Eric Allen's Blog, page 5
April 19, 2020
*does happy dance* IT'S DONE!!!! ERMAGERD, FINALLY!!!
So, I just finished the final draft of Memories of What Never Was, and if you feel the great urge to read it, you can do so for free at the bottom of this page.
So, about 20 years ago, I was writing my first novel length story. It was crap. The less said about it the better. And I was coming up with what would be my second novel length story at the time. That one was also crap. But while writing that second story I did a lot of thought on the backstory and how everything came to be in the world of that second novel length story. So naturally, I wrote a story that takes thousands of years later next, instead of the backstory for my third novel length story. It was REALLY crap. And then I came back to the backstory for that second novel length story and thought, yeah, I could do that one. So I wrote it out, and I called it Beyond the Lost Horizon. This was about fifteen or sixteen years ago. At the time, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't. It was crap.
I had big plans for that book. It was a massive tome, almost 350k words. And it was to be the first book of a six book series. I even wrote a rough draft of what would have been the second book. Which was craaaaaaaaap. Anyway, I tried to sell that one. I tried HARD to sell it. I probably sent submissions in to about 300 different literary agents and publishers. I got one bite, but it turned out to be a scam in the end. Defeated, I set it aside, and went to work on my next project, which was the original version of Spires of Infinity. Which was actually not that bad, but did have some serious problems with it.
Once I finished Spires of Infinity, I looked back on Beyond the Lost Horizon, and thought to myself, you know what, self? I can do better. I really liked the world in which the story took place, but the characters were pretty bland and generic, and the story was cliche, generic, and just plain terrible, and the writing wasn't great either. I thought to myself, this world, and these characters deserve better than what I'd given them the first time around. So I set to rewriting the entire thing from scratch. I developed a TON of new lore, and gave the characters new, and better motivations. And I started writing it. And it turned out crap. So I set it aside again, and went to work on my next novel length story I Am Nobody, which, again, wasn't terrible, but wasn't great either. And all while working on that one, I was thinking how I could fix Beyond the Lost Horizon to make it work.
And so, about 5 years ago I started work on the current version. The original story was way, WAY too long at 350k words. I wanted something that was more in the 130k-170k range. So I took what was about the first third of the original Beyond the Lost Horizon story and completely reworked it with all the new lore, and basically completely new characters that just happened to have the same names, and I called it Memories of What Never Was, which would be the first book of the Beyond the Lost Horizon trilogy.
There was a lot of work that needed to be put into it to get it just right. I rewrote it probably three times before I came up with a first draft of something that I actually felt good about. And I had to put it on hold for long stretches due to burnout at my job with the Post Office, and needing to work through some story elements that weren't quite working before continuing. It's taken me about 5 years to get Memories of What Never Was to the point where I actually feel like it's finished, on top of all the other versions and incarnations that this story has been through before it. I've rewritten this book so many times I should get a medal for keeping my sanity.
I really like this version of the story, and of the characters. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of it. I'm actually pretty proud of the FINALLY completed book. I've been working on this thing, in some form or another, off and on, for half of my entire life now. And it's finally in a form that I feel ISN'T crap. ........and it's only 1/3 of the story....... *sigh* The good news is that I have the characters, the world, and the lore all figured out. It really took some doing to put it together and get it to this point, but the foundation is already there instead of being built from scratch, so hopefully, I don't take another 40 years to write the next two volumes.
Anyway, if you feel the great urge to check out the product of my blood, sweat, and tears, again, you can read it at the bottom of this page And a reminder that it is in manuscript format, which means 12 point courier font, double spaced, and all italics are underlined instead. Also, copyright, etc. I own it. It's mine. Don't steal it. I worked on it for twenty freaking years.
So, about 20 years ago, I was writing my first novel length story. It was crap. The less said about it the better. And I was coming up with what would be my second novel length story at the time. That one was also crap. But while writing that second story I did a lot of thought on the backstory and how everything came to be in the world of that second novel length story. So naturally, I wrote a story that takes thousands of years later next, instead of the backstory for my third novel length story. It was REALLY crap. And then I came back to the backstory for that second novel length story and thought, yeah, I could do that one. So I wrote it out, and I called it Beyond the Lost Horizon. This was about fifteen or sixteen years ago. At the time, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't. It was crap.
I had big plans for that book. It was a massive tome, almost 350k words. And it was to be the first book of a six book series. I even wrote a rough draft of what would have been the second book. Which was craaaaaaaaap. Anyway, I tried to sell that one. I tried HARD to sell it. I probably sent submissions in to about 300 different literary agents and publishers. I got one bite, but it turned out to be a scam in the end. Defeated, I set it aside, and went to work on my next project, which was the original version of Spires of Infinity. Which was actually not that bad, but did have some serious problems with it.
Once I finished Spires of Infinity, I looked back on Beyond the Lost Horizon, and thought to myself, you know what, self? I can do better. I really liked the world in which the story took place, but the characters were pretty bland and generic, and the story was cliche, generic, and just plain terrible, and the writing wasn't great either. I thought to myself, this world, and these characters deserve better than what I'd given them the first time around. So I set to rewriting the entire thing from scratch. I developed a TON of new lore, and gave the characters new, and better motivations. And I started writing it. And it turned out crap. So I set it aside again, and went to work on my next novel length story I Am Nobody, which, again, wasn't terrible, but wasn't great either. And all while working on that one, I was thinking how I could fix Beyond the Lost Horizon to make it work.
And so, about 5 years ago I started work on the current version. The original story was way, WAY too long at 350k words. I wanted something that was more in the 130k-170k range. So I took what was about the first third of the original Beyond the Lost Horizon story and completely reworked it with all the new lore, and basically completely new characters that just happened to have the same names, and I called it Memories of What Never Was, which would be the first book of the Beyond the Lost Horizon trilogy.
There was a lot of work that needed to be put into it to get it just right. I rewrote it probably three times before I came up with a first draft of something that I actually felt good about. And I had to put it on hold for long stretches due to burnout at my job with the Post Office, and needing to work through some story elements that weren't quite working before continuing. It's taken me about 5 years to get Memories of What Never Was to the point where I actually feel like it's finished, on top of all the other versions and incarnations that this story has been through before it. I've rewritten this book so many times I should get a medal for keeping my sanity.
I really like this version of the story, and of the characters. I feel like I've done a pretty good job of it. I'm actually pretty proud of the FINALLY completed book. I've been working on this thing, in some form or another, off and on, for half of my entire life now. And it's finally in a form that I feel ISN'T crap. ........and it's only 1/3 of the story....... *sigh* The good news is that I have the characters, the world, and the lore all figured out. It really took some doing to put it together and get it to this point, but the foundation is already there instead of being built from scratch, so hopefully, I don't take another 40 years to write the next two volumes.
Anyway, if you feel the great urge to check out the product of my blood, sweat, and tears, again, you can read it at the bottom of this page And a reminder that it is in manuscript format, which means 12 point courier font, double spaced, and all italics are underlined instead. Also, copyright, etc. I own it. It's mine. Don't steal it. I worked on it for twenty freaking years.
April 17, 2020
Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
In 1997 Final Fantasy 7 came out. A friend of mine bought it and a Playstation on the release day, and we spend all night long playing through the Midgar section of the game. We were blown away by the graphics, and the characters, and the story. The game pulled us in, and only when it was like 3 or 4 AM did we stop for some much needed sleep.
I, like the genius that I was, had spent my money on a N64, rather than a Playstation, expecting the Nintendo console to continue to be where JRPGs were headed, and was not able to afford a Playstation for almost another year. (by selling my N64 to that same friend) I became obsessed with this game. When I finally got a copy of my own, I played it every single day for an entire year, looking for all of the little secrets held within. In my opinion, it is the last truly good game in the Final Fantasy series. The series never again reached the same scope and height that it did in Final Fantasy 7. Looking back, it's not my favorite Final Fantasy game, that would be 6, but it's the game in the series that most captivated my interest upon release.
When they remade the opening cinematic to show off what the PS3 was capable of, I freaked out over the prospect of getting a remake of the game with modern graphics and voice acting. I was sooooooo disappointed when I found that there were no actual plans for it. I bought a PSP just so I could play Crisis Core when it came out, and I played through Dirge of Cerberus when it was released. I jury rigged my laptop to hook up to my TV (that wasn't a thing back then) so that I could watch Advent Children the day it was released in Japan with fansubs. And I was generally disappointed by all of them except for Crisis Core. They just weren't the same, and seemed to have walked back all of the character development that the characters went through during the second half of the original game.
Anyway, fast forward to when they announced the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I was very excited. But with each subsequent news update on the project I became more and more apprehensive. The game would be serialized. The first game would only be the Midgar section of the original. Despite all of the fond memories I have of that all-nighter my friend and I spent playing through the Midgar section, it's kind of the most boring part of the game. It's a prologue that drags on FOREVER before the actual story begins.
But FF7 fanboy that I am, even in my 40s, I was, of course, going to buy it no matter what. And I did. And I was pleasantly surprised by it. The graphics are amazing. The English voice cast do a pretty great job. The music is a mix of completely new tracks and reimagined old tracks, some of which have several different versions, like the original fight music, or the bombing mission music. And there is this completely epic medley of, basically, all of my favorite tracks from the original game that plays during the amazingly cinematic motorcycle chase at the end of the game. I felt the combat was a little clunky, but eventually got the hang of it when I realized that you could keybind abilities. I played through on normal difficulty, and on that difficulty level there were some bosses that were exceptionally hard to beat. One of them I did end up lowering the difficulty to easy to be able to get through.
