Open Thread

Open Thread #275

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47 thoughts on “Open Thread #275

  1. Super Metroid has been decompiled:
    https://github.com/snesrev/sm
    There is apparently some work left to do, but this is nonetheless a big milestone, seeing how popular this game still is among speed runners. I have to admit that I never even played it, outside of perhaps 15 minutes in an emulator decades ago.

  2. Aaron,

    You’ve recently talked about programmers. May I ask if you’re familiar with Terry Davis (RIP) and his creation of TempleOS?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7gf5M04hdg

    Pretty amazing that he was able to create his own Operating System from scratch! But unfortunately,he was Schizo (a REAL schizo to my knowledge) and that eventually led to him becoming homeless and dying. (I think he was hit by a train or so?) Really reminds me of that cliche saying about how there is only a very fine line between Genius and Crazy.

    It kinda reminded me of a blog post you wrote earlier about the Schizo mindset. Or I guess if we were to make the term more accurate,that mindset you speak of is simply not being afraid to question the status quo and looking beyond what’s on the surface.

    Do you personally find it unfortunate that Engineers,Programmers,and people in high IQ professions in general tend to be really bad with women? Its a sentiment Roissy made a long time ago when his blog was still up. Its actually the geeks who innovate and advance our society better,not the jocks. But he did also make the sentiment that if the geeks got laid as well as the jocks and bad boys,they might not be so motivated to make the effort to invent stuff anymore.

    In hindsight,I know now that Roissy’s shit is almost entirely mental masturbation,but that specific thing he said kinda stuck with me. You’ve posted before in your old blog about how sex is actually pretty overrated,and only those who rarely ever get it put the experience so high on the pedestal,which does look to be telling given Roissy’s writing. Its the same thing with the blackpillers thinking romance is everything and Chad’s life is perfect just because he can get chicks.

    1. I have heard of Terry Davis and Temple OS, but I was not aware that he had died. He is a tragic figure. There are quite a few examples of similarly determined autists. The first that comes to mind are the Adams brothers who are the creators of Dwarf Fortress.

      I thought about the high-IQ problem. There are of course well-adjusted high-IQ people but the extreme outliers, which include genius types like Terry Davis, are not part of this group. I would be curious to know if the well-adjusted high-IQ types are even as smart as the eccentric outliers — I have a hunch that they are not. Evolutionarily speaking, a very high-IQ is dysgenic in our society, and so are the mating preferences of sexually “liberated” women. Arguably, having too many high-IQ individuals around would have endangered a tribe’s survival in the ancestral setting, which would explain why women are not attracted to them. Those geniuses need a stable society to work in but if you have too many of them, they undermine society. Similarly, leftist parasites need a functioning society, but if you have too many of them, society collapses. You can observe this in real time in the current year.

      I am not sure I view “high-IQ professions” that fondly. In my opinion, the vast majority of people in them have at best a slightly above-average IQ, somewhere around 105 to 110. Those are people who have no real excuse to not be good with women. Instead, I think the underlying issue is poor socialization. You can teach those guys how to get laid, and I have done that plenty of times. In contrast, a genuine high-IQ eccentric like Terry Davis could most definitely not even be bothered with pursuing women. In fact, I think that the mark of a genius-level IQ outlier is that those women have little interest in women and rather pursue their own interests.

    2. >Arguably, having too many high-IQ individuals around would have endangered a tribe’s survival in the ancestral setting, which would explain why women are not attracted to them. Those geniuses need a stable society to work in but if you have too many of them, they undermine society. Similarly, leftist parasites need a functioning society, but if you have too many of them, society collapses. You can observe this in real time in the current year.<

      I think AlekNovy mentioned this somewhere (if it happens to ring a bell for you,please do link it if its not too much trouble for you),but its something along the lines of "Society was built to undermine the power of looks". If I'm not mistaken,this was why arranged marriages existed back in the day. So instead of people getting together because of "base urges" (physical attraction),people got together to make family alliances and produced offspring to continue the next generation and that was how society propagated itself. (Do note however that I'm not a not a history nut. if I happen to be wrong in anything I've said thus far,please feel free to correct me,lol)

      We also have to discuss the role of wage slaving here. You've already talked about it elsewhere,primarily in your other blog,but the harsh truth is that in the real world,there is dirty work (often times not just dirty,but even outright hazardous to our health) and it needs to be done. Somebody's gotta clean the toilets and dispose our shit or we wil be living in the filth of our own waste, Evil and violent people exist and somebody has to volunteer risking their own lives to protect us from them. (i.e. Police,Military,etc.) etc.

