Idle Thumbs 82: An Ancient Evil Awakens

[Jake]

By titling the episode this we fully admit that we aren't helping.

Idle Thumbs 82: An Ancient Evil Awakens

We're joined by special guest, designer JP LeBreton, to talk about hidden content, haunted content, and contextualizing your playthrough with a lot of post-game stats. We heard an ancient evil was awakening but it turned out to be a skull that comes out of a face.

Games Discussed: Dota 2: Diretide, Hotline Miami, Doom, Fez, Halo, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Frog Fractions, Real Lives 2010, Homefront, Alpha Protocol, Alf Protocol, Assassin's Creed

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[Salacious Snake]

I'm still like "Oh, shit!" whenever a new episode comes out.

[elmuerte]

oh man... episode

[Brannigan]

our brain meats are all on the same wavelength apparently, was just thinking the same thing.

[Henroid]

I haven't listened yet but I got DOTA 2 as a gift from a friend today on Steam. So soon I will experience what it's like to be a Lord Manager. Or Managing Lord.

[elmuerte]

I don't agree on the subject of "interactive entertainment" software not scaling as well as other software. It scales equally well (or rather, equally crappy). The major difference between interactive entertainment software (i.e. Video games) and a lot of other software is that Video games are much more difficult to break up into proper isolated components of meaningful size. If you cannot create isolated components for which you can define proper interfaces you cannot scale your number of developers. The engine and tool support of a Video game is the easiest to split into components. The game logic is a rather small component, and is repeated constantly throughout the game. This logic is also the most volatile part of the game and is under constant change. So yeah, that part scales like shit (compared to other things VG jobs like LD)

[gregbrown]

Sweet discussion of Diretide on the cast, especially for someone who's never played a LoMa before. Sean's evocation of the game as an ecosystem of lords was really cool, with Papa Roach as an invasive species.

[ThatSoupGuy]

Could anyone post a link to that Halo trailer with the flaming skull? I can't, for the life of me, find it.

[youmeyou]

[youmeyou]

Watching that again... did they swap child master chief with another identical looking child? The ol' switcheroo, eh Spartan Ops?

[Chris]

This is specifically the one we watched--the shorter length gives the skull moment a pretty different implication contextually:

[Korax]

Watching that again... did they swap child master chief with another identical looking child? The ol' switcheroo, eh Spartan Ops?

Yeah, part of the Spartan-II program was finding children with genetic adaptability to the consequent enhancement and cyborginizing, stealing them, and replacing them with flash-grown clones that would end up dying of "natural causes" soon after.

That skull reveal does happen in the game, but at that point, the Prometheans and their rad skulls are glowy blue, not orange.

As for other skulls, the Marathon gametype that Oddball became was called something like "Kill the Man with the Skull." In Halo: Reach, they added a multiplayer mode where killing someone would cause them to drop a skull that could be collected and returned to a scoring base, with the risk/reward that more skulls would give you exponential amounts of points, but if you got killed, all the skulls you collected would also pop out for others to collect, and there were flaming skulls all over the place. There was a similar mode in Tribes 2 with flags, and one with skulls in Quake 3 Team Arena.

[Twig]

Listening as I respond!

RE: DOTA 2 GAME MODES

I really hated Diretide at first, but I've since grown to love it. I sincerely hope Valve takes this game mode, rips it out of the context of "Diretide", builds a new map for it, and throws it into the game proper. I sort of disagree with regards to only some lords being viable. I've randomed in every single game I've played - a couple dozen at least - and the only two lords I felt suffered were Chen and Enchantress. They sort of depend on jungling a bit before they kick ass, and you don't really have the time to do that in this mode. However, even there, I sort of second-guess my own reaction. I am not good at those lords even in the regular game mode, so it's hard for me to judge! Different lords have different strengths compared to regular Dota, for sure, but I don't think it's fair to say that only a small selection of the pool is valid.

My one real complaint about Diretide is that when you're getting stomped... there's really no way to come back. There actually is a point in Diretide where you literally cannot possibly come back and win, because beating candy out of the enemy bucket is a factor of time. But the game mode is so short that whatever who cares!

