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felassan · 4 years

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Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

Some really tasty factoids here.

Cut for length.

Dragon Age: Origins

The continent of Thedas was at one point going to be named Pelledia, a name initially floated by James Ohlen

“Qunari” was a temporary name that ended up unintentionally sticking, much like “Thedas”

Mary Kirby wrote the Landsmeet. To this day, nobody understands how it works, except possibly her. If she’s “really really drunk” she can explain how it works. There’s as many words in it as Sten’s entire conversations put together

Concept art for Thedosian art - as in in-world art - draws heavily on Renaissance-era portraiture, the Art Nouveau movement, religious styles and media like stained glass, and favorite pieces from the golden age of illustrations in the early 20th century

Andrastianism in-world (art-wise) is depicted in wildly different methods depending on who in-world made the art in question. “One religion, 3 different lenses”. There’s the Chantry take, the Orlesian take and the Fereldan take; each with its own different interpretations, different mediums and different stories

The stained glass images were drawn by Nick Thornborrow for DAI, to decorate religious spaces in that game “and beyond”

irl Viking art influenced Ferelden

Greek and Italian art influenced Orlais

The book also had other insights into and anecdotes from the development of DAO, but I’ve transcribed them recently as they’re essentially the stories DG has recently been relating on the awesome Summerfall Studios DAO playthrough Twitch streams. (On those streams he provides dev commentary while Liam Esler plays through DA. The ones with DG are currently once every two weeks. Check them out! Here’s a calendar where you can check when the next one is) Instead of repeating myself I’ll just provide the link to the first transcript. From there you can navigate to the subsequent parts. Note these streams are ongoing. At this point I will also point you to a related post which is cliff notes of the Dragon Age chapter in Jason Schreier’s book Blood Sweat and Pixels.

Dragon Age II

DAO had the longest development period in BioWare history. In contrast DA2 had the shortest

Initially DA2 was going to be an expansion to DAO. A few months in EA said “Yeah, expansions like these don’t sell very well, so let’s make it a sequel.” So it suddenly became DA2 and they had to make it even bigger, although they still only had 1.5 years of time in which to do this

Production of DA2 officially lasted only 9 months, and at the time the team was still supporting live content for DAO! They finished development that January after the design team crunched all the way through the holiday period that year. Then it went to cert 9 times

The limited time they had is why the story takes place mostly in and around 1 city, and over 7 years (so it was temporal, rather than over physical distance, because a more expansive world would have taken more irl time to make)

They had no time to review even the main plot. Mike Laidlaw pitched the idea of 3 stories taking place at different points in the PC’s life, tied together by Varric’s recollections of events. DG rolled with this and made 1 presentation on the idea. This presentation was then approved and off they went

As they were writing DG realized that there was going to be no oversight and that everything was going to be a ‘first draft’. “Because nobody had time.” He sat down with the writers and said “Look, here’s the conditions we’re working under. A lot of what we’re putting out is gonna be raw. We’re not going to get the editing we need. We’re not going to get the kind of iteration we need. So I’m going to trust you all to do your best work.”

Looking back, DG has mixed feelings on DA2. “A lot of corners were cut. The public perception was that it was smaller than DAO. That’s a sin on its own.”

Despite this he thinks DA2 has some of the best writing in the series, especially character-wise. The DA2 chars are his favorite

The pace with which production progressed may in some ways have helped. “When we do a lot of revision, we often file away [as in buff off] some of the good writing as well. Somehow DA2′s whirlwind process resulted in some really good writing”

The pace meant chars landed on the writers in various stages of completion. For example Isabela was fairly defined due to appearing in DAO. In contrast Varric at the start was just that single piece of widely-shown concept art

Varric was conceived as a storyteller not a fighter. His skills are talking and bullshitting. Hence the question became, so what does this guy do in combat? The direction was to make him as different as possible to Oghren, so not a warrior. He couldn’t be a dual-wielding rogue in order to differentiate him from Bela. But you can’t really picture this guy with a bow. “For a dwarf, it would probably be a crossbow. We didn’t have crossbows, or we only had crossbows for the darkspawn. And they were part of the models. We didn’t have a separate crossbow that was equip-able by the chars. They had to like, crop one off a darkspawn and remodel it. And that became Bianca” (quote: Mary Kirby)

“Dwarven mages are exceedingly rare.” [???]

If DAO was a classic fantasy painting, DA2 was a screenshot from a Kurosawa film or a northern Renaissance painting. (Here Matt Rhodes was commenting on art style)

John Epler: “In any one of our games, there’s a 95% chance that if you turn the camera away from what it’s looking at, you’ll see all kinds of janky stuff. The moment we know the camera is no longer facing someone, we no longer care what happens to them. We will teleport people around. We will jump people around. We will literally have someone walk off screen and then we will shift them 1000 meters down, because we’re fixing some bug.” John also talked about this camera stuff in a recent charity Twitch stream for Gamers For Groceries. There’s a writeup of that stream here

Designing Kirkwall pushed concept artists to the limits of visual storytelling, because it has a long history that they wanted to be present. It was once the hub of Tevinter’s slave empire, so it needed to look brutal and harsh, but it also then needed to feel reclaimed, evolved, and with elements of contemporary Free Marches culture

The initial plan was for DA titles to be distinguished by subtitles not numbers, so that each experience could stand on its own rather than feel like a sequel or continuation. (My note: New PCs in each entry make sense then when you consider this and other factoids we know like how DA is the story of the world not of any one PC). Later, DA2′s name was made DA2 in a bid to more clearly connect the game to its predecessor. For DAI they returned to the original naming convention. (My note: so I’d reckon they’d be continuing the subtitle naming convention for DA4)

DA2 was initially code-named “Nug Storm”, strictly internally

The Cancelled DA2 Expansion - Exalted March

This was a precursor to DAI

It was meant to bridge the gap between DA2 and DAI

It focused on the fallout from Kirkwall’s explosion, with Cory serving as the villain

Meredith’s red lyrium statue was basically going to infest Kirkwall and it would end up [with what would end up] the red templars taking over Kirkwall and essentially being Cory’s army

To stop him Hawke would have recruited various factions, including Bela’s Felicisima Armada and the Qunari at Estwatch, forcing Hawke to split loyalties and risk relationships in the process

It was meant to bring DA2′s story to an end and end in Varric’s death. DG was very happy with this because all of DA2 is Varric’s tale. The expansion was supposed to start at the moment Cassandra’s interrogation of him ended in the present. “And we finished off the story with Varric having this heroic death.” It tied things up and would have broken many fan hearts, something BioWare writers notoriously enjoy. But between a transition to the new Frostbite engine and the scope of DAI, the decision was made to cancel EM, work any hard-to-lose concepts into DAI, and in the process save Varric’s life. DG has talked about the Varric dying thing before

Concept art for EM explored new areas previously not depicted in the DA universe, with costumes that reflected next steps for familiar chars. Varric was going to war, what would he have worn? With Anders, if he survived DA2, the plan was to present a redeemed Warden

A char that vaguely resembled Sera in DAI was first concepted for EM. This fact was mentioned near this concept art (see the female elf) and this concept art of Bethany with the blond bob

The writers sketched out plans to end it with Hawke having the option to marry their LI. This included alternate ceremonies for party members like Bethany and Sebastian if the player opted not to wed. There was even a wedding dress made for Hawke. This asset made it into DAI (Sera and Cullen’s weddings in Trespasser). The dress can also be seen in DAI during an ambient NPC wedding after completing a chain of war table missions

The destruction of a Chantry was explored in concept art as it might have happened in EM. This idea ended up carrying over to the beginning of DAI. (My note: Lol, the idea that DA2 could have had 2 Chantries being destroyed in it 😆)

World of Thedas

Sheryl Chee and Mary Kirby started with “a disgusting little dish called fluffy mackerel pudding”. In the middle of DAO’s busy dev period one of them (they can’t remember who) found a recipe online for this, scanned in from a 70s cookbook. “I don’t understand why it was fluffy. Why would you want fluffy mackerel pudding?” MK says. “We loved it so much we included it in a DAO codex.”

This led them to create more food for Thedas, full recipes included, like a Fereldan turnip and barley stew from MK and SC’s Starkhaven fish and egg pie. The fish pie became Sebastian’s favorite. “To me it made sense for it to be fish pie because a lot of the Free Marches are on the coast”, SC says, “It was something that was popular in medieval times, so I thought, let’s make a fish pie! I looked at medieval recipes and I concocted a fish pie which I fed to my partner, and he was like ‘This is not terrible’”

For WoT the whole studio was asked to contribute family recipes which might have a place in Thedas. SC adapted these to fit in one Thedosian culture or another, including a beloved banana bread that localization producer Melanie Fleming would regularly bake to keep the DA team motivated. “Melanie’s banana bread got us through Inquisition”

DAI

It says part of DAI takes place in or near the border with Nevarra [???]

This game was aimed to be bigger than DA2 and even DAO in every conceivable way

The first hour had to do a lot of heavy lifting, tying together the events of DAO and DA2 while introducing a new PC, new followers etc in the aftermath of the big attack. DG rewrote it 7 times then Lukas Kristjanson did 2 more passes

DG: “Our problem is always that our endings are so important, but we leave them to last, when we have no time. I kept pushing on DAI: ‘Can we work on the ending now? Can we work on the ending now? Can we do it early on?’ Because I knew exactly what it was going to be. But despite the fact that it kept getting scheduled, whenever the schedule started falling behind, it kept getting pushed back... so, of course, it got left til last again.”

“The reveal of the story’s real antagonist, Solas, a follower until the end, when he betrayed the player”. “Solas’ story remains a main thread in Inquisition’s long-awaited follow-up” [these aren’t DG quotes, just bits of general text]

Over the course of development they had 8 full-time writers and 4 editors working on it. Other writers joined later to help wrangle what ended up being close to 1 million words of dialogue and unspoken text. While many teams moved to a more open concept style of work for DAI, the writers remained tucked away in their own room, a choice DG says was necessary, given how much they talked. All the talking had a purpose ofc as if someone hit a bump or wall in their writing they would open the problem up to the room

As writing on a project like DAI progresses, the writers grow punchier and weirder things make it into the game. This is especially the case towards the end of a project (they get tired, burned out)

Banter and codexes require less ‘buy-in’ (DG has talked about this concept a few times on the Twitch streams) from other designers. DG liked to leave banter for last as a reward because it was fun. Banter begins as lists of topics for 2 followers to discuss. These may progress over time or be one off exchanges. One banter script can balloon to well over 10k words. “The banter was always huge because we were always like, laughing, and really at that point, our fields of fucks were rather barren, so we would just do whatever”

The bog unicorn happened pretty much by accident. It was designed by Matt Rhodes and was one of his fav things to design. They needed horse variations and he had already designed an undead variant which was a bog mummy [bog body]. irl these are preserved in a much different way to traditional mummies. When someone dies in a bog their skin turns black and raisin-like. The examples we know of tend to have bright red hair for whatever reason. It’s a very striking look and MR wanted to do a horse version of this as he thought it’d be neat. 5 mins before the review meeting for it he had a big ‘Aha!’ moment, quickly looked up a rusty old Viking sword, and photoshopped it through its skull like that was how it died. “And I was like, ‘I just made a unicorn. Alright, in it goes!’” It got approved. “So we built the thing. It fit. It told a little story”

With the irl Inquisition longsword, one of the objects they tested its cleaving ability on was a plush version of Leliana’s nug Schmooples

The concept art team explored a wide variety of visuals for the Inquisitor’s signature mark. It needed to look powerful and raw but couldn’t look like a horrific wound. In some cases, as cool as the idea looked on paper, they just weren’t technically feasible, especially as they had to be able to fit on any number of different bodies

Bug report: “Endlessly spawning mounts! At one point during development, Inquisitors could summon a new horse every time they whistled, allowing them to amass a near infinite number of eager steeds that faithfully followed them across Thedas. “You could go charging across levels and they’d all gallop behind you,” Jen Cheverie says, “It was beautiful.” Trotting into town became an epic horse siege as a tidal wave of mounts enveloped the streets. Jen called it her Army of Ponies”

The giants came from DA Week, an internal period when devs can pursue different individual creative projects that in some way benefit DA. They also had a board game from one of these that they were going to put in but they didn’t have time. It’s referenced though. It was dwarven chess

Josie’s outfit is made of gold silk and patterned velvet, with leather at her waist. She carries “an ornate ledger” and she has “an ornamented collar sitting around her neck, finished by a brilliant red ruby, like a drop of Antivan wine in a sunbeam”

Iron Bull’s armor is leather. His loose pantaloons and leather boots give him agility to charge

On DAI in particular, concept artists took special care to make sure costumes would be realistic, at least in a practical ‘this obeys the laws of physics and textiles’ sense. “While on Inquisition, we thought about cosplay from a concept art perspective. Given how incredible a lot of [cosplays] are, I now am not worried about them. In fact in some cases in the future I want to throw them curveballs like, ‘All right, you clever bastards. Let’s see if you can do this!’”

