So, the proper post-dissection follows. Objection Man, if I came off as defensive earlier, quite frankly it's because I am, just not at you. Again, I was using your earlier comment as an example, my frustration is with Facebook members who continually harassed and shamed anyone on the L3 page who wasn't backing Red Ash. And if I skip any pieces of your last two posts it's because I believe them to be redundant; as I see it you did hit the same point more than once a few times.
[spoiler=For future reference, think long and hard before accusing me of being selective in what I respond to.]
I kinda do feel that's sort of true though... This IS the Legends spiritual successor and we have not heard much of anything from the actual Legends fan base that I can see. I can understand if the 'outside world' doesn't understand or make any noise over it, but the core Legends fan base should know better. They are informed. It's not like you have to go far to reach them.
If the Kickstarter had the Legends fanbase's confidence then they should have acted as ambassadors to the outside world. Where the early backers got it wrong is that they set their sights on their own inner circles instead of the outside world. However, I think there was a reason for that, more later.
As much as I hate to say it, it really does kind of seem like Capcom's justifications for not making more Legends games is kind of true... I follow 100k on Facebook and until recently I haven't heard so much of a peep out of them about it. That seems ridiculous to me.
There are two equally flawed angles by which a lot of noise was made amongst the Facebook members. One was as I discussed above the "this is the closest you'll get" approach, which to many is unacceptable. By extension, this then invalidates the other angle, which is "if this non-Legends thing fails, Capcom will never touch Legends". While it is certainly true that Capcom may mis-read the failure of a similarly styled game, what's a member of the group "for bringing back Legends 3" doing if NOT trying to challenge Capcom's perception of the fanbase? I also think that there is some level of fatigue among Legends fans and perhaps among Mega Man fans as a whole in how many times they've been asked to buy things that they almost want for lack of a better way to communicate to Capcom what they really want. The reality has sunken in that these vaguely Mega Man-esque products need to stand on their own, and Red Ash sadly was never promoted as such. At every turn it has simply ridden Legends, even the alpha build is based around Volnutt kicking the can in Apple Market.
Mighty No. 9 set an important benchmark. People already banded together and told Capcom to suck it with their wallets. Anything that comes later and hopes to succeed in "influencing" Capcom where Mighty did not get the desired result, has to either be more direct or has to have more numbers behind it. And what are the odds of Red Ash's success surpassing Mighty's? Probably none. "More direct", then, means to start supporting things with connections to Mega Man that aren't so loose; say, the re-release of a damn hard to find Legends prequel game on PSN. There is enough licensing and merchandising going on with Capcom that opening your wallets for Mega Man's sake really should be able to stay within the franchise, even if actual new games are still not present.
Even if the KS is confusing, even if it is just a preproduction right now, even if its a prequel game, even if Mighty has not come out yet... As rabid and dedicated as the Legends core fanbase is... I too am completely surprised they have not embraced this like a pack of rabid animals.
Unfortunately, Red Ash's problems are not misconceptions or miscommunications, but actual flaws with regard to timing, presentation, and direction, and this has made it extraordinarily difficult for the early backers to recommend Red Ash to anyone who isn't already a fan of Inafune. Because, outside of Inafune's name, the game has little going for it, and this is probably why many of the early backers felt the need to cannibalize the Legends fanbase instead of reaching out to the broader world of gamers and anime fans. How would you do that when you can't tell them which console it's coming to, and you don't have a demonstration of what kind of quality Comcept has been able to deliver thus far? By all rights, anyone who backed Inafune in the past should be just as viable a target for this as a Legends fan. Except that those people want to see Mighty No. 9 first as a demonstration of if their confidence in Comcept is well placed or not. I understand that in a developer's world they are either unwilling or unable to sit still for that long, but if Comcept is going to continue to seek money from the other side of the fence, from the consumers, then they need to respect how things look from the outside. And they very clearly did not consider that when planning the Kickstarter. The "hardcore fans" are supposed to be the messengers to the rest of the world, not the sole support.
Not sure where that presumption would come from, especially since Legends and Legends 2 got a PSP release in Japan. What exactly was preventing Tron Bonne from releasing, outside of Capcom not wanting to at the time? For the US it could have been presumably the voice acting or whatever issue that was legally preventing it, but for Japan?
I was talking about the US, not about Japan. Before Misadventures was re-released, everybody
knew voice acting was keeping US Legends games from getting re-released. Before Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom was localized everybody
knew that picking Tatsunoko for a Vs. series game would keep it from being seen outside of Japan.
