also i don't remember aslan's death having a lot of impact on me
as far as i remember, his death and rebirth were in subsequent chapters? "deep magic from the beginning of time" and then "deeper magic from before the beginning of time". i didn't think "wow, what an amazing sacrifice!" so much as "damn, aslan, you just magicked circles around that nutty witch"
in any case my favorite books were a horse and his boy and the sailing one (dawn treader?), so maybe those are less obviously allegorical
the end of dawn treader is heavily allegorial, iirc that was the point where i 'got it', though before that point i think it was mostly just an adventure story
also it's possible the lamb = Jesus association is less potent if you haven't encountered it in church, idk
i still primarily think of "Lamb of God" as a band.
obviously i'm still "culturally christian" in the sense my code of ethics is bla bla bla, but stuff like "jesus died for our sins" is harder to absorb from cartoon than those sorts of cultural norms
while we're on the subject of childhood fears, the scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader with the pool that turned you into gold and the golden statue at the bottom freaked the hell out of me as a kid
i had to stop reading there and didn't come back to it for a long time
while we're on the subject of childhood fears, the scene in Voyage of the Dawn Treader with the pool that turned you into gold and the golden statue at the bottom freaked the hell out of me as a kid
i had to stop reading there and didn't come back to it for a long time
That was pretty freaky. Wonder how that'll turn out when they inevitably make a movie adaptation
Okay, I think it’s time to voice my opinions on Film Crit Hulk.
I do have a certain beef against him, but it’s not for his gimmick (although I’m not a huge fan of it either). Rather, the beef I have against him is that I’m generally skeptical of critics that hype Quality TV and modern blockbusters at the expense of anything old. From what little I’ve read of him, he seems like an exemplar of this.
I mean, yes, people who act like art and media aren’t as good as they once were are irritating, but I find people who act like art and media are better than they ever were just as irritating in their own way. While I don’t hate the modern ways of doing things, there are things that were done in the past that are valuable but have been unfortunately thrown aside in favour of “new! new! new!”. At the risk of sounding like John K, I do tend to prefer 2-D animation and practical effects to CGI, although I’m not entirely against it either. I consider The Incredibles one of my favourite films of all time, after all.
Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest that he or anyone else intentionally does this, Kex. It’s an unconscious bias that just sorta happens. It still kinda annoys me, though.
For the record, I would be annoyed at Todd for this if he became a film critic instead of a music critic, too, so I’m not just against Film Crit Hulk here.
also i don't remember aslan's death having a lot of impact on me
as far as i remember, his death and rebirth were in subsequent chapters? "deep magic from the beginning of time" and then "deeper magic from before the beginning of time". i didn't think "wow, what an amazing sacrifice!" so much as "damn, aslan, you just magicked circles around that nutty witch"
in any case my favorite books were a horse and his boy and the sailing one (dawn treader?), so maybe those are less obviously allegorical
weirdly, i felt the ending was disappointing and undermined the ethical freedom of everything prior
idk, this is maybe the typical reaction
I couldn't really find much "ethical freedom" in Mass Effect. You could either be a dick or nice and ultimately those were the only two paths- like many games with morality meters the problem was that a Paragon rarely had reason to do a Renegade action because Paragon never really had to sacrifice anything. The series got much better towards the end at nonetheless making these moments feel meaningful which I think is a lot more important than having the choice. At any rate the ending forced the player to reconsider the entire preceding game in a lot of fascinating ways- the deliberate inversion of making the "Renegade-esque" option a peaceful one and the "Paragon-ish" option a violent one stands out in particular. I think it was a mature ending to a series that stumbled a lot when it came to maturely implementing choice. As it stands, sometimes the best choices in games are the ones that force you, as a player, to decide what your decisions meant. I put a lot more thought into Mass Effect's final choice, the dialogue choices in SMT, and the moment to moment decisions that secretly were choices in Spec Ops: The Line than I ever did in any game where the impact is directly shown.
i'm not super invested in this, Mass Effect is not one of my favourite series
but i found it incredibly frustrating that the whole ending seemed, for me, to hinge on the reapers being unreasonable assholes and there being an obvious 'good' ending that seemed entirely possible but was disallowed purely because the reapers were assholes
See, I think that if ME3 wanted to end on a note of moral complexity, they should have started early in the game and kept at it.
