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Azaar last won the day on March 11 2019
Azaar had the most liked content!
About Azaar
- Birthday 08/11/1975
Profile Information
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Gender
Male
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Location
North Carolina
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Interests
Guyver, D&D, reading, video games, bunch of others
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How did you find us?
Came over from the Warrior Guyver website, which I've been a member of since 2003.
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Guyver 1
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Talk about your console wars. I confess, I'd decided most of two months ago that I was going to make the leap to Xbox Series X and leave PlayStation behind -- mostly because I actually have some friends who still play Destiny 2, as well as some other factors. But now? 11am tomorrow morning can't come fast enough.
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It's official: additional story DLC with three new characters. I'll let you see for yourself.
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I'm actually intrigued by it, myself. Problem is, we're gonna have to wait another year before we can see it, because it got pushed back to 2021 thanks to this COVID-19 pandemic.
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The times in which we live, am I right? The more I've found myself (mostly) sitting around, the more I've felt that my own rewrites need to happen. With X-Day occurring three years earlier than originally estimated when I started writing my take on the story of Gabe Kelso, it meant things would have to be different. So... after several years of banging my head against the wall and being rather writer's-blocked, my own re-writes have officially begun (in fact, began last night). Some highlights: Inception: It's going to be, in many respects, a brand-new retelling of Gabe's origin story. I'm actually starting things off a little more than five months before the events of X-Day -- March 5, 2003, which lines up with the end of where Sully's new timeline sets the events of Guyver 2: Dark Hero. From there (as well as consolidating all of the "origin story" into a single, cohesive whole and making what necessary changes are needed as well as expanding and trying to describe things more), I'll be jumping forward some five months to the day following X-Day, which is where the original story began. There will be some changes there as well, particularly in how Gabe reunites with Cori and finally gets to meet Sean for the first time. To get an idea of how expansive Inception may become: I've spent just over a page for the new introduction, and am already into page 3 of the document -- what I covered in half a page or so of the original version of Gabe's origin now takes up a full page and then some. So all told, it's an easy prediction that Inception will be somewhat longer than the original version (which itself barely made it to page 14 in the LibreOffice doc. Preparations (Part I): Most of this will likely remain relatively intact, though with X-Day being moved back in the current timeline, I have three years worth of material to try and add to the mix. Not entirely sure yet what all I'm going to add, aside from more interactions with Cori and Sean, and some more with Dr. Drake and Lacey Hamilton. Preparations (Part II): This one never got posted, but was actually completed, I swear (may have been my fault -- my email to Sully may have gotten lost, or didn't attach the document properly or something -- doesn't really matter now, though). Even so, it's gonna be getting some re-writes as well before I submit it to Sully to get posted. I'd wanted to rewrite aspects of it anyway, because I'm a perfectionist and didn't like parts of what I'd written, so this gives me the chance to do so. From there, I have the rough beginnings of Part III in the works (and even it's a rewrite, based off some changes I'd already made while rewriting parts of Part II), so I'll likely find myself back at that brick wall I've been beating my head against. But by then, I think I've figured a way around it, depending on how all these changes go and all. In short: no, I haven't forgotten about Gabe, nor have I given up on him. Like Sully and Matt and the others, RL has hit me too. Right now, at least, I have the free time to try and take another stab at the story, and see about molding it a bit more to keep in line with what Sully, Matt, and everyone else has already established.
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I've enjoyed the franchise as a whole, even when the movies have been somewhat lackluster, but my favorites will always be the original and T2. That said, I want to have faith in this movie because a) James Cameron is involved again, which is something that can't be said for any other Terminator movie past T2, and b) Tim Miller did a pretty bang-up job with Deadpool, so I'm actually optimistic (which is better than I can say for Star Wars, thanks to how badly Disney has mangled the sequel trilogy thus far). As to the former, I have two answers; one is the straight answer, the second is my theory. 1) I'm guessing mystery that has yet to be revealed. 2) The theory: let's assume for a moment that Dark Fate is set in present-day. That's going on 22 years past the events of Judgment Day as both Reese and the T-800 have described them. Since it's safe to also assume that John Connor was born in 1985, that would mean he's 34 years old at this point. Now, there's one of two possibilities here: either John is in hiding and preparing for Judgment Day and what comes afterwards... or time has changed and John Connor is no longer the target. After all, Sarah does say that the reason she's helping is that "she was once just like her". My guess is the latter, that Connor isn't the target. But there's still plenty of questions left to ask, like... why is there an aged T-800 in present-day that Sarah leads Dani and Grace to? The original T-800 was scrapped in 1984 after killing Reese. The second T-800 willingly melted himself down to slag in molten metal, along with the remaining parts of the original T-800 from the first movie, at the end of T2. So where does this aged T-800 come from? And has time jumped forward in the future as well, given that present-day means there's only a decade between a potential (much belated) Judgment Day and 2029 when Kyle Reese originally followed the first T-800 back to 1984 and the human Resistance under John Connor had effectively "won" the war against Skynet. Hopefully future trailers will give us a little more to go on -- I imagine we'll get another trailer in a month or thereabouts, and then a final trailer sometime in September (since Nov 1 is the release date for Dark Fate) -- but I don't want too much information. Movies tend to have a bad habit of letting too much slip.
