Jake

Idle Thumbs 216: Super Hypercast

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Last Guardian was mentioned for a few minutes on the cast, so I'm going run with it and maybe it will provide some discussion for next week's show. I never remember seeing Last Guardian when it was first shown at E3. I'm aware that it essentially has become the next Duke Nukem Forever at this point, so I kinda get the anticipation, even if I'm not familiar with the actual game myself.

 

I didn't think the video at the Sony presser looked very good graphics-wise, and not particular great gameplay-wise either. For those people who have been looking forward to it for a while, did the video meet your expectations? Is there a particular thing you did or didn't see in the video that you were looking forward to? What was so special about the original announcement?

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Super hyper cube is the coolest looking game that I will never get to play. I have watched that trailer too many times

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Touching on the reference to Tale of Tales while discussing the trends of indie development I think it is safe to say that there is a natural rhythm and flow to business environments where sometimes it is advantageous to be a big company, and sometimes it is advantageous to be a small company. When Bioshock Infinite came out it seemed like being small was better. AAA studio headcounts were large, and costs were very high, and as a result games from big developers needed to sell tons of units to be even modestly profitable. In contrast indie development promised quick development time with small teams that could release critically acclaimed games that would sell great on Steam.

 

Of course as soon as that becomes the narrative the market eventually gets saturated with smaller developers, and it becomes harder to stand out in the crowd. Suddenly being a little bigger (or having a deal with one of the big players) seems more advantageous because you have greater means to get attention compared to the million smaller efforts.

 

David Pittman's output here is illustrative I think. He released Eldritch in 2013, and it sold reasonably well and it received quite a bit of press. In 2014 he works on Neon Struct and it was released recently, and I feel like I've seen a lot less written about it comparatively. It does have the disadvantage of being released the same week as the Witcher 3 I think. But still. Eldritch has 14 reviews listed on Metacritic, whereas Neon Struct only has 3. It is harder to get noticed now, even if your game is doing something cool and relatively novel.

 

It is sad to say, but I suspect we'll be hearing a lot of stories similar to Tale of Tales throughout the year.

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Other way around on #1. There are two loading stations for swinging gondolas and one for stationary, in the middle. The line is longer, but moves twice as fast up to the point where it splits into separate queues for the front and back load. That said, the ration of swingers (ha) to non-swingers in line is usually higher than 2:1, so the total wait for non-swinging is usually shorter.

 

The key to making the whole thing fun is to put all the heaviest people on one side.

 

Oh damn, you're right. Also, perhaps because I haven't gone to Disneyland/California Adventure with more than two or three people in a while, I haven't been in a swinging gondola with a big enough group to really enjoy it. 

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As someone who fucking loves very naive early animation and comics, I'm super stoked for Cuphead. I'm not really sure what's up with the sentiment of "they should have just done this other, completely different visual style instead of this one that they very clearly wanted to use and obviously put a lot of effort into nailing."

 

I have to wonder if they'll go all the way with the visual jank of the stuff they're mimicking, ala Osamu Tezuka's Broken Down Film.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbUYVVmWESg

 

 

 

I fell asleep during the cast, so I'm gonna have to relisten to it, but I did want to say I got stuck on a swinging gondola ferris wheel once. It had spun all the way around to the point where my gondola was at the very top of the ride and then broken down and needed to be serviced. I was stuck there for something like half an hour while it swayed in the wind.

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While I am not a fan of simple rounded characters of early animation, I am not equating that with how they move. A visual style is separate from an animation style.

I have to wonder if they'll go all the way with the visual jank of the stuff they're mimicking, ala Osamu Tezuka's Broken Down Film.

That's what I mean, they picked the "jank" or primitive animation style to make an action game with. It looks weird, floaty, and slow. I don't see how the game conveys fun rather than just going for a gimmick. You don't have to animate like you are in the 1920s to use the aesthetic and like I said I don't think anyone would notice if you didn't. Which again is why I brought up Shovel Knight which clearly stayed within the constraints until it serviced the game, like tons of extra frames of animation, an extra color for the background not in the NES palette, an five color sprite set up, the amount of original music, etc.

