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Chris

Idle Weekend December 20, 2016: Mythology in the Midst

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Idle Weekend December 20, 2016:

Idle Weekend December 20, 2016


Mythology in the Midst
Danielle apologizes for making this episode more of an Idle Monday than an Idle Weekend. Even though we're late, we have an exciting episode for you, as we examine the constant reinterpretation of popular characters in our own modern mythologies. There is Star Wars talk! Star Trek talk! And we manage to not even talk about The Witcher, somehow. Warning: there are spoilers for Star Trek Beyond, if you are afraid of hearing about the (totally stupid) reveal at the end of the movie.

Discussed: Batman: The Telltale Series, Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider, God of War, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Beyond, Monsters by Gareth Edwards, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

 

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Seriously, rename the cast to "Idle Monday", if that's when you're going to publish it.

 

On Monday, working people are simply not in the mindset you're trying to speak to in this podcast.  We've just been thrown into the the work week.  We are not thinking about what we're going to do next weekend.  We are not unwinding and relaxing.  We are anxious or burdened or amped up or all three; we are not winding down and chilling out and contemplative.  We don't have a lot of idle time on Monday night (or Tuesday, or Wednesday) if we have any at all.

 

Just change the name of the cast to "Back to the Grind" and readjust the tone, if you simply don't have the schedule space to publish a Weekend cast on Friday anymore.  

 

I figure you'd quickly gain an audience for a "Stressful Mondays" podcast... surely you've got the experience to draw on for that, no?

 

But I for one am done with listening to "Sleepy lazy Weekend pajama times" podcasts on fucking Monday nights after work.

 

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11 hours ago, jennegatron said:

 

This is unnecessarily super aggressive.

I don't comment much in the podcast threads, but I fully agree with this. I oftentimes like listening to them on Mondays anyway.

 

As always, great episode.

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Sounds like a case of the Mondays. Life hack: download the podcast whenever you want to, and listen on Fridays. You're not missing out by waiting.

 

Anyway, Tomb Raider. For all the emphasis on character development in the new games, they have this weird clash between the story and the gameplay - Lara's a young, inexperienced treasure hunter (who cries a lot) stranded on a hostile island, but then a few hours later, she's an unstoppable killing machine chaining the headshots together. I found it jarring in a way that didn't happen with Legend/Underworld Lara - in those games, she's still portrayed as the generic badass hero, and of course there's less combat. I wonder if the new games have lost something in trying to follow in in the footsteps of Nathan Drake.

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Ahh, the longstanding problem of ludonarrative dissonance ;), or "the devs wanted to make the game they wanted to make, and basically told the writers to write around it" (also a problem with some Hollywood movies, apparently, where the special effects are so expensive to do that the script needs to be written specifically to include whatever they've been planning for the last 6 months)

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Damn... some shade thrown at the top of this discussion, huh?

 

It's my fault that the podcast was late. As you can imagine, work schedules are utterly bananas all the time and it's even worse in December, with family obligations, holiday travel, etc. It's even worse-worse (editor here, that's not a word!) when there are also a bunch of deaths in the family and weekends don't exist any more.

 

I apologize, earnestly. But please understand that Rob and I - and Jake and Chris, who do the publishing - do run up against some pretty rough schedules at times. We all have jobs (often multiple jobs, and lives) that sometimes get in the way of timely podcasting.

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Wow.

 

Just wait and listen to it on Friday if it bothers you that much that an episode came out on Monday. Problem solved!! Weirdo.

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Imagine if that person had to deal with being in another time zone and the podcast NEVER coming out on Friday.  

 

Please don't feel the need to be apologetic Danielle, this is a busy time for everyone, let alone someone who takes as much on in their life as you seem to.  I really appreciate the time and energy that the Idle Weekend team have to put in every week to produce a consistently entertaining podcast, on top of everything else that you all do.  

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Regarding games about being other life-forms:


There's Mushroom 11 where you play a sentient fungus in a post-apocalyptic world. Action puzzle game. It's pretty amazing.


Also there's this game Feral that appeared on itchio recently. First-person big cat simulation. They have a demo. Seems pretty cool... though probably use a gamepad because PC controls are en français (AZERTY).

 

... and you might like this game I made: Guppy, an attempt to interactively capture the movement of fish in 2D watercolours.

 

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Thanks for answering my question on my difficulty in being scared due to an inability to reconcile my suspension of disbelief.  As Rob surmised at lot of this comes from being a dev for so long it's pretty hard not to see the light trickling in through the cracks in how games are made to deflate the atmosphere of games.  I do hold respect for the craft recognizing quality design and implementation when I see it.  It's just that when it happens all I feel is: "Huh, that's cool, I bet that'd scare a lot of people, anyway..."

 

There are plenty of things that can emotionally affecting:

Disturbing - Jessica Jones

Heartbreaking - That Dragon Cancer

Tear Jerking - Any movie that has a dog in it because come on hollywood there is only one way that ever end you monsters

 

Maybe the issue here is that horror relies much heavier on atmosphere and tension over story.  If the person involved isn't doing their fair share, by building up a worse monster or outcomes, to amplify the basic elements the game is providing it can't reach the exciting peaks horror fans enjoy.  Am I playing the wrong horror games?  Are there any that have enough story meat on their bones to do the heavy lifting to cover for my inability to bring my fair share of fear to the experience?

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