#because as a gamer i like stylized art. if i ever end up making a game alone itll probably be stylized. im not a 3d modeller.

[devotedlystrangewizard]

i fully understand we dont need ultra perfect realism in games but there is a part of my brain. that really likes pretty graphics. there is a part of my brain that sees how raytracing is evolving and giggles in unbridled glee. i adore stylized games more than anything ever (my current favorite games are ultrakill, ffxiv, hollow knight, celeste, and rain world) but MAN.

[sarasa-cat]

Positive but personal (and somewhat hilarious) fan art related things (cp2077 for what its worth) behind the cut

I skipped writing yesterday and ended up drawing instead -- after my pencil charged up.

So, luckily those apple pencils charge up to full pretty quickly. Last night I accomplished a little bit of digital drawing on an ipad (sorry, on computer now, ipad charging in another room).

And ... for reasons... reasons of 🙃oh how much I enjoyed my years at daygig 🙃

I actually haven’t drawn a single human head, realistic or stylized or just sketched or anything, in a couple of years.

And drawing digitally on glass (an ipad or many non-cintiq drawing-tablet-displays) is very different from paper (although, actually sort of similar in slipperiness to the first pass of paint when using oil paint on a very slick hard panel).

So, I had a blurry cell phone photo (lol) of my V from cp2077 (console, much lower res than fancy graphics card PC gamers are getting). 

Set the photo in front of me and did a quick gestural sketch followed by a realistically proportioned block in drawing. Realized that I need to hold my apple pencil the same way (far end away from tip for gesture, and then switch to the backwards overhand that many artists normally use with traditional media) while drawing and was very pleased that years of portrait means I can still draw (block in) the under-drawing and nail the measurements for naturalism (obviously, if I want to stylize, I need to work toward a stylized style for proportions, which I haven’t done, at least, not yet -- and for those wondering, drawing realistically is actually FAR EASIER than drawing stylized on purpose as opposed to “stylized” because you haven’t mastered proportions yet).

Once that sketch/underdrawing was done, I drew a giant blank.

How the fuck does one (meaning, myself) paint an interesting digital portrait?

Like, I really am NOT into ultra-realism or painterly realism as a style (🙃do you want to ask me why? I mean, I can most certainly do it, and upload a portfolio proving it, but you really don’t want to ask me why, trust me 🙃)

So then I started looking at other art -- lots of fanart but also other contemporary media/comics/gaming art that DEPARTS from the ultra-realism that has been the bread and butter of entertainment art in the west for 20 years (e.g. ever since consumer-oriented programmable pipeline graphics cards appeared in PCs).

And, I mean, I guess I could just mentally translate all of the steps I know for doing a realism-oriented oil painting to digital. 🙃🙃🙃🙃

🙃🙃🙃

But I really 🙃the fuck do not want 🙃to do that.

So now i have this sketch (on the ipad charging in another room)

And I ... will tackle it. Somehow.

Because FANART IS FREAKING AWESOME FOR LEARNING NEW THINGS AND PLAYING WITH NEW STYLES as zero money and zero “professional” expectations are riding on it. Fanart is like -- let’s just do shit and have fun no matter how it turns out because who cares! WHoo hoo!!! FUN IS FUN. (and learning is learning)

What I really want to do is find a GOOD watercolor brush pack for procreate.

What I will probably do instead is mess around with either a comic book inking style 

or 

A big strokes of bold colored paint (painterly mark making) style that uses “non-naturalistic” colors. (technically, there is no such thing as non-naturalistic colors because the color you see of anything is based heavily on the color of the light illuminating it).

[onpaperintofilm]

Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’ Is, More than Ever, the Spectacle of Our Time                

Yet it has never gained true respectability.

Variety

                                                                           |                            

                               Owen Gleiberman

                                      “ Works of art that were once radical tend to find their cozy place in the cultural ecosystem. It’s almost funny to think that an audience ever booed “The Rite of Spring,” or that the Sex Pistols shocked people to their souls, or that museum patrons once stood in front of Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings or Warhol’s soup cans and said, “But is it art?” In 1971, “A Clockwork Orange” was a scandal, but it quickly came to be thought of as a Kubrick classic.    

           Yet “Natural Born Killers,” a brazenly radical movie when it was first released, on August 26, 1994, has never lost its sting of audacity. It’s still dangerous, crazy-sick, luridly hypnotic, ripped from the id, and visionary. I loved the movie from the moment I saw it. It haunted me for weeks afterward, and over the next few years I saw it over and over again (probably 40 times), obsessed with the experience of it, the terrible lurching beauty of it, the spellbinding truth of it. It’s a film that has never left my system.    

           I’ve met a number of people who feel the way I do about “Natural Born Killers,” but I’ve also run across a great many people who don’t. The reaction has always been split between those I would call “Natural Born Killers” believers (they included, at the time, such influential critics as Roger Ebert and Stanley Kauffmann) and those who thumb their noses at what they consider to be an over-the-top spectacle of Oliver Stone “indulgence.” At the time of its release, it was said that the film was bombastic, gonzo for its own sake, pretentious as hell, and — of course ­— too violent. Too flippantly violent. In a way, “Natural Born Killers” was the “Moulin Rouge!” of shotgun-lovers-on-the-lam thrillers. Either you got onto its stylized high wire, its deliberate pornography of operatic overkill, or you thought it was trash.    

           The divide has never been resolved, and the movie has never gained true respectability. Which I think is a good thing. Some works of art need to remain outside the official system of canonical reverence. But if you go back and watch “Natural Born Killers” today, long after all the ’90s-version-of-film-Twitter chatter about it has faded, what you’ll see (or, at least, what I hope you’ll see) is that the movie summons a unique power that descends from the grandeur of its theme. Far more than, say, “The Matrix,” “Natural Born Killers” was the movie that glimpsed the looking glass we were passing through, the new psycho-metaphysical space we were living inside — the roller-coaster of images and advertisements, of entertainment and illusion, of demons that come up through fantasy and morph into daydreams, of vicarious violence that bleeds into real violence.    

