What Remains of Edith Finch (PC) - Review

What is wrong with these people?
(Spoilers!)

I am so happy about the indie-revolution. Because of it, we're seeing a plethora of game-genres emerge (or re-emerge) that I didn't think were possible some 15 years ago. Back then I thought we'd pretty much be stuck with an endless line of Battlefields, FIFA's and Final Fantasies. Now we've got games that are more like toys, like Chuchél, games that are more of everything like Undertale and then we have games that are more like books, like Gone Home and To the Moon. What Remains of Edith Finch falls into the latter category, although for some reason they've been a bit playfully, or spitefully, called "walking-simulators". It's understandable, if you were to traverse a book you'd mostly just do walking and reading, and so it is in these games. Some argue that they can't be called games at all, and I find that discussion a bit beside the point. They're interactive, but they don't have much of gameplay in the sense of being able to fail at things or achieve stuff. It's an experience, and it's inbetween reading and gaming. The fact is I don't know why these games don't fall under the "visual novel" category, because it would be pretty lame if it was solely because you can walk around in them.

I do feel that these games, as I am going to call them nonetheless, fill a niche that a regular book couldn't though. Even with Walking-Simulators I didn't find very enjoyable, like To the Moon, I find it hard to imagine that the story would've been any good if it had been text only and no "gameplay" at all, even if the gameplay is what I found particularly weak. The interactivity of the medium gives life to a story that could've otherwise potentially not been as strong or entertaining. It's only fair that if we have a ton of games where the story only works as the backdrop or excuse for the gameplay the other end of the spectrum would be where the gameplay is only the backdrop or excuse to experience the story.

I know I've said there will be spoilers, and never is that more serious than with these games. They pretty much are their stories, so if you want to play it I strongly suggest doing so before reading this review.

What Remains... is a story about Edith returning to her childhood home to explore her family history. Four generations of Finches have lived and died in the house, and we pretty immediately find out that most of them died very young. This is due to a combination of Kennedy-esque bad luck and what can only be described as criminally neglectful parenting by the Finches. As you uncover more and more of the stories behind these peoples deaths, because that is the narrative of the game, you'll baffle at how no one seemed to learn from past mistakes. So we learn that Molly dies from eating poisonous mistletoe berries, that were kept in her room. Gregory drowns in the bath after his mom leaves him unattended to answer a phone call. Gus is left out in a storm and Calvin falls into the ocean because someone thought it would be a good idea to build a swing set right next to a cliff. Each story, and subsequent death, is experienced through a little mini-game which is different for each character and quite imaginative. It's difficult for me to wrap my head around whether the designers intended for these mini-games and stories to leave me sympathetic or chuckling. There is nothing funny about a toddler drowning in the bath of course, and the mini-game handles the matter quite delicately, but as a parent myself I found it a lot more frustrating than endearing to get to know the Finches. A lot of the time the stories left me thinking "really?", and not necessarily in the "wow, this is so tragic" kind of way.

As Edith you walk around the house and slowly discover each story. I say slowly because sweet macaroni does Edith walk slow. Fortunately it's not something that becomes very annoying, simply because the game rarely requires you to move, or want to move, quickly anyway. But walking up and down stairs is unrealistically slow and I was glad it wasn't something that I had to do often. Speaking of unrealistic, for some reason the designers have some very un-human looking models in the game at places and they really broke my immersion. Overall however the game did an ok job with making me feel like I was visiting a real place, albeit one inhabited by what must've been semi-crazy people. Because of this the game is also perfectly linear, but if you expected something else from this genre then you should've probably gone for one of those "Pick your story"-books instead.

Here are some of the notes I wrote down while playing it;
- Right at the start of the game Edith comments that they all grew tired of eating salmon after her brother started working in the cannery. Let me just say it's impossible to grow tired of salmon, I could eat that all day, every day.
-  If I've done my math correctly, Dawns dad is supposed to be 33 when he dies. He definitely looks like he is around 50 when we play his segment though, so I guess life wasn't kind to him.
- The first Finch (of the game family tree) is Odin, who is from Norway. Bit cliché to name a Scandinavian after Norse Mythology though, innit? Don't think Odin is a very common name in Norway.
- The end credits are really cool! Each name in the development team is accompanied by a picture of them as a kid. I wonder which picture of me I would choose for something like that?