      To try and summarize my entire point,I think that what is in the best interest of an individual is often times (if not almost always) in conflict with society wants/needs to keep itself functioning.

      For example,we advice men who really lost the genetic/looks lottery (can't even get someone reasonably attractive) to just drop out of the dating scene altogether instead of settling. and/or use escorts. From an individual perspective,I do agree this is more likely to result in happiness for the man. (I've seen average/ugly people in marriages. same old same old constant nagging dynamic. I very much doubt these people are happy) But it undermines society,because it robs them of future wage slaves (because they don't have kids) AND they have less incentive to work hard. (they'll do the absolute minimum in their job to keep being able to pay the bills,but no more).

      For the record,I don't personally see this as a bad thing,I'm just explaining how I think it works. Society (and especially the elites) have pretty much shown they don't give a fuck about us as individuals,so why on earth would we be obligated to sacrifice our personal happiness for its objective?

      How does this relate in general to the topic of High IQ people undermining society? Well,they're more likely (albeit not guaranteed) to realize the above and put their personal well-being over what society needs to keep functioning. Meaning too many of these people means not enough people will be willing to do the necessary dirty work,and that may collapse society. That's what I'm picturing here so far.

    3. “ There are quite a few examples of similarly determined autists. ”

      I am currently working for a center dedicating to treating and offering compensatory strategies to autistic children. I urge you not to use this word for any kind of high IQ people. Diagnosis and treatment plan for autistic children and autistic adults are very complex. It is not that easy to determine whether a child is autistic. The most common features of autistic children are avoidance of social interaction, playing games all by themselves, enjoy repeating tasks. Of three, only the first one is the strong indicator of autism. Delayed language development will certainly accompany autism.

      I have seen the so-called high functioning autists, but they still exhibit traits that are quite different from “neurotypical” children. Many suffer from poor memory and respond in a delayed manner to questions. They may greet you warmly and be responsive to your probing, but once you scratch the surface, abnormalities will show.

  3. I am not sure for how much longer the “woke garbage action RPG” genre will be around. One of its most prominent examples, the steaming pile of crap that was Forspoken, sold so poorly that Gamestop dumped the steel books of this game into the trash. Watch the clip below for some laughs. My highlight is the Mexican garbage man referring to this game as a “miserable failure”. When your low-skilled labor force knows what’s up, a game truly is an abysmal failure:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYzq66Z57Sw
    The comments are lit, by the way.

    This reminded me of the investment adage that when the cab driver tells you about the stocks he has bought, it is probably time to exit the market.

    1. That’s hilarious, and also great news. In other news, the REmake 4 demo is rumored (pretty legitimately) to drop tonight. I’ll definitely be giving it a whirl.

    2. A few months ago we briefly talked about Darksiders. As I had the day off, I set up my PS3 and gave it a spin. In short, as a teen with not a particularly sophisticated gaming palate, I would probably have enjoyed this game quite a bit. It is a relatively shallow hack-and-slash game, clearly inspired by the classic God of War games, but sloppier in its execution. I grew tired of it within an hour, unfortunately.

    3. Ah, thanks for your impressions of the game. I’m not really surprised to hear that it’s just a discounted version of God of War. It’s probably still better than over 90% of what came out in the last few years.

    4. I just finished the RE4 Chainsaw Demo. First off, it’s pretty much unplayable on the Deck from a visual standpoint, but I persisted. You get all these black blocky glitches around certain outlines and this seems to be pretty consistent among other Deck users. I think it’s something that could probably be sorted out either before or after the main launch, though. However, I think it’ll overall be a pretty low quality experience on the Deck. We’re probably looking at low texture models at 30 FPS. I guess we’ll see.