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Ehh, I was never a fan of Fujin, but then again, MK4 was definitely my least favorite MK game of the Midway/arcade era. Given what I've seen of MK11 (yes, I went ahead and got it, along with the extra bonus stuff), there's still a part of me holding out hope that Mileena will make a comeback. But today, they released the new gameplay reveal:
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You know, it's stuff like this that makes me interested more and more in MK lore...
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Newest titles to look forward to this year (for me), in no particular order: 1) The Outer Worlds (getting it on console, because screw that PC exclusivity junk) 2) Cyberpunk 2077 3) Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 -- FINALLY, a sequel to one of my favorite PC games of all time. And it'll be available on Xbox One and PS4 as well as PC.
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In my personal headcanon, Guyver: Dark Hero takes place parallel to the manga
Azaar replied to Maze247365's topic in Guyver
Interestingly enough, Guyver (Mutronics) and Guyver 2: Dark Hero are prequels, at least in the Warrior Guyver universe. Sean bonded with his unit a year or more before Chronos discovered the "original" three units in Japan. As for the rest of the post -- there's no denying that Mutronics is bad, I won't even try to defend that. Sully, however, has said before that he wants to rewrite the first movie because of all the wacky crap that went on for the WG universe. So at least there's that. And, speaking for myself, there's actually one character from Mutronics that I have planned on using for my Stellar Warrior Guyver stuff that I'm (slowly) writing for the site. Regarding Guyver: Dark Hero specifically -- I think the main reason why Sean's Guyver unit doesn't look to be as powerful as Sho is demonstrated to be over the course of the anime/manga is budgetary consideration. Mutronics had a paltry $3,000,000 budget; Dark Hero was under a third of that, at $900,000. Between that and the state of special effects from the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, it's little wonder that it looks less than extraordinary. Terminator 2 in 1992 was an outlier in many respects, not the least of which is because James Cameron knew how to push the envelope. I will say, however, that I really wish that whoever has the movie rights to The Guyver will open it up to give someone another shot at it.- 1 reply
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Not entirely sure if I'll get it at launch, but I have watched several of the character reveal trailers. Johnny Cage's fatality is pure hilarity -- I mean, most of his stuff was funny (like the Ninja Mime reference, or having help from "stunt doubles" wearing previous Johnny Cage costumes. But the fatality is just hilarious to me.
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I've not played in a while, myself, but I have it on both PS4 and XB1. Never played it on PC. The console versions were both Ultimate Evil Edition with Reaper of Souls, and I bought the Necromancer DLC for both as well. Demon Hunter and Necromancer are my two favorites, but like Matt said, there's plenty of good builds out there for all the classes. One of these days, I'll get it all together for a Crusader and go all Captain America shield-slinging all over the place -- have most of that build on XB1, but need to get it going on PS4. I've not done seasons yet, even though they're available, but a lot of that has been because there's been so much demand on my time, whether with RL or with other games. But D3 / Skyrim / Fallout 4 are all games that I want to get back into. Destiny 2 Is still eating up some of my time, at least.
