Thanks to Ecclesiastes again for another good idea for a rant.
Opening sequences. They're not a new concept--the idea of having an opening that shows the premise and characters of your work through various scenes spliced together to the main theme was a standard for television shows decades before even the concept of video games had been thought up. These original music videos were used by sitcoms, dramas, soaps, and especially cartoons without fail, and often still are.
RPGs' opening sequences usually occur immediately before the title screen, after the title screen's been up for a minute or so without any buttons being pressed, or once you begin a new game. Some games will have even have more than one--like, one that happens before the title screen, and one that occurs after the title screen's been up for a bit. The purpose of the opening sequence is, as near as I can figure, to get you excited and interested in the game you're about to play, and to give you a taste of the game's themes, scope, ideas, setting, and/or characters. Most opening sequences hit on most or all of these points in one way or another. For example, take the opening sequence to Tales of the Abyss, which is a pretty good specimen of the average opening sequence. The opening is a montage of anime scenes portraying specific events from the game (which, incidentally, are usually not actually portrayed in anime FMV cinemas when they're actually happening in-game) that grab your attention, containing both scenes of action and scenes of mysticism and so on, all to a rather fast-paced main theme. The idea is clearly to grab your attention immediately. The scenes show several of the game's places and suspenseful moments (providing a taste of its scope, ideas, and setting), and has a part which shows each of the main characters one by one, thus giving you a quick orientation to them.
The concept of an opening sequence is a good one. It's entertaining, and it can be a good, effective way to get a player into the right mood for the game, which can be important. I mean, sure, if you're playing a game from the Tales of series, you probably don't need to be told that it's going to be a very colorful, anime-ish adventure, so setting the mood might not be so essential, but with a game like, say, Breath of Fire 5, setting the mood is significantly important, especially if the audience is at all familiar with previous games in the series. Breath of Fires 1 - 4 were all decidedly fantasy games with a world-spanning scope and the feeling of a save-the-world adventure.* Breath of Fire 5's opening sequence, though, is gritty and at times somewhat aggressive, showing a grimy urban underground and emphasizing a personal struggle, while showcasing the artistic style and setting, which are all major factors in the game. It helps you get into the feel of the game before you start playing, and in this case, it's helpful, because a player might otherwise feel a little disjointed at playing something very obviously not the fantasy epic they're accustomed to with RPGs.
Of course, there are some common annoyances with opening sequences, too. For one, the JPop. The terrible, terrible JPop. Now it's not like I don't occasionally (actually, "rarely" is closer) like a pop song from Japan. Hell, I'd say JPop has as good a chance of producing a quality song as any genre of this hemisphere. But I can't recall the last time I saw an opening sequence set to a JPop tune that wasn't just utterly horrible to listen to. Opening sequence JPop tunes only seem to come in one variety: Whiny and Disjointed, Interspersed with Screeching. Y'know, if the rest of the game's going to have tunes that actually fit in appropriately to the scenes they play in and don't have keening vocals "singing" one of the most annoying languages ever spoken, I don't see why the opening song, which should be, y'know, trying to create an accurate feel of the game, has to be radically different. Take Grandia 3's terrible opening sequence--the song to it is generic and pointless JPop. It doesn't get you ready for an adventure in any way, it doesn't stand out or fit the game's feel at all, and frankly, it's not particularly nice to listen to. I guess you could say that it actually IS relevant given that the game itself is generic, boring crap, but I somehow doubt that was what SquareEnix was going for.**
Worse than the vocal stylings of a talent-deficient teenager whose highest aspiration is to be one of a virtual sea of Japanese pop idols for whom the phrase "5 minutes of fame" is unrealistically optimistic by a good 4 minutes, though, is some of the visual content of some opening sequences. First of all, there are some out there that just plain spoil too much of the game. The problem with showing scenes from the game in an opening sequence, you see, is that one will usually take some of the game's best and most gripping parts to show, which tend to be plot-important enough that showing any part of them gives stuff away that would have otherwise been surprising and interesting! Giving away your better plot twists and moments of tension before the game has even begun is NOT an effective strategy for preparing your audience to maintain an interest for a plot that takes 50 hours to tell.
Another problem is the rare opening sequence that actually just has no relevance to the game. I mean, Suikoden Tierkreis's opening sequence doesn't suggest an RPG adventure that involves danger and combat and mysticism so much as it suggests a long nature walk with an abundant amount of photo ops of anime characters standing and looking out to the horizon in a thoughtful way. When the whole point, as near as I can figure it, of an opening sequence is to give a sample of what's to come and get you interested in the game's events, showing a bunch of stuff--BORING stuff--that just doesn't really have much or anything to do with the game just defeats the purpose of having it.
A personal irritation with these things that I often have is also how often opening sequences reuse Full Motion Videos from the game itself. FMVs, be they 3D or anime or whatever, are meant to be the attention-grabbers in an RPG, the moments that are so important that they have to be shown in cinema form--something to look forward to, essentially. So I kind of feel like I'm getting cheated a little when a lot/all of the opening sequence's cinematic footage is taken from the FMVs you'll already see. I mean, not only does it invite the problem of spoiling the plot that I mentioned above, but it also lessens my interest--I'll be slightly less interested in the FMVs in the game that I've already seen a decent glimpse of, and after I've seen them, I'll be less interested in the opening sequence because it's just little pieces of larger cinemas. I just feel that it's better, and gives the audience a little extra, to make the FMV of your opening sequence portray stuff that doesn't already occur in FMV during the game. You take the FMV opening sequence Square added to their Chrono Trigger rerelease for the Playstation 1--it's got lots of anime cinema in it to watch that's neat, showing various situations and scenes from the game, but the actual in-game FMVs aren't included, giving us more to watch instead of just recycling the same FMVs multiple times.
