tbarrie

I'd like to circle back to this, as I've seen other people online describe the new game as an action game and not an RPG. So how not-an-RPG are we talking here? What I'm really asking is: do you have carte blanche (or close to it) to define the protagonist's personality? How much freedom of action do you have? And how much do the choices you make for the protagonist influence the story? Those are the factors that make a game an RPG, in my opinion. (Though I sometimes get the impression there are other definitions floating around out there.)

Do most people not like rapper gimmicks? Because I've been told everybody loves The Acclaimed.

Well - he didn't mention Triple H by name. He did in fact explicitly mention his dad on AEW TV when explaining why he was making that vow.

That may be the best short description for a video game I've ever encountered.

Well now wait a minute. What about the Cheongpung Blind-Beetle?

I actually thought it was the best Adam Cole match I'd seen. (Which is admittedly a medium-height bar to pass at best. But still.) It told a fun story that we haven't really seen a thousand times. What was the problem with it?

Will I ruin it if I point out that it's spelled "phylactery"?

Can anybody point me to info on what the controls are like for this game? Would it work well on Xbox, or would I want a mouse and/or keyboard to play it properly?

See, I wouldn't have a big problem with a promotion that simply didn't have "tag" team matches or titles, but rather made all team-on-team matches tornado-style. You would lose out on all the narrative tropes that have developed over the years for tag matches, but it would be consistent. But as Matt pointed out, AEW doesn't do that. Instead you have guys frequently waiting on the apron for the hot tag, but you also have guys just randomly coming in for spots and facing nothing more than impotent mild disapproval from the ref. It doesn't make sense. It's like the promotion isn't willing to give up those tropes, but also wants to be able to have elaborate Young Buckesque multiperson spots at any point of the match. And trying to have it both ways just muddies things, in my opinion. It doesn't work well, at least for me.

Unless they run with the idea that somebody else is pulling Mox's strings, and that somebody turns out to be the Bucks.

Also guys who don't like seeing goobers with no personality pushed like stars.

Those all look good to me, except What If and Marvel Zombies. Thunderbolts is borderline for me.

I thought the Firefly Fun House match sort of did that, but from Cena's subsequent appearances it seems his career and sixteen title reigns were not in fact erased from continuity.

I'm honestly not convinced that's a WWE trope so much as a pro-wrestling trope. I mean, how many friends turned on Dusty in JCP? And I'm no expert on the old territory days, but I suspect there were plentiful examples prior to the 80s as well.

Man, I don't want to shit on other people's tastes, but that sounds horrible to me. Exactly. Look at how the lack of enforcement of the tag rules kind of bit into FTR's gimmick (when they were heels and actually had a proper gimmick). You had to ask yourself why Dax and Cash were being all clever and sneaky to get their double-teaming in behind the ref's back when Santana and Ortiz or the Young Bucks could just stay in the ring and hit tandem moves uninterrupted for five minutes. And there was never a real answer to that.

Particularly when the person doesn't even start moving until the count of 9. Once in a while is fine, but it's overused now. Darby Allin and The Butcher did it right a couple of years back. It does need to happen more often.

Like hammerva, I quite enjoyed the Nigel-Yuta interview. Good character work from both men. I also enjoyed Taylor vs White. I may be starting to come around on Jay White having potential to be more than a midcarder. MxM vs the Outrunners was fun, but I still think the Outrunners' gimmick works a lot better when they're total jobbers. Of course, I might conceivably turn around on that too eventually. At least we're presumably going to get heel FTR back out of this FTRunners thing.

The Learning Tree is only three guys, so per your criterion they don't count. EDIT: Come to think of it, the Hurt Syndicate is one guy and a manager. There are four guys in the Bang Bang Gang, so you don't have to include trios to count them.

According to the commentators, Moxley and crew had been hiding in the building since before the babyface brigade arrived. I don't see any reason not to accept that explanation. Okay, that sound awesome.

Surely neither Eddie Brock nor his symbiote are twisted enough to be against the Oxford comma?

I don't know if I love it or hate it that they brought somebody in to lose a complete squash match and let him bill himself as "Pirata del Muerte". But I lean towards the former.

Really? I hadn't heard that one.

I agree, although I could see somebody objecting to such metonym use without thinking they were crazy. And I've sometimes wondered whether the much-discussed WWE ban on "belt" instead of "title" or "championshp" was a result of Vince objecting to precisely this, but his underlings were afraid to ask for clarification and over-interpreted. Like I said, I could see somebody objecting to "vying for the belts" even if I don't share that peeve myself. I find it hard to imagine anybody insisting that the act of hitting somebody with the physical belt only be referred to as "hitting them with the championship". Though of course it's entirely possible Vince is in fact completely batshit regarding his linguistic preferences, as in other matters.

I mean, Russo is completely correct, it's just the conclusion he draws next is nonsense. Yes, the belts are props. So was The One Ring in Jackson's film adaptation of Lord of the Rings, or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated as important in-story!

At least they announced in advance that this one would be for a title match whenever the winner chooses. So better than the time MJF won the poker chip in a Casino Ladder Match and they decided after the fact that this chip could be used for a surprise cash-in, which had never been part of the deal before. But yeah, they should drop the gimmick entirely in my opinion. (And nitpick: Christian won his shot in a Casino Gauntlet Match, not a Casino Battle Royal. Though I realize keeping track of all the various "Casino" matches AEW uses can be tough. Easiest to remember that Casino Battle Royals are kind of stupid where Casino Gauntlet Matches are kind of fun, in my opinion.)