LOL, ancient aliens guy! He's one cool cat, you have to be with that hair.
I remember seeing Xplay coverage of Too Human at an E3 and I was kind of interested in the concept. But then the game fell off the face of the Earth and I never heard about it again. The soundtrack you guys were discussing sounds like it would be worth checking out.
I bought a couple games online during Black Friday and I ended up quite happy. I got new copies of Skyrim and Dishonored for $25 a piece. It was the only opportunity I had to get those two games. Dishonored is brand new and has been at 60 like normal and surprisingly even Skyrim has been close to full price even now a year after launch. So I got both of those for less than the full price of just one of them, I thought that was neat and gave me the chance to own some games I was really wanting to play. It's been a long time and I haven't talked about it in several months but I was one of the people holding out for the Skyrim ultimate edition with all the fixins but I got tired of waiting lol. It was only $25 so it was a nice deal, and plus for now I'll get tons of gameplay out of the core stories, guilds, side quests, and random exploration. If I end up really loving Skyrim I'll just buy the eventual ultimate edition anyways for all the DLC. After all, I have all the vanilla and complete editions of Morrowind and Oblivion too. I bet Skyrim ultimate will be released sometime mid or late next year.
It sucks Rob got sick and couldn't make it back, I hope he's feeling better. I was sick over this weekend and was in bed most of the time either sleeping or watching marathons of How The Universe Works. Before I got sick though I was playing lots of Dishonored and enjoying it quite a bit. Not so much the story or any of the characters (I haven't taken to either in general), but mostly the level design, visuals, and the horror genre thrill that the Creepers and rat swarms add to the game. I never thought I'd be scared of packs of rats but Arkane got me to feel that fear, and the Creepers are interesting zombie types that give me chills. I've been spending a few hours in every level of the game so far, even though most of them could be completed in 20 minutes or less it seems. Even once I figure out how to complete a level I avoid finishing just so I can find guards to choke out, search every room, discover all the paths, and trying to understand the logic of the level designers.
Onto holiday gaming memories, I have quite a few because for me gaming has always been tied closely to the holidays. As a kid I was very fortunate and privileged that over the years my parents bought me some consoles on various occasions or a game for whatever console I was playing at the time. My most cherished holiday gaming memory of all was in 2000 when my parents got me the collector's edition of Majora's Mask. It expanded my love for games and became my favorite Zelda game, by far my favorite sequel to a game ever. For context, a year or more before that I played Ocarina of Time and I was so engaged in the Zelda mythology solving puzzles and feeling like I was saving the world I would tell my parents all about it. My mom always encouraged me to read stories about Joan of Arc as well as King Arthur so I loved mythology or tales of heroism from a young age. Zelda was the first time I ever felt like I was able to be a hero or interact with a beautiful mythology instead of just read about it. I cried once Ocarina ended, the credits roll, and they take you all around Hyrule to show you all the races in peace as the music plays.
So when Majora's Mask came along, my parents had an idea of how much Zelda meant to me. I was growing up year by year and Majora's Mask was exactly the type of sequel I needed as a developing kid. It was more dense, had more complicated gameplay and different story, it was tonally darker, and was able to challenge my developing emotional intelligence and problem solving in ways that school and society never did. Getting Majora's Mask was definitely my favorite holiday gaming memory.
I remember you talking about doing this, and it's really cool to see it happening finally. It should be really fun. I'd like to see stuff that's simple but has great color and texture.
It would be awesome to see a three-colored Triforce showing the symbolism and colors of the three parts of Wisdom, Courage, and Power. So, the Triforce parts would all be connected like normal and they could be outlined in bright gold but inside the three individual triangles would each be colored and themed after the way the Goddesses are shown in Ocarina. Din being purple, Nayru being blue, and Farore being green. In addition to the color theme, each section could have a design throughout it symbolically representing each character.
Din's purple/red section could have something representing fire. Nayru's blue section could have a pattern or texture representing water. Farore's green section could have vines, flowers, or some other organic representation. You could take that concept and run with it any way you want with the Triforce outline, the color themes, and the patterns/textures to change it up any way you like. I'd just love to see you do a Triforce with different sections each having their own color theme and special designs to show the nature's of Din, Nayru, and Farore.
Dare mighty things, Bungie. I expected no less, and I approve.
Super-sized episodes? I like the sound of that. I was really excited when I heard about your new podcast a few months ago, but when it never showed up I was pretty bummed. Needless to say, I'm quite excited that it's still coming. I've also missed The Rant, it'll be nice to see those features make a comeback.
Great roundtable. I share sentiments from a few different staff members. Like Julian I would like something shiny and new. Like Patrick I think this next generation will be more about performance, animation, frame rate, and simulations. I don't care much about games looking better, I care most about games playing better. Efficient development, better tools, not having to start from scratch with every game, solid high frame rates, handling more complex simulations and interactions. Getting high quality, and free, development tools into the hands of as many people as possible. The more design-tool-literate people out there who can experiment, the better. Gameplay and simulations need to take more ambitious steps, but have great engines to do it with, and not have you go bankrupt just trying to design a system. Gameplay experimentation gets me very excite!
The Wii U gamepad seems pretty cool. I just need to get my hands on it, because even though it looks cool and has interesting functionality, I'm also skeptical because I'm hoping that it isn't too long or uncomfortable. I'm accustomed to playing games that utilize thumbsticks and triggers, but on the 360 controller the spread between each trigger is 3" and the spread between the thumbsticks is a little less than 3". Will it be weird to play a thumbstick/trigger game on a controller the width, shape, and button layout of the Wii U tablet controller? I'm going to go into the Gamestop by my house to see if they have a display Wii U and if they do I'll check it out. It probably won't be as drastic as I imagine, but I won't know till I try.
