Will English's Blog, page 10
November 2, 2012
Big Announcement: My first book signing.
I have been waiting for this day for a LONG time. I just got off the phone with owner of Bookmiser, a local used bookstore, and that Book signing I have been waiting for is finally gonna happen on the 17th of this month from 1-3 PM. If any of you are interested then check out these links for details:
http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/823158-my-first-book-signing
http://www.facebook.com/events/223687011095197/
And if you all feel so inclined, then please spread the word maybe bring a friend ^_^. you'll be glad you did ^_^.
Thanks in advanced guys.
That is all.
http://www.goodreads.com/event/show/823158-my-first-book-signing
http://www.facebook.com/events/223687011095197/
And if you all feel so inclined, then please spread the word maybe bring a friend ^_^. you'll be glad you did ^_^.
Thanks in advanced guys.
That is all.
October 16, 2012
Long time no see.
So, where did I go? Well I've been kinda busy with other things, like my seemingly futile search to find a source of regular income (if you all have any advice, ideas, opportunities and what-have-you that will help me with that, I would be most appreciative if you could tell me) and work on my first proper novel has been keeping me pretty busy. That and generally when I do a blog post, I like to have something to actually talk about and lately I haven't been able to think of anything worth blogging about. So, yeah, sorry about the silence.
Anyway, while I'm here I might as well take the time to make some announcements:
The first is kinda long over due: A while back, the very talented William Hahn was kind enough to interview me on his blog as part of the Magic Appreciation Tour. Which you all can read here: http://independentbookworm.com/2012/09/10/an-interview-with-will-english/
Sorry Hahn for taking so long to post this on here, time just got away from me.
The second is that I am talking with Bookmiser, a local used bookstore, about setting up my first book signing for Walking With Summer Dreams. Nothing is set in stone as of yet, since the manager of the store is talking with several other local authors for the same thing, but we are hoping that the signing will take place on a Saturday in November. So as soon as the details are finalized I'll talk about that some more, who knows I might actually see some of you there ^_^.
If you all want to check out Walking With Summer Dreams before that, well you can get it as a paperback or as an e-book. Here are links to it below:
Paperback (Amazon): http://www.amazon.com/Walking-With-Summer-Dreams-Fiction/dp/1105722546/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2
Paperback (Lulu.com): http://www.lulu.com/shop/will-english/walking-with-summer-dreams-short-fiction/paperback/product-20193868.html
Paperback and Nook (Barns and Noble.com): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/walking-with-summer-dreams-will-english/1112046452?ean=9781105722547
Kindle (all territories): http://www.amazon.com/Walking-with-Summer-Dreams-ebook/dp/B00579FV6C/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2
E-book (Lulu.com): http://www.lulu.com/shop/will-english/walking-with-summer-dreams-short-fiction/ebook/product-20030278.html
and finally the Ibookstore/Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/walking-with-summer-dreams/id501772020?mt=11
You can also have physical book stores order it for you from Ingram.com. If you end up getting it, I hope you like it.
And that's all from me for now. Talk to you guys later.
Anyway, while I'm here I might as well take the time to make some announcements:
The first is kinda long over due: A while back, the very talented William Hahn was kind enough to interview me on his blog as part of the Magic Appreciation Tour. Which you all can read here: http://independentbookworm.com/2012/09/10/an-interview-with-will-english/
Sorry Hahn for taking so long to post this on here, time just got away from me.
The second is that I am talking with Bookmiser, a local used bookstore, about setting up my first book signing for Walking With Summer Dreams. Nothing is set in stone as of yet, since the manager of the store is talking with several other local authors for the same thing, but we are hoping that the signing will take place on a Saturday in November. So as soon as the details are finalized I'll talk about that some more, who knows I might actually see some of you there ^_^.
If you all want to check out Walking With Summer Dreams before that, well you can get it as a paperback or as an e-book. Here are links to it below:
Paperback (Amazon): http://www.amazon.com/Walking-With-Summer-Dreams-Fiction/dp/1105722546/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2
Paperback (Lulu.com): http://www.lulu.com/shop/will-english/walking-with-summer-dreams-short-fiction/paperback/product-20193868.html
Paperback and Nook (Barns and Noble.com): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/walking-with-summer-dreams-will-english/1112046452?ean=9781105722547
Kindle (all territories): http://www.amazon.com/Walking-with-Summer-Dreams-ebook/dp/B00579FV6C/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2
E-book (Lulu.com): http://www.lulu.com/shop/will-english/walking-with-summer-dreams-short-fiction/ebook/product-20030278.html
and finally the Ibookstore/Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/walking-with-summer-dreams/id501772020?mt=11
You can also have physical book stores order it for you from Ingram.com. If you end up getting it, I hope you like it.
And that's all from me for now. Talk to you guys later.
September 25, 2012
Game reviews: Party Wave Free and Blade Guardian for Iphone
Life is kinda cool sometimes. Sometime ago, I sent a private Twitter message to Mistwalker, the game development company formed by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, on Twitter asking if Sakaguchi would be interested in doing an interview for the blog. By some twist of fate, I had been casually talking to the very nice man who runs the companies' Twitter account for some time prior to this, and I was feeling pretty confident so I thought why not. Of course in reality I didn't think that anything would come of it. Game developers are just as busy as anyone and I'm not a professional game journalist, I'm just a fan. But asking a question never hurt anybody. And while I hope that said interview will happen someday, today is not that day. Anyway, last night I got a private message on Twitter from Mistwalker asking if I would be interested in reviewing two of their upcoming releases on the Iphone: Blade Guardian, and the free version of their previous Iphone game Party Wave. For those of you living in a five mile radiance of my house, I must apologize for waking you with my fanboy squeal of delight at 4:30 in the morning. Anyway, I said yes, they sent me the means to get the games and now we're here. I'm mostly gonna focus on how the games are played (beyond tapping the screen I mean), so I'm going to try and be as neutral as I can be. Lets start with the newest game, Blade Guardian.
To begin with, this is a tower defense game , a sub spices of the real-time strategy genre. Anyone familiar with games like StarCraft will understand the concept immediately. Tower defense games are basically games like, boiled down to their most basic components. You're placed on a space and you have to defend your base from waves upon waves of aliens while simultaneously trying to out maneuver them and destroy their base. Now normally when I talk about a game, I would take some time to explain the plot first, but Blade Guardian doesn't have one. If this was any platform other than a smart phone that would be a strike against it. But as it is, it doesn't matter, because 90% of the best games on the Iphone don't have plots either and they're still a blast to play (see Angry Birds). So this game is all about gameplay, not story.
Anyway, here's an example of what a level looks like:
Just when a fence would be most useful.The bottom of the screen is self explanatory, it tells you how many waves you have to fight off, how much abuse your base can take, your score, the pause button ect. The '+' and '-' icons in the top right are for zooming in and out, which can help out sometimes. The "G" icon on the top left displays how much gold you've acquired, and that's an important part of the game. You get gold by killing enemies, the bigger the enemy the more gold you get, makes sense. And a bonus amount of gold is awarded after each level depending your score. What you use the gold for is obvious. You buy weapons and pieces of wall which you can string together to slow the enemy down and change his direction. The weapons are your standard laser cannons, a catapult that hurls bombs at groups of enemies, a...thing (I don't know what) that spits acid, and your standard machine gun turrets that come by the dozen. The idea is to place each weapon along the wall you build at strategic points so that you can get the most kills and get more gold to upgrade your weapons to more powerful versions. This what I like, because the game doesn't reward you for blindly charging in with guns blazing, you have to slow down and think of how to outflank the enemy. Its like a game of chess. Sadly you can't pen Aliens into a single area and pick them off, which can be a little annoying. But doing that would've made it too easy. Not that it matters, because more enemies are constantly coming out of their base (that weird purple tube thing) and later on they can come at you from all sides thanks to tunnels that dot the level. Its easy to get surround you if your not careful. As the game advances, tougher aliens appear that take forever to die. So the only quick way to advance is to destroy the alien base and the tunnels.
The Blade Guardian
Which brigs me to the next point: how do you destroy the enemy base anyway? The guns along the walls can't do it, so how? Simple, a Blade Guardian (see left). When in play, these things will automatically make their way to the alien base or the nearest tunnel and destroy it. It will also attack any enemy that it comes across. And just like the other weapons, they can be upgraded to more powerful forms if you have enough gold. They even have a ball form, which they call a "Sphere Blade," that runs things over, which is kinda cool. It just too bad that its a pain in the butt to control. You have to physically tilt the Iphone (or whatever your using) in the direction you want it too move. Most of the time though, it just does whatever the heck it wants and it ends up falling uselessly off the board. So it really takes some time to get use too. But that's just one portion of the headache the mechs cause, because getting them on the board is not as self explanatory as you might think. This screenshot explains it:
Yeah, this thing appears at random and you gotta attack a metal octopus to free it. Freeing it also drains your gold which can get you killed. Thankfully your normal weapons can damage the octopus, but they take forever. And the mechs blow up after destroying a tunnel or a base, which is kind of annoying. I still haven't figured out how to upgrade these things either. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but when I tap the unit and hit what I think is the upgrade icon, I end up turning into the Sphere Blade and rolling off the board. Why couldn't they be two separate icons? Or better yet, why couldn't I just buy and upgrade the mechs from my base? Why do I gotta destroy a metal octopus? But admittedly, that's more of a personal complaint than any real flaw with the game. Because otherwise, this game is a blast, check it out when it comes out.
Next up is the free version of Party Wave, its an imaginative action surfing game with cute aliens. I haven't played the paid version (which came out some time before), at least not yet. But so far as I can tell both versions are pretty much identical. Except that the free version is basically a glorified demo and not a full game. But even for a demo, I gotta say, this game is even more fun than Blade Guardian. Thanks to its cartoony look and simplistic gameplay. There's no plot to this one either so lets just hop on in. To win each section of the game, you have to direct a group of surfers to a foaming white line in the water and wait for a wave. But the way to the line is full sea creatures and you gotta maneuver around or they will knock you off your board and you'll lose a life. There are stationary hazards too, like small islands and clams, but these are relatively easy to avoid. Anyway, after a set time, the wave will come weather the whole group is there or not, so you have to take your time in a hurry. Once on the wave, well you'll have to surf it by guiding the surfers with your finger, if they touch the bottom of the wave or get off their board you lose. When riding the wave, you can do sorts of tricks for points. But you also gotta dodge hazards both above and below the water like Jellyfish, seagulls jumping dolphins and other sea creatures. Even the aliens:
If you hit the Alien's while surfing, you'll get extra points, but they are moving all over the place so you really gotta aim for'em. So much stuff happens on the screen, if you don't pay attention you get wiped out. But anyway, the graphics are nice and colorful, the music is cheery and really adds to the happy mood. My only real complaint is that the controls can be kind of stiff and it is kind of hard to move to the foamy line. The characters just move along at a jerky pace and the game doesn't let you do any sharp movements, not until you're surfing anyway. But this can be forgiven, because this game is fun and just has a charm that makes you smile.
