/vr/ - Retro Games

A retarded meme that needs to die.

Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more~

>>8347160
limitations meeting creativity
devs who wanted to make their game playable and replayable for months to come
devs who put extra features and bonuses in purely because it would be fun, not because of any precedent or expectation to do so
passion and effort
love

>>8347160
Not being constrained by the rules of capitalism - letting criativity, authenticity and passion rule over trendies and easy profit. Old companies generally have more soul because they were small and not ruled by multi-billionaire corpos. You could release a game in the nineties with just 5 or 6 people (or even less). Doom was made that way.

You can find soulful games today but it's a lot rarer. The majority are on the indie side but even there you have to search a bit to avoid the derivative shit.

>>8347160
This is soul

https://youtu.be/RMttEWdVj7k

What you played as a child

>>8347160
nostalgia for what you played as a kid... is what i'd like to say but majora's pretty soulful and i didn't play that til that since i was a mid teen. it really is just a meme word though like if ya actually like the game's looks ya oughta be able to express it with more than one word.

The soul is a rational being actualizing its essence into the material and corporeal body in order to be a fully human being. Since the truth can only exist in an incorporeal substance that is alive, and is inseparably connected with it as with its subject, this incorporeal substance, i.e. the soul, must everlastingly live. In view of the fact that only living substances can reason and the soul is living. Therefore, the soul must be necessarily an incorporeal substance in order to do reason. Thus, the soul is immortal.

>>8347160
Passion and vision. If you don't get it I'm afraid you have the 'tism.

>>8347349
soulful videogames are en expression of a person's soul unfiltered by jew restriction

>>8347160
Don't ask /vr/

>>8347349
Based. I like Mario though

>>8347170
>>8347347
Wrong. Lurk more newfags.

>>8347165
>>8347338
>>8347347
Lurk more.

>>8347429
idk i've been lurkin for a while and this whole soul thing seems to be relatively new. back then ya know people could explain what they liked about video games.

>>8347429
no u

>>8347160
A gay meme for /v/ermin newfags

>>8347374
This is the problem. One person's soul is another person's soulless. That sentence alone makes me want to choke.
PSU seemed like a cash grab to a lot of PSO fans, even though a lot of people seem to think it still had a lot of heart. Soul is a really meaningless term

>>8347443
It's so that they don't have to explain their opinion or feel like someone can challenge it. People who come in from /v/ feel so threatened by someone else having a different opinion that they feel like they have to guard it by saying "it's too hard to explain"

Soul is the interplay between divergency, diversity, and difficulty. It's what makes a game feel "fresh" even after multiple playthroughs. Majora's Mask has good soul but ironically doesn't have as much as its predecessor. This is why people call it soul. Because it's the closest term that we have to define "actual longevity." No I will not be explaining what makes OoT have more soul than MM. You either are a real Zelda fan or you're not.

>>8347160
That which makes us human.

Passion.

>>8347170
Take your radaway..

If you have to ask, then you ain't got it.

>>8347374
>cartoon girls for you to masturbate to
>soul

>>8347160
MM_Artwork.png

>>8347160

>>8347160
Soul = Everything new is bad and remakes are the spawn of satans bunghole.

Soul is what reminds you of your childhood.

The new games you trash as having "no soul" will eventually be called "peak soul" by the new generation of kids growing up with them. As a matter of fact the crap you grew up with was the stuff that last generation saw as cheap garbage.

>>8347983
pretty funny, I won’t lie

>>8348072
You don't get what Soul means anon.

Left = Treasure, made mostly quality games (from 1993 to 2000)

Right = Trashure, made mostly garbage (from 2001 to present)

>>8347180
This.
There are modern indie games that can still pull it off like Hollow Knight, Freedom Planet, Terraria, Stardew Valley, hell, even Eastward has more soul than your average AAA game or 1st party Nintendo game does nowadays.

