anthony wrote: ↑Thu Apr 03, 2025 3:15 pm
I think you may be misinformed on the nature of Drakengard. Going to respond to everything you said about it here. Collectively you seem to have accepted the retarded /v/ goes hard human interpretation that the game is bad unpleasant and retarded on purpose.
Doubtful. How could I be misinformed when that is my legitimate thoughts, that it's one of the worst action games that I ever played. You act as though this were an aberration, an insane assertion when it's just common sense amongst action hack n slash fans. I didn't say that Ninja Gaiden Black is shit, I said Drakengard is shit. There's a wide gulf of difference between the two.
You make it sound that one can only reach to the conclusion that DK is shit, through over-socialization. When I know that's not the case, I played that game before most of modern internet even existed. I played Drakengard back in Japan when I was in my 20s during 2003 or 2002 whenever it was made.
I was playing DW4 with a group of friends during the year that both DW & DK released and it does come across like a parody of Dynasty Warriors especially since DW was popular within mainstream Japanese culture during the early 2000s. They're both basically hack n slash war games, it's not uncommon to compare the two.
We have different interpretations of what the "Art" of a game is, you think of art as a collective expression that is presented through the multimedia of a video game. I view the Art of a game as the performance, similar to how one would judge the artistry of a Ballet Dancer or the sweet science of a Boxing match.
What are video games? They're primarily about problem solving. If I'm not interacting with systems to solve a problem, then what am I actually doing? How is it any different from watching a movie, other then movies generally have better writing & cinematography than videogames.
A game is just a ruleset. The entire game is built around its ruleset, which is how a game should be.
A game should still be entertaining even when divorced from art assets, which is secondary to the ruleset.
This is the artistry of the game, how well it can combine art assets that are wrapped around the gameplay to conceal the objective fact that a game does not exist without the ruleset. The ruleset is the Soul and the core-identity of the game, they're a performance first, traditional art merely helps to sell the game to guide toward the main attraction which is the gameplay.
I have a lot of fun playing games that are basically nothing but calculator number crunchers like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Nobunaga's Ambition, which have barebones art assets but why does that matter when the core game does what it sets out to do? It represented warfare & politicking through nothing but text & number, with the ruleset governing
the possibilities and limitations of the game.
That's what a real game is, you focus too much on the traditional art assets, and mistake the art assets as the game. No the game of Drakengard is a barely functional hack n slash that plays like a stereotype of what people assume Dynasty Warriors played like. This is easy to see for anyone who is not enthralled by Drakengard's art assets. Drakengard without gfx or art assets would just be a generic 3d hack n slash game (which it already was) because there's nothing that stands out about how Drakengard plays.
A game of Tetris would still be fun, even if you completely obscure that you're actually playing a game of Tetris by replacing the blocks with soldiers or demons and have a video playing of a random badass or huge titty woman that represents your character who is presented as shouting commands at the soldiers fighting the demons or cyborgs, with said soldiers
standing in formations that resemble Tetris blocks, when seen from a bird's eye view.
Said solders are animated as fighting and killing the demonscyborgspiratesninjas whenever you've initiated a tetris line that plays an animation of the demonsetc. dying as they represent the blocks that you've cleared.
This would still work as a game, because the core ruleset of Tetris already corresponds to the need of the gamer to solve constant problems every second with the tension and speed of the match reflecting how well the player can navigate through the problems that constantly surface as the player eventually runs out of space once the blocks (which are represented as random enemies) fill the screen and initiates a game over.
That's video game design. The art supplements the game, but it does not make the game. The art assets can make the game in very specific circumstances such as with Dragon's Crown, which is a very average beat em up, but everyone seems to love it because the art & music are so good that most people are willing to overlook that Dragon's Crown doesn't hold a candle to Golden Axe or its inspiration the Capcom D&D games.
DC does a successful job of creating an anime inspired dark fantasy to the point that it feels as if you're actually living in that world. The average gamer will not care or even notice that Dragon's Crown has somewhat shitty gameplay because it's one of the few cases where people are willing to buy the game just for the art and music.
You can call me crazy if you want but I actually found Drakengard pleasant to play. Like sprinting back and forth across fields to do errands in NieR I found the steady, rhythmic killing fields of Drakengard compelling. It forms a complete picture. I'm not enjoying disharmony or ugly chaos. I simply find it pleasing. The nature of the music is a giant meme. It's nowhere near as chaotic or as much of a cacophony as the internet will tell you.
I had those same exact opinions back when it first came out in 2003/2002, that's pre modern internet. I don't recall youtube or v existing, not that it matters because I don't pay attention to game videos or what reddit & 4chan nerds say.
I have ears. If it's hurting my ears, it generally means that it's bad. The music is terrible for an action game.
