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Jake

Idle Thumbs 84: Nineties Cockpit Freakout

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LOL, I made the .gif, but I didn't expect to hear about it on the podcast.

I signed up to post a link for you if you want to see:

I originally posted it here on NeoGAF if you wanna see the replies.

Oh, holy christ! Thank you for signing up and posting that! This is amazing. LOL'd at work. People looked at me funny..

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So no one heard the static at the end of the episode? Either there's an audio glitch in the file, or someone who's smarter than me needs to run it through an audio spectrometer.

I heard it, thought it was intentional.

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Halo ODST is definitely the game that makes me most sorry I don't have an Xbox. I really could not care less about the Master Chief Power Fantasy Saga. Heck, I'd upgrade to Windows 8 for a PC port!

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This is the only space shooter thing i've played this gen. It was actually a lot of fun. Firing off 60 homing missiles simultaneously was totally badass. And the game looked gorgeous

man that game was awesome. The game had a stupid upgrade system where if you played averagely/poorly you couldn't afford the decent upgrades and would ruin the second half of the game as you'd be woefully underpowered with no way of catching up. Luckliy they added a patch which gave you a load of shit hot weapons from the beginning. I would highly recommend it for anyone sourly missing a space dog fighting game

How are these games not made anymore, its crazy

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This is the only space shooter thing i've played this gen. It was actually a lot of fun. Firing off 60 homing missiles simultaneously was totally badass. And the game looked gorgeous

This might be one of the last things i would have expected to see somebody bring up in relation to that conversation.

I actually quite liked this game, a kind of weirdly sophisticated space combat game with a ton of cool mechanics. It was probably done no favors by being virtually the only game of its kind on the 360 and featuring such a trite and shitty anime narrative.

I think that combination just made it a game people never really gave a chance, it was definitely one of those ocassions where most of the reviews written were not even displaying a fundamental understanding of the game's systems.

http://images.wikia....f_cortana-2.jpg

Halo 1-3 improved with fidelity, but kept the generally thin, high-cheekboned look to them. 4 makes her more noticeably rounded and curvy, including a much more round face. 1-3 also kept her "skin" more patterned and abstract with transparent circuitry through it, and 4 just makes it a solid texture, making it look much more like a nude woman in body paint or something. I can recognize who she's supposed to be just from general look, shape, and (mostly) voice, but she's definitely not Bungie's Cortana any more.

Did anybody else notice the redesign Ashley Williams got in Mass Effect 3?

First game.

Third game.

Evidently, a boob job was got.

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Ashley fucking Williams.

Playing through Mass Effect 1, Kaidan was my boy! I used him in every mission throughout the game. Levelling up our abilities together, we like like brothers. Perfect synogy in combat. He was an integral part of my mass effect story. Until that fateful ultimatum....

Being a keen follower of gaming news sites i was fully aware of the notorious sex scene that had mothers up in arms all across the country. I needed to see it for myself! So i sold out my friend, my brother, sent him to his death so i could chase a bit of skirt. honestly, i think it was one of the hardest decisions i've had to make in gaming... it polarized me, i remember staring at the dialogue choice for five minutes and then finally giving in to my pathetic school boy instincts.

After experiencing said sex scene i was left feeling hollow and sicked by my actions. Not only had i sold out my padre for sex but i had also sacrificed the mission! She was absolutely useless to me in the field being as i was also the soldier class, no other team i put together felt right, there was always something missing that really resonated throughout the rest of the game.

Following my school boy instincts again not being able to live with what i had done i channelled all these feelings into bitterness and hatred towards Ashley Williams. Which carried over into the sequel and Ashley's brief cameo was not a pretty reunion. And in Shepard's quarters there was a picture of Ashley Williams on his desk which really wound me up.

Anyway skip forward 3 years, i've matured, the galaxy is under threat once again and Ashley Williams has come back into my life. i thought lets let bygones be bygones and work together for the greater good. But before i knew it i was right back at the beginning, lying through me teeth, sitting at her hospital bed side pretending to care about her and her family so i could ultimately get in back in to the sack. My mass effect alter ego is a womanising scum bag, and i really don't like the man i'd become. So in respect for my fallen brother Kaidan i switched off my xbox and vowed never to return.

I'll leave the fate of the galaxy in the hands of better men.

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Awesome episode. I'd talk about the Cortana shit but I'm worn out from that after having spent a while on another forum in another thread arguing with people who think she's totally fine because she just chooses to look like that and it fits with her character and jesus christ kill me now.

