Once in a while, there's good news coming and the news in particular is that Wreck-It Ralph 2 is announced and will be coming to theaters in 2018. And being a fan of the first one, I'm quite excited and happily looking forward to it, given that it's the most I want from Disney these days (though Moana looks pretty good so far...minus the garbage compliants about the supposed fat shaming it's displaying but I digress).
Now while we have mostly no idea what's the film going to be like, we have a promotional image being shown in the article linked here, so I'm going to analyze the hell out of it.
Now as we can see, he appears to be in a cityscape of some kind with little ol' Von Sweetchz on top of his shoulder and well it's awesome. Though we can notice that the little names being displayed on top of the "buildings" are obviously internet services just with the names changed for possibly copyright reasons (though I wonder if Youtube will get mentioned but I'll get there later). As we have noted, in this sequel, Ralph will be going to the internet which will be represented as a city of sorts and that the buildings themselves might represent the websites. I'm quite mixed here, since on one hand it will be interesting for a film like this, especially from Disney, to deal with the internet directly and possibly tackle the ups and downs the internet faces but on the other I'm quite skeptical of this given that since the first film had numerous video game references and had the affair take place in old arcade machines which as of this post are pretty much a niche thing if not dead for as far as I'm concerned. However there's plenty of games that have online functions, such as World of Warcraft and Overwatch, so I wonder if Wreck-it Ralph 2 will feature them or at least have expies of them, we'll have to see. Speaking of which, it's no secret that roms and the emulators to play them are a part of internet society (though that's another topic for another time) and it would be interesting if they get featured in the film as well, though again expies might be abound for both legal and creative purposes. Then again, maybe what the first missed out in terms of opportunities the second might make up for it.
Right now I'm tired and I have to get to bed but all I have to say is that I'm very glad this films is being made and will be out by 2018; afterall I rather have good news to end the day than bad news.
So of course, Kojima Hideo, the man behind Metal Gear and Zone of the Enders, put out a trailer for his new upcoming game for the PS4 during this year's E3 (via Yongyea):
While I'm quite impressed with the way the trailer looks, looking like it might set up the protagonist's possibly trippy adventure, I've got to say it's a pretty bizarre trailer. What with the baby being held just disappearing and having the protagonist's hands being covered with oil (or tar or somethin'), the invisible hands pressing against the black sand and being filled with that same black substance no doubt, him being naked for no reason (though if the protagonist was a woman, I'd imagine a lot of SJWs would go nuts and be hatin' on the trailer, ironically racking up a lot of traffic for it but I digress), and of course the bunch of sea animals being dead all around him. There's a reason why I think the game might be a lot trippy, because well it's weird and I'm quite fine with that given that the game will be dealing with connections in life and death; it's a Kojima game after all. That and I like the music being played, adding into the trailer's mysterious tone (after all it's not usual to end up on a beach with dead sea animals with a baby that disappears in your hands while buck naked). Oh and I should mention that the protagonist is obviously played by Norman Reedus, the guy involved in the sadly cancelled Silent Hills/PT game. I guess nothing can stop the Reedus-Kojima bond, huh? That and it's all photorealistic again, something that I feel Kojima didn't learn from given that the development of the FOX engine was expensive for a reason and I feel might have cut into Metal Gear 7: The Phantom Pain's awesomeness. Not that the trailer shouldn't be impressive mind you but I feel like photorealism is quite overused and dare I say it undesirable given that IMO cuts into the artistic aspects of many games (and being expensive as hell and party why the gaming industry is having trouble these days). But of course my distaste for photorealism is another story for another time.
And speaking of aesthetics there hasn't been any ingame footage but at least it's complete rendered ingame meaning that the game will be a lot like that graphics wise. And of course sadly the weird astronaut esque Ludens guy won't be appearing in the game (talk about Sir-Not-Appearing-in-this-Game), you know the guy whose side of his face forms the symbol for the recently resurrected Kojima Productions logo. But given that this is made by Kojima and that the game might play like an action but maybe offer a lot of unique elements (trippy ones I bet), I'm pretty sure this might be one of the biggest killer apps for the troublesome PS4 console (along with Gravity Rush 2 and the Crash Bandicoot Remasters).
And as a fan of his work (most of them), I'm quite happy he's still in the gaming business and intends to stay there, unlike a certain gaming company Kojima worked for.
*Sigh* Another day, another a--hole decides to go shoot up some place with innocents for some distorted reason, in this case some dude who shoot up a gay bar in Orlando, Florida. It's almost routine for someone like me living in America in the 2010's where it seems to be a tradition to witness news reports of someone shooting up innocents for no good reason, and it's almost like I should just not care because it happens all the time but of course what good would that do? The least I can do is give my condolences to the people whose lives have been drastically effected by this disaster.
And of course, cover some people getting all politicized over this for no reason. If there's anything "political" to get nuts over it's the motive of the scumbag who have clearly shown to be sympathizing with ISIS and may have been committing a hate crime (too bad he died in a gunfight with cops during the shooting, I would have liked to see him get hanged but I digress). And by getting politicized I mean blame white cishet males and linkvideo games to the tragedy. It always grinds my gears to see video games getting blamed for anything, including supposed misogyny. And what's bad about this is that it's the games media doing this not some dumb lawyers like Jack Thompson and all of this just before E3 begins. I mean no offense to the staff of the upcoming E3 showing solidarity with the victims with them having that pin with the rainbow flag, I'm fine with that, but how in the hell would those games be "insensitive" to the recent tragedies? If they are then what about the other tragedies that happened like the one in Belgium or Sandy Hook or that one in California? Jeez, talk about being over sensitive, unreal. Just stop acting like video games were somehow responsible for the reprehensible act of terrorism, the guy could have been a video game hater for as far as I care.
While I'm usually hesitant to do this given that this relates to a certain possibly never-ending controversy that should not be named but this dude sums up the crazy hypocrisy the games media is displaying: http://kukuruyo.com/comic/gamergate-life-81/
