Idle Thumbs 179: Shadow of Something

[tegan]

If it was Trademarception, the trademark would need a trademark that had the title and subtitle with trademarks. 

 

ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™™^{ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™}

 

 

Seriously among my favourite jokes in Speed Racer.

[zerofiftyone]

He really was a supremely likeable person. I had a couple of records of him reading from his work that I treasured.

http://www.amazon.com/J-R-R-Tolkien-Reads-Hobbit-Fellowship/dp/B000KFVSHY

He just sounds so pleasant.

 

 

Spot the difference

[CaptainFish]

Cacodemon!

 

I guess I need to re-read the trilogy, a lot of that stuff went right past my middle school aged brain. I always pictured the cast as more diverse in the book than as it appears in the films, but I'm sure some of that is misreading. Still, it let me think of the Mordor peoples as just being symbols of corruption without seeing how they might be stand-ins for other races. I did notice the racial stuff among the 'good races' with some aryan and jewish overtones for elves and dwarves, though. 

[namman siggins]

 

Seriously, among my favorite jokes in Speed Racer.

[RubixsQube]

Regarding Alien: Isolation and wanting to just walk around the Sevastopol, I have been watching some gameplay videos from the game, and it looks both like a game that I really wish I could play, but also that I have zero interest in actually playing. I'm the type of person who doesn't have time for any 10+ hour video games, especially ones where you constantly have to replay sequences, and I'm not the biggest fan of survival / horror / stealth in games. However, I think the game looks absolutely gorgeous. I always wish, with games like this that there was a stupendously easy mode, where the game became something of a kind of interactive film, letting you wander around, but then kind of taking over for the more tense situations. Our current internet culture really looks down on people who play games on easy modes, but I just think it's disappointing that Creative Assembly spent so much time and effort creating this world that I would love to explore, except they gated it by making it insanely frustrating to actually see.

[xir]

The Brief, Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao? is definitely on my list of things to read. Junot Diaz seems like a pretty rad dude in the interviews with him I've read.

 

It's really good and so splintered.  But in a good way.  Also, I think he really hates Magic the Gathering.  You'll learn a lot about the Dominican Republic, too.

[Henroid]

Super Smash Brothers: First Blood

 

It's over Luigi. IT'S OVER.

 

NOTHING IS OVER!

[clyde]

I found the orc racism discussion quite interesting. can anyone point me in the direction of good articles on this topic? a quick google search didn't really help me...

 

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/10/real-human-beings-shadow-of-mordor-watch-dogs-and.html

[Synnah]

My best guess is that it is because Enslaved was originally planned as a series of games, or at least just a sequel. Game sales weren't very good and they moved on to the Devil May Cry license to save the company.

 

However, I don't see any box art or titles screens with the ™ after Odyssey to the West so perhaps that is just a typo by whoever put it up on Steam? I don't remember how it appeared in game though.

There was a significant overlap in the development of DmC and Enslaved, actually; the game was announced at TGS in September of 2010, shortly before Enslaved was released, and the game had been in development for at least a year at that point. Enslaved's lack of a sequel was due to mediocre sales and Namco being in a pretty poor financial position at that point, but DmC was very much in the bag for NT, so there wasn't really a question of falling back on it to save the company.

 

The trademark stuff is garbage though! The logo on the title screen has a ™ symbol after Enslaved, but not after Odyssey to the West. There's a line of copyright text at the bottom of the screen that has ™s on both of them though, so it seems like Namco were really trying to strengthen the brand or something.

[tegan]

Masahiro Sakurai on "Super Smash Bros. for 3DS" and "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U":

 

“This time the name of the system was used as a subtitle in order to avoid confusion among consumers. However, for both systems ‘Smash Bros. for’ is included in the title, so isn’t that nice?”

[BigJKO]

Oh, wow.. they basically called it Smash Bros. 4 and I didn't notice.

[atte]

After numbers as letters, this should be the new trend.
-Super Castlevania for Super Nintendo
-Resident Evil for Gamecube
-Tekken for Playstation too
-The Elder Scrolls for PC Oblivion
-Uncharted for Playstation for

[DarthEnderX]

I would imagine that the reason they have the platform names in the actual titles is so they can be distinguished when they're in lists or databases where you won't see the cover and the platform may not be immediately apparent.

Exactly this.

 

After numbers as letters, this should be the new trend.

-Super Castlevania for Super Nintendo

-Resident Evil for Gamecube

-Tekken for Playstation too

-The Elder Scrolls for PC Oblivion

-Uncharted for Playstation for

Street Fighter too.

[syntheticgerbil]

There was a significant overlap in the development of DmC and Enslaved, actually; the game was announced at TGS in September of 2010, shortly before Enslaved was released, and the game had been in development for at least a year at that point. Enslaved's lack of a sequel was due to mediocre sales and Namco being in a pretty poor financial position at that point, but DmC was very much in the bag for NT, so there wasn't really a question of falling back on it to save the company.

Oh, nevermind that then. Seems like DmC had a pretty long development time then.

[Salacious Snake]

Street Fighter too.

 

Teen Wolfenstein Too

 

I think I'm doing this wrong.

[Chris]

Did I completely misinterpret this? I was not under the impression that you have any contact with him at the end of the game.

Gormongous basically has it spot on. Orcs were bred by evil forces and are essentially "evil" in the throughlines of the main stories. They're bred to hate humans, so they're adversary whether they're evil or not.

