Image by Sally-Avernier. Check her work at deviantArt-http://sally-avernier.deviantart.com/
Just watched Deathly Hallows P.1
Great stuff through out.
Other have commented on it so I’ll just pick two moments that made it special for me.
1. The dance: I felt a little awkward with that tacked on scene between Harry and Hermione, but the two of them pulled it off. You know Harry just wants to cheer up Hermione who is depressed about Ron leaving them (and leaving her). But when it is over, she looks at him and simply turns around as if to say, “You’re not Ron.”
BAAM GO THE SHIPPERS!
2. The Tale of the Two Brothers: Holy Heck! My jaw just dropped to the floor. The animation, top notch, it had one part old fairy tale (the really creepy versions before the Brother’s Grimm/Disney clean them up), two part puppetry and three part eye candy. Simple and sublime.
As an added note: I liked the “zip-me up” moment. Yes, not like it happens on the book, but funny enough with the ear less twin thrown in for good measure. The folks at Potter Cast say it was awkward, but considering that the relationship got such a short drift in Mov 6, that the characters simply had their relationship interrupted before they could get comfortable with each other.
Plus it ended right where I knew it would end, or at least a moment after. I knew that Shell Cottage was the perfect midway point after Dobby (sorry, I have something in my eye), but they added the last bit with Voldy just to remind us that this is far from over.
Not great, at least by the standards of what came before, but it does the job.
For this installment Bethesda takes the players back to the West Coast or at least as close as they dare without retreading the steps of the Vault Dweller (Fallout) and The Chosen One (Fallout 2).
The Good: The wasteland is far more colorful, the characters are more engaging and even if your not playing in hardcore mode, it’s will remain challenging for most players through out. And for fans of the franchise (I’m taking Fallout and Fallout 2 devotees), the call backs and references to earlier games abound.
The Interesting: You have faction based reputation, so as you play you build up your reputation (good or bad) with a vast variety of factions. Towns, governments, gangs and movements all form an opinion of you depending on how your actions affect them. Like I said above the Mojave Wasteland is far more colorful, with red rock lined canyons, actual trees and even snow caped mountains. And there is more variety of critters as well, which makes for more interesting combat.
The Bad: (HERE BE SPOILERS!) Here is where things take a downturn, especially if your a fan of Fallout 3. The storyline fails to immerse you the way past games did. While the story in Fallout 3 literally kicked you out of the womb here you wake up after being shot in head. Fine you want to get revenge on the SOB who did it, but besides that, what happens in the wasteland is of little concern to you. In Fallout 3, the world seemed to revolve on your every move, your actions either sung or vilified by Three Dog on the radio. Not so in this game. In fact, it seems that whatever you do, you have very little real impact on the game.
Not only that, but you will see the twist a mile away. It suffers from the inevitable sandbox shrinkage far to early in the game (when you realize that the game world is not as big as you thought it was). The reputation system is a bit broken as well, as doing things that are beneficial for some factions will still garner you a loss of karma/reputation with them. It even has the annoying feature of telling you you failed quests you didn’t even knew you were a part off. And you suffer from ending fatigue (as I did while playing Morrowind) because while you know how the game is going to end, you have to run around and do a bunch of quests that simply streech the game play further.
This game is then an adequate continuation of the Fallout franchise, but one I consider could have been delivered via DLC rather than packaging in an entire new game. Lets see how New Vegas own DLC packs deal with the flaws above, and I hope that Bethesda has not abandoned the East Coast completel
Yes the graphics are always improving and the physics engines both imitate and subvert reality in many outstanding ways but now we have something more….
Story.
At the dawn of video games, there wasn’t much space in cartridges or floppy disks for stories. Most developers didn’t bother, but as the first decade of gaming progressed (that’s the 80’s for you youngsters, yeah the ones wearing the John Hughes’ movie wardrobe), RPGs crossed over to home computers and PCs, which meant stretching the hardware to accommodate story beyond “here be aliens, shoot them!” explanation of the earlier frantic gaming mechanic.
Most of said story remained buried in the manuals with the game itself providing more shooting, spells swinging and sword bashing than complicated plot points.
Not anymore.
Somewhere around the turn of the century a combination of more powerful machines and graphic cards, game worlds could be rendered in glorious 3D (as opposed to the chunky polygons of the century before) and with plenty of space in both hard drives and disks (CDs, then DVDs and now Blu-Ray) they could inject great soundtracks, thousands of lines of spoken dialogue by dozens of highly skilled voice actors (and not a few celebrity cameos).