In closing. Both of these games are great additions to your Iphone, Ipod touch or Ipad and are well worth buying. If you're interested: then the paid version of Party Wave is available now on the Itune's app store for $1.99. But if you want to wait for the free version, well you won't have to wait long. Both Party Wave Free and Blade Guardian are set to be released on the same day, October 1st, on the Itunes app store. I think that Android users will begetting Party Wave on October 1st as well, but I can't confirm that so please don't quote me. I haven't heard anything about Blade Guardian coming to the Android though, but "never say never" as they say.
And with that I'm out. A big thanks to Mistwalker for giving me this opportunity to review these games, and Thanks to Hironobu Sakaguchi and his team for making them, stay awesome guys ^_^.
All the pictures and video clips in this post are copyrighted 2012 by Mistwalker Corporation and were used with permission.
To begin with, this is a tower defense game , a sub spices of the real-time strategy genre. Anyone familiar with games like StarCraft will understand the concept immediately. Tower defense games are basically games like, boiled down to their most basic components. You're placed on a space and you have to defend your base from waves upon waves of aliens while simultaneously trying to out maneuver them and destroy their base. Now normally when I talk about a game, I would take some time to explain the plot first, but Blade Guardian doesn't have one. If this was any platform other than a smart phone that would be a strike against it. But as it is, it doesn't matter, because 90% of the best games on the Iphone don't have plots either and they're still a blast to play (see Angry Birds). So this game is all about gameplay, not story.Anyway, here's an example of what a level looks like:
Just when a fence would be most useful.The bottom of the screen is self explanatory, it tells you how many waves you have to fight off, how much abuse your base can take, your score, the pause button ect. The '+' and '-' icons in the top right are for zooming in and out, which can help out sometimes. The "G" icon on the top left displays how much gold you've acquired, and that's an important part of the game. You get gold by killing enemies, the bigger the enemy the more gold you get, makes sense. And a bonus amount of gold is awarded after each level depending your score. What you use the gold for is obvious. You buy weapons and pieces of wall which you can string together to slow the enemy down and change his direction. The weapons are your standard laser cannons, a catapult that hurls bombs at groups of enemies, a...thing (I don't know what) that spits acid, and your standard machine gun turrets that come by the dozen. The idea is to place each weapon along the wall you build at strategic points so that you can get the most kills and get more gold to upgrade your weapons to more powerful versions. This what I like, because the game doesn't reward you for blindly charging in with guns blazing, you have to slow down and think of how to outflank the enemy. Its like a game of chess. Sadly you can't pen Aliens into a single area and pick them off, which can be a little annoying. But doing that would've made it too easy. Not that it matters, because more enemies are constantly coming out of their base (that weird purple tube thing) and later on they can come at you from all sides thanks to tunnels that dot the level. Its easy to get surround you if your not careful. As the game advances, tougher aliens appear that take forever to die. So the only quick way to advance is to destroy the alien base and the tunnels.
The Blade Guardian Which brigs me to the next point: how do you destroy the enemy base anyway? The guns along the walls can't do it, so how? Simple, a Blade Guardian (see left). When in play, these things will automatically make their way to the alien base or the nearest tunnel and destroy it. It will also attack any enemy that it comes across. And just like the other weapons, they can be upgraded to more powerful forms if you have enough gold. They even have a ball form, which they call a "Sphere Blade," that runs things over, which is kinda cool. It just too bad that its a pain in the butt to control. You have to physically tilt the Iphone (or whatever your using) in the direction you want it too move. Most of the time though, it just does whatever the heck it wants and it ends up falling uselessly off the board. So it really takes some time to get use too. But that's just one portion of the headache the mechs cause, because getting them on the board is not as self explanatory as you might think. This screenshot explains it:
Yeah, this thing appears at random and you gotta attack a metal octopus to free it. Freeing it also drains your gold which can get you killed. Thankfully your normal weapons can damage the octopus, but they take forever. And the mechs blow up after destroying a tunnel or a base, which is kind of annoying. I still haven't figured out how to upgrade these things either. Maybe there's something I'm missing, but when I tap the unit and hit what I think is the upgrade icon, I end up turning into the Sphere Blade and rolling off the board. Why couldn't they be two separate icons? Or better yet, why couldn't I just buy and upgrade the mechs from my base? Why do I gotta destroy a metal octopus? But admittedly, that's more of a personal complaint than any real flaw with the game. Because otherwise, this game is a blast, check it out when it comes out.
Next up is the free version of Party Wave, its an imaginative action surfing game with cute aliens. I haven't played the paid version (which came out some time before), at least not yet. But so far as I can tell both versions are pretty much identical. Except that the free version is basically a glorified demo and not a full game. But even for a demo, I gotta say, this game is even more fun than Blade Guardian. Thanks to its cartoony look and simplistic gameplay. There's no plot to this one either so lets just hop on in. To win each section of the game, you have to direct a group of surfers to a foaming white line in the water and wait for a wave. But the way to the line is full sea creatures and you gotta maneuver around or they will knock you off your board and you'll lose a life. There are stationary hazards too, like small islands and clams, but these are relatively easy to avoid. Anyway, after a set time, the wave will come weather the whole group is there or not, so you have to take your time in a hurry. Once on the wave, well you'll have to surf it by guiding the surfers with your finger, if they touch the bottom of the wave or get off their board you lose. When riding the wave, you can do sorts of tricks for points. But you also gotta dodge hazards both above and below the water like Jellyfish, seagulls jumping dolphins and other sea creatures. Even the aliens:If you hit the Alien's while surfing, you'll get extra points, but they are moving all over the place so you really gotta aim for'em. So much stuff happens on the screen, if you don't pay attention you get wiped out. But anyway, the graphics are nice and colorful, the music is cheery and really adds to the happy mood. My only real complaint is that the controls can be kind of stiff and it is kind of hard to move to the foamy line. The characters just move along at a jerky pace and the game doesn't let you do any sharp movements, not until you're surfing anyway. But this can be forgiven, because this game is fun and just has a charm that makes you smile.
In closing. Both of these games are great additions to your Iphone, Ipod touch or Ipad and are well worth buying. If you're interested: then the paid version of Party Wave is available now on the Itune's app store for $1.99. But if you want to wait for the free version, well you won't have to wait long. Both Party Wave Free and Blade Guardian are set to be released on the same day, October 1st, on the Itunes app store. I think that Android users will begetting Party Wave on October 1st as well, but I can't confirm that so please don't quote me. I haven't heard anything about Blade Guardian coming to the Android though, but "never say never" as they say.
And with that I'm out. A big thanks to Mistwalker for giving me this opportunity to review these games, and Thanks to Hironobu Sakaguchi and his team for making them, stay awesome guys ^_^.
All the pictures and video clips in this post are copyrighted 2012 by Mistwalker Corporation and were used with permission.
September 18, 2012
Magic Appreciation blog tour Guest post: Something New-Old by Cynthia Ravinski
Lingering in the Woods http://amzn.to/HsxZWE is not your average fantasy story. Yes it has a witch, a demon and trolls, and even the ubiquitous pre-industrial European setting. So what pushes Lingering in the Woods into the “not average” category? Simple, the main character is a shaman of Finnish discipline, and it’s an emotobook. You won’t come across either of these things every day (unless you are lucky).
What’s up with these Finns, you say? Well, all Scandinavians did not follow the same pantheon. Even the Norse, according to the sagas, considered all Finns to be “sorcerers.” This might have something to do with the fact that the Finns did not fight for Thor or pray to Odin for wisdom.
When you think of a culture that developed half in the Arctic Circle with many dark days and months of subzero temperatures, you may not be surprised that their pre-Christian equivalent of the devil, Lempo, was also their god of love. Perhaps that makes a certain kind of sense.
Another one, Loviatar, is the goddess of illness. She had a few sisters, but her nine offspring were the personification of the most miserable diseases known to the ancient Finns. Human suffering frequently seems to be blamed on interfering spirits.Okay, that one was a bit geeky.
If the unusual Finnish motifs in Lingering in the Woods don’t strike your fancy, maybe this will. It’s an Emotobook: A new medium of fiction, the first designed to be tablet friendly.
Emotobooks employ abstract art, inserted into a fast story at emotional high points. Reading an emotobook, no matter if it is on your computer or you smartphone, will simultaneously engage multiple parts of your brain for a saturating reading experience. How about a sneak peak?
Grit City Publications http://bit.ly/HbwqKRpublishes Emotobooks on Smashwords http://bit.ly/H3sBbWso you can download them directly to your computer as a PDF or in html so you can read it like a web page. But they’re also available in the iBookstore http://bit.ly/K7ioxP on Amazon http://amzn.to/HsxZWE and at all major ebook retailors (Emotobooks look great on my new Samsung Galaxy S III).
If you try an emotobook and love it, visit the Grit City page http://bit.ly/OHSXHe and request an autograph card for the creators of the emotobook.
This post continues my September Magic Appreciation Blog Tour. My last stop was at the Active Voice. http://the-active-voice.com/
Bio:Cynthia Ravinski writes Emotobooks, among other things. From her coastal northern setting she finagles language into stories. She’s been an athlete, a co-pilot, and a world traveler. She’s basked in the light of great poets, and has been educated to high degrees at UMaine Farmington and Seton Hill University. To say she is obsessed with drinking tea is an understatement.Find Cynthia Ravinski at her Blog www.cynthiaravinski.comOn facebook: http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaRavinskiAuthorAnd twitter @CynthiaRavinski
September 9, 2012
Magic Appreciation Tour Guest Post: Superhero Shows, Complete with Ads by William Hahn.
Maybe it’s a sign of advancing age, but I start to notice simpler and simpler things these days, obvious beyond mention but hitting me like a revelation. Reading around in Mr. English’s fine blog here it dawned on me; that special combination of fantasy, sci-fi, and all other kinds of heroic activity was something my generation experienced like no other before or since.