Opening sequences are more important than they're often given credit for. A good one, like the original opening sequence of Chrono Trigger, which had exciting music, good direction, and set the game's tone perfectly, can get the player in just the right mood to appreciate the game all the more--hell, a good enough opening sequence might actually buy a bad game some time before the player starts to realize that the game's not all that the exciting beginning promised. It worked admirably with Chrono Cross's 2 opening sequences, particularly FMV one--that one is so effective as a preparer for adventure that watching it STILL gets me excited and ready to play the game it's showing, even though I HAVE played it and KNOW that it is actually awful. Conversely, a bad one can just drag a game down, an irritating strike against the game before it's even begun. A little effort and good directing sense on this matter can go a long way for an RPG.
* Even though one, arguably two, of them ended up not having world-saving as their main purpose.
** Then again, who knows...considering SquareEnix's business plan and overall level of game quality from around the time of Grandia 3 up to the present moment, it very well could be that they DID intend to make a crappy opening sequence to recognize and reflect the game's poor quality. Just another in a long line of "Fuck Yous" to their loyal fanbase.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Fallout 3 AMV: Mad World
2012 Update: As time has gone on, I've come to think much less of this AMV. By all means I still consider it very good, but if I were to encounter it for the first time today, it wouldn't get its own rant. I'd include it in my General RPG AMV rants, sure, but it just doesn't merit as much praise or focus as I've given it here. I'll still keep it up, of course--it wont' be the first rant I've felt less in tune with over time, after all, but it's still a part of my history here, and it's not like it's totally off or anything. Just take this one with a grain of salt. And now, as it was:
Yeah, that's right--ANOTHER Fallout 3 AMV rant. I make no apologies. It's a good game and these are good AMVs.
Now I'll grant you, in comparison to the other Fallout 3 AMVs I've posted, this one isn't quite as blatantly awesome. But it's still darned good, and very impressive in its own right when you realize that this AMV was made before the game was even released. That means that somebody, in this case a Youtuber named Squiggy3210 (or Zorskel, on his other channel), put together an AMV using nothing but stock footage of preview videos that managed to be good enough to catch my attention (and I tend to be borderline unreasonable with how picky I am about these things). Certainly worth a look, wouldn't you say?
(Unless you don't like blood and guts and such--I've said this a couple times now, but it bears repeating that Fallout 3's general gameplay is not for the weak of stomach, faint of heart, or low of age).
Fallout 3: Mad World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afOWtUjHXHg
Poetry in Motion: Quality-wise, this AMV's certainly fine. Certain parts are definitely in higher definition than others, but I wouldn't say any of the clips in this video are anything less than satisfactory for how well you can see them.
As far as visual tricks go, there's not much to note here. The camera work is good sometimes, like when it gives a wide shot at 2:35, which emphasizes the scene's conjunction with the lyrics "mad world." Still, from what I understand, all of the clips of this were taken from preview footage, so that's more a case of picking the right scene for that moment than the AMV maker's setting it up himself. As far as Zorskel goes, not a lot of effects were put in--just some basic fades for transitions from one scene to the next, really. Still, even if some effects might have improved it, the AMV's good without them, and with a more mellow and slow song like this one, visual bells and whistles might have actually been distracting. The scenes often change accordingly with the music's tone and changes, so it seems reasonable to say that Zorskel did put some thought into the arrangement and timing, at least, and it does work.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: The song is the real strength of this work. This AMV's visuals are more there as a backup to the song and its general mood than a completely equal share of it. The song for this AMV is Mad World, a song by British band Tears for Fears. This version of Mad World is the one from the movie Donnie Darko, performed by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews.
Now, I admit that I'm biased in that I'm fond of this song anyway, but I think that Mad World really fits Fallout 3's setting quite well, and this AMV shows that. Previous Fallout 3 AMVs I've covered are more active and even upbeat, having messages of warning against letting a world like Fallout 3 come to pass, and emphasizing the battle between vice and virtue in Fallout 3's wasteland. Fallout 3 Mad World, however, looks at a different, but also significant aspect of the game: the moody, regretful tone of the Fallout universe, the feeling created from simply stopping a moment in your journeys through the wasteland and looking around at it.
The song captures this lonely sadness in and of itself well, but the AMV enhances this mood and its association to the Fallout world by often tying the lyrics to the scenes being shown. The opening is very nicely done, backing up to view a part of the Capital Wasteland until you get to its explorer getting ready to go through it. Parts like the segment that starts at 0:13 match the song very nicely, showing the tired people of the wasteland and its decimated, decaying locations to the lyrics describing them as "familiar faces," "worn out places," and "worn out faces." The part at 0:27's decent, showing traveling through the Capital Wasteland as being an example of "going nowhere." The part at 0:47 is, of course, a perfect fit for "no tomorrow," being scenes of a nuclear explosion from the game. 1:55 shows the Lone Wanderer's first encounter with Sarah Lyons and her paladins, a meeting in the game in which the Brotherhood of Steel combat veterans wonder who the hell this newcomer is who's just waltzed into a combat zone, to the lyrics "no one knew me."* The real highlight of the AMV's matching scenes to the song, though, are the parts for the chorus at 1:17 and 2:34, where you're shown examples of standard chaotic settings of the post-apocalyptic world, along with a scene of the horrible violence that occurs in it regularly, perfectly emphasizing what a "mad world" it is. The second chorus is particularly good, as it goes on to be the end of the song, which the AMV handles very well, giving a wide view of the world to the "enlargen your world," and finishing the final "mad world" with the game title and the iconic Fallout 3 scene of the Lone Wanderer walking down the road with Dogmeat.
