Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #123: Tony Hawk 5, Star Citizen, Patreon Hack”
Did you miss the hangout last month? Don’t worry! Because really, that’s a very silly thing to worry about. But also don’t worry because here is the whole two hours and forty minutes of it:
Link (YouTube) |
Yes, I lied. That was only the first hour and twenty minutes. Sadly, the second half is shrouded in mystery, lost in the depths of time, or perhaps simply featured in Part 2:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Kerbal Space Problems – Reloaded”
Morrowind‘s narrative is settled around a religious schism between the “real” gods, who are worshiped by the occupying Empire, and three home-grown mortals-turned-gods who are worshiped proudly and a little spitefully by the unwillingly colonized natives. Unsurprisingly, there's a complex lore and backstory behind this state of affairs, and I admit that this is where I would normally check out; this sort of thing is so commonly tiresome in fantasy. An author creates a convoluted narrative of gods and wars and legends and thinks the reader will find it as interesting as they do, if only they relay every detail precisely. The result is a plodding, ponderous shaggy dog myth that competes for headspace with the dozen other lores the player had to memorize. What these fantasy authors fail to realize is that history is not story. It’s the tools for telling a story.
This is one thing that Morrowind gets exactly right.
How did the self-made gods come into being? Great question! I don’t know. All I or anybody else knows is that there’s a half-dozen different accounts all believed passionately by factions that bring their own prejudices and needs and grudges onboard. The history of the tribunal’s divinity resembles a real history: a he-said she-said conflict of mythologies and folk accounts that sparks heated arguments and debate even between people on the same side. History as a debate is much more interesting to learn and follow than history as an inventory, and conflict over who is right is more interesting that conflict over who is stronger.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 9: Small Considerations, IPISYDHT#3”
Link (YouTube) |
I realize it’s a running joke on this show for Josh to play unconventionally and for the rest of us to rage about it, but let me drop the shtick just long enough to point out what a mess this boss fight is.
So apparently this fight is scripted to end when Calo “dies”. But the game doesn’t tell you that, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to deal with Davik first. But then Davik is almost immune to damage and your squad mates obsessively cancel orders to go back to beating on Calo. This becomes all the more befuddling later when Calo shows up for another boss fight on another planet.
As if being defeated by the player isn’t enough of a death sentence, Calo then blows himself up with a detonator. And is then hit by an orbital beam. And then some scenery falls on his head. Why inflict all this damage on him when the plot mandates he needs to show up later? And of course, once you fly away, Calo has no way to escape the planet, which is currently being bombed into gravel. Which means the encounter should kill Calo five times over: Once from the fight, once from setting off a grenade in his own face, once from the death-beam, once from the falling scenery, and finally from being left behind on a planet where everyone is doomed to die.
(It actually doesn’t show the detonator go off. I can’t tell if this means the orbits death-beam hit him before he could set it off, or if this is just a byproduct of 2003 animations and cutscenes.)
Why compel the player to attack the person that needs to survive this fight? Why subject him to so much overkill if he needs to show up later? Why portray Davik as the guy who is immune to damage, when he’s the one who dies? Why make a boss fight with two foes, only one of which you’re supposed to fight, without explaining the goal to the player? I guess the player is supposed to do this fight several times and then intuit how to beat it through heavy meta-gaming?
What a mess.
Link (YouTube) |
So now Carth is wearing assless chaps and an Oculus Rift on his face. So is this the work of developers who wanted to grief the player with clown gear, or are we all victims or artists with no taste? Also, what BioWare game has the stupidest outfits? My money is on this one, but you could make the case that Jack and Samara could take the gold medal away from Carth’s chaps in the No-Dignity Olympics.
I’ve found that retrospectives like this one can be very therapeutic, both for the author and the audience. If we find ourselves annoyed and frustrated at the way the story has failed us, we can’t very well do anything to fix it besides compose ever-more convoluted headcanon to try and patch over the holes. But even though we can’t fix the story, there’s a certain satisfaction to be gained in enumerating and organizing the problems as a way to give them a sense of finality and closure.
The opening of Mass Effect 2 is doubly painful. Not only is it packed with retcons, but it’s also exposition-heavy and clumsy. This is painful because the first game had already paid off the expositional overhead. With the Mass Effect 1 setup, the second game would have been free to jump right into the action without the need for an extended series of setup scenes. By breaking from the existing status quo, the writer obliged themselves to twist the world in knots to make the new setup work, and then they executed the transition in the most desultory way possible.
At the opening of Mass Effect 2, the Normandy is flying around the Terminus Systems looking for Geth. A strange ship (the Collector ship) pops in, spots the Normandy despite their stealth driveI’m not going to cry foul over this one. Someone mentions it, so it’s not an oversight. I’m okay with them being able to spot the Normandy, given the handy excuse of “Reaper Tech”. It’s lampshaded. No foul. and attacks. Shepard runs around, gets seemingly “everyone” to the escape pods, and is then blown out into space. We see Shepard flailing, his suit leaking atmosphere, vanishing into the distance. As we fade out, we see what appear to be “re-entry” particle effects around him as he drifts towards the planet below.
Somber music plays, and we transition to the “bringing Shepard back from the dead” opening credits montage.
Some people insist Shepard didn’t really enter the atmosphere, simply because that is too stupid to believe.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 16: Re-entry”
Link (YouTube) |
In this episode, Rutskarn proposes going through the planets in the order of Tatooine, Kashyyyk….
Hang on…
“Kashyyyk”? Really, Expanded Universe? Really? The Wookiee homeworld has THREE vowels in a row? And all of them are the letter “Y”? And nobody had a problem with this? Not even Georgeee Lucaaas? What are you doing with your proper nouns? This is madness.
ANYWAY.
In this episode, Rutskarn proposes going through the planets in the order of Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, and then Korriban. You’re free to do the planets in any order you like, but I’m willing to bet Zalbaar’s freedom that this is the order that most people favor for subsequent play-throughs. I suppose you could make a pretty good case for swapping Tatooine and Kashyyyk, but otherwise this seems like objectively the best order.
Basically, this ordering will maximize your choices with regards to party composition.
For those of you who played KOTOR more than once: What’s your preferred order?
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
A music lesson for people who know nothing about music, from someone who barely knows anything about music.
From the company that brought us Fallout 76 comes a storefront / Steam competitor. It's a work of perfect awfulness. This is a monument to un-usability and anti-features.
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
My first REAL published book, about a guy who comes back from the dead due to a misunderstanding.
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
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