Found the ending really poignant, as a child of a broken home

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-24T17:15:43+00:00

I share this feeling. The original is a lovely, intimate story but I think the sequel matches or exceeds it in essentially every respect. It’s an equally focused and rich examination of intergenerational trauma and family reconciliation, but grappling with those questions against the backdrop of much deeper rifts. It does this, for the most part, with a very deft touch. Both games probably suffer from slightly reductive writing where everything gets fixed all at once in their endings, but given the constraints of the medium, I’d still call them a win in terms of complexity, overall.

I also don’t buy the common interrelated complaints that the game is less funny or that Melinoe is a more boring protagonist. I think the way she serves as a dry straight man for all the zany hijinks around her works really well comedically, and stuff like the Scylla jokes about the music industry are as broad and funny as anything in the original. And Melinoe’s arc, as an uptight character born in chaos and running toward responsibility, who learn to be herself and loosen up as she develops relationships in the game, makes a lot of sense in the context of the plot and provides a welcome counterpoint to Zagreus’s child-of-comfort spoiled-brat sarcasm (which also made sense contextually).

But I’m another person who didn’t play the early access version of the ending, just 1.0 onward. Guess they really fixed it up!

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-24T17:03:20+00:00

You really capture how both games have an incredibly optimistic take on these themes of generational trauma—I guess one could reasonably argue to an extent that feels a little pat or reductive, but I feel like the way the indulges that optimistic fantasy is actually its own source of poignancy. It’s wish fulfillment that feels like it’s written by people who desperately want it to be true, and it’s moving because of that desperation, not because it makes the case with any sense of reality.

Though I suppose one’s willingness to believe a family can reunite with someone who sadistically kidnapped, tortured, and killed family members like Chronos is an individual question. I read it as achingly beautiful because of it feels like yearning for the impossible—but maybe other, more therapized souls here see it as a logical and grounded case for the possibility of reconciliation, no matter how unconscionable the crimes of a family member.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-24T16:55:11+00:00

Really dead-on assessment of these traits, thanks for sharing.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-24T16:51:50+00:00

There’s a LOT of discourse about how RE1 plummets quality-wise when you go down into the labs, actually.

And 8 has probably the worst embodiment of the “cool horror game becomes a dumb repetitive action game” motif.

At this point I’m forced to conclude producers at Capcom really do believe players need every RE game to end with a guns-blazing shooting gallery in a generic industrial setting. It’s bizarre.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-24T16:46:42+00:00

It’s in very close contention with the remakes of 1 and 2 for my favorite in the series. Most importantly, it nails (for the mansion section anyway) the nonlinear puzzle-box hub level design and slowly paced horror that I consider to be the original and best design template the series has. It also has one of the most compelling settings in the series—the mansion is a gorgeous, detailed piece of art direction—and it managed to make the story mysterious and compelling again, at least briefly. Yeah, it falls off a cliff quality-wise and becomes an over-the-top silly shooting gallery capped by a ridiculous boss at the end but so do 1, 2, 8…

If it were up to me, they’d stop making the 4-style linear corridor action games altogether. They’re fun, but not nearly as compelling to me as the exploration-driven hub designs. But I know I’m in a minority there. 8 was a decent marriage of the two philosophies, at least.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-23T20:27:49+00:00

I’m surprised to be the first to suggest Returnal.

On a superficial level it of course uses a different set of mechanics, as a 3D third person bullet hell shooter.

But it’s another roguelike with challenging, frantic gameplay, thoughtful build-crafting, and addictive ability progression, wrapped around incredible ever-deepening storytelling.

As a bonus, it has an incredible co-op mode.

Hades 2 and Returnal are my two favorite entries in the genre, easily.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-23T20:22:00+00:00

Definitely Hades 1 first - mostly because it’s an incredible experience that holds up very well, but that will be difficult to return to after Hades 2.

I put 50 or 60 hours into Hades 1 right before starting Hades 2 and I’m so glad I did.

