PC vs. … Switch? (What will be your way of playing ReMI?)

[BaronGrackle]

But right... the Switch. I'm buying this on Nintendo Switch. My computer lives in the office where my wife works from home. Also, the computer is old and had issues trying to run Delores, so I'd have doubts about it running any new game. I'm also not eager to jump into the wars of Steam vs. GOG, from what I hear.
 

The Switch version will let my kids and me play together on our big TV. If I like the game and want to replay it, I can do so in bed during the evenings while my wife is on her phone or the TV.

[Wally B.]

59 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

This is a sincere question because I don't really have a gauge on how old everyone is: Do you have strong memories of when the Star Wars special editions and Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out?

 

People talk about twitter being toxic and an echo chamber. But just ask Jake Lloyd or Ahmed Best if it was a few rogue twitter comments that got to them.

 

"Media backlash".

 

 

 

I was actually still a kid when it came out, but I've never heard anything bad about it from tv or media in general, they were all over the place on tv and they were always praised. I live in Italy though, so the way media reacted here VS how they reacted there is surely very different. I didn't really live that period of time like many of you probably did, since I didn't start using internet since close to 2007 maybe.

I know the backlash by the fans and media was enormous and that it had severe consequences on the lives of Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best, but I do also know that critics received them well (not all, but most) when they first came out and started bashing on them a few years later when the hate from the fans couldn't be ignored anymore and the general consensus was now that they were bad movies. It was the start (or the continuation actually) of what has now become our world.

 

Twitter isn't an echo chamber and it isn't necessarily toxic. I believe twitter to be kind of a reflection of how the world is going in this day, since almost everybody uses it and everybody on it has different opinions (on the same level as people in real life have different opinions, at least). Twitter just made it easier to feed the "drama machine" and to make situations that a couple years ago wouldn't have been a problem, a real pain.

 

This is also a discussion that is WAY off-topic and very difficult to have, because once one goes into it, it starts also being about art industry, criticism, opinions and it just gets too big and drawn out, so maybe I'll shut up now 

[Garystu]

While we're posting simpsons clips, this was a direct parody of alt.tv.simpsons.

The regulars of that community even recognized it as such. The reivews section of this FAQ is my source on this. https://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/4F12.html

 

 

Also, this line appeared in Super Paper Mario, a videogame from 2007. The whole section is a parody of the nerd stereotypes.

 

People didn't wait for Super Paper Mario to come out, and give it a fair chance. They started judging it based on trailers. If you're not familiar with why people would complain about the game, it was changing gameplay styles significantly from previous instalments in the Paper Mario series. That was the point of contention. So this line made a lot of people mad. Nowadays, Super Paper Mario is still considered an odd entry in its series, but it has a generally positive reputation.

 

I'm just throwing on some evidence of... something. I don't know what my point is. The economy of "complaining about games you haven't played" keeps on booming iguess? wow that sucks

[Jake]

The first “everyone piles on and tries to destroy it before it shipped” that I remember in gaming was The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, for GameCube. People were INCENSED that they weren’t getting a “realistic” Link, and instead got what they perceived as a cartoon for kids. 

It’s fun seeing that era come up in discussion now, twenty years later, in places like Reddit comment threads. So many embarrassed now-adults who were teens or kids at the time, saying “well I was extremely wrong and behaved so badly, it turns out that game was a stone cold classic.” Honestly it gives me a tiny bit of hope for all of us, that the “looks more like Celda, not Zelda!” brigade actually grew up and had some hindsight. 

[BaronGrackle]

I was never a Zelda fan, but forgive me if I hold hope that in Zelda and Smash Bros. today there exists both "Link" and also "Toon Link", rather than the latter destroying the former!

[Vainamoinen]

59 minutes ago, Jake said:

It’s fun seeing that era come up in discussion now, twenty years later, in places like Reddit comment threads. So many embarrassed now-adults who were teens or kids at the time, saying “well I was extremely wrong and behaved so badly, it turns out that game was a stone cold classic.” Honestly it gives me a tiny bit of hope for all of us, that the “looks more like Celda, not Zelda!” brigade actually grew up and had some hindsight. 