Of course, it's not perfect. There are times in the AMV where the lyrics and feel of the song just don't match up to the the visuals. 0:33, for example, shows you a scene of a gunfight with a couple super mutants, while the song, as quiet as ever, talks about tears filling up glasses and no expression and so on, which...well, there's not a lot of connection there between the audio and visual, unless I'm missing one hell of a metaphor. There are a few other moments where the connection between video and music are shaky at best, though I think that one's probably the worst. The AMV overall is of good quality and worth viewing, which is why I'm doing a rant on it at all, but it wouldn't be honest not to make mention that it's not perfect.
I'm running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein! And I wanna know what the fuck you're doing with my time!: As I said, I rather like the part of Fallout that this AMV emphasizes, the strange, displaced sense of both familiarity and the alien in a destroyed world that was once ours. Most AMVs about Fallout 3 emphasize its violent, twisted world and the small wars of vice and virtue that occur within it, and power to them--that stuff is a huge part of it. But few AMVs are willing to step back and look at the calm, exhausted displacement of the Fallout world that rests beneath it all, the sadness behind the chaos and madness that you can see, hear, even feel in the game when you stop for a moment and just take in its surroundings. Fallout 3: Mad World does a good job of that, and few AMVs try to.
This work also has a second notable function--while it may seem less important now that Fallout 3 is well over a year old, this AMV was made 2 weeks before the game was released, and was intended to further spark people's interest in the upcoming game (as is made obvious by the end of the video). I'd certainly say it does this well, too. While there were obviously fast and attention-getting trailers and such for the game, speaking for myself, a well-made AMV that shows a more contemplative side to the game and promises some heart and soul to it to go along with all the action and adventure and whatnot is easily as likely, if not more, to get me interested in the upcoming product.
This is a good AMV that gives the viewer another perspective to its featured game that most other AMV creators don't consider, and accomplishes its task of garnering interest from its viewers quite adequately. It's not perfect by a long-shot, mind--the AMV was made before there were clips to use beyond those released for trailers and such, and it does show. It could be greatly improved by Zorskel with an update to its video selections--now that Fallout 3's been out for a while, there are craploads of in-game videos of it all over Youtube and beyond, so chances are he could find some decent new clips to put in at certain parts where the video loses relevance to the song. Still, as it stands, it's still remarkably good, and worth the watching.
* Interestingly enough, since this AMV was made before Fallout 3 was out and thus before its story's events and details could have been known, Zorskel couldn't have actually KNOWN that this scene would match so well to the lyrics right then. It has to just be a very handy coincidence that he happened to put that scene there. Intentional or not, though, it DOES make for a nice addition.
Yeah, that's right--ANOTHER Fallout 3 AMV rant. I make no apologies. It's a good game and these are good AMVs.
Now I'll grant you, in comparison to the other Fallout 3 AMVs I've posted, this one isn't quite as blatantly awesome. But it's still darned good, and very impressive in its own right when you realize that this AMV was made before the game was even released. That means that somebody, in this case a Youtuber named Squiggy3210 (or Zorskel, on his other channel), put together an AMV using nothing but stock footage of preview videos that managed to be good enough to catch my attention (and I tend to be borderline unreasonable with how picky I am about these things). Certainly worth a look, wouldn't you say?
(Unless you don't like blood and guts and such--I've said this a couple times now, but it bears repeating that Fallout 3's general gameplay is not for the weak of stomach, faint of heart, or low of age).
Fallout 3: Mad World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afOWtUjHXHg
Poetry in Motion: Quality-wise, this AMV's certainly fine. Certain parts are definitely in higher definition than others, but I wouldn't say any of the clips in this video are anything less than satisfactory for how well you can see them.
As far as visual tricks go, there's not much to note here. The camera work is good sometimes, like when it gives a wide shot at 2:35, which emphasizes the scene's conjunction with the lyrics "mad world." Still, from what I understand, all of the clips of this were taken from preview footage, so that's more a case of picking the right scene for that moment than the AMV maker's setting it up himself. As far as Zorskel goes, not a lot of effects were put in--just some basic fades for transitions from one scene to the next, really. Still, even if some effects might have improved it, the AMV's good without them, and with a more mellow and slow song like this one, visual bells and whistles might have actually been distracting. The scenes often change accordingly with the music's tone and changes, so it seems reasonable to say that Zorskel did put some thought into the arrangement and timing, at least, and it does work.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: The song is the real strength of this work. This AMV's visuals are more there as a backup to the song and its general mood than a completely equal share of it. The song for this AMV is Mad World, a song by British band Tears for Fears. This version of Mad World is the one from the movie Donnie Darko, performed by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews.
Now, I admit that I'm biased in that I'm fond of this song anyway, but I think that Mad World really fits Fallout 3's setting quite well, and this AMV shows that. Previous Fallout 3 AMVs I've covered are more active and even upbeat, having messages of warning against letting a world like Fallout 3 come to pass, and emphasizing the battle between vice and virtue in Fallout 3's wasteland. Fallout 3 Mad World, however, looks at a different, but also significant aspect of the game: the moody, regretful tone of the Fallout universe, the feeling created from simply stopping a moment in your journeys through the wasteland and looking around at it.
