The Frost-Giant's Daughter

Oh hell yeah!  A month of literary abandon.  I have taken part in National Novel Writer's Month for the last two years, but have only completed the challenge once.  It's a really hard challenge, to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30-days.  It challenges even the author's residing on the Times' Best Selling lists.  If you're a writer, I heartily recommend checking it out. Nanowrimo

Heck yeah baby!

DA:O

Well, my goal was to write something here at least every couple of days.  Unfortunately, I've completely failed at said goal.  Oh well. 

I do have an excuse prepared.  I'm not saying it's a good excuse...but it is an excuse. 

BTW...that was the excuse.  Death to the Darkspawn and noble assholes everywhere!

Map of the Problematique

Alright, it's rant time.  Today's rant of choice is brought to you in part by Bioware and LucasArts.

So they're coming up with Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, and that's a fine thing.  Afterall, Bioware was the genius company that created Knights of the Old Republic.  But the thing is that SW:tOR is an MMO.  Massively Multiplayer Online, with a strong emphasis on Multi and Player, as in more than a score.  So, when I hear that they're creating the game with the intended party size of 2 (maybe 4) people, I have to stand back.  Say wha?  2 people for an instance?  Just so they can put in their overly-complex chat trees (which are cool, don't get me wrong, I've played MassEffect, Dragon Age: Origins, and KotOR)?  Really?  Why didn't they just concentrate on an MMO of a scope like, say, World of Warcraft?  I mean, obviously, with 15 million people playing, Blizzard had to do something right with their formula.  

I'm not saying they should copy Wow, because clones can't ever compete against an original, but still, maybe Bioware should be looking at something a little more epic than 2 people for their intended group size.  Just saying...

Beyond that, another thing, why-oh-why did they have to choose to go with the ridiculous Clone Wars art style?  It's horrendous.  Always has been.  It's Plastic Mannequin Wars.  It's too simplified, and in the SW:tOR, it just looks ugly.  I keep seeing their screenshots, and I can't keep from thinking, 'Are these place-holder models?' they just look that unfinished.  Here, judge for yourself: Screens.

But you say: 'That's pretty unfair...you don't even make games so how can you rate these guys so harshly.  It's Bioware even!'

I say: 'Well you have a point.  Since I don't have any experience creating, only playing, video games, I can only compare their work to their Peers.  So, let's take a look at another MMO coming out in 2010 for comparison.  Let's look at Final Fantasy XIV.  Now if you go to Media / Screenshots, hidden between the rendered CGI art are some actual gameplay screens, and they blow away ToR in every way from model-geometry to texture work.  And you know?  I really am not digging ToR's laser-pointed pickle jars...

Sith: Fear me Jedi!  You're time is at an end!  *brandishes double-bladed saber*
Jedi: What the hell is that?
Sith: My saber, you dimwit!  Prepare to die!
Jedi: Really?  Looks like two pickle jars taped end-to-end.
Sith: It, what?  Really?  You think so?
Jedi: Absolutely.  I'm trying, but I just can't even feel any sort of fear from it.  I mean, dude, the most I'm fearing right now, is pickle breath.  Do you have fat fingers, or something?  Couldn't you maybe have, I dunno, made something a little slimmer and more wicked looking?
Sith: Hey!  That's, well, my original art designs were badass, something was just lost in translation!
Jedi: Whatever...want a breath mint?

Not cool.

I'm planning to keep my final judgments until I actually play the game, but right now?  We're at Warning Level: Yellow.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV is the latest Squeenix-branded MMO that's coming out in [apparently next year 2010].  They've released screenshots of the game, and for an mmo, it looks really good on the graphics.  Not that I'm surprised, mind you, square has always delivered a high-standard for game graphics.  

My point is this, however: when did they start modeling their characters after TV show actors?  

I present to you: Evidence A.  David Boreanaz of Buffy, Angel, Bones, is the Roegadyn race hero model?  You be the judge!

Sun and Steel

Time for a Halloween themed post here....

