@nilsdoen: The towns and dungeons are literally different every time you play. The names of the taverns and shops are the same but their locations within the town and the NPC's and the random generated quests and dungeons are all different. This is the very definition of procedurally generated.

It's like saying that Terraria maps aren't procedurally generated because they exist in a fixed rectangle and have specific sets of enemies that can appear. It's ridiculous, but whatever.

Some people just want to continue believing falsehoods I guess, or at least can't admit when they're flat out wrong about something. *shrug

@nilsdoen: I don't think you understand the concept of procedurally generated. The shape of the map wasn't procedurally generated but all the play zones were (other than a few scripted dungeons and towns), as were the random dungeons. They didn't hand code hundreds of thousands of potential dungeons, and the tree and rock placements were generated on the fly, ie procedurally.

@nilsdoen: Well, but most of the games that were being discussed were not endless by your definition. We were talking about large open world games, which while not procedurally generated and not "endless" they don't have a clear cut "end" to the gameplay, because of sandbox mode. That said, Daggerfall actually did have procedurally generated quests, towns, and landscapes. They basically had to do this because of how massive (and slow) the game would be if it were all hard coded and had to be loaded into memory every time, especially without modern techniques for partial caching zones as you move about the seamless open world.

@nilsdoen: Bah sorry I meant Elder Scrolls...They're not MMO, but Daggerfall was huge. It had ALL the main lands, not just Morrowind or Skyrim...ALL of them. It had approximately 160,000km map size that eclipses even most modern large map open world games.

@nilsdoen: That's not true. Look at some of the older Elden Ring Elder Scrolls titles. Those games were MASSIVE even by today's standards.

@hardwenzen: And I feel like I've had enough when I beat the final boss. With Bethesda games I always front load the side quests and whatnot and avoid the final boss until I've done everything I want to because I will always feel like beating that boss is the endcap to the game. Also stop calling it a "zoomer" thing, I'm borderline GenX and this has been a standard for a lot of us for a long time.

Most games, even open world ones, didn't have an after final boss sandbox mode. Or if they did it was incredibly lackluster. The main quest is supposed to be the primary driver, in Skyrim it is literally stopping the end of the world, but you can put it off to go fishing indefinitely if you want. It just really doesn't make sense when you think about it narratively.

@jkreifels229: Honestly I held off on doing the main quest BECAUSE of dragons in Skyrim and Oblivion gates in Oblivion. They get in the way of doing side quests more than anything in my experience and make everything more difficult and annoying by adding a lot of random events that are basically cookie cutter rinse and repeat (read boring after a short time).

@hardwenzen: The end boss is supposed to be the final greatest challenge of a game, with maybe a few hidden bosses being the exception. Sandbox games can go on forever, this is true, but beating the end boss is a clear end point to demarcate when you can and probably should stop playing the game or load up a new character at least.

@ives74: It COULD have worked if they made the movie more like the games, where Mario is largely a silent protagonist, with a few quips and exclamations here and there. Also Martinet could have toned it down a bit to make it more palatable for general audiences. After all he does a LOT of voice work beyond Mario. For example, did you know he voiced Paarthurnax the dragon in Skyrim?

@jenovaschilld: I'm sure I could convince them, but scaling their ivory tower turns out to be far more difficult than you might imagine.

I'm really only advocating for a sane standard for determining what constitutes a planet. Even one that might see Pluto ultimately be determined to not be a planet at all, dwarf or otherwise. I just want some logical consistency, not what appears to be grossly arbitrary and capricious.

That was a pretty good bit. Though it raises the question of anthropomorphism in the Disney universe. If Pluto and Goofy are both "dogs" then that raises a whole host of questions, like why can Mickey keep Pluto as a pet, but Goofy is a "free" dog. Does this also mean that there are non-anthropomorphized mice, ducks and chipmunks? Could a child of Mickey and Minnie be a regular mouse or not? So many questions.