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For my part, I thought Solo was better than most claimed -- definitely better than Force Awakens or The Last Jedi. And @Matt Bellamy hit the nail on the head in regards to why I didn't like it: the characters. Specifically, in my case, the new characters. From the beginning, Poe came across as a poor man's attempt to blend Han and Wedge Antilles. He has some moments where the characterization tries to be interesting, but by and large the performance comes across as uninspired. The Last Jedi only made things worse, with having him lead a mutiny of sorts. It just felt jarring at best. Next up: Finn. For an ex-First Order stormtrooper, he's surprisingly rogue-ish, and I don't mean that in a good way. Throughout Force Awakens and most of The Last Jedi, I didn't care for him -- he was all about saving his own skin, and to hell with anyone else. Now yeah, that's a lot like Han during A New Hope, but taking most of two movies before he finally has a moment where he's willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good -- only to be metaphorically screwed out of it by Rose (who spent most of the entire movie complaining about how he was only looking out for himself and didn't care, only to then turn around and keep him from having what I felt was his first heroic moment)… ugh. And the fact that Finn spends part of two movies playing around with a lightsaber when he has no business touching one, let alone actively wielding it... I can only eyeroll so many times. That said, Finn's still at the best place right now of the three characters I'm outlining for this, but this is a low bar I'm setting. And then... there's Rey. Let's be honest here: "The Last Jedi", in my mind, refers to Luke. It does not refer to Rey in any sense, and I'll get to why shortly. Rey was written to be Disney's version of Kyp Durron from the Expanded Universe. She's pretty much completely ignorant of The Force... and yet can Jedi mind-trick stormtroopers and do several other Force abilities without any semblance of training in Force Awakens alone, and can defeat (and injure) Kylo Ren with zero training with a lightsaber. She's the Mary Sue of Mary Sues*, and The Last Jedi only highlights the problems with Rey as a Force-user all the more. While believing that there's still some good in Kylo Ren is noble, it's about the only noble thing Rey has going for her. The way she fights in both movies, she's far more of a Sith than she is as a Jedi -- every lightsaber duel she's been in, and for that matter, most every use of the Force that Rey has shown thus far, stems out of fear, anger and aggression. She's closer to being the embodiment of the Dark Side of the Force than to anything else, and I don't see how she could actually be seen as any sort of hero by the end of Episode IX. I'll leave out the other nitpicks about how Leia's doing effectively the exact same thing as Rey during The Last Jedi when she does her Force Flight in space to save herself when she should have been dead, or how Luke was worthy of taking over as the replacement for Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street and all that. A lot of the problems come down to the directors and their narrative "vision", and everything I've seen so far tells me that J.J. Abrams should never have left television, and Rian Johnson having creative control over a trilogy of his own making after the craptastic job he did in The Last Jedi is a bad idea. But in the end, I think Disney has to shoulder the blame as well. There's no mistaking the fact that buying out Lucasfilm in 2012 was exactly what most people feared it to be: the ultimate cash-grab. They're about to do the same thing again with acquiring Fox -- the only difference is that they can at least try to integrate the X-Men and Fantastic Four back into the MCU. But it's clear that Disney never had a long-term plan for the Star Wars franchise other than "lets make six movies in the next 7-8 years and recoup our financial losses" -- if they thought Star Wars could be another MCU-like springboard, they've done a lot to cripple themselves in that regard. And let's not forget the waffling back-and-forth about how they publicly said they weren't using any of Lucas's planned material for the sequel trilogy, and yet have tried convincing the public in the wake of The Last Jedi how they actually were using some of Lucas's material after all (which I think was a backhanded attempt at throwing shade at Lucas after how critical he was of Disney's plans, in part because of his own claims that Disney had no plan to use any of what he developed for the sequel trilogy). If there is a silver lining to all of the missteps that have been made since Disney bought the franchise out, it is this: they've managed to make the prequels look so much better than anything they've done. And I say this as someone who actually does enjoy the prequels, in spite of their flaws. But aside from Rogue One and Solo... I haven't been able to enjoy the sequel trilogy in the slightest, and I don't have faith in Disney (and I certainly have no faith in J.J. Abrams or Rian Johnson) to be able to make Episode IX watchable. * I do want to note, I'm not against strong female protagonists in the slightest. I only have issues when it becomes blatantly obvious how much of a special snowflake that Rey was written to be. I'll also note, more generally, that I don't have any issue with the actors/actresses playing Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, etc. -- their writing is what fans are (rightfully) up in arms about... but that doesn't give those same fans the right to bully/harass any of the actors/actresses for portraying the role they were given. If the fans want to take issue with the characterization, they should be aiming those crosshairs at Disney, J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson and the writers for the screenplays for both Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
