Poll of the Day > Geekmasters: Now in 4D

(+) Yeah! (+)

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Should I bother to watch Agents of SHIELD at this point? It's always been on my list, and I found out Ghost Rider is in it, which is cool.

idk, the show still mostly looks like shit so you might be better off just binging at the end. I caught the Ghost Rider clips on YT and that part of the season doesn't look terrible, though.
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I_Abibde posted...

-- Agelessness / immortality for my superpower, though I imagine my archenemy is going to be a Scotsman brandishing a Japanese sword given to him by an Egyptian ... with a Spanish name ... played by another Scotsman.

"Prepare to be immortal!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccrhTmWurvQ" data-time="

I_Abibde posted...

Immortality breeds boredom, after all, and, if he is a robot version of me, then he is going to ask, anyway.

You're picking 3 powers, so just go with 2 other powers that will keep existence exciting.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Come on, you know why: Film fatigue, which myself and practically everyone else predicated would happen as soon as Disney got the SW rights.

I imagine it's less fatigue than it is a testament to the shaky quality. After all, Disney pops out Marvel movie after Marvel movie at an absurd clip -- and is joined by 20th Century Fox pushing out a few -- and yet it's still breaking records. Clearly you *can* make things work with the right approach.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Same. I have a problem with doing stand-alone movies with already established characters, just so they can fill in their backstories. I don't NEED to know Han's backstory-the fact that he's a ruffian and a smuggler has been, and always will be good enough for the SW movies. I don't need the exact details.

I don't necessarily need backstories, but I like side adventures. How somebody became who they are won't always be interesting, but seeing them in a new adventure is usually fun.
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I_Abibde posted...

-- Agelessness / immortality for my superpower, though I imagine my archenemy is going to be a Scotsman brandishing a Japanese sword given to him by an Egyptian ... with a Spanish name ... played by another Scotsman.

Don't worry, it will eventually be revealed you're all from a planet named Zeist anyway.


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Zeus posted...

"Prepare to be immortal!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccrhTmWurvQ" data-time="

That Deadpool 2 thing with carl was such a fucking tease.
Bring back Aqua Teen!!

On a random note, I have been enjoying these strawberry mochi that are sold at Trader Joe's, with coconut milk ice cream. The plastic tray that they come in, however, might be made from a better quality plastic than the PS4 controllers.
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I've softened on The Last Jedi a lot since Christmas. I think a lot of it had to do with seeing the movie a second and third time, and finding the good in the movie, and focus less on the bad.

I'm still not a fan of the middle of the movie, or Poe being wasted, but I do get the subtle nuisance they tried to establish in the movie. It didn't always work, but I do like what they did with Luke's character.

Holdo and Rose are still huge problems. Mainly because Holdo could have used a droid to accomplish the task at the end of the movie.

The Leia stuff is fine too. It's a mixed bag, but still enough worthwhile that I'm not going to fan boy rage and declare it the worst thing ever.
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Black Panther is incredible. Full disclosure I am African American, and that movie is in my demographic.

However, the love and care taken to make it the movie feel completely modern, African, and traditional at the same time is amazing. Even the soundtrack, which I won for free in a contest, is a nice mix of urban and African flair.

Then we get to Killmonger. Finally a villain who wasn't wrong at all, and called T'Chalia out on the garbage hyprocracy of Wakanda and their isolation from the world. The ending where....

He tells Black Panther to bury his ass in the sand like his ancestors!

Was The most badass moment in any Marvel movie to date.

Yes, the CGI was off in places, but that happens in every Marvel movie.

Overall, it's a great movie and one of the best, if not the best, Marvel movies they have done.
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I_Abibde posted...

I need more Waterdeep like I need a hole in the head.

I kind of agree, but like it or not, Waterdeep is pretty much the de facto main city in Forgotten Realms. It's certainly Ed Greenwood's favorite city (he basically made his first self-insert character a Masked Lord there, and I seem to remember it was initially based on his home city when he created it), and D&D has spent years pushing it as the "core" of any game set in Faerun (except for the times when they're pushing the Dales instead).

Personally, I much prefer Baldur's Gate, but I also admit that's definitely because the two PC games and the console Dark Alliance games were the first time I ever really got into Forgotten Realms, so my brain still sort of sees that as the heart of the setting. In the same way I'm sure there are people out there who prefer Neverwinter for their central setting.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Same. I have a problem with doing stand-alone movies with already established characters, just so they can fill in their backstories. I don't NEED to know Han's backstory-the fact that he's a ruffian and a smuggler has been, and always will be good enough for the SW movies. I don't need the exact details.

It's worse than that. The real problem is that you absolutely KNOW that no backstory movie they do is ever going to live up to what you have in your head, especially when they shoehorn what should be a lifetime worth of experiences into a single film. If in the span of 2 hours you show every single reference or implication from a character's backstory, it completely removes all real emotional value from those scenes. By the end of Solo, you probably like Han less as a character than you did before, or at the very least care about him less than you did.

The prequels were themselves a pretty good example of that - nearly every single explanation they gave to an off-handed reference from the original trilogy winds up being terrible. So much so that, years ago, we came up with a ton of better ideas for what the plots of the prequels should have been. But the best solution would have been to not do the prequels at all.

Besides, random off-handed references or implications that are never explained help make a setting feel more "real", because it makes it feel like a living world that exists outside of the movies, and you're only seeing part of its history. Going back to explain away all of those references makes everything feel more artificial.

That was another of the (many) problems I had with the EU - obsessive nerds basically felt the need to elaborate on literally every single minor reference or character in the films, to the point where someone who appeared on screen for 1/2 second in one movie probably has 30 pages worth of info if you look them up on Wikipedia. At some point I basically reach critical mass and stop giving a shit about everything.


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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I didn't spell it out in my original quote, but yeah, this is exactly what i meant by "inconsistent structure", since there was basically no guidelines that each writer/director has to stick to. The effect being it feels like reading one of those "Let's write a story 3 words at a time" topics when watching TFA and TLJ back-to-back.

It's interesting that when fans started throwing tantrums about how Snoke winds up just being an unexplained punk and Rey's parents are nobodies, Rian Johnson basically came out and openly said those questions had never had answers in the first place (or if they did, no one ever bothered telling him), so it was up to him to explain them.

Which is part of why I suspect the next movie may reveal that there was more to Snoke than we know, or that Snoke was lying about who Rey's parents were, because there's enough flexibility there for them to retcon pretty much anything.

Which is also why Mass Effect springs to mind. It's basically been openly admitted that no one had any idea what the Reapers' motivation was when they did the first game, because they never really thought there were going to be more games. Then, when they DID start thinking about making more games, they found themselves painted into a corner, and had to come up with explanations that wound up being inherently shit because they were shoehorned in rather than being organically part of the plot from the beginning.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

especially now that JJ is doing IX. Is he going to have blue balls for not being able to write the conclusion he was likely imagining (since TLJ likely derailed it), or will be somehow try and make a salad out of the leafy fragments that he has to now work with?

I think you're vastly overestimating him in assuming he had anything resembling a conclusion in mind in the first place, considering we ARE talking about one of the major people behind Lost.

I think he just took a contract job from Disney to make Episode VII, and he helped come up with the new characters and ideas completely extrapolated from the original trilogy (and with a few ideas stolen from the smoking ruin of the EU), and then completely stopped giving a shit. He assumed that either Disney or the directors who followed after him would take the building blocks he left them and build something out of them, and that lack of having any actual plans or endgame in mind is why Last Jedi was what it was.

Now that he's back to do Episode IX, I assume he's desperately scrambling for something resembling an ending, which will probably wind up being derivative again because the lesson Disney probably walked away from this with is that Star Wars fans hate new ideas.


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Zeus posted...

idk, the EU wrote him out of the Sarlaac Pit -- and added to his badass legend -- but that's non-canon now so I'm not quite sure what's going on with him

And aside from the EU as a whole being blissfully non-canon now, that story was stupid anyway.

Basically, it came across like something a 12-year old would write. Though I suppose that's appropriate, because I feel like that was basically the target audience.



Zeus posted...

And he wasn't much of a fuck-up, he very easily tracked and trapped Han Solo's group. And his loss resulted from being struck from behind while in battle.

Yes, the tracking part was the "one clever thing". He was apparently the only one smart enough to realize what Solo was doing hiding and taking off with the trash.

Almost everything else he does from that point on is either stupid or pointless. He hangs around aimlessly waiting for Vader to give him Solo, and is lucky that Vader actually does (especially considering his stance on "altering deals"). Then he apparently goes and hangs out with Jabba for 3 years. Then he gets hit in the back by complete happenstance and falls down a hole.

The prequels only make him worse, by presenting him as a kid and over-inflating the reputation of his "dad" in the same way (which I'm almost tempted to say might have been a deliberate dig by Lucas, but I'm not sure he's that self-aware).



Zeus posted...

Honestly, they could have just chosen to adapt something else. There was tons of existing content they could have adjusted and tweaked. (And I would have loved to have seen Mara Jade on film.)

It's hard to adapt most of the EU when you skip ahead as far as they had to. Mara's pretty much out if you have any intention of having her interact with Luke and don't want to recast actors. The closest you get there is that Kylo seems inspired by Jacen.

Short of skipping ahead hundreds of years after every major character from the original trilogy was dead (and the fan outrage if they'd done that would have shattered mountains), they were sort of painted into a bit of a corner. Especially when they wanted to push the nostalgia route to help counteract the negative response to the prequels.



Zeus posted...

Granted, there were logistical issues *because* it took too damn long for new films to come out so the actors had aged. However, had they continued with E7, 8, and 9 instead of going prequel, history would have been pretty different today... or not, because Lucas might have mucked things up.

Oh, I agree. Stuff like the Thrawn novels, the Mara Jade stuff, and some of the other post-Jedi story ideas were some of the few worthwhile things in the EU, and those were the sorts of stories they would have been forced to tell if episode VII happened shortly after.

The downside there is that Carrie Fisher was pretty much in a downward spiral and would have been useless, and Harrison Ford would have cut his own arm off before starring in another Star Wars film (he only agreed to do Episode VII because they finally agreed to kill Han off), so they would have had to come up with logical story reasons to phase Leia and Han completely out of the new movies, which would have forced focus onto Luke.

Though if they'd gone that route, odds are you'd have gotten a story with Luke building a New Jedi Order only to have one of his students go Dark Side, so you'd probably get the exact same plot we got anyway, only in the "present" and not as backstory flashback.


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Zeus posted...

had they continued with E7, 8, and 9 instead of going prequel, history would have been pretty different today... (cont)

The one sticking point where I would definitely have preferred immediate sequels is in the idea that a weakened Empire would continue fighting the Rebellion even in the wake of the Death Star/Emperor going boom, with factionalization and an imperial civil war making the overall conflict more complex. Are the Rebels willing to ally in the short term with an imperial remnant faction, or would they refuse? Would some imperial leaders be willing to "defect" to a rising New Republic if offered positions of power within its framework? Would the Rebellion realize too late that, in removing the Emperor and his somewhat heavy handed, "mystic" style of leadership, they've opened the door for a more popular, dynamic, strategic Imperial to take the throne and lead far more effective opposition?

(Since Asimov has come up recently, I think the Foundation novels would be fantastic to mine for ideas for this sort of thing. Especially since they already stole the entire concept of Coruscant from them.)

Conversely, I would have preferred the new movies we got have the New Republic in them and not the phenomenally stupid First Order/Resistance scenario. By thirty fucking years later, the New Republic should be mostly in place, and the Imperial Remnant should be operating more like isolated enclaves of power or outright guerilla terrorists, with the balance of power completely flipped. But they wanted to mimic the power balance of the original trilogy so closely, so they just did exactly the same thing with different names, and gave absolutely no explanation for how things worked out that way.

(Part of why people "losing hope" in Last Jedi makes perfect sense - if a bunch of assholes have been fighting the same war for 30+ years and gaining absolutely no ground, and without even replacing any of their significant leadership, I'd probably stop supporting them as well.)



Zeus posted...

It wasn't the lightsaber battles that made them bad, those battles were usually the only redeeming feature

They really weren't. Nearly every lightsaber battle was an overly choreographed dance that looked more like martial arts exhibition than it did actual fighting, and it was made worse by the fact that, most of the time, there was almost no emotional weight to the fights.

Yes, you might pause and go "oh, that looks neat" the first time you see it, but it doesn't really add anything to the story.

Ultimately, the prequels would have been much better off with fewer fights (and fewer Jedi), so that the ones we do get feel far more impactful.



Zeus posted...

Say what you will, but I loved Mace. I don't know what motives they might have had in mind, but he worked... although SamueL shines in most things.

He doesn't shine in Star Wars, though. He's a bland cardboard cutout who could have been played by literally anyone.

He was cast in an attempt to draw the "urban" audience, and then he was written poorly because George Lucas is an old white man. Then he gets written out like a punk.

I'd argue that Mace may be the worst character Jackson has ever played, and I say that having seen The Spirit.


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The Wave Master posted...

Holdo and Rose are still huge problems. Mainly because Holdo could have used a droid to accomplish the task at the end of the movie.

