Thursday 8 May 2014

Stories And Stuff



One day, I want to create a story that makes you feel like you’re home. A place and people you get comfortable with, who you think about at the weirdest hours of the night. Characters and moments that become like old friends. Situations you daydream about, and spend days and weeks wracking your brain trying to figure out how it will end, and if it’s possible for a happy ending.

And then I want the end to approach faster than you can prepare for. I want an audience that almost doesn’t want to see it end at all, because it would mean saying goodbye to a place in their lives that shielded them from the horrors of reality. Maybe even strengthened them to it.


And then I want the end to come and be so perfect, so shattering, so right that you don’t know what to do with yourself for a while after it’s over. Nothing but to sit in silence and absorb what happened, how it will never happen again, and how grateful you were that it happened to you.


I guess what it comes down to is paying a debt. I want to write that story to repay the stories that did that for me. The stories that make life worth living.

I don’t know if I’ve done that yet, but I think I’m getting closer…


END OF LINE 

 ~A.H.

Wednesday 7 May 2014

Bungie: Destined For Failure?



Activision recently announced that it's going to cost them half a billion dollars to create Bungie's new game "Destiny". $500 million. That's even more than the rumoured cost of BioWare's Star Wars online game "The Old Republic".

There are about 7 million Playstation 4s in the hands of consumers, and about 5 million Xbox Ones that have been sold. As has already been pointed out, the only way Destiny will be make a profit is if every single human being who owns a Playstation 4 and an Xbox One buys a copy of Destiny.

Destiny.

The game that's just Borderlands without the flavour, personality, art direction or comedic appeal.

The game where Peter Dinklage boredly tells you to go over here and shoot bad guys, then go over here and shoot more bad guys.

The game that marks the point where Bungie fired one of the great video game composers, for apparently no reason(my guess is to cut costs somewhere).

A game with no readily apparent characterization, no indicator of a compelling story, and no one talking about it. Other than how expensive it is, because why else would anyone talk about it?


Monday 5 May 2014

The Walking Dead: "You Killed Kenny!"



Did it ever feel like that scene in "No Time Left" where Kenny "dies" offscreen felt like a cheap placeholder, intentionally vague so they could bring him back later?

Wasn't it a complete non-event when, oh look, he's magically still alive in Season 2, even though that's literally impossible given his circumstances? And even though the end-of-game tally screen says he was overwhelmed by the horde?


Well, Gavin Hammon admitted that Kenny was canonically dead in Episode 5, until the director intentionally deleted audio files. They literally cheated at their own story just for idiotic fan-service in the next season. That is some BioWare level nonsense.

Boy, what a great feeling! To know that all of the tension is robbed from an entire franchise, now that Telltale Games can just pull a "Death & Return of Superman", and bring back any character the director has a chubby for. That just fills me with confidence.


Remember when Jurassic Park was the worst thing this developer had done?


END OF LINE

~A.H.