      As far as the demo goes it’s pretty short and watching a play through of it isn’t going to spoil anything. It takes places a little after what I assume will be the introduction cinematic, and right before you head into the first big village fight where you encounter Mr. Chainsaw. As soon as you complete the village section the church bell rings, leaving Leon shrugging his shoulders and commenting about how everyone must be heading off to play bingo.

      To make up for the modernized control scheme the enemies are much more aggressive and harder to combat overall. They’ll swarm you, then one will rush you and attempt to grapple you leaving you open to further enemy attacks. You can either mash the action button to break free, or sacrifice some of your knife’s durability for an instant break. Stunning an enemy with a head shot, for example, allows you to either melee them or use a special knife attack for more damage. Then you can also perform stealth kills and finishers on grounded enemies. You can map up to 8 weapons including grenades, while the knife is defaulted to RT (without readying a weapon using LT), or you can hold L1 to have Leon perform a jab instead of a slash. Sometimes you’ll get a quick prompt to counter an attack with a knife, however, durability is a real problem and carrying a ton of knives in your weapons case isn’t going to be feasible. I suspect an unlockable infinite knife is in the game just like in REmake 2.

      There’s also crafting in the game. Using 6 gunpowders and some metal scrap will grant you handgun ammo, for example, while 12 gunpowders + scrap gives you shotgun ammo etc. Enemies drop a variety of items just like before, and picking everything up is super quick and easy allowing you to gather resources in the midst of a hectic situation pretty fluently.

      During the village showdown, I was surprised at how many enemies the game throws at you. It was straight up chaos. Unlike in other REmake’s, the reticle in this game is pretty tight allowing for quick and precise adjustments. Which makes sense as Leon will be surrounded quite often in this game. If you get around to watching it I’d love to get your impressions of it.

    5. I just watched a play-through of the RE 4 demo. My impressions overall are very positive. Quick remarks:

      1) The demo is quite nicely structured: it takes a coherent segment of the game, and it tracks completion time as well as the number of enemies. Thus, I expect competitive people to sink quite a bit of time into it. I could even imagine this game demo showing up at speed run events but probably not Games Done Quick because there are, as far as we know, no trannies in the game.
      2) Capcom went the extra mile and included a more challenging difficulty called “mad chainsaw mode”. This seems to indicate great confidence of the developer in the quality of the product, as does the lack of restrictions of the demo. (I recall that the Monster Hunter Rise demo was limited to relatively few launches, I think it was just 30.) Thus, they expect that this demo will keep fans busy for the two weeks until the release. This does not sound like a stretch to me.
      3) The action is very snappy. The great number of enemies gave me flashbacks of RE 5, and the unpleasant experience of having to fight off a mob while you move as if you are wading through molasses. In contrast, in REmake 4, you can move around quickly.
      4) The weapons seem to lack “oomph”. Capcom clearly went for a more realistic approach, but I’ll probably miss the high-impact weapons of the original.
      5) Despite what some nay-sayers say, the graphics are very good. According to some guys on NeoGAF, this looks like a PS4 game, which is a ridiculous position. However, one could make the argument that the game looks comparatively weak, considering that the original release on the GameCube was, back then, by far the best-looking game on the market. That was the last time we saw a really big improvement over the status quo in terms of graphics. Ever since, graphics have only been increasing incrementally.
      6) Despite the increased realism, the core of the original game is still there, with Leon suplexing enemies and his signature one-liners.
      7) I am a bit divided on the increased pace. In the original, I liked that the game was slow and methodological. The remake, in contrast, goes for a completely different approach, seemingly stressing fast reactions and crowd control.

    6. Update: I opted into the Steam Deck’s beta software updates and the newest version installs drivers that fix the graphical abnormalities on the Deck. I can run the demo on medium textures at 40 FPS smoothly, but I opted to dial it back to cut down on fan noise. Assuming the full version is optimized well at some point, then it should be a decent enough experience on the Deck.

      Btw, I think you’ll get a kick out of the one-liners in this demo. Even the famous bingo comment makes its way back!

