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goatsandgangsters · 4 years

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I want to hear your mental thesis on why GOT ruined television because I agree.

OH THIS IS EMBARRASSING, I GOT YOUR ASK, I IMMEDIATELY WROTE A RESPONSE LAST FRIDAY, AND THEN I.............. left it in a word doc and forgot I never posted it. SORRY

So for onlookers, this is in reference to my tags on this post, on how capitalism has resulted in our current TV landscape where TV shows are constantly getting cancelled (specifically in a Netflix context). But I have a little pet thesis about how Game of Thrones contributed to this trend and really shaped what the current TV landscape looks like

With the caveat that I have nothing concrete to back this up—I haven’t looked extensively at numbers or data, I haven’t read any specific analysis on this, I don’t work in the media or any media-adjacent field—and I am basing my claims totally on observations and vibes

Game of Thrones was unprecedentedly successful in a way that set the bar for TV networks who suddenly realized TV shows could be immensely profitable. Game of Thrones certainly didn’t invent the concept of prestige TV, but it aired in a period of time where there was a lot of good quality television. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, we were seeing a cultural conversation about the “golden age of TV” and how TV could actually be good, after a long period where the film was viewed as “art” and television was viewed as “entertainment.” Suddenly, that was changing. There was more recognition of the artistic and storytelling merits of television. Shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men were acclaimed. The conversation was shifting. Game of Thrones was born into this golden age and it was at first another show that shifted the perception of television towards a cultural cornerstone that would be taken seriously.

But then Game of Thrones got BIG. I mean, BIG. It was everywhere. It was so popular. Everyone was talking about it! Everyone needed HBO so they could watch it! Don’t spoil me, I missed last night’s episode! Game of Thrones in your meeting on Monday morning. “Hey, have you heard of Game of Thrones?” “I just started watching Game of Thrones, I’m obsessed!” “I binged all three seasons last night, I can’t wait for the next season!” Okay, I did look up some data. Game of Thrones earned BILLIONS OF DOLLARS. Billions! Not millions, BILLIONS! PLURAL! Your friends were all watching Game of Throne! Your professor was watching Game of Thrones! Your dad watches Game of Thrones! Your boss watches Game of Thrones! Everyone watches Game of Thrones! Everyone talks about Game of Thrones! Game of Thrones makes MONEY, MONEY, MONEY!

And without getting into any discussion of the quality of Game of Thrones, because quality is secondary here to hype and money-making potential, suddenly TV shows aren’t just capable of being good like movies. They’re capable of MAKING SERIOUS MONEY. Everyone wants a Game of Thrones! Everyone wants a cash cow like that! But an enormous cash cow that brings in 13 million viewers for one episode alone and makes billions of dollars—those don’t come along every day (especially as we have more and more channels and streaming services and options pumping out content and flooding the TV market to the point where you don’t even know what new shows are out there because there’s just so many). But networks still want that cash cow. So they premiere a show. It does well, it makes some profit, a good number of people watch it. They cancel it. They premiere a show. It does well, it makes some profit, a good number of people watch it. No, cancel it! We want Game of Thrones! We want millions of viewers! We want all the money! Instead of putting money into additional seasons of a reliable show that has steady ratings, steady viewership, and makes more money than it cost to produce (i.e. profit), it seems like networks and streaming services are throwing as many shows as possible at the wall to see what sticks—and cancelling anything that doesn’t immediately have promise as The Next Big Thing, The Next Game of Thrones.

Of course, there are exceptions, as there are with everything. Plenty of shows before this time period were cut down in their prime after only a season or two, like Pushing Daisies. But on the other hand… Remember how much people TALKED about Firefly? I mean, they couldn’t believe it! They cancelled Firefly after only ONE season! Justice for Firefly! Can you believe that, only ONE season? It seemed like such a shocker. Nowadays if you recommend a really good show to me and say it was cancelled after only two seasons, I go “ah, another one huh? That’s a shame.”

And of course there are plenty of other factors as well for the constant death of shows, not all of which are about Game of Thrones. First of all, there’s more of them, overall, everywhere, on every network. So naturally, there will be more cancellations. Again, I don’t have the numbers to tell you if it’s proportionate. We also know that Netflix—which doesn’t rely on advertising but on subscriptions—leans on the premiere-and-cancel model, since they claim that new shows bring in new viewership to watch releases, whereas apparently later seasons of shows (apart from the BIG hype-trains like Stranger Things) don’t bring in the kind of cash and numbers they’re after. Plus, the longer a show airs, the more likely you’re going to have to give raises to the writers, actors, and everyone else working behind the scenes. You don’t have to increase their pay if you cancel their show.

It’s part of the overall trend of capitalism—ever-expanding and ever-increasing profits, constantly looking for things to cut and curtail to achieve them. It’s incredible to think back on shows of similar genre (drama and SF/F; I’m not getting into things like comedies which feel like they operate differently) and similar levels of cultural popularity and compare those shows to the television landscape today. Lost had six seasons with anywhere from 14–25 episodes per season. Buffy had seven seasons, plus five seasons of a spin-off, with 22 episodes per season from season 2 onwards. That seems unimaginable today. Of course, longer seasons (and MORE seasons) are not always better. The phrase “jumping the shark” exists for a reason and originated with the show Happy Days—and many other shows have dragged on past their endpoint, past when the story was finished, and continued beating a dead horse.

So shorter seasons can be a good thing! A tight few seasons of a show can be a wonderful opportunity to tell a complete story with a tight narrative and end in a satisfying way! I much prefer this to shows that drag on to the point where they become a chore to watch. That sweet spot is hard to hit—but it seems like the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction where shows don’t jump the shark because they don’t live long enough to have the opportunity.

Except Game of Thrones. Which did jump a shark. And then several more.

#runn0ft #thank you for the opportunity to Share My Opinions #I have a lot of opinions but I'm like a vampire and I need to be specifically invited inside to share them #also again PET THESIS: NO EXPERTISE JUST OBSERVATION AND OCCASIONAL SPRINKLING OF NUMBERS

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chaosstar290 · 4 years

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Reasons try out Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore.

Nintendo's been pretty casual with porting Wii U games over to the Switch, and for good reasons. Normally, I'm not all into porting games that I've already played, but my personal favorite games on the system that lack good marketing and advertising are now getting the attention and love they deserve.

Take Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for example, one of my favorite 2D platfomers. The game originally sold 1.72 million copies worldwide on the Wii U. Not very good numbers, huh? However, the Switch port managed to beat those sales numbers with 2.25 million units sold worldwide by the end of March 2019.

So while this could be seen as a way for Big N to earn more $$$, this is also a way for those who never owned a Wii U and missed out on some of the system's best titles to give these games a shot. Now we just need a port of Xenoblade Chronicles X and The Wonderful 101...and Star Fox Zero, I guess.

But that's a topic for another time. This post is specifically for my favorite JRPG on the Wii U only to be tied with Xenoblade Chronicles X....Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

This'll be a long one, so here's hoping you'll stick with it until the end.

Development

Before I get into the reasons, lemme educate you guys a bit. Back in January 2013, both Atlus and Intelligent Systems made a teaser trailer for a potential Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem crossover for the Wii U.

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The trailer was mostly just a slideshow with various character artwork. Despite this, there was a decent amount of hype surrounding it. But development around the game was pretty silent. That is, until we fast forward to the Nintendo Direct in April 1, 2015. We got a trailer of the ambitious SMT x FE crossover that fans were waiting for...but this was the final product.

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Needless to say...neither SMT nor FE fans were happy about this. The fandoms were incredibly salty and foaming at the mouths, basically calling it a Person 4 Lite with a hint of FE. Heck, they're probably still posts on this site from 5 years ago that'll show that.

Fast forward to the games initial release, and you'll see quite a few positive reviews and thoughts about TMS. Unfortunately, the sale numbers were not all that great for the game. Obvious reasons being that it was a Wii U game, and many fans of both SMT x FE were not happy with how it turned out.

And to be honest, I wasn't feeling the game myself at first. It seemed too lighthearted and upbeat, and the J-Pop, anime-ish aesthetics were very off-putting. However, the more I saw about the game, the more I was drawn into it. Somehow all that disappointment I had about TMS originally just washed away. And considering it was a new IP, I decided to give it a chance. And hoo boy...I was generally pleased.

With that outta the way, let's get into why I'm excited for the Switch port of game, and hoping people will give it a fairer chance.

The Setting

The plot of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is mostly simple. You start out as high schooler Itsuki Aoi, the main character of the game encountering his childhood friend Tsubasa Oribe at an audition event to become a idol. It isn't until moments later in the game that the area gets overruned by shadowy creatures known as Mirages that suck out the creative energy known as Perso-- ah I mean Performa from the other idols and audience.

Poor girl doesn't know what's gonna happen next.

Despite our main characters seeming unharmed by the effect, the Mirages drag Tsubasa into their world known as the Idolsphere. And of course, courageous Itsuki takes action to follow and rescue her.

After trying to make a daring rescue, Itsuki gets bombarded by a Mirage, but somehow manages to awaken it. Taking the form of Fire Emblem Awakening's protagonist Chrom. Itsuki does the same with the Mirage that captured Tsubasa that takes the form of Cedea from Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon. The two awakaned Mirages, however, suffer from a bit of amnesia and can't quite remember who and what they are.

From there on, Itsuki and Tsubasa form a partnership with Chrom and Cedea, encountering various characters trying to reach their way to stardom while trying to draw back the opposing forces from taking over Tokyo and the world. Typical RPG stuff, am I right?

It's a fairly standard and slightly cliche plot with some common anime tropes, but for this game...it works. It's a plot that's incredibly silly, upbeat, and over-the-top, but again...it works for this game. And I love it. It may not be original, deep, or complex, but the story does its best to not take itself too seriously, and it doesn't fail to keep a smile in my face.

Aside from the vanilla cookie-cutter MC Itsuki, the various casts that you meet are incredibly charming, and go through their own personal growth as celebrities. Though you mileage may vary on this.

The Gameplay

The combat is the real star of Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Basically, it's your standard turn-based combat system...but with a few twists. If you've ever played a SMT or Persona game, then don't be surprised that elemental weaknesses make an appearance here. Along with that, the Triangle Weapon system from Fire Emblem also makes an appearance in the game.

But if you're not familiar with either franchise then give you a basic example how this works. Say that you've encountered an armored Mirage wielding an axe. The weaknesses on that enemy are both lightning and swords, and Itsuki just so happens to have both the necessary element and weapon equipped.

In case you're wondering...how the Triangle Weapon mechanic works in FE is that Swords beat Axes, Axes beat Lances, and Lances beat Swords.

The interesting thing about this is that once you exploit an enemy's weakness, other characters will jump in and combo extra attacks. These are called Sessions, and their not only powerful...but also flashy as all hell and it's glorious. Not only that, but there's also Duo Arts where two certain characters will sometimes perform a song that unleashes a powerful attack...which also strings up more Sessions. As broken as this sounds, it actually is pretty strategic for taking down harder enemies, and they can also form Sessions...so be careful.

There's more to the gameplay like roaming Tokyo, exploring dungeons, and upgrading your characters and Mirages by Tiki from Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon as well.

There's mixed opinions on the dungeon aspects of Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but...I personally enjoyed them. Aside from the first one. Once you get past the first dungeon, they get better as the game progresses. From exploring a darker version of Shibuya where you have to avoid giant cameras from sending you back to the entrance of the of the room you currently entered, to venturing through a maze-like TV studio.

There's also side-missions that you can do with your main cast that'll help them grow and develop even further. You'll be rewarded with either a special cutscene or a special attack. Or maybe both.

The Visuals

Go go...Persona Rangers?

If it wasn't obvious from the amount of images I'm posting, Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a very colorful game. Fitting with it's lighthearted theme, the amount of colors the game throws at you makes visuals aesthetically pleasing. Heck, you could make these your personal wallpaper on your phone or something.

Sure, Tokyo Mirage Sessions isn't nearly as strong as Persona 5 graphically or even artistically, but like most Nintendo games...what their games lack in terms of detailed ultra-hyper graphics, they make up for it with giving their games gorgeous artstyles.

Also, this game has some reeeeeally good artwork.

The Music

J-Pop plays a pretty big role in Tokyo Mirage Sessions, so expect a lot of vocal tracks. If you're not into this kind of genre of music, then you might wanna stray away from this game. If you are (or if it doesn't bother you), then you're in for a treat. As someone who really isn't into J-Pop myself, the songs in this game are incredible and catchy followed by some beautiful cutscenes. Reincarnation from Kiria Kurono and Feel from Tsubasa Oribe are some of my personal favorites.

The music from outside the vocal tracks are pretty good too. The normal battle theme and the Illusion Shibuya dungeon theme are just to name a couple.

What's New?

Like I said before, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is a port of the Wii U version, but with added content. Any DLC that was added in the original game will part of the base game in the Switch version. But let's talk about the new stuff.

EX Story and Songs

The EX Story is basically a dungeon that you explore in short bursts. Here you'll find new costumes such as a Joker outfit from Persona 5 for Itsuki, or an Annette outfit from Fire Emblem Three Houses for Mamori Minamoto. Or you can have a much easier time grinding for EXP. Also, much like the side-stories, this dungeon will also explore the main casts' issues and help them grow.

New songs will also be added in this port. A duo song called "She is..." sung by Tsubasa and Kiria is one of them.

Sessions

By making Sessions even more powerful and ridiculous, unplayable characters like Tiki, Maiko Shimazaki, and Barry Goodman will also join in Sessions.

In addition, a Quick Session option will be added. Which is a major upgrade in my book. One of the big issues the Wii U version had was while the Sessions were fun to watch, they took forever to get through with the more characters that joined your party. There are also smaller improvements like the Switch version having faster loading times.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this long as hell post will spark some interest into those who'll give the game a shot. I know there's small nitpicks like the lack of English voice acting and censorship, but the latter is a topic I'd rather not delve deep into.

Regardless, these small cons are greatly outweighed by the large pros this charming game has. If you're an Atlus fan, a lover of JRPGs, or wanting to play something that'll ease the wait for Persona 5 Royal, I highly recommend you give Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE encore a shot.

If you're also waiting for Persona 5 to actually come to the Switch like me, this game is next best thing we've got for the time being.

This is one of the most stylish menu screens ever.

#tokyo mirage sessions fe #tokyo mirage sessions fe encore #atlus #intelligent systems #nintendo switch #wii u #persona #persona 5 #fire emblem #shin megami tensei

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magog-on-the-march · 5 years

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How Lorne Lanning re-imagined Abe’s Exoddus as Oddworld: Soulstorm

By Dean Takashi, VentureBeat.com, MAY 13, 2019 7:15 AM

Under the cut is an interview between Lorne Lanning and GamesBeat regarding the development and gameplay of Soulstorm, as well as the looting/crafting system.

It’s a lengthy but informative read, and has been copied here for the sake of posterity (this stuff disappears all the time).

GamesBeat: Tell me what you’re doing.

Lorne Lanning: Last time we talked was when New and Tasty was just announcing, I think. We were at a GDC. It’s been a while. Since 2008, when we started the business digitally, self-publishing the library–that’s when all the rights had reverted, so it became easier to do that. Steam let us do that. From that, we were getting tens of thousands of dollars from old titles. Abe’s Oddysee was 10 or 11 years old and still selling. That led to us being able to start making things like converting Munch’s Oddysee to PS3. But we were it the organic way, purely from sales.