The songs you linked to are what I would call a prelude. It's not an actual song, it's build up. The real song is what you hear when you start a stage and have to hear the same damn loop for nearly 30 minutes. That's fucking torture.
This is the song that I remember hearing and the group I was playing with in Japan, we were all laughing at it.
You need to take into context of when Drakengard was made. You don't strike me as someone who played it when it just came out, because you're completely ignoring Drakengard's immediate competition and seem to be judging it as if it existed in a bubble outside of the PS2 early 2000s library. Drakengard was shit back then, and it's still shit now.
The sure wasn't the fucking case back in the 2000s. Shadow of Rome? Yeah I can understand why some would like that game. It's competent.
This is what a real action game looks and sounds like from the same era as Drakengard.
This is Drakengard's direct competitor during the era of DK's release window, Dynasty Warriors.
It's just generic heavy metal, but who cares it's badass and still maintains an intense atmosphere. That's the type of music that I was expecting to hear when I first played Drakengard over 20 years ago. I think even Berserk was released in Japan around this time frame and I recall enjoying that game far more than Drakengard. I remember Berserk being boring, but it felt like a competent action game.
Shadow of Rome is way better than Berserk (Rome seems somewhat inspired by Berserk) but the stealth bullshit killed that game.
You also say that this is satire, but I don't see it and I haven't heard of it. As far as I can tell it's just sincere and awkwardly executed melodrama. As you say, probably not drafted thoroughly. A production riding on passion rather than professional finish. I don't get the impression that this game feels it is above other Japanese fantasy games. And I don't believe it does anything to make a reasonable person assume that. The gamer mass might think so, but they're retarded so who cares? They're wrong about everything. Assume the popular meme interpretation of every game is the opposite of the truth. You'll be right more often than wrong, I'm sure.
It sure came across like satire to me, especially if you played Dynasty Warriors right before it. Even Tomonobu Itagaki the guy who made Ninja Gaiden often makes fun of Dynasty Warriors as just a genocide simulator where you mindlessly kill hundreds of braindead enemies. Drakengard is the same thing, but it barely has a combo system and shows no pretenses of being a valiant hero unlike DW.
You act as if Drakengard were this unique misunderstood game as if it were self evident, when it was just a generic hack n slash back in 2003 when it came out because games of that style were a dime a dozen during that era due to the Dynasty Warriors craze that was sweeping Japan at the time.
Even if Drakengard had not come out during a fad, I doubt that it would've faired better because nothing stands out about DK other than its art assets. I've always been intriqued by the DK cutscenes, but I'm not going to suffer through the game just to watch the cutscenes. The game is barely serviceable.
It's funny, I always believed that Kojima did this kind of thing exceptionally well. My interpretation of Metal Gear, which shouldn't strike anybody here as too out there, is that it's a game about freedom, power, and human thriving. This story being presented as a game is fundamental to the point. That we want to have fun. We want to challenge ourselves. Be all we can be. Snake is depressed when he's not soldiering because the warzone is liberating and stimulating like nothing else in his life. We buy Metal Gear because like Snake we find ordinary life boring. Liquid says "you don't know what this shit is about, this isn't your conflict, you came here because you enjoy it", Snake can't answer him and neither can we.
MGS1 maybe, but only MGS1. That's the only MGS that's paced well, the cutscenes never feel intrusive and they add to the tension. In later MGS games, it barely ever feels like a Wetwork Op anymore because you have grown ass retards like The Boss moaning on the battlefield about loyalty and adapting to the geopolitical climate that changes the alliances of the people you know, which sure I understand that Hideous Kojima needed to waste about a fucking hour in the beginning of the game just forcing us to watch The Boss whine like a baby about simply doing the job that she's hired to do, otherwise it wouldn't feel as shocking when she later betrays you about 8 minutes later, even though in-game we just fucking met her LOL!
Metal Gear's point is so simple and so fundamentally bound to what mere "games" are that any addition of depth, anything more fun, is simply that much more to the point. If you're a true warrior the battlefield is liberating, it makes you free, you're a happy human animal because if you can think it you can do it and we inherently enjoy testing ourselves and overcoming. The proof is in Metal Gear sales and lasting success.
Perfectly clean and easy story and game harmony. Any game that takes this angle, which is just lying there to be picked up by anybody with the balls, it will achieve harmony and aesthetic elevation. Even westerners have picked up on this before. Halo: CE and Farcry1+2 are also doing this very directly (but gamers are blind cattle so they can't tell despite decades of attempted failnalysis).
You've been completely charmed by Big Boss's rhetoric. Big Boss wasn't searching for freedom. He was searching for purpose. He was losing his identity because he was living in a world where war changed how battles were fought and people with his skillset are no longer needed.
His purpose is killing, for him and all those similar to him which is why he established Outer Heaven. That's always been the hypocrisy of Big Boss.
He cosplays as a revolutionary but the reality is that he's just a Neoliberal Ultracapitalist who disguises his war profiteering by appealing to survivor's guilt.
The moral conflict of MGS is that it's a game about war veterans from the Nam era who are losing their place in a modern high tech society that no longer needs their talents. This is what kills their purpose, the reason why they exist.
So what Big Boss does is exactly what our Elites always do, starts a conflict and then sells himself as the solution that you need.
After his 'death', Big Boss lived on as an ideal for all aging warriors to aspire to,
Big Boss's story would've been perfect had it only been MG,MG2, & MGS3 because he was a much more effective character as a ghost from the past who still influences the future.
Metal Gear's overall conflict is far more relevant now, because it's about gradual entropy which leads to the competency crisis that is affecting the entire world right now precisely due to the death or aging out of Big Boss's era (Boomers), & Snake's generation (Gen X), which causes a huge power vacuum because Millennials (Raiden) just aren't mentally ready to take on the responsibilities that the previous two left behind.
The previous two eras have been left behind due to globalized smart tech, so Raiden's dilemma is that he has to train for wars that are completely unlike the wars that the previous gens fought.
Raiden is just the transitory state between the previous gen and whomever the incoming gen is, and it doesn't matter who comes after Raiden because that's pretty much where MGS & Revengeance ends.
It was only concerned about the plot that plagued Big Boss's era and Solid Snake's attempt to correct those sins.
And the trajectory of the development of these games over time was to become more free, more liberating, more stimulating, by giving you more power to do stuff, exert control over your environment, be liberated by the opportunities afforded by the battlefield, and constrained by the ZOGshit that in the 21st century is imposing itself upon the last holdouts of free men.
Your case for Pathologic isn't incorrect at all. And the game deserves praise for building novel systems to support a novel premise. But the stock game premises became stock for a reason. All war games are doing the same thing. All of your rules, systems, and inputs serve the premise and aesthetic drive of the thing. Kill or die. And Kojima did this in a far more clever way than his competition.
How do these systems work with Kojima's cutscenes? They don't, they basically exist in separate worlds. One is the overwritten Kojima movie, the other is the game, the rulesets that you interact with. To Kojima's credit, he's actually good at making games unlike most of his Western imitators like Last of Us who completely forget that games are meant to revolve around problem solving, whereas in Last of Us, the gameplay portion is just that chore that you're forced in to. Kojima understands that a game is basically nothing but problem solving which is why his games steadily up the ante with a constant slew of scenarios that test your problem solving skills.
The original MGS actually felt like an arcade game because there were clear rules to how the stealth worked, and once mastered it played like a lightning fast Ninja stealth game.
MGS2 still had a solid stealth rule set and is the most complex stealth system of the MGS games but is not fun to play because of all of the unneeded codecs. I really don't need to hear Jack's bitch constantly reminding me about the day they met or her birthday or whatever the fuck.
Yes I understand the point, he's supposed to be us, and he has a naggy girlfriend just like in real life.
You seem to be so enamored by Kojima's cutscenes that you're willing to let it slide that the cutscenes and the game seem to exist in different dimensions. Have you ever noticed how the game world completely stops every time Metal Gear characters decide to pontificate with each other for over 30 minutes to an hour?
This is not a cohesive whole like how one would describe Deus Ex or Pathologic. Games such as Resident Evil 4 have constant tension even during the cutscenes and whenever it gets to a talking head section, their exchanges are brief.
RE4 feels like a wetwork op and is much closer to the James Bond inspiration that MGS3 was going for.
How does MGS5 get bigger or more free as you say it is? Well, because it dropped most of the movie part to the point where all you do is interact with the game. To its credit, the base game is good and can tide you over to the next cutscene. I don't have a problem that MGS5's cutscenes are so minimal. I'm just stating that it's a much more coherent game than the 3 that preceded it, because the actual ruleset portion is no longer fighting to share time with the narrative.
It only became bigger or more free, because it got rid of some of MGS's core identity.
I don't have a problem with that, but you make it sound as if MGS5 got to this point naturally when what it did was increase the time that you play the game, and decrease the time that you spend watching the movie.
The hospital scene during the beginning was effective though and I wish there were more of that, but this would also collide with the bigger more free game that it set itself out to achieve.
The essential line I would draw in assessing these things is the one you draw in film, I'd just do that for everything. Am I actively engaging with and getting something out of this? Is my appreciation active?
You seem like you may be taking playing a "game" as an inherently active thing. I disagree.
I am. As I said earlier in the post, the art assets are just a supplement to the game.
Adventure games aren't passive like a movie. You're actively making decisions in a game like Disco Elysium or Until Dawn.
With a game like Disco Elysium, you are creating the story based off of your actions which are limited by your stats.
