T w e n t y S i d e d
Via Terminally Incoherent I find this gem:
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The tag at the bottom says the comic is by Dave Kosak, but I couldn’t find the original.
LATER: “Comic”? Why did I call this thing a comic? This is humorous, yes. But I don’t think I’d call it a comic.
DM of the Rings XX:
Temple of BOOM
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Ask any fighter: A hammer is just a really heavy set of lockpicks.
Dick Van Dyke, CGI Artist
Did you know that 80-year-old actor Dick Van Dyke is a CG artist?
I didn’t. Cool.
DM of the Rings XIX:
A Pinata of Stone
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Never provide a dungeon without treasure. The longer they search and find nothing, the more your players will be convinced that the treasure is bountiful and exceptionally well-hidden. If left unchecked, they will eventually dismantle and excavate the entire site in their search for loot.
Dreamfall, The Bitter End
I finished Dreamfall, and I’m obliged to retract some of the high praise I heaped on the game. The ending was quite unsatisfying. Alan De Smet warned of this in the comments of my original Dreamfall post. Even so, the ending was a real shocker. Not “shocker” as in “I can’t believe that happened” but as in “I can’t believe they ended the game there.”
One review I read likened the game to The Empire Strikes back: A dark second installment in a trillogy. I disagree, because I’m sure I would remember if in ESB the beloved Luke had become self-destructive and nihilistic, eventually alienated his friends, and finally allowed himself to be killed by a stormtrooper. I don’t recall the scene where the rebellion was crushed and it hinted that even their families were killed. Princess Leia didn’t fall into a coma and eventually die, and Han Solo wasn’t rounded up and sent to the imperial prison where he was left to rot. The Empire didn’t introduce their new & improved Death Star at the end, and people left the theater talking about wether or not Darth Vader was Luke’s father, not if they thought Chewbacca could maybe have somehow survived that final raid on the rebel base.
In Empire, the Rebels lost a battle. In Dreamfall, they lose the war, the good guys snuff it, and the bad guys get the last laugh.
I’m sure fans of the game will be quick to point out that this is the second act in a three-act play. Great. The first installment came out in 1999. Adventure games and budgets being what they are, there is no guarantee that the next game will even be made. And even if it is, I don’t really care to wait for it. In another seven years I’ll be 42, my oldest daughter will be getting ready to turn 16, and I will only have a vague memory of what happened in this game. Unlike a book or a movie, I probably won’t be able to go back and play this installment, either. Will I need to surf around, hunting for some Windows XP emulator? I had some trouble getting the game to run right on today’s equipment. I can only imagine the challenge of getting it to run on some machine built in 2013, just so I can go back and familiarize myself with all of the various characters and plotlines.
I care about the story now because I’ve been playing it. I won’t care about it then. Seven years is a long time.
Even when the game comes out – even if it came out tomorrow – I’m not sure I’d want to play. A lot of heroes were dispatched. Everyone I liked died. There were many, many bad guys in this game. Lots of people hurt the good guys, hurt the main character, and were a general pain in the butt. In the end, they all went free. Only one bad guy died, and he was dispatched off-camera by one of his own people after all of the good guys were already defeated. Make a story harsh enough, and the reader will be eager to see it all get put right in the end. Make it too harsh, and the reader is going to put the book down and not come back. This is supposed to be entertainment, after all.
The last several minutes of the game were an extended cutscene where the writer drove home his message of hopelessness and utter defeat. Note to Ragnar Tà¸rnquist: Geeze man, mercy already! I liked your characters. Could you maybe leave like one or two alive*?
Of course, the fact that I reacted this way shows that the game was very successful on a lot of other levels. There are wonderful characters in this thing, and even after that brutal ending I have this urge to run around and re-visit earlier parts of the game. Despite the miserable ending, I still think this is one of the best non-comedy adventure games I’ve ever played. It’s generous with the visuals, dialog, and characters. There is a lot to love here, which is why the ending was so upsetting.
* Okay, I actually doubt all of the good guys are dead. It looks that way, but there were enough loopholes that they could show up again. Still.
Please do NOT feed the EGO
My fragile and child-like ego, forever insecure and paranoid, has an insatiable appetite for stuff like this. Although, I’m not sure that feeding it is a particularly wise move. It’s probably a lot like feeding gremlins after midnight. I’m cute and funny now, but just wait until I think I’m better than the rest of you. You have not yet learned the meaning of insufferable.