>>8347160
It's a few things. First, there needs to be a level of detail that can only really be achieved by a team that's genuinely passionate about the game they're making. Everything from the environments down to the idle animations for the characters/enemies will have a lot of personality and will tell you something about the characters and the world they inhabit. The PS1 Spyro trilogy is a great example of this.

Second, there'll generally be content that a player might not necessarily see in an ordinary playthrough. A soulful game will be filled with secrets and side objectives, to the point where seeing the end credits might mean you've only seen half of what the game has to offer.

Third, some of the dev team's personality will shine through. Think about Gran Turismo and how clear it is that the guy at the helm really loves cars, or how Doom wears its influences (heavy metal, action movies, DnD, horror) on its sleeve. A game with "soul" will reflect the team that made it in a way that's extremely difficult to achieve when you've got a team of a few hundred people and several focus groups between the game's development and the shelves.

>>8347368
This is the tl;dr version. It's seriously just another word for creative vision.

>>8347160
pretty much soul is all the timeless qualities of a game. so if i sat down and made the graphics for a game, i'd ask myself what looks good even past whatever year it is, rather than what's sexy right now.

>>8347208
>Not being constrained by the rules of capitalism - letting criativity,
the fuck

>>8348325
What sucks about how its used is that so often, people just assume how the devs did things. There are tons of games that had hard work put into them but were just moneygrabs that got lucky. There are tons of games that have the teams working their asses off, that ended up feeling rushed and messy, or even just plain shit.
Also annoying since it's again one of those things that can be argued, but isn't told like it is. People say Resident Evil on PS1 had more soul, but some say the remake is more soulful. There's arguments for either, but that leads me to complaint 3: nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about by grouping things into just soul or soulless. How would someone being recommended one over the other even react? Words like atmosphere or vision are abundant and capture the same gist of what you're saying while being more specific about what you mean.
If someone says Gran Turismo has no soul, you've got easy bait because you have no idea why they say that, and it gives the replies tons of ways to imagine what they thought was wrong. Saying "I hate Gran Turismo because it was the big push towards sim car gameplay" or some shit makes it easier to argue or understand. Just an example by the way, I don't have many opinions on GT on either side.

>>8348424
>the fuck
He is right. There's nothing more soulless than big corporations. If you try to make a game on an AAA studio your job will be nothing more than lifeless drone work stuck on a crunch routine and without any creative input. And if you are on a higher hiearchy you will need to deal with publishers and all the messy bureaucracy. Old developers had a lot more freedom because the industry was smaller and less lucrative than now, which resulted in passion, criativity and soulfulness.

>>8348424
He is right. There's nothing more soulless than big corporations. If you try to make a game on an AAA studio your job will be nothing more than lifeless drone work stuck on a crunch routine and without any creative input. And if you are on a higher hiearchy you will need to deal with publishers and all the messy bureaucracy. Old developers had a lot more freedom because the industry was smaller and less lucrative than now, which resulted in passion, creativity and soulfulness.

>>8348424
>the fuck
He is right. There's nothing more soulless than big corporations. If you try to make a game on an AAA studio your job will be nothing more than lifeless drone work stuck on a crunch routine and without any creative input. And if you are on a higher hiearchy you will need to deal with publishers and all the messy bureaucracy. Old developers had a lot more freedom because the industry was smaller and less lucrative than now, which resulted in passion, creativity and soulfulness.

>>8348691
Hmm, Interesting.

>>8348691
I think he just meant the spelling. :/
not
>"Dude, your propaganda is showing! "

>>8348260
Spyro is such a beautiful game

The games you call "soulful" now were called trash by /v/ in 2008, because you played it as a kid and they didn't.

>>8349864
Lurk more anon.

>>8349864
Shit opinion.

>>8349864

>>8349864
>Majora's Mask
>SM64
>PS1 Spyro
>Gen 2 Pokemon
>Doom
Yes anon, you were very clearly on /v/ in 2008, when all of those games were trashed constantly. Fucking faggot.

>>8347160
It's when you can tell creators put their heart and soul into their product but it's not black and white.

>>8347663
But that's like saying the word 'good' isn't a real thing because a game can be shit to someone else.