Which still leaves one thing….
Story!
The best games in the last few years, specially in the Console/PC RPG market, not only have stunning visuals and fast paced action but powerful story lines. You don’t simply want to blast your enemies into pink (or green or blue, whatever) mist, but you want to known what your father was working on, who is behind the abduction of of human colonies and why your family was slaughtered while you were spared.
Story matters.
Story makes the difference.
The age of true interactive entertainment is here.
——-
And to show you what I mean, here is a bit of epic writing that turns the Mass Effect franchise into something more than alien fodder blasting or Space Opera Light:
Well Magic: The Gathering™ doesn’t have trap cards, that’s another collectible card game with a anime/cartoon show on Saturday mornings.
Alas, the addiction has returned.
Way back in the Nineties, the granddaddy of collectible card games came into a market crowded by AD&D splat books on the RPG side and bland tabletop board games on the other. It mixed and matched elements of the two and added a $$ making idea, lets make the cards collectible and like splat books, we will launch new expansions every so often which the players must buy or find themselves defeated the next time they play.
I bought many a card and lost many a game until I grew sick of it.
Mainly because I ended up losing far more than I ended up winning.
I even gave away all my cards and swore the game off.
Then last year I bought a couple of premade decks just to play when the regular RPG group wanted a break from the story. I didn’t buy too many cards this time around. Not going to get hooked again. Just take them out of the box once in awhile and play, loose and put them back in the box again.
Then a friend of ours discovered that a local Gaming/Comic book store was having an offer for the new Magic edition.
Half-price.
So, yeah I bought some.
And I lost.
But then I decided that instead of playing the decks as is, I should do something I resisted doing a long time ago, creating my own deck of cards. I went to the Holy Internet and found the answers I sought.
Do I go the U/F route with the new release of Kelly Meding’s As I Lie Dead?
I recently read Changes and it was good, as was Meding’s first book, Three Days to Dead. Maybe it will kick start the stalled Revision/Revising on my on U/F tittle.
On the other hand I pulled an all-nighter just to finish Sanderson’s second book of the Mistborn trilogy, The Well of Ascension, I haven’t done that in years which should tell you how good the book is (review to be posted soon on SuD) so getting The Hero of Agesshould cure my epic fantasy itch.
And last but not least there is David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. A Short Victorious War would certainly put me in a space warfare kind of mood which is the perfect mood to be in when you’re writing the outline(s) for your own space sci-fi trilogy (yes, my head is that big, I’m not surprised you noticed).
Any suggestions?
——
Talking epic sci-fi as well as media premiere’s (Kelly’s book as well as the subject of the clip below debut today!) I leave you with this video from Starcraft 2-Wings of Liberty.
The Honor of the Queen is the second book in the Honor Harrington series. It carries the tradition of strong narrative with a great main character at the center of the action. Fresh from her victory in Basilisk Station, Honor is sent to escort a diplomatic delegation from the Kingdom of Maticore to the planet Grayson.
One problem, Honor is a woman.
Grayson is a heaven for misogynistic Mormon-Expys.
And the population of are considered social moderates compared to their exiled brethren from Masasa, whose sole mission in life is to bring the “apostates” to heal by any means necessary (they have used nukes in the past, yeah they are that kind of folks) including allying themselves with the Republic of Heaven, Manticore’s sworn enemy so they can get the necessary tech to beat the Graysonites to submission.
This is a typical “Cold War” scenario where in two great powers, on the verge of war, manipulate local politics to their advantage. In essence is a repeat of the plot of the first book, On Basilisk Station, but with less infodumps and some new wrinkles that keep the situation fresh enough to be enjoyable.
But certain problems crop up:
Orientalism: I get that these cultures don’t measure up to the standards of either Heaven or Manticore (their extreme misogyny being a key point of contention between each side and their would be allies), and while Grayson comes of the better with their intention to learn and change their ways (to match their new Heaven protectors) they still need pried open by through Honor’s near heroic sacrifice. Then and only then (and with their Axe Crazy/Religious Fanatic enemies) at their door will they support whatever the Manticorians offer (in good faith of course). Of course the Massadans, well….
Complete Monsters: The Masadans are the epitome of religious fanaticism. Use of extreme measures like nuking a planet-check, torture of prisoners in the most vile way possible-check, no deviation (with screening, frothing at the mouth and crazy fascist speech thrown in for good measure) from their divinely ordained mission even though they would be better off letting their neighbors live in peace-check. Except for one sane man among them, all are complete bastards with no redeeming qualities, which leads me to my third and final point…..