I actually feel terribly ashamed because this didn't even occur to me.

I'm going to deflect the shame by suggesting it never occurred to me because I never really thought of Holdo as a worthwhile character anyway, so in my brain she's actually less worthwhile than the average droid.

But yeah, now that you've said this, I'm never going to be able to watch that part of the movie again and not be annoyed by it.



The Wave Master posted...

The Leia stuff is fine too. It's a mixed bag, but still enough worthwhile that I'm not going to fan boy rage and declare it the worst thing ever.

My biggest complaint with Leia is that she has that thing that some older actors get (which I think may be tied to ill-fitting false teeth), where they kind of lisp their words and it sounds like a speech impediment. Leonard Nimoy had it in his final Star Trek film.

That's more or less why I said earlier that I think she as the actress was "too old" for the role. Ford and Hamill sort of just manage to skirt the problem, but when I see her in Last Jedi I don't see her character, I just see an old, tired actress.


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I_Abibde posted...

-- ... I thought Black Panther was great, but everybody in my family has the same thought about it: "We liked it a lot, but we definitely don't feel like the target audience."

This, so very very much.

And this line of thinking ties into both of the following responses I'm about to post:



The Wave Master posted...

Black Panther is incredible. Full disclosure I am African American, and that movie is in my demographic.

However, the love and care taken to make it the movie feel completely modern, African, and traditional at the same time is amazing.

That was part of what made me overly conscious of the movie not being "for" me, as it were. The parts where they were deliberately contrasting the high-tech, super-future elements of Wakanda with the more traditional, tribal influences sort of made me overly aware of my own white maleness (which is something I usually don't care about, "privilege-shaming" SJWs on the Internet be damned). Mainly in the sense that I couldn't decide whether or not I should be offended by that fusion in the sense of it being somewhat racist ("Obviously, everyone in Africa is going to wear teeth necklaces and have plates in their lips and bang on drums and throw spears around regardless of how high-tech or advanced they are!"), or if it was completely acceptable by the logic that it somehow balances past traditional influences with modern ways of thinking that Africans and African-Americans can be proud of.

My response was mostly to shrug and try not to think about it, because I felt like it kind of wasn't my place to worry about it, but I did remain somewhat overly aware of it, and wonder what actual African-Americans and Africans in general thought about it.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I liked Black Panther. Not so much to explain to me its staggering box office success (it's still in theaters as it's coming out on home media!), but it's probably the best Marvel film focused on a "B-tier" Avenger

I feel like the explanation is very obvious.

When Wonder Woman came out, it was praised to the moon. After having seen it, I can say it felt like a mediocre-at-best superhero film that didn't even remotely deserve half the praise it was getting. At least some of that was definitely the result of it being the first real DCU movie that wasn't hot garbage, so people were desperate to love and praise it, but a large part of it was absolutely stemming from the politicized idea that a "feminist" icon was starring in a movie that somehow struck a blow for female empowerment, etc etc.

It kind of goes without saying that Black Panther is getting the same sort of upsurge. People are praising it (and spending money on it) more because of what it represents (either deliberately, or because of what they read into it) more than because of what it actually IS. It's the first mainstream black superhero movie, and it actively addresses issues pertinent to the black community, so it's going to pull the same sort of politicized praise.

Which is not to say that it doesn't deserve at least some (or a great deal) of the praise, because it IS a good movie. But I don't see it being the best Marvel movie ever by a wide margin, which is what the reaction implies.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Killmonger is definitely one of MCU's better villains (and it helps that I like Michael B. Jordan a lot

I'd agree with all of that. He was definitely the best part of the movie in multiple ways, and Jordan is definitely great (shame about the FF, though).


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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I'm really glad they gave Thanos the "You'll know what it's like to lose. To believe so desperately that you are right, yet fail all the same" line, just it's basically a giant "fuck you" to the idea of the power of friendship

I saw a MovieBob video where he basically said the real gut-punch of the movie is that the movie basically subverts expectations along those very lines.

Basically, in every other Marvel movie, the heroes do the right thing, they learn their moral lessons, they grow as characters, and their willingness to improve and live up to those higher ideals ultimately allow them to succeed. They learn to trust, they learn to love, they learn to work as a team - whatever. But in Infinity War, every hero basically learns the lesson the universe was clearly presenting to them, and they do what they're clearly supposed to do in the context of the narrative - and still lose. Thanos repeatedly makes their sacrifices absolutely meaningless (Quill shooting Gamora, Wanda sacrificing Vision). Thor's heroic moments with Stormbreaker lead to absolutely nothing.

Ironically, tying into the idea that Thanos is the actual protagonist of the movie, he's literally the only one who seems to learn lessons, make sacrifices, and actually win. Giving up Gamora for the Soul Stone is essentially the key to his victory (and it's arguably what helps him gain the Time Stone as well, which in turn is what allows him to recover the Mind Stone). HE'S basically benefiting from the Power of Narrative that has always helped the heroes in the past.

Granted, he's going to lose like a motherfucker in the next movie, but part one exists more or less to build Thanos up as high as he can possibly go.


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Oh, and to elaborate on something I just said there:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

HE'S basically benefiting from the Power of Narrative that has always helped the heroes in the past.

This actually reminded me of a concept/quote from the Discworld tabletop RPG, where "Narrative" is literally the most powerful force in the universe:

"A character who tries casting himself as The Brave Peasant Lad Who Outwits the Troll may find he is actually playing one of the Twenty Poor Peasants Eaten by the Troll Before the Knight Comes Along. Or he might even be the Devious Little Human Squashed by the Troll Hero (troll stories aren't very subtle)."

Basically, the heroes thought they were in the story where the brave heroes overcome an evil genocidal space tyrant, but it turned out they were really the obstacles the brave visionary hero Thanos had to overcome to achieve his goal and "save" the universe.


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The Wave Master posted...

Full disclosure I am African American,

idk, what I love about the internet is not having to know peoples' race, gender, and so on, so that there are fewer labels to deal with.

The Wave Master posted...

Then we get to Killmonger. Finally a villain who wasn't wrong at all, and called T'Chalia out on the garbage hyprocracy of Wakanda and their isolation from the world. The ending where....

tbh, I kinda enjoy it when the villains aren't necessarily wrong. One of my friends hated that about Killmonger, though.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That was another of the (many) problems I had with the EU - obsessive nerds basically felt the need to elaborate on literally every single minor reference or character in the films, to the point where someone who appeared on screen for 1/2 second in one movie probably has 30 pages worth of info if you look them up on Wikipedia. At some point I basically reach critical mass and stop giving a shit about everything.

idk, there are a lot of kinda neat characters who we only see for two seconds and who often don't even get a line of dialogue. The bounty hunters are the prime example (although Tales of the Bounty Hunters isn't the way to do it >_>)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And aside from the EU as a whole being blissfully non-canon now, that story was stupid anyway.