The sales were always a little bit exceeding our expectations. We didn’t have high expectations, but it was amazing that 11-year-old games were still selling. That led to us being able to get to the point where we made Stranger HD. That got really good Metacritic. We were surprised. It had pretty good sales. Then we got to where we started to be able to spend millions of dollars, and that’s how we got New and Tasty.

New and Tasty then became our largest venture, self-financed, paid for the old way, the business building organically from sales and not borrowing any money or doing publishing deals. New and Tasty moved 3.5 million downloads. That was a surprise. It treated us well and helped us set up ground zero here, with a new distributed development model. New and Tasty was largely done under one development house, with a couple of others coming in to solve various problems. We learned from that and went all cloud-based. We control all the data through many development houses.

Right now we have people in Vancouver, in Seattle, in San Francisco, in San Diego, in Los Angeles, in Washington D.C., in Quebec City, in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in Australia. That’s our day. Managing the time zones is pretty fucked. But we’re able to control costs a lot better. It’s operating more like film development, where you set up the company for development and use all contractors. If you want to keep on going, you keep on going. You swell as you need it and thin as it makes sense. That’s the way we’ve been doing it.

It’s tough finding anyone who has the highest bar. It’s easier when we’re getting animation talent, because then we get them from the film industry, or we get them from top-tier experience. Lighting, modeling, rigging tend to go more film, less game. Then you get into level design, you’re really in a hybrid of being able to contract out. Depending on the skill set it’s easier or harder.

Traditional outsourcing companies haven’t really worked for us because they want architectural specs, basically, and then they can function on that. We’re still looking at more of a distributed development team rather than hiring outsourcers. More like contractors who know how to build games versus — if you look at the history of India and China for outsourcing, it’s very, “Tell us exactly what you need and we can get you that.” But if we have to work together to shave cycles or figure out solutions, outsourcing groups get harder.

GamesBeat: How many people do you work with now?

Lanning: When it comes to individuals, right now it’s about 30 on the project. That will be higher eventually. They’re all spread out. At times we’ll scale down and scale up. As we get through the rest of the project we’ll scale up a little, because we have your systems established and code and things like that.

Where we are with it, we started this about three years ago. We told the audience — we’ve had a lot more conversation with the audience on social, since we haven’t been at retail. We said, “If we’re successful with New and Tasty, what would you like us to do next?” They said, “Redo Exoddus the way you did with New and Tasty.” That brought us back to — Exoddus was this emergency game that we had to get done for GT Interactive because we had a hit in 1997 and they needed another hit in 1998. Other games that were supposed to ship for that publisher, like Duke Nukem Forever and Unreal, they all slipped Christmas. Being the one title that delivered for Christmas, that was our curse.

What I had thought was going to happen, I was hoping to have a hit with Abe’s Oddysee and then be able to take a couple of years and build a sequel. It would be this big five-part epic series. We put that on the back of the box. This is the first part of the Quintology. Then we got derailed from that right away because we needed to ship a game in nine months to be a good partner. It changed the story I had intended. Then I felt like the property started to get off course from that initial vision point. You know the history of the industry, the history of Oddworld.

From there, when they said, “Redo Exoddus,” we said, “Huh. We’re not sure if we really have enough money to do a new game.” It’s one thing to reskin and rez things up and re-envision. It’s another thing to do a brand new game, all new everything. We decided to bite the bullet and said, “If we’ll do that, let’s go back to the original vision of the Quintology and focus on what that second game, ideally, was supposed to be. Let’s reboot the idea of that five-part epic, where we’re at number two. If we can do that well, if we can keep the trajectory of Oddworld growing again and get more into the triple-A space where we had been, and get there on our own with the audience’s help, that would be a much different and better existence.”

We started this one about three years ago. We had the legacy of doing New and Tasty on Unity. At the time, Unreal was still a million-dollar engine. We didn’t have the money to throw at that. Unity was basically free. We continued on Unity. That had a lot of legacy code for various reasons. So we started building up, and fortunately Unity started getting better and better. We started pushing Unity in places it hasn’t gone yet. You saw a little clip the other day. All of that was rendered in real time in Unity. It’s not the highest of highlights, but we’re showing a little bit.

We have to be careful about how we’re showing the insights into the single-player story. We need the reviews come release. We’re still a year or more out.

GamesBeat: And your script is basically done?

Lanning: Oh, yeah. We built all the systems. We did a lot of code work. We expanded on what is Abe substantially. We’re riding the latest versions of Unity, so that we can help them to build into their engine the things that facilitate better building of games like this, rather than mobile games. We have a lot of caching, taking advantage of multiprocessor, various thread optimizations that they just weren’t doing because the mobile space wasn’t demanding it. How their portaling data, how they’re caching in and out. A lot of that streaming needed to get better. Various rendering things that needed to get better.

GamesBeat: Is that how you got on stage [at Unity’s event]?

Lanning: Yeah, we caught their attention early on this project. We contacted the CMO and he saw it and kind of flipped out. They’re chomping at the bit to show more. We agreed that we would only show this much, and only if it said sneak peek. It’s not a teaser and it’s not a trailer. We’re trying to be careful with that language so we’re not sending the wrong messages. But it seemed to work, because it’s just that video from the other day on a few channels that have covered it, including ours, but well past a million people have viewed it. That’s a good indication. Better than we’ve done in the past.

From there we’re going to stagger this out across the next year. We’ll try to get it done across the next year. I can’t say exactly when. There’s a lot of new systems in there, a lot of new tuning to do. We need the whole thing running synergistically. We want to do it right. It has to be a great game. But I think we’re in the zone.

GamesBeat: You’ve already been on it for two years?

Lanning: Three. It’s three years in, with another year to go.

GamesBeat: The original took nine months, and this is four years.

Lanning: Right. We’ve just ignored the original. This is a completely new game. It’s what Exoddus was inspired by, but couldn’t be. This gets back to the true inspiration. We’re able to run it better on 21st-century technology and do things I was thinking of before, but we’re probably lucky I didn’t try to do, because I would have shot myself in the foot.

GamesBeat: So a much larger game?

Lanning: Much larger. Probably the biggest game we’ve built. Definitely more sophisticated. This is why we’re going to the crowd. We’re still going to want to get physical deals. We’re still going to want to have promotional partners, various types of partnerships. We just don’t want to be at the typical end of that shortish stick, in terms of — you know how publishing works.

We wanted to take it to the crowd. Really the crowd is what got us here, because it’s the profits that allowed us to build this. It just wound up being more expensive than we expected.

GamesBeat: Does the title mean something?

Lanning: Soulstorm? It’s the essence — it means a lot of things. It’s the essence, the mystery of this one, the Soulstorm Brew. The Brew gets into, what is the Brew? The spoiler is, the Brew is the ultimate employee performance and retainment solution. What it is, it’s an energy drink. You get two a day if you’re an employee and you work in the factories. That’s great. They hype you up for optimal performance, and then to go to sleep they give you a Snoozie at night. Brews and Snoozies.

But the Brews — one of the by-products is, they’re highly flammable, which becomes an advantage. Another is, the mystery of it — what’s happening in this game is, it picks up where the last game left off. A ripple effect in the underground — all these other factories, they know they’re slaves. Think in the outlying parts of China, big factories, factory farms, pharmaceutical companies, whatever. They know they’re screwed. They just don’t have a way out. What happened in the mythos is the success of the destruction of Rupture Farms, Abe causing an uprising that frees the employees, it’s starting to spread the word across the land. Now we have employees starting to flee factories and catch up with the guys responsible for the uprising, trying to find Abe.

As they’re still just trying to keep themselves alive, Abe and the guys, now that they’re free from the farm, they’ve caused a lot of economic damage to a big — it’s like Oscar Mayer just got shut down. Imagine the impact on Wall Street. These guys are on the run and they start encountering more slaves from other factories that have fled to try and find the group that was responsible for the uprising. But all the ones that they find are sick and dying. They don’t understand yet that the Brew is designed so that you’re addicted to it for performance. If you ever try to flee the factory, the withdrawal will kill you in 48 hours. That way you’re not going to make it to the second world and talk to the labor unions and defense attorneys and human rights organizations. They keep them where they products are being built, safe away from the standards of the modern world.

That’s the theme of the game, the theme of the Brew, how the game works. That’s the initial start of it. We wanted to focus on a single-player story game. We know that’s not chasing all the trends, but we built a lot more in, a lot more RPG capability. Abe was always begging for it. Stranger took on a little more it. Here we’re going to do a lot more of it in terms of ways to exploit the environment and empower Abe to have a lot more abilities. He can deal with the world in more interesting ways and be more powerful. We’re turning the Mudokons you’re saving into less like beasts of burden and more like allies with AI mob dynamics, gang dynamics. They can have various benefits as well.

GamesBeat: Politically, you’re still pretty right-wing, then.

Lanning: [laughs] We were always considered pretty severely left. It’s funny. Someone asked me recently, “Are you a socialist?” I said, “Fuck no! My relatives were killed by the Bolsheviks. That’s not going over either.” It’s interesting, our demographic. It’s really wide. It’s misfits, right? Huge LGBT base. We’re big with women.

But sometimes I meet these guys — in England in particular, these big dudes who come up with Abe on their chest, Abe on their shoulders. What the fuck? They look like thugs, like hooligans. There were these twins, two brothers that both looked like MMA fighters, covered in Abe tattoos, and they’re like, “Dude, you don’t know, my brother and I, the shit that used to go down in our household, this is what kept us together. This was the only thing we could be successful at in our life, was playing Abe’s Oddysee. We played it through the most horrific part of our life. It meant the world to us. If we kept on trying, we could succeed.”

I met another guy who had an Elum and an Abe on his asscheeks. He wanted to show them to me. I still can’t figure that out, to this day.

GamesBeat: The new teaser looks nice.

Lanning: We’re investing a lot more in the expression of the characters and the emotional connectivity. We spent more time on the rigging and all that.

If we live long enough and have enough success, we finish the Quintology. This is part two. In that, we’re setting up — you don’t need to have played part one. They’ll stand alone. But we set up Abe’s condition — opening movies are getting shorter. People are trying to dial more for the free-to-play audience. We went the opposite direction. We want an eight-minute opening movie. We dialed in more on Abe’s dilemma, which is he’s waking up to the fact that this game is not over. It’s just beginning for him. His shit is just about to really hit the fan.

I’ll show you the opening movie. This is all rendered in real time in Unity. It’s about 12 hours for a straight playthrough if you’re playing like a speedrunner. Here we’re taking you back to where you’re actually going to begin to play. That’ll be the first screen of the game. In a traditional Oddworld flavor, we do the first screen last. [laughs] That’s where it’ll start, in that burned-down condition. He’s learning the basic moves in a burning-down hideout facility. We wanted to have destructible playing fields and more forces, like liquid, flammable liquid, and fire as true play elements that were more organic and spreadable.

Let’s go to a compilation of some gameplay. One thing we wanted to do — New and Tasty delivered in 2.5D. We were monitoring the audience and asking them about it a lot. What we found was that compared to POV or over the shoulder, they liked being directed through the narrative experience. They liked not having to steer. They liked seeing their character on screen. They liked being able to aim, do whatever they had to do. But it took them out of the traditional — it might not have been looking in the right direction, the camera showing what you should be seeing. They liked those aspects of it.

We focused in on that. We wanted to expand on that with something we call 2.9D. We’re using it as a little marketing hook. We are going into the world. We can be on curved paths around stuff. We can move in full dimensional space. But we keep it on rails, so the play style stays in sync with the evolution of the side-scrolling platform. We dial it up in the dimensions of the world, the feeling of being in the world and how deep the world is. What you’re seeing in the distance is something you’ll come to play, which is also an Oddworld thing, even back in Abe’s Oddysee. We took that a few pumps higher.

This is a compilation of some of the play that’s happening. First, a big change is we wanted to bring more RPG-ish elements. It’s not a real RPG. It’s still an action-adventure platformer. But we wanted to bring in a wallet, an economy, a crafting ability to allow Abe to have what we call a sort of homeless economy, a scavenger’s economy. He finds recycled bottles, bottle caps. He can sift through lockers or get change out of phones, pickpocket sleeping guards. He can cash in things at recycling machines and use that scavenged cash to start buying vending machine products, food products.

Out of the things he’s finding in the world — scraps, wires, paper, dirty rags, things that don’t seem to have much relevance — he can combine them through the crafting system and start making weapons a la the Anarchist’s Cookbook. You’re buying Pepsi and Mentos and putting them together to create your little sticky bomb. In our case it’s Fizzy Pop and Explos. That system allows much greater exploration in the world, much more of a slow-down pace — find, discover, create things with meaningful uses to the player. It gives the player more agency.

The other thing that’s happening, the Mudokons historically — Abe’s always about saving others. He’s an empathetically driven hero. But those others were always really beasts of burden. They had some value. In Munch’s Oddysee it was different. But they were basically hard to get out alive, and that was the challenge. We wanted to give them more agency as well, more power to the player. It’s more like you’re building up your gang. If you’re crafting things that become available in your inventory, you can gift them to your followers and set them to aggressive or passive. They can start fighting and defending for you in a myriad of ways.

That’s what will be happening here. The first thing you’ll run past is vending machines. I’ll speak to that as we play. All of our vending machines are in the light animated look. This is 2.9D. Here I can pickpocket some sleeping slaves. It’s still the same basic controls. Instead of hiding in steam vents and shadows, now you can hide in the lockers, and so can your followers. What you see in the distance, you’ll be playing later. You move through in a more Z way. It has a lot more depth. But you can still play in that classic platformer tradition.

You’ll find a lot of cases in the environment where you can set up industrial-scale accidents that you use as weapons. The Mudokons are armed as well, fighting for you. Extra powers come to Abe if he has followers that give him more benefit, more abilities. Here we’re taking down an end boss on a moving train. We wanted that physics, that overwhelming feeling of little vulnerable characters against a really powerful world, this industrial environment. Abe’s followers can defend him, and he’s the main targeting system. They follow through. We did the effects in all these candy colors because they’re built out of consumer products. We wanted these crazy effects to showcase the abilities.

Then every level has a tallying system, leader boards, and different achievements and badges and karma. There are lots of different ways to play it. We estimate that on this game, people will get their 100-plus hours’ worth, but it’s not like the first playthrough is 100 hours. It’s definitely there to be milked through the systems, though.

We’re running toward the very latest versions of Unity, which means this might crash. If we were sane, we would have locked it off earlier in the development and said, “We’re sticking to this version.” But if we did that we wouldn’t get Unity to be doing features in their source code that we made. Hence, if it crashes, that’s my excuse. [laughs]

We have a new UI system with lots more controls, but everything Abe always did is still there. The rest is built upon that. Every level is self-contained as a single story, with an intro and outro and tally. We’ve done a lot more hint systems in this game. You can turn that on and off depending on your needs as a player. There’s a log for objectives, where you are on missions.

This is more of that 2.D effect. You can see where you will be playing in the world. This is case where we wanted to have environments, particularly in the backgrounds, where you can come in and scope it out and spy around and see what these things are to understand what you’re going to face before you actually face it. This is one of those sniping spots, where we give the user controls to preview the level before engaging. If there are workers in a zone, you have to get them out of there.