The story has been fleshed out, and we get to spend a lot more time with all of the characters to better learn who they are as people. I like what they did with the characters, for the most part, and I also really liked that we got to spend more time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, to build them up as people, rather than those NPCs that don't really have much going for them at the beginning of the original. Mostly, the additions to the story are pretty good, but I don't really like the Kingdom Hearts-ization of the story much, with those annoying Whisper things. I DO NOT enjoy Kingdom Hearts AT ALL, and I felt that Nomura's trying to force some of its BS into Final Fantasy 7 was not great, especially in the ending. While I do like the ending, I'm also a bit afraid of what it might mean for the rest of the FF7 remake series. Because to me, it seems as though it was meant to be a, we broke the ties of fate, and now this story can go off in a completely different direction and leave the old game behind so we don't have to tell the same story again, sort of thing. I really, REALLY hope that they do not decide to go that route, because if the rest of the story of the original gets the same treatment that the Midgar section did in this first game of the remake, I will completely love them. If they go off in a completely new direction, I may like it, but I will probably be a bit angry that I am not getting what I was promised all those years ago when they announced that they were, in fact, remaking the game.
So, all in all, I really enjoyed it, and I hope that the rest of the remake episodes are handled as well as this one. If you like the original, and were maybe a bit on the fence on whether or not you wanted to spend the time and money on the remake, I'd say go for it. It's not an exceptionally long game, I finished in just under 40 hours, but at the same time I did not even come close to 100%ing it. I do feel that I got my money's worth out of it, and look forward to the next, with the hopes that they do not do what I'm fearing that they will with it.
I, like the genius that I was, had spent my money on a N64, rather than a Playstation, expecting the Nintendo console to continue to be where JRPGs were headed, and was not able to afford a Playstation for almost another year. (by selling my N64 to that same friend) I became obsessed with this game. When I finally got a copy of my own, I played it every single day for an entire year, looking for all of the little secrets held within. In my opinion, it is the last truly good game in the Final Fantasy series. The series never again reached the same scope and height that it did in Final Fantasy 7. Looking back, it's not my favorite Final Fantasy game, that would be 6, but it's the game in the series that most captivated my interest upon release.
When they remade the opening cinematic to show off what the PS3 was capable of, I freaked out over the prospect of getting a remake of the game with modern graphics and voice acting. I was sooooooo disappointed when I found that there were no actual plans for it. I bought a PSP just so I could play Crisis Core when it came out, and I played through Dirge of Cerberus when it was released. I jury rigged my laptop to hook up to my TV (that wasn't a thing back then) so that I could watch Advent Children the day it was released in Japan with fansubs. And I was generally disappointed by all of them except for Crisis Core. They just weren't the same, and seemed to have walked back all of the character development that the characters went through during the second half of the original game.
Anyway, fast forward to when they announced the Final Fantasy 7 Remake and I was very excited. But with each subsequent news update on the project I became more and more apprehensive. The game would be serialized. The first game would only be the Midgar section of the original. Despite all of the fond memories I have of that all-nighter my friend and I spent playing through the Midgar section, it's kind of the most boring part of the game. It's a prologue that drags on FOREVER before the actual story begins.
But FF7 fanboy that I am, even in my 40s, I was, of course, going to buy it no matter what. And I did. And I was pleasantly surprised by it. The graphics are amazing. The English voice cast do a pretty great job. The music is a mix of completely new tracks and reimagined old tracks, some of which have several different versions, like the original fight music, or the bombing mission music. And there is this completely epic medley of, basically, all of my favorite tracks from the original game that plays during the amazingly cinematic motorcycle chase at the end of the game. I felt the combat was a little clunky, but eventually got the hang of it when I realized that you could keybind abilities. I played through on normal difficulty, and on that difficulty level there were some bosses that were exceptionally hard to beat. One of them I did end up lowering the difficulty to easy to be able to get through.
The story has been fleshed out, and we get to spend a lot more time with all of the characters to better learn who they are as people. I like what they did with the characters, for the most part, and I also really liked that we got to spend more time with Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, to build them up as people, rather than those NPCs that don't really have much going for them at the beginning of the original. Mostly, the additions to the story are pretty good, but I don't really like the Kingdom Hearts-ization of the story much, with those annoying Whisper things. I DO NOT enjoy Kingdom Hearts AT ALL, and I felt that Nomura's trying to force some of its BS into Final Fantasy 7 was not great, especially in the ending. While I do like the ending, I'm also a bit afraid of what it might mean for the rest of the FF7 remake series. Because to me, it seems as though it was meant to be a, we broke the ties of fate, and now this story can go off in a completely different direction and leave the old game behind so we don't have to tell the same story again, sort of thing. I really, REALLY hope that they do not decide to go that route, because if the rest of the story of the original gets the same treatment that the Midgar section did in this first game of the remake, I will completely love them. If they go off in a completely new direction, I may like it, but I will probably be a bit angry that I am not getting what I was promised all those years ago when they announced that they were, in fact, remaking the game.
So, all in all, I really enjoyed it, and I hope that the rest of the remake episodes are handled as well as this one. If you like the original, and were maybe a bit on the fence on whether or not you wanted to spend the time and money on the remake, I'd say go for it. It's not an exceptionally long game, I finished in just under 40 hours, but at the same time I did not even come close to 100%ing it. I do feel that I got my money's worth out of it, and look forward to the next, with the hopes that they do not do what I'm fearing that they will with it.
April 5, 2020
Memories of What Never Was Draft I forget what number I'm up to
Okay, so, even though it's April, I'm still feeling burnt out from Christmas. It was THAT BAD last year. As a mail man, my job is considered to be an essential service, so I am still out working, while everyone else is working from home, or losing their jobs. I am very grateful that I still have a job, don't get me wrong, but I could really use a month or so off to recover from Christmas.
So, being so burnt out, it's really hard to find motivation to do much of anything, which is why I've taken so long to get back to work on Memories of What Never Was. But I've been forcing myself to do it over the last few weeks and have finished another draft of it. I forget what number I'm up to. It's 7 or 8... or maybe 9. Something else that had me dragging my feet was that this draft was a very tedious one to get through, because it's the one where I was fixing all of my sentence structure, to make sure I don't have too many sentences with the same structure in a row. And doing that can be extremely mind-numbing.
There were also a few character changes I wanted to make with Kriss. This is a story about her overcoming her past, and learning to live with it. And I felt that she didn't have enough agency in that, so I've done some big changes regarding her. I also felt that her redemption at the end felt a little forced and anti-climactic, and needed both a more conscious decision on her part to move on and be better, and a little more of something to push her toward it. This required rearranging a few of the events during the ending, and rewriting a few of her earlier introductory chapters, as well as an almost entirely rewritten climax.
Anyway, I have one draft left to do, which is basically just a read through to make sure everything jives correctly, and I didn't miss any big grammar mistakes, or create any new ones with my changes. Once that's over with, I'll be done, and since that'll only take a week or two, I'll post the finished thing then, on my crappy little website, instead of the latest draft now.
So, being so burnt out, it's really hard to find motivation to do much of anything, which is why I've taken so long to get back to work on Memories of What Never Was. But I've been forcing myself to do it over the last few weeks and have finished another draft of it. I forget what number I'm up to. It's 7 or 8... or maybe 9. Something else that had me dragging my feet was that this draft was a very tedious one to get through, because it's the one where I was fixing all of my sentence structure, to make sure I don't have too many sentences with the same structure in a row. And doing that can be extremely mind-numbing.
There were also a few character changes I wanted to make with Kriss. This is a story about her overcoming her past, and learning to live with it. And I felt that she didn't have enough agency in that, so I've done some big changes regarding her. I also felt that her redemption at the end felt a little forced and anti-climactic, and needed both a more conscious decision on her part to move on and be better, and a little more of something to push her toward it. This required rearranging a few of the events during the ending, and rewriting a few of her earlier introductory chapters, as well as an almost entirely rewritten climax.
Anyway, I have one draft left to do, which is basically just a read through to make sure everything jives correctly, and I didn't miss any big grammar mistakes, or create any new ones with my changes. Once that's over with, I'll be done, and since that'll only take a week or two, I'll post the finished thing then, on my crappy little website, instead of the latest draft now.
January 13, 2020
Mass Effect 3
Well, I finished Mass Effect 3. I’ve been vaguely aware since this game came out that people were disappointed with it. I have to ask, what the hell is their problem? This game is BY FAR the best of the series. It completely blows all others away. There isn’t even a question of competition here. This is the game that I was expecting Mass Effect 2 to be. Imagine my disappointment when it was Mass Effect 2 instead.
This is the only game in the original trilogy that actually feels like a story, rather than a collection of things that happen. The whole thing feels sufficiently apocalyptic and epic in scope. Even the side quests feel like they’re a part of the greater story, and serving the overall narrative. Right from the beginning it starts off with a bang in the Reaper invasion of Earth, and you head through, resolving the conflicts of the people who have been with you from the beginning to pull everyone together to fight in the last battle to save all life in the galaxy. I loved it. Despite being the shortest game in the series—I didn’t even break 20 hours of gameplay on it—this was a GREAT end to a story that has been kind of mediocre up to now, if I’m being honest.