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I feel like Cuphead knows what it's doing. It's got sort of a Mega Man or bullet hell feel to its gameplay, and those games are all about having slow, predictable character movement rather than trying to embellish it with extra frames of flourish that can mess with your timing. Having a character that moves like something from an era where everything was like that seems like a choice that they made very carefully in service to their gameplay.

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Another point re: Cuphead's visual style worth considering is that there's a rather ugly history associated with that style of animation. I don't have a horse in that race but it's a perspective I think is interesting.

Huh. I was aware of the history of animation in general, but I hadn't really deep-dived into Cuphead itself - just appreciated that it looks beautiful in all the ways. That 2014 version of the devil is... dubious. Good that they changed it, but it still, hmm. why not make it red. D:

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I feel like Cuphead knows what it's doing. It's got sort of a Mega Man or bullet hell feel to its gameplay, and those games are all about having slow, predictable character movement rather than trying to embellish it with extra frames of flourish that can mess with your timing. Having a character that moves like something from an era where everything was like that seems like a choice that they made very carefully in service to their gameplay.

It's basically Metal Slug though, which moves like butter and is extremely snappy.

 

On that article though, I don't think it's fair to say Cuphead is referencing the racist stuff of the old cartoons. While blackface was often a basic character design because it required two colors, was popular, and could be easily done as a line drawing. If you use that logic you could say Mickey Mouse and Felix also bear the weight of the same reference because of their visual basis, which they don't exactly. Bosco however...

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Well, I think it's saying that the overtly racist is not so neatly separable from the not-racist, since that racism was such a prevalent attitude at the time. I think it's likely that Mickey Mouse and Felix do inherit from that tradition in a way that's reflected in their design, even if the intent behind them wasn't to caricature a given race.

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Implicit racism aside, Cuphead art would have scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, and even creeps me out a bit now. 

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Another point re: Cuphead's visual style worth considering is that there's a rather ugly history associated with that style of animation. I don't have a horse in that race but it's a perspective I think is interesting.

 

Am I insane or is that article is overreaching in the extreme? It reads like guilt by free-association...

 

The jazzy score with the almost tribal undertones calls to mind not only the savage portrayal of men of the African diaspora, but also the savage sexualization of its women.

 

What are "almost tribal undertones"? Brass instruments? And "calls to mind" are such weasel words here. I genuinely see no way to get from the trailer music to the second part of that sentence without motivated reasoning.

 

This seems to line up well with all of the temptations that Cuphead and Mugman find themselves faced with gambling, speakeasies, liquor, and sirens, all things reminiscent of African American culture and the Harlem Renaissance.

 

This is baffling to me. Are gambling and liquor uniquely reminiscent of African American culture and the Harlem Renaissance? And sirens? The creatures from Greek mythology? The implication here seems to be (I think) that the designers are drawing upon African American stereotypes to add to some sense of the characters' peril. But the author can't seem to pin down any actual evidence of that:

 

And while the siren that we see at the end of the trailer is not African American, she is there to serve as a obstruction to reaching their goal.

I kept waiting for the next boss to be a thick-lipped, black-faced, spittle-dripping caricature of an African American man (probably holding aloft a terrified, screaming, blonde, Caucasian woman just to show what a threat he actually was).

(Note: no such boss ever materializes).

 

The one bit of actual textual evidence mentioned, the change in character design for the Devil from the 2014 to 2015 trailers, appears to me to be factually incorrect, or at least unsupported. In the

, it seems to me that the Devil character is the one that appears at 0:11, and the bat character from 0:15 is something different. It looks to me like the Devil character from the
is only a slight modification of the 2014 version, with fur added. So it looks like the author just imagined the character design change scenario.

 

The conclusion of the piece is that

The game threatens to draw upon racist caricatures to inform the narrative and give players a series of racism infused bosses and obstructions to justice to properly hate.