The game is eerily similar to Gone Home, so much so that I had to check which came first to see which game copied the other (Gone Home was released 4 years before What Remains...). What Remains... is a much more fantasical game where Gone Home is a lot more grounded, and I definitely enjoyed the latter more. They're both only about two hours of gameplay however, and What Remains is still worth experiencing if you enjoy these types of games - if nothing else for the pretty far out death stories and they're accompanying mini-games. I will definitely give credit for those mini-games being quite memorable, especially the first one where you as Molly go on a hallucinogenic trip where you end up eating yourself and the last one where you as Lewis end up cutting your head off. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It makes you wonder though, who comes up with the idea of a game that is basically a whole bunch of kids dying in different ways?

Dishonored (PC) - Review

Honor among rats.
(With spoilers)

Dishonored has floated around in my peripherals for quite some time, ever since I first read something about it somewhere that made me realize it was a stealth game of some sort. This was probably around the time it was released in 2012, I suspect - I can honestly not say when I first heard of it. I do know that it never really left me though, and I kept coming back to it as a game I really wanted to try out. For some reason I kept stalling it however, until now, when I finally decided that enough was enough and it was time to get it done. Considering Dishonored takes inspiration from one of my favorite games - Thief - and is designed by designers from another of my favorite games - Deus Ex - it seemed like a match made in heaven and a dream game from the start. No wonder it wouldn't leave me alone. Big wonder I didn't get to it sooner!

I'm glad I did though, because the inspirations are clear and make for an overall lovely experience.

What I've mentioned above is pretty much all I knew about Dishonored going in to the game but I instantly liked it and its almost-as-if-painted graphic aesthetic. Visually it wasn't going for full realism and I enjoyed it all the more for it because it gave the city of Dunwall a unique feel to it. After I had managed to get my lighting settings into a satisfactory state (originally I could barely make it out of the first area because I couldn't find my way in the dark) I looked around to see a gameworld well realized and that felt realistic enough even when twisted into the shape the game designers needed for the gameplay.

The story is not what makes the game memorable - Dunwall has been struck by some sort of plague, and people are dying by the dozens. The Empress is killed and you (Corvo) is framed for it. You have to find your way out of prison and join a group called the Loyalists, for which you complete a series of missions to rid the city of its new Lord Regent to allow for the daughter of the Empress, Emily, to take her rightful place on the throne. Initially I was hoping the story would unfold to uncover who, or what, has unleashed the plague on the city. I felt it was hinted at early on in the game and was a bit disappointed when that is never fully explained (at least not in my playthrough). While there is one interesting twist towards the latter half, the story plays out pretty conventionally and even the twist isn't used to its full potential.

They've employed some famous voices, like Susan Sarandon and Lena Headey, for the voice work but overall there isn't enough of the story for the voice work to be of much importance. If there is something I would've loved to see more of it is a fleshing out of some of the side-characters, which seem pretty promising when you first encounter them but don't get the screen time they deserve. Like Granny Rags, voiced by beforementioned Susan Sarandon. Crazy for sure, but also apparently important enough even for the Outsider (the mysterious force who endows you with your powers for pretty mysterious reasons) to make special mention of her. Why exactly that is isn't further explored, neither do possible story paths you take with side characters get enough room either if you ask me.

It was instantly obvious that inspiration had been taken from Deus Ex, where the stages offered up several different ways of taking on the goal. You could choose to go rampage and murder anyone that stood in your way, or sneak your way in. Just as in Deus Ex you can also choose not to kill "bosses" if you find another way of neutralizing them or to achieve your goal.

Overall I found that most stages did a good job at giving you fun ways to explore the areas and find different ways to go. Some of the most fun I had in the game was to perch myself high up early on in a stage (the ones that allowed it), survey the area and plan out how I would play it in my head before executing. Sometimes, even most of the times, there would be something in the way that required me to rethink my plan and that only made it all the more fun. In this way Dishonored often felt like opening a puzzle box, looking through all the information you had and trying to figure out how to solve it.