I’m not sure why so many people are linking to DM of the Rings all of a sudden. Has it gotten funnier recently? The sad truth is that I can’t tell. At the start I’ll have some little gem of an idea that makes me smile, but by the time I upload the final result I’ve re-arranged it a dozen times and worded the thing a hundred different ways. I’m just numb to it.
So I don’t know what the sudden interest in the thing is all about. I’ve gotten more links since Tuesday than I have in the past month. Go figure.
The other thing worth noting is that humorous video I posted the other day had almost 6,000 views this morning. If that number is correct, then it pretty much dwarfs the traffic I get here at Twenty-Sided. Crazy.
UPDATE: The next morning. Thirty thousand views. That’s just strange. It’s not like this video is sitting on the front page. Most of those 30k visits were from people digging around in search results and finding the thing more or less by accident.
Battlestar Galactica
Over at Augury I found a bit about the new season of Battlestar: Galactica. There is a lot of controversy over the plot at the launch of the new season. It seems the humans have had to resort to suicide bomber attacks, and some parallels between the story and current events are causing an uproar. It portrays the Cylons as the “occupation” and the humans as “freedom fighters” who are obliged to use “suicide attacks”.
People seem to be divided into two camps:
- Casting the bad guys as the Americans in the Iraq war and having the other side (humans) argue about the morality of suicide attacks is a grotesque and heavy-handed allegory.
- The show is just trying to make you think. That’s what science fiction is for.
I have only seen the pilot episode / miniseries / whatever it was, and have not checked out the show itself yet, so I don’t know the specifics of this. I will say that I think the most obvious mistake is having the characters use the language of the current war in Iraq. I think this is what makes it seem so clumsy and heavy-handed. The writers should have come up with different words to use so that it wouldn’t be so jarring. Hearing “suicide bomber” – a term that entered use in just the last couple of years and is now on the news regularly – is a terrible idea. This is like having characters talk about their blogs.
They could have instead used “kamakaze”, or (even better) they could have come up with a new word for this. Then it would have seemed more like an exploration of the idea of suicide attacks as a tool of warfare and less like a fumbling allegory of the Iraq war.
I think its an interesting idea: What if we were in a spot where we were outmatched by a superior foe, but we found we could gain an advantage if we were willing to use suicide attacks as a weapon? There are a lot of hooks here that could yield interesting stories. Despite being from the other side of the galaxy (or whatever) the humans in this story obviously hold very western attitudes and values, so finding a volunteers would not be easy. How would commanders react to giving such an order? What if nobody volunteered? How many lives are worth how much gain? At what point does the idea become so costly that they will no longer consider it? For example: what if we could win the war in a single stroke, but we need 10 people willing to die, and we need to know that none of them will chicken out at the last minute? So, if one person chickens out the plan fails, but the other people still die? What if this potential suicide attack was a window of opportunity that was only available for a limited time, but (if they could do it) would deal a real blow to the Cylons?
This stuff is gold, from a writer’s standpoint. You could write a dozen short stories (and thus: a dozen episodes) on this by just looking at it from various angles and exploring all of the ways people react to this idea. The only danger is that you will yank the audience out of the story by reminding them that it was written today. Your characters should never use the lingo of the nightly news. This is the very reason they have space-jargon in sci-fi.
Sadly, it sounds like the show was going downhill even before this happened. Lurking around various comment threads I can see a lot of people echoing the same complaints. It looks like this is a very American television show: Launch with great fanfare but no clue as to where the long-term plot arc should be headed. Then just wing it until the show gets canceled. If you write yourself into a corner, pull out a Dues Ex Machina or two, toss in some controversy, and then just sort of gloss over it and move on.
On the upside, it looks like Vandread is pretty good. I guess I’ll just stick with the Japanese to fill my hunger for Sci-fi.
(One final note: Let’s see if we can keep from getting into a debate over the war. Really. The ‘net is wall-to-wall with people talking about it. We’re talking about TV shows here. Don’t be that guy.)
From The Archives:
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Silent Hill Origins
Here is a long look at a game that tries to live up to a big legacy and fails hilariously.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Patreon!
Why Google sucks, and what made me switch to crowdfunding for this site.
Playstation 3
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
Gamers Aren’t Toxic
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year
Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
Tenpenny Tower
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
Joker's Last Laugh
Did you anticipate the big plot twist of Batman: Arkham City? Here's all the ways the game hid that secret from you while also rubbing your nose in it.
The Disappointment Engine
No Man's Sky is a game seemingly engineered to create a cycle of anticipation and disappointment.