TrueGentleman

Potentially, perhaps, but unlikely to be realized. The fragility of Japanese society - not only due to politics, but also because of its geographic instability (i.e. the Pacific Ring of Fire) - is only one of many major themes. Another is post-World War II Japan beginning to feel a sense of its own international power and the problems involved with that, a theme that certainly doesn't seem present in the Americanized remake.

By increasing the ages of Tetsuo and Kaneda - they're just adolescents in the manga/anime - the Americanized version has completely missed out on the generational conflict that runs through its epic plot.

If Warner Bros. were serious about this remake, they'd throw out everything they'd produced so far and try to start fresh. Instead, this mediocre project is all about recovering whatever development costs they can after pouring so much money into it.

You both express valid viewpoints, which, incidentally, are also under discussion in the Super Pack thread this-a-way. (I'm trying to stay positive here, I swear.)

We all know there are going to be a ton of homages to Battle Angel Alita's Doc Ido when this goes live...

Thanks for the insights and tips, Synapse.

Just in case there's the slight chance people have missed the 60+ page thread about the Super Pack from Pummit, here's the link before this one gets derailed.

The Gunslinger/Ginslinger costume issue is an ongoing problem all right. The devs certainly didn't pay sufficient attention to criticism during its beta, and the problem's flared up on the general forum now that it's live. The one bright spot, despite Zwillinger's 'table for later' comments, is that directly porting over several pieces from the male set to the female model has been demonstrated to work. And Noble Savage has said that the flexibility of the Paragon Market's piecemeal offerings allow for easier revision and one-offs than the old booster pack model. Hope springs eternal.

Same here - and you're far from alone these days. I've been, ahem, providing so much feedback lately that I jumped at the chance to share this good review for CoH Freedom.

Hey, I'm trying to reinforce positive behavior here! The devs have shown enough flexibility in the past due to player feedback that it's worthwhile to encourage more. Besides, the last thing we want is the "you'll get nothing and like it" attitude that some MMORPG studios have.

The latter surely? The changes to the CoT revamped art after player feedback recently are the kind of thing we'd like to see more of.

There's nothing wrong with Shakespeare in modern dress if the updated setting has an interesting concept behind it and the production commits to it. Or, for that matter, someone could relocate A Tale of Two Cities to Berlin and Moscow during the Russian Revolution or Gone with the Wind to the English Civil War. To succeed with such a project, though, different yet appropriate analogs would have to be devised for the new setting. Even if the transplanted adaptation were sufficiently creative, the loss of much of the original subtext would be inevitable.

Right now, we're not seeing any such effort being put into the Akira adaptation. Jaume Collet-Serra's apparently working with the same playbook that Warner Bros. has been using with such little result on this interminable project. They're merely trading on the (deservedly high) reputation of Otomo's manga/anime while making perfunctory efforts to make it as blandly acceptable to a mainstream audience as possible.

After reading a leaked earlier draft of the adaptation's screenplay, I'm pretty pessimistic. The most significant new development is that the budget's been slashed, which doesn't suggest Neo-Manhattan will look anywhere near as impressive as Neo-Tokyo.

While Caucasian recasting is an issue in a lot of Hollywood live-action adaptations of anime/manga, this Akira movie goes further by unimaginatively moving the setting to kinda-future New York City. It's neither preserving the original material nor reworking it into a science fiction epic of its own. This is like, say, a French film company remaking Watchmen except transferring it from 80s Manhattan to contemporary Paris.

And Miss Kitty was someone Matt Dillon "has to visit every once in a while" in Gunsmoke (ahem). There aren't too many archetypal roles for women in oaters, and the devs clearly haven't gone the Annie Oakley/Calamity Jane route with this costume pack.

Zwillinger confirmed this in the gunslinger thread:

The ultra-pale Kristen Stewart has been tipped for the role of Ky opposite Garret Hedlund's pasty Kaneda and Helena Bonham Carter's upper-class English Lady Miyako.

In short,

Although my Paragon Points appear to have shown up early, my attempt to make a purchase on the Market crashed my machine - an OSX issue that's been around since the Freedom beta - so I've opened a ticket. As anyone can see from my persistent posts in this thread and others, I'm not the type to give up in frustration about anything. Here's hoping support will be, well, supportive.

Well done, little man - that's the closest thing to a laugh I've gotten out of this thread so far. You'll need more than just Spice Girls-grade feminism if you want to be truly provocative, though.