           I’ve always found “Natural Born Killers” a nearly impossible movie to nail down in writing (it’s like trying to capture what music sounds like). Sure, it’s easy to summarize the tale of Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson), a sloe-eyed drawling psycho in a blond ponytail, and his ragingly damaged bad-apple lover, Mallory (Juliette Lewis), the two of whom go on a killing spree that turns them into celebrities, like Bonnie and Clyde for the age of TMZ.    

           Yet it’s the moment-to-moment, shot-to-shot texture of the movie that transforms a two-dimensional story into a four-dimensional sensory X-ray. I took my best shot at writing about it in my 2016 memoir, “Movie Freak,” in which I said:    

“The tingly audacity of ‘Natural Born Killers,’ and the addictive pleasure of watching it, begins with the perception that Mickey and Mallory experience not just their infamy but every moment of their lives as pop culture. Their lives are poured through the images they carry around in their heads. The two of them enact a heightened version of a world in which identity is increasingly becoming a murky, bundled fusion of true life and media fantasy. It works something like this: You are what you watch, which is what you want to be, which is what you think you are, which is what you really can be (yes, you can!), as long as you…believe.”

           What form does this kind of belief take? It’s a word that applies, in equal measure, to the fan-geek hordes at Comic-Con; to the gun geeks who imagine themselves part of a larger “militia”; to the gamers and the dark-web conspiracy junkies; to the people who think that Donald Trump was qualified to be president because he pretended to be an imperious executive on TV. It applies to anyone who experiences the news as the world’s greatest reality show, or to the way that social media is called social media because it’s about people treating every facet of their lives as “media” — as a verité performance. Made just before the rise of the Internet, “Natural Born Killers” captured, and predicted, a society that turns reality itself into a nonstop channel surf, a simulacrum of the life we’re living. One of the film’s most brilliant sequences is a dystopian sitcom, with a vile fulminating Rodney Dangerfield, that depicts Mallory’s hellish home. It’s a dysfunctional nightmare reduced to TV, which is what allows Mallory to murder her way out of it.    

           “Natural Born Killers” took off from a script by Quentin Tarantino that got drastically rewritten (Tarantino received a story credit), though it provided the basic spine of the film’s evil-hipsters-on-the-run structure and kicky satirical ultraviolence. But there’s a reason that Tarantino didn’t like the finished film; it’s not, in the end, his sensibility. His vision is suffused with irony, whereas Oliver Stone directs “Natural Born Killers” as if he were making a documentary about a homicidal acid trip.    

           The patchwork of film stocks that Stone employs (black-and-white, glaring color, 8mm, grainy video) turns the movie into a volcanic multimedia dream-poem. And it’s no coincidence that those clashing visual textures are an elaboration of the style that Stone invented for “JFK,” a drama about political reality (the assassination of a president) that gets sucked into the vortex of media reality (the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t mesmerization of the Zapruder film). “Natural Born Killers” pushes that dynamic several steps further, as Mickey and Mallory’s murder spree becomes a hall of mirrors that’s being televised inside their own heads. In 1967, the tagline for “Bonnie and Clyde” was “They’re young. They’re in love. And they kill people.” The tagline for “Natural Born Killers” should have been: “They kill people. So they’ll have something to watch.”    

           “Natural Born Killers” captures how our parasitical relationship to pop culture can magnify the cycle of violence. Yet that theme may be more dangerous now than it was in 1994. As a liberal who’s a staunch advocate of every gun-control measure conceivable, and would never think to “blame” a mass shooting on a piece of entertainment, I am nevertheless haunted by the possibility that half a century’s worth of insanely violent pop culture has had a collective numbing effect. In “Natural Born Killers,” a psychiatrist, played with diligent dryness by the comedian Steven Wright, gets interviewed on television about Mickey and Mallory, and his analysis is as follows: “Mickey and Mallory know the difference between right and wrong. They just don’t give a damn.”    

           That, to me, is one of the most resonant lines in all of movies, because what it’s describing now sounds chillingly close to too many of us. Sure, we all say that we care. But if you look at the actions, the judgments, the policies supported by millions of Americans, it seems increasingly clear that we’re turning into a society of people who know the difference between right and wrong, but just don’t give a damn.    

           Or maybe that’s too dark a thing to say. But the beauty, and brilliance, of “Natural Born Killers,” which draws on and radicalizes a tradition of movies (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Badlands,” “Taxi Driver”) that deposit the audience directly into the souls of sociopaths, is that the film dares to ask us to ask ourselves what we’re made of. To ask whether we’ve removed life from reality by turning it into a spectacle of nonstop self-projection. To ask whether we’re now watching ourselves to death. “   

-- I loved it when I saw it. I saw it once. It scared me. It was too real and too predictive, too foretelling. But brilliant. Scary brilliant. To see the parody of the sitcom is to live your present life, your past life, and realize a subtle and not so subtle horror coursing through our filtered vision every day.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Video Games as Textual, Audiovisual, Spatial Storytelling

Video games are worth your while and are a unique form of storytelling. Games combine the best aspects of books, movies, and comics, while offering one other element, which we’ll get to later. First, let’s talk about games’ use of textual, audiovisual, and spatial storytelling.

Text and Subtext

Like a book, many games use text to tell their story. Older games rarely had voice acting, instead having each character’s words written or typed out on the screen. Games that now have voice acting still usually reserve it for cutscenes and use text for the majority of encounters in the game. This is somewhat equivalent to a comic’s use of speech balloons.

Some games, however, use text in a way unique from comics or books, and that is by using it in the descriptions of creatures and items. Okami is but one example of this; each time you fight an enemy, a description of it is added to your bestiary. These descriptions reveal new information that the player wouldn’t know simply from fighting each creature: that’s not just a flying fish, but the soul of a drowned woman; that electric mirror was struck by lightning, became a tsukumogami, and holds some of the theatrical feelings of it’s former owner; that scarecrow monster is the physical embodiment of loneliness felt in wintery lands. Although these descriptions don’t affect the main storyline, they add to the player's understanding of the world of the game. Similar encyclopedic items are found in other games, such as Pokemon’s Pokédex or Breath of the Wild's Sheikah Slate camera.