Deus Ex did a better job than Dishonored in making the different paths offered seem logical and realistic, often in Dishonored I would wonder why someone who has so many guards still chooses to have a huge open sewage leading into their mansion or open hatches everywhere (I'm not saying Deus Ex didn't suffer from these problems, but somehow they felt more glaring in Dishonored). It is clear that the designers of Dishonored have let nothing stand in the way of fun gameplay, and I have no problem with that. Because of this, Dishonored makes you feel like you're in control of the path you're taking, whereas in Deus Ex it's more rigid. Jumping from pipes, rooftops and hiding behind dumpsters is an acrobatic joyride - the areas are littered with opportunities to explore them.

Early on you're given a teleport magic/power that allows you to travel quickly a short distance in any direction. If you want, this is the only supernatural power you'll have to aid you. If you want to make things (I suspect considerably) easier, there are a handful of other magics that can aid you in your missions. The Eye that allows you to see enemies (and if upgraded alarms and items) through walls almost feels like cheating however, it made the game very easy. On the other hand, it allowed for a different kind of playstyle and planning which was also highly enjoyable. Not using this skill would probably make the game a lot more difficult than I found it.

There were many powers I didn't even try out, either because they required killing enemies to be used or because the game was easy enough with the powers I had. Because of this I never tried out the "possession" skill for instance, that allows you to mind control enemies, neither did I try out a skill that allowed you to summon a pack of rats to attack enemies with. There were a couple more skills and it would definitely be fun to try to play the game with a different setup.

The NPC's have also been dealt the "fun over realism" treatment, with most enemies about as smart as two thick planks. Enemies will not notice when the people they are patrolling with are missing for instance and are, at least on normal difficulty, extremely easy to sneak up on. Reading on Wikipedia I see that the game designers didn't want to make the mistake of Thief where the player can pretty much hide in plain sight as long as they stay in the shadows - I feel that this game did little to change that however, as most of the time you can stay out of the sight of enemies without much trouble at all. But it is really your choice whether you want to make it that easy for yourself. Like I said, playing without any additional powers would probably make the game a whole lot harder even on the normal difficulty. I opted instead to use some of the powers for the enjoyment of being able to explore the areas more freely, allowing me to try different angles of attack or side-missions.

Side-missions, or optional goals, are basically the chance to help people around the stages that aren't otherwise related to the main quest line. Here as well you're sometimes given several options as to how to deal with it, you can either help them, betray them (which sometimes gives you some other benefit) or just ignore them. One example was one of the later stages where a group of survivors of the plague are holed up in a house. You can choose to help them escape the city or you can alert the guards to their presence. If you choose the latter, the guards will be temporarily busy fighting the survivors, making the stage easier to traverse for you. This of course leads to a lot of replayability if you want to try the different options presented to you.

Because of the plague in the city you will also fight the "weepers", plague victims that are not yet dead but mad from disease. I wasn't too happy when these were introduced to the game as I am easily frightened by anything remotely zombie-like. Dishonored also has a very interesting design choice which means that the more people you kill, the more weepers the stages will hold. Even before I knew this I had decided to kill as few people as possible, but this definitely increased my motivation ten-fold.

I had an interesting experience early on in the game that definitely left an impression and lasting memory. I was on a mission to help the criminal Slackjaw uncover who had infected his men (it was me). He had already locked some weepers up in a caged area on his premises. When I left Slackjaw's chambers to leave his premises, I noticed that the weepers had gotten out of their cage somehow and were fighting Slackjaw's men outside. I was perched above on some pipe, watching them battling it out and it was genuinely creepy. Who had let out the weepers? Were they going to kill Slackjaw while I was gone too? I don't know if it was scripted, but it really made the city come alive and the eeriness of the situation felt real.

I've so far mentioned that I am not too fussed about game designers who choose fun gameplay over realism (in the cases where it's either/or). In one area I was a bit annoyed however, Dishonored doesn't allow you to shoot out lights (at least not the couple of times I tried it) which was something I was counting on after having played Thief, in which it is basically mandatory throughout. I feel like this would've been a great option to using the magical skills, and it is a double-edged sword as it simultaneously alerts enemies to your presence. I also would've liked for the AI to be a couple of notches smarter than they are in the game - maybe that requires the harder difficulties.