After all, I've played on weirder controllers before. The Duke was really wide and trying to press some of those buttons was like packing up for a cross country trip. I really like small, light, traditional controller design like the PS3 and 360 controllers. Fairly ergonomic, not too big or small, and for the most part the buttons are all easy to get to. I wonder how many games will be able to use the Wii U's Xbox 360 imitation controller? I'd probably end up using that a lot if it's available.
I know Resident Evil 6 has been very polarizing and you don't find a lot of people with nice things to say about Capcom anymore, but I'm still really glad they made profits and did well for Dragon's Dogma's sake. That's a really cool game and I hope it's been doing well from release to today. I hope they keep exploring that type of design and gameplay some more.
Nash and Hall for the win! I didn't know you both tag teamed up on the music, sorry I left you out of that. Great job all around Rob, not just the music but the hosting and the discussion as well. Another great episode in the bag for NWP.
Hearing Nightwish close out the episode was much excellent. Great choice of the musics, Julian. I like how personal things can get on NWP. Other podcasts I listen to don't manage to cover their topics, stay funny, but also get deep the way NWP does. I can relate to Julian's fear of letting his mother down. Both of my parents are very loving and they are relatively accomplished in life. My mom and dad each came from large poor families, and my parents both went to college, got 4.0 GPAs, and went on to secure careers and a middle-class life for themselves. I feel a very inherent competitive urge to not only live up to that standard, but I actually want to be better than them. It's one of the reasons I'm so hard on myself, and why I shoot high when setting career goals in level design. I love my parents, but I crave to be better than them and improve on any of their weaknesses that I find. I want to get more education than they did, and I want to be a legitimate evolution in the history of the family. When my parents die one day I want to be able say that I am a legit successor to their family name, that evolution didn't go backwards, and that I didn't stagnate.
In video games one situation that scares me is when I'm dealing with immortals or ghosts. This may be weird and I don't know if I've heard anybody else bring up the concept before, but I'm quite afraid of the concept of immortality. The longer a creature lives, the less you can relate to it, I believe. In video game lore, when you encounter ancient species that have thrived for millions of years (like the Reapers) they are often removed from any morality or social conditioning that would affect a short lived species and the fight for survival.
At the beginning of XCOM: EU they have the quote by Arthur Clarke saying, "Two possibilities exist, either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Either option is equally terrifying." I fully believe in that when it comes not only to aliens but extending out to deities and gods of myth from any religion. I'm an atheist and have no proof yet or reason to believe aliens or gods exist, but if ancient texts and myths actually have any truth to them, I believe the universe will be much more terrifying. If we can actually discover all-powerful immortal beings my first instincts won't be to bow to worship them, my first instinct will be to run silent and deep, and prepare for war if it came to it. I would end up dying. I would rebel because the gods in ancient texts from Christianity, Greek myth, Egyptian myth, Myan, etc, aren't very peaceful creatures. Well, they are peaceful as long as you stay in your caste, and worship as told. If you don't, you get fire and brimstone, genocide, planet flooding, disease, war, etc. I have no desire to live forever, and I am skeptical of the people who have the nerve to seek it out and crave it whether it be for nefarious purposes or peaceful "heaven/paradise" purposes. Believing in immortality at best is wishful thinking, and at worst it's plainly greedy and dangerous. If you were an immortal species, you would have no connection to humans or the understanding of our struggles. You would have no understanding as to why life is precious, because your life would never be under threat. Human beings have no empathy or understanding of the struggles of something as little as an ant or house fly. See where I'm going? If you were immortal would you really be "alive"? Discuss.
So that's one of the things that scares me in real life. In video games I get really scared when I come across enemies who don't die. Like the floating ghosts in Silent Hill 4, or Alma Wade in the FEAR games. It's a surreal and terrifying moment for me when I'm playing an action-packed shooter and suddenly I come across a terrifying little ghost girl, and all the ammunition and karate chops in the world can't stop her, but she can melt people with her thoughts. I'm completely desensitized to monsters. All the hell knights and chainsaw zombies in the world don't scare me, but one little ghost girl can give me nightmares. I actually had a nightmare about Alma once, it's the only nightmare I've had about a video game villain, and that's when I figured out that my fear of her is the real deal. What makes my fear of Alma Wade even more layered is the fact that I'm empathetic towards her and I feel sorry for all the horrible things her dad did to her, and what her childhood was like being a forcibly impregnated test-subject. That game is fucked up, nothing good can come from the narrative in those games. It's bad any way you look at it, and there's really no good and evil, it's just chaos and survival. The people she kills deserve to suffer, but Alma doesn't stop, she is just pure chaos and even if you feel sorry for her, you have to fight back at least for your own survival's sake.
Based on the way you explained it, I think the use of the dialogue wheel system is dumb and should've been opted for something else. I had the same problem with LOTR War in the North. In that game you talk with people through the wheel and there are often a lot of options on the wheel but they never effect anything, they just give you lore or extra small talk. The simple aesthetic design of the Bioware dialogue wheel comes with baggage and expectations that have been imbedded over this generation since Mass Effect 1. The wheel may give your game a sophisticated modern feel and it may be a familiar thing for Bioware fans to see, but if you aren't actually giving the player the opportunity to change a person's disposition, or control the tone of a conversation, there's no point to the dialogue wheel. The wheel itself is an interface in which you are given options and it implies that the player has control over how a conversation goes and what the outcome will be.
Bioware built the wheel for specific function, to accommodate the Paragon/Renegade/neutral system. There are some small talk options in Mass Effect games, but the majority of the wheel use is for interfacing with the p/r/n system because that's what it's for. If you don't use it the way Bioware uses it, don't use it at all. Come up with an idea that suits your game better instead of just tossing in the design because it's visually familiar.
