u/PushNSqueeze

What do you expect and hope for from the next flagship Zelda game after the OoT remake? What will be the core theme and hook? When do you think we'll see a teaser for it?

I assume the remake is an interim title and not the next BOTW-sized game. Nintendo will continue making an open air, open-world game, and they certainly want to capitalize on the BOTW/TOTK fanbase.

What I expect and hope for:

- Still huge, but smaller open-world, more linear sequences, more traditional themed dungeons

- Midsized caves/dungeons + shrine-sized puzzles

- Unusual, unexpected theme/hook that is not elemental nature or music. Some ideas: sleep/dreams (like Link's Awakening), corruption/sickness (like HK, Silksong, and Terraria), size (like Minish Cap - this would be extremely cool in 3D)

- Link transforming is a mechanic in some way

- Verticality inspired by TOTK

- Intricate questlines like we saw in Majora's Mask (more of a hope, lately Nintendo has kept Zelda quests fairly simple)

- I have no idea but I'd imagine a teaser/announcement in 2028 or 2029

I think Elden Ring's mixed dungeon sizes would work well in the next Zelda game and satisfy both traditional and BOTW fans. Nintendo will have learned a lot from BOTW/TOTK and apply the best of both to their new engine (I assume a Switch 2 engine based on the original BOTW engine).

I think a world that's huge but smaller than BOTW is ideal. It was fun to explore the outer edges, but most players likely did not, and you could feel that things were stretched thin by late game (same issue with any big open-world including Elden Ring).

(I'm sure this is a common subreddit topic, but I had trouble finding recent similar posts)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I wanted to repeat a longstanding complaint about moderation policies tied to negative karma + discuss it.

I saw a question in the help subreddit asking if reddit has a karma bias problem. Upvoted comments said no, which really shocked me. That motivated me to post this.

I think it's bad policy to delete negative-karma comments and then ban the person, assuming they did not break any other rules. Reddit already hides downvoted comments.

A lot of normies think reddit consists of other normies, and that can be true for many subreddits. But some broad-category subreddits (such as r/wnba) have surprising bias that isn't representative of normies, exacerbated by the removal of negative karma comments. I like coming to reddit to see how everyday normal people think about things (yes, I know it's practically a meme that reddit is a fringe site).

I don't mind getting showered with downvotes for saying "Go Sophie! The other girl wanted to fight" after Sophie Cunningham scored a shot while being clotheslined by an opposing player who then pushed her immediately afterwards -- but to remove my comment entirely just degrades the subreddit, at least from the standpoint of the myriad of lurkers like me (I'm normally a lurker, but have started posting more).

^ I used to roll my eyes at comments complaining about moderators on reddit, but now that I'm commenting and posting myself, I understand that it's a major problem. I remember the good ol' days of online forums, and aggressive moderation was always a grab-the-popcorn scandal. Being a bad moderator was considered way worse than being a troll.

Now, I did see a comment a while back describing subreddits like clubs, and that helped me understand why things are the way they are.

Everyone in that sub may not like seeing support for a player they hate. But then... it shouldn't be called r/wnba right? It should instead be called r/wnba-we-hate-sophie and then it will be clear that's a subreddit about women's basketball where you aren't allowed to show support for Sophie.

Or they could rename it r/wnba-popular-comments-only. Either would make it very clear that that's not the community I want to engage with.

One quick example of karma bias where the comments stayed up: comments in gaming subreddits that support Palmer Luckey's Modretro company get heavily downvoted due to him also starting a defense contracting company. I'm thankful the negative karma comments aren't always removed because you'd quickly get the false impression that gamers hate tech companies supporting US troops. I don't think that's remotely true in real life, and at least in America, bipartisan Congressional votes show that I am right. Then again maybe adult gamers don't pay attention to how their reps vote 🤷‍♂️

In conclusion: I frequently sort by "controversial" and like reading downvoted comments, and removing those comments is unhelpful to the vast majority of people visiting reddit given the comments are already auto-hidden. More people are lurkers than posters! Extreme moderation policies tied to negative karma don't seem good for reddit as a whole.