Certain games rely more heavily, if not entirely, on such descriptions to tell their story. Dark Souls is a hands-off game that gives players only the barest minimum information: in order to light the First Flame and stop everyone from going undead, ring two bells, fight four guys, get their souls and dump them into the Flame. That’s it. Not a lot to go on, and if that were it, I can’t see Darks Souls ever having become as popular as it is (especially considering how punishingly difficult it is). But beneath the surface lies a trail of breadcrumbs to follow; in the descriptions of each article of clothing, piece of armor, or weapon lie an intricate story and world building. If the player takes the time to pay attention to what is said, what items look like, and how they are described and then connects the dots, they are rewarded with a totally fleshed out story. Before I watched my brother play Dark Souls (It’s way too hard for me to play myself), I thought I hated dark fantasy, but Dark Souls sold me on it, and it did that with its subtle yet complex storytelling technique.

Art Style and Sound Effects

Games utilize visuals and sound in a way similar to movies, in that they present their story with specific camera angles and blocking (in cutscenes, at least) and use recurring theme music and sound effects. Games do, however, tend to be more stylized than movies. In terms of visuals, this was originally due to technological limitations; that is, graphics had to be simple because arcade machines and game cartridges didn’t have the capacity to handle more complicated data. Nowadays, the visual style of a game is a deliberate choice on the part of the developers.

As an aside, more realistic or better graphics do not necessarily equate to a better art style, in that “real” is not actually a style. There’s nothing wrong with games that choose realism, but I personally prefer those that present something more intentional: the painted scroll look of Okami, whose story is based on folklore; the lanky griminess of Dark Souls, which has themes of death and a world passing away; or the neon, middle-school-skater aesthetic of Splatoon, a paint-ball/skatepark simulator. Choosing a particular style and color scheme for a game can affect the way the player feels about it. Should they be scared, or amped up? Should it seem serious, or goofy and silly? Should the game feel artificial or realistic? Maybe it should be even more real than real, as in the detailed sci-fi sets of Halo and Destiny? These are things that good game developers ask and answer in the form of visual storytelling.

As far as the use of sound, the most stylized aspect of it is non-diegetic sound effects and the use of theme music. For non-diegetic sounds, I mean sounds that are meant to alert the player to something, but that are not part of the world of the game: the sound in the Metal Gear games that happens when someone notices Snake sneaking around, the beeping in Zelda games, and so on. Though such sounds function as alerts to the players, but I wouldn’t necessarily call them part of storytelling.

Music, on the other hand, absolutely serves the story. Games use recurring musical themes for specific characters  and situations. Ace Attorney, for example, uses the “Turnabout Sisters” theme for Mia and Maya, while other themes specify which phase of a trial you're in: cross-examination, a dangerous situation or new revelation, or the final confrontation with the guilty party. Many game series have music that span all games such as the Halo Theme, The Legend of Zelda Theme, and Zelda’s Lullaby. When these play, not only does the player get a sense of the import of whatever’s happening in that particular scene, but also feels connected to something larger, something that spans decades (in the real world) or even centuries (in the story setting). Music like this creates cohesion and immersion, and is a huge part of the emotional impact of games.

Two- and Three-Dimensional Space

While comics use two-dimensional space, in the form of panels and pages, games can use two- or use three-dimensional space. Side-scrollers (those games that feature the characters in profile, moving more or less left and right), top-down games (where the players views all action as if they were seeing it from above) and other such games generally use space either to simply let the character more from one location to another (whether that is from one event to another, to different random encounters or battle scenes, or even just the beginning of the level to its end), or as a way to introduce puzzles.

While oftentimes games include puzzles to make the games more challenging, certain games incorporate them into the story. Ghost Trick’s gameplay consists of building Rube Goldberg machines in order to save people from being killed, but that's because the main character is a ghost who can only possess and manipulate objects. A three-dimensional version of this is Portal, where the premise of the game is that you find yourself in a rather shady laboratory that is running tests using a gun that can shoot portals, allowing you to teleport around the test chambers. The gameplay involves strategy and puzzle-solving skills, and the in-game setting literally involves the same thing (incidentally, while Portal would be a fun puzzle game on it’s own, the audio from GlaDos, the AI who runs the test, is what makes that game an unforgettable classic!). While comics require that the artist use space to tell their story, games like Ghost Trick and Portal require the player to utilize and interact with the space in order to become a part of the world and advance the plot.

Since we’re talking about three-dimensional games, which obviously include puzzles and getting from point A to B, I’ll mention that games have the addition of a sense of distance. That is, you might be able to see a volcano on the horizon, or know on your map where the next town lies, but you actually have to take the time to journey there. Thus, many a game includes a quest element. You, the player, take a journey and spend time in the space—the world—of the game. Not only do many games require you to complete a quest, many allow you to go off the beaten path, in the form of side quests, exploration, and choices.

But this post is getting long, and I have a lot to say regarding how that exploration and choice factors into what makes games truly unique. For now, I think I have shown that video games are worthwhile. Next time, dear readers—and gamers—I’ll share more thoughts on video games and why they are a totally unique form of storytelling.

[ostentatiousgamer]

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Initial Impressions - Post Launch

When I got a free copy of the Witcher 3 on PC in 2015 I stumbled upon what eventually became one of my most visited game worlds – and very favorite video games. Geralt of Rivia’s adventure represented a coming of age for video games, presenting a mature but digestible tale in a world that lived, breathed and interacted with itself. Everywhere was intrigue and drama and interesting goings on in which to get embroiled. It was an open world, one that invited you like none before it to not follow the story, but instead discover everything the world had to offer on your own.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild follows this trend by leading Nintendo, kicking and screaming, into its own coming of age tale. This is an organization whose heart has been in the right place for the past decade, but they could not see past their own ridged designs and tropes to create a truly unique experience that didn’t need silly gimmicks or half-baked ideas to sell it. This is the first game in over two decades where I truly felt Nintendo trusted its audience’s intelligence. That in and of itself is Breath of the Wild's first order of business: to create an interactive world in which the liveliness of the systems in place led the player to notice subtle clues about their environment to explore further – often off the main path.