>>8350540
You have a good point anon

>>8348159
HOLY FUCKING SOUL

>>8347983
pokemon is a goldmine for the soul vs souless meme because they created the pokemon company, the anime show runner retired, the series changed its artstyle, they fired the anime voice actors, and so on pretty much overnight during gen 3 when pokemania ended.

>>8351610
here's a classic

>>8347368
Normal people often don't care about soul.

>>8347160
A value tending towards the dreamlike that can be quantified as a combination of art direction, design, atmosphere, setting, aesthetic, narrative, and overall design philosophy but all of which amounts to an ephemeral quality more than the sum of its parts.

>>8351610
>>8351616
even as an 8 year old i hated gen 3 (yes im a zoomer), wanted nothing to do with it, didn't buy any of the cards and didnt watch the show
i wonder how many other kids were turned off by the drop in quality, I didn't even know other people felt the same way as I did but it must have been a big loss for them if many people disliked it

I did really like fire red and leaf green though, they were great remakes despite everything being more standardised, I still play them nowadays

>>8347160
baby dont hurt me
dont hurt me
no more

>>8347160
Something original and fun enough to replay again more than a few times

>>8351626
Are they even alive?

>>8347160
Soul is a feeling of "yeah that's neat" while soulless is a feeling of "fuck I could have done a better job than that".

I don't understand why so many people on this website feel offended and insulted by the soul vs soulless debate. It's like npcs getting offended by the npc meme. You're just revealing yourself as soulless by getting upset at the soulless term. Anyone with soul can recognize soul without having to formulate it. If you can't see it then you don't have it. If you don't have it then kys yourself.

>>8351970
Soulless

>>8347160
soul means a game made with an engine that isn't unity or nu unreal engine

>>8351610
>>8351616

I've seen the "soul" label applied to every game up to X/Y. The last soulful Pokemon game is the one you grew up playing.

>>8351610
>>8351616

I've seen the "soul" label applied to every game up to X/Y. And when the kids who played the Gen 7 and 8 games grow up and start posting on 4chan, they'll call them soulful too.

>>8352309

See: https://archive.nyafuu.org/vp/search/text/soul%20-silver/

>>8347180

>>8347160
It's a meme this board invented, usually means an art style that has personality instead of a generic looking one

>>8347983
Left is soulless, right has soul

>>8347443
>people could explain
Clearly YOU can't though. I will explain why I know this.
Any good informal discussion involves a mix of high-level terms and details. You start out talking in general terms and then get more specific based on what the people involved are interested in.
You go the opposite direction. You see the term soul and instead of getting more specific, you get LESS specific. You start whining about the meta, because that's easier and requires less thought, but lets you stroke your own ego.
>>8347663
>Soul is a really meaningless term
No, it's really not. It's a general term with some subtle implications that you fail to grasp.

>>8352542
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-game-sizes-got-so-huge-and-why-theyll-get-even-bigger/

The only game that ever had a 50gb "patch" was fallout 76, and Bethesda is the gold standard for both overblown AAA trash and idiot devs. Agree that game filesizes are absurd, and devs could do some things to address parts of it, but when every AAA game has to have 4k cutscenes, full voice acting for numerous characters, and massive textures, what exactly do you expect game file sizes to do? Unless you have some references to how this should be accomplished, you should quit posting nonsense.

A buzzword to try and make nostalgia sound like a more legitimate reason to like a game. Used by people who feel they need to defend their like/dislike of a game on the internet and don't feel comfortable saying "I like it" and want something that sounds more legitimate without really meaning anything.

>>8352597
>Edgelord parroting the same bs
Read the thread.

>>8347160
>What is "soul"?
It's a euphemism for "nostalgia".

>>8352597
Some people may use the term as a way of describing nostalgia. But the word have more meaning than that.

>>8352616
It's an attempt to reframe nostalgia as something more, hence another word. But it's actually just nostalgia.

>>8352624
you're actually just retarded.
Explain to me how the right is better than the left in this pic: >>8352568
And I will explain to everyone else why your taste is terrible.