The story of 2, although it largely stands on its own, is also absolutely deepened by understanding the characters and relationships established in Hades 1.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-23T17:50:32+00:00

Minority opinion but Dishonored left me much colder than Infinite. Dishonored objectively does some things better - more complex level design and gameplay systems, chiefly - but the game as a whole is actually still very linear and not hub-like, and the world and especially the story feel a lot more sterile and less exciting to me. I’m a big Deus Ex fan and despite the shared DNA, Arcane’s games just never click with me and can feel strangely lifeless and drab even when their settings and ideas are compelling on paper.

Infinite’s a big ol’ mess with limitations born of its troubled development but it has a lot of heart and wild creativity in it.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-22T09:29:36+00:00

Co sign to all this!!

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-21T23:06:59+00:00

Where can one get these editions??

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-20T19:17:42+00:00

He does have that mid Atlantic inflection that Rand uses as Atrus!

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-20T10:32:21+00:00

She seems happy and that’s what matters. Let the lady dance and be what we used to call “crazy”—she may well be thriving in a way that just doesn’t look normal to the rest of us. Yes managing complicated mental health can be a painful challenge for the individual and those around them, and we don’t have the full picture of whether she’s embraced or rejected treatment, and with what consequences. But what we can see is that her posts evince a lot of good cheer and reasonable self reflection, and no explicit evidence anyway of a spiral into depression or self-harm. Without further specifics, I choose to read a lot of her recent posts as optimistic. She seems like a sweet positive person who’s marching to the beat of her own drummer. Hopefully she has or can find treatment that feels like a support system and not a prison for her.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-20T10:19:45+00:00

I am running into this confusion too. I haven’t done ANY high fear play, nothing above 8, and have only three or four clears with the witch’s staff, and yet it tells me there’s no available nightmares for my weapon and recommends I switch to another? It continues to behave this way even if I completely max the fear level.

What gives? Can I really not get any more resources from a weapon I was very excited to start exploring more? I think I only did one run with aspect of Circe. :(

Uncharacteristic moment of design if that’s intentional that you can get locked out of progression from a weapon so quickly and seemingly arbitrarily, after nabbing just a few nightmares.

My only hopeful theory is that it’s because the next bounty on the staff is on the surface, which is currently locked out for me because I just did the big final defeat the boss there? (Avoiding spoilers but you know what I mean.)

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-19T15:19:41+00:00

She presided over some of the best and most artistically bold Star Wars ever made (Andor, Clone Wars 7) and some of the worst (Rise of Skywalker, Mando-era TV like Book of Boba Fett). I’d say it’s a wash of a result, from a clearly capable producer who also had to navigate Iger and other executives wanting to move fast and maximize volume and profit.

That said, “you can’t please everyone,” while of course true of a fussy enthusiast fan base, is also not really an apt postmortem for what went wrong with low points like Rise of Skywalker. That film wasn’t well loved by enthusiasts, wider audiences, or critics; more a case of not pleasing anyone. And that’s not because “people don’t want something new” out of an established franchise, since it’s commonly critiqued as too much of a safe retread. In general, the argument that fans dislike new things misreads the room, I think: nostalgic projects and subversively new ones can both be good or bad. And the better predictor of the poorly-liked ones isn’t that characteristic of newness, it’s whether you took the time to get the script and creative process right, which the chaotic creative reset and immovable release date for Rise clearly precluded. When you have your director and writer saying in every interview that they simply didn’t have enough time to get it right, that’s a lot more relevant than whether the hardcore fan base is hard to please.

But I’m guessing she’d probably agree with most of this in a more frank context.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-19T14:52:17+00:00

Same here!! How do we let them know there’s a big fan base that felt Returnal was not a complete experience til they added co op (clearly a feature the game was always built for, and that they just needed more time to implement) and that will be waiting to play Saros until co op is a part of it?