An action version of this emergent story telling is something like Left 4 Dead where the entire gameplay loop basically is a movie, but it's a movie told through action. That's generally what I thought the future of gaming would look like, basically just arcade games but recontextualized as movies that correspond to its genre like Left 4 Dead.
Instead they got lazy and followed the Kojima formula where the movies exist in a separate designation from the gameplay portion.
Something like Cyberpunk 2077 is probably a mixture of both approaches because the gameplay does tell an emergent story but there's also plenty of cutscenes that are almost as long as MGS cutscenes but I don't notice as much, maybe due to how the dialogue is nowhere near as bad as Kojimbo's.
In Cyberpunk I constantly feel immersed even when they're just talking for over 15 minutes because the dialogue, the music, the atmosphere of the game create a verisimilitude that feels as though I'm interacting with a world that's reacting to me. It's an illusion but it does a good job of immersing me within the setting that I'll forget that I'm basically just interacting with rulesets and systems that are hidden by the art assets.
Have you ever watched a depression-vlogger game channel on youtube?
I don't even fucking know what a vlogger is. I'm old mang, I may look as young as the Zoomers but I'm not going to adopt their culture. I only pay attention to their thots.
My mind lights right the hell up while I'm watching 'Full Metal Jacket' because it's an extremely rich and thoughtful movie. There's something new for me to take in and bounce around inside my head every second. The same is true of my favourite games. 'Dead Rising' something similar is going on in my head.
If you sit me down and get me to play a few rounds of a game I can tolerate but I don't care a lot about, World of Tanks if we're online, or I'm just playing some crap Obama TPS, what's going on? Probably not a lot. Though, this is me, I can make a lot happen in my head, actively think about anything. I can think about the creative and productive forces behind some boring piece of crap like 40k: Space Marine if I want to study some industry history. But it's not a richly stimulating work in which I'm engaging with the deliberate wilfully expressive elements. And it's not pleasingly beautiful either.
All you're saying is that movies emotionally move you like how video games can also emotionally move you.
Did you have to interact with Full Metal Jacket to gain your emotional release? No you did not, because the movie did it for your since that is the job of a movie to grip you through its visuals, writing & aural aesthetics.
Games can have those qualities but without the interaction part, how is it a game? Games revolve around problem solving
With a game, you need to interact with it in order to initiate some emotional stimuli.
I say some, because it's not the same as a movie.
Alien & Blade Runner are in my top 3 fave movies list, (which is amusing because I hate most Ridley movies and those are the only two from him that I like.) While Alien Isolation can achieve the same emotional highs as Alien, Isolation does so through its gameplay, your interaction with its rulesets.
With the Alien movie, it does it for you but it keeps you engaged with well paced script & mystery.
I'm never going to see a game that reached Blade Runner's climax (I've played the Blade Runner game, it's shit.), because there aren't any games out there that made me care about the possible fate of a character like how Rachael does.
It's just not possible because real writers just don't write video games, unless it's a hobby of theirs.
It's how Chris Avellone is able to stand out, he's like the one game writer who seems to have actually read a book and actually understood it. I know this because I played Planescape Torment and I was impressed by some of the occult knowledge that the characters were speaking and I was laughing at Morte's reactions who imo seems to be the voice of Avellone within that setting, because all Morte does is talk shit.
God, what a beautiful game. This raises further questions on your framing. If I really enjoy running across the giant barren fields listening to this and killing 500 guys who look exactly the same, is this an experience of artistic quality? I'm largely just lost in the sounds and the experience. Though I'll often go lucid and contemplate the production of something as strange as these giant flat fields.
We're having different conversations. You structure your arguments around what is art, when I believe that my initial comment about Taro, didn't say about the art. It's irrelevant to me if I don't even like the game.
I have a similar mindset as Electric Underground
& Icycalm (Oh how I loathe to say his name but the motherfuckers around here seem to love him, so I have to put up with him lol. And peeps magically forget that he's the one who started shit with me.)
in that all three of us are much older & view arcade game design, as gaming at its purest form.
This vid is interesting
because he's elucidating about the arcade merit of Demon's Souls which I never noticed
until he pointed it out, but it also shows to me what that's actually one of the only Souls games that I like. I didn't notice that it's due to its arcade sensibilities.
You sound like one of those PS1 or PS2 era kids (this would include xbox, gaycube, etc.), so your idea of what a game is was shaped from that environment. To where attention to the ruleset takes a back seat to the art assets, when said art assets are actually part of a different medium. They can combine together to create a video game but if not synergized, well most people will just clip the movie section of the game and then ignore the game. That's why both of them need to work in tandem as a cohesive whole.
For me I view Super Metroid as the artistic synergy between arcade game design, and 'art'.
Something like Demon's Souls is probably the modernish version of that game design style.