Anyways, random thoughts:

Chris making the XBOX "shwoomp" sound was amazing. That was a really good recreation of that sound.

Chris revealing that BioShock Infinite is just a Halo clone will give quite a bit of succor to the 14 year old Halo fans who are going to post denigrating stuff on BioShock Infinite YouTube videos.

I'm so glad someone (Sean?) brought up The Phantom Menace as the start of all the Latin/Sanskrit chanting. I was saying in my head "I think it was probably Duel of the Fates" and then Sean said it! One of the many reasons I love Idle Thumbs is that between all of you, there's almost never anything I want to add to the conversation that isn't added by someone. I'm also glad Flotilla and Brendon Chung in general got some props for the amazing music choices he makes.

On the subject of awesome game music and using one violin instead of 8 string sections, Arcanum's entire soundtrack is written for a string quartet and it's beautiful:

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Bioware talked about redesigning Ashley, but when I first saw it I laughed because all they had really done was change the shape of her nose slightly and let her hair down, like some sort of bad 90's teen movie. If she had only been wearing a pair of glasses in the first two games, the transformation would have been complete.

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Bioware talked about redesigning Ashley, but when I first saw it I laughed because all they had really done was change the shape of her nose slightly and let her hair down, like some sort of bad 90's teen movie. If she had only been wearing a pair of glasses in the first two games, the transformation would have been complete.

From about 0:40:

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Regarding using a single voice or a single violin vs using a bunch of them, I feel like maybe some of that comes from how hard it is to make that sort of thing sound good when you're working with samples and/or synths. Because the little performance touches get really important there, you really need to hire a musician (assuming you don't know the instrument well yourself). While I'm sure that many of the composers working in the big-name game space have access to these sorts of things when it requires a musician it takes a lot of confidence in whatever you've written to take that leap, whereas it's much easier to dump a piece full of big bombastic sounds and make it sound EPIC. The best way to prove a concept that you can't perform yourself would be to quickly prototype it, which would require the samples and/or synths which, as mentioned, sound lousy with that kind of style. So, yeah.

Also, I think a really interesting instance of the music and sound design interacting, though maybe not strictly diegetic (hard to say) is near the end of Limbo. The clicking warning of the gravity reversal becomes part of the music, which makes the entire flow towards the end just grab you right in the spine and yank you through the climax. It is pretty good.

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The huge orchestra synth stuff has always sounded bad, but nobody seems to care a whole lot.

God I miss the Mass Effect 1 music.

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The Diablo III music falls into that overdoing-it trap hard, throwing as many instruments as they can at

. (Though, granted, it's of a piece with the rest of their storytelling strategy.)

Diablo II was much better by comparison, and the expansion had some Wagner-wannabe stuff that I was pretty fond of. But the new one? Ugh.

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Regarding using a single voice or a single violin vs using a bunch of them, I feel like maybe some of that comes from how hard it is to make that sort of thing sound good when you're working with samples and/or synths. Because the little performance touches get really important there, you really need to hire a musician (assuming you don't know the instrument well yourself). While I'm sure that many of the composers working in the big-name game space have access to these sorts of things when it requires a musician it takes a lot of confidence in whatever you've written to take that leap, whereas it's much easier to dump a piece full of big bombastic sounds and make it sound EPIC. The best way to prove a concept that you can't perform yourself would be to quickly prototype it, which would require the samples and/or synths which, as mentioned, sound lousy with that kind of style. So, yeah.

That's probably the case, but I feel that a good composer can probably circumvent it. For instance, Sid Meier's Pirates! is what comes to my mind right after Arcanum when thinking of small-scale musical arrangements that play well with the theme. Sure, there's a massive synth orchestra when you're sailing the high seas, but walk into a tavern and you get a fiddle-and-pipe version of the same, or flute-and-horn during a land battle.

And I second the hate for Latin choruses. At first blush they're dramatic, but that ready-made bombast is the least durable thing in the world. These days, I just listen to the weird un-Latin most composers use, which honestly sounds like this video to anyone in the know:

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If you listen to Duel of the Fates, it doesn't sound anywhere near as generic as all the stuff that appeared afterwards, even now that our ears are inundated with the crap.

John Williams also understands dynamic range, which is totally missing from many video game soundtracks.

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Yet another post with random Halo thoughts.

ODST was also my favorite Halo. I really like playing the Halo campaigns co-op, but in ODST I actually enjoyed it more being by myself. Not because of the gameplay, which is essentially the same as any other Halo game, but because of the atmosphere. I really enjoyed wandering around this ruined city at night with enemy patrols everywhere and a smoky sax as my only companion. Also the Firefly fanboy in me liked having Mal/Wash/Jayne in it.

