Looking the other way and whistling - July 7th, 1999 - Allan Milligan
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I once killed a man with his own earlobe because he looked at me funny. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Did you know that I read books? Really, it's true. I finished off a novel called Shella by Andrew Vachss this afternoon. I was quite entertained. For one thing, the main character was pretty much amoral, and lived out some violent fantasies I've developed since I started writing this column. Moreover, it was written in, bar none, the single cleanest, boiled-down prose I've ever seen in a published work. At first, everything in the book seems as simplistic as the words themselves, but as you continue on, it all builds, piece by piece, patterns emerging slowly, until you put together a very compelling story. Not for everyone, mind you. Those who don't find crime fiction compelling should stay the hell away. And, for a guy who was weaned on writers like Ellroy and Chandler, this is quite a jarring change. Vachss makes James Cain look like Dickens, in terms of purple prose, and Cain is the guy who practically founded the hard-boiled style. Who me, wander off-topic? Pish. Never happens. ... so what's this column about, again? Video games or something? | Make Ebonics, not war | Hmmm...There I was, sitting in the Theatre of my Mind, when suddenly ITsprang out of the fog and latched onto my throat, insisting with a voicethat gurgled with my life's blood that it deserved to be a well formedthought, and thus a letter to you, Allan. It occured to me that Barret was perhaps one of the more coherentspeakers in FFVII BECAUSE of his whacky zainy ebonics slang. Makes yournubbins tingle with their Nubbin Sense, doesnt it? ~Ian "Mmm, nubbin" P. |
Hmm. My common sense is tingling. I guess Barret's dialogue in FF7 DID come off a lot better, since you quickly realized that it was a horrible, painful stereotype, and therefore held it to really low standards. I came to regard his dialogue as a sort of running joke within three hours of getting the character, so any grammatical or spelling errors, I simply chalked up to be being part of the bad slang, and let it go. | Trinity and SaGa | Allan who is called Allan, First off, much praise to Fritz for giving SaGa an unbiased review (and nottearing down Cosmo Canyon when he decided to stop updating it....whew!). Ijust wanted to comment on what he was saying about Trinity not beingdeveloped well as a major villain. I don't think that Trinity needed muchdevelopment, it was meant to be more of a faceless background organization,"Big Brother", if you will. It added an ominous overtone to the world thatall the characters shared. Of course, if a player really wanted to clashwith what Trinity had to offer, they could always play through Lute's quest(if you can call it a quest...it's more of an aimless wandering!) Anyhow,just thought I'd chime in. -The Guy Who Makes Much Bucks for Slacking All Day |
Me, I'd prefer to see a game where all the characters' lives are manipulated by a giant, omnipresent company... which is totally benevolent, in truth. The characters spend the entire game battling the machinations of a company that they're convinced is the root of all evil, but only, in fact, produces well-made kitchen appliances and decorative wallpaper. | Hijacked letter | it seems like you guys havent even heard of ffgaiden. those sketches that you are suggesting are ffix or ffgaiden are definitely not for ffgaiden. ffgaiden is going to continue the story of ffviii. did you guys discuss this in some article already or are you just out of the info. loop |
On Monday, I lost all faith in gamers as a whole, due to a stupid letter. Today, my faith remains absent, but my amusement has been restored most mightily by another, equally stupid, letter. Hallelujah! | I give such points for this | Bah, Gilgamesh, Kefka, Sephiroth..pathetic! Pathetic I tell you! All ofthem shall fall before the awesome, limitless power of...MUMM-RA, THE EVERLIVING!!!!!!!! And soon, Mumm-Ra will be joining forceswith Cobra Commander and R5-D4, to form the greatest force evil has everknown! Thank You Drive Thru, Tedman |
Thunder... Thunder...! THUNDERCATS, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mumm-Ra rules, dammit. Even if he gets a little frisky at times. | Square isn't everything | Allan, I haven't been very vocal on this issue until now, but it must be said(especially to RPG fans). I visited RPGamer today and clicked straight tothe editorials section. Although all the editorials as a whole stunk(although I don't want to ramble on how much RPGamer sucks, you wouldn'twant that), one that particularly struck me was an editorial on the next gensystem wars. When Dreamcast was mentioned, third-party support was"average". Nothing would have sparked me if the writer actually putlegitimate reasons for it. However, instead of a list of companies notsupporting DC, the writer just points out that Square isn't on thethird-party list. This must be said. Square is not a huge enough developer (nor is any otherdeveloper, despite what Electronic Arts wants you to believe) to determineif a system is successful or not. I don't disagree that they make classicvideogames. However, blind Square drones want to believe that a system'ssuccess solely depend on an RPG