 

Sure. It is 100% possible that this could happen. And if it does, I'll happily join in to condemn the stupid artistic choices. But I kinda feel like you're obligated to dig up some evidence that's a little less flimsy than what was presented in the article before declaring that Cuphead categorically "isn't the place" to use the art style.

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I also think the problem with that writer is that she condenses like 3-4 decades worth of animation to make one point. What inspired entertainment and racial connotations is not the same every decade, times changed, attitudes changed, and sensibilities changed. Putting Coal Black up there doesn't really make any sense with the context of Cuphead, which is pulling directly from a time where characters were designed in very black and white styles because of the simplicity due to lack of color and cels plus blackface being popular at the time. Sometimes it's hard to say with some of those early characters, since they are all so homogenous, what might actually be inspired by blackface and what is actually just due to black and white design like all Felix, Disney, and Warner Bros. characters pre color. I haven't even been alive for a full thirty years yet and in my time media and sensibility has changed so much as it is, so to mash up every gross thing in three to four decades as a big problematic reference seems reaching to me.

 

Just because it borrows elements from a time period doesn't mean you have to take away the disgusting parts of those times with it. You can "sanitize" it so to say. I feel like Cuphead does a good job of that.

 

I mean, should I not enjoy Monkey Island (or really any pirate fantasy) because it is a fun filled reflection on a brutal time in history where raping and pillaging was a normal thing? I don't feel like I should take away that any character is a rapist in Monkey Island or it's necessarily romanticizing it just because they are pirates.

 

This is also my argument with putting too many gruesome elements within Metal Gear, like that fiasco in Ground Zeroes, because while everyone says, "war is gruesome and that's reaalllll, man" it is also a wacky game series that I expect a lot of that stuff to be held back so you know, I can enjoy myself.

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Classic sirens made me smile.

 

I came here to say this too. Classic sirens.

 

 

Last Guardian was mentioned for a few minutes on the cast, so I'm going run with it and maybe it will provide some discussion for next week's show. I never remember seeing Last Guardian when it was first shown at E3. I'm aware that it essentially has become the next Duke Nukem Forever at this point, so I kinda get the anticipation, even if I'm not familiar with the actual game myself.

 

I didn't think the video at the Sony presser looked very good graphics-wise, and not particular great gameplay-wise either. For those people who have been looking forward to it for a while, did the video meet your expectations? Is there a particular thing you did or didn't see in the video that you were looking forward to? What was so special about the original announcement?

 

I have mixed feelings about it. I don't think the Last Guardian footage looked great either, so on one hand I am expecting a game that should have come out in 2011 to come out next year. However, in some ways Ico and SotC felt very far ahead of their time, and because of that it could still be amazing. That's what was so special about the original announcement: it's another game from the same people, and it seems like it's going to mix Ico and SotC into the same game (escorting the catbird).

 

I would have liked to see some other part of the game, a different location with different interactions with the catbird. I know that these games are lean and spartan, with no crufty side missions or other superfluous things, and it relies heavily upon doing its small set of mechanics in a few different and interesting ways. Showing off later parts of the game where all of these things start to come together is basically a big spoiler, so I understand why they did it.

 

I'm excited about it, but I would have liked to have seen more.

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Aside: The Fleischers did dabble in more 'mature' animation. In their Out of the Inkwell series of experimental shorts they used Max Fleischer's invention of rotoscoping to great effect. I like this passage from Modelling. Max Fleischer plays himself and draws Koko the Clown. Koko complains: "Why don'tcha use fresh ink when you draw me? I've got no more pep than a snail under ether." He yawns in a janky motion. Fleischer commands: "No stalling now ~~ brace up ~~ show some life!" And indeed he does:

 

https://youtu.be/3AtEeQQp0Fg?t=55s
 

Animation related: When Jake spoke about his expectations/hopes for VR - "put me inside a sweet of a sweet neon light show" - Norman McLaren came to mind:

 

 

And especially:

 

 

Btw: All parts of McLaren's introduction to animation - Animated Motion - can be found on the National Film Board of Canada site. Part 1: https://www.nfb.ca/film/animated_motion_part_1

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For the record, Spelunky doesn't track things like consecutive days played.  In a way I kind of wish it did, mostly because I'm curious to know how long I've been doing it.