 

That was a time when 4.3 million copies sold was perceived as a moderate success or even a disappointment by Nintendo. Ah well. Let's hope Return to Monkey Island sells 4.3 million copies. 🤑

 

 

16 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

Was this about Bosco's voice in the remaster?

 

Mostly, it was about coarse ground shit. Some self declared investigators found a handful of lines cut from Season one to be "censorship", then went on and wrote that lines were cut from Season 2 as well even though that wasn't the case. I wrote to GOG, but before they even replied they had all the respective reviews deleted already. At the time, the most upvoted review claims that Season 2 is "still censored", because of Bosco's voice. Which is a claim they can make, because it's true, but a one star rating because of that is of course still coarse ground shit by a pathetic loonie who didn't buy the game. If GOG finally deleted all reviews that aren't written by game owners, they'd have 80% more positive reviews, and that is that.

 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[BaronGrackle]

On the one hand, I sympathize with wanting to preserve an original product. On the other hand, I shudder a bit that vocal "blackface" is only recently becoming uncomfortable to people. I loved Aladdin for years without reflecting on voicecast in it. So yeah, I get the desire to recast Bosco and Voodoo Lady in remasters when applicable.

Edited September 1, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[Remi]

25 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

On the one hand, I sympathize with wanting to preserve an original product.

 

Luckily, they are preserved and you can download the original versions of the games.

[Alexandra IDV]

Do we know yet if RtMI will support touchscreen controls on Switch? That will likely be what determines what I get it on - I love playing games on handheld systems, but moving a cursor with a thumbstick is to me an inherently worse experience than using a mouse.

[Remi]

3 minutes ago, Alexandra IDV said:

Do we know yet if RtMI will support touchscreen controls on Switch? That will likely be what determines what I get it on - I love playing games on handheld systems, but moving a cursor with a thumbstick is to me an inherently worse experience than using a mouse.

 

I believe David Fox quasi-confirmed that touchscreen would be supported.

[ThunderPeel2001]

7 hours ago, Marius said:

Y'all sound a bit like making a lot of assumptions about people who you critisize for making a lot of assumptions.

 

Are you saying echo chambers don't exist? Or that the world hasn't become polarised? Or that people don't demonise those that are seen as the opposite to them? We're ALL guilty of either doing these things or being affected by them. 

 

What I said doesn't just happen online... I've just seen it get worse since the internet became a core part of our lives. People are stuck in their own echo chambers... on BOTH sides of any debate.

 

You can zoom all the way out to a big topic like Trump, or all the way down to something (relatively) insignificant like ReMI's graphics...

 

How many of the most nasty vocal people in the Lucas Fans world are convinced they're representing the vast majority? Every one I've engaged with has told me that "everyone" agrees with them... that "everyone" hates ReMI's graphics. That's always their first point of defence.

 

And even after I show them a statistically significant poll where only 2% are actually upset with the graphics, they try to explain it away. ("The wrong people answered" was one response I was told). And that's literally cognitive bias -- you believe evidence that supports your view, and ignore any evidence that doesn't.

 

Again, it's human nature to do this -- everyone is guilty of it in some way, but I feel people are less willing to listen (and quicker to judge) than ever   (And no, I'm not being guilty of the same thing by saying all this.)

 

 

7 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

This is a sincere question because I don't really have a gauge on how old everyone is: Do you have strong memories of when the Star Wars special editions and Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out?

 

People talk about twitter being toxic and an echo chamber. But just ask Jake Lloyd or Ahmed Best if it was a few rogue twitter comments that got to them.

 

"Media backlash".

 

I have vivid memories of it all (I saw The Phantom Menace on a trip to New York on my 21st birthday). I feel this sort of thing happens every other week these days, whereas the magnitude of the backlash in 1999 was a rarer thing.