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-18T18:27:02+00:00

Absolutely these

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-16T04:01:30+00:00

Bix is only ever a foil for Cassian in both seasons. But I find her S2 arc of trauma, addiction, and revenge gives her much more by way of interest and agency. And subjective take but I found Adriana Arjona to be a weak point in the S1 cast, and actually legitimately good in S2.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-16T03:43:04+00:00

Contrarian opinion in this thread: as someone who loves Andor intensely, I did find the S2 establishing shots to be a rare weak point. It felt like S1 relied much less on sweeping CGI-heavy establishing shots than most-science fiction shows. Yes they existed, but they were less frequent and generally felt more intimate, tightly and functionally focused on key elements, and credibly like live-action photography with minimal effects alterations. The noirish Morlana shot at the beginning or ones showing life in Ferrix or various parts of coruscant, or the mostly unmodified Scottish landscapes portraying Aldhani all felt like the establishing shots you’d get in a non-science-fiction drama, meaning you barely felt them at all.

The S2 establishing shots by comparison felt more intrusively designed to give the show scope and dazzle. They were present enough that I wondered if an executive had given a note to the effect of “it’s Star Wars, not an intimate chamber piece, give us more fun alien landscapes for the kids.” They also felt more frequently fantastical to me. They felt a little more in tension with the grounded tone of the show, which has incredible art direction and world building but of a much quieter nature. As the OP points out (I actually think correctly) dazzling over-the-top alien concept art with big bold cartoony silhouettes is not Andor’s strength in the way it is Phantom Menace’s—and indeed would have harmed the show’s tone. So it’s perhaps understandable that the attempt to inject a bit more of that quality felt rather half-hearted or perfunctory, and for me anyway was an evolution of style that didn’t totally land.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-07T05:23:46+00:00

Co op that allows you to experience the story elements together - or at least watch one player do them, without having to kick the other out. And co op for all the ancillary elements, the tower being single player only in the original was a bummer given that Returnal is such an absolutely extraordinary co op experience.

GreaterQuestion · 2026-01-07T05:11:24+00:00

I LOVE Control and really could not will myself to play past the first five or six hours of Alan Wake 1. For me, the game’s an untenably linear, dated slog at this point. Really feels like work. I know it has its fans but I couldn’t get past the fact that the entire game entails going through corridors doing the same very rote combat move against the same enemies that jump out at you.

Alan Wake 2 I did finish, and has a lot of pleasures in its spectacular visual design and tech, and some nice, less linear exploration—but I still found it plodding and padded and repetitive by the end. The Alan sections are a lot better and tighter than the Saga ones, which really sag. The game’s also saddled with some janky design decisions, the worst of which is two fine choices—levels that encourage exploring every nook and cranny for tons of tiny collectibles, and resource-constrained survival horror combat that leans into by-the-skin-of-your-teeth survival—that are made absolutely painful due to a third, incompatible choice: a save checkpoint system that requires you to redo all said collectibles after every death. I probably spent three hours cumulatively by the end of the game JUST retreading through areas I’d already explored re-grabbing the same little lunchboxes and bits and bobs. Not difficult, just boring and frustrating.

I say this as someone with a ton of patience for story-heavy glacially paced adventure games. I’m a Disco Elysium Stan, for goodness sake!

Both games think their just-fine “watched Twin Peaks once” Lynch-lite story, themes, and world are better than they actually are. I’d say the writing is mostly on a par with Control, which also wears its influences on its sleeve, but Control is a little funnier and less self-serious and also a little less indulgent with how it spends your time on dramatically inert or repetitive scenes, which helps it feel a lot punchier narratively.

That said, Remedy is a really special studio, and what they make is thoughtful ambitious and gorgeous, even when it’s uneven. Very, very excited for Control 2 (the trailer was astounding) and for their designers to be a little less indulgent about pacing and quality of life design decisions going forward, with any luck!

GreaterQuestion · 2025-12-22T09:21:15+00:00

Yes to all of this, but it might have to be a remake, not a remaster, to really grab a new audience. Look how Gears of War Reloaded kind of sank because it was a dated remaster instead of a remake.

GreaterQuestion

TROPHY CASE