company. While I have nothing against RPGs,especially Square's (why else would I visit this site), RPGs aren't the mostpopular genre in videogaming. Also, one developer can never determine thesuccess of the system, even a great one like Square. Going back to thepreviously mentioned editorial, if the writer also pointed out thatcurrently Electronic Arts, Enix, or Working Designs (who ports andtranslates, by the way, not in the making process) are not on the team, thatwould be acceptable, but the fact that Square isn't developing for DCcurrently surely didn't stop me from buying one, nor did it stop 100,000people from pre-ordering one in June. I don't really have much to add, so this obviously wouldn't make a greatargument (although it would be posted on the second by RPGamer in theireditorial section), but remember this quote to anyone who still think thatDC will fail solely because of Square. "The world is not Square. It is wonderful." Andrew Vestal Clyde Hudman
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Rue though I am to launch discussions from other sites (every time I do, I end up making a total ass of myself, which I do quite enough without outside influence...), this is something to remember. There are plenty of reasons to be antsy about the Dreamcast, especially in this sort of forum. Truth be told, this is essentially an RPG site, and therefore the readers are primarily RPG fans. And, without question, the Dreamcast's weak point right now is RPGs. I suspect that'll change in time, but between Sega's track record in the US, and the system not playing into the interests of the readers, we have an inordinately large number of anti-DC people lurking about, and still more people who are uncertain. But yes, blind devotion to one company, much less making predictions about the future of an entire system based on the development choices of one company is pretty ridiculous. Buy games for games, not brand names. | Vaulting choices | Who became the new writer for the Vault? Or were there nobody worthyenough? I wanna take a shot at it. -- Zig |
We didn't pick out a specific Vault person. We chose selected people to do specific Vaults for us, which they are working on diligently as I write this very line. If I discover otherwise, I will be forced to use the whip. So, unless you're one of the few we selected, you'll have to wait until a future staff or Vault writer drive. Sorry. | Okay, so maybe there ARE Dreamcast RPGs a-plenty | Double-Agent: I recently dug out my old CD-ROM of theAD&D Gold Box series for Mac, startingwith Pool of Radiance. God, those gameswere advanced for their time! How manyconsole RPGs today incorporate time ofday and working-hours for shops? Anyway, I'm now a staff writer over atSegaWeb (www.segaweb.com) andI just wanted to let you know that theDreamcast is building up to be a realforce in the RPG community. Most of your readers know about Shenmue,Grandia 2, Climax Landers, Evolution/SeventhCross, and a number of others. However, did you know that Balder's Gatewill appear in custom, possibly-networkableform on Dreamcast sometime after launch?Balder's Gate is a PC RPG that is set inthe AD&D Forgotten Realms universe thatmy beloved Gold Box series games wereset in. Also forthcoming on Dreamcast is Project Ares,from the same team that created the much-lovedPhantasy Star Series for the Sega Master Systemand the Sega Genesis. Finally, if you have any fans of massive multiplayeronline RPGs like EverQuest, Ultima Online, andAsheron's Call, the developer of Asheron's Call,Turbine, is teaming up with Sega for the first-everonline RPG delivered on a console system. Currentlyreferred to as Frontier, it is an action RPG witha huge world and will rival EverQuest in terms ofthe number of people able to simultaneouslyplay while online on the same server. Oh, and don't forget that Pool of Radiance 2, thePC update to the original Gold Box series withstandard-setting graphics is a likely candidate fora Dreamcast port sometime shortly after its PCrelease. I know most of your readers (like myself) have enjoyedthe Playstation for the way it has served the RPGcommunity. But I wanted to remind your readers and youthat Sony is not the only platform for great RPGs. Segamay not have Square in their corner...but there's a lotof RPG goodness to be had on Dreamcast, and it'sall coming our way much sooner than the PS2, so ifanyone is ready for the next level in RPGs today, ratherthan next year, don't be afraid to check out the Dreamcast. Thanks, and keep up the good work on your site. CraigInMN...2! (a/k/a Craig Hansen on SegaWeb) P.S. We all know that Saga Frontier is the onlydecent piece of literature produced by 500 yearsof English-speaking society and rivals the Biblein importance. Screw Shakespeare, just submitto the truth, dude! :-) LOL |
