Julius

Horii with a pretty direct callout of needing to adhere to pressures from America when making certain production decisions – such as when it comes to the female protag's outfit, or male/female options becoming Types A/B: Also "it's like an absolute god...an evil disguised as good" sounds anime as hell and I love it I can kind of see where Horii is coming from, in the sense that I took have never in my life heard someone complain about the way options are named, has anyone else? It seems extreme to me that we end up treating character designs like they're different types of mannequins? Anyways, all of this conjures up memories for me of IGN's review of Dragon Quest XI by Jared Petty, who talks about some of the skimpier outfit options in the game like just having the outfit in your inventory is going to make you spontaneously combust. Kind of hard to disagree with Horii when the first review you'll find when you search for a Dragon Quest XI review is this one. I do think there are times when anime and games can go completely overboard and oversexualise female characters to a very uncomfortable degree - outfits, angles chosen, how they're treated by and in the story, etc. - but Dragon Quest XI isn't at all one of them. There are dudes built like freaking freight trains walking around shirtless for goodness sake. And don't even get me started on "icky bits". Urgh, yes this review still irks me to this day, how could you tell?

Lore book incoming, and it looks a little familiar Urgh fine I'll take twenty

So, uh, this ad and its use of Astro and friends is incredible And sharing because I found it charming and funny:

Hell yeah, great idea, thanks H-o-T For sure, I've been on the verge of making a post on here somewhere which was just blank with a spoiler tags and saving the link the last few days -- I only pushed back doing that because I didn't know where I could put it Wonder if that means you can add titles to spoiler tags again then? [SPOILER=test] *content* [/SPOILER] [SPOILER="test"] *content* [/SPOILER] UPDATE

Looks like it works to me @Hero-of-Time It's been a minute – was it ? EDIT: okay, that does the trick then. Awesome!

Full recording of today's TGS panel: Some stuff out of today's TGS panel: Photo Mode looks ~ I N S A N E ~

Just got back from watching Revenge of the Sith in cinemas for the first time. Loved it. Teared up several times. Mouthed many, many strings of dialogue along with the characters at several points. Didn't realise until part of the way through that I was actually watching the original theatrical cut, counted probably 30 or so very quick shots I've not seen in RotS before from the point I noticed onwards, some were at really odd points and totally changing the pace or tone of a scene. But the real downside of the theatrical cut is that those bastards cut down the best credits medley in existence. For shame! Not the best Star Wars film by any stretch of the imagination (still think that honour belongs to A New Hope or Empire), but it's my personal favourite and it meant so much to me to finally get the chance to see it in theatres!

Per the game's English TGS stream, it will be aiming to run at 60 fps on a base PS5 console, though it seems to be using frame generation to do so. Going to look amazing on the Pro, and really happy that it's going to be able to kind of cheat to 60 fps on the base PS5 – the option is always nice to have!

Uzumaki continues to look like absolute perfection: Can't wait

Did I fall asleep watching the Suikoden panel which aired in the stupid hours over here, despite it lacking a translator and me not knowing a lick of Japanese? You're damn right I did. Really jolly vibes in this panel, highlight for me was probably getting to see some of the concepts for the original games when it comes to how battles were presented. They also showed off some of the merch which was announced a couple of weeks ago, which uh, yeah, made my wallet twitch. I'm totally in for the OST. They also showed some footage from the Symphonic Poem Blu-ray set, which depicts the 2022 concert held in Tokyo, and comes bundled with a ton of things like a fabric map which I want but have no reason to want but really, really want. Oh, and a little peek at some of the animated music video. Just 5 ½ months to go

It really is, I've popped on some of the tracks people have pulled from trailers between various rewatches of them (because I love a good trailer) and as someone who looooooooooves me some epic orchestras and vocals, this game's OST has it in spadefuls. Look, I know we knew Shoji Meguro was talented as hell from his other OSTs - I pop the Persona 5 soundtrack on in the background in my apartment at least twice a month - but it's crazy that he's gone from THAT to THIS. Like, seriously, it's such an extreme switch up in genres it's insane. It's like being one of the best snooker players in the world and then deciding to take up ice skating. Damn it I'm trying to be sensible and wait for this to be my Christmas game while I'm off work for a few weeks with how endless it seems to be but also I DON'T WANT TO WAIT AT ALL Don't get me started – I remember this got announced the year I joined the forums, which was, uh, over 8 years ago now. Where the hell has the time gone? Project Re Fantasy was a silly project title then, but somehow Metaphor ReFantazio...is kind of incredibly epic as a title? If still a little silly there was that IGN First video with the cool concept art (still a bit letdown she didn't become our protag but whatever). There was also that time they released that really weird, high concept trailer with concept art, random people standing around in fantasy costumes and that guy in a set of armour. Is this game's entire existence a metaphor..?

