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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34997 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Tfw you write out what you think is a really cool topic of discussion, but forget that nobody else lives inside your head but you, so you just expect everyone to connect all the dots the same way you did instead of explaining yourself properly, so you spend the whole time getting frustrated that nobody is engaging with it the way you expected.

When you include a line like "What makes Dune such fertile ground compared to, say, Lord of the Rings?" you really should reiterate your specific target. Especially since it was the only sentence you broke out of the paragraph, you basically made it the flashpoint of your post. People try to read left to right top to bottom, but our eyes are drawn to areas of uniqueness, I'd guess a lot of people read the last line first and, if they were like me, had an inordinate amount of trouble focusing on anything else you said after such a cosmetically ridiculous statement (because it does make sense under your stipulations, but your stipulations are kind of confusing.)

Here's a question - can you think of any examples of this other than dune? Another piece of media that seemed to fuck up its licensing opportunities but still inspired some great licensed works?

Here's a question - can you think of any examples of this other than dune? Another piece of media that seemed to fuck up its licensing opportunities but still inspired some great licensed works?

Dragonball managed to produce FighterZ even though 90% of its licensed games are terrible.

Moreover, the license fits the game. Dune II may have been a successful game, but I don't get the impression that it was successful as a Dune game specifically.

Dune II may have been a successful game, but I don't get the impression that it was successful as a Dune game specifically.

Yeah, I loved that game as a kid, but when I got my hands on the book, I felt it's a big missed opportunity. The Dune universe is full of these little details that are begging to be translated into game mechanics - you can only reliably use infantry to move your forces around, anything mechanized is getting eaten by worms, unless you airlift it in the last possible moment, etc... it would be a lot of work to get it right, but you could have so much rock-paper-scissors stuff built around that.

I suppose Dune II didn't necessarily stand out for its IP, yeah--the reason it's even called that is because the other Dune game of its time was a weird adventure game (albeit with strategic elements, weirdly), and aesthetically, Dune II doesn't quite fit with the visual style of the Lynch film (though Dune 2000 and Emperor would change that).

But that being said, I think Dune as an IP does give a cool enough world that makes people want to explore it--lord knows that that's probably why Brian Herbert continues to crank out Dune spinoffs.

Your mention of Dragon Ball does make me think: Gundam is an IP that arguably could be so much more, though it hasn't done too terribly--I think it's more that Gundam could use a bitchin' simulationist game along the lines of MechWarrior or Steel Battalion. The only games that seem to have come even close to emulating the brutal, anyone-can-die combat of the actual anime are MSG 2.0 for the PS1 and the Side Stories games for the Saturn--and outside of the Missing Link remake(?) of the latter, those games are trapped in the past. Everything else is more fantastical, arcade-oriented fare like Dynasty Warriors Gundam or Gundam Versus, or RPG stuff like SD Gundam or Super Robot Wars. And all of that stuff is maybe a little too focused on referencing iconic moments from their source animes, rather than simply plopping you into the world of the Universal Century, After Colony, Cosmic Era, or Post-Disaster and letting you choose your story. The only other kind of game that Gundam has spawned that really sounds appealing is the Japan-only Gihren's Greed series of strategic games.

The only games that seem to have come even close to emulating the brutal, anyone-can-die combat of the actual anime are MSG 2.0 for the PS1 and the Side Stories games for the Saturn--and outside of the Missing Link remake(?) of the latter, those games are trapped in the past.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire (for PS3) is very down-to-earth—it's quite easy to be sniped across the map by Gelgoogs or Guntanks in later levels (or by Acguys in earlier levels). I've also read that Zeonic Front (for PS2) is very tactical in the style of the first Rainbow Six game, though I haven't played it.

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