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Idle Thumbs 97: The Dash Rendar Synergy

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Idle Thumbs 97:

 

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The Dash Rendar Synergy

Jake and Sean are joined by Olly Moss and the rest of the population of England during their merry jaunt to the Baftas. Chris was left behind in San Francisco, where he's probably still playing Zuma.

 

Games Discussed: Kentucky Route Zero, SimCity, Thomas Was Alone, The Silent Age, Shadows of the Empire, Assassin's Creed, Pandemic, Twilight Imperium, RIsk: Legacy

Guests: Olly Moss, Duncan Fyfe, Lawrence Bishop, Ben Andac, and Alex Ashby

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I should have traded in my PS1 for an N64. Ok, well, I probably shouldn't have, because it was a great system. But I'm devastated I missed out on Star Fox 64, Mario 64 and especially Shadows of the Empire. I used to look at images of speeders lassoing giant walkers on Hoth in Nintendo Power (which I still was subscribed to even though my last Nintendo system was the NES) and feel so jealous about how fun it looked! Console wars are really the worst.

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Oh man, that's a really great list of games discussed. No spoilers for Kentucky Route Zero (or Thomas Was Alone) I hope - I haven't made it to either of those yet and I'm really looking forward to them. Also I hope there are no spoilers for Risk: Legacy or SimCity. Someone spoiled the original Risk for me once and now that I know grabbing Australia is the best, that whole game is ruined.

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No real spoilers for Kentucky Route Zero besides what happens at the very beginning and a minor easter egg, no spoiling of Thomas Was Alone. There is however, a random spoiler (?) for Shadows of the Empire and general Star Wars Expanded Universe plot details (the best part of the whole podcast in my opinion, because I too enjoy reading wikipedia entries on Expanded Universe stuff).

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 There is however, a random spoiler (?) for Shadows of the Empire and general Star Wars Expanded Universe plot details.

 

Also a spoiler for Risk Legacy.

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The talk about exchange rates reminded me of a conversation I had with an Argentinian friend about the same thing. Apparently as far as cost of living, AR$1 roughly equals US$1, as in if you buy a hot dog off from a street vendor you'll spend about the same amount of pesos as dollars. However, in terms of exchange, back when we spoke, it was about three pesos to the dollar. Argentina has jack shit for national industry, so most manufactured goods have to be imported at ridiculous cost. My friend's boss wanted a custom self-inking rubber stamp, and ended up importing one from Germany, which after exchange and shipping cost AR$80. That shit's crazy.

The plus side to Buenos Aires is that if you're a foreigner with a moderate amount of spending money you can take it really far.

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I remember that compilation of Legends of the Hidden Temple screwups, but I can't find it now...

 

Those temple guards were so terrifying, in a way that seemed so cruel! I like to think that after they dragged you away, they'd sit you down with a 7-Up, try to calm your nerves. Maybe some days Melissa Joan Hart was waiting back there to give you her autograph.

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now that I know grabbing Australia is the best, that whole game is ruined.

 

There is no game that can't be improved by grabbing down under.  :naughty:

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I hope this whole episode is about how bullshit that IG-88 level in Shadows of the Empire was because man that level was bullshit.

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Since recovering from the Star Wars EU fandom of my youth (I got better, I swear), I have also loved revisiting Wookieepedia and saying "...what?" a lot.  There's no better way to expose the absurdity of a decades-long, multi-author continuity than to simply recount it in a dry and factual manner.  (See also: Books, Comic.)

 

So yes.  This episode really Resonated.  Thank you.

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It was a really fun episode and it's cool to hear about Thomas Was Alone's success. It's not a game I'd hold out as a standard of gaming achievement, but it knows what it wants to do and does it super well. It's just a really, you know, nice game. It's the sort of game which, unlike Dead Space 2, your mom doesn't hate. I also completely dig the soundtrack.

 

However, I think Chris's presence was sorely missed. It was particularly weird hearing one of his transitions without having his voice as a presence in the rest of the cast-- you dudes should have busted out some improvised a capella transitions, and it can only be a sign of your lack of commitment to the (vaguely defined) cause that you didn't. Anyway, Chris is really good at keeping things on the rails while still leaving plenty of room for goofy hijinks, so things, I dunno, kind of sprawled a bit here. That could be an editing issue as well.

