As somebody who both frequently watches challenge runs and does them myself occasionally with no audience, the investment time argument feels a little backwards. A main reason I do variant runs is because I want to spend more time with a favourite game. Quality takes time, after all, so there's no guarantee of good new stuff for a given game right when I want to play it. An 80 hour storyline just isn't relevant at hour 250, while a gameplay system with loads of room for self-imposed challenges is. I don't personally speedrun, but it feels pretty similar: these are absolutely people who keep with a single game for the long haul, even if the final result would seem to indicate otherwise.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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I'm not talking about people who play challenge runs.
I'm talking about streamers. You cannot join a narrative-based game stream 12 hours in. No matter how far the Nuzlocke run is in, you know the rules and you know what the stakes are.
Speedruns are similar. They are easy filler for tens of hours of stream time, because no matter when someone joins the stream, the stakes and rules of what is going on are easily apparent. The more gameplay focused the stream game, the easier it is for people to join in no matter what's happening.
ie. Northernlion, who mostly plays roguelike games or other games where it doesn't actually matter, it's background filter for the streamer to talk over and get visual stimulation.
Why do you think Ironmon was popular for a while, and some streamers still do it, despite it being basically a mundane challenge that is basically a lottery with minimal room for outplaying or underplaying the game? Because it makes for stream moments, it makes room for banter, and on the off chance one run goes far it is good clip bait.
Now try doing that with an 80 hour JRPG storyline where half the stream is reading dialogue or getting to the next point of dialogue.
When it comes to the videos, which nowadays are mainly based on streams cut up, it's a lot easier for people to get everything and craft a storyline around gameplay for your video rather than retell the game's story, and your story of playing it.
Challenge runs. Speedruns. Gimmicks like Infinite Fusion. That is the modern bedrock of gaming content. And the point is that content is what drives people to know about things.
Not many people are actually scrolling pokecommunity to find the next unknown gem. They see content and want to try it out.
"It's called that because the original idea for the game was based on a roleplay"
Ah, like Rejuvenation. The name's sadly "ulterior" out of context, which may turn off some interest
The reason I'm focusing on names is cuz Sonic fans have done bs like "Adventure 3, Sonic Reborn, Sonic Adventure Returns" for fangames, or even officially "Mania is the true Sonic 4", with notorious narcissism. Some just straight up showing it in promoting their game trailer. I've been too wary admittedly
It doesn't help that Pokemon suffers with feeling repetitive without the self imposed challenges, so a 50 hour campaign REALLY drags, regardless of story. Noticed Pokerogue players getting fatigued with the repetition post game. Even Mystery Dungeon struggles with post game feeling like a slog for recruit em alls, despite dungeon layout randomization
And again...being in dev for over a few years and still being unfinished will wane interest
I'm not fully sure why Rejuvenation is underlooked even further, but the rise of difficulty hacks is definitely a factor
Ah, like Rejuvenation. The name's sadly "ulterior" out of context, which may turn off some interest
The reason I'm focusing on names is cuz Sonic fans have done bs like "Adventure 3, Sonic Reborn, Sonic Adventure Returns" for fangames, or even officially "Mania is the true Sonic 4", with notorious narcissism. Some just straight up showing it in promoting their game trailer. I've been too wary admittedly
It doesn't help that Pokemon suffers with feeling repetitive without the self imposed challenges, so a 50 hour campaign REALLY drags, regardless of story. Noticed Pokerogue players getting fatigued with the repetition post game. Even Mystery Dungeon struggles with post game feeling like a slog for recruit em alls, despite dungeon layout randomization
And again...being in dev for over a few years and still being unfinished will wane interest
I'm not fully sure why Rejuvenation is underlooked even further, but the rise of difficulty hacks is definitely a factor
Historically, this has never been a blow against Pokemon fangame stuff. Again, the update cycle actually used to help these games, since the updates would also revamp the beginning content, and Pokemon lets players would get new players into the game.
The old way the scene worked was that Pokemon content was mainly lets plays. Once they ran out of main series content? Boom, gotta find alternatives. Easiest way is fangames. There's never been enough fangames to just lets play different ones forever, so new updates for unfinished fangames was very common, and lets plays would often stop and continue in a cycle until the game either was canceled, or ended.
I'll note in advance that yeah, these youtubers also did do nuzlocking content, but instead of being a supercut it was usually filler until the next game released- filler. Nuzlockes of fangames and romhacks were also done especially for stuff that was usually deemed bad and unfair, although that is kinda funny compared to nowadays.
Hell, sometimes it was neither: MunchingOrange did a Pokemon Uranium lets play from when it was a GBA game, and then restarted when it was a full fangame. The GBA version!
(Noteworthy is Munching Orange actually never covered Reborn or Rejuvenation, because he was always prioritizing a family friendly brand, and neither of those games work with that well. His way of surviving between generations was usually PMD, family friendly fangames, or Yokai Watch.)
