What is "soul"? What makes something soulful and what makes something soulless?

Soul is a dumb meme term that was originally pushed super fucking hard on Yea Forums by viral marketers and shills to discredit people criticizing the Spyro remakes by boiled down all their arguments to a shitty buzzword and simplifying it to the point where it looked like people were asking for graphical limitations instead of the good artistic choices born from said limitations.
Every single time you propagate the SOUL/SOULLESS meme or the BOOMER/ZOOMER meme, you're falling for a fucking marketing scheme.

Fun sure but the artstyle and music is definitely bland and soulless. Compare NSMBU to DK Tropical Freeze for example.

A perceivable effort made within a limited or restricted medium, often bolstered by the viewer's imagination. Modern 3D often looks dull or characterless by comparison simply because the confines of the previous hardware and software demanded more minute details not only from the artists but from your own mind as well. In high definition, this factor is lost and what you see is what you get. This is exacerbated by the fact that many 3D models don't have enough charm or character attached to their design or have low quality animations, so although they have finally been "brought to life" from an old game or a concept design, they feel hollow or plastic.

Man, this makes me realise that 2D Pokémon still had a lot of potential.

The Super Nintendo can output better graphics than this, but it looks a bit advanced for the NES. The closest thing I can think of is the Wonderswan Color.

There's too much going on with this artstyle. It's difficult to look at, desu.

t. zoomer

Did the designers put themselves into the creation of the game, or did they only treat it as a job? Is the game a realization of their creative drives and ideas made reality, or is it a product being designed to tic the necessary boxes because that's what fans/marketers expect to see? Is it something the devs happily pour more time into, or do they work overtime because if they don't they will get fired the second the game is done?

soul or soulless?

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A word with many meanings to the point that is becomes worthless to describe something with said word. It could be nostalgia. It could be effort. It could just be "I like this one better". People may as well say "good/bad" instead of "soul/soulless" with how little it actually describes anything. It's what people with small brains use to express their opinion, because they think it means something due to the fact that it's a trendier word than "good/bad".

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"Soul" is equal parts shaders, technological limitations, and nostalgia.
As long as a game looks vague enough for people to fill in the blanks with their own delusions, and dark enough to create a false sense of tone and grandeur, it has soul.

Soul: "I like it"
Soulful: game that I liked or played when I was a child
Soulless: everything else.

Soulless and artificial

Exactly this.

describes something that has a lot of work and effort put into it. but retards don't understand that and use it for things they like, while things they don't like are "soulless"

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Any game with that color pallet ?

wow looks like shit.

Pinnacle of soul.

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SOUL

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Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3, Soul Blazer, Terranigma, Cross Code, Lufia 2 and Hazelnut Bastille come to mind, there are obviously more out there.

>That white hand on your shoulder,
>white hand
>white

FUCKING TRIGGERED.

Soulless is a useless criticism of a game because it doesn't really determine the enjoyment someone would derive from it. It doesn't directly criticize the gameplay, story, aesthetics, music, etc. It's funny how everyone here says fun is invalid while at the same time thinking soul/soulless is any more sustantial. It's literally just a feeling you possess.

Soul = thing that I like and probably grew up with
Soulless = thing that I don't like and probably experienced as an adult, if I experienced it at all

>Kino vs. ????

donkey kong tropical freeze is unironically one of the most soulful games made in this decade

kinoless

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>What is "soul
Subjective is what it is. Also a bad meme.

oink

Soul overload.

Is it that same guy who made the Smash Bros Game Boy version with only 6 characters and decided to make one of them Vaporeon because he's a degenerate who is into watersports?

This fails to meet multiple gen 2 palette requirements
ur gay

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This. Peak soul would be passion projects like Dragons Crown, Hollow Knight, Metro etc. Antisoul would be churned out by the numbers games like Ubisoft open world sandbox game #352

Is there are Gen 2 version of this? Not saying I don't appreciate this work of art.

Boomer was actually a cross-board spamming retard.

I will if this thread survives long enough.

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Both of these are soulless, as they wear cheap kawaii clothing and pretend to do cute things for the entertainment of the degenerate watching the video.

>What is "soul"? What makes something soulful and what makes something soulless?
I'd say a passion project from devs who put in an unreasonable amount of love and detail in places you wouldn't expect that nonetheless show you that they cared deeply about their game and the world they wanted to create.

What I'm trying to say is, play Gravity Rush 2

You watched the video too, you know.

Based user.

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True. Something like Paper Mario 2 had so much soul that you felt the essence of something greater than fun while playing it.

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the left makes me want to puke

based, took the words right out of my mouth

that gengar is from gen 2

And the right one doesn't?
>lol guys look, le animes :)
I hate them, I hate everything and I hope the world fucking burns

>What is "soul"?
Memes
>What makes something soulful
Memes
>what makes something soulless?
Memes

Soul vs Soulless is just the same as OLD GAME GOOD NEW GAME BAD.

>is great! It's full of women!

What did he mean by this?

Soul = thing from my childhood
Soulless = modern thing

post more

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For (you)

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no, its actually just a tool for contrarians to shove their opinions around with. doesnt necessarily mean old/new

That he isn't a faggot like you.

Happy international women's day user

I'm not memeing when I saw there's a passion that emanates from certain games. You can feel the soul in games. It has to do with the developers

god the gen 1 sprites are so fucking awful

cringe

They really are.

not really, fuck off

Soul = pushing limitations for antiquated technology

Soulless = Emulating design choices of soul, but without the same limitations

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You would know, being an authority on the matter.

I love what I've played of this game but I'm way too casual to get through it

its fucking scary how we almost got the same art style for gen 2 instead of the KINO we got

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But the enemy design and general artstyle in the new dk games is completely soulless.

Soul is the nuance of personality in the game. It's the signs that show the game was a passion project for at least some of the members in the developer group.
>Hollow Knight
>Warband
Soulless is when it's obviously nothing but corporatist product put together by careerists based on what analysts say sells.
>Assassin's Creed
>Battlefield

soul/soulless is how women argue and Yea Forums is a bunch of bitches so its no coincidence that they use it to argue

It had sole

I know actual good pixel art is expensive and takes an eternity to make, but I wish Nintendo would make at least one new game with pretty pixel art, it doesn't need to be Metal Slug tier, just something litle more refined than OP's pic would be fine.

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Soul is attention to details, when you are on an underpowered hardware and your character is a 16x16 sprite, every pixel count

When you make shit on modern hardware there's no real reason to do that, therefore everything must be generic and marketable as possible

that women cause their sexuality to get what they want, but men cant compliment it

This is very true. It's why XBX is the only modern game with soul.

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Pokemon has been soulless since the beginning.

really wish this was playable

Soul is a sense of identity that comes from the right creative people coming together and making their own vision into a product. Soul is often lost when things are over focus tested or designed to appeal to a large majority of the audience.

Usually nostalgia, but also a sense that this particular game is not copying off the same cheat-sheet as other games. Skullgirls is an example, echoing off Western porn instead of Eastern anime.

Usually they're copying off a cheat-sheet that's too old or obscure for you to be familiar with, like any very Japanese game from your childhood. Or they're in unfamiliar waters and ran into technical limitations they don't know the common tricks to overcome, like most pixel art from the eighties.

Or they're imitating the above, like Cuphead.

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Zoomer 18 year old here what fucking Pokemon game is that, emerald?

It's the new "comfy". What makes this game from 8 years ago better than the one that just came out? Don't bother thinking of an actual point. Just say the new one lacks soul.

Soul is the love that a team pours into a game.

Limitations breed creativity and soul, even if self-imposed. Fact.

No wonder she has huge fucking tits. Gengar feeds her all day.

Given the ridiculous number and combination of Pokemon onscreen it's probably not from anything.

>there’s none such thing as identit! All games are the same!

You serious? Awww that sucks.

Zoomer 19 year old here, how retarded are you that you can't immediately tell its fan art?