As mentioned I would've loved for some of the characters to get more room and development and some of the storylines to be further fleshed out. In the end it pretty much comes down to me just wanting more of this game and it almost feels like they've had to leave a lot on the cutting board. Maybe this is where multiple playthroughs come in, as I've only done one so far I can't say for sure that there isn't at least some more for me to discover about each character and storyline.

Overall though, Dishonored is a lot of fun. I rarely hammer out games where I play them intensely (as intensely as I can with two small children) until I am done, but I did this with Dishonored. At first I thought it was a bit short when I had finished it after 15 hours, but with the replayability and sheer vastness of options offered to you I find it a pretty fair length. Still, I was a bit sad to hit the end and I am very glad there are more games in the series, which I am really looking forward to trying out.
While it is not as intense or memorable as Thief and not as slick as Deus Ex, Dishonored is a lot more playful - the kind of game where you can almost see the game designers enjoyment reverberate throughout every thoughtful idea. If you enjoy stealth games I would say Dishonored is a must-play.

Orcs & Elves (NDS) - Review

A boy and his wand.

John Carmack is probably among the best known names in video gaming, almost as much of a household name as Shigeru Miyamoto or Nobuo Uematsu. And even if you don't know who he is, you most definitely know about some of the games he's worked on - Doom, Wolfenstein 3d and Quake to mention a few. For a few years in the mid-90's, video gaming pretty much was all about Doom, everyone talked about it and everyone tried to copy it and it's difficult to overstate the influence Carmacks work has had on video game design since.

But I wonder how many people know that Carmacks Doom RPG engine was also used for a little game called Orcs & Elves however. Originally released in 2006 for mobile phones, Carmack has arguably had the most influence on this little gem out of all his games, as he is credited both as producer, programmer and writer here. Created together with his wife Katherine Anna Wang as an homage to their love of everything D&D, Orcs & Elves uses the Doom RPG Engine to put you in the shoes (slippers?) of a wand-wielding elf named Elli (the wands name is Ellon if you're curious), dungeon crawling your way through a monster-infested dwarven fortress. It really couldn't be any more D&D if it tried.

I came across this many years back on a pirate multi-cart (I played the DS version) and intrigued by the name (Orcs & Elves says pretty much everything you need to know about this game) I tried it out. I liked it, and have no idea why I didn't finish it back then, but it lingered in the back of my head until I decided to buy myself a copy this year and play it through fully. Turns out it's not a very long game, but every minute is well-designed and fun to play.

It wasn't until I was researching some background information for this post that I found out this was originally designed as a mobile game, but looking at the game it makes sense. While the DS version was suped up to fit the DS, with some added menu functions for instance, enhanced graphics and more levels, it still looks pretty basic for a DS game. It never once bothered me though and definitely doesn't detract from the fun.

Graphically it's reminiscent of Doom, but plays out turn-based in which every action you do corresponds to one turn - in short, the enemies move when you move. I've played other games like this, Legend of Grimrock is the first that comes to mind, and I am overall a fan of the concept. I did not have fun with Legend of Grimrock though but unfortunately it was too long ago since I played it for me to make a good comparison to this game to tell you what Orcs & Elves does right where LoG failed for me.

Orcs & Elves is very straightforward, but mixes things up enough to keep it interesting. At first you only have two weapons, but your arsenal will quickly expand as you delve deeper into the fortress. This will equip you with a wide range of abilities, both physical and magical, to tackle the different enemies you encounter. Enemies in turn have varying weaknesses that make certain weapons more or less useful, some enemies you don't want to fight ranged and some you do and so on. To aid you further you've got a bunch of different potions and drinks that improve your stats for a couple of turns. Knowing when and in which order to use your weapons and potions is a big part of the combat fun in Orcs & Elves. While I found the game to be fairly easy on normal difficulty, and rarely requiring too much tactical thinking, I can see how utilizing your arsenal (and your turns) fully and cleverly would be a necessity on the tougher difficulties.

The same touch has been used on the writing. This is not an epic story that will leave you feeling your full range of emotions before the end, essentially you are just working your way through hordes of evil-doers to avenge the dwarven king. But on the way you'll encounter interesting characters that definitely add to the experience with some fun dialogue and neat side-quest feeling adventures. There are some secrets to be found and puzzles to be solved. It takes trope elements from old D&D games and blends it all together wonderfully, you can tell this is done with pure love for the genre.