And he still went on to do it basically all, again.
This meant that these updates for fangames were a part of the scene. Release the game unfinished, get traffick from lets players, start releasing updates, cycle it.
Now let's see what Munching Orange uploads now:
Now, this isn't ALL the same style of videos, but also it is funny to note that the most popular one here basically just looks like any other Pokemon fangame with weird mechanics videos.
I'll note that it isn't really the creators' fault, to be clear- it's about where viewership went, and also that livestreaming is just a very nice way for Youtubers to operate. You get paid twice, and the viewers get content twice, everyone wins. But it does mean that gaming content that is about fully playing through a game has its own real genre now which is 2-5 hour long supercuts of other streams, where it's trying to condense an entire playthrough, which still doesn't work for a longer RPG.
Trust me, RT Games tried.
Elden Ring is one of the few RPGs in the last few years to break this mold, and a big part of that is that Elden Ring is basically Challenge Run, The Game in that there is such a metanarrative around Souls games that it basically takes the spot of a challenge run title, where getting past bosses is the challenge, and half the stream is dying.
Edit: Can you tell I am very autistic about this topic (I am autistic and I am autistic about this topic, I love talking about the history of gaming content and fangames)
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Aren't streamers who do challenge runs et al. a subset of people who do challenge runs et al. by definition? There's plenty of other options to fill the screen if the main objective is banter, after all.
At the same time, I'm also super deep into a let's play of Ace Attorney and it's 100% dialogue, with my enjoyment mostly being carried by the people being pretty good voice actors and/or comedians. Interestingly, I think it would be far less watchable if the games had full voice acting, because that would remove an opportunity for the presenters to do something and express themselves. At that point, there's no real distinction between an LP and a cutscene compilation, and the latter usually has a faster turnaround after the game releases. JRPGs generally provide more tools for somebody to express themselves through gameplay compared to dialogue, so it makes sense for the gameplay to be prioritized when attempting to make something unique from other options.
What used to be gaming youtubers now are called "variety streamers" and usually many of the people do all of these at different times.
For instance, SmallAnt1 started as a speedrunning streamer but his content is more like this:
As you can see it's a mish-mash of challenge runs, speedrun content, and sometimes multiplayer content. Also, even when streamers aren't doing speedrun content, often they'll have a speedrun timer on for some reason nowadays, anyways? I don't actually know the logic for this one, I think it's just part of an "aesthetic".
There are definitely "challenge run content creators" who's main bread and butter is that, even when they stream, like Gamechamps, but generally streamers will try all of the above as their content.
There are absolutely some people doing the traditional format, it's just rare. Aforementioned RTGame did Phoenix Wright streams and I loved them. But in general, the most common type right now is a "variety streamer" who usually just does the stuff I just talked about, and that usually gets the most views
Anywho, I think we're a bit off-topic, so I won't really talk about it much more.
What discouraged me to not play Rejuv by myself until it's fully done is bc of how much the story and world have been rewritten and retooled from the early game. I have a save file around mid game and I saw that I missed out on some story segments which have been added after I already went through those parts of the game. I don't want to restart from zero, since it's quite a hefty game (plus I don't want to lose my shinies and trained mons), and who knows if they're going to keep adding more scenes at earlier points of the game.
I understand how much effort it takes to create a game like this, and it's admirable how dedicated the community is towards Rejuvenation, but I don't feel this is doing it for me (plus some story beats later on discouraged me even more...). I feel like I was more dedicated to Reborn bc I was more impressionable back then, plus the PokeEssentials fangames scene was still quite new.
I understand how much effort it takes to create a game like this, and it's admirable how dedicated the community is towards Rejuvenation, but I don't feel this is doing it for me (plus some story beats later on discouraged me even more...). I feel like I was more dedicated to Reborn bc I was more impressionable back then, plus the PokeEssentials fangames scene was still quite new.
Starting from scratch in Rejuvenation is especially unappealing because there are a bunch of lengthy setpieces that become a real slog on subsequent playthroughs. It's cool to refresh the early game as you develop later sections, but it's hard to strike the right balance for longtime players who don't want to feel like they have to restart the game with each new release.
My biggest (and apparently most unpopular) issue with Rejuv is that I find almost every major character extremely grating, so it constantly feels like I'm being forced into a friend group with people I hate.
With how long the storyline is regarding Reborn and Rejuv and how often it tend to get reworked, I prefer to wait until the game’s storyline is completed in the case of Rejuvenation.
I know about the whole “a delayed game is eventually good” thing, but that is only true if the dev team doesn’t take the right priority, such as adding more fillers to the story when actual story progress should have been made. Reborn’s case is fine given it’s based of the roleplay of the same name and must have lasted this long; Rejuvenation does not have the same excuse, and comes off as much bleaker than it should due to how slow the pace feels.
