For many people, my parents included, more than 3 hours is an immediate no-go for them, and they say they’ll catch it on streaming a couple of months after if it’s that good. I’m tending to agree with them more as I get older

The other thing is that historically the audience is not rewarded for that extra time. The length doesn’t increase the quality and there are almost always pieces of bloat that could be cut.

I think that calling out movie length is reasonable. There are stories that absolutely need more than 1.5-2 hours to be told well, but I think there’s a run-time inflation kind of thing happening now, where directors see that someone else has blown past 120 minutes, and think to themselves that their story deserves at…

The dev totally didn’t say it the right way but he has a point. The fucking whiners about a balance patch in this game are insufferable. Its been out for like two weeks. Its not like they took away some weapon after two years. Of course they are gonna have to fix some shit once the players get their hands on it. 

“Black Dwarves in LotR is just absurd”

I’ll never get over the sheer incelity of the guy who was calling Aloy “hideous” and when his dumb bitch buddies agreed, he got into detail, and part of it was that she’s so realistically rendered you can see the fine hairs on her face, and he, god fucking help us, though this was a sign of a “progressive agenda”…

At least, there won’t be any need to adapt God Emperor of Dune, given that five-hour-long rambling monologues from a giant worm with a human face who rules the universe already exists in the form of Donald Trump’s phone calls to Fox and Friends.

“At the end of the day it seems like both sides are talking about the same thing. SBI’s right wing critics insist that SBI is intentionally putting DEI elements into their story and SBI pretty much admits to it”

Did we read the same article because they didn’t admit to that at all? They said that the DEI elements…

Saga being a Black woman is perfectly integrated into the story and even adds to the story during an early investigation scene.

This is legit my favorite open-world game. Just a mind-boggling story, incredible robot designs, and delicious combat. I, too, was incentivized to get through every collectable and questline. I think I sank over 120 hours into the original game. I’d logged well over that amount into its sequel because I like upgrading…

The post credits scene was amazing. The final followup to what we learned about her and a perfect ending for the game. 

I have replayed HZD often, and my jaw hits the floor whenever I get to the point of what Project: Zero Dawn really is. Same for HFW when we find out the truth of Far Zenith.

Learning Elisabet Sobek’s true fate is one of my most memorable gaming moments of recent memory (followed up by learning what Ted Faro did to Apollo and the other Alphas...).

I actually kind of see it a different way. The Horizon games are, imo, unfairly compared to the likes of then new Zeldas, Skyrim, and Elden Ring because of its open-world design, yet I would argue that they have very different intentions. The other open-world games are about ‘go off and do your own thing and there may…

Agreed. There are moments in Forbidden West that are absolutely wonderful (Sea of Sands being a pretty compelling standout), but they’re bogged down by so many moments that are simply... fine. For every Kotallo there is an unfortunate Beta.

I liked the combat a lot more than I liked other OW games (in particular - that you could brute-force your way through some fights or you could do them right and the game just let you do whichever you had the patience for).

But I agree that the story was amazing. I loved finding out slowly what had happened to the…

For me it was the story that drove me, and the gameplay/open world took a back seat. For some reason, the combat just does not click with me and I’ve played through both games and still just can’t “get it.” The stealth doesn’t feel good and the action combat is too frenetic for me to really click with trying to pick…

Ah yes, the incorrect use of “Luddite” as a pejorative.

Sure, every community has vocal assholes, but it seems like “gamers” have taken that reality as a challenge and then went the wrong way with it. “Every community has assholes? Well then we’ll win by having the most, biggest, worst assholes! Assholes that shit on everything! We’ll win at assholes!”

Terminus. That was when the series jumped the shark for me. It felt like it became less about telling a story and more “how can we really hurt these characters?”

Which is like...not fun after awhile. I realized I wasn’t enjoying the show and I didn’t enjoy seeing people basically tortured endlessly, both physically…