Ori is my favorite Metroidvania series by far, and I love Metroidvanias. The most incredible feat is that the second installment actually surpassed the first. The first Ori was amazing. It was stunningly beautiful, had a compelling story, and the gameplay mechanics were fantastic.

For Ori 2 I would have been happy with more of the same. They didn’t have to try to reinvent anything, and yet they did in Wisps. Every tweak they made was for the better. The interface/mechanics changes rounded off rough edges I didn’t even realize were there. The story remained engaging and touching, and it had a real arc. And the graphics are even more stunning. I remember playing Wisps for the first time and just standing still and being amazed at the graphics. My character was standing still, and yet the entire screen was alive with movement. I was standing on a branch, and the branch was slowly bouncing with my weight. The leaves were gently blowing in the wind. Blades of grass were swaying. It was incredible.

The two Ori games are some of the best games of any genre I’ve ever played. Big fan, and I’m excited by that studio’s next game.

I agree this is a legitimate goal. I guess I’m just thinking they need to be transparent about it. The representative should be clear what they are doing and not insinuate they are only identifying the presence of a human and that’s it. They probably should even have a sign on the machine to notify people they are being videoed. When I get into my Ford Escape the touch screen tells me I’m supposed to notify my passengers of privacy concerns because I have location services turned on. This sort of privacy notification seems standard these days.

They need to recognize a face because they explicitly state in their FAQ they are estimating purchasers’ age and sex. This isn’t just adjusting lighting. I would not be so quick to say there is nothing problematic here. I’m highly skeptical.

Based on the quotes from the vending company, at first I thought this was just a dumb way to detect when a human is standing there. But it’s worse than that.

So first we get this from a company representative:

The technology acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the purchasing interface

Ok, fine. Overkill, but fine. But then their company’s FAQ tells us this:

only the final data, namely presence of a person, estimated age and estimated gender, is collected without any association with an individual.

So they ARE collecting data, and they are trying to obfuscate that fact by saying they are just “activating the purchasing interface”. This isn’t just turning on a lighted display when a person is standing there. “Activating the purchasing interface” means activating the algorithms to analyze my appearance. They are trying to figure out who is buying their product. That’s different.

So they are being shady about their true intentions. They aren’t being up front, and they expect us to trust that they aren’t storing or transmitting anything other than estimated age and sex. Hmm, maybe. But their actions don’t build trust.

Plus, now I have to worry about VENDING MACHINES getting hacked and being used as surveillance devices now too?? Can I just buy a candy bar without being reminded we live in a dystopia?

What?? That’s a month away. That feels really unprofessional and doesn’t foster trust in the company, which is really important when you’re in the security field.

When I heard the news about killing the desktop apps in August I immediately started transitioning my accounts to use the TOTP authenticator built into Bitwarden. Now I’m really glad I did.

I want to be excited about this, but I just don’t believe I’ll actually be able to get one for retail price. For much of the RP4 lifecycle they prioritized corporate sales, and regular consumers were out of luck. I don’t have a lot of faith in them right now.