Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Why aren't these dates in laser-etched runes!?

Agreed about Dragonslayer. Greatly helped by its smart script that subverted some high-fantasy cliches while still being a solid, non-ironic fantasy story. I re-watched it about 5 years ago, but maybe I'll re-watch that soon instead of Ladyhawke. ;)

For related commentary, I recommend IF author Emily Short, who focuses on the use of narrative in casual and AAA games on her Interactive Storytelling blog and in her Gamasutra articles. For instance, she had some especially interesting things to say about LA Noire recently that relate directly to many of the points raised in this thread about player agency vs. linear narrative, player vs. player-character, etc.

I don't always agree with her, but always a good read.

It's interesting re-playing the 80s crpg Ultima IV. Depsite its various clunkinesses, it does a pretty good job of balancing a central 'storyline' you're supposed to follow (attaining the state of Avatarhood) with an open world were you can freely explore and where many (but not all) of the individual steps towards the Avatarhood can be completed in any order.

Sure, it's narrative built through goal-achieving as opposed to trying to integrate a rich linear narrative with gameplay, but it's still pretty impressive. From what I've played of Ultima VII, it also seems to do a great job of balancing a richer central narrative with an a *much* richer and still open-ended world (and one with interactivity I still haven't seen matched).

In contrast, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion always had a kind of disconnect between the supposed urgency of the central quest narrative (the oblivion gates opening up all across the land) and its open-ended world where you can dawdle endlessly on side-quests and exploration while the gates and invading Daedra wait patiently for you. It was still plenty of fun, but the gameplay did not integrate with the narrative.

Fallout 3 did a much better job of offering similar open-world freedom that didn't conflict with the central plot. As Nevan said:

Nevan wrote: "I loved how we were given the framework of a plot, and then it was up to us to stitch our experience together using any combination of missions, side-plots, and dungeoneering."

In games that offer good and evil routes, I always feel pulled to be the goody-two-shoes, and that's how I played most of F3. BUT I did have a save game where with the same character I accepted the proposal to help blow up Megaton. With my weak character I ran all the way to Tenpenny Tower, barely alive from the attacks I suffered along the way, and then played through both fully seeing it through (BOOM) and alternately betraying and shooting Mr. Burke at the last moment.

It was *great* that the game afforded me those choices. I've heard there's no other such hugely dramatic good/evil choices in the rest of F3, but I still mean to go back and see what the game would be like played evilly with that version of the character, with his Tenpenny room and ill-gotten equipment to boost his early game.

New Vegas is still on my to-play list. (as is Dragon Age (which I've at least started), Mass Effect, and Bioshock...sheesh...)

Haha, great review. "I remember that I said that in my previous review because I have perfect recall..."

Interesting that he liked and got so much out of the audio books for books 2 and 3, when opinons in our group seemed to be that you'd miss to much via audiobook, or that the speaker was too monotone, etc. Makes me want try them.

Jenny wrote: "Silly Luke aside, I kinda want to go back to Gene Wolfe now. I mean, if book 3 really has all the answers...."

Dooooo it. :)

I'll wait til various reviews roll in, but I likely get the Touch to replace my 2nd gen Kindle.

I remember that rant. I found it after I had spent some frustrating time searching for any of his books in ebook format.

"We've got too many Internets."

I had this same question when I read another 80's-video-game-nostalgia-spelunking book, Lucky Wander Boy (written by D.B. Weiss, who is also a writer on the HBO Game of Thrones series). I loved Lucky Wander Boy, and am enjoying Ready Player One so far (45% in), but I also wondered how much enjoyment or even comprehension would be had by someone with no prior connection to the pop culture artifacts being obsessed over by a modern day protagonist (Lucky Wander Boy) or mashed up in a future virtual reality (Ready Player One).

What would be a proper primer? I imagine some 22nd century "Survey of 20th & 21st Century Pop Culture" college class in which both books are read, accompanied by holographic annotations that pop-up for each ancient cultural reference, accompanied by equally ancient video, audio and/or game emulation.

xenphi, your case is interesting because you didn't grow up with the games, but you *did* have a prior connection to them through getting into MAME in the 2000's.

My digging back into the games of the era started as pure nostalgia bingeing when I first discovered emulators in the late 90s and re-sampled many games of my youth (and ones I had wanted to play but never had) with Atari 2600 and Apple II emulators.

But I discovered it was not *just* nostalgia when I tried a ZX Spectrum (an 8-bit computer very popular in the 80's U.K.) emulator and found some of its games, which I had *never* played or heard of, fun & interesting. (As part of my retro obsession, I very sporadically blog about my Apple II hobby.)

There's something fascinating about compelling experiences people were able to create despite the astounding technological restraints that existed then (Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System, for example, looks at the brilliant tricks programmers used to squeeze extra graphic sprites, multi-colored sprites, multi-colored backgrounds, etc. out of the 2600, which was originally meant to provide nothing more complicated than the included Combat cartridge).

