Lothic

On the other hand it's very easy to focus on the only badge out of perhaps (at this point) 1200+ accounted for in the game so far that is awarded via non-deterministic whimsical means.

I would argue the "concept" behind Bug Hunter should have never been applied to a badge. The Devs should have been smart enough to have come up with a unique "reward" that didn't rely on the badging system. I realize at this point the damage is done and the Devs will never rethink the situation, but that won't stop me from calling them out on it every chance I get if for no other reason but to remind them to never do something as shortsighted again.

This kind of thing might not be important to the average player. But because people like Beef_Cake are taking the time to work on a badge tracking website which has been effectively endorsed/supported by the Devs of the game for years it's probably a bit more important to him what the game files are named and making sure there are as few "errors" like this as possible.

Well it just seemed like the classic joke the South Park guys would pull.
They made too much out of MBC being "pointless" not to turn it around on us.

I don't know about all the anime references, but I know for a fact the third episode "relationship" between Cartman and Cthulhu was a direct ripoff of the 1952 Merrie Melodies cartoon "Feed The Kitty".

The show you are describing, with such a limited scope that they never address the "big picture" in any form or fashion, would probably only interest me for few episodes tops. I don't really need a "simulation" of a down in the trenches post-ZA reality TV show. I'd rather have something with a plot that would make me want to watch it past the initial "cool zombie shock" phase.

I don't need to know how the Zombie Apocalypse happened ASAP. But if it doesn't get worked into the show at some point then it's going to be the "elephant in the room" that can no longer be ignored.

How are the survivors going to ultimately deal with this ongoing, worldwide, slow-motion disaster of epic proportions if they don't know everything they can about the zombies that caused it? I think the idea of seeing how people react to a "Lord of the Flies" situation without sooner or later establishing how they got to be in that situation in the first place ruins the impact of the story that's trying to be told.

Obviously this story is coming from Rick's point of view of being "late to the party" as far as learning about the zombies. But we as an audience are going to have to be brought up to speed on them just like he's going to have to. If no one around him tells him what's going on how are we going to find out?

P.S. Shawn turned off the news cast because he, like the audience, had already lived through the entire zombie outbreak from beginning to end. He (and we) didn't need a recap. On the other hand we didn't get to see the beginning of this in this TV show so we, in effect, do need to see the equivalent of that "news cast" to know the full story. Apples and Oranges.

I don't require a second-by-second accounting of these events but yes, at some point, I would like to see it be made a bit more clear what the general timeframes were. When Rick starts to piece together what happened when he was in a coma (especially concerning his wife's and partner's apparently adulterous relationship) we, the audience, should get a better idea of what happened with the zombies in general.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm not assuming or wishing that 'Rick and Friends' are going to save the world from the zombies. I just want them to react to it as "realistically" as possible. Not talking about what happened with each other would be anything but realistic.

It's these kinds of "vague rumors" and "incomplete facts" about what's going on that's going to drive the plot of this story past the initial "zombie-shock" effect. What worries me is that this TV show is just going to (very oddly) try to avoid addressing this issue at all and be left with nowhere to go plot-wise.

Well if "magic" was the reason the Zombie Apocalypse happened in this story then I hope that is revealed at some point. I don't need Rick and gang to find the evil wizard who cast the zombie spell and kill him or anything like that. But just to know, as a viewer of the show, what caused it all would be satisfaction enough. *shrugs*

In this age of 24 hour news and global Internet there still would have been a period of time where everyone would be talking about the "weird things happening in [insert name of city here]" at least a few days before EVERYONE was dealing with those weird things in their backyards. This show has already established the vague idea that the zombie thing is a "disease" and diseases only spread so fast, even if they are airborne and kill people instantly.

I'm sorry but because this story is apparently assuming everyone has selective amnesia about what happened when civilization collapsed I fundamentally have a serious problem enjoying it. Hopefully this TV show will surprise me and become logical at some point.

Again, like I said, I doubt the characters of this show are ever going to be able to know every single detail about what happened. I'm STILL not asking for that.

But I also still don't buy the idea of civilization collapsing instantaneously either. The only way these people would not know ANYTHING about it is if it happened in the wink of an eye. That's a stupid impossibility unless you want to assume things changed via magic or maybe a time travel accident. Do we have any evidence of that in this show?

By all reasonable assumptions the Zombie Apocalypse had to have taken at least several days for things to go from "normal" to "all F'd up". Consider what we saw in the first episode: as Rick stumbled out of the hospital he saw a make-shift morgue where dozens of bodies had been laid out in the apparent chaos of the last few days. Just beyond the morgue he saw a military staging area with supplies and an army helicopter. Obviously there was a point as things were falling apart that the government tried to contain and handle the crisis.

So it's very safe to speculate that there was a period of time, even if that period only lasted a few days, where things were getting bad but there was still enough people and infrastructure around so that news about what was happening would have been available. Our characters might not ever know that "Scientist Smith spilled the super-zombie juice in a government lab 23.5 miles west of Denver, Colorado" but they would have certainly have heard that "Denver was one of the first major cities to fall to zombies".

Please consider the "realities" of what would happen in this situation.
People would have SOME clue as to what happened - and that's all I'm asking for from this show.

I think Lucas "handwaved" that mistake away by explaining that the Kessel Run requires a pilot to fly through an ever-changing maze of asteroids or blackholes or some-such. The idea is that Solo is boasting that he figured out a path through those hazards that took the least total DISTANCE to travel. Presumably since he was able to make the run traveling only 12 parsecs that it was a relatively QUICK run time-wise as well.

I know it still sounds silly, but I honestly think this is how that goof was explained after the fact.

Obviously I didn't make my point. Kenny's gruff voice is SUPPOSED to conceal his secret identity. I didn't say it actually SUCEEDED in doing that. That's half the joke right there.