I think you meant to say sssssssslander

I'm pretty sure his proper title is Serpentine Steve Sesame, Snek, of Sssville. That's right, I still use my copy of the Yellow Pages. AND NO, I WON'T STAND FOR THIS MISLABELLING. STICK TO THE MIGHTY BUT SILLY SHOPKEEPING CHAMELEON AND LEAVE THE SNEK LABELLING FOR THE EXPERTS.

YOU'RE A ROPE JUSTICE FOR SNEK

No-one mentioned the fact that you can make your Switch profile icon a bed or snek after the launch of Echoes of Wisdom, and I feel personally aggrieved A fine addition to add to my personal Zelda collection of icons which also features Piece of Meat from Breath of the Wild™

20 million copies were sold in the game's first month, it has been confirmed at TGS, by Ken Kuturagi of all people, seemingly during the opening ceremony. Per Insider Gaming: Mental. Absolutely mental.

Super weird update on this, but it'll make you get those pitchforks back out for sure – GI alumni Ben Hanson was in the Mall of America recently for a MinnMax vid for one of their Patron stretch goals, and popped into a GameStop after noticing a very familiar looking Dark Souls III statue in the window (the below video is timestamped). To sum it up: No museum donations from the GI library, a load of GameStop managers were brought in to move things around and got first dibs on some items – like the manager in the video getting a mint, sealed in box Japanese copy of Pokémon Green (obviously it's not on that particular guy, I mean why wouldn't you grab that if you had the chance?). Just imagine how much great stuff that must have been in that library for physical game preservation. To quote Indy: And to tweak a quote to make it relevant here, from the ever-eloquent Ben Moore, formerly of Easy Allies: GameStop seem so gleefully happy to piss on the corpse of Game Informer, and they never seem to run out of urine. Screw those guys. Seriously.

Don't know how I missed this but I did Seems very appropriate that it's been recommended to me now in light of the lawsuit

Features trailer out of TGS: So excited for more people to play these games, and I absolutely can't wait to replay them! That 6th March release date suddenly has me real nervous about it getting buried, though, after the recent Monster Hunter Wilds and Pirate Yakuza release dates were announced as being on the 28th Feb

Second trailer for the game coming out of TGS, and this time focused on Virtuous Mission. Keeping us waiting on that release date still, huh? That kind of sucks. Looks so freaking good, though. I'm all abroad. There's definitely still that Unreal Engine-ness to it in its appearance when it comes to faces and the like - looks *very* similar to what we've seen so far across VII Remake and Rebirth - but I love it nonetheless, the textures on the fabrics and stuff like that are what's really making this feel new and shiny and just so great to look at for me. Cannot wait, think the characters look fantastic. Really hope I can convince some of my friends to check this out, if it turns out well enough I feel like this would be the easiest way to get them into MGS!

Another trailer for Season II. Looks great. Feel like the first season was a great if flawed adaptation of what is a practically flawless story in the game, be it the content or its pacing. Definitely dropped the ball at certain key moments for me. Meanwhile, the second season should have much more flexibility when it comes to its adaptation because of how flawed the second game is, it leaves plenty of room to be interpreted differently and potentially better by the showrunners, which I don't think could ever have been the case for adapting the first game (again: practically flawless). Scratching my head for when and how they pace and frame and order this second season, but I can't wait.

So, "SIREN" has shown up in some ratings over in Korea. Question is, what for? Been following the updates on this one for a while, and it really does look great. That thumbnail art which is all over the game's marketing completely betrays how great it looks in practice though

30th anniversary DualSense secured via PS Direct going to wait a bit for my second one so that I've got one in box, not to sell on but just for my own little collection. Was really, really hard not to add the Edge to my basket but I resisted for now, but if it's to resolve the stick drift issue...does it need resolving if I have enough controllers on rotation? The Man City of DualSense ownership

On today's TGS agenda (subtract 8 hours for BST equivalent): Curious to see what comes out of Xbox and Capcom, the biggest hitters of the day. Wonder if what was being teased for the Xbox event will be worth the wait?