Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese franchise spanning multiple volumes of manga, anime adaptations, movies and more. At first glance you might think of it as just another sci-fi fantasy anime - it does, after all, feature a buxom lead female with purple hair fighting crime in a thong. But what makes Ghost in the Shell so good across its multiple iterations and incarnations is how it slowly peels back the sterotypical machismo-la🥂den action to reveal itself as something far m🦹ore thoughtful and personal.

That is not what I saw today in a trailer for Ghost in the Shell: First Assault, an online, team-based shooter that could perhaps be best summarized as "Call of Deus Ex." Tak༒e a look:

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying First Assault is bad. In fact, I dare say it looks like it could ꦫbe fun. I dig the smooth, anime-inspired visuals and cyber-augmented soldiers fragging one another in fast, fluid succession. But scenes like that so rarely happen in Ghost in the Shell that it feels akin to making a Dragonball Z racing game based on that one (admittedly fantastic and hilarious) episode where Goku and Piccolo go driving. It's fun, but that's not the heart of this franchise.

When I watch Ghost in the Shell, I see a team of complex individuals who work together, complementing each other's skills and flaws, to solve crimes. The fact that almost all ☂of them have robot parts and work for the fictional equivalent of the CIA is secondary - it's the people that matter. I often describe GitS as "Law & Order, in the future, with cyborgs" when I suggest it to people, because I want them to understand that it's the mystery and drama that should ent♊ice them, not the shootouts.

Take the Laughing Man, for example. As a primary antaꩲgonist of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, he taunts our heroes by way of hacking into not just security cameras, but cybernetics as well. Even when witne🍒sses see him in person, Laughing Man hacks into people's memories to superimpose his logo over his face and thus conceal his identity.

It is only through a long period of careful investigation (which, being a cyberpunk mystery, naturally includes morally-bankrupt megacorporations, government conspiracies and the like) that his identity is revealed. And when the truth comes to light, there's no grand battle of running and gunning. It🎶's a quiet moment that the characters take to reflect on what brought them to this point.

In another episode, a mostly-unaugmented character dismisses AI-controlled tanks as mere things, to which the tanks respond angrily, with one going so far as to label him a "bigot." It sounds silly, but in a world where you can be a human sentience living in a completely inorganic prosthesis (a "ghost in the shell" if you will), it helps to see how blurred the line between man and machine has 🌊beco﷽me. You ponder what it means to be a person.

That's the G♈host in the Shell game I want. I want stealth, sabotage, mystery and intrigue. I want to hack into p🍸eople's minds to steal, impose or re-arrange information, memories and senses like they were lines of code. I want the government to be corrupt and oppressive, but abstract and impossible to defeat. I want to think and circumvent the system. And in more quiet moments, I want to question what it means to be human in this world.

I get it. Shooters sell, online team games are a hot ticket right now, and giving your game brand recognition with one of the most influential and popular animes of the past decade helps it stand apart. I have no doubt that First Assau✨lt will ღfind an audience. But the combination of these particular elements feels wrong.

Games like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt show that a developer can stay true to the spirit of a franchise, avoid relying on popular trends to sell their product, and still make an impact and financial success. Games like BioShock and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Spec Ops: The Line show that you can even make the game in🍎 question a shooter but not abandon the spirit of the source material.

Ghost in the Shell te🐻aches ꦰthat there are some problems you can't just shoot away. It's a lesson I'd love to see reflected in a game bearing its name.