In this case your mission is you want to get up and out to terminal 2 and free your guys along the way. The heat really starts picking up. The scavenger economy includes rummaging through these garbage cans. Let me say, you’re about 60 percent into the game here, but with the hints system none of these things have been activated yet, so you’ll see a lot of windows coming up. There’s not as much as that when you play the real thing. Every item is new because this is a fresh playthrough.

He’s picking up seemingly useless things half the time, but they actually have a lot of depth once we start applying them. There are destructible floors, destructible platforms. These things add up. You get a changing playfield based on action. We wanted to have that, so the environments didn’t remain static. Here’s where you go to cash in your recycled bottles and bottle caps. You don’t have enough right now, but you do get some of our cheesy music.

These are vending machines. Each gives you a description of what they do. These are Jawbreakers, and they can be thrown. Lockers can be looted, and you can also hide in them. If I have followers — you see that they drop their hats right away. Now, if Abe goes in a locker, they’ll go in with him. At the same time you get the benefit of — expanded followers equals an ability to loot faster, and also the additional powers they bring.

You get a sense of the scale of these levels and how they operate. We have lots of characters running around. Even off in the distance you can see people operating back there. All of that you’ll play, even when you have huge trains passing in the background that you might see going by. We’ll be playing all the way through that. I’ll come to lockers that I can’t get into, but I can do things like pickpocket the security guards, take whatever he’s got, and get the keys.

As long as I hold the sneak button, all of his moves are quieter. Now I have the key to the locker. You can get that health power-up right there. You have an extra ability in this case, so now let’s look at the inventory system. This is what I just bought. What it does, just as a base model, I can use this to knock guys out when I throw it. We’ll do that real quick. That’ll knock them out, the Jawbreaker, but he’ll wake up in a few minutes. It’s limited, non-lethal. But if I go into the crafting system and take this and add some rubber bands to make it bounce, and some tape that can secure it, I can craft a new thing.

When I get back into the game, now this guy is waking up. Aw, I didn’t get him. But I can do this old trick. I can possess these guys. I have that full round of capabilities. Then I can choose to de-possess him and knock him out or blow him up. That gives you different bad karma or good karma possibilities.

Let me cheat on some stuff to add more cash, some fire extinguishers, some Brews, some Jawbreakers, some Fizzy Pops, some rubber bands, some more tape, general crafting components. Now, these are some of the scenarios where these things — the ammo is sort of puzzle-ish. I have to summon this elevator so I can continue deeper into the level. These guys, who will have a lot more voices and humor in them by the time we release, they’re like, “Not on my watch. Not before 5PM. Not before the bell. Not while I’m here.” He’ll keep sending this shit back.

But if I’m using this, my bouncy Jawbreaker, I can add rubber bands, and each band I add will give a bounce to his capability. This is where it works well for the side-scrolling platformer style. These will go plink-plink and bounce around. If I get it in there, that’s a non-lethal takedown. It could have been lethal.

We spent a lot of time on the camera system so it’s more informative to the player. It has a more choreographed way about it. We’re able to have that sense of gameplay that’s familiar, but expand the dimensions of it with more of a Z and curved entrance into it.

GamesBeat: It’s a little like the latest Trials game. It’s still side-scrolling, but it has more of a Z dimension to it. A train comes at you from that direction.

Lanning: Yeah, we do that too. That’s coming up. With Brew, the thing about Brew is that we wanted to have a really flammable type of force that you could control and manipulate. If I had just a bottle cap, that would provoke a spark here. That’ll start to burn. I can spread this through ceilings, through other areas. At the same time, this is one of the reasons I have fire extinguishers. I can also spray my guys and make them fire-repellent.

I can take my fire extinguisher into the crafting and add some Brew, add a lighter, and add a battery and some wires. That gives me a flamethrower. Now I can put my fire extinguisher here and a flamethrower there. Flamethrowers are very dangerous. They have an amazing ability to stick to most everything. Here’s another case where I can’t go any further. If I try to open that electrical gate, that guy would keep it firing. I have to deal with him.

Let’s make one of these, assign it here — got him. Now I can go onward. With puzzles we’re learning to get more into action as part of the puzzles, rather than just twitch timing. We want you to be able to explore these environments, even though these are the guys you’re supposed rescue. You can walk around, navigate it all, figure out what’s going. You’re not under any real threat.

Each of these things up here is a guard tower. If it has a number five, there’s five guys in there that could be summoned out under certain conditions. We wanted a more emergent level. You have the ability to explore and do all these things, but once you start rescuing guys and pulling them off their jobs, everything changes. Once they drop their hats and they become followers, the whole place starts lighting up. Alarms, scary lights, scary guards coming out. The world starts emerging on you.

Anything I’ve crafted, if we go back into this, I can take over to my followers. Say I want to give my followers a bunch of Brews to throw. I’ll give them a bunch of bottlecaps to throw and start fires. I want to craft some Molotov cocktails, so I can take a bottle and a dirty rag and a lighter and craft a bunch of those. I’ll gift those to my followers real quick and then make a few for myself. I’ll craft up some Fizzy Pops too. I can increase the power of these by adding Blastos. And then of course I can keep powering these up through more and more levels, but this is good enough to demonstrate.

Some of this stuff, you can have fun trying to figure out how far you can get into different areas. These things have a lot of capability. One thing I can do is assign my guys to become more aggressive. Even if I’m not fighting, they’ll fight for me. When threats come along they’ll start to throw stuff and take them out. I have a mob that I’m working with now. There, they got him. The world stays more persistent in that respect. I’ll blow away some of these floors. My goal is to get as many of these guys out alive as I can.

Now I’m going to go through a gauntlet. This elevator has what we call air supply delivery cannons. Then I suddenly have an air cannon, like a potato cannon. Anything you’ve got in your inventory, you can use with that. You, as the player, have the inventory cannon, but the Mudokons you’ve armed are your support cover. As I go through here, the world’s going to wake up again. All the alarms go off. We wanted to get this real feeling of mayhem going on, a storm of visual effects from all the consumer products, lots of pinks and greens.

Each of my Mudokons also has keys, so they get me further into the level. I’ll grab some more of these guys. You notice that they have much more agility than in our previous games. I’ll blow a hole through the floor and let them shoot on out. My guys can find their own way, or I can leave them anywhere, like in a tower defense situation. Now I’ll pull this down and take them into the next level.

I’ll go through another one of these gauntlets, so I’ll want to arm these guys up real fast with more of these. I’ll gift those to my followers. First I need to take away these bottlecaps, take away water. We don’t need that. Instead I’ll give them all of my Fizzy Pops. I’ll get by with crafting up some more of these. Not as sensational, but they work. Now you see that all of my followers are represented by this icon on the lower right of the screen. I lost one guy in that battle. That didn’t work out so well.

Here I come to the train crossing. Recruit a couple more guys here, let’s go. C’mon, hurry up, hurry up! Just keeping that pressure on. Oh, shit! No! I’m so sorry. God, that was just brutal. All that work. C’mon, guys, hurry up! Get out of the way! And then this gets us into terminal 2. Here I’ve gotten a cheat charm. These open up a different store, which is basically the metaphysical store.

At the end of each level, if you choose to have this display on, it’ll give you a full tally of your stats, the achievements, whether you found the secret areas, everything that’s happening. Each of these saved and you can go back and play each level and master the achievements, master your karma, do your speedruns. There’s a whole series of bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond. Then, if you get all diamond, we’ll open up a couple more achievements per level.

The first playthrough, we estimate that to be viable it has to be a minimum of about 12 hours. But the people who are milking it, there’s more than 100 hours that you can spend.

GamesBeat: How much of it is in that kind of environment, the factory? Is it a lot of the game? Or do we see different places like the train?

Lanning: Oh, yeah. We start off in a hideout, with some more native environments. You escape that towering inferno. Then we go into old, abandoned towns that are a little more like Stranger, these old mill towns and mining towns. We have ancient ruins, pretty spooky-looking areas. We wind up at gas stations for trains, big fuel depots. Then we go to a Slix barracks and the Necromines, a mining factory that’s built on top of a graveyard, basically. They’re mining the bones. That’s the other secret ingredient in the Brew.

You need to hijack the train in the train level so you can carry your 300 guys from the previous game and keep them safe while you’re on the run. You’re stacking them all up. At the end of the game, if you played it perfectly, you’ll probably wind up with about 1,300 saved Mudokons. But you could have zero. The idea is you could play the game and kill everybody, with a really terrible karma count, or you could play the game and kill nobody, with the ultimate, most positive, new-agey type of friendly touchy-feely run.

GamesBeat: How similar would you say this is to the original gameplay?

Lanning: With the original gameplay, Abe could sneak, run, jump, and do the basic moves he was doing here. But he didn’t have an inventory system. You could only play through with one guy at a time in the original game, too. When we remade that with New and Tasty, all the guys in the level could follow you at one time, which was really taken from Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus.

In the original game, you could throw something, but it was just like, “I need to solve this puzzle. There’s an item I have to find in this room and then I can throw it.” But it wasn’t an inventory item you could carry with you to other places. It had no accounting system either, no wallet. It was really about what level you’re in, how fast you get through, and how many Mudokons you could save. That was the basis of it.

Now we’ve really gone off on the collecting, the exploring, finding secret areas, and community. Healing guys you find that are dying, crafting antidotes, crafting things with medicinal properties.

One thing you’re not seeing here, if you’re a completionist, the leaderboards that come up at the very end — if you want to get perfect platinum badges and compare that to the rest of the community, or zero deaths for slaves, or zero deaths for yourself, all of those things are different verticals you can play along and explore. That’s one of the big motivators. I want to see how I beat everyone.

This is what we’ve been doing. We thought that were in a fairly good position to make a more unique offering to the crowd, because it’s this far along. We don’t plan on giving out a playable. We just plan on dosing them with more information throughout the year, without blowing too much about the world.

#Oddworld #Soulstorm #Lorne Lanning #VentureBeat #GamesBeat #interview #Try finding 10 Oddworld interviews from Web 1.0

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missmeikakuna · 5 years

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Chad and the Incel Chapter 1

Rated: M

Fandom: Original Fiction (but inspired by the Virgin vs Chad meme)

Relationship type: Male/Male with a bit of Female/Female (the lesbians are adorable, btw) and unrequited Male/Female (in other words, the guys are bisexual).

Description: Chad is, well, a Chad, or at least he looks like one. He’s got his sights set on the cool nerd Becky and enlists the help of her shy incel ex-friend Noah, offering to help him get the gorgeous girl (Stacy) he desperately wants. Noah is reluctant to help, believing that he will be stuck in inceldom forever, but Chad’s interest in his life gives him hope. When their plans go awry, they start turning their romantic attention towards each other.

Content Warning: Given the subject matter, you can guess that this story has dark themes in it, such as suicide and self-harm (plus the mental health issues that often cause them), sexism, slut-shaming homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. There is also swearing and some mentions of sex but nothing too explicit (hence the M rating as opposed to an Explicit rating).

1st Post: [SuicideFuel] Talking to a Chad

Chad Beaufort wiped his forehead with his towel, which he held over his back like a tarpaulin. He kept in one corner as he changed. He didn’t need to, per se. For an eighteen-year-old, he was fairly muscular and lacked much excess body fat, plus he had the benefit of being one of the tallest students on the team. However, he didn’t want to face his teammates, and he certainly didn’t want to have to see them changing.

He gasped and felt tempted to nurse his back when a hand smacked it. He grit his teeth. He could already tell who owned that hand.

‘Hey, my man. You wanna go and get some Mickey D’s?’

He was right.

He turned his head. Tyrone Cooper. A short, scrawny black kid with a big mouth and an urge to insult every person he came across.

‘Or are you too busy chugging salads in fear of getting fat?’ He looked up and down Chad’s body despite most of it being covered by a towel. ‘Good decision,’ he said. Case in point.

Tyrone reached up and wrapped his arm around Chad’s neck, pulling the poor sonofabitch to his level. ‘But surely you won’t sacrifice a friend for that, right? Come on, have some fun.’

Ah, yes. ‘Friend’. Chad and Tyrone? Totally friends. Chad definitely enjoyed spending time with him and certainly never wanted to punch his teeth out.

‘I’m busy,’ Chad murmured.

Tyrone let go of him and crossed his arms. ‘Fine. Enjoy your fucking salad.’ He left with a huff. Chad sighed in relief.

He finished changing and headed out the door. He looked at his watch and sped up his walking. She was probably gone by now.

His heartbeat became as intense and full of hype as an overture when he saw Becky White pass him in the halls. At least she hadn’t left yet. Her dark chocolate hair was pulled back tight into a high ponytail, making her soft facial features all the more visible. The icy blueness of her eyes made her stand out. Her slim arms, covered by a merino wool sweater, were somehow carrying several books without her face showing any signs of struggle from their weight. Her mouth was closed so her braces didn’t show, but somehow those braces were charming to Chad. Or maybe he just liked seeing her smile.

For a moment she did, but then she hid her face behind her books. Chad’s face started to heat up but then he looked behind him and saw a girl he sort of knew.

Stacy Wells was a tall girl with a fake tan and a large chest, wearing short shorts, just long enough to avoid being chastised by teachers, and a tight top. When she saw Becky, she pushed a strand of her wavy bottle-blonde hair behind her ear and gave her a little grin. She stared at her with warm brown eyes.

Covertly following her was a short boy with greasy and messy short black hair, which had bangs long enough to almost cover his eyes, a shirt with some anime girl on it and a pair of glasses Chad expected a grandfather to wear. Noah D’Arc. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking away from Stacy but inched closer to her. Chad caught him taking a whiff of Stacy’s fruity perfume.

Stacy held her hand up to wave at her. Becky noticed Noah’s presence and scowled at him. He scowled back. She whipped her head away from him, causing Chad to savour the sight of her ponytail bouncing, and continued walking.

Stacy frowned and dropped her fingers, her hand still hanging in the air. Noah looked down at the floor and shuffled away.

The next day, Chad found himself staring at Noah in class, trying to come up with a possible reason why Becky glared at him. His thoughts quickly got distracted from this puzzle when Becky’s face entered his mind. Chad grinned as he wondered what she’d wear on a date. Would she still wear her usual simple attire or would she dress up? He had a feeling she’d look cute in a sundress with her hair down. Then again, ponytails were kind of hot-

He was thrown out of his mind by another slap on the back. Like a bull he breathed out through his nose and turned his head. Tyrone. Of course.

‘Hey, you know Emilia Graff? I heard she just got pregnant. I can’t imagine it, personally. I mean, is it physically possible for her to get fatter?’

Chad considered replying, ‘Shut up. No one cares.’ However, Becky’s face once again popped up in his head. He instead asked, ‘Hey, do Becky White and Noah D’Arc know each other?’

Tyrone scratched his chin and looked up. ‘Hm…. Well, I do remember them being friends in middle school. Don’t know what happened after that. Why?’

Chad shrugged. When lunchtime rolled by, he watched Noah head to the computer lab with his lunchbox and decided to follow him.

When he entered the lab, he leaned against the doorframe. ‘Hey, uh, Noah, right?’ he asked when Noah sat down by a computer. Noah didn’t look up. His shoulders rose, his hands curled into fists and his eyebrows met in the centre of his face.

