**** that shit, one of Quan's threads got in the top 10 threads of all time in that place because it had LoZ vs LoK. I hate that bastard for being able to get his threads filled with replies due to his stubbornness. :T
Anyway, I feel like there are people still not understanding how exactly the VGVF people are using video game characters. So I'll try to explain it using this bastard as an example:
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His name is Sora. He's far from the strongest Video Game character but he's more or less around Link's/Sephiroth's(I have a feeling this will get a reaction) level if you want to place him somewhere. I'm using him because he's a character whose feats I'm most familiar with and it's just easy to use him as an example. I'll attempt to best explain the video game hierarchy of Cutscene>Scripted Gameplay>Regular Gameplay and why it's such a troublesome business at times.
Strength
Sora is stronger than a normal human and while he has a handful of good feats for this area, none is more wanked than this one:
At 4:30-ish, he slices several buildings in half like there is nothing to it. This is a combination of scripted gameplay and cutscene. In normal gameplay however, any time Sora hits his weapon against a building or wall, it bounces off with a thunk, even though we can clearly see him do it here. In part, you could make the argument that Sora is much stronger at the end of the game(the fight above) than otherwise but the real reason is the game designers aren't going to make the building crumble at the whims of the player. It's just not that type of game. But the reason this low end feat of not being able to crush a building in gameplay can't be used against Sora is two-fold: Sora isn't the type of character to go around busting buildings and more importantly, the narrative doesn't force or even expect you to do it. In games, you have things the game expects you to do in order to complete the game which takes precedent over things that they don't need to happen. Sure, it's programmed into the game that Sora can't just wreck shit and kill his enemies in one hit(unless higher level but those are details) but it IS programmed that at one point he does indeed level buildings. What the game makes you do and shows the character doing is more important than the other details outside the realm of either possibility or desire of the designers.
Speed and Reactions
Sora has canonically reacted to lasers via scripted gameplay and cutscene(later on). However, it is easily possible for a regular human to tag him in the gameplay. What you have to understand is that if Sora gets hit by someone in gameplay, it's going to be the player who didn't react, not the character who has in his narrative reacted to far faster things. Sora is a superhuman with superhuman abilities. The player is not. It's entirely possible to get hit by a random no name in gameplay, but so long as cutscenes don't imply it as a constant thing(in after battle cutscenes, Sora rarely looks tired for example, short of a few scenes here or there, implying that this isn't very difficult at all to him). So, say you're fighting a supposed to lose boss fight that is too fast for you. That means that both you and the character are unable to handle the challenge. But if it's a boss that you can defeat, you just have a difficult time in the fight and need to try again constantly, then it doesn't matter because the character isn't having a hard time(unless a cutscene later implies that it was indeed a trial).
Speed is a bit more of an issue for games and fiction in general. For instance, there are characters in fiction that are faster than light speed but you, the audience, can observe them without problem. Sora's actions in cutscenes are completely visible to the player, even though he has, say, been able to move fast enough to block lasers in gameplay. It's I think a rule of thumb that fiction has to bend the rules here in order to let you see what's going on. But the inconsistencies come up anyway. Here cutscenes can be put into question since, well, they have to be crafted to accommodate the player and will certainly cause power inconsistencies. Hard to say if gameplay flat out overrides it but I suppose it's just up to the intent(Sora reacting to lasers means he is fast, regardless of if you can see it or not). And no, the laser speed hasn't been calced as far as I know.
Durability
This is one is probably the one that is most difficult for people to deal with because it seems counter intuitive but really any kind of middle ground would be impossible to find. Sora has survived falls from terminal velocity for example and been just fine, yet can be injured in gameplay by gunpowder. But the gameplay is arbitrary and has no consistency to it. A shot from a gun might cause the same amount of damage as a punch from Hercules, which is really silly. Here, it really is just best to let the cutscene/scripted gameplay do most of the work since it makes the most narrative sense. Compare these two scenes:
Around 35 seconds in, Sora falls down because he is tired(he'd just been asleep for a year in the narrative). It's safe to assume here that yes, the enemies conceivably landed a hit.
At 3:30, Sora ends a fight with a noteworthy character who is capable of killing hundreds of the guys in the above video, and seems perfectly fine(incidentally, so does the other guy, meaning the fight was more or less a draw even though the player actually won the fight).
It might seem inconsistent but it's just how things go.
There is more I can say but I'll leave it at that for now.
No, I destroyed and zelda fans used to get the threads closed when they could. They would ignore me because I dominated them so badly. Guess what I am still standing and they are finally admitting defeat so all my persistence has paid off.
Good set up, Aura. Incidentally, I wouldn't be so hard pressed to believe that Sora's in league with Cloud and Sephiroth, though I'd say he's probably the lower of the three. They're all Square characters, and so will have certain similarities. Really, Kingdom Hearts is like Final Fantasy for kids because of the Disney aspect, and even that gets turned on its head when the series takes on some darker tones.
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Based on the way he was being argued I thought there was a possibility, yes, with all the ammo I gave him. I wouldn't have argued in favor of him, but I wasn't sure if he couldn't be argued or not.
The only planetary thing was a seal covering the earth in the form of clouds from a character that's stronger than Ganon. Ganon is not planetary in that sense. Country range and City Block destruction.
And even if Ganon was a planetary threat, Thanos approaches galaxy level(?) so I don't really see the area to argue either way. -shrugs-
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Sep 6th, 2012 03:10 AM