>Soul
Something you like
>Soulless
Something you don't like

Pretty easy.

flick

Shit has or hasn't soul since forever, what the fuck are you talking about? The "soul" conspiracy nut right here gents.

Flick

soulless NPC detected

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OLD GOOD
NEW BAD

Why was this game so gorgeous

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You're not 19. That or you have brothers who played that old shit. I don't know anything before the 3ds Xbox or ps3. That old pixel art looks all the same to me bruh

'Soul' is effort. It comes from doing your best while not having the biggest budget or the fanciest tech. It comes from genuinely and sincerely from the bottom of your heart wanting to make something great that people can enjoy and will sell well.

Based retard

This guy put it best, basically what I came here to say.
The easiest way to describe it is to compare Final Fantasy 7, a labor of love whose devs were notoriously passionate about the project, to any Final Fantasy game released in the past decade, entries in a soulless corpse, reanimated and being kept "alive" for the sake of corporate interests.

you want pushing limitations of antiquated tech? well, here you go
youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

Based

Soul is my unironic answer.

Born in 1999 and my first pokemon was Sapphire you retard.
>I don't know anything before the 3ds Xbox or ps3. That old pixel art looks all the same to me bruh
I pray this is bait.

a subjective, but commonly shared feeling

What is the picture from, a fan game? If so, can you post a link to it?

Crystal is soul incarnate

R/B/Y is just genuinely hideous, for its time and now

soul means that someone gave a shit when making something, or that it comes from genuine intentions, or a labour of love
it's not strictly old versus new, but for a lot of cases that does tend to be the case

I actually think this looks quite nice.

SOUL2

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>What is "soul"?
a forced meme

based and saved

>First game was saphire a game that came out in 2003 wow I'm so special and retro gamer wow

Who gives a shit. Most of my gen only played the 3ds ones. Your an exception since you're a loser no life who wants "gamer cred" by playing old shit.

yup... that goes in my soul compilation

Too bad actually trying to play vanilla gen 2 is a hassle these days. It's slow as fuck, trainers have very mindless selections of pokemon, and the diversity of pokemon is terrible.

Reading this thread I notice many people remark on the passion of the developers being a vital component
I'd say most games are made out of passion, especially indie titles, as most of the time there's literally no other rational reason to do something as risky as game development. Not only that, a lot of cherished games were straight business with little passion behind them, and churned out in less than a year.
Even further, people usually only point to graphics and art when discussing soul, it's mostly a visual phenomenon.
I just think people use soul as an obfuscated way to judge games just on their art direction. If a game has a unique (or economical if it's old) art direction, it has "Soul" and therefore earns a bunch of unqualified positives aspects that make it your time.
tl;dr it's lookism for vidya hipsters

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make it *worth your time

Well said

453753857
Alright, I honestly wasn't sure if this was a falseflag or not so thanks for at least confirming it for me.
>I'd say most games are made out of passion
Not at all. Even a lot of beloved games were made with profit in mind above all. The thing though is so many people have a weird preconception that making something with profit in mind is somehow bad. People need money, no shit is it going to be a mian motivation, it doesn't mean creators have to sacrifice all freedom and creativity when making a title though.

You sound more like a retard who didn't even play games until you were well out of childhood. Red was my first game when it came out and I was only 5.

>Playing red at 5 years in 2006

Yeah your parents were poor because that's just sad.

of course indie games are gonna have passion. the problem is the bigger and closer to AAA a game is, the more money > passion.

i do agree with your later point though. its not just art style, its music and sound design. music creates nostalgia and atmosphere. atmosphere is soul, and atmosphere is composed of art style, sound design and music

shit tast

I'm a different user from that other guy you retard.

If you make only 200 dollars per month for slaving away at an indie game, you're not gonna be able to put much soul into it

Rather be poor than some retard super zoomer

>TAJIRI GOOD
>OHMORI AND MASUDA BAD

Stfu you lowlife boomers. Sword and Shield looks like the best Pokemon game to date.

I expect this will be posted on all future SOUL threads. Well done, user.

God that's pathetic.

Then stay out of the conversation next time fucking idiot.

The circlejerk in this thread is pathetic stop switching your IP your samefagging boomer.

>it's not me i swear
pathetic

Why can't the new pokemon games just be mega detailed sprites? Gamefreak clearly isn't capable of doing 3D well

Soul is what this image has

Schmino

Are these images what Gold and Silver looks like to boomers?

>What is "soul"?
>What makes something soulful and what makes something soulless?

Being able to tell someone enjoyed what they were doing, that they put their all into it because they wanted to make the best possible thing they could.

The easiest way to tell, for me, is how much artistry went into it. And no, I am not talking about art as in "too deep for u/emotional game play" west coast bullshit. Art as in:
>wow, that's nicely designed and not the bare minimum at all, someone with real talent made this

Basically something that doesn't look generated by an algorithm, or something that isn't the bare minimum to get cash. A good example would be Shovel Knight vs. Mighty No.9, both of which were trying to be 'the new megaman'. You don't even need to play both games to know which one pulled it off. Just watch a short clip on youtube of both and you'll know.

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This thread is such a dumpster fire. Over a hundred posts and no info on who made the pokemon fangame other than "that furry guy who's into watersports" wow that really narrows it down fuckwit. There must be only like 1 or 2 of those guys!!!

This. It's all a matter of subjectivity. One could describe something as having soul while discussing mechanics, while another speaks of artstyle, and so on. If someone is trying to tell you something is soulless and harping on your own ideas for what has 'soul' its nothing more than their opinion.

I don't see any soul there, too clustered, simple is better, is a mess, there's so much detail I can barely distinguish anything, pretty picture no doubt, as a game? Shit

op pic is amazing way better than sword and shield

is this like a fanmade mystery dungeon or something?

reverse search you absolutely massive brainlet

>what makes something soulless?
The person likes it.

Right did it for fun left did it for the meme and tries to be cuter but she is just cringe. Hate them both though cause that shitty meme was everywhere

With Pokémon you can tell just by looking at the box art.

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I just want to know what the fuck is going on in the bottom left

Remake played better, but crashed every two hours or so at release on PC.

The visual aspects of games, just happen to be the most easily identifiable, and the most easy to convey to others. You can point at visuals, and explain why they're good, and almost everyone gets it. But abstracts like gameplay are harder to explain. However, people do talk about those aspects as well. Maybe you haven't read into the discussion as far as you need, in order to see that.

Most games have soul by default. The lack of soul tends to stem from aspects about the game that were affected by laziness or greed.

Sorry you have no taste in games and can't recognize the classics. Go play fortnite nigger

Shuckle is powerswapping

Maybe that'd change drastically the series art atmosphere. I think that the pokemon series has a lack of freedom to offer to the player and a poor pokémon design, which is worst.

Exactly what I came to say. You know a game has soul when there are lots of details and care put into all areas of the game, especially in places that are hard to find. Or when there is a lot of depth to the game, and you still are discovering new things about it years down the line. You don't even have to think about if the game is good or not, you don't have to convince yourself. It's just good.

Being born in 1995 or below

Some people has to.

Yeah, the problem is also them just constantly shitting out a ton of new stuff each gen, which isn't sustainable.

But nice sprites would make the world feel bigger and more lived in. Guarantee this new game is gonna be boring shit.

When a game feels like a real person designed it by hand instead of an algorithm or something

NSMB is the epitome of "oh this is neat I like this" the first time you play. Then after you play it for a while, you lose interest, and don't really have a desire to play it or any of the other 500 NSMB games ever again.

Soul was around way before the spyro shit. It's also a term that's been used ever since criticizing art has been a thing.

I think it's just spritework, not a playable game unfortunately

Soul
youtube.com/watch?v=GCOBa91Hoz8

I'd say that Owlboy,Bastion & a (very) few other modern games are soulful.

