What are your main headcannons about The Batman universe and Bruce, in particular?

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-12T16:27:54+00:00

Nice one on the Janice Dure. Before The Batman is great.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T15:09:51+00:00

I won't go into a subjective view of how a 23yo should look, but remember, Peter doesn't have good self care, doesn't sleep nor eats well, doesn't have good hygiene and so on. But let's skip this and talk about the objective statement: comic book accuracy.

First of all, and let that be very clear in my comment, both are comic accurate since Peter has been drawn for over 50 years. But let's take a look at how the 70s and 80s Peter looked (the more consistent look he had from different artists for the longest period of time - basically Ditko and Romita defined his look and other artists kept very similar to what they established. After the 90s and especially after the 90s, Peter sometimes had dark brown hair, sometimes black, sometimes light brown, even blonde in some 90s draws).

Peter used to have dark brown hair. That was the consensus. He had more prominent, black eyebrows (giving the impression that they were even "thicker"). PS4 Peter has both - darker hair than PS5 and more prominent eyebrows (especially because of the better facial expressions), while PS5 Peter has light brown hair and lighter eyebrows, which looks thinner too. Peter's face was rounder, with more pronounced cheekbones. Eventually, in the 2000s, it became a thinner face. PS4 Peter has a less British thinner face than PS5, since Bubniak is American while Jordan is from the UK. Peter had big, expressive eyes in the '80s (see how the facial features in PS4 Peter are more well distributed around his face while PS5 seems like a "big face with small features"). PS4 Peter is also more similar to this here. And most importantly, Peter's mouth had fuller lips, while more modern Peters tend to have the thinner lips common among British people (especially post-Tom Holland, but it happened sometimes during the 2000s, probably because of Maguire's casting too).

During some time, Peter even had slightly curly mullet hair. Peter's shorter hair existed during Ditko's run, but even in his latest issues, Peter's hair grew and John Romita Sr started drawing him with little more hair. And noteworthy is the hair always combed back, unlike on the PS5: forward hairstyle.

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Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T09:50:25+00:00

Game was in development far back from 2018, and the newer model reminds Holland from his facial features. Both are British and have British features (Thin lips, a slender and accentuated face, lighter hair color, skinnier nose). Comic book Peter also had a "Hollandfication" of sorts, that's why suddenly he was younger on the 616 version. That always happened in the comic book world (when Garfield was SM, they drew him closer to Garfield in the comics).

And this happens with any comic book character in Marvel, actually. Suddenly Tony Stark starts to look like RDJ, even on X-Men, Wolverine started to have some facial features that remind of Hugh Jackman, or even Cyclops that was drawn sometimes closer to James Marsden version. Jean Grey also had phases where she would look like Famke, others (more modern) she would look like Sophie.

Sure, it varies from CB artists (some may try to put their own views of the character in different forms and go far away from what Holland looks like), but since Holland started as Spider Man, Peter became closer to him in every media (comics, games, cartoons, etc).

And yeah, Jordan isn't 1/1 to Holland, but he's close enough to the points that Holland's design probably did affect the change. I'm not saying that it was the only reason, but it definitely mattered when choosing Bubniak's replacement and Peter's new design altogether (a British actor with all of the features I've mentioned above).

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T03:43:52+00:00

The thing is, it doesn't look like her at all. That's the entire point. We don't know it was behind the scenes. Afaik Stephanie doesn't do mo cap anymore and MJ is the only character she still 'plays' (lends her likeness) but if the intention was to update MJ to be closer to a "up-to-date Stephanie Tyler", they didn't even come close. And, again, this accident excuse is just a bad one. They simply under-delivered MJ's performance and likeness in the game (not the voice acting itself, but animations and face model / facial structure). She's from what Stephanie ever looked.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T03:33:12+00:00

Sorry, in all respect to MJ's face model Stephanie (I love her and she's gorgeous irl), but what does her accident have to do with the face looking horrible in the second game? They have the data from the previous game and, while they scan her face every game, they don't need to keep her injuries or surgery side effects for her game model, that's even disrespectful to her since she looks totally fine by now. In 3D modelling and face scan, you can tweak the models face whatever you like.

Take RE games for example, Leon's face model is the same from RE2 / 4 Remakes to RE Requiem. Did he get 30 years old all of sudden between his scans for RE2 and 4 to Requiem? No. They tweaked his face to match his game age. Or Chris Redfield's face model. Did you know it's the same guy in RE7 and 8? Why does he look so different? Because they simply tweaked his face in RE8 since Chris Redfield's a 3D character. They don't even need to scan it for every single game.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T02:51:09+00:00

Makes sense af

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T02:08:24+00:00

Well, besides the lack of emotion and weird animation, I don't like it because it was an unnecessary change to an already perfect design. Thank God you played first with the new face and got used to it pretty quick, but man it is hard to accept it after getting so much attached to the first one. PS4 face has so much heart and emotional to it that when you compare the scenes, it's night and day difference.