Chad put a smile on his face and his hands in his pockets. This was how it was done, right? ‘So, I was wondering if you could tell me about Becky.’ Noah remained silent but started moving, turning on the computer and focusing on the screen. Chad rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’d kind of like to know what kind of guy she likes.’

Chad’s eyes widened when Noah rolled his eyes. He heard him murmur, ‘Typical.’ Chad covered his mouth to suppress his laughter, releasing a tiny bit of spit into his hand. He wiped that hand against his jeans and held it out for a handshake. Noah looked at the hand like it was covered in maggots or, well, spit. Chad kept his hand out but curled it nervously.

‘Well, how about…’ Chad said, unsure what to do next. ‘You like Stacy, right? Let’s help each other out.’ Noah whispered something. Chad leaned down and put his hand against the back of his ear. ‘What was that?’ Noah tucked his lips into his mouth. Chad sighed. ‘I thought you’d be, I dunno, happy to get some help. Wait, I didn’t mean that in a… Sorry.’

Noah whispered again, but this time Chad heard it, though just barely. ‘No fucking point.’

‘Why?’

Noah tensed up even more. ‘I’m blughpild’

‘Huh?’

‘Blaghpeeled.’

‘What? I still can’t hear you.’

Noah took a deep breath. ‘Blackpilled.’

‘The fuck does that mean?’ Chad blurted out, though he didn’t apologise.

Noah crossed his arms and turned his head in the direction opposite to Chad. ‘I realized the truth a few months ago.’

‘The truth? Is this ‘blackpilled’ thing a cult or something?’

Noah stood up and grabbed the collar of Chad’s polo shirt, pulling him closer. ‘You think someone like me would end up in a cult? I’m not dumb enough to believe in some sky wizard.’ After saying this, he immediately let go and sat down, sweat dripping down his face. The two were silent for a few moments.

Chad asked with a curious grin, ‘So what is it, then?’

A sigh from Noah. ‘Well, you would agree with me if I told you the world’s unfair, right?’ Chad shrugged but then nodded. ‘It’s especially unfair for people like me. No girls want to talk to me, no girls even want to go near me.’

Noah paused, considering how much information he planned on giving. ‘I’ve been deprived of love my entire life. Women just want Chads who treat them like shit, leaving behind all the ugly guys who’d treat them with respect.’

His face scrunched up with just enough force to stop his eyes from spilling tears. ‘When I gave up on trying to get a woman, I became blackpilled. Your world and mine are night and day. You get the bright blue day world full of love and admiration and I get the pitch-black night world full of, well, nothing.’

Chad asked, ‘Hey, wait, what did you say about me? Women want guys with my name? Why?’ Noah looked at him like a dog being told an unrecognisable command. ‘My name’s Chad.’

Noah scanned Chad’s body. ‘How fitting,’ he said as he tried to rip his eyes away from the lightly-tanned muscles that bulged out from underneath his crimson T-shirt and the tousled blonde hair that accentuated his strong jaw-

‘How?’

Noah coughed and turned away again. ‘You look like a Chad.’

It was Chad’s turn to cross his arms. ‘The hell does that mean?’

Noah’s throat closed up. His arms stiffened and his eyes darted everywhere. Chad exhaled and left the room, but not before seeing a tab on Noah’s computer entitled ‘Incels.me’. He just missed Noah groaning when the website was blocked by the school, taking out his phone and seeing only a tiny bit of internet data left.

Chad didn’t talk to Noah for a couple of weeks, but he did occasionally stare at him in the hopes of catching him considering the option.

Noah did consider it. In his mind was a constantly repeating video of him gathering the courage to talk to Stacy and her giving a cute little giggle before grabbing his hand. However, he remembered something someone on Incels.me said.

Stacies don’t know what true oppression is. They’re able to use their body to get what they want. If I tried to do that, I’d be arrested for sexual harassment.

This comment kept battling with the fantasy of Stacy going out with him. Chad’s idea was useless. No, it wasn’t. It would never work. But Chad could give him some expertise. No girl wanted an ugly guy. But maybe this Stacy was different!

He finally made his decision as the lunch bell rang, though part of him screamed for him to reconsider. Instead of heading to the computer lab, the library or the cool-aired spot behind the gym, he walked up to Chad.

It took him a while to start talking as Chad put his pens in his pencil case. ‘If you give me some dating tips, I’ll tell you about Becky.’

After a moment of pressure at the thought of giving dating tips, Chad beamed at him and did something he didn’t expect to do. He gave him a little slap on the back.

‘I knew you’d come around,’ he said.

What he didn’t know was that Noah had written about him on Incels.me.

#chad vs incel #Chad x Incel #bisexual #Incel #romance #drama #original fiction #breaking stereotypes #lesbian #Chad and the Incel

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unnursvanablog · 3 years

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All the movies I watched in 2020.

Not a long list, because I am much more of a tv show person than a movie person. Months can pass and I suddenly realize I have not watch any movies.

The Farewell: An amazing and quiet little family story. The premise of this movie is so simple, yet it works so well. It's just amazing.

Hustlers: I liked it very much, and yet I have very few words to say about it for some reason.

Jojo Rabbit: Funny, sincere and thoughtful all at the same time. I really enjoyed it and how Taika Waititi uses humor to tell his stories. It's just so masterfully done.

Memories of Murder: Interesting and exciting, but by no means my favorite Bong Joon Ho movie. I am not that into crime-thrillers, so that might be it.

Little Women: Made me cry, just like all the other adaptations of Little Women. It was a new and interesting way to tell a very classic story. I really liked it a lot.

Portrait of Lady on Fire: A really interesting story. It hooked me right from the start. I loved how slow and quiet it was, yet so impactful.

The Hustle: I had to google what movie it was, because I had forgotten it. Says it all about that movie, huh? I do not like the humor that Rebel Wilson has and this movie is just riddled with that.

Gone Girl: It was interesting, but I did not find it that entertaining.

P.s. I Still Love You: I forgot this movie was released this year. Not as cute or fun as the first one. I felt like it lacked some of the charm the first one had. Not as re-watchable.

Tune in for Love: I loved this little romance story. I remember really enjoying it, yet I have very little to say about it.

Monsters: The idea was there, but the result was not up to par with what I had hoped. A decent popcorn flick, but it's often difficult to turn a monster movie into something more than just an empty battle-sequences with monsters with a interesting narrative, in my opinion.

Harry Potter 4: I watched it with my little niece after she finished the book. Idk, I still love this film. (also, this was before Terfy Rowling was a thing)

Guns Akimbo: I thought Daneil Radcliffe was really funny in it, it had some great dark humor, but gun fights is just something I get bored watching.

Emma: It delivered on everything that the trailer had promised me; Colorful, funny and a little weird. I really enjoyed it.

1917: I could quite see why people find this film amazing. It was beautifully shot. The story didn't really captivate me.

Bright Star: I found it a little too slow in parts. Beautiful to look at though.

Stardust: Ah, the perfect fantasy movie in my opinion.

The Great Battle: I had to google what movie this was, so it was not that memorable. An okay war movie, did not relate to the characters that much and it felt a little too long.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1984: They changed the story a little from the book and made the husband a little less of a jerk to me. Did not have quite the same effect as the book did, but it was still good.

Time to Hunt: I got pretty bored while watching this movie. Watching some boys in a gang and their fraudulent activities and gunfights between them and the bad guys is just not something I usually enjoy watching.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Ah, what a classic. These movies age so well.

Eurovision: Fire Story: I liked the songs, I hated the story and Will Farrel and I do not have similar type of humor. I just find him boring and obnoxious.

Hamilton: It was incredibly cool and well-executed, I did find my attention slip a couple of times, as it is very long. Can I see why people have been hyping this up all these years? yes. Seeing this live would have been amazing.

Two Towers: What can I say? These are amazing movies that age so well. I enjoyed this so much. I don't do a lot of re-watching, so when I do and I enjoy it it feels like a treat.

The Love Birds: Had to google it, so not that memorable. A good comedy, but nothing really outside of the box.

Return of the King: Seeing this movie in theaters was amazing! I cried my eyes out during the ending, and it's really amazing how well these movies age.

Prince Caspian: My favorite Narnia movie. It doesn't follow the book very well, but I like it so much.

Old Guards: I loved the backstories and the more mythical part of the story behind it all. But gun fights just aren't exciting for me to watch. The last part was all that.

#Alive: I found the first half really interesting, but the second half ends up being a pretty typical zombie movie that I've seen so many times before.

The Odd Family - Zombie on Sale: Omg, this movie. I loved it! How it mixes humor and horror without neither of those elements overshadowing each other or anything was amazing. I had an incredible time watching it, I liked pretty much all of the characters, I laughed out loud a few times (and that is rare for me) and the story managed to be really exciting on top of that. What a good movie!

Train to Busan: This movie is kinda amazing no matter how often you watch it. There is just something that really works in this movie. It takes advantage of the genre it is set it, the space where the stories takes place, and does something new with it. The plot is great, it's intense and sad when it needs to be. A fun time!

Penninsula: oh boy.... this movie was an empty thriller that adds nothing to the movie that came before it and nothing new to the zombie-horro-genre. It truly was everything that Train to Busan wasn't. It was not good.

Seel Rain: This is such a good thriller. The performance of the actors is really good, it has some humor, it has some heart, and it even managed to surprise me on a second watch.

Steel Rain 2: I loved the beginning and the middle of this movie, as the relationship between the three presidents who are stuck in a submarine together was really fascinating and fun to watch. When the plot looses that element it becomes rather a formulaic thriller. Yoo Yeon Seok is the best part of the movie.

Mulan (1998): I love this movie, by far one of the best Disney movies. I watched it in English this time, so some of the jokes were not as funny to me in English as they are in Icelandic... in my memory.

Mulan (2020): oh my, this was something. All the warmth, all the emotions and all the humor from the original film was just not present in this one. It just seemed so empty.

The Mummy: It's weird to watch a movie that is so beloved, it's quotes a lot, but it's not a part of your nostalgia so something about it feels lost to you. There is this pressure to like something that is so well loved, and often I have seen references to these movies and I feel like I have already seen it, when I finally see it. I liked it well enough, but I also felt this disconnect to it.

Double Worlds: She looked much more fun that it was. The plot was not good, nothing that happened seemed to matter and for me it seemed just pretty empty and full of CGI that looked cool enough but didn't add a thing to it.

The Craft: It's always nice when you watch a well-loved film and you really enjoy yourself while watching it.

Coraline: I can't believe it took me so long to watch this movie. I still knew the story quite well even though I had not seen it so little about it surprised me.

The Divine Fury: I thought it was a little too long and a bit all of the place at times. I thought it started well, but by the end I was getting pretty bored.

The Babysitters Guide to Monster Hunting: I thought it was silly but in a way that kinda works for this story. Good fun, if you do not dig too much into the plot.

The Personal History of David Copperfield: Dev Patel is awesome in this role and the tone of the film itself is rather whimsical, which I enjoyed. Judging by the trailer, I expected it to be funnier, but we can't have everything.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: This movie is a classic. At least for people my age. Everything about it just kinda works: The humor, the story, the characters, battles. She's just so good.

The Call: A really interesting storyline and the idea behind it is really cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it surprised me a few times, although I found the ending a bit confusing.

The Prom: The decent musical. I found it rather sweet, the songs were fun and most of the actors in it were nice. I had a fun time watchin it.

Jingle Jangle: A very cute family Christmas movie. I adored the costumes and the sets. The songs were really good. I thought it dragged on a bit sometimes, but it was still really cute and wholesome.

Guernsey Litarary and Potato Peel Society: This is just a really well made costume drama. I was not bored to watch it again.

Parasite: It's just as spectacular to watch this movie the second time watching it, or third, as it was watching it for the first time. The sequence of events is so gripping that it had me on the each of my seat as I was excited to experience all those things again.

#movie review #Movie Reviews #out of all of my end-of-the-year reviews I struggle with this one the most #I don't feel like I have too much to say about most of the movies I watch #compared to tv shows or books

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breakingarrows · 5 years

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Discourse Conversations During E3 2019

Watching press conferences and livestreams of various talking heads discuss whatever video game thing they saw that day is only part of E3. Another major part is the social media discussions that unfold faster and accumulate more conversation than any ten hour IGN livestream could. However, like any form of discourse being developed on Twitter and elsewhere, it can be easily lost if you aren’t in the moment, and nearly impossible to find due to some of the best commentary coming indirectly. This is a small attempt to capture some of that discourse that unfolded during this week of E3 2019.

Before E3 even started we already had a large social media argument about “spoilers” for the press conferences. Essentially: people went back and forth on whether or not to share/publish/promote leaks of things like, “This game surprise is going to happen!” While things like Breath of the Wild direct sequel being announced is a fun secret to watch live, a headline report spreading online beforehand isn’t something to condemn. The sort of corporate love-fest E3 already is will only continue when gamers are actively antagonistic to anything other than the publisher message being put out. As many of these discourse conversations will go, this is the same old song and dance we have seen for over a decade. If you don’t want to see anything before a corporation hits “go” on a press conference, just stay offline and don’t bitch about it at whoever it is that’s publishing details earlier than the publisher dictated commercial. People trying to frame this as hurting developers feelings should redirect that energy towards unionization and fair pay advocacy, not, “Please don’t publish details early, these people worked really hard to sell me this game.”

Perhaps the biggest thread-spawner was the reappearance of Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Projekt Red at the Microsoft press conference. Developer CDPR also owns GOG, which has previously tweeted a gamergate related gif of Postal 2, a, “did you just assume their gender?” response tweet from the Cyberpunk account, and using the #WontBeErased for GOG games. Eurogamer has a rundown of it all here. Then this week, you have Keanu Reeves making a surprise appearance in the game Cyberpunk 2077 as well as on the Microsoft stage to announce the release date. The internet goes wild, fueled by post-John Wick 3 hype and long-lasting Keanu love. Then an advertisement in-game for ChroManticore appears, bearing the image of a presumably trans-female with a large erect dick and the phrases, “Mix It Up,” and, “16 flavors you’d love to mix.” CDPR’s explanation via Polygon was: “This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible,” Redesiuk continued. “It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world — a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you’re fighting against.” Responses were generally critical of the ads message, intentional or not, as well as critical due to CDPR’s past actions. “Also, as a note, and this is all i'm gonna say: in proper context, that ad could absolutely be a meaningful statement in a cyberpunk world, and we don't know the context. But also, sadly, CDPR has burned all their trust and have given us little reason to take them in good faith.” [source] That about sums up most of the opinions coming from trans critics, CDPR has failed to properly respect them in the past, why should this be treated in good faith?

