Ronnie

Wow customisation looks great. Nice to see positive reactions, the whole game sounds a big step up from Fallen Order which was already a great foundation.

I've often wondered if the original trilogy had come out during the social media age, whether the narrative would be similar to what it is with the sequels. "Empire Strikes Back does a 180 on A New Hope, Darth Vader was never supposed to be Luke's father!" or "Return of the Jedi just goes back to A New Hope and does another Death Start, Leia and Luke are siblings?? pfftt, retcon!". Ok, a bit of an exaggeration but it does make me wonder. Definitely agree with you that a general story outline would have been good for 7, 8 and 9, but I do think that argument is overplayed. The Last Jedi flowed perfectly fine from TFA for me, and even TROS didn't 180 that much. A lot of what people claim it did is just plot development. But absolutely agree with you about TLJ. I think the issues some people have with it all boil, deep down, to Luke's anti-hero portrayal in the opening two acts and it colours their entire impression of what was a very well made, thoughtful, engaging film. I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought the Force Skype™ scenes in TROS were a step down from TLJ. I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe there was more subtlety in Rian's film, he gave them more time to breathe, whereas TROS was so frantic, the scenes had to be a little rushed. Also you could see Adam Driver emote in 8, whereas he had his helmet on in TROS. Yeah I see what you mean. The Canto Bight sequence gets a lot of flack, and the bits on the cruiser, although I loved both, especially the latter. Oscar Isaac's performance when calling Holdo a coward and a traitor is brilliant, love that scene. As for Luke, it's a little sad that some people seem to fixate on his Ahch-To portrayal, and not, you know, the last act where stories of what happened on that planet inspired the galaxy. The broom boy scene gets so much abuse, but I've no idea why. Could be the same thinking that made Jake Lloyd give up acting after TPM, though obviously on a smaller scale. Agree. It's a film that I enjoy watching bits of, 5 minutes here or 20 mins there, but as a whole, it's a mess, and JJ tried to cram waaaay too much in. Too many planets, too many characters, too many story beats, too many setpieces. Keep it simple. I'd have gotten rid of the whole Kijimi scenes, and definitely ditched the rescuing Chewie on the Destroyer. Spent more time on Pasaana, slowed the pace down early on to build over the runtime. I wonder if Disney were pressuring him to make it as epic as possible. Good quote about ANH being saved in the edit and TROS being destroyed in it. All of this with the caveat that it must have been tough to work around Carrie Fisher's passing. They've said numerous times she was going to have a big role in the storyline, so obv it wasn't easy to reshape it all. Fingers crossed! There's great subtlety to some of the more emotional moments in The Bad Batch, which I really appreciate. Glad you enjoyed the first half the season. I wasn't a fan of Faster or Tribe, prob my least liked eps of the whole series, but Entombed was one of my favourites. Incredible visuals, mood and MUSIC!!! As for Faster, it's funny you loved TAY-0, I absolutely hated him and I don't use that word often. Yeah that's what a lot of fans were speculating at release. I stupidly didn't pick up on the design at first. Thought you'd like the clone two parter, it was all really interesting and well made. The final scene in the Senate was great. The Echo stuff at the end of 8 makes sense from a story perspective, he'd been building up resentment of the Batch's aimless wandering around in the build up to this two parter. Ep 7 is my probably my favourite of the whole series along with Ep 13, but I doubt many would share that opinion . Be interesting to see what you think.

What about you know, fun? That's what the majority consensus is.

Getting great reviews from people who've seen it. Not sure when official reviews are out though. Overall consensus seems to be: fun, amazing animation + music/sound, great voice acting, a million easter eggs but the storyline is weak. So basically, a Mario game on the big screen. And one bad one:

Good fun!

Fair enough. Man, I wish that rumoured trilogy from Rian Johnson ends up being real, but I suspect it'll never happen. Would love for him to craft his own story on his own terms though. Would be incredible. Interesting thoughts re: your re-watch of the sequels, and always enjoy reading your thoughts on soundtracks and themes, a massive blind spot for me. Generally speaking loved Eps 7 and 8, and loved bits of 9, lots of bits of 9 actually. The Ben/Han scene is incredible, everything on Exegol, Finn going from someone who wants to run away from the First Order in 7 to "...now we take the war to them." + that epic af ship take-off scene. Goosebumps. And yeah Adam Driver is fantastic. Great casting and good chemistry with Daisy Ridley. That's a really good point, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe a bit of both following orders and protecting Cody? Brilliant episode though, loved it, and I say that as someone who doesn't typically gravitate towards TCW-type episodes (don't hate me). Looking forward to more thoughts of later episodes.

This is surely enough to raise your The Last Jedi score to a 9/10 @Julius ?

It'll take a while to recover from The Bad Batch 2-part season finale...

I think it's just leftover code from development and it won't be in the final game. I'm not sure Nintendo wants people to be trading exact coordinates for things, and instead just stumble on and discover stuff naturally. And yeah, the fact that it's not always legible suggests that too.

Unfortunately DK definitely does sound exactly like Rogen. That's the only voice work that I'm not a fan of, at least from what we've seen. Which is a shame cause everything else about DK looks great.

"You lived there once, hiding in the sewers, but now... you can be heroes." hype af.

Chapter 21... fantastic. Much as I've been loving the season so far, definitely feels like it needed a bit of a kick up the arse, overall storyline wise. But eps 3 and 4 in particular seem to have laid the foundations for future eps, same as we say in Andor. Tons to talk about... I'll give this one a 9/10, loved it. Sad there's only three episodes left. Next week could be a great one though given it's Bryce Dallas Howard in the Director's chair. I'm expecting a weird and wacky Mando/Grogu-centric episode and a trip to that droid bar?

