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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2947 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 22, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Gaming subthread.

The amount of content in Genshin Impact is absolutely staggering. I know everyone thinks of it as just a gacha but it's gigantic compared to full-price open world rpgs too.

It's got a huge map with lots of verticality and ambient content, puzzles and regional features. It actually looks pretty, unlike Skyrim. A tonne of characters with their own unique abilities. Mechanical complexity beyond just stacking on more attack.

And the story just goes on and on and on. There's a fair bit of BS they put in like 'you NEED to sit through endless tedium with Zhongli gathering ingredients for this ritual before you can go to not-Japan', clearly they want to do artsy character-development and worldbuilding stuff rather than just gacha moneygrabbing. That's just the main story, which is well over 100 hours at this point.

Then there are heaps of character side missions which are also long and voiced. And then dozens and dozens more area missions which are unvoiced but are still long with plenty of cinematics. Or just exploring the huge map, that would take ages.

There are more limited-time events than you can shake a stick at. Player housing. A card game. Really the only things missing are deep endgame like Path of Exile's mapping system and proper modding.

There is however a grindy element to it, you have to kill a bunch of bosses over and over again and pick huge numbers of flowers to level your characters and advance through the story. Surprisingly it seems you can't even skip this by paying, which seems odd to me given it is gacha. You're supposed to pay to get the character you want, not to skip the grind. I refuse to pay either way.

But WTF were Starfield devs doing with their 400 million if the Chinese can make something so huge for 800 million, get whales to pay for it all and have it actually be good too? Does Call of Duty Black Ops really cost nearly that much to make?

Apparently Genshin Impact is second only to Monopoly Go in cost, the latter is pure marketing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

In 2025, the game surpassed $1 billion in marketing spending since its launch.[12] The game generated $5 billion by April 2025.[3]

What a sad state gaming is in, Monopoly Go makes considerably more money. There's always sloppier slop.

Genshin Impact

I loathed the aesthetics on sight. But then, maybe mission accomplished - I was told I have an abnormal personality profile.

Admittedly, almost none of these extremely well-dressed young people look like they can fight in their outfits, or do rock-climbing in heels... Form is clearly privileged over function.

It is very much a game for normies, you play as a pure-good hero. Sometimes the saccharineness of it all does get a bit over the top. But it is remarkable to think how far it can go into horror only for the artstyle to make it not-really-horror.

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