#lol tho it sounds familiar i think it was a previous player?

[miss-floral-thief]

lol did they give mia a va?

[iwonderwh0]

Hey! Do you know anything about "Uncanny valley effect"? I watched some videos on YouTube recently and was so impressed! I like your analysis posts about android nature and I would be interested to know what you think about this. The detailed examples from DBH are especially welcome!

First I want to thank you for this question because thinking about it evolved into an argument within my head about the definition of the term that I am now super excited to share. Yes! Yes, of course I know about uncanny valley and referred to it in my previous posts.

And I want first to talk about this effect in details.

To those who don't know (if there are still people who haven't heard of that term before ) the uncanny valley effect describes the feel of unease or even fear that we, as humans, experience when confronted with something that looks like human, but just sliiiiightly off. The example of that would be mannequins or just dolls, anthropomorphic robots or even other actual humans, whose behaviour seems "not human-like". Probably the best example of uncanny valley to this day is this infamous video "I feel fantastic" where this doll that looks like a woman, sings a song with this creepy robotic voice. This video is The definition of uncanny valley effect in it's purest form.

Y tho

I've seen an explanation to the question why would we feel this kind of fear around those objects that look like humans, but off, which was "Because we're naturally afraid of dead bodies, duh. Simple as that!" to which I strongly disagree, because it doesn't answer the question why would this robotic voice be so scary in itself, even without this robot girl. And I have an answer to that, which may be a little different from the others I've seen so far. I like to think about the uncanny valley effect as a subset of this more general fear, caused by ruined expectation of something in our reality that we're really-really familiar with. In a traditional understanding of uncanny valley effect - that "something" in question would be humans. But let's think further, as generally a fear caused by something, that's supposed to be familiar, but for some reason is not.

I have a good picture to illustrate this more general "uncanny valley" effect that isn't linked to human-looking/sounding objects.

It's this fucking picture

On the first glance it looks like something we instantly recognize as "some table with a bunch of junk on it", but the really next moment we go "Oh..wait.." and this sickening moment you realise that yes, it's familiar, but also completely utterly not, is the uncanny valley. For me at least.

Being a microtonality fan that I am, I can't help but draw the parallel between uncanny valley effect and the feeling people get when they first listen to microtonal music. It is described painfully similar to how people would describe uncanny valley, as something that's making them feel deeply uncomfortable for a reason they can't exactly name. It sounds like music (it looks human), but also there's something fundamentally different about how it sounds (acts, looks, smells) that makes it uncomfortable and scary, because it's something that's supposed to be familiar, but isn't. I'll take this opportunity to link a microtonal piece that struck me the first time I heard it with it being both uncanny and stunningly beautiful. When I played to other people they reacted almost as if it was physically harming them, lol.

I realise I dwelled away from the original topic, sorry.

With uncanny valley being attached specifically to androids within dbh there's actually not so much to say because in this game it's specifically emphasized that androids = humans without a proper attempt to make it androids != humans, but even so they deserve to be treated as such. I suspect it's because if they were actually shown as really different from humans, it'd make it harder for a player to emphasize with them, as player will be just as uncomfortable thinking about androids receiving rights. If only they looked and acted slightly less human the whole plot of a game would be perceived from a completely different angle, it'd actually put a game within a "horror" category solely because of it all being uncanny.

But even so, there are SOME examples of uncanny valley within the game.

Starting from the most obvious one, singing Kara's head that can be found on a landfill along with others mutilated androids. This right here is almost a dictionary example I gave earlier, I wonder if it was intended as a reference to "I feel fantastic" (other than a reference to Kara's first short film) but other than that there are barely any examples. Like yeah, their blood is blue and the insights are slightly different (although they do look similar to human's) and they can be brought "back from the dead" in a way, and their voice can get slightly glitchy when they're corrupted, but all of this is only hinting at being uncanny without actually being uncanny (at least not for us to feel it like this). It's even kind of weird that in a game absolutely fucking NO ONE is scared of androids for them being uncanny, but instead everyone hates them for replacing them at their work, which is honestly a really valid reason that isn't just "I hate them for being different" kind of thing. Sure there is Lucy, there are Zlatko's modified androids, all those things. Not uncanny, not nearly enough.