The song captures this lonely sadness in and of itself well, but the AMV enhances this mood and its association to the Fallout world by often tying the lyrics to the scenes being shown. The opening is very nicely done, backing up to view a part of the Capital Wasteland until you get to its explorer getting ready to go through it. Parts like the segment that starts at 0:13 match the song very nicely, showing the tired people of the wasteland and its decimated, decaying locations to the lyrics describing them as "familiar faces," "worn out places," and "worn out faces." The part at 0:27's decent, showing traveling through the Capital Wasteland as being an example of "going nowhere." The part at 0:47 is, of course, a perfect fit for "no tomorrow," being scenes of a nuclear explosion from the game. 1:55 shows the Lone Wanderer's first encounter with Sarah Lyons and her paladins, a meeting in the game in which the Brotherhood of Steel combat veterans wonder who the hell this newcomer is who's just waltzed into a combat zone, to the lyrics "no one knew me."* The real highlight of the AMV's matching scenes to the song, though, are the parts for the chorus at 1:17 and 2:34, where you're shown examples of standard chaotic settings of the post-apocalyptic world, along with a scene of the horrible violence that occurs in it regularly, perfectly emphasizing what a "mad world" it is. The second chorus is particularly good, as it goes on to be the end of the song, which the AMV handles very well, giving a wide view of the world to the "enlargen your world," and finishing the final "mad world" with the game title and the iconic Fallout 3 scene of the Lone Wanderer walking down the road with Dogmeat.
Of course, it's not perfect. There are times in the AMV where the lyrics and feel of the song just don't match up to the the visuals. 0:33, for example, shows you a scene of a gunfight with a couple super mutants, while the song, as quiet as ever, talks about tears filling up glasses and no expression and so on, which...well, there's not a lot of connection there between the audio and visual, unless I'm missing one hell of a metaphor. There are a few other moments where the connection between video and music are shaky at best, though I think that one's probably the worst. The AMV overall is of good quality and worth viewing, which is why I'm doing a rant on it at all, but it wouldn't be honest not to make mention that it's not perfect.
I'm running this monkey farm now, Frankenstein! And I wanna know what the fuck you're doing with my time!: As I said, I rather like the part of Fallout that this AMV emphasizes, the strange, displaced sense of both familiarity and the alien in a destroyed world that was once ours. Most AMVs about Fallout 3 emphasize its violent, twisted world and the small wars of vice and virtue that occur within it, and power to them--that stuff is a huge part of it. But few AMVs are willing to step back and look at the calm, exhausted displacement of the Fallout world that rests beneath it all, the sadness behind the chaos and madness that you can see, hear, even feel in the game when you stop for a moment and just take in its surroundings. Fallout 3: Mad World does a good job of that, and few AMVs try to.
This work also has a second notable function--while it may seem less important now that Fallout 3 is well over a year old, this AMV was made 2 weeks before the game was released, and was intended to further spark people's interest in the upcoming game (as is made obvious by the end of the video). I'd certainly say it does this well, too. While there were obviously fast and attention-getting trailers and such for the game, speaking for myself, a well-made AMV that shows a more contemplative side to the game and promises some heart and soul to it to go along with all the action and adventure and whatnot is easily as likely, if not more, to get me interested in the upcoming product.
This is a good AMV that gives the viewer another perspective to its featured game that most other AMV creators don't consider, and accomplishes its task of garnering interest from its viewers quite adequately. It's not perfect by a long-shot, mind--the AMV was made before there were clips to use beyond those released for trailers and such, and it does show. It could be greatly improved by Zorskel with an update to its video selections--now that Fallout 3's been out for a while, there are craploads of in-game videos of it all over Youtube and beyond, so chances are he could find some decent new clips to put in at certain parts where the video loses relevance to the song. Still, as it stands, it's still remarkably good, and worth the watching.
* Interestingly enough, since this AMV was made before Fallout 3 was out and thus before its story's events and details could have been known, Zorskel couldn't have actually KNOWN that this scene would match so well to the lyrics right then. It has to just be a very handy coincidence that he happened to put that scene there. Intentional or not, though, it DOES make for a nice addition.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Shadow Hearts 1's Doll House
Every now and then, you get an RPG setting that really just pulls you in and conveys a mood perfectly, instilling an intended atmosphere within you seamlessly, getting you into what's going on with above average skill and subtlety. In my old rant about Skies of Arcadia Legends's City of Valua, the visuals of the environment, the background music, and what you encounter all work together to put together a particularly strong environment of the worst of urban life.
You get superior environments like this every now and then in RPGs. Sometimes they portray human settlements, as Valua does, and Final Fantasy 7's Midgar. Most often, you find yourself in a dungeon, forest, temple, cave, or some other dangerous place where you explore an area made exceptionally well to pull you into the environment--Grandia 1 does this in practically every explorable area in its game.
There's only one time, though, that I can recall experiencing an RPG where a strong environment like what I'm speaking of is created which just scares the pants off you: Shadow Hearts 1's Doll House.
While Shadow Hearts 2's Doll House has its moments of mild creepiness (and SH3's Doll House, as par for the game, is dull and boring), it's SH1's Doll House that has the dark, spooky look inside and out, lighted or in the dark, of a house whose history makes it better left abandoned. It's SH1's Doll House that has the heavy, moody music that sets the tone without going too far. And it's SH1's Doll House that has the creepy history of a little girl and her doll told through pictures and diary entries, all leading to the final place of the house, a silent, utterly scary room where a doll sits on a rocking horse, watching you with its lifeless face...a lifeless face that may move just out of the corner of the main character's eye when he's not paying attention. SH1's Doll House is as spooky, as creepy, as downright freak-you-out scary an area, particularly its final room, as any environment you'll find in a Survival Horror game like the Resident Evils. I was seriously impressed with it--when I was done holding my breath in fright.
You get superior environments like this every now and then in RPGs. Sometimes they portray human settlements, as Valua does, and Final Fantasy 7's Midgar. Most often, you find yourself in a dungeon, forest, temple, cave, or some other dangerous place where you explore an area made exceptionally well to pull you into the environment--Grandia 1 does this in practically every explorable area in its game.
There's only one time, though, that I can recall experiencing an RPG where a strong environment like what I'm speaking of is created which just scares the pants off you: Shadow Hearts 1's Doll House.