Likewise I don't think you can even use that as an argument to say Legends 3 is still even viable. Capcom has been releasing tons of classic games, both main stream popular and not so much, without intentions to reboot or continue their franchises.
That's not what I meant. I'm not trying to logically justify whether one should or should not hope for Legends 3. Actually, I'm doing the exact opposite, and arguing that such a thing cannot be done. I'm talking about public perception, how people fill in the gaps with their own assumptions, how things happen that others would have dismissed as impossible, and for that reason anyone hoping for Legends 3 has LONG SINCE trained themselves to tune out people who say "Capcom will never make Legends 3" as if it was an axiom. The odds are against Legends 3, that is well known fact. My point is this: So what? The odds have ALWAYS been against Legends 3. Anyone who is not prepared to face that wouldn't be hoping for Legends 3 to begin with. You can't rationalize to them why their hope is wrong; their very mission statement is that their hope is probably wrong and they don't give a damn, they'll hope for it anyway.
And this is why "Red Ash is the closest we'll get" is such a divisive statement as it is.
If you really think Solatorobo comes close to REDASH then... God I can't even describe it. Lets just go over the basic facts about it all so that you can see it illustrated crystal clear:
Is Solatorobo intended as a spiritual successor to Legends?
No, it isn't. It's a litmus test. Once upon a time, when everyone was still reeling from the 3DS Legends 3 getting canned, CyberConnect2 said if that if they had their pick of Capcom franchises to work with, it would be Legends. The big question of that time, was that would Legends fans be willing to trust an outside developer? Assuming they were, would CyberConnect2 be up to the task? Solatorobo was seen as the go-to proving ground of CC2 after that. A measure of how well they could present a game with such endearing characters and that intangible sense of charm and heart.
And you know, it has the whole open world anime style post apocalyptic world island hopping thing going for it to. Except in the sky instead of over the sea, and you throw things instead of shooting things.
Is Solatorobo produced by Inafune? Did Solatorobo have major members from the Legends team developing it?
Do these mean absolutely nothing all of a sudden?
Different fans will give you different answers to that last question. Here's mine:
YES.As a rabid follower of the 3DS Legends 3 project, I had 10 months to adjust to the fact that I was looking at a Legends 3 game without Inafune. And I have spent 4 years since then doing whatever I can to convince Capcom that I still want to see Legends 3, knowing full well Inafune does not work for them anymore. I obviously want a quality game, but I in no way shape or form believe that any given name in the credits constitutes a guarantee of quality, or that lacking such a name caps the quality as being less than it otherwise would have been. Inafune left Legends 3 mid-development of his own accord, he obviously believed the torch could be passed on, and so do I.
If you follow your logic on this then Bloodstained shouldn't have been seen as IGAvania returning. Mighty No. 9 isn't Inafune bringing Megaman back to his fans. Yooka-Laylee isn't in any way valid as a spiritual return of the Banjo series.
They are a return of the style, not of the series. The series entails a certain world and the characters within. What I said was that the appeal of the games that you mentioned is stronger to their respective inspirations than Red Ash would naturally be to Legends on account of the fact that we are moving from games that primarily appeal through gameplay to a game that primarily appeals through its character interaction. Much as I would sing the praises of Legends's gameplay, it had more than a few rough spots, and that alone isn't what keeps me coming back a decade and a half later. I adore every moment of watching the Bonnes play off of each other and off of Volnutt. Red Ash cannot give me that. It can give me a new cast of characters, and as such it needs to sell those new characters on their own merits and not on how much they look like somebody else. The same is true, to a lesser degree, of any of those games. And of Gunvolt, by the way, which I love.
Does Sakura's logic invalidate these spiritual successors the same way my own allegedly does? Because I agree entirely with her: I look forward to Mighty No. 9, but I look forward to it for being Mighty No. 9, not for being almost Mega Man.
At least here we have a chance to relive some of the magic, and create a brand new branch of it, or you can pout and bicker in your little corner of "real fans" accepting nothing less than the complete reinstatement of Legends 3 in the form it was originated. I will choose to see the reality of the situation and get what I can, and if Legends 3 by some godly miracle does happen to get restarted down the road, then don't we have a double win?
Indeed we do. Perhaps you missed the part where I said that I did in fact back Red Ash. I simply fail to see how doing so is necessary to prove myself as a Legends fan. Nor do I see how anyone else should be held to such a standard. A Legends fan, an Inafune fan, a 3D action game fan, an anime fan, all of these should look to Red Ash, and all should ask themselves if they want to back Red Ash for the sake of Red Ash, not for being a stand-in for something else.[/spoiler]