Man, does everyone who reads and writes to this column work at a gaming website? More importantly, if I get canned here, can any of you guys score me a job? :) Anyhow, thanks for the heads-up on the upcoming DC RPGs. That's a brighter future for the genre than I was aware of. I knew about all the titles except Asheron's Call, but somehow never really put it all together for an overall picture. Hopefully we'll see still more titles, though. | The voice acting "debate" | People seem to be forgetting one major point in this whole "should rpgs have voices" debate. Voice acting in video games almost always sucks! There's maybe a handful of games, if that, that have decent voice acting, like Metal Gear Solid. Think of Xenogears. There were a few anime cutscenes where Fei or Elly talked, and some more talking at the end. The acting was horrible! Now imagine that you had to endure that throughout the whole 50 hour game, which is almost entirely dialogue anyways. Also, RPGs have too many characters for a game company to be able to hire enough high quality actors. They'd probably end up letting there nephews do it for them. If nothing I've said is making sense yet, this should help. Imagine this: FINAL FANTASY TACTICS WITH VOICE ACTING. I think company's should concentrate on having high quality text before they even touch voice acting -BenGrande |
Okay, this is the last letter in the voice acting "debate", which I place in quotes, since 90% of the letters on the subject expressed, more or less, the same idea as the above letter. Subject closed, next topic, thank ye kindly. | Lunar movie guide | Close-captioning in Lunar would be a nice option, but even though its not there, in the official WD Lunar guide, each anime scene is scripted in the guide at the point in the game it takes place. Just thought i'd let you know. The guide also has awesome stickers of each of the characters, stickers of the bromides, and a free poster offer for a big poster of the box cover (with Dragonmaster Alex and the giant Evil Godess face and the Magic Emperor.)Reijin |
So there you go. | Ready, aim...! | I've been seeing a lot lately about music and videogames. There's this CD coming out with FF tracks I've seen CD's out before that featured music from video games. All I have to say is who the hell cares about the music? Do you people honestly make your video game decisions on which game has the best music score? God, I hope not. I mean Jesus, it's just video game music! I play video games that are fun and I don't really care about the music that much. It's just a side thing. I mean unless you blare Backstreet boys music constantly throughout the game it can't really detract from the game that much at all. Until they start using big name bands or get the guys who do movie musical scores like Star Wars, Jurassic Park or Jaws I will never waste money on a CD for video game soundtrack. If you print this I'll probably get tons of letters flaming me but let's face it, video game music has never been a factor in how well a game has sold and video game music is well...just video game music and not much else. Pendy (who will die of a sudden unexplained brain tumor explosion if DQ7 is not released in America) |
And what a shame that'd be, too... Getting to your letter topic, I suspect I'll hear more... tempestuous responses to this letter before too long. For my part, I hold video game music to Sturgeons's Law. Just as there are the Britney Spears of the game music world, so are there the Thelonius Monks. I enjoy orchestral scores in the first place, and have received some very interested inquiries when I played Actraiser Symphonic Suite aloud. Do those, non-gamers I might add, who enjoyed Actraiser's music have no taste? My point, and I do have one, is that opinions vary. I doubt anyone buys a game specifically for the composer of the music, but there are some excellent tunes cranked out of these games. 90% of game music is crap, but hey, so is 90% of modern music. You may not enjoy it, but some people, myself included, find that a well-composed soundtrack can make an enjoyable gaming experience even better, just as a bad soundtrack can sabotage the experience. And some few pieces and composers transcend simple mood music, and are worth listening to outside of gaming. I'll pick Monk or Gillespie over Uematsu any day of the week, but I'll pick Koshiro over Hole. That's the wonder of music. One man's Mozart is another man's N'Sync. So don't get all high and mighty just because you don't enjoy game music. If you don't like it, ignore those of us who want to discuss it. It's really that simple. | My bad, re: Redbook audio | Another thing to be considered with Redbbok is that you can't spin anyinformation off the CD during it. That nixes FMV, voice acting, andgenerally anything that requires loading. It's also impossible to have acontinous song, there has to be a small interruption when the track isover. Oh, BTW, the music in Symphony of the Night isn't done by the soundchip. It's a file format called XA. You can actually listen to the musicand voice acting off the CD, with a small program. That includes someJapanese lines, a few scrapped ones, and a hilarious "sound test".Information about it can be found here -->http://www.classicgaming.com/castlevania/dungeon.htm in theMiscellaneous section. -Makkuro |
Brad Williams brought up the same point regarding Redbook audio in a letter I didn't publish. But you, and he, are right, and I am wrong. Damn. Redbook and RPGs just don't seem to be meant for one another, unless they're action RPGs like Ys, in which case there's no change of music due to entering a battle or what have you, so there'd no skipping problem.
Closing Comments Meep, says the rabbit, just before the hammer falls and crushes its bunny skull into gooey red fragments. Meep indeed. - Allan Milligan
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