Alright...in Fantasy/Video Games/whatnot you have these badguys with these massive sprawling castles of doom'n'gloom.  For Example, you have Icecrown in Wow.  There's Nockmaar in Willow, Barad-dûr in LoTR, even Maleficent's castle in Sleeping Beauty for crying out loud...  

But who builds these things?  I mean, do you have some poor sap of an architect conscripted to build these awful edifices of terror?  Can you imagine Sauron going up to a notable architect of the time and how that meeting would go down?

Sauron
Hey, sup, are you...?

Architect
AAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  A FLYING EYE!

Sauron
Yeah, get that all the time, but I'd like to discuss a business proposition with you.  See, I've been going over your extensive references, and I feel you have the qualifications I'm looking for.  I'd like you design me a huge tower...are you running already?  I know the project is daunting but...

Architect
Help!  Help me!!  Someone help me!!  The eye!  it BURNS!!!

Sauron
/sigh

I mean, I know some of these badguys are normally immensely powerful wizards and can summon their fortresses of hate through their mastery over magic...but wouldn't that get old after a while?  Destroying the castle to defeat good guys, and then summoning it back again?

Evil Lieutenant
Sir!  The heroes approacheth!

Evil Castle Owner
My insurance is going to go up again...  -.-

But, I guess it's a requirement of the position, because they all have them.  Even the Emperor had his tall tower on the Death Star.

Flight of Icarus

RTS...real-time strategy.  As a genre of video games, is it dead?  

I don't think so.  At least, I hope it isn't.  RTS pretty much has the same formula, and it mostly comes in two flavors: with or without resource management.  Personally, I prefer with.  Something about hording all the gems, crystals, wood, gold, and metal that I can get my hands on, and building massive armies to defend it appeals to me.  Even without resource management, you build massive armies to a cap, and then unleash them on your opponent, and hope that he's got scissors to your rock - which is where the complexity comes into play when you're not worrying over resources.  Instead, you're worrying over what units your opponent is about to kick your ass with.  Even so, this formula is nothing really new.  Age of Empires, as great as it was, became fairly stale with it's third rendition and n+20 rock-paper-scissors setup - they even messed with their best setup in AoEII when everyone knows that English Long Bowman are the way to go (what the hell are woads again?).  Even though stale, I don't think that's what really hurt RTSs.  

What really hurt RTSs, was console versions of tried'n'true PC games.  C&C with an analog stick?  Are you serious?  There's no way in hell I'm going to select all of my mammoth tanks and stop the impending doom as speedily as with a mouse.  Kane and his forces of Nod merely laugh at my pathetic choice of input peripheral and proceed to be in my base killing my dudes  Just didn't really work as well as they hoped (Halo Wars is really the sole exception, but even so, control wasn't as tight as desired).  So instead of saying 'hey, we'll stick to PC with this genre' they said 'maybe we can evolve this genre'.  And what did we get?  Tower Defense.  So they meant to say 'devolve the genre'?  There's about 20 variations of Tower Defense on XBLA and PSN stretching the gamut of theme from Starship Troopers to South Park, and all of them are "build towers at bottlenecks, upgrade them with your meager allotment of resources, and then pray that they're effective".  They are fun, I admit, but they're not the epic RTSs of yore.

And then we have Blizzard Entertainment.  Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is looking to be as epic, frenetic, and truly awe-inspiring as it's predecessor.  And it's on PC.  Blizz considered console for all of 2 seconds, and then said "nah".  

So I say that 'no', RTSs aren't dead.  But is it dying?  Yeah.    

The Mothership has landed

So this is the gayest thing I've seen since an 80's Wham video

Testing...testing...

Starting, starting 123.

Testing this new blog.  First things first, naming.  It took me almost thirty minutes to pick a name for a blog no one will ever see...and what did I use?  Some flashy wording basically mocking the fact that no one will read this blog.  And it's interesting that it took my thirty minutes because all of my other planned names were already taken.  Guess they weren't original.  I should check out lazyninjas or nerdcommittee blogs since these were taken.

First test completed.