I’m a child of the superhero age. Headline in “Duh” magazine.I was that kid just old enough to be on the edge of my seat during the “Batman” show on TV. I could never figure out why my mom and dad were chuckling. And every odd-numbered episode, with the Caped Crusader in an impossible jam- I lost sleep, really. That show was not funny, not to me- getting the heroic ideal under my skin and into my DNA was serious business.Ditto “Star Trek”, “Wild Wild West”, and the real, true golden age of comics- when they didn’t just exist, but there were lots of them in the store near where you lived, and you could afford them. Load me up, dude; Iron Man, Spider-Man, all the stuff YOU KIDS TODAY :: wags finger, practically drools :: have seen in the blockbuster movies. I knew the real guys, you know, the ones who didn’t exist except in my soul- I can judge whether the flicks did it right or not.I was there.
Never you mind what year it started precisely. If you’re not already nodding your head and grinning like the kid who got an extra bubble-gum cigar for the nickel, here’s when it was. During that gilded window of time when the media had just descended on us and no one was carping yet about how TV rotted your soul. Your folks left you in the land of wonder for long periods, in between eating. Saturday morning cartoons were a solid seven-hour block of time; three networks all loaded with The Mighty Mightorr, The Impossibles, Jonny Quest, Space Ghost. Afternoons were filled with tree-branch swinging and barn-roof derring-do, launching model rockets and chiseling away at the rock face out back, trying to create a personal Fortress of Solitude (got about a quarter-inch along, lots of cool sparks though).
Even the ads were heroic. First product I ever bought purely because of the commercial was Hai Karate After-Shave. The ads featured a regular joe (Dan Resin, he was Dr. Beeper in “Caddyshack”), who slapped on the Hai Karate, and immediately had to use martial arts to beat back gorgeous women trying to tackle him. You bet I ran right out and bought me some of that. I was twelve. Didn’t shave until I was sixteen! But the bottle came with a little self-defence manual- a bargain at twice the price. Fare like that set me up perfectly- my mind and spirit prepared by struggle and victory in any genre you could name. Then the closer, the deal-sealer and mind-stealer, a show that stamped itself forever in my memory and to this day stands as the acme of heroism. And I had to wait until evening to watch.The Prisoner.
If I say much more I’ll need another blog. But Patrick McGoohan in that show swept me into a world of enthralled horror and excitementthe likes of which I’ve never known. One man, completely isolated, surrounded by those he can’t trust using technology he can’t understand. The definition of hope-less, and he still thrusts his fist into the air and shouts the immortal words, “I am not a number, I am a free man!” I couldn’t tear myself away- I mean now, forty years later. The show’s not on, the remake was bad, the graphic novel a mess. But everything I write, I look for the heroes and what they’re thinking. Nothing else matters- the struggle, the decision, the unhesitating moment of self-sacrifice. And sure, the witty quips as they head into the fray.I know what the non-nodders are asking. So what? Here’s what, you little whips. If you like these movies today- and you should love them- remember this. Nicholas Cage and Morton Downey and Gary Oldman (Comm. Gordon) and Andrew Molina (Dr. Octopus); these guys are all MY age. From my time. You read about how Downey wasn’t up for the role, and kicked in the door on the producers to insist, “no, you don’t get it- I AM Iron Man”, and then knocked their socks off in the first audition. How Cage sold his comic collection for $1.6 million, wanted to be Superman but happily took on Ghost Rider.I know these guys I never met. They saw the same stuff I did (Cage’s comics collection was bigger, OK). And this is our time. So what again? (Always so what with you kids.) So this- guys my age are driving this bus. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. _________________________________________________________________________________Will Hahn is the chronicler of the Lands of Hope, a world of fantasy adventure. The tales of Hope are available online at Amazon, B&Nand Smashwords.com, and a free Compendiumabout the Lands can be found at his shared website, the Independent Bookworm.His most recent tale is “The Plane of Dreams”- see the trailer on YouTube
September 8, 2012
Anime talk: Space Runaway Ideon.
I am an Otaku, an anime fan. I was anime fan before it became cool to be one. Not that much of big confession, or even that surprising if you've been reading this blog for a while and know how nerdy I can be. Now why am I bring this up? Well I'm about to talk about an anime series that is both really, really good and is one that I'm pretty sure that not many of you in the western world have actually heard of. Space Runaway Ideon.
Yeah, yeah, dumb title is dumb title, but this series is anything but. Here's the gist of the plot, and this will probably contain some spoilers but I will be as vague as I can be. Ideon takes place far in the future where man kind has finally left Earth and colonized other planets. On the planet Solo in the Andromeda Galaxy, archaeologists uncover an alien spaceship (later dubbed the "Solo Ship") and three massive armored trucks. Just as the colonist go about the task of restoring the ship and the trucks, a humanoid alien civilization called the Buff Clan (yeah, I laughed at first too), arrive at Solo while investigating the legend of the 'Id', an energy source that is said to be infinite. When they discover that Solo is suddenly inhabited Karala, the daughter of the Buff Clan's supreme military commander, goes down the planet to get a closer look at the humans. The man in charge of the investigation sends a squad of planes to get her back and...well long story short: the planes can't find her, they think she and her servant were captured and they opened fire on the humans. Our central characters, Cosmo Yuki the white teenage boy with a silly looking red Afro, the blond hair bitchy girl Kasha and the not quite comedy relief kid Deck and the head of planet Solo's military forces Jordan Bes, get on board the armored trucks and discover that these trucks combine into a giant mecha called, the "Ideon" (see picture on the left). The colony is destroyed and the survivors (including Karala and her servant) take refuge on board the restored Solo Ship, which they then take off in and escape with the Buff Clan in hot pursuit. By now some of you are asking "hey, Mr. Summer Sleeper, is this 'Id' energy source the Buff Clan are looking for connected to the Ideon and the Solo Ship?"
To which I would respond: "Uh....duh." As the series progresses we do learn what the "Id" actually is. And here are the spoilers I mentioned earlier. As it turns out, the Id is actually the power source of both the Ideon and the Solo Ship: not only that, its also alive. Yes, alive. It has a living consciousness and is comprised of millions upon millions of other consciousness that get added to it as the sentient life around it dies. Its pretty much the same thing as 'The Overmind" from Arthur C. Clarke's novel 'Childhood's_End' and the idea of "Human Instrumentality" from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anyway, put simply, the Id is kind of a bastard. Its manipulating both the Buff Clan and the Humans to fight each other because it wants to see if intelligent life is worthy of surviving. And if its not, it intends to do something about it. What exactly? Come on people, you should know the answer to that. But I'll get to it later.
Story wise, Ideon deals with themes such as the futility and stupidity of war, racism, xenophobia (i.e. How the Buff Clan wants the Human race dead simply because they don't understand them and don't want too, and because they think that the human's will turn around and destroy them all with the Ideon and its awesome power). And of course the dangers of technology. Its was also one of the first examples of a "Hybrid giant mecha anime," a genre of Japanese anime that combines elements of both "Real Robot anime" (in where giant mecha is portrayed in a realistic way, such as Gundam) and Super Robot anime (anime in where the giant robots are basically ultra powerful super heroes such as Mazinger Z) in 1980 this was still pretty much a new thing and neat idea. Here is an example of what I am getting at here: The Ideon and the Ideon and the Solo Ship are basically alive (thanks to the Id) and the Ideon basically has super powers (which I'm getting too). But its not a super hero, its a weapon of mass destruction, it can't work without people or living things inside of it. And while the Buff Clan are aliens all they are really trying to do is protect themselves from said weapon of mass destruction. This is what I personally like, there is a lot of grey area here and neither the Buff Clan nor the humans are portrayed as particularly evil, just ordinary people thrusted into extraordinary circumstances beyond their control and they're trying to do the right thing as they see it. And the poor residence of the Solo Ship are caught in the middle. Turned away from their own kind because of the war they unknowingly brought on humanity and hated by the Buff Clan for their primary source of defense, they become essentially runaways (hence the title). And despite all of that, Karala and Bes manage to fall in love with each other and make child together. But that doesn't really help at all.
Now let me talk about the Ideon itself. I don't even need to comment. Just look at this thing: [image error] Isn't that not dumbest looking giant robot you've ever seen? It looks like an oversized Gundam with rabbit ears. Now would you believe that this is the deadliest Giant mech ever devised by humans? How is that possible? Well remember those Super Powers I mentioned earlier? Now were gonna talk about them. However, "powers" is a bad choice of words, becuase I'm talking about weapons. Ya see, as the story progresses and the Ideon becomes more powerful and uncontrollable, 3 weapons are discovered that are considered by fans and critics alike to be some of the powerful ever in any anime. Up until this point, the Ideon's weapons are basic, just a ridiculous amount of missiles located on the top of its shoulders, arms, legs and thighs. When it wanted, it could fire all these missiles at once and reduce whatever it wanted to cinders. But that's not one of the weapons I'm talking about. The first is the Black hole cannon, which is basically a mini-black hole in the Ideon's stomach (I don't know how that's supposed to work either). The Ideon sword, twin beams of energy that are basicly oversized light sabers video on the left shows them slicing a planet in half). And finally, the most destructive of all: The Ideon Gun, which is so impossibly powerful that anything that even comes close to its line of fire (ships, mechs, people, planets, comets, whatever), is instantly turned into star dust. Even if the target is in hyper space.
Anyway, Ideon first premiered on Japanese TV in 1980, and was the brain child of Mobile Suit Gundam creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino. Tomino and his team originally planed to have Ideon to run for a total of 43 episodes but the show was canceled in 1981 after just 39 episodes becuase of low ratings. The fan's were, understandably, not happen about this and neither was Tomino. So in 1982 he got his team back together and got the green light from Sunrise Studios to make two movies based on Ideon, titled "A Contact" and "Be Invoked." both titles were released on the same day as a double feature. A Contact was a compilation film that retells the story of the first 32 episodes of the show with some new seances, retouched animation and re-imaging of events...it was kind of a mess. Be Invoked on the other hand, retold the events of the last episode and also warped up the series proper, and is arguably one of the best things that Tomino ever made. Sadly, Ideon was never considered for release in North America back in the 80's and I have no idea wh---oh wait:
That's why. And Yes, all the clips (most of them admittedly from A Contact and Be Invoked) in that montage are real, I did not alter them to mess with you. Yes, that little girl's head was blow clean off by gun fire, yes that guy was disembodied by cannon fire, yes you just saw a four month pregnant Karala get shot 3 times in the face, yes you just saw the Ideon blow up and destroy the universe (literally). This is seriously one of the most violent anime's I've ever seen, far more violent than what North American censors at the time would allow. While its not gory, and the first half of the show isn't anymore violent than the average comic book, when the second half starts, to gets darker and darker until by the time you finally get to Be Invoked, Ideon has become a blood bath. I must say, Ideon had some serious balls.