I'm sharing a pic of my convo with the mods. This kind of response from a moderator would have been SHAMED on the old-school forums.

edit - sorry I tried resizing the image but it keeps maxing out 😬

edit 2 - added screenshot of my downvoted comment on r/wnba

https://preview.redd.it/yi41ao69zeih1.png?width=738&format=png&auto=webp&s=12f793a12a50380fe2594617389bdae63e27eeda

https://preview.redd.it/ednyqo50l8ih1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=8fbe273c9d45b751bcd3c3ccbbef75c38b04f570

I keep thinking about why AI art along and mixed/inconsistent styles (2D pixel art with 3D backgrounds) can be so off-putting. In this post I will bring up some recent games as examples and point out what I liked and didn't like. I am curious what you all think in general.

The Look Outside artwork in my Steam on-sale notification email was the first thing I saw to remind me that this game existed:

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Okay, nevermind this subreddit doesn't allow images (something funny about that from an AI meta perspective, but that's neither here nor there).

Within 100 ms of seeing the Look Outside cover artwork in the email, my brain said, "this is AI art slop," and then I spent 10 minutes dissecting the image to try to figure out why my brain experienced that "gist recognition" (which is a real term apparently!). The AI-tells seemed to be:

- Use of overly, inconsistently, detailed psychedelic colors throughout.

- Not following the light source: light rays coming out from the sides of the curtain that's supposed to be revealing the light from the center opening. But you could argue that's just a torn and tattered curtain letting light escape everywhere.

- Inconsistent stylistic motifs: inconsistent eye-ball types, some mouths have colored lips, some just don't, feels out of place even in the context of a crazy psychedelic monster image. I have more examples, but you get the idea.

I didn't talk to the developer, so I don't know what, if any in-game or marketing material used AI, that isn't the point.

The in-game pixel art does look good! I'll probably buy it at some point, though I am worried my brain will gist-recognize any AI art that was used in-game.

Mixing 2D Pixel Art with 3D Art

Akatori, just released yesterday. The art style gave me Dave the Diver vibes in a bad way.

I will forever have a love-hate relationship with Dave the Diver's art style because it mixes 2D pixel art with 3D graphics. In the end, they pull it off, but something always felt jarring about it.

So Akatori does the same thing, but their art seems a lot less consistent about when and where to use 3D graphics, and it also looks like they use different sized pixel art seemingly at random, regardless of foreground/background which is super odd.

I found myself cringing at the trailer when the camera zoomed in on a pixel art character, to the point where you're just staring at massive pixels of a 2D sprite, as though that's supposed to be an motional moment. Maybe Dave the Diver gets away with that because it doesn't take itself too seriously -- we're supposed to laugh at how serious Bancho takes everything. Maybe Akatori is like that too, and it was just a cringey trailer for me, idk.

So I feel conflicted about Akatori's art because it looks really cool at times, I mean that's probably why I wishlisted it ages ago. Also the mixed use of pixel art cleverly avoids the "mobile game art" feeling that a fully 3D scene would likely evoke. It helps that they did a great job with lighting from what I've seen.

Also the mixed style helps save development time. The dev used 3D art in some places where pixel art may have taken forever.

Actually, I would have loved this mixed art style in Metroid Dread, because that game's artwork and soundtrack were dreadfully boring and mobile-game-esque. Put that one down after a few hours sadly. Super Metroid, Fusion, and Zero-Mission were way more atmospheric, but that pixel art style takes a LONG time to do well.

Going back to AI art, the reactions today remind me of the backlash to overused free game assets from the 2010s. Kinda funny, but I was relieved to see reused urban building assets in the background of one of the Akatori images on the Steam page. At least I knew they weren't AI-slopping every background scene (but you could argue that would have added variety, so it's a little paradoxical).

Anyhow, if you know of good 2.5D art or mixed-style games, do share!

My go-to would probably be Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Also, I've heard that the 2.5D Prince of Persia game is fun with good artwork.

P.S. - extremely random, but I recall TotalBiscuit reviewing a weird indie game (was it a magic soccer-like sports game?) many years ago that had INREDIBLE colorful, splashy artwork. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I know that's not very specific, I'll have to dig through his WTF reviews and find it. I think there was also story-driven click-based game he was gushing over at one point.