2 geese that nested on the office building and had chicks were named Ganders and Arishonk (it wasn’t known who was the mom or the dad). Other possible names were Carver Honke, Bethany Honke, Urdnot Pecks, Quackwall, Cassandra Pentagoose, the Iron Bill, Shepbird, Garroose, Admiral Quackett, Scout Honking, HChick-47 and Darth Malgoose

Bug report: “The surprising adventures of Ser Noodles!” DAI was the first time the series had a mount feature, meaning this had a lot of bugs. A lot of the teams’ favorite bugs were to do with the mounts. There was a period of time where the Inquisitor’s horse seemed to lose all bone and muscle in its legs. They had a week or so where all quadruped legs were broken. It was a bit noticeable in things like nugs and other small beasties but the horse was insanely obvious. “The first time we summoned the horse [for this] and started running around, the entire QA exploration room just exploded with laughter.” Its legs flapped around like cooked fettucine, leading testers to lovingly nickname it Ser Noodles. At galloping speeds the legs almost looked like helicopter blades, especially when footage was set to classic pieces such as Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries

For DAI the artists were asked questions like “What would Morrigan wear to a formal ball? Can Cassandra pull off a jaunty hat?”

On DAI storyboarding became the norm. John Epler: “Cinematic design for the longest time was the Wild West. It was ‘here’s a bunch of content, now do it however you want’, which resulted in some successes and some failures.” Storyboarding gave designers a consistent visual blueprint based on ideas from designers, writers and concept artists

Quote from a storyboard by Nick Thornborrow (the Inquisitor going into the party at the end of basegame sequence): “Until Corypheus revealed himself they could not see the single hand behind the chaos. A magister and a darkspawn combined. The ultimate evil. So evil. Eviler than puppy-killers and egg farts combined.”

A general note on concept art:

In the early stages of any project, before the concept artists are aware of any writing, they like to just draw what they think cool story moments could be. It’s not unusual for the team to then be inspired by these and fold them into the game as the project progresses

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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m39 · 4 years

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Hiveswap: Act 2 review

It’s the end of November. The shitshow known as 2020 will soon come to an end. So why not talk about Hiveswap: Act 2 for a minute? As I said days ago, Act 2 didn’t suck major ass. Overall I thought it was pretty good. Unfortunately, like many games, it also has some bullshit in it.

Just to warn you up before we start: While I’m not gonna talk about major spoilers from the game, there still will be topics that might be considered as one. Proceed with caution.

Byers-Tier of Awesomeness(positives):

Let’s start with the story. I kinda enjoyed it. It starts off slow but when it reaches the 2nd act (as in, the train), it gets better. We get the target location to get there and we are under the time limit to do so. So yeah, a solid motivation to go forward, and it makes sense what we are doing with the train.

The characters, however, are probably the best thing in Act 2, particularly our two main protagonists. I fucking adore Joey and Xefros! I adore what they do! I adore the dialogues between them! I fucking adore them! I fucking adore them!! I!!! FUCKING!!! ADORE!!! THEM!!!

As for the rest of the cast, it was mostly good. I kind of expected that the characters would act differently than in Friendsim(since you know, different people were writing them), but most of the time, I think they were acting like in the Friendsim. Sure, some of them could stick up for more time and there is definitely one troll who overestimated hER WELCOME but I’ll talk about it later.

There isn’t really much to talk about the graphics about it. Both backgrounds and characters look amazing and props to the artists for a fantastic work.

The soundtrack is still God-tier. Then again, it’s James Roach and Toby Fox (with some help from Clark Powell). These guys can make gold out of thin air. My three favorite music pieces were the first three variations of Ticket to Ride (the last one especially was stuck in my head for a long time)

Now let me show you some of the highlights from the game (particularly, the train ones):

The first act (before the train): The bug lusii from Charun’s and Zebede’s hives and the train station. Their design is awesome and I want to pet them.

Rust/Bronze wagon: It was kinda hard to choose the highlight from this section since it’s pretty short but I think I’ll go with Skylla. Her smile fucking broke me!

Gold/Olive wagon: The wagon itself was the best part of this section since it reminded me of the trains (railbuses to be exact) I used to take in the past. Asides from that, there is also Konyyl.

Jade/Teal wagon: Ignoring how the trial was a chore, Tyzias was a fucking savage beast in this game and I fucking love her for that. The best part was how she and Joey basically straight out humiliated Tegiri for being such an attention-seeking failure of a Tealblood. Stuff like this makes Tyzias the best troll out of her caste (in Hiveswap of course).

Blue/Indigo wagon: Amisia.

…

What? You want me to say more? NOPE! There is nothing else to add. Amisia is still the best! She was an adorable, murderous child back then, in Friendsim, and she’s still the same child now. I fucking love her!

I’m not going to talk about what happens in the third act because, you know, spoilers, but let me tell you: it gets fucking intense.

Septic Tank of Caliborn’s Yaoi Filth(negatives):

Unfortunately, Hiveswap: Act 2 is not all fine and dandy as you might have guessed. It can be infuriating sometimes.

Let’s start with the most obvious con: The trial in the Jade/Teal wagon. It drags the game out for way too long. When I was playing the game, it was around 10-11 PM when I reached this wagon. I’ve decided to finish Act 2 the next day after finishing that part of the game. Unfortunately, it went on, and on, and on for so long that I’ve decided: Fuck it! and stopped when I reached the recess. Sure, there are some funny moments like the one I’ve mentioned before but when you create a segment that feels like it’s ten times longer than it actually is, shows that you need to triple-check your in-making game before releasing it.

Now for my personal worst aspect of Act 2: Elwurd. Good, fucking, GOD!!! I fucking hate this one-note character for being such a plank of wood! The fact that we have to overly rely on her of all the trolls pisses me off even more! I’m serious, we are forced to ask her for help like three to four times to go further! Let me show you an example: You receive an item that you have to show to another troll. To make it look more convincing, you need Remele to cover it in paint. Now here’s the catch: In order to get the painted item, directly talking to her will do shit! Seriously! You have to talk to a plank of wood with I’M GAY written all over it to actually get help from Remele!!

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OKAY! TIME OUT! CAN SOMEONE TELL ME WHICH ONE OF THE WRITERS DECIDED IT WILL BE A GREAT IDEA TO TURN JOEY INTO A FUCKING SIMP?!?! Is it because they want to develop Joey in terms of her sexuality?! Well, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use someone who’s attitude screams GIMME DA PUSSAY every time there is a dialogue with her!! Like, for fuck sake, Tegiri was more enjoyable to watch! Hell, Zebruh, of all trolls, was more bearable than Elwurd! And we are supposed to hate his guts!! You could have make Joey ask for help from the other trolls that didn’t really shined in this game but NO! You are forcing us to pick the most boring one for help over and over again!! GOD FU-

technical difficulties

Okay, this rant was going on for too far. Let’s change the topic.

For some unknown reasons, Zebede and Charun were not in this game. Like, we saw them on promotional media and I saw that they were probably finished so the reason why the rest of the cast was in Act 2 but not them is nonsensical.

Although the artwork is still amazing, it feels rushed and unpolished in some places. For instance when Joey and Xefros are passed out, instead of the animation of them waking and standing up, they just… POP And now they stand up.

…

Okay?!

Also I would prefer for items to be more usable.

And that’s basically all stuff that I have to say about Hiveswap: Act 2.

Before I’ll end up my review, however, there is one last elephant in the room that needs to be said about: the credits that weren’t implemented when this game was released a few days ago. While the reason behind this decision can be considered reasonable (as is, avoiding a backlash until the hype wents out) since some of the fans can be considered complete nutcases straight out of Arkham Asylum, the decision itself overall feels hyperbolic to me. I saw many artists who were showing the assets from the game that they were working on, and they were proud of their work. They wanted to share it with fans and they were greeted with a very warm response from the fans. It basically looks more like it was about the writers and directors not getting a backlash for the decisions they created since some of them were working on the highly controversial Epilogues and an even worse sequel to them. If that was the case, then why not just have the credits from the beginning but without the directors and writers until around three months pass? There! Problem solved!

Summary:

Despite the trial, despite Elwurd being Elwurd, lack of two characters and the overall roughness, Hiveswap: Act 2 is still a very good game. While I don’t believe anymore that any of the future installments will give us the same level of magic that Act 1 did, I was still satisfied with what we got.

Before I’ll finally take a break from Homestuck for a long time, let me tell you something. The beginning of the game with the train in the background felt like this:

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After finishing it, the atmosphere changed to this:

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I’ll let you feel it for a moment. >:]

See you all next time.

Bye!

#homestuck #hiveswap #hiveswap act 2 #review #joey claire #xefros tritoh #skylla koriga #konyyl okimaw #tyzias entykk #amisia erdehn #elwurd #zebede tongva #charun krojib

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littleeyesofpallas · 5 years

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Bleach - Name Games

Not a family by name or blood, but a kind of found family. (at least the way they were originally presented) This time I’m tackling the Visored! And while I’m at it I want to address some of the broader thematic elements going on with their original character designs. Buckle up, this is a long one...

Hirako(平子) Shinji(真子)

Shinji’s name is actually kinda of a false start to this one. His names read as “Flat-Child“ and “Real-Child“ but that’s keeping in mind that -ko(子) for “child” is actually just a really common suffix for names, and not one generally used to ascribe literal meaning. (Typically because of its diminutive implications it denotes a female given name, but it applies neutrally to family names, and even generally is not uncommon in male names.) So his name kind reads as “Flat Reality“ or “Flat Truth.“

But this one isn’t actually about the meaning of the words, it’s a different kind of name game. As we all remember, when Hirako introduces himself to Ichigo’s class at Karakura High during his original entrance at the start of the Arrancar Arc, he writes his name on the board mirrored and mentions how he’s “good at doing things backwards.” At the time it was a reference to him being a hollow (Remember that when Ichigo’s inner hollow was given a chapter cover, his “name” was Ichigo’s but written mirrored) and would later influence his zanpakutou, Sakanade(逆撫)

As an aside here, Sakanade(逆撫) has been kind of erroneously translated as “counter stroke” in English, which is technically accurate as a literal translation but is kind of needlessly vague; For one the word “Stroke” here specifically refers to the act of stroking as in petting, patting, or smoothing over, and not something like a sword stroke; secondly the “counter” here should read more obviously as “reverse,” “opposite,” or “inverted.”

Moreover, Sakanade(逆撫で) is an actual verb already, so it doesn’t actually need to be broken down in the first place. The word actually means exactly what it sounds like as well as having a colloquial use as, “rub the wrong way.” Yes, other than just meaning to literally “pet in the opposite direction” (as with petting a cat or dog from tail to head) it means “to irritate” or “to annoy,” (which the former action invariably does) and that is an apt description of Sakanade’s powers.

Anyway... About Hirako’s name not being about the meaning: the joke is that whether you write the name forward or backwards 平子真子 -vs- 子真子平, you still get Shinji(真子) out of it. As in, his name is still legible both forwards and backwards. Plus both kanji, 平 and 真 have horizontal symmetry, so they don’t change when mirrored..

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Okay... let’s do an easier one...

Sarugaki(猿柿) Hiyori(ひよ里)

My personal favorite Visored, has a nice straight forward name Saru(猿) as I’m sure anyone amply familiar with anime knows means “Monkey” and the Gaki(柿) is the word for the fruit “Persimmon.” The image of a monkey in a persimmon tree references an old folktale present in various east-asian cultures about a greedy monkey who cheats other animals before eventually receiving its comeuppance at the hands of the animals it has wronged. In this case it’s reflective of Hiyori’s general image, sandles, track suit, decidedly tomboyish and unladylike; the “mountain monkey” is a poor, rural character type in Japan, not dissimilar to the American hillbilly of the Appalachia.

In that same vein, the name Hiyori(ひよ里) has a peculiar rural slant to it, in that it uses hiragana in place of the first component. The ri(里) is a common place indicator in surnames meaning “village” or “hamlet” but like many Japanese surnames that reference landmarks like -kawa(川)“-river,” “-yama”(山)-mountain,” and “-da”(田)”-field,” the important part isn’t actually the locale but the descriptor preceding it; Which mountain? Which river? Which field? Which village? In the case of Hiyori, it’s not clear... The fact that the village she appears to be named after doesn’t have a kanji again lends to this impression that, like the peasants of Soul Society’s Rukongai, the person who named her didn’t know how to read or write kanji.

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Muguruma(六車) Kensei(拳西)

I think this one has gotten pretty good visibility in the fandom already because of the relation with Hisagi Shuuhei. The eventual explanation of Hisagi’s 69 tattoo would be that it was copied directly from Kensei’s, and that Kensei’s comes from a mix of his name Muguruma, and the fact that he was captain of the Gotei 13’s 9th squad. (Personally I don’t like this explanation, and I think there’s pretty reasonable cause to assume this was a later decision and not a part of Kensei’s original conception or design.) But the reason behind that being Muguruma(六車) Mu(六) which is the Japanese numeral “6″ and Guruma(車) meaning “wagon” and later updated to mean “car.” In the Turn Back the Pendulum sidestory, this name is played upon in how Kubo styled Kensei’s 9th squad as a Bousouzoku(暴走族) the term for a Japanese biker gang (although they often include sports cars), where the “Six Car” reading becomes emblematic of his gang.