From the cover art to marketing, to the way Nintendo has referred to the game over its 4 years in development - they never once call the video game as such; instead, they refer to it as an adventure. Even when they originally revealed the title before the first trailer dropped in December 2014, their design philosophy was to strip away the conventions of what makes Zelda, Zelda and provide a truly unique experience. Harkening back to the release of the original Legend of Zelda on the NES in 1986, Nintendo took the idea of a truly boundless adventure, one unconstrained by linear story paths and item locked dungeons, and created a game world rich with colorful characters and a world map that is one of the most dense in video game history – all on hardware that is decidedly more than a generation behind. From the pacing, the art design, sound design, and tone, this is an altogether different Nintendo wanting to break free from their own ridged paradigms of what a game should be and deliver a game that modern gamers want.

Convention and repetition typically end up killing long running franchises in the gaming industry because what once made them successful eventually becomes stale after 2, 3, 4 iterations of the same basic premise. This premise and structure can even permeate multiple franchises from one publisher (looking at you UbiSoft and FarCry, Assassin’s Creed, Watch_Dogs…_) leading to solid, but predictable experiences that give the player a faux sense of agency that they are actually impacting the game world in meaningful ways. While it would have been easy for Nintendo to create another iterative sequel to the Zelda franchise, and knowing that it would be generally well received by the gaming public and critics alike, they instead embarked on a new adventure themselves. You don’t even need to turn on the game to notice just how far from convention Nintendo is going with this adventure.

The logo design, instead of being silver, embossed, and rather ostentatiously styled, it is all one flat tone of beige. The way in which these familiar fonts are styled gives a sense of being something old, worn, and withered. Even the Master Sword, shown prominently striking through the familiar Z in Zelda is chipped and worn out – useless looking. Link, who is usually portrayed wearing his signature green garb, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we get a look at a Link who himself eschews convention and wears cloths that befit the adventure in which he is about to embark. Similarly, Breath of the Wild’s menu system, fonts, and presentation take away the bombastic and stylized look from past 3D Zelda games and replace it with a very modern and clean interface that uses hard lines and dark/light contrast that tie into the more mature adventure that is about to take place. There is such a big story to tell even before you turn on the adventure, but all the marketing and hype that came before does not prepare the player for the grandeur and spectacle that awaits their curiosity.

The opening section of Breath of the Wild sets Link up on a large plateau that overlooks the rest of Hyrule. This opening area is brilliantly designed and disguises a full Legend of Zelda adventure distilled down into a 2-ish hour segment: let me explain. Link awakens after a 100 year slumber into a ruined (yet still beautiful) world that he does not remember. Link quickly finds an old sage that guides him on his path and promises an item of great worth once he has acquired the treasures of 4 shrines placed around the plateau. Once Link gathers these treasures he is presented with an item that lets him leave the plateau and begin his adventure proper. This linear, systematic approach fits old Zelda tropes well where you would see Link needing to gather 3 to 4 treasures/items before gaining the master sword which unlocks the rest of the adventure – typically much bigger than the starting areas.

Once Link obtains the item of worth from the sage (who turns into a familiar face), he is able to leave the plateau and embark on a quest to meet Impa in Kakariko village. While you have plenty of guidance here from the Sage who gives you clues and landmarks to look for (I turned on Pro HUD mode which takes away the mini-map and onscreen prompts by this point), you quickly realize that as you gaze over the horizon there are a multitude of interesting things to look for. It isn’t long before you get yourself lost and venturing into areas that you just aren’t quite powerful enough to explore yet. Enemies can easily one hit kill you – all of your weapons can break – you have no constant horse companion (you have to catch and train the horse which engenders a friendship not unlike the Last Guardian between Link and his steed) – this world is hostile and does NOT want Link to be there. You will die, and die a whole lot. This is offset by a generous auto-save system so when you do succumb to your own curiosity you won’t lose hours of progress if you forget to manually save.

Much like the open world and direction, the moment to moment gameplay in Breath of the Wild does not hold your hand. Instead, you are driven to move through and interact with the world by paying attention to all the subtle details that make it feel so alive.

Example: I saw this darkish rock, sparkling like I needed to investigate, sticking out of the side of a cliff. I knew I had just enough stamina to reach it, so I clamored up the side of the cliff and reached a small patch of stable ground to stand on just below the rock. I climbed on it, hit it with my sword, stared at for a second and then remembered, “AH HA! I have a BIG FUCKING HAMMER!” I took out said hammer and smashed that rock into bits revealing several pieces of precious minerals you can sell to merchants for rupies or use in crafting.

Breath of the Wild is full of moments like this. Never once does the game tell you what you need to do in the environment, Nintendo lets YOU figure out how much you want to invest in the environment thus making one of the absolute most amazing ways to scale game difficulty I’ve ever seen. That being said, the difficulty of the game is 100% tied to your curiosity. You can trek to Hyrule castle and face Calamity Gannon the second you leave the plateau – don’t recommend this course of action, but you CAN if you want. That is the flavor and tone of the adventure; you do what you want to do because this is YOUR adventure. No two people will have the same experience – there aren’t even separate save slots that allow multiple people to play your game. Your individual adventure is tied directly to your Switch profile.

I’ve used the word subtle much in this article due to all of the subtle ways that make this version of Hyrule feel so vibrant and alive. From watching the way the grass is moving to tell how hard and from what direction the wind is blowing, to small cues in Link’s animation – like when standing on a platform that unexpectedly moves and watching him react with a startled gesture before he recomposes himself with his steel resolve to see the adventure through no matter the odds. This is the most “human” Link has ever felt, and it helps that he is grounded in a world that is just as convincing as he is.

There are no traditional dungeons in the game, but instead the world is dotted with Shrines that double as interactive puzzle rooms and way points to fast travel around the gargantuan game world. Each shrine has a central puzzle solving concept that drives the 15-30 minute break from the hostility of the overworld. The shrines have no enemies, but only clever and intuitive puzzles that, at times, I wish were more fleshed out. Let me explain: There is one shrine early in the game where you use your ice rune to create climbable pillars of ice from running or standing water. Neat, right? As you move through the shrine you are faced with a massive wall across a huge chasm with water running down the entirety. You see a series of platforms you cannot reach, but there is a ball that materializes and starts making its way down these platforms. The ball eventually falls into the abyss below, so you need to find a way to get the ball to follow the full path of the platforms to make it to its goal (a switch on the floor). To do this you need to use the ice rune to create pillars that stick out from the wall in order for the ball to bounce off of to redirect it to the goal. Brilliant.