That Angel dude did talk about Taro's merits as an artist. That's an argument you should have with him.
Me I'm just like, "ok bruh. You like the game. Good for you. It's still shit."
You know that Xed guy (he told me not to say his name, but I think he'd make an exception for this.)
does actually like Taro's games to almost as passionate a level as you do, so it's a shame that you can't have that convo with him. At least not in public around here, since he doesn't seem interested. He doesn't read my fucking posts either, so I have to just deal with his assumptions.
What is "passive", what does it mean to be a passive audience? Simply not holding a controller? Personally I don't even think I'd draw a line between intellectual and sensory pleasure. You're either getting a high of stimulation, or merely a low novelty suppression of boredom. I might not be able to think as deliberately and produce as many words on Drakengard as I could Full Metal Jacket, but inside I'm firing in response to each.
You talk about games as more like a drug, to reach stimulant sensations.
The older crowd, Icy, Electric guy, me, we view games as a performance + art. I personally couldn't care less about the emotional satisfaction from a game. I'm only interested in solving problems.
It's this key ingredient that separates gaming preferences between older & younger players.
Even Melonie Mac claims that a game is just problem solving, and it's shocking that she's smart enough to figure that out lol but she's fucking 40 yrs old anyway. So it probably just comes with the territory.
I don't need an emotional high from my games. I just want to kill shit. Now how that's done, doesn't really matter to me since I can kill a lot of shit in a Strategy Romance of the Three Kingdoms game, to turnbased like Tactics Ogre, or just pure normie shit like Marvel Rivals. I judge the games by how well they implement the rulesets, the rulesets are how we interact with the game. It's what makes something like Until Dawn a game, even though it's about 97% movie.
With something like Until Dawn, I change the mindset from killing shit, to how long can I survive while suffering all of these morons in the game? With something like Darkest Dungeon it's I just want to kill shit and how long can I survive while suffering these morons in my party?
My directive or goal changes depending on the concept of the game. I don't play games to feel emotions, I play them to temper or refine my decision making skills.
I just view it as another form of exercising.
I am Halo: Combat Evolved's strongest soldier in the world. I believe there's no competition. In trying to finally answer to my satisfaction the question "who wrote Halo?" (several people) I found a lot of interesting comments from the non-Bungie general professional "writers" who Microsoft brought in to support the project. Editors, manual-producers, etc. One of these guys, Eric Nylund, said something what you just wrote reminded me of. He said "Writing is re-writing".
And that's just common sense amongst writers. The more you reread a story, that more that you start to see relationships that you could expand upon or rearrange. Within gaming, you'll be forced to change or rewrite the story around when you realize that the characters don't work as a game squad or party, even though said squad could've had excellent synergy had it been a movie where it's normal for supporting cast to simply support the 1 or 2 leads. Film writing is structured by how much you can limit the budget. Music writing is based around how much story you can tell with as few words as possible.
The only reason I even bothered to concede to Rake and agree with him when he labeled me as an artist is because he told me that a lot of the shit that I say about the gods & ideas & how we're used as vessels, sounds like convos he's had with his art professor.
He also brought up an interview that David Lynch had where Lynch said what I also say that "we live in a dream."
I'm literally saying that, as did Lynch.
When I think of the word artist, I just think of Marxist Hipsters who smear their own shit on the wall, but I can concede to the artist label if artists are actually what he thinks it is, like his professor or David Lynch.
Those who can correspond with the divine.
But where are these guys now? As far as I can tell Trautmann's biggest achievement since editing work for Halo (which he hates with a burning passion) is writing the Army of Two tie-in comics. While Eric Nylund, who strikes me as an extremely nice guy, writes more Zelazny-influenced mythology sci-fi but struggles to find commercial success.
Do you see where I'm going? Who are the real writers here? Bungie's internal guys were a bit like Nomura and Toriyama. If it's cool they're doing it. But their work is a mess. Nylund and Trautmann bring it together into a finished AAA product. Who in this equation is God speaking through(you may think God is not speaking through Halo, but you'd be wrong)?
I don't see why it matters what they're doing. What's Amy Hennig doing? Nothing. What's Avellone doing? Also nothing.
That's not indicative of their skill. I'd argue it's because of their skill which is the reason why they don't get work, because Corpos only want to hire Tumblr fan fic writers who are much easier to bully around and also underpay.
Last I checked, writers are always under appreciated in both hollywood & videogames. Music is the only medium outside of books, where writing is somewhat valued to a point.
However writing is the most important part, it's what gives the property life, it's personality. Its soul.
That's why nobody likes modern Star Wars or MCU. The writing is shit.
You misunderstand what God is, because we're all emanations of God.
God is just consciousness and Gods are ideas. A god is basically a title or a job, and geometric avatars adopt that title. This is how we have multiple gods of war who are distinct & connected to their local culture. They're the same god or job application, it's just each world culture sees a different shape or interpretation that's based off of the local culture.