There’s a lot about the Bousouzoku that is culturally specific to Japan, but much of the familiar American cliches do actually carry over. One distinct aspect of how the Bousouzoku opperate however, is that they are predominantly a youth culture phenomenon, as any wide spread, organized criminal activity among adults quickly steps on the toes of the much better established Yakuza scene. For this reason it is very rare for Bousouzoku to persist in direct group activity into their adult years, although often bikers become easy recruitment targets for Yakuza.

Kensei(拳西) is actually an odd one for me. It’s both super straight forward yet somehow together really obtuse. Ken(拳) for “Fist” and sei(西) for “West;“ both are pretty singular in their meaning, so it’s not like there’s any uncertainty to what each one means, but I can’t make heads or tails of the two together. For one, Ken(拳) is usually something you’d see put on the end of a compound, and when it’s used that way it tends to denote a kind of martial arts style or technique. It might still be meant to read as “Western Fist” or essentially “Western [style] Fist” and Kubo just liked the sound of Kensei over Seiken. It might be a reference to the fact that Kensei’s original design was largely reminiscent of a kind of military look and feel, with a combat knife for a zanpakutou, short hair, combat boots, and pants that look like they could be part of military fatigues. (the tank top sorta throws the look off, though.) But this was a theme that was dropped by the time the Visored got reincorporated into the story after their long absence.

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Yadoumaru(矢胴丸) Risa(リサ)

...is another odd one. Her surname, Yadoumaru(矢胴丸) has pretty clear implications, Ya(矢) means “arrow” and dou(胴) means “hull” as in the part of a ship, and maru(丸) doesn’t actually have an explicit meaning. The kanji does generally mean “round” or “whole” both in reference to a circle, but it is most notably a suffix used in naming both naval ships, and frequently boys. Given the rest of the name the imagery seems clear, Yadoumaru(矢胴丸) is meant to read as “Arrow-Hull Ship.“* And although the uniform has heavy ties to school girl aesthetics and fetishism (which in turn link to her preoccupation with adult books) the tie here actually seems to be to the origins of the Japanese school girl uniform as a modification of the European naval uniforms introduced to Japan in the 1800s.

*edit: I’m an idiot. A Yadou(胴丸) is the sleeveless chest plate and skirt piece in traditional samurai armor, which also carries over into kendo sports armor.

Adding to this, the name RISA (sometimes romanized as LISA) being written in katakana and not kanji or even hiragana works together with the naval associations would seem to imply she’s of mixed birth? Possibly the daughter of a foreign naval officer stationed in Japan, hence a Western name and a ship as a surname? In fact, most Japanese ships would be named after some mythical figure or indeed named like a person, so the literal descriptor of “Arrow-hull” actually sounds like what someone would call a ship they didn’t know the name of, tacking “-maru” on to the end.

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Let me also take a moment here to complain about the fact that Kubo originally wrote Rabu(ラヴ) and Roozu(ローズ) as katakana, pretty clearly denoting them as the English words LOVE and ROSE and while those seem pretty implicitly like nicknames it also implied in conjunction with their designs that they were both foreigners. So the fact that he retconned them to being nicknames based on more conventionally Japanese when he decided to make them previously SoulSociety shinigami names bugs me... But that being said

Aikawa(愛川) Rabu(羅武)

Man, what is it with Kubo and black people and “love” gimmicks? Zomarri’s Amor, and PePe’s The Love, Love’s whole thing... The name Aikawa(愛川) means “Love River,” and Kubo’s clever shorehorning of kanji into the phonetics for Rabu that he’d already used for the nickname Love use Ra(羅) for “silk,” but specifically a thin or sheer kind, and bu(武) for “warrior”/”soldier.“ The associations with sheer silk and negligee seem very intentional, so his name really is basically “flowing love, [sexy] silk soldier.“ And that’s it, it’s actually super straight forward. I dunno why he looks like an unemployed slacker, in a tracksuit and sneakers, lounging around reading manga, though.

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Otouribashi(鳳橋) Roujuurou(楼十郎)

This might be my favorite as far as name games within the Visored. The given name Roujuurou(楼十郎) means “Watchertower 10 Son;” Rou(郎) being an exceedingly common suffix in boys names meaning “son.” (this is incidentally how anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with Japanese knew for certain Yuushirou(四楓院) was a boy at first glance, where as a bunch of other people thought he was a girl. In case any of you were around certain fandom circles for that whole drama... More on him later though, because he’s got a fun name too.) It’s not super clear if the arrangement here denotes the “Son of the 10th Watchtower [family],” or the “10th Son of the Watchtower [family].”

The surname Otouribashi(鳳橋) is a great little work of poeticism, where Outouri(鳳) is the Japanese name of the Chinese Feng(鳳) which in the most colloquial sense could be translated as “Phoenix,” but there’s a little more to it than that...

See, the Feng is itself the male half of the mated pair of mythical birds together called the Feng-Huang(鳳凰). The Japanese pronunciation Outori is actually directly taken from Ou(王) meaning “King” and Tori(鳥) meaning “bird.” The mythical Feng-huang is in fact king of birds, but more broadly represents a union of yin and yang, and is a common visual element of Chinese weddings evoking harmony. As a part of this theme of unity it is said to share features of many different birds, and also of the 5 fundamentally opposed colors associated with Chinese daoism and fengshui: Red, Blue/Green, Black, White, and Yellow. This particular feature has been tweaked over time to depict the Feng-huang as more broadly multicolored, and associated with the rainbow. (it’s also the basis of the Pokemon Ho-oh, if that wasn’t apparent) For a number of different mythological similarities, the Feng-huang have become erroneously thought of as “the Chinese phoenix,” but I’m not going to get into all that here...

So, getting back to the name, Bashi(橋) means “Bridge.” The, again false equivalence based, but more easily understood translation of Otouribashi(鳳橋) thus being “Phoenix Bridge.” But what is shaped like a bridge and directly associated with the Feng? A rainbow. His family name is just a really fanciful and kind of poetic reference to a rainbow. In conjunction with the “Watchtower” referenced in the name Roujuurou(楼十郎) I’m tempted to take to the meaning of “10th [Floor of the] Watchtower Son” as it implies a high floor, and in the common mythological motif of rainbows as actual physical structures, a high tower would be the sensible entry point to a rainbow bridge.

Also this is why he has a bird mask.

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Kuna(久南) Mashiro(白)

Let me just come right out and say that I haven’t got a damn clue on this one. Mashiro(白) means “White.” Ku(久) means “long time,” na(南) means “South.” She dresses like a super sentai character, specifically one of the original Himitsu Sentei Goranger team, and her mask is a nod to Kamen Rider, with its antenna and big round bug-eyes. I don’t really see a connection with the name and the tokusatsu theme though.

Small aside, Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese TV and film that was originally named for its emphasis on special effects like camera tricks and editing in post, used most noticeably in children’s shows like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. That distinction became less and less relevant as special effects became more widespread, and so it is now used mostly to refer to live-action costumed super hero shows.

Super Sentai is btw the source material for the American franchise, Power Rangers, from which Saban Entertainment originally bought the footage that they would cut together with their own original footage, and later from which they would buy the costumes in order to shoot their own shows from scratch.

Also of note is that Ishinomori Shoutarou, author of the original Cyborg 009, was also the original show creator of Kamen Rider and Super Sentai. His work created the transforming(henshin) hero, the body suit and helmet aesthetic, and the heroic billowing scarf, effectively inventing the Japanese superhero almost single-handed.

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Ushouda(有昭田) Hachigen(鉢玄)

Another funky one... “[To] Exist [in] a Shining Field” might be the best way to read Ushouda(有昭田)? Its really the U(有) that gives me trouble here, as it just means “Exist”/”Existance.” And Hachigen(鉢玄) seems to read Hachi(鉢) meaning “bowl” and Gen(玄) meaning “deep,” “mysterious” and in certain contexts “occult.” I’m not sure if that “deep” is really a physical deepness or just a sort of “profoundness” that would fall more in line with “mysterious” and “occult.”

Either way I think the general meaning is actually pretty clear, “bowls of rice from a shining field” evoke an image of kind of mythical field of magical produce, eating from which grants a kind of magical quality and sustenance. In other words, his name is saying that Hachi is such a huge guy and so gifted at magic because he ate a lot of food that grants magic power.

I have no idea why he has the tux or the shaved hair though. Stage magician? Fancy gourmand? But again then why the shaved head and the cross bones? And Kubo did eventually come up with for him is strangely Balinese looking? It seems reminiscent of Barong, king of spirits; A benevolent lion/bear monster that defends mankind from Rangda, the demon queen and master of blackmagic. But apart from the superficial appearance and broad ties to magic, there’s not a lot really tying the two together.

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It’s hard not to just go off on all the weird little design choices, and loose ends, dropped plot points, and retcon’d details that surround the Visored in Bleach. They really were just such a great concept utterly wasted by terrible pacing and some truly confusing priorities as far as publication goes, eithe ron Kubo’s part, editorial, or both... But that’s a story for another time...

#Bleach #hirako shinji #sarugaki hiyori #muguruma kensei #yadomaru risa #aikawa love #otoribashi rose #kuna mashiro #ushoda hachigen #visored

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bitchesofostwick · 5 years

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What was the game of your childhood or the game that got you into gaming? What do you prefer - RPG or not-RPGs? Is there anything that you missed in Kotor that was in Dragon Age and vice versa? What is your favourite The Sims game? Are you the kind of player who installs a baijillion of hairstyle/clothing/furniture mods or do you play mostly vanilla? Is there any mod that you simply could not play the game without? (The last two questions can be both The Sims and any other game.)

my VERY first game system was an N64 that my uncle got for me and my sisters as a christmas gift when i was three or four. the first games i remember playing were super mario 64, mario kart, and goldeneye. but i think i really got into *gaming* gaming when i got my gameboy and played pokemon fire red. it was the first game where i really completed something from start to finish by myself (even when i’d been playing super mario 64, i took turns playing levels with my sisters, so it was a group effort to the finish). and then i ate up pokemon emerald when it came out a year or two later. so we can definitively thank pokemon gameboy games for my love of gaming.

i prefer RPGs! i like being able to play a certain class and customize my character a bit. but i do ALSO like non-RPGs!! (like mario! i’ll always love mario!)

i don’t think there are many things i’d miss in either kotor or dragon age, since they’re very different and i played them for completely different reasons. they’re the only two bioware games i’ve played, and i have no brand loyalty when it comes to games, so that didn’t impact my decision to play either. really, i played kotor because i love star wars (perhaps more than anything else in pop culture ever), and i wanted to experience more of the non-mainline stories. i played DA because i love fantasy RPGs. i enjoy both series and couldn’t really compare them.

tbh??? i really love the sims 4 but i miss some of the design options from the sims 3! i loved how you could choose material, color, and pattern for basically every piece of clothing, furniture, etc. to me, that’s the biggest loss in the sims 4. but i do like that the sims 4 runs on mac! i had the sims 3 on PC at my parents house (because i was in high school at the time), and then went YEARS without playing the sims at all. it was only when i realized you could get it for mac this year that i started playing again!!

okay, so mods. i can’t mod, or otherwise don’t bother, because!! i play 90% of my games on xbox one (but yes, i do have skyrim SE, so yes, i do mod that. but mostly only scenery or bug-fix mods). otherwise, i have a few games i’m able to run on my macbook (basically just sims, undertale, and stardew valley), and i’m sure i *could* mod sims and stardew, but alas, i am mod illiterate and have failed the few attempts i made. so vanilla it is. but to answer your last question–since i only mod skyrim, the one mod i could not live without (not counting unofficial skyrim patch because that’s obvious) is……..no vampire attacks. i’m not joking. this mod is life changing, for someone who (unpopular opinion!) hates the dawnguard DLC. i downloaded this mod and have been blessed ever since.

anonymously (or not) ask me any question you’d like to know about me

#:D #reverienne #answered

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michaelandy101-blog · 3 years

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The 7 Greatest Music Playlists for Productiveness, Based on Science

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-7-best-music-playlists-for-productivity-according-to-science/

The 7 Greatest Music Playlists for Productiveness, Based on Science

Not lengthy after I first began at HubSpot, I used to be welcomed with a contemporary pair of orange, noise-canceling headphones. On the time, I had no clue that these headphones would carry me by many lengthy work days and a few of the deepest, darkest ranges of author’s block.

Over three years later, they’re actually the reward that retains on giving.

You see, for me, listening to music whereas working is the key to my productiveness. All it takes is the fitting Beyoncé monitor, and I’m going from idle to uber productive. (Significantly, it really works like a allure.)