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[Marius]

1 hour ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Are you saying echo chambers don't exist? Or that the world hasn't become polarised? Or that people don't demonise those that are seen as the opposite to them?

No, I was just surprised how passionate the thread turned to this topic.

[BaronGrackle]

Do some of you wish there were a wider, louder controversy against Steam and its release practices? So that maybe now, instead of pressure related to character sprites, there could be pressure to release RMI via GOG, or physical copies, or some other method where consumers owned the game directly?

 

EDIT: It's just that I've seen fans who are SO hyped about this game, so excited, so overjoyed... they've sometimes "waited 30 years for it"... and they're not getting it. They won't do Steam on principle, and they don't have a Switch.

Meanwhile, there're people like me. A bitter, frothing, often loud hater who hasn't been waiting for anything since 2009, more apprehensive about where the franchise is going than I've ever been - and here I am preordered, ready to buy on day one, just because of system circumstances.

 

Isn't that kind of backwards?

Edited September 1, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[ThunderPeel2001]

1 hour ago, Marius said:

No, I was just surprised how passionate the thread turned to this topic.

 

It just all makes me sad (and grumpy)

[Niemandswasser]

On 8/31/2022 at 10:49 AM, Vainamoinen said:

Yup, absolutely. Season 2 still maintains a whopping 5/5 stars verified owners' rating, so if GOG just got off their fucking asses and banned non owner reviews ... LE SIGH.

Personally I don't think this is an oversight--I think allowing it is intentional. At best CD Projekt has tended to look the other way with the crowd who do this; at worst they have a history of soft-catering to them. 

[madmardi]

5 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

It just all makes me sad (and grumpy)

Yea, I feel you.

[Marius]

Hey! Just wanted to say that I hear your frustration, and I didn‘t mean to downplay your (and my) concerns about the ugly side of internet society (unsure if this description is a summary of the issue but I am no wordsmith and I think you know what I mean). I am sharing most of the emotions you have, and rereading my comments I realize I poked a nerve which wasn‘t necessary or funny.

[Vainamoinen]

9 hours ago, Niemandswasser said:

Personally I don't think this is an oversight--I think allowing it is intentional. At best CD Projekt has tended to look the other way with the crowd who do this; at worst they have a history of soft-catering to them. 

 

They've developed their platform 14 years ago, back when we really had no clue what power a disgruntled (non-)customer really has, and how destructive to social media the mere downvote is. That was the good old time when games were mostly sold in boxes from brick and mortar stores, when 'freespeechy' wasn't an insult, and Leigh Alexander had not yet spoken the immortal words about creating or curating a culture in your spaces. GOG has recently removed downvotes from their forums, so they've finally seen the error of their ways, but I don't think that right now they even have the budget to rectify the review situation. They have a whole system set up with a verified owners rating, an all reviews rating, and a "combined score" that means jack shit because a few positive owners' ratings can not counteract a tide of review bombers who don't own the game. You remove a nail, the whole system collapses.

 

From my perspective, Valve also has a history of looking the other way for the very same reasons GOG/CDPR did: They always tried to look like an advocate for the customer against the industry bigguns. Although that was always an obvious and a bit pathetic marketing ploy, it has worked out marvellously for Valve, what with the Lord Gaben and ambrosia from heaven sales memes. Glorification and even deification by the customer for a power hungry monopoly, I don't really see many other companies that achieved that besides maybe Apple back in Jobs times. I don't blame CDPR for trying to step in exactly those footsteps, obviously, but they never had the fanbase, the budget nor the developers to make it work. They should have reacted wayyyyy sooner to the rise of the shitstorm, but I think their options were always limited. They couldn't risk upsetting their customers. Valve eventually bowed to their business clients with sensible and solid safeguards against review bombing. I kind of dread the unavoidable shitstorm when GOG finally introduces those very elementary and extremely necessary culture war blow softeners.