This shine structure gives a subtle reminder of the Mario Galaxy series where each planetoid in the galaxy has a central concept and theme that is typically not revisited in the rest of the game. The set-up is: introduce concept, develop concept, and test player mastery of concept by presenting a final, brain twisting puzzle before the goal. I wanted the series of puzzles in the aforementioned shrine to last much longer because the concept is so solid, but after that last puzzle of 3 total in the shrine I was complete. Given that there are over 100 shrines in the game, I hope some of the concepts that are touched upon early in the adventure are revisited.

The music and sound design also lend to this subtlety by being more complimentary to the action and world than by providing heroic themes that give your emotions clues about how you should feel. While there are small nods to classic Zelda themes, and jingles that you well remember from prior games, these themes feel like they are there to ground you in the realization that this is still a shared universe that is interconnected with past adventures.  

One of the most fun moments I’ve had with the game is through the use of Amiibos. I have a Link Amiibo from Smash Brothers and a Wolf Link Amiibo from Twilight Princess – these two tiny statues can be used daily in Breath of the Wild to afford Link two familiar companions: Using Smash/Ocarina Link will unlock his horse Epona and using Wolf Link will unlock the Wolf Link companion who has his own health bar, will attack anything that threatens you, and you can even feed with steak or food you cook to replenish his health. It was truly awesome to gallop through the beautiful hills, steep mountain valleys, and green pastures while having your trusty wolf and horse companions along with you.

After about 10 or so hours with the game, I’ve barely even covered a quarter of the map – and even less inside of that less than a quarter. There is no in-game clock to tell you how long you’ve been playing, but that is not the point. Nintendo wants you to get lost, not to rush, and take your exploring this amazing world their talented designers have built. Sure, there are a few minor technical squabbles, and being a PC gamer the master race soul living inside of me wants to see this game shine in 4K and 60 frames per second. However, Nintendo has crafted a timeless masterpiece that feels more like a Miyazaki film than a video game, and the 30 frame per second cap lends to the cinematic quality that permeates through the adventure. There is no good stopping point you ever come to where you want to stop playing, but with the Switch you can pick up and reenter Hyrule anytime you want.

It will be a long time before I’m truly complete with my adventure, but already my time with Breath of the Wild has given me a new sense of who Nintendo is, who they are trying to become, and the types of experiences that they will provide in the future. Breath of the Wild is not just a critical success because it will sell systems, it is a critical success because it shows that with good design, a little ingenuity, and placing trust in the intelligence of the gamer has given the world a new standard in which to judge all other open world adventures. Nintendo has shown the world what true freedom in an interactive world can be – and all other developers have much, much to live up to. Bravo. �

[fortunatelybeautifulmilksha-blog]

Overlord (Season One)

Oh, look!

Another wish-fulfillment, power fantasy, Isekai anime about a guy getting trapped in an MMO

and being a complete badass that no one can defeat.

NEVER SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE.

This is going to be so much fun [Sarcasm]….

Okay yeah, no that was far better than I expected.

Well done!

Well done…

Overlord is an anime that’s been around for a number of years now but I ended up avoiding

it largely because Isekai anime have increasingly become boring to me over the last little while

and there are only so many power fantasies that I can take.

We all wish that we could live in a fantasy world.

Our world sucks, I get it, but variety is the spice of life and this genre is one that

gotten saturated by the same kind of shit hella quick.

So do you want to know how to get me interested in a “From another world” anime?

BE BOLD!

Be bold, even if it fails.

Bringing the fantasy to the real world? O-Ki.

Fantasy world but with a magical smartphone?

Not O-ki.

Teaching fantasy denizens the glory of otaku culture?

O-ki!

Sword Art Online!

Not O-ki!

I know I’m just beating a dead horse with jumper cables by mentioning SAO, but it really

is the most well-known example from the genre that’ll help me get my point across.

I'm not gonna mention it again, anyway, SO!

OVERLORD!

It is the story that makes your protagonist a villain.

In Overlord, our main character Momonga is getting the last few hours of entertainment

that he can out of his favorite MMO before it apparently goes offline...

FOREVER.....

He looks after his spoils of a long-fought career.

Last minute upkeep on the guild hall for memory’s sake.

Screwing around with your friend’s custom built NPC because hey the servers are closing

down anyways, who's there to get mad?

Only problem being that the server didn’t stop, or maybe it did, but that becomes quickly

neither here nor there.

At the moment of shutdown, instead of being logged out our protagonist finds himself living

in the body of his Lich avatar, sitting on his throne, surrounded by... suddenly very active

and emoting former NPCs.

What follows is the traditional Isekai story.

Character finds the limits of what used to be the game but is now “real life”, he

uses his overpowered abilities to show the world how awesome he is, etc, etc.

Overlord’s twist in the genre however is that our protagonist is playing a character

who is, traditionally, a villain.

Lich’s are evil, he has demons and aberrations under his employ, all of whom despise and

loathe the smelly humans.

But this Lich is technically a regular Japanese citizen thrust into a fantasy world.

So how evil does that make him really?

Over the course of the series, I’d say that he’s less evil and more so just trying not

be bored while doing his best to discover the limits of his circumstances.

He doesn’t know why he lives in this world now, nor what about it is similar to the game

he remembers.

He doesn’t know if anyone else got transported with him, what their thoughts and motivations

on the subject will be.

But he does know that he is thus far the most badass evil overlord in the land and no one’s

power seems to come close to his own.

Which begs the inevitable question that I doubt will be directly asked: Even if he figured

out how to get home, will he want to?

Probably not...

Because that in essence, is why this genre has been so popular.

Everyone to some extent has dreams at some point in their life about living in another

world, a better world, and stories about characters getting to do just that are engrossing because of it.

But Overlord rides a fine line between a fantasy that you could follow along with and be interested

in, despite it not being about you,

and masturbatory fanfiction about what the author wishes their

life is like.

Mechanically, Momonga is all-powerful, but the way he lives acts as guidelines that keep

him in check.

Could he start a harem at his home base between all the female minions and demons currently

living there?

Sure, he is a great and powerful overlord!

But he doesn’t.

It doesn’t fit the character he is trying to portray.

Which is important.

He’s playing a villain, a traditional fantasy villain at that.

You can’t imagine Sauron, Dark Lord of All, starting a harem out in Mordor.

