Oddly enough, I just started playing Dragon's Dogma. Do you get to create more than one pawn? There's so much potential there...
You only get to make one pawn, sadly, but, as Anansi pointed out, you do get to recreate both yourself and your pawn later. First as a one time thing by buying a certain item back at the war camp after you reached the capitay, then post-game, whenever you want.
Man, you've piqued my curiosity now. The game is on PC right? I skipped out on a lot of PS3/360 gen games but having a having PC I want to catch up on some of those titles now.
I also really like the DD character creator. I remember being really impressed by the body size differences as well as the ability to add some muscles. The hair options were great too, boosted further by the Hair DLC that eventually came packed in with the Dark Arisen version as well IIRC. Some creepy stuff in the game as well though. I hate the duchess' quests. Spoiler I'm really hopeful for Monster Hunter World's character creator. Hopefully they bring in the good stuff from Dragon's Dogma.
ROFL at the gif in the spoiler tag. Spoiler being able to pick up NPCs in DD was the best feature. You can toss things to your Pawn in a game of catch as well :D
I love this gif so much LOL. Fuck the Duchess. Hate that you have to do her stupid side-quest to even get access to the Blighted Manse.
I like to change up my characters' appearances with every new playthrough. Naturally, there are also some great lore reasons to do this, which adds to the fun. It's unfortunate that the game was rather obviously written with a straight-male player character in mind. Not only because of the aforementioned Duchess's quests, but also because, out of the small handful of NPCs who have lines for when they're your romantic partner, five are female and three are male. It can also get really weird, as they don't care about things like age differences or the like. It's possible to get literal children as your beloved, or vice-versa (you can also literally play as a child, which says a lot about how incredibly powerful the character creator is). It's one of the most Japanese things ever, I swear. At any rate, the game also came out rather half-baked, which is one of the reasons I'm really pining for a sequel. There's still so much potential here, and yet the game itself remains remarkably solid even in that half-baked state. There's good reason why it's still near the very top (if not at the top) of my list of greatest games of all time. It's also still the only game I can think of that actually lets me make a player character with the exact body type I have in mind. Damn, I wish more games would let me do that. Damn, damn, damn...
The gameplay and character creator are amazing, but the game world is just... kinda bland. It's also really easy past a certain point. Sorcerers in particular really bust the game against everything except Golems (the monsters are cool on the whole, but their AI needed significant work). Still love it... it's just so good in so many ways. Movement, climbing, magic, melee... it's so weirdly frustrating in just the oddest ways.
Yes exactly. I was also completely turned off by the quest in general particularly the way it end. As a bonus it was a compelling reason to let Grigori live later.
I actually really liked the environment design in Dragon's Dogma, but I think at the time of release most game worlds were just blander in comparison.
I think at least part of it is hardware limitations. Like, you just couldn't populate a dense forest on PS3 (arguably PS4 either). That's one of the things Skyrim modding fixed. Expanding the game world exponentially and making place feel more lived in and believable. It's really hard to look back at 3D stuff when you compare it to what modern hardware can do (especially facial expressions and environment design). Still, this is admittedly unfair to the technology of the time (and even modern technology has a LONG way to go). That said, I'm not a huge fan of 3D video games to begin with (so I tend to be overly critical). My favorite games of the past decade so far are Papers, Please and VA-11 Hall-A after all.