The combat and leveling systems are a step up from the previous games, and this is the first game in the series where I really noticed the music, which was really good. My only real complaint is that the character and facial animations are horrible in this game. It’s like they took a huge step backward from the previous game in that regard. People make fun of Mass Effect Andromeda for the character and facial animations, but anyone who does must not have ever played Mass Effect 3.
I did not play any of the DLC for the game, though I did get the free extended cut. I just didn’t want to pay double what the game costs to be able to play three stories that are probably pretty short and not worth the money. If they ever cut the price on them, maybe I’ll pick ‘em up, but until then I’ve got better things to spend my money on.
Anyway here’s my rankings for the series, best to worst:
1.) Mass Effect 3 - The story, in my opinion, is the best of the bunch, and I liked the narrower focus on a smaller group of characters. It gave the game the time and room it needed to flesh them out more than previous games.
2.) Mass Effect Andromeda - A very good open world game with a crapton of things to do, the best combat of the entire series, an interesting story, and some good characters.
3.) Mass Effect - Though the characters are pretty wooden and one dimensional, and the controls are pretty broken, once you get a good team put together with enough abilities, you can pretty much just overpower your way through the deficiencies in the gameplay. While the story feels less a story and more a collection of random things that happen, it had a great villain, a pretty epic climax, and was a good setup for things to come.
4.) Mass Effect 2 - Yes, that’s right, everyone’s little darling is my least favorite game in the series. Why? IT’S FREAKING BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Too many characters. Not enough story. The game doesn’t even have a villain. It’s 5 hours of story, and 30 hours of playing psychiatrist to boring people I just don’t care about. While the combat, controls and visuals are better than the first game, the more I think about it the less I actually liked it. For all the choices and consequences for those choices there are in the game, it just didn’t have a story to back it up with.
Okay, there. Now I can say I’ve played the Mass Effect series. Now people can stop harassing me about it. I played your stupid games, now leave me alone!
This is the only game in the original trilogy that actually feels like a story, rather than a collection of things that happen. The whole thing feels sufficiently apocalyptic and epic in scope. Even the side quests feel like they’re a part of the greater story, and serving the overall narrative. Right from the beginning it starts off with a bang in the Reaper invasion of Earth, and you head through, resolving the conflicts of the people who have been with you from the beginning to pull everyone together to fight in the last battle to save all life in the galaxy. I loved it. Despite being the shortest game in the series—I didn’t even break 20 hours of gameplay on it—this was a GREAT end to a story that has been kind of mediocre up to now, if I’m being honest.
The combat and leveling systems are a step up from the previous games, and this is the first game in the series where I really noticed the music, which was really good. My only real complaint is that the character and facial animations are horrible in this game. It’s like they took a huge step backward from the previous game in that regard. People make fun of Mass Effect Andromeda for the character and facial animations, but anyone who does must not have ever played Mass Effect 3.
I did not play any of the DLC for the game, though I did get the free extended cut. I just didn’t want to pay double what the game costs to be able to play three stories that are probably pretty short and not worth the money. If they ever cut the price on them, maybe I’ll pick ‘em up, but until then I’ve got better things to spend my money on.
Anyway here’s my rankings for the series, best to worst:
1.) Mass Effect 3 - The story, in my opinion, is the best of the bunch, and I liked the narrower focus on a smaller group of characters. It gave the game the time and room it needed to flesh them out more than previous games.
2.) Mass Effect Andromeda - A very good open world game with a crapton of things to do, the best combat of the entire series, an interesting story, and some good characters.
3.) Mass Effect - Though the characters are pretty wooden and one dimensional, and the controls are pretty broken, once you get a good team put together with enough abilities, you can pretty much just overpower your way through the deficiencies in the gameplay. While the story feels less a story and more a collection of random things that happen, it had a great villain, a pretty epic climax, and was a good setup for things to come.
4.) Mass Effect 2 - Yes, that’s right, everyone’s little darling is my least favorite game in the series. Why? IT’S FREAKING BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Too many characters. Not enough story. The game doesn’t even have a villain. It’s 5 hours of story, and 30 hours of playing psychiatrist to boring people I just don’t care about. While the combat, controls and visuals are better than the first game, the more I think about it the less I actually liked it. For all the choices and consequences for those choices there are in the game, it just didn’t have a story to back it up with.
Okay, there. Now I can say I’ve played the Mass Effect series. Now people can stop harassing me about it. I played your stupid games, now leave me alone!
January 10, 2020
Mass Effect 2
So, finished Mass Effect 2. Right from the beginning it is a much, much better game than the first one. It has a pretty awesome cinematic beginning, followed by a pretty good opening mission. The combat is a vast improvement, the graphics and level design are a lot more detailed. The controls aren’t a complete dumpster fire. I mean, you can actually utilize cover without having to bash the cover button 73 times before giving up and just charging in guns blazing like in the first game. The camera controls actually work correctly, and there’s no horrible vehicle or even worse vehicle combat. Shepard has a lot more personality this time around. Although, I think that might be due to my dialog choices. The first game I played straight paragon, and holy crap was paragon Shepard boring. This time I played straight renegade and I had a heck of a lot more fun with it being evil and ruthless.
But with all of the improvements over the first game, I still found myself a bit disappointed by it. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to everyone tell he how great this game is, and how it’s the best thing Bioware has ever made, and blah blah blah. There are 4 story missions. 4. That’s it. 4. And they’re all pretty short too, ranging from 30-45 mins each. What do you do for the rest of the game? Well, you go gather characters, survey planets for resources, upgrade your ship, and then you go spend a good 20 hours of the game playing psychiatrist to all of your peeps. Some of them are pretty good. I quite enjoyed Kasumi, Jack, Tali and Mordin’s. I think the best part of the game wasn’t even originally part of the game. The Liara DLC was probably my favorite story of the entire game. It has a lot of cinematic chases and fights, and tells a great story. Why couldn’t the rest of the game have been like that? But most of them range from mediocre to adequate. The problem with this game is that it has way, WAY too many characters. And even though each of them has an introduction mission, and a story mission to earn their loyalty, there’s just so many of them that if you’re not regularly using the characters, they might as well be invisible for the rest of the game. I don’t know how anyone else does it, but in games where you choose a team from a group of characters for each mission, I tend to find a few favorites, and only use them. From all that I heard about this game before playing it, I expected this huge epic story, and it wasn’t. It just felt like I was running around babysitting instead of taking part in a big, epic story. It wasn’t bad, but I still kind of liked Mass Effect Andromeda more. My brother about dropped dead when I told him that. You’d think I’d just murdered his children and pissed on their graves by his reaction. I’m sorry, I just don’t find running all over the galaxy doing glorified side quests to be very fun or interesting. In any other game I’d have just skipped a good 30 hours of my 35 hours of gameplay, but I wanted everyone to live at the end. I’m not much of a side-questy kind of guy. Also, I really, really dislike the leveling up system. Rather than getting xp from everything you kill, you get a certain amount of xp for each mission, that usually does not equal what you have to do to get it.
So yeah, it was okay, but it doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it.
Also, I started playing Mass Effect 3 today. Anyone out there complaining about the character and facial animations in Mass Effect Andromeda, have y’all played Mass Effect 3? HOLY CRAP!!! Hypocrisy much?
But with all of the improvements over the first game, I still found myself a bit disappointed by it. I suppose that’s what I get for listening to everyone tell he how great this game is, and how it’s the best thing Bioware has ever made, and blah blah blah. There are 4 story missions. 4. That’s it. 4. And they’re all pretty short too, ranging from 30-45 mins each. What do you do for the rest of the game? Well, you go gather characters, survey planets for resources, upgrade your ship, and then you go spend a good 20 hours of the game playing psychiatrist to all of your peeps. Some of them are pretty good. I quite enjoyed Kasumi, Jack, Tali and Mordin’s. I think the best part of the game wasn’t even originally part of the game. The Liara DLC was probably my favorite story of the entire game. It has a lot of cinematic chases and fights, and tells a great story. Why couldn’t the rest of the game have been like that? But most of them range from mediocre to adequate. The problem with this game is that it has way, WAY too many characters. And even though each of them has an introduction mission, and a story mission to earn their loyalty, there’s just so many of them that if you’re not regularly using the characters, they might as well be invisible for the rest of the game. I don’t know how anyone else does it, but in games where you choose a team from a group of characters for each mission, I tend to find a few favorites, and only use them. From all that I heard about this game before playing it, I expected this huge epic story, and it wasn’t. It just felt like I was running around babysitting instead of taking part in a big, epic story. It wasn’t bad, but I still kind of liked Mass Effect Andromeda more. My brother about dropped dead when I told him that. You’d think I’d just murdered his children and pissed on their graves by his reaction. I’m sorry, I just don’t find running all over the galaxy doing glorified side quests to be very fun or interesting. In any other game I’d have just skipped a good 30 hours of my 35 hours of gameplay, but I wanted everyone to live at the end. I’m not much of a side-questy kind of guy. Also, I really, really dislike the leveling up system. Rather than getting xp from everything you kill, you get a certain amount of xp for each mission, that usually does not equal what you have to do to get it.
So yeah, it was okay, but it doesn’t live up to the hype surrounding it.