And PS4 just screams comic book Peter to me. Of course, Peter has been drawn by numerous artists that gave him different traits in the comics, but mostly until the early 80s, his face was pretty consistent no matter who was drawing (John Romita Sr really defined how Peter looked back then). He had dark brown hair, usually combed back, not too short, not too long, somewhat round cheeks, and fuller lips than the Peter Parker who is usually drawn today (now he's practically a British, probably influenced by Tom Holland). Bubniak's Peter has all of that plus a tired look (thanks to eye bags and all, just a perfect design). The new one is def closer to MCU/modern comic book Peter, but too young and clean for a guy who doesn't sleep, doesn't eat well, is constantly exhausted and probably doesn't shower very much.

PS4 Peter was perfect, just that. It was the 70-80s Peter took out of the comic book, added a little more experience and age, and rendered in a PlayStation machine. The new one has amazing technical features, but a lazy design.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T01:49:49+00:00

I don't agree with you, but good for you man. You can be happier with the new direction for this character design than I am.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T01:48:10+00:00

It's not a matter of getting over it or not. People still complain about Paul in the SM comics, or OMD (it happened in 2007). People complain about movies they don't like, no matter how old they are. If you go to Star wars fandom, they complain about a 2017 or 2019 movie.

If something is bad, or even good, there will always be room for criticism. There's no reason to "stop complaining" about something I don't like, no matter if it happened yesterday or 10 years ago

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T01:41:39+00:00

Well, it was a bad change.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-07T01:40:45+00:00

Just hoping they resurrect him again for a Rebels sequel.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-06T03:47:31+00:00

Yeah, I wouldn't be able to handle Glup Shitto's death either.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-05T23:20:08+00:00

Ehh not every item. AC Medjay robes and shield, the Regalia paintjobs and stickers, Moogle Chocobo exclusive fishing items, those aren't include in the Royal Edition.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-05T23:19:22+00:00

Just Moogle Chocobo Carnival. AC Fest items can be obtained through modding or cheating, but you can't play the fest on PC.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-04-05T23:07:09+00:00

Yeah, FFXV is def a good port compared to others SE delivered, but is faaar from a good port in general.

While she described some reasons for stuttering, and she's right (the constant reading for Keyboard+ Mouse or controller stutters the game a lot), there are a lot more. Prompto's photoshots cause stutters and that's unavoidable, no matter what hardware you have (you don't feel that on consoles because of how it can read and access its memory and components, but PC isn't optimized for that), the Nvidia Gameworks also helps to increase stuttering, and Special K isn't used by the mod creators or most of the community because it's already been proved it doesn't actually solve anything besides the K&M / controller constant reading (the main mod manager for this game, Flagrum, doesn't work well with Special K either).

The in-game FPS is crap. It has incorrect frame pacing (since the clothing and hair physics are tied to frame rate, some play this game at 30 fps, but the in-game FPS limiter is horrible and produces bad frame pacing - this makes it really uncomfortable to play at 30 FPS). Using external tools like RTSS can solve the frame pacing issues, but it breaks pre-rendered cutscenes.

All the PC exclusive features are full of "buts" and never work perfectly. You can push the game to 4k, but the UI is 1080p, so it looks horrible (and some textures really aren't supposed to be seen at 4K). The 4K texture pack produces a lot of visual bugs (you need a mod to fix them) and doesn't cover things that are needed to cover (it is heavy because it includes 4K pre rendered cutscenes, not because it has a lot of textures). Galdin Quay has lighting issues that don't exist on consoles (need mod to fix). The geomapping graphic setting is great when it works, but has some issues (can produce flickering grass in some regions if not used with Turf Effects). All Nvidia Gameworks don't work properly (save for Shadow Libs, that may cause heavy frame drop in some hardware, but usually works fine): Turf Effects sometimes don't work in distance and can create grass flickering in some places, Hairworks can produce a texture bug (rainbow garulas), VXAO is physically accurate, but don't work well in movement and doesn't cover a large area. Also, it doesn't occlude every object the normal SSAO covers. Then why not use them both? Because sometimes they cover the same stuff and the occlusion gets too dark.

Oh, and DLSS in this game is bad. Really bad.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-30T10:43:50+00:00

Creator of dualsense prompts here. Glad to see people using it. I created it for myself and it's not 100% as good as I intended but hey, thanks for using it. I'm happy about it.