Honestly, my only complaint about this game is that it's a tad on the short side. I finished it under 6 hours which I guess is a fair amount of gameplay for a 2006 mobile game, but feels cut short for a game on the DS. In the end though, it's only because I want to spend more time cutting through enemies and with the harder difficulties there is some replay-value to be had.

If you're after some well-designed, quick and neat D&D fun, I definitely recommend this game. It's not trying to reinvent the wheel, but it will never leave you bored.

Chuchel - PC Review

The cherry on the cake.

My best gaming experiences are almost all a shared gaming experience. The countless hours I've spent in the sofa (or on the floor in front of the TV) at my parents playing games like Mario Kart, Mario Party, Golden Eye and Super Smash Bros. The even more countless hours I've spent playing World of Warcraft. But also games that you'd normally consider single-player experiences, like Final Fantasy VII or Resident Evil. To this day I am certain that a big part in why I love gaming so much in the first place, comes from watching my mom play games like Myst, Diablo and the Dig.

This, of course, is something I want to share with my son. Just as I love building lego, drawing, walking in the forest to find cool insects or play pretend games with him, I love playing video games with him. And I've found that his 4 yo brain has its special way of thinking of gaming and puzzle solving that really adds to my experience as well. Firstly he simply enjoys puzzle solving a lot more than I do, and brings the enthusiasm I need to try and retry more difficult parts. Secondly, I find he thinks about solving puzzles differently from me, and often brings the out of the box thinking that I need. Of course, being 4 yo it is clear he wouldn't get very far in the games we've played together (that have been designed with adults in mind) without my help, but while I might do the big nudging to get us forward he definitely sometimes helps me as well.

So while we also play racing and platforming games together, I often find that puzzle solving games have worked best for making it feel like we're in it together. It allows us to have a dialogue where we suggest things for each other that I find unique to the genre. I also don't have to help him (ie take over the controller to make a difficult jump) as much as I help him help himself (or us) move forward.

We recently played The Room together and had a lot of fun with it. I was definitely on the lookout for something similar to play together with my kid, but even though I heard of Chuchel already when it was released and I immediately thought it looked interesting, for some reason I didn't think about that it could be a fun game for us to play. It wasn't until the other day, when it popped up on the gog.com summer sale that I decided to give it a shot.

A lot of things verge on creepy

Just like The Room, Chuchel is a very short game. Even with me and the son playing around, not always trying to solve the puzzle but just trying to see what clicking on everything would do, I think we clocked in at around 2,5 hour gameplay when we reached THE END. Unlike The Room however, Chuchel is almost more of an experience than it is a game (like a sort of puzzle version of the "walking simulators). That is not to say that it isn't fun to play, and we definitely had a blast with it.

The premise is simple and reminiscent of the Scrat + Nut short films that air before the Ice Age movies. Chuchel, which I assume is the name of the protagonist, is a little soot ball who just wants to eat their cherry. In various screens it is prevented for doing so and you need to solve the puzzle to allow them to get to it. This game has no in-game text or dialogue, making it universally appealing to pre-reading children in the same way that for instance TV-series like Shaun the Sheep or *shudder* Angry Birds does (Pencilmation is another great example of this type of entertainment). The comparison to TV-series is actually apt in many ways, as Chuchel almost plays out more like an interactive, and incredibly whacky, cartoon than a regular puzzle game.

While the game will mostly present you with a puzzle or scene where you get to click on various things to see how you can interact with them (presented through icons rather than text) it often intersperses with cut scenes and the title Chuchel pops up so often you think the creators story boarded the game like TV-episodes (Wikipedia even categorizes it as an "adventure game" rather than a puzzle game).

While the gameplay is simplistic, and I felt instantly understandable for a 4 yo, the puzzle solving itself felt a lot more trial and error. But definitely not in a bad way. Often it is completely impossible to be able to tell how different things on the screen act and interact until you've tried to click everything at least once. Chuchel presents itself like a fever dream and all the crazy characters you encounter are probably as weirdly disturbing to an adult as they are hilariously wonky to a child.
While we never had to use a walkthrough to get through any puzzles, I credit this to the excellent in game tip system. Once you've tried a puzzle for a while, a little question mark will pop up somewhere, explaining roughly how to solve the puzzle but keeping with the rest of the in-game style. Nothing is explained flat out or in text, but rather with pictures or little animations. Sometimes the tip is as much a puzzle to understand as the puzzle itself, but I felt the balance was great and using the tip didn't feel like just being handed the solution.

