Poll of the Day > Super Geek Odyssey

(+) Yeah! (+)

You know, I can't bring myself to bother watching wrestling these days but I still wind up listening to a lot of wrestling content. In addition to the usual Jim Cornette stuff, wound up catching part of a Cody Rhodes interview via clips and now I'm going to go watch the whole thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGD9bLmN7Bs

Wasn't ever really a huge fan of Cody other than some of his Stardust work, but all the interviews I'll listened to since he's left the company have made me into somewhat of a fan.

The Wave Master posted...

I didn't even realize that a lot of people still played or cared about Pokemon Go. At least I didn't until the giant Pokemon Go meet up in Chicago that went horribly wrong.

I'm not sure what people were thinking. Of course it would be a disaster

A small area, thousands of phones, limited bandwidth, limited facilities, equals a recipe for disaster to me.

Yeah, seemed kinda obvious.
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Zeus posted...

You know, I can't bring myself to bother watching wrestling these days but I still wind up listening to a lot of wrestling content.

I listen to Cornette, WrestleTalk, and WhatCulture wrestling on a regular basis, but it's been like 16 years since I've actually watched a single episode of Raw or Smackdown. And I'll occasionally catch a video here and then of Alverez or Meltzer ranting about how terrible the WWE is these days.

I DO watch most of the pay-per-views (though I didn't for like a 10 year stretch), but that mostly because my best friend subscribes to the WWE Network, so it's an excuse to hang out at his house every 2-3 Sunday. It's more just about the opportunity for socializing for us and our significant others than it is for really watching the graps in any serious way.

But yeah, the Internet has really helped rekindle my interest in wrestling, when I'd lost interest almost completely years ago.


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Speaking of wrestling.

Ric Flair is on his deathbed. There is no way to sugar coat this. The doctors put him In a medically induced coma, and he is out of heart surgery, but his condition is still serious.

Hopefully he can recover, but it isn't likely. He has lived a fun but tough life. Women, drugs, alcohol, and a survived plane crash. The man lived his wrestling character in real life.
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tbh, given everything he's been through, I'm a little surprised he lived as long as he has.... He's only 68 which is just a few years past a normal person's retirement, but in wrestler years he's probably like 95.
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Yeah, just heard about that a few hours ago.

It's sad, though unfortunately inevitable for all of us eventually. And considering his lifestyle up to this point, it's not entirely surprising that he'd go now that he's almost 70.

Though considering how his life started, it's kind of mind-boggling that he managed to accomplish all that he did in the first place:

http://www.cracked.com/article_22634_5-famous-people-with-mind-blowing-connections-to-evil-crimes.html (entry #3)


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In my circle of close friends we actually do the Four Horsemen pose for wedding pictures. Granted there are 5 of us, but the 4 horsemen always fluffed their numbers anyway. (I'm looking at you J.J. Dillon.)

Damn I'm old to remember J.J. Dillon.

Either way those were good memories with my grandma watching old Mid South Wrestling on Saturday nights.

Hopefully Naitch pulls through.
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I just want to say that I'm a minority. (I'm black.) My wife is white. (I married a red head.)

It has nothing to do with games or being a geek. We shall always keep it civil in here, and I would like to thank you all for doing that. That's all.

Also, even if Ric Flair lived what kind of remaining life is he going to have? He already has multiple organ failure, heart, liver, colon, and at this point you have to question quality of life versus keeping him alive.
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The Wave Master posted...

I just want to say that I'm a minority. (I'm black.) My wife is white. (I married a red head.)

It has nothing to do with games or being a geek. We shall always keep it civil in here, and I would like to thank you all for doing that. That's all.

Did I miss a post somewhere? I'm a little confused by the relevance.
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Oh, just wanted to thank everyone in here for having an open kind and heart. You didn't miss anything st all.

Man, 3,000 people lined up in Japan for 105 Nintendo Switch consoles.

The problem continues.
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The Wave Master posted...

Oh, just wanted to thank everyone in here for having an open kind and heart.

To be fair, I'm actually incredibly closed-minded and have a dark withered lump of beef jerky where my heart should be.

