Soul vs Soulless in video games

[Viata]

The only thing right on your post is that RE4 is garbage.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

The only thing right on your post is that RE4 is garbage.

It's awkward but it's not 6.

 

[Viata]

The only thing right on your post is that RE4 is garbage.

It's awkward but it's not 6.

I always took 6 was what RE 4 was aiming for, but still had not "developed" the mechanics "well enough" for it. You can see a declining starting with 4 and going downhill fast with 5 and reaching hell with 6.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

The only thing right on your post is that RE4 is garbage.

It's awkward but it's not 6.

I always took 6 was what RE 4 was aiming for, but still had not "developed" the mechanics "well enough" for it. You can see a declining starting with 4 and going downhill fast with 5 and reaching hell with 6.

I see where you're coming from. It's the Capcom cycle where they get a good idea, take it in the wrong direction and reboot the series again. Same with Street fighter 3 into 4, RE 3 into 4 and Megaman.

 

[Athena]

The worst offender on the topic of covers:

soul

soulless

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Blackthorne's intro is the coolest shit ever, and pure soul:

I can still see those shotgun animations clear as day, you can just tell they gave a fuck.

 

[Butter]

Nah
There's still soul to Oblivion

Jeremy Soule did most of the heavy lifting for that game.

It'll be amusing to see how terrible TES6 is being Souleless.

 

[Viata]

Jeremy Soule did most of the heavy lifting for that game.

Indeed.

 

[Vic]

all bethesda games are soulless decline console trash, except starfield and daggerfall, well ok let's be real, so is starfield

 

[mondblut]

except starfield

How did you manage misspell "arena" like that?

 

[Vic]

except starfield

How did you manage misspell "arena" like that?

never played it

 

[Modron]

How did you manage misspell "arena" like that?

He obviously misspelled "Where's Waldo?" and "Wayne Gretzky Hockey."

 

[Vic]

my spelling is flawless

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Soul = "I'm making the game I want to play. It's dripping with my personal touches and design sensibilities."
Soulless = "I'm making the game I think other people want to play. I'm second-guessing my own design sensibilities and sanding down all the rough edges for mass appeal."

I don't know... sometime I wish devs to make a game that I like, not the same boring thing that they like and make again and again.

 

[Alex]

Cover Edition

Soul

Soulless

You know what is soul in covers? The old ones that looked nothing like the game. Not the stupid Mega Man cover, but the cool Ultima 1 cover, for example. I really miss those kind of covers. They were just the imagination of the artist based on what the game was supposed to be.

This is factually wrong. Megaman 1 cover was awesome.

Also, I've always liked the older master system covers. Putting the theme of the game inside a square grid always looked really cool to me.

 

[Alex]

my spelling is flawless

Ego latinus macairos.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Soul = "I'm making the game I want to play. It's dripping with my personal touches and design sensibilities."
Soulless = "I'm making the game I think other people want to play. I'm second-guessing my own design sensibilities and sanding down all the rough edges for mass appeal."

Dunno why the thread kept going after this. You could have all just brofisted this post and moved on. This is also why various fanworks and indie passion projects often turn out way better than larger projects, including even sequels or expansions to excellent games.

Every remake is soulless. All of them.

Not the crazy fan projects by like 3 obsessed fans working for 10 years.

 

[Vic]

Not the crazy fan projects by like 3 obsessed fans working for 10 years.

example?

 

[Viata]

I don't know... sometime I wish devs to make a game that I like, not the same boring thing that they like and make again and again.

What do many triple A devs even like? I really wonder if after making Assassin's Creed 35, programmer John Who goes home to play that game. I remember reading something like how the guys after doing Heroes of Might and Magic(or maybe King's Bounty), went to play the game like crazy given how much they loved what they were doing.

 

[Viata]

Not the crazy fan projects by like 3 obsessed fans working for 10 years.

Those are not considered remakes by the industry. And obviously, I was not talking about them. Those games are made with passion, remakes are made so the dev gets easy money.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I don't know... sometime I wish devs to make a game that I like, not the same boring thing that they like and make again and again.

What do many triple A devs even like? I really wonder if after making Assassin's Creed 35, programmer John Who goes home to play that game. I remember reading something like how the guys after doing Heroes of Might and Magic(or maybe King's Bounty), went to play the game like crazy given how much they loved what they were doing.

I was thinking about the indie devs. They do what they like, but they have shitty tastes.

 

[Viata]

I don't know... sometime I wish devs to make a game that I like, not the same boring thing that they like and make again and again.

What do many triple A devs even like? I really wonder if after making Assassin's Creed 35, programmer John Who goes home to play that game. I remember reading something like how the guys after doing Heroes of Might and Magic(or maybe King's Bounty), went to play the game like crazy given how much they loved what they were doing.

I was thinking about the indie devs. They do what they like, but they have shitty tastes.

Indie devs make games in all kinds of genres, though. It's just that the ones that sells a lot is 90% some boring metroidvania that people praise as if the genre was not tedious as fuck 99% of the case.

 

[Black]

Let me help, I'm an expert on souls.

and

vs

 

[9ted6]

BG1/2 vs BG3 is probably the best comparison. BG3 isn't even soulless, it's antisoul. It sucks out every last drop of joy, creativity and cleverness from the genre.

 

[Beastro]

Nah, some games looked shit and it was definitely easier to make something that looks atrocious than it was in the VGA era (usually thanks to empty space combined with badly tiling textures) but but some early 3D games still look great. Crash Bandicoot as mentioned, Unreal Tournament 99, Half-Life, Hexen 2 (especially the expansion where the level design was less shit), some bits of Quake 1 (others look pretty bad admittedly), Daggerfall, Thief, Descent, M&M 6, etc. Plus, if you'll permit the Build and Jedi engines as 3D, then Dark Forces, Outlaws, and Blood look fantastic too (plus Hexen 1 and Doom if you consider the Doom engine 3D).

I've never been able to figure out exactly why, but 3D graphics from the late 2000s in particular look awful. Not sure if it's because of adapting for PS2 hardware or what but games from that era really look like shit, and it's not solely down to the trend of making everything brown and "realistic".

Take Daggerfall as an example.

It has detailed, prerendered models (done on Silicon Graphics workstation ?) and some handpainted ones. Software renderer pushes megabytes upon megabytes of images / textures on the screen.

It would look terrible as PS2 / 3Dfx Voodoo 1 title - as all textures would have to be scaled down to fit together within 1-2 MB of texture RAM. Some prerendered textures would be replaced by real 3D models - but nowhere near the levels of fidelity that are possible today:

Imagine this done with 50 triangles on PS2 / Voodoo 1.

And it would have colored lightning in the dungeons - because no feature of hardware renderers will be left unused. Colors of lights would be chosen by programmers working 80 hours a week - so (255, 0, 0), (0, 255, 0) and (0, 0, 255).

It's worth noting the role music plays in this, as seeing the image on the left can't help but bring to mind this music:



There's also the role music plays in zeitgeists as Daggerfalls soundtrack is VERY mid 90s PC, and that's something missed by people with a lot of music.

It's why the Command and Conquer Remastered soundtracks suck. They're still done by Frank Klapacki, but he's not the same guy he was 25 years ago and it shows in how he's altered the songs to the point where they feel like Frankenstein's monster - one moment they're their old original selves, then the next something new has been shoved in that's completely discordant with the original music and back again.

I find those periods of music fascinating, especially in video games because of how quickly they developed. Some music aesthetics were in style for very very brief periods and you can date games by them.

An example of this that always stood out to me is this Red Alert song and a Xenogears one similar to it that are both very mid/late 90s: