Nintendo execs: No.

That’s absolutely what’s going on.

A fun way to combat this would be to get every artist to add giant, throbbing dicks to everything they create in Photoshop with the hope that it creates the thirstiest, nastiest AI model out there.

Hell yeah!!

Yeah, I think this looks beautiful. I like the idea of catching those wind streams and flying/floating around. Definitely keep an eye on this one!

I know this is the ultimate cliche answer, but it’s gotta be Sephiroth for me. The original FVII just caught me at that perfect time.

Spoilers ahead…

When you play through FFVII (the original, that is–I haven’t played the remakes yet), you only just hear about Sephiroth at first. Then you see some of the carnage that he’s caused: the President of Shinra dead at his desk and the super difficult snake boss piked on a giant stake.

In one of the flashbacks, he’s doing freaking research. That sounds boring and bland, but it was a level of depth to a villain that most people (or at least I) had never seen before. In another flashback, Cloud as a new recruit is with Sephiroth, and the difference in power is incredible. Sephiroth makes child’s play of this enormous dragon.

The final battle(s) is fantastic, and his theme song–hinted at throughout the game by Uematsu’s classic score–is iconic. Phallic imagery aside, the Masamune blade is simple but super cool. And he freaking kills Aerith?! Can he do that?! A friend of mine stopped playing the game for weeks after he got to that part.

A lot of these things are super common in games now, and I know there are several games before FFVII that had characters with this amount of depth (FFVI comes to mind), but Sephiroth is just the coolest, man!!

Cool! So are the cutscenes fully stop-motion or are they computer animated? I can’t tell…

Minecraft. I know it’s a big company now or whatever, but back when it was just Notch, it was still completely captivating.

Also, Stardew Valley!

Here is a trailer that explains what the game actually is. Looks fun and cozy!

This looks really cool!

This guy’s voice…

Was it also a geographical oddity?

That’s lame! I really like my local Ace.

God, this looks so amazing. I’m excited to pick it up!

Didn’t Captain Disillusion already debunk this…?

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but this game is one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my life. I love CA and SV!

I use Plex on my PS4. It runs great!

That’s true, but using older, less expensive hardware had almost always been part of Nintendo’s business model. A cheaper console allows them to invest in game development–time, talent, and just money. If they used cutting-edge tech, they would have thinner margins (or even lose money on the console at first as Sony and Microsoft have done in the past), which would give them less to invest into game development. Nintendo spent an entire (extra) year just tweaking and polishing TotK; if they had thinner margins from the Switch, there would probably have been more pressure to release it earlier, which would have given us a less refined game.

I’d love it if we could have both great games and cutting-edge graphics, but at the end of the day, I’ll still take good games every time.

If Nintendo being “one generation behind once again” means I get more games like Breath of the Wilds, Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread, and Tears of the Kingdom (just to name a few of the incredible first-party games this generation), then I’m fine with that!

I’m one of the six or seven Mac gamers out there…

Cross-platform play currently isn’t available for me and my PC buddies until the Mac version gets the full release build next week. If the PC version is on patch 2, will that still be compatible for cross-platform play, or will we forever be playing catch up?

I disagree. I think labor is a good thing, and I use that term to encapsulate any sort of occupation. A person who doesn’t have some sort of fulfilling labor is missing a big part of life. There’s so much pride and fulfilling that can come from working hard.

The problem is that, currently, laborers are not fairly compensated for their work, and it’s increasingly difficult for someone to just live without working beyond their limits. And so labor is no longer a small part of a fulfilling life but a perpetual cage for an exploitated husk of a person.

In my opinion, freedom is equity and justice, not a life of pure leisure…