I think animation gets a pass because that business operates so differently from live-action movies. You're given the freedom to deal with casting decisions more flexibly, whereas in movies you have to cast somebody first before any filming happens. In animation, as long as it's clearly portrayed that the actors aren't playing themselves and that they are able to play a part convincingly, I don't have a problem with anybody playing anybody, so long as the casting decision-making process is fair. Above all, it needs to be believable, and if anything ruins the credibility of a production -even in video games- questions will be raised about the casting decisions, including those of racial nature.
Now, somebody playing a race or ethnicity other than themselves in a live-action film is something I'm way less comfortable with. Actor identity is super important for most movies, especially films where the ethnicity of a character contextually matters. It's a lot harder to believe that a white person would play an Indian person the best, for example, when you can see there's a physical real human being on the screen.
@soapy86: The first game was mainly a platformer that had guns in it, but since then the guns had been more emphasized in sequels. Ratchet: Deadlocked, for example, was just a third-person shooter. I think people like to call these games platformers because of how the earlier games played and that it has a lot more of it than typical shooters do. It strikes that delicate balance of exploring an environment and shooting things that other video games don't really do the same way.
Overall, I'd say the series is under the broad "Action-adventure" label because it's kind of its own thing that no specific genre term can accurately describe it. And, I think that's where its appeal lies. It's its own thing, and nobody else really makes games like this.
@waronhugs@eusebio@totsboy@whitegreyblack@tanookisuit Wow, didn't expect such the responses. Time for armchair defense. (Disclaimer: I'm not a biologist or a chemist, so if anybody is one of those feel free to enlighten us with science!)
-163.4C is -262.12F. The coldest temperature recorded on Earth was recorded at -128.6F, and this was recorded in a frozen barren wasteland on top of miles-thick ice. The planet in No Man's Sky shows large conifers and mammals happily running amok the snowy wasteland more than 130 degrees colder than Earth's coldest.
The limit for life's ability to grow and reproduce is about -20C on Earth. There's no way life on this planet would be oxygen-based life. Suppose the world is made of methane-based life instead? Sadly, it's not cold enough! Methane boils at -161.5°C, very close to the temperature of the planet, so the landscape on this planet would not have solid precipitation and ground cover, but rather would appear to be very steamy and wet. Now, extremophile methane microbe life could probably survive at such a temperature, but I'm not holding out hope for the big trees and elephant-sized animals.
Now, this planet could have ammonia-based life, but perhaps the planet is still too cold for that as well. The melting point of ammonia being -77.73°C seems too hot for this world.
But I'm sure No Man's Sky has it's own rules for how things work, and it could care less about the rules of the real world because vidya gaemz!
There should be no plant or animal life roaming around at -163.4C.
Nitpicks aside, can't believe it's almost out already. It's come so far, and I hope it's as amazing as my dreams and ideals made it out to be when it was first shown off more than two years ago. Any tiny bit of new information in these videos justifies the hype even more.
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