"soul" is a made-up buzzword to represent the difficult-to-describe concept of selfish nostalgia. These old and defunct styles and and technologies are ingrained into your deeper consciousness because you were exposed to them during a period in your life when your brain was still developing. You literally formed an unbreakable mental attachment to those visuals, and are hardwired to form a bias against visuals your brain is unfamiliar with. It's quite literally blind nostalgia. There is no "soul" and "soulless". Only neural pathways you have and have not made permanent parts of who you are.

Exactly. It's a bit of a cringey example, but the idea is there. The right is more charming, her smiles feel more real, the dancing is better, etc.

That he is a healthy adult male, and not a low test shitposter

Definitely one of the most, if not, the most soulful game I've ever played.

Yeah that's right.

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>What is "soul"? What makes something soulful and what makes something soulless?

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This thread basically confirmed the fortnite soul threads in 2030

Soul is basically something that was done with passion and some quality in their work heavily reflects this and this quality can overshadow a lot of the cons other parts of the game has. Compare peak 2006/2007 Runescape to RS3

should have a cap of the actual game that was remade on the left instead of its sequel. Secret of Mana looks so much uglier than Seiken Densetsu 3, the obnoxious bright colors look like shit

I went over 4 year without knowing this existed. Why couldn't it have been forever? Now youtube is going to punish me by putting bad fan works in my recommendations.

>all the cynical faggots ITT that think soul isn't a legitimate term that can be used to describe a video game
You guys are actually retarded.

From soul to zero soul:
>You are exploring and, with no previous hint, you find a secret area where you can fish on the sand instead of water
>You find a skeleton with a fishing rod in the middle of the desert, when you use the fishing rod on that spot of sand, it allows you to fish on it instead of just canceling the action.
>A villager tells you she heard rumors about a fish that swims on sand near X area.
>As you upgrade your cooking and fishing skills, you will eventually need to hunt for a sand-fish to master it
>You hit the desert area, every area has 5 fishes types including one special one, the special fish of this area is an easy to find sand swimming fish
>The guards won't stop saying how you can acquire sand-fish by going to the desert oasis, even though the first time you heard it added "hunt for the sandfish" to your quest objectives
>Same as above, but its "Collect sandfish here" with a tracker on the map HUD
>Explore the new desert area in this exciting new DLC! Discover new exciting things like the camel mount, the cactus outfit and... oh! A fish out of water? Yes! You may hunt for the mysterious and unknown SandFish (tm) in the Givemacash Desert.
Got it?

soul: trendsetter

soulless: trend follower

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Turbografix 16?

Really great post

>his game had soul

you can't prove me wrong.

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Looks a lot better if you replace the god awful sprites

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STOP
Those are feels I didn't wake up today expecting

youtube.com/watch?v=HU13Lcj2-Fc

gen 6 and onwards is soulless

This is my definition of soul vs soulless.

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Had this been pokemon Golf and Silver it would have been amazing.

>>You are exploring and, with no previous hint, you find a secret area where you can fish on the sand instead of water
Sometimes having to put some effort before finding your reward is good.

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This is so misleading, it's crazy.

Here's a hack I've been working on that replaces the horrendous sprites but still used the Super Gameboy's palettes. The compressed and blown up backsprites are just terrible and needed to be removed.

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It seems like a simple idea for a romhack - adding small fixes for tedium and making trainers if not most encounters more difficult or fulfilling.

Why is that Gengar feeding her orange peels?

So soul is passion huh,i knew i was right!
OLD GOOD NEW BAD
Based.
Remasters,unlike remakes are usually supposed to not change a thing about the game besides graphics.

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>lvl 3 machoke
The fuck bro?

>OLD GOOD NEW BAD
the gen 1-4 pokemon games are objectively better than the new ones

Just for testing purposes. I swapped the light and dark colors on machoke's sprite so that the sgb palette would look better. He would have been pink with grey arm lines if I didn't do some mspaint edits.

It's an utterly meaningless and subjective term used by people who have no argument when attempting to defend their chosen piece of media.

Attention to details and focus on finetweaking instead of adding more and more stuff

It's like porn, you know when you see it.

Passion and a desire to be creative, the exact opposite of something created within a board room to maximize the most profit. That might sound abstract to a lot of people, but I wouldn't ever expect AAA western fags and tasteless zoomers to understand

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Literally Cyberpunk 2077 but Yea Forums still considers it as soulless. Why's that?

Unironically this

It's because everything she is doing and the way she looks, is fake as hell, not one single bit of actual person exists there it's all just rehearsed, false imagery.

Nice reading comprehension

>passion
>the feeling
>feels
>liking

There is no argument here folks.

I havent played the oldies (i cant play them) but I really like the new games
Im mainly talking about people who think shit like”Old graphis good on smb becase i remeber it being gooder than maro odyesys and its not becaus i had low expectations and was easiwy amazed as a kid!and maro odesy look bad!!!”

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Right
>soul
Left
>soulless

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The Travel Gates in DQ3 was not particularly fun. Though damn, that game has some real soul, the town layout is pretty nice and I love how you are given a lot of freedom without handholding.

>gen 2 gengar sprite
>french screenshot for Tri Attack
>says TM49 instead of CT49 like in the french versions (unless RB have TM but I'm almost sure they don't)

The Pokewalker was fucking soulful

>There
>Folks
>Argument

There's no point to this post

You can't make an objective argument from a subjective base.

It needs to be old to have soul.

Didn't care for it personally.

Wrong. Pokemon has a lot of soul despite being heavily copycat of Dragon Quest and Mother. Monster Rancher 2 and Digimon World 1 have soul despite existing to cash in on the Pokemon craze. Super Mario Land 2 has soul despite not being particularly innovative with gameplay. Spyro has soul despite following the 3D platformer trend.

He wasn't making a case for mentioning soul on it's own being an argument though, he was just explaining the definition to retards who think it's just a buzzword

Attention to detail, polish. You can tell right away when there's effort and dedication put into things, and when the game is just made with minimal effort.

>It's because everything she is doing and the way she looks, is fake as hell
But it's the same with the right. The difference is that the right makes different face expressions and not smile all the time, also she makes different dance moves, meanwhile, the left only smiles and makes pathetic moves by doing literally no effort to be more "unique".

This made me realize, spontaneity is important for something to have soul. I guess that is why little villages have very different feeling from some overly planned standardized neighborhood.

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So based on this thread, soul = bad graphics and flawed gameplay.

Take Metal Gear 2, you could shoot through papers and leave a hole, melt an ice cube with a laser pointer, etc. Behind the project there was people willing to experiment and giving their best to make the best game possible. To me that's soul

@453764213
Bait this stale, the very definition of a soulless post.

Soul is whatever vague, formless "good" you want it to be in hopes that people don't ask you to expound upon what you mean or defend yourself in any way. It's a catch-all term any person can morph to anything and therein has lost any meaning it may have once had due to people who think it's the cool thing to describe things as having soul or being soulless.

It's just another buzzword perpetuated by people who can only follow what they see others post on Yea Forums.

both are exactly the same except the right has shittier music and pointless forced dialogue that slows the game to a crawl

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>Soulless things can still be fun to play, but

You should be embarassed

You were given plenty of examples of what people consider a soulful game here, you clearly didn't read the thread and entered to shitpost.

Im going to post this everytime i see this shit webm, the left's dab is by far the worst shit i've ever seen. its like someone described a dab to her and that's all she had to go off of.