Strawman Political: And how! Anyone that skews to one side of the political divide or another is seen as either a fool or a dangerous extremist. Only those who agree with Honor’s point of view are safe from this. Particularly bad with the character of Houseman, who while making some good points in the beginning, but his utter cowardice later on undercuts him completely and even leads to a near-no holds bar beat down from our resident Amazon/Tactical Genius. Not that people like that don’t exists, but it seems that the character exists only for the author to prove a point, mainly that college educated liberals are sissies.
These things might annoy some readers enough to make them walk away from the books, but the action is so fast and intense, the main character so likable, and the situation so desperate, that it you can blow through these. In his defense, the Havenites do not come off as complete idiots or inhumane and the Manticorians are not perfect, even if they are the chosen good guys, so it seems that the author is aware of issues.
Overall, the book is entertaining, engrossing and well worth it.
12.The Dirty Dozen: Of course! Where to begin? A subversion of every war movie made until that date and of the attitudes of the time The Dirty Dozen doesn’t pull any punches. War is a dirty business that requires dirty men and some of them are dirtier than others. Murders, rapists and all around scalawags. In an army of millions, you are sure to find a few of them here or there and Major Reissman does just that. Doesn’t hurt that it is played by Lee Marvin. The final sequence is standard war movie stuff, with big explosions and everything, but what leads to it is what makes this movie stand out from the rest.
11. Dune: Another book made into a movie. Panned by critics and bombing at the box office when it came out, never the less, David Lynch’s take on Frank Herbert’s classic is stunning. The sense of style and scale are amazing, and the rock opera score (from Toto no less) exceeds all expectations. It may not be the most faithful of adaptations, but stands on its own as a sci-fi classic. LONG LIVE THE FIGHTERS!
10.Blade Runner: Another sci-fi adaptation (of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). It was Ridley Scott before Scott became a legend in his own right. The movie that cemented the cyberpunk look; mega cities, megacorps, the Japanese take over of the world and the sense that Man, whatever he may be, is but a sliver of thought in an ocean of ideas. The flying car sequences alone are enough to pull you in and the final fight with the replicant leader tugs at your emotional heartstrings. “I want you to use the machine on her, Deckard.”
9. Akira: The movie that defined anime outside of Japan (also an adaptation to film, this time from the manga of the same name). Deviant youths cruising the chaotic streets of Neo-Tokyo, old psychic souls trapped in the bodies of children, government conspiracies both large and small, Akira has it all, it has it spades and threw in an orbital kill-sat for good measure. Blowing up Tokyo (twice!) never felt so eerie or satisfying. The psychic scream scene at the beginning of the movie, plus the nightmare escape from the hospital are a must for all anime/movie lovers. AKIRAAAAAAA!!!!!
8. Ghost in the Shell: Another manga adaptation to the big screen. It’s cyberpunk 2.0. Where Akira is visceral, Ghost in the Shell is cerebral and told from the point of view of the government conspiracy, or at least those who work within government to keep it on track. It doesn’t hold back on the action either although it isn’t as dark as it’s predecessors, it does show that technology has its price and that the human soul may not be anything more than a memory. Cyborgs never looked so good since Deckard’s smoking replicant girlfriend.
7. Dr. Strangelove: Political satire at its finest, made more so intriguing in that it was built entirely around the words of leading nuclear war theorists (the man-to-woman ration thing was real, as ludicrous as it sounded then or today). It also has Peter Sellers at his finest, as a demented ex-nazi with an evil gloved hand and a meek President trying to explain to his Soviet counterpart, that unfortunately one of his generals “went a little funny in the head” and now Moscow is about to go KABOOM, which strangely enough it did, but because of the Soviet’s own Doomsday Device, talk about Mutually Assured Destruction! “We must protect our precious bodily fluids!”
6. X-Men: Why this movie and not Iron Man or The Dark Knight? Because those movies would not exist it if were not for the first X-Men movie. As a movie it made the modern superhero movie possible (and as a franchise it nearly killed it, although the Superman remake and Hulk were far worse). Not an adaptation per say, since it only took the characters and concepts from Stan Lee’s long running series (part of Marvel’s New Wave of comic books that started in the 1960s), it deludes the essence into life-action imagery without going overboard.
5. The Longest Day: One of the last truly epic war movies shock full of movie stars (watch it and see if you can spot all of them, hint, two Bonds appear on screen). Accurate and realistic (for the time), it tackles one of the most important days in the 20th Century, the invasion of Europe or D-Day. Notable in that non-English speakers lines are not dubbed but subtitled and that the Germans are treated realistically.
4.Saving Private Ryan: Steven Spilberg/Tom Hanks at their finest, with a great backup of performances (and like #5, a few hidden celebrity gems). Where as Longest Day is epic, Private Ryan is gritty. It strips away the vainglorious nonsense of past war movies, without the action cinema excesses. These are real men fighting a real enemy and facing death around every corner. Visceral, dramatic and soul wrenching, you can’t watch this movie and not shed a few manly tears. “I’ll see you on the beach!”
3. Gladiator: Anachronistic and accurate as the same time, this is Ridley Scott at his finest. A soaring score, matched with bloody imagery that leaves no doubt Rome, for all it’s wealth and glory is a primal, self-consuming society. I also found it to be a deft commentary on our own modern society and our claims at superiority through modernity. The subversive political subtext is there, if you really listen. “On my mark, unleash Hell!”
2. Empire Strikes Back: This is the way you make a sequel (and the first thing you do is get George Lucas out of the director’s chair). The second movie in a trilogy can make or break it, and Empire saves it. The stakes are higher, the Empire (and Darth Vader) are scarier and the mysteries of the Force run deeper. If you thought that the might of Empire was impressive when you saw the Death Star, it doesn’t compare to the sheer terror of a kilometer long warship or the inexorable approach of AT-AT on your position. “Apology accepted Captain Needa.”
1. Star Wars: Not the prequel (we will not speak of the prequels). Space Opera at it’s best. Along with Jaws, it cemented the movie blockbuster as the pinnacle of the Hollywood movie experience. George Lucas did what no one dared to do before (and many have failed to replicate, especially Lucas himself), a classic for the ages. It also defined the concept of the movie franchise, with millions of novels, video games, action figures and other assorted paraphernalia. After Star Wars, nothing was the same. “May the Force be with you.”
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I left out a few movies, such as LotR, Batman Begins/Dark Knight, The Matrix (only the first one), V for Vendetta, Sin City, When Harry Met Sally, Harry Potter and many others, but I only had 12 spaces and I wanted to highlight some movies that others would have missed.
And to cap it all off, here is the original trailer for The Dirty Dozen.
After seeing the new trailer for Fallout 3 New Vegas, I decided that I had to get an Xbox 360 (don’t like the control scheme on the PS machines among other things). I’m a bit behind the gaming curve at the moment, but that also means I can snag a lot of great used games for half to a third of the price such as:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Halo 3
Mass Effect
Fable 2
GTA IV
Gears of War
Fallout 3
And a few others.
The plan is too avoid extreme gaming addiction by acquiring one game a month. Play them fully and then buy the next one. I may never catch up to the latest games that way, but for me, it’s all about the fun of playing them!
——
And to celebrate, a rebroadcast of one of my favorite Halo AMV (made by yours truly):
Ruins of Empire 
“You’re not Ron.” DH P.1 (SPOILERS)
Image by Sally-Avernier. Check her work at deviantArt-http://sally-avernier.deviantart.com/
Just watched Deathly Hallows P.1
Great stuff through out.
Other have commented on it so I’ll just pick two moments that made it special for me.
1. The dance: I felt a little awkward with that tacked on scene between Harry and Hermione, but the two of them pulled it off. You know Harry just wants to cheer up Hermione who is depressed about Ron leaving them (and leaving her). But when it is over, she looks at him and simply turns around as if to say, “You’re not Ron.”
BAAM GO THE SHIPPERS!
2. The Tale of the Two Brothers: Holy Heck! My jaw just dropped to the floor. The animation, top notch, it had one part old fairy tale (the really creepy versions before the Brother’s Grimm/Disney clean them up), two part puppetry and three part eye candy. Simple and sublime.
As an added note: I liked the “zip-me up” moment. Yes, not like it happens on the book, but funny enough with the ear less twin thrown in for good measure. The folks at Potter Cast say it was awkward, but considering that the relationship got such a short drift in Mov 6, that the characters simply had their relationship interrupted before they could get comfortable with each other.
Plus it ended right where I knew it would end, or at least a moment after. I knew that Shell Cottage was the perfect midway point after Dobby (sorry, I have something in my eye), but they added the last bit with Voldy just to remind us that this is far from over.
Just my two cents!
——–
Listening to Telepopmusik-Don’t Look Back:
Deathly Hallows
Harry Potter
Herminone
movies
Ron
stuff