So apparently including 1 as a prime number was getting too messy when making lists of all non-primes as products of primes (they would always have to exclude 1 or they'd end up with infinite trailing lists of 1x1x1x1x2x2=4 and so on). So, 1 got kicked off the prime list because it made things too inclusive and too messy.
First Pluto isn't a planet any more, and now 1 isn't a prime number any more! Is nothing sacred?! Next you'll tell me that W isn't a letter.
No, not the one about how BotW doesn't have a playable female character because "if Zelda was the protagonist then what would Link do?", or how The Last Guardian or Shadow of the Colossus don't have one because women don't have strong grip strength, etc. There are a lot of Western games with only male protagonists too, but probably because Japan is more sexist than the West, their excuses for why games don't have them often are way worse; here it's usually stuff like "because marketing says male characters sell better".
It's Persona 5... and Persona 4 as well. So why don't Personas 4 and 5 have female protagonist options, after Persona 3 Portable added a female character, and her campaign was pretty good and is considered by some as the better of the two? Well, they give two reasons, one understandable and the other as bad as the worst of my first paragraph:
First, that it'd have cost a lot more to do two protagonists -- this is a writing-heavy series with a relationship component, so yes, that is true, you would need a lot more script, two versions of many scenes, etc. They could have done it though, as they have before and many Western dialog-heavy games do have gender-choice options.
And second...
Quote:With the way that game's world worked, it was okay for the protagonist to be female. With Persona 4, though, we needed the character to come from a big city to a small country town to be the driving force of the story, and it seemed more natural for a male character to fulfill that role. There are story aspects to this decision, as well.
Wait, what? Japan, no, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever anywhere other than super-sexist-land where somehow it doesn't make sense to have a female move from one town to another or something? What?
(Oh, and like most games in the series, Persona 5 doesn't have any same-sex romance options either.)
Now, personally this isn't too big of a deal because based on the two I have, P2EP (which is a quite different game) and P3P I find the Persona games boring after a little while, since the visual-novel half is not a genre I have ever liked much and I don't find the dungeon-crawler side all that much either, but still, this is a pretty popular series now and this kind of thing needs pushback every time or it is not going to change.
So, I wonder, will Japan ever realize how far behind they are on gender relations and actually start to catch up on this? Because this is yet another example of how badly that needs to happen, tossed on the huge mountain of other such absurd comments we have heard before; even if we just look at games, the excuses why games like P4, Zelda BotW, The Last Guardian, and such don't have playable female characters are insanely bad and sexist! And then there's their frequent inability to even get the concept of a female character that is not sexualized... ugh. That problem's bad enough in Western games so I can undertstand why it is even worse in Japan, but it is often disappointing.
Of course, things like games, anime, and such are just a reflection of the culture of the nation that creates them though, which is why I asked the question I do, but regardless of that there need to be pushback every time says something like this or nothing will ever change.
I just got out of Power Rangers: The Legend of Rita's Gold and saw yet another example of completely warped morality in the "heroes".
There's a scene where one of the rangers reveals she did something horrible to some class mate. The specifics aren't mentioned, but basically she humiliated someone just because she could with no real reason to do it. The other ranger says "Just because you did something horrible doesn't mean you are a horrible person." and then further says "What's important is that you do what you think is right." Then they beat up the evil Rita because she's doing what she thinks is right and say she's a horrible person because of the horrible things she did.
I've been seeing this "sentiment" in a lot of US TV and movies lately, and I just have to wonder where this inane and, frankly, EVIL mindset comes from. It seems like the opposite of a moral code, and I'm sick of seeing it sprawled across US media.
I've been hearing people comment on just about all of the actors simply "not aging", and I'm starting to think there's a bit more to it than that.
At this point, I'm simply convinced the more famous actors just have access to makeup that us mere mortals could never even imagine. In other words, I'm pretty sure Patrick Stewart in Logan was simply not wearing any makeup in order to look that old. Heck, look at Jon Stewart now vs just a year ago when he was hosting the Daily Show. Looks like the two are decades apart.
It's just makeup people. You're flattering a bunch of makeup artists. All the old actors are secretly mummies!
So, I buy upgrades every now and then. I've had the same computer since I first got one as a kid. I'll switch out a hard drive, or an optical drive, or a new motherboard, or a new case, or what have you. Point is, my computer always moves along for the ride. At this point, I've replaced everything in my computer multiple times. Still the same computer though, right? I never out and out just plunked down a new PC in place of the old, it's just replacing a few parts.
Well, here's the thing. I often have enough parts left over to built a decent second-hand computer for a relative or someone. That second computer is built from the parts I took out, and basically consists of what used to be my computer.
Well, I got one. I had to. Breath of the Wild was at stake here!
The interface, spartan as it may be compared to the competition, seems to work pretty well. I'm still waiting for a way to add friends using their username instead of a friend code, but at least there's plenty of options to add friends from previous online sessions. No online chat yet, and I really hope that the party infrastructure doesn't require a cell phone. That's just not kid friendly.
The pro controller, which has an aesthetic that screams "cheap PC controller from the early 2000s", is actually pretty comfortable and solidly built, as one would expect from Nintendo. There's no analog triggers to be found on it though. That's disappointing... It'll also be big trouble for Gamecube virtual console games. I imagine they'll map the buttons to "full press" and as a consolation prize offer compatibility with the Wii U Gamecube controller adapter (meaning you have to have devices from two previous generations of consoles, and now I'm wondering why I don't just use my Gamecube).
Breath of the Wild is great. A good open world game isn't about random wandering so much as giving visually distinct items of interest for the player to decide to explore. The start of the game does a very good job indicating sites to see just by making them prominent on the landscape as you first exit the starting location. This is a great way to keep the player from getting totally lost, and it's good to see what they've done. Already this game has THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING! SO MUCH! Sick of smashing your face into trees in order to knock stuff down? Just grab an ax from a stump and chop those suckers down. Or, you know, maybe just climb it? The combat is silky smooth, though it'll take some adjustment now that Link can jump any time he wants. It's not like a Mario jump though, it's basically the same jump you're used to from side-stepping and back flipping in previous 3D Zelda games (and you can still do those specific moves). I'm a bit disappointed that I don't automatically jump if I just run towards the edge of a platform, so in that respect it's more platformy.
It's got autosave, but done better than a lot of games that have switched to that system. You can manually save and it also stores a list of recent autosaves instead of just one, so if you do something you regret, you can load your manual save or an older autosave. Well, to an extent. If your manual save is too old, it'll get deleted to make room for the next autosave. I don't think that's acceptable. Manual saves should be immune to that overwrite. Here's hoping they adjust that a bit, but it's already a better system than Bioshock Infinite, the new Doom, and Phantom Pain, which have all decided a single uncontrollable autosave is the future. Along those lines, this game has the Japanese voice acting right on the cart, but in order to switch you need to change the system language, which also changes the subtitles. The english voice acting isn't bad, but here's hoping these issues are easily patched in the future. I know they've gone that route before. If only I could whine on Miiverse!
I've only just begun, so these are just my first impressions. I can already sense another "sink into this world and vanish for months" game though.