While Shadow Hearts 2's Doll House has its moments of mild creepiness (and SH3's Doll House, as par for the game, is dull and boring), it's SH1's Doll House that has the dark, spooky look inside and out, lighted or in the dark, of a house whose history makes it better left abandoned. It's SH1's Doll House that has the heavy, moody music that sets the tone without going too far. And it's SH1's Doll House that has the creepy history of a little girl and her doll told through pictures and diary entries, all leading to the final place of the house, a silent, utterly scary room where a doll sits on a rocking horse, watching you with its lifeless face...a lifeless face that may move just out of the corner of the main character's eye when he's not paying attention. SH1's Doll House is as spooky, as creepy, as downright freak-you-out scary an area, particularly its final room, as any environment you'll find in a Survival Horror game like the Resident Evils. I was seriously impressed with it--when I was done holding my breath in fright.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tales of the Abyss's Ion: The Damsel in Distress Who's a Boy
Remember that rant on Wild Arms 3's Virginia I did? About how she perfectly fulfills a male character's role, without once sacrificing even a hint of her identity as a woman? Today's rant is like that, only for a male character and a female's role.
Ah, the Damsel in Distress. One of the oldest and most traditional plot tools for story-telling, the Damsel in Distress is a classic way to create the excitement of a dangerous situation, express the heroism and manly male manliness of the hero as he mannishly saves the damsel in a masculine manner, and, perhaps most importantly, reinforce the notion that anyone with a vagina is weak, helpless, and probably stupid. It's a writing device as common in RPGs as it is in anything else, although there is a small variation with RPGs: normally, the plight a damsel becomes involved in may or may not be of the villain's doing (sure, she COULD be kidnapped, but there's a good chance she just stupidly tripped and fell into a damn hole or something, too), but with RPGs, women who need to be saved from something are at least 80% of the time kidnapped by the villain, or otherwise at said villain's mercy. It's practically video game tradition.
You don't really see any real role-reversal in this situation, either. While there ARE a few times when a male character is in a bind and needs saving, these events are a one-time thing for the guys--and just how often do you see major male characters get captured away from the party, and NOT initiate and at least halfway, if not just totally, complete a successful escape attempt? On the rare occasions when they don't just get out all on their own, they're either saved so far into the escape attempt that the rescue's nearly superfluous anyway (like Chrono Trigger--yeah, I know you CAN have Crono saved at the last minute by Lucca, but you can also have him escape all by himself, and most players' actions are going to trigger the latter), or the folks saving the male character are escaping the same prison at the time anyway, making it just a part of the joint escape rather than an honest rescue.
Ion of Tales of the Abyss, however, is a notable exception to this rule. Ion, leader of TotA's world's major (actually, one and only) religion, is a boy. He is young-ish, like 14 years old, and even for a kid, he ain't exactly manly, but he definitely is a male.
Ion finds himself in a bind a lot. A LOT. Really, it seems like every time you turn around, Ion's gone and gotten himself caught by an enemy general. If he's not being held captive, you're dragging him along with your party, trying to keep an eye on him so that the next random person he says "Hi" to doesn't kidnap him. He's seriously right up there with Final Fantasy 8's Rinoa and Tales of Legendia's Shirley for how often he needs rescue and asylum--he might even be in the same league as Shana from Legend of Dragoon.
Still, there's also a certain set of personality traits that Damsels in Distress almost always seem to have. Just getting caught a couple times doesn't necessarily make gamers see you as a DiD. Take Knights of the Old Republic 1, for instance--there's a couple instances in that game where Bastila's held against her will by enemies and needs to be saved, but I've yet to meet a KotOR player who'd call her a Damsel in Distress. The distinction comes from the fact that Bastila is a short-tempered, demanding, strong-willed person who also kicks ass as a lightsaber-wielding Jedi Knight. She also insists after you save her that she had the situation well in hand and that you nearly messed everything up, although how true her claim is is kind of left open to debate. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how many times circumstances might dictate she need rescuing--Bastila's personality and combat abilities preclude any possibility of calling her a Damsel in Distress.
Ion, however, fits the bill perfectly on this account, too. He's kind, innocent, and eternally optimistic, always seeing the good in people even when others cannot. He's never lacking for an encouraging remark, always determined to emotionally help all around him, and as soft and sweet as a syrup-drenched marshmallow. And while this detail wouldn't necessarily disqualify him for DiD status were it not true, it doesn't hurt that his voice is about as far from being masculine as you can get without actually becoming Shirley Temple.
So he's got the personality, and there seems to be a neon sign taped to his back that says "KIDNAP ME." That IS typically enough for a character to be seen as a Damsel in Distress, but those characters actually are girls. We need one last DiD staple for Ion to fit into: plot role.
DiDs' roles in a game's plot usually fall under 2 categories: political importance and mystical anime holy powers. Basically, there has to be SOME reason for the hero and company to go to all this trouble for the damsel, because even heroes' good will only goes so far. Political importance is probably the oldest role for a damsel (how many game plots, even RPG plots, have boiled down to "Go save the Princess?" Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda Series and Princess Peach from Mario games are pretty much the ultimate Damsels in Distress for all gaming history), but a recent favorite with the RPG genre is the mystical anime divine nonsense stuff--basically, the hero HAS to cart around this female dead weight because she's the only person in the world who can commune with the gods or realign the sparkly magical spirit energies or whatever.
So how does Ion fit in here? Pretty well, as he's both. Half the time, the Tales of the Abyss heroes are babysitting the little guy because he happens to be the most important religious figure on the planet. The other half, it's because he's the only one who can unlock the mystical seals on magical lift pillars of the forgotten age yadda yadda yadda. And hey, as if he wasn't already 10 for 10 on the Damsel in Distress Checklist, using his powers drains his energy and makes him faint.