I was playing this NES RPG for the first time, I was born in the 90s so I never experienced it before and I only started to play the franchise in 2011, when I was 18.
Through the game, I had to actually think and remember hints from NPCs to discover where to go next and to avoid getting lost: Soul.
When I was fighting the final boss, I used an item that weakened him and this triggered the music to change from an oppressive battle theme to a heroic as fuck theme: soul.
When I finished the game every single NPC started to congratulate my party on what they had done, I went from city to city talking with 100 people and they all acknowledged what they had done: SOUL
Now in Skyrim, I remember saving the world, becoming the world eater, uniting the province, and when I went to the main city an NPC was like "Do you go to the cloud district very often? Oh what I am saying, of course you don't.": SOULESS
It's not anyone's fault old devs could do with kbs what new devs can't do with gbs

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A big part of Soul is how nostalgic the thing makes you feel
youtube.com/watch?v=2XjouKSkSeM
SOUL

Attached: kant soulless.png (897x153, 22K)

Have u ever used google reverse image search? Try it with these images, it leads nowhere

>It's an utterly meaningless and subjective term
>subjective
of course, all criticism of media is inherently subjective
>meaningless
literally the opposite, in fact, the problem with "SOUL / SOULLESS" is that it encapsulates far too much meaning in one word so as to be opaque. It needs to be further qualified, but it is anything but meaningless.

4K HD shit is still shit, polishing it won't make it something else. A simple blue sky in HD doesn't triumph over a detailed sky in low definition.

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> It's not photorealistic so it's bad

Attached: soulion.png (1020x800, 179K)

yahoo!

I would rather play an objectively shit game I enjoy than an objectively good game I don't like. The only thing important in a game is how it feels.

>her

Except many people come up with good examples of what is soulful and what is soulless, nobody seems to shy away from being asked why they think it has soul and are in fact quite excited to share their thoughts.

And notice how many different answers there were? CTRL+F "soul is" and see how many different meanings people ascribe to it. Not because it is, at a solid level, all of those things together, but because it is nebulous, meaningless bullshit.

Going by this thread, "soul is"
>"the feeling that someone, somewhere cared about what went into it"
> the nuance of personality in the game
>attention to details
> a sense of identity
>the love that a team pours into a game

It doesn't matter if they all share their thoughts. If you ask what a frequently used, highly popularized word means and 100 people give 95 different answers, that's a good indicator that word is a buzzword and devoid of all meaning.

>You must always push the limits!
>It doesn't matter if it costs billions to make and needs a team of thousands
>It doesn't matter if it makes niche gaming impossible!
>Everything must push for the limit of the latest hardware or else it's soulless

soul as fug

This. Except that you can feel the big corp money in RE2 so I won't agree you with that one.

Big corp money, dreams without passion.

>Fun
>Original or different enough from the competition in some way (looks, sounds, plays, innovates)
>You can see the work done on the product comes from the makers personal interest and love for the product, not from calculated "how to make money" excel sheets

Counterpoint: Architecture that pushes limits in often soulless in comparison to some random house some dude in his 50s built in central Europe. With video games it's the same, most cutting edge games pushing the limits are also soulless, see Crysis.

Attached: modern-building-design-200717-107-01-800x702.jpg (800x702, 153K)

>"the feeling that someone, somewhere cared about what went into it"
>the nuance of personality in the game
>a sense of identity
>the love that a team pours into a game

These are all the same thing, or close. I know you had to have 5 examples because just two would make you look retarded but how the fuck do you right "the feeling that someone, somewhere cared about what went into it" and "the love that a team pours into a game" and not realise how similar that is?

>It doesn't matter if they all share their thoughts. If you ask what a frequently used, highly popularized word means and 100 people give 95 different answers, that's a good indicator that word is a buzzword and devoid of all meaning.

Also, this would happen with every single word in the English language because everybody would word their definition in a different way.

Holy fuck that looks good. It's too bad it's just fanart.

>haha guys my game is so soulful im gonna try to start a thread with a different topic in what i think is a stealthy way to get people interested in my game hehee

>What is "soul"?
Something only white people and dogs have.

Yes, right is a less professional version of the left and therefore still has some of her personality left in.
The girl on the left has practiced so much that she won't make any expression that would make her face contort in the slightest bit unpleasant way that's not maximum cute at any given moment, so that means no actual expressions, the light is strong and washes away any shadows or hard lighting anything that could be considered a flaw, lathered in makeup, eyeliner goes beyond eyes to give a false sense of facial proportions, the smile completely lacks contribution from the eyes a clear sign of a fake smile, she's not enjoying what she's doing in the slightest.
All pure production, every single look, every "expression", every angle, every movement is practiced and planned.
When someone gives off a complete lack genuineness, it's highly off putting, that's her issue.
I don't think either one has "soul", but the left clearly is everything you could do wrong if one was going for soul.
The girl on the right did something stupid and silly for attention, the girl on the left is jumping on the bandwagon for attention while trying her hardest to remain hidden.

Attached: tik.jpg (963x592, 95K)

The left one is bad and something about the right creeps the fuck outta me - like the eyes are unnerving to me.

Except you just describe it, many adjectives have more than one aspect related to them, and soul is basically:
>Attention to detail
>Game with a strong, irreplaceable, identity
>Spontaniety instead of designed by control group and marketing team
It is not crazy for a word to mean all these things. The word "Wild" has a wider definition than this, and it's still a valid word to use to describe many things.

Right has a passion for cosplay and even though all her irl friends make fun of her for it she still does it for fun. Left probably got a patreon request to do it.

You're going to tell me that if you asked 100 people what the words "cat" "hug" or "smile" mean, you would get that many different definitions? Of course not, because those words have actual definitions, that are used in regular everyday speech and are listed in a dictionary. Grab an oxford or merriam webster dictionary and tell me how many meanings of "soul" are verbatim what was given in this thread. If you are reduced to arguing daaaaahhhh people use word different when it's pointed out that a word is nebulous enough to have multiple meanings, you really have no argument whatsoever.

I picked the first five from searching "soul is" on the page, as I described. Are you literally retarded, or just illiterate? I didn't "right" any of those, I copy pasted them from posters in here. Look for yourself. That's going without addressing that you intentionally ignored other parts of the post to make yourself look more credible. If you have to resort to ignoring things, that's when you already know you're a retard.

>But it's the same with the right.
are you retarded?

>right
original and creative(in the sense of inventing that movement)
doesnt follow anyone but just did it for fun, creating a meme
>left
soulless bitch who just wants to be famous and copies everything she sees, but doesnt have any skills or attention span whatsoever so she cant even copy basic dance moves without sperging out

left is the defintion of "mommy I want to be famous too!"

Soul is videogame Kintsugi

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couldn't have said it better myself

Why is contrast between fore and background overlooked so much these days?

Yes, it is broad and ill-defined. But because I said that people who use it are just following other people, retards have to get defensive about it and speak up. They don't like that people can have a different opinion from themselves. They can't stand being told the world doesn't all conform to their own personal views and have to blindly defend their retardation to feel validated on the internet.

All dogs go to heaven

>old game
soul
>new game
soulless

This is the real answer, prove me wrong

kino

>英語版
>ソール

努力したけど大元のほうがええよ。

Attached: pokemon-vc-3ds-aka-midori-pikachu-8.jpg (500x313, 74K)

You are the one who seems to be angry that people don't conform to your opinions. Why else would you be here? Why else would you oversimplify things and misrepresent them?
Pokemon Gen 2 has more soul than Gen 1, Sim City 2, 3 and 4 have more soul than Sim City 1.Dragon Quest 3 and 4 have more soul than Dragon Quest 2. Vice City has more soul than GTA3. Saints Row 2 has more soul than Saints Row. A link to the past has more soul than Zelda II. Super Mario Land 2 has more soul than Super Mario Land.

This.

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you're just a faggot

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>You're going to tell me that if you asked 100 people
Try asking them what is something Silly, Wild, Elegant, Casual, Fancy, Glamorous, Traditional, Courageous, Plain, Occult, Pitiful.
But of course you won't consider this, you will pick the most basic of verbs and nouns and think its equivalent to more complex adjectives. Most of the people who come to say "Its just old good new bad, lol" in these threads are cowards, once they receive replies they just go back to make a non-response "old good new bad, lol" answer and claim nobody who uses soul wants to discuss it.

That's why people responded angrily to my post, right? Because I'm the one who's mad? Makes plenty of sense to me.

The absolute state of zoomers. Stay retarded.