While I think Halo 4 is a good game, one thing driving me insane about it is how horrible the storytelling is. Granted, story was never Halo's strong suit (at least in the games) but at least the other ones didn't introduce crucial plot points with the expectation that you already knew a bunch of it. Specifically, I mean why am I still fighting the covenant and how the heck did Cortana learn the main villain's name? I don't recall him ever saying it, but in the next scene she's telling me to stop him and calling him by name. It took me a while before I understood who she was talking about. A lot of this kind of information can apparently be learned by reading some of the books or going deep into the Waypoint stuff, but since I didn't do either of those things, the game's plot was a complete mess to me. I don't need detailed histories, but at least enough to know what the heck is going on without turning to outside sources. I suppose this could be part of the whole "multimedia" idea but I felt it didn't work.

And in the complete opposite direction, one thing I like about Halo is the stupid out of the way stuff that doesn't matter at all but I think is interesting. For example, in the very beginning of the game, you come across a display which gives you the status of the ship, including the weapons status. Later in the level, you're being attacked and the Chief recalls that the display said the weapons were online and Cortana directs you to launch a missile. But if you skip the display in the beginning, the Chief doesn't learn about the weapons status and this part of the dialog is slightly different because of it. It doesn't effect the game in any way other than the dialog, but I was stupidly happy to discover this detail.

Cortana is supposed to be a flash copy of a human brain, specifically her creator Dr. Halsey. If she keeps updating her image to Sexy 4.0, what does this say about her creator? Was she getting plastic surgery every few years?

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Just ran it through a spectrometer, just plain old static, no sick ass hands descending from the sky

552px-Spectrogram_-_Nine_Inch_Nails_-_My_Violent_Heart.png

oh shit, cue the Reznor-based ARG disseminated through USB sticks left in bathrooms.

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Proving once and for all that i am a sponge for shitty fiction.

Specifically, I mean why am I still fighting the covenant

It's explained literally nowhere, it's never even touched on, and it's frustrating when it's such a simple answer. It's Halo's version of the imperial remnant, it's an easy justification, old empires die slowly. The tougher question is why you're still fighting Elites, that one doesn't exactly jive with what came before. (The Elites being forced out of the covenant by the Prophets, pushed into leading a civil war against the Brutes who rose to take their place.

The reason for it, of course, is that Elites are more fun to fight than Brutes. So Elites are evil again, but only some, apparently. (You can probably expect to see the Arbiter make a heroic return somewhere in Halo 5.)

and how the heck did Cortana learn the main villain's name? I don't recall him ever saying it, but in the next scene she's telling me to stop him and calling him by name. It took me a while before I understood who she was talking about.

Unless we assume the Cortana and the Chief read the Halo 3 terminals while running around the Ark, which do talk about the Didact and were events immediately preceding this game, they shouldn't know who the Didact is. It's most easily chalked up to an over eager script that frequently forgets what it hasn't addressed yet.

A lot of this kind of information can apparently be learned by reading some of the books or going deep into the Waypoint stuff, but since I didn't do either of those things, the game's plot was a complete mess to me.

The Waypoint story section is relatively barren and almost completely useless in relation to 4. The Halo 3 terminals would have been mildly informative for where 4 ends up going, but those were really well hidden, extremely opaque, and five years ago. The way 343 dives so hard into everything, i think they overestimated the general familiarity people have with the universe. Bungie's games steadfastly ignored anything beyond the scope of the immediate narrative, and so a lot of people have played a lot of Halo games without actually knowing a whole lot about what's going on.

Anyways, yeah, a lot of stuff is only in the books. (Some of which are totally okay!)

I don't need detailed histories, but at least enough to know what the heck is going on without turning to outside sources. I suppose this could be part of the whole "multimedia" idea but I felt it didn't work.

It seems like Halo 4 was expecting its own terminals to do a lot of the heavy lifting for bringing people up to speed, but having to quit out into the very crashy Waypoint app to view them is kind of bullshit. (Also, the terminal vids are really, really poorly produced. Painfully so.)

There's also that giant info dump about half way through the game where they try to compress their remarkably complicated prehistory into a couple minute long monologue, that was pretty terrible. That is a goddamn lot of world building there that needed to be done much more carefully than it was, i can't believe they would just dump that stuff on the player like that. Some crazy revelations about that universe with no fanfare or buildup. (Again, all stuff from the books, but that's not the point.)