Other specifics: I agree that Wargames remains a fun, well-done thriller, and it took a decent shot at getting early hacker culture right (not that any of that is really communicated through the re-play that occurs in Ready Player One). Tron - I can't argue that it's a *good* film, but I still find it goofy fun, and its visuals still intriguing & inventive via their abstractness.

Many games of the period are more interesting as evolution-of-video-games examples, but some are true gems. Adventure is one of the handful of Atari 2600 games that really holds up for me, duck-dragons and all, and the paths through the mazes are still hard-wired in my brain.

Zork doesn't hold up for me, but later Infocom text adventures do - those later (but still 80s!) games had better prose, parsers that understood many more commands, and truly compelling environments or stories -- games like A Mind Forever Voyaging, Suspended, Trinity, all mentioned in the Games as Storytelling thread.

I always sucked at Joust. :P But I like the image of a knight and a lich playing it side-by-side.

Real Genius still makes me laugh. Weird Science less so. I now want to re-watch Ladyhawke, which I will probably regret.

The list could go on and on (I'm replaying Ultima IV currently despite its clunkinesses - this time I'll finish!).

Could either Ready Player One or Lucky Wander Boy successfully communicate what might be special about such retro gems, personally adored favorites, etc. to someone with no prior feeling for said pop cultural artifacts? Maybe, but it's hard for me to imagine someone with no connection to the era's pop artifacts *loving* either book.

Sean wrote: "l'auteur est mort."

He did mention he was feeling a bit sick, but I wouldn't go that far.

The Peter Schilling song is actually the first cover song on the album. As for mother's advice that to get things done, you better not mess with Major Tom -- Shatner apparently didn't get that tip.

My favorite "musical" performance of his will likely always be It Was a Very Good Year.

Barely legit for this area, but it *is* the former Captain Kirk and his album "Seeking Major Tom" comes out next month - an album that somehow answers the question "What happened to Major Tom after he stepped out of his space capsule?" with a variety of cover songs.

Apparently Major Tom becomes Iron Man at some point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICbc8D...

I LIKES it.

I got that email today, too, but it must be some glitch with the Brown Paper Tickets auto-emailer or database, because it was definitely last week (see my posts above) -- unless I had a communal hallucination with Tom, Veronica, Molly Wood and Christopher. Not that that wouldn't be cool in its own way.

Sorry you were sick!

+1 and a lost golden ark to Spielberg!!!

Ah, gotcha. Now I think of it, if the evening event had been just the Q&A, it would have been kinda disappointing, but I was able to give that portion a pass since the reading portion (which came first) was entertaining.

Interesting. He came off as tired at the reading (he mentioned he had been feeling sick), but I don't think patronizing. But I totally understand not wanting an author's personal impression to ruin your reaction to their work.

Agreed and agreed - the site linked to above gives multiple arguments for why it could be restored.

Anyone see the video chat?

The reading was excellent - Reamde looks to be a much funnier book than I expected, and I'm now pretty excited about it despite its usual-Stephenson-epic-length.

The Q&A was amusing, too, as several times his answers to complex questions (eg "why did you put x and y into novel z in a [ornate approach] fashion?") were variants of "Well, that's just the kind of stuff I'm into" (delivered good-naturedly).

I'm halfway through, but I may need to put it on the backburner for a bit to participate in Ready Player One and Reamde discussions.

At this halfway point, I am glad that the Yatakang genetic breakthrough is propelling a new direction for the plot and characters, because I think Brunner has gotten enough mileage out of making his dystopian vision clear through a meandering panorama, and that it would start repeating itself if he stuck to that.

Doug wrote: "Oh, they will appear...I'm only 26. Maybe by the time I hit 50 I'll be able to see a proper version of Star Wars again. "

From that same Save Star Wars site: at one point after the SEs first came out and people were clamoring for restored (not revised) originals, Lucasfilm publicist Lynn Hale issued a statement saying, "As you may know, an enormous amount of effort was put into digitally restoring the negatives for the Special Editions...The negatives of the movies were permanently altered for the creation of the Special Editions, and existing prints of the first versions are in poor condition." They used this rationale for why the 'dual-edition' DVD version was the best anyone could expect for the originals, but apparently that was a misleading statement, as the article details. For instance, Robert Harris, who restored Lawrence of Arabia, Vertigo and The Godfather, said he knew where 35mm elements of the originals were and offered to restore the films (an offer Lucasfilm ignored). The site's faq has more on the possible state of the original negatives (damn, that site is detailed).

So yes, one can only hope we'd see them *someday* (maybe the singularity will come along by then and help.)

Philip, haha I hadn't seen that!

Yay for hearing Anne!

I'm going to try The War of the Flowers thanks to the interview (and then read Tailchaser's Song, which I started to read in jr high but never finished).