Ion's a Damsel in Distress, no matter how you look at it. Not only that, but he's essentially the PERFECT Damsel in Distress--he really does pretty much fit every criteria for the role that I, or likely anyone else, can think of. So how does it work out? Very well. There's really no point in the game where this situation feels unnatural or off at all, and Ion even manages to be one of the very few Damsels in Distress that's actually an appealing character--even if he's saccharine, he's still very likable, which is something most DiDs don't manage (Grandia 3's Alfina, Wild Arms 4's Yulie), and his personality fits into the dynamic of the party very well, rather than superfluously intruding on it like some DiDs do (ToL's Shirley, Lunar 2's Lucia) or destroying it altogether (TLoD's Shana, FF8's Rinoa). Ion perfectly fulfills the role of Damsel in Distress, while remaining unquestionably a guy--a shy, young, nice little guy, but a guy--AND far surpassing nearly every other RPG character with the same role by simply being a good fit with the group and a LIKABLE human being. Like Wild Arms 3's Virginia, a girl playing a male hero's role to complete perfection, Ion being the ideal example of the role he plays is an example of gender equality in writing--that it should be the character, not the gender, that determines their role in a game. All it takes is good writing.
Ah, the Damsel in Distress. One of the oldest and most traditional plot tools for story-telling, the Damsel in Distress is a classic way to create the excitement of a dangerous situation, express the heroism and manly male manliness of the hero as he mannishly saves the damsel in a masculine manner, and, perhaps most importantly, reinforce the notion that anyone with a vagina is weak, helpless, and probably stupid. It's a writing device as common in RPGs as it is in anything else, although there is a small variation with RPGs: normally, the plight a damsel becomes involved in may or may not be of the villain's doing (sure, she COULD be kidnapped, but there's a good chance she just stupidly tripped and fell into a damn hole or something, too), but with RPGs, women who need to be saved from something are at least 80% of the time kidnapped by the villain, or otherwise at said villain's mercy. It's practically video game tradition.
You don't really see any real role-reversal in this situation, either. While there ARE a few times when a male character is in a bind and needs saving, these events are a one-time thing for the guys--and just how often do you see major male characters get captured away from the party, and NOT initiate and at least halfway, if not just totally, complete a successful escape attempt? On the rare occasions when they don't just get out all on their own, they're either saved so far into the escape attempt that the rescue's nearly superfluous anyway (like Chrono Trigger--yeah, I know you CAN have Crono saved at the last minute by Lucca, but you can also have him escape all by himself, and most players' actions are going to trigger the latter), or the folks saving the male character are escaping the same prison at the time anyway, making it just a part of the joint escape rather than an honest rescue.
Ion of Tales of the Abyss, however, is a notable exception to this rule. Ion, leader of TotA's world's major (actually, one and only) religion, is a boy. He is young-ish, like 14 years old, and even for a kid, he ain't exactly manly, but he definitely is a male.
Ion finds himself in a bind a lot. A LOT. Really, it seems like every time you turn around, Ion's gone and gotten himself caught by an enemy general. If he's not being held captive, you're dragging him along with your party, trying to keep an eye on him so that the next random person he says "Hi" to doesn't kidnap him. He's seriously right up there with Final Fantasy 8's Rinoa and Tales of Legendia's Shirley for how often he needs rescue and asylum--he might even be in the same league as Shana from Legend of Dragoon.
Still, there's also a certain set of personality traits that Damsels in Distress almost always seem to have. Just getting caught a couple times doesn't necessarily make gamers see you as a DiD. Take Knights of the Old Republic 1, for instance--there's a couple instances in that game where Bastila's held against her will by enemies and needs to be saved, but I've yet to meet a KotOR player who'd call her a Damsel in Distress. The distinction comes from the fact that Bastila is a short-tempered, demanding, strong-willed person who also kicks ass as a lightsaber-wielding Jedi Knight. She also insists after you save her that she had the situation well in hand and that you nearly messed everything up, although how true her claim is is kind of left open to debate. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how many times circumstances might dictate she need rescuing--Bastila's personality and combat abilities preclude any possibility of calling her a Damsel in Distress.
Ion, however, fits the bill perfectly on this account, too. He's kind, innocent, and eternally optimistic, always seeing the good in people even when others cannot. He's never lacking for an encouraging remark, always determined to emotionally help all around him, and as soft and sweet as a syrup-drenched marshmallow. And while this detail wouldn't necessarily disqualify him for DiD status were it not true, it doesn't hurt that his voice is about as far from being masculine as you can get without actually becoming Shirley Temple.
So he's got the personality, and there seems to be a neon sign taped to his back that says "KIDNAP ME." That IS typically enough for a character to be seen as a Damsel in Distress, but those characters actually are girls. We need one last DiD staple for Ion to fit into: plot role.
DiDs' roles in a game's plot usually fall under 2 categories: political importance and mystical anime holy powers. Basically, there has to be SOME reason for the hero and company to go to all this trouble for the damsel, because even heroes' good will only goes so far. Political importance is probably the oldest role for a damsel (how many game plots, even RPG plots, have boiled down to "Go save the Princess?" Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda Series and Princess Peach from Mario games are pretty much the ultimate Damsels in Distress for all gaming history), but a recent favorite with the RPG genre is the mystical anime divine nonsense stuff--basically, the hero HAS to cart around this female dead weight because she's the only person in the world who can commune with the gods or realign the sparkly magical spirit energies or whatever.
So how does Ion fit in here? Pretty well, as he's both. Half the time, the Tales of the Abyss heroes are babysitting the little guy because he happens to be the most important religious figure on the planet. The other half, it's because he's the only one who can unlock the mystical seals on magical lift pillars of the forgotten age yadda yadda yadda. And hey, as if he wasn't already 10 for 10 on the Damsel in Distress Checklist, using his powers drains his energy and makes him faint.