After all, there’s such a thing as being too long. You don’t want it to end it too shortly lest we get a rushm convoluted and unsastifying one, but if the story started to drag on with no significant progress, made worse if the main characters continues to suffer with no positive character development (or a well-made negative character development if one wanted to make it logical), then the audience will eventually lose interest until the pace goes back up… and that’s only if the pace goes back up.
For streamers, it’s already not a good sign if the game’s story is pretty long. Now imagine how daunting it will be if such story ends up dragging on longer than it should due to fillers or exceedingly slow pace and lack of progress, so it’s not hard to see why many streamers would nope‘d out if they saw how long the likes of Reborn’s story is.
Reborn and it’s connected cousins of fangames worked due to high number of writers and programmers alike, not just because of it’s dark but nonetheless grounded tone, and given the sheer length, it’s one of the few fangames where the “all Pokémon available as of this writing” thing actually worked in it’s favor. Any smaller fangame dev trying to replicate the success by copying it’s formula and length will end up realizing that the task is more herculian than most players thought.
The silver lining in that there is nothing wrong with wanting to write a long story for a fangame, but you had to make sure to keep the story happening by making meaningful progress for both the protagonists and antagonists, not putting plot twists for sake of extending the already long plot, and making sure that the important characters does not overstay their welcome by becoming unintentionally hated in the process. It’s not easy, but it can pay off if done well.
On a game, however, you may want to put a “speedrun mode” or something along the line so that streamers or players not having patience with the story can enjoy it, or at least progress through the game faster. If the gameplay aspects turned out bas due to rollercoaster dififculty and unfair gauntlets like 6v12s, it at least makes it easier to expose the flaws on the game as well.
I know about the whole “a delayed game is eventually good” thing, but that is only true if the dev team doesn’t take the right priority, such as adding more fillers to the story when actual story progress should have been made. Reborn’s case is fine given it’s based of the roleplay of the same name and must have lasted this long; Rejuvenation does not have the same excuse, and comes off as much bleaker than it should due to how slow the pace feels.
After all, there’s such a thing as being too long. You don’t want it to end it too shortly lest we get a rushm convoluted and unsastifying one, but if the story started to drag on with no significant progress, made worse if the main characters continues to suffer with no positive character development (or a well-made negative character development if one wanted to make it logical), then the audience will eventually lose interest until the pace goes back up… and that’s only if the pace goes back up.
For streamers, it’s already not a good sign if the game’s story is pretty long. Now imagine how daunting it will be if such story ends up dragging on longer than it should due to fillers or exceedingly slow pace and lack of progress, so it’s not hard to see why many streamers would nope‘d out if they saw how long the likes of Reborn’s story is.
Reborn and it’s connected cousins of fangames worked due to high number of writers and programmers alike, not just because of it’s dark but nonetheless grounded tone, and given the sheer length, it’s one of the few fangames where the “all Pokémon available as of this writing” thing actually worked in it’s favor. Any smaller fangame dev trying to replicate the success by copying it’s formula and length will end up realizing that the task is more herculian than most players thought.
The silver lining in that there is nothing wrong with wanting to write a long story for a fangame, but you had to make sure to keep the story happening by making meaningful progress for both the protagonists and antagonists, not putting plot twists for sake of extending the already long plot, and making sure that the important characters does not overstay their welcome by becoming unintentionally hated in the process. It’s not easy, but it can pay off if done well.
On a game, however, you may want to put a “speedrun mode” or something along the line so that streamers or players not having patience with the story can enjoy it, or at least progress through the game faster. If the gameplay aspects turned out bas due to rollercoaster dififculty and unfair gauntlets like 6v12s, it at least makes it easier to expose the flaws on the game as well.
Regarding Legendary Pokemon, I actually much prefer their escalation in scale, going from "just" stronger creatures with some folklore around them to many being environment-molding Titans from Gen 3 onward. This is mostly the case in Gen 1 for me as Gen 2's lore can retroactively fit the idea that these Pokemon (the revived Beasts and Ho-oh) are part of a Legend in the region rather than being legendary just for their rare existence.
It always bugged me trying to dissect what in terms of lore makes something like the Kanto Birds "Legendary" as opposed to just extraordinarily powerful Pokemon that are on the rarer side given they're just sort of "there" in the games and the anime was no stranger to the premise that multiples of them could exist. The big hole for me is that Dragonite exists and is treated with a similar mysticism and power by a lot of lore at the time (being statistically stronger in the games and the signature mon of Lance as THE biggest NPC big wig across Kanto representation).