That's why it's so fun to imagine it actually being uncanny in a post-revolution setting and thinking about how will it actually affect interpersonal relationships between characters when one of the characters is stepping away from being perceived as just another human, who just happened to have a few quirks like having blue blood instead of red. When you actually acknowledge this inhuman part of the question. This is something I want more, so I write some of it myself. Here's a little piece of text from it that basically summarises what I want to see discussed more

[flute-fields]

Ooh nooo I did put animal crossing! I feel so dumb now I meant harvest moon. Sorry about that!

that’s fine! considering your mom wants one for her DS, i’m going to list the DS games available for Harvest Moon and offer my two cents on them since the DS games are the ones i have the most experience with lol so you’re in luck

to add another note, keep in mind that Harvest Moon has rebranded as Story of Seasons, so SoS is the same HM we all know and love; Natsume took the Harvest Moon title and released a bunch of horrible games to catch peoples’ interest with the familiar title, so the title shifts in this list. i only used the name Harvest Moon when discussing the games out of familiarity/force of habit; later on down this list, the title changes. i’m also adding the 3DS games.

i’ll link you to the games as well so you can go over them yourself/she can check them out herself to see what she’d prefer. i wrote a lot but not nearly enough to cover the controls/functions/story line/overall goal/townspeople in each game.

1) Harvest Moon DS/Harvest Moon DS Cute. considering one of your mom’s favorite HM games are AnWL, i think she’ll like this the best; the game is set in Forget-Me-Not-Valley with a huge amount of characters from AnWL! in DS, you can only play as Jack/Pete. in DS Cute, you can choose to play as either Claire or Pony/Jill. DS/DS Cute is probably one of my favorite title games because it’s so similar to AWL/AnWL, so i think she’d really enjoy this one. i don’t have much to say on the story/goal of the game since it’s basically AWL/AnWL for a DS. out of all the games i go over here, i think she’ll like this one the best.

2) Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness/Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands. these two are very similar to Tree of Tranquility/Animal Parade because they’re essentially the same game with major differences. in IoH, the player character is washed up on a new island during a horrible shipwreck after a violent storm/lightning strike and sea and never makes whatever their original destination was; those who survived the crash make a new life on the island they washed up on (it sounds bleak but i promise it’s not).

however, in SI, the MC sails to SI for a new life and all of the villagers have an established life there. the two games have different goals and slightly tweaked characters, but are functionally relatively the same, with SI adding in more marriage candidates. this series is also one of my favorites, but one thing to add is that the art is very chibi-fied. not sure if your mom will mind it, but it kind of bugged me at times. i personally prefer SI.

3) Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. this was one of my first HM games, and it’s very cute and charming; the art, however, is more cutesy than the previous titles, so at times it kind of feels like everyone is a baby lol. the game is a little different from usual - there’s no shipping bin, because the goal is to sell everything you produce at a bazaar that’s held once a week (or at a shop in town if you don’t want to wait that long). you don’t mine in this game either, since you buy ore in shops or find them in rocks during winter. overall, it’s a cute game, but maybe not the most memorable? i remember enjoying it a lot, but i can’t remember that much about it. >_> it’s one of the more cutesy games as opposed to the little bits of realism/somberness in AWL/AnWL

i’m skipping Puzzle de Harvest Moon/Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming because neither of them are farming simulators, they’re puzzle/matching games

4) Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns. one of my favorite games! you play as a farmer starting in one of two towns situated on either side of a mountain, with a blocked tunnel connecting them. your goal is to bring the two towns together again through cooking festivals, which will unblock the tunnel; until then, you travel between the towns by climbing the mountain, which is great for foraging but eats up some time in your day. one town is focused on farming crops, the other is focused on farming livestock; you can do both in either town, but your farm will be devoted more to main export of either town. for example, in Konohana has a lot of fields for crops and a small barn. it’s the opposite in Bluebell.

your residency in one town isn’t permanent, though; i think at the end of every season you can choose if you want to move to the other town and you can keep doing that indefinitely. another addition to the game is dating, where you go on dates with marriage candidates rather than just leveling hearts and proposing! it brings a tiny bit more realism into the romance lol. this game is available for 3DS as well.