Just because he can.

It’s not...

IT'S NOT DONE.

So being able to stick to his character is what makes him intriguing.

Audiences love a good bad guy.

But at the same time, he was originally human, a closeted nerd, and some of those

tendencies end up surfacing from time to time. That's what makes him relatable.

He’s not necessarily good at interacting with people, and even less so when they are

ones who used to be his unmoving emotionless NPC characters.

So at first he struggles with how he should interact with them.

But eventually he starts to form bonds with those he spends time with, and if you try

to take those bonds away from him his wrath will be swift and without mercy.

But I’m not saying he’s perfect. That's what I like about him.

The subject of the power he wields is still a tenuous one.

He still has yet to face any enemy that even came close in power level to match him, and

hasn’t had any real challenge in that regard.

The closest yet wasn’t even all that close because with the “masterful planning”

and strategy that he has – because power fantasy protagonist – he had the fight on

lockdown from the get go!

But there’s a new season in town, which is odd considering how long it’s been since

the first season wrapped up.

With any luck in this new season Momonga will finally have a good proper challenge,

one where he could and does lose.

That’s the next scenario I want to see.

But we’ll get to that.

Another nice thing that Overlord as a series does that has a leg up on other enjoyable

shows in its genre (like say Log Horizon or King’s Avatar), is that they never spend

a lot of time trying to explain the minute details of this MMO world our villain finds

himself in.

It’s just kind of assumed you know.

But at the same time there’s just enough remnants remaining to make it believable that

this was at one point a playable MMO world and not just some fantasy world look-alike.

Just enough to flesh out the world, but not so much that it feels like it needs to educate

its audience.

Which is its own kind of refreshing.

But there’s a slight disappointment with the show.

The Animation.

Now having said that I need to be perfectly clear, the animation in    Overlord is not bad.

Hell, by most standards it’s actually really good.

So why would I call it a disappointment though?

Because this is a Madhouse show.

Madhouse for me has a history of extremely stylized and fluid animation, and for years

they’ve been one of my favourite studios to produce anime for television.

They still are, to be clear, but while watching Overlord I had to remind myself that they

produced this, because it didn’t feel like a work they had anything to do with.

Oh hey, it’s the cousin to the Deen/Stay Night dragon!

What the hell are you doing here?

So it's just unfortunate that to me Madhouse is not what it used to be,

but times change, and studios have dropped far lower than this.

But back to Overlord.

Overlord is an example of a series that attempts to invert some of the tropes that made its

genre a hit, trying to give its own spin on a genre that we are slowly getting more and

more tired of as time passes.

Like I'm already kind of spent on it, I know some people aren't, but I totally am.

This is a power fantasy of a guy would could very well be extremely similar demographically

to the audience that the show is trying to cater to, but not overly so and has enough

limits on both his power and personality to stop him from being obnoxious.

His supporting cast may be filled with cliché tried and true tropes, but the method in which

they are integrated into the story makes them far more endearing than they would be otherwise.

Because of course otaku overlords would create a squadron of battle-ready maids to protect

their guild hall.

Wouldn’t you?

Overall I’d like to present Overlord with the recommendation to Buy It.

Although I would have been far more disappointed in this show had I watched it when it aired,

as the first season leaves the story kind of in a lurch, and there’s nothing more

at the end than a massive tease at what could be upcoming in it's future.

This prevented me from recommending it any higher. Even with the second season currently airing.

For the longest time – knowing Madhouse’s track record with sequels – it was unlikely

to ever get a second season…until it happened.

Which is surprising.

A nice surprise, but still surprising.

Far too often we see shows, Madhouse shows in particular, getting released as nothing

more than glorified advertisements for their source material that we as North American

fans can’t partake in because most times said source material isn’t available to

us over here.

It’s a sad and depressing reality that I wish wasn’t the case.

BUT SPEAKING OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR SOURCE MATERIALS:

Our friends over at Bookwalker

are having a sale on the Overlord manga and light novels to help promote the show’s

second season.

From now until February 12th 2018, buying any Overlord manga from their website will

enter you to win either a Nendroid set of some of the show’s characters or one of

five Shikishi Boards signed by Overlord’s Mangaka.

You can also use the coupon code “grarkada” to get 600 JPY off any ebook in their store.

Though this coupon will only be applicable to new accounts.

And of course the series itself is available to watch over on Crunchyroll, with a dub of

season one as well as a simuldub of season two available from Funimation.

If you’ve watched Overlord and are looking for something else of similar quality, the

aforementioned Log Horizon will fulfil most of your trapped-in-an-MMO needs.

There’s also a show from late last year, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, which offers a

humorous take on MMO gamers specifically, although they are not trapped in the fantasy

world itself.

Unless you consider spending hours on end in front of a monitor playing an MMO, to be

being trapped in it.

Either way, there will be links down in the description so that you can check those two

out as well, should they be to your liking.

As always, a very special thank you to my patrons who make these videos possible and

support my work.

You guys are fantastic and I can’t thank you enough.

But specifically I’d like to thank Patrons: Siri Yamiko, Viktor Ekmark, Joshua Garcia,

and Calhoonboy for being specifically awesome.

And until next time ladies, gentlemen, and others: Stay Frosty.

[roterclaus-blog]

Selena Gomez And Demi Lovato On 'Barney And Buddies' (PICTURES)