The difficulty is, discovering the proper playlist is not all the time simple. With limitless streaming music potentialities at my fingertips, it may be exhausting to nail down simply the fitting tunes to get the wheels turning. So, I did what we do greatest round right here — some research.

Because it seems, there are a ton of research that discover the affect of particular varieties of music as they relate to your productiveness ranges.

That can assist you discover simply the correct mix, we have sourced and curated seven Spotify playlists designed with particular research in thoughts. Whether or not you are into Mozart or Probability The Rapper, we’re assured that there is one thing on this checklist that can do the trick.

Observe: Among the playlists comprise tracks with specific language that may not be appropriate for the workplace.

7 Science-Backed Workplace Music Playlists for Productiveness

1. Classical Music

Some of the continuously cited research associated to music and productiveness is the “Mozart Effect,” which concluded that listening to Mozart for even a short interval every day can enhance “abstract reasoning ability.”

The examine — led by researchers Gordon Shaw, Frances Rauscher, and Katherine Ky — employed 36 Cal-Irvine college students who had been divided into three teams. Group one hearken to a Mozart choice, whereas group two listened to a rest tape, and group three endured 10 minutes of silence.

After the listening exercise, all 36 college students had been issued the identical take a look at, during which the Mozart group averaged an eight-to-nine level enhance of their IQs, in comparison with the remaining teams.

Since then, the “Mozart Effect” has been hotly contested, however many researchers have gone on to discover the psychological advantages of studying and listening to classical music. One current examine, for instance, discovered that elementary-school-aged youngsters who participated in music composition training outperformed college students in a management group on studying comprehension.

Assume classical music would possibly be just right for you? Take a look at this classical-influenced playlist to seek out out for your self:

2. Video Sport Soundtracks

“Choosing the right video game soundtrack to work to is all about understanding what type of music motivates vs. distracts you when you need to concentrate,” says HubSpot’s VP of Acquisition (and former online game marketing advisor) Emmy Jonassen.

“For example, if you’re the type who gets amped and focused listening to high-energy music, rhythm game soundtracks, like those from Thumper or Klang, could work well. Conversely, if you need calm to concentrate, the serene soundtracks from exploration games, like ABZÛ and Journey, may do the trick. With thousands of games releasing every year, including many independent titles, there is a soundtrack to suit everyone’s ear,” she went on to elucidate.

Give it some thought: Taking part in a online game requires lots of focus. To make it to the subsequent degree, gamers generally must keep away from traps, dodge obstacles, and uncover secret instruments that can assist them progress to the subsequent degree. Consequently, the music selection for video games is often very strategic, in that fashionable soundtracks are likely to mirror epic, inspiring cinematic scores moderately than simply primary sound results.

And whereas research have revealed blended outcomes, there may be proof to help that avid gamers can expertise improved efficiency by enjoying a sport with the amount on.

For instance, when psychology professor Siu-Lan Tan and her colleagues John Baxa and Matt Spackman particularly honed in on the sport “Twilight Princess (Legend of Zelda),” they discovered that participants who played with both music and sound effects off performed worse than those that performed with it on.

Need to attempt it on for measurement? Take a look at the playlist beneath:

three. Nature Sounds

Based on psychophysical information and sound-field evaluation printed in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, listening to “natural” sounds might improve cognitive functioning, optimize your capacity to pay attention, and enhance your degree of satisfaction.

Assume: Waves crashing, birds chirping, streams trickling, and the like.

That might clarify why extra consumer-facing manufacturers — from Google Home to the newer Noisli — are introducing such ambient sound options to assist listeners chill out or focus. It may also be behind Spotify’s a number of nature-themed playlists, like this soothing one:

four. Pump Up Songs

After observing that many athletes arrive on the stadium carrying headphones, Kellogg College of Administration professor Derek Rucker and three of his colleagues — Loran Nordgren, Li Huang, and Adam Galinsky — got down to reply the query: Does listening to the proper type of music make us really feel extra highly effective or in management?

So, again in 2014, the group of researchers arrange a study to gauge how music would possibly affect motivation and subsequent habits. First, they performed a number of songs for contributors in a lab, and requested them — on a scale of 1 to seven — how highly effective, dominant, and decided they felt after listening to every music. There have been three “high power” winners: Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” 2 Limitless’s “Get Ready for This,” and 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”

Then, to gauge how the music would affect their habits, they requested contributors to hearken to the music after which decide whether or not or not they’d prefer to go first or second in a debate. Because it turned out, those that listened to the high-power playlist volunteered to go first nearly twice as typically as those that listened to a much less highly effective playlist.

The lesson? “Just as professional athletes might put on empowering music before they take the field to get them in a powerful state of mind,” Rucker defined, “you might try [this] in certain situations where you want to be empowered.”

Subsequent time you are seeking to really feel empowered earlier than a giant presentation, interview, or wage evaluate, take a look at this roundup:

Need extra? Take a look at my colleague Amanda Zantal-Wiener’s picks here.

5. Instrumental Songs

In 2015, Center Tennessee State College researchers Carol A. Smith and Larry W. Morris discovered that college students who listened to “sedative” music throughout a take a look at scored greater than those that listened to lyrical music. (That considerably contrasts their initial findings 39 years earlier, which confirmed that whereas music did not reveal an affect on take a look at scores, those that listened to “stimulative music” confirmed a major enhance in fear and extremely emotional reactions.)

That is not to say that it is fully unimaginable to cross issues off your checklist whereas listening to songs with phrases — I really desire lyrical music, however my colleague, Amanda Zantal-Wiener, has joked about hip hop verses unintentionally slipping into her first drafts when she listens to songs with phrases. If you happen to’re like she is and discover that lyrics are too distracting, you might need to experiment with some instrumental choices.

For these instances, take a look at these lyric-less tunes — we promise they will not put you to sleep:

6. “Feel Good” Songs

Buried in deadlines? Making an attempt to unearth your self from an e-mail mountain after a while off? No matter’s bugging you, typically, the most effective treatment for productiveness loss is a strong dose of “feel good” tunes — you recognize, the type that make you spontaneously use a pen as a pantomimed microphone.

However scientifically talking, music can stimulate the identical a part of the mind as scrumptious meals and different bodily pleasures. Researchers at McGill University, for instance, found that when contributors obtained the opiod-production-blocking drug naltrexone, they did not reply as positively to their favourite tunes as they may usually.

The decision? Our brains are educated to naturally produce these chemical substances once we hear our most well-liked playlist.

And whereas “feel good” songs differ from individual to individual, a search for Spotify playlists with these very key phrases yields dozens of outcomes. That stated, here is considered one of our favorites:

Cannot get sufficient? Here are a few more suggestions from my colleague Amanda.

7. White Noise

Based on a study led by Yamaguchi College, “When carrying out intellectual activities involving memory or arithmetic tasks, it is a common experience for noise to cause an increased psychological impression of ‘annoyance,’ leading to a decline in performance.”

Whether or not you are distant working with roommates or working in an workplace house with noisy colleagues, it may be difficult to focus with conversations occurring round you. Impartial, non-verbal background seems like white noise, which isn’t the identical as nature sounds, may help block out these distractions — issues just like the din of a restaurant or shopping center, an electrical fan, and even laundry machines.

And in case you are questioning — sure. Like the entire above, there is a playlist for that:

So go forth — focus, get pumped, really feel good, and rock out.

What are your favourite songs for getting work performed? Tell us within the feedback.

Editor’s Observe: This publish was initially printed in March 2015 and has been up to date for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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therobotmonster · 7 years

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Obscure Enemies of the NES TMNT Game

There is a shocking lack of coverage of the original TMNT NES game, outside of very justified commentary on its unfair difficulty and some poor design decisions (like the dam message).

But the TMNT NES game is unique in that it was very early in the for-kids TMNT canon, and has a lot of wacky concepts that don’t show up anywhere else. I’m not going to be bothering with Mousers and Foot Ninjas and the like, but baddies that are original to the game.

Unless otherwise noted, the names are my inventions, as only a few enemies got names/descriptions in the manual.

Sewer Bug - Your basic fly-back-and-forth baddie, the Sewer Bug is one of the less interesting entries. Its hard to tell from the sprite, but it is either some kind of mutated wasp or bee or its a robot bug-shaped drone used by the Foot, and either way it meshes well with TMNT.

Stick ‘em Up/the Roof Leaper (official name): From the manual: “Ignorant to the force of gravity this pesty (sic) sewer thug (the product of a horrible chemical spill) pounces about on ceiling pipes, waiting to rain terror from above.” Chemical spill created sewer mutants, now we’re talking. I love the implication that they’re immune to gravity because they don’t know about it.

Fire Freak (official name) and Clone: From the Manual: “An ex-pyromaniac from Brookyln, this hot dog takes careful aim before launching fireballs that turn into clones of himself.:” One assumes there was some mutagen involved in Fire Freak’s career change from pyromaniac to Foot Clan stooge. There’s something about “dude made of fire that throws other dudes made of fire at you” that’s very NES era, and I kinda want to see the new TMNT series have a go at updating this guy.

Mecaturtle (Official Name): From the Manual: “Appearing like your average turtle, this level 3 commander will show his true colors if you do him any harm.” They probably meant “Mechaturtle”, but the manual says “Mecaturtle” and so that’s his name. He’s basically the Terminator wearing an off-color Leonardo suit instead of the usual Austrianwear. Oh, and he’s got swords for hands and shoots missiles.

I have to wonder if Mecaturtle was a prototype for Metalhead and the other robo-turtles throught the series. The blue Leonardo with orange bands and pads disguise tempts me to figure customization.

Chansawiac: This guy is an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in standard 80s video game logic. All we know for sure is he loves: 1) Chainsaws, 2) Waving chainsaws wildly while walking back and forth, 3) Purple pants with footies, probably not in that order. He seems to be wearing either a hockey mask, making him a lazy Leatherface/Jason mashup, or a fleshtone Iron Man helmet, which makes him my favorite SDCC cosplayer this year.

Divebombs: Krang saw the destructive power of a heat-seeking missile and said “That’s good, but can we make it slower and <urrrp> less effective?” His minions then come up with this, a nerf football missile with wings cribbed form a flying machine from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. If you get near you, it dives at you like a suicidal hawk. I’d say this was a dumb idea for a weapon, but Krang’s minions literally have rocks in their heads, so I’ll grade on a curve and give this a B, mostly for creativity.

Rock Soldier: Maybe this golem-guy is supposed to be one of Krang’s rock soldiers? He crouches down into a “sleeping” position where he’s invulnerable only to get up and throw vague crescents of energy at you. Weirdly, there’s a badguy in the NES Wolverine game that had essentially the same shtick, so at least this guy kept working after the Foot let him and the rest of these guys go.

Spydrone: A basic flying robot spy that does damage on impact. Not much to write home about. Unless, of course, you’re a fan of the 1987 Jessica Tandy sci-fi/comedy Batteries Not Included.

Sky Prawn: Some kind of flying mutant bug or crustacean. They might be beetles, or shrimp with claws, or mosquitoes, but no matter what they are, they fly sideways and like to knock you out of the air while you’re making stupidly precise jumps.

Foot Balloon: Part of me really wants to think this was a toy concept that got abandoned. Its a balloon with a mechanical claw holding a bomb. It flies over you with its flapping wings (why?) and drops it, proving once again that the Foot are the leaders in the field of overly complicated explosive delivery systems.

Boomerang Bouncer: As a kid I thought this guy was a sort of sub-Bebop pig mutant, but now he looks more like Vin Diesel wearing red sweatpants and wraparound shades. He hops around like a jackass and throws boomerangs. In the 80s, Big Boomerang had an iron grip on the video game industry, so his inclusion was inevitable.

Wandering Eyes: They’re eyes with spider-legs, one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body, stripped of its meager defenses and let loose with nothing so much as a mouth. Look at how bloodshot they are. Every piece of dust they touch is burning agony. A normal spider would have been more dangerous but crawling eyes are more about psyching out the enemy than actually hurting them.

Unemployed Mutant Toad: The Turtles are doomed to run into mutant frogs or toads no matter where they go, and this game is no exception. They hop, they hit you with their tongues, pretty straightforward. Shredder hasn’t seen clear to give these guys clothing and they show no skills, martial arts or otherwise. If you squint, they might be tail-less chameleons, which is at least a bit more unique.

Big FleaKid: Big fleas have little fleas, Upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum. Of the many, many enemies that hop in this game, this guy is my favorite. I love his blue colorscheme, his very humanoid-mutant bipedal design, the whole package. I imagine him as being a fast-talking swindler working for the Foot clan to make ends meet.

Wall Crawler: One of Krang’s robot minions, he only shows up toward the end of the game during the wall-crawling stages to crawl at you along the walls. You’d think a Ninja Turtles game would have used the climbable wall throughout the game, but you’d also expect them to make the Dam level playable by human beings. The NES TMNT game knows what its about, however, so neither one of those things happened.