Beings on the level of Groudon and Kyogre or Dialga and Palkia make a lot more sense to me as legendary creatures with such awe-inspiring feats to their name that it's hard to believe more than one could exist, and why these organizations would go to such massive lengths to possess them for reasons beyond just powerful battling tools. The smaller scale legendaries meanwhile possess powers not directly related to battling or appear in legends for such reason (the Regis being Golems based on entities in real life religious texts that were similarly artificial)
I have mixed feelings about the way later generations have approached the matter: stuff like the Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon don't have the "Legendary" classification officially since they're powerful but don't really have a place in the world itself, but then are adjacent to Pokemon who do get the classification without that sort of consistency (Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma have lore in Alola's light and past, while the Raidons are not recognized as more than weird Cyclizar and get passing mentions for the Sc/Vi Books).
It always bugged me trying to dissect what in terms of lore makes something like the Kanto Birds "Legendary" as opposed to just extraordinarily powerful Pokemon that are on the rarer side given they're just sort of "there" in the games and the anime was no stranger to the premise that multiples of them could exist. The big hole for me is that Dragonite exists and is treated with a similar mysticism and power by a lot of lore at the time (being statistically stronger in the games and the signature mon of Lance as THE biggest NPC big wig across Kanto representation).
Beings on the level of Groudon and Kyogre or Dialga and Palkia make a lot more sense to me as legendary creatures with such awe-inspiring feats to their name that it's hard to believe more than one could exist, and why these organizations would go to such massive lengths to possess them for reasons beyond just powerful battling tools. The smaller scale legendaries meanwhile possess powers not directly related to battling or appear in legends for such reason (the Regis being Golems based on entities in real life religious texts that were similarly artificial)
I have mixed feelings about the way later generations have approached the matter: stuff like the Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon don't have the "Legendary" classification officially since they're powerful but don't really have a place in the world itself, but then are adjacent to Pokemon who do get the classification without that sort of consistency (Solgaleo, Lunala, and Necrozma have lore in Alola's light and past, while the Raidons are not recognized as more than weird Cyclizar and get passing mentions for the Sc/Vi Books).
This post and all of these "long game unfinished" posts are putting the cart before the horse.
90% of the people who got into Pokemon fangames in the last 4ish years don't even know that Rejuvenation exists. Because no one covers it anymore.
90% of people who play romhacks nowadays don't use Smogon Forums. They don't go on pokecommunity, and god no they do not find RebornEvo. They exclusively find new games through Youtube content.
Reborn didn't "work", by the way. Reborn actually is a far worse game than Rejuvenation and that's the reason why people who had interest in Reborn still care about Rejuvenation. Reborn after many of its updates ended up having a great tileset, good unique mechanics, a good artstyle and good taste in music- but its story was bad, and the game's difficulty went off the rails towards being mainly unfun towards the last third of the game. I say this as someone who actually did slog through terrible moments such as listening to an annoying character's dialogue in my head over and over, doing a fetch quest to be able to fight the Fighting gym leader, who's gimmick is practically luck-based and I had to reconstruct my team to do it without IVs.
Reborn is a game that falls off extremely hard as it goes on. I will say the beginning of it is one of the coolest bits of any Pokemon game, with the limitation of options the player gets meaning they actually have to try- Reborn is one of the best Pokemon fangames when it comes to getting the player to remake their team, and rewarding them for doing so. But as the world opens up it's more about convenience and the vibes of the game goes from this cool, atmospheric broken city, to just mainly normal Pokemon.
Rejuvenation in a way is actually fulfilling things that Reborn was supposed to do but with an actually coherent plot and game, while Reborn was always messy as fuck to begin with, and a way better difficulty curve.
Saying that Rejuvenation's plot is inherently not well-written because the game is long is just a bad take. Many of the best stories ever are absolutely long as fuck- is Rejuvenation one of the best stories ever?? No, but it's Pokemon as a series that is one of the few RPG series to have plotlines that aren't over 50 hours minimum. Reborn and Rejuvenation are just the length of normal RPGs.
All of y'all are bringing smoke for a project trying to reverse engineer a justification when the reality is that it's not about your thoughts on the game, it's that people don't make content on these games anymore. Rejuvenation isn't the only story game that isn't talked about much, and while I dislike Unbound there's a reason Radical Red got far more coverage- it has that streamable quality.
The idea of a "Speedrun mode" is literally just anti-games-as-art. Games should not be designed around convenience, they should be designed to elicit the feelings that the developer wants. Story games should be story games, and if the developer wants the game to be about the story, why would they do a "Speedrun mode" so that people will skip most of the work?
Redesigning games to appeal to streamers is such a cringe concept and it's one of the flaws with modern gaming, frankly. I'm not one of those people who thinks modern games are getting worse, I think there is a lot of variety in the genres that weren't there in the early 8th and majority of the 7th gens, where it was mainly just military shooters and other varieties of shooters. A 2023 couldn't happen a decade ago. But honestly, this touches on something that's making the indie game market less appealing to me as a potential maker; games being designed around going viral and being streamable will always win out over the games that are mainly singleplayer and often make people cry.