Anyway, like I said, Ideon has never been officially released outside of Japan, and nor is it ever likely to be. Because, lets be honest here, despite the timelessness of its message, Ideon has NOT aged gracefully. Most of the character names are unintentionally hilarious (I mean, "Cosmo Yuiki"...really), the animation looks its age and the mech design, as I've said...is just dumb. But if you can look past all that, should you watch it? Hell yes. Even though its never had an official release, it has been unofficially subtitled by fans and released online for download (which I will remind you is highly Illgeal ) and the TV series and both the movies has been uploaded to Youtube (which is basically how I watched it so, there you go). If you want to import it legally on DVD, well that's a problem, to degree you....kinda can't anymore. Ideon has never been that popular in Japan, and its home video releases go out of print very quickly. I do know that both the movies at least have been released to Blu-ray though, so maybe the show has too.
In anycase, if you have a chance to watch it. Then I say do it.
and I'm out.
Yeah, yeah, dumb title is dumb title, but this series is anything but. Here's the gist of the plot, and this will probably contain some spoilers but I will be as vague as I can be. Ideon takes place far in the future where man kind has finally left Earth and colonized other planets. On the planet Solo in the Andromeda Galaxy, archaeologists uncover an alien spaceship (later dubbed the "Solo Ship") and three massive armored trucks. Just as the colonist go about the task of restoring the ship and the trucks, a humanoid alien civilization called the Buff Clan (yeah, I laughed at first too), arrive at Solo while investigating the legend of the 'Id', an energy source that is said to be infinite. When they discover that Solo is suddenly inhabited Karala, the daughter of the Buff Clan's supreme military commander, goes down the planet to get a closer look at the humans. The man in charge of the investigation sends a squad of planes to get her back and...well long story short: the planes can't find her, they think she and her servant were captured and they opened fire on the humans. Our central characters, Cosmo Yuki the white teenage boy with a silly looking red Afro, the blond hair bitchy girl Kasha and the not quite comedy relief kid Deck and the head of planet Solo's military forces Jordan Bes, get on board the armored trucks and discover that these trucks combine into a giant mecha called, the "Ideon" (see picture on the left). The colony is destroyed and the survivors (including Karala and her servant) take refuge on board the restored Solo Ship, which they then take off in and escape with the Buff Clan in hot pursuit. By now some of you are asking "hey, Mr. Summer Sleeper, is this 'Id' energy source the Buff Clan are looking for connected to the Ideon and the Solo Ship?" To which I would respond: "Uh....duh." As the series progresses we do learn what the "Id" actually is. And here are the spoilers I mentioned earlier. As it turns out, the Id is actually the power source of both the Ideon and the Solo Ship: not only that, its also alive. Yes, alive. It has a living consciousness and is comprised of millions upon millions of other consciousness that get added to it as the sentient life around it dies. Its pretty much the same thing as 'The Overmind" from Arthur C. Clarke's novel 'Childhood's_End' and the idea of "Human Instrumentality" from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Anyway, put simply, the Id is kind of a bastard. Its manipulating both the Buff Clan and the Humans to fight each other because it wants to see if intelligent life is worthy of surviving. And if its not, it intends to do something about it. What exactly? Come on people, you should know the answer to that. But I'll get to it later.
Story wise, Ideon deals with themes such as the futility and stupidity of war, racism, xenophobia (i.e. How the Buff Clan wants the Human race dead simply because they don't understand them and don't want too, and because they think that the human's will turn around and destroy them all with the Ideon and its awesome power). And of course the dangers of technology. Its was also one of the first examples of a "Hybrid giant mecha anime," a genre of Japanese anime that combines elements of both "Real Robot anime" (in where giant mecha is portrayed in a realistic way, such as Gundam) and Super Robot anime (anime in where the giant robots are basically ultra powerful super heroes such as Mazinger Z) in 1980 this was still pretty much a new thing and neat idea. Here is an example of what I am getting at here: The Ideon and the Ideon and the Solo Ship are basically alive (thanks to the Id) and the Ideon basically has super powers (which I'm getting too). But its not a super hero, its a weapon of mass destruction, it can't work without people or living things inside of it. And while the Buff Clan are aliens all they are really trying to do is protect themselves from said weapon of mass destruction. This is what I personally like, there is a lot of grey area here and neither the Buff Clan nor the humans are portrayed as particularly evil, just ordinary people thrusted into extraordinary circumstances beyond their control and they're trying to do the right thing as they see it. And the poor residence of the Solo Ship are caught in the middle. Turned away from their own kind because of the war they unknowingly brought on humanity and hated by the Buff Clan for their primary source of defense, they become essentially runaways (hence the title). And despite all of that, Karala and Bes manage to fall in love with each other and make child together. But that doesn't really help at all.
Now let me talk about the Ideon itself. I don't even need to comment. Just look at this thing: [image error] Isn't that not dumbest looking giant robot you've ever seen? It looks like an oversized Gundam with rabbit ears. Now would you believe that this is the deadliest Giant mech ever devised by humans? How is that possible? Well remember those Super Powers I mentioned earlier? Now were gonna talk about them. However, "powers" is a bad choice of words, becuase I'm talking about weapons. Ya see, as the story progresses and the Ideon becomes more powerful and uncontrollable, 3 weapons are discovered that are considered by fans and critics alike to be some of the powerful ever in any anime. Up until this point, the Ideon's weapons are basic, just a ridiculous amount of missiles located on the top of its shoulders, arms, legs and thighs. When it wanted, it could fire all these missiles at once and reduce whatever it wanted to cinders. But that's not one of the weapons I'm talking about. The first is the Black hole cannon, which is basically a mini-black hole in the Ideon's stomach (I don't know how that's supposed to work either). The Ideon sword, twin beams of energy that are basicly oversized light sabers video on the left shows them slicing a planet in half). And finally, the most destructive of all: The Ideon Gun, which is so impossibly powerful that anything that even comes close to its line of fire (ships, mechs, people, planets, comets, whatever), is instantly turned into star dust. Even if the target is in hyper space.
Anyway, Ideon first premiered on Japanese TV in 1980, and was the brain child of Mobile Suit Gundam creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino. Tomino and his team originally planed to have Ideon to run for a total of 43 episodes but the show was canceled in 1981 after just 39 episodes becuase of low ratings. The fan's were, understandably, not happen about this and neither was Tomino. So in 1982 he got his team back together and got the green light from Sunrise Studios to make two movies based on Ideon, titled "A Contact" and "Be Invoked." both titles were released on the same day as a double feature. A Contact was a compilation film that retells the story of the first 32 episodes of the show with some new seances, retouched animation and re-imaging of events...it was kind of a mess. Be Invoked on the other hand, retold the events of the last episode and also warped up the series proper, and is arguably one of the best things that Tomino ever made. Sadly, Ideon was never considered for release in North America back in the 80's and I have no idea wh---oh wait:
That's why. And Yes, all the clips (most of them admittedly from A Contact and Be Invoked) in that montage are real, I did not alter them to mess with you. Yes, that little girl's head was blow clean off by gun fire, yes that guy was disembodied by cannon fire, yes you just saw a four month pregnant Karala get shot 3 times in the face, yes you just saw the Ideon blow up and destroy the universe (literally). This is seriously one of the most violent anime's I've ever seen, far more violent than what North American censors at the time would allow. While its not gory, and the first half of the show isn't anymore violent than the average comic book, when the second half starts, to gets darker and darker until by the time you finally get to Be Invoked, Ideon has become a blood bath. I must say, Ideon had some serious balls.
Anyway, like I said, Ideon has never been officially released outside of Japan, and nor is it ever likely to be. Because, lets be honest here, despite the timelessness of its message, Ideon has NOT aged gracefully. Most of the character names are unintentionally hilarious (I mean, "Cosmo Yuiki"...really), the animation looks its age and the mech design, as I've said...is just dumb. But if you can look past all that, should you watch it? Hell yes. Even though its never had an official release, it has been unofficially subtitled by fans and released online for download (which I will remind you is highly Illgeal ) and the TV series and both the movies has been uploaded to Youtube (which is basically how I watched it so, there you go). If you want to import it legally on DVD, well that's a problem, to degree you....kinda can't anymore. Ideon has never been that popular in Japan, and its home video releases go out of print very quickly. I do know that both the movies at least have been released to Blu-ray though, so maybe the show has too.
In anycase, if you have a chance to watch it. Then I say do it.
and I'm out.
September 3, 2012
Goodreads review: The Legend of Drizzt book II: Exile. By R.A. Salvatore.
Exile by R.A. SalvatoreMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Having liked Homeland, naturally I picked up its sequel. I started it while still reading A Dance with Dragons, because I wanted something easy and straightforward to balance the increasing complexity and grayness of A Song of Ice and Fire (which at that point was really starting to drag on and on); And since this was really short and even easier to read than Homeland, I figured what the hell. Besides, I like Drizzt even though he is kind of a "Mary sue" character. But thankfully his "Mary Sue"-ness isn't as obvious here.
Anyway, this book picks up a decade or two after the end of Homeland. Drizzt is free of the evils of Drow society and is now wondering the underground wilderness of the Underdark. Basically the book is about Drizzt inner struggle to hold on to his humanity (so to speak) in the face of the savagery needed to survive in the wild. Meanwhile, his family back in the Drow city are hell bent on seeing him dead because he put them in their evil goddesses disfavor and they want to get into their goddess good graces. You can probably see where this is going. Its not terribly original by any means, but then again I'm one of those people who think that its not what you do, it how you do it...and there is where Exile kinda falls on its face.
Don't get me wrong I like Salvatore and Drizzt, but this book feel half-assed at the best of times. It feels like a filler episode, something that was made just to fill a schedule. His struggle to hold onto his humanity gets resolved rather quickly when he's joined by a genome he met during Homeland and another character who was transformed into a monster by a rouge human wizard. From there, the book quickly degenerates into a camping adventure with Drizzt occasionally going physco on an enemy and him lamenting about it afterwards. Now I get what Salvatore is trying to do here: namely the gnome is there to keep Drizzt from losing himself completely, and the monster character is gradually losing its grip on what it once was and is becoming a monster inside as well as out. But Salvatore just doesn't do a good job with it. Just like with Homeland Salvatore just tells us everything the characters are going though, but here its a thousand times worse. I feel like he's trying way to hard to make us feel sorry for Drizzt and in doing so he made me want to laugh at how melodramatic it is.