But geeks is my peeps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdjFk-xhmI&t=4m38s










Also, I know it seems like SoBe is pretty much gone by this point, but on the off-chance he's still around and can see this, I'm just throwing this out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Loathing


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The Wave Master posted...

Oh, just wanted to thank everyone in here for having an open kind and heart. You didn't miss anything st all.

Somehow, despite everything else, we're still just here arguing about Final Fantasy versions and Alignment. Never mind anything else, I just need to remind PO that rules that don't help anything shouldn't exist.
It's just some sort of weird constant.

Think SoBe was having marital issues; hope he's ironed those out, or is at least managing well.

Anyway, hey, someone mentioned Final Fantasy! I think, in honor of Halloween this year, I'm gonna make a conscious effort to beat some of the RPGs I've never beaten because of how much I disliked playing them, including Final Fantasy II and Chrono Cross. Going in with an open mind should, at the very least, make Chrono Cross somewhat bearable. I still have rock-bottom hopes and little expectation that I'll play more than two hours of FFII.

Raganork posted...

I think, in honor of Halloween this year, I'm gonna make a conscious effort to beat some of the RPGs I've never beaten because of how much I disliked playing them, including Final Fantasy II and Chrono Cross.

i may have to join you in that and go with Chrono Trigger and Xenogears...
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shadowsword87 posted...

Never mind anything else, I just need to remind PO that rules that don't help anything shouldn't exist.

I agree! That's why freeform RPG is the best RPG.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtdjFk-xhmI&t=4m38s

I never liked the Shield and wasn't a fan of Rollins until his singles career (although Ambrose on the mic has always been great). Granted, from what I understand of how the two have been used lately, this might be the best move.

shadowsword87 posted...

Somehow, despite everything else, we're still just here arguing about Final Fantasy versions and Alignment.

idk, I like alignment systems even if they're seldom used well and act as content-gates.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I agree! That's why freeform RPG is the best RPG.

Well, even calvinball has rules.

Zeus posted...

I never liked the Shield and wasn't a fan of Rollins until his singles career (although Ambrose on the mic has always been great). Granted, from what I understand of how the two have been used lately, this might be the best move.

I have very little interest in the Shield either, but I needed a fistbump image and it seemed to be topically appropriate.

But on a semi-related note, I have an irrational distaste for Ambrose mainly because he's spent the last few years stealing every facet of "my" gimmick.

Back in the 90s I basically came up with my self-insert create-a-wrestler character for all the WWF/WWE video games and called him "The Psycho" - he was more or less an odd hybrid of Mankind plus Tommy Dreamer with a touch of Raven. He even had his own real-life "merch" (when the Gus Van Sant Psycho remake with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche came out in 1998, they sold t-shirts for the movie in Suncoast, which were basically all black with PSYCHO written on it in the "Crackhouse" font, and I bought a couple so I could "cosplay" as my character. I have a couple pics of me wearing it somewhere, and they used to be the central image on my old home page forever and a day ago).

But his character was basically that he was kind of insane, and got off on physical pain, so he'd constantly have hardcore matches which he'd deliberately lose, or smash his head into walls, and on at least one occasion he jumped off a roof for absolutely no reason (my one friend and I actually used to "script" weekly shows for our own fed for a while, so we just kept coming up with more and more ridiculous stuff for him to do). But he also had a faction called "The Asylum" because that's the totally obvious way to go with that sort of thing.

So when Ambrose started calling himself the Lunatic Fringe (which is grammatically incorrect, damn it), I was like "He's infringing on my gimmick!". And then when he did the Ambrose Asylum I was all like "I'm gonna sue!" He basically IS my character, if you shed some of the more Stone Cold-ish elements of his persona and just made him more of a masochist.

Ironically, my wrestler's tag-team partner (ie, the main CAW of my friend) could probably be described as a cross between Ric Flair (the stylin' and profilin') and Seth Rollins (the "Architect" concept, wherein the person is supposed to be a schemer and a tactician), so there's even more to compare there. Though in his case the Flair influence was probably way, way stronger (so much so that when that friend went to Disney World for the first time a few years ago, he deliberately took his wife on Space Mountain, solely so he could then shout about taking his old lady for a ride on Space Mountain, wooooo!).



