| flashfire926 said: |
Haha, sorry. Saying that Dragon Quest "saved" the middle of the direct was definitely exaggeration on my part. I think at this point I've just talked about this direct so much and why I loved it, that I'm looking for new ways to describe it, which leads to some reaching. Full transparency, I edited that part of my comment out because I don't agree with it, lol. Bad description.
I appreciate different viewpoints and I can understand where you're coming from as well. I just don't agree personally. I think that what this direct really punctuated for me was that the circumstances surrounding a direct really affect it's quality. If this was just every game we had to look forward to this year, I would be disappointed. But knowing that we still have Luigi's Mansion 3, Animal Crossing, and Pokemon Generation 8 coming ... I feel like the direct was more than amazing. Especially because the "surprises" people were expecting was stuff like "Mario Maker Port", "Boxboy Collection", "Xenoblade Chronicles X Port", "Skyward Sword HD". Compared to all that, the announcements were way more inspired. Quite frankly, one of the big three games releasing this year could be delayed, and I wouldn't even be that disappointed. That's how much this direct added to the lineup.
It's kind of hard to talk about the "middle" of the direct because really I think it's easier to categorize is at four quarters. Otherwise if you divide it into three sections than Dragon Quest would moreso be in the beginning than in the middle. I don't want to get too much into semantics because it's not really worth anyones time but assuming the 2nd and 3rd quarter of the direct are the "middle" then there were quite a lot of cool moments:
-Dragon Quest Overview + Features Trailer
-Starlink DLC
-Rune Factory Series Continuation
-Oninaki
-Fire Emblem Trailer
-Yoshi Trailer + Demo
-Daemon X Machina Demo
To explain this a bit further, usually during the middle of a direct the entire pace is completely ruined and any momentum is lost. That wasn't the case, for the most part it was pretty consistently cool announcements. Granted, not everything interested me, but what's important is that a lot of the bigger stuff at the very least did interest me. And I don't think that's the case with a lot of the directs, they always tend to fall apart in the middle. For example I said that Fire Emblem looks "underwhelming" but it was still a vital part of the direct, and it's still a big title that I'm interested in. That's already more than I can say about a lot of segments in other directs. There's basically no way I'm not buying that game, unless the next few trailers just completely shit the bed. Another example is Oninaki. Knowing the reputation of Tokyo RPG Factory, I can't say for sure that I will go out and buy the game. But at the very least, it was an interesting title that didn't feel out of place with the rest of the content shown in the direct. Some stuff like the Rune Factory 5 announcement is just cool to see considering that franchise could have potentially died, and I've wanted to get into it for a long time but never wanted to go back to the 3DS. I'm not saying that I'll go out and buy every title this Direct had, but at least most of them felt worthy of showing, interesting to watch, and thematically consistent with what the direct was trying to communicate.
Also, Yoshi's best trailer was in this direct, far and away. It's hilarious too because it was just a small portion of the direct and we're only a month from launch. But they showed off so much cool stuff just in that one little snippet: Over 180 collectable costumes, MECH YOSHI, SHOOTING DOWN PLANES YOSHI, RACING CARS THUG LIFE YOSHI. Made the game seem way better than before.
The most questionable part of this direct was the last set of Nintendo Switch headlines. That's where they showed off Dead By Daylight, Assassin's Creed 3 Remastered, and Unravel 2. All those games looked pretty ugly. Grid Autosports was kind of a mixed-bag, in some areas it looked cool in others it kind of looked too limited considering it's a Switch title. But even that set of headlines had Deltarune, Hellblade, Daemon X Machina demo, and the Final Fantasy game releases.
To sum it all up, I think this direct really benefited from it's pacing and the rate of great reveals and showcases. I can understand it wasn't the best for everyone though, but it was my favorite. If we keep getting directs which are as consistently interesting as this one throughout then yeah, this could easily be dethroned. I just think that this kind of momentum isn't usual that common, it's kind of what's missing in these I feel.
Nintendo basically announced an entire years' worth of Wii U exclusives, or hell even post-2014 3DS exclusives, as a bonus for a year which was already looking super stacked.
Also, Astral Chain is now the game I'm most looking forward to, after DMC5.
Last edited by AngryLittleAlchemist - on 17 February 2019