I'm so goddamn sick of killing Roshan at the end, though...

RE: HOTLINE MIAMI

I really loved the game. I think it's utterly fantastic in both presentation and gameplay. As far as story goes, I find it interesting enough, but I can certainly understand why someone would just not give a shit about it. It's not very deep, for sure. I didn't dislike the "real" ending like a lot of people seem to, but I suspect it was just a way to formally leave the story open to further development, and not really supposed to be meaningful. The story is absolutely secondary to presentation/gameplay, but there are some super, super neat touches going on, like the evolution of your apartment as you progress through the story.

I wish people wouldn't keep latching onto the absurd violence as the defining factor of the game, though. I think it's part of it, but it's not the key. Well, that just makes me sound like one of those "GAMEPLAY IS ALL THAT MATTERS" assholes. Nevermind. I'm the worst. U:

EDIT: Holy moly I fixed a run-on that was eighty miles long!

[shammack]

Oh man, I'm so pleased to finally find out how old that guy's daughter was. I'd been hanging off that cliff ever since whatever episode that was was first released.

[Henroid]

Goddamn Sean for referring to Master Chief as "Halo" unrelentingly.

Okay, time to check out this flaming skull.

[Brannigan]

Everytime a sample of Hotline Miami music came on, I wanted a Puffin mask.

[I_smell]

I sent Chris this episode banner over twitter #humblebrag

Anyway on Hotline Miami having collectibles and ranking scores and stuff, I think a lot of 1-man indie developers just have it in their head that "My favourite game is [blank]" and just naturally don't have the discipline of working in a team to not let it bleed through into everything. There's a lot of indie games that for some reason have boss fights, and for some reason have a number of lives, and secret endings, and are all pixelated for no reason. I've done it before and it SOUNDS like a really dumb, obvious thing that only a newbie amatuer would do, but it's a regular accident.

Of course for games like Super Meat Boy or FEZ, it's perfect to throw in hidden warp-zones. Not that I'm saying independant developers are dumb, I'm just saying this is a thing that happens.

EDIT-- While you guys were talking about Halo I was thinking "and then Halo takes off his helmet, and HE has a flaming skull, and if you like Ghost Rider you'll love this. An ancient, evil Ghost Rider awakens."

"Skulls pop out of heads, and then heads pop out of those skulls, it's the Stacking of Video games."

...for more podcast fanfiction, visit my deviantart.

[Problem Machine]

The bit about Hotline Miami had me really frustrated as I rarely am when reading the podcast, since I really thought that you guys weren't giving it enough credit. Fortunately I had like an hour and a half of other cast pods to chill off to afterwards, and can no longer remember most of the points I wanted to argue. I'll probably write one or two thousand words on Hotline Miami this weekend, and try to make a case for why I think this game is super important and more than just a novelty. I'll link it here, along with maybe a couple of choice quotations, when it's finished.

[melmer]

i've put it off long enough...lets do this episode 82

[StarGoose]

Does anyone have a link to the article where Real Lives 2010 is mentioned? I listened to the cast whilst in transit and forgot to write down where they read about it.

EDIT: Got the trial and first life is a female child in India! Dammit! Now I have some serious choices to make... is it better to have loved and caught syphilis than to have never loved at all?

[Salacious Snake]

Oh man, Frog Fractions. GOTY material right there for sure.

[A Zen Master]

Haven't listened yet, but I just wanted to be grateful again that you're casting pods, and weekly no less. That's a lot of work and it is appreciated!

[filk]

Does anyone have a link to the article where Real Lives 2010 is mentioned? I listened to the cast whilst in transit and forgot to write down where they read about it.

EDIT: Got the trial and first life is a female child in India! Dammit! Now I have some serious choices to make... is it better to have loved and caught syphilis than to have never loved at all?

Yeah, I can't find this either. Went to the PC Gamer site and they don't even seem to have a features section, nor does Google turn anything up.

[melmer]

what the fuck is mountain dew...is it like lemonade

i'll google it

[melmer]

oooh, so its an energy drink. YAGER BOMBSSS like totally awesome man