Ion's a Damsel in Distress, no matter how you look at it. Not only that, but he's essentially the PERFECT Damsel in Distress--he really does pretty much fit every criteria for the role that I, or likely anyone else, can think of. So how does it work out? Very well. There's really no point in the game where this situation feels unnatural or off at all, and Ion even manages to be one of the very few Damsels in Distress that's actually an appealing character--even if he's saccharine, he's still very likable, which is something most DiDs don't manage (Grandia 3's Alfina, Wild Arms 4's Yulie), and his personality fits into the dynamic of the party very well, rather than superfluously intruding on it like some DiDs do (ToL's Shirley, Lunar 2's Lucia) or destroying it altogether (TLoD's Shana, FF8's Rinoa). Ion perfectly fulfills the role of Damsel in Distress, while remaining unquestionably a guy--a shy, young, nice little guy, but a guy--AND far surpassing nearly every other RPG character with the same role by simply being a good fit with the group and a LIKABLE human being. Like Wild Arms 3's Virginia, a girl playing a male hero's role to complete perfection, Ion being the ideal example of the role he plays is an example of gender equality in writing--that it should be the character, not the gender, that determines their role in a game. All it takes is good writing.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Evolution Worlds's Characters
Mag: Mag is about as dim-witted and annoyingly enthusiastic as you'd expect from a protagonist. I was going to say that he has an excuse since he's obviously no older than 11 while your typical feeble-minded main character is in his late teens or early 20s, but I just looked it up, and Mag is apparently actually 16. I guess I was thrown off by the fact that he stands no higher than a regular-sized adult's waistline, and most of that height is from having a head of unusual proportions even for anime. Maybe that's the problem--his freakin' head's so titanic that the rest of him can barely manage to hold it up, let alone grow higher.
Linear: Once she actually starts speaking and receiving tiny tidbits of character development, it is made very apparent that Linear is a complete moron. When main villain Yurka, a guy that Linear has known for an entire 3 days and over the course of those days only actually met thrice for about 5 minutes at a time, comes out of nowhere and accosts Mag, who took Linear in years ago and has been her constant companion, friend, caretaker, and protector since meeting her, and starts being nasty and threatening, Linear's first impulse on seeing them not getting along is to jump in and take Yurka's side. How dare Mag get upset about somebody he doesn't know speaking threateningly to him! Way to have a handle on the ideas of friendship and gratitude, Linear. Then Yurka convinces her that she's just a burden to Mag and should come with Yurka to stop being so much trouble for Mag, which would be maybe a little more convincing an argument if Yurka's intentions for Linear weren't to have her help him revive an ancient mech suit of destruction with which he can eradicate humanity. Somehow it doesn't occur to her that Mag might actually consider her co-piloting a robot suit that destroys everything he knows and loves to be more of a burden than just letting her freeload at his place.
Actually, she reminds me of Tales of Symphonia's Genis, the dipshit for whom choosing between the friend he's known for about 2 hours and the friends and family he's grown up with and loved for all his life, all of whom said new friend intends to kill or sacrifice, is a major moral conflict. Same general idea, really, just somewhat (not much) less absurd and idiotic with Linear's scenario.
Gre: Gre is Mag's butler. His loyalty is an awfully odd thing--Mag's family is just shy of bankrupt so Gre can't be getting paid, and Mag is an idiot who screws up almost everything he touches and continually manages to drive the family into greater debt. My only explanation for why Gre has stuck around is that the family went bankrupt before he got a final paycheck, so he's just desperately hoping that Mag will accidentally strike it rich one day and Gre can finally collect years of back-pay and move on with his life. That, or the family has one massive life insurance policy on Mag, and Gre's sending him into these dangerous ruins armed only with a mechanical hand and his malfunctioning wits with the hopes that he'll have an accident and Gre, as the closest thing to an inheritor that the family has after Mag's gone, will finally get his freedom and a chunk of change to go with it.
Chain: Remember Rebecca from Wild Arms 5? The girl whose entire character development was centered around romantic feelings that she never acted on or had closure for? Chain is like that, only the romantic feelings that comprise her entire personal stake in the plot aren't just never acted on--they're barely even mentioned.
Pepper: Pepper is a flighty, flirty, attractive woman. That's about it. Oh, and there's this one special ability she has where she restores Mag's HP by shoving her melons into his face. I don't care how old the game says he is, how much he clearly enjoys it, or how low his health is--he's still a squat, baby-faced midget, and I still pointed at the screen and yelled "BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH!" when I saw it.
Carcano: Carcano is a hardened criminal, a bandit accustomed to museum heists and armed, violent train robbery. Yet as soon as Mag beats the crap out of him in battle, he suddenly becomes the most good-natured, smiley buddy to the kid that can be imagined. Oh RPGs, you and your ridiculous "If you can prove you're wiser than me by beating my face to a raw fleshy pulp, I'll do whatever you want forever" policy.
Yurka: "Dude, I have known you for 2 days, and during that time you've stolen the shit I worked my ass off to acquire for a museum, turned my semi-adopted sister-figure and/or girlfriend against me, and tried to murder me every time you've seen me. Now that I've finally whupped your ass for good, you can't even have the dignity to die like you lived and stick to your convictions? NOW you're gonna spew this bullshit about wanting to be my friend? Fuck you, asshole, I don't think so!" --What Mag SHOULD have said to Yurka during Yurka's dying moments.*
* To compound just how annoying and dumb Mag is, this is more or less what Mag actually did say at the time: "Of course we can be friends, Yurka! We'll always be friends, and we always were! We were just too busy with me smashing you in the face with a hammer the size of 3 men and you attempting to incinerate me with a beam of fire to notice our great friendship! BFF forever, girlfriend-stealing guy I met yesterday with aspirations to enact Armageddon on humanity!" I am barely exaggerating.