Considering I've been arguing for the expansion of costume options for the female models, not restrictions, I have no idea what you're talking about. On the other hand, it's interesting that you're more interested in arguing more with the male posters in this thread than the female ones are saying much the same thing.

Again, you're not reading my posts or the others on this thread very closely or carefully. Nobody's been calling on a ban on any kind of clothing, only parity, particularly when the new costume set is so obviously mislabelled and CoH already has a surfeit of corsets, as people already complained about in previous threads.

How about you come right out and say what you think these "true colors" are? You tried to question the example of a ridiculous outfit for the Invisble Woman that Marvel had of course published in the 90s? You're throwing scare quotes around "whorrific" when you evidently haven't even bothered to follow the link to which it refers, i.e. the ludicrous new redesign of Harley Quinn's costume.

I wouldn't presume to speak on behalf of all the women I've gamed with about how they want or don't want their characters to appear. I will say that I've noticed my own female avatars get treated noticeably differently depending on merely how tight their costumes are (it's creepy).

Perhaps I'm being merely self-interested, but I'd like a game that appeals as widely as possible and doesn't alienate a significant portion of its potential playerbase. The limitations in options that Techbot has amply illustrated and that have been complained about for a long time now aren't promoting that.

Care to back up your anecdata with some facts, figures, names, and numbers?

Plenty of women on these forums have been perfectly clear early on in this thread about how they'd like some variety in their costume options and/or how they'd prefer less revealing pieces. Their opinions are more solid than any claims to a "different kind of male bias", silent majorities, and the like, and they're there for everyone to read.

You think these issues aren't available in reprints these days? For decades, the Invisible Woman wore the same jumpsuit outfit as Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch, then someone thought she needed "modernizing" late in the day. And as I said previously, fan feedback resulted in that redesign's retirement.

Passionate and well articulated opinions can shape the tastes of the broader community, hence the importance of this forum and the attention the devs try to pay to it. And good word of mouth is more valuable than most advertising campaigns.

Some will of course defend the most "whorrific" outfits to their dying breaths, at least on comics bulletin boards, but that's a truly vocal minority.

See #6 on this list of Worst 90s Superhero Redesigns. Here's another from the same era.

Well, some artist thought it was a good idea, and someone higher up approved it (much like what happened with this "Old West harlot" costume), but fortunately, the fans' negative reactions were taken into account, and it was revised (as we're hoping will happen here).

But sells to whom? And in what quantities? Even as contemporary superhero movies appeal to a broader box office, the dwindling readership for mainstream superhero comics is contracting more and more into a stereotype fanboy demographic.

And Sue Storm? Even she has to wear a "cleavage window" outfit for formal occasions these days.



The other fact to keep in mind is that the population of video gamers is gradually achieving parity between men and women. It's now about 60/40, having once been overwhelmingly male. Moreover, women make up a significant percentage of the dedicated MMORPG playerbase in general. Paragon Studios would be only shooting itself in the foot with a six gun if its costume offerings only alienated such a sizable and growing part of the CoH community.

One of the selling points of the Paragon Market, as Noble Savage pointed out, was that it was much more flexible about adjusting and expanding existing costume themes than the old Super Booster series. If the Magic Pack can't be revised, for whatever reason, then the art department can create a heavy jacket for the female model that can serve in the place of the Baron jacket. If the Barbarian Costume Set is untouchable, then David or Cheryl can devise fantasy leather armor pieces for females to complement it. Etc., etc,. etc.

Plenty of players would be happy to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to these complaints about the lack of equivalent female costume pieces, but at present, we don't even have that option.

Why so modest when the review provides so many enticing pull quotes? What about "How free-to-play gaming should be done, in a superhero MMO that’s yet to be beaten for fun" or "one of the most generous free-to-play games ever"?

Congratulations on the good press. Here's hoping it leads to more VIPers.

If we complain, I mean, give feedback, it's only because we want CoH to be better still. The devs' receptiveness to our input separates this game from so many other MMORPGs.

Yet variety for variety's sake runs the risk of breaking thematic coherence. As has been pointed out here, this costume set is titled "Gunslinger", not "Male Gunslinger and Chippy". "Wild West" would have been more accurate advertising, for those who want to re-create Deadwood (minus Calamity Jane).

This is very encouraging. We look forward to seeing how the new sets reflect this policy.

This is a small but welcome improvement. Thanks for being receptive to feedback.