I know this is premature, but I’m kinda worried about this game already.

I think the prologue video stinks. In the OG, we have all these interesting cuts and shots, the moon turns into a pixel for a large screen, the MC is often partially obscured, there are a bunch of extreme closeups of hands and eyes, that wacky lady with the dogs. The cuts are disorienting, the faucet is abrasive. We get these uncomfortable scenes with Yukari, dutch angles, the music gets louder, late afternoon sun the only light in her room, sweat on her chin, shaking hands, she whimpers and drops the gun, fish-eye perspective from the outside of her apartment.

In Reload, we get these super bland establishing shots, all these scenes feel empty, and then we see a generic long shot of Yukari. We get a closeup on her mouth, there’s no sweat. There’s no loud music, but no deafening silence either. We barely see her tremble. She gives up, and falls to her knees, but not before saying:

“tHeRe’s nO wAy, I cAn’T”

I’m not a screenwriter, I’m not a film critic, I don’t like Nicolas Winding Refn movies, but what the fuck is this? It’s not like they didn’t have the reference to work with when this was made. Look at the comparison shot of the train scene. In game the difference is even bigger, because in the original the movement of the other train cars creates this vertigo effect, it’s barely noticeable in Reload.

This feels like a big downgrade artistically, it just feels so bland. Maybe I’m just too old for this shit.