I don't actually hate Ambrose for all of that - I generally treat it as more of a joke than anything. But it amuses me of just how much like my character he wound up being in spite of having absolutely no real means of ever knowing my character ever existed in the first place.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Well, even calvinball has rules.

Calvinball is also a fictional concept which doesn't actually exist as a real game, and its "rules" aren't real as much as a meta-fictional scenario in which there are no rules.

It falls more into the realm of thought experiment or fictional meta-game (like Mornington Crescent), wherein it's really just an exercise in improv pretending to be a real game.



On a semi-related note, I know there's a card game like that that people used to occasionally play at conventions, where it literally consists of the "players" putting down normal playing cards or cards from some abstract deck or another, and pretending that there are actually rules, pantomiming actions and responses that literally don't exist because there are no actual rules, no real game mechanics, and no standard meaning or value for any card. The goal being to basically come up with creative descriptions of card effects, combinations, and counters to amuse the people you're playing with, with the true meta goal being to see if you can get anyone else nearby to come over and ask you what game you're playing and what the rules are (and then how long you can bullshit them talking about nonexistent rules).

I heard about it a few years ago (maybe 10? maybe less or more - I'm old and the passage of time blurs now), but I can't remember what the name of it was.

The only names coming to mind are Mao and Nomic, but I know it isn't one of those because those actually DO have rules.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I have very little interest in the Shield either, but I needed a fistbump image and it seemed to be topically appropriate.

I usually stick with variants of the Wolverine Spidey fistbump, which I might have first seen in one of these topics.


ParanoidObsessive posted...

So when Ambrose started calling himself the Lunatic Fringe (which is grammatically incorrect, damn it),

That also seriously annoyed me for the same reason. Either they assume wrestling fans are so stupid as to not recognize the meaning of certain words or the writing team is comprised of complete idiots. Given that the writers initially named Paige-Becky-Charlotte's group the Submission Sorority (something which would have taken two seconds of Googling to reveal as an awful idea, even if Paige hadn't tried bringing it up), it's probably more the latter.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't actually hate Ambrose for all of that - I generally treat it as more of a joke than anything. But it amuses me of just how much like my character he wound up being in spite of having absolutely no real means of ever knowing my character ever existed in the first place.

It's kind of a common idea. I'm sure plenty of people have independently had it, especially with things like ECW to inspire it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

On a semi-related note, I know there's a card game like that that people used to occasionally play at conventions, where it literally consists of the "players" putting down normal playing cards or cards from some abstract deck or another, and pretending that there are actually rules, pantomiming actions and responses that literally don't exist because there are no actual rules, no real game mechanics, and no standard meaning or value for any card. The goal being to basically come up with creative descriptions of card effects, combinations, and counters to amuse the people you're playing with, with the true meta goal being to see if you can get anyone else nearby to come over and ask you what game you're playing and what the rules are (and then how long you can bullshit them talking about nonexistent rules).

I heard about it a few years ago (maybe 10? maybe less or more - I'm old and the passage of time blurs now), but I can't remember what the name of it was.

That sounds like the early YGO manga =p
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Having listened to a slam poem by Savannah Brown (who is apparently one of the biggest and best names in that genre?), I resent the comparison of anything in Hamilton to something that god-awful. The only song that even slightly resembles that style is the semi-coherent soliloquy in "The World Was Wide Enough" meant to resemble Hamilton's jumbled train of thought in the last moments of his life.
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I would like to point out that Chrono Cross isn't that bad of a game. The problem is that it's instantly compared to Chrono Trigger and that isn't fair. Give Cross a chance, it's a solid game.

Never finished Xenogears, but I love the game. I do actually have a very good reason for not finishing the Xenogears.

I was in college at the time, and Oreon got sick. It was when he lost his testicle. So I spent a lot of time either doing my college work or going to the hospital. Eventually it fell by the way side especially with the mess that was disc 2.

Therefore, Xenogears is a game I need to revisit as well. Same thing with Legend if Dragoon.

