Pat consistently shouts/roars him down, even if he agrees with him. It's exactly why I never kept up the podcasts after that first one, but this seems particularly bad - George very rarely getting a chance to finish his point without being shouted down by Pat.
I've flicked through it to the Metal Gear section at the end, and multiple times now, the Best Friends have let Woolie talk and lay out his point in full, but when George tries to make his point, Pat consistently shouts/roars him down, even if he agrees with him. It's exactly why I never kept up the podcasts after that first one, but this seems particularly bad - George very rarely getting a chance to finish his point without being shouted down by Pat.
I'm going to be sad if we get any of the main cast VAs from P3/P4 in P5. It'll make the eventual crossover game annoying imo.
E_Darkness
Member
Bosch talks to Bosch talking to Bosch. And Lowenthal talks to Lowenthal talking to Lowenthal.
skLaFarebear
Member
Unfortunately its a really bad habit of Pat's as he gets overpassionate about things and essentially tones the others out. He's gotten better about, but for a first time listener its definitely real jarring.
What the fuck? Laura Bailey's Rise is more than excellent (and blows her JP counterpart out of the water). So is Karen Strassman's Nanako, and J.B Blanc's Dojima, Amanda Winn Lee's Yukiko and... fucking almost everybody on P4's cast puts in some of the best dub VA that a game's ever seen. Naturalistic and genuine performance put to naturalistic and genuine dialogue. This is the worst thing I've read with my eyes.
Ehh, I haven't made it to the spoilercast portion of the podcast yet, but if this is accurate then I'll be more than a little disappointed that they seemed to give the ending (and the overall story implications that cheapen the MGS3 story) a pass. I was kinda expecting Pat (and Matt, though I guess he's not done with the game yet) to blow up over it.
I feel like this was at its worst with Mike Z. Not sure why he consistently feels the need to act that way, but yeah, it's grating.
Uh, P4 dub is great man, dunno what you're talking about. Though at this point, I'd prefer the Japanese simply because the English team doesn't care about keeping the same VAs across games, which irks me to no end.
It's not really as simple as 'not caring'. I really doubt the team at Atlus doesn't care about people connecting to Troy Baker's Kanji or Laura Bailey's Rise, or the unknown actress responsible for Naoto. Schedule conflicts happen and union politics can and do happen, and localization efforts can't afford to wait up for the sake of one or two unavailable voice actors.
Finished the podcast. Narratively (and parts of the gameplay as well) MGSV left me kind of cold. I do understand what Kojima was going for with the game, and the points they make in the spoilercast are good, though nothing new. For me, it all just boils down to the fact that the game is way too big and padded for the story it tells. Still a good game, just not great.
Mirror's Edge LP continues to be fun, though as Woolie points out, these levels are not the strongest bits of the game.
Mirror's Edge LP continues to be fun, though as Woolie points out, these levels are not the strongest bits of the game.
Yeah, I know it's not really on the Atlus team, but I still place some of the blame towards the VA team. Just seems like English VAs in general don't care nearly as much for their characters.
Youch. I'll be avoiding this one then. I think I've put a lot of my disappointment to bed. Its still raw so I don't want to re-open it by listening to people discuss things that's been said a million times by now.
I don't really enjoy some of these talks about emulation because Bunny kind of comes off ignorant at parts about it. PCSX2 is not a one be all solution for all PS2 emulation, and if my PS2 classics I already bought can carry over without any work on my part while also getting simulataneous framerate and resolution upgrades then that's great. I'd much rather see something interesting like that than the 360 emulation which is practically just the same games. Also the Xbox emulation through 360 was a bit shit. A pretty small list of games and problems with some releases that weren't problems on the previous platform.
I also don't know if Liam chose those words on purpose, but saying "real" journalists have to work with blacklists all the time. If that was a secret undercover burn to Kotaku, it was pretty alright.
As far as the blacklisting goes, I feel like they took their chance with the story knowing they might get blacklisted in exchange for the clicks. It's a bummer for them, but that's what happened. I think the article comes off as whining or public shaming Bethesda/Ubisoft a little bit too. Someone at Kotaku probably knows that if the article goes up there's a chance one of the companies will back down super hard and go back to working with them. For now though, they can just continue to deal in the back alleys if they really want to continue doing their job with the companies products. People are real chummy in the games industry with this stuff and I'm sure they can easily work past it by just using a freelancers review copy if needed.
Liam doubling down more on P4DAN being shit and a 5/10. Welp. I'll just assume he's using the wide range of the scale and not the anything below a 6-7 is shit scale. My salt increases a little bit week by week.
I also don't know if Liam chose those words on purpose, but saying "real" journalists have to work with blacklists all the time. If that was a secret undercover burn to Kotaku, it was pretty alright.
As far as the blacklisting goes, I feel like they took their chance with the story knowing they might get blacklisted in exchange for the clicks. It's a bummer for them, but that's what happened. I think the article comes off as whining or public shaming Bethesda/Ubisoft a little bit too. Someone at Kotaku probably knows that if the article goes up there's a chance one of the companies will back down super hard and go back to working with them. For now though, they can just continue to deal in the back alleys if they really want to continue doing their job with the companies products. People are real chummy in the games industry with this stuff and I'm sure they can easily work past it by just using a freelancers review copy if needed.
Liam doubling down more on P4DAN being shit and a 5/10. Welp. I'll just assume he's using the wide range of the scale and not the anything below a 6-7 is shit scale. My salt increases a little bit week by week.
That's still... kind of presumptuous? There are plenty of roles that VAs forget about - they do so many, after all. But there should be no expectation they should drop obligations, schedules, and whatever else specifically to reprise a role or else they don't 'care' about it as much as they should. I've been to tons of con panels with VAs and they're amazingly passionate about the work they do and the characters they play. Just as much as any seiyuu might. I talked to Laura about Rise during a signing session once and I didn't exactly need to jog her memory about her - she really enjoys the character.
The fact P4's VAs kept changing over the years is a huge shame (though some of the recasts were for the better IMO), but it has nothing to do with how much anyone involved 'cares' about the characters and their roles. It's just inherently hard to keep the same group of people working on the same roles over a long period of time in the American voice acting industry.
skLaFarebear
Member
For the discussion, if you're really tired of Metal Gear talk, then there's nothing here that really adds anything new to the discussion and you should avoid it
If you're disappointed in the game and looking to feel validated in your disappointment with 2 hours of shit talk, then (thankfully) you're not gonna see that here. They, including bunnyhop, highlight both the positives and the negatives and talk about each component of the game while going deep into what they really liked and what they didn't. There are plenty of GAF threads if you really need your complete and total disappointnent in everyway fix.
If you're disappointed in the game and looking to feel validated in your disappointment with 2 hours of shit talk, then (thankfully) you're not gonna see that here. They, including bunnyhop, highlight both the positives and the negatives and talk about each component of the game while going deep into what they really liked and what they didn't. There are plenty of GAF threads if you really need your complete and total disappointnent in everyway fix.
Xux
Member
Short podcast for me, too, it looks like. I still need to finish MGSV so I can watch the LP and the podcast, lol. Sad to see people disappointed they didn't reach the correct level of disappointment they expect of everyone; in fact, I'm enjoying it enough that I'm worried I won't get there myself.
RecursiveFault
Banned
Liked the spoilercast, not often you see people who aren't full-on shitting or defending it.
MGSV>PW>MGS4
skLaFarebear
Member
To quote bunnyhop, "I'll never understand people's love for Peacewalker"