Lethal Company is a cool game, but compare its success to the likes of Rain World, where it took years and a DLC in order to be a small niche title with any fan community, despite being one of the most immersive games ever- an experience that will stick with players for decades. I think game design is in a war right now between games that try to stick with people forever (good!) and games designed for players to forget the experience the next day, but come back for their next dopamine hit.
Games like Radical Red are cool, but ultimately their main purpose is streamer fodder to be used by streamers so that their thousands of viewers can get their dopamine hit (Where they will forget everything the next day).
IMO this entire discussion is a microcosm of what the scene of developing is becoming. Trying to make a 100 hour campaign game with a story you want people to remember for free? But what if not all of the story is important! How will streamers stream this??
Then onward to do challenge run 42 that will be forgotten the day after completion, or watching Youtube/Streaming in a week for accumulative many hours, or many games where literally all of the time you spent will be forgotten.
We should support games that are actually aiming to be ambitious and try to make an experience that will stick with people, and not reverse engineer a justification for why the games failed to get traction when the actual reason is much more cynical than "Some people didn't wanna replay it", considering the majority of the audience doesn't know the game exists.
I understand if what I'm describing sounds pretty dramatic, but at the minimum I just want people to recognize the amount of effort that goes into this, and how it isn't "the developers fault" that they started making a game close to the end of an era. Rejuvenation is one of the last remnants of that era, and most of the fangames we get nowadays don't bother with a new campaign; people are spending hundreds of hours remaking Kanto. Again. In another engine (Essentials).
If you want one of the other few story games to come out in the last few years, there's a cool fangame I played called "Pokemon: The First Journey"; the premise is that the game is about Professor Oak in Kanto when he was young, and includes a lot of fanon lore about what Pokemon are and how they work. It's a decently lengthed game, about 15ish hours I think, and it has some interesting gameplay since Pokemon Centers don't exist. I don't like all of the lore, but the lore leads to an extremely interesting ending that is supposed to lead to the other game the creator is making. It is as I just said, another person spending hundreds of hours remaking Kanto, but instead of in the way that Pokemon Infinite Fusion just remade Kanto but again to fulfill a gameplay gimmick, the way this game plays through Kanto is mainly in reverse, and it's used for story context- it doesn't end up feeling much like a Kanto game, only maybe the last third can feel like it moreso when the areas open up. IMO it justifies that work.
And the game is done, so if you want a complete Pokemon story experience, there you go. I wish we got more games like these, because this is a game that actually really sticks with me; I'm not gonna act like it's some high-class writing, but what I'm getting at overall is that it doesn't need to be high-class writing to be something to stick with you. I recommend anyone who likes to get an interesting take on Pokemon lore to try it.
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All these comments you've been making are way, WAY better-articulated versions of what I said in my first post about "bad incentives" in online content creation potentially having a role in why the kinds of Pokemon fangames I want to see aren't being made or getting anywhere, so thanks for that a great deal.
I think you've also touched on why Radical Red bothers me so much. I'm can't say it's totally devoid of merit, boss design at its level is its own form of art, but its view of the Pokemon setting is just too... I guess utilitarian is the right word? It's the same reason why I can't get into most 2d Marios, the world is so bland, extraneous and secondary to the experience that it's practically just pure gameplay, which in a world filled with 2d platformers that excel at both just doesn't cut it anymore. RR could've easily been Extreme Emerald or Bodacious Black and nothing about its design goals would've changed whatsoever. This would be completely fine if it were just treated as a glorified tech demo, a stepping stone for better experiences down the road; instead it's the most popular Pokemon fangame ever which as you said overshadowed the comparatively much more thorough Unbound. There's just something grimy and cynical about the whole affair - I recall a buddy who's a huge Whitney superfan complaining to me about RR making a feet pics joke about her. Bad vibes all around.
So basically, appealng to streamers bad, and I can see why. Instant gratification have been overemphasized in the game markerting nowadays to the point of criticism, where even some indie companies fell to this trap. I would not be surprised if “streamer-bait” becomes a term by now or in the future.
I haven’t experienced Rejuvenation myself so I’m not one to speak, so I apologizes for coming off as giving bad faith. Still, I do hope Rejuvenation won’t end up fumbling the bag with the potential ending.
Not the “bad guy wins” scenarios as long as it’s logical and with intent of giving a cautionary tale, which Rejuvenation isn’t necessarily one cautionary tale from what I know. I‘m moreso talking about a weak ending or a horrible one that ends up tainting the story itself or even the game as a whole. An example is Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, a standalone DLC of Serious Sam 4 that receive wide acclaim for the first time since The First and Second Encounters, especially regarding the much-wanted boss fight with General Brand. Alas, the postcredit stinger of Siberian Maynem did leave a severely sour note.
A bigger one would be Game of Thrones. It used to be quite a juggernaut in terms of multimedia franchise… that is until Season 8 made the show’s flaws much worse, and the final episode swiflty killed interest of the franchise, at least as of this writing. Not that the franchise is abandoned, such as a rep in WB’s Multiversus crossover game, but definitely not as big as it once was.