Discussions about cyberpunk weren’t limited just to the one game, as it also extended a previous conversation about the origins of cyberpunk as a genre and if the genre has any inherent themes no matter its adaptation or usage. One thread making the rounds argued that cyberpunk is inherently xenophobic, playing on fears of Eastern Asian cultures spreading and taking over the world. Other pushed back against this, citing early Japanese media that heavily influenced western cyberpunk fiction, not the other way around. The opinion I most agreed with was, “Maybe I'm being naive, but everyone keeps saying ‘Cyberpunk is good’ or ‘Cyberpunk is bad’ or ‘Cyberpunk is X’ as if cyberpunk is a cohesive, monolithic thing. It's a genre that has been around for decades which countless different creators have contributed to, and all of those creators were trying to say different things within the genre.” [source] “I am beginning to feel like strongly emphasizing genre as an acting force is kind of formalist nonsense? Like, cyberpunk or whatever isn't any *thing*--it's just a set of ideas some people have used, and other people can take or not take or use or not use.” [source]

Another big topic was the continuing saga of games as non-political and the back and forth between media and developers/publishers/PR in the lead up to a game’s release. Games have messages, but their creators, whether intentionally or due to PR, won’t engage with those ideas during pre-release coverage most of the time. Those sorts of conversations don’t happen until post-release, because the previews are generally focused on the gun-feel or summarizing slideshow pitches. There is also a disconnect between what “political” even means. “They think ‘political’ means being explicitly literalist about what every single moment means instead of being in any capacity complex or open to audience interpretation, for better or worse.” [source] Chris Avellone, longtime games writer, had a statement in a VG247 article about whether stories can be apolitical. “If you’re purposely pushing an agenda or point of view in your game – especially a real-world one that’s clearly divorced from the game world – and you’re dictating that perspective as correct vs. asking a question or examining the perspective more broadly, then it’s left the gaming realm and the ‘game’ has become a pulpit.” However, in an example like Far Cry 5, a game that doesn’t “push an agenda,” actively, still promotes a specific perspective or viewpoint as valid with its endings, as I detailed before. “But, another (very reasonable group, to which I largely subscribe) would say that ‘asking questions that emerge from perspectives in the fiction’ is *exactly* what being political is--interrogating our relationships to each other and the world.” [source] This topic also seemed to collapse in on itself when Watch Dogs Legion was announced, playing on the fears of a post-Brexit London and an authoritarian surveillance state, and coopting the “welcome to the resistance” which is mostly mocked by leftists online whenever someone from the right is kicked out of their group. Definitely not political.

This is also a very tired subject. Ubisoft for years, and other publishers as well, have avoided talking about their games messages relating to the current events during events like E3. Continually the press laments and pushes back against it on social media and sometimes in previews, but the cycle continues. “You know how I've argued ‘We need to stop debating if games are art and just do the job of treating them like art?’ It's also time to move past ‘Can games be apolitical?’ and just focus on continuing critical cultural analysis. Do the work, make it unavoidable, shift the frame. To be clear, I think we needed to spend some time on that earlier debate just to have a mass-level, stakes-setting conversation. But at this point, the best way to push back on ‘No, no, we just make games just ask questions’ is to show how those games actually offer answers.” [source] This is true, but it’s also something others (mostly non-staff people) have been saying for years now.

The annual, “E3 is weird huh?” conversation also happened, like it has for at least the past five years. In May it begins with, “Man what is E3 going to be like this year?” Then E3 happens, everyone does their shit, and at the end they go, “Boy what’s next year going to be like?” The major difference this time was Sony’s complete absence from the show. Despite not having a press conference or show floor presence with demos and presentations, games media still had plenty to talk about, including E3’s relevance. It seems to be the same old song and dance, with the ending statement being, “Well I guess we’ll wait and see what next year is like.”

Another repeated conversation was that of video game streaming platforms, with Stadia having another presentation pre-E3 and Microsoft coming out with console and internet streaming plans for later this year. No real advances were made in this conversation other than confirmation that, yeah, Stadia streaming for those with data caps on internet or smartphone use are going to be fucked if they want the best presentation, which of course they would. Not a ton of talk about the details behind how developers would be paid, though going by how streaming has been slowly killing the movie and music industries, it is not going to be good. Of course the usual access and archivist arguments continue, which I am 100% behind.

New game details sparked lots of speculation, mostly in regards to a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, one of the few good Zelda games. Being a direct sequel to a previous entry and having a trailer with a darker tone, mean Majora’s Mask became a recurring subject in regards to what this follow up could be. The inclusion of visuals and audio cues seemingly from Twilight Princess also fueled the “darker” Zelda sequel. Some also speculated about a playable Zelda, which, don’t get your hopes up people, this is Nintendo after all.

A game closer in release and in my heart is Final Fantasy VII Remake, which looks to be a big fucking hot mess. Broken up into parts, each seemingly equivalent to a mainline Final Fantasy game in content, this first one releasing next March (we’ll see about that) will only cover the Midgar section of Final Fantasy VII. You know, that section that takes about five hours to complete in the original release. Now that’s going to be extended into probably 30+ hours, which means lots of new original content coming from Square Enix, who are great at adding great new content to the already existing universe of Final Fantasy VII! Despite that I’m still very interested in getting my hands on it and playing through it all. I really like the opening hours of Final Fantasy VII, I just have little faith that they are going to do anything interesting with the new content and not make it feel like filler. It appears Jessie will have a much more expanded role, but still no word on the crossdressing or squats minigame. Combat has been very much changed, and everything is super overproduced in terms of visual flairs, which might explain why there will be TWO blu-ray discs! TWO! Red Dead Redemption 2 is the only other game to do this!

Back to Nintendo, Animal Crossing will now allow players to choose their skin tone, something that has been asked for a very, very long time now. They also confirmed they will let you use whatever hair type you want, which some people took and ran with as equivalent to them saying trans rights, which, no? “You guys please these are fucking table scraps. This is not pro-trans this is just a bare minimum feature for thee love of god.” [source] “Not only is that animal crossing thing a bare minimum there weren't hair restrictions in new leaf anyway???” [source] This was giving me flashbacks to when Soldier 76 was shown to be gay in a tertiary comic from Overwatch and people went nuts despite it not being represented in the game at all. Also, “quick reminder that nintendo fired a support team member bc of ppl making trans flag stages in smash bros” [source] [source]

There was some good news, Ikumi Nakamura came out and presented her new game Ghostwire to rapturous reception. A female creative director, a visually interesting trailer, and an excited jump at presenting her game made her the darling presenter alongside the likes of Keanu Reeves. She was previously an artist on Bayonetta, The Evil Within and its sequel, and made her own Twitter account during E3 to celebrate with her fans. Some of the reaction is probably rooted in how Asian women are treated as adorable and infantilized when compared to others, but she’s been having a good time gathering all the fan art of herself on Twitter, so for now it’s a nice break from the usual depressing nature of AAA publisher presentations.

Lastly, this wasn’t so much a part of the discourse but just an amazing moment, Dr Disrespect was banned from Twitch and thrown out of E3 after he live streamed in a bathroom without censoring other people’s faces, violating a California privacy law. As Alex so wonderfully stated, “this is our generation’s version of Capone going down for tax evasion.”

There was probably a lot of other conversations going on and this isn’t even the full depth of what I tried to find but boy does going back on timelines and searching for threads and responses and quote tweets and subtweets take way too much time. Anyway hope this proves to be a good time capsule for E3 2019 discourse and can’t wait for next year where a majority of these topics are readdressed again and again and again. Video games!

#E3 2019 #Video Games #Discourse #Criticism #writing

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cviperfan · 7 years

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E3 2017: Microsoft Conference

-we get it microsoft you wanna fuck the Hank Scorpio -at this moment i have never wanted a console to bomb harder than the Scorpio lmao -it's got a pretty good design tho -"...but all we had was Halo 1" -"there's no power greater than x" omg that's kind of adorable haha -Xbox One X -.....X.B.O.X. -....cute -wow y'all really got hyped for that huh -OH MY GOD THESE PEOPLE ACTUALLY GETTING HYPED FOR SPECS CALM THE FUCK DOWN LMAO -*explains processor specs in detail* "...." *it's really fast.* "YEA" -christ okay these people HAVE to be like 50 percent plants calm down Forza Motorsport 7 -that driver lady looks fuckin cool -oh my god are they gonna OH MY FUCKING GOD THEY DID IT AGAIN ANOTHER FUCKING CAR ON STAGE AssCreed Origins -Awful name you should be ashamed -...it does look cool but i don't trust it -new protag is nice! -also is this Fake Ass Ubisoft Canned Chat but applied to a single player game???? -Like it sounds like they got the VA to do some lines that probably don't happen in game unless this is like a super early mission or smthng Metro Exodus -OOOH A NEW METRO GAME -so now the outside world is okay and the tunnels are fucked? Interesting lore-wise -gotta say while it going more (apparently?) open-world is cool at the same time.....the tunnel-heavy focus was pretty unique and with that downplayed now it's just Fallout? idk -probably still gonna check it out Player Unknown's Battlegrounds -hey nice a console release! -but it sounds like it's XboneX exclusive so fuck it State of Decay 2 -ehh another zombie game The Darwin Project -....?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! -WHAT -thanks for not saying anything about it actually Minecraft Update -????? they're setting up crossplay across consoles? That's pretty cool actually -including community mods across all systems -Like I don't fuck with Minecraft but that's pretty impressive stuff -rounded edges? -so dynamic lighting and stuff? that's cool -"and then its creator became a creepy hermit asshole" -an appropriately tepid response to 'preorder now!' Dragonball FighterZ -A Dragonballz game? huh that's not something i would have expected to be at the Microsoft presser of all things -It's Arksys???? Okay i might have to fuck with this -omg....is goku's japanese voice that bizarrely high???? omg Black Desert -DARK SOULSMAN? -....OH IS THIS BLACK DESERT FINALLY???? -nice The Last Night -Looks nice aesthetically! Too bad the creators a GG fuckboy The Artful Escape -Annapurna??? the film production company? -ooh interesting a real papercraft art direction -Is this the No Man's Sky for Music are we finally getting a Cool Games Inc. production?????? Code:Vein -Yea I hope this is good i can dig Anime!Souls Sea of Thieves -cool we got a launch date this time? -oooh nice underwater stuff :o -hauling stuff underwater sounds like a Bad Time -"everyones discoveries will be different" doubt.jpg -ZOMBIE SHARK FROM THE SHITTY NEW PIRATES MOVIE!?!?!? -Like.... god i really hope this game is good -OH MY GOD cannonballing people that's pretty fuckin good lmao -that lantern looks....bad? like it's barely lighting up anything Tacoma -wtf is this a console launch exclusive what part of that art direction benefits from 4K TERAFLOP SUPER JESUS FIDELITY Super Lucky's Tale -Awwwwwwwww :D -I'm all for a cute mascot platformer tbh! Looks like a Conker throwback in the non-Bad Fur Day sense Cuphead -WOW ARE U FINALLY GONNA GIVE IT A HARD RELEASE DATE?????? -God this game looks so fucking lovely -SEPTEMBER 29 Crackdown 3 -TERRY FUCKIN CREWS -LIKE I WANTED CRACKDOWN 3 BEFORE BUT NOW ITS JUST CONFIRMED

-FUCKIN -LADY -AGENTS -FUCKING -FINALLY

-Also fully expecting this to go to 'lol whoops now its a XboneX exclusive! :D' ID@Xbox Sizzle Reel -Unruly Heroes looks nice -Fables Fortune WOW HOW SAD THIS IS ALL THATS LEFT OF FABLE LMAO -Brawlout nice! -Ooblets looks cute -Hello Neighbor and Shift! nice Ashen -Annapurna again have they been doing this a while and I just never saw it? -ooh some sorta dungeon crawler? It looks cool I can dig it -interesting that the chars have no faces haha Life is Strange: Before The Storm -Echoing shortazn97 here 100 percent everything nice in LiS is here (art direction, music, character design) and I wanna see what Rachel's like but god after the ending of LiS I don't trust it Middle-Earth: Shadow of War -Like.... the first game was p good and the Nemesis system was cool and some of these expansions to the idea are really cool! -But it looks like there's a huge emphasis on strategy elements and I don't fuck with that -"Hold B to dominate Bruz" ;) -I'm curious if this big expanded cutscene is reflective of everyone you can collect or if he's story-specific Ori and the Will of the Wisps -Is this tied to Ori and the Blind Forest somehow? -Sad Owl Adventures :( -OH IT IS OK -"games should be celebrated just like books and movies" FINALLY SOMETHING I AGREE WITH -YEA WOO ALL 2 GOOD XBOX ORIGINAL GAMES WILL BE COMPATIBLE -Hey nice Crimson Skies tho -4K updates for Forza/Gears 4/Halo Wars 2 and a few others -More from 3rd parties -well maybe after the XboneX has a price drop lmao -I love people CHEERING for the price point thats exactly the same as it was when the first Xbone launched Anthem (throw all your hands up) -TALLNECKS?!?!?! -is this first person???? -....okay i refuse to believe this is real someone in a bioware game ACTUALLY DID GOOD MOCAP -OH GOD THAT ENTRANCE LOOKS SO FUCKIN TINY FOR THAT POWER ARMOR LMAO -hmm this looks way more like an action game than a usual Bioware RPG but again genre-blending makes it hard to say -U know what this reminds me a little of Xenoblade Chronicles X -mannnn that Iron Man suit looks so cool i don't believe it's taht good out the box -That sounds like Fake-Ass Ubisoft Canned Chat -Okay this is straight up an Action-Shooter with RPG elements AND FUCKING LOOT BOO -Not a bad thing overall but honestly unexpected for Bioware -I can't believe Halo was at E3 after all :o

#e3 2017 #microsoft conference #sorry im behind with these ubi and bethesda coming

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sueboohscorner · 7 years

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#Gotham "Light the Wick" S3 Ep 18 Spoilers, recap, and review

Okay, kiddos, a bunch of stuff happened in this episode, so let’s get right down to it.

We open seeing Nathan Barnes (Michael Chiklis) being taken away from Arkham by several Court members. We also see Jervis Tetch (Benedict Samuel) take a peek at the action unfolding.

We see that Ivy (Maggie Geha) has gotten word about Selina’s (Camren Bicandova), um, “injuries,” and she goes to visit her in the hospital. It’s very easy for her to get information about Selina’s condition from the staff. One of the nurses says that it’s most likely that Selina will not make it out of her coma, much less recover. Ivy dismisses her and swears to Selina that she will heal her, even if it means using unconventional methods. (That mostly means plants, plants, and more plants).

So guess whaaaaaaat? Using a “break in case of emergency” kind of herb on Selina worked. However, she remembered why she was in the hospital in the first place: Five. Selina hurries out of the hospital to warn Alfred and to kill Five. So…. I guess Selina is gonna be okay? Okay….sure. Fine.

At the GCPD, we *groan* see Lee give a ruling on Frank’s death: Homicide.

Hey, guys! Guess what? Lee (Morena Baccarin) is still in her little struggle to hurt Jim! And get this: She believes that Jim killed Frank and she wants him to be investigated! I know, shocker, huh? Of course, Harvey, (Donal Logue), tries to talk her down from her attack. She’s not crazy; she’s just in pain and angry at Jim. She does have the right to be suspicious about Jim and Harvey covering something up, but she has completely convinced herself that Jim is up to all things that are bad…..*groans*.

Before heading out, Jim (Ben McKenzie) has a little run it with Oswald (Robin Lord Taylor) and Firefly (Camila Perez). Oswald inquires information on Edward Nygma’s whereabouts since Jim was the last person he most likely spoke to and because Edward “escaped” his custody. Since they’re such good friends, Oswald lends Jim a phone with only his number on it in case Jim changes his mind about telling Oz about the Court and Edward.