Remember when Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato would sing and dance with a big purple dinosaur? The Draw is open to all UK residents over the age of 16 except employees of The NEC Group and their relatives. Other than being the important thing cause for altering looks, hair extensions have been in rising demand by women wishing for lengthy hair. Before capturing the cover, Selena had just lately left the hospital after recovering from a Lupus remedy and the photographer Petra Collins encouraged her to maintain the bracelet on to own the vulnerable look. Justin made it obvious to everyone at the Met Gala in early May 2015 that Selena appeared stunning in her white gown. She has appeared in function films (Ramona and Beezus and Monte Carlo), and TELEVISION motion pictures (One other Cinderella Story and Princess Protection Program). Natalie Portman is an grownup as of late having obtained critical attention for her works and continues to be continuing to reel in the massive cash because of her smart decisions in terms of function pickings which has stored her internet worth in the larger areas because of a healthy yield for her salary per film. He got his first mugshot on the age of 19. He even has a prostitution scandal below his belt. So, guests to my Ping profile could consider that I am a hardcore Hannah Montana / Jonas Brothers / Selena Gomez fan. A document breaking pay-day for young check out this site stars in the movie business got here with Macaulay Culkin's charge for Dwelling Alone the place he was payed $1 million, which at the time was a brand new document for a young minor at his age. In April 2013, Selena does fly to Norway to fulfill Bieber on his World Tour however the couple is reported to have had a bust weekend. Raven Symone was once a Disney star headlining her very own TV show on Disney channel called That is So Raven, a show which gained her fame and a superb salary at a younger age. Selena Gomez and her boyfriend The Weeknd had been spotted on Saturday trudging via crowds at São Paulo-Guarulhos Worldwide Airport. This performs a serious function in promoting the thoughts-body-pc connection to just about all ages. We're already, as her lyrics state, born to die.” Beauty fades, her songs recommend, but love saves. Gomez discusses her past relationship along with her fellow pop star and states that she will all the time assist him. She worked for quite a lot of low paid office jobs whereas elevating Bieber as a single mother in low-revenue property. Gaming as a basic category tends to get some dangerous press, however once you take a look at some of the points in colleges where they're chopping artistic writing and art courses, I believe Wizard101 actually pushes youngsters and all gamers creatively. What occurs is this: An individual who possesses particular psychological talents is chosen at a very young age. Nonetheless, Nelson states that it does not have to be washed each day for maximum hygiene as a result of natural oils contribute to wholesome hair. Baby/teen stars can make a fortune from their work, but as might be seen on this list of the richest child stars, they need to persevere and star in quite a few films and/or TV exhibits if they're actors. In addition, Gomez filmed a cameo for Aftershock, an upcoming thriller starring Eli Roth which premiered on the thirty seventh Annual Toronto International Film Competition. Selena Gomez ensured she made her style mark as she swapped her outfit 4 instances in at some point on Wednesday. To be clear no one is saying she is a bad particular person simply that good just isn't her factor. Beat: Gomez przyznała, że uwielbia miejską muzykę”, zwłaszcza Drake'a i Rihannę. However if it is indeed the pop star, it sounds like Gomez and Swift's friendship is as sturdy as ever. High school dances rank right up there with getting your driver license and graduation relating to memorable highschool moments, so make it rely by donning an ensemble worth remembering. Thomas Sangster made his first notable look as a toddler actor in the nicely-recognized christmas rom-com movie, Love Actually (2003), and has since gone on to star in quite a few movies. I believe the people who do this, and basic hair dying, have to get a hold of their lives and be glad with what Mother Nature gave them, the impact seems abysmal anyway. The singer posted a trio of extremely-stylized (learn: dark, moody) photos that includes the words Unhealthy Liar” scrawled with lipstick on a mirror. I've lately been ending up a ebook on the cult of celebrity in America (and for analysis, reading way more Each day Mail gossip than may presumably be thought of wholesome), so once I saw Selena Gomez's identify pop up on considered one of my tech information feeds as a substitute my superstar news feeds, I used to be bowled over. If this is too excessive for you and you just want to have somewhat aptitude this season then take a tip from celebrities like Dakota Fanning, Selena Gomez and Lauren Conrad by opting so as to add a number of small jewel tone highlights.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Emeric Thoa is Creative Director and Co-Founder at The Game Bakers, the studio behind Furi, Combo Crew, or the Squids games on console, PC and mobile. This post is reposted from The Game Bakers blog. Follow The Game Bakers: @TheGameBakers / @EmericThoa

Furi is a character action game for console and PC in which you fight only bosses. You can get an idea of what the game is about with this trailer: Furi Trailer.

*****

We launched Furi and received a truly incredible response from some players: they are crazy about the game, they love it more than I could have ever dreamt. In the meantime, other players, some reviewers didn't enjoy the game or felt rejected by it. And they criticized the game for that. That’s pretty fair, but here is a thing. Not every game is for you. That’s what is called diversity. That’s a good thing (Ken Wong explains it better than I would ever do).

Of course, there are games that are bad or average. They missed something and very few people actually love them. But I don't think it's the case for Furi. As it was very well summed up in some reviews, Furi is a love-hate kind of game. And believe it or not: it’s by design. It’s a game that was designed to create intense satisfaction, and it succeeded in doing so, even if it frustrated some along the way.

Furi is a Love-Hate game

In this article, I’ll explain how we came up with this intention, and how we made it happen.

PART ONE: On making a game that doesn’t try to please everyone.

After we made Combo Crew on mobile, my partner Audrey and myself started thinking about what our next game could be. We were in 2013. Indie gaming was already big, but we knew it would grow bigger. We knew the market would be even more saturated, even more fragmented. We knew that, by 2016, iOS and Google Play would be nothing like in 2010. Steam would be flooded by releases every day, and even the very young new consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) would have their stores full of games and sales of any kind.

We realized that, in order to be in the top 10 of the indie devs, we needed to make something « outstanding ». A game that stands out, in every possible way. A game with an edge. A game that I call a « Triple i » or “iii”.

This picture was in the very first document for Furi

Triple AAA games have the budget, the talents, the teams to achieve greatness with a huge scope. Story, visuals, characters, gameplay features, game modes, game length… they try to have everything in order to please everybody. Their aim is mass audience.

We believed that, in order to be competitive, smaller studios must go the opposite way. We are too small to be the best at everything, but we can aim to be the best at one thing. We can make something edgy. We can choose not to please everybody. We can choose to make something that most would actually dislike, in order to make sure a niche of gamers will find it truly memorable.

This was the foundation of our strategy for the three years to come.

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

Every decision in Furi was made in order to make it memorable for a niche of gamers who were somewhat starved: the Japanese character action game fans. Every decision was made in order to make the game outstanding, unique and focused.

The art direction stands out, with colourful and surrealistic environments.

The character design is stylish and unique, as we can expect from Afro Samurai’s creator Takashi Okazaki.

The combat is (very) fast paced, inspired by Japanese game design.

Its use of both shoot’em up and beat’em up mechanics is totally unique.

The soundtrack is made up of original compositions from amazing electro and synthwave musicians.

