I feel like you’re not really encapsulating the problem people had with Adam. It was a Metroid game where you weren’t exploring and collecting powerups along the way, instead starting the game (at least narratively) as if you already had them, but you could only use them when your commanding officer allowed you to use…

There’s always just one more thing. It’s not for the villain of the week to know the hour of their reckoning, but just one more thing is inevitable all the same.

For a small print run of a limited edition physical copy? Sure.

It’s not really meant to be a whodunnit sorta detective show. The appeal is seeing how Columbo puts it all together. The whodunnit has its own appeal, of course, but ultimately it’s about execution more than anything. It’s quite easy to do either variety poorly.

I don’t know where you got the idea anyone was demanding they look “progressive.” They chose the setting, it’s controversial by default. You can’t just say, “I’m not being political” when you interviewed actual Cuban guerillas for your game.

They want to argue they’re not saying anything political, but it’s their choice to pick the setting, to deal with the topics they are, and then to do it in a way that scrubs it of any real sincerity so it doesn’t prove “controversial.” It’s a political statement, but it’s also a corporate friendly cowardly one.

The sanitization IS the statement. They want the trappings the settings invoke but want to do it in an inoffensive way that doesn’t seriously deal with the subject matter.

I get that it leads to a lot of high school/college papers where you just dump whatever you feel like it means into an essay.

It’s the inverse of “death of the author,” I guess? “The author’s intent is everything,” maybe. I wonder what that means with authors like JK Rowling who retcon their fiction after release.

I don’t know how you say that seriously. Making it take place in a fictional setting doesn’t disconnect anything you do from real life or making a statement. You can draw conclusions about Tolkien’s worldview from his fictional world building.

How do you write something that doesn’t say anything?

This notion that you can take highly political situations and just opt out of making a political statement means you’re not being political is eyerolling. It doesn’t have to be a grand political statement. No one is arguing they should be putting out some sort of philosophical treatise or anything. But when you make a…

It’s all style and nearly zero substance. The cool sequences don’t really matter because they’re all dreams and worse they’re a way for the protagonist to escape from the horrors perpetrated at the hospital, which range from physical to sexual abuse to ultimately effectively killing her as a person by the end of the…

“It’s all a dream” is a risky trope at the best of times, but here it’s used as an escape mechanism from dealing with the horrors of an abusive mental hospital. So none of it really matters because it isn’t real, and it’s covering for the terrible things the hospital staff inflict on all the women those action scenes…

Same. I love movies, but something about Sucker Punch just had me walking away rather than finish it.

What you think they should do and what they already do are two different things. They still host non-gaming streaming content.

From playing Legendary Edition some, it appears they more or less eliminated weapon sway entirely, which solved early sniper rifle issues (although your weapon overheats after 2-4 shots in quick succession...)

It’s hard to reconcile the tone when you start making lots of Renegade choices together. There are possible narratives you could craft out of some choices, like playing a xenophobic Shepard, or the hard ass loner or whatever. But a few too many choices are just Shepard being a jerk, and that doesn’t really mesh with…

I still think it’s the end that really screwed things up. Yeah, retaking Earth could have been better, but the stuff they dump on you at the minute is just so bad. The macguffin was lazy writing of course, but literally having an avatar for the big bad guy revealed at the last possible moment, find out that a thing…

Renegade choices lack consistency though. Like you can’t always know what kind of asshole response you’re going to commit to when you pick a red option. Paragon options might be “boring” but they at least feel like they’re choices made by the same character. I think DA2 had the right idea splitting personality…