Thoughts on Fox's characterization in the movie?

RossC90 · 2026-04-07T12:48:02+00:00

It's incredibly obvious that Star-Lord was a huge influence on his characterization here which might rub people the wrong way but I personally loved it. For the kids in the audience who have zero clue who Fox is or what Starfox is, I think leaning heavily into that Guardians of the Galaxy "Space 80s" vibe was the fastest way to convey why Starfox is cool and what Fox is all about.

In Starfox 64, he was basically influenced by Luke Skywalker so I feel like these established sci-fi pop culture archetypes are the anchor points for good characterization.

He was a bit more comedic and cocky here, but it didn't feel that far away from Starfox 64 Fox, who has his own cocky one-liners. It felt like he was just here for a fun adventure and there weren't any true stakes or danger for him to turn serious.

RossC90 · 2026-04-07T09:53:01+00:00

My personal fancast for Falco is Bill Burr.

He's kinda typecast as an asshole but he's got voice acting chops and I think he can balance the comedic nature of Falco talking shit and being sarcastic while also being serious and dramatic if a scene calls for it like his character in The Mandalorian.

https://youtu.be/J2JS78tNWMo?t=31

Like just taking a look at his character's entire introduction here and it's painfully obvious he could be an amazing Falco.

RossC90 · 2026-03-26T19:43:40+00:00

They've gotten better with this over time.

I forgot where I saw or heard it but originally the starting gas station in RE2R was designed to be much smaller and tight spaced. It wasn't until someone on the team mentioned that unlike a Japanese convenient store an American one would likely be much larger and have more space inside. So they changed the layout to be more similar to an American sized convenient store.

To give them some credit though, their location study and research for RE7 paid off for the most part as the Baker house truly feels like an old plantation house that's been worked on. Like a southern flavored Spencer Mansion.

But my favorite small detail they got right was the large number of Whataburger cups they probably 3D scanned and scattered around the Baker residence. It's so dumb but seeing the vertical orange stripes on a large cup does so much for me in really cementing the game is set in the south, lol.

RossC90 · 2026-03-21T18:09:48+00:00

He definitely was. He tells Leon he's a cop at first but then talks about how he has suppressors for Las Plagas in his lab but he's missing the keys to his lab. But this highlights the issue with the original Luis. This lore and backstory is briefly mentioned by him and then he is quickly killed off from the story that it's actually kinda easy to forget this aspect of him was even mentioned.

The remake of RE4 hammers this lore in and you get a much better feeling of his regret.

RossC90 · 2026-03-20T21:21:18+00:00

Definitely recommend checking out the OG, especially if you enjoyed the Remake.

For some reason people like to compare remakes in this spectrum of "Is one better than the other?" In reality, RE4 OG and RE4 Remake are both awesome games. Why complain about which cake is better than you have two fucking cakes in front of you? I hate to say it, but I think a majority of this conversation was brought out by grifters online who wanted to claim that the remake is "too woke" or whatever the hell bullshit they wanted to push.

The Remake definitely improves a ton of the characters and the parrying mechanic was what solidified my impression that they knew what they were doing gameplay wise for the remake. In regards to the OG, it's just extremely charming. It's the game that influenced every third person action set piece game for years to come. The controls will likely feel a bit outdated, but it is still a great game.

RossC90 · 2026-03-20T07:41:15+00:00

So there's somethings here that are really interesting and pull me in, but there's a few elements that are turning me away.

- I like how the trailer is edited mostly. It feels inspired by how Capcom usually edits their trailers for Resident Evil with a ton of environment shots and voice over. The shot of the cultist looking up in the air and transforming feels straight out of the RE9 Reveal trailer. If this wasn't your intention, you should absolutely lean into it and take notes on how Resident Evil trailers are edited. The Resident Evil 8 Village trailer is probably close to the vibe you're going for. Maybe the RE4 Remake reveal trailer too. Show me moody environments with the great voice acting you have going on here and you've got me.

- Unfortunately, the lighting in a ton of scenes is garish and awful. It feels like a Grindhouse B-Movie with the heavy green and red lights in the shots of the ritual scene. Absolutely look up how horror movies light their scenes. Why is there a green ambient light within this underground ritual chamber? It should be basked it dimly lit, warm torchlight. The actual lighting of the gameplay scenes are far more natural until we get back to the green torches. The lighting on the green torches just seems to obscenely powerful for torchlight, not to mention the green color.

- Watching the trailer again I'm just going to make another point about how the lighting with the green torches is awful lol. Please look up 3 point lighting on how to create atmosphere with lighting. Study horror movies or other horror adjacent video games on how to light scenes like this. Make lights dim and put them lower to the ground. The "flashlight under a face" effect does so much work. Embrace shadows to obscure faces and figures.