"Gust of Wind Dance."
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Oh, when I said Chrono Trigger, I meant Trigger. I always make the mistake of putting the game down at around the same point every time for one reason or another and end up unable to figure out when/where I'm supposed to go next because NPCs in that game all suck.

As to Xenogears, I. Can't. Take. The. Slow. Dialog. That. Can't. Be. Sped. Up. It. Makes. Every. Character. In. The. Game. Sound. Like. Stevie. From. Malcolm. In. The. Middle. And. To. Make. Matters. Worse. Every. Single. Person. In. That. Game. Wants. To. Tell. You. Their. Entire. Life. Story. God. Help. You. If. You. Press. X. One. Too. Many. Times. Or. You'll. Have. To. Hear. That. Story. All. Over. Again...seriously for all the other issues that game has this is the one that actually makes me want to punch the people that made it right in their stupid fucking faces.
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I played Chrono Cross before Trigger, so there's no nostalgia or bias when I say Cross was a painfully dull experience.

Trigger's no masterpiece; I've tried on 3-4 separate occasions to beat it, and still never have, but I still think it's a well-crafted, fun game.

Xenogears is fun, but it has massive pacing issues. Conversations drone on for inordinate amounts of time, to the point where I couldn't really tell you what the game is about despite reading endless reams of dialogue for 70% of the playthrough. Really, the only times I had fun were when I was exploring dungeons with the hand-to-hand combat; not the gear combat. Sadly, that makes up probably 10% of the entire game.

Zeus posted...

That sounds like the early YGO manga =p

When my nephew was old enough to watch and enjoy the cartoon but not quite old enough to read the actual cards and play the game by the real rules, we basically just bought him the cards and he ran around "playing" the cards and making stuff up just based on the pictures. A lot of which was mostly just paraphrasing from the cartoon.

(My niece did the same thing more or less years later, when she would try to play Uno and basically just invented all her own rules as she went. Though in her case, every rule more or less existed solely so she could say that she "won".)

I actually bought him the duel discs to play with, but he never really visited enough to get much use out of them before he kind of "aged out" of caring about them. I still have them, though I'm mildly annoyed that the card sizes for Yu-gi-oh cards are smaller than standard, because otherwise I would absolutely use those duel discs to play Magic with my friends when we occasionally play.


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When I was a kid I collected Magic cards based on how cool the art on them was, I didn't actually play the game because I was dumb.
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Raganork posted...

I played Chrono Cross before Trigger, so there's no nostalgia or bias when I say Cross was a painfully dull experience.

I played Cross when I was around 23 and Trigger when I was 24 or so. And I've always felt like playing Trigger years after it was released - on the PS1 instead of the SNES, and after other, better RPGs had already come out - has played a very large role in why I've spent most of my time since not giving a single shit about it, and sort of shaking my head at the insane people who act like it was one of the greatest RPGs ever.

I wouldn't say Chrono Cross was a great RPG in and of itself (even at the time, I'd probably give the nod to Final Fantasy and Suikoden instead - and that's not even getting into non-JRPGs like Baldur's Gate or Deus Ex), but it felt light-years ahead of Chrono Trigger. For one thing, I found Cross' metaphysics to be far more interesting and entertaining than Trigger's (and the whole "change the past, change the future" mechanic had certainly appeared in other games by then). For another, the characters in Chrono Trigger had the distasteful taint of Toriyama on them (who we've discussed in regards to Dragon Warrior/Quest), and most of their personalities were bland at best and annoying at worst. So I never had the "Man Frog is so coolzors!" or "WOMG Magus is badass awesomesauce!" attitude so many 90s kids seemed to have about it.

With Chrono Cross, the "recruit 40+ allies, half of which are mostly nameless and lacking in personality" gimmick reminded me of how Suikoden handled the 108 Stars, so it was already a concept I had zero problems with (and honestly, I'd almost rather have a dozen generic allies than one who annoys the piss out of me). And while the art style was still a bit "cutesy", I vastly preferred Yuki's designs over Toriyama's (and Cross was designed for the PS1 while Trigger was designed for the SNES and only ported to the PS1), so Cross just looks better than Trigger to me in pretty much every possible way.