But it's all gen 1/2 stuff dude

Cat, dog and smile would have more concrete definitions than "soul" because those are actual physical objects and actions. It's just retarded of you to compare them. Instead, consider how people would define other abstract qualities, like "enjoyment," "stupidity" or "ignorance."
Or how about other video game qualities, because it's more logical to "soul" to these things than it is to a domesticated animal. Do you think "graphics," "story," "gameplay" would all get identical definitions? Are they in a dictionary? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean a game can't have graphics, story and gameplay. And people will be able to tell if there is good graphics, story or gameplay.
Just as they can play game and tell if there's "soul."

TL:DR Just because there isn't a concrete blanket definition that everybody agrees on, that doesn't mean "soul" doesn't exist and doesn't effect a game.

I also noticed how you didn't mention that 4/5 of the definitions agreed with each other.

Pokemon SOUL by gen:

2≥5>1>3>4>6>>>>POWER GAP>>

Yep

>lol u mad
Is this the best you can do? And compare the tone of the replies to your post to the replies.
Why is this such a personal matter for you user? Making these generic replies every thread makes you feel more interesting and smarter than "the average user" or is there something deeper to this for you?

>ほうがええよ。
>ええ
Is this some japanese meme or do you just suck at it?

you both are the reason this place sucks

soul = whatever I enjoy
soulless = whatever I don't enjoy

If you have to ask you'll never understand

>大元
Did you mean 大本? Never seen 大元 being used that way, since it can mean something completely different.
Go back to class, user.

>5
>the literal copypaste of gen 1 with routes that are just straight lines with set pieces tacked on
>higher than fucking 3 and 1

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When the makers behind them have soul.

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"soul" comes from boomers desperate to act like their old games are still good despite being surpassed in every way

Is that a monster, I see?

Soulless things:
>emulation
>piracy
>PC games
>f2p/mobile games
>movie games
>generic shooters and sports games

Because for a lot of Yea Forumsirgins soul just means nostalgia or "whatever I prefer".

lets be real, only furries make spritework that pretty

>graphics just means "whatever I think looks nice"

HGSS are the most soul-full remakes of any videogame in the past 15 years, fact.

I think the reason there's so much art posted in soul threads is because of the nature of Yea Forums. This is an imageboard, and it's simple enough to just post two pictures side by side than it is to create webms showing gameplay or writing posts that accurately capture the difference between two games.

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>gen 3
>half the game is featureless water routes
>removed day/night cycle

Soul = Dark Souls, Bloodborne

Soulless = Dark Souls 2 and 3

>PC games
Wrong.

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this is what nu-nu-Yea Forums looks like

gen 3 has far superior trainer ai than that of gen 1 and 2

the entire map had no loading transitions like gatehouses

the first gen with weather

the first gen with natures

firered and leafgreen fixed all of the broken things from gen 1 and perfected those games

RSE has the best and biggest post game of any pokemon game

but muh pointless day/night cycle

but muh tentacool buying repels is hard!

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>but muh pointless day/night cycle
Post is based until here. Pokemon benefits from day/night cycles.

It's not a fan game, it's just some fan art, there's no actuall game behind it

sorry bruh it's what came up first in my shitty windows10 IME and I actually meant to put it in kana only, fuck.

N5テストのために勉強することに戻るべき、できない様。

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Not true. Soul is best made when you're doing the best with what little you have.

I actually LOVED the gen 2 caves, despite the encounter spam. But caves aren't featureless like the enormous gen 3 water routes. It also doesn't help that gen 3 was on the GBA. That whole gen felt off.

Gen 2 was an empty cramped dead mess and they barely had enough room for kanto. That's why kanto is compressed and empty. RSE were absolutely massive games and there size would have probably needed to have been halved to fit in day/night back then.

outfitting your room was so dope

Going by this board made up definition, soul seems to be things just like your image. 2D trash not too detailed so you can fill the gaps with your own imagination, making it whatever you want. You think you share the same definition of "soul" with every person who likes shit like your image but in reality all of them connect the dots in whatever way they want, so when you start discussing how to implement this "soul" into games with more detailed graphics you will find that every person have vastly different ideas on how to do it.

Yep, there is no such thing such as excessive detail.

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Because it's usually correct to asume something it's going to be soulless when a corporation is behind it

There’s a distinguished difference between pushing the limits for the sake of tryin desperately to be unique and stand out and pushing the limits for the sake of being able to come as close as possible to your unattainable vision.

>IP counter didn't move
lol

Soul

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Poor showing, DJT-kun.

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What if my vision is not conveyed by something that is the latest and most advanced forms of art? Are all cartoonists soulless, because they choose to make simplistic drawings when they could make something similar to great paintings.

Are games that push the limits of RPG Maker soulful?
youtube.com/watch?v=BuWx7NPy2yQ

Not counting remakes, what would be modern soulful games?

RPG maker is soulless by definition.

Now if someone manages to make a great RPGmaker 3 game, then I'll be impressed.

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The problem is that by the time you are skillful enough to break the limits of RPG maker, you are skillful enough to make games outside of RPG maker.

That's the most soulless thing I've seen in a while

Soul is depth and care in artistry. Style consistent across the majority of the game's aesthetic.

Rune Factory 4

But the people criticizing the Spyro remakes were the ones using the term "soul" to describe the old games in contrast with the remakes, it wasn't the marketers you fucking retard

Why?

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cool man I admire your work

so fucking comfy holy shit

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day/night cycle with slowly moving clouds and night sky

That’s my point, old games weren’t good because they pushed boundaries, they were good because they pushed boundaries in order to make their vision a reality. If you can make your vision a reality without pushing technological limits, that’s great. Pushing limits when you don’t have to makes the game come out worse.

Yes, in conjuction with more specific arguments about the visual design and color choices. Then marketers started falseflagging by boiling it all down to SOUL VS SOULLESS.

Hollow knight was p soulful

Its supposed to have love, passion and artistic values in it, thats what soul means. But in the end is just a meme used by Yea Forums tards

Have some soul
youtube.com/watch?v=v4OiC_U5p9E

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youtu.be/wB8Nkum3QAY

^^

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Yes. Trying to make the best game possible with absolutely no guarantee that it won't be a waste of time and doing it with such limited tools is the literal recipe for soul. Those things are what breed games made with passion, because passion is the only thing that would make creating a game worthwhile with those conditions.

>soul
Something I like, something old, something pixelated/lowpoly
>soulless
Something I don't like, something new, something not pixelated/lowpoly

soul = top down view. vivid color palette, high contrast. catchy tunes.
souless= 3d third/first person view. brown and grey colors. synthesized music. press a button to perform anything.

What makes something soulful is memorable style and graphics along with careful attention to detail. It can look comfy but it doesn't have to (as in, it puts you at ease and so burns a pleasant memory of that in your mind due to the memorable style)

Im not a fag, but i agree.

She's autistic and sees into your soul with her special eyes.

>press a button to perform anything
The term you're looking for is "context specific actions"

FUK

That has as much soul as those f2p porn browser games
Or Farmville

Crystal Clear
Or do a randomizer/nuzlocke

>emulation
>piracy
But it's still the same game, sometimes with better performance

Like said, it's not down to visual artstyle. Music is huge in this too, story and character many times (doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be a well written story, mind you), even gameplay mechanics.
The best example of the latter I can think of is the disk mechanic in Monster Rancher, where you had to insert a CD into the Playstation while playing the game, and depending on its contents you would get a certain monster.

The areas in all 3 xenoblades are filled with soul in general, Monolith really has a knack for beautiful landscapes.

Attached: XB waterfall.png (1920x1080, 2.67M)

No, you idiot. That is like saying pixel art games have no soul because of all the shitty low effort pixel art games. The amount of detail, the variety of buildings, and the context of not being a microtransaction game, makes it soulful where some shitty browser game is not.