Dimension X Trooper: Ok, Krang can be sensible! We have what is either a robot or a human in armor, decked out with a jetpack and a laser gun. He uses both at the same time, flying and shooting, and compared to some of his coworkers (I’m looking at you, Boomerang Bouncer) he’s an overachiever, if a little simply designed. He shows up in later stages as a general foe and a low-power miniboss.

Gunbot: He walks, he shoots, he’s like ED209, ET and Robocop had a baby. He’s not thrilling, but at least he mostly makes sense. He walks and shoots, doing the minimum required to get paid as a low-level video game flunky. This is why you’re never going to get promoted, Gunbot.

Whirly N.E.R.D. (Negligibly Effective Robot Drone): They take the place of Sky Prawns in later enemy sets. Essentially a robot scorpion with a helicopter blade attached to its tail in place of a stinger, removing the whole reason one would design a robot to look like a scorpion. If it is a robot, that is. TMNT for the NES doesn’t like you being able to tell the robots from the bugs, but this guy leans a bit more mechanical to my eye.

Dragon Knight: From this point on “mostly making sense” is not in the cards. This towering, probably robotic, warrior breathes fire and walks back and forth, which seems normal enough for a video game, unless you kill him by hitting his body. If you do that, his head will fly off, using the ears on the helmet as wings, and rush back and forth at high speed. I don’t know what raises more questions, him possibly being a robot designed to do this, or him being literally anything else.

Man-O-Bubbles: Ever since Metroid, flying jellyfish have been no surprise in video games. What is a surprise is when they explode into painful bubbles. Not when you kill them, just at random. While this could be a mutant, it seems more like something Krang would have smuggled in from Dimension X.

Kangosaurus-Bot V.4: Ok, so we’ve got a vaguely-Hadrosaurid robot dinosaur or possibly a kangaroo. With no arms. Who fights by jumping around and attacking with its tail. This is obviously one of Krang’s, but what is the goal here? Is this a robot version of some Dimension-X native animal? Is Krang really into Dougal Dixon? Were the comical arms with boxing gloves not ready by the time the Turtles breach the Technodrome? NES TMNT, give me your secrets!

Rock-Roc: This thing is either a hawk that has been trained to drop boulders larger than itself on talking humanoid turtles, or ti is a ROBOT hawk DESIGNED to drop boulders larger than itself on talking humanoid turtles. And its probably the latter, because it doesn’t show up until around the same time the Technodrome does.

Spidrobyte-Men: We’re taken a triolobyte, a spider, and a person and combined them via the power of the ooze and we get these things. They slide up and down on web-lines from their asses, occasionally spitting bubbles that hurt. I’m betting because of digestive acid. Then again, I can’t even understand this things physiology, and it could just as equally be a mechanical claw on a tow-line that spits painful bubbles and hang out in caves.

Pill Thug: Ok, this guy is my favorite, so I saved him for last. He’s a pill bug/rolly polly, mutated into a sort of pint-sized Megalon with a dancer’s physique, who either has a really big chin or hings his head open at the mid-section to spit pink tadpoles at our heroes. When not on the attack he rolls around in a ball. Everything about this guy is wacky and fun, and with a little more color and a splash of job-related theme, he could be a serviceable mutant foe for the Turtles in the larger franchise.

I think I hit everything, minus some of the over-world Foot Vehicles and some basic wall turrets and things, but I have may have missed a few while playing to get screencaps, what with the cursing and all. Even cheating there’s enough one-hit kills to keep things challenging.

EDIT: I missed two dudes!

The Goo Crew: This melty-looking dude who might be a foot soldier splits into tinier guys when you hit them, and those tinier guys turn into two even smaller guys when hit. I’ve decided he’s a slime creature that splits when hit, and all of his few in-game appearances are subdivisions of a larger whole. Maybe he’s a human foot soldier mutated with a slime mold.

I missed him the first time through because he’s rare and the places where you do find him he can disappear off the screen edge easily, only to be replaced by one of those shifty unemployed toads when you come back to the area.

Spiny Anthony: I know most people think he’s a porcupine, but his down-turned snoot says “echidna.” He jumps around in your personal space while occasionally shooting spikes out of his back like porcupines, hedgehogs and echidna’s all don’t. Like the other newly-minted mutants from this game, he doesn’t get clothes, so its hard to tell if he’s supposed to be a fully sapient mutanimal or just a beast, but I lean toward character whenever possible, so Spiny Anthony the Spiny Anteater is on the scene.

Spiny Anthony and Big FleaKid are already teaming up to pull some scams on the tourists

#TMNT #ninja turtles #NES #ninetendo #Teenage Mutant ninja turtles #8-bit gaming #sprites

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milosflaca · 7 years

Text

My Cintiq Experience.

(or how Aurea finally could get her hands on a Cintiq and the very expensive-nightmarish - worth-every penny experience)

So my Husband gave me a brand new Cintiq for my upcoming b-day. I was really excited about this because I believe most artist want to have a display where they can draw on. After researching for a while and testing chinese knock offs, my husband and I decided to go for a Cintiq (let me assure you that chinese tablets are good as well. Especially the Ugge brand. I recommend 2150 which I tested along with the 1910b and they are pretty good displays).

Here you can see my brand new cintiq. I was very excited. I’ve been a long time wacom user and I fully trusted the brand. However if I had to knit pick, I wasn’t so sure to spend a lot of money on a huge display. As you know Cintiq has displays of different sizes going from 13 inch to the 22 inch. For me, neither of those sizes were good at all. I am a very small person and wouldn’t like to have a huge tablet taking all of my space. When the 16 inch pro was released I was thrilled. At least for me, it’s the PERFECT size to draw on and above all, at an affordable price.

The feeling of drawing on the display is superb. I’ve used Cintiqs before but never for personal projects or for long periods of time. Although it does take a bit of time to get used to it (couple of days), it really improves your workflow and speed. I have to say I was very proficient with the Intous. Most of the few lustrations I did were drawing directly with the wacom so I had no issues with the hand-eye coordination. In any case there is a huge difference when you do it on the display. The only thing I would have to disagree with the Cintiq lovers is that it is definitely not like drawing on paper. I just wouldn’t change that for the world (however it is close, so there’s that ;).

Now, here are the cons for me of owning a Cintiq. There are few reviews like this on the internet (considering the display is fairly new) and I wanted to share my experience in case someone out there encounters the same problems I had. Spending a lot of money on a display is a huge deal and you wouldn’t want to end up with a useless device.

I have Mac, running Sierra OS (latest version). This is crucial since the Cintiq ran into some problems as the driver conflicted with the latest Sierra OS.

When I turned it on the first time there was a awful red tint on my display. Like so:

The tint was so bad I had to color correct it manually. The colors were never accurate. Especially the reds which looked orange (to my dismay) and the yellows with were like pink which in turn were the whites I kept on seeing all over the display. At first I though this problem was because the Cintiq needed to be color corrected (which I did and kept on working with a manually color corrected monitor), but this was a Sierra issue that I later would find out as I found other Sierra users had the same problem (keep on reading to find the solution to this annoying issue). As I color corrected the display I encountered yet another problem. Despite all my software was working correctly Photoshop started to act weird. Whenever I pressed F to go to full screen there was an annoying red stripe

It was only present when in full view whilst the Cintiq was the primary monitor. Later on I discovered it was a Sierra issue with second displays (keep on reading for solution).

Theeeeen, I find out that my Cintiq which had touch function enabled had a bug. Whenever I launched it, the touch function was detected on the mac screen (moving my finger on the cintiq, moved the cursor on the imac). I had to turn it on twice to get the touch function to work correctly on the display. Solution:

Red Stripe Photoshop First I solved the issue of the red stripe by upgrading to Photoshop CC. Wacom or adobe, or apple (I don’t know which) simply does not support older versions or photoshop when using the Cintiq as second display. Once I installed CC, the problem went away. It’s a hassle really. But I have TOC and cannot be working with a red stripe. It’s simply very annoying.

Another solution is simply to hold the OS upgrade. For me, taking this decision was already too late since my computer came with El Capitan. So there was no way I could hold anything at all. To all those out there who have Yosemite, do not upgrade. Some things will be messed up... badly messed up. Consider yourselves warned!

Red Tint

Well, after almost a month of using my brand new device I discovered that the red tint was NOT something that *had* to be there -___-. That actually some people (mac users) returned their devices considering them defective. I have to say I did cry like a little girl, incredibly frustrated. The display although affordable wasn’t at all cheap. I was heart broken having to return it because I was already using it a lot. Later on talking to several guys on line and signing into the European wacom Forum, I found out the culprit was the M**F Sierra OS and the Night Shift Function. What the night function does is to adjust your monitor light for late hours. And second displays translate that function in a weird red tint. I never had that function enabled so when I read about it I kept wondering why the Night shift Function was messing up my display. The tab had sort of a disclamer below the ticking box, assuring me that second displays are not affected (riiight). Before I did anything I restored my display to factory setting and the red tint was instantly there. Then I went to my Imac Settings/Displays/Night Shift.

what I did was, select and unselect it with the Cintiq on. I could see how the light adjusted on my Cintiq and the red tint was GONE. The colors were more vibrant and more accurate. Nothing like the ones I had set with my color corrected profile. Thankfully! With the color correction I did, I had lots of problems with reds. But now all the colors look good :D I am so happy. The only downfall to this solution is that you will have to do this EVERY time you start the computer /wakes from sleep mode. It is a very simple procedure yet, I have to add, annoying as hell!

As you can see the red tint is gone. It’s so shiny and pretty my little pomegranate *hugs it* (My husband name it pomegranate after the simpson episode of Das Bus). I still need to test it on another computer that has yosemite, but I haven’t heard or read anyone with old OS that have any problems with the Cintiq. This is clearly a driver issue and conflicts with the Sierra OS. I though I would leave this here in case anyone runs into these problems. I went crazy for a couple of days thinking I had spent a huge amount of money on something poorly constructed. I do hope Wacom really help us Sierra users to block the Night Shift function for good!

Despite all the bad things I experienced on this device I’d still recommend it to serious artists. It really made a difference for me. The design of the Cintiq is really pretty. I’ve heard people complaining that it does not come with express keys and that you have to buy them separately. For me this was not an issue and I don’t see what’s the problem of reaching out for the keyboard. The only thing I’m waiting for is to get a decent stand that wacom assured us would be released early this 2017 and which is still on hold. So far I would recommend this product. It is a shame that apple and wacom have difficulties with the drivers because this is a major deal breaker. I really though of returning the cintiq but in the end decided against it. I really like my Cintiq and I’m hoping the red tint issue will get solved with the driver update! In any case Sierra OS is really bad. I have a Macbook Pro which never had any problems, when I updated to sierra my cursor started to act erratically and jumpy. It turned out to be an interference with my wifi modem (???), an old modem that the very same Macbook had been connected on for three years with no problem at all. I solved the issue in the end, but my computer could no longer connect wirelessly to that modem. I had to connect it to the main router. Sierra does that to your computers and to your mental peace.

ETA April 2018:

In the end I had to return the device. Six months later the touch became faulty and the device flickered altering the colors. I noticed the colors didn’t match at all and purples on the cintiq were shown blue.

Wacom exchanged the 16” inch twice. Both were faulty.

I ended up with a 22hd model. Won’t recommend you buying the 16”. Huge dissapointment.

I hope this post helps people out there. In the meantime I leave you guys with a nice drawing of school boys :)

#cintiq #aureafrenieresart #milosflaca #troubleshooting #SierraOS #mac #Drawing #Displayproblems #art #Solving problems with Cintiq #wacom

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Some DA trivia and dev commentary from Twitter

There’s a lot of different tweets, so I’m just pasting and linking to the source rather than screencapping them all or making several different posts or something. Post under cut for length.

User: Was dragon age 2 your favourite in the franchise?

David Gaider: DA2 was the project where my writing team was firing on all cylinders, and they wrote like the wind- because they had to! Second draft? Pfft. Plot reviews? Pfft. I was so proud of what we all accomplished in such a brief time. I didn't think it was possible. [source] DA2 is, however, also where the goal posts kept moving. Things kept getting cut, even while we worked. I had to write that dialogue where Orsino turned even if you sided with him, because his boss battle had been cut and there was no time to fix the plot. A real WTF moment. >:( [source]

Mike Rousseau: I remember bugging that! And then being told it wasn't a bug, and being so confused. Doing QA for DA2 was an experience. Trial by fire. [source]

DG: So I think it's safe to say DA2 is my favorite entry in the DA franchise and also the sort of thing I never want to live through ever again. Mixed feelings galore. [source]

User: (I personally blame whoever it was for ruining most romance arcs in other games for me; they don't live up to Fenris's romance storyline)

DG: I wrote Fenris, so uh - me, I guess? Or maybe his cinematic designer, who put in the puppy dog eyes. [source]

User: If DA2 had just been an expansion, do you think it would have been better received? There was a lot of great stuff in there, and I think my initial dislike of it was because of the zone reuse. If it hadn't needed to be a full game, would that issue not have arisen?