I also wasn't coming into the game as a Chrono Trigger fan who was pissed about "my" characters getting unceremoniously killed off or denied their own sequel, which I'm still absolutely convinced is at least a large part of why Cross gets most of its hate.

When it comes to gameplay I'm less likely to comment (considering my usual standard philosophy of narrative, character, and setting being far more important than mechanics for my personal enjoyment of any game), but at the time I don't remember considering either system to be appreciably better or worse than the other. They were both relatively serviceable, and honestly, if I had to give the nod to either on mechanics alone I'd probably still go with Cross if only because the elemental system seemed to force a slightly more tactical style of play, as you had to plan your moves in advance for maximum effect combos.

And Cross wins hands down when it comes to music, because Time's Scar alone is better than any song in the entirety of CT (including the oft-cited Frog's Theme, which I've always found meh at best).

Cross definitely bogged down at times, and I could easily accept the argument that it could be dull at times (though I'd probably disagree if you said the entire game was - I enjoyed the overall experience), but I'd also apply those same criticisms to Trigger, and I'd absolutely say that almost any problem I had with Cross was both present and worse in Trigger.


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Raganork posted...

Xenogears is fun, but it has massive pacing issues. Conversations drone on for inordinate amounts of time, to the point where I couldn't really tell you what the game is about despite reading endless reams of dialogue for 70% of the playthrough.

I feel like the real problem there is that the writers thought they had deeper ideas than they actually did (though that might also be at least partly a cultural/translation/localization issue to some degree). So it basically takes them a long time to set up all of the backstory, plot elements, and details necessary for later pay-off... but then you get to Disc 2 and you're rushed through the entire rest of the game and the climax of the narrative on rails because they ran out of time or budget, and getting the game finished and released mattered more to them than whether or not it was entirely coherent (especially since they were already planning a six game epic franchise in their heads even before the first game came out).

Xenogears feels like a majorly epic game that could have been awesome if they'd had double the budget and a few more years to finish (and maybe a project head with a firmer grasp of their creative vision who could rein people in if they started to get a bit too abstract with their ideas).

Sadly, I think most of the problems that plagued Xenogears only became worse over time, so by the time they managed to get everything in place to work on Xenosaga, it wound up becoming a massive clusterfuck of ideas and characters I couldn't even remotely give a fuck about.

Which is a shame, because you watch this, and it seems like it has so much promise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RLf0O8eofU


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I enjoyed Trigger every time I've played it, but never felt interested in trying Cross. However, as far as SNES RPGs go, I'd say that I was more interested in Secret of Mana (which I've never beaten) although, as I've repeatedly stated in the past, my favorite SNES RPG will always be Lufia 2 (which I can't recall beating, since I only ever had it as a rental).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I actually bought him the duel discs to play with, but he never really visited enough to get much use out of them before he kind of "aged out" of caring about them. I still have them, though I'm mildly annoyed that the card sizes for Yu-gi-oh cards are smaller than standard, because otherwise I would absolutely use those duel discs to play Magic with my friends when we occasionally play.

Can't imagine that duel disks would make for convenient play for other CCGs anyway. Honestly, I'd be surprised if they worked all that well for YGO.
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Zeus posted...

However, as far as SNES RPGs go, I'd say that I was more interested in Secret of Mana (which I've never beaten)

I always confuse it with Illusion of Gaia in my head. For some reason those two games blur together into an indistinguishable mess.



Zeus posted...

Can't imagine that duel disks would make for convenient play for other CCGs anyway. Honestly, I'd be surprised if they worked all that well for YGO.

Convenient? FUCK no. But then again, you're not using them for convenience.

That being said, they are poorly designed so if you actually DO use them with real cards, the cards tend to fall out, so it's kind of useless anyway. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT.


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It's actually been a while since I last played Cross, so I can't comment on what exactly all the issues were that I had with it, which is why I want to replay it. All I can remember was that I took issue with a number of gameplay decisions, but the specifics escape me at the moment.

I also remember a lot of the characters being differentiated by strange accents, which doesn't come across too well in a game with no spoken dialogue, largely because reading accents that are spelled-out phonetically is frustrating regardless of medium. This is a game that would have benefitted immensely from voice acting.