Meanwhile, Jim does a little snooping in Kathryn’s (Leslie Hendrix) house and finds a nifty little card key with the name ‘Wayne’ on the label. With some collaboration with Harvey and Lucius Fox (Chris Chalk), they figure out exactly where that card key goes.

Harvey and Jim end up going to this freaky looking warehouse lab sort of place where they see a big, bloody, mess. They see this guy come out, covered in blood, and Jim and Harvey are quick to pull out the handcuffs. Unfortunately, the guy starts to get more and more emotional and animal-like. He pounces on Jim and Harvey and they have a quick fight scene. The guy appears to be too much for them until someone pushes a sedative into the guy’s neck. That man was…………Dr. Hugo friggin’ Strange! (B.D. Wong)

Strange explains how he is being held by the court to create and remodify the Tetch virus. Basically, the virus originally would infect people through contact. Now Dr. Strange has made it more of an airborne virus.

Kathryn gives Gordon a call as to Jim’s “curiosity” about the weapon that the Court wants to use on Gotham. Since Jim has proven his loyalty, Kathryn invites him to a Gotham socialite’s birthday party where she plans to do a test on them with the Tetch virus. As soon as Kathryn leaves Gordon alone with a single Talon, he discreetly calls Oswald to come over and then Jim and the Talon proceed to beat the mess out of each other.

Firefly gets the last word in when she torches the Talon and he falls out of a window and right in the middle of the party. It takes them a minute, but the guests and Jim eventually make it out before the pre-weapon is released.

Back at the GCPD, Lee is apparently giving her resignation. Jim tries to console her, but she lashes out at him until he couldn’t take it anymore. Jim tells her off. He’s fine with Lee being mad at him about Mario, but he was going to killer because of the Tetch virus WHICH SHE HAS KNOWN ABOUT FOR THE LONGEST TIME NOW. Being a stupid, dumb-butt who’s been cornered, Lee tries to leave; but not before Jim burns her with her question about Jim: How can he just leave after everything that happened; apparently, Lee found a way.

Bruce’s training seems to be improving, but not that much when we see him fight a guy with sticks while being watched by the Shaman (Raymond J. Barry). The Shaman tells Bruce (David Mazouz) that when he defeats the opponent with sticks, he is free to go home. However, Bruce’s anger clouds his judgment and he keeps falling on his butt. The Shaman offers to relieve Bruce’s pain from his parent’s death with his magical acupuncture needles for Bruce to become stronger, but only if he chooses so. Of course, he accepts, and he manages to defeat his opponent and feels no anger, no rage. Bruce feels nothing as he fights. The Shaman feels that Bruce is worthy to go back home to Gotham.

Because Oz kinda sorta killed one of their Talons, the Court kidnaps and places Oswald in what looks like a large bird cage. He is not alone in his imprisonment; Oswald slowly turns around to see that Edward Nygma (Corey Michael Smith) had also been captured by the Court. The shock of each other’s company leaves them completely speechless.

Hearing of Jim’s betrayal towards the Court, Kathryn meets with Barnes and orders him to kill Gordon as the Executioner.

I know that there was a loooot going on in the episode, and it had its fun and cool moments, and I understand how the show might want to wrap things up a tad quicker to make the season finale a bit smoother. I get that. So I think I would give the episode a rating of around 7.5.

Things I Liked:

However small of a window we got to see Jervis, I don’t mind if we at least get to see him at all.

Bruce fighting and training. He is coming along quite nicely in hand-to-hand combat.

The super awesome team of Jim, Harvey, and Lucius!

Looking good, Penguin! Nice costumes.

The kind of sisterly love between Ivy and Selina. Aww.

Doctor Hugo Strange is back in the house!!!!!

The nearly two minutes of silence and tension between Oswald and Edward.

JIM TELLING OFF LEE. It was about time too.

Things I Didn’t Like:

The whole thing with Selina and Penguin’s freak army felt rushed, which I understand why.

I’m sorry if some of you guys like Lee, but I’m seriously feeling at my wit’s end here. PLEASE, just kill her off, make her go away, or just turn her into Harley Quinn already. We clearly don’t need a Harley, but because of the stupid hype, we’re gonna get her anyway, and we don’t need Lee. She adds nothing but a whiny, weak, and childlike argument justification for her anger and an annoying antagonist-like behavior that might hinder our protagonists.

I’m pissed at Lee, and I’m pissed that we’re getting a Harley Quinn ONLY because of the hype, not because the story of Gotham might benefit from it.

And if I hear more crap like “I want a relationship like Joker and Harley” or “The Joker loves her in his way, really,” I feel like my anger will cloud my enjoyment of the show, and I don’t want that to happen.

By the way, JOKER DOES NOT LOVE HARLEY. She is, and always been since her creation in 1992, a means to Joker’s incredibly vain and shallow end. She was created to make to Joker look good and more like the monster he is.

I know I got a bit ranty and ragey at the end there, but I wanted to get all that out there in the open. If you guys disagree with me, let me know. If you even agree, let me know. Did you get questions? Let me know.

As always guys, stay weird.

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meetingofstars · 7 years

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Translation for the cross-talk between Masuda Toshiki and Takahashi Naozumi for the upcoming MARGINAL#4 anime, MARGINAL#4 KISSから創造(つく)るBig Bang in Otomedia, 2017 February issue.

Q: When the anime adaptation for MARGINAL#4 was announced, what were your feelings on it?

Masuda Toshiki: I was very happy about it! Takahashi Naozumi: Same here! Masuda: Besides that, there were also other feelings like “finally” and “that’s really something” 50-50 within me.

Q: Does “finally” mean that you’ve been anticipating for an anime adaptation for a while now?

Masuda: MARGINAL#4 was originally formed in 2013 for Rejet Fes as an event-only unit. That in itself was something to be happy about, but we were invited back to Rejet Fes every year even after that. Also, this project being a part of Rejet’s (regular) lineup and having it grow so much over the years was something to be happy about. Many of Rejet’s works have gotten anime adaptations which was why I was wondering “Will (the MG4 anime) be soon? Will it be soon?” Takahashi: Really? (laughs) Masuda: Yes. But an anime adaptation is a huge deal so there was also the wonder of whether or not we would get one, which was why the feeling was a little half-hearted. Takahashi: That’s true. As for me, my reaction was largely directed to “Uwa! That’s great!” (when the announcement came out). I mean, up till now, we have already released so many things like 3 best albums, drama CDs and, a (PSV) game. I somewhat was hoping for the progression to something like an anime adaptation, or a huge live concert with everyone where I personally experience the feelings that comes with it. Which is why when I heard the news of the anime adaptation being confirmed, I felt like this was an opportunity to get hyped up!

Q: This time, other than seeing MARGINAL#4 as idols, we also get to see them in their daily school lives right?

Masuda: Actually, in the drama CD* there was a scene where the boys went on a school field trip so I thought there wouldn’t be much of a difference while recording for the anime, but during the recordings I definitely felt it. Takahashi: It definitely felt different during the recordings. Masuda: This time we were working with the anime staff for the dubbings so instructions given were different (from when we were recording with Rejet) such as certain expressions that we had to show, etc. But that doesn’t mean destroying the previous MARGINAL#4 image that was built, it just felt like we were showing another side to them instead.

Q: After going through the script, what were your thoughts on the characters?

Masuda: Ah! I felt like Atom might be calmer in the anime! Takahashi: That may be true! The Atom up till now is more... Masuda: He’s more stupid. Takahashi: The way you said it (laughs). But it feels like he’s pushing on very straightforwardly that you really need to stop him sometimes. Masuda: For example, 90% used to be him howling all the time and 10% would be him being in a “ahh I see” kind of contentment. But in the anime, about 30-40% of the time he’s just sulking like “seriously…” (laughs). Takahashi: Atom like that is cute too!

Q: What about Rui?

Takahashi: Initally I was wondering, “had Rui always been so cold!?” When we were recording, the director in-charge told me to hold back and be patient in getting chummy with the other characters for now (laughs). The story starts from their debut, so naturally there would be a reset to all the character relationships that have been built in previously released works. But this really shows how much time we had given into this project and how us, the cast’s relationship had grown and how it had reflected in the characters too. Which was why in recordings I wasn’t doing it like how it was in the very beginning where Rui was colder. Masuda: The impression I got from Rui in the anime was kinder though. Takahashi: Oh, really? Masuda: Initially, it was like “you are you, and I am me”. And in the anime, Rui at least listens to Atom. Takahashi: You’re right. Initially in the drama CD, there were a lot of times where Rui got really angry (laughs). When Rui used to be unforgiving, I felt like I had to do something, and I really fell in love with this and having a chance to reenact it again made me really happy. Masuda: Also, the Nomura twins are really close huh! Takahashi: Very close! I felt like it was a really good thing that the brothers are on such good terms with each other. Masuda: In the recent CD releases, we were all separated but in the anime you can really feel that the twins truly come in a set.

Q: The first episode of the anime will air soon. Are there any points to look out for during the broadcast?

Masuda: The first episode isn’t a prologue, but more of an introduction showing you how MARGINAL#4 will proceed from now on. It should be easy on the eyes in the beginning. Takahashi: In the first episode, it reminds me of the scenery at Rejet Fes and I couldn't stop the goosebumps. I vividly remembered being on stage with all of them at that time and it was a really happy moment seeing it again. Masuda: You’re right!! Other than the stage, there are also scenes like backstage and in the dressing room. Also the happenings on backstage, you’ll never know who’d appear… Those who know of Pythagoras Productions’ members would definitely be in for a treat! Takahashi: Ever since that one day at the event, the four of us had been together up until now. I hope that our passion for this can be conveyed to the Star Cluster through the anime as well.

Q: With those feelings in your hearts, dubbing sure sounded enjoyable.

Masuda: I was… Bullied… (coughs)

Q: Eh!?

Takahashi: Ahaha! That happened in between recordings right? (laughs) When we were sitting down, we were even in the same order as MARGINAL#4! Atom (Masuda Toshiki) and Rui (Takahashi Naozumi) were in the centre, with Aru (Suzuki Yuuto) on the right and Eru (KENN) on the left! Masuda: That’s why I was surrounded by KENN-san and Naozumi-san and got bullied! Naozumi-san just kept staring at me thought (laughs). Takahashi: (He) picks up on everything and his reactions were really funny so I kind of just wanted to mess with him a little (laughs). Masuda: I felt like it was how I’m always the one that gets bullied during dubbings.

Q: Let’s move on to the songs. With the ending song changing every week, Atom and Rui has a duet together right?

Masuda: With the songs that have been released up till now, I’m sure everyone has been enjoying themselves with it. But with the anime, the songs are more inter-linked with the story, so it feels like you’re enjoying a full song of 30 minutes as well. Takahashi: Our seniors and juniors in Pythagoras Productions also have had released songs but lately, MARGINAL#4’s songs are more towards pop and cute sounds. When you think about it, Atom and Rui’s duet would be just like how MARGINAL#4 was in the beginning, and leaning more towards cool and a bit of rock. The opening now leans towards, pop and catchy, like how MARGINAL#4 is lately.

Q: Lastly, any words for the readers?

Takahashi: In the anime, you will get to see a side of MARGINAL#4 where they are just normal high school boys. All four of them have very strong personalities, which makes them look like the entire group is very out of place, but from there, different kinds of episodes are born and you can see how the bond between them is formed. I’d really like for the Star Cluster to enjoy that part. We have always been saying to the Star Cluster, “let’s make the stars rain down”, but with the anime, I’m sure that the smiles from them would definitely make the stars rain. I would be happy if you would watch over the four of them. Masuda: There are many scenes that have not been shown in the drama CDs, and also surpassing the barrier of drama CDs, you can watch even the smallest of their reactions and their interactions with the people around them. The original works still do exist but the anime comes with new content that even people new to the story could enjoy it too. For those who have been supporting this series, I am sure you would enjoy the new content as well.

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T/N: *In the first drama CD ~星降る夜に、新たな誓いを~, released 28 August 2013, where they all went to Kyoto.

#Masuda Toshiki #Takahashi Naozumi #MARGINAL4 #Pythagoras Productions #Rejet #seiyuu #Haru translates #aksghaskjghaskhgas #you have no idea how many times I've watched the first episode already #so much tears #can't believe this happened #SUCH A LONG WAIT #MUCH TEARS

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radramblog · 3 years

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Nintendo Direct E3 Takes

Well we’re pretty much done with E3 at this point, and it looks like once again Nintendo is carrying the whole damn thing on their back.

This is obviously a bit biased, because I’m not really into the AAA gaming industry otherwise, and the only other potential announcement I cared about didn’t happen. You had one fucking job, Capcom. One job.

Anyway as I did last time this came around I’m giving some hot takes like every single other person on this godforsaken internet because innovation is dead and react culture is king. Shall we?

Smash DLC Fighter…10 or something idk

I mean, look. I was hoping for an indie representative. Kazuya isn’t really that. But on the other hand, Tekken rep is something I can still get behind. They’ve already got Street Fighter and Fatal Fury in there, might as well get Tekken. What’s next, Raiden from Mortal Kombat? Hell, might as well get some Rivals of Aether character in there, might as well, don’t even have to change much.

From what little we’ve seen of Kazuya’s kit, it looks like his gimmick is going to be…complicated input combos for special attacks. Hm. Well, it’ll probably be fine. People managed with Ryu, they’ll manage with Kazuya. I do appreciate that they gave this guy his demon form- I guess they had to make him jump somehow, huh?

Life is Strange

I haven’t played the original Life is Strange, but I did watch a playthrough so I know how it goes. Don’t really know much about Before the Storm or 2, but I don’t think 2 is part of this collection anyway? Look I’m probably not going to buy this, but it’s probably good that it exists. The original was like, actual good rep, I think, so they’re probably not going to fuck this one up. New character is neat looking, good for them.

A Bunch of games, I guess

Guardians of the Galaxy? Damn dude, did I ask?

Worms Rumble said it had 32-person multiplayer, which I was like well hang on how’s that going to work with turn-based Worms combat you’d be waiting for ever. Except it isn’t turn-based. And it looks like ass as a result. F.

Astria Ascending…I’m reading this name and I already forgot what this was. Sorry if you cared about it I suppose.

I know nothing of the Two Point…series, I guess? I keep on seeing Hospital pop up on either Steam or the eShop, and I’ve scrolled past it without thinking twice every single time. Not about to change that.

Super Monkey Ball

I understand this series was a lot of fun for a lot of people, but it just looks miserable to me. With that said, I have seen some speedruns of these games that look incredible, so on that axis I’m happy this is getting made. Makes doing a marathon-length run of this a fair bit easier.

Mario Party

Look I haven’t even gotten around to playing my (very fake) Mario Party 3 cart, you think I’m going to buy another 80 dollar game on top of that? Nah.

Metroid

Yoooooooooooooo lets fucking gooooooooooooo

Okay so I’ve actually never beaten a Metroid game. Got some ways into Fusion and Super but didn’t complete either of them. But this looks super cool and good and I’m here for it. They mentioned that this was the first new 2D Metroid game in 19 years, which I guess means Fusion was the latest one.

…wait how many Metroid games are there even? Like, the original, Super, Fusion, the three Primes, and that one we don’t talk about…is that it? That feels a lot smaller than I thought it was, but I guess it adds up.

Just don’t cock it up, I guess. Metroid and Castlevania’s absence have left indie devs to fight for the Metroidvania name, and it’s about time the big boys got to come back around again.