I disagree with two points you brought up, Chris. One, I don't agree that Talion is presented nobly. He and the wraith are both presented as seeking revenge, and his moments of "humanity" are shown by using trickery, deceit, and stealth rather that brute force to slaughter orcs. Even if their goal is defeating the forces of Mordor and Sauron, neither character is good. It's mentioned by the freed slaves that Talion was hunting THEM before the Orcs overran wherever he was stationed.

The next point isn't yours so much as Carolyn's, as you haven't finished the game yet. It's unfortunate that the plot is undercut for the sake of sequelitis, because Celebrimbor is not a good person. He is clearly corrupting Talion. If they could have just ended the game, I can see a fall of those characters like you suggest the corrupting power implies in LoTR. Talion should have died. Celebrimbor should be released or doomed to eternal torment. Instead they have the Middle Earth equivalent of a ghost-dead guy high five to keep kicking ass. It's a damn shame because it was so close.

I think you should just send this into [email protected]!

[Badfinger]

I think you should just send this into [email protected]!

 

Cool, I will!

[Danielle]

 

(It is, in fact, on Art of the Title, and even more amazing, one of the animators is goddamn Andrew Stanton, from WALL·E)

 

I recently re-watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids while one of my observing nights was weathered out a few months ago. As I watched the film I realized that I had it entirely memorized from my childhood.

 

Have a ball, baby.  

 

Oh goodness, this brought me back. I just realized that Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was one of the first (maybe the first) movie I actually remember seeing in the theater as a child. It also had a Roger Rabbit Cartoon short - Tummy Trouble, I think? preceding it.

 

Hooray, 80s babies!

[Danielle]

The Star Trek thing is weird. There really was a core ideal in the early goings that involved using the wacky aliens in an almost allegorical way to promote understanding, but it gets very muddied. Likewise, the push to have prominent women and people of color on the bridge (including Majel Barrett as the first officer in the first pilot) was constantly undercut by insanely sexist shit left and right.

 

It was a product of many collaborators and of course of its time, but holy cow. If you marathon Star Trek, you'll get whiplash from how quickly it swings between presenting a progressive message and leaning on the worst shorthand.

 

So much good ST discussion in this thread!

 

All of the Treks have wonderfully progressive elements, and plenty of sexism, racism, light homphobia (or at the very, very least, excessive heteronormativity) and other deeply problematic elements. I am a massive Trek fan, but it's difficult to ignore the issues.

 

The original Trek put a woman of color at the controls of a spaceship's communications board in the 60s! That's so amazing I am still awed by the decision. But, in every other episode, there's a lady in a miniskirt screaming and clinging to the nearest Heroic White Guy (often Kirk, but any HWG will do), instead of acting like a professional officer.

 

TNG had some remarkable episodes about race and sexism and gender identity. And it also positioned Worf as The Klingon . Even Worf had weird ideas about gender. In one episode, he tells a human boy something along the lines of "human women are equal to men," and in another, he talks about the use of trickery/acting as a weak "woman's exploit." I'm paraphrasing, but there are huge inconsistencies wrt race, gender and sexuality within each show.

 

DS9 probably has the better track record here, since it actually humanizes some of the Ferengi characters (like Rom and Nog), and actually presents a feminist revolution in Ferengi culture (they are known as being a very sexist culture). 

 

Even DS9's big "gay allegory" episode - where Dax meets up with a former lover, only they are now both in female host bodies, and there's actually a really awesome lesbian romance angle to it - has a few lines that are pretty icky, hiding homophobia/intolerance behind the shield of cultural relativism.

 

All of Trek is fascinating, from this point of view. Each show is generally progressive, and each made huge strides for TV. But each is also shackled by the constraints and crappy reigning attitudes of its era.

[sclpls]

All of Trek is fascinating, from this point of view. Each show is generally progressive, and each made huge strides for TV. But each is also shackled by the constraints and crappy reigning attitudes of its era.

 

I was about to say that I think Voyager had the best presentation of race and gender stuff out of all of them, but then I remembered Chakotay, and all the weird baggage with his Native American identity being hella Other'ed.

[SecretAsianMan]

I remember liking Ensign Kim a lot when I first watched Voyager, although I didn't realize until much, much later that I was mostly identifying with the Asian cast member (I hadn't watched TOS at that point so I wasn't very familiar with Sulu).

[Chris]

The Original Series is the only Star Trek I've seen much of, and one of my favorite moments in it is when it's revealed that Sulu has fantasies about being a swashbuckling swordfighter in the Errol Flynn mold, rather than the obvious choice of giving him a katana or whatever—I read somewhere that this was a conscious suggestion on the part of George Takei to avoid the easy stereotype. So I was a tiny bit bummed out when in the new Star Wars movie they gave Sulu a space katana.

[tberton]

The Original Series is the only Star Trek I've seen much of, and one of my favorite moments in it is when it's revealed that Sulu has fantasies about being a swashbuckling swordfighter in the Errol Flynn mold, rather than the obvious choice of giving him a katana or whatever—I read somewhere that this was a conscious suggestion on the part of George Takei to avoid the easy stereotype. So I was a tiny bit bummed out when in the new Star Wars movie they gave Sulu a space katana.

 

This is a brilliant typo.

[Blambo]

It's actually a plugin that randomly replaces Chris' mentions of Trek with Wars to mess with nerds.

[Professor Video Games]

A forum filter that randomly swapped "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" would be fantastic.