Chris

Idle Thumbs 180: Wars and Pieces

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I'm not that far into it, but I think I like the Ethan Carter a whole lot more than the thumbs crew. I certainly have no issues with the writing or supernatural stuff, but also I could just enjoy walking around in it because its so pretty.

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I believe it's also 'father' in Dutch.

Edit: yep

 

I am pretty sure that George Lucas didn't plan on the Empire Strikes Back twist until after A New Hope came out. I think George Lucas is just terrible at naming things.

 

 

If people haven't read the SUPER FASCINATING J.W. Rinzler Making of Star Wars book, please find a copy and read it. It shows that while George Lucas is a hack in many ways, he's also very good at some things, especially when he's up against the wall. I have a lot of respect for the younger version of Lucas, trying his hardest to get his weird dream off the ground, fumbling with a horribly written script, showing rough cuts around to his friends, like, you know, Steve Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. It's a beautiful book, and it features one of my favorite anecdotes about A New Hope ever:

 

During the last days of mixing the sound for the wide release of the film, George and his wife were sitting in a hamburger restaurant in Hollywood, eating quickly before heading back into the editing bay to keep working. Outside, he can see a huge crowd gathered at Grauman's Chinese theatre, and he says something like: "oh man, it'd be so great if Star Wars got that kind of reaction." After eating, they go out to see which film was playing at Grauman's and it was a limited release of Star Wars, which had opened there that day, instead of William Friedkin's Sorceror. He just hadn't realized that a version was already playing and building buzz around town. I love the idea of young George Lucas a lot. 

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My friend has a photo with George Lucas

He's a ameture/indie film maker and tries to visit the canes film fest every year. This was the year the crystal skull was shown and he had caught wind Lucas was in this hotel. He managed to bypass the masses of press/people being blocked at the front entrance and sneaked in a side door (did I mention he's steamingly drunk). He walks into the foray and finds George and another guy alone. He's a massive massive Star Wars fan, so not wanting to miss the opportunity walks up to them, probably said something cringy, stuffed a camera into the other guys hand and asked for a photo

eaves_lucas.jpg

Lucas was not impressed :) oh, and it turns out the other guy was the producer of the Crystal skull, oops

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The Ethan Carter guy also says that you are allowed to have opinions on the writing if you have heard of the character Prospero from either Shakespeare or Poe, so I'm guessing the Thumbs are safe on this one...

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The Ethan Carter guy also says that you are allowed to have opinions on the writing if you have heard of the character Prospero from either Shakespeare or Poe, so I'm guessing the Thumbs are safe on this one...

You should probably be allowed to have opinions on the writing if you have read/heard it.

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LIEUTENANT ETHAN CARTER BLAKE. color your hair.

 

I wanted so badly for somebody to make this joke during the cast. They even had Danielly use her Rhode Island accent and nobody made the connection.

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I wanted so badly for somebody to make this joke during the cast. They even had Danielly use her Rhode Island accent and nobody made the connection.

 

It was the first thing I thought of, too.  But then I realize I didn't remember which game Lieutenant Carter Blake is from.  I only know him from Jake's rendition of his name.

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You should probably be allowed to have opinions on the writing if you have read/heard it.

 

Obv.

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It was the first thing I thought of, too.  But then I realize I didn't remember which game Lieutenant Carter Blake is from.  I only know him from Jake's rendition of his name.

 

There's some mighty Heavy Rain today, ain't there Lieutenant Carter Blake?

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The Ethan Carter guy also says that you are allowed to have opinions on the writing if you have heard of the character Prospero from either Shakespeare or Poe, so I'm guessing the Thumbs are safe on this one...

 

I like the implication that any work that references Shakespeare or Poe is somehow beyond critique because Shakespeare and Poe.

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Well, I think it was more the implication that the name came from the works of Poe and Shakespeare rather than from a dime store novel.
 

Not that that is an excuse when the name gives off the impression of being a dime store name. (and it's also kinda silly to have a random Shakespearean name in a modern setting)

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I think it seems like a name from a dime store novel because that's the exact kind of self-important illusion dime-store pulp would make.

 

Paul Prospero and the Capulet-Amontillado Conspiracy.