DG: Hard to say. It was either going to be an over-scoped expansion or an under-scoped sequel. If it had stayed an expansion, it might never have received the resources/push it DID get. [source]

User: I'd love to visit the universe where you had an extra year or so to work on it. You did a very good job as it stands, but it definitely had rough edges. Not just the writing team either. The whole game had hit and miss moments, that just a little more dev time could have fixed.

DG: On one hand, DA2 existed to fill a hole in the release schedule. More time was never in the cards. DA2 was originally planned as an expansion! On the other, if we had more time, would we have started doing that thing where we second guess/iterate ourselves into mediocrity? [shrug emoji] [source]

Jennifer Hepler: This is what I love about DA2. Personally, I greatly prefer something that's rough and raw and sincere to something that's had all the soul polished out of it. Extra time would have helped for art and levels, but it would have lost something too. [source]

DG: Right? I think we could have used some time for peer reviews (and fewer cuts), but I think the rawness of the writing lent a certain spark that we usually polished out. [source]

JH: Definitely. I think the structure (more character-driven) and the tightness of the timeframe let each individual writer's voice really come through. Polish can be very homogenizing. [source]

DG: I should add I'm not, by any means, against iteration. Some iteration is good and necessary. The problem that BioWare often had is that we never knew when to stop. Like a goldfish, we would fill the space given to us by constantly re-iterating on things that were "good enough". [source]

Patrick Weekes: I appreciate your incredibly diplomatic use of the past tense on "had". :D [source]

User: DA2 was my gateway into the series and I’m so happy it is. I love the game the way that it is. It’s one of my favorites of all time. But I am also aware of everything that was said here. If it were remastered, do you think it would change?

DG: I'd be surprised if it was ever remastered. If it was, do you really think they'd change things? Do remasters do that? No idea. [source]

User: Both sides got undercut as I recall. Didn't that whole sequence also end with the mage leader embracing blood magic? It was very much "a plague on both your houses" moment, at least for me.

DG: Yep. Orsino was supposed to have his own version of Meredith's end battle, which only happened if you sided with the templars. That got cut, but the team still wanted to use the model we'd made for him. So... that happened. [source]

DG: I would personally say that DA2 is a fantastic game hidden under a mountain of compromises, cut corners, and tight deadlines. If you can see past all that, you'll see a fantastic game. I don't doubt, however, that it's very difficult for most to do that. [source]

PW: I love DAI with all my selfish "I worked on this" heart, but DA2's follower arcs and relationships are probably my favorite in the series. [source]

User: As I've expressed many times, I love the game, especially it's writing and characters but, for me, the most impressive aspect of it, in consideration of it's lack of time for drafts and revisions, is the 2nd act with Arishok. What amazingly complex character and fantastic duel

User: Just played it again and I have to agree. Though he is bound by the harsher tenants of the Qun, he makes valid points about free marcher society. Though it is obvious that he and Hawke will come to blows eventually, the tension builds gradually and understandably

DG: Luke did such a fantastic job with the Arishok I found myself sometimes wishing the Qunari plot had just been THE plot. [source]

User: What do you think would have changed, story wise, if you had more time for DA2?

DG: I would have taken out that thing where Meredith gets the idol. It was forced on me because she needed to be "super-powered" with red lyrium for her final battle. Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that. [source]

User: I deeply lament that there wasn't/couldn't be some sort of DA2 equivalent of Throne of Bhaal's Ascension mod.

DG: I'd have done it, if DA2 had allowed for anything but the most rudimentary of modding. ;) [source]

User: I mean, and I think I understand where you were trying, but how much legitimacy did the Templars and her as top Templar have after they're keeping the mages locked up against their will in the old slave quarters? Feel free to not reply.

DG: I think it's the kind of discussion which requires nuance, and which discussions on the Internet are not prone to. [source]

User: Was a compromise that the quest lines don’t branch? It felt like it was supposed to be that way but then you end up in the same place later regardless of what you pick. Like I hoodwinked the templars so good to help the apostates escape but in Act II they were caught anyway.

DG: I remember us having a lot more branching in the initial planning yes. Most of this got trimmed out in the first or second wave of cuts, in an effort to not cut the plots altogether. [source]

DG: "If you could Zack Snyder DA2, what would you change?" Wow. I'm willing to bet Mark or Mike (or anyone else on the team) would give very different answers than me, but it's enough to give a sober man pause, because that was THE Project of Multiple Regrets. [source] I mean, it's the most hypothetical of hypotheticals. It's never gonna happen. I wouldn't be surprised if EA considered DA2 its embarrassing red-headed stepchild. We'd also need to ignore that in many ways DA2 was as good as it was bad BECAUSE of how it was made. But that aside? [source] First, either restore the progressive changes to Kirkwall we'd planned over the passing of in-game years or reduce the time between acts to months instead of years... which, in hindsight, probably should have been done as soon as the progressive stuff was cut. [source] I'm sure you're like "get rid of repeated levels!" ...but I don't care about that. All I wanted was for Kirkwall to feel like a bigger city. Way more crowded. More alive! Fewer blood mages. [source] I'd want to restore the plot where a mage Hawke came THIS close to becoming an abomination. An entire story spent trapped in one's own head while trapped on the edge of possession. Why? Because Hawke is the only mage who apparently never struggles with this. It was a hard cut. [source]

User: I would LOVE to hear more details about this! I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a short story?

DG: I don't even remember the details of the story, sorry. There was a fight, and you caught the bad guy and then realized none of it was real and woke up idk [source]

DG: I'd want to restore all those alternate lines we cut, meaning people forget they'd met you. Or that they knew you were a mage. Or, oh god, that maybe they'd romanced you in DAO. So much carnage. [source] I'd want to restore the Act 3 plots we cut only because they were worked on too late, but which would have made the buildup to the mage/templar clash less sudden. Though I don't remember what they were, now. Some never got beyond being index cards posted on the wall. [grimace emoji] [source] As I mentioned elsewhere, I'd want to restore Orsino's end battle so he wouldn't need to turn on you even if you sided with him. And I'd want an end fight with the templars that didn't require Meredith to have red lyrium and go full Tetsuo. [source] Heck, maybe an end decision where you sided with neither the mages nor the templars. Because it certainly ended up feeling like you could brand both sides as batshit pretty legitimately, no? That was never planned, tho. No idea how to make that feel like an actual path atm. [source] Maybe an option to go "umm, Anders... what are you DOING?" 👀 [source] And, of course, a Varric romance, because Mary took that "slimy car salesman" character we'd planned and did the impossible with him. I can feel Mary glaring at me for even suggesting this, tho. [source] Lastly, the original expanded opening to the game which allowed you to spend time with Bethany and Carver BEFORE the darkspawn attacked. And, um, that's about it off the top of my head. Zack Snyder, WHAT PANDORA'S BOX HAVE YOU OPENED. [source] Shit, I remembered two more things: 1) Restore the "Varric exaggerates the heck out of the story" at the beginning of every Act, until Cassandra calls him on it. Yes, that was a thing. 2) Make DA: Exodus. Yes, I am still bitter. [source] God damn it, I meant "Make DA: Exalted March". The DA2 expansion, NOT Exodus since that was DA2's original name and makes no sense. Because the expansion ended with Varric dying, and that will always be on my "things left undone" list. [source]

User: Whaaaat?

DG: Well, you know that scene in Wrath of Khan where Spock goes into the dilithium chamber because he's a Vulcan? Well, imagine that but with Varric and red lyrium and because he's a dwarf. ;) [source]

John Epler: I distinctly remember referencing the bit from MGS4 where you crawl through the microwave corridor in the split screen, while cinematic battle rages on the other half. [source]

DG: It would have been glorious, John. Glorious. [source]

JE: I don't think I've ever been so certain what a shot should look like as I did Hawke coming in and finding Varric in the broken throne, just like when he was telling Cassandra his story. [source]

DG: It would have come full circle! Auggghh, it still kills me. [source]

User: Lord, you folks are a little too good at this.

JE: The true secret behind videogame narrative is knowing how to make yourself seem a lot more clever than you actually are. [source] 'Oh, we TOTALLY planned that.' [source]

User: Ok, this thread [the DA2 regrets thread, which is the big chunks above] but Inquisition.

DG: My regrets about Inquisition are, more or less, the normal kind. Nothing so dramatic, I'm afraid. [source]

User: You can keep your Varric romance, I want a Flemeth romance goddamnit!

DG: I would allow for one flirt option, and then a recording of Kate Mulgrew laughing for three minutes straight. [source]

User: I had a hypothesis about the repetitive caves in DA2. They're repetitive because it's Varric telling the story and he didn't consider them important. They're like sets in a play. (Okay, I really suspect it was a time/money/resources thing but I like my fake explanation better.)

DG: Hang a lampshade on it, maybe? Cassandra: "But that's the exact cave you were in last time?" Varric: "Whatever. They all look the same, I'm not THAT kind of dwarf. Can we move on?" [source]

User: that makes sense, hypothetically to make Varric romanceable and keep his arc—that had to happen for the main plot—I imagine you would have to make double the content (or more)? which would've been a tall order given the time/budget constraints the game was under

DG: Right. When it comes to "romance arc" vs. "follower story arc", we generally only had time to do one or the other. Never both. Romancing Varric would have meant not getting the story of his that you did. [source]

Mary Kirby: The one exaggeration I really, REALLY wanted, that we never got to do was Varric narrating his own death scene with Hawke weeping over him, then cutting to Cassandra's pissed off glaring at him. [source]

DG: Haha! The one I wanted was Varric's plot where he takes on the baddies single-handedly, sliding across the floor like Jet Lee, action movie-style, until finally Cassandra gets irritated and he has to admit Hawke & the rest of the party showed up to help. [source]

MK: We did that one! (He didn't do any Jet Lee moves, though.) Jepler gave him letterboxing to get The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly showdown vibes while he shot a ton of mooks single-handed. [source]

DG: Wow. Shows how much I remember. [source]

JE: I found it! I remember seeing this sequence as my treat for doing a bunch of much more challenging work. It was fun to see how far I could push our limited library of animations. [link] [source]

DG: Heh awesome. I could have sworn it was cut, honestly. I think I was even in that meeting. [source]

User: no disrespect but that’s surprising and rich of Mary “Hard in Hightown” Kirby to think DA2 shouldn’t have had a Varric romance when she wrote an entire book of Varric’s self-insert character pining over his Hawke insert character… HIH is the reason we had VHawke Summer 2018

DG: I can't *really* speak for Mary, or how she feels about it now compared to back then. I only know how she felt about it back then, and I'm not sure it was as much the concept of the romance but that Varric's entire story would be bent to "romance arc" ...a very different thing. [source]

JH: I remember pushing to have the first DLC start with Hawke having an option to ask Varric, "Did you tell Cassandra about us?" and if you picked it, Varric would answer, "Of course not, baby. I told her you were sleeping with X..." and then proceed as if you had had a full romance. [source]

DG: I still wonder how that would have gone over. x) [source]

JE: Okay, one more DA2 thing. Putting together the cinematics for this scene was a blast. [link] [source]

MK: These lines are my greatest legacy. I want "Make sure the world knows I died... at Chateau Haine!" inscribed on my tombstone. [source]

JE: I was so glad no one said 'no' to the crane shot. [source]

MK: It needs that crane shot. It's the perfect icing on that cake made from solid cheese. [source]

DG: The designers were all "we need more combat" and I think we were all "I think you underestimate just HOW interesting we can make this dinner party". [source]

JE: And finally. I think @SherylChee wrote the one-liner. I think we had a collection of like, 20. [link] [source]

Sheryl Chee: Yeah! Something like that! I remember submitted a whole bunch and Frank said you only needed one. Wish I'd kept the other fifteen. [source]

JE: A random chooser where, each time through the scene, you get a different one-liner. [source]

JE: DA2 is the project I'm the proudest of. I also absolutely get that it didn't land for a lot of people. But I don't think it's inaccurate to say that, in a lot of ways, DA2 defined my career. [source] Everyone spent a year working at their maximum ability. I was a fresh cinematic designer and was given all of Varric's content, as well as the Act 1 Finale mission. It was a lot for someone who had been doing the Cinematics thing for literally 6 months. [source] There's some stuff in there I can't look at without wincing. And there's some stuff I'm genuinely proud of. Not to mention, it was my introduction to most of the writing team. Several of whom I'm still working with today! Albeit in a different capacity [source] Also, weirdly, one of my most enduring memories of Dragon Age 2 is how much Bad Company 2 we'd play at lunch. It was a LOT. [source] Every game I've worked on has a game I played attached to it. ME2 is Borderlands. DA2 is Bad Company 2. DAI is DayZ. I, hmm. There's a progression there. I don't know how I feel about it. [source]

User: Is DA4 going to be tarkov then?