    7. I watched the Capcom Spotlight yesterday, which was quite disappointing. At least it ended on a high note with the REmake 4 demo announcement. A little later I caught Synthetic Man on stream playing through the demo, but I only saw the last few minutes. He only did one run before going back to the HD textures mod of RE 4, which looks very good.

      Are you talking about the “Proton hotfix mod“? With it, performance is a lot better than I would have expected.

    8. Yes, that’s exactly what I did. I’ll remember that channel for future reference. I figured out how to do it reading the comments section of another video.

      I’ve since ran the demo a couple more times and managed to take down the chainsaw guy both times. It took 2 grenades, 5 shotgun shells and about a dozen precise handgun shots to finish him. He drops about 3,000 credits for killing him. The second time I killed him was right when the bell was going off so I didn’t get to collect the credits for a “great” score.

    9. The Capcom Spotlight reminded me of a Nintendo Direct. Where with the latter you get a bunch of farming sims for 45 minutes, and then finally you see a little trailer for a Zelda game before months of radio silence.

    10. Thanks for analysis! I’m glad that we’re in agreement that so far, the remake isn’t a disappointment. I don’t usually like the argument for when a remake disappoints in some major way that you can “just play the original if you don’t like it, bro”. However, the original is still quite relevant as it’s not such a night and day difference like FFVII was. It could also be really nice to see all the retcons and surprises built into this remake.

      As for the pacing that you pointed out in number 7 I feel that it was somewhat necessary, otherwise the game would just be too easy as Leon got a significant maneuverability buff. One could argue that he should never have received this buff, but it’s just the direction that modern shooters have taken and I don’t really see them not implementing this. Personally, Doom Eternal’s play style kind of conditioned me to now want and expect shooters with more frenetic pacing.

      I think there will, no matter which direction they go in, be a very vocal portion of the player base that is unhappy about certain aspect of the full game. There’s just no way to please everybody, but I think it shouldbbe a worthwhile game for me so long as they don’t insert some glaringly woke nonsense in it somewhere. Certain nitpicks such as “Leon’s voice actor isn’t as good as the original”, for example, are also to be expected. I’m convinced that REmake 1 will be the only ever perfect remake.

      Btw, I’m not currently aware of the crowd complaining about the graphics. They look fine enough to me, but what do I know? I do think that Capcom has gotten a lot better with facial animations than with REmake 2.

      Do you have a timeline planned out for when you’d like to procure a PS5?

    11. I came across people claiming that the PS4 launch game “The Order: 1886” looks better than RE4 or that it was a step down from REmake 2. It’s all quite childish.

      Regarding me getting a PS5: After the REmake 4 demo announcement, I have occasionally been looking for one online, refreshing browser tabs a few times a day, and, for the first time ever, I found one for the MSRP, the base version, not the lame Faggot of War bundle. I bought a PS4 in 2016, three years into the generation, to play The Witcher III, and got a decent bundle offer, which amounted to a nice discount. Yet, the PS5 is still sold at a very high price, and it is also a shockingly ugly piece of hardware. A good friend of mine has one, and even next to his absolutely enormous TV, the PS5 still looks way oversized. On the one hand, I do want to play REmake 4 and, later, FF XVI but on the other, I don’t really want to put this eyesore of a console on my desk. There are rumors about a slim PS5, but there is another option. As I work in tech, I could buy myself a decent PC and deduct it from my tax bill. Thus, a new PC would effectively cost me about as much as a PS5, and on top I could use mods to get rid some of the woke crap that seeps into our games. I’ll sit on this for a bit. As Sony’s exclusive games have zero appeal to me, I may just get a PC.

    12. Speaking of the graphics in this demo, check out this video and skip to the cabin scene. This guy is running the game on high specs and the ray tracing and shadows are probably some of the best to date: https://youtu.be/X2XL2tOA0Lg

    13. This looks incredible. Thanks for sharing! This is the PC version. I am looking forward to Digital Foundry’s inevitable comparison video.

    14. “Faggot of War”
      Lmao!