This also sort of stems from the problem I have with most games that carry large casts: it's too difficult to develop that many characters and assign them importance to the plot without them feeling underdeveloped or forced.

Cross has, what, 50-some characters, of which maybe 5 have any sort of meaningful impact to the story. That's fine-ish because most characters are optional, but even then, they largely feel present simply because woo, the more the merrier. Like the luchador, which is anachronistic considering there's no Mexico in the game. Why is he here? Who cares, you've got a luchador party member now!

I dunno. It just feels like, with Suikoden, yeah there were more characters, but they were developed better. For one, you're the resistance trying to scrounge together an army, so you'll take what help you can get. Recruiting these guys felt more relevant to the goals the main characters were trying to accomplish. Also, some of the characters weren't combatants. You'd recruit a chef to cook meals for your army, or an inventor to install an elevator in your castle. These little characters all contributed to the army's success in some way.

With Chrono Cross, what the fuck did the skeleton jester thing do? I'd much rather they'd have spent their efforts crafting a small party of tightly-written characters that I cared about, rather than 50 that I can scarcely remember.

Raganork posted...

Like the luchador, which is anachronistic considering there's no Mexico in the game. Why is he here? Who cares, you've got a luchador party member now!

Raganork posted...

With Chrono Cross, what the fuck did the skeleton jester thing do?

Seeing these two thoughts together makes me think Matador from SMT might be some kind of homage to Chrono Cross because he doesn't make a lot of sense in relation to 99% of the demons in the series aside from perhaps being a spooky spooky skeleton or something...
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Raganork posted...

I also remember a lot of the characters being differentiated by strange accents, which doesn't come across too well in a game with no spoken dialogue, largely because reading accents that are spelled-out phonetically is frustrating regardless of medium.

If I remember correctly, that was mostly a translation problem. Because different characters had different accents as a specific Japanese-centric trope used to define character personalities, but which doesn't necessarily translate well into English (in the same way that the Japanese use blood type to help define a character's personality while it means absolutely nothing to Western audiences - see also, "Why do all these games always list characters' blood types?").

It's sort of related to this concept:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheIdiotFromOsaka
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KansaiRegionalAccent

With Chrono Cross, if I remember correctly, the idea was that, because they DIDN'T have a ton of time to define who all those characters were (remember, back then you're still dealing with computer memory restrictions to some degree, and the age of the 80+ hour narrative-heavy RPG was still yet to come), giving some of them distinctive accents was a short-cut to establish who they were to the Japanese audience. "Oh, I get it - that guy is the [insert regional stereotype here]".

It's sort of like if you made a Western game, and instead of giving all of your characters elaborate personalities of their own, you just based some of the less important characters on stereotypes and had talk/dress like Southern cowboys or Californian surfers (oh wait, no, that's Final Fantasy VIII).

To some extent, it's also like reading X-Men in the 80s where Rogue is constantly saying "Ah" instead of "I" and ending sentences with "sugah" to really, really remind you that she's Southern.

I never found it too jarring (especially because the dialogue quirks were usually only on the characters who barely speak all that much), and because I'd seen it used in other contexts before. And apparently it doesn't come across as awkward in the original Japanese as it does in English, which makes it hard to blame the game itself, in the same way that it's hard to shit on the developers of FFIV for "You spoony bard!" or similar awkwardly translated lines.

I agree that it probably would have worked better with spoken dialogue, but that was about one console generation too early for it. And honestly, spoken dialogue isn't ALWAYS better than text regardless (see also, Final Fantasy X).


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Raganork posted...

Cross has, what, 50-some characters, of which maybe 5 have any sort of meaningful impact to the story. That's fine-ish because most characters are optional, but even then, they largely feel present simply because woo, the more the merrier.

I dunno. It just feels like, with Suikoden, yeah there were more characters, but they were developed better.

I feel like you're not remembering Suikoden as well as you think you are.

I absolutely love the series (obviously! http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/929668-suikoden-v/reviews/99721 ), but even I'll admit that it has its fair share of palette-swapped filler characters, pointless unfunny joke characters, and other useless cruft thrown in for a one-note use or utility who you talk to once and then never think about again. A LOT of the 108 characters exist solely to pad the number up to 108 for symbolic purposes (Suikoden (III might be the only game that bypasses that for the most part, but mainly by having separate storylines).