All of these gods originate from one god, as that's the source of creation.
Do I think that God is within Halo? Well it's a story filled with plenty of Christian allegory, but no I don't think it's saying a damn thing about God, or what our reality is. It just does what anime does and names various objects after Christian lore.
Matrix 2 & 3 did something similar and only the original Matrix did an ok job of explaining what our conflict is and even much of the dialog between Trinity, Morpheus & Neo were clever allegories of the reality outside of the perimeter. And no, it's not machines that Neo was connected to. It's much closer to how its depicted in the The 13th Floor, simulations within simulation.
Of course ideally the skills and the focus and the passion and vision are all flowing through one man, or team or whatever, but we're a sick culture and we've been actively suppressing talent, human quality, sanity, excellence, and brilliance for decades now. Anything good won't be cultivated and what we build is sterile, lacking its appropriate cultural base. Choose your player. Trautmann's grumpy boring pointless professionalism, or the Bungie office frat-house zoo where nobody will EVER finish ANYTHING on time without a gun to their head. And of course, since this time we've also managed to basically kill Bungie with no equivalent replacement emerging. Culture dies a bit more all the time.
This is what the real flood is. A flood of Indians lol. (That's a joke, but it's much closer than Halo's flood which seems to combine the locust showers from China to symbolize an end of the world.)
This is basically the conflict of MGS, ramplant decline but with nobody of merit to replace it, because we live in a bioleninist society where only those who spout correct opinions are allowed to fail upward.
All pretty true, and again, I won't really defend Taro's work on the execution of its writing. Instead I would say it's a game where the divine touch reached parts of it, but definitely not the finish of its storytelling. But listen to them and tell me they're not touched. I feel this way about many works. It's very hard to land a complete production.
Yes you love the music. Good for you, but I process that as art asset. Just because a piece of music came from a game, doesn't make it the game. Most composers are freelance and don't even work for the company that made the game. Why would I consider the art asset as the game when it's just a supplement? The game is the whole, not the sum of its parts.
Now I know what movie critics must feel like when ever they try to explain to gamers what art is, because from what I'm seeing, it seems to be a much too liberal definition of what defines a game as art.
You like an art asset, but that's not the soul of the game.
It can and does help the game, but the soul is the ruleset. Which is just passable. Without the ruleset, there is no game. It's just a series of images & music, which yes can be interpreted as stand alone pieces of art, but I'm not making a statement about the art assets. I'm talking about the actual game. Which is shit, and I'm not sure why I need to change my mind about it being shit when I already thought it was shit over 20 years ago.
Your argument is look at this piece of art, give it chance. You're not convincing of the merits of the game. You're just pointing out that it has art assets that you appreciate. You're not actually talking about the game, in fact you seem to be ignoring the game.
It's similar to how mathematics basically is reality without the supplemental art assets (all of the imagery that we're seeing right now. We're simply the assets obscuring the mathematics.), the golden ratio is the formula that builds this reality. These are the building blocks, a game's rule set is the skeleton of the game.
I'm old, I don't have time to play every shit game. I'm not going to waste my time to play a game, because it has a piece of art. Especially since it's mostly just the music, story and gfx that everyone loves. I could just longplay that on youtube.
This is why it's important for a game to be equal parts arcade & art like Super Metroid, Strider or Demon's Souls. Sure you can enjoy separate aspects of its art assets outside of the game, but it's only when you play those games that you truly experience what they are, and it's an experience that can't be found outside the domain of gaming.
Now for this whole section of you responding I'll just have to say it's hard to accurately carry over someone else's entire worldview as a third person so I won't tell you I have him perfectly captured and can't answer for him. You're taking an awful lot from not much.
Because I'm telling you common Japanese belief systems which I believe make it impossible for Japs to be classified as Atheists. Who's ever heard of an Atheist monarchy? That goes against the entire concept of monarchs. Even a constitutional ceremonious one.
8 Million Gods is culturally ingrained within the japanese psyche.
This is how they perceive reality, it's what makes them what they are.
It's why their entertainment is the way it is. It makes no sense to me for they to process logic
as simply
"Just trying to figure life out, and then they die."
That doesn't sound Japanese. Japanese don't give a fuck about death and this is enveloped
within their culture from seppuku to the kamikaze,
Kurosawa to Kitano from film, & even to their folktales such as the 47 Ronin.
Their folk tale heroes are depicted as killing themselves or willingly allowing themselves to be ritually slaughtered in order to maintain face for the daimyo that they failed to protect.
Once the flame has died out, they accept the incoming inevitable, and don't even bother to try and change their fate.
