singlespace

It leads you specifically to the point where the rope is, not Ned's base, otherwise the sensor responses make no sense (i.e. what it reads as you move around).

Problem is that we don't know by what rules the wave reader is operating. It certainly doesn't operate like any hardware in real life, so how does it operate in the fiction? It's not detecting just any electronics because it flatly ignores things like Henry's radio and ends up leading you to a cassette tape and rope that aren't electronic at all. It's not leading you to just the animal tracking devices because while it's possible that one was placed within the alarm, there's nothing of the sort by the cassette and rope outside leading to Ned's. Does it operate on authorial intent then? If so, and if there's no other evidence in the narrative world, the only thing you can really do is guess as to what the author wanted it to be. It does make more sense that it's been placed there with the intention that it be found.

Really? I thought that if you took the boombox then it showed up at Ned's at the end?

Did Henry bathe at all?

Consider the outhouse. Consider the outhouse after several months.

Part of that makes me rather frustrated because, while Firewatch presents itself so brilliantly from moment to moment, it never delivers that notion with any force. Rather it presents several disparate themes without giving its full weight to any of them. It's certainly quite true to reality, but the ability to focus and filter out all the noise and present a single coherent vision is one of the greatest strengths of art. My biggest issue with Firewatch isn't the pacing, or the deus ex machina, or the divergence between the narrative presentation and player perspective, but rather that if you consider any one argument of what Firewatch means, there will be large swaths of the narrative rendered irrelevant. You never have that singular moment when all that has happened comes to bear in an epiphany. You never have that moment when you feel, for the briefest of moments, what it is to be someone else. Or at least it never happened for me. Intellectually I can understand the various thematic elements, and how they could fit together, but what empathy that I have for Henry and Delilah are things that I brought with me in the first place. EDIT: used the wrong quotation somehow

Fixed

I've been slowly cataloging various things in Firewatch, here's a Twine of the intro sequence: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26101/Firewatch%20Intro.html https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26101/Firewatch%20Intro%20Source.html

Ah, yeah, the Cody cap is in front of your right truck wheel when you arrive at the trail head.

By hat, do you mean one that says Cody Wyoming with a rodeo rider on it? Because if you do, you can pick that up at the very start of the game.

Haha, yeah -- there's a lot of things that you have to let go to enjoy the game and that's fine. After some of the early footage, I sent this crazy long rant on things that didn't make sense to the Thumbs that I regret.

Yeah, I really liked that small vignette, but I doubt they had the budget to really lean into that kind of content. I think maybe I had a slightly atypical experience with the rappels: they didn't really seem that bad, just some scree slopes as opposed to verticals. If pressed, you can sprint and slide down those kinds of things, though it's really not advised since it erodes the scree and is a bit treacherous. Most of the time people will switchback up and down those kinds of slopes, it's a bit rare to bother with fixed lines.

There's actually one point where they explicitly telegraph that you can explore, I think maybe on Day 2? It's when Delilah asks if you're ready for work and then the conversation has an unnatural beat added where you can say either you're ready or that you'll hike around a bit.

The entire camp also seems pretty run of the mill. When Henry says something to the effect that there's 20ft tall radio towers, they're just short weather monitoring towers: both feature prominent anemometers and various other weather packages with a distinct lack of any antenna. The items in the tent are similar innocuous: tracking collars, notes about weather, etc. -- the only things out of place are the items that Ned added.

I think those dialogue choices are actually dependent on what you tell Delilah during the course of the game. I played through twice and when being open it gave the Shrink option, but when being cagey it gave a Crossword option. Nothing you say changes what happens, but it's a nice touch.

After playing way too much PP, I really wish they included a

Well, priorities you know... Miltank is important.

But Vin Diesel + D&D is back! https://www.facebook.com/VinDiesel/videos/10153771413778313/

ASTRONEER By: System Era Synopsis: Explore and exploit distance worlds in ASTRONEER: A game of aerospace industry and interplanetary exploration. Trailer:

Looks like fnatic and other pro CS players might not be so magical afterall: http://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/2npzoc/dreamhack_on_ldlc_vs_fnatic_controversy_ldlc_vs/cmfvt7j https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/2nowkw/discuss_the_fnatic_boost_on_overpass/ TL;DR: Teams, one that the featured in the video that this episode was talking about, were caught using texture transparency, immortal bugs, and pixel walking at Dreamhack. There is also some talk of aimbots, though not substantiated at this point.

Wait for it.... https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=babywalling+sims

Is it me or are the brothers looking a bit buff these days? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53KpSKm4eHM

No problem. I think they said that there would be more characters at some point, but didn't really elabourate. Also, no information on how the game will be priced, whether it'll just be one price tag, or free with purchasable aesthetics, or per a character, etc.

Animation is pretty incestuous. For western animation, there are pretty much only three successful feature length animation studios today: Pixar, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky. Of those three, two are based out of California, which is true of a lot of VFX and animation studios who work on other shorter length and mixed media projects projects like Blur. A good portion of the best animation schools are also based out of California like CalArts, USC, and CMU, while top tier animation schools which aren't from California, like Sheridan, are heavily staffed by former animators from the big three. A lot of this intermingling dates back to the golden age of animation and Disney's Nine Old Men which are still some of the strongest influences in animation today. Studios like Warner Bros. Cartoons and MGM were started by former Disney animators and when those studios started closing through the 50s and 60s, Disney remained as one of the last places that trained in full animation. A decade later, when animators like Brad Bird and John Lasseter were educated, there were only a handful of young animators being trained and educated in the art worldwide. Famously, many of today's most prominent animators are from a group of friends who all learned animation together in room A113 at CalArts in the 1970s. John Lasseter, Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Glen Keane, Henry Selick, Genndy Tartakovsky, Rob Minkoff, John Musker, Brenda Chapman, and Kirk Wise all learned animation together. Even today, when you look at all english animated features made in the past two decades, the overwhelming majority were directed by CalArts graduates – many from that same 1970s group. So when you look at Blizzard, which is yet another studio based out of California, it's not particularly surprising that their work shows a great deal of commonality with other animated works.

On the experience of developing Titan and changing direction for Overwatch: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-connection-between-overwatch-and-blizzards-can/1100-6423457/