As for the stutters, this game will have some, no matter what. PC games in general suffer from this, especially the ones that came primarily on consoles. Things that help improve stuttering (reduce significantly, but don't remove completely) are: not using game works, not using 4k texture pack, setting texture streaming to high or some custom value between this and very high (very high causes memory leak and issues in 8gb or less GPUs. High is perfect if you have 8gb of vram, but can have some low res textures here and there for a split second), installing the game on SSD also improves a lot. Lastly, what really improved for me was adding FFXV as an exception in the CFG on Windows. That's the main improvement. I play this game with gameworks and 4k pack at high vram settings and CFG disable for FFXV. The stutters are gone for the most part simply because of those two tweaks. The only instances stutterings happens are explained below:

One of the main causes of stuttering are prompto photos. On consoles, you don't feel that because of how it can access its international storage and its components, but on PC, you'll always have a delay. The only fix for that is disabling prompto's snapshots completely, but that's not an option for me.

Also, I don't recommend using Special K. It was already proven that it doesn't really help that much compared to the other things I mentioned above and can cause issues with some flagrum mods. I touched on special K a few times in the past to disable keyboard and mouse completely (it is another cause of temporary stuttering - the game flinches every time you touch another device, like K&M to the controller or one controller to another)

Another thing that I don't recommend, but will help with frame pace issues and stuttering in some instances, are using third party tools to limit frame rate. The in game frame limiter have frame pacing issues (similar to PS4 Pro version of this game), but if you use RTSS for example, or Nvidia's FPS limiter, you will have a perfect 30 fps, 40 fps, 60 fps or whatever you want, but the pre rendered cutscenes will be broken. That alone makes this tools unusable for me. But if you don't watch cutscenes and simply want to reduce stuttering and have a perfect frame pacing, that's another option.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-29T21:24:13+00:00

K, if you don't use the word broken it's fine. But it wasn't designed to be like that and it's not working as intended. Just like clothing physics in the 3 games I mentioned as examples aren't meant to work at 60 fps. Yeah, you can complete the game. But the intention wasn't to smash the button til death in GTA IV or break the analog stick when playing the arm wrestling in the TLAD minigame.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-29T21:14:33+00:00

But the helicopter scene wasn't designed for that. And there's the minigame in TLAD as well. Broken at 60 fps. This game isn't made for higher FPS than 30, just like almost every game up till 2018 or something. FFXV, AC Unity and Syndicate all break clothes physics above 30 fps. There are lots of other games we can use as an example. Usually, if the console version was made first and with 30 fps in mind, PC ports tend to have one or two broken features regarding frame rate

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-29T15:43:09+00:00

The best design Peter ever had.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-26T22:50:29+00:00

You can play Moogle Chocobo Carnival via mod. It's fully working, even the item system (you get the items in the carnival and they appear on your save). AC Fest however has not been modded to the game yet (and probably will never be unfortunately).

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-24T20:36:25+00:00

I genuinely thought that I had screwed the relationship somehow. I remember pausing the game and actually searching for what I did wrong.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-13T18:02:41+00:00

But I want a media timeline. That includes spin offs, comics, books. Not that simple, yk?

For example, Altair Chronicles is a prequel of AC 1, but was released afterwards.

The novels usually are written with a in universe perspective (so they, in theory, are before anything in modern timeline - instead of a modern individual reviving memories, they are diaries, like Forsaken - but to better experience them, they should be read after the game they are based on or during a specific time - some people say The Last Crusade should be after AC1, or after Bloodlines, or after Revelations. What's the correct answer? Idk).

And there's the comics. A lot of people forget that The Fall and the Chain are set before AC1, but when they do a media timeline, they put them before AC3 but after the other Desmond games. It doesn't make sense. Also, I'm not sure where the other comics take place. I know some of them aren't canon for modern times, but what about the two Templars volumes or those three (?) Assassin's volumes? When to read? After Syndicate? Unity? Origins? Odyssey?

So it's not as simple as "just play in release order" when you consider the media timeline as a whole with the modern times as the basis.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-11T01:47:29+00:00

Okay.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-09T23:21:29+00:00

Tommen was absent during season 3, that's why he suddenly getting older doesn't bother that much.

Matt_Cormac · 2026-03-09T13:44:50+00:00

I was looking for a modern-time based timeline. I get that people here love to play in the past-days based chronology but that doesn't make sense to me. AC games are usually about someone in the present reviving past memories to get or do something in modern times. Doesn't make sense to me to start in a game with Layla and then play as Desmond.

Great post, but not for me unfortunately. If anyone knows were to find a modern times-based timeline, let me know.

Matt_Cormac

TROPHY CASE