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I think it's unfair to read that article about the racist connotations of Cuphead as reaching, because it's the writer expressing their genuine reaction to the art style. The article is basically tracing why that reaction might come from seeing this art style. I didn't read it as a harsh criticism about how terribly racist Cuphead is, just highlighting the fact that there's a strong racist connection to the art style that people should be aware of and not evoke thoughtlessly.

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I think it's unfair to read that article about the racist connotations of Cuphead as reaching, because it's the writer expressing their genuine reaction to the art style. The article is basically tracing why that reaction might come from seeing this art style. I didn't read it as a harsh criticism about how terribly racist Cuphead is, just highlighting the fact that there's a strong racist connection to the art style that people should be aware of and not evoke thoughtlessly.

Yep. It's tracking an emotional reaction to the art style, not unequivocally stating that Cuphead is racist and so are the developers.

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David Pittman's output here is illustrative I think. He released Eldritch in 2013, and it sold reasonably well and it received quite a bit of press. In 2014 he works on Neon Struct and it was released recently, and I feel like I've seen a lot less written about it comparatively. It does have the disadvantage of being released the same week as the Witcher 3 I think. But still. Eldritch has 14 reviews listed on Metacritic, whereas Neon Struct only has 3. It is harder to get noticed now, even if your game is doing something cool and relatively novel.

 

It is sad to say, but I suspect we'll be hearing a lot of stories similar to Tale of Tales throughout the year.

 

I had no idea that Neon Struct was out, it looks cool!  It's definitely harder now for a dev to stand out from the crowd, or even get coverage.  I have to wonder if the audience shift over to streamers is also affecting discovery.  Some place like Joystiq could easily write about several dozen games in a week between reviews, previews, news, commentary, etc.  A popular streamer is unlikely to cover more than a few games in one week. 

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Joystiq also has a lot of people on staff, I'm sure each one is probably only covering a few games in a week as well.

 

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's more the shift to longform video that's starting to limit the coverage of games, regardless whether it;s YouTube or Giant Bomb.

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Joystiq also has a lot of people on staff, I'm sure each one is probably only covering a few games in a week as well.

 

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think it's more the shift to longform video that's starting to limit the coverage of games, regardless whether it;s YouTube or Giant Bomb.

 

Yes!  That's actually exactly what I meant, that the shift over to video content in general is limiting to the total topics covered.  The same is true of all news media historically, look at the depth and diversity of coverage that the New York Times can deliver in a day versus the total number of stories covered by CNN. 

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I think syntheticgerbil mentioned this already, but the reason early animation is mostly filled in with black isn't (usually) racial, it's because it was cheaper. Here's a breakdown of how this sort of animation was made (at least at Disney, but it should be pretty similar elsewhere):

 

1. An animator draws keyframes with major poses

2. Animation keyframes are sent to in-betweeners, an army of grunts who fill in all the frames between the keyframes

3. The complete frames are sent to the inkers, who copy the frames from paper onto acetate

4. The acetate cels are sent to painters, who then fill in those lines

5. Then the whole thing goes to be photographed, with the backgrounds as separate painting(s) (in multiple layers in the case of Disney's multiplane system)

 

 

Basically, it's cheaper to have an army of inkers and painters all working in black with occasional spot color than it is to pipeline them through a bunch of colors for each frame. Color usually came from spots or backgrounds.

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I feel like Cuphead knows what it's doing. It's got sort of a Mega Man or bullet hell feel to its gameplay.

I agree and that makes me worry that it is going to be Not For Me because I don't really like Mega Man and I really don't like bullet hell games. Cuphead looks awesome but I feel that it will play just like a million other games.

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Haha, as someone who likes Mega Man, I feel like there are woefully few games that play like it. It's not a commonly aped style (or at least, not commonly successfully aped), so it's strange to see someone complaining about it happening too much!

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