JE: I've kind of churned out of Tarkov for now. Probably Hunt Showdown, at least right now. [source]

User: I think people also don't take nuance into consideration -- like I FULLY acknowledge the flaws in my favorite games and will openly criticize them, but that doesn't mean they're not my favorite games anymore??? You can like and thing and still be critical of it.

JE: A lot of my favourite shit is deeply flawed! I acknowledge it and I think it's interesting to dissect the flaws. [source]

User: I still wish Justice was an actual character in DA2 rather than a plot point.

DG: There was a moment during DAI where we *almost* put in you running into Justice with the Grey Wardens, and he's all "Kirkwall? I never went to Kirkwall" [source]

User: Does that imply that Justice was shoehorned in to DA2?

DG: Nah, it was an in-joke where we thought it'd be fun to suggest that "Justice" was simply some demon that tricked Anders in DA2. Wooo those tricky demons! We didn't do it, though. [source]

User: [about templars] except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.

DG: I don't doubt that many people agree with you, and yet people can and do argue on behalf of the templars as well. My place isn't to pick a side, but to provide evidence that players can interpret for themselves [source]

User: Can you shed some light for us on how DA was able to do multiple same-sex romance options for different genders but the Mass Effect team treated them like the plague? What process existed for your team that just wasn't their for the other tentpole franchise?

DG: Different people making the decisions, almost different cultures. I don't know what it's like now, but for many years the Mass Effect team and the Dragon Age team were almost like two different studios working within the same building. [source]

User: It truly boggles the mind. Kudos for doing demonstrably better on consistent queer representation than the ME teams. Y'all never needed us to make petitions to try to get the studio's attention and ask them to do better by us. That's the fight we're once again embroiled in now.

DG: Honestly, I don't feel like tut-tutting the Mass Effect team. They did their part, and if they were a bit later to the show than the DA team they certainly did more than almost every other game out there -- and willingly. [source]

Updates begin here

User: So what was the reason for naming Dragon age 2 "Dragon age II" and not using a subtitle?

DG: As I recall, that was purely a publisher decision. I think they wanted to avoid the impression it was an expansion. [source]

User: Is there no chance of ever remaking DA2 under better circumstances? -Somehow remove the repetitiveness of gameplay by making changes and updating the tech and adding much more to the storyline. It could almost be a new very exciting game.

DG: I'd say there's zero chance of that. Let's keep our hopes up for the next DA title instead. [source]

User: I am a little confused here, help me out here please! How exactly was the cut boss battle with Orsino supposed to work out? How it would've kept him from turning against the player?

DG: It means that, if you sided with the templars, the entire boss bottle at the end would have been against Orsino and the mages. No fight against Meredith. The end decision would have been more divergent. [source]

User: I do remember that one of the reasons going around for that, was that resources were going to the transition to Frostbite. I'm still not fully sold on that having been a good choice. I felt that more time should have been given for that transition considering it was made for FPSs

DG: We didn't transition to Frostbite until DAI. Given our time frame for DA2, I don't think we *could* have transitioned to a new engine. [source]

User: Since your talking about the what could have been for DA2. Could you say what your script was for Anthem? Cause I remember reading that you wrote the plot on that game.

DG: I created a setting for Anthem and scripted out a plot - but, as I understand it, almost none of that ended up being used. So it's a bit pointless to talk about what I'd planned, as that'd be for some completely different type of game. [source]

User: [in reference to the exchange above where DG said “Being "crazy", however, robbed her side of the mage/templar argument of any legitimacy. I hated hated hated that.” re: Meredith] except, I don't think it had very much legitimacy to begin with. keep in mind, we interact with other characters with the same argument. The one that comes to mind is Cullen, a sane templar in power. The templar's side of the argument is inherently flawed.

If I missed a tweet, got the wrong source link or included a tweet twice, feel free to let me know and I’ll correct.

Edit / Update: Post update 22nd April

#dragon age #bioware #video games #fenris #the Fenaissance #long post #longpost #cassandra pentaghast #my lady paladin #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #mass effect

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the-wintry-mizzenmast · 7 years

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My thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda

My overall impression is that I enjoyed playing the game because the combat system is really smooth, and easily the best out of the Mass Effect games so far. So, yeah. A+ combat experience, lots of fun, cross-class capability and flexibility. The maps are generally very similar to Dragon Age: Inquisition with the forward stations (camps), obvious quest markers, and ability to set waypoints, only a way more massive scale as like the sprawl of Los Angeles, it is impossible to get around on foot, so you have to use your car, the Nomad. The Nomad is a vast improvement over the previous Mako, both in its capability and it’s near-indestructible handling ability. Apparently they got in some devs from the Need for Speed series to consult, and it shows. In a good way.

Despite all the griping of other reviewers, I do not feel that it’s a waste of time. It was fun, I enjoyed it. I could have enjoyed it a lot more, as there were a LOT of things that bugged me that detracted slightly from the experience. It is not the best Mass Effect game, and it is not the best BioWare game, but also probably not the worst. I don’t regret paying for it, and I think it has a lot of promise that might be fulfilled in either the DLCs or a sequel, though I feel slightly cheated because BioWare said it was supposed to be a standalone game and it’s very clearly not.

Now more detail into the Andromeda world, spoilers ahoy for ME:A and Dragon Age: Inquisition which I’m comparing it to.

ANNOYING THINGS

I’m going to start off with the things that annoyed me, the things that I felt could be done better. They are mostly narrative related. There are a lot of other pieces out there on the internet on why they failed so hard at animation (this tumblr post is a great place to start), so I won’t get into the details.

There’s nothing new about the Andromeda galaxy. Some of that is fine, because I never really felt that Mass Effect was all that groundbreaking in terms of science fiction world building, but the original trilogy was a really good execution of already existing science fiction tropes, like battling an ancient cosmic evil, biological life vs. artificial intelligence, etc. But it is kind of disappointing when you go to a new galaxy and you still find that the aliens are humanoid bipeds with an emotional range that’s the same as humans. Like, the Angara are supposed to exceptionally emotional…but you hardly ever see anything that is NOT a human-like acceptable emotional expression. Sure, when Jaal is pissed he gets really pissed, but there is never a moment that’s, “Wow, we have different ways of emoting, and what you just did would have been totally inappropriate in our culture” or something like that. Languages are easily decoded, and the Angara even have binary gender that correlate directly with our gender binaries. Worst of all, Jaal is straight, and that blows my mind. Like, he has a preference? Really? Despite humans being literally so alien they’re from another galaxy, Jaal prefers Sara over Scott Ryder? By the time you’re going xeno it’s so far away from what is probably your standard sexuality that I have no idea what rational basis his preference would be based on, but it enrages me that Jaal is apparently straight. I’ll get back to the subject of romances a little later, but… I’ve seen more originality in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and that aired in the late 80’s to mid-90’s. The Kett are essentially biological Borg, and they’re given such a laughable “bad guy” design that I just…*throws up hands* Some of the reasons the Angara are so similar are because you want to emotionally identify with them, and there is some base level of humanness that you need in order to romance Jaal for it not to feel weird. Like, I get that it’s less skeevy-feeling to fuck something that looks like Jaal instead of an octopus or sentient slime. Okeydokes, but I feel like that more could’ve gone into making Andromeda truly creative and they really just didn’t.

Your crewmates are boring. They are just so dull. It’s not that they’re bad people, in fact you get the impression that most of them have their shit together. But they’re all…good people, and that makes them tearfully boring. They have stupid little quirks that it feels like somebody filled out a character generation sheet in a tabletop, but they’re not even as fleshed out as somebody playing a one-shot would make their characters out to be. Everyone is fundamentally a good person, and lacking the darkness or the ongoing tribulations and trials that made your crew in DA:I so interesting. I’ll go through them one by one:

CORA is a snoozefest. I find her insufferable. At first she’s kind of stand-offish because she was supposed to be the Pathfinder, which I would imagine romancing her as BroRyder really weird because of her close relationship with your father. Then she reveals herself to be some sort of Asari-aboo, in the worst sort of weeaboo fashion. She refers to herself as an Asari Commando, and worships one of the Asari Commandos on the Asari Ark, and she just comes off as one of the creepiest weeaboos ever. Couple that with her “I need people to tell me what to do” character arc, and I just…tried to avoid her as much as possible. Do the loyalty missions even do anything? I might just skip hers and see if that kills her in my new playthrough. SO BORING.

VETRA is kind of sweet, and I like her relationship with her sister Sid. She has a rough background that makes her not a Turian citizen, but it’s kind of hard to feel especially bad for her because hey, she’s got her new start in a new galaxy and all that is behind her. Great! …there’s no darkness, no moral greyness about her. Sure, I’m sure she’s involved in all sorts of shady requisitions dealings, but she doesn’t even have the interesting quirks or usefulness that is Josephine in DA:I. I relegate her to the sweet, and I like her, but not romance material.

PEEBEE is annoying as hell. She’s like the manic pixie scientist girl who just won’t shut up, and her absolute commitment phobia is just…BLEGH. She’s like that flaky friend that depends on you for everything, and once you need help she’s all “NEW PHONE WHO DIS.” I feel like she’s supposed to be the fun Asari character who’s the opposite of Liara, and that managed to include her being a million times more insufferable and annoying. She also has that “I’m not like other Asari” that bugs in the same way that people go, “I’m not like other Asians” or “I’m not like other girls” that smacks of internalized misogyny or racism and…yeah. I had a one night stand with her with my first playthrough as an Asian Sara Ryder, and that was enough, thanks. :/

LIAM is a sweet nerd. His loyalty mission was fun. I have no idea why he doesn’t like Vetra. He’s fun to have around, but he mostly seems to have his shit together. He’s a good dude, he’s got my back. …and he does nothing interesting or fun or has anything interesting in his backstory whatsoever. So he’s really into nerd stuff and takes on the duty of first contact and culture sharing with Jaal and the Angara and he fucks that one up a little…okay, anything else? Nope. Snoozefest.

JAAL is supposedly all about emotional stuff, but so often he clearly just suppresses his emotions? He’s got like…a normal sensitive guy range of human emotions and the game is trying to tell me he’s amazingly emotional and I’m all like, “No, that’s just a healthy level of human emotions, yo.” He’s probably your second most interesting romance option, but he’s still in the running for the “pretty bland” title which is not saying much. He’s got a little more to chew through in terms of the Kett/Angara revelation, and the fact that he’s seen war and a lot of death, but yeah. …good friend, great skills as squadmate. Not interesting. Also not sure why straight. SOMEBODY AT BIOWARE JUST MAKE HIM BI ALREADY.

DRACK is the most fun of all your squadmates, because he’s this ancient Krogan but he has so much left to give. He is full of humor and fun and Krogan loyalty, and HELL YES DRACK is great. I wanted more Drack in this game. I am still disappointed that they don’t let you romance Krogan or Salarian. :/ Bummer.

SUVI is also a snoozefest. So she’s a religious lesbian scientist who keeps wanting to eat things in Andromeda. There is literally nothing else about her to write home about.

GIL bothers the hell out of me. He is the only gay male romance option on your ship, and that is not cool. He’s not a squadmate, and frankly, his story arc which is his best friend, Jill, pressuring him to have a baby with her smacks of the heteronormative narrative of homosexuals being problematic because they are stealing away reproductive opportunities. That is so regressive, that it bothers me. I’m not sure if they were trying to go the “gay parenting, yay!” route, but with Sara Ryder, it just smacks of gay conversion therapy because he does end up going to his female best friend to have a baby with her. EW. WHAT THE FUCK. I am told this narrative doesn’t go away if you are romancing him as Scott Ryder, so…DOUBLE EW. WHAT THE FUCK.

Again, these are all fundmentally good people. That means there’s nothing interesting about them as characters in a Mass Effect world. It’s not like in the DA world where you have this great representation of troubled and morally grey characters (e.g. Zevran, Anders, Fenris, Cassandra, Dorian, Iron Bull, Solas), so everybody is just boring. The only exception to this is…

REYES VIDAL and thank fucking god because he single-handedly (single-voicedly, perhaps, as he’s voiced by Nicholas Boulton, who is known to us DA fans as Garrett Hawke) saved the Andromeda experience for me. He is actually interesting because he is this morally grey character trying to make the best out of a shitty starting experience in the Andromeda galaxy, and he is put into situation where he makes hard and oftentimes not squeaky-clean decisions. AND I LOVE HIM. He’s very clearly from Antiva, and the Zevran Arainai school of charm, flirtation, and bisexuality, but DAMN am I not pissed at BioWare that because he’s a supporting character and therefore never joins your crew or becomes your squadmate, your interactions with him boil down to about 20 minutes of some 90-hours of gameplay. And he cuts off your other romance pathways as well (as I discovered the hard way), so I felt kind of ripped off that I am apparently exclusive with some mafia kingpin that I’m in a long-distance relationship with. No sex scene, just a couple of make-outs and a kabe-don.

…WHAT.

If I don’t get more Reyes Vidal in a DLC I’m going to flip a table.