Also, I started playing Mass Effect 3 today. Anyone out there complaining about the character and facial animations in Mass Effect Andromeda, have y’all played Mass Effect 3? HOLY CRAP!!! Hypocrisy much?
January 4, 2020
Mass Effect
So I've now played through the original Mass Effect. And, uh, Mass Effect Andromeda is kind of a better game. Anyone that says otherwise is probably looking back through nostalgia goggles. The top three criticisms I see against Andromeda is the story isn't as good, the characters aren't as good, and the facial animation/graphical glitches. Please. Anyone saying that Mass Effect is better than Mass Effect Andromeda, go back and play it. The characters are not really all that fleshed out. I kept talking to them, trying to get some personality out of them, but all they do is speak entirely in exposition, and never feel like actual people. Shepard is a piece of wood without a personality. And the story feels more like a collection of side quests rather than an actual story. It does have a pretty cool ending, and the villain is better than the one in Andromeda. I ran into way more graphical errors and glitches in this game than I ever say in Andromeda. The facial animations are pretty good even by today's standards though, so there is that.
Anyway, this game is just not very fun to play. The controls are pretty broken. Oh, you want to turn the camera to the right? You can't do that, there's a wall 12 feet behind you blocking the camera's movement, so sorry. The combat is kind of bleh, again, I don't really like shooters all that much, which is why I've avoided this series until now, but the combat in this game is really, really clunky. Where it kind of grew on me in Andromeda, I was constantly fighting the controls in this game to do even the simplest of things. It makes a game that would otherwise have been okay just a chore to get through. And omg, the freaking mako. Just, holy crap, the controls on that thing are sooooooo freaking broken, so are the physics. The thing feels like it weighs nothing as you attempt to drive it around.
This is the shortest Bioware RPG I've ever played. I finished in less than 23 hours, and I did every side quest that came up, and surveyed every planet.
The variety of planetary environments are pretty imaginative, but the actual maps themselves are all pretty copy and pasted. The planets that are story related are a lot bigger with a lot more to explore, but at the same time, all of the imagination is pretty much gone from the environments. Kind of a sad little trade off there.
Anyway. I didn't hate the game. I enjoyed the story well enough, though it did feel less like a story and more a collection of things that happen. Like with Andromeda, this game kind of feels like a big, glorified prologue to a more interesting story to come later. If you can get past that terrible controls and not very enjoyable gameplay, the story isn't bad, but holy crap, I can't believe anyone ever bothered to pick up the second game on release after playing through this thing.
So yeah, my probably unpopular opinion: Mass Effect Andromeda is a far superior game to the original Mass Effect. Playing them back to back as I did really illustrated how much better the gameplay and all of Andromeda was. I'm glad I played this one, and I'll be happy never to play it again.
Anyway, this game is just not very fun to play. The controls are pretty broken. Oh, you want to turn the camera to the right? You can't do that, there's a wall 12 feet behind you blocking the camera's movement, so sorry. The combat is kind of bleh, again, I don't really like shooters all that much, which is why I've avoided this series until now, but the combat in this game is really, really clunky. Where it kind of grew on me in Andromeda, I was constantly fighting the controls in this game to do even the simplest of things. It makes a game that would otherwise have been okay just a chore to get through. And omg, the freaking mako. Just, holy crap, the controls on that thing are sooooooo freaking broken, so are the physics. The thing feels like it weighs nothing as you attempt to drive it around.
This is the shortest Bioware RPG I've ever played. I finished in less than 23 hours, and I did every side quest that came up, and surveyed every planet.
The variety of planetary environments are pretty imaginative, but the actual maps themselves are all pretty copy and pasted. The planets that are story related are a lot bigger with a lot more to explore, but at the same time, all of the imagination is pretty much gone from the environments. Kind of a sad little trade off there.
Anyway. I didn't hate the game. I enjoyed the story well enough, though it did feel less like a story and more a collection of things that happen. Like with Andromeda, this game kind of feels like a big, glorified prologue to a more interesting story to come later. If you can get past that terrible controls and not very enjoyable gameplay, the story isn't bad, but holy crap, I can't believe anyone ever bothered to pick up the second game on release after playing through this thing.
So yeah, my probably unpopular opinion: Mass Effect Andromeda is a far superior game to the original Mass Effect. Playing them back to back as I did really illustrated how much better the gameplay and all of Andromeda was. I'm glad I played this one, and I'll be happy never to play it again.
December 31, 2019
Mass Effect Andromeda
So, I have never played any of the Mass Effect games before. I hear they're great. But I just don't really care for shooters. Never have. Probably never will. They're just not fun to me. My brother, a Mass Effect fanatic has been trying to get me to play the games for years now. So this year, for Christmas, he got me all 4. So I guess that means I now have to play them, whether I want to or not.
So, my brother suggested that I start with Andromeda as it isn't really connected story-wise to the trilogy, and it's also the worst one, so best to get it out of the way first. So, I follow video game news every now and then. I don't really have a huge amount of time for games these days, so I like to see what's coming, and what kind of reviews it's getting when it comes out, so I can pick and choose which games I'll spend my limited time and money on. I also find epic failures by AAA game studios to be somewhat amusing. So when Mass Effect Andromeda came out and had all kinds of graphical glitches, and hilariously bad facial animations, I watched videos of how bad things were, chuckled to myself, and moved on with my life. This game seems to be just universally hated by everyone, not just for not living up to the Mass Effect name, but also for being a broken, unfinished mess.
Now, I played this game 2 years after release, and when I popped the disc into my PS4 I had to download a 6 GB patch before I could play. This suggests to me that a lot of the graphical errors and nightmare fuel facial animations have been patched, as I didn't notice many as I played through the game. There were still a few bugs. I had some freezing errors, and the game crashed on me once while I was fighting the last boss. Every now and then a character will be looking off in a weird direction during a conversation. And one time while talking to a character all dialog options that did not lead to a sex scene were grayed out so I was forced by the game to have sex with my least favorite character. Hurray. But I saw none of the horrifically bad crap that people made videos about in the beginning. For the most part, the game ran pretty smoothly, and the facial animations we pretty on par with other AAA games I've played this console generation.
So, that being said, and a reminder that this is the ONLY Mass Effect game I have played. I LOVED IT!!! I seriously do not know why this game gets so much hatred. It's one of the better open world games I've ever played. As good as The Witcher 3 might be, I've never finished it. I'll play a bit, get bored and do something else, come back, play a bit, get bored and go do something else. Mass Effect Andromeda I played straight through without feeling bored at all. I took the week between Christmas and New Years off to recover from working through Christmas, and I've done very little this week but play through this game.
I was expecting an unfinished, broken mess of a game that was devoid of content. But what I got was a pretty fun to play open world game that just bombards you with things to do. My biggest complaint about most open world games is that it's a huge open world with nothing to do in it. That was NOT the case here. I was just playing through the story and talking to the people in my crew at first, then I looked at my quest long, and just doing that I had literally dozens of side quests flagged that I could do. The exploration actually plays a part in the story. There are a lot of fun puzzles to solve. A lot of the side quests that I completed had interesting and fun stories. I enjoyed the snarkiness of the main character, and had fun with a few of the crew members that you collect. One I found unbearably annoying, and a couple sort of just faded into the background, but I generally liked the ones I played with most. While I don't really care for shooters, the combat was pretty straightforward and fun enough, I guess. Again, not really my thing, but it played well enough that I didn't mind so much. Also, the game has an easy mode, which I played on to make up for my natural lack of aptitude with shooters. The visuals are pretty great, even if the character animations are a bit wonky sometimes, and your character runs like he/she has something stuffed up his/her butt. The worlds, the transitions of your ship flying around, all of the cutscenes, the graphics were pretty darn good.
I did not even touch the online multiplayer aspect of the game. That is really just not my thing. I don't enjoy shooters, and I definitely do not enjoy shooters where I'm forced to play with other people who are lightyears better at it than I am. I never really got the appeal of that sort of thing. Imagine my sheer annoyance with EA that 2 out of the only 3 Star Wars games to come out in the last 10 years have been online only shooters. Anyway, I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof of that aspect of the game, since I avoid that type of gameplay like the plague.
I really liked the story, and about half of the characters, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I honestly do not know why this game is so hated, because I really, really liked it. If this is the worst game in the series, I can't wait to play the rest of them.
So, my brother suggested that I start with Andromeda as it isn't really connected story-wise to the trilogy, and it's also the worst one, so best to get it out of the way first. So, I follow video game news every now and then. I don't really have a huge amount of time for games these days, so I like to see what's coming, and what kind of reviews it's getting when it comes out, so I can pick and choose which games I'll spend my limited time and money on. I also find epic failures by AAA game studios to be somewhat amusing. So when Mass Effect Andromeda came out and had all kinds of graphical glitches, and hilariously bad facial animations, I watched videos of how bad things were, chuckled to myself, and moved on with my life. This game seems to be just universally hated by everyone, not just for not living up to the Mass Effect name, but also for being a broken, unfinished mess.
Now, I played this game 2 years after release, and when I popped the disc into my PS4 I had to download a 6 GB patch before I could play. This suggests to me that a lot of the graphical errors and nightmare fuel facial animations have been patched, as I didn't notice many as I played through the game. There were still a few bugs. I had some freezing errors, and the game crashed on me once while I was fighting the last boss. Every now and then a character will be looking off in a weird direction during a conversation. And one time while talking to a character all dialog options that did not lead to a sex scene were grayed out so I was forced by the game to have sex with my least favorite character. Hurray. But I saw none of the horrifically bad crap that people made videos about in the beginning. For the most part, the game ran pretty smoothly, and the facial animations we pretty on par with other AAA games I've played this console generation.
So, that being said, and a reminder that this is the ONLY Mass Effect game I have played. I LOVED IT!!! I seriously do not know why this game gets so much hatred. It's one of the better open world games I've ever played. As good as The Witcher 3 might be, I've never finished it. I'll play a bit, get bored and do something else, come back, play a bit, get bored and go do something else. Mass Effect Andromeda I played straight through without feeling bored at all. I took the week between Christmas and New Years off to recover from working through Christmas, and I've done very little this week but play through this game.
I was expecting an unfinished, broken mess of a game that was devoid of content. But what I got was a pretty fun to play open world game that just bombards you with things to do. My biggest complaint about most open world games is that it's a huge open world with nothing to do in it. That was NOT the case here. I was just playing through the story and talking to the people in my crew at first, then I looked at my quest long, and just doing that I had literally dozens of side quests flagged that I could do. The exploration actually plays a part in the story. There are a lot of fun puzzles to solve. A lot of the side quests that I completed had interesting and fun stories. I enjoyed the snarkiness of the main character, and had fun with a few of the crew members that you collect. One I found unbearably annoying, and a couple sort of just faded into the background, but I generally liked the ones I played with most. While I don't really care for shooters, the combat was pretty straightforward and fun enough, I guess. Again, not really my thing, but it played well enough that I didn't mind so much. Also, the game has an easy mode, which I played on to make up for my natural lack of aptitude with shooters. The visuals are pretty great, even if the character animations are a bit wonky sometimes, and your character runs like he/she has something stuffed up his/her butt. The worlds, the transitions of your ship flying around, all of the cutscenes, the graphics were pretty darn good.
I did not even touch the online multiplayer aspect of the game. That is really just not my thing. I don't enjoy shooters, and I definitely do not enjoy shooters where I'm forced to play with other people who are lightyears better at it than I am. I never really got the appeal of that sort of thing. Imagine my sheer annoyance with EA that 2 out of the only 3 Star Wars games to come out in the last 10 years have been online only shooters. Anyway, I can't speak to the quality or lack thereof of that aspect of the game, since I avoid that type of gameplay like the plague.
I really liked the story, and about half of the characters, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I honestly do not know why this game is so hated, because I really, really liked it. If this is the worst game in the series, I can't wait to play the rest of them.
December 24, 2019
Why I never thought the Star Wars Prequels were all that bad, and other Star Wars-y thoughts
I'm going to say something that many people might find somewhat unbelievable. I don't hate the Star Wars prequels. I actually kind of like them. Are the the best Star Wars movies? Nope. Do I care? Not really. And I never really did. There are two aspects that go into this. The first is quickly and easily explained: I just love Star Wars. It doesn't really matter if it's boringly shot, with terrible direction, actors that look lost and bewildered, and dialog so bad it could peel paint, overuse of CGI that has NOT aged well. It's still Star Wars, and I still love Star Wars.
My second reason is this: By the time that the prequels began coming out, I had read a good decade's worth of Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. There are some real gems amongst the SWEU, Like Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, and Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy. (although the latter is kind of terrible, it was just terrible in a very entertaining way) And then there were books like The New Rebellion. The Truce at Bakura. The Courtship of Princess Leia. Anything with Babara Hambly's name on it. The Black Fleet Crisis. The Corellian Trilogy, where 35 pages of the first book were taken up with a masturbatorily long landing scene involving a character we'd never seen before and didn't give two shits over whether or not she landed safely, and it only got worse from there. Anything with James Luceno's name on it. Anything Karen Traviss has ever even glanced at, much less written. Anything with Christie Golden's name on it. Anything with Troy Denning's name on it. Anything with Aaron Allston's name on it, especially the second half of the X-wing series. And R.A. Salvatore. Really? They got freaking R.A. Salvatore to write a Star Wars book(which was utter garbage). The Young Jedi Knights series. The vast and overwhelming majority of the New Jedi Order that had been released at the time. Oh, and that beautiful gem of absolute wtf-ery, the Crystal Star.
My point is that by the time the Star Wars prequels began coming out, I'd read an entire decade of Star Wars stories that were much, MUCH worse. Worse written. Far less consistent. Lobotomized characters from the Original Trilogy. Things that just plain do not make sense however you try to wrap your brain around it. I'm looking at YOU Crystal Star! So when the Prequels came out, I thought, well, I mean, it's not great, but I've read worse. When you compare the prequel trilogy to any number of Star Wars novels that I mentioned above, they are actually far superior stories, despite their flaws. Even Attack of the Clones, which is my least favorite Star Wars movie, has things that I like in it. It's easy to say you hate something, but hatred isn't really what I feel for that movie. Sure, Luke and Leia were, apparently, born because someone forced two people who clearly do not like one another to bump uglies at gunpoint, and like, every single bad thing that happens in the Star Wars universe after that point would probably have been averted had Obi-Wan taken two seconds to apply even a cursory amount of logic to the situation, but there are still things I enjoy about the movie. Anakin riding a speeder bike to find his mother as the suns set behind him. It's beautiful imagery, fake as shit, beautiful imagery. The arena fight, and subsequent battle. John freaking Williams! (who btw has a cameo in The Rise of Skywalker). The speeder chase at the beginning of the movie. Jarjar barely being in the movie. There are things to like, even if they're not very well put together. It's still a Star Wars movie, and I still love Star Wars. And though it may be the least of the 11 current movies, it's still lightyears better than the Crystal freaking Star.
So yeah, that's why I've never really hated, and actually kind of liked the Star Wars prequels.
Now some thoughts on the Rise of Skywalker, which will be spoiler free. I liked it. In fact, I actually kind of loved it. But at the same time, it does have issues. This movie feels like exactly what it is. Lucasfilm in full on damage control mode after The Last Jedi. While I enjoyed The Last Jedi when it first came out, I've had two years to think on it, and the more I think about it, the more I find in it that I don't like. It was a beautifully made film, but it had some insanely bad pacing issues, some very large leaps of logic, and it didn't really respect characters that had been my heroes for as long as I can remember. I don't hate it, but there's a bit less to like about it than I thought upon first seeing it. HOWEVER, there is a very vocal part of the fanbase who absolutely flipped their shit about the movie, and this part of the fanbase organized a boycott of the next Star Wars movie, Solo, which caused the movie to bomb pretty hard. Lucasfilm and Disney highly underestimated just how much backlash they were going to get from the film, and, I mean, I just don't see how they could have thought giving the movie to a director notorious for saying "no I don't wanna do that, I think I'll do my own thing" giving him complete creative control, and next to no oversight was going to turn out well, but I just a humble man who doesn't know the workings of billion dollar companies. When JJ Abrams made The Force Awakens, he did next to 0 planning for the next two movies. There was a vague sort of outline, but nothing solid. This, by the way, is NOT how you write a three act story. If you don't know the ending when you make the beginning it is going to play SERIOUS havoc with the overall tone of the story as a whole across all three films... which it did, to an spectacular degree. When Rian Johnson stepped up for The Last Jedi, he looked at the bare bones of plot they'd put together for the second film, said I don't like it, and did his own thing. Which basically threw the ending off balance.
And then Carrie Fisher, bless her, passed away. According to her daughter (who plays a small role in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker) The Rise of Skywalker was supposed to be her turn to have the spotlight, and she was very excited for it. The title "The Last Jedi" actually refers to HER. She went on to say that when her mother passed away, the script had already been finalized and they were ramping up to begin filming the final film. Her death meant that even as they were about to start filming, the entire script had to be rewritten. So, not only did the director of the previous film toss out the plan, and kill off the villain that they were obviously planning on using to the end, the actress meant to play a pivotal role in the film was no longer with us. And then the fan reaction to The Last Jedi hit. And then Solo bombed, in part, because of it. And they really, really had to scramble to put together a film from all the tattered shreds of the movie they were planning to make to both appease fans who were angry about The Last Jedi, and work around Carrie Fisher's absence, and the absence of the villain they'd meant to be the big bad at the end.
And you can see a lot of the scrambling to put together a movie under these circumstances in the film. I REALLY do not envy Abrams the task he had in making this movie.
Anyway, the things I felt were not so great about this movie: The pacing is a bit off. It's not as egregious as it was in The Last Jedi, but there are some issues. Also the movie feels very rushed. I would not be surprised to hear that a good 30 mins had been cut from it. The final battle against the fleet of Star Destroyers feels very epic UNTIL the moment that it's supposed to BE epic. I promised no spoilers, so I'm not going to say what that moment is, but anyone who has seen the movie will know. Before it happens you have this desperate, we have to fight on no matter the odds, feeling to it, and then it just sort of falls asleep. Wedge not piloting an X-Wing is a waste of Wedge. Basically every single scene involving the Emperor is very silly, and really kind of stupid (but at the same time Ian McDiarmid is clearly having so much fun playing the character that even though the scenes were kind of stupid, they were an absolute joy to watch. To quote Red Letter Media, "He's evil and he fucking loves it.") There's a lot of running around to places that don't really seem necessary to the plot at the beginning of the movie. The movie tries to have it both ways with Finn and Poe's relationship. Look, either they're a gay couple, or they aren't. Quit playing it like they are, then giving them both female love interests in the movie. The movie goes all in on new force powers, and, well, I have to agree with Brandon Sanderson on that. It's always better to see characters using things we already know in new and interesting ways than to have them suddenly develop a new ability. That's called Deus ex Machina, and it's usually frowned upon. Who Rey actually turns out to be is kind of a little silly. The Emperor's ultimate goal isn't really fleshed out all that much. I would be willing to bet there are deleted scenes that explain it better than it was in the theatrical cut of the movie. He wants Rey to do spoilers. .......... Profit? The ending also feels a little anti-climactic due to the villain that was clearly meant to be there at the end having to be replaced by the Emperor.
So, what did I like about the movie? I completely loved the scene involving Kylo Ren and a surprising character who shall remain spoilerless. And I like Kylo Ren's storyline in the movie overall. The lightsaber fight in/on the Death Star wreckage is really awesome. Lando was back! Wedge was back! The Emperor is something of a joy to watch, because the actor playing him is having the time of his life hamming it up. C-3PO got ALL of the best jokes. Finn and Poe's relationship is really entertaining to watch. They argue like a married couple throughout the movie, and it's really kind of great. Rey feels more like an actual character in this movie. It seems as though Abrams listened to a lot of criticism on the character, and went, I feel, a long way towards addressing that criticism. Rey is seen to be training, and not doing very well at it. She makes mistakes. She loses a lightsaber fight. She is seen to have problems and internal turmoil and shit she has to work through. You know, like an actual human being, instead of someone who is always perfect at everything. She loses her temper. She snaps at people. She has an actual personality. She struggles with the Dark Side about as much as we ever saw Luke struggle with it. All of these were positive, and much needed, changes to her character. The visuals and music are pretty amazing. At no point in the movie was I bored. The movie takes a good step toward fixing some of the damage done to Luke's character done by the previous film. The movie is nostalgia baiting ALL over the place, and while I've seen some fans call it cynical, I loved it. The three main characters, Rey, Finn and Poe spend a large portion of the movie together, something that was really missing in The Last Jedi. Finn feels more like an actual character again, rather than his annoying downgrade to token black guy in the previous movie to make way for Rose, who, thankfully, had very little screen time in this movie. Nothing against Kelly Marie Tran, but I really did not like her character in The Last Jedi. That's entirely on the writing, not on her. I am abhorred how fans treated her, but I still do not like the character, and was glad to see less of her.
So, anyway, I really enjoyed the movie. It's not the best Star Wars movie ever, but it's definitely not the worst. It was a good ending. If I could name the biggest problem with the movie, it would be this. It's act three of a three act story with two act ones and no act two, and because of that, and due to Carrie Fisher's passing, it really had to scramble to pick up the pieces and pull them together into a movie. But, again, despite it's problems, I felt it was a fun and entertaining movie, and I do not understand why so many people are so angry about it. Maybe in 2 years time after I've had some time to think about it, I'll understand the other side better, like I did for The Last Jedi.
Anyway, now that we've got some new Star Wars movies, and I've had time to think on some of them more, here's my updated Star Wars Movie Rankings. Best to worst. Since I already gave my explanations for my rankings last time I posted my rankings I'll just give the list this time.
1.) The Empire Strikes Back
2.) Rogue One
3.) Star Wars (A New Hope)
4.) Return of the Jedi
5.) The Force Awakens
6.) The Rise of Skywalker
7.) Revenge of the Sith
8.) Solo
9.) The Last Jedi
10.) The Clone Wars
11.) The Phantom Menace
12.) Attack of the Clones.
And here's my rankings on Star Wars TV series. Best to worst.
1.) Clone Wars. Though it has it's fair share of terrible episodes, it makes up for them by the rest of them being really, really good. This series basically took the Star Wars prequels and said we can fix this. And they did. They made the characters (except for Jarjar) more human and likeable. And made the Clone Wars the huge, destructive conflict that old Obi-Wan speaks of with such reverence in the original movie. The first season is kind of lame, but George Lucas gave them the thumbs up to do more, and dig deeper in following seasons, and they really went for it.
2.) The Mandalorian. Like a spaghetti western in space. I enjoy the short episode runtimes, they tell the story and get out. I like the metric crapton of Baby Yoda memes. It's just a really fun show to watch, even if the special effects and the acting on side characters are not always that great.
3.) Rebels. This show is not great. It's like they took the Clone Wars, stripped it of everything that made it good, and vomited it back out in a boring, annoying mess. It has it's moments. Anytime Darth Vader is on screen is awesome to watch, and I liked seeing Grand Admiral Thrawn in a visual medium, (other than the opening cutscene from Tie Fighter) even if he wasn't written very well. But the main protagonist is unbearable, and it's just not a very fun series to watch most of the time.
4.) Resistance. I watched one episode of this series and said this is not for me. It's too kiddie for me. I just found it to be boring and stupid. And the animation is kind of garbage too.
So there's my obligatory Star Wars rambling following the release of a new Star Wars movie.
My second reason is this: By the time that the prequels began coming out, I had read a good decade's worth of Star Wars Expanded Universe novels. There are some real gems amongst the SWEU, Like Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, and Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy. (although the latter is kind of terrible, it was just terrible in a very entertaining way) And then there were books like The New Rebellion. The Truce at Bakura. The Courtship of Princess Leia. Anything with Babara Hambly's name on it. The Black Fleet Crisis. The Corellian Trilogy, where 35 pages of the first book were taken up with a masturbatorily long landing scene involving a character we'd never seen before and didn't give two shits over whether or not she landed safely, and it only got worse from there. Anything with James Luceno's name on it. Anything Karen Traviss has ever even glanced at, much less written. Anything with Christie Golden's name on it. Anything with Troy Denning's name on it. Anything with Aaron Allston's name on it, especially the second half of the X-wing series. And R.A. Salvatore. Really? They got freaking R.A. Salvatore to write a Star Wars book(which was utter garbage). The Young Jedi Knights series. The vast and overwhelming majority of the New Jedi Order that had been released at the time. Oh, and that beautiful gem of absolute wtf-ery, the Crystal Star.
My point is that by the time the Star Wars prequels began coming out, I'd read an entire decade of Star Wars stories that were much, MUCH worse. Worse written. Far less consistent. Lobotomized characters from the Original Trilogy. Things that just plain do not make sense however you try to wrap your brain around it. I'm looking at YOU Crystal Star! So when the Prequels came out, I thought, well, I mean, it's not great, but I've read worse. When you compare the prequel trilogy to any number of Star Wars novels that I mentioned above, they are actually far superior stories, despite their flaws. Even Attack of the Clones, which is my least favorite Star Wars movie, has things that I like in it. It's easy to say you hate something, but hatred isn't really what I feel for that movie. Sure, Luke and Leia were, apparently, born because someone forced two people who clearly do not like one another to bump uglies at gunpoint, and like, every single bad thing that happens in the Star Wars universe after that point would probably have been averted had Obi-Wan taken two seconds to apply even a cursory amount of logic to the situation, but there are still things I enjoy about the movie. Anakin riding a speeder bike to find his mother as the suns set behind him. It's beautiful imagery, fake as shit, beautiful imagery. The arena fight, and subsequent battle. John freaking Williams! (who btw has a cameo in The Rise of Skywalker). The speeder chase at the beginning of the movie. Jarjar barely being in the movie. There are things to like, even if they're not very well put together. It's still a Star Wars movie, and I still love Star Wars. And though it may be the least of the 11 current movies, it's still lightyears better than the Crystal freaking Star.
So yeah, that's why I've never really hated, and actually kind of liked the Star Wars prequels.
Now some thoughts on the Rise of Skywalker, which will be spoiler free. I liked it. In fact, I actually kind of loved it. But at the same time, it does have issues. This movie feels like exactly what it is. Lucasfilm in full on damage control mode after The Last Jedi. While I enjoyed The Last Jedi when it first came out, I've had two years to think on it, and the more I think about it, the more I find in it that I don't like. It was a beautifully made film, but it had some insanely bad pacing issues, some very large leaps of logic, and it didn't really respect characters that had been my heroes for as long as I can remember. I don't hate it, but there's a bit less to like about it than I thought upon first seeing it. HOWEVER, there is a very vocal part of the fanbase who absolutely flipped their shit about the movie, and this part of the fanbase organized a boycott of the next Star Wars movie, Solo, which caused the movie to bomb pretty hard. Lucasfilm and Disney highly underestimated just how much backlash they were going to get from the film, and, I mean, I just don't see how they could have thought giving the movie to a director notorious for saying "no I don't wanna do that, I think I'll do my own thing" giving him complete creative control, and next to no oversight was going to turn out well, but I just a humble man who doesn't know the workings of billion dollar companies. When JJ Abrams made The Force Awakens, he did next to 0 planning for the next two movies. There was a vague sort of outline, but nothing solid. This, by the way, is NOT how you write a three act story. If you don't know the ending when you make the beginning it is going to play SERIOUS havoc with the overall tone of the story as a whole across all three films... which it did, to an spectacular degree. When Rian Johnson stepped up for The Last Jedi, he looked at the bare bones of plot they'd put together for the second film, said I don't like it, and did his own thing. Which basically threw the ending off balance.
And then Carrie Fisher, bless her, passed away. According to her daughter (who plays a small role in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker) The Rise of Skywalker was supposed to be her turn to have the spotlight, and she was very excited for it. The title "The Last Jedi" actually refers to HER. She went on to say that when her mother passed away, the script had already been finalized and they were ramping up to begin filming the final film. Her death meant that even as they were about to start filming, the entire script had to be rewritten. So, not only did the director of the previous film toss out the plan, and kill off the villain that they were obviously planning on using to the end, the actress meant to play a pivotal role in the film was no longer with us. And then the fan reaction to The Last Jedi hit. And then Solo bombed, in part, because of it. And they really, really had to scramble to put together a film from all the tattered shreds of the movie they were planning to make to both appease fans who were angry about The Last Jedi, and work around Carrie Fisher's absence, and the absence of the villain they'd meant to be the big bad at the end.
And you can see a lot of the scrambling to put together a movie under these circumstances in the film. I REALLY do not envy Abrams the task he had in making this movie.
Anyway, the things I felt were not so great about this movie: The pacing is a bit off. It's not as egregious as it was in The Last Jedi, but there are some issues. Also the movie feels very rushed. I would not be surprised to hear that a good 30 mins had been cut from it. The final battle against the fleet of Star Destroyers feels very epic UNTIL the moment that it's supposed to BE epic. I promised no spoilers, so I'm not going to say what that moment is, but anyone who has seen the movie will know. Before it happens you have this desperate, we have to fight on no matter the odds, feeling to it, and then it just sort of falls asleep. Wedge not piloting an X-Wing is a waste of Wedge. Basically every single scene involving the Emperor is very silly, and really kind of stupid (but at the same time Ian McDiarmid is clearly having so much fun playing the character that even though the scenes were kind of stupid, they were an absolute joy to watch. To quote Red Letter Media, "He's evil and he fucking loves it.") There's a lot of running around to places that don't really seem necessary to the plot at the beginning of the movie. The movie tries to have it both ways with Finn and Poe's relationship. Look, either they're a gay couple, or they aren't. Quit playing it like they are, then giving them both female love interests in the movie. The movie goes all in on new force powers, and, well, I have to agree with Brandon Sanderson on that. It's always better to see characters using things we already know in new and interesting ways than to have them suddenly develop a new ability. That's called Deus ex Machina, and it's usually frowned upon. Who Rey actually turns out to be is kind of a little silly. The Emperor's ultimate goal isn't really fleshed out all that much. I would be willing to bet there are deleted scenes that explain it better than it was in the theatrical cut of the movie. He wants Rey to do spoilers. .......... Profit? The ending also feels a little anti-climactic due to the villain that was clearly meant to be there at the end having to be replaced by the Emperor.
So, what did I like about the movie? I completely loved the scene involving Kylo Ren and a surprising character who shall remain spoilerless. And I like Kylo Ren's storyline in the movie overall. The lightsaber fight in/on the Death Star wreckage is really awesome. Lando was back! Wedge was back! The Emperor is something of a joy to watch, because the actor playing him is having the time of his life hamming it up. C-3PO got ALL of the best jokes. Finn and Poe's relationship is really entertaining to watch. They argue like a married couple throughout the movie, and it's really kind of great. Rey feels more like an actual character in this movie. It seems as though Abrams listened to a lot of criticism on the character, and went, I feel, a long way towards addressing that criticism. Rey is seen to be training, and not doing very well at it. She makes mistakes. She loses a lightsaber fight. She is seen to have problems and internal turmoil and shit she has to work through. You know, like an actual human being, instead of someone who is always perfect at everything. She loses her temper. She snaps at people. She has an actual personality. She struggles with the Dark Side about as much as we ever saw Luke struggle with it. All of these were positive, and much needed, changes to her character. The visuals and music are pretty amazing. At no point in the movie was I bored. The movie takes a good step toward fixing some of the damage done to Luke's character done by the previous film. The movie is nostalgia baiting ALL over the place, and while I've seen some fans call it cynical, I loved it. The three main characters, Rey, Finn and Poe spend a large portion of the movie together, something that was really missing in The Last Jedi. Finn feels more like an actual character again, rather than his annoying downgrade to token black guy in the previous movie to make way for Rose, who, thankfully, had very little screen time in this movie. Nothing against Kelly Marie Tran, but I really did not like her character in The Last Jedi. That's entirely on the writing, not on her. I am abhorred how fans treated her, but I still do not like the character, and was glad to see less of her.
So, anyway, I really enjoyed the movie. It's not the best Star Wars movie ever, but it's definitely not the worst. It was a good ending. If I could name the biggest problem with the movie, it would be this. It's act three of a three act story with two act ones and no act two, and because of that, and due to Carrie Fisher's passing, it really had to scramble to pick up the pieces and pull them together into a movie. But, again, despite it's problems, I felt it was a fun and entertaining movie, and I do not understand why so many people are so angry about it. Maybe in 2 years time after I've had some time to think about it, I'll understand the other side better, like I did for The Last Jedi.
Anyway, now that we've got some new Star Wars movies, and I've had time to think on some of them more, here's my updated Star Wars Movie Rankings. Best to worst. Since I already gave my explanations for my rankings last time I posted my rankings I'll just give the list this time.
1.) The Empire Strikes Back
2.) Rogue One
3.) Star Wars (A New Hope)
4.) Return of the Jedi
5.) The Force Awakens
6.) The Rise of Skywalker
7.) Revenge of the Sith
8.) Solo
9.) The Last Jedi
10.) The Clone Wars
11.) The Phantom Menace
12.) Attack of the Clones.
And here's my rankings on Star Wars TV series. Best to worst.
1.) Clone Wars. Though it has it's fair share of terrible episodes, it makes up for them by the rest of them being really, really good. This series basically took the Star Wars prequels and said we can fix this. And they did. They made the characters (except for Jarjar) more human and likeable. And made the Clone Wars the huge, destructive conflict that old Obi-Wan speaks of with such reverence in the original movie. The first season is kind of lame, but George Lucas gave them the thumbs up to do more, and dig deeper in following seasons, and they really went for it.
2.) The Mandalorian. Like a spaghetti western in space. I enjoy the short episode runtimes, they tell the story and get out. I like the metric crapton of Baby Yoda memes. It's just a really fun show to watch, even if the special effects and the acting on side characters are not always that great.
3.) Rebels. This show is not great. It's like they took the Clone Wars, stripped it of everything that made it good, and vomited it back out in a boring, annoying mess. It has it's moments. Anytime Darth Vader is on screen is awesome to watch, and I liked seeing Grand Admiral Thrawn in a visual medium, (other than the opening cutscene from Tie Fighter) even if he wasn't written very well. But the main protagonist is unbearable, and it's just not a very fun series to watch most of the time.
4.) Resistance. I watched one episode of this series and said this is not for me. It's too kiddie for me. I just found it to be boring and stupid. And the animation is kind of garbage too.
So there's my obligatory Star Wars rambling following the release of a new Star Wars movie.
December 1, 2019
I did a thing.
So, for NaNoWriMo this year I thought to myself, I COULD do final edits on Memories of What Never Was... or I could take a month off from that to keep from going insane and ending up on the news running through downtown in my skivvies with my pants on my head serenading parking meters like I was in some sort of musical, but in real life. So I looked at what I wrote last year for NaNo, the, as yet, still incomplete first draft of the second book to Memories, and decided that I still needed to hash out a few things in my head on that one before I pick it up again. I didn't really have anything on the back burner that was ready to go, so I toyed with the idea of just, you know, not participating in NaNo this year. It can be stressful, and god knows I don't need any more stress in my life. I mean, do you know what it's like to be 40, unmarried, and have a mother who physically NEEDS grandchildren, while also trying not to keel over during one of the most intensive times of the year at work? It's like I'm sitting in a flippin' pressure cooker 24/7. But I couldn't do that. It would break my 7 year streak of finishing NaNo every year. So I looked at what I have being stirred by three cryptic witches in a cauldron in the back of my head and pulled up two stories I've been kicking around for the last few years while working on Spires of Infinity and Memories of What Never Was.