Cross probably has a slightly lower signal-to-noise ratio than the average Suikoden game (though nowhere near as bad as you're implying), but it also has about half as many characters join (and you can't recruit all of them in a single playthrough, so you don't get the full 45 or so in one playthrough anyway). Maybe about half of them have significant personalities, backstories, and purpose in the plot (even if you don't actually like those personalities or appreciate that narrative).

Cross' main problem might be that it evolved out of Radical Dreamers, which means sometimes you can see the narrative seams, and plot holes or implications are created which are never really explored because they related to earlier versions of the story. Like Gil supposedly secretly being Magus in disguise before they dropped that plot, but with hints in-game apparently still hinting at it.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Convenient? FUCK no. But then again, you're not using them for convenience.

That being said, they are poorly designed so if you actually DO use them with real cards, the cards tend to fall out, so it's kind of useless anyway. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

tbh, the real way to go would be to somehow set up a projector or something and have it hooked into a laptop. Hell, maybe get a few projectors going.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(in the same way that the Japanese use blood type to help define a character's personality while it means absolutely nothing to Western audiences - see also, "Why do all these games always list characters' blood types?").

Oh yeah, I recall that being a big thing. Makes me kinda wonder if the horoscope systems in some jrpgs were actually blood type systems in the original japanese (granted, that might not work out in FFT)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

To some extent, it's also like reading X-Men in the 80s where Rogue is constantly saying "Ah" instead of "I" and ending sentences with "sugah" to really, really remind you that she's Southern.

Oh, I didn't realize that "Ah" was supposed to replace "I". That explains so much. The rest I had no issue with.
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Zeus posted...

Oh yeah, I recall that being a big thing. Makes me kinda wonder if the horoscope systems in some jrpgs were actually blood type systems in the original japanese (granted, that might not work out in FFT)

Probably not - that's probably more just a case of the Japanese loving the idea of culturally appropriating ideas from other people's mythology and religion to serve as the basis for their own stories, in spite of them clearly not understanding (or even giving the remotest of shits about the accuracy of) those cultures in their original context.

Then again, it's hard to fault them for that, considering the West has been doing the same thing to various Asian or native cultures over the years (and other marginalized cultures - is how we got Marvel's version of Thor and movies like Clash of the Titans).

But yeah, it's why there's so much Judaism/Christianity/Kabbalah references in the Xenogears/Xenosaga games, in spite of the fact that literally none of it makes sense in the context they use it in. Or why Norse myth crops up in a lot of games (especially Square games). Or why you'll occasionally see nuns show up who don't even remotely act like real nuns (at the very least, they'll be acting like Shinto shrine maidens, at worst, they'll probably be bad-ass demon hunters of some kind).

Of course, they're also willing to cannibalize their own culture and other Asian cultures for ideas, which is why the Dynasty Warriors and Kessen games bare only the vaguest resemblance to actual Three Kingdoms or Sengoku-era Japan (not to mention things like Ikki Tousen).

Personally, I tend to like that mentality, and I think it makes for more creativity in art and entertainment. It's part of why I kind of loathe the term "cultural appropriation", especially in the sense that most online assholes tend to use it.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Then again, it's hard to fault them for that, considering the West has been doing the same thing to various Asian or native cultures over the years (and other marginalized cultures - is how we got Marvel's version of Thor and movies like Clash of the Titans).

Are ancient Scandinavians and Greeks really "marginalized"?
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Metalsonic66 posted...

Are ancient Scandinavians and Greeks really "marginalized"?

Marginalized in the sense that people who believe in Norse mythological beliefs or Greek gods aren't really "mainstream" in modern culture, even if their ethnic groups (Scandinavians and Greeks) are still technically part of Western culture as a whole.


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...Does ANYONE in modern times still believe in Norse or Greek mythology, like, seriously?
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I managed to stay dark on all these GoT spoilers.
All I know is tonight's episode is the longest.
I'm pretty excited.

I think it's going to be the equivalent of "episode 9", since that was always the episode when shit went down in previous seasons.