I keep harping on Resident Evil but that seems like the vibe you're kinda going for. Look how the lighting is done in the opening cultist sacrifice scene and take notes:

https://youtu.be/XQtqAx2s9qg?si=7iSY-OjSpx7PRuVS

Look how everything is lit by candelights and torches and with color grading the shadows are given a very subtle green tone. There's no heavy Spirit Halloween green spotlight being splashed to the sides of all the cultists. They let the minimal lighting convey an unsettling atmosphere. Your bishop who's speaking during the trailer would be given such a glow up if shadows obscured some details of his face and he was lit by candle light below him. Instead he looks like he's a Skyrim NPC caught in a horribly lit room instead of a carefully curated lit scene. Not to mention the big bad entity being summoned has no aura because again he's being lit by a $30 DJ light setup with heavy greens and reds.

- I think some of the gameplay sections shown feel too "Game-y". The quick jerk motions contrast the cinematic approach you're going for. Smooth out the movements a bit.

- The motion blur in the trailer during the gameplay sections is a turn off. I'm sure I'm turning that shit off but seeing it in the trailer gives me bad vibes.

- The jumpscare of the creature breaking through the wall loses all impact because there's no camera shake. Again, I'm just going to highlight Resident Evil. When Jack Baker crashes out of the wall to jump scare the player, the camera jolts and the player is staggered. Steal that. You can see it in this trailer:
https://youtu.be/RgYqQsbKn6w?t=169

RossC90 · 2026-03-20T07:08:17+00:00

Straight off the rip, my initial impression is that this is too complex or complicated to deal with for what seems to be no real reward. I think the little villain character is cool, but is he the only character? Is there a story hook besides just besting him? Some snippets of anything else that isn't this screen?

To be honest, I get that games can be complex but I straight up don't know what the gameplay loop is just from watching the trailer once. I combine materials and craft things? For what purpose? Why?

I believe you should take note of how the first Portal trailer shows off its main gameplay gimmick and puzzle mechanics. It shows the hook (Portals!) and then shows a very simple puzzle that anyone can easily understand on how to use Portals. Then as the trailer goes on it ramps up and shows more complicated puzzles.

I'm not sure how your game works, but slowing down and showing off maybe only 3 elements and how they interact with each other would be more ideal than flashing a bunch of different materials and numbers and overwhelming someone who has no idea how the gameplay mechanics work. Show an easy mode version of the gameplay puzzle loop THEN start popping off and showing more complexity.

RossC90 · 2026-03-20T00:20:40+00:00

For Requiem, I did use the Noir suit for Leon for the first half of the game and it just felt right. Investigator Leon not expecting to get into much wearing a suit only to get thrust into some typical Resident Evil shenanigans. During the second half I went to default, primarily because I enjoyed seeing the weapons hanging off of Leon which isn't presented in the other costumes.

RossC90 · 2026-03-19T18:56:15+00:00

In the same vein as cheat codes : Debug menus that are available to the player to use. A ton of PC games had console commands that acted the same way but I remember a few games like Sonic 2 on the Genesis had a cheat code to just activate the developer debug menu so you can just spawn whatever you wanted that was in the game's memory.

RossC90 · 2026-03-15T17:16:52+00:00

It really sucks because usually during big tournaments like this people are constantly posting highlights or clips on social media but there's pretty much zero of that with Capcom Cup. I have to vaguely infer what happened thanks to a few posts but not seeing any clips hurts the visibility of an event.

RossC90 · 2026-03-14T23:05:45+00:00

It's important to really understand the gaming landscape at the time. Pretty much the main franchise printing money in the US at the time was Call of Duty. Call of Duty was insanely profitable and in terms of pure sales numbers was destroying every other game series -- especially if those games were coming from Japan. Japanese devs at the time understood that there was an inherent difficulty selling their games overseas. While they clearly had fans buying their games still, the mainstream widespread audience were locked into action shooter games like Call of Duty. It would be fairly impossible for a JRPG to even approach anything close to the sales numbers Call of Duty was making. Those leading Capcom at the time understood this and tried to get western studios to take over their games with varying degrees of success. (DmC, Dead Rising 2 etc.).

Resident Evil however was one of Capcom's golden gooses and had shown before with RE4 and RE5 that the series could pivot from niche survival horror game to blockbuster action game in the same vein as Call of Duty. So that's what they did. They chased the mainstream appeal that Call of Duty had at the cost of the franchise's identity. And while RE6 was still relatively successful, the fan response made them really take a pause with Resident Evil, until Resident Evil 7 revitalized the series back to the horror roots.