The problem I'm having with the show is that they seem to be treating ALL of the human survivors as if they were in a coma and just woke up to find civilization gone. I can understand that's the way Rick is having to deal with what's going on because he literally did just wake up to it all. But all the other survivors supposedly actually lived through it and should know SOMETHING about what happened.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it took a full week for the zombies to spread everywhere as we see them in the show. With that it would seem reasonable that at least for the first day or two after it started there would have still been enough "civilization" in place for news to spread that something massive was going on somewhere. Cell phones and satellites would have still been functional for a while. Surely some of the survivors we see in this show would know SOMETHING about what happened and even have a general idea where it might have started.

I simply can't buy the premise that NO ONE knows ANYTHING about what happened. I'd expect Rick to be clueless, but everyone else? Please...

The problem is not "getting rid" of that plot device. The problem is that kind of plot device can't last forever without getting old and ineffective very quickly. It's like trying to make the shower scene in Psycho last for 2 solid hours - after a few minutes it'd lose its "shock value" and just become silly after a while.

Sure I don't mind them playing out the suspense of this "semi-clueless" zombie horror theme for a few more episodes. But if this show doesn't refocus itself into an evolving plot that gives the humans a "purpose" to move towards it's going to get fairly pointless fairly quickly.

Well technically speaking Tron really wasn't the main character of the original movie either. Flynn was the main character the story revolved around. Yes Tron was pivotal in defeating the MCP but he wouldn't have been able to do that without Flynn distracting the MCP in the final showdown.

I have a feeling the new movie will at least explain what happened to Tron and Yori but I don't really have a problem with them not playing big roles in new movie.

I guess it was a compromise between having "too much" content versus "not having enough". They had to err one way or the other so they went with the safer bet of making the arcs longer than you can typically finish without artificially slowing yourself down. It's not an optimal implementation, but it's a practical one. *shrugs*

I don't need to know precise details like "some government scientist in Area 52 dropped a vial of super-zombie juice and everyone became a zombie." No, I don't assume that any of our characters would ever know that.

But by the same token I think it would be incredibly odd if throughout the course of this show we NEVER see anyone talk about it amongst themselves. Surely the survivors would be curious about what happened. Surely some of them might decide they want to leave to go try to "find out" what happened. Don't you think they OUGHT to be slightly curious as to why civilization collapsed? Don't you think they'd be motivated to try to find something better even if that's a hopeless dream for them?

I actually like that this show is focused on a few people trying to survive instead of it being like some kind of cheesy global "Independence Day" type story. But if the question of "WTF happened?" doesn't get dealt with at least in some form or fashion this story is just going to seem ultimately pointless to me.

I really don't think I'm "setting the bar too high" for this. I realize none of the survivors are scientists or superheroes or anything like that. As I said I don't really care if they don't/can't "save the world" or even figure out everything about everything.

I just have to assume that at the very least the survivors would reveal some "working theories" as to what happened amongst themselves and/or maybe from time-to-time they'll stumble over bits and pieces of info or maybe another survivor who'll tell them what happened "over the next hill" so to speak.

I don't need this story to turn into some kind of global "War of the Worlds" kind of thing. I just think if they keep this small group of people in a perfect static bubble without any outside context at all it's going to quickly annoy me. Frankly if the original comic didn't provide that kind of context I hope that'll be a change the TV show makes to correct that oversight. *shrugs*

Actually Kenny is technically "disguising" his voice the same way Christian Bale does for Batman. Theoretically the other boys aren't suppose realize it's Kenny the same way Lois Lane isn't supposed to realize it's Superman when Clark Kent is wearing glasses. Remember that everyone on the show can understand Kenny's typical muffled voice as if it's completely clear to them - only the audience can't hear it very well. So when Kenny talks in that rough, low tone that's supposed to conceal his secret identity to the other boys, not us.

The irony of course is that Kenny's gruff "secret" superhero voice is much more understandable to the viewers of the show than his normal voice.

If the makers of this show were really funny they'd include a quick scene of a background zombie that looks like how Micheal Jackson looked in Thriller or some-such.

That earlier trailer must have been a Work In Progress or some-such. Still, it seems weird to publicly release something like that "half-baked" to begin with. You have to wonder why they'd bother to tease us with anything that could potentially make us think badly about the movie.

Oh well it's not that big of a deal - just a curious bit of trivia.
I guess we should just be glad the final product will apparently look pretty good.

This.

I have never let the backstory of the game affect the backstories of my characters. Sometimes I choose to incorporate more of the elements of the people or places in the Rogue Isles or Paragon City, but other times I "explain" my characters without any regard to what the game's narrative is.

As far as this Incarnate thing goes I'll probably apply it to the evolving backstories of some of my characters, but for other characters I probably won't bother to rationalize it at all. Bottomline do whatever you feel like doing. Don't let this new Incarnate system make you feel like you are "forced" to have to explain it.

So I'm wondering if all the European players are going to be merged onto NA servers (or even if the current European servers are simply added to the NA list) what will the fate of the Passport badge be. Will it still serve any purpose or will the Devs open it up to apply to any server transfer?

It'll be interesting to see what the Devs do with this.

I don't mind the idea that the Zombie Apocalypse in this show is just a pretense to present a "Lord of the Flies" type morality story. I don't need the humans to be constantly fighting zombies non-stop every minute of every episode. On the other hand I do expect this story to eventually start providing hints as to how/why the zombies happened in the first place. I don't need that revelation to be the main focus of the story, but I think it's important enough that if they keep dodging it I'm pretty sure I'll lose interest in this show pretty quickly. I don't even really need the human characters able to "solve" the zombie problem - it could very well be something the remaining human population will never be able to stop. But I still want to know why it happened to put the situation into its proper context.