5) the Rune Factory games. i haven’t played a lot of RF (only 4 lol ._.) but they’re all titled as fantasy Harvest Moons, meaning you have a farm and farming is a major focus, but there’s also magic and elves and fighting monsters in dungeons to get good loot! RF title games for the DS are Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, and Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Rune Factory 4 is a 3DS title and the only one i’ve played but i liked it a lot and intend to play the other titles!

i don’t have too much to say on the series since i haven’t played a lot, but i really enjoyed RF4! the games are much more story driven than Harvest Moon, which i found really fun since it felt like i had more of a goal than just “farm for the town”. i will add though that i loved all of the bachelorettes(minus Amber)/bachelors up until gearing toward proposing, because a lot of their Marriage Events suddenly had like...weird stuff? i won’t spoil anything but suddenly things like possessiveness/jealousy/weird unhealthy relationship stuff came up and i was like WHOA WHAT WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM O_O because it was all SO drastically different from everything else up to that point. i didn’t romance any of the bachelors but it was there for the bachelorettes so idk if it’s the same.

there are more HM games, but these next ones are for 3DS. i’m not sure if your mom has a 3DS (i know u said DS but i call my 3DS a DS all the time so idk if it’s the same thing for you or not >_>), so i’m adding these next titles because i’m on a roll, but keep that in mind! i will also add that, with your mom’s preference in her favorite games, she’d probably enjoy the games i listed above waaaaaay more than these next ones, since that’s how i feel too.

1) Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning. this is the title where things feel... very different. i didn’t really enjoy it that much, if i’m being honest, because it brought in a weird focus away from farming where you reorganize the town and build new buildings and stuff. it felt a lot like the sims, minus making characters. this is the first title where you can customize the player character though! which i love! since your mom’s favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and MY favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and i didn’t enjoy this game much, she probably won’t either. the tutorial stage is also really, REALLY, horrifically long -- it stretches over a week in-game time of just basically doing nothing. most of the characters are REAL charming though imo, and they lose the cutesy chibi art which i was really happy about. the art and characters made me stick through the gameplay since i enjoyed them. they also brought in older characters and renewed their designs; i loooooved Witch Princess and Amir in this game so much i was so stoked to unlock them. but overall yeah one of my least favorite titles in the series since it brought so much focus away from farming to me and while characters/romance are nice, a huge draw TO the HM games is the farming

2) Story of Seasons. first game to be hit with the rebrand from Harvest Moon! any game after this was released (FEB 27 2014 in Japan) with the title of Harvest Moon is NOT Harvest Moon anymore! it’s Natsume up to their dirty tricks of using a great brand and stealing the name to release bad games.

anyway, SoS was... pleasant! i enjoyed it. it didn’t stick with me like the older games, though. but i loooved the art and the town, and the villagers were charming. you compete with other farmers in town for certain fields located in different places, all of which are best suited for certain kinds of crops. i liked the rival aspect, but it is very different from older HM titles. you can also select the difficulty to play in either Veteran mode or Seedling mode; i recommend Seedling mode, both because prices aren’t as high and because HM (to me) is a game to relax and have fun farming, and Veteran mode is just stressful.

3) Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. i love this one. (well, for the most part). this is the first game that introduces your family! you start off as a young adult still living at home with your mother, father, and younger sister, and decide to move out and become a farmer. your father is furious at this idea but you are eventually set to live in the same town as your Uncle Frank, who is a farmer, to measure your farming ability. if by the end of three years, you haven’t proven to your father than you have what it takes to be a farmer, you’re leaving the town forever. the bleakness reminded me a lot of AnWL, for some reason; i loved the aspect of your father being strict and hard on you since it felt a little bit more somber than the super cute, super peppy titles in the series of recent years.

that’s where the bleakness ends, tho. i will say that, despite loving this game and the characters, i really, REALLY hate the three-town system. you start off on your farm to three crossroads that lead to three different towns that all unlock by summer in your first year. and yes, it’s fun! the different towns yield different crops and resources. but it doesn’t feel at all like Harvest Moon to me. it feels way bigger and with way more things to do. it also makes days a LOT longer, since you run from all of the towns to complete errands in part-time jobs. it needs more of your focus than other games. i haven’t finished the game yet, and while i love it, i love it separately from other HM titles. it doesn’t hook me in the way the older titles did, which i think is because of the modernity of it with three different towns and being bigger and and having such consistently bright colors as opposed to one small town and muted color scheme of, for example, AWL. it feels, like ANB, very different from the vibe Harvest Moon usually gives you. idk how to describe it. i feel like this game exists in a separate niche.

i like how your family feels more real in it, though; they periodically send you letters and visit you. it really feels like you had a life before coming to the town(s), rather than starting off as a blank slate at the beginning of the game.

anyway i hope that helped! lmk if you need any clarification or want to go over other things or want any other recommendations. i hope ur mom finds a game she likes! ^_^

[your-friendly-neighborhood-sc00t]

Soul Calibur VI was just announced at the Game Awards

As I’m sure everyone is aware, the announcement trailer for Soul Calibur VI was just revealed yesterday, and the game is coming out in 2018, meaning that at most, it’ll be released in 12 months, and at shortest, most likely 6-8 months. MEANING THAT THE GAME IS MOST LIKELY FINISHED AT THIS POINT.

With the horribly rushed, unfinished, and pathetic state that Soul Calibur V was released in, Namco/Project Soul has ALOT of ground to make up for. And with this game coming out in just a year, it had better be a finished and complete product, there’s no excuse for it NOT to be.

With that out of the way, I’m going to list off some predictions I have, as well as things that should be added or removed to the game.

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Removal of Critical Edges and Brave Edges

I absolutely despised this addition to SCV, super attacks and special attacks are things that are present in just about every other fighting game franchise, but Soul Calibur was always unique, in which it had never needed or used these mechanics, and rightfully so, the lack of these in previous titles is one of many things that helped differentiate it from everything else. The inclusion of these mechanics didn’t further deepen the combat system, but simplified it, and wasn’t at all innovative for a fighting game. AND, there was balance issues with them, like some character’s CEs being far superior to others.

All in all, these were terrible additions, and I never want to see these mechanics in another Soul Calibur game again. And I genuinely hope they don’t become pillars in the core gameplay.

-

Removal of Just Guard, and Revival of the Original Guard Impact System

The Just Guard mechanic was definitely one of the most boneheaded decisions made in V, there just, wasn’t ANY reason for it to even exist, it was difficult for some to pull off, it required EVEN MORE so precise timing to execute, and was just utterly pointless.

We need the original GI system from SCII and III, with the standard Impact and Parry, and you NEED to be able to perform it freely, with no restrictions to meter.

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Removal of Meter

A meter system truly has no place in this series, it never did, it added this retarded restriction of GI'ing, and was required to perform buffed versions of your standard attacks, sound familiar?

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Needs to be a Prequel to V

Considering all the dreadful mistakes made in terms of characters and story in V, this game needs to take place before this game, and from the looks of the trailer, it is indeed going to be, Sophitia (dead by SCV) and a much younger looking Mitsurugi are both present. So this gives me a bit of hope. And let’s be perfectly honest, nobody honestly gave a damn about half of the new characters introduced in V.

-

Chronicles of the Sword Mode

Something really innovative, unique, and fun that was in III, was this mode, which was essentially a campaign for your custom characters, with it’s own unique plot and characters, with some RTS elements thrown in. It was a truly satisfying, and gratifying experience, and with how in-depth the Character Creation system is becoming, this NEEDS to make a return, it’ll definitely add some replay value to the game.