I can only hope Rejuvenation keep the hype and story going now that it got a much needed revamp update in Chapter 13.5m and deliver a sastifying ending to an already great story.
On the topic of Radical Red…
Radical Red is meant for more of a NatDex challenge mode hack, but I can see why it’s so concerning. You could say that people’s nostalgia can also drive them to the wrong direction.
I want to clarify too that, not every game needs to be some super artistic masterpiece. What worries me is when people who do try to make those kinds of games can't make it work anymore.
I am not trying to say you can't enjoy games that aren't trying to be deep, I'm not a purist in that way- I enjoyed Radical Red (as I've said many times before), and I dabble in difficulty hacks. I play some multiplayer games (albeit I've tried to cut down on it. I played 2,300 hours of Splatoon 2, and years later I'm now thinking- how much of that do I really remember? Extremely little. When I play multiplayer games, I try to usually play them with friends so that it's more of a social thing rather than solitarily grinding against the ELO wall- tangent aside-) and as I said, I do like Lethal Company. It just worries me when both can't coexist. I think it's very valuable to have games that are just comfort food to put on while listening to a podcast, or to wind down from work.
Games don't all gotta be super meaningful, or things you remember your entire life, just as not every movie is made to be remembered, and some people read a hundred YA novels. I just think there's gotta be a balance and I feel that's been lost in the Pokemon fangame scene.
I just wanted to clarify this because I get that in my rant earlier it may have sounded far more judgmental than I am, I don't think playing these games is bad and I myself will play them on occasion. I just think that the way streamers are incentivized to only really play these games changes the reward ratio way too heavily in favor of games that are mainly "Pokemon but X is different", rather than unique campaigns.
I watch some of the streamers that do this, it's because twitch chat always complains about there being no timer even if a timer isn't relevant to what they're doing. I think people just like knowing how long someone has been doing something.
Mario Wonder deadass is so devoid of world building and substantial world themes it's funny, especially for lack of bosses. I was the Day 0 "hater" for immediately seeing past the aesthetic upgrade compared to NSMBU (it's still abuses rigid 1x2, 1x1, and 1x3 slope tiles). It's an ok game, but still super barebones in the other aspects you mentioned
Actually I feel that's another issue. A lot of people now are so easily swayed by superficial aesthetic, the lore/worldbuilding/gameplay takes a massive backseat. Nostalgia also clearly skewed; fans hate corporate nostalgia of beginnings, but then aggressively prop up fan nostalgia of another era. I feel like ScaVio would be significantly less exposed for its game design flaws (outside glitches) if the game actually looked pretty. You know, like HGSS
It unironically, completely shits on this
Look at the recent King Kong game, that's beyond trash for art and graphics. No one cares or really likes it. And Pokemon again was the middle finger to this meme
A lot of modern Indie games are extremely obsessed with aesthetic, then...end up spending so much time on it they never finish, as game design and story were again backseat. Or if they do finish, it's a retread of another game for gameplay
It's pretty depressing
I'm gonna stick my head out, I think Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a great game.
The game absolutely lacks like, any writing really. And compared to games like Celeste it can leave it being really feel weird not having a theme. The bosses are bad, no defense for them.
But I think it's a great game because I disagree, I think Wonder has a great visual identity where it all feels cohesive despite being all over the place. In dev interviews they talked about how a lot of conventions in the Mario games went from "weird" in the 80s and 90s to mundane, and wanted to create new things that are definitively Weird. And I think it works well.
The 3D Mario-esque setup makes each level feel more interesting IMO, and I think that the movement and mechanics are top notch. If you think they really just said "fuck it make a new mario but this time make it pretty to trick them", please watch their GDC conference. They go through basically their entire process and why, Wonder SPECIFICALLY is not a game that was supposed to be like that- and it really isn't.
Is it my favorite 2D platformer? Nah, but it's probably my favorite 2D Mario, feeling the most fleshed out with stuff I'd want to do. No other 2D Mario made me want to 100% it (unlike the 3D Marios), but Wonder got me to do it.
Plus, I can play as Toadette. EZ Clap W
Ultimately still a game to just play with a podcast on, not that deep, but 2D Marios are supposed to be Premium Junk Food and IMO Wonder is the Premium-est Quality Junk Food
Don't forget that the fanbase was reeling from the Pokemon cut of 2019, so a game which includes the (almost) whole National Dex plus having balance changes to mons and levels of difficulty that would never be seen in mainline games (for better and worse) sounds pretty attractive.
Given the damage done by the ultra-realistic games, both of the PS3 / Xbox era and late PS4 / Xbone onward, of course people are more attracted to the “superficial” aesthetic, as long as it help it stand out among the crowd.
I do agree that those modern Indie games are obsessed with aesthetic to a fault. When, and not just if, people realizes that the senseless pursuit for aesthetic over a balance between them caused more harm than good, including far too little indie releases down the line, some severe backlash might happen.
