About once or twice a week someone messages me on Twitter, or in the comments, or sends an email to the Diecast, asking for my thoughts on the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda. While it’s probably clear from my lack of interest in the subject that I’m not really looking forward to the game, I guess I should tackle this topic head-on.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “What About Andromeda?”
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Even if you’ve been skipping this series, you might want to watch the first ten minutes or so to see the friendly fire incident. It’s one of those wonderful, idiotic moments we couldn’t possibly plan for.
I’m actually surprised at just how much of this game I’ve forgotten. I haven’t really thought about Dishonored since I played it in 2012, and apparently it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I remember liking it at the time, but I’ve forgotten most of the characters, the missions, most of the locations, and a lot of the powers.
In any case, that was pretty fun. Next week we’ll be covering the final DLC, Brigmore Witches.
I’m back!
Last week’s post didn’t go up because my laptop died late on Thursday night, but now I’m here again, with bells on. Two weeks ago I made plans to explain how the death of Roose Bolton was emblematic (to me at least) of the show’s decline. To do that, I’m going to take the way-back machine all the way to the halycon days of 2013, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the Red Wedding was a watershed moment for Game of Thrones. Even if later episodes and later seasons eventually eclipsed it in ratings, I’m not sure the show has since equaled the amount of buzz the Red Wedding generated. It’s the sort of moment TV executives dream of: millions of mouths gathering around millions of (virtual or otherwise) water coolers, boosting their Q rating into the brand attachment green zone, or whatever sorts of things TV executives say.
And I have to admit, they earned it. The Rains of Castamere was, in fact, a unique moment in television. For one thing, it required the tacit collusion of thousands of book readers not to blow the game ahead of schedule, which I was a little surprised to see it mostly got.It was a teeth-grinding moment every time a book reader got too cheeky with their hint-dropping. Second, it asked for an expert control of tone on the show’s part. The audience has to have a growing sense of unease without suspecting the true extent of the danger. That unease has to steadily grow, then be at least briefly and carefully deflated before the hammer drops.
Since the last episode of MBTSAAFGOTGSMrBtongue’s Scrupulously Accurate and Fair Game of Thrones Griping Spectacular established me as a show!Bolton fanboy, you may not be surprised to learn that my favorite moment was this one:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game of Thrones Griping 6: The Dead Wedding”
Link (YouTube) |
I know everyone is going to want to talk about the emergent bugs that Josh discovers, but I’m content to let that stand on its own. Instead let’s talk about the Outsider. The Outsider says to Daud after a low chaos mission, “Surprisingly clean work for a man with so much blood on his hands. Did the Empress change you? Or do you think this will help you dodge what’s coming? You’d better hurry. You’re running out of rope.”
You know, that’s actually pretty good. Those are interesting questions. Why is this career assassin suddenly working so hard to spare lives? Like the question of “Are you the Nerevarine?” in Morrowind, it’s something the player needs to decide for themselves. It’s an introspective sort of roleplaying. I don’t know that this kind of fill-in-the-blanks-yourself approach to character could carry an entire game, but they do make for interesting little moments.
Too bad these questions came from the mouth of the God of Boring. I guess you can’t really fix that in the DLC.
Or can you? It might have been interesting to make it so the Outsider has a different face and personality to each person. Daud sees a little mischief urchin, Emily sees a crafty old woman, and Corvo sees Mr. Boring. I don’t know if that idea would “click” for the audience, or if people would just assume they were dealing with a different god.
Having knocked out Penguin and his goons, Bruce Wayne calls Alfred to request the delivery of the Bat-suit. Bruce climbs to the top of a building (this is the tutorial for the climbing movement controls) and obtains the Bat-Suit. During the climb, he establishes his goals for Alfred / the audience. He’s not trying to escape Arkham City. He’s not here to pick fights with the super-villains or their henchmen incarcerated here. Instead his goal is to figure out what Protocol 10 is so he can stop it.
The Bat-wing flies over and drops a pod containing the Bat-suit. It opens up to reveal…
I’ve seen the Bruce-less Bat-suit in media before, but I’ve never seen it depicted in this way. The bottom of the cowl is yawning open like a massive grin. I think they had to cheat a bit to make this work. The inside of the costume ought to be dark, but instead it’s lit up with magical glowing blue fog to make the smile stand out.
It’s very reminiscent of the Joker and I’m sure it’s intentional. This game is supposedly Mark Hamill’s last appearance as the Joker (although he changed his mind later) and so the writer wanted to spend a lot of time talking about the Joker and his relationship with Batman. A lot of this is done in the style of “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham City Part 7: Arkham City Limits”
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How many games use “Detective Vision” these days? The Arkham series is the first usage I know of, but now we also have Witcher, Tomb Raider, and Dishonored. It’s been years since I played Assassins Creed, but I seem to remember some sort of alternate vision in that game. I think one of the Far Cry games used it?
So then the developer comes to the problem: We want the player to be able to use “detective mode” (or whatever it’s called in this game) but we don’t want them to leave it on all the time.
I like the Tomb Raider solution best: It takes a second for the vision to fade in, and it gets canceled when you move. This makes it something you do to survey the space before you act, not something you toggle at will.
Despite my better judgment I’m playing Caribbean!, and have just finished crafting my ultimate wish fulfillment character: a brittle, penniless grandmother. I’m also playing on the hardest difficulty, which will make it all the more fulfilling when I transition from “ragged nobody” to “pursued, reviled, and heavily in debt.”
The only grace-giving box I checked was the one that lets me save whenever I want. Basically, I’m stupid enough to jump naked into shark-infested waters, but not quite stupid enough to leave the motor running on the boat.
After I’ve signed off on all my terrible choices the game provides a brief backstory:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Nan o’ War CH2: Entry-Level Brigandry”
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
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T w e n t y S i d e d
