relyanCe

bought TF2 mac on Steam for 10 bucks and can't wait to play it

she looks like an expy of Shanoa. or maybe its the other way around, i dunno which was out first.

common time for commonlu mediocre musicians like myself.

i should have the abiliy to crank something out this month too. lets do it guys!

New DS Castlevania plx

is it good?

Yeah so I was lookin through my friend's GameInfomers and stumbled upon a FFXIII interview. I got in a discussion with Vivi22 earlier in this thread about the whole "no cities" thing and posited the idea that it was a writing decision, not a developmental decision. sure enough: So yeah I pretty much hit the nail on the head.

wow derrit you like ffxiii you must stoooopid

yeah I just finished watching Midori Days if you can get over the initial squick factor of the premise, it's actually a pretty good story with some genuinely hilarious moments. i don't know why bleach is terrible, I just hate it because it's a long runner

wasn't that the biggest letdown in the history of history? I mean I knew he was dead the moment I heard him start quoting Julius Caesar but still.

y'know Kyle Rayner (green lantern) actually used the ring to own somebody with Gurren Lagann once. also Gurren Lagann is the only anime i've ever watched through twice.

dude, have you played xenosaga? yes, you spend most of your playtime watching cutscenes. unless of course you mean character/city/blah interaction, which is, well, hard to say.

of course i was only talking to you. i mean it's not like there's ANYBODY ELSE complaining about ffxiii's linearity out there. narcissist much? yeah those dirty game developers ruining our fun. who gave them the right? seriously, they did it before why can't they just do it all over again i mean that's all i play it for. in FFX: the only thing that changes once you become a fugitive is that you can't go back to Bevelle. You can walk up to yevon-controlled areas and mill about as if nothing is wrong. this is called gameplay-story segregation. it's what you expect out of games, and you didn't get it this time around and now you're mad about it. jeez. Another game that readily comes to mind is Tales of Symphonia. You become a fugitive from the major city on the continent and all that changes to get in and around the city is walking right in front of the guards to go to a side passage. You can then traipse about the city and talk to guards/fight in the (massively public) arena/do whatever and nobody does anything. They don't do that in FFXIII, for whatever reason, and you can pretend they did it because they were lazy or just being jerkasses to their market or whatever, but the point remains that this game breaks jrpg conventions with finesse, and because you didn't get to chat it up with the townsfolk, it's just slipshod work man. ... I still think it's kinda funny that the developers actually gave the players a bait-and-switch town setting. I honestly thought I was gonna get a breather milling about in Nautilus.

dear god what just happened

I'll accept that, as you're either supporting your opinions with more than "I just don't like it", or just out and out saying that you just don't like it, and those are both perfectly justifiable reasons for why you, of course, don't like it. I just can't stand when people complain about things for reasons that have nothing to do with what they're complaining about, and what I try to do is point out the actual reasons they're complaining, not tell them to stop.

I'm not squeenix's PR, i'm not "excusing" anything, and neither is Square-Enix. I'm telling people why (from the standpoint of a writer) the game was developed in the way it was and what they're really complaining about. They built a narrative, and then constructed the game around the narrative, just like you build a TV show or a movie or a book or any other narrative medium. If you don't like the way it goes, then you're probably playing the wrong game. The point I'm trying to make is that it would be out of place and entirely out of character for the protags presented in the plot to simply mill about in cities talking to people just because you the player expect them to. The developers likely saw this coming, and stuck to their guns regardless. Hell, they actually DID write in a completely random plot element just for people who like side-stuff (the mark sidequests). I'm very impressed by Square-Enix for this game. It breaks genre rules and breaks them well. Unfortunately, some people (or a lot of people) simply can't stand the idea of the rules being broken, I guess. You're idea that they wrote the plot to excuse game elements is almost certainly baseless and completely false, because frankly, that's not how it works. thank god. watch your words, Sixto. the JRPG Gods have smitten foolish mortals for less caustic statements.

i think a lot of the "city/character/world immersion" complaints people have with ffXIII stem from not paying proper attention to the plot. without spoiling any real details: 1. The characters are all on the run from the (absurdly powerful) government from the very start of the game. Sitting around in a city is counterproductive to the whole "don't get caught" idea, and the one time this actually happens (note: you can interact with people in this section as well), guess what? They get caught. 2. The characters spend from a point very early into the game till pretty much the end living on borrowed time, trying to avert a fate worse than death. A sense of urgency and lack of world immersion and casual chitchat should be expected. Granted, there are parts where they do sit around and talk for no real reason except to at least try to develop the characters, and these do indeed feel contrived. Note:I haven't finished the game yet. Still in taejin's tower blowing robots up with Ruinga and Thundaga (oooooh shiny!). I dont think people are actually saying "OMG NO INTERACTION". They just don't know the right words for "OMG NO PLOT/GAMEPLAY SEGREGATION" and resort to the former. Gripes with characterization, I can understand. They definitely stepped back from the less-exaggerated characters of FFXII.

yeah the OP was probably the best part of the anime. Boom Boom Satellites are awesome.

Xam'd was kinda cool, if not a bit hazy. I highly recommend it.

I see you did some fiddlin with the header I made ya. looks good, man. I like.

people keep saying this word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

hey bleck go eat your hat already

marry me malaki EDIT: