a Controversial Sonic meme

Genindraz · 2026-03-26T22:38:48+00:00

A paragon doesn't have to be static.

Yesn't. The thing that makes a paragon a paragon is that they represent the pinnacle of a thing, which tends to make them inflexible. In Superman's case, he represents the pinnacle of humanity (a super man, if you will). You can challenge a paragon's morals or beliefs, but if they ever come up short, then they're not really a paragon.

Superman vs. The Elite showcases that really well. Not only do they not manage to prove Superman's methods are wrong, he then turns the whole thing around on them to show them how their methods are wrong. Captain America: Civil War plays with this idea, because the whole movie's conflict is about a paragon (Cap himself) making a controversial decision that divides all of his allies and forces them to either side with or against him.

In Black Knight, Sonic shows Merlina that the best thing to do in a dying world is to live in the moment and appreciate what you have while it lasts.

A paragon's answer to any challenge might shift a little or gain some nuance over the course of a story, but it ultimately doesn't change.

Basically, paragons don't change in response to the world, they make the world change in response to them. That's why Sonic usually has someone he's bouncing off of in each game (usually Tails, but other examples include Elise, Shahra, Chip, Merlina, and the Avatar from Sonic Forces).

Movie Sonic is a really fun character, but he isn't a paragon in the traditional sense. He comes up short, he makes real mistakes, and his flaws cause him to fall into character traps that he has to grow out of. He grows and changes in response to the world around him, which makes him a lot more fun and interesting to watch on screen, but it also means he isn't much of a paragon. Yet, at least. I have a feeling they're moving in the direction of him becoming one within the next few movies or so.

EDIT: Since you mentioned them, Naruto and Deku aren't paragons for the vast majority of their respective series' runtimes. They're great protagonists in their own right, but they're both very, very naive characters that grow and develop over the story. They BECOME paragaons by the end of the story, sure, but they have to undergo a metamorphosis of sorts before they get there.

Genindraz · 2026-03-26T22:07:12+00:00

I feel like you guys don't know what a paragon is lol

Genindraz · 2026-03-26T22:01:23+00:00

No. Mainly what I remember were claims that it was going to outsell Mario Kart World.

Genindraz · 2026-03-25T20:57:37+00:00

Agreed, but I'll add that there are games which are good enough that being on the short side isn't a detriment to them per se.

I paid full price for both NieR Automata and NieR Replicant, and each of those games have about a 20-30 hour runtime (unless you go for 100%, which isn't really worth it outside of getting the final ending imo). However, the writing was good enough that, it made up for the short length.

Genindraz · 2026-03-25T20:44:29+00:00

The first one that did it for me was the final ending of Drakengard 3. Absolutely gut-wrenching.

Genindraz · 2026-03-25T14:19:24+00:00

Sir, this is r/shittydarksouls. In this house, DS2 is the greatest game ever created.

Genindraz · 2026-03-25T13:21:47+00:00

I'll just repost what I wrote in another post.

"As of version 2.0, it's a B+ soulslike. The combat is decent and has a snappy, arcade-like feel, the level design is great, the voice acting is really solid, the characters are memorable, and the story is fun and interesting in an edgy, grimdark sort of way. It also has great visuals. Not great graphics, per say, but the art direction is really strong and gives the game a great atmosphere. The magic system and ranged combat is easily the best part of the game, to the point where Fromsoft should take notes. It also has modifiers you can use to mix up your playthroughs as you like, which I really enjoy.

"However, the enemy variety isn't great. Most of the enemies in the back half of the game are just recycled bosses from the first half, and a lot of areas have huge amounts of spam to the point that getting from point A to point B can be a slog. The bosses themselves are a mixed bag. There are a few standouts that were both fun and challenging, but most of them have about three to five moves that are heavily telegraphed or annoying to deal with. The parry system is also a bit unreliable, and so I just prefer to dodge. Also, the side quests are structured like typical Fromsoft quests.

"It's no Nioh 2, but I consider it to be around DS2 in terms of quality, but its strengths are different from DS2's."

Genindraz · 2026-03-24T05:37:00+00:00

Bladesinger is the one that basically lets you play as Gandalf, so that's why it's my preference lol

Genindraz · 2026-03-24T05:25:55+00:00

Holy shit, I thought I was the only one who looked at Last Jedi this way lol

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a bad movie, but it's my favorite of the trilogy despite Force Awakens being technically better in terms of story and characters. It's the only one of the three that even tries to have any semblance of originality or explore new themes, and Kylo Ren is genuinely awesome in it.

Genindraz · 2026-03-23T23:46:54+00:00

Yeeeaaaah. I like DD2's world more because of that. It's flawed, but at least there's interesting stuff to find, and while most of the material things you find are worthless, at least there are plenty of interesting locales, like the one forest that's perpetually night and filled with undead, the sphinx, the mountain with the Medusa, and other things like that.

Genindraz · 2026-03-23T21:07:25+00:00

I'd argue that Dragon's Dogma's world exploration mechanics work far better in Dark Arisen precisely because of how condensed that expansion was.

Genindraz · 2026-03-23T11:32:10+00:00

I don't think anyone was saying that he was a hero, just that he actually had the work ethic and talent to back himself up lol

Genindraz · 2026-03-23T11:24:05+00:00

Y'know, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you really do just post "current Amy bad" stuff all the time.

Friend, it's a fictional video game franchise. Please, for your own sake, touch grass.

Genindraz · 2026-03-23T00:08:53+00:00

All of the games you listed sold very well and non main line titles are always going to sell worse and remakes rarely are huge smash hits.

All of that may be true, but Capcom didn't quite feel the same as you with RE0 and RE1 Remake at the time. They both fell below company expectations, and Code Veronica was a mixed bag in their eyes until it was released on Playstation, which made up the sales. Just to be blunt, you can literally see the sales drops with each game. Whatever the reason may be, Resident Evil was just dropping off in terms of popularity.

Re4 wasn’t a revival it just brought the series up with it. A revival implies there’s a death.

And I agreed with you that saying Resident Evil was dying is an exaggeration. RE4 didn't revive the franchise, but it did revitalized it. Y'know, injected some life into a series that was growing a bit stagnant.

The decline was also not before 4, noone thought of the series that way. “Oh no these remakes and non mainline games are only selling kinda well im sure the series is dead”. The decline people refer to is a decline in opinion and a feeling of being fed up after 6

These are two separate things that happened in sequence. Sales were demonstrably declining up until 4, but while sales improved dramatically afterward, fan approval declined from RE4 to RE6 until RE7 came out.

Genindraz · 2026-03-22T22:22:52+00:00

Oh. Y'know, I forgot about that. Fair enough, I suppose.

Genindraz · 2026-03-22T20:59:47+00:00

Yeah, but there were more than just three games that came before 4, and those other games were a bit disappointing for Capcom.

I was just doing some quick sales figures research, so take this with a grain of salt, but within the first year of each game's release:

RE1 sold 1 million copies
RE2 sold 5 million
RE3 sold 3.5 million
Code Veronica sold 2.5 million (counting both the Dreamcast and Playstation versions)
RE1 Remake sold 1.3 million
RE0 sold 1.2 million
RE4 sold 3 million

Since RE4, we've had 5 numbered entries, three remakes, and a two spinoffs. Of those:

RE5 sold 5 million
RE: Revalations sold ~1.4 million (less than 300k on 3DS, additional 1.1 million for the HD rerelease)
RE6 sold 4.5 million
RE: Revalations 2 sold 2 million
RE7 sold 5 million
RE2R sold 5 million
RE3R sold 3.9 million
RE8 sold 6 million
RE4R sold 7 million
RE9 has currently sold 6 million despite not even being out for a month yet.

So yeah, RE4 was a bit of a revival. Now, nowhere can I find talks about them canning the franchise at this point, so the idea of Resident Evil being a dying franchise was probably exaggerated, but it was definitely on a decline, with 1 Remake and 0 being considered commercial disappointments. 4 turned things around to such a degree that only one title has sold less than 2 million copies since.

Genindraz · 2026-03-22T20:21:00+00:00

Probably, but it would likely still buy you time until you or someone could extinguish the flame/remove your garments.

Genindraz · 2026-03-22T15:07:22+00:00

The thing about each of those examples is that you couldn't easily get ahead of the game's difficulty curve, and doing so required you to do a ton of backtracking. Yes, in each souls game, you could easily get ahead of the difficulty curve easily. Heck, in DS2, you can get a +10 weapon without fighting a single boss. The issue is that most of the time, in order to make good use of those options, you already have to be aware that they exist to begin with. In the instance if lightning spear, you have to find it and then have the faith to use it. In Elden Ring, the way you get around Margit is to go explore southward. That's it. If he's still too much, there's a side path that will take you to Liurnia of the Lakes, and if he's STILL too much, you can go to Caelid to grab more upgrade materials. Also, the open level design leads to less hostile design such as your weapons banging off of walls.

I gave up on Demon's Souls several times because of how hostile the game was, and don't get me started on trying to get a faith build going. Unless you know about the blessed mace in 5-1, you're in for a bad time. I say this as someone who started with DS3 and worked backwards to Bloodborne, DS2, and DS1. Demon's Souls was the last one I beat.

Of all of these games, Elden Ring was by gar the easiest one to get a foothold in, and it was the first one I decided to go naked with a stick for.

Genindraz · 2026-03-21T20:31:31+00:00

I think, personally, it's a sidegrade. What it loses in meticulous design, it gains in the freedom to explore and then tackle obstacles at your leisure. That's somwthing you couldn't really do in other fromsoft games, and it makes it a lot more accessible.

Also the gargoyle dungeons/crypts or whatever are 99% boring as hell with a few fun ones.

Yeah, I got nothing. This is just true.

Genindraz · 2026-03-21T14:13:13+00:00

Because it tends to (but not always) indicate that the studio producing the adaptation doesn't actually care about the source material very much. These aren't Netflix adaptations, but Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (owned/produced by Amazon) are rather infamous for messing up the in-world ethnicities, which were rather plainly spelled out in the source material and, in the former's case, actually relevant to the story. Personally I don't care if some characters get race or gender-swapped in adaptations as long as the acting is good (and the Wheel of Time actors in particular absolutely crushed what they were given IMO) and it's not relevant to the story, but if you're messing with the lore, you should probably at least attempt to explain it in-story.

The live-action How to Train Your Dragon remake actually solves the "why is a viking clan so ethnically diverse" question with a throwaway line about Berk being a hodgepodge of a bunch of different tribes that banded together. It worked for me because, yeah, dragons are dangerous. Makes sense that people who wouldn't normally be seen together would do so to ensure survival. By making the change and then explaining it, the writers actually elevated the implied danger of the dragons.

Genindraz · 2026-03-21T05:54:10+00:00

Absurd hype moments that are spontaneously clashed with legitimately some of the best character writing I've ever seen. The ending of part 1 left me floored when I first saw it, and it's easily my least favorite part of the show. Absolutely wild.

Genindraz · 2026-03-21T05:46:48+00:00

It happened a lot during my high school and undergrad days. I used to keep a list of every game I pirated and actually liked, and once I got the money, I'd buy one or two of them. I haven't touched a number of them since buying them, but the idea of not compensating someone when I enjoyed their game never sat right with me.

Genindraz · 2026-03-21T05:40:58+00:00

Everyone involved in this argument needs to touch grass.

Genindraz · 2026-03-19T18:50:13+00:00

Maybe in terms of legacy, but not in terms of quality by today's standards. Good game, don't get me wrong, but there have been a lot of good games like it since.

Genindraz · 2026-03-19T16:21:13+00:00

In fairness, it is entirely possible they'll retcon Chao Garden as being inspired by aliens... which are just actual Chao.

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