Doesn’t help that the aesthetic of some modern games, both corporate and indies, look awful to look at, and not in a good way.
I feel the idea of "realistic" and "cartoony" is wrong. It should be "simplistic" and "detailed" for design. Technology has mostly plateued for tech, but the effort to make it good and run well is lost for some
A lot of post mid 2010s ultra realistic games are bland ironically due to being unrealistically devoid of life, characters, and piss camera framing. A BBC documentary is far more interesting to me than those games precisely cuz of this. It was honestly worse 2006-2013 when bloom and piss brown filter was thought as "realistic", though current post processing being prioritized over actual good lighting is shitty. Monkey Ball Banana Mania while not trying to be realistic in the slightest is very guilty of this, and looks worse than the OG Gamecube games lighting
Similarly, this ignores that cartoony can be generic. NSMB series very blatantly shows that. It's why the aesthetic upgrade for Wonder was extremely well recieved, it was new for once, and tried
Something I also feel is missed is logo and ui iconography does affect a game's feel as well. Mario Odyssey's ui amongst other early Switch titles are extremely flat, just raw New Rodin mostly with no further tweaking. It's odd given traveling is a theme of the game, with Peach herself going on a tour post credits, so you'd think the entire game would have travel brochures, not unlike what Sunshine did with it's infomercial, pause/map screens, and even made up alphabet for Noki bay. Meanwhile OG Super Monkey Ball...
This isn't even half the list for Monkey Ball-SMB Deluxe
A lotta shit was used, and even outside that, a lot were tweaked depending on context (like replicating family owned restaurants using stock fonts). You see this fade after the mid 2000s later
Now the weird thing is, bombastic iconography is still common in Japan magazines, even TV shows. But I think the reason it faded in games is cuz UI designers stopped being a specialized 2nd role likely due to budget. Programmers wanted more immediate results, and less licenses would be needed to use less fonta, so they just use use around 3 plainly. Which again, weird, cuz for Splatoon Nintendo directly made a new font for the game, with a lot of flashy elements for online events, but...
With all this said, visual noise exists. Getting on an aesthetic high can ruin the experience. Japan game shows and NicoNico vid are awful to see cuz of the sheer text spam eating most of the screen
It's overall a tightrope to balance
The whole "why wouldn't I just use actual reality" thing is pretty much my reaction to a vast majority of open world games. At some level, it feels like a parallel to the real is brown era: a devtime-intensive buzzword that doesn't actually indicate the quality of the experience. If exploration in and of itself is supposed to be interesting, at least pick a biome I haven't seen a hundred times before. It probably says something where the only game in recent memory I thought about playing primarily to experience the vastness of the world is a creepypasta SM64 romhack.
My response to "artstyle vs realism" (as if most realistic styled games don't have an artstyle):
i feel like where there are people who absolutely are like "games are meant for graphical showcases!!! give me more polygons!!!" there is also the entire opposite side where people say realistic graphics can't be worth it generally, and that games are degressing due to it,
and idk! it depends!
a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that really uses its artstyle to shine. it's not just a Realism Game, it's also stylized to like. a painting's rendition of America during the time period (factually, they said this in interviews), and it says a lot about the time period the game takes place at. riding with the chief of a native american up a mountain while seeing this vast, beautiful land that we know what happens to (Because real life! we know what happens to the native americans and real life!), it makes it... melancholic, inspiring, beautiful at different points of the story.
the visuals are realistic but that realism adds to the art in a way that a more stylized artstyle couldn't capture. im by no means some patriotic american, but it somehow feels the most American essense game possible, in a good way. it's clear the devs had a lot of love for american history, i mean they basically wrote fake chapters of books based on real writings of philosophy at the time; i'd go as far as to say Red Dead Redemption 2 is the biggest budget "Nerd Game" in history
but then, of course, there are games like spiderman where, frankly, i think an into the spiderverse style game would go nutty mode. at the same time, i do think the visuals add value to that game too, but i admit that sm2 doesn't really need all those polygons
i think people really get caught up on bad examples of games prioritizing realism (which were more common in the 7th gen) while forgetting that the realism style still has value, and that while some may say it ain't so, the fact that movie type stuff crossed with games is popular is so (and isn't necessarily a bad thing)
as with all trends in game creation, its best when there is a balance, and imo we are hitting a balance after over a decade. it feels like there is a healthy amount of both styles
one thing i will also add is the "realism game = cost = shutdown studio" is just not exactly true, in fact if we cut realism games that'd cut tens of thousands of jobs in the industry that are mainly to help make those games possible. a lot of the jobs being cut are studios that banked dosh on trying to become the next fortnite (usually due to investor pressure), or their owner just wanted a tax cut + to look better on the portfolio.