>>8352624
Not at all. I can identify games with and without soul regardless of being part of my childhood. Actually, it's even easier to see that when you don't have nostalgia attached to it. Of course, soul is a subjective matter as well as a game being "good" or fun, but that doesn't mean it's not a relevant term.

>>8348691
This.

>>8352597
well you're right about it bein nostalgia but i don't think that's a bad reason to like somethin. i mean if you're explainin to others why ya find it good sure probably don't say nostalgia lol but ya know.

>>8347429
Been here since '07. Soul is a recent meme faggot.

>>8347160
You posted it.

>>8352548
Sorry you're extremely gay and a Chinese mindslave.

>>8352571
>Unless you have some references to how this should be accomplished, you should quit posting nonsense.
They should stop adding 4k cutscenes

>>8353019
Wrong. Nostalgia and soul are different things. If you are using it to describe the first you didn't got the idea.

>>8351616
>Unfezant
>Overdesigned and nonsensical
It's just a female pheasant with a cartoonish crest.

>>8352609
Your are dumb af

>>8347160
Visible proof of design decisions that were made to make the game good rather than just make it sell more

>>8348168
bad bait, Treasure's always had soul

Soul: Something made with profit at most as an afterthought. The primary goal is to create something beautiful, with the hope that people will be able to enjoy and appreciate your effort.

>>8352626
Right has more information

>>8356363
>No view of the map and all tiles providing resources for the city. This is critical city-related information that apparently must be found somewhere else.
>No visualization of food and gold clearly depicting maintenance and profit.
>No visualization of the proportion of population allocated to working, farming, and rebellion
>No listing of city enchantments*
>No city classification (Village/Capital/etc.)
And that's strictly missing information. We wont get into the specific UI features or the bland color palette.
There are 4 pieces information in the remake not present in the old.
+ Your Gold/Mana/Food totals. This is a minor, almost trivial improvement. This mundane information is easily available, in plenty of other places.
+ Towns listing. This is pointless to include here, especially when there's only 4 per page in a game where you can easily have 10-20 cities.
+ Taxes and Unrest. This is a reasonable enhancement to the city page.
+ Build queue. The original did not have a build queue feature, this is new.

And so you want to know what "Soul" means? Soul is hand-crafting that UI to be as perfectly suited to the game as possible given the limitations of the time. Soul is making the hard choices about what information doesn't make the cut for the city screen, but going above and beyond to include the small 'live' map view. Soul is when the game doesn't have a build queue because they were too busy adding awesome spells.

Soulless is copy/pasting a bunch of generic UI plugins that show unimportant information in a normalized and sometimes downright inconvenient format, and implementing a mundane build queue automation feature instead of the live minimap.

>>8356971
>city enchantments*
* Presumably, the city in the image doesn't have any enchantments on it. So it's possible that this information would be available on an overlay or something if it were necessary. (But maybe not, the game is not out yet)

>>8357384
The best thing about this image is that I don't know if it's ironic or not

>>8357397
u must really like the color brown if youre this confused

>>8354562
Is that really a doormat? And is that pattern really a spider web? I am not so sure.

I agree left has more soul though.

>>8356295
10/10 definition
This is why Dwarf Fortress is my favorite game.
So much soul it stinks!

>>8348159
imagine if that area below Mario's position was deep enough to swim in the water. Might have been comfy

>>8347160
Soul to me captures a feel for life relatable to the consumer. This changes as I get older.
To me, the most soul I've seen in a game recently is Eastward. Before that, Crosscode.
Also, I don't think a game has to have soul to be great or even near perfect.

>>8348267
Indie games are the games with the most soul because you can actually tell there was effort made. Cuphead fucking oozes soul

>>8347160
"Soul" is when millennials rebrand existing words in their desperate quest for identity. Such is the fate of identityless conformists.

>>8361051
>i am an individual

>>8347170
Incredible. As soon as I read the thread, the same song popped up on my mind. Coincidence.