Despite that, there are some good ideas at play here. For example, as part of their efforts to kill Drizzt, Matron Malice reanimates the corpse of Drizzt's mentor and father, Zak. And apparently in doing so magically turn him into an unstoppable killing machine under Malice's control. Yeah, it kinda does end how you expect too. But I say its a good idea because of wasted potential. Let me just ask, wouldn't it have been a lot more interesting if the plot of the entire Dark Elf trilogy had centered around the relationship dynamics of Drizzt, Zak, his mother and his siblings? Like if a very much alive Zak was forced to hunt Drizzt down (or if the reanimated corpse thing was carried over to the next book) while at the same time showing the price Malice and her family pays for her greed and lust for power? Homeland set up the trilogy to go along these lines, so I can only assume its what Salvatore was originally going for. But in Exile, that whole aspect of this story ends and it ends very awkwardly. In other words, Salvatore tries to fit all of that into a book only a little over 300 pages long and the end result is very messy. Maybe if the book had been longer and everything more fleshed out, it might have worked.
In the end, Exile doesn't deliver on the promises made in Homeland. It feels rushed and poorly planed and is only saved by entertaining fight scenes and promises of a stronger third act. Definitely the weakest entry of the Dark Elf Trilogy. I only recommend it if you're a fan of either Salvatore or Forgotten Realms and have read Homeland first. Otherwise, best to avoid it.
View all my reviews
August 27, 2012
Within the spirits hand.
"Video game movies suck." That's been the sentiment among gamers and most film critics since the Super Mario Brothers movie came out in 1993 and put a fat "don't take me seriously" sign over the concept ever since. And there's a good reason for that; most video game based movie, those made by Hollywood or western film companies in general anyway, have little or nothing with their source material on either a visual or narrative level, and 9 times out of 10 the name of video game in question is just slapped on for market value. And then there the simple fact that as films, well, these things really do suck the big one (I'm looking at you, every Uwe Boll movie ever made).
But what about when a video game movie comes along that doesn't suck? What happens when said movie works as a movie? And yes, they do exist, despite what internet forums will tell you. And ya know what? One of them happens to belong to Final Fantasy. No, no. I'm not talking about Advent Children, although that's a damn good movie too in its own right. No, I'm talking about the other Final Fantasy movie, the one that was actually released theatrically in the US and most of you probably don't remember or have never heard of. I'm, of course, referring to 2001's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
As far as plot goes, here's the summery and this does contain spoilers, so look away now if you don't want the movie to be ruined for you: Spirits Within is a hard science fiction film that takes place in the far future on a post-apocalyptic Earth in where many years ago a meteor crashed into the planet, but what people soon discovered was said meteor was a kind of Noah's Ark for a race of energy based beings dubbed "Phantoms." Sounds pretty straight forward, but there's a wrinkle. Ya see, despite many years of blowing the meteor to hell many times over, and developing technology that can protect people from and kill these things, nothing seems to be working, and the meteor and the Phantoms are somehow killing the Earth on a spiritual level. Yes, spiritual, as in spirit (hence the title). If a person comes into contact with a Phantom or one of the alien fauna that came with the meteor, then basically their soul gets ripped from the their body, or if a fragment of a Phantom gets into your body, it devours your soul more slowly unless its removed. The central characters Aki Ross and Doctor Sid have a theory that every thing in the universe has a soul, including planets, or Gaia, and that the Phantoms are somehow eating away at Earth's soul. Based on this theory they set out to find 9 special spirits that they hope to amplify/weaponize and they hope that that will cancel the Phantom's Gaia out. Pretty much in the same way that two opposing waves of equal and opposite force cancel each other when they come into contact with each other.
No body really believes them though and that's where, I think, the plot really gets interesting. Ya see, everyone, including Aki, Sid and the other characters (both major and minor), think that the Phantoms are the classic alien invaders that must be destroyed. But during the course of the movie, Aki discovers that that's not the case at all. The Phantoms aren't an invading army. In fact, this isn't even an invasion. There was no grand plan to crash an army into Earth, no super galactic intelligence that wants us dead for apparently no reason. No, the Phantoms all died long ago in a war so destructive, that it destroyed their entire planet Krypton style. The meteor is just a part of their planet that found its way to Earth. That's right people, the meteor hit the Earth by pure chance and what the characters been fighting the whole time are GHOSTS. *slow clap for genuine cleverness*. Well ok, its not that straight forward. What the Phantoms actually are are living memories of an alien Gaia, lost and frightened and totally unaware that they've become an accidental invasion force. Its pretty much the alien Gaia killing the Earth like a parasite. Either way, its a refreshing and clever take on the whole alien invader genre.
Final Fantasy fans, incidentally, will recognize Dr. Sid's theory of Gaia as pretty much the same thing as The Lifestream from Final Fantasy VII, and that was no accident. But that also brings me to the biggest complaint that Final Fantasy fans have with Spirits Within, which for those of you who play the games have probably picked up on from the trailer. Aside from the Gaia concept, Spirits Within has nothing visually to do with its source material. Now is it just me, or did that compliant strike anyone else as incredibly stupid in this particular case? Any Final Fantasy fan whose been with the series a long time will tell you that each new numbered installment (direct sequels like Final Fantasy X-2 and XIII-2 don't count) has, in terms of visuals, setting plot and characters; nothing to do with its predecessor, save for the reuse of common enemies, magic spells, musical motifs and other things like the series mascot, the Chocobo and a character named Cid (pronounced "Sid"). Ya see, every Final Fantasy game is more or less self-contained with a new setting, characters and plot for each installment
And yes, I'll be the first to admit that the common enemies and magic, and the familiar musical tunes are absent from the film. And the Chocobo is only seen for a brief few seconds on one of Aki's t-shirts. And while I'm as baffled as anyone as to why the musical motifs were left out. I can't really jump on with the fans about the rest of it. Guys, this film didn't take place in a "Science-Fantasy" (a science fiction story set in a fantasy world) setting like a lot of the games did at the time (and still do). The movie is "hard science fiction" and having the characters riding Chocobos, using magic and fighting monsters (as defined by the games) in a realistic (or more realistic) setting, where such things are proven not to exist, would have made no sense . Even if they had made the Chocobo a Phantom, there's no way (and no reason for) the characters to ride the damn thing.
Anyway, Instead of relying on the games visuals elements and history, the film makers decided to capture the feel of Final Fantasy by reusing some of the same story themes and character archetypes of the recent games of the time, particularly Final Fantasy 7. And so far as I'm concerned, they did so pretty damn well in my opinion. Spirits Within is one of those rare licensed property movies that can actually stand on its own two feet as a movie. You don't need to be a fan of the games in order to understand and like it. My sister, who has never played a Final Fantasy game in her entire life, saw this movie with me in the theater and enjoyed it (though admittedly probably not as much as I did). What's more, even though this is technically an animated film, they don't treat this like a "kids" movie, they treat it like a serious, adult oriented drama while staying as respectful as possible to the spirit of its source material. Part of this has to do with the fact the company who made the movie are the same people who actually make the games, Squaresoft (now Squarenix). Final Fantasy's creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, wrote the original screenplay and even directed the movie. And I think he did a damn good job for someone who had never directed a major motion picture before. Square even brought on board major Hollywood production talent to help with production and even some big name actors like Alec Baldwin, James Wood, Donald Sutherland and Ming-Na (famous for voicing the title character in Disney's Mulan, and acting in The Joy Luck Club movie) to provide the voices of the characters. So the final product is an sci-fi action movie that combines the best elements of both American and Japanese storytelling and film making. A hybrid that I personally wish would happen more often.
Anyway, Spirits Within is also remembered for for visuals and special effects. In case you haven't noticed, Spirits Within is a CGI movie, but what made it unique was the amount of detail that went into the character models. Seriously, this movie is GORGEOUS to look at. Take a look at this scene here as an example. Look at how the characters and the the way they move:
Pretty realistic huh? At the time, this was the closest to photo-realism that you could possibly get. Now would you believe that this whole movie was shot using motion capture technology? Today that's pretty standard, but back then, nobody had ever thought to use this kind of using motion capture tech for a whole film before, mostly because it was used by video game companies as a cheap way to incorporate realistic movements into their games. The tech was still in its infancy at the time production started in the mid 90's, so Square poured millions upon millions of dollars into developing the tech and rendering just for the this film and any future projects that they wanted to do. It was an ambitions project, one that Square and Paramount (the company in charge of distributing the film) marketed the hell out for years before the film was released...but if you're getting the sinking feeling that that same ambition and hype came back to bite them in the ass when this thing saw the finally saw the light of day in 2001...you would be right.
Let me put to you this way: When it was all said and done the final budget of the film was $137 million US dollars, almost all of which came from Squaresoft's pockets. The film...only made a total of $32 million US dollars at the North American box office, and only $85 million world wide. Making it, despite much critical praise, some award nominations and being a moderate success overseas, the biggest box office disaster in the history of film at that time. There are probably a lot of long winded and boring reasons for this, but I think it really boils down to three things: A) Not being able to live up to its own hype. B) the fact that it was animated and not a live action film made people think it was a kids movie (a stigma that animation has never truly been able to over come in North America) and B) and most importantly, it had Final Fantasy name on it, and that put people off from going because, well because its a video game movie and video game movies are always bad.
Anyway, the film's failure almost destroyed Squaresoft, who only manged to stay in business by merging with rival company Enix and with some financial help from Sony, whom Square sold their newly created film division too a few years later. Hironobu Sakaguchi also voluntarily later left Square in 2004 to form his own company, Mistwalker (makers of the Blue Dragon series and Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360 and most recently The Last Story for the Nintendo Wii). And despite selling their movie division, Squarenix never truly got out of the film industry. In 2003 they were one of the main sponsors for the anime version of the popular Manga (Japanese comic) series "Full Metal Alchemist" and they even commissioned an anime based off the Final Fantasy mythos in the form of Final Fantasy Unlimited the same year. But in 2005 Squarenix threw their hats back into the film industry proper when they released a new, this time direct to DVD, CGI Final Fantasy movie based off of Final Fantasy VII called Final Fantasy VII:Advent Children. Which is a great movie in its own right and is responsible for (partially) dismantling the notion of "Video game movies suck."
As for Spirits Within, its legacy in the world of movies doesn't go unnoticed. The motion capture technology used to make it, and the amount of realism that Square was able to squeeze out of it, has since become a staple in the arts of special effects and animation, paving the way for other motion capture and computer animated films like Monster House, Polar Express, Despicable Me, its spiritual successor Advent Children, and even the most recent film adaption of Beowulf. The tech also opened the door for new special effect techniques that would be explored, and later perfected, in such movies as the Matrix Trilogy, The Star Wars prequels and even Avatar (well how else do you think they made the Na'vi's bodies or all the creatures in Star Wars). The film itself has become a cult classic, and is widely available on DVD, online, streaming video services like Netflix (last time I checked) and was even one of the first animated films that I remember being sold on Blu-Ray.
If you all can find it, then check it out. You'll thank me later ^_^.
and I'm out.
But what about when a video game movie comes along that doesn't suck? What happens when said movie works as a movie? And yes, they do exist, despite what internet forums will tell you. And ya know what? One of them happens to belong to Final Fantasy. No, no. I'm not talking about Advent Children, although that's a damn good movie too in its own right. No, I'm talking about the other Final Fantasy movie, the one that was actually released theatrically in the US and most of you probably don't remember or have never heard of. I'm, of course, referring to 2001's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
As far as plot goes, here's the summery and this does contain spoilers, so look away now if you don't want the movie to be ruined for you: Spirits Within is a hard science fiction film that takes place in the far future on a post-apocalyptic Earth in where many years ago a meteor crashed into the planet, but what people soon discovered was said meteor was a kind of Noah's Ark for a race of energy based beings dubbed "Phantoms." Sounds pretty straight forward, but there's a wrinkle. Ya see, despite many years of blowing the meteor to hell many times over, and developing technology that can protect people from and kill these things, nothing seems to be working, and the meteor and the Phantoms are somehow killing the Earth on a spiritual level. Yes, spiritual, as in spirit (hence the title). If a person comes into contact with a Phantom or one of the alien fauna that came with the meteor, then basically their soul gets ripped from the their body, or if a fragment of a Phantom gets into your body, it devours your soul more slowly unless its removed. The central characters Aki Ross and Doctor Sid have a theory that every thing in the universe has a soul, including planets, or Gaia, and that the Phantoms are somehow eating away at Earth's soul. Based on this theory they set out to find 9 special spirits that they hope to amplify/weaponize and they hope that that will cancel the Phantom's Gaia out. Pretty much in the same way that two opposing waves of equal and opposite force cancel each other when they come into contact with each other.
No body really believes them though and that's where, I think, the plot really gets interesting. Ya see, everyone, including Aki, Sid and the other characters (both major and minor), think that the Phantoms are the classic alien invaders that must be destroyed. But during the course of the movie, Aki discovers that that's not the case at all. The Phantoms aren't an invading army. In fact, this isn't even an invasion. There was no grand plan to crash an army into Earth, no super galactic intelligence that wants us dead for apparently no reason. No, the Phantoms all died long ago in a war so destructive, that it destroyed their entire planet Krypton style. The meteor is just a part of their planet that found its way to Earth. That's right people, the meteor hit the Earth by pure chance and what the characters been fighting the whole time are GHOSTS. *slow clap for genuine cleverness*. Well ok, its not that straight forward. What the Phantoms actually are are living memories of an alien Gaia, lost and frightened and totally unaware that they've become an accidental invasion force. Its pretty much the alien Gaia killing the Earth like a parasite. Either way, its a refreshing and clever take on the whole alien invader genre.
Final Fantasy fans, incidentally, will recognize Dr. Sid's theory of Gaia as pretty much the same thing as The Lifestream from Final Fantasy VII, and that was no accident. But that also brings me to the biggest complaint that Final Fantasy fans have with Spirits Within, which for those of you who play the games have probably picked up on from the trailer. Aside from the Gaia concept, Spirits Within has nothing visually to do with its source material. Now is it just me, or did that compliant strike anyone else as incredibly stupid in this particular case? Any Final Fantasy fan whose been with the series a long time will tell you that each new numbered installment (direct sequels like Final Fantasy X-2 and XIII-2 don't count) has, in terms of visuals, setting plot and characters; nothing to do with its predecessor, save for the reuse of common enemies, magic spells, musical motifs and other things like the series mascot, the Chocobo and a character named Cid (pronounced "Sid"). Ya see, every Final Fantasy game is more or less self-contained with a new setting, characters and plot for each installment
And yes, I'll be the first to admit that the common enemies and magic, and the familiar musical tunes are absent from the film. And the Chocobo is only seen for a brief few seconds on one of Aki's t-shirts. And while I'm as baffled as anyone as to why the musical motifs were left out. I can't really jump on with the fans about the rest of it. Guys, this film didn't take place in a "Science-Fantasy" (a science fiction story set in a fantasy world) setting like a lot of the games did at the time (and still do). The movie is "hard science fiction" and having the characters riding Chocobos, using magic and fighting monsters (as defined by the games) in a realistic (or more realistic) setting, where such things are proven not to exist, would have made no sense . Even if they had made the Chocobo a Phantom, there's no way (and no reason for) the characters to ride the damn thing.
Anyway, Instead of relying on the games visuals elements and history, the film makers decided to capture the feel of Final Fantasy by reusing some of the same story themes and character archetypes of the recent games of the time, particularly Final Fantasy 7. And so far as I'm concerned, they did so pretty damn well in my opinion. Spirits Within is one of those rare licensed property movies that can actually stand on its own two feet as a movie. You don't need to be a fan of the games in order to understand and like it. My sister, who has never played a Final Fantasy game in her entire life, saw this movie with me in the theater and enjoyed it (though admittedly probably not as much as I did). What's more, even though this is technically an animated film, they don't treat this like a "kids" movie, they treat it like a serious, adult oriented drama while staying as respectful as possible to the spirit of its source material. Part of this has to do with the fact the company who made the movie are the same people who actually make the games, Squaresoft (now Squarenix). Final Fantasy's creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, wrote the original screenplay and even directed the movie. And I think he did a damn good job for someone who had never directed a major motion picture before. Square even brought on board major Hollywood production talent to help with production and even some big name actors like Alec Baldwin, James Wood, Donald Sutherland and Ming-Na (famous for voicing the title character in Disney's Mulan, and acting in The Joy Luck Club movie) to provide the voices of the characters. So the final product is an sci-fi action movie that combines the best elements of both American and Japanese storytelling and film making. A hybrid that I personally wish would happen more often.
Anyway, Spirits Within is also remembered for for visuals and special effects. In case you haven't noticed, Spirits Within is a CGI movie, but what made it unique was the amount of detail that went into the character models. Seriously, this movie is GORGEOUS to look at. Take a look at this scene here as an example. Look at how the characters and the the way they move:
Pretty realistic huh? At the time, this was the closest to photo-realism that you could possibly get. Now would you believe that this whole movie was shot using motion capture technology? Today that's pretty standard, but back then, nobody had ever thought to use this kind of using motion capture tech for a whole film before, mostly because it was used by video game companies as a cheap way to incorporate realistic movements into their games. The tech was still in its infancy at the time production started in the mid 90's, so Square poured millions upon millions of dollars into developing the tech and rendering just for the this film and any future projects that they wanted to do. It was an ambitions project, one that Square and Paramount (the company in charge of distributing the film) marketed the hell out for years before the film was released...but if you're getting the sinking feeling that that same ambition and hype came back to bite them in the ass when this thing saw the finally saw the light of day in 2001...you would be right.
Let me put to you this way: When it was all said and done the final budget of the film was $137 million US dollars, almost all of which came from Squaresoft's pockets. The film...only made a total of $32 million US dollars at the North American box office, and only $85 million world wide. Making it, despite much critical praise, some award nominations and being a moderate success overseas, the biggest box office disaster in the history of film at that time. There are probably a lot of long winded and boring reasons for this, but I think it really boils down to three things: A) Not being able to live up to its own hype. B) the fact that it was animated and not a live action film made people think it was a kids movie (a stigma that animation has never truly been able to over come in North America) and B) and most importantly, it had Final Fantasy name on it, and that put people off from going because, well because its a video game movie and video game movies are always bad.
Anyway, the film's failure almost destroyed Squaresoft, who only manged to stay in business by merging with rival company Enix and with some financial help from Sony, whom Square sold their newly created film division too a few years later. Hironobu Sakaguchi also voluntarily later left Square in 2004 to form his own company, Mistwalker (makers of the Blue Dragon series and Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360 and most recently The Last Story for the Nintendo Wii). And despite selling their movie division, Squarenix never truly got out of the film industry. In 2003 they were one of the main sponsors for the anime version of the popular Manga (Japanese comic) series "Full Metal Alchemist" and they even commissioned an anime based off the Final Fantasy mythos in the form of Final Fantasy Unlimited the same year. But in 2005 Squarenix threw their hats back into the film industry proper when they released a new, this time direct to DVD, CGI Final Fantasy movie based off of Final Fantasy VII called Final Fantasy VII:Advent Children. Which is a great movie in its own right and is responsible for (partially) dismantling the notion of "Video game movies suck."
As for Spirits Within, its legacy in the world of movies doesn't go unnoticed. The motion capture technology used to make it, and the amount of realism that Square was able to squeeze out of it, has since become a staple in the arts of special effects and animation, paving the way for other motion capture and computer animated films like Monster House, Polar Express, Despicable Me, its spiritual successor Advent Children, and even the most recent film adaption of Beowulf. The tech also opened the door for new special effect techniques that would be explored, and later perfected, in such movies as the Matrix Trilogy, The Star Wars prequels and even Avatar (well how else do you think they made the Na'vi's bodies or all the creatures in Star Wars). The film itself has become a cult classic, and is widely available on DVD, online, streaming video services like Netflix (last time I checked) and was even one of the first animated films that I remember being sold on Blu-Ray.
If you all can find it, then check it out. You'll thank me later ^_^.
and I'm out.
August 16, 2012
Who broke the Halos?
My Top Ten Science Fiction Games post was really fun to write, and I'll probably do more top tens in the future. But if you think back, there was one game series that seemed like it belonged there, it seemed really obvious, and yet somehow I overlooked it. It was something that supposedly changed its genre forever, and has become such an icon that its main character rivals Super Mario as one of the most recognizable video game characters ever. Now what could that be.....Oh that's right HALO.
You hardcore Halo fans are probably frantically wondering now "Da f***ck is wrong with him? Did he just forget it? How could he not include one of the best games of all time?" Well calm down Halo fanboys, I didn't forget about it. I just didn't include it. Why? Because the Halo series....has one of the worst plots in video game history. Halo fanboys, its time to wake up and face the firing squad: Halo is overrated. And no amount of manliness, space armor or e-murdering your friends in multi-player is gonna change that. You and I know both know it, and its time to stop pretending otherwise.
That being said, I want to make something perfectly clear, because I know that there will be a million trolls waiting to descend on this post like the four horsemen of the apocalypse: despite all the negative things I'm about to say about this series, I don't hate the Halo franchise. I own the first 3 games and they are great for parties. And admittedly playing the co-op mode with your buddies is actually kinda fun. And I will be the first to admit that I am looking forward to Halo 4...just not for the same reason that everyone else is. You see, I'm not looking forward to Halo 4 because of the online multi-player modes. Unless I'm playing with friends, I don't care about the multi-player that much. And I don't want to deal with the vocal minority of 10 year olds and immature adults shouting obscenities and homophobic, sexist and racial slurs (you know who you are, knock that crap off) over Xbox Live like Cotton Hill on meth.
No, I'm excited about Halo 4 because of the fact that the new developer, 343 Industries, is claiming that with Halo 4-6, they are going to do what the original developer, Bungie, should have been doing in the first place...namely have an actual story.
Ok let me back up for a bit: for those who don't know, Halo is a first person shooter game that takes place in the far future and is about the last surviving super solider Space Marine, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117, though I honestly don't remember them ever calling him that in any of the games, they always just refer to him as Master Chief. Anyway, Master Chief and the human race are locked in an intergalactic war with 'The Covenant,' religiously fanatical aliens who have conquered and converted and/or enslaved most of the galaxy and see humans as heretics that must be annihilated because....well because their aliens and apparently aliens only want to kill humans. Seriously, I don't think they ever talk about why the Covenant wants the human race dead or why they see them as heretics. At least not in the games but I'll get to that later. In anycase beyond this premise, the "plot" of the first 3 games centers around a series of ringworlds called "Halo" (hence the title) which apparently has some sort of religious significance for the Covenant and also houses a parasitic alien spices called 'The Flood'. You can probably guess by now what Master Chief's goal is. Stop The Covenant, the Flood and in general save the human race from galactic genocide.
The premise of the plot (such as it is) in of itself isn't bad. Its more or less draws on the same archetypes of the Military Science Fiction genre that have been around since Robert A. Heinlein first put Starship Troopers to paper. What many people forget however, is that Starship Troopers was a societal critique from a militaristic point of view, in where the intergalactic war was just one part of the mayhem. But Halo doesn't even have that going for it. So the problem here isn't the premise, its the execution. And that terrible execution stems from a couple of things: A) inexperience in story telling and character development on the part of Bungie. B) Bungie focusing 99% of their efforts on the Multi-player aspect of each title rather than the single player campaign. C) making Master Chief a personality deficient avatar rather than an actual character. And the other characters are as one dimensional as cardboard. And most importantly D) the decision to tell Halo's story with "In medias res," a story telling/literary device in where a story starts in the rising action (or second act) portion of the plot and the first act is filled in as the story progresses using flashbacks or some other means. This last doesn't have to be a negative, the anime movie Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? did it and it still managed to tell a complete and compelling story. And Halo's spiritual brother Gears of War basically did they exact something with its plot and it still managed to tell a complete and coherent (if incredibly uninspired) narrative when it was all said and done. But sadly this is not the case for Halo.
Let me put this way, Halo's plot is a mess. With in the games, we get no back story on anything. This series is full of bad story telling decision, so let me zero in on one example: in the games, so far as I remember, its never explained why Master Chief is the only living Super Solider left in the galaxy. We get no insight as to where he came from, who he is, or why he was turned into a super solider to begin with. Hell, we don't ever get to see his face or hear him talk that much. In other words, there is nothing to Master Chief other than "big macho-man kills Aliens and things go boom." We are never given insight into what he's thinking and he's never allowed to develop as a character becuase he's too busy killing things. Where I'm from, you wouldn't even be allowed to get away with that. And I fully realize that part of the reason for the Chiefs blandness is because the developers were trying to make the player envision themselves as the Chief. I also realize that a lot of games try to do this same thing nowadays like The Mass Effect series and the BioShock games. But the difference here is that, unlike Chief, Commander Shepard's (Mass Effect's main character) personality is molded by the player's action and the personality that the player gives him (or her) will affect in-game events. Similarly with BioShock, the player character is mute but he still has a fully developed back story and their personality and in-game events are shaped by the player by way of the moral decisions that you have to make as you progress. Its the same thing that Mass Effect is doing, only on a much shallower level. Halo sadly has none of this. All you do in Halo is run down a corridor or to an objective, "point and shoot anything that doesn't look human" and occasionally watching a cut scene. That's pretty much it. The rest of the time you're just shooting things and even that gets boring and repetitive after a while.
Ya see, rather taking the time to tell the first act of the story and develop the characters in the games, Bungie and Microsoft instead decided to do all of that in other media. Namely a series of expanded universe/tie-in novels, comics and even an anthology of Japanese anime short films similar to the Ani-Matrix.Which is hilariously ironic because games like Halo and the Xbox brand have never been popular in Japan. Now I have nothing against expanding the narrative of a franchise like this. It can put writers like me to work and, for the most part, the finished products aren't all that bad, even taking into consideration the time constraints placed on the authors (or other wise creative team) and questions of quality. But when said expanded universe becomes mandatory reading or viewing just so you can make sense out of the most basic principals of the source material, that's a sign that something has gone horribly wrong. In other words, in this particular case, Halo's expanded universe isn't "expanding" on the story. It IS the story. But even if you take the time to read all that stuff, Master Chief and the other characters are still as one dimensional and boring as ever in the games. Now, let me ask you people something, whats the point of telling the story like this if your source material doesn't reflect the development of the characters and progression of the plot as told in the expanded universe? The answer is that there isn't one, and all of this is just an excuse for Bungie and Microsoft to keep sucking money out of our wallets. Oh and yes, I am aware that Bungie made a video game prequel to the first Halo game, called 'Halo: Reach', before selling the rights to the franchise to 343 Industries. And I am also aware that Bungie tried to fill in the story gap in Halo 3's plot with the expansion pack, "ODST." I have not played either yet, but based on everything I've read and heard about Reach, it doesn't address any of the broader problems I'm talking about.
And thus leads us to Halo 4:
I really have to applaud 343 Industries for recognizing that Bungies approach to story simply wasn't working and probably never worked. As I said before, 343 Industries has stated that they are placing a greater focus on story than the previous games. Unlike the previous games, they are actually developing Halo 4 and its planed sequels as an overarching trilogy that will tie the games much closer the back story as explained in the expanded universe novels, comics etc and also flesh the cast out and make them more rounded characters. Which is great because it means that they have a chance to make Master Chief interesting for once. But they also claim to be changing the game play a bit. While shooting stuff with a gun is still a big part of the game. that won't be the only thing you'll be doing, as the game will have more emphasis on exploration, and problem solving similar to BioShock (although I doubt that there will be moral choices). And while I won't spoil much, The Covenant and The Flood are also no longer the bad guys here, no they are done with. We get all new aliens that want to wipe us out....ok so that much hasn't changed, but the point I'm making is that 343 Industries are taking a huge risk here. Just like the movie industry, The video game industry is notorious when it comes to closure, meaning that as a whole they suck at it. And just the idea that the fight with the Covenant, the enemy that gamers have come to know for the past few years of theoretical interconnected story, is truly finished, well I say that's a big deal. It be like if DC comics killed off Lex Luthor and kept him dead for the rest of time. Yeah, its basically one big bad group of aliens being replaced with another big bad group of aliens. But the point is that these new aliens are not connected (so far as I know) to the old ones, and therefore the developers have more room to be creative, since they are not being held back by tradition. In other words they're now free to take an old idea, and make something new out of it...which is what Bungie should have been doing in the first place.
As I said before, I don't hate the Halo series, but is it the best game of all time as so many of its hardcore fans have claimed? Hell no. Its not even close. But Halo 4 looks as if it is going to at least try and be better than its predecessors, and that's really all anyone can ask for.
And with that, I'm out.
You hardcore Halo fans are probably frantically wondering now "Da f***ck is wrong with him? Did he just forget it? How could he not include one of the best games of all time?" Well calm down Halo fanboys, I didn't forget about it. I just didn't include it. Why? Because the Halo series....has one of the worst plots in video game history. Halo fanboys, its time to wake up and face the firing squad: Halo is overrated. And no amount of manliness, space armor or e-murdering your friends in multi-player is gonna change that. You and I know both know it, and its time to stop pretending otherwise.
That being said, I want to make something perfectly clear, because I know that there will be a million trolls waiting to descend on this post like the four horsemen of the apocalypse: despite all the negative things I'm about to say about this series, I don't hate the Halo franchise. I own the first 3 games and they are great for parties. And admittedly playing the co-op mode with your buddies is actually kinda fun. And I will be the first to admit that I am looking forward to Halo 4...just not for the same reason that everyone else is. You see, I'm not looking forward to Halo 4 because of the online multi-player modes. Unless I'm playing with friends, I don't care about the multi-player that much. And I don't want to deal with the vocal minority of 10 year olds and immature adults shouting obscenities and homophobic, sexist and racial slurs (you know who you are, knock that crap off) over Xbox Live like Cotton Hill on meth.
No, I'm excited about Halo 4 because of the fact that the new developer, 343 Industries, is claiming that with Halo 4-6, they are going to do what the original developer, Bungie, should have been doing in the first place...namely have an actual story.
Ok let me back up for a bit: for those who don't know, Halo is a first person shooter game that takes place in the far future and is about the last surviving super solider Space Marine, Master Chief Petty Officer John 117, though I honestly don't remember them ever calling him that in any of the games, they always just refer to him as Master Chief. Anyway, Master Chief and the human race are locked in an intergalactic war with 'The Covenant,' religiously fanatical aliens who have conquered and converted and/or enslaved most of the galaxy and see humans as heretics that must be annihilated because....well because their aliens and apparently aliens only want to kill humans. Seriously, I don't think they ever talk about why the Covenant wants the human race dead or why they see them as heretics. At least not in the games but I'll get to that later. In anycase beyond this premise, the "plot" of the first 3 games centers around a series of ringworlds called "Halo" (hence the title) which apparently has some sort of religious significance for the Covenant and also houses a parasitic alien spices called 'The Flood'. You can probably guess by now what Master Chief's goal is. Stop The Covenant, the Flood and in general save the human race from galactic genocide.
The premise of the plot (such as it is) in of itself isn't bad. Its more or less draws on the same archetypes of the Military Science Fiction genre that have been around since Robert A. Heinlein first put Starship Troopers to paper. What many people forget however, is that Starship Troopers was a societal critique from a militaristic point of view, in where the intergalactic war was just one part of the mayhem. But Halo doesn't even have that going for it. So the problem here isn't the premise, its the execution. And that terrible execution stems from a couple of things: A) inexperience in story telling and character development on the part of Bungie. B) Bungie focusing 99% of their efforts on the Multi-player aspect of each title rather than the single player campaign. C) making Master Chief a personality deficient avatar rather than an actual character. And the other characters are as one dimensional as cardboard. And most importantly D) the decision to tell Halo's story with "In medias res," a story telling/literary device in where a story starts in the rising action (or second act) portion of the plot and the first act is filled in as the story progresses using flashbacks or some other means. This last doesn't have to be a negative, the anime movie Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love? did it and it still managed to tell a complete and compelling story. And Halo's spiritual brother Gears of War basically did they exact something with its plot and it still managed to tell a complete and coherent (if incredibly uninspired) narrative when it was all said and done. But sadly this is not the case for Halo.
Let me put this way, Halo's plot is a mess. With in the games, we get no back story on anything. This series is full of bad story telling decision, so let me zero in on one example: in the games, so far as I remember, its never explained why Master Chief is the only living Super Solider left in the galaxy. We get no insight as to where he came from, who he is, or why he was turned into a super solider to begin with. Hell, we don't ever get to see his face or hear him talk that much. In other words, there is nothing to Master Chief other than "big macho-man kills Aliens and things go boom." We are never given insight into what he's thinking and he's never allowed to develop as a character becuase he's too busy killing things. Where I'm from, you wouldn't even be allowed to get away with that. And I fully realize that part of the reason for the Chiefs blandness is because the developers were trying to make the player envision themselves as the Chief. I also realize that a lot of games try to do this same thing nowadays like The Mass Effect series and the BioShock games. But the difference here is that, unlike Chief, Commander Shepard's (Mass Effect's main character) personality is molded by the player's action and the personality that the player gives him (or her) will affect in-game events. Similarly with BioShock, the player character is mute but he still has a fully developed back story and their personality and in-game events are shaped by the player by way of the moral decisions that you have to make as you progress. Its the same thing that Mass Effect is doing, only on a much shallower level. Halo sadly has none of this. All you do in Halo is run down a corridor or to an objective, "point and shoot anything that doesn't look human" and occasionally watching a cut scene. That's pretty much it. The rest of the time you're just shooting things and even that gets boring and repetitive after a while.
Ya see, rather taking the time to tell the first act of the story and develop the characters in the games, Bungie and Microsoft instead decided to do all of that in other media. Namely a series of expanded universe/tie-in novels, comics and even an anthology of Japanese anime short films similar to the Ani-Matrix.Which is hilariously ironic because games like Halo and the Xbox brand have never been popular in Japan. Now I have nothing against expanding the narrative of a franchise like this. It can put writers like me to work and, for the most part, the finished products aren't all that bad, even taking into consideration the time constraints placed on the authors (or other wise creative team) and questions of quality. But when said expanded universe becomes mandatory reading or viewing just so you can make sense out of the most basic principals of the source material, that's a sign that something has gone horribly wrong. In other words, in this particular case, Halo's expanded universe isn't "expanding" on the story. It IS the story. But even if you take the time to read all that stuff, Master Chief and the other characters are still as one dimensional and boring as ever in the games. Now, let me ask you people something, whats the point of telling the story like this if your source material doesn't reflect the development of the characters and progression of the plot as told in the expanded universe? The answer is that there isn't one, and all of this is just an excuse for Bungie and Microsoft to keep sucking money out of our wallets. Oh and yes, I am aware that Bungie made a video game prequel to the first Halo game, called 'Halo: Reach', before selling the rights to the franchise to 343 Industries. And I am also aware that Bungie tried to fill in the story gap in Halo 3's plot with the expansion pack, "ODST." I have not played either yet, but based on everything I've read and heard about Reach, it doesn't address any of the broader problems I'm talking about.
And thus leads us to Halo 4:
I really have to applaud 343 Industries for recognizing that Bungies approach to story simply wasn't working and probably never worked. As I said before, 343 Industries has stated that they are placing a greater focus on story than the previous games. Unlike the previous games, they are actually developing Halo 4 and its planed sequels as an overarching trilogy that will tie the games much closer the back story as explained in the expanded universe novels, comics etc and also flesh the cast out and make them more rounded characters. Which is great because it means that they have a chance to make Master Chief interesting for once. But they also claim to be changing the game play a bit. While shooting stuff with a gun is still a big part of the game. that won't be the only thing you'll be doing, as the game will have more emphasis on exploration, and problem solving similar to BioShock (although I doubt that there will be moral choices). And while I won't spoil much, The Covenant and The Flood are also no longer the bad guys here, no they are done with. We get all new aliens that want to wipe us out....ok so that much hasn't changed, but the point I'm making is that 343 Industries are taking a huge risk here. Just like the movie industry, The video game industry is notorious when it comes to closure, meaning that as a whole they suck at it. And just the idea that the fight with the Covenant, the enemy that gamers have come to know for the past few years of theoretical interconnected story, is truly finished, well I say that's a big deal. It be like if DC comics killed off Lex Luthor and kept him dead for the rest of time. Yeah, its basically one big bad group of aliens being replaced with another big bad group of aliens. But the point is that these new aliens are not connected (so far as I know) to the old ones, and therefore the developers have more room to be creative, since they are not being held back by tradition. In other words they're now free to take an old idea, and make something new out of it...which is what Bungie should have been doing in the first place.
As I said before, I don't hate the Halo series, but is it the best game of all time as so many of its hardcore fans have claimed? Hell no. Its not even close. But Halo 4 looks as if it is going to at least try and be better than its predecessors, and that's really all anyone can ask for.
And with that, I'm out.
August 3, 2012
The Donner of the Veil.
If participating in the Magic Appreciation tour (which is currently on break until the fall) has done anything for me, it has allowed me to befriend some extraordinarily nice people and given me access to the new, if slightly unknown, voices of fantastical literature that I would miss otherwise. And today, one of the friends I have made on the tour has agreed to sit down and talk to us about a number of things: Most notably her book Protector, which is the first book in her Anniversary of The Veil series. Please help me in welcoming the very talented Vanna Smythe.
Me: Welcome Vanna, thanks for coming.
Vanna: Glad to be here, Will. Thanks for inviting me.
Me: What originally inspired you to become a writer? Or was it something that you always wanted to be?
Vanna: Honestly, it was something I always wanted to be. I can't even remember the first time I decided to be a writer, it was just always there, in the back of my mind.
Me: What drew you to the Fantasy genre?
Vanna: I love reading fantasy above all other genres. Therefore it was a pretty logical choice for me to write fantasy, especially given that the story I came up with wouldn't go over so well as another genre.
Me: Who are some of your favorite authors and why?
Vanna: Tough question ;) I have so many, I just can't list them all.
Me: Welcome to my world *laughs*. Its hard to choose your favorite things of anything when there are so many...which makes me question why I've done so many "top ten" lists on here *laughs*.
Vanna: *laughs*
Me: Anyway, You told me once that your day job is a freelance writer. What publications and/or projects have you worked on?
Vanna: I was a freelance journalist for awhile, covering political and economic/business issues. But it wasn't for me. I currently blog for several clients. It gives me the freedom to pursue my fiction.
Me: Do you find balancing work with your fiction difficult? Or have you found ways to separate one from the other (If that makes any sense lol)?
Vanna: I do my non-fictional writing in the mornings, and my fictional writing in the evening. Words have always come pretty easily to me and I don't have a problem keeping my article and blog writing separated from my stories and novels.
Me: I envy you on that ^_^. What are your favorite fantasy creatures?
Vanna: I'm not big on fantasy creatures, to be honest. I do like elfs and dwarfs and hobbits, thanks to Tolkien, but I don't see myself writing about them anytime soon ;)
Me: Hobbits are always a good choice. Anyway, I hate to admit it but I haven’t read very far into Protector (yes that’s bad, and I am working on fixing it). What can you tell us about it?
Vanna: I do hope you fix that ;) But seriously, the story is about a soldier who finds himself with a role and responsibility that could well decide the fate of the world. On top of that, he's fallen in love with a girl who doesn't share his feelings ;) There's also a lot of political maneuvering and behind the scenes things that they must all deal with. But I don't want to give too much away.
Me: It sounds pretty cool. What was the inspiration for Protector?
Vanna: I wanted to explore the idea of Twin Souls and how energy can be used to steer the world in a certain path. The book also revolves around themes of friendship, love, power and the need to control.
Me: Where is it available? And in what formats?
Vanna: It's currently available as an ebook from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Protector-Anniversary-Veil-Book-ebook/dp/B007J6DN2A/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1333822560&sr=1-1 and as a paperback from Amamzon, Barnes and Noble, and several other online retailers.
Me: You've said elsewhere that you’re working on the sequel. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Vanna: I'm struggling through the first draft right now. I do already know where I want it to end up, but how I will get there is not yet decided. Again, I don't want to give too much away ;)
Me: When can we expect to see it?
Vanna: I plan to release in later this year.
Me: What made you decided to self-publish?
Vanna: I had the book finished and didn't want to wait for years before it was accepted by a publisher. It is also a great time for self-publishers and I get to keep all control over my book.
Me: Have you found the self-publishing experience more enjoyable or frustrating (Or a bit of both lol)? Do you intend to try and sell Protector (or any of your future work) to a publisher when it’s all done or continue to self-publish?
Vanna: I enjoyed the whole process of self-publishing, though I don't have much to compare it to. If the offer to buy it is good enough, I will consider it down the line, but otherwise I think I'll just continue to self-publish ;)
Me: I hope you find bukus (a lot) of success with both kinds of publishing ^_^. Now I have to ask the obvious questions: what advice can you give to those looking to self-publish and what promotional strategies have you found to be the most effective?
Vanna: I would say go for it. There's nothing like having total control over your book and career. I promote mostly through Twitter, though I have done a few virtual book tours and a bunch of interviews. Letting your book be free for a few days is also a great promotional tool, though on the whole I'm against giving your work away or pricing it very low.
Me: And now a question for the nerds. Who’d win a fair fight: The Wheel of Time’s Rand al’Thor or Forgotten Realm’s Drizzt Do’urden? *laughs* Just kidding.
Vanna: Well, I don't really know who the other guy is, but Rand al'Thor struck me as a bit of a weakling ;)
Me: He kinda is in the beginning, yeah. Then we get to book 3 and he becomes a man *laughs*. Thanks again for joining us, Vanna. I hope Protector becomes a best seller soon.
Vanna: Thanks, Will. Hope your book does too.
If you'd like to know more about Mrs. Smythe then check out her website at: http://vannasmythe.com/
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