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To reply: Matt: I won't deny that what Marvel is doing works -- I'd be an idiot to deny it. I just wish that Marvel would try to step out of their comfort zone a little more, but that's just me -- they have done so, to be fair, when they opted for Guardians of the Galaxy. I remember thinking that Marvel had made their first misstep with GotG, and was very pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong when I went to see it after several of my friends said it was excellent. My hope for DC, going forward, is that Geoff Johns will get more hands-on with things -- like Feige, Johns is a fan of DC. For crying out loud, Johns is the reason DC's recovering (on the comic-book front) from the travesty that was the New 52. I want to see him be more involved. Hell, I want to see Kevin Smith do a DC movie -- as much fun as his episodes of The Flash have been, I want to see that translated to the big screen, because he's also a fan. Salkafar: I liked the brightening of the colors -- that, perhaps, has been one of my biggest gripes of the DCEU. The costumes have been really nice -- I absolutely love Cavill's Superman costume. I just hated seeing how Snyder intentionally went "dark" with the palette. The CGI... yeah, some of it left much to be desired, no arguments there. My problem with Steppenwolf was more that I think WB reached too far by trying to use the New Gods -- they do have an interesting mythology, to be sure, but I liken it to trying to match the coming Avengers: Infinity War with Thanos, without having the leadup with Loki or Ultron as villains. I wasn't exactly a fan of Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, but I would have rather had seen the Justice League oppose Luthor's Injustice League (that they hint at with Lex and Deathstroke in post-credits) to be a start, then something like the Hyperclan or White Martians for the second movie, while potentially giving the New Gods a movie of their own and let it serve as a lead-in to a future Justice League movie. As for Aquaman... I dunno, I actually liked Jason Momoa, and I'm looking forward to the movie in November. The fact that Amber Heard is co-starring and we'll get to see more of her as Mera has absolutely nothing to do with the desire to watch the movie... okay, Amber Heard is hot. Still! As for introducing Flash/Cyborg/Aquaman in Justice League... yeah, I'm with you there. I think DC rushed Justice League in that regard, like Matt alluded to with how WB/DC is trying to copy some aspects of the Marvel formula, and yet trying to deviate from it at the same time.
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Speaking for myself, I actually enjoyed Justice League pretty well. Is it as good as Marvel? Not really, but there are two factors that are worth keeping in mind: 1) The DCEU is effectively a decade behind Marvel, and so it's little wonder that Warner Bros. feels the need to try and rush things along in an attempt to catch up. 2) Everyone keeps comparing it to Marvel and making Marvel out to be gods. The second factor, I think, is what bothers me the most. Yes, Marvel did good with Iron Man, the first couple of Captain America movies and such. The thing I've started seeing, though, is that Disney/Marvel is afraid to change anything up -- we're seeing the exact same formula for GotG Vol. 2 and Black Panther that we saw in Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger; ten years, no change to the formula. And honestly, I don't see that changing any time soon, particularly on Disney's part -- as badly as they've mangled Star Wars (Rogue One being the only decent movie of the three so far, and I think Solo isn't going to be very good either) because they've tried to change everything up to make it theirs, I don't see them taking that risk in tandem with Marvel. And yet, I think that may ultimately prove to be Marvel's undoing. But as long as the "critics" keep humping Marvel's leg and trashing anything that isn't Marvel or Marvel-related, I don't see the comparisons ending any time soon. Now, to be fair, the DCEU hasn't wow'ed either. I think Man of Steel was rather fun, but at the same time it was a darker take than fans wanted, and BvS was even worse in that regard, particularly with the intent of turning it from being a Superman sequel to being the backdoor intro to Justice League. I can also agree that Wonder Woman was too much like Captain America: The First Avenger -- that was the one thing I wasn't wild about when it came to the movie when it leaked that the time setting was WWI, in that even choosing a different war, there were still too many similarities to Cap; even so, I still enjoyed it rather well. I even rather liked Suicide Squad, and Jared Leto's Joker was better than I expected (mostly because I hated the whole tattoo'ed look they did with him). I still enjoy the movies as a whole, but Snyder does not need to be involved going forward. Knowing that his take on Watchmen was divisive, and barely making it 15 minutes into 300 before I walked away and tuned it out... he's good with visuals, but he's crap as a director.
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If I remember Correctly, Sean had a nightmare (which was really the Utah Relic trying to commune with the Guyver unit Sean was bonded to, just with Sean resisting because of his issues with the unit and how out of control he felt), and it triggered a mini-quake that opened a fissure in the main dig site cave. Mary was one of the two college kids who subsequently discovered the fissure and the outer hull of the now-revealed Utah Relic, and brought it to the attention of Marcus Edwards and Arlen Crane.