assuming Paragon Shepard and all the right choices in the earlier game, Shepard gets most of the galaxy following behind him with, what, 4-6 casualties that we actually care about? forcing players to make a decision with actual consequences after the rest of the plot is like putting Sophie Scholl on after, i don't know, a Transformers movie marathon, or 6 hours of the MCU. Your audience isn't prepared for that kind of thought, so they're not going to be pleased when they're forced into it. I swear, if ME3 did what they did at the ending throughout the entire game, it would have reached the legendary "Video game citizen kane" rank
i'm not super invested in this, Mass Effect is not one of my favourite series
but i found it incredibly frustrating that the whole ending seemed, for me, to hinge on the reapers being unreasonable assholes and there being an obvious 'good' ending that seemed entirely possible but was disallowed purely because the reapers were assholes
also that. three games worth of yelling "WE MUST KILL THE REaPERS" makes an audience member want to kill the reapers. Bioshock got away with ruining the goal at the last second and being a cocktease, but it worked because their in-game reason was iron-clad and intriguing enough to distract from how cockteasy they were being
well yes, if just plain regular 'kill the reapers' had been an option that would have qualified as a good ending in my book, given the alternatives presented
basically i guess i would have liked the opportunity to reason with the Catalyst?
because the reapers were wrong, dammit, the geth storyline proved that
You don't always get that opportunity. Sometimes you have to make decisions that make a lot of people unhappy. Honestly the fact that Shepard bends everyone's will so effectively is kind of one of my issues with the series; with almost no effort the player never has to truly experience any sort of personal failure.
Besides, Synthesis and Control were technically peaceful options. And Destroy was deliberately made unsatisfying because the player is lead to believe for the entire game that /somehow/ wiping out an entire race, evil or not, won't have collateral damage. So faced with the impossibility of thus, yo can decide "fuck synthetics, the reapers need to die" or you can adjust your thinking to the new information.
Is it a fun choice? Is it a choice I wanted to make? Hell no. But it did something few other moments in the series did: it made me feel like I could make the wrong decision, and never told me if I did or didn't. And that makes the experience all the more valuable.
basically i guess i would have liked the opportunity to reason with the Catalyst?
because the reapers were wrong, dammit, the geth storyline proved that
You don't always get that opportunity. Sometimes you have to make decisions that make a lot of people unhappy. Honestly the fact that Shepard bends everyone's will so effectively is kind of one of my issues with the series; with almost no effort the player never has to truly experience any sort of personal failure.
Besides, Synthesis and Control were technically peaceful options. And Destroy was deliberately made unsatisfying because the player is lead to believe for the entire game that /somehow/ wiping out an entire race, evil or not, won't have collateral damage. So faced with the impossibility of thus, yo can decide "fuck synthetics, the reapers need to die" or you can adjust your thinking to the new information.
Is it a fun choice? Is it a choice I wanted to make? Hell no. But it did something few other moments in the series did: it made me feel like I could make the wrong decision, and never told me if I did or didn't. And that makes the experience all the more valuable.
Concerning destroy, all I'll say is that, if you're going to make the one goal of the PC over three games have a great cost, please don't tell them 5 minutes before they get it. It's less adding moral complexity and more Lucy stealing the football from Charlie Brown. Also, um, we had already caused the genocide of an entire race. They were called the Collectors. We blew up their base in the center of the galaxy and whatnot. Also possibly the Rachni. Sure, the Reapers are bigger, but still.
Concerning Control, you have to understand that this is the option associated with TIM, of all people. The whole game's been saying that controlling the reapers is a stupid idea and TIM's a brainwashed nutter. The last conversation with him is basically proving to TIM himself that he's a brainwashed nutter. And now you're going to trust the little glowing boy who says that it'll totally work for you?
Concerning Synthesis, it kind of comes out of nowhere? The fusion of flesh and metal's been sort of a theme in ME, with Saren's whole spiel and the Quarian/Geth thing, but it's never been one of the primary ones. AI becoming human in terms of thought? Yes. But it's kind of a jump to make, and I'm sure it left a lot of players going "what the hell does this have to do with anything"?
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
How come nobody wants to be Mayor of Queen City anymore? :<
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Coming soon: The Seventh Sense
The plot twist is BOTH main characters were dead the whole time!
Opponent busted my ass about forgetting about the new tuck rule for 5 seconds because i happened to draw a card during those 5 seconds. Even when I clearly showed him that the card i drew had no bleeding connection to me putting my commander back in its zone.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
Now you've got me wondering what the theoretical post limit is for a single Vanilla thread.
I'm not even sure what the limiting factor would be. Vanilla itself? The underlying database?
Destroy fits right in with the theme of cycles, in this case, genocide. It waits until the last minute to tell you the collateral damage because it's SUPPOSED to be upsetting and surprising and because the game was structured around creating the weapon and if it was known earlier that it could destroy all synthetic life that would make the Crucible's creation feel a lot more evil than it needed to feel.