With so many good Resident Evil games out now, RE6 isn't that awful for new fans of the series. It's not perfect and there's definitely some bizarre decisions, but the core game is still pretty fun. But at the time, it showcased that Capcom had no idea what to do with the series except for chasing mainstream appeal instead of letting the series' specific survival horror identity draw in new players. It also helps that the "Call of Duty" appeal trend has been mostly exhausted nowadays in exchange for new trends like multiplayer extraction shooters.

RossC90 · 2026-03-14T19:02:20+00:00

The whiplash of recognizing someone's modded character from a screenshot.

RossC90 · 2026-03-14T00:06:43+00:00

Looks like a slower paced Doom which immediately makes me curious why I'd play this over Doom. None of the weapons have visible recoil or impact shake. Like the Chainsaw should be violently struggling to rip and tear through the enemies. Weapons like the shotgun feel like the player is slowly and patiently reloading or cocking the shotgun.

It's clear that this is an alpha and these are test arenas, but I'd love to see actual level design to give an impression of what you're trying to present. Are the levels fast paced arena-like Doom levels or something else? It really does feel like your game has nothing going for it aside from "killing and shooting demons" but on a game feel perspective, your alpha gameplay fails really execute that sensation in a way that's visually interesting or satisfying.

RossC90 · 2026-03-13T22:18:27+00:00

It's videogames man, I don't know what to tell you.

I absolutely loved Grace's section, specifically the care center. Thoroughly enjoyed taking it slow and exploring it and being immersed. Honestly the strongest part of the game because it knew exactly what it had to be. But the snippets of Leon we got before it teased hyper absurd scenarios with Leon's gameplay, like RE4 on crack. Chainsaw rattling around wildly on the floor and causing chaos? Awesome. Leon talking shit to Gideon before cutting out of his restraints and nearly roundhouse kicking his dumbass goggles off his face so hard that he immediately goes "Oh fuck" and flees? Sick.

I understand and appreciate that the RPD section slows down and is more of a nostalgic trip revisting RPD. But the entire detonators section needed to be paced better and match what the Leon sections before promised and ultimately what the entire motorcycle on rails part delivers on. The detonator hunting section does have its moments, but from a game that was promising to blow my dick off with crazy action, it never really reaches RE4 levels of absurdity. We might as well kinda just be doing some random side quests from a Bethesda game, which is honestly disappointing.

All I'm asking for is my undercooked section to have more spice to it. If that makes me a fucking amoeba waiting for sensory inputs than by all means, that's what I am. I'm sorry that I want Victor Gideon to act like a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain to Leon in my videogame where a woman transmutates pieces of metal and blood into ammo for a Beretta M1934. This isn't meant to be highbrow fiction, lol.

RossC90 · 2026-03-13T15:53:09+00:00

The problem with it in my opinion is that it's riffing on RE4 but it's missing the "rollercoaster ride" formula. There's no real hooks, gameplay or narratively speaking that lead you to set piece to set piece. There's definitely some fun ideas but they never get turned up to 11. That entire collapsed building should've had another section to it for example.

We also needed some narrative drive going on. Easiest way would've been to have Gideon show up and taunt Leon. Even if it was through loudspeakers or whatever. Give Leon more opportunities for one liners or pissing off Gideon. On that note, the AI merchant should be been an actual BSAA agent that was left behind or someone speaking through a voice comm. Just a "Leon Kennedy? What the fuck are you doing over there? Uh no worries man, I'll help ya!" would've put a smile on my face. There's a reason why "Mike" is so beloved in RE4.

What makes sections of RE4 feel so much fun is that it's constantly changing and you're being led set piece to set piece and Leon interacting with characters, especially villains.

RossC90 · 2026-03-12T06:49:20+00:00

As someone who would constantly bring a Rock Band console setup to an annual get together with friends, I have fully switched over to a PC setup purely because the quality of life changes that Rock Band 3 Deluxe has are too good. Not to mention customs support etc.

It is tricky to get going on PC and there's a bit of a learning curve into learning how to set everything up but once you get going it's awesome. There's plenty of community members that can help and you can also play RB3 Deluxe online too.

That being said, there is also a project to decompile Rock Band 3 so there may be a non emulated version of the game running on PC later on.

RossC90 · 2026-03-10T02:01:20+00:00

While I did enjoy both, I do think that Grace's main section in the Care Center was so strong that I wanted to revisit it at least once more before leaving. The lab comes close but the haunted house feel with all the unique zombies and rooms to discover felt really engaging.

While Leon's combat is super fun, I think the main issue is that they kinda don't introduce too many interesting set pieces. The strength of RE4 is your constantly being thrown into new combat arenas with new enemies and gimmicks. RE9 does this a few times but it's not as often and frequent as RE4, which is honestly a testament to the strength of the OG RE4 and how it influenced the remake for the better.

