The spongebob game wasnt so bad. It had like a login bonus but it didnt seem to be too bad But once we got into the lego star wars game the f2p bullshit started. And oh god. This game clearly designed for kids had all the f2p bullshit. Login bonuses. Gridnyness. Multiple in game currencies. The daily/weekly ect missions. The unlockables
But god the racing game was even worse. 100000 things to unlock and basically nothing is by default basically. Sooooooooooo absurdly grindy. And most harrowing of all… i swear to god… 5 seperate in game currencies.
I want to reach out and scream to him “games werent always like this maaaaan”
Horizon Zero Dawn spoilers.
Yeah Faro is basically Elon Musk but death robots instead of Tesla cars. So him being the main villain will ruffle techno optimist and gamer feathers. Then there’s the juxtaposition between what Ted Faro and Elisabet Sobeck represent. Faro represents the masculinity of the old ones, to go forward without restrictions, without care, not to show restraint, even with death robots. While Sobeck represents femininity in a sense, caring about earth, nature, eventually creating basically mother earth as an AI in GAIA to restart life on Earth after the apocalypse.
Then there’s the in game villan Helis, who leads an ultra masculine religious cult and is the personification of them himself, with his appearance and beliefs. A religious cult that was an offshoot of carja patriarchical society. Meanwhile Aloy comes from a matriarchical society in the nora, and is a genetic clone of Dr Sobeck, created by the mother earth AI GAIA to restore the world. So the juxtaposition is obvious.
That’s not to say the games themes are as simple as masculinity = bad and femininity = good, the matriarchical nora society has plenty of flaws and does a lot wrong, but the game has an interesting way to explore both masculinity and femininity. Which all goes back to the flaws of the old ones and how the robots raising the first generation of humans were programmed, with the mother persona being the nurturer and the farther persona the disciplinarian, and how that understanding has influenced the current socio politics of the game world and the tribes that exist in it.
Also I haven’t played the second game yet please no spoilers lol
spoiler
Action for action’s sake and murderous contempt for the feminine, just like the Italian futurists that preceded contemporary fascism, then.
The writing sounds like it both went over the heads of most blue curtain bazingas and still had enough flavor tones to upset them anyway.
The writing went over most peoples heads I think. It even went over my head during the mid game, I thought it was really boring and didn’t play it for years. Then I got back into it and suddenly it all made sense and became a lot more interesting after I got through the mid game.
spoiler
Also that happens in the game again when Helis orders the genocide of the matriarchical Nora tribe before capturing Aloy, even after capturing Aloy he still wants to carry out the violence and conveniently can’t stop it with the crashing of the focus network
I think I had a similar issue in my own novel trilogy; the feedback I got from test readers ran a baffling range from “What is Megan’s special power? I can’t tell” (she didn’t have one, unless you count running and climbing a fence fast enough to get the job first as a superpower) to “this story is too dark for me (came from an in-law that was particularly enthusiastic about fucking Gambo Thrones which still baffles me)” to “this is a terrible retelling of the Ramayana” from someone that missed the fact that I didn’t like the Ramayana either and part of the latter end of the first book was a direct criticism of that story’s misogyny and Great Man Theory ideology. I liked the Mahabharata a lot more and deliberately used names/themes from it throughout the rest of the trilogy, if that matters.
Yeah the pacing of Act 2 in a three act story is probably one of the most difficult things to do as a writer or creative. I certainly couldn’t do it. Though sometimes the audience just has to continue on with the story and it will all make sense. But how to get them to do that is very challenging.
I also updated my previous comment after noticing an interesting thing in Horizon to do with what you mentioned about Italian futurists prediction of fascism
Second/middle acts tend to be a hard sell in most stories, I noticed, with a few exceptions where for some reason the second/middle act is considered the high point, like in the first three Star Wars movies for most people.
In my own work, I think my first book was, unfortunately, growing pains and that I actually am much more proud of how my own “Act 2” turned out by comparison.
Since we’re on the subject of Halo/Marathon, I think I hated Halo’s lack of satisfactory story resolution and the absence of an actual meaningful conclusion enough that I went out of my way to wrap up my own story series with great care. Those that got that far and left me feedback seemed to like the ending at least.
For a very funny and jokerfying example of this in gaming, most people consider 2009s “Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2” to be the peak of the original Modern Warfare trilogy. And I have to say that I agree with them lol. As cheesy as those games were, MW2 probably has the best story of the three.
I never played Halo because I didn’t have an Xbox, but yeah I’m glad that the people who finished your book trilogy enjoyed the ending. That’s a good sign.
Thanks.
I admit that sometimes I wish I started with the second book and somehow crammed in some “so you might be wondering how I wound up here piloting a mecha while fighting billionaires” record-scratch exposition after the fact.
I don’t hate my first book as much as I feel that it was on-the-job training to write the next two better.
There are some trilogies where the final part is basically a prequel to the first two parts, it’s a narrative device that can work well in certain contexts. The Ace Combat trilogy on the PlayStation 2 does this, the final game in the trilogy is titled “Zero” and explains how the game world ended up the way it did. Just don’t go around making an entire prequel trilogy to explain the previous trilogy (Star Wars… )
Lol im just going to go on writing my massive scope final fantasy/gambo/shonen hybrid kinetic novel series that closes individual arcs but technically doesnt “end” because thats whats fun for me.
I mean, sure, that can be fun for both you and those ready and prepared for that on an ongoing basis.
My gripe is when there’s promised (or implied) expectation of a story actually wrapping up in a satisfying way, but instead going the JJ Abrams route of bullshit “Mystery Boxes” as seen in “LOST” or maybe just the sheer showrunning incompetence that plagued both Gambo shows so far, or Halo as a series in general that is addicted to go-nowhere cliffhangers and rolling back to prequels and spinoffs over and over again.
I’d also argue that capeshit “origin story” retreads are a similar sort of tedious and boring, especially if they vaguely promise that they’re going somewhere but just revisit the origin over and over again.
LOST is a show that I stick up for even if I hate the Mystery Box shit in totality, since Abrahams only had his hand in the first season anyway. The thing is, most of the mystery stuff is wrapped up, its just not spelled out for the viewer explicitly. You can logic your way to most of the answers.
But also always saw LOST more as a character drama than a mystery show, and thought the ending wrapped up the characters arcs decently with a few exceptions (Sayid’s ending is ass, Shannon being his one true love and not Nadia is completely bonkers, but anyway).
I wont argue post season 4 gambo being a mess obviously. I cant personally report on HOTD. ’
As for origin stories. I will give the MCU credit on one front here, the fact that they decided to forgo that route with MCU Spidey entirely (or was that Sony’s decision who knows). Because they were like “ok everyone knows the Uncle Ben stuff now, fuck that, lets not even show the guy”. And yet some fans were actually mad at that lol. That being said it seems like the new Fantastic Four is an origin story so the lesson didnt stick.
But yeah Im just going to be pretty open with my readers that this story is going to take awhile and be more like One Piece or DC/Marvel comics shared universes and that they should just have fun with the ride. Character arcs will close, individual adventure and political arcs will close, mysteries will be solved, but theres always going to be something else going on. Or at least the scope is going to be so big that if it gets popular enough some other poor sap is going to have to put my notes together to continue/finish it lol. Like it could in theory end I just… havent gotten there yet in my preplanning yaknow? Sort of like how Oda has outright admitted he doesnt know what the One Piece actually is yet. (actually most of the core mystery arcs are in fact preplanned endings?