Articles,Miscellaneous |

May 19, 2019

Let’s talk the potential of digital personalities as well as Arc System’s engine in 3D games. Also, something about To All Mankind is rubs me the wrong way.

MakeS’ Digital Assistant Boy

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but MakeS is a digital assistant app featuring a handsome man. Subtitled Morning make System, it’s a basic daily life management app that looks like it includes calendars, alarm clocks as well as the ability to take notes. More uniquely, you can customize your dude, take AR pictures with him or, in true video game romance fashion, rub his body using the touch screen.

I know things like Siri and Alexa exist voice companions and probably do these tasks better. Though I think for me the visual component goes a long way in giving them an actual persona. For some reason, it’s just a lot more charming than some text to speech voice.

Ultimately the problem with most digital personalities, especially those with real voice actors, is that they have a low ceiling on how deep they can get. There’s no real consistency of thought when they talk and rarely do they have on-going persistence of memory. In my experience with Love Plus, I had the same discussion with Manaka about four times in a single week once we started dating.

I’m guessing a lot of it has to do with the limitation of pre-building scripts for these characters. At some people, you’re limited by the number of scenarios humans can write.

I have a lot of hope for them though. Even with the limitations, the idea still feels novel and charming. Maybe further developments in things like AI will take away some of the burden of needing to develop human created interactions. Although there are always those horror stories of machine-learning characters developing some foul language.

This may seem like a random topic because MakeS has been around for awhile, but they recently announced they were doing a Cafe for it.

My Interest in To All Mankind is Waning

I’m not sure what it is about To All Mankind. The more I see of it, the more disinterested I am. I haven’t had a great track record with survival games. Lost in Blue has remained on my shelf for over a decade for a reason. So maybe I doomed from the start to lose interest. But I think part of it also has to do with the characters.

I’m not sure why, but I feel like there’s an over reliance on these characters being cute girls. I’ve definitely played games that definitely prioritize these types of character and haven’t had problems with them. But something about To All Mankind’s implementation just rubs me the wrong way.

Maybe it’s just because I think the game itself doesn’t look like it holds up.

Kill la Kill: If – Seeing the Third Dimension

The graphics engine/style Arc Systems has been doing for their games since Guilty Gear Xrd is fantastic for 3D fighting games on a 2D plane. You can definitely tell it’s not hand drawn, but in motion it blends in well and opens up the ability for some dynamic close ups during gameplay.

As far as I know, this has only been used for 2D fighters, including Dragon Ball FighterZ and the new Granblue Fantasy Versus. So I think it’s interesting that Kill la Kill: If’s gameplay is from behind the back.

The results aren’t quite as impressive as I thought they would be, but I’m hoping this is a first step in creating something that might look more impressive down the line.

I also wonder if YouTube doesn’t do it justice. It looks a bit blurry, even in 1080p. Or maybe that’s just how the game is.