 

Valve eventually introduced those safeguards, GOG stuck to allowing everything because they couldn't risk upsetting their customers. But to be fair, Valve can dictate the market entirely on its own and won't have to ask their gazillion business clients when they introduce e.g. no questions asked refund policies, "bigger cut for higher sales" exclusivity fostering/competition squashing mechanisms, or continues sales to Russia. CDPR/GOG never had any of those options.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Niemandswasser]

I certainly don't think Valve is any better than CDProjekt, but it always seemed like CDPR embraced and welcomed the reactionary assholes on their platform in a wink-nudge sort of way that got to be too much for me to stomach. (Did they ever lock or delete the "Gamergate Updates" thread in their general forum? It sure was there for a long time.) The last straw for me was trying to claim that "many messages from gamers" were behind the self-created PR disaster that was their cowardly Devotion about-face; it read to me like a pathetic, transparent, hail-Mary attempt to blow the "the gamers" dogwhistle so those jagoffs would circle the wagons for them. And it didn't even fool *them*. I definitely don't have any love for Valve or Steam, and I wouldn't advocate supporting one or the other; if ReMI was a GOG exclusive I'd almost certainly swallow my distaste and buy it there. Considering what's required to even make a computer, the mere act of owning one cancels out any good a boycott of one or the other online game store might put into the world (imo). In the end I just flat out don't like CDPR very much, so I don't go to their playground. For others it's the other way around, and I both get and respect that.

[LowLevel]

Would it sound completely off-topic if I say that I'll play it on the PC? It will be probably on the bigger monitor, but before that I'll try to screencast it to the living room TV, hoping to minimize the lag.

[BillyCheers]

25 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

Would it sound completely off-topic if I say that I'll play it on the PC? It will be probably on the bigger monitor, but before that I'll try to screencast it to the living room TV, hoping to minimize the lag.

I always had quite a bit of lag when I connected my MacBook to my TV (for MI1) - or I had to mess around with the settings for so long that it just looked ugly. And for me, it's no fun at all even with the slightest lag. But that probably depends on the TV, as someone pointed out here. I keep my fingers crossed that it works fine for you.

[LowLevel]

8 minutes ago, BillyCheers said:

But that probably depends on the TV, as someone pointed out here. I keep my fingers crossed that it works fine for you.

 

Thank you! It really depends on the TV and the most annoying thing is that, in my case, results aren't consistent.

 

Sometimes I manage to get zero lag, to the point that I can even play games that are very time-sensitive, like pinball. Other times the lag is unbearable. I've tried with different forms of screencasting (Steam, Windows casting, etc,) but I've never found an easily replicable solution.

 

I could simply forget about wi-fi and connect the laptop to the TV with a cable, but managing to do it through wi-fi has become a bit a matter of principle.

[BillyCheers]

3 minutes ago, LowLevel said:

I could simply forget about wi-fi and connect the laptop to the TV with a cable, but managing to do it through wi-fi has become a bit a matter of principle.

Hmm, I somehow couldn‘t even get rid of the lag connecting it with an hdmi cable (although that should normally work fine ?). 

[Vainamoinen]

5 hours ago, Niemandswasser said:

I certainly don't think Valve is any better than CDProjekt, but it always seemed like CDPR embraced and welcomed the reactio ...

 

Let's ... give other forumites the opportunity to keep some cans of worms tightly shut. I'm trying to keep this short, but I will fail. 🥴

 

 