All of the gameplay is handled with just one mouse-button, and while most of it is just clicking around for various ways to interact with objects, there are also more action-packed parts to give you some variety. For instance there is a Space Invaders-puzzle, flying or jumping through obstacles stages and all of these can still be controlled with just the mouse button. You are also given the option to control these stages (that require a bit more reflexes) with the arrow keys and I personally preferred this while my son preferred to stick with the mouse button.

Of course this isn't a game where you can die nor are you on a time limit, so the bf said over my shoulder that the game seemed void of challenge (and thus in his eyes pointless). I just replied that in a puzzle game the puzzles, namely solving them, is the sole challenge and that goes for pretty much all of them. This does leave the non-puzzle parts feeling "pointless" in the meaning that there is no way to fail them, but yet again I feel like they are more there for providing an experience in between the puzzle solving bits. And this works perfectly to mix things up for a 4 yo, in fact one of my kid's favorite parts of the game is where you have to run and jump your way through a section (think a very light version of Bit.Trip Runner).

Gameplay-wise Chuchel isn't doing anything new. It's basically a hodgepodge, and in some instances versions, of existing games and gameplay-elements. But that's not why you want to play it. It's all in the presentation and aesthetics of the game. You simply haven't seen Pacman or Tetris this way before. The sound design is an equally lovely bunch of hums and umms that adds to the overall style. Chuchel itself just spouts gobbledygook and flails its arms to communicate with various things and my 4 yo loved pointing out how funny everything sounded. Since Chuchel has a soundtrack I am assuming it had music, but to be honest I can't remember any of it. It doesn't detract from the experience, but what you'll remember are probably the sound effects rather than the score. (Listening to the score on its own it's actually pretty cool).

Once you've beaten a part you can revisit it to replay it, and and for myself I'd have to admit I wouldn't say there is much replay value in Chuchel. The kid enjoys replaying some of the more platformey bits (as mentioned above) but overall I think once you've beaten it few people would care to revisit.

What a visit it is though. You just don't see things like this every day, and the sheer surprise effect of almost everything on screen, the amount of times you're thinking "what am I even looking at" and of course the laugh from my 4 yo when Chuchel gets smashed flat by a hammer out of nowhere, his enthusiasm when you play a Pacman clone and to see his joy when he experiements with turning Chuchel into different animals at one point - it's like a really great movie experience but with the added fun of interactivity where you control the story.

Chuchel won't provide you with much challenge, maybe not even a lasting effect. But it will definitely brighten up a few hours of your day, and I can definitely recommend playing it. And if you have the opportunity to play it with a kid, I'd say that is the way to go about it.

I Saw Avengers: Infinity War And I Have So Many Questions

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I saw Avengers Infinity War Friday evening, and while I thought it was a highly entertaining movie and recommend anyone with an interest in the MCU to watch it, it also left me with a bunch of questions.

Now I realize my knowledge of the lore and intricacies of the MCU are very limited and that comes a lot from the fact that the comics aren't so easily available in Sweden and some from the fact that I haven't even watched most of the other movie entries in the Marvel Superhero franchise yet. Some of the questions I have from AIW might already have been answered in the previous movies, most of which feel like they've all been setting up for this one.

While I don't think it's essential to have seen ALL the previous movies, because there are a lot at this point, I do agree that some of them are pretty dang important to get the right feel of the characters and story.

Dr Strange is definitely one of those movies. Black Panther is another. I had no idea who Vision, Scarlet Witch or Red Skull were (other than that I know they exist in the comics) because I haven't seen Age of Ultron or Captain America: The First Avenger, so they are worth watching first as well. Some things in AIW I didn't really know the background of, like who the heck the guy with the arm was (apparently the Winter Soldier from another Cap America movie) but he was more of a cameo than a plot element. The movie references events that happened in the latest Thor movie (Ragnarok) which I also haven't seen, but recaps it well enough that you get the gist. I also haven't seen any of the newer Spider-Man movies, but Spider-Man is Spider-Man. I guess the final scene where he vanishes loses a bit of its punch if you haven't built up some emotional attachment to that particular Spider-Man yet though.