If we compare with the direction taken by a recent mainstream beat’em up like God of War, it's clear to see we just went the opposite way. They go for realism, we opted for surrealism. They went for an orchestral soundtrack, we decided on electro. Let’s not fight head to head with these guys, right?

They aimed for mass appeal, we didn't. No compromises. No consensus. We developed a game for a niche audience, but with the intention on casting a spell on our fans forever.

PART TWO: On fighting half-measures. On making strong choices.

This is a bold strategy to start with, but it’s even harder to make it actually happen. Especially during two years of production where as a creative director you are constantly challenged, by the team, by the playtesters, by the press in previews, by trailers comments… by anyone who is slightly involved in the game really.

I remember, during the heat of the production, tweeting this:

Any designer who reads me knows what I’m talking about. This fight against consensus, against half-measures, was the key to succeeding with this initial strategy of not trying to please everyone. If you go soft, you lose the edge, and then it’s over.

Here are some examples of the controversial decisions I took. Even some players who loved the game still disagree with them. I hear them. I’m not saying it couldn’t have been done otherwise or better. If I could, I would improve lots of things in the game, like the tutorials or the promenade mode. But I would probably stick with some of the controversial decisions I took, they are part of what makes Furi what it is.

Spoilers ahead.

Paths

In Furi, in between each fight, there are walking sequences where you just get backstory and coaching by your rabbit-masked mysterious buddy. You discover a visually unique environment teasing the upcoming boss personality, and listen to the music. These sequences are important because they give a meaning to the game through the story, they build the tension, and they force the player to take a break in between two intense boss fights. I knew the most arcade-hardcore players wouldn’t like it, but for most of our audience, it took Furi from “a great game” to “a meaningful experience”. As a designer, we stood strong with the idea of having the player “walk” and even “autowalk” (there’s a button for that) for 3-4 minutes. No minions to fight. No experience points to grind. No loot. I bet you can imagine this was a tough call to keep for two years of development.

The secret ending that resets your save

At one point in the game, there is a disguised choice. You can basically stop fighting. Stop killing. Reach a status quo. There is no good ending in the game, they all are good and bad in some ways. There is no happy end. But at least, you can choose why you fight for, or if you want to fight at all. It was important to me to make it “a true ending”. Otherwise it would have been a simple “easter egg”. Another trophy to the list. So I stood with the decision to reset the save after the players get that ending. Some people are annoyed because it makes them replay half of the game. Some people are annoyed because they triggered the ending accidentally (they are right to be annoyed, they are collateral damage of a strong design choice). But this kind of moment: - “I found a hidden event”. - “Oh it’s an ending, a peaceful one in a game about duels”. - “F*** my save is erased, they are not kidding, it’s actually over”. It’s part of what Furi tries to deliver. Surprise, adrenalin, intense emotions. Some people ranted about it, but some understood and loved it.

No come back from Promenade difficulty level

The game has three difficulty levels. The default one (Furi level) is demanding, requires a lot of patience and perseverance, and delivers a great deal of satisfaction when beaten. The hard one (Furier) is an extremely difficult game mode with the patterns and boss fights redesigned. We know that players who finish this game mode love the game and understood it, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to beat it. We actually thank them for that.

The last one (Promenade) is an extremely easy and shorter difficulty level for players who just don’t want to invest as much effort in the gameplay. Some players complain they can’t switch to Promenade for one fight and then come back to Furi mode. The reason we don’t allow this is not to punish players, it’s the opposite. If we did allow that, players would be tempted to switch to Promenade as soon as they encounter a difficulty peak. They would be tempted to go back and forth between the difficulty levels and they would lose all the satisfaction they'd get of eventually overcoming a big challenge.

Dashing on the “release”, a.k.a. the false perception of delay

In the game, there is a very fast, satisfying dodge ability, that makes you basically invincible. Some players have complained it was laggy or they felt a delay. There is no delay at all, but the dash starts when you “release” the button, not when you “press”. The reason for that is that you can charge the dash to go further. Press and hold, you charge. Release, you dash. This charging dash gives tons of depth to the patterns we can create. The boss fights get a lot of variety from this feature. But even within the team, this decision was considered very controversial. We could have split the dash ability on two buttons (quick dash/charged dash), but it felt too complex. Once you are used to a quick press & release for a dash (and most players are after one or two bosses), you get both the simplicity of the controls AND the gameplay depth.

These are only a few of the decisions that were controversial but that I decided to stick with instead of looking for a compromise. Of course, I DID change a lot of the design when I got complaints or relevant comments. I’m not saying it’s good to be narrow-minded. But it’s good to take some risks in order to keep your edge. I’m very grateful to Audrey and the core team at The Game Bakers and our partners at Sony for understanding that. They all committed to this vision from the start of the project.

PART THREE: On creating intense satisfaction.

The reason I love video games is because they create emotions. Through their gameplay, story, visuals, music, they can deliver any emotion you can think of.

Uncharted 4 delivers great brainless distraction, P.T. freaks you out, Journey creates a bond, Monument Valley makes you feel smart and poetic. Furi creates intense satisfaction. And by necessity, it can also create intense frustration along the way.

But I believe it succeeded creating intense satisfaction.

People say the game is hard. I would argue it’s mostly from another time. It’s anachronic. It requires patience (definitively not a trendy trait) and it’s a game of counter attack (a game where you wait and punish instead of aggressively attacking with combos, as in most games of the 2000's to current era).

But players who are perseverant will get better each time they play. Furi is like a guitar and each bossfight is like a partition. You start playing and you suck at it, but you get better after each practice. This is not something everyone is willing to do, but it makes it extremely satisfying when you finally beat a boss. This satisfaction is actually proportional to the effort you put into the bossfight. In order to create intense satisfaction, you need to require efforts.

And when the game manages to trigger that into someone, when a player finally overcomes the frustration and pain to turn it into relief and satisfaction, you get this:

The industry has a tendency to reward games that don’t itch.  Metacritic rules us all, and the formula to get a high Metacritic score is to make a game with one good feature and no flaw. We are prompted to make games that don’t displease, games that don’t frustrate. But recently, I have seen more and more games trying to be edgy. Trying to create intense emotions, even if it’s at the risk of segregating themselves from a larger audience. It’s exciting. Let’s welcome that.