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BladeOfCreation

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BladeOfCreation

2491

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I played that six hour long "closed beta" they had a month or two ago. I put that it quotes because it was really easy to get into, you just had to watch someone stream it on Twitch for a few hours. I remember being really surprised that there was nothing to do on land other than visit shops. I had always assumed you'd be going to islands, exploring them with some third-person parkour, then sailing away for another island adventure. Gathering resources by parking your ship near land and playing a silly little timing minigame is just profoundly uninspired.

The combat was fine and makes sense in terms of the different types of weapons used for gameplay purposes. That said...I laughed my ass off when the first ship that you unlock specializes in ramming enemy ships. Say what you will about gameplay and Assassin's Creed games, but Ubisoft has taken great effort in the past to make their games historically compelling. Maritime combat during the late-17th/early-18th century did not feature warships ramming each other as a primary means of engagement!

And I'll say this: at the end of the day, making a game about pirates in that era in a real-life historical setting is, at best, fucking weird. Pirates were murderers, brutes, enslavers, and bullies. But, hey, this is Ubisoft. They made a game about Vikings in which the player is penalized for murdering monks.

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BladeOfCreation

2491

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A few years ago, I read House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. It's largely a murder mystery set against an extreme far future backdrop in which groups of essentially immortal humans traverse the galaxy (always slower than light speed) as they interact with different human and post-human cultures. The audiobook has great narration.

The Hyperion Cantos is a duology that is absolutely fantastic. The first book in particular is a blend of half a dozen different types of science fiction that come together in a rewarding way. The only thing is that you definitely need to read both books--it's essentially one book that was split into two volumes because of length.

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BladeOfCreation

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Absolutely incredible writing and a great list. I immediately purchased Heaven's Vault (I am an historian with no skill for languages, and I love science fiction so this game seems like pure wish fulfillment for me) and downloaded the demos for both Chants of Sennaar and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, despite the latter being so utterly removed from what I'm normally interested in. That, folks, is the power of empathetic writing.

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BladeOfCreation

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@shindig: I'm not saying they should be prevented from running it. I just think it's extremely shitty to do so.

@bigsocrates:This is nothing like saying that the NYT is keeping government secrets. This is writing about entertainment. It's nowhere near as important or vital as other forms of journalism.

If things that I wrote were leaked (or stolen) to the press and shared before I was done working on them, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off. That's where I'm coming from with this.

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BladeOfCreation

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@bigsocrates said:

No journalist has a responsibility to help a game company hide elements of its game. And while secrecy might make sense when you have a big twist most games aren't like that at all. Hi-Fi Rush, a game that was successfully kept secret up until launch, had zero surprising twists. You could see them all coming a mile away.

Yet all of the same people who are reporting on the content of these leaks are the very same people who will gladly sign NDAs from these companies for access to early/pre-release versions. These people and these video game sites already keep secrets and limit their reporting to content and timelines that are beneficial for the video game companies.

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BladeOfCreation

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@bigsocrates: Time and time again, we've seen developers get harassed when leaks like this happen. That isn't the fault of journalists, but it ought to be a consideration at the very least.

I think there are two separate issues going on here. One is about institutions and one is about individuals. No one should give a shit that a corporation's plans for marketing products have been disrupted. At the same time, it's extremely shitty that people's art has been shown to the public before they were ready for it. That does not serve the public in any way.

There is a third issue going on in this particular case, which is the selective nature of the reporting. The vast majority of people who write and talk about video games are not journalists, they're enthusiast press, and it shows.

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BladeOfCreation

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I've been saying this for years--Jason Schreier even blocked me on Twitter for saying that reporting leaked/unfinished art was not journalism.

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BladeOfCreation

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I'll second this. They haven't been working for me for a couple of months at this point.

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BladeOfCreation

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#9  Edited By BladeOfCreation

Fan theories and reinterpretations tend to be uninteresting, uninformed, and frankly bad. Media literacy and critique is a real thing--and everyone's own experiences and values will change how they interpret a work--but sometimes the person critiquing the media can be literally, objectively wrong in their interpretation. Now, we all have our own interpretations of whether or not something is good or fun or whatever. Part of how I interpret and enjoy media is, "Did this piece of media set out to do what the author intended and did it do that for me?" A secondary concern is, "Is my interpretation what the author intended?" There is a third consideration, which is, "Can I take something of value from this work, even if that interpretation is unintended by the author?" That last one is important to me, personally. Orson Scott Card is a massive piece of shit, but I'll never apologize for finding Ender Wiggin to be a deeply sympathetic character.

I guess, for me at least, the difference is that I don't find much value in saying, "Aha! What if we change the author's vision to mean this?!" That's not really engaging with a work of art in a meaningful way.

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BladeOfCreation

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@bigsocrates: You're not the only one who feels that way. I played TLoU for the first time in 2020, as everyone was playing TLoU 2. It was an incredible game. But I felt like that was all I needed from that universe.