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So I just finished the Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and I loved it. I don't want to say too much, but a lot of what the thumbs people thought was dumb ends up making sense. There is method there, its just not supernatural stuff thrown on. Definitely worth playing. Also goddamn beautiful.

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The thing with the name Prospero is If it's just because that is also the name of a character what has supernatural powers, that's a shitty reason to make the reference. I dunno what happens in Ethan Carter but unless Paul Prospero exhibits a controlling possessiveness towards his daughter, it's kind of not an apt allusion to make (at least from the Shakespeare end of things). There's no point in shoehorning a reference in for the sake of making a reference; in fact I'd argue it's counterproductive.

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Paul Prospero in: The Macbeth Cipher

Paul Prospero in: The Raven Summit

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The thing with the name Prospero is If it's just because that is also the name of a character what has supernatural powers, that's a shitty reason to make the reference. I dunno what happens in Ethan Carter but unless Paul Prospero exhibits a controlling possessiveness towards his daughter, it's kind of not an apt allusion to make (at least from the Shakespeare end of things). There's no point in shoehorning a reference in for the sake of making a reference; in fact I'd argue it's counterproductive.

 

The typical reason for an allusion to Prospero from The Tempest is to illustrate the end of an era. The magician is putting away his tricks and laying down his staff, even though there is no one to replace him, because he is old and tired. I don't exactly know how that theme resonates with being a psychic detective looking for a missing kid, but then I haven't had a chance to play the game.

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I don't really know about the name being an allusion to anything, but, having finished the game, the name makes sense.

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In retrospect after finishing it, the writing in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter makes more sense

 

when you find out the whole thing is meant to have been written by a child.

 

Which, y'know, maybe it's a cop-out, but I figure it's at least worth considering.

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I didn't know Tom Bissell helped with the writing, that puts the game way higher on my priority list. I adore his stuff.

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I can really empathize with the airport story; my father worked for an airline, and the world of airlines and flights is a realm of madness, where standby doesn't even actually mean standby, depending on who asks, and when, and how much they paid.

 

So there's grades of standby, arranged in a sort of hierarchy the same way Angels are. As I recall, it goes something like:

  • Bumped Passengers (this is where Danielle probably ended up when she got a seat)
  • Paid Standby (rare, since most of the time you can spend another 25-50 bucks and just get a real seat)
  • Airline Employees On Serious Airline Business (like flight crews relocating for a route they are assigned to, or executives flying to 'meetings')
  • Luggage / Checked Carrion
  • Airline Employees Flying Free (fun fact: this is called 'negative space'; as in, money is not flowing out of these seats)

Since we flew 'negative space' a lot, I spent a lot of time as a kid sleeping in airports. It wasn't terrible; you learned how to sleep in all sorts of places, you got good at reading maps and signs, and you gained a new appreciation for having a newspaper to read, since at the time the only portable gaming system was the original GameBoy, which you could only play for so long before even that obnoxiously heavy power pack died. But yeah, even when you worked FOR the airline, you were subject to the whims of Bureaucron, Master of Paperwork.

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In retrospect after finishing it, the writing in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter makes more sense

 

when you find out the whole thing is meant to have been written by a child.

 

Which, y'know, maybe it's a cop-out, but I figure it's at least worth considering.

 

 

My biggest question when people pull a "they're all cows," ending is... what is the point? What does the fact that

the story was written by a child

ACTUALLY MEAN? What should I take with me when I leave?

That this story wasn't real? That it didn't matter? That the imagination of a child is *gasp* so powerful?

 

I don't get it.

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My biggest question when people pull a "they're all cows," ending is... what is the point? What does the fact that

the story was written by a child

ACTUALLY MEAN? What should I take with me when I leave?

That this story wasn't real? That it didn't matter? That the imagination of a child is *gasp* so powerful?

 

I don't get it.

 

I thought that like, as an overall experience, it worked. I mean, I also don't write games or anything, but I felt that even though 

the story wasn't "real" and so there was no payoff anything

that it worked as an experience. Including the writing, I mean the game is so pretty you could just walk around and enjoy that if you want, but I ended up enjoying the way they wrote it. I don't know that I took anything away from it at the end, other than "I enjoyed that experience"

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The idea that you don't just check all your bags is bizarre to me. Apparently American carriers regularly lose bags? You'd think 'we never lose bags' would be a cunning marketing tactic.

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