Basically, it came across like something a 12-year old would write. Though I suppose that's appropriate, because I feel like that was basically the target audience.

The event itself is significant even if the story is awful. iirc, it was covered in Tales of the Bounty Hunters which, other than the IG-88 story (and, at the time, I kinda liked the Dengar story), was kind of a lackluster anthology and not one of the better examples of the EU.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yes, the tracking part was the "one clever thing". He was apparently the only one smart enough to realize what Solo was doing hiding and taking off with the trash.

Almost everything else he does from that point on is either stupid or pointless. He hangs around aimlessly waiting for Vader to give him Solo, and is lucky that Vader actually does (especially considering his stance on "altering deals"). Then he apparently goes and hangs out with Jabba for 3 years. Then he gets hit in the back by complete happenstance and falls down a hole.

You're forgetting that he was working *two* contracts, both of which specified wanting the targets taken alive (and, in Vader's contract, they were *only* good alive). As such, it made sense for him to just arrange the capture instead of attempting a riskier move that might have killed some of them.

And just because Vader broke whatever deal he had with Lando doesn't mean he would leave Fett out in the cold. If you recall, he agreed to compensate the difference on the bounty if Solo didn't survive carbon freezing instead of just giving him the Lando treatment. Of course, as a bounty hunter, Fett had value to Vader whereas Lando didn't really offer any long-term value.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The prequels only make him worse, by presenting him as a kid and over-inflating the reputation of his "dad" in the same way (which I'm almost tempted to say might have been a deliberate dig by Lucas, but I'm not sure he's that self-aware).

Yeah, that was pretty awful. From what I've seen of the Clone Wars, child Boba Fett is pretty cool in that.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The downside there is that Carrie Fisher was pretty much in a downward spiral and would have been useless, and Harrison Ford would have cut his own arm off before starring in another Star Wars film (he only agreed to do Episode VII because they finally agreed to kill Han off), so they would have had to come up with logical story reasons to phase Leia and Han completely out of the new movies, which would have forced focus onto Luke.

idk, I kinda suspect that had the films continued, Carrie might have been in a better place (which, as I consider the phrasing, may be a poor choice of words). As for Harrison Ford, had they locked him into a longer contract, he could have cut off an arm and still be stuck starring in another few movies.

Granted, since Luke was the big draw, they could have just built things around him.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though if they'd gone that route, odds are you'd have gotten a story with Luke building a New Jedi Order only to have one of his students go Dark Side, so you'd probably get the exact same plot we got anyway, only in the "present" and not as backstory flashback.

Or they could have worked in some clone emperor shit or sent him off to the outer rim. There's always stuff for him to do and restoring the jedi order seems like something that might come later, possibly as a teaser ending to the potential trilogy. Then they could Jedi Academy down the road.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The one sticking point where I would definitely have preferred immediate sequels is in the idea that a weakened Empire would continue fighting the Rebellion even in the wake of the Death Star/Emperor going boom, with factionalization and an imperial civil war making the overall conflict more complex. Are the Rebels willing to ally in the short term with an imperial remnant faction, or would they refuse? Would some imperial leaders be willing to "defect" to a rising New Republic if offered positions of power within its framework? Would the Rebellion realize too late that, in removing the Emperor and his somewhat heavy handed, "mystic" style of leadership, they've opened the door for a more popular, dynamic, strategic Imperial to take the throne and lead far more effective opposition?

While I've liked the idea as well, I'm not sure how well it would translate to film. Something like that feels more like a tv show... which, come to think of it, would have been a pretty awesome transition (other than maybe needing to recast some roles). Granted, the costs in general -- even with whatever they could recycle from the films -- might have been more than people would want to invest in tv shows at the time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Conversely, I would have preferred the new movies we got have the New Republic in them and not the phenomenally stupid First Order/Resistance scenario. By thirty fucking years later, the New Republic should be mostly in place, and the Imperial Remnant should be operating more like isolated enclaves of power or outright guerilla terrorists, with the balance of power completely flipped. But they wanted to mimic the power balance of the original trilogy so closely, so they just did exactly the same thing with different names, and gave absolutely no explanation for how things worked out that way.

idk, even with 2 Death Stars down and the Emperor gone, it seems like there was enough military strength and leadership left to continue putting up a fight. And, given the leadership structure, it *might* have been possible to avoid the whole operation splintering.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

They really weren't. Nearly every lightsaber battle was an overly choreographed dance that looked more like martial arts exhibition than it did actual fighting, and it was made worse by the fact that, most of the time, there was almost no emotional weight to the fights.

Yes, you might pause and go "oh, that looks neat" the first time you see it, but it doesn't really add anything to the story.

Honestly, I've watched the Darth Maul fight numerous times over the years and it *still* holds up. And there is considerable emotion, especially given the breaks in the fight when the shields come up and Maul is pacing trying to unnerve the Jedi.

Every Yoda lightsaber fight looked like shit, though. It just wasn't a good look. They should have stuck with other force moves, especially because given the badassry of stopping that heavy thrown object.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

He doesn't shine in Star Wars, though. He's a bland cardboard cutout who could have been played by literally anyone.

He was cast in an attempt to draw the "urban" audience, and then he was written poorly because George Lucas is an old white man. Then he gets written out like a punk.

I'd argue that Mace may be the worst character Jackson has ever played, and I say that having seen The Spirit.

I don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye on this at all... or when it comes to the Spirit, since his performance was delightfully over the top and one of the few things I didn't hate about that movie.
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Zeus posted...

tbh, I kinda enjoy it when the villains aren't necessarily wrong. One of my friends hated that about Killmonger, though.

Definitely agree. I always prefer stories where the villains don't consider themselves villains. It makes things more interesting and complex than "Mwu-ha-ha I'm an evil bad guy!"

The only problem there is that, in a lot of cases, when you're dealing with a villain who seems to have noble motives but questionable methods, all too often you run the risk of leading the audience to sympathize with the villain, potentially to the point of preferring them to the hero.

It happens a lot in wrestling, where badass justified heels can appeal far more than pure babyfaces. It's also part of why Doctor Doom's popularity has skyrocketed over time, as his characterization got more and more complex (and arguably, the same could be said of Magneto).



Zeus posted...

You're forgetting that he was working *two* contracts, both of which specified wanting the targets taken alive (and, in Vader's contract, they were *only* good alive). As such, it made sense for him to just arrange the capture instead of attempting a riskier move that might have killed some of them.