 

Oh, right, and congrats on your BAFTA thingies (fuck your BAFTA thingies).

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After I played Kentucky Route Zero, I was blown away (ign.web), it is honestly one of my all time favorite games. From looking at discussions of it on the internet, I've gathered that few people had responded to it the way I had, and it wasn't until listening to this episode that I had some idea why this might be. It sounds like people are turned off by the writing being "pretentious" but to me the content of the writing was less important than the tone and metre of it. It felt poetic, and helped the world feel mysterious, or alien. Also, the scene where you return to the farmhouse was beautifully constructed and contained possibly my favorite moment in a video game.

 

On an entirely different note, Jake mentioned "Glory to Rome" and while I also found the game fun, I felt the need to share just how ugly the original art was. If I recall correctly, there was even a card with no art at all, like they forgot to draw it or something.

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After I played Kentucky Route Zero, I was blown away (ign.web), it is honestly one of my all time favorite games. From looking at discussions of it on the internet, I've gathered that few people had responded to it the way I had, and it wasn't until listening to this episode that I had some idea why this might be. It sounds like people are turned off by the writing being "pretentious" but to me the content of the writing was less important than the tone and metre of it. It felt poetic, and helped the world feel mysterious, or alien. Also, the scene where you return to the farmhouse was beautifully constructed and contained possibly my favorite moment in a video game.

 

I haven't had a chance to listen to the episode, but I've come to realize that the internet has shifted the definition of pretentious from "acting like it's something that it's not" to "ambitious in a way I don't appreciate or respect myself". Few words are used to tear down genuine quality and innovation like "pretentious".

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I haven't had a chance to listen to the episode, but I've come to realize that the internet has shifted the definition of pretentious from "acting like it's something that it's not" to "ambitious in a way I don't appreciate or respect myself". Few words are used to tear down genuine quality and innovation like "pretentious".

 

This is something that I've had more and more of an issue with lately. It's really true the labels hipster/pretentious have become these catch-all-terms for describing something that a person doesn't like, to the point where both those words have become extremely devalued and meaningless. It has become a really lazy way for people to criticize something, without having to come up with an actually critique beyond: 'I don't like that, so it's bad' or 'I don't like the type of people who like that, so it's also bad.'

 

Personally, I loved Kentucky Route Zero and was completely sold on everything it was trying to accomplish, especially its atmosphere. My friend however, was never sold on the writing or the gameplay mechanics of the game, so he didn't connect with it in the same way that I did. I can understand why someone wouldn't like that game for those reasons, because at least they're actual flaws that you can highlight and discuss. Just calling it 'pretentious' is a nonstarter to any kind of meaningful discussion.

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I could never tell if "frag" in Doom terms really did derive from the military meaning of deliberately killing your superior or fellow officers.  In the official narrative introduction to Doom, we first see the word as a substitute for "frak" or "frell":

A few hours ago, Mars received a garbled message from Phobos. "We require immediate military support. Something fraggin' evil is coming out of the Gateways! Computer systems have gone berserk!"

But the first paragraph of that introduction says that you've been transferred to Mars as punishment for assaulting (and murdering?) a superior officer, so it's likely that id knew the military definition.

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This is something that I've had more and more of an issue with lately. It's really true the labels hipster/pretentious have become these catch-all-terms for describing something that a person doesn't like, to the point where both those words have become extremely devalued and meaningless. It has become a really lazy way for people to criticize something, without having to come up with an actually critique beyond: 'I don't like that, so it's bad' or 'I don't like the type of people who like that, so it's also bad.'

Personally, I loved Kentucky Route Zero and was completely sold on everything it was trying to accomplish, especially its atmosphere. My friend however, was never sold on the writing or the gameplay mechanics of the game, so he didn't connect with it in the same way that I did. I can understand why someone wouldn't like that game for those reasons, because at least they're actual flaws that you can highlight and discuss. Just calling it 'pretentious' is a nonstarter to any kind of meaningful discussion.

