Example; the Legend of Zelda: BotW and TotK weapon degradation system. At first I was annoyed at it, but once I stopped caring about my “favorite weapon” I really started to enjoy the system. I think it lends really well to the sandbox nature of the game and it itches that resourcefulness nature inside me.
Ariel in Disney's A Little Mermaid doesn't drop everything for "a man".
She is clearly interested in land culture from the opening of the film, spending her time collecting shipwreck items and trying to learn what they are. She also isn't interested in the hobby her father wants her to do, singing.
King Triton is abusive when destroying Ariel's collection of artifacts, which makes you think of what else is going on with how he parents her.
So, Eric shows up and seems like a way out. It isn't a lot of information to go off of for adults, but it is something solid for a teenager.
And what did she give up to gain her legs? Her voice. People interpret it as her giving up being able to speak for herself, but it is her giving up the thing that her father cares about.
In the original cartoon, it is explicitly shown that Triton does not like, or enjoyed or wanted to harm or hurt Ariel by destroying her collection. He wanted to protect her from her own follies and didn't know what else to do. At worst, flawed but well intentioned.
This is obvious on the shot of his face, showing his sad expression, hurt and regret as he looks back at her and as she starts crying, as he leaves. This important nuance was completely cut out from the live action film. Doing so recontextualised the entire scene.
Which in the film does make him look like a crazy asshole father, do not know why this was done as it just unnecessarily vilifies him without reason and removes previously shown emotional depth and context from the cartoon. My guess was because he = man, and man = bad, which went along with some people working in the film and some others saying that she had dropped everything for "a man."
It is still an act of violence against things she loved. It may be well intentioned, but we wouldn't condone that behavior in real life.
It seems like a lot of people complain about Doctor Who not really having any canon or rules, and contradicting itself constantly (sometimes within the same episode) but I don't think that's necessarily a failing because it's not trying to do that at all.
The trend these days is for a lot of shows, especially sci-fi ones, to be sort of 'internet-proof' and be designed to withstand the people who go through frame-by-frame looking for little errors and contradictions to pull apart, and Doctor Who ignores that completely and just aims to be big fun campy dramatic nonsense, which I think it mostly succeeds at. I think the only cardinal sin for that show is don't be boring, which IMO it pulls off more often than not.
And it's fine to not like that of course, but I don't get it when people try to call the show out for not doing something it's never really tried to do, at least since it came back in 2005.
The Van Gogh scene is amazing, and it made me think that I understand the purpose of the show
Everybody says Dark is a better Stranger Things (around the Season 1/2 time period), but Dark is a really boring alternative to Stranger Things that replaced cool Lovecraftian shit with boring ass "it's sooo deep when you call it a time travel paradox instead of endless meandering and plotholes".
And to be fair, Stranger Things Season 4 (which was already in decline) also retconned all the cool Lovecraftian shit with boring ass "some random asshole has super powers for literally no reason".
also Interstellar pisses me off because it's a dumbass time travel bullshit movie that branded itself as hard scifi with space travel but was actually about invisible space wizards doing a Deus Ex Machina.
Everyone is on fire in this thread. Every comment legitimately interesting and well thought out. Upvotes abound. (Apologies for the meta)
I once read a comment on the old site about how Skyrim’s combat is like mashing WWE action figures together.
I completely agree but I don’t think that’s a weakness at all. Maybe when it released, the game was seen as a grand RPG by more casual people and as a watered down Oblivion by older ES players.
But I think by looking at it not through the lens of a grand RPG, but as a familiar, comforting brain-off experience, it really shines. It really gave us the most it could for how low effort it is to play, and I mean that in a good way.
I remember getting recommended a YouTube video (by the algorithm) called something like “why do we still like Skyrim” and I thought the video was very disappointing. And I think the video’s thesis was about the same as mine in this comment. I wanted it to be something like this:
I associate the game with a long tradition of RPGs that I wasn’t around for, as one of the last great games we got before the priorities of the industry shifted again. The graphics didn’t need to be perfect, the comically small number of VAs didn’t need AI bullshit, the straightforward story lines don’t need to be groundbreaking. The music and atmosphere though are immaculate. It’s a game with a ton of flaws, even some jank that is endearing in hindsight. It just works!
Throw on the modding aspect and you have a very “pure” PC gaming experience. This is exactly what I want from a game, something that’s good enough to just be fun to run around aimlessly in, without feeling like I need a podcast to play in the background, that I can just lose hours in.
I’m playing a much higher effort game now. Workers and Resources Soviet Republic makes the Cities Skylines 2 look like drawing stick figure houses. WRSR is absurdly complex and is super engrossing when you’re in it, if you’re wired to enjoy these types of games. However, I need to be mentally ready to jump in.
With Skyrim I just launched it when I was bored, and I was less bored after.
I insist: Skyrim’s simplicity is what made it work.
Almost every case of movie purists. The Hobbit trilogy was great. The new Star Wars trilogy was great. The old ones are great too.
I have similar issues with music and video games. I almost always love the most hated albums or games in a series based on the loudest commentary online. I also find the most popular entry to be kind of meh. I think average people have boring taste or just follow a crowd or something.
Whenever certain keys words are thrown around to criticize something, you bet it’s actually not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. I went through the entirety of The Last Us Part II and she-hulk just because of the hate, and boy was the hate overblown.
Sonic Adventure 2's mech stages. I actually loved those stages and was really surprised to learn that so many people didn't like them, I always found it so satisfying getting good combos!
I enjoyed the ending to the Battlestar Galactica series. I know there were some missed opportunities but the writer's strike had an impact.