One, about a Damsel in Distress that gets kidnapped by the Dark Lord, and then takes over his evil empire because she's more evil than he is, and better at his job, then starts a war with the Great Hero that's trying to rescue and marry her, which I decided not to do, because it still needs some plot points filled in before I start work on it. And another called Carrying the Weight of the World, which is a very complex epic fantasy standalone that is very hard to describe briefly. Allow me to try, and fail, to do so. *ahem* Some dude tore a hole in reality to the realms of the gods and the demons, and all three worlds began to unravel. At first there was a three way war of extermination going on, before they realized that all of reality would unravel if they didn't come together and do something about it quick. So they created this thing called the Balance. An artificial pocket of reality that small parts of their three worlds could escape to, and continue on, while the rest of reality comes apart and ceases to be. The Balance functions by placing rules on the artificial reality, balancing all things. No one can gain power without someone losing it, for someone to be born, someone has to die, for someone to be healthy, someone has to be ill, etc etc etc. Now, 2400 years later, elements in all three of the worlds have decided that the Balance is BS, and they want to cause it to fail and see what happens. Will reality continue on without the Balance keeping it in check, or will everything unravel and cease to be? The Balance must be maintained by an immortal priestess from each of the three worlds in a ceremony every year and a day, but if the ceremony is not performed there is a grace period of a year and a day before the Balance fails, and someone kidnaps the human priestess, while causing a civil war in the human world to distract from what's happening. So we follow a slave girl who inherited a beast god's soul, power, and knowledge who uses her newfound power to build a crime empire for the purpose of destroying the Balance. The kidnapped priestess who is desperate to return to her shrine to save the Balance. The queen's bastard daughter whose birth caused a very costly and bloody rebellion 20 years ago, and a mercenary that she hired to get her the heck away from her crazy mother. And an assassin from an order that upholds the Balance by assassinating those who become too powerful or wealthy so that those who suffer a lowering in status because of it can rise within the Balance. And so beast god slave girl starts a civil war, kidnaps the priestess, and a world that was already butthurt from the rebellion 20 years ago decides that now is a good time to go insane, while the other characters hook up and attempt to get the priestess back to her shrine to save the world. *takes deep breath*
So, yeah, that's the one I chose to start work on for NaNo this year. It's the most complex story I've ever attempted to write with about a dozen different viewpoint characters, a lot of politics, and also incorporates a lot of philosophical and metaphysical ideas about what reality is, and what it means to be human. It's probably the most ambitious story I've ever started, but I've been kicking around ideas that eventually evolved into it for about 15 years now, and I feel that I've gained enough writing experience in the last few years here that I can actually pull it off decently now. Part of the reason I've put it off so long is that I didn't feel I was a good enough writer to properly tell the story, but I think I can handle it now. *crosses fingers*
Anyway, I just barely managed to hit the 50k words for NaNo last night at about 11:55 PM so I made it, but just barely. I still have about a month's worth of work to do on Memories of What Never Was before the final draft is finished, and it's December and I'm a mailman, so that month is not going to be this month. But once I'm done with that, I think I'm pretty well set to continue with Carrying the Weight of the World's first draft.
One, about a Damsel in Distress that gets kidnapped by the Dark Lord, and then takes over his evil empire because she's more evil than he is, and better at his job, then starts a war with the Great Hero that's trying to rescue and marry her, which I decided not to do, because it still needs some plot points filled in before I start work on it. And another called Carrying the Weight of the World, which is a very complex epic fantasy standalone that is very hard to describe briefly. Allow me to try, and fail, to do so. *ahem* Some dude tore a hole in reality to the realms of the gods and the demons, and all three worlds began to unravel. At first there was a three way war of extermination going on, before they realized that all of reality would unravel if they didn't come together and do something about it quick. So they created this thing called the Balance. An artificial pocket of reality that small parts of their three worlds could escape to, and continue on, while the rest of reality comes apart and ceases to be. The Balance functions by placing rules on the artificial reality, balancing all things. No one can gain power without someone losing it, for someone to be born, someone has to die, for someone to be healthy, someone has to be ill, etc etc etc. Now, 2400 years later, elements in all three of the worlds have decided that the Balance is BS, and they want to cause it to fail and see what happens. Will reality continue on without the Balance keeping it in check, or will everything unravel and cease to be? The Balance must be maintained by an immortal priestess from each of the three worlds in a ceremony every year and a day, but if the ceremony is not performed there is a grace period of a year and a day before the Balance fails, and someone kidnaps the human priestess, while causing a civil war in the human world to distract from what's happening. So we follow a slave girl who inherited a beast god's soul, power, and knowledge who uses her newfound power to build a crime empire for the purpose of destroying the Balance. The kidnapped priestess who is desperate to return to her shrine to save the Balance. The queen's bastard daughter whose birth caused a very costly and bloody rebellion 20 years ago, and a mercenary that she hired to get her the heck away from her crazy mother. And an assassin from an order that upholds the Balance by assassinating those who become too powerful or wealthy so that those who suffer a lowering in status because of it can rise within the Balance. And so beast god slave girl starts a civil war, kidnaps the priestess, and a world that was already butthurt from the rebellion 20 years ago decides that now is a good time to go insane, while the other characters hook up and attempt to get the priestess back to her shrine to save the world. *takes deep breath*
So, yeah, that's the one I chose to start work on for NaNo this year. It's the most complex story I've ever attempted to write with about a dozen different viewpoint characters, a lot of politics, and also incorporates a lot of philosophical and metaphysical ideas about what reality is, and what it means to be human. It's probably the most ambitious story I've ever started, but I've been kicking around ideas that eventually evolved into it for about 15 years now, and I feel that I've gained enough writing experience in the last few years here that I can actually pull it off decently now. Part of the reason I've put it off so long is that I didn't feel I was a good enough writer to properly tell the story, but I think I can handle it now. *crosses fingers*
Anyway, I just barely managed to hit the 50k words for NaNo last night at about 11:55 PM so I made it, but just barely. I still have about a month's worth of work to do on Memories of What Never Was before the final draft is finished, and it's December and I'm a mailman, so that month is not going to be this month. But once I'm done with that, I think I'm pretty well set to continue with Carrying the Weight of the World's first draft.
October 8, 2019
Why Zelda: Breath of the Wild didn’t work for me.
There’s something of a plague of open world games out there on the market today. Some of them are very good. The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Final Fantasy XV, to name a few that I’ve actually played. And then there’s the ones that aren’t. Xenoblade Chronicles X and Breath of the Wild among them. Both of those games were made by the same company, Monolith Soft. And they both suffer from a lot of the same problems.
What makes a good open world game as opposed to a bad one? For me, it’s the way the story is handled. Looking at the examples of the open world games that I enjoyed, mentioned above, the story is the central aspect of the game. It just happens to take place in a large open world that you can explore and do all sorts of things in, but the story is always foremost. You always know exactly where to go to continue the story, and you can plow straight through it without doing any exploration or side activities if you so desire. The open world serves the story. You have a large, lived in world for it to take place in. You know where to go and what to do. Exploration, crafting, hunting, leveling up, side-questing, etc is all secondary to the story.
When you look at games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or something like Dragon Age: Inquisition, the open world is the point of the game. It’s all about the exploration, hunting, crafting, leveling up, side-questing etc. The story is secondary to all of that. And usually the story ain’t all that great either, because the focus of the developers was not to tell a story within an open world, but to make an open world period. It gives the feeling of there being a huge world with nothing to do in it. Nothing driving you forward to do anything.
Looking closer at Breath of the Wild, there is a story, but it’s very weak and it feels like it was added in as an afterthought. After the initial beginning area, you are basically told, hey, there’s story out there somewhere in this huge world. Go find it. You’re given small clues as to where you might find bits of the story in the form of pictures, but holy hell, have you tried locating them without an online guide? It is nigh impossible. It is as if the developers didn’t WANT you to find and play through the story. Where Horizon Zero Dawn, for example, always has a marker on your map for where to go next in the story, and the entire game is centered around the character and her struggles to find her place in the world, you’re left completely to your own devices in Breath of the Wild with a character that has no personality or will of his own.
When you do, eventually, find the story of Breath of the Wild--IF YOU EVEN CAN!!!--It’s very weak. It’s barely even a story at all. It feels more like the back story you’d read on the first page of the instruction manual if those were still a thing. The character you play doesn’t feel like he’s a part of it. He doesn’t have much of a personality, and exists solely as a projection of the player. Which, ironically, makes you feel as though you have LESS of a stake in the story. The story is not very character driven, and even if it was, the characters are so flippin’ bland that they might as well just be cardboard cutouts. So all you’re left with is a bunch of exploration and puzzle solving for the sake of exploration and puzzle solving. And, while that obviously seems to be enough for a lot of the people who played the game, it’s not enough for me. I want story. I want deep and sympathetic characters. I want drama. I want action. I want something--ANYTHING--to happen. I don’t want to have to search with a freaking magnifying glass just to find the bare bones of an extremely lazy story that feels like an afterthought by the developers. I want a story that takes place in an open world, not just an open world in itself.
Also, I don’t really care for the gameplay of Breath of the Wild on top of the story being kind of insultingly bad. The combat is kind of meh. The stamina system is pretty simple to overclock early on in the game, which removes, basically, all of the challenge in exploration. And good god the weapons. Whoever decided that every weapon you pick up will break after you whack something 4 times with it needs a good kick in the ass. It’s absolutely ridiculous! Also, the limited space you have to carry weapons in adds more artificial difficulty to the game. Not only does every weapon shatter after using it only a few times, you also can’t carry enough weapons to make up for it. I also disliked the lack of music in the game. For me, the music is part of the experience. When there’s no music at all outside of towns or combat, it feels like a huge part of the game is missing to me. Also, and this is something that has been annoying the crap out of me for decades now. Where is the Legend of Zelda theme music? The last game that it really featured in was Link’s Awakening (Yes, I know a remake just came out. Shut it!) that music is so iconic for the series, and it hasn’t been used in 25 freaking years. What the actual hell, Nintendo?
So, I guess the point is that an open world within a game just isn’t enough. It needs more. It needs a story to guide you through it. Without that, the open world just feels like an empty waste of time. And before anyone asks me what I thought about Skyrim, I played about 2 hours of it and gave up because I absolutely hated the controls. Open world games are really only worth playing so long as there is something meaningful to work toward in them. And for me, that meaningful thing is story. When the developers are so focused on open world that they forget to tell a story, or do a poor job of telling it, the whole game is just a big, empty wasteland of nothing interesting for me.
