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"Press F to Pay Respects" and other gaming memes that have had incredible staying power
- Thread starter ItWasMeantToBe19
- Start date
What's funny is that Arkham Knight had literally the exact same thing the next year "Press [button] to pay respects."
Wasn't it Arkham City (released 3 years earlier) that had the spot where Bruce's parents got murdered offer "press X to pay your respects"?
Also, the difference here is that while in Arkham Knight, it's almost an Easter Egg in a massive open world, while in Call of Duty it's a silly button prompt in what is basically a first person ingame cinematic.
Also, as Batman you could not kneel down and 'pay your respects' - it was an actual option.
I don't think the difference of it being cinematic or an option really matters. The end result is that your summarizing emotions with a simple button prompt. It's still the same stupid thing.
Again though, lots of games do this. People decided to swarm on Call of Duty for this fault, because memes.
I've never seen Loss used in relation to that though. Loss memes usually come up with the structure of the comic (the lines), when miscarriage is being discussed in a video game-focused site (for whatever reason), or when people are talking about shitty comics.
It's also that the CoD series is generally a laughably shallow rootin' tootin' shootin' series that has you just pump bullets into lots of people for three hours of a bad story then off to multiplayer. A QTE to touch a coffin comes off as a hilariously bad attempt to seem "deep" or "emotional" and winds up summarizing the series' approach to story as a whole.
"That's a 50 DKP minus"
"Hell, it's about time."
"That was left-handed!"
If someone recognizes all 3 of those, you know how old they are.
"Hell, it's about time."
"That was left-handed!"
If someone recognizes all 3 of those, you know how old they are.
I can't believe that no one has mentioned the Joel as Antonio Banderas gif yet.
Edit: damn beaten above
Edit: damn beaten above
This.
Google made a reference to it even before doodles where a thing. And its hard for anyone in gaming to make a mention to it without instant recognition.
Plesioth's all-destroying hip-check I feel like never got past the MH community.
I feel like this post is a memeIt very much does. It's not the game's fault if the audience refuses to meet it in the middle. Every major interaction in most Call of Duty games is "Press F to <insert action>." Whether it's opening a door or shooting your best friend in the face to preserve your cover. When everyone's favorite dog Riley from Call of Duty Ghosts got shot, you pressed F to pick him up and carry him. The prompt, like most of the series, was "Press F to Action X".
This is a very common design trait across the story-driven FPS genre as a whole. What underpins it is that you don't want the protagonist performing significant actions without the player's prompting. This is something the "everything should be a non-interactive cutscene" contingent don't grasp. In Bioshock: Infinite, Booker is the player, and the player is Booker. In Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Mitchell is the player, and the player is Mitchell. These actions large and small make the player responsible for the protagonist's actions and punctuate their character development. In Call of Duty: WWII, there's a scene where you carry a little kid. There isn't a prompt to pick up the kid, but there's a prompt to open the closet where she's hiding. What this does is ensure the player presses F to rescue kid in some form. You don't want a cutscene triggering where the player rescues the kid unprompted. You want as many actions as possible to be triggered by the player directly. This is cornerstone of the story-driven FPS stuff here.
Paying your respects is what normal, well adjusted people do at funerals, regardless of whether they feel any genuine sorrow. It's not the game's fault if its audience is determined to be misanthropic. It's not like Sledgehammer did anything wrong with the introduction, the characters, the setting, or anything like that. Everything leading up to the funeral is fantastically written and acted. The "John Wick cries because he has a puppy scene" was early in the movie. If John Wick were a game, the game might feature a prompt where you look at the puppy and a prompt appears saying, "Press F to pick up Puppy."
You can alleviate this slightly by giving the player a choice. Press F to pay respects + Press C to walk away. Press F to pick up the puppy + Press C to kick the puppy. But ultimately the problem is entirely the audience, not the game itself. Some audiences simply refuse to meet emotionally sincere games in the middle because they have some kind of hangup that the game is powerless to rectify without compromising its underlying intent. This seems particularly common with violent games. FPS and TPS. Games that attempt to be emotionally nuanced but they have an audience that just wants to kill stuff. This is a different problem to people memeing lines that have genuinely bad line delivery.
If we're taking a broader view, literally every important character interaction in, say, a Telltale game falls into this category. If The Walking Dead were an FPS game, it would have a prompt like "Press F to trust." and "Press C to tie him up."
Almost none of those cam from Everquest btw. They all originated in the online MUDs that Everquest was based off. In particular, DikuMud (which is basically text based Everquest).The big leap Everquest made was turning these ropey text game into a fully 3d game.
Nah, the meme had so much staying power that the guy who wrote that line actually got promoted for Fallout 4
And then suddenly when a CoD game doesn't have a campaign these same people who always complain about how CoD shouldn't waste time on a campaign suddenly go "WTF where's the campaign boycotting now!"
Are they really? I had no idea
How is Syndicate 2012? Worth a play?
CoD games have some of the best writing and acting in the videogame medium. Some games are better than others, obviously. But generally they're excellent. They should be considering the best talent in the industry is recruited to make them. Just look at how closely Infinity Ward worked with Brian Bloom for Infinite Warfare. The problem with CoD has long been the audience it attracted and fostered. The games themselves are not "shallow" in any sense that Naughty Dog gamea aren't.
Are you really surprised that people who think Black Ops and Black Ops 2 are two of the finest FPS games ever made aren't keen on a new Black Ops without an incredible campaign? CoD sells bazillions every year to a wide demographic. Some love the campaigns, some don't. Since several million people play and finish CoD campaigns every year, that's several million people who are less interested in Black Ops 4. I won't be buying the game, personally.
The bloom is like acid in your eyes and the mod to remove it on PC is unstable. Otherwise it's a very good, if blatantly troubled game.
I did'n play any CoD game, but IMHO the "Press F to Pay Respects" thing has a lot to do with the formulation. "Press F to ..." has a similar effect as "Hold your controller and press the button" would. It reminds the player that he/she is sitting before his/her screen and playing a video game. Add it to the fact that paying respects is not a common action in the game, and the willing suspension of disbelief is utterly slain, which results in an absolute disaster when it occurs during a tragic scene. It would have been less meme inducing if the phrase had been formulated in a more discreet way, like :
[F] Pay Respects
Of course, I'm not saying it is the only explanation. In Arkham City, the Pay Your Respects prompt is working way better because the player is given the choice to do it or not.
[F] Pay Respects
Of course, I'm not saying it is the only explanation. In Arkham City, the Pay Your Respects prompt is working way better because the player is given the choice to do it or not.
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I've since replaced saying R.I.P with actually just saying RIP, due to that one daft line in Human Revolution. I love Elias Toufexis but he must be kicking himself over it.
"I'm in ur base killing ur d00dz." Is something I still say with surprising regularity, or some variant of it.
Can't believe this took 29 posts. This one is second place for me after "press F to pay respects."
For the blissfully unaware, actual lyrics of a DMC4 battle BGM.
This is the only one that i use in real life because you dont need to understand crap about videogames to be a funny phrase about exageration.
In fact I used it 2 weeks ago after riding Taron at Phantasialand for the first time (thats is fucking amazing btw) and non videogames fans laughed.