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this ruins games for me.
>press X to open door.
>press X to drink soda
>press X to gen into the car
>press X to insert battery into the radio
>press X to forge your sword, then press X to seathe it. press X to look at it. if somebody wants to buy it, press X to sell it. If you get challenged, press X to accept challenge.
>press X to drive wherever the minimap points you to go.
>press X to read email, and press X to answer it.

FUCK.

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shut the fuck up you stupid fucking liberal

Some of the tilework looks way too detailed. A modern console on a modern engine could handle it nicely, the older consoles would need to simplify the tilework.

Shame the gameplay sucks, and the story is cringe.

The same game without the soul you mean

a very good attempt at the argument, but is self defeating.
but at least it sort of points the way to understanding these types of people.
(In short, they are just biased.)

More/Source?

This is cool.

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You're delusional. That looks like garbage
The shitty fonts should've made it obvious

>PC games
Bet you're one of those sony fanboys shitting up Yea Forums

When i think souless the first thing that comes to mind is compass markers and quest updates by the second, nothing is intuitive anymore without the game telling you that you have done something or you now have something to do

Also, a lot of shooters are implementing this shitty wallhack mechanic that highlights enemies behind walls or objectives and i fucking hate it

Sony has only released like two soulful games in the past decade.
I'm talking purely objectively here

Im so fucking mad that the 3ds red and blue have no color option

Nah mate, this 2003 game is still the best looking RTS. No game has added as much detail to its buildings and paid so much attention to the architecture of its buildings.

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CP77 looks like it has soul behind it, I hope it's really the case.

>Rise of Nations

Based as all fuck

>Many different, meaningless things
>Posts a bunch of concepts that are tightly related and complement the same core concept

Everything that's not modern or what zoomers play.

u wot m8
I am the unfortunate owner of a Wonderswan color, and holy shit, it's way worse than even the original GB. It runs "games" at a silky smooth 2 FPS.

The fucking pinnacle of the series.

Soul = "i like this"
Soulless = "i dont like this"
Regardless the game is good or not

I unironically believe there is somethinv like soul in video games. Where I think the sweat spot lies is where you have a good art and unique art design mixed with a game not being in grasp of a big corporation who tries to make it as accessible as possible.

It's been almost a year now and NPCs and zoomers are STILL seething over not understanding what a soul is, amazing

>RTS
There's your problem
I'm not saying it's a bad game. But it's definitely soulless

>Across The Bog is now playing in your head

youtube.com/watch?v=RvC6kpdvS7k

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>this will never exist

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Why couldn't HGSS look like this?

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XII was FULL of passion and care.
Soulles has always and will always mean "game I don't like".

Aw shit motherfucker that's full soul right there.
Rise of Nations was such a gem.

Uhh, wonderswan games are 60FPS.
The WSC's problem is it uses a REALLY bad display technology from before the time of LCDs.
I used to own a Wonder Swan Crystal, which is a WSC with a new LCD screen. I modded it with a GBA SP front-light since the screen is reflective like the original GBA.
It's way better, but they're expensive and hard to find.

Modern shit like Bastion has tons of soul, explain that retard

monsters don't have souls.

>the entire map had no loading transitions like gatehouses
Gatehouses give a great feeling to the transition between zones.
>the first gen with weather
True
>the first gen with natures
True
>firered and leafgreen fixed all of the broken things from gen 1 and perfected those games
Mostly true
>RSE has the best and biggest post game of any pokemon game
What is Kanto in gen2?
>but muh pointless day/night cycle
Fuck off, this is just being contrarian.
>but muh tentacool buying repels is hard!
Eh maybe the water was a bit much but I agree people complain excessively about it, deep sea exploration was very cool too.

Soul= Great dedication to bring the most detailed content with the fewest resources available

Soulless= Cashgrab that tries to imitate soul throwing insurmountable amounts of money at it to get an end product far lower than the potential it had from the resources available for it.

soul = someone cared about making this
soulless = made purely for commercial purposes
how fucking hard can that be to understand

Where does the "soul" get removed exactly?

Soul = thing I like
Souless = thing I dont like

ftfy

>best looking RTS
That's WC3 or arguably AoE2

more like soulless silver

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Why is it soulless?

If VV had more time, it would've had the soul it deserves. Fuck Activision's investors, I hope VV drops out like Bungie did.

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Don't reply to zoomers, just imagine you had to grow up in the worst era of video games and be indoctrinated into liking soulless garbage. Of course they can't distinguish and call it "nostalgia".

Sorry champ we live in a capitalist society. Everything is part of the great, souless, corporate machine.

has the build of a man and a boyish face to boot. anyone attracted to this is a legit homosexual.

nobody understands what soul is. soul is what's missing from video games that the player projects into it. the reason that low resolution and pixelated games have "soul" is because there is enough vaguery in the presentation that the user can "fill in the blanks" with their own "spirit" (or can otherwise imbue personal qualities into their subjective experience).

the lack of "soul" in a game is typically due to designers and artists leaving no room for such personal association with the medium, which results in alienation in the player.

It's pointless arguing with a pirate, I won't even bother because you'll just deny it

LISA, Yume Nikki and there is a dev making a furry game in RPG maker that you can't tell it's RPG maker

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>I have no arguments but i'll pretend i had them and not share with you

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Soul means = Passion + Honesty.
This is why director films are so popular, why manga made by 1 artist are so prolific, you're not just connecting with the characters and stories, you're sharing an author's honest sentiments for his craft.
Good directors are able to get their message through even with the involvement of multiple people but this only works if they're honest about their work.

As far as the buildings go, I think RON's look better than AOE2, even if AOE2 still has a gorgeous style. RON's units look a bit worse, but have more variety depending on the region.

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Soul is when you can clearly tell the devs loved their project and put their blood sweat and tears into it. Contrary to popular to belief its not synonymous with "good".
I'd point to Sonic Adventure as a bad game with a lot of soul.

low poly shallow water is peak soul

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>its an emotion you fell
Well thats vague

men's stomachs don't look like that

Nice, I was just thinking of replaying this game some days ago.

it's not a man, moron, it's a teenage boy who is obviously low t.

Piratefags are infamous for moving goalposts
It'd suck to put in effort to get a reply that reads "well that doesn't count"

I find it cuter if it has a short flat later of water.

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You could just give me your argument and not be such a bitch about it

Speaking of him, I wish he'd update the animations of the older Rivals of Aether characters to be more in line with the newer ones.

Seems like a lot of hard work to accomplish what an introductory programming education would. Maintaining that is going to be hell.

you are literally describing hyperreality

Name a soulful game that you didn't like. Prove it isn't your own bias.

Posting wojack memes = soul
Posting 2D women = souless.

If you disagree with me you are both physically and mentally retarded.

*siiip*

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Banjo Kazooie.
Undertale.

my fucking nigga
where's my encarta cd

oh my fucking god i've wanted to play this so bad for years. but dont know how

Soul: Pokemon Gen 1-5
Soulless: Pokemon Gen 6-present

Donkey Kong Country, I tried it after beating Returns and while I recognize the game has a lot of care and passion behind it, I just can't force myself to play it

>5 is better than 6
>5 is better than 7

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>Grimer in the trashcan

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I don't think it gets more soulful than this.

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can you pick the right one?

Attached: supersmash.png (696x614, 383K)

It looks good, is it good?

Black and White 2 are the best pokemon games by a fairly wide margin.

>anything after gen 2
Endless Tentacools were shit, 3D is shit.

"Soul" to me means good art direction and design along with music direction that properly fits the setting of the game and blends seamlessly with the gameplay,

Simply put the better the art direction and overall design of the game the more soul it has.