OMG

Saw this on ResetEra, looks like you can use the Ultrahand ability on sky island pieces too, they're highlighted in the background Also from Japanese Nintendo Twitter

The last BOTW DLC released in Dec 2017 too, so take another 6 months off the development time, as well as Covid.

I was going to say something similar. I love their clever/crazy way they handled the weapon durability thing. For me, it's a system that's central to the game design, so I'm relieved it's still in, but the way they've expanded on it is genius. I always felt like the 80 or so puzzle shrines from BOTW were the equivalent of four or so traditional dungeons, just broken up into pieces to fill the openworld with, so be interesting if they can have traditional dungeons AND a similar number of shrine type things as BOTW. Absolutely. The new mechanics shown off are ideal for years of social media posts of people discovering things or sharing funny moments. No way it beats BOTW, I'll say about 94 on MC. But like @killthenet says, there'll be a few outlier clickbaity scores "glorified DLC" etc that'll drag the average down.

A game world that needs to be constructed around, for starters: - rewinding various objects trajectories and being able to ride them/stop them at any point. - building your own means of transport - phasing through ceilings funnily enough, takes a long time to design. Are you seriously comparing Spirit Tracks, with its sectioned-off gameplay areas, with the above? Once again, you talk as if you know everything the game has to offer. You don't. I wish you'd put this at the top of your post, I'd have known to stop reading there.

As if there was any doubt, they're literal gameplay geniuses over at Nintendo. Like @Julius said the way everything is so seamless is fantastic. Ultrahand looks crazy ! I assumed there'd be some menu system to get through to make things but I guess not! An incredible sandbox game seemingly made even more incredible.Very restrained showing too, great to see. Why not? (not that I think there's anything to 'excuse', for the record)

Thank you! Hopefully no last min changes for you though. Yeah I'm not sure if more tickets = better chance at success. I would have thought single ticket orders would have more luck, but who knows. Found a guy happy to sell a Showcase on Galaxy stage QR for $35. Might do it and try and find another for my me/my sister, we'll see. With that there's still the danger of hoping the person doesn't sell it multiple times. At least you're familiar with the reservation system now, it'll be the same for on the day panel reservations. I had 3 phones up and one got in faster than the other two. If people have 2 or 3 tickets on their order, they should be able to make one reservation for 2 or 3 people. It's bizarre they expect people to be split up. But yeah like I said, I imagine that late in the day you'll just be able to walk in anyway. Yeah, they should have switched it around, last year panel wins were announced the day after the lottery closed but this time it took an extra week, dunno why. As for double-booking, you'd hope people would just avoid booking a 11-12 slot, but I think there's early morning exclusives like pins and Funkos, so earlier tends to sell faster. From what I gather, ReedPop are universally disliked. So you're not alone there. Excited for Mando tomorrow, I imagine this is where we head back to Nevarro. Also they keep referring to the Bad Batch two parter as the season finale so hopefully that means there's more to come.

Fantastic, congrats! You should def be chuffed with that. As usual there are reports of people getting into 3 or 4 and even more getting into 0, so two out of five is a great return. Of the two you got, the Showcase is definitely the one you'll want to be in the Celebration stage for, and it's a great way of kicking off Celebration. I got into one panel, Bad Batch on the Celebration stage, for me and my nephew, the exact same one I got into (officially) in Anaheim . A little disappointed I didn't get a second as well (Showcase or Ahsoka) but never mind. I'm loving the series so much so it'll be great. Still holding out hope of blagging my way into another one, constantly checking Facebook/eBay. If god forbid you have any last minute cancellations in your group I would selflessly take a QR code off your hands for a decent fee btw tbh, I think I might just try queueing up in the standby line at 8. And yeah got a Store reservation easily enough (despite their terrible messaging in terms of number of people per order allowed). How about you? Just head straight there I'd suggest. Got an email today saying they'd been shipped, about time! You'll be alright. They sent international tickets first I believe. UK ones last. Ah that's annoying re: Lyte, you're right, very scalper like prices. And they aren't exactly cheap to begin with!

Any luck in the panel lottery @Julius? Be sure to check https://register.growtix.com/entry/event/hgjert5131_nn4_5g and register/sign in, very occasionally you get successful there but without an email.

10 minutes of gameplay is perfect. No need for a big 30+ min blowout of a game where they show everything it has to offer. Discovery and exploration is the main draw of BOTW and presumably TOTK.

I'd be really curious to hear their actual reasoning on the decision, but obviously that's unlikely to happen. Businesses just seem obsessed with controlling the messaging these days, so it's just an extension of that I guess. The funnyt hing is all the footage they showed last year of Mando and Ahsoka looked polished and ready for broadcast, it wasn't rough looking at all. (like that first footage of Mando they ever showed to the public apparently was) That'd be a great idea! Sign me up. Even if it's just the major panels, kind of like a pay-per-view type thing. Yeah giving most people a minimum of 1 and maybe a maximum of 2 to spread things around would be ideal, though I imagine the numbers would still come up short there, especially in London with much smaller rooms. All the Mandos in Mando are so stoic and stiff it'd be great to have Sabine have a bit more personality. Same with Ezra of course. I get that time would have passed obviously, but still. Fingers crossed.

Chapter 20 of Mando... have to say I wasn't a massive fan of this one. Carl Weathers directed my least favourite of S2 and I get the feeling it'll be the same in S3. It wasn't bad by any means and re-watches definitely helped a bit. Probably a 6.5/10 for me. It was enjoyable, but definitely my least favourite of the season so far. Seems to be getting good reviews online though, so what do I know. Chapter 2 is one of my favourites and I think that's the shortest episode of the whole series. But yeah fair enough, 40+ mins for most would be good.

Here's a tip, the posts that talk about Mando start with: on the previous page and this one.