For the past… I don’t even know how long, there’s been a lot of talk about bringing in a wave of diverse characters and trying to lessen the use of characters fitting a mold of being straight white males with short black hair, athletic builds, and possibly some beard scruff, as that is quite frankly an incredibly dull mold when you consider how those sliders can be manipulated. Hell, when I started writing, well, writing something that I actually completed, I specifically went out of my way to avoid that mold, when I was dealing with the medium of writing, which is where the character’s visual appearance does not matter all that much as it is not a visual medium. Yet I still went out of my way to make sure I had balanced ethnicity well, even if I boiled it down to four variants, White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, made them either pansexual or asexual, and make sure the character at the very least obtains a female form if they do not begin with it… The Transformation, Ascension, and Degeneration of Terra is coming to this blog 11/18/2014 or sooner! I’ve got about three more chapters and two months of editing left to do, so I’d say early October. Probably.
So, over the prior weekend the EVO occurred, and it apparently held the announcement of Tekken 7, which will be a platform TBA Unreal engine 4 powered fighter that I know next to nothing about, although that is the case for most people as it was teased above all else. Yes, I know next to nothing about fighters in general, but I can still get excited when a new Smash Brothers character is announced, well, characters to be exact. First off is a delightful shift in what I assumed, as Chrom was confirmed under the pitiful title of an assist trophy, good seeing as he was the worst character in Fire Emblem: Awakening, as his daughter, Lucina, is introduced to balance the genders! Yet I suppose the entire reveal could be viewed as 50/50 in that regard, as the bigender Avatar character from FE:A is also ready to smash with the best of them, although I could come up with 8 better unisex names than Robin within ten blasted minutes. While, surprising nobody, the male character is Captain Falcon, who has been given a slight redesign as he hasn’t had a single game released since the last Smash Brothers. Oh, and Sakurai decided to tease people hoping for another third party fighter by thrusting a picture featuring a Rayman Trophy… Yet Ubisoft apparently made the model, meaning that the character may not be on the roster. Oh, and current predictions are Wario, Ness, Jigglypuff, Sceptile, Mr. Game & Watch, Meta Knight, Shulk, and Chorus Men, as I think that’d be radical. Why eight? Because there will only be 8 more characters, with one random slot!
Random much like how the statement of Crytek UK not being tied in with bankruptcy, or the phrase, “is now owned by”. So what is it tied with this week, a week* before any of those things being said? They wish to so Timeplitters, well, everybody at the company anyhow, except for the terribly described owners of the company, who I am as reluctant to believe to be evil as I am to believe any massive corporation is. Although who can really blame them for wanting to obtain money, when really you should blame the shitlords who are driving this doom train, and offering popular Youtubers money for coverage of video games… like 25% of them… Look, this only comes across as screwy in my mind due to how this data is loose enough to be interpreted that people are being paid off to praise a game based on playing an early demo of it. If actual criticism is being thrown about, as it is with press, then it still means that people are being paid to talk about something, when that just doesn’t sound quite right. Making a commission to help promote a game, though? That is perfectly fine.
What is fine, hell, better than fine in my book, is news that Volition is going to be expanding, and they are one of the few developers whose hairy black balls I would suck, accidentally bite, and then flee the scene before crying beneath an oak tree. It will be a 50% increase in staff, and I would not be surprised if that also means another Saints is on its way, despite how I feel the franchise ended well and only has spin-offs left in it, like Saints Row Rockin’ Racing (Kart Racer), Saints Row: War on the Streets (SRPG), Saints Row: Gangstas in Space (FreeSpace X Saints Row), and Saints In Time (Modern TellTale Clone and Sequel).
The tactics is the most likely in my mind, as after the whole never started Bioshock Vita spin-off it seemed like nearly any IP could get a tactics spin-off, including Power Rangers, at least in the eyes of Saban when it comes to the Kickstarted Chroma Squad. Yes, in a bit of truly crummy news the company decided that either Chroma Squad has to be murdered, or some of the profits had to be shared with a company who owns the rights to use footage from a show which inspired this title in terms of visuals and concept. Personally, I would have changed the art style just enough to make these cows stop spraying their sour milk, but at least the game will be released and not be shut down like… the fan-translation of Type-0? Nah, that was only a matter of time. Shame, since they were almost done with their labor of love. Square Enix probably should’ve taken the translation and edited it if you ask me, it’d likely only cost them 10k or somethin’. But no, that can never be how it works with a company who spent a generation flushing their goodwill down the toilet.
…I’m not going to talk about the Yogscast thing, as I do not even know what the Yogscast are, I do not wish to know, and I will respond to all Kickstarter failures by saying, “Yeah, you knew this risk when you gave your cash to people you have never met. If you got something out of the deal, good for you.”