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Even More In-Depth Options for Character Creation

V did an astounding job at furthering the already-impressive character creation systems from III and IV, but they could still add some more options to improve the system. Increasing and decreasing the size of individual body parts in V was a good start, but I’d like to be able to further mess around with my character’s facial features, like increase/decrease the size of their nose, eyes, ears, cheeks, etc. Add highlights to their hair, and smaller things like that. Also I’d appreciate more than 3 slots for Special Equipment, and little to no conflicting equipment, which was something that was incredibly annoying in IV and V.

-

Custom Character Jobs and Unique Fighting Styles

Something specifically present in III, was jobs for your custom characters, essentially you’d pick a job, and a variety of different fighting styles and weapons would be available for you to choose (though you had to play as them for a bit to unlock these special fighting styles). The cool thing was, these were entirely distinctive from the roster of existing characters, your custom character was even able to fight differently than the rest. They took this out starting in IV, and it has yet to make it’s return. Reintroducing this would be freaking awesome, and would encourage players even more so to craft their own CCs, as they will have new, different styles to also try out.

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Defining Mode

Starting in II, each game had, what I refer to as a “Defining Mode”, essentially the one mode that stands out in single-player content. II’s was Weapon Master, III’s was Chronicles of The Sword, and IV’s was Tower of Lost Souls, V didn’t really have one, unless you consider “Legendary Souls” to be it, I don’t as it was just a lazy and sorry excuse for a mode, lol…

So if VI doesn’t return any of these modes (which it likely won’t) it needs to have it’s own distinctive single-player mode that defines the game.

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Removal of the “Comeback Mechanic”

This one, absolutely infuriates me, essentially in V, when your opponent is on their last 20% of life, all of your attacks are nerfed and HALVED, unless they do more than 20 points of damage. So, the match begins to swing in THEIR FAVOR, JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE LESS HEALTH THAN YOU.

WHAT KIND OF LOGIC IS THAT, THIS IS A FIGHTING GAME, IF YOU WANT TO WIN, YOU HAVE TO HARD FOR IT. This is the only fighting game I’ve ever heard of to make use of this TERRIBLE mechanic, this is disgusting, and I NEVER want to see this in any fighting game ever again.

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Cancels

Something that every game after II was lacking in, were attack cancels. Being able to cancel a large variety of your attacks boosted the mental game of SC, SIGNIFICANTLY, you had several ways to fake-out or bait your opponent, that it was ridiculous. And if you started up some attacks, you didn’t always have to actually commit to it, giving more freedom to the player. There are some cancels in III and IV, but they are truly far-and-few between. While V lacks essentially any cancels at all, and standard attack cancels are utterly useless due to GI being restricted to meter. So, VI really needs to bring back the immense amount of cancelable attacks to bring back that lost depth.

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Needs to be as fast as SCII

I really hope I’m not the only one who thought V’s gameplay was slow as all hell, the characters are sluggish and take a LIFETIME to recover from THEIR OWN ATTACKS. AND IT TAKES YEARS JUST TO GET UP FROM THE GROUND WHEN KNOCKED DOWN. This game absolutely needs the speed and fluidity that II had, no other game felt as smooth or refined, but VI has the chance to equal it, to which, I hope and pray that it does.

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Team Battle

A mode that was exclusive to II, you could form a team of up to 8 characters and duke it out against someone else who also has a team of that size. It was incredibly satisfying just to go through numerous rounds, trying to see who could knock-out whose team first. And it’s a feeling I’ve been sorely missing for years at this point.

-

Anyway, I think that’s about everything Soul Calibur VI needs in order to be a proper SC title, but I have to admit, I’m nervous as hell. Like I said earlier tho, it has immense ground to make up for, after the travesty that was V, but I’m hopeful that VI will be a game worthy of praise, and of the SC name.

I really do hope this game turns out to actually be something, I’ve been a fan of the series for years, I’ve grown up with these games, so I’m just hoping this is the game that redirects the series onto the proper track.