      Are you saying that once you deduct the PC from your taxes that it will end up costing around the equivalent of a PS5? That seems like the better option considering the the PS5 has about 2 or 3 games even worth playing. I assume you would have just sold it after you were done with it anyway. At least with the PC there are decades worth of great games to revert back to. If you do end up going this route I’d love to hear about the hardware you end up with. Btw, it will probably be at least six months or perhaps a year or more before FFXVI gets a PC release. The developers are definitely trying to negate the fact that they plan on releasing it for PC because they want people to not hold out and just get a PS5.

      I managed to trigger the mad chainsaw challenge just now and it was pretty brutal. The village section just keeps going and going. I fought for what felt like 5 minutes before I ran out of resources and died to a grab. You take a lot more damage in this mode also, usually meaning one hit requires a heal. Also, I couldn’t exactly tell for sure but it seemed like Salvador got a re-skin as well as a glowing chainsaw. It was hard to study him because he also seemed to have a faster sprint and kept on my tail the whole time. It was intense!

      I’ve also discover a couple more mechanics in the game that aren’t explained in the demo. The famous 180 turn makes its comeback, yet the way to trigger it is different (back+RB). Then there is a power slash, where you press RT while sprinting to perform an accented version of the standard slash.

    15. A colleague tipped me off with regards to deducting a PC from your taxes. From what I gather, up to a certain amount you can fully deduct it right away, which is a little less than 1,000 euros. If your PC is more expensive, you need to spread the cost over multiple years. There are some limitations, of course. A highly-expensive RTX 40 series graphics card would be hard to justify but standard equipment would be fine. Besides, I work in a data-heavy field, so I could probably justify even a relatively powerful GPU. With a total expense of around 900 euros, such a PC would cost me about as much as a PS5, and for that amount of money you can get pretty good hardware.

      I expect that FF XVI will be exclusive to the PS5 for one year, similar to Monster Hunter Rise on Switch. On that note, the original RE 4 was supposed to be a Gamecube exclusive and never leave the console. A little over half a year later, though, it was out on PS2 already, and nowadays, this once console exclusive game is available on every relevant platform. Considering that porting is not entirely trivial, I think that the original claim was a bold-faced lie. Capcom may even have worked on the GC and PS2 versions in parallel, and signed a deal to keep the game on GC for six months or so.

    16. Yesterday I even came across someone selling a new PS5 for 450 euros on a classified ads site. The seller seems legitimate, but if I add shipping and PayPal fees, to have protection in case this is a scam, I’d pay closer to 470 euros, and then there is the issue that I won’t have much of the warranty left as the console allegedly was in storage for a year. In a saner time, you’d get a used console for about half the MSRP and sell it with a minimal loss after a few months. There was also a recent hardware revision of the PS5, which would be preferable.

    17. Someone apparently was able to get their hands on an early copy and is in the process of leaking the entire game on tiktok. Needless to say, I won’t be indulging in any spoilers.

    18. You mentioned how this demo would keep people busy for a couple weeks earlier, and indeed people are starting to uncover new secrets already. You can gain access to a TMP simply by discarding all of your items before heading into the main village square. Doing so causes a well to open up and you just climb down and open a chest for it. Once you’ve obtained it it stays in your inventory even on the mad chainsaw mode.

    19. This sounds like an easter egg. Do you also get enough ammunition to put the TMP to good use?

    20. There is extra ammo for it in the well inside several breakable barrels, so once you initially obtain it there is indeed quite a bit of ammo for you to clean up with it and finish the demo. Once you restart the game you merely have 50 bullets in a single clip, and I’ve yet to find any extra ammo for it laying around as the well is closed off unless you perform the cheat each time. However, that one loaded clip is still pretty game changing alongside the handgun and the shotgun on the replay. The damage output seems to be comparable to the 9mm, so even though the reticle is wider and veers off target more erratically some well placed shots gun devastate a crowd, or even Salvador. I was able to obtain a “great” score for the first time by a margin of almost 4,000: https://files.catbox.moe/gqt19d.jpeg

      In regards to your gaming PC it seems that if you got tired of gaming after a while you could perhaps even part it out to recoup the losses and then some. I will check out the link to the PS5 revisions.