>literally can't go a thread of Pokemon being mentioned without the B2W2 zoomers forcing their shitty meme game as good

I don't get this meme at all. I played it like a year after playing BW1 and it felt like I was just playing the same game again since my memory was foggy. Neither of them were good imo.

i like the top.

check archive.org
im pretty sure it's on there

Yw

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it's the best format for a trivia challenge game, you travel a maze answering general knowledge questions, it was fun as a kid but I was awful at it, playing it now that I'm older feels profoundly good

Mmm I can't recall any but I'm sure there is

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thanks, ill try it

>implying endless Geodudes and Zubats were any better
And Johto games are my fav.

pretty much this. soul and souless are meaningless meme buzzwords amounting to "i like" and "i dont like"

I REALLY wish they'd do this. The 3D looks like shit and destroys any chance of your brain filling in the gaps with imagination. The weird stuffed anime/doll aesthetic pokemon games have lately really sucks.

theres just something really comfy about going through that medieval castle. its hard to explain. its just a trivia game in an encylopedia CD ROM but it was so atmospheric.

Really torn on this one, boys

Does Dragon's Dogma have SOUL?

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You probably shouldn't come to a video game board looking for objective arguments.

I would just walk around in the mornings and talk to things. It looked that damn good.

Old games were a marvel of engineering. New games are a marvel of computing autonomy.
One is based on human skills, trial and error. The other based on paying for expensive tools.

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Too much work.

It has soul, but that soul was suppressed by corporate limitations. The game couldn't be nearly as much as it was intended to be and as a result comes out as kind of shallow and bland. The first time you play it the world feels pretty interesting but afterwards you just see all the things it lacks.

To me, soul is hard to pin down. Looking at this thread, I can see some of the what makes these images good is stuff like palette and color and the way the light and shading behave.

But there's also more complicated things involved, like the technical limits working in the game's favour and the fact that nobody seems to know how to recreate the effect these 2D visuals had with modern hi-def 3D models.

Even something as simple as being able to see the squaring and pixels has a huge impact on the "feel" of the visuals, one I can't really explain.

And I haven't even got into what makes a picture feel "comfy".

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asshurt zoomer

The problem is that there's a line between a beautifully crafted game and a game that focuses too much on the graphics at the cost of everything else.
A game with a gripping story can have shit gameplay and still be enjoyable.
A game with amazing gameplay can look absolutely terrible but still be fun.

A game can be overdesigned and look hideous. A game can be minimal in design and still charming.

It is all about the passion put into it. All about how much the developers actually wanted to work on it and got to put in.

Wait it wasn't this one, it was the one where Bugs has a time machine. Is this the one where you can coop with the Tazmania Monster or some such?

I actually think the new zelda looks pretty good.

well put.
some tragic shit, is what that is

What are the starters?

This. Its lack of dungeons, diverse environments and enemies makes it feel like half of its content was sucked out of it before it was launched.
Bitterblack Island is soulful as hell.

This comparison doesn't apply user. Audiovisual mediums hold a different meaning of vision.

idk why it's so hard for some people either

>having broad shoulders is having soul
ummm, ok

It's called beauty, what you're describing is beauty which takes care to create whether it be visual, audio or interactive and contrary to modernists belief it is not subjective, it is an objective based in mathematics
youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc
youtube.com/watch?v=5tMtV5p0s4E

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I would have preferred the Links Awakening remake to look more like Wind Waker visually but I recognize that would actually been more soulless since they would just had recycled an artstyle they made for something else.

There are three games involved here:
>the shallow water gif game is Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, they travel through time but using portals and not a time machine
>Sheep Dog 'n' Wolf is the gif with Ralph Wolf on the raft with the sheep
>Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time is the one with the time machine and the creepy wizard in a tower

This, 'beauty' and 'soul' are absolutely objective things. For example, an AI choosing blonde white women as the most beautiful type of human being, while fucking sheboons take home awards for no justifiable reason.

>any old game which was "new" during its time
>Soul
>Most new games which are rehash or ripoff of old game
>Soulless

There you go. You call a game "with soul" because it made everyone feel "new" and refreshed, excited to play an unknown adventure. Nowadays all we get are cheap plot twists and games made for microtransactions.

We all just miss our childhood, the feeling that a new game is fresh, full of adventure and excitement.

I miss it so much ;_;

>fucking cringe

Based Scruton
Also is that from a romhack or just fanart like OP?

>I like simplistic GBC art
>But here, let me tell you how ultra-traditional takes on art are the right way to go and can be explained by fucking math.
Imagine being so much of a sheep you post contradictions openly without questioning it.

Thanks, I meant the third one. I remember playing the one with Taz and not liking it that much, I'll have to try the second one.

>actual good pixel art is expensive and takes an eternity to make

Nintendo fucking added animation TO ALL THE SPRITES in black and white 2.

This was expensive and took a lot of work. They then threw them away for the 3d models in future games.

>things you were exposed to as an impressionable child
SOUL
>things you were exposed to as a jaded adult
SOULESS

Something that can't be intuitively known by npcs.

Just like reality, no such thing as "soul." It's a vague description for shit games that idiots use to describe why they like that shit game.

>Just like reality, no such thing as "soul."

Yup that's an NPC right here.

What? How is that contradictory? Audiovisual art in the form of games is an entirely new and different medium, of course it will follow some but not most of the directives of painting or photography.

Without a doubt
If it's any consolation, I can 100% agree with Capcom's wariness in investing a huge amount of money on an experimental new IP.
To me Dragon's Dogma's primary strength and evidence of soul is its unflappable dedication to its establishment of a fluid combat system that is so well implemented that potential sequels would only have to do minor fixes and otherwise just let the creativity flow.
It wasn't trying to distract you with CGI trailers or cutscenes. The team knew what they had made and what they made was a game focused on being a video game first, and bringing everything else second, even if "everything else" meant getting cut due to budget restraints. Any game that advertises being a video game is soulful in my book, no matter the consequences of its development. When a team can get together and design something so simple, yet executed so well as to put certain decade-old franchises who still have absolute shit-for-brains gameplay, it's hard to put it down for any secondary reason.
And despite all that they still brought some original storytelling elements to the oldest story ever told, and created a mythos that sticks with you even if the actor's characterization (or lack thereof) don't.
Dragon's Dogma to me is the perfect example of a near flawless pilot for an IP. It's that type of game still worth playing even if the hypothetical sequels blow it out of the fucking water, and hopefully they do.
It's without a doubt personal taste, and it feels crazy that I feel the need to establish that, but for me a game like this just puts low effort shit like Skyrim and BotW to fucking shame. It's goddamn embarrassing how basic these titles and more are, that despite their massive budgets and marketing drive, an equally basic game like DD made by a team who gives a flying fuck about video games can put them to shame.

OLD BAD
NEW GOOD

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No. I find games (both new and old) with soul all the time. An easy example is Titanfall 2. At first glance its visual design looks very generic and uninteresting, but playing through the campaign gives the player the distinct impression the developers really cared about the game and enjoyed making it. The campaign is very short but packed to the gills with soul- from the boss intro cutscenes to the background grunts and their conversations.

user, preferring and seeing the beauty of a GBC game in comparison to the photorealism of a modern game goes incredibly against some of the ideas exposed in that video.
If we made a sliding scale of realism and abstraction, where do you think a modern AC would fall and where do you think Pokemon Crystal would fall?

Cutting up the sprites and then puppet-animating them barely counts as animation, it's fucking Flash level (lack of) quality

>believing in a soul
Don't you have some sort of mindless ritual bullshit to attend to gain favor with your invisible sky friend or something?

Why do you equate beauty to photorealism?

Plenty of people ITT have mentioned new games with soul, zoomer.

Not that user, but three minutes in into that second video and this is what I am getting as well. That realism good and abstraction bad.

this
h
i
s

*tips fedora*
Ah, I see you're enlightened as well... very rare indeed...

>dozens of anons put forward eloquent, fully realized ideas about what soul memes
>largely ignored, the main response is OLD GOOD NEW BAD
What's even the point? These shills and literal children can't be persuaded otherwise.

