Arkestry

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Everything posted by Arkestry

  1. Mindhunter

    Mindhunter is the new Netflix series from David Fincher and Charlize Theron, focusing on the period in the 1970s where the idea of trying to understand the psychology of serial killers was floated within the FBI. Adapted from the book of the same name, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Douglas, it follows a pair of agents that criss-cross America interviewing killers like The Co-Ed Killer Ed Kemper, Dennis Rader, Jerry Brudos and Richard Speck. From these interviews, they start to put together the very beginnings of profiling. The first and last two episodes (4 total) are directed by Fincher himself, and the whole thing is saturated with his directorial style. With that out of the way, I deeply enjoyed the vast majority of the show. To me it felt very much like a continuation of the themes and styles of Zodiac, focusing on the obsession with the killers rather than the killers themselves, necessarily. That said, the actual interviews with the killers (which I think are closely adapted from the actual interviews John Edward Douglas conducted), are incredibly compelling, and all of the actors cast as the killers knock it out of the park. Few general spoilers: Anyway, I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys anything Fincher has done, but especially Zodiac. It's probably my favourite straight drama Netflix has produced.
  2. Mindhunter

    It's definitely one of the things I think streaming is going to lead to more of. I suppose it's good to have a template for length, but if you have more or less than that and it feels like an episode, why pad or cut it unnecessarily?
  3. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War(dor)

    It's been pretty interesting how the game has slowly begun to show it's working as you enter Act 4. I suppose some mechanical spoilers follow. The other fun comparison I've been doing in my head is comparing the combat in this with that of Batman, which it cribs from in most conceivable ways. I've been trying to think about why Batman feels so damn clean, where often in War-dor I've been much more overwhelmed, and I think it's a mixture of things, chief among them being that Batman does two things that really help with clarity. The first is that the camera scales back based on how many enemies you're engaging, and the enemies themselves spread out quite a bit. You have goons charging in to attack you, but they're rarely right next to you before they begin their attacks. The other is that any fight over a certain amount of enemies has the arena chosen and designed by Rocksteady, whereas Monolith just throws orcs at you wherever you are. It can lead to a lot of messy scraps where it's really hard to see what's going on, or anticipate attacks before they come in. War-dor could never do the thing Batman does where it removes counter notifiers at harder difficulties. Which is one area where you can actually tangibly see the design concessions in War-dor. Whereas Batman just has little alerts above the heads of enemies (blue for counter, yellow for counter dodge, red for dodge), War-dor has to throw the actual button up beneath the notifier because you can't read the animations due to the camera being so damn close. It sounds like I'm being down on the game but I actually do really enjoy it, just find it interesting where the concessions Monolith had to make are, and how I feel they're much closer to the surface with this game, maybe because they increased the scope without having a chance to increase the depth with it.