You should know the drill by now. Movie first, followed by my response with links to the part of the speech in question.
Link (YouTube) |
Please, please, would someone from Quakecon log in to YouTube and CHANGE THE THUMBNAIL FOR THIS MOVIE? Thank you. Geeze.
“Every game has taken longer than the one before, and that cannot continue.”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “John Carmack 2011 Keynote Annotated:
Part 3 of 3″
Spoiler alert: In this episode… someone dies!
Link (YouTube) |
This quest structure is really odd. In order to secure the escape route for the tribe, you have to disable the traps, or kill the guys who placed the traps. You have to kill the Yao Guai that would attack you on the way out of the valley. You have to wipe out a camp of White Legs (or steal their banners to reduce their morale) that would ambush you on the way out of the valley. You must do all of this, even if you have no intention of leaving the valley and plan to exterminate the white legs.
I’m disappointed to hear that hardcore mode is so lame. The tutorial gives it such a build-up: WARNING. HARDCORE MODE IS SUPER-HARD. NO REALLY. IT’S NOT EVEN FAIR. YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN ENABLE IT. YEAH. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY WE PUT IT IN THE GAME.
I’ve been “saving” hardcore mode for later. As we mentioned in the episode, there was a “survivalist” mod for Fallout 3, and I spent a lot of time with it. It even let you carry a bedroll with you. I did a run of the game where I wouldn’t use fast-travel, so getting somewhere meant loading up with enough food and water to get you where you were going. You had to think of trips in terms of how many in-game days it would take to get there, and plan accordingly. The mod had a lot of flaws, and I dreamed of a day when we could have a well-balanced, properly integrated survival mode. I was hopeful when I found out that Obsidian had made a built-in survival mode for New Vegas. I’d planned on bumping up the difficulty and doing a hardcore run for my final play-through.
Now Rutskarn tells me it’s not all that brutal, there’s no bedroll, and it doesn’t really require you to ingest reasonable levels of food & water to survive. That’s really a let-down.
Here is part 2 of my commentary of John Carmack’s Quakecon 2011 keynote. As before, the entire presentation is first, followed by my comments, with links to timestamps.
Link (YouTube) |
Carmack talks about the PS3 and the way its memory space is divided up. This has always been a hot-button topic when I’ve tackled it, but it’s been a few years since we had that conversation. Perhaps heads have cooled and we can try again…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “John Carmack 2011 Keynote Annotated:
Part 2 of 3″
On Friday, August 5th, John Carmack gave the keynote address for Quakecon 2011. He does this every year, and always has interesting and important things to say about the industry.
This year, I thought I’d give my own commentary on what he said. His talk lasted for about an hour and a half, so there’s a lot of ground to cover here. I apologize for the awkwardness of this. Ideally there would be a way to seamlessly have my comments available during his talk, or a link to my comments, but instead we have to do this the other way. This might be a bit of a pain to watch. I’d suggest simply watching the whole thing, rather than trying to pause-and-play your way through it, but whatever works.
First is the talk in full, followed by my comments, with links to the individual timestamps in question.
Link (YouTube) |
Before we begin: Man, that thumbnail view of Carmack is really unfortunate. The guy spent an hour and a half looking calm, measured, and thoughtful, and the thumbnail managed to capture this expression of wacky, comedic bafflement.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “John Carmack 2011 Keynote Annotated:
Part 1 of 3″
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About a year and a half ago I denounced the PR coming out of the upcoming Captain America movie. (Or rather, I denounced the attitudes that I thought were driving that PR.) Well, the movie is out now, and I’m happy to see I was wrong. The movie didn’t have any of the problems I’d feared.
Superhero movies have a tough job. They need to make a film that will appeal to the masses that know nothing of the source material, while at the same time pleasing the core fans that likely know the material better than its creators.
The movie is doing well. MovieBob is a huge fan of Captain America and he liked it. I knew little about Cap and cared even less, and I liked it. My kids liked it, my wife liked it. So the movie managed to cover just about everyone. Fans, kids, and adults.
Nicely done. Glad to see I was wrong about this one.
Now, if I can just be wrong about Mass Effect 3, that would be really awesome.
Link (YouTube) |
Once again, here is the story of the survivalist. It’s the best thing about the DLC. If you’re wondering if you should get Honest Hearts or Old World Blues, I’d say read the survivalist diaries and buy Old World Blues. (Haven’t picked up OWB myself. Plan to, time permitting.) However, there is a lot to be said to finding the entries yourself in Honest Hearts. The entries are left in the caves where they were written, and so there’s a good bit of environmental storytelling going on. You can see the various caves he used and follow his adventures.
The Survivalist was 24 when the bombs fell. He lived on for another 47 years after that. The diaries chronicle a few of his adventures, and hint that we’re only seeing a tiny part of his whole story.
I think his efforts also explain how the superstitions arose. The Survivalist was fond of making traps. He employed bear traps, shotgun traps, and landmines as a kind of home defense system. He was good at hiding his traps (they’re better hidden than any other traps in Fallout 3 or New Vegas) and the Sorrows, who lacked technical knowledge, would have been unprepared to deal with those kinds of threats. Once enough of the Sorrows strayed into them and died inexplicably and violently, they would naturally see it as an mysterious danger. It’s easy to see how this became a more generalized taboo over the generations.
Link (YouTube) |
I’ve done Honest Hearts twice now, and the rain thing is kind of odd. Originally, I saw it began raining, was impressed, looked up, saw a clear starry sky, laughed, and didn’t look up again. I was actually surprised to see the clouds forming in Josh’s game. I watched it more closely on my second play-through. It seems like it begins raining from a clear sky, and then the cloud layer slowly thickens. I think having those two things happen in the reverse order would be less ridiculous.
I also hadn’t noticed the raindrop thing. In case you couldn’t follow Josh’s demonstration:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spoiler Warning S5E48: Take Drugs, Kill a Bear”
Who is this imbecile and why is he wandering around Europe unsupervised?
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
Crysis 2 has basically the same plot as Half-Life 2. So why is one a classic and the other simply obnoxious and tiresome?
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.
The story of me. If you're looking for a picture of what it was like growing up in the seventies, then this is for you.
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
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.
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
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