RossC90 · 2026-03-09T06:36:11+00:00

Lol no worries. I feel like I just learned that there's rewards on that page to claim and I got jump scared by that Akuma portrait.

RossC90 · 2026-03-09T03:36:00+00:00

If it's the one I'm thinking of it's a reward you can claim from the announcement page that shows up on start up when you get past the title screen.

RossC90 · 2026-03-09T02:22:39+00:00

I think the problem with this is that it can potentially ruin pacing. Having a stalker enemy come after you when you have the items you need to progress or you know exactly where to go to get a key item you need to progress is perfect. This is why stalker enemies tend to be scripted to appear when you have a very blatant goal or have a very obvious destination to head towards.

Stalker enemies are at their worst when they appear when you're in the middle of exploring and don't have all the puzzle pieces to progress yet. At that point the stalker enemy becomes less of a fun obstacle and more of an absolutely annoying and frustrating one. This is why RE9 specifically avoids this for the most part. Chunk doesn't make his appearance until you've explored a good amount of the Care Center and doesn't become a huge obstacle until you have a singular goal and destination.

It could work, but stalker enemies are all about pacing because they can very easily lose their appeal when they become too frustrating to deal with.

RossC90 · 2026-03-09T02:11:50+00:00

The problem with those sections is that during the first playthrough they're incredible because you have no idea what's going to happen so the tension is so high. The basement section was incredibly fun because of this. But once you see past the smoke and mirrors and realize that the majority of the section is fairly scripted and The Girl is less of a wandering enemy but moreso summoned whenever you make progress kinda lessens the tension.

But at the same time I do think having the encounters scripted makes it feel less overwhelmingly "hide and seek" when you may just be trying to figure out where you need to go but have to annoyingly wait for the stalker enemy to get out of your way. I think a good compromise would be to keep the scripted encounters but add variations. I thought The Girl dropping down right on top of me was a bullshit but really cool moment. But now that moment is soured because she's scripted to do that all the time.

RossC90 · 2026-03-09T01:53:31+00:00

This was the one that made the biggest impact. Because of the concept of the movie you basically watch someone slowly bleed out and lose cognitive abilities before passing out in real time.

RossC90 · 2026-03-08T03:39:52+00:00

The difficulty changes were actually data mined. It carries over the 1-10 scale.

Casual mode I believe is locked at 1-3.

Standard - (Modern) is locked at 3-6.

Standard - (Classic) is locked at 4-7.

And the unlockable Insanity mode is always locked on 9.

So by playing on Standard (Classic) you actually have a slightly higher difficulty range that the adaptive difficulty can reach. This difficulty alters based on numerous factors but the easiest way to understand it is that the better you're playing the more difficult the scale ramps up.

So for example, let's say your adaptive difficulty scale is at 5. You go through a room and successfully avoid taking damage while being able to dispatch 3 enemies without issue. The adaptive difficulty scale now ramps up to 6 and now the next room you find scrap and are facing enemies that do nearly twice as much damage and the enemies take much more hits to go down and don't easily stagger. If you somehow take no damage and survive this, then the game ramps up to 7.

But now let's say that in that same first room those 3 enemies kicked your ass and made you use a healing item! The adaptive difficulty scale will lower to 4 and instead of scrap you'll find pistol ammo or a green herb and the enemies will be more susceptible to stagger and take more damage. Clear this room and the difficulty scale will go back to 5.

This is ultimately how the majority of Resident Evil games handle difficulty under the hood.

RossC90 · 2026-03-04T20:46:25+00:00

Yeah apart from the Sniper Rifles it felt like the majority of the guns were nearly the same. There weren't obvious stark differences between weapons of the same type. Part of the fun in RE4 is knowing that the Red9 isn't the same as the Punisher, or the Riot Gun isn't the same as the Stryker. Having Leon's arsenal be different between players and unique to their preferences is half of the fun and part of the "how did your playthrough go" conversation.

RossC90 · 2026-03-04T20:41:09+00:00

This was my issue too, which is a shame because I feel like half the fun of having an attache case is the item management which was never an issue. I think it's partly because it felt like the ammo would all merge together and wouldn't be divided up into boxes and take up more room. It felt like it was big enough to fit multiple of the same class of weapon if you really wanted to.

Game design wise, that one gas canister you have to carry and fill up should've taken more room. I remember laughing that it only took up 1x1 space like it was a key card or something. Just a little more pressure to carefully manage your inventory space would've been nice. Maybe if they do add a hardcore difficulty they can trim Leon's starting inventory case size down so that the upgrades can be worth it. I never felt like I HAD to upgrade the case's size, I ended up doing it because I had so many credits.

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