He didn't capture them at all, though. He followed them, predicted where they were going because they took their time with their broken hyperdrive, and then called Vader to tell them where they were going (apparently quickly enough for Vader to "arrive just before you did"). Then he basically made part of the terms of his agreement with Vader "Hey, I've got Skywalker's friends, once you get what you want give me Han so I can double-dip." He mostly just lucks out that Vader is willing to humor him.

Vader did most of the heavy lifting, and that mainly because he could swing Imperial weight around to cow Lando into submission. And had Vader not been so quick to fuck Lando over and renege on the deal, Luke and Leia would almost certainly be turned or dead, and Han would still be hanging on Jabba's wall.

Boba's pretty much a glorified errand boy. He's about on par with Greedo in A New Hope.



Zeus posted...

And just because Vader broke whatever deal he had with Lando doesn't mean he would leave Fett out in the cold. If you recall, he agreed to compensate the difference on the bounty if Solo didn't survive carbon freezing instead of just giving him the Lando treatment.

Yes, and he promised to spare Cloud City from future Imperial interference, and apparently agreed to leave the others in Lando's custody once he had what he wanted.

Vader pretty clearly doesn't give a shit what he has to promise you to get your cooperation. He'll promise the world, because he doesn't necessarily feel obligated to ever follow through on his end. What are you going to do, complain about it to the Emperor? Try to kill him over it? Get too uppity and he'll Force choke you and blow up your floating city.

The fact that he's willing to pay Fett at all - and give him Solo - basically just boils down to this:

Zeus posted...

Of course, as a bounty hunter, Fett had value to Vader whereas Lando didn't really offer any long-term value.

Fett potentially has future use to the Empire, so Vader is willing to pay him (credits are pretty much meaningless when you've got the Imperial expense account) and give him Han (Han is a nobody, Vader only wants him to lure Luke out). But nothing in that scene really suggests that Vader considers him any more important or useful than any of the other bounty hunters. If Fett got too lippy, Vader likely would have killed him too.


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Zeus posted...

Yeah, that was pretty awful. From what I've seen of the Clone Wars, child Boba Fett is pretty cool in that.

From what I've seen of the Clone Wars, I have no real desire to watch more of the Clone Wars.

And while I know Disney tends to consider it canon, I kind of ignore it in the context of not being the movies, because I assume they'll do the same, and ultimately wipe the slate clean (again) whenever they feel it's convenient.

It's like how Lucas and his minions claimed the EU was canon, but Lucas didn't give a single shit about it, so they had to come up with complicated excuses involving multiple tiers of semi-canon to justify it.



Zeus posted...

idk, I kinda suspect that had the films continued, Carrie might have been in a better place (which, as I consider the phrasing, may be a poor choice of words). As for Harrison Ford, had they locked him into a longer contract, he could have cut off an arm and still be stuck starring in another few movies.

I think the movies were part of what sent her downhill in the first place, so more movies likely wouldn't have pulled her back up as much as potentially accelerated her problems. The movies ending is part of what helped her shift her life into a healthier place and sort of allowed her to get clean. Without that break, she might have self-destructed completely.

As for Ford, they DIDN'T have him locked into that contract, and he was never going to sign one like it. Long-term multi-picture deals weren't as common at that point (definitely not in the way Marvel does them these days), and no one was going to think to sign anyone to exceptionally long multi-picture deals for a franchise almost no one thought was going to make it past the first movie anyway. By 1983 he was successful enough that they couldn't have bribed him into it, and (he was barely willing to do Jedi as-is - they've openly admitted they only froze him in Empire because they weren't sure they could convince him to come back to do Jedi at all).

And more to the point, LUCAS didn't really want to do Star Wars after Jedi. It wasn't until years later and the appeal of tons of cash started to revive his willingness to do it that Lucas was willing to commit to the prequels at all. Realistically, we were never going to get an Episode VII in the 80s or 90s. In theory we COULD have gotten Episode VII instead of Episode I (and we probably would have been better off if we did), but even then, you're talking almost 20 real world years post-Jedi, which would probably have been about 30 years later in-universe. Which leaves you not much different from what we actually got, only with older Han, Leia, and Luke.



Zeus posted...

Granted, since Luke was the big draw, they could have just built things around him.

Weeeeelllll.

Luke was supposed to be the heart of the first movies, but a lot of people definitely saw Han as the more interesting character. And even if we assume Luke post-Jedi development would be strong enough to carry a movie on his own, you're still going to be left with the audience constantly wondering where Han, Leia, and Chewie are if they don't show up.

Short of being willing to kill them off completely, or having them "retire" (which would almost require you to say the Empire had completely collapsed, the New Republic has been reestablished, and the Rebellion is dissolved, so Leia feels like she's completed her duty), it would always be a problem that needs to be addressed.


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Zeus posted...

Or they could have worked in some clone emperor shit or sent him off to the outer rim. There's always stuff for him to do and restoring the jedi order seems like something that might come later, possibly as a teaser ending to the potential trilogy. Then they could Jedi Academy down the road.

You're basically asking for Dark Empire. Which was an interesting enough story, but I don't think it would have worked well on film.

Something along the lines of the Thrawn trilogy might have worked, but there were still parts of that that were pure cheese, and you'd still have the problem of Han and Leia.



Zeus posted...

idk, even with 2 Death Stars down and the Emperor gone, it seems like there was enough military strength and leadership left to continue putting up a fight. And, given the leadership structure, it *might* have been possible to avoid the whole operation splintering.

Oh, I agree. In fact, that's exactly what I'm saying. Two Death Stars and an Emperor don't immediately win the war and collapse the Empire.

But the narrative as presented is that doing those things DID ruin the Empire. Then the Rebellion established the New Republic. And then the remnants of Imperial power hid in secret for 30 years before reemerging as the First Order, effectively shattering the New Republic and leaving the remnants of the Republic as a new Resistance which is basically just the old Rebellion with a new paint job.

But the movies don't really explain that at all, and you're left assuming the Rebels have been fighting for 30 years with absolutely no evidence of success or progress. And even if you are aware of the finer details of the backstory, the backstory is kind of stupid.

A setting where the Rebellion has become the New Republic, with the conflict being a weaker Imperial Remnant/First Order being the underdogs while the New Republic is weakened by politics and infighting (the likely scenario you'd get trying to rebuilt a galactic government in the wake of the Empire's fall - see also, Rome), would be much more interesting than just replicating the original setting beat for beat.