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I'm absolutely certain "soul" is referring to the feel of beauty, videogames being moving, tactile and ever changing is why people use a more abstract word for it as it's harder to capture beauty in a constant, pokemon has plenty of ugly frames, black empty negative spaces in caves for example

>For example, an AI choosing blonde white women as the most beautiful type of human being, while fucking sheboons take home awards for no justifiable reason.
I can't find it on youtube anymore but there's another fantastic documentary on mathematics of the golden ratio in beauty
Here's a quick test you can do for yourself when it comes to people, throw a bunch of pictures into photoshop and set the color mode to greyscale, beauty is constant and it's not skin or eye colour

Fanart I'm afraid, here's their DA
deviantart.com/queen-vespi

I picked the simplest one they made to prove the point complexitty isn't the same as beauty you absolute window licker, you haven't had time to watch either video, there are no contradictions you're jumping to conclusions for a "gotcha" fuck right off
>but muh pixel art
We have a fucking name for that long before pixels were even a thing, Pointillism

If only Pokemon looked like this.
Why did they have to change sprites for 3d models. GF is clearly too incompetent to make them not look like shit.

it's cool how reflection was so inherently impressive then that it could be of anything. such as a desert landscape here

True, but collective passion from a team is probably pretty rare as creative direction probably varies person to person

dummy that's just quality and has nothing to do with soul

Abstract art like cubism and low resolution, more cartoonish-like artstyles in videogames are not comparable at all.
If anything I'd equate it more to a Van Gogh or Monet, not to various silly cubes of different colors pretending to be a painting.

goddamn this pic is delicious. this is soul

Sorry this was meant for

why do you fuckers talk about visuals (oh and le music) like that's the topic? cos op's put a pic? You can have a soulful mechanic, a soulful engine etc. Goldeneye you can shoot the hats off is soul. fuck your color pallette that shit is all 'comfy' not 'soul'

>If Gamefreak was a half decent developer

Hard disagree. It's different from the originals sure but a shit ton of care was put into the art direction of Tropical Freeze at least. DKCR was a bit soulless though.

Okay user, I am this user and I am six minutes into the second video and while I will watch it to the end, this thread will die before it. But so far, the narrator has said nothing but to equate complexity and realism as positive and said all the modern art lacked in execution and style. By applying his same standard to any retro game, the retro game fails.
He has literally shown a cubist artwork and compared it to realism at the 6 minutes mark. He seems to be hitting those two are apple to apple comparisons.

>soul
can make a low poly/ low pixel game incredible. It's something that shows the studio either took a chance or added something to the game that the player would find pleasant. something that's not much really a gimmick but small details that give the game a more organic feel instead of a $60 5hr tech demo.

>tl;dr
the little details added to games that give it life.

I think it might be a little harder to capture these days.

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Why are you so mad? It's all part of a larger whole.

youtube.com/watch?v=k7J910J9vk0

It was literally a passion project that Game Freak needed to fund via other game contracts and took 6 years to complete because of it.

Gen 1 Pokemon is the definition of soulful.

>What makes something soulful
Coming out when I was ten during a time in my life I have fuzzy nostalgia for
>what makes something soulless?
Being new and/or popular, it doesn't matter how much effort or passion was put into a new game, it's soulless because it's new

>le music
>le
You need to go back.

also art and animation goes a long way too

The limited color palette forced them to create a striking color scheme.

The remakes are also excellent in their art direction though. Prettiest games in the series imo.

Again, no. Photorealism in a game isn't the same as realism in a painting, simply because of the capabilities of both mediums, and cubism and cartoonish/retro games have absolutely nothing to do with each other (inb4 there's 1 in a million case of some game with cubist artstyle, we're talking more about things like OP's pic).

>brown brown and more brown guest starring green
I like Faxanadu but boy did it need a more diverse colour palette. The endlessly drab colours grate on you after a while.

>but I wish Nintendo would make at least one new game with pretty pixel art
There's clearly a lot of effort put into Dream Team's sprites, which is probably why they've been trying to get their money's worth out of them with Paper Jam and the SS and BIS remakes.

No they're not, fuck off.

Yes they were, you pissy little zoomer. Sorry that the world that you were born into is creatively bankrupt.

If you guys followed the definition of soul being something made as a passion project with all of the developer's effort put into it because they really wanted to make a game you wouldn't moan about every indie game that comes out, because according to you passion only existed in the nineties.

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>it is an objective based in mathematics
If beauty is mathematical then in 20 years humans will no longer be necessary for art to be made. Just get a computer to do it.
Somehow I don't think that will be the case, or hope so.

the story is only cringe if you thought it meant to be taken seriously. The story is a shameless blob of anime tropes and it's glorious.

>I'm physically incapable of enjoying 2d games

I personally prefer the first video myself as it's more nuanced, it directly points out modern art entirely lacks skill and can be recreated by toddlers and chimps
Meanwhile good pixel art cannot, nor does the simplicity in execution divorce this, hence I told you about pointilism. Retro games do not fail because games are more than visual, they are visual, audio and interactive. You could apply your same logic to music, it's about the tools, canvas and intent. Look at this low poly, low texture quality game, shit tools and a shit canvas sure okay that's valid. But look how it's framed, look how they've used the lighting, this is why I explicitly said games are in constant motion and brought up pokemons caves, the dark tunnel is ugly, every single frame of it is ugly with wasted space, but the game isn't just dark tunnel it is in motion constantly and after the ugly ordeal you are presented to a bleak, melancholic lavender town and once you move on the cheery route music plays again
In Motion.

Computers already are producing paintings and music bro
edition.cnn.com/style/article/artificial-intelligence-ai-art/
bbc.com/culture/story/20181210-art-made-by-ai-is-selling-for-thousands-is-it-any-good
Now the question is do they have soul?

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Passion and effort are a necessary but not sufficient condition, skill must also be present at least in some level.

That is because soul also includes detail and honesty, things minimalism and meta designs lack. Also quality. Some even fail to create identities of their own.
However most of the good indie games do have soul, even things I do not enjoy like Undertale.
The thing is that you gotta understand soul is not yes or no, there is a sliding scale. There are games that have soul in one aspect but lack it in others.
I mean hell, a lot of games on kongregate and newgrounds have some level of soul to them, though usually lacking quality, there are clearly some games that the author spent more time than necessary building things, as such they come of as spontaneous.

Really insightful. Thanks, user.

Look at Stardew Valley for example, or Undertale with the music. These guys clearly had love for their creation but didn't just start out of 0.

Passion alone doesn't not create value, look at Chris-Chans comics now tell me they have "soul"
Go on I fucking dare you

I think AI alone cannot do it, but there is a legitimate art in shepherding it by changing the algorithms and culling the results so it produces more legitimate results. Ultimately, the tool needs an injection of human spirit to become sincere and soulful.
It is something I think a lot about since I am trying to make a tool that randomly makes RPGs with a complexity similar to DQ 3, which is my favorite JRPG, and I wonder what that even means in the long run.

At that point you've basically divorced effort and sincerity from technical ability. They definitely need to go together to create a good game, but one is very arbitrary.

And I never want to play these games again. Gen 3 was a god send allowing us to run, even if not in buildings. One of the few things I actually liked about Gen 4 was the fuck you could now run in any location.

Stardew feels great when playing, but god the character dialogue in that game in generic, weirdly even the plastic as hell Story of Seasons games come of as more interesting to me.

Your walking speed is way faster in Gold though, you aren't significantly slower than the gen 3 running speed. Plus you can just whip out the bike.

Oh man, i was so disappointed when i figured out she was really a woman

No. But there is no denying there is an allure to Chris-chan's work, or TempleOS, or Henry Darger. In the end, any human can make something with soul if they sacrifice their sanity and life to a single piece of work. Doesn't mean it will be good, but it will certainly hold a certain fascination to it.

God i hate these new buzzwords
they hold no meaning at all

That is the identity aspect of soul. It manages to create something that cannot be easily replaceable, even if not something good. It still lacks the other ingredients to make it something truly soulful.