Pretentious as "aiming for the sound and feel of something from higher art or culture for its own sake or for the sound of it, without the meaning or maybe even raw talent to back it up" is what I think people mean when using pretentious that way, not "I don't like it." I think they're trying to say "your attempt to elevate your work tonally came off as affectation, not as genuine to me," and are shorthanding it in a way that doesn't always work. Honestly, I think people mean something close to that more often than not when they use the word "pretentious" as a pejorative, and that is a far more specific criticism than "I don't like this," so dismissing it out of hand as people not having anything to say seems... too dismissive.

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Oh fun, now there's going to be a reactionary movement where everyone who calls someone/something else pretentious is bad (I'm still waiting on which word people will settle on).

Regardless of how much merit you think the idea of pretentiousness even has, they were talking about a certain stylistic quality that they, along with plenty of other people, find distasteful. Dismissing it as "just something they don't like" gives no credit to the meaningful stylistic implications the term carries. It's just a relative thing anyway, if you're bothered or insulted that people don't like Wes Anderson because they feel he's pretentious, maybe you should focus more on understanding what they don't like instead of how they're technically semantically wrong.

Anyway, it looks like the exact kind of game I'd love to play. I saw screenshots and clips of video and assumed it was elaborate 2D vector work, bi if its 3D I'm really interested. I love flat graphic styles with lots of layers, and Id love to see how that can be done well in 3D (I'm like Jake, I love me some parallax). Blender is OSL compatible now, so maybe I can learn how to do that cool stuff.

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Pretentious as "aiming for the sound and feel of something from higher art or culture for its own sake or for the sound of it, without the meaning or maybe even raw talent to back it up" is what I think people mean when using pretentious that way, not "I don't like it." I think they're trying to say "your attempt to elevate your work tonally came off as affectation, not as genuine to me," and are shorthanding it in a way that doesn't always work. Honestly, I think people mean something close to that more often than not when they use the word "pretentious" as a pejorative, and that is a far more specific criticism than "I don't like this," so dismissing it out of hand as people not having anything to say seems... too dismissive.

 

That's fair. I'm just overreacting to a lot of the criticism I saw about Kentucky Route Zero/Proteus, which has made me a little too sensitive to hearing something called 'pretentious.' Just need to take a step back and remind myself that not everyone will enjoy something that I really liked (and I really liked Kentucky Route Zero.)

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I bought The Real Texas on sale on GOG last night.  It wasn't until I was listening to this podcast that I realized that it and Kentucky Route Zero are two different games.

 

"Adventure game?  Wait, I bought a blocky Zelda/Ultima-ish game!"

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I get the same feeling about the extended universe as I do about Nintendo grudgingly saying 'fine, all the Zeldas connect, I guess? You guys seem to really want that to be true, so have at it.' 

 

Get it together, nerds, not everything needs to have continuity. Stop being weird!

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I get the same feeling about the extended universe as I do about Nintendo grudgingly saying 'fine, all the Zeldas connect, I guess? You guys seem to really want that to be true, so have at it.'

Get it together, nerds, not everything needs to have continuity. Stop being weird!

Wind Waker passively suggesting it was so good. An actual legend of Zelda. It becoming explicit was a bummer.

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I look at Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County as the best model for a setting that's revisited over the course of a saga. It only connects up geographically or chronologically sometimes, but it still gives a sense of history. There's no reason to make yourself crazy by trying to make a genealogy or timeline or map.

 

On the other hand, the mostly kinda sorta coherent continuity of Star Trek (across TV shows and movies only) does add something to its sense of reality, which I think offsets some of the distancing effect of its more esoteric sci-fi trappings. 

 

So I don't know what I'm saying at all.

 

I did love the hints at prior Hyrulian shit in Wind Waker.

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Wind Waker passively suggesting it was so good. An actual legend of Zelda. It becoming explicit was a bummer.

 

On that note: Alex's(?) suggestion that New Game + was actually a meta-joke within the game world blew my freaking mind. So so so good.

 

Great episode this week, guys. 

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