More bullshit

Just Dance 2022. Is this one also coming out on the Wii?

Some racing game that looks cheap as fuck, neato. Man I feel bad for the devs working on these absolute shovelware games, like I bet they’re either working hard or being worked to the bone. But this is what the result is. R.I.P.

It’s about 13 years too late for me to be caring about Dragon Ball. Especially since this is just a port. Next.

Mario Golf

I mean we saw this earlier this year. I don’t even know what was actually new in this presentation.

Bowsers outfit is fucking clean though. Once again proving himself the best Mario character.

Monster Hunter

Fuck off Capcom. Y’all are leaving Mega Man in the fucking dust and he doesn’t deserve it.

I mean I guess ill get into it here, I mostly just wanted something, anything for the Mega Man Battle Network series. It’s their 20th anniversary, and we haven’t gotten shit so far. Literally just a MMBN collection for the switch, that’s all I want. They were even on the Wii U VC, you can just port those again, I don’t care fucking give it to me.

Anyway. Monhun? Ehhh they already showed this at their lacklustre presentation who cares.

Warioware

Look I haven’t played this series before, it’s probably fun, but I’m not sure how they stretch microgame content out into a fully-priced game.

Also, the multiplayer looks kinda miserable? Like, in case Mario Party was a little too efficient for ruining friendships, now you can yell at one person specifically for fucking the both of you up, and vice versa. Wheeeeee.

SMT5

Shoutouts to Squiggy, they’re super hype for this and I’m happy to see it. I personally again haven’t played this series, let alone Persona (though 4 is sitting untouched in my steam library, oops), but it looks pretty aight. I’m sure there’ll be a huge pile of demons to fuck up, or friend up, and some level of story that people will like (I have literally no idea what the plot of the series is), so. Atlus (?) has been at this for a long fucking time, they aren’t goofing this up.

Danganronpa

Shirtless Rantaro Shirtless Rantaro (shamelessly stolen from u/ AnaLissaMelculo on r/danganronpa)

I’m interested to see Talent Development Plan develop into it’s own fully fleshed out game. It was surprisingly good for a tacked-on minigame, and I hope that they’ll fully take advantage of its potential.

It also looks like the 4 games are releasing separately on Switch, but there is a physical collectors edition with all of them, and I mean, I can probably afford that, riiiiight?

R.I.P. Ultra Despair Girls fans, snubbed yet again. Ehhhh fuck it aside from the dialogue that game sucks ass so its fine.

More stuff

Fatal Frame looks spooky, I guess. I dunno, I was talking to mates through half of this one so I basically missed it.

DOOM Eternal DLC, cool. I still haven’t finished the original.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater should be on the Switch, and now it is. Or, it will be, in a couple weeks. Good.

There’s something on this list of notes called Strange Brigade, and I have literally no idea what that is. Oops again.

Mario+Rabbids 2, now with a Rabbid Goth GF. I’m terrified to go on any fuckin NSFW platforms for the next couple weeks, because I’m sure everyone is drawing incredibly cursed hentai of that thing. Ubisoft sucks ass, fuck Ubisoft, don’t buy this.

Advance Wars

This sure isn’t Fire Emblem. Actually when I was explaining to my mates why this was cool, I called it Fire Emblem but with tanks instead of waifus, except I forgot this game still has waifus. I know strategy nerds love this series, so for their sake I’m happy to see it remade. This just looks unbelievably cute.

Zelda

Oh look, Hyrule Warriors 2 DLC, Zelda gets the motorbike now, cool who fucking cares we got more BOTW sequel footage

It does kinda bug me that people keep calling this BOTW 2, because there’s no way that’s what it’s going to be called. Zelda has never done numbered sequels. I mean, they’ve also very rarely done sequels at all, but there are a few- Phantom Hourglass is a sequel to Wind Waker iirc.

It is kinda funny that right after I was saying boo who cares to Skyward Sword remake (still mad this is one game and not a collection) that the new game clearly has SS-ass floating islands and such.

I was hoping we’d get to see Zelda do things this game. Apparently not, she’s stuck in a hole now. Or dead. A shame. But Link at least looks kickass, so.

Look, they could not say a single other thing until release and everyone would still buy this game. Breath of the Wild was an incredible enough game that so many things that vaguely resemble it get compared- Genshin Impact comes to mind. This is likely made by the same (or similar) team, in the same world, and it looks fucking incredible. We all know this is going to be a good game. My hot take isn’t going to change that.

And that’s the tea, sis. All the shit that Ninty had in their corner of E3. It’s a pretty solid lineup! It looks like they are bringing their A-game. I was kind of surprised not to see any Pokemon stuff- while it usually gets its own direct these days, BDSP is really coming up soon and they kinda need to win back the crowd on that one.

Oh what am I saying, it’s fucking Nintendo, it’s too big to fail.

#ramble #video games #nintendo direct #e3 blogging #reaction content #this is how you get big on the internet right

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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The 19 Most Hype Moments from EVERY Dragon Ball Movie

Dragon Ball is that special kind of thing that transcends anime fandom itself--there are folks who don't even like anime or manga by and large, and yet they love Dragon Ball. You can sing "Cha-La Head Cha-La" at karaoke and people sing along, you can start shouting "KA... ME..." into a crowd and let them finish the rest--Dragon Ball's popularity is on a whole 'nother level.

Of course, with that level of popularity you're going to get anime-original content, and in Dragon Ball's case we didn't get too many in the way of filler episodes... we got movies. Dragon Ball Super: Broly, which released last month in Japan to ludicrous box office numbers, is arriving in the US tomorrow, and is the twentieth theatrical Dragon Ball release.

Twentieth.

Kinda crazy, huh? Personally, I've always had more of an attachment to Dragon Ball's movies compared to the TV anime (I'm a "read the manga" kinda guy), so I wanted to go back and look through each and every one of the past nineteen Dragon Ball movies and pick out my single most hype, most "HOLY CRAP" moment or scene in each one... and who got the most robbed, for good measure.

SPOILERS FOR 33 YEARS' WORTH OF DRAGON BALL MOVIES FOLLOW

1. Curse of the Blood Rubies

Most Hype Moment: Goku vs Bongo

The first few Dragon Ball movies are sorta-retellings of the main story, so in Curse of the Blood Rubies we get Goku meeting Bulma, Yamcha trying to rob them, Master Roshi and Oolong being... themselves... and new villain King Gurumes and his goons in place of Pilaf, Mai, and Shu. The movie had been building up Gurumes' right-hand man, Bongo, so Goku legit having a flying staff fight with him while Bulma tries to evade an entire air force is pretty great stuff. Still, shoutout to Yamcha's not-showdown with Pasta.

Who Got Robbed? Technically, Goku did, right at the beginning of the movie! Honestly, I don't think anybody got robbed in this--early Dragon Ball was really good at making sure everybody got to do something even if it wasn't related to the action, and Curse of the Blood Rubies lets the whole cast shine.

2. Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle

Most Hype Moment: Goku and Krillin, the perfect tag team

With the goal of "training under Master Roshi" driving them, Goku and Krillin team up to take on all of main villain Lucifer's henchmen at once, and it's pretty damn cool. It turns into a running fight and they get overwhelmed later, but then they get to team up again to fight Lucifer himself (and Yamcha gets to take on Lucifer's top guy!), just solidifying what a great team these two are.

Who Got Robbed? Again--nobody!

Everybody gets to do something, and nobody feels like they're there just to take up space. It's kinda nice, while it lasts. Honestly, if there's one character the movie doesn't have enough of, it's Lunch, since everything she does is awesome and more of her wouldn't hurt.

3. Mystical Adventure

Most Hype Moment: Akira Toriyama's two most popular creations team up to murder a man

Tao Pai Pai's kind of an evil jerk, and in this quasi-retelling of another stretch of Dragon Ball proper, he publicly and brutally murders Bora before beating up Goku and blasting him out over the horizon. Tracking Goku and a Dragon Ball, their fight ends up in Dr. Slump's Penguin Village, where Goku gets an assist from little robot girl Arale and they literally blow Tao up with his own missiles. Solid runner-up moment: Tenshinhan being a hero and using a beautifully-animated Kikoho on the Crane Hermit.

Who Got Robbed? Nobody, really?

Although the argument could be made for Yamcha--he was doing well in the tournament! It seemed like he was getting a push! He did pretty awesome things in the last two movies--but really, much like Krillin later on, his job is to job.

4. Dead Zone

Most Hype Moment: Goku vs Ginger and Nicky

Time for that first timeskip! There's just a whole lot of cool action in Dead Zone--Piccolo winding up a punch in slow motion for what feels like a full minute before totally murdering Sansho, Kami's laser eyes, and the final 2v1 where Goku and Piccolo team up against Garlic Jr. But the real star of this movie is Goku taking on two of Garlic's henchmen--Ginger and Nicky--with some slick weapons choreography wrapped up with a great Kamehameha.

Who Got Robbed? Chi-Chi

Yeah, I guess I could say Krillin since, y'know, he gets peed on and then gets half a building dropped on him, but let's keep this interesting. When Garlic Jr's minions show up to kidnap Gohan, Chi-Chi squares up and reminds us that yes, she is in fact a world-class martial artist who just happens to hang with freaks and aliens, and gets one-shotted by Ginger's forcefield. It's okay, we all still know who commands the strongest, fight-hungriest being in the universe.

5. The World's Strongest

Most Hype Moment: OH SHIT THE WHOLE GANG'S HERE LET'S DO THIS

This is a Z movie where Master Roshi--MASTER ROSHI--gets two awesome fights, Piccolo is a good guy who becomes a mind-controlled bad guy and goes back to being a good guy, and while Goku definitely gets the last hit, everybody has to work together to keep Dr. Wheelo off him! But this right here, this one shot where everybody lines up to charge Dr. Wheelo... this is the good stuff.

Who Got Robbed? Krillin literally adds nothing

In his past three movie appearances, Krillin has guts--he charges into fights, stands his ground to protect people, and even gets a few cool moments of his own. But in The World's Strongest, he's diving for cover, regularly getting slapped around, and the only actually-helpful thing he does is prevent Bulma from getting blown away at the end. Oh well, he'll redeem himself--no really, he totally does.

6. The Tree of Might

Most Hype Moment: Goku wipes out Turles' henchmen

On the one hand, it's a little annoying when you bring most of the good guys to a fight, and Goku's the only one to actually do anything. On the other, it's so freaking cool to watch, and Goku styles on all these fools in the most dynamic, satisfying way possible.

Who Got Robbed? The whole gang shows up, fails to make a dent in Turles' henchmen

Y'know how "wait for Goku" is the all-too-accurate joke of this series? It's in full force here--the Z Fighters come out in force, everybody has a unique opponent to fight, and everybody gets absolutely demolished by Turles' goons. Piccolo's smart enough to show up later--all he needs to do is show up, fight Turles himself to buy Goku some time, get blown up, and collect his paycheck.

7. Lord Slug

Most Hype Moment: Piccolo offers a helping hand... to Hell

Hoo boy, do villains die bad in this movie, or what? Goku blows Medamatcha to pieces, and then bounces Angila's mouth-beam back where it came from, decapitating him, but I think the worst one goes to poor Wings here. Wings tries to fight Piccolo, but gets thrown around, beaten up, kicked while he's down, and then he offers a hand (and a job) to Piccolo. Piccolo reaches down, then opens his hand up and executes him. It's awesome enough to get everybody watching to go "OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" but also kind of a war crime, so you're feeling uncomfortable about it afterward. Still, really awesome.

Who Got Robbed? The audience

I think I've talked about this before, and it only partially has to do with Gohan's stupid whistling song. See, the Japanese title for this movie is 超サイヤ人だ孫悟空--Son Goku, the Super Saiyan, but Goku doesn't really go Super Saiyan in this movie. And, y'see, him kinda-sorta-not-really "going Super Saiyan" doesn't actually do anything against titular bad guy Lord Slug other than shift the momentum in his favor--there's a weird Piccolo/Goku not-quite-fusion and Goku blows Slug away with a Spirit Bomb. So yeah. I... might have some repressed childhood issues due to this movie lying to me.

8. Cooler's Revenge

Most Hype Moment: Salza and Piccolo reenact the ending of Die Hard

Goku finally became a Super Saiyan in a movie, for real! Cooler is defeated, blasted into the sun! The world is safe again, right? Not exactly--Cooler's top henchman Salza is still alive, and even though he's pretty beat up, he has more than enough left in the tank for OH NEVER MIND Piccolo just killed him from off-screen. Thanks, dude!

Who Got Robbed? Honestly? Nobody

Krillin puts up a decent-enough fight even if he doesn't take out any of the henchmen--he basically heads up the plan to locate and heal the wounded Goku. Same goes for Gohan--nobody really does nothing in this movie and they all contribute to the final victory, so good job, team!

9. The Return of Cooler

Most Hype Moment: Vegeta's constant, awesome assists

Flying in with a huge head kick? Helping to take down Metal Cooler? That final, desperate ki blast that gives Goku the second he needs to land the final blow? Vegeta's a huge help in this movie!

Who Got Robbed? Vegeta constantly, awesomely getting shut down

Well, for about half the time. That huge head kick? Metal Cooler gave just as good as he got. Big Bang Attack? Vegeta got kicked in the junk, then got his face grabbed and almost blown off. For every cool thing Vegeta does, he immediately gets knocked back down a peg. This won't become a routine or anything, right?

10. Super Android 13!

Most Hype Moment: Trunks vs Android 14

The Japanese title of this movie is 極限バトル!!三大超サイヤ人--Extreme Battle!! The Three Great Super Saiyans and HO DAMN does it live up to that. Goku, Vegeta, and Future Trunks (in his first movie appearance!) are each given an Android to fight, and Trunks takes his opponent out in the coolest fashion possible--charging toward him, slashing with his sword, staying in this pose until the dude flies in half and explodes, and only sheathing his sword afterward. So cool.

Who Got Robbed? Piccolo

After getting beaten up real bad in Tree of Might, Piccolo went on a huge upswing for the next three movies, constantly taking out henchmen, saving the rest of the Z Fighters, and participating in one of the final battles! So we've built up some expectations for Piccolo at this point, meaning it's disappointing when he shows up late (after Vegeta!), barely scratches the final boss, and really only helps by momentarily serving as a punching bag.

Yes, I realize the easy joke is to talk about how Android 13 full-force punches Son Goku in the Son Gonads, but I'm a professional.

11. Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan

Most Hype Moment: Broly no-sells a point-blank Kamehameha

An unspoken rule of Dragon Ball is that the slower you say "Ka... me... ha... me... HA," the stronger the attack is. After getting thrown through multiple buildings and surviving the explanation of Broly's super dumb backstory, Goku decides to finish things with his signature move. He spends a while charging it up, too, while Broly slowly walks towards him... and then Goku lets loose, firing a Turtle Destruction Wave point-blank into Broly's Dwayne Johnson-esque pecs. Even after the massive explosion, Broly is unperturbed and grabs the dumbstruck Goku by the face. The movie's nice enough to not show us what happens next.

Who Got Robbed? Vegeta doesn't even last 30 seconds

I could change this to "Vegeta literally does everything wrong in this movie," but this stands out the most--after preening, posturing, bitching, moaning, and finally freaking the f**k out, Vegeta finally decides to join in the melee after Piccolo yells at him. How long does the Prince of Saiyans last against Broly, the Legendary Super Saiyan?