    21. If I sold a PC in parts or as a whole after having deducted it from my taxes, I would have to add any sales proceeds to my taxable income, so I don’t think this is much of a money-making opportunity.

      It just struck me that Capcom could easily cater to the competitive gamer community by adding some kind of score multiplier, expressed in gold coins, i.e. if you kill enemies faster, you gain increasing amounts of gold, until your “combo chain” drops. This is basically how the chaining system in some classic bullet hell games like Dodonpachi works. While modern game developers do not care much about replayability, I think that the episodic structure of RE 4 would lend it self quite well to it.

      I am not sure how scoring in REmake 4 works and a cursory search online did not yield any results either. Even in the current form, I think that the subtle gameplay grading the game offers could be motivation enough to replay missions to get more “great” or “excellent” scores. Perhaps there are further rankings, but the highest I found online was “excellent“. I like this better than self-imposed challenges, such as speed-running with an external timer. Capcom even caters to this crowd by offering an in-game timer, though. Personally, I think that completing a game the fastest is not necessarily the best measure of skill, in particularly if glitches or exploits are used.

    22. I’m really curious to see how the scoring works within the mercenaries mode. Did you ever play the original mercenaries mode? What you describe in terms of a potential scoring system for the demo is what the original mercenaries more or less utilized: https://youtu.be/vXsSgxaA5OY

      I recently learned by watching a mad chainsaw run that killing Salvador in that mode nets you 10k versus the usual 3k. I’m hoping to reach that 15k threshold next time it triggers with the aid of the tmp. Also, it appears that bypassing all the enemies inside the first cabin is essential as none of them seem to ever drop any items. Not even that gigantic rat in the basement is worth killing.

    23. I’ve never played Mercenaries, but it’s great that Capcom had a similar scoring system in the past. This mode will also be in REmake 4 but I don’t think any footage of it has been released yet.

    24. I just had the thought that if harder difficulties in the full version potentially reward the player, then that would be a great incentive to challenge yourself in that way.

      Btw, I don’t know why I didn’t look before, but I went into the items menu to examine the handgun and TMP and I found something interesting about the former that you’ll be pleased with: https://files.catbox.moe/10bpmc.jpeg

    25. This is fantastic. I would have been very disappointed if the iconic laser pointer had not been in REmake 4. I hope they stick to the red color, too.

    26. I was in the middle of listening to this video when you posted this comment. We also talked about the gameplay differences. I can certainly see the original game remaining relevant next to REmake 4. In the video, he claims that people will forget about REmake 4 once enough time has passed, while still praising the original. I am not sure this will happen as they appeal to different audiences in terms of their gameplay.

      I think the most important issue he raises is that Capcom abuses the reputation of a classic game in order to boost sales of the remake. Seeing how different the original and the remake play, one could very well ask why Capcom does not just put out Resident Evil IX or — what an unusual idea in the current year! — try to establish a new IP that centers on more action-based survival horror. Devil May Cry is a Resident Evil spin off, for instance, and so is Onimusha, which sold millions back in the day but is all but forgotten. I think that RE VII and VIII could have been new IPs.

      The thought that people will still play OG RE4 in ten years is not at all outlandish, by the way. This game has managed to remain relevant for 18 years. Probably in the mid or late 1990s some video games got to the point where they became so refined that they could stand on their own. My most-played game, and one I still regularly play, is an arcade game from 1998, followed by an arcade game from 2000, and I got into the former just five years ago. There are also a lot of more modern games that still have strong followings. Think of Skyrim or Dark Souls, which both appeared in 2011, or GTA V, which came out in 2013. Currently, I am trying, once again, to get into the original Demon’s Souls, a 2009 game, and despite some jank, I can readily acknowledge the high quality of it.

    27. Aside from his gameplay critique, the portion of the video where he criticizes Leon’s looks kind of threw me. Also, I don’t think he realizes that it is indeed the same face model (Eduard Badaluta) from REmake 2, who he claims they should have kept. They just made the model look a bit older with forehead lines and a furrowed brow.

