Eh... I guess? The bar was pretty low from the base game tho.
Pfft, that's just being cynical. The bar wasn't high, seeing as it was more or less "modern FPS by the numbers" in terms of gameplay, but at least it wasn't bad. The tears also made for a nice touch, gameplay wise. It was often gimmicky and somewhat easily exploitable gameplay, but not bad at all. But stepping into the shoes of a vulnerable character who PLAYED like a vulnerable character, instead of some deadly predator taking out their prey in the most mundane manner possible JUST for shits and giggles, was above and beyond better than what the base game provided.
Also you missed the part where "Burial at Sea: Episode 2" was a massive, terrible retcon of NOT ONLY Infinite itself, but all of Bioshock. The rewriting of the events of BS1 was just appalling...
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I'm sure if there was some sort of exploit that allowed someone to enter the realm of the Old One immediately after entering the Nexus for the first time, Speedrunners would use it? Would I then be allowed to flaunt that Demon's Souls can be beaten in five minutes?Would you consider that to be fair?
As I have been arguing elsewhere, possibility is irrelevant to likelihood. It IS possible to beat FO1 within mere minutes. It IS possible to beat FO2 within minutes. It's TOTALLY fair to point that out, even though they use script exploits and abuse engine bugs to do so. They key point, consistent with my arguments, is that it DOESN'T MATTER. You entertained the notion that
Demon's Souls was objectively the shorter and smaller game better itself and
Dark Souls, and that's a stance that invites certain points to be addressed. One of which is "What determines a game's length?" and you seemed to cling to rushing through the game at top speed with refined skills. Well, this is little different than speedrunning; it's not easy to rocket jump consistently, it's not easy to land on those platforms so you can skip x amount of the level, etc.
On the other hand, what about optional game content? Well exploring optional content which would NOT prevent you from proceeding forward is obviously going out of one's way, so it's not rushing through the game at top speed with refined skills, therefore it doesn't count, according to the line of thought you were presenting. My point was very clearly that like its counterbalancing opposite, IT DOESN'T MATTER. What's possible is NOT what's likely, and what's likely to happen is that a player will find themselves equally as lost (in a good way) in the world of
Demon's Souls no less so than its younger cousin.
And as for me being some stubborn fanboy or whatever it is you're telling me I am, I didn't come into this thread to pointlessly trash on Demon's Souls.
Yet you do so, every time. Every time there's a not-positive with
Demon's Souls, you latch onto it with fervor. There's a fine line between criticism and cynicism, and maybe it's just because we're on opposite ends of an opinion, but it continually APPEARS like it to me that you frequently cross that line. But I enjoy debate and discourse and two forces at odds because I find there's no better determinant for a conclusion that surpasses the status quo than beginning with two capable forces at odds, so I wouldn't immediately assume "being on opposite sides" would color my perspective any different than usual. But it certainly is possible. That said, it still appears to me that when you venture forward to critique
Demon's Souls, you seem to cross that line into cynicism. Maybe it's because it was honestly news to me that you liked and praised the game, because of how rarely you mentioned that? Meanwhile EVERY time I levy a complaint about
Dark Souls, I never do so without measuring it against its successes and triumphs. Perhaps some people think that's needless conversational padding, but I consider it vital equalizer, no less important than the constructive criticisms themselves.
It's very likely that Akratus would be able to beat Demon's Souls in a much shorter time-span than the whole MGS series, especially since Akratus is an experienced Souls player. Akratus asked me to expand upon the idea of DeS being short, so I did.
Yes, we BOTH realized that 1 game length < 1 series length, but your presentation was misleading, which caused Akratus to pose the question "[
Demon's Souls is] that short?" Despite the obvious, that a game won't take up as much time as a series- let alone a series notorious for lengthy (often unskippable) exposition -you made a point that seemed to exaggerate a game's size, and worse it seemed like you were okay with that, on the basis that, objectively speaking, it WAS a shorter game, according to you. Again, as addressed at the beginning of this post, while nebulous to determine at best, it's still irrelevant to the overall length of the game that its content offers and delivers consistently.
I feel comfortable in saying that DeS is objectively shorter than [DeS] based on my own experiences and the experiences of others I've talked to. As I've said before, my first blind playthrough of DeS didn't take that long, it didn't break 20 hours, whereas my first playthrough of Dark Souls took nearly 50. Even now after I've learnt the layout of every area in [DeS] like the back of my hand, it still takes me between 30 to 40 hours, whereas on a repeat playthrough of DeS, it took me around 12.Obviously my own experiences aren't the law of the land, but seeing such huge jumps in time taken to complete should give the implication to anybody that one game is shorter than the other.
And the conclusions you and "others you've talked to" differs from the conclusions I've reached and others I'VE talked to, which is why anecdotal evidence is not to be confused with objectively certifiable. For instance, FO3 fans (and fanboys) love to criticize FONV as the inferior game based on it being smaller, when in fact the map is larger by several sectors... its width and the large unused areas simply make people perceive that it is smaller. Something about a square, one with just as much unused space, somehow makes people perceive it as larger. Perception should simply not be confused with concrete evidence. As I listed last time, your "I dare you" comments were refuted years before you made them, but I still endeavored to contact those people I referred to, just to make sure I wasn't putting words in their mouths, and they were still on board with
Demon's Souls being the objectively superior (by law of averages) and objectiely larger of the games. The difference between them and myself is, unlike me, they started with
Dark Souls, and migrated backwards upon my suggestion. Most players who did so ended up with the same results: a greater appreciation for the predecessor and an understanding that, while a great experience, the successor was simply overall inferior. But, unlike your points of "feeling comfortable that it's objectively such and such", I'm still chalking all that up to experience and perception. I WON'T say all that proves it to be the bigger game, but it DOES stand as a counterpoint to your equally anecdotal point. So long as a group of people "feel" like a game is x and another group "feel" like a game is z, and x cannot be z, one cannot matter, because there are differences in perspective skewing the results.
I think we should both accept that Dark Souls and Demon's Souls both have their advantages and disadvantages over eachother, and that they're both excellent games at the end of the day, and neither one is objectively better than the other.
This was my stance all along, with one major caveat: ASPECTS of each game can be segregated as objectively superior and inferior, and those are worth pointing out- bosses, size, combat mechanics, etc.
It's very obvious that both of us are getting tired of this debate (Or whatever you want to call it)
Frustrated, not tired. I could continue this forever, so long as the thing being continued is a civil debate between two wills at odds and that there's signs of acceptance and both parties are willing to acknowledge facts. I'll never tire of that. But the issues as mentioned above will always be frustrating, and increasing so, the more I encounter them.