Linear: Once she actually starts speaking and receiving tiny tidbits of character development, it is made very apparent that Linear is a complete moron. When main villain Yurka, a guy that Linear has known for an entire 3 days and over the course of those days only actually met thrice for about 5 minutes at a time, comes out of nowhere and accosts Mag, who took Linear in years ago and has been her constant companion, friend, caretaker, and protector since meeting her, and starts being nasty and threatening, Linear's first impulse on seeing them not getting along is to jump in and take Yurka's side. How dare Mag get upset about somebody he doesn't know speaking threateningly to him! Way to have a handle on the ideas of friendship and gratitude, Linear. Then Yurka convinces her that she's just a burden to Mag and should come with Yurka to stop being so much trouble for Mag, which would be maybe a little more convincing an argument if Yurka's intentions for Linear weren't to have her help him revive an ancient mech suit of destruction with which he can eradicate humanity. Somehow it doesn't occur to her that Mag might actually consider her co-piloting a robot suit that destroys everything he knows and loves to be more of a burden than just letting her freeload at his place.
Actually, she reminds me of Tales of Symphonia's Genis, the dipshit for whom choosing between the friend he's known for about 2 hours and the friends and family he's grown up with and loved for all his life, all of whom said new friend intends to kill or sacrifice, is a major moral conflict. Same general idea, really, just somewhat (not much) less absurd and idiotic with Linear's scenario.
Gre: Gre is Mag's butler. His loyalty is an awfully odd thing--Mag's family is just shy of bankrupt so Gre can't be getting paid, and Mag is an idiot who screws up almost everything he touches and continually manages to drive the family into greater debt. My only explanation for why Gre has stuck around is that the family went bankrupt before he got a final paycheck, so he's just desperately hoping that Mag will accidentally strike it rich one day and Gre can finally collect years of back-pay and move on with his life. That, or the family has one massive life insurance policy on Mag, and Gre's sending him into these dangerous ruins armed only with a mechanical hand and his malfunctioning wits with the hopes that he'll have an accident and Gre, as the closest thing to an inheritor that the family has after Mag's gone, will finally get his freedom and a chunk of change to go with it.
Chain: Remember Rebecca from Wild Arms 5? The girl whose entire character development was centered around romantic feelings that she never acted on or had closure for? Chain is like that, only the romantic feelings that comprise her entire personal stake in the plot aren't just never acted on--they're barely even mentioned.
Pepper: Pepper is a flighty, flirty, attractive woman. That's about it. Oh, and there's this one special ability she has where she restores Mag's HP by shoving her melons into his face. I don't care how old the game says he is, how much he clearly enjoys it, or how low his health is--he's still a squat, baby-faced midget, and I still pointed at the screen and yelled "BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH!" when I saw it.
Carcano: Carcano is a hardened criminal, a bandit accustomed to museum heists and armed, violent train robbery. Yet as soon as Mag beats the crap out of him in battle, he suddenly becomes the most good-natured, smiley buddy to the kid that can be imagined. Oh RPGs, you and your ridiculous "If you can prove you're wiser than me by beating my face to a raw fleshy pulp, I'll do whatever you want forever" policy.
Yurka: "Dude, I have known you for 2 days, and during that time you've stolen the shit I worked my ass off to acquire for a museum, turned my semi-adopted sister-figure and/or girlfriend against me, and tried to murder me every time you've seen me. Now that I've finally whupped your ass for good, you can't even have the dignity to die like you lived and stick to your convictions? NOW you're gonna spew this bullshit about wanting to be my friend? Fuck you, asshole, I don't think so!" --What Mag SHOULD have said to Yurka during Yurka's dying moments.*
* To compound just how annoying and dumb Mag is, this is more or less what Mag actually did say at the time: "Of course we can be friends, Yurka! We'll always be friends, and we always were! We were just too busy with me smashing you in the face with a hammer the size of 3 men and you attempting to incinerate me with a beam of fire to notice our great friendship! BFF forever, girlfriend-stealing guy I met yesterday with aspirations to enact Armageddon on humanity!" I am barely exaggerating.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 + 2 AMV: Sera's Holding Out for a Hero
Before starting the rant proper, let me just say that I've written a lot of this while in the grips of a rather overbearing fever, so...cut me some slack if my prose isn't up to its usual standards here.
Whenever I finish playing an RPG, I have a certain process of stuff I do before I move on to the next one. Among other things, I check to see if there are any desktop wallpapers out there about the game that I'd like, I listen to any remixes that OCR or VG Mix have for the game, I check to see if there are any videos available for download of the game's FMVs if I happened to like any (and incidentally, do any of you know a good site for this beyond Blue Laguna and Youtube? I can't find quite a lot of stuff that I'd like to have), and I look on Youtube and AMV.org for any and all AMVs that have been made for the game. Since I typically play RPGs at least a year after their release, and usually much later than that, there's usually a fair bit to sort through.
When I finished the Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga series last year and began this little post-game rite, I wasn't expecting to find many AMVs for the obscure mini-series, and certainly none that would particularly interest me. I was half right--there are very few AMVs for the SMTDDS games out there. But I was also half wrong--an AMV-making individual going by Veccachan did manage to get my attention.
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 + 2: Sera's Holding Out for a Hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCVcyJgpVc
Poetry in Motion: Visuals are admittedly the weak link to this AMV. There are parts of the AMV that look a bit blurry, and while the rest is fairly decent, it's not what I'd call sharp quality. Also, there's a discolored band right in the middle of