One single character design could not, even theoretically, put me off from playing the game. It would be petty on my part and I have never understood when people do that, because, it's one design out of many and game consists out of many things, like gameplay, music, other designs, e.t.c. Being turned off the whole package by just one single aspect is senseless and illogical to me. For example: I really disliked a lot of designs in MK9 - most of the female designs in this game were tasteless and boring (especially Mileena, who was one of my favorite characters in the past) and she, alongside Kitana was heavily shafted both in costume and story departments. Nevertheless, I am really big fan of the series and I really loved the gameplay. It's possible to like the game and admit that there are some problems with it, be it designs or gameplay. On the other hand, there is MGSV. Despite my big love for the series and the fact that MGS2 has one of the biggest influences on my outlook on what video games could be, I didn't want to play this game, due to the multiple problems, like some designs, story decisions and gameplay. So all in all, I can be turned off the game, when there are more things then one that I dislike. As for diversity - you have already said it - I'd like to see more characters of various ethnicities as long as they nicely written. Often I see people saying characters and going "good enough / at least it's something", i can understand it, but it doesn't really sit well with me, because, "token" character doesn't really feel genuine. Of course, it is case by case thing. There is no such thing as "sacrosanct" games. Everything can be criticized as long as criticism makes sense and not goes into realm of personal taste. If you lost friends because of such stupid shit, it is your problem, not theirs. Zealousy is never good. As this thread proves. Someone in this thread said, that, when people address problematic stuff, some people take it as if ti was personal insult. I see a great irony, that you take my criticism of some people as a personal slight. "Vaguely antagonistic"...What is this? You can't even figure out what I was trying to say, but you still say that I did something bad. OK. "Rude, dismissive, hostile". So many buzzwords. So little meaning. It's like you have a dictionary, which you apply, whenever, possible, with zero understanding and contexts.
Oh come on, how is it his fault? Now if he went around saying people are awful and disgusting for enjoying Odyssey, sure, but it sounds like you might relate as you're being just as defensive towards criticism. It's called being obtuse, you're doing it right now. Ugh, come ON, dude.
Given this dude's...disgusting opinion on rape... I'd say he not only doesn't want to understand, he thinks he's morally superior because he doesn't understand.
I've seen people defend sexual harassment by saying "oh he wasn't harassing her, he's just really bad at flirting" soooo
It's very disgusting. Especially when you have to hear the whinings of the so called "incel" crowd. Those guys are the worst.
I'm presumably near the end of chapter 4, making incredibly slow progress. God this chapter and its locales are dull. Spoiler: Chapter 4 Xenoblade 2 What the hell is Poppi QT... Why.
Look at this posted and created by Servbot24: That’s what the fuck I’m talking about! Practicality >>>> titilation. A form fitting suit that doesn’t seek to give me a raging boner and respects the character. Well no wonder he was being so dodgy and obfuscated his actual positions. He’d have been rightly ripped to shreds here. Now he’s banned a few days... again, and he’ll be right back in this thread after the ban lifts to grace us with his superior morals.
Spoiler: About that I honestly think thats her best form. Also Spoiler: Yeah... thats not even her final form.
Oh yeah I finished XC2 the other day. Couple of things pertinent to this thread (big spoilers to follow) Spoiler Pyra/Mythra's final form was by far the coolest and least problematic. Her breasts are still enormous but they're far less in your face bouncing around everywhere than either of the other two forms. Nia turning into a sexy moth blade and professing love for Rex literally out of nowhere (they maybe spent one or two cutscenes immediately prior hastily setting this up), was one of the most disappointing things about this game. Even worse, Rex responds with "Oh Nia, I love you too... I love ALL my friends!" and then this development is literally never brought up again. It's absolutely pointless and ruins what was otherwise a cool female character, imo. Apart from these issues I did enjoy the game overall. The story isn't anything mind-blowing but it was interesting enough and presented in such a way that kept me on the hook. So yeah that's my little wrap up on that rather contentious game. Whoa what, how did I miss this? It's optional is it?
Spoiler I mean I had no issues with her initial form. I liked that she looked ragtag, almost designed and completed by a child. But like QT mode is just maid with thigh highs and boobs? I swear if there's any jiggle I'm flipping my shit. Maybe there's some hidden message I've yet to see, so I'll keep myself reserved for now.