I haven't watched the leaked episode, but a bunch of jerks spoiled some things for me on Facebook (it wasn't even on a GoT post!)
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Metalsonic66 posted...

...Does ANYONE in modern times still believe in Norse or Greek mythology, like, seriously?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movement)

Arguable whether or not you accept them as true believers or as hipsters who just latched on to dead religions or made up their own pastiche versions to be trendy/rebellious/anti-Christian, but it's been a thing for a while now.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Metalsonic66 posted...

...Does ANYONE in modern times still believe in Norse or Greek mythology, like, seriously?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathenry_(new_religious_movement)

Arguable whether or not you accept them as true believers or as hipsters who just latched on to dead religions or made up their own pastiche versions to be trendy/rebellious/anti-Christian, but it's been a thing for a while now.

As a modern day "Neo-Pagan" I can confirm that there is quite the crowd of believers. Some of us, too, believe that the gods were once mortal who were raised to godhood for their deeds, so the rites become less of worship as a way to request blessings and more like paying respects for what's been given. Again, that's some of us.
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Entity13 posted...

As a modern day "Neo-Pagan" I can confirm that there is quite the crowd of believers.

I ALMOST said something like ~waiting for Entity to come comment~ in my post, but I refrained.

:-P

I still remember forever and a day ago when we had a few posts back and forth about Thelema. And how you used to pair off against Ail when she went a bit too deep down her Wiccan road.


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You're remembering wrong. I tried back then to balance defending her beliefs while also trying to get her to simmer down with how much she was sharing with Wydrah and Co. who clearly weren't so accepting of such beliefs. My attempts to do so came across as awkward, stupid, crazy, and so forth.
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)o( pew pew )o(
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Arguable whether or not you accept them as true believers or as hipsters who just latched on to dead religions or made up their own pastiche versions to be trendy/rebellious/anti-Christian, but it's been a thing for a while now.

lol. Okay.
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Entity13 posted...

You're remembering wrong. I tried back then to balance defending her beliefs while also trying to get her to simmer down with how much she was sharing with Wydrah and Co. who clearly weren't so accepting of such beliefs. My attempts to do so came across as awkward, stupid, crazy, and so forth.

That might have been earlier on (because I wasn't here for the earliest salvos in the Ail/Wydrah UST War). By the end I remember you sort of calling her out from time to time because you were implying that she wasn't necessarily embodying the beliefs she claimed to have, and you emphasized at least a few times that your beliefs weren't the same as hers.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

culturally appropriating

Somehow "inspiring" sounds a lot less alarmist or SJW. The entire term cultural appropriation is silly.

Metalsonic66 posted...

...Does ANYONE in modern times still believe in Norse or Greek mythology, like, seriously?

=(

Metalsonic66 posted...

I think it's going to be the equivalent of "episode 9", since that was always the episode when shit went down in previous seasons.

I haven't watched the leaked episode, but a bunch of jerks spoiled some things for me on Facebook (it wasn't even on a GoT post!)

tbh, one of the major spoilers came ages ago although I had already suspected that at least one dragon would be killed by the walkers and reanimated
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Zeus posted...

Somehow "inspiring" sounds a lot less alarmist or SJW. The entire term cultural appropriation is silly.

The thing is, the phrase itself is perfectly fine and functionally appropriate. The real problem comes from the context it's generally used it, and by the repugnant sort of people who use it.

I've been annoyed for a while now that words like "toxic" and "problematic" have basically become unusable because of over-misuse to the point of ruining their connotation.



Zeus posted...

I had already suspected that at least one dragon would be killed by the walkers and reanimated

People have been calling for the Night King to have some kind of zombie ice dragon for multiple seasons now, so it's not all that large a leap.


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Zeus posted...

tbh, one of the major spoilers came ages ago although I had already suspected that at least one dragon would be killed by the walkers and reanimated

I figured that at least one of them would die, but I didn't expect it to happen the way that it did.

TBH in general, I don't care that much about spoilers. I try to avoid them if I can, but the journey is more important to me. However, when I see someone who is obviously trying to ruin things for other people, I can't help but think they're an asshole.
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