If anything, it might be interesting to go for the Rome analogy even harder, and have the successful Rebel Alliance/New Republic sort of break down into separate polities coalesced around differing views of what the New Republic should BE (since they were disparate groups only allied in the first place against the more dangerous threat), while the disintegrating Empire manages to stabilize itself and reform along different lines (a la the Holy Roman Empire), with the New Republic (or maybe just have it be the Alliance?) and the Empire being two opposed and equally balanced powers in the galaxy locked in an uneasy peace, but with neither really able to actively destroy the other.

Then you come into Episode VII years later, once this new status quo has become the norm, and the conflict can revolve around minor skirmishing between the factions (a la the Great Game in real history) that threatens to blossom into a new, far more destructive war. Minor characters get introduced, with young Republic troops or unaligned outsiders forced to pick a side, and bam, new trilogy.

(And for bonus points, you can even imply the Empire isn't evil this time, and maybe the Republic has grown corrupt. Moral complexity? Who really ARE the bad guys?)

That would also let you keep Han and Leia mostly distant (they're in charge in the government of the good faction, and too busy for boots-on-the-ground action), and then you can potentially have Luke teaching a New Jedi Order (or living as a hermit until a new student finds him) to make things more complicated (and that way, you can have a couple Jedi without overdoing it, like the prequels did).


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As a last thought there, in a setting where the Alliance and the Empire are co-equal political entities in the same universe engaged in a Cold War, it really opens a lot of complicated plots you can apply to Luke's New Jedi Order.

In a setting where the Empire is still cartoonishly evil, you could easily have one of Luke's earliest students defect to the Empire. Potentially, they discover some cache of notes (or Sith holocrons, or whatever) from Palpatine or others, using the knowledge to embrace the Dark Side and reestablish the Sith. Then you get all the lightsaber battles you can stand, as Luke's Jedi become the lieutenants in the Alliance military who occasionally have to oppose the Sith who support the Empire. And then you've also got the potential plot where heroes have to travel into Imperial territory and try and take down the Sith Academy.

Conversely, in a setting where we drop the black/white absolutism for shades of grey, Luke can have a student who defects to the Empire... but then starts his own Jedi academy, that still follows the Light Side. While their worldly politics differ, they're still both "good" in the sense of following the Jedi traditions and ideology. In fact, in such a setting, maybe one of the Alliance Jedi tap into the Dark Side in an attempt to overcome the Empire, and it's left to an allied group of both Alliance and Imperial Jedi to unite and hunt down the new world-be Sith.

Or maybe Luke isn't an idiot, and he implicitly understands that the downfall of the old Jedi were tying themselves to mundane politics, and he establishes a New Order that tries to be impartial, and sides with neither Empire nor Alliance, and instead focus on their own spiritual advancement or helping others on the small scale, not interfering with massive space battles or diplomatic manipulations (in that sense, the Jedi would very much mirror the monks of Japan they were originally based on, with the monks of the Nara period who were implicitly tied into government and politics replaced by the monks of later eras who became itinerant wanderers who would travel from village to village with no real authority, but willing to fight when necessary - which is what the Jedi should have been anyway, until the prequels and the EU ruined them).


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To go back to Black Panther for a moment.

My wife is very white. Pale skin, flaming red hair. She's close to six feet tall. We kind of stick out when we go to the movies or anywhere actually.

(Voting was interesting yesterday as Mississippi had its Primary.)

When we went to see Black Panther afterwards she told me she really liked the movie, but that she too was aware of her whiteness.

She admitted that if she wasn't married to me that she would have felt a bit uncomfortable watching the movie in a theater alone, or with her white friends.

I'm not sure of that's the pointed the movie, but it was part of the backlash (Eh...) online.
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Being handicapped it's hard to do a lot of things. Everything is a challenge, going to the bathroom, getting into a car or truck, and even something like going to the movies.

IGN did an article about handicapped issues at movie theaters. It's an interesting read, and maybe it will open your eyes to the plight of us handicapped people.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/06/03/how-movie-theaters-are-failing-viewers-with-disabilities
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I'm just going to leave this here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Hbz2jLxvQ" data-time="
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The Hitman 2 announcement today was a big disappointment. Unless you're a Hitman fan. Hell, I'm not a fan of Bret The Hitman Hart. (He wasn't as great of a wrestler as he thought he was.) So, another Hitman game wasn't what I personally wanted.

I actually was hoping for Mortal Kombat XI. Since Ed Boon was teasing a lot of Sub Zero related stuff on Twitter over the last few weeks.

I'm not actually a big fan of Netherrealm fighting games, other thanThe fact that they are beautiful games. The game play is weak sauce compared to Arc System Works games and Capcom fighting games. But the presentation in Netherrealm games is on point so it makes up for the gameplay to an extent.

So In summary.

Hitman 2.. meh
Bret the Hitman Hart.. Double meh
No Mortal Kombat XI yet... Triple meh.
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I have nothing to add to the Star Wars discussion, at this point. Between Zeus and PO, it feels like all possible bases have been covered. To quote ol' Darth, "Impressive."

As far as Mortal Kombat goes, I agree with Wave Master: The games are great when it comes to presentation ("Mortal Kombat has always been, and always will be!"), though I think the character designs can be pretty fugly, sometimes, especially the women. And the game play is clunky, but it always has been.
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Posting to day the name is decent this time. See ya next topic!
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I feel like e very game is going to have a Battle Royale mode.

Final Fantasy Battle Royale
Madden 19 Battle Royale
Street Fighter 6 Battle Royale
The Sims 4: Battle Royale

I will be glad when this trend ends.
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Kingdom Hearts III is finall6 being released on January 29, 3019. My mother's birthday. It's been 5 years in the Making since they first announced the game at E3.

It's good news and finally a reason to be excited because the end of the long journey is here.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/06/10/e3-2018-kingdom-hearts-3-release-date-announced
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I foresee characters talking about nothing for twenty minutes at a time as the camera does long pans across empty landscapes. Y'know, like every Kingdom Hearts game. ... I've never been a fan. Don't much care for Disney, and I really don't care for Tetsuya Nomura. I mean, I get it, the series has tons of fans, but it's never really done anything for me.

....

Okay, I did like the Tron segments in KH2, but that's just because I'm a huge dork who loves the Tron movies. I'm still a little glum that Legacy isn't getting a sequel.
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The Wave Master posted...

I feel like e very game is going to have a Battle Royale mode.

Some pundits have pointed out recently that this always happens, and it seems like, whenever a smaller indie game breaks out huge and starts a trend, and the wave of copycats follows, it usually takes triple-A developers a few years to catch up. So basically, a lot of larger mainstream games now are basically survival based, because that was a hugely popular genre a few years ago (and most people are burned out on it now). Before that, it was MOBAs, and crafting mechanics, horde modes, and so on.