we have not been at a time where singleplayer games of all styles can be this popular since like the 6th gen, baldurs gate 3 sales people!!! that was impossible before
people like to point to sony losing money on ratchet and clank when Rift Apart was mainly a way to sell the Power of the SSD and it was one of the first exclusives on a console nobody had for years, and frankly- it's just more niche. sony's done a bad job of expanding its audiences tastes. if you only feed them uncharted over and over, they will come to expect uncharted- what makes nintendo work is that while most of their games are AA endeavors that aren't award winners, they give a little something to everyone
if sony sucked up the "studio prestige" shit where every game has to be a GOTY nominee and started pumping out a WarioWare here and there, their audience would be more privy to picking up games like Rift Apart
its a pretty uniquely sony thing considering most big developers right now are shipping singleplayer games that sell a kazillion copies
edit: i also wanna add that contrary to popular belief, cartoony style doesn't inherently = less technically complex either, because Fortnite is being passed around as a UE5 showcase to devs
i feel like where there are people who absolutely are like "games are meant for graphical showcases!!! give me more polygons!!!" there is also the entire opposite side where people say realistic graphics can't be worth it generally, and that games are degressing due to it,
and idk! it depends!
a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that really uses its artstyle to shine. it's not just a Realism Game, it's also stylized to like. a painting's rendition of America during the time period (factually, they said this in interviews), and it says a lot about the time period the game takes place at. riding with the chief of a native american up a mountain while seeing this vast, beautiful land that we know what happens to (Because real life! we know what happens to the native americans and real life!), it makes it... melancholic, inspiring, beautiful at different points of the story.
the visuals are realistic but that realism adds to the art in a way that a more stylized artstyle couldn't capture. im by no means some patriotic american, but it somehow feels the most American essense game possible, in a good way. it's clear the devs had a lot of love for american history, i mean they basically wrote fake chapters of books based on real writings of philosophy at the time; i'd go as far as to say Red Dead Redemption 2 is the biggest budget "Nerd Game" in history
but then, of course, there are games like spiderman where, frankly, i think an into the spiderverse style game would go nutty mode. at the same time, i do think the visuals add value to that game too, but i admit that sm2 doesn't really need all those polygons
i think people really get caught up on bad examples of games prioritizing realism (which were more common in the 7th gen) while forgetting that the realism style still has value, and that while some may say it ain't so, the fact that movie type stuff crossed with games is popular is so (and isn't necessarily a bad thing)
as with all trends in game creation, its best when there is a balance, and imo we are hitting a balance after over a decade. it feels like there is a healthy amount of both styles
one thing i will also add is the "realism game = cost = shutdown studio" is just not exactly true, in fact if we cut realism games that'd cut tens of thousands of jobs in the industry that are mainly to help make those games possible. a lot of the jobs being cut are studios that banked dosh on trying to become the next fortnite (usually due to investor pressure), or their owner just wanted a tax cut + to look better on the portfolio.
we have not been at a time where singleplayer games of all styles can be this popular since like the 6th gen, baldurs gate 3 sales people!!! that was impossible before
people like to point to sony losing money on ratchet and clank when Rift Apart was mainly a way to sell the Power of the SSD and it was one of the first exclusives on a console nobody had for years, and frankly- it's just more niche. sony's done a bad job of expanding its audiences tastes. if you only feed them uncharted over and over, they will come to expect uncharted- what makes nintendo work is that while most of their games are AA endeavors that aren't award winners, they give a little something to everyone
if sony sucked up the "studio prestige" shit where every game has to be a GOTY nominee and started pumping out a WarioWare here and there, their audience would be more privy to picking up games like Rift Apart
its a pretty uniquely sony thing considering most big developers right now are shipping singleplayer games that sell a kazillion copies
edit: i also wanna add that contrary to popular belief, cartoony style doesn't inherently = less technically complex either, because Fortnite is being passed around as a UE5 showcase to devs
I don't really know anything about Resurgence or Unbound, but the game design decisions I've heard of regarding Radical Red seem... not good. And the story and flavor stuff I've heard in this thread are not good. And I've heard a lot of the stuff it does is actually just ripped directly from someone else's project.
...why do people like this mod, exactly?
...why do people like this mod, exactly?
Cuz Dexit
Having nearly all mons wasn't done before in hacks/fangames. The rebalanced abilities some mons are also cool
No one cared for everything else
Nah, everybody was doing it. It was extremely easy to make hacks like these. There was a patch with all mons up to Gen 5 or 6 iirc back when XY was the current game.
Most of them just wound up incomplete or irrelevant.
The stuff I hear about Radical Red sounds positively abysmal. It's like going back in time to those half-baked "betas" but apparently they actually finished one.
I've yet to see a difficulty hack that doesn't immediately sprint into the pitfall of Showdown-style bosses. National Dex hacks are also tear-inducingly boring. You can accurately tell if a hack will be garbage just by reading what it's about. Aimless, boring, uninspired projects can't result in good design.
