This is such an incredible memo because it starts out with a genuinely good question to ask “Why don’t we love it?” It would almost make you think they were about to suggest introspection and drilling down into why what they’ve come up with is unappealing even to their devs. But instead of engaging in any self…

He was great in the Lego Movie and I think that led to studios thinking “Great, a big name actor we can confidently cast in animated stuff.” But his character in that movie was just the same role he always plays but a little goofier. Which worked fine for that movie but doesn’t mean he can voice act. 

This’ll really rely on the writing but Jack Black has the energy that I think would be required to bring in some of that Paper Mario Bowser feel, which is my ideal.

The silver font that Super and Movie are in in the title honestly feels suspiciously evocative of some of the 93' films posters.

Yeah, the Chris Pratt is controversial discussion has been going on for years, long before the Mario movie was on anyone’s minds. I think I first started hearing about it back around 2016 or so and it only grew with time. It’s not some false narrative, it’s just how celebrity culture goes. Guy got super popular, and…

I’m pretty sure they are, the brickwork around the pipe Mario comes out of screams original Mario Bros game, where that backstory originated. And we know that someone has been cast as Foreman Spike, the character from Wrecking Crew which also had Mario and Luigi as just laborers.

It’s Chris Pratt but with like 0.5% New York accent. On the flip side, I’m kind of shocked how well Key is doing Toad.

I mean that’s probably true. The moment they decided to stop adding any content to OW1 to focus on 2 they were on a time limit, so there was really no good option unless they were going to be ready to launch much sooner. Still I don’t think this was inevitable, but rather poor planning.

I’m no comp player, but I do think there should be more than just the Spiral Abyss, maybe something randomized or infinite so comp players can just see how far they can go. But my suspicion is that Hoyoverse is worried (perhaps overly so) about new player lock-out, something that I remember was discussed among the…

Yeah I’m glad the author brought it up. I’m not numb to competitive player’s complaints, but they are undermined by the fact that these same types of people are usually so aggressively opposed to anything that might make a game more accessible and demand casual playstyles be discouraged or punished as much as possible…

Genuinely I do wonder how much this has to do with it. Like does the branding collab matter at all or is it just because it is an “adult happy meal” that is driving this craze. That would make a lot more sense to me.

And back when they did Disney collabs, and pretty much any other time they work with ultra popular brands. (Would not have pegged this one as being in that group but, you learn something every day)

See now I’m starting to think that the toys are that ugly on purpose to try to avoid them being so popular but alas. Honestly kind of surprised these are selling -this- well. Never heard of this brand, and I wonder how many of the people buying have either and aren’t just buying it because it’s limited.

Rather enjoying this unexpected DYKG pivot from trivia to investigative history. Don’t know if they intend to keep it up but I hope so.

Still feel like releasing this without the PVE element is a big mistake.

I mean the simple answer to your last paragraph is that research studies have consistently proven a link between suicide depiction and increases in suicide ideation, and consistently disproved any link between violence in video games and real world aggression increases.

Ah yes, if you have epilepsy just do your research. Maybe you can just look up whether or not a piece of media has epileptic inducing patterns included in it. Some sort of.. description of the content and whether you need be warned of it.

Reminds me how Battlefield trailers last year were always age restricted while other, far more graphic games were not. Just total calvinball.

In all seriousness I’m surprised how nice it all looks, but for some reason I still feel tense since we can’t see how Mario really looks yet.

To be fair, there’s pages of mods centered around the idea that Skyrim’s intro was not great so..