More dangling threads than a Project Runway disaster. There was real potential with a lot of the background plot that was going on, but NOTHING is resolved by the end of the game except for the most urgent “where we gonna live?” plotline.

Things that are dangling and aren’t even sewn up before hitting the runway are: - Ellen Ryder is still in cryo? - Who is the Benefactor and who murdered Jien Garson? What is up with the shady shit behind the Initiative anyway? - Who created the Scouge? - Are the Remnant still around? Why did they just abandon Meridian? - The Kett are still at large in the galaxy… - What caused the course deviations in intergalactic space about 300 years ago? - What’s happened to the other arks?

NOTHING IS RESOLVED. I thought I was getting a standalone game, and it’s actually a bait and switch. There are more questions raised than answered, which bodes well for a sequel, but I’m not sure if I want Bioware Montreal to be the people making this game.

Hardly any of your choices matter. I feel more rail-roaded in this game than I have in a modern BioWare game, DA2 included. At least in DA2, while Hawke had absolutely no agency in the events surrounding them, at least your choices decided who you fought against in the final battle, and there was also the very real and very common possibility of losing one of your friends. If you didn’t play your cards right, Isabela could’ve left, you could’ve given Fenris back to Danarius, you could have killed Anders, your surviving sibling could’ve died in the Deep Roads, you could have killed Merrill, you could’ve lost the allegiance of Aveline…literally the only person who can’t leave you is Varric, so it feels like a real accomplishment when you do go through the game with everyone intact. The same is somewhat true for ME2 as well, as the final mission you can potentially lose squadmates if you don’t assign them the correct tasks and have their loyalty missions. Even in DA:I you can make choices about certain characters in their arcs that change them and their interactions with other characters, as with the Cole human/spirit decision, and the choice of whether or not to work with the Qunari and whether to keep Cullen on the lyrium which both have the potential to come bite you in the ass in the Trespasser DLC. DA:I overall had more meaningful choices that affected your experience, as in the choice of mages vs. Templars, but also the end world state of your game, as in who you picked to be Divine, and the fate of the Inquisition and so on.

You are almost never asked to make a hard choice in Andromeda. There’s no equivalent of whether or not to kill Anders, of picking between Kaidan and Ashley. The closest to the former is whether to pick to side with the krogan or save the krogan over the Salarian Pathfinder, and that doesn’t seem to change the ME:A experience much. You are never asked to pick between a squadmate, and the only meaningful close choice there is the choice between Reyes Vidal and Sloane Kelly (which, let’s be honest, is a real no-brainer because Reyes in the only interesting romancable character in the entire game and Sloane Kelly is a thug through and through. It’s like, pick between this gang leader and this smooth mafia boss; yeah, this is pretty clear). Everything else is…minimal. And that’s really, really sad. I’m expecting, throughout the game, to have to make that hard call between say, whether to leave the Warden or Hawke behind in the Fade (in my first playthrough, it was a real rough one because that was a choice between Warden Alistair [who was coupled with my DA:O warden, Lyna] and Marian Hawke [who was coupled with Anders]), and while that was awful and painful, it was also GREAT. There is no equivalent in Andromeda and that makes me really sad. The stakes are just lower overall, which narratively makes for a way more boring game.

The gay options suck. This is less sucky if you are a lesbian, but if you are a gay bloke, you’re kind of out of luck. As I stated above, Gil undergoes conversion therapy to have a biological child with a woman, and your only other option is the amazing and charming space ZevranReyes Vidal whose single downside is treatment as a SECOND-CLASS ROMANCE. If you want to get the Matchmaker achievement where you romance 3 characters across 3 different playthroughs, it is currently NOT POSSIBLE to do that with male characters without having to do something hetero. That’s so not appropriate.

Aside from awkward facial expressions, the fact that there’s one face for all the Asari, and relatively shallow interactions with other NPCs, those are my major ME:A complaints.

GREAT AND AWESOME THINGS

The Nomad drives so well. I hated the Mako from the first game, and I love, love, love the Nomad now. Driving across Voeld makes me feel like Dominic Toretto in that custom Dodge Charger running from a nuclear submarine in Fast & Furious 8 good.

Reyes Vidal. I don’t need to say more here than Garrett Hawke and Zevran Arainai had a lovechild and his name is Reyes Vidal.

Combat experience is smooth as silk. Which makes the new game + more awesome because diversifying skills and quick profile switching is FUCK AWESOME. It’s kind of a pain to set up, but once you’ve got going, you’re going good.

That trope where everybody you’ve encountered in the game comes and helps you at the end of the game. That brief moment during endgame in front of the vault on Meridian where the krogan you’ve saved and Reyes Vidal and the whole damn cavalry come to assist. YESSSSSSS I love that trope so much and it hit all my happy buttons.

Jump jets. I am never going to be able to go back to a game where I can’t jump.

Movie night was cute. It was adorable.

Low grav asteroid/planet was amazing and fun. I’m really surprised it look this long to execute that. I wish it were bigger? It was smashing fun to drive around on.

Asians in space. I’m finally glad to see some goddamn Asians in space, knowing how many damn Asians exist in this world, I am so glad to finally see myself represented? One of the Asian default Sara Ryders is also super cute and we played as her and it was SO FUCKING NICE TO FINALLY SEE SOME ASIANS IN SPACE THANK YOU.

#mass effect: andromeda #Just me with my thoughts #I need more Reyes vidal

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translationandbetrayals · 4 years

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Pocket Monsters: Translating 151 Pokémon names is hard

I’ve loved pokémon since I was a little kid, and I think many people can say the same. Few are the games that have had such an impact in the world such as pokémon. But did you know that the games were conceived as a Japan-only game?

It all began in the early 90’s when a small game development team named Gamefreak decided to create an RPG for the Gameboy.

Based on one of the producer’s childhood hobby of collecting bugs, they decided to make a game where you collect creatures. It took them a long while but they created a total of 151 creatures for the game(there were more, but many were scrapped in order to make them fit the limited space in the gameboy cartridge). They called them Pokémon, as in Pocket Monsters. Then in February 1996 Poketto Monsutā Aka and Poketto Monsutā Midori(in english, Pocket monsters Red and Green) were released.

Flayer advertising both games

The game’s objective was to become the league champion, defeat the crime organization known as Roketto-dan(Team Rocket), and to collect all of the 151 pokémon; this last one being one of the most crucial points in the game’s success. One version of Pocket Monsters had only 139 of the 150 pokémon available, to get all 150 you would have to trade with someone that had the other version of Pocket Monsters.

There was also one Pokémon, Mew, that could only be obtained through a real life event. This would become a staple in the series, even in recent games there are pokémon only obtainable through events.

This mechanic that promoted socialization, combined with the simple and accessible combat the game had, made Pocket Monsters a huge success in Japan. Not even the team at Gamefreak were expecting the game to sell so well. So well in fact that the game would eventually become the second best selling game of the Gameboy, surpassed only by Tetris.

Trading Pokémon between two consoles. (source Reddit)

The game had a third entry released in October 1996, called Poketto Monsutā Ao(Pocket Monsters Blue), which featured new art and some bug fixes. This version was primarily an exclusive for the subscribers of CoroCoro Magazine.It was later released to general retail in 1996.

To accompany the success of the game in Japan, an animated series was released the following year, and on top of that, in 1998 a fourth version of the game named Poketto Monsutā Pikachyū(Pocket Monsters Pikachu) was released to be more in line with anime.

The original four Pocket Monsters games released in Japan.

The game sold very well in Japan, but what about the rest of the world? In the beginning they weren’t planning on releasing the game outside of Japan, but due to its huge success there was no reason to not do it.

But Nintendo of America were a little bit sceptical about the idea of releasing an RPG for the Gameboy in the US. Handheld RPGs were seen mostly as a Japanese thing, in that regard, they were afraid that a game that had a lot of text could make the kids not want to play it.

Also, Nintendo of America thought that the creature design was “too cute” and would not be appealing to kids. They even proposed some changes to the designs to make them look more gritty and edgy. In the end, Nintendo decided to turn down those ideas for being too drastic.

And so in 1998, after a big advertising campaign, which included the release of the Pokémon Anime in North America, the games Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue were released, both versions based on Pocket Monsters Blue. A few weeks later, Pocket Monsters Pikachu was also released in North America as Pokémon Yellow.

Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow boxart.

But wait, no Pokémon Green? Yes, the Green version was never released in the rest of the world. This was just one of many decisions made during localization, and oh boy there is a lot to talk about that.

Pokémon translation and localization was a hell of a ride.

They first had to change the name of most of the Pokémon, Characters and Locations. Some Pokémon Japanese names didn't make sense in English or were straight up bland. Here are a few examples:

Squirtle name in Japanese is Zenigame, which literally means “small baby pond turtle” in japanese. Some other names were more clever like Bulbasaur, Fushigidane which literally means “mysterious seed”, or could be also interpreted as “mysterious isn't it?”(Fushigi, da ne?)

Then we have other names that are straight up english words, like Krabby, named Crab(クラブ kurabu) or Sandslash, named Sand (サンド sando).

And then, at the back were the names that made sense only if you were Japanese; Farfetch’d is called Kamonegi (lit. Duck with a leek) which is a contraction of a japanese saying. More info here.

Pikachu's name was kept in the English version, in spite of being a combination of Japanese Onomatopoeias.

But the names of Pokémon, towns and characters only make up for a very small portion of the game script. The rest, which is more than 90% of the translation work was done by just one man, a Canadian freelance translator named Nob Ogasawara.

He really put a lot of effort into making the translations, it wasn’t just a job of directly translating everything, a lot of things that messed with culture differences had to be changed.

One big example is that moment in the game a hiker man is laughing uncontrollably because he ate some mushrooms. Getting high on mushrooms is something that would be seen as very bad here in America, but in old Japan, when foraging, it was common to mistake a normal edible mushroom with a warai kinoko, a type of mushroom that would make you act like the hiker man. This without context would make for a very inappropriate joke.

Hiker laughing because of the mushrooms

Fortunately, Nob was very aware of these cultural differences and translated accordingly. Not only that, but he also added some of his own. There are some pop culture references, like when a trainer says “Hit me with your best shot!” and then “Fired away!” In reference to the song Hit me with your best shot by American singer Pat Benatar.

There was one time when he “went too far” as seen by Nintendo executives; they almost fired Nob for wanting to name a girl's Spearrow “Britney'', as in Britney Spears(Britney Spearrows?).

The translation was very good overall, but was also weird at times. Like that kid that says: “Hi! I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!”. The phrase sounds weird, but it’s way less strange when you realize that the trainer character called youngsters in the english versions, are literally called shorts boys in Japanese, and that the original phrase is “Shorts are nice and easy to move around in! Why don’t you wear some too?”. Way less aggressive innit?

There is also one mistake I can recall that confused me as a Child. An NPC that asks you to trade a Pokémon with him, tells you later that the Raichu you traded him, evolved.

The feature of transfer-evolving was a common one, but Raichu doesn’t evolve when traded, in fact he doesn’t have an evolution. What happened is that they used Pocket Monsters Blue for the dialogue, but used Pocket Monster Red for the NPC placement. In that version, the NPC asks you for a Kadabra, a Pokémon that does evolve when traded.

When the English translation was done, Nintendo decided to also translate the game to French, German, Spanish and Italian. All these languages used Nob’s translation as a base. It’s important to say that this was one of the first times that a translation was made for Spanish and Italian, it was sort of an experiment.

Title screen of Pokémon Red, in English, Japanese and Spanish.

Julien Bardakoff did the translation for the French version, he did a Job as good if not better than Nob’s. He changed the name of the Pokémon to make sense in French, Nintendo originally wanted to keep the Japanese names, but thanks to Julien the Pokémon were given very clever and interesting names, like the Legendary bird trio were named after Nord Mythology gods.

For the Italian and Spanish translation though, the work wasn’t all that smooth, there were a lot of mistakes done during the process, mostly due to bad communication from Nintendo and the translators. The translation team had to work with very little information, as they were handed mostly words without context. As a child i didn’t know this fact, so I was very confused by the weird phrasing in the spanish version:

For example the move Counter, as in “counter attack” in spanish is translated as “Contador”, which literally means “someone or something that counts”. The move Slam was translated as “Portazo'' which literally means “To slam a door”.

And the weirdest one, when you hook a Pokémon with a fishing rod, the text says “El malvado [pokémon name] atacó!” which means “The evil [pokémon name] attacked!”.

The evil Magikarp attacked!

It may look like a small thing, but translating those games took a lot of effort, the original games weren’t made with the translation in mind, and english language used a lot more space than Japanese. For example, the Pokédex entries in English were two pages long, instead of one. But in the end, all was worth it. Many people got to enjoy the games, and it birthed a multi media franchise that is still the one with the most revenue of all time.

I still wonder what could have happened if the Pokémon design was changed to fit the “cool kids” of America, or if the Pokémon names would have been changed for the Spanish version. I can only wonder.

-Luis Sobarzo

#Japan #personalstory #submission

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