Similar to the 1997 point-n-click Blade Runner game. The rights to all the aspects of that movie were such a mess that the developers decided not to use any footage or audio from the game because they honestly couldn’t figure out who owned what, and made it follow a new main character which was an obvious “Not-Deckard” who was chasing replicants in a similar but ever so changed variation on the plot of the movie.

That’s why I called it “16ish”. It is probably taking some liberties to improve the graphics that wouldn’t have been available in the 90s, but it is trying get those nostalgia neurons firing. Point is, the aesthetic is intentionally not photo realistic, so missing out on Arnold’s face isn’t the biggest problem in the world.

The headline seems a bit overly snarky and dismissive of a small studio dealing with the kind of licensing problems that just come with big properties and image rights to expensive actors. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in a game.

It sounds like without the image rights, there won’t be any closeup cutscenes of Arnold’s face, but given that the game play is a 16ish bit throwback aesthetic, it actually doesn’t seem as distracting as it sounds.

I mean, this looks fine to me:

Maybe they aren’t allowed to do an accurate Arnie voice impression, but if all the character audio is crunched up to feel more retro, that might not be a problem either.

I really enjoyed it as an XCOM combat-ish game that felt like there was work done to make it feel like it belongs in the Gears Of War universe. It’s not infinitely replayable because the campaign has mandatory side-missions that are generated from a limited template and begin to feel stale once you’ve seen all the templates, and by the endgame you have so many special abilities unlocked in your squad that it kind of drifts away from any semblance of feeling like combat tactics and into a puzzle game about min-maxing abilities to combo chain them together (this opinion might read a little oddly but if you’ve played enough turnbased tactical games you notice many game riding this line, with some going extreme one way or the other). It is worth a sale price though if you need a turn based combat fix.

The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn’t like it. That wasn’t helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).

I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.

Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.

Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.

I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.

Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.

You don’t have any problems with it cycling? I’ve heard really big cans on tilt barrel handguns can cause problems with the weight of the can interfering with barrel movement.

What’s the can model? Do you like it?

A paintball filled with capsaicin or something similar. Technically many of the guns are sold purpose made as pepper ball launchers, but they are literally rebranded .68 cal paintball guns and compatible with commercial paintball gun parts.

I see two in the photo. Along with what I presume is a 37mm break open launcher.

Yes, they are repurposed to fire pepperballs.

The last Black Ops I cared about was 2. I could almost feel the developers of that one screaming that they wanted to break out of the COD mold. It actually had a lot of cool, if underbaked ideas. There were the sidemissions where you commanded an NPC squad ala Brothers In Arms, there were the pre-mission loadouts where after beating a mission set in the past you could go back and load up with future guns, there were multiple endings driven by choices in the missions.

There was a lot of stuff going on in that game which if it had been given a longer development cycle than the COD treadmill, and more freedom to stray from COD mainstays could have been something interesting. All of the above features could have really been pushed and refined beyond the small implimentation they ended up as. BO2 also tied the setting back to the cold war era roots, which makes it far more interesting that the cutout metal angular girder future design that is just the most generic looking thing ever. Call Of Duty Advanced Warfare was forgotten for a reason and it’s disappointing that Black Ops ended up eating all its aesthetics.

None of this matter of course, since no matter how many story trailers they release or how much people like me talk about what could make single player good, in the end the series is kept alive by tweaked out multiplayer addicts so I suppose it is all just a waste of time to think about.

I don’t support using it as a basis to shove politics into everything, I was just following that this is a common trope of people who do, which leans on semantics while ignoring the spirit of people not wanting everything to be a political debate.

For such people, there’s no way to word a rule ironclad enough, and you simply have to make judgement calls at some point.

Since “everything is politics” it seems impossible to ever word a rule is a way that an obnoxious wannabe rules lawyer won’t argue, but the plain intent of the rule seems clear enough. Enforcement will normalize the tone, and if a post is removed and the poster reacts will outsized outrage, in my observation, it was probably because they were emotionally invested in the politics of the post.

objective

MEDIA APPRECIATION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, GOOD NIGHT!

People are giving answers to your specific hypothetical, but on a higher level, the answer is simple. The government likes having more money. Once a tax is in place, it becomes the new normal. It can be like pulling teeth to make a government roll back a tax. Groups in my local area have tried numerous times to roll back a specific tax where a government spokesperson has even said the tax is no longer fulfilling the original purpose, but removing the tax would now affect the overall budget. That has become the reason they refuse to remove it, and because neither party cares much about removing it, there’s no political leverage by the voters who care about it.

The OP is asking about using portions of copy written works. Therefore if those works were used or not wouldn’t be at issue. What would be issue is if the use is fair use. Which again, goes back to the balancing test which would be decided in court if the rights holder pursues it.

From what I have gathered of the Lemmy zeitgeist, intellectual property doesn’t exist except if AI uses it.

you can in some situations argue that the way you infringed on their copyright should be allowed

That would be an argument made in court, pursuant to the balancing test. You would be arguing that the use wasn’t actually infringement. Thats how fair use is determined.

People can give you their best guesses, but without a court case and a ruling it is impossible to say what the answer will be with iron certainty.

My guess, for US law, would be based of the four factor balancing test used in determining fair use. The four factors are the nature of the use, the nature of the copyrighted material, the amount of the copyrighted material used, and the effect of the use on the value of the material.

If you are using the copyrighted works for a non-profit purpose that helps, if you are remixing them that helps, if you are using works that are not violating right of first publishing that helps.

Importantly copyright does not have to be enforced by the holder for them to retain full legal protection. What that means is even if the holder somehow became aware (which honestly is pretty doubtful for such a small individual use), they can simply choose not to pursue the matter. The resources that could go into pursuing a copyright case for such a use are probably going to be a lot more than any gain they’d get. Big IP holders have endless waves of people using their material, and their resources are better spent going after uses that are clearly trying to make or making a profit or distributing their copyrighted works.

The TLDR is yeah sure, it’s probably fine. If you somehow got the evil eye on you, in practical reality the first thing you’d get would be a C&D letter anyway.

Edit: Here is the relevant text in 17 U.S. Code § 107