This particular guy is half-American, largely sees Japanese culture as an other thing relative to the west which he understands like a native, rather than something he can just unconsciously breathe. He is Japanese, but consciously so. So perhaps not an average person. Also I don't know if he'd appreciate me saying all this about him but it's down now and I don't redraft because I am an id-driven artfag when I write my posts.
Well he's an outsider, just like me. So it means that I don't have to take his opinion seriously. I would only have to follow the social order if it were an actual Jap.
There's many different degrees of outsider. This guy imo looks, feels and acts like a native, but even he's considered an outsider and isn't allowed to enter some Japanese establishments.
Now I made a whole big thread on
my forum about this. I called it 'anime sentimental existentialism'. In response to critiques of certain animes and popular Japanese works I feel like I see repeated pretty often. That a work seems to be dealing with our greater relationship with the world, and just kind of ends on some good feelings. My first point is that the fact you would expect anything more from such a work goes to show that they at least feel like they're being honest and serious about them. You don't get mad when an episode of CSI fails to resolve the human condition.
And second, if the stock life goes on we look at the horizon ending
is just the extent of things, is that really a problem? You sound like you're suggesting there's potentially some great disillusionment to be had here, but frankly I don't see what it is you want that you're losing. What do you
think they're channeling when they make all of these things you love?
Do you think one has to be an esotericist to be a great artist? Honestly having read a lot of your posts I think you may believe that, and you may even be onto something. But I think that perspective does clash with the reality of how most Japanese pop-artists think and generally seem to be.
There are only so many esotericists in the world. Have you ever read an author's statement in a manga? Most of them sound like deeply quaint, almost
simple people(in the best sense possible).
It's not like I ever expected anything out of Hellsing, which has some occult elements but is obviously just about random cool shit because that's all it is.
What a lot of Japanese produce does do is retain callbacks to ancient history from Ghibli to One Piece.
These callbacks exist not due to esotericism, but due to their national character.
A Japanese who practices & believes in Buddhism doesn't make them esoteric, it makes them Japanese.
Buddhisim is as common in Japan as Christianity is to the USA.
I don't expect Japs to be esoteric, when Buddhism is their dominant religion.
I assume that Japs have merely retained ancestral memory through the traditions & rituals of their culture
which is passed down the generations through their 2 dominant religions, which in itself functions as an historical blueprint of who they
are and who they came from with the Royal family being a constant reminder that they are the same children of the sun and have bowed before the same
monarchs since nearly the beginning of their founding. I say nearly, because the witch Queen Himiko predated the Japanese royal family, who I feel
is still relevant to the Japanese cultural identity because Hime's existence helps explain this weird dichotomy that Japan has between the native culture of Japan that she represents and Chinese/Proto-Korean people that represent the royals with the admixture between these two groups leading up
to the people who inahabit the land of today.
They believe this world, the waking world is transitory and the shapes that Japanese behavior and conduct.
They embodify the saying "Live within the world, but not of it".
That explains their isolationist culture, that explains their self-segregation even when amongst other Asians.
The Chinese have a similar behavior pattern. For the most part, the Chinks actually ignore the world. Or at least the world outside of their sphere of influence.
A culture that's shaped by the alleged divinity of their monarchs, doesn't strike me as one that I'd label as Atheist.
It's a statement that makes no sense to me, because Japs are far too ritualistic to be labeled as anything Atheist.
Pantheist sure. Agnostic? Somewhat, but Atheist? Much of their behavior that could be described as Atheism just looks like Buddhism to me.
Buddhism can't be categorized as Atheist because they do actually believe in other worlds.
You'll never see a Black man like Denzel Washington ever coming out of Africa, because the cultural psyche of Denzel
is mostly shaped by his American Evangelical beliefs, which is why he culturally blends in with the White American culture of the 1950s-2000s.
He's unmistkably American, because he processes logic like a typical American Zionist.
The religion shapes the cultural mindset.
And second, if the stock life goes on we look at the horizon ending is just the extent of things, is that really a problem? You sound like you're suggesting there's potentially some great disillusionment to be had here, but frankly I don't see what it is you want that you're losing. What do you think they're channeling when they make all of these things you love? Do you think one has to be an esotericist to be a great artist? Honestly having read a lot of your posts I think you may believe that, and you may even be onto something.
I believe that Japanese evolved separately from White people but were also able to obtain a higher civilized culture. Hearing that they're Atheist makes me laugh because it indicates to me that Japs are just dogs imitating gods.
I'm not saying that Huwites are gods, but I am saying that much of the arts that they are responsible for attributed to them is due to the favoritism of the gods which granted them glory. Since the 15th or 16th century, Japan was the one other country who also seemed to be children of the sun. It seems authentic, but they're actually just pretending. How does life & society progress if you only know how to imitate?
But I think that perspective does clash with the reality of how most Japanese pop-artists think and generally seem to be.