Battle Royale is basically the flavor of the month, so over the next few years we can expect a lot of existing games to bolt on similar mechanics, and for major publishers to start pushing out titles in a desperate attempt to cash in (maybe we'll get Metal Gear Royale in a year or two?).


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The Wave Master posted...

Kingdom Hearts III is finall6 being released on January 29, 3019. My mother's birthday. It's been 5 years in the Making since they first announced the game at E3.

It's good news and finally a reason to be excited because the end of the long journey is here.

http://m.ign.com/articles/2018/06/10/e3-2018-kingdom-hearts-3-release-date-announced

I think I just fucking came.
I've been waiting for KH3 for so long!!
I won't argue the writing is incredible or that it's even a good game, but damn do I have an absolute blast just hanging out with Disney and final fantasy characters while fighting the forces of evil.

On an unrelated note, I've decided to try to introduce my dnd group to the world of Role playing (they we're introduced with Roll playing). I'm going to be using Masks (a version of Apocalypse World).

Basically young superheroes who are trying to find their place in the world.
I'm still reading the books and planning out what stories I want to tell but I'm pretty excited for it to start.

Since I'm an adult now, all my friends have jobs (and some have their own family) so attendance is going to be spotty which is perfect for a superhero game. Thor isn't in Spider-Man, he's off doing his own things, basically translates to "Bryan couldn't make it this week".

I've been listening to a podcast where they play it to learn good techniques and story telling and conflict introduction.

My only concern is that some people's idea of playing Dungeon World is "I swing my sword and deal 6 damage".

knivesX2004 posted...

I've been waiting for KH3 for so long!!
I won't argue the writing is incredible or that it's even a good game, but damn do I have an absolute blast just hanging out with Disney and final fantasy characters while fighting the forces of evil.

I enjoyed the first two games, but after all the spin-offs and side-stories etc kept going harder and harder into most of the JRPG cliches I tend to dislike, while leaning harder into original character donut steels instead of straight Disney/FF for the most part, my enthusiasm has slowly seeped away more and more. And after 12 years, I can't even remotely muster up anything resembling a single shit about the franchise anymore.

The fact that the new game is apparently going all-in on Pixar and newer stuff like Tangled and Frozen just exacerbates things for me, because I have zero nostalgia for those movies and honestly couldn't give a fuck about them. The first two games went hard on a lot of my actual childhood Disney memories, but they've sort of tapped that well dry, and I am very much not the target audience demographic for these games anymore, so I'm not surprised they're working in more and more popular newer characters that I have no interest in.

You damned 90s kids ruin everything!


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The Wave Master posted...

"If you had three super powers, not just one or even two, what would they be?"

Flight, telekinesis, strength.

The Wave Master posted...

Bonus question: "Good or bad, it's your choice, what would your arch enemy be like. Describe his or her powers."

He would have a green Mohawk and shoot laser beams out of his nipples.
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The Wave Master posted...

Then we get to Killmonger. Finally a villain who wasn't wrong at all, and called T'Chalia out on the garbage hyprocracy of Wakanda and their isolation from the world.

He was right about Wakanda staying out of world conflicts, but wrong about the methods he used to try and solve that problem.

The Wave Master posted...

He tells Black Panther to bury his ass in the sand like his ancestors!

It was the ocean.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

The Wave Master posted...

Then we get to Killmonger. Finally a villain who wasn't wrong at all, and called T'Chalia out on the garbage hyprocracy of Wakanda and their isolation from the world.

He was right about Wakanda staying out of world conflicts, but wrong about the methods he used to try and solve that problem.

To fall back on Marvel's favorite cliche when it comes to race politics, he was basically filling the Malcolm X role when what we all really want is Martin Luther King Jr.


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The Wave Master posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Hbz2jLxvQ" data-time="

As a huge Spider-Man fanboy, I have mixed feelings about seeing another Sony Spidey movie, especially with how bad Venom looks... But I like almost everything about that trailer. The animation style looks almost like stop-motion, but in a good way.

I can't not hear Nick Miller from the New Girl as Peter, though.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I actually feel terribly ashamed because this didn't even occur to me.

I'm going to deflect the shame by suggesting it never occurred to me because I never really thought of Holdo as a worthwhile character anyway, so in my brain she's actually less worthwhile than the average droid.

But yeah, now that you've said this, I'm never going to be able to watch that part of the movie again and not be annoyed by it.

I was going to question how you just now noticed this, since it was pointed out almost INSTANTLY online after the first showing, but then I remembered you just saw it recently, and thus would have missed the rants/analysis.

It's one of the few times those long, wall o' texts by angry nerd fans turn out to be absolutely right. There is a staggering amount of logical lapses and suspensions of disbelief to make almost any part of the Holdo-Poe-Leia-Finn sequence work. Like, virtually every part of dialogue and scenes in the whole sequence is the most blatantly vapid attempts to pad out a film I've ever seen, hyperbole be damned. The salt on the would being that the entire subplot amounts to dick, and takes up easily 1/3 of the movie. And while I have plenty of other problems with the film, gutting that entire part would instantly make TLJ way better.

Rian clearly had no clue what to do with any character not named Luke, Rey, or Kylo (and even then he only hit a few elements right, in my opinion), so instead of try, he just kept them in an extremely cringey holding pattern. I've only seen the film once (and likely only ever will, at least for some time), and it generally takes a LOT to jar me out of the filming experience, but I kept having mini double-takes during the entire subplot, because it was so extremely contrived from top to bottom.
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Opinion: My views do not reflect the opinions of otherHeeks in this topic.

What the hell Square Enix?

You had a press conference yesterday to talk about or reveal nothing.

No Final Fantasy VII remake news. No screenshot, a trailer, a press release, a raven from the hinterlands.... not a damn thing.

Fine, the FF7 remake will be out once we sacrifice Konami to the devil.

Final Fantasy XVI?
Parasite Eve?
Chrono Break?
Soul Reaver? (Yeah, I didn't forget about you.)

A new I.P. with a trailer or a cool concept? Nope.

Why spend millions on a press conference to tell us crap we already know? It was a waste of time and money.

Final thought: I need a dn time machine so I can fix this janky as company.

P.O. I already know you don't give a poop, but if nothing happens soon, well, I'm out.
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I do not care about Smash. I barely care about Nintendo.

I suppose Smash Ultimate is great for fans, but it's not really a new Smash. Ok, it's more of a port or an update to Smash 4. Call it Smash 4.5 if you will.

The reactions online seem positive from the fans, but it's not for me. I do not consider Smash a fighting game, or an interesting party game.