1. I never used Steam in my life, and always pointed at the quasi-monopoly that has taken over PC games distribution almost completely. Making a PC is a complex matter, but Valve doesn't make PCs, like Microsoft makes the Xbox or Sony the PlayStation, hence the cut of the platform shouldn't be that great and consolidation of sales on that one platform would eventually be to the detriment of PC games culture as a whole. Well, that was my reasoning for over ten years, before February 24th at least. I choose not to buy from Steam. I am aware that may eventually mean no more PC games for me.
2. I do not and will never judge anybody for buying games from any platform including Valve's Steam. I don't even judge the streaming dudettes and dudes. I'm aware like none other that PC gaming today is near synonymous with using the Steam platform. Imagine I feel the prick of a needle every time Steam gets another game as a factual PC exclusive, that's how aware I am.
3. GOG doesn't have an 'odious' nature any more than Valve does. Marcin Iwiński himself is a pretty cool and, let's call him "woke" for lack of a better word, guy. I am absolutely certain that Mr. Newell is an equally cool dude. Ethical production in late stage capitalism and so on.
4. Valve just retained a better public image even though being a mega corporation. If Valve got the same kind of shit from customers for not doing Half Life 3 as e.g. Ubisoft for their on/off/on/off/on/off development of Beyond Good & Evil 2, they'd probably stop making games altogether.
5. Similarly, the Devotion hickup exemplifies how exempt Valve is from criticism. Valve just straight up deleted the game, customers accepted it. GOG announced the game, made the fucking effort to be the right rebels for once and - probably for the first time in their business - felt China's icy cold squeezing hand on their throats. In shock, they retracted. And bam, shitstorm. They did get a whole lot of twitter flak from Chinese accounts before, so they could actually truthfully say those "gamers" were there that called for cancelling the release. They folded, but they never had a choice. China's influence is fucking absurd and they have every opportunity to censor especially American media wholesale. China made Valve fold immediately, GOG/CDPR poked the bear with a stick, but it was never in doubt they'd eventually have to run.
6. The higher ups on GOG/CDPR make a lot of crappy decisions, as one does when you're a higher up. GOG tried a "hands off" policy for their forums, which may have been great until 2014, but dumped the whole community in the trash come 2014.
7. GOG's confusion with the new situation was exemplified by their ever changing community managers with vastly different approaches to keeping the community at bay. The g*merg*te thread was going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, then was closed by a new community manager named Fables. But Fables was ripped to shreds after the community found out she didn't have a dick, therefore couldn't be a gamer. The thread was later reopened, I think, but people didn't post in it much longer. In came Linko as one of the many community managers, a dude with a fairly fine attitude towards moderating the forum. He threw out the reactionary assholes for a bit, and they accepted it, because hey, he had a dick. Unfortunately he bothsided the whole thing in public statements and was wholly incapable of also doing GOG's social media shit. He co-opted a trans hashtag and tweeted gamergate references (back then I didn't, but now I actually do believe he didn't know what he was doing). The suits threw him out. He still haunts their forum to this day, which is ... odd.
8. At present, I feel that they're really making an effort. Political discussions are now off limits, and hear ye hear ye the present moderators understand how the political elements pervade the discussion of pop culture, which is why they recently even closed a Rings of Power 'discussion' thread. I got a little conk on the head by the new mods as well, wholly understood why, and with the removal of downvotes I think the community has a fighting chance again. I started posting there again as soon as the downvotes were out.
9. The community is still fairly reactionary and a whole lot of work lies before the new community managers. They had their Pride month sale, I am really certain that they meant it, and they of course had the Pride month sale thread swarmed with fucking nazis, I mean legitimate and civil critics of modern LGBTQ+ culture. I hope it's not way too late for them to learn the new ways of the internet.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Vainamoinen

[Niemandswasser]

7 hours ago, Vainamoinen said:

 

Let's ... give other forumites the opportunity to keep some cans of worms tightly shut. I'm trying to keep this short, but I will fail. 🥴

 