Also, apparently the Chief is now a chosen one fulfilling an ancient plan. God dammit, what the fuck 343, try harder.

You know, and it's still the best story in the series.

ADDITIONAL THINGS THAT BUGGED ME: Chief is wearing the fancy new Gen 2 Mjolnir with no explanation at all. Ever. (It bizarrely even still has the same specific armor damage Chief's Mark VI had in 3.) The Forward Unto Dawn is also portrayed as much larger and is unrecognizable to its Halo 2/3 counterpart.

So yeah, out-of-canon aesthetic retcons is basically all you can chalk it up to. (There's also been like 3 different canon designs for the Mark IV over the course of the series, and New Mombasa changed completely between Halo 2 and Halo 3: ODST.)

Requiem also has some seriously confusing geography that isn't really ever adequately explained, i played through the game twice before it made any sense. (It's a big metal sphere surrounding a smaller planetoid with a hollow core.) I don't think they should have made a deliberate plot point out of it or anything, but i feel like there were still probably better ways to convey that information.

Cortana is supposed to be a flash copy of a human brain, specifically her creator Dr. Halsey. If she keeps updating her image to Sexy 4.0, what does this say about her creator? Was she getting plastic surgery every few years?

The implications are way worse when you consider that the only woman in the Chief's life is effectively a clone of his adoptive mother figure. (And, you know, not real.)

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Unless we assume the Cortana and the Chief read the Halo 3 terminals while running around the Ark, which do talk about the Didact and were events immediately preceding this game, they shouldn't know who the Didact is. It's most easily chalked up to an over eager script that frequently forgets what it hasn't addressed yet.

Nothing has revealed to me more the tendency for mid-tier writers to assume every character is familiar with each other after a certain point in the script than rewatching Deadwood with a friend. That show is so careful about keeping track of who has met/liked/trusted whom that my friend is occasionally confused that two major characters meet each other, apparently for the first time, half a season in. I just don't think it pays in lower-stakes media to remember who knows what.

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It's explained literally nowhere, it's never even touched on, and it's frustrating when it's such a simple answer. It's Halo's version of the imperial remnant, it's an easy justification, old empires die slowly.

It would have been nice if this was in the game somehow. The Chief even says at the beginning that they're supposed to have a truce with the Covenant. I guess he really doesn't care since he proceeds to murder hundreds of them without any attempt to find out why they're his enemy again, even after he meets up with the Infinity. Just give him something to shoot and he's happy.

It seems like Halo 4 was expecting its own terminals to do a lot of the heavy lifting for bringing people up to speed, but having to quit out into the very crashy Waypoint app to view them is kind of bullshit. (Also, the terminal vids are really, really poorly produced. Painfully so.)

Agreed

The implications are way worse when you consider that the only woman in the Chief's life is effectively a clone of his adoptive mother figure.

I forgot about that part. The Chief has some serious Oedipal issues.

Does anyone else besides me miss having a flashlight? You'd think with all the armor upgrades that don't actually change anything, they'd have kept the one piece of functional equipment.

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The discussion on the differences between Halo and immersive sims like Dishonored was interesting, because I find part of what draws me to Halo over Call of Duty and COD-likes are the similarities to an immersive sim.

Halo isn't a stealth game, but I've always liked how the enemies are nonetheless limited by their "perception", and that you can surprise them, even in the middle of a firefight, by keeping out of their line of sight and getting around their flanks.

On the subject of awesome game music and using one violin instead of 8 string sections, Arcanum's entire soundtrack is written for a string quartet and it's beautiful:

Indeed. I just wish I enjoyed the game as much. I'm curious as to why the developers thought it was a good idea to make the guns so weak, because looking at it from either lens of theme or mechanics, it just makes no darn sense.

For game soundtracks that uses a single singer as opposed to a chorus, Nier is an excellent example.

It's not the most polished game, but I don't think I've heard of or played a game more experimental than Nier for the whole of its 15-20 hours this generation.

Sometimes it's just a third-person hack-and-slash ARPG, others, its also a 2D platformer, or a top-down scrolling shooter, and sometimes, you get trapped in somebody else's dream and its a text adventure lite. It rarely commits the sin of lingering on any one gameplay type for too long.

Also, it's notable, particularly amongst games from Japan, for featuring a weathered, roughly middle-aged father as the protagonist.

Does anyone else besides me miss having a flashlight? You'd think with all the armor upgrades that don't actually change anything, they'd have kept the one piece of functional equipment.

Being able to sprint and use the flashlight at the same time would be too big a drain of energy, obviously.

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