When I was at college I remember seeing a massive guy basically block a doorway and use his arm to physically stop a woman leaving while he attempted to impress her, and then justify it afterwards as ‘I was just flirting’ without realising that the reason that such difference in physical power allowing such casual ease in stopping her progress was what scared the shit out of her/pissed her off/both and was why she kneed him in the nuts. Naturally afterwards he called her a bitch. Clueless tosser. This wasn’t at a party, this was in leaving a lecture hall in a small art college in England in the late 90s. Personally I thought a knee in the nuts was also appropriate, not just because, y’know, physical harassment, reasonable force vs stronger opponent etc, but because mechanically it was a crowded space by the door and his groin was wide open. Best use of space, mass, velocity, advancing towards the exit, limiting pursuit. Slowing down could have removed any power she had and maybe also normalised it like it was acceptable. She didn’t know whether the rest of the class would back her or him, we were all still only casual acquaintances to each other really and so an unknown quantity of an equal mix young men/women, I only realised that much later, also that not all the people in the room would or could have responded so effectively or with such required immediacy. Months later we spoke about it, she basically had to decide instantly whether to try and talk her way out with no way of knowing exactly how much of a tosser he and the rest of us were on the scale of things or keep advancing and rightly chose the latter. /sorry for off topic
I still think the biggest problem with the character designs in XC2 is just the pure lack of consistency. I can understand there being some difference between designs, but there's a total lack of uniformity and it drives me nuts (it's even more frustrating when it's the military characters - they tend to be pretty big on conforming). The character designer is supposed to fix it if they hire outside designers for character work - and it's clear they just took the designs and plopped them into the game without any thought as to how disjointed it is.
I actually missed the first game! So I only really know Shulk from Smash. I'm guessing he wasn't a sort of paedo-pon?
You see that a lot with military officers in JRPGs, where the grunts are all about identikit uniforms but the general is wearing his most colourful, flamboyant, kickass clubbing gear and the captain has turned up in lacy underwear because it’s Tuesday :D
Some of the rare blades suffer from this, some fit right in and others look kinda weird. Especially giant-breast-rabbit-chan.
He was a sweet daddy-pon to the whole party. Plus he had the advantage of being the first nopon, so he was adorable too.
Given you could remove Riki wholesale from Xenoblade and it wouldn't affect the story whatsoever, could you really blame someone if they forgot him?
Fingers crossed it gets some sort of Switch release! I would very much like that. I find them kinda endearing and I like their designs and way of talking, but most of my friends hate them. But then I like Porgs so I am pretty sub-human already.
I knew this would be an issue when I learned they were hiring guest designers for the rare blades. It's nice that artists get to contribute but it kills any consistency. It doesn't help that there's this awkward disconnect between the main cast and the rest of the world and monsters and even the story. They stick out like sore thumbs. Maybe it's a deliberate design choice, but by god it's jarring.
I guess it could be some kind of art direction to make the main-cast "pop" more in comparison to the world/monsters/npcs?
Yeah its an optional sidequest. I think that ruins her to the point where shes no longer unique, design wise.
To be fair, Morag at least looks like an officer, even if she is wearing a completely different outfit from everyone else. On the plus side...that form never appears in the main story except for a quick one time appearance afterwards.Yeah, it's amazing how poor the designs are that the upgrades "don't count" because it would break the flow of the story, because Poppi as a child actually is very relevant later on so it's even more confusing why they'd give her...that.
Yeah, fair enough. Cool outfit, I like her hat. She might be in someone else’s army, but at least she’s in the army :D
In some ways it's worse because she's such a contrast to all the females in bikinis. It's just... so tone deaf.
I quite liked nopons in the original Xenoblade, including Rikki. It was particularly heartbreaking when, in one side quest, you meet a child nopon Spoiler: light spoilers for a XB1 sidequest in a camp of refugees that fled a city completely destroyed by the Mechon. You soon learn from a different NPC that he has nightmares every night because he saw his parents killed in front of him. That stuck with me for days. :( Xenoblade had some dark stuff, for a Nintendo game with such a vibrant world.
The Zero Suit always made sci-fi sense to me as a kind of interface between Samus's body and the chozo armor she wears. It being sleek and obviously lacking in any armored or protective elements also did a good job in projecting vulnerability and the need for stealth, which was important to the gameplay in the part of Zero Mission where the thing was introduced. That said it has definitely been almost exclusively used for "yo dudes check out how HOT Samus is" purposes in every other appearance though. The high heels are stupid and have only gotten dumber over time.