Plus I'm salty I didn't get any Metroid Prime 4 news. Octopath Traveler looks great though.
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The Wave Master posted...

Plus I'm salty I didn't get any Metroid Prime 4 news.

I may or may not have been if I didn't expect this. I legit suspect that the announcement made last year was a last minute idea they had, complete with a title screen, for the purpose of showing off to 1) pad their time, and 2) gauge people's reaction to it. So it was barely, if even that, in pre-production at the time, and we'll be a while before we see anything of Prime 4.

Then watch Nintendo pull what they did with both Twilight Princess and BotW, and put off its release just enough that Metroid Prime 4 will end up on both the Switch AND the next console.
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Like I said in the topic for anime / manga and JRPGs, it looks like the new Fire Emblem game is going to play like a Langrisser game. This, I find amusing.
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...Will it be another wifu simulator, or a war game?
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The fact that the new game is apparently going all-in on Pixar and newer stuff like Tangled and Frozen just exacerbates things for me, because I have zero nostalgia for those movies and honestly couldn't give a fuck about them. The first two games went hard on a lot of my actual childhood Disney memories, but they've sort of tapped that well dry, and I am very much not the target audience demographic for these games anymore, so I'm not surprised they're working in more and more popular newer characters that I have no interest in.

You damned 90s kids ruin everything!

I have hope that we'll revisit old places (like with KH2). Plus I just love the gameplay and the visuals so much I can forgive the cluster fuck of a story.

Hey! I'm an 80's kid! We still ruin everything though, I won't deny that.

New smash looks fun, but I'm really more excited about Cyberpunk, And Fire Emblem.
Looks like I gotta buy a switch...

hmm... the most interesting thing about E3 this year, at least to me, is the out-of-nowhere crossover between Monster Hunter World and FFXIV. This is not unwelcome, but I don't exactly have faith in FFXIV's handling of MHW. I do, however, have some faith that MHW's handling of Behemoth will be better than what we even got in FFXV.

Meanwhile, people who wanted a NieR: Automata crossover in FFXIV get nothing, despite asking for it since the game came out, and some people in FFXIV cosplaying as 2B. <_<
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CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I was going to question how you just now noticed this, since it was pointed out almost INSTANTLY online after the first showing, but then I remembered you just saw it recently, and thus would have missed the rants/analysis.

Yeah, I avoided spoilers like the plague.

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised how well I managed to do so. Sure, I kind of put two and two together from a few nebulous hints that Luke died, but I honestly expected that anyway. And other than that, I had no real idea of anything else going in.

I actually waited a month before seeing Infinity War as well. And that one got slightly more spoiled for me (I knew Thanos succeeded, but honesty, I expected that going in as well, and I was able to sort of piece together that Spider-Man died in the end because of a couple of hints and implications, but no one ever outright said it in anything I heard or saw), but I was mostly able to dodge any real major spoilers online.

And to be honest, these days, just watching trailers tends to spoil movies more than people talking about them after the fact does.



CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Rian clearly had no clue what to do with any character not named Luke, Rey, or Kylo (and even then he only hit a few elements right, in my opinion)

To be fair, though, nearly every one of their scenes basically boil down to "Remake the Luke/Yoda relationship from Empire, but Yoda is a broken, cynical asshole" and "Remake the Luke/Vader/Emperor interaction from RotJ, but turn it into a twist/swerve to screw with the audience." While I generally enjoyed those scenes (a large part of which stemming from the fact that I enjoyed the original versions of those scenes as well), it didn't take a ton of creativity to come up with them.


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The latest backlash from E3 is that Cyberpunk 2077 is first person.

One of the huge selling aspects of the game was that you had a "Cool" atribute based around your choices, your starting traits, and finally your clothes.

It's pretty damn hard to see your clothes and how cool you are in first person.

Since the game doesn't have a release date we will just have to wait and see, but first person combat that isn't shooting, can get real clunky, real fast.
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tbh, when I'm active, PO usually isn't. When I'm starting to less active, PO's activity usually picks up >_>

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Definitely agree. I always prefer stories where the villains don't consider themselves villains. It makes things more interesting and complex than "Mwu-ha-ha I'm an evil bad guy!"

Eh, I mean more than that. Even an objectively evil character could see himself as the hero. I was thinking in terms of the villains having valid points.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The only problem there is that, in a lot of cases, when you're dealing with a villain who seems to have noble motives but questionable methods, all too often you run the risk of leading the audience to sympathize with the villain, potentially to the point of preferring them to the hero.

It happens a lot in wrestling, where badass justified heels can appeal far more than pure babyfaces. It's also part of why Doctor Doom's popularity has skyrocketed over time, as his characterization got more and more complex (and arguably, the same could be said of Magneto).

Well, in those cases justifications can also take a backseat to their coolness or humorous behavior. In the case of wrestling, the lines became blurred anyway.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

He didn't capture them at all, though. He followed them, predicted where they were going because they took their time with their broken hyperdrive, and then called Vader to tell them where they were going (apparently quickly enough for Vader to "arrive just before you did"). Then he basically made part of the terms of his agreement with Vader "Hey, I've got Skywalker's friends, once you get what you want give me Han so I can double-dip." He mostly just lucks out that Vader is willing to humor him.

Given that I specifically said he "arranged the capture of" (as opposed to "captured"), I'm not sure what you're driving at. The fact that he was able to sell their location, have the client do the lifting, and keep one of the targets to cash in on another bounty makes him *extremely* smart and savvy. Otherwise he would have had to risk a space battle where, if the crew died, Vader would have been royally pissed or tried to capture them in a safe haven friendly to Han Solo. Selling the location was the smart play.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As a last thought there, in a setting where the Alliance and the Empire are co-equal political entities in the same universe engaged in a Cold War, it really opens a lot of complicated plots you can apply to Luke's New Jedi Order.

That would be an awesome idea, tbh.... although that's the kind of longer-term thing that works better on tv than in film.
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Entity13 posted...

I may or may not have been if I didn't expect this. I legit suspect that the announcement made last year was a last minute idea they had, complete with a title screen, for the purpose of showing off to 1) pad their time, and 2) gauge people's reaction to it. So it was barely, if even that, in pre-production at the time, and we'll be a while before we see anything of Prime 4.

To be fair to Nintendo, they said years ago that they no longer wanted to use E3 as a vehicle for their big game announcements, choosing instead to host their own Nintendo directs as they please for game news. So an absence of MP4 doesn't mean we won't glimpse it sometime this year.

For what it's worth, one of the Nintendo reps. interviewed simply said they didn't think it was a good enough state to show yet. While normally that might agree with your guess that they are still pretty early in development, this being Nintendo, that answer could honestly mean anything.
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