    28. I think that Leon in OG RE4 is much better looking than the new guy, so I tend to agree. I don’t see much of a difference between Leon in REmake 2 and REmake 4, though.

    29. It’s not that I disagree about his conclusion about the face thing. It’s just that it came out sounding sort of metro, thus it sort if threw me. I think a better way to explain it is that the new model has more of a “pretty boy” look, whereas the inspiration for the original RE4 character model had more classically handsome features. When they remade RE2 and were trying to portray a young and naive Leon, I think the face model worked a lot better. I wouldn’t go as far as to say the old one looks “much” better. We’re talking about face models in the top 10% of men in both instances probably. Also, ever since they started scanning in real life faces into video games instead of just looking to them for inspiration, I’ve noticed a massive drop in quality in attractiveness overall in Japanese video games. It probably has something to do with the fact that real people just aren’t as attractive as what an artist (or AI) is able to render.

    30. I think that the jawline of OG Leon is far better. If you put them next to each other, REmake 4 Leon almost looks like a soyboy beta. You are right about faces in vidya having become less attractive when creators pursue realism. Probably we can thank Hideo Kojima for that, and his obsession with Hollywood. The result of scanning a face with modern equipment is a 3D model of it, and it would be quite trivial to make adjustments to it in order to make it more attractive. Western devs seem quite adept at the opposite, by the way. I was quite surprised when I learned that the actress that lent uglo Aloy from the Horizon series her face is not at all unattractive. Even the hag in Returnal was modeled after an actress that looks more feminine in real life. If you can uglify scanned faces, you can make them more attractive as well. TikTok and other apps can even do this algorithmically and in real time nowadays, so devs have absolutely no excuses anymore.

    31. I think a good contrast is looking at what Square is able to do with their characters modern day FF games despite the availability of face scanning tech, particularly the women. They seem to disregard this approach altogether and focus on creating a fantastic world filled with beauty. However, Japanese characters in games and anime typically resemble felines more so than actual humans.

    32. This REmake 4 demo vs RE6 side by side comparison video popped up in my feed recently, and I thought the contrast was pretty interesting considering recent complaints about the new demo looking like a PS3 era game. One thing that really popped out is Leon’s character model is much more detailed, while the REmake 4 model looks blurry in comparison. I don’t want to draw too many conclusions here as it’s entirely possible the demo we recently received is merely an unfinished early build of the game. However, the overall look of the textures and environments as well as visual effects and lighting is clearly improved in the recent demo. Also, unrelated to Mark’s comments about the character design’s aesthetic, I’m now convinced that RE6 Leon is the most rugged-looking and best of all the games: https://youtu.be/_aVXkee35D0

    33. This is an interesting comparison. I agree that RE6 Leon looks far better than his REmake 4 counterpart. In the latter, the in-game face looks really crappy, in fact. It could well be that Capcom paid little attention to it as you are not supposed to even see it, considering the camera angle. It is quite startling that it contains fewer details than it did 10 years ago in RE6.

    34. I just learned some new information about the game. Apparently a casual 1st run is expected to extend to about 19 hours (for the main story, approximately 30 hours if you go for all the side content for a complete play-through) on average, telling me that there isn’t much cut content if any. It was recently revealed that a platinum run with an achievement is granted if you can finish the game within 8 hours. Compare that to REmake 2’s hardcore S+ requirement of under 2 hours (plus a maximum of 3 saves). Also, there is some pretty interesting news regarding the weapons effects. Namely that there is reported to be a toggle feature to add more “oomph” to the guns.

    35. All of this sounds like great news. Now we only need to get the “ballistics” line modded into the game, and a sluttier Ashley.

    1. Who would have thought that handing out a bag of poo to each loan applicant and forcefully pricking them with a used syringe was not a good business model?

  4. I decided to drop Mother 3 as it is a tad too repetitive. The story is also moving quite slowly. I can see the appeal of this game, but I wonder if all the people who praise it really played it or just like its aesthetic. On that note, I also recall once coming across a meme with the fake headline “Mother 3 super fan decides to finally play the game on it’s 15th anniversary”.

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