Have I done that? I don't believe so.
I never expected anything out of Hellsing and works similar to it. Those works are obviously just the pure individualized creativity of some fat Jap neet. Only one I could think of is One Piece but One Piece as well as Ghibli actually are recognized within occult communities (which to my estimation seems to be several million. They're not that rare, they're just rare within the videogame community because vidya gaems are homogenized and you're only allowed to be a faggot.) as having a possible connection to the past.
It's not due to some hidden ancient knowledge. It's just cultural artifacts that Japan has retained through their culture. They're the only culture left in the world, that still lives somewhat like the old days which is why the Eurocuck Union, UN and the Open Society are trying their hardest to flood them with Indians, so no reminders of the past of who we are can remain.
You're equating Buddhism to esotericism, which it is but not within a Japanese context.
A lot of the Jap entertainment that I'm into, they're definitely into something.
Cozy Okada & Kazuma Kaneko, I would not be shocked if they were Golden Dawn, because the shit they do is pretty fucking demonic.
Masamune Shirow, a fat nerd but he's well researched in both military affairs and esotericism and if you see his timeline which connects all of his manga (including his hentai lol) under a single chronological time line, depicts a society, our society that starts out as a cargo cult. Except his version has Friendly Reptilians whereas I believe that the ancients were just White bearded humans.
Chainsaw man, this is obviously just creativity, but it's well researched and utilizes aspects of the occult to build a fun narrative around.
Going by the standards you imply here I'm inclined to think you must believe there are no worthy cultures, at most only initiated orders where human existence takes on value.
In the modern era? Of course not. We only have one globalized culture that pretends to be multiple nations, because that's part of the play, the ritual.
I look down on all those who join an order. I consider myself an errant. I'm just passing through. The affairs and their stupid made up politics and histories don't matter to me. The entire world is fake and it's constantly trying to force you into their fake conflicts of false binaries.
You always have the choice, to not engage. Our monetary system is fake. Over 35 trillion dollars in debt and that's just the fake digital number. The world total of our paper money only amounts to about 2 billion dollars which further shows to you just how fake and rigged the game is. It's not actually possible to be a billionaire, unless that's the role you're chosen to play because everything is digital and easily trackable
Games in this era were looking for new justifications. The aborted direction was aesthetically justified works. The "moviegame". That project stalled out because the moviegames that didn't really resist you and just drove forward were terrible. But where we went wrong was blaming the "gameplay" for this. Yeah, ducking behind a low wall to fire your assault rifle at guys as they pop-up is boring. But only one game of that generation was designed with that in mind as a central justifying experience.
The first one.
Judging from the name of the thread, I was expecting a Blobert post.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/members/blobert.8256/
I view that era as the death of game design. Arcade is no longer viewed as the default and that era destroyed most of the arcade design blueprints, because arcades expect you to actually have a life or at least get one eventually. The corpos who currently control gaming want you to treat gaming as a religion and as your life so they bank on their $150 retail Grand Theft Auto 6. Gaming is worse than drugs at this point.
The problem with the Obama movie game, was simply that they were bad movies. We removed the game, but once that was gone there was nothing else to do. Gamedev carried on making genuinely pointless, irredeemable works. It is simply impossible to give a reason why one should bother playing American games from this era. Just look at them. They look like jokes now. Conflict: Denied Ops. Battle: Los Angeles.
I still need to respond to your other post. What I wanted to remark upon in that other thread was how Obama era culture was characterized by Anti-Terrorism which was also reflected within the pop culture. It's funny, because you don't hear any of that shit any more.
Now it's either Antifa or Maga terrorists which is weird to me because those Middle Eastern terrorists were real, but they got replaced with fakeness.
What's missing here, and good for you not even thinking of it, is multiplayer gaming. God what a mess. Talk about aesthetically unjustified experiences. What I said earlier about man's capacity for low-engagement stimulation. Call of Duty multiplayer. That's where all the blood went. Once we discovered that there was nothing else to do. Nobody who thinks like an artist survived by 2008.
Not an artistic experience. Not a gamer. Plenty of people sit down just to spiritually and mentally die in front of video games every day.
Multiplayer games can be an enthralling experience when played at a high level and that's not reducing the game. That's what a game is, its soul is the play mechanics. They're the closest things to arcades that we have left, where you're rewarded with your skill. Not many games these days reward skill. I used to be in top 100 in several hero shooters and even used to have psn fan communities. What's shocking is a lot of hot girls took part in that and made me realize that several bitches in my team, including the captain are girls. I would even get hit on by some bitches from the opposing team and they'd made orgasm sounds, just because they love the sound of my voice.
Modern era is nothing like that anymore since everything is extremely moderated. All I hear are gay sounding Zoomers cussing me out, they basically sound like Riley from Boondocks.