29 seconds. Next time you rewatch this movie, count 'em. Also, after that, he spends like five minutes complaining about how he's not going to lend his energy to Goku so they can just beat Broly and go home. That was pretty annoying, too.

12. Bojack Unbound

Most Hype Moment: Gohan snaps

There's always a point in a Dragon Ball movie where the hero(es) figure out some clever-yet-simple method of beating the exhibition-match bad guy, and it usually involves borrowing energy from friends (or Goku's only-really-effective-in-movies Spirit Bomb, so... same thing). But this time, Gohan goes Super Saiyan 2, like he did against Cell, and it's chilling. Most of Dragon Ball's cast have a body count thanks to the movies, but Gohan tears Bojack's minions apart with his bare hands, and it falls into that "horrific, but awesome" bucket that Dragon Ball sometimes dips into.

Who Got Robbed? Piccolo

Did you know that this is the last time Piccolo shows up in a Dragon Ball movie until Battle of Gods? Maybe they were running out of things to do with him, but basically he shows up, saves Gohan, and promptly gets blown away by Bojack. He saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to take a break.

13. Broly - Second Coming

Most Hype Moment: The Son Family Kamehameha

Oh hey, we're finally into Dragon Ball's other timeskip! Goku's very dead at this point, but he shows up to join Gohan and Goten for that great father-sons activity called "it's not murder if it's self-defense and it comes at the end of a really cool martial arts battle." No really, it's really cool--the somehow-still-alive Broly leaps up onto a spire of rock and throws a huge energy ball down at Gohan, intending to finish him off. Gohan fires off a Kamehameha, and is joined by his little brother Goten. The two of them are just barely hanging on, and their pleas for help become a wish to the Dragon Balls (collected earlier in the movie!) and Goku shows up to help. With a brief distraction from Trunks, the Son family shoots Broly into the sun and his heart explodes! DID YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS A CHILDREN'S MOVIE

Who Got Robbed? Piccolo again

Looks like I was wrong in the Bojack writeup! Gohan's in trouble--he's unconscious and about to sink into lava! Suddenly, silently, Piccolo shows up, swoops down, saves Gohan--his awesome flute theme plays, and Gohan is safe. But it turns out that Piccolo couldn't be bothered to show up in the first of several Broly sequels--it's actually just Krillin, dressing up like Piccolo for laughs and getting unceremoniously dumpstered by Broly, also for laughs!

14. Bio-Broly

Most Hype Moment: HE JUST WON'T GO DOWN

On a rewatch, Bio-Broly ended up being awesome mostly for how insane the odds are stacked against our heroes. Nobody's a top-tier fighter (we have Trunks, Goten, 18, and Krillin), but everybody keeps taking gnarly hits, getting up, giving it another go, getting knocked back down, and then getting up for another round. They only really get a break when Trunks pours toxic goop all over Broly, giving them a chance to save people from, uh... the overflowing toxic goop.

Who Got Robbed? Everybody who avoided this because people (like me) said it was the worst Dragon Ball movie

That's Return of Cooler. Give this one a shot--it legit feels more like original Dragon Ball despite being, y'know... a Broly movie. It's nice to be proven wrong sometimes.

15. Fusion Reborn

Most Hype Moment: Super Saiyan 3 isn't enough?!

Okay so, Goku's stuck fighting big, adorable first-form Janemba while Pikkon's off trying to free Hell's bureaucracy. Goku turns Super Saiyan 3 and absolutely pummels Janemba... to the point that it transforms into a sleek, mean-looking red-and-purple badass. A sleek, mean-looking red-and-purple badass who can evenly fight with a Super Saiyan 3! Backed by some beautiful animation, the new and scary Janemba lays into Goku and puts him on the run.

Who Got Robbed? Sorry Gohan, guess you're not the protagonist any more

On any other day, "Gohan fighting Frieza" sounds like a cool thing, right? Well, with Hell frozen over, a whole bunch of former DB villains show up, and Gohan, along with Videl, Goten, and Trunks, get to play cleanup on Earth while Goku and Vegeta do the real work. At least Gotenks re-kills a bunch of Nazis.

16. Wrath of the Dragon

Most Hype Moment: When the dust settles

Wrath of the Dragon is a constantly-escalating ride where you think there's a straightforward solution--Tapion sealing the monstrous Hildegarn in his magic flute--but when that falls through, the gang's gotta do what they do best and use some good old-fashioned action violence on the giant monster. This all culminates in Goku going Super Saiyan 3 and using this crazy-ass golden Dragon Fist attack that we never see anywhere else (maybe GT?), and as the dust settles, the clouds part, and you see a victorious Goku standing amidst the rubble with his fist held high... it's almost a spiritual experience.

Who Got Robbed? Gohan definitely isn't the protagonist any more

So Wrath of the Dragon is supposed to take place shortly after Kid Buu is defeated, meaning this is Ultimate Gohan/Mystic Gohan/whatever he's still in high school so he's not "Adult" Gohan, meaning that you think he'd at least help out against Hildegarn. He does not, barely participating in the fight and getting knocked out almost immediately.

17. The Path to Power

Most Hype Moment: Goku wipes out the Red Ribbon Army

Released to celebrate the series' 10th anniversary, The Path to Power is a super-gorgeous loose retelling of the early part of Dragon Ball, going from Goku meeting Bulma to the assault on Red Ribbon HQ, connecting it all with meeting Master Roshi for the first time. Everybody gets kidnapped, so Goku rushes to save them... and takes on an entire army in the process. From an aerial chase to a rough fight against tanks and foot soldiers, to the final, emotional showdown with Commander Black, the entire movie builds up to this and doesn't disappoint.

Who Got Robbed? Nobody, it's an original Dragon Ball movie

Although there is an argument to be made that we got robbed, because I would have loved more Dragon Ball movies like this, but instead, we took a long break from DB...

SEVENTEEN YEARS PASS. WHAT, YOU THINK I WAS JOKING?

18. Battle of Gods

Most Hype Moment: Goku rushes Beerus only in regular Super Saiyan form

Even the mighty Super Saiyan God form isn't enough to stop the God of Destruction, but Goku's riding this high until the very end. "Only" turning Super Saiyan 1, Goku goes toe-to-toe with Beerus, dragging the fight out into the upper atmosphere and getting whooped--but it's awesome the entire time, especially with FLOW's "Hero" playing in the background.

Who Got Robbed? Videl

Remember how cool Videl was? How she was Gohan's fiery other half, loved to train, wanted nothing more than to learn how to do all the cool superhuman shit? Remember how she charged Broly head-on, then came back for more? Yeah, all that's in the past now.

19. Resurrection F

Most Hype Moment: EVERYBODY GETS TO BE AWESOME

"Krillin, Tenshinhan, and Master Roshi all get awesome moments in a Dragon Ball movie." Yes, Mystical Adventure came out in 1988, but what if I told you that I was describing a Dragon Ball movie from 2015?! While the headline fights definitely go to Goku and Vegeta, Resurrection F remembers that Dragon Ball has a whole supporting cast, and puts them to good use fighting Frieza's army.

Who Got Robbed? Vegeta, but it's okay this time

This is the one time that Vegeta gets robbed in a Dragon Ball movie and it doesn't feel wrong--it's legitimately part of the story because Vegeta plays with his food and doesn't immediately finish Frieza off. Getting a re-do thanks to Whis' literal deus ex machina button, Goku flies in and killsteals Frieza from right under Vegeta's nose, saving everyone from the real enemy of Dragon Ball: Vegeta's ego.

And that's all of 'em! Dragon Ball Super: Broly hits US theaters tomorrow, so let's all go see what the most hype moment is... and who gets robbed (my money's on Vegeta)!

What about you--what are your most hype moments from the Dragon Ball movies? Who do you think got robbed? Sound off in the comments and share your takes!

-----

Nate Ming is the Features Editor for Crunchyroll News and creator of the long-running Fanart Friday column. You can follow him on Twitter at @NateMing. Check out his comic, Shaw City Strikers!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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darkarm66 · 7 years

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Xenoblade Chronicles X review

Hundreds of ship are leaving the planet and then, the Earth explodes. Right off the bat, Xenoblade Chronicles X is filled with wonderful sights. This game is not only one of the best RPGS, it also a blueprint on how to do open world games that aren't just inefficient ways to select quests. As much as Nintendo's consoles has gotten shit for its lack of hardware muscle, the amount of content that the player can seamlessly access and just how much gameplay is actually there.

First off, this one of the biggest and best worlds ever. Actual worlds where people work, show up on schedules, creatures have their own biology: there are a million moving parts, all in front of the player. In fact, this game can overwhelm when control is giving to the player. Mainly due to the fact at no point, the player is ever forced to do anything. Xenoblade Chronicles broke JRPGs for its unprecedented lack of linearity and XCX follows suit for open worlds.

And it's beautiful! You see sights that are legitimately breathtaking in real life: waterfalls, active volcanoes, snow-capped caverns, isolated islands, sandstorms, lightning storms, caverns, and sky high islands. People gush over real life open worlds but this is one of the best looking video game worlds ever. It's like Nintendo keeps it a trademarked secret that more than 8 colors can be used.

What makes these visuals more hypnotic is the lush soundtrack from Hiroyuki Sawano. Looking around the sky and looking at that night sky and hearing a lot of these overworld themes is powerful. It swells up more emotion than any cutscene can do, even if it lacked some of the variety of its predecessor. But what makes this world of Mira more beautiful: all of it is interactive. There are no invisible gates, no waist barriers blocking off access. Anything visible can be walked on and explored. And this is the truly beautiful part: all of it affects gameplay.

XCX has some of the deepest linking systems in gaming. Every and any thing done feeds into on another system that is needed to progress though the game. Any battle, no matter how quick or long? Of course you get XP to level up but you also get affinity points between your party members that allows for battles to go smoother. Random doodad you picked up walking around? Boom: side quest completed. Side quest completed? You just leveled up your online affiliation and have bonus items waiting for you. Those items? Yeah, just completed another quest. That quest you completed? Just gave you some Miranium to use to level up stores, now you have access to better weapons and gems but what if you want higher level gems? Keep getting into battles and gain the materials needed, which still gives you more player specific missions which unlock tougher sidequests and expands more materials. Point is: nothing you do in this game is wasted or just busywork to fill a marketing bullet point. Everything leads to something to unlock and use. Everything is a constant build to better and better gear. This was a great way to stimulate player agency. Can it be too much? Kind of leading to one sticking point.

XCX has no time to explain how a lot of it works together. You will spend hours wandering around these gorgeous continents, doing whatever, wanting to know the purpose of why something was done. And fighting yourself to do something more directed. And its mainly due to trying to reach a ledge or cave you know leads to better loot but can't reach in the meantime. So while XCX does a good job of letting you play in a sandbox, you have no ideas why some of the toys are there. But the truth is, a lot of it is there to test your battle mettle.

While the game isn't a direct sequel to the incredible Xenoblade Chronicles, the battle system (and sidequest logic) returns with a lot of tweaks. While its still auto attacks/special arts/cooldown based with your party being handled by the A.I., the affinity system comes into bigger play as the your party members, expanded to four, actually call out which arts they need to stay in the battle, which not only increases affinity, but has the player tinkering which class and skill set is needed to be effective at every battle. Then, half way (or a quarter: story/chapter progress isn't the same for every player), the Overdrive system is introduced and allows for more bonuses and status effects, as well as some nifty visual effects. And now arts can be chained together for more bonuses, but finding the right chains will take some experimentation. Sometimes you'll miss the way more effective chain attacks, but due to the online elements, the battles had to seemingly be tuned for balance but to make the player work a bit harder. That was the only element from Xenoblade which I missed the most. This is a severely challenging game, make no mistake. As easy as Xenoblade was and as much the high level enemies exist to 'conveniently' gate off other areas of the world, this game will hand you your ass if you never paid attention to how buffs and statuses work, which is which makes the sidequest grinding described a few paragraphs earlier so important. Truthfully, this game is gauntlet to gamers who crave gameplay.

This game will be as easy or hard as you want it to be, depending on how much time you attempt to put into it. A straight romp through the story, which is still gonna ask the player to explore, will still take a bit of commitment but the beauty of the game's depth reveals itself the more the player puts into it on their own accord. It's like Monolith Soft heard how easy Nintendo games and just went 'Uh huh, try this on for size.'

And again, when it comes to sidequests, XCX will drown players in actual content. Many of the same 'collect this and kill that.' This can drive people insane due to the game's inability to explain stuff. Especially affinity, which is a just a vague bar where you never know how much is being added to it. While many of them are optional, it just becomes chances to actually get some challenging gameplay for their selves. Despite this, too much good stuff is hidden behind some quests and bars. I never minded because it was still a chance to keep exploring the world itself. And then you get Skells....

And its when you get Skells, you kinda get why a good chunk of the content was locked off. One reason was to justify its size but the main reason: they're fucking awesome! It's not just a super mode for combat, skell combat and exploration becomes a game on its own and one can appreciate the size and diversity of Mira. As mentioned earlier, despite how huge this game is, nothing is wasted. And even Skells unlock more and more challenging gameplay to experience. I'll go on record and say that Skells are the best video game mechs ever, even if they never fight. It flies, transforms, and when it fights, it curbstomps and can be customized to an absurd degree.

And the online elements, which are that elements, not huge blockers or impediments to gameplay. They can only enchance your time, but yet: it's not a requirement.

For all this gameplay that makes XCX a worthy successor to the original Xenoblade and it many elements, surpass it, there was one key element not mentioned: the story. Chris Kluwe's dumbassery be damned, Xenoblade's story was epic, masterfully told, thematically tight, and above all: complete. XCX's opening scene of an exploding planet couldn't be better of a set up. And yet, to find any kind of theme, emotional resonance or connecting thread, it's all in the sidequests. The plot never got going and only until its final chapter are players getting answers that turn into more questions, just like all previous games in the Xeno series.

While I applaud any game developer that chooses more gameplay over more cutscenes and linearity, what disheartened me about it is that Xenoblade proved that could tell a story completely. And I was fine for the plot staying away from the most part and when it revs up: the end! Maybe it was gonna be left to DLC or a Switch port, but either way a bigger story was going to be told and there's no definitive conclusion. All the threads have to be found on the player's on accord with the evidence they have left. But still, themes of genocide, diversity, racism, extinction, rebirth, insanity (you can't be part of surviving race in a new planet without losing your mind) are touched on with neatly.

So, while the story didn't conclude, what we're left is still an amazing game that continues to delight and expand. A sprawling open world that puts more emphasis on the world actually being open and not inhibiting the player's own natural curiosity. It takes some doing and some time, but Xenoblade Chronicles X is an instantly rewarding time sink and one of the very best games of this console generations.

CAVEATS!!!!: I try to review games as a way for how I feel about to make sense to me, so I try to look at the the mechanics of a game, which may or may not work, regardless of how I feel about them. Also, I hate the release date rush to get a review because you have to rush before you truly understand a piece of art. Sometimes, its only when you get away from the hype and first week cycle can you see a game on its own merits. Plus, hindsight really, really helps prevent a review from sounding like an unofficial circle jerk.

#review xenobladechroniclesx

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