But I also know there are a lot more characters in the MCU, or at least within the Marvel Universe, that I wondered why they didn't show up. Like, where are any of the X-Men when you need them? I am sure Phoenix (when she's not just going all bonkers) could've been useful against Thanos. I also missed the Fantastic Four. While the Four themselves might've been of limited use (but to be fair, since they still try to make me believe Black Widow is anything but useless I am sure the Four could've contributed quite a lot) it would've been cool to see what Dr Doom had to say about Thanos' plans. Since I don't really know much about Dr Doom and judging by his name it probably wouldn't have benefited Earth however.

I realize any characters missing were probably due to legal issues, and also the fact that the movie already sports a massive array of super heroes (some of which, like The Falcon, seem completely unnecessary). I think the movie did a tremendous job to manage to get this plot come together to something that wasn't just a mess trying to follow. Each storyline manages to make sense and come together to a marvellous (see what I did there) whole.

So while it would've been cool to see even more super heroes get involved, and they might still be, I understand why they weren't.

My questions instead regard a lot of Thanos' reasoning. Now, as you must've understood by now I know very little about the MCU in general and not much about Thanos either. These questions are raised by someone who basically only has the information from AIW to go by. I think AIW does a very good job at layering Thanos' motivations, making it a lot more than just black and white. While Thanos wants to kill people, and a lot of them, he does it for the "greater good". Essentially he is no different from any hunter who culls a herd of animals for the greater good of the rest of the eco system, and in the end the animal itself as well. Rather than having a lot of people suffering, you have a few people living in prosperity. So far so good (even if, rightfully, a lot of people don't agree with his reasoning). 

What I don't get though is that if Thanos has the power to wipe out half of all life in the Universe once he gets his grubby hands on all the infinity stones, then why doesn't he also have the power to provide for the life that is already in the Universe? If the argument is that that wouldn't really solve the issue as resources are finite I would argue that reducing any population by half to remove overpopulation also doesn't solve the issue as populations will rise back up again, at which point Thanos would have to redo all the work (of having to snap his fingers to kill people). Will he do this on a set time schedule or whenever people reach a certain amount or ratio of overpopulation? Or maybe continuously? It makes more sense to terraform planets into livable area for the people that already exist, because A: no one would have to die and B: with the infinity stones resources aren't limited in the Universe in any practical kind of way. 

Are you even alive?

This also saves him the hassle of figuring out something else - who to kill? In the movie it's not clear whether people die randomly or Thanos has chosen them, but that's not the big issue here. Do only people die? Only sentient beings or any living being? Because let's be frank, there are more animals on Earth than just humans who can be quite devastating for an eco system. Also taking into account every other planet with living organisms on them I think it's safe to assume that the range of sentience is quite wide, so where to draw the line? Is Thanos going to wipe out half of everything living just to make it easier for himself?  What is a virus classified as? Where to draw the line with people with disabilities or species with different levels of sentience, like elephants and dolphins? Wiping out half of everything living would also be extremely counter-productive as it would basically put the resources vs people ratio to the same levels he is trying to avoid. So let's assume he doesn't want to get rid of half of every tree, beetle and duck. What kind of scale does Thanos use to judge whether something living is enough of a burden on an eco-system? Has Thanos even thought this through?

Worst of all though, once Thanos has all the infinity stones, or even beforehand when he plans on what he is going to do with the infinity stones, he only has one plan. He doesn't even try to consider any other way of dealing with the issue. When he looked at the devastation going through his home planet of Titan he never once thought "how can I provide for all these people?" but instead all he thought was "how can I make half of them die so that at least we don't all suffer?". It says a lot about his inner workings and is definitely worth calling him out for when he starts on his "holier than thou"-rant of trying to help people. Nah dude, you just want to kill people. Why even bother trying to justify it?

But maybe the infinity stones don't work that way, maybe they can only destroy. If that is the case it's not very clear in the movie (in which they're only basically portraid as giving the wielder immense power of any kind).

And in the end this is all just a lot of over-analyzing from someone who really should read up more on the lore first, and maybe not write rambling blog posts when tired and hungry. If anyone finds the time and want to clear up any of these questions though - I'd be grateful.