  Reveal hidden contents

1. I never used Steam in my life, and always pointed at the quasi-monopoly that has taken over PC games distribution almost completely. Making a PC is a complex matter, but Valve doesn't make PCs, like Microsoft makes the Xbox or Sony the PlayStation, hence the cut of the platform shouldn't be that great and consolidation of sales on that one platform would eventually be to the detriment of PC games culture as a whole. Well, that was my reasoning for over ten years, before February 24th at least. I choose not to buy from Steam. I am aware that may eventually mean no more PC games for me.
2. I do not and will never judge anybody for buying games from any platform including Valve's Steam. I don't even judge the streaming dudettes and dudes. I'm aware like none other that PC gaming today is near synonymous with using the Steam platform. Imagine I feel the prick of a needle every time Steam gets another game as a factual PC exclusive, that's how aware I am.
3. GOG doesn't have an 'odious' nature any more than Valve does. Marcin Iwiński himself is a pretty cool and, let's call him "woke" for lack of a better word, guy. I am absolutely certain that Mr. Newell is an equally cool dude. Ethical production in late stage capitalism and so on.
4. Valve just retained a better public image even though being a mega corporation. If Valve got the same kind of shit from customers for not doing Half Life 3 as e.g. Ubisoft for their on/off/on/off/on/off development of Beyond Good & Evil 2, they'd probably stop making games altogether.
5. Similarly, the Devotion hickup exemplifies how exempt Valve is from criticism. Valve just straight up deleted the game, customers accepted it. GOG announced the game, made the fucking effort to be the right rebels for once and - probably for the first time in their business - felt China's icy cold squeezing hand on their throats. In shock, they retracted. And bam, shitstorm. They did get a whole lot of twitter flak from Chinese accounts before, so they could actually truthfully say those "gamers" were there that called for cancelling the release. They folded, but they never had a choice. China's influence is fucking absurd and they have every opportunity to censor especially American media wholesale. China made Valve fold immediately, GOG/CDPR poked the bear with a stick, but it was never in doubt they'd eventually have to run.
6. The higher ups on GOG/CDPR make a lot of crappy decisions, as one does when you're a higher up. GOG tried a "hands off" policy for their forums, which may have been great until 2014, but dumped the whole community in the trash come 2014.
7. GOG's confusion with the new situation was exemplified by their ever changing community managers with vastly different approaches to keeping the community at bay. The g*merg*te thread was going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, then was closed by a new community manager named Fables. But Fables was ripped to shreds after the community found out she didn't have a dick, therefore couldn't be a gamer. The thread was later reopened, I think, but people didn't post in it much longer. In came Linko as one of the many community managers, a dude with a fairly fine attitude towards moderating the forum. He threw out the reactionary assholes for a bit, and they accepted it, because hey, he had a dick. Unfortunately he bothsided the whole thing in public statements and was wholly incapable of also doing GOG's social media shit. He co-opted a trans hashtag and tweeted gamergate references (back then I didn't, but now I actually do believe he didn't know what he was doing). The suits threw him out. He still haunts their forum to this day, which is ... odd.
8. At present, I feel that they're really making an effort. Political discussions are now off limits, and hear ye hear ye the present moderators understand how the political elements pervade the discussion of pop culture, which is why they recently even closed a Rings of Power 'discussion' thread. I got a little conk on the head by the new mods as well, wholly understood why, and with the removal of downvotes I think the community has a fighting chance again. I started posting there again as soon as the downvotes were out.
9. The community is still fairly reactionary and a whole lot of work lies before the new community managers. They had their Pride month sale, I am really certain that they meant it, and they of course had the Pride month sale thread swarmed with fucking nazis, I mean legitimate and civil critics of modern LGBTQ+ culture. I hope it's not way too late for them to learn the new ways of the internet.

 

 

I'll move on after this because we're getting way off topic, just wanted to say I 1000% respect and understand your reasons for staying away from Steam and hope I didn't come off as trying to argue/dismiss them; I was just explaining my own aversion to patronizing GOG given a series of decisions over a period of years that soured me on their public-facing image. (Also, AFAIK Steam didn't pull Devotion outside of China--Red Candle pulled it themselves to edit out the "offending material" and then, for reasons that I've never seen made public, it never went back up. Assuming there was some behind-the-scenes stuff that was never disclosed which may well have come from Valve, but all we can do is speculate.)

 

Anyway. I have a Switch so that seems like a good place to play the game.