Control is, as I mentioned, deliberate inversion. With the player's newfound understanding of what the Destroy option will cause Control would seem like the new best decision, but knowing that it's what one of the main villains wanted casts it in an unsettling light and sheds doubt on the idea that it would lead to lasting change.
The thing about Synthesis is that even though it seems demonstrably better than the other two, because it comes out of left field it feels particularly scary and unknown. For a lot of players, the ambiguity scared them into doing one of the other two.
All three are effective, and the presence of choice lends each individual option greater gravitas than if there wasn't choice. The VI lays out in explicit, obvious detail everything necessary about each option while leaving enough open ended that the player really, really had to think about what they are doing. The lack of tangible effect paradoxically makes it a great expression of choice because in real life you fundamentally can't know the effect of alternate actions.
Comments
obviously i'm still "culturally christian" in the sense my code of ethics is bla bla bla, but stuff like "jesus died for our sins" is harder to absorb from cartoon than those sorts of cultural norms
i had to stop reading there and didn't come back to it for a long time
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I do have a certain beef against him, but it’s not for his gimmick (although I’m not a huge fan of it either). Rather, the beef I have against him is that I’m generally skeptical of critics that hype Quality TV and modern blockbusters at the expense of anything old. From what little I’ve read of him, he seems like an exemplar of this.
I mean, yes, people who act like art and media aren’t as good as they once were are irritating, but I find people who act like art and media are better than they ever were just as irritating in their own way. While I don’t hate the modern ways of doing things, there are things that were done in the past that are valuable but have been unfortunately thrown aside in favour of “new! new! new!”. At the risk of sounding like John K, I do tend to prefer 2-D animation and practical effects to CGI, although I’m not entirely against it either. I consider The Incredibles one of my favourite films of all time, after all.
Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest that he or anyone else intentionally does this, Kex. It’s an unconscious bias that just sorta happens. It still kinda annoys me, though.
For the record, I would be annoyed at Todd for this if he became a film critic instead of a music critic, too, so I’m not just against Film Crit Hulk here.
but i found it incredibly frustrating that the whole ending seemed, for me, to hinge on the reapers being unreasonable assholes and there being an obvious 'good' ending that seemed entirely possible but was disallowed purely because the reapers were assholes
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
that would have been a good ending
instead they're like 'well here's three horrible options, take your pick, asshole'
because the reapers were wrong, dammit, the geth storyline proved that
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i'll edit that
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Besides, Synthesis and Control were technically peaceful options. And Destroy was deliberately made unsatisfying because the player is lead to believe for the entire game that /somehow/ wiping out an entire race, evil or not, won't have collateral damage. So faced with the impossibility of thus, yo can decide "fuck synthetics, the reapers need to die" or you can adjust your thinking to the new information.
Is it a fun choice? Is it a choice I wanted to make? Hell no. But it did something few other moments in the series did: it made me feel like I could make the wrong decision, and never told me if I did or didn't. And that makes the experience all the more valuable.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Concerning destroy, all I'll say is that, if you're going to make the one goal of the PC over three games have a great cost, please don't tell them 5 minutes before they get it. It's less adding moral complexity and more Lucy stealing the football from Charlie Brown. Also, um, we had already caused the genocide of an entire race. They were called the Collectors. We blew up their base in the center of the galaxy and whatnot. Also possibly the Rachni. Sure, the Reapers are bigger, but still.
yntkt
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
The plot twist is BOTH main characters were dead the whole time!
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
I'm not even sure what the limiting factor would be. Vanilla itself? The underlying database?
Destroy fits right in with the theme of cycles, in this case, genocide. It waits until the last minute to tell you the collateral damage because it's SUPPOSED to be upsetting and surprising and because the game was structured around creating the weapon and if it was known earlier that it could destroy all synthetic life that would make the Crucible's creation feel a lot more evil than it needed to feel.
Control is, as I mentioned, deliberate inversion. With the player's newfound understanding of what the Destroy option will cause Control would seem like the new best decision, but knowing that it's what one of the main villains wanted casts it in an unsettling light and sheds doubt on the idea that it would lead to lasting change.
The thing about Synthesis is that even though it seems demonstrably better than the other two, because it comes out of left field it feels particularly scary and unknown. For a lot of players, the ambiguity scared them into doing one of the other two.
All three are effective, and the presence of choice lends each individual option greater gravitas than if there wasn't choice. The VI lays out in explicit, obvious detail everything necessary about each option while leaving enough open ended that the player really, really had to think about what they are doing. The lack of tangible effect paradoxically makes it a great expression of choice because in real life you fundamentally can't know the effect of alternate actions.