Forum:The LEGO Dimensions Conundrum, Reconsidered: Difference between revisions

Forum:The LEGO Dimensions Conundrum, Reconsidered (edit)

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→‎LEGO Dimensions coverage discussion

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 : Personally, I don't see it being all that detrimental covering the rest of the game, especially with it all being segmented as alternate universes. In any case, there's one thing I want wrapped up before this forum closes: coverage of the tie-ins. In particular, the gameplay footage seen in {{cs|Endless Awesome (webcast)}} and {{cs|Supergirl Meets E.T. (webcast)}} (or any other promo videos I forgot). Despite my prior coverage, I'm not too sure the gameplay shown in those warrants coverage (other than that which is explicitly shown diagetically, like the bit with [[the Riddler]]). [[User:Cookieboy 2005|Cookieboy 2005]] [[User talk:Cookieboy 2005|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 23:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
+::I don't really see the value in covering things that appear in gameplay footage seen in trailers. To me, the relevant part of a trailer is the content unique to it.
+::Phase 8 makes sense (although, personally, I like the idea of Phase 7), but I feel like there are some ways in which it could make more sense than others. Covering literally everything on a single behemoth page would make parsing the Doctor Who parts difficult in a way that, if we went with Phase 4, things wouldn't be so difficult. Based on the precedent of games like ''[[The Christmas Trap (video game)|The Christmas Trap]]'' and ''[[Bigger on the Inside (video game)|Bigger on the Inside]]'', we see the value of covering separate commercial add-ons to prior bigger video games on separate pages. We could have [[Lego Dimensions (series)]] for the wider franchise and [[Lego Dimensions (video game)]] for the baseline, no-frills game. At the very least, I think that the Lego Doctor Who world and ''The Dalek Extermination of Earth'' should get separate (video game) pages from the main Lego Dimensions game, because ''The Dalek Extermination'' was content only accessible with purchase of the Twelfth Doctor figure and the Doctor Who world could be accessed by purchasing either the Doctor or the Cyberman. Distinct commercial content. This principle would extend to the add-ons such as the Fantastic Beasts level pack - cover them as distinct entities.
+::The question from this structure would be: how to cover character/vehicle interactions? The DC Comics character Cyborg, for example, makes a comment if he's near the playable Cyberman, so would that mean we should have a page for the individual commercial release of the Cyborg Fun Pack? Maybe this is just autism speaking, but I see the value in that. But I would also see the value in a page called [Lego Dimensions character and vehicle interactions] or [Lego Dimensions (video game)/character and vehicle interactions], with a chart of all the ones relevant to Doctor Who. [[User:TheChampionOfTime|TheChampionOfTime]] [[User talk:TheChampionOfTime|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 16:18, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
+As somebody who doesn't want to spend ages analysing the OP to find my answer, which phase would best describe the following: covering all episodes of the main story, plus any DLC episodes that tie directly into said story (the ''Portal'', ''Midway Arcade'', and ''Sonic'' episodes, according to the LD wiki). [[User:WaltK|WaltK]] [[User talk:WaltK|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:26, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
+: The above had reminded me that this discussion hasn’t concluded yet - I don’t recall my exact points earlier but my stance is that I think the whole game should probably be covered, but definitely tie-ins to the main story and ones that have DWU elements (the TARDIS travel thingies, even if we don’t consider them inherently relevant outside of the following, do feature an image of the TARDIS). [[User:Cookieboy 2005|Cookieboy 2005]] [[User talk:Cookieboy 2005|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:42, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
+The more I think about this, the more I feel that my ideal coverage for this game also happens to be the coverage that we probably will never be able to get... Which is that we really should cover ''most everything''... But with some level of discretion. Like, ideally we cover all the broad strokes and important characters on their own pages, but with a level of... Dude, come on. We don't need Harry Potter's page to be every single detail of his use in the game, we don't need a page on every member of the Goonies... We ''should'' be able to just go "Oh, let's cover this DW easter egg" and leave it at that.
+The issue is that any sense of "Dude, come on" is the antithesis to Tardis Wiki rules and precedent. So while covering just the relevant chunks ''would'' make the site better, allowing these random fringe LEGO character pages would just end up being a big mess in my head. [[User:OttselSpy25|OttselSpy25]] [[User talk:OttselSpy25|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:18, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
+:Always nice to see you around OS25. And I get where you're coming from. But even without [[Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1]] and everything after setting very strong precedent the other way, I do think there are Sorites style concerns here. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:45, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
+:: (written before Najawin's post) Well, this is a forum thread in the Panopticon, it does ''have'' the power to change policy. Perhaps enshrining a sort of "Dude, come on," clause into [[T:VS]], if you will, wouldn't be such a bad idea. Ultimately, our validity rules should have some semblance of common sense to them, otherwise, well, we find ourselves in all sorts of various ridiculous states of affairs.
+::(in response to Najawin) Could you elaborate on your concerns? {{User:Aquanafrahudy/Sig}} 17:52, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
+:::Adapted from the general Sorites the argument would run something like, "We clearly agree that object (1) should be covered, and object (2) is only marginally different from (1). So (2) should be covered. To generalize, if (n+1) is marginally different from (n), we should cover (n+1). We cover (1). Thus, by induction, 'we should cover all things'." The bit in single quotes there is a little problematic, because we don't have '''a clean''' induction step, there isn't just one path to take over induction and a guarantee that there will never be non-marginal differences.
+:::But the "dude c'mon" argument is supposed to be a way to step back and look at big picture differences in a way that this argument says we just ''can't''. (In the Sorites as it's generally discussed the argument runs something like "if we have a heap of sand and we remove one grain, it's still a heap, so do this repeatedly, therefore one grain of sand is a heap". "Dude, c'mon.") So I'm just skeptical that we can ever draw these boundaries with any consistency or clarity, even if on the big picture we think it looks ridiculous. Yeah, Doctor Men looks ridiculous. Dimensions in Time looks ridiculous. Curse of Fatal Death looks ridiculous. The Noodle stuff look ridiculous. (I say these things with all the love in the world. You know that's how it looks to outsiders.) But finding clear demarcations to keep them out and other stuff in? I just don't buy it. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 20:11, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
+:::: Oh, fair enough, that seems sensible. {{User:Aquanafrahudy/Sig}} 20:22, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
 == ''LEGO Dimensions'' validity discussion ==
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 : The reason is that they are not LEGO Gandalf and LEGO Batman, they are versions of Gandalf and Batman from universes that have no understanding of what a "LEGO" might be.
 But this first clause is '''''precisely''''' wrong. They ''are'' LEGO Gandalf and Batman, namely, LEGO Gandalf and Batman from LEGO universes where the LEGO inhabitants ''believe they are not LEGO''; they believe they're Batman and Gandalf from the original properties completely. This is what the Burton quote illustrates! They're not LEGO Movie Batman and Gandalf, of course. But this is a different statement. They're still LEGO! I also once again direct you back to the Portal issue when you're insisting that the ''Doctor Who'' sections were treated with different gravity. This is true here ''as well'', and we know that this is irrelevant here. I get that you don't like this comparison, but it's sufficient to show that extra care to a section, not simply redoing something that previously existed, doesn't entail that there was intent for it to "count". You need more than that. And the Sharples quote could be that! But I think the Burton quotes and the Mystery Dimension are more than enough to make this very very messy as far as intent is concerned. Is it enough to get R4 disqualification? I dunno. It is for me. But everyone has their own standards. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 01:54, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
+:: I've been on the fence about adding to this discussion as I feel that, before I could give an entirely informed opinion on the matter. It's hard, as I don’t expact this discussion to be reopened but I'll never be able to contribute now. I've been considering watching a playthrough, but without actually interacting with the game I don't feel that I could understand the material. (Damn you devs for never making a 3DS or Switch port!) {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 23:54, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
+:::Switch doesn't really do many peripherals, does it? Labo, I guess. Just wouldn't be possible on 3ds. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 00:11, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
+:::: Idk, the 3DS was often pushed to its limits and it did have its number of toys-to-life ports. (Even if half of them were technically entirely new games that served as sidequels to the main versions.) {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 00:42, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
+::::: It doesn't help that accessing every possible piece of the content the game has to offer requires quite the financial investment. What's that? You ''didn't'' purchase this one minifig because it's from a franchise that doesn't interest you? Boy that's too bad, now you can't access the one piece of ''Doctor Who''-related content that's hidden away in the DLC pack it came with. Whoop-de-doo. [[User:WaltK|WaltK]] [[User talk:WaltK|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 20:13, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
+Going back to Najawin's second-last post and the LEGO-ness of Gandalf and Batman, it's worth noting that they're specifically the versions of the characters from the previous LEGO video games, seen at the beginning of ''Dimensions'' to be pulled directly from cutscenes in their previous games. When these main characters reference their universes, we are to understand that we have seen these universes previously in those games, but the other crossover characters only have the context of the media they originate from; when the Doctor says something about Victorian London and facing Weng-Chiang there, that's a reference to the TV show and not some layer in between because there isn't any LEGO retelling of that. Continuity is paid attention to in areas such as Davros meeting the Twelfth Doctor for the first or the Twelfth Doctor saying he shouldn't be able to go to Trenzalore. They're LEGO characters, but they have continuity of consciousness with the live action characters, as others have noted with regards to the Jack Harkness line. The game is set in a "Dimension Crisis" which in-universe has altered, shrunken, and spliced the universes affected (i.e. turned them into easily traversable open worlds which highlight the famous locations of a franchise), so we could take Jack's line to mean that LEGO-fication was part of that process for the Whoniverse.
+There's more meat on the bones of that Comic Con interview in regards to this. The interviewer asks the actors, "Do you consider them to be the same characters you play in the show or are they different?" Peter Capaldi responds, "Absolutely. To me it's the Doctor, that's who I'm playing. It's a different technique, because obviously you don't have my expressive face there... so obviously the voice is a bit more over-the-top, but they did ask for more."
+Perhaps a thing to focus on is the instances of ''classic Lego video game humour'' in the Doctor Who content. Normally in Lego games, scenes are recreated from famous movies and visual comedy is inserted into the otherwise serious narrative. Such as, for example, Lego Gandalf playing with the TARDIS controls and briefly transforming into Gandalf the White; that's a visual gag consistent with his home universe of the Lego ''Lord of the Rings'' video game. This is present in ''The Dalek Extermination of Earth'' with the scenes on the Dalek ship, where we see Daleks skateboarding and playing ball and other non-Dalek things. This is notable because I don't think any other Doctor Who element gets this jokey treatment, and there is an in-universe reason for this: the Daleks are a new batch created from the population of Earth in the year 2025 (uh oh, that's coming up) and this seems to be part of their personality.
+Additionally, regarding Portal, a popular franchise composed of only two video games is clearly different to the sprawling mess of ''Doctor Who''. Canon has a defined meaning relational to a central authority with that franchise, whereas ''Doctor Who''{{'}}s central authoritative author said that this was as canon as everything else (a statement which has some weight given that Moffat described some ''Who'' as being in [[Virgin reality#Behind the scenes|a separate continuity to his show]]). [[User:TheChampionOfTime|TheChampionOfTime]] [[User talk:TheChampionOfTime|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 15:53, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
+:Once more, you're advancing a hypothesis that's very difficult to hold, given the evidence. Maintaining that LEGO Batman + LEGO Gandalf + Wyldstyle are all from native LEGO dimensions, and the other characters come from their original IPs doesn't really line up with the statement about Portal. And, again, I understand you dislike the comparison, I really do. But the comparison is relevant because people are trying to make general arguments that, if successful, would entail, or would seem to entail, things ''about the Portal levels that we know to be false.'' Thus your arguments must fail. One person's modus ponens and all that.
+:Secondly, this is not what others have noted with the Jack Harkness line, this is simply false.
+:And finally, I don't know that it's quite ''relevant'' what Capaldi says here. My contention has never been that every person involved didn't intend for the work to count. Certainly I don't believe that. My contention is that the R4 intent has been far more messy than people are portraying it as, and I think there's a substantial bit of evidence that the people primarily working on the game itself think of the game writ large as being fully LEGO based. Surely in the past we've had R4 discussions where ''some'' of the people involved thought their work counted and some didn't, and still taken the latter R4 intent to be sufficient to disqualify it. (Shalka springs to mind, see [[User:CzechOut]]'s comments at [[Thread:207499]] in [[User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates 1]].) [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:52, 3 May 2024 (UTC)
+::What I should have said about Portal is: the quote that you're talking about comes from a Valve spokesperson and is thus ultimately irrelevant to this conversation. Like, realistically, canon has a very different meaning for that franchise and it makes sense that the people behind Portal would say that about a game that isn't even playable on PC, and they're licensees so their statement doesn't make sense to apply to other properties in the game, no more than Steven Moffat could declare the Simpsons levels un-canon to the Simpsons. As this is a statement from the people behind the Portal property, all it tells us is that Lego Dimensions is officially not canon to the Portal games, not that the Portal games are non-canon to Lego Dimensions. "Dimensions" are fictional concepts in their own right, and I think it's a leap to say that because the Lego Portal Dimension is not considered by its licensees to be part of their official continuity that the Lego Dimension is therefore itself a discrete continuity, because that border is uni-directional and the statement 'that game is not canon to our series' does not equate to 'that game is in a separate universe in the multiverse". I think that all the multiverse content of this game confuses the conversation, when in truth we could compare this situation to the fact that [[Dimensions in Time (TV story)|Dimensions in Time]] being non-canon to ''[[EastEnders (series)|EastEnders]]'' shouldn't have a bearing on its relation to ''Doctor Who''.
+::Since we're talking about the intent of the people making this thing, the Burton interview is far more relevant, but as I said in my previous post his talk about the comedy of Lego Gandalf is just as much in reference to the ''Lego Lord of the Rings'' as it is to ''Lego Dimensions''. Burton is talking about the Lego games franchise in general as a parody franchise, and that the parody is about more than the fact that its all Lego. They've always had gags and goofs. The fact that we can see many examples of what their version of parody is means that some of the franchises in Lego Dimensions stand out due to their relative lack of this ''classic Lego video game humour''. The main characters of Lego Dimensions stand out from the worlds they interact with because they originate from previously established Lego universes while the other worlds were established in non-Lego media. [[User:TheChampionOfTime|TheChampionOfTime]] [[User talk:TheChampionOfTime|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 01:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
+:::I would agree that the Portal statement is in no way definitive proof that we should view LEGO Dimensions as a whole as being "non canonical" for every franchise. (Or taking it as a statement of R4 intent for this discussion, etc etc.) That's not why it's useful. It's a statement that serves as a refutation of ''specific arguments'' that people are bringing up. If the arguments that people make are successful, they would entail that the Portal level should to be taken in a way that we know the creators very explicitly did not intend to take it. So '''''those arguments must fail'''''. (''This doesn't mean their conclusion is incorrect'', '''nor does it even suggest to us that their conclusion is incorrect''', just that the reasoning can't be valid, so we can't listen to the arguments at all.) It doesn't move the needle on its own here, it just prevents other things from moving the needle.
+::::The main characters of Lego Dimensions stand out from the worlds they interact with because they originate from previously established Lego universes while the other worlds were established in non-Lego media.
+:::There's an issue here, well, two. You've set up a dilemma, in how you've portrayed "[originating in] previously established Lego universes" and "[being] established in non-Lego media", as being exclusive and/or all-encompassing. Gandalf only originates from a previously established Lego universe insofar as ''LEGO Gandalf'' does. But then, if we frame the issue in this way, focusing on the LEGO iteration of the character, it's not clear that any of the other characters ''do'' originate in non-LEGO media. To say so is question begging. And if we instead interpret LEGO Gandalf and LEGO Batman as also belonging to the second camp, of being established in non-LEGO media, the distinction you're trying to draw evaporates, the claim is simply false. So either your argument fails or it's circular. Viciously so.
+:::I note as well that I think your reading of the dimension crisis is completely incompatible with both the mystery dimension, trailer, and the ''second'' Burton quote, where he specifies that they've tried to be true to the brick. (Now, I am taking Wired's interpretation of that to be correct, and if you disagree, ultimately I find that to be reasonable. But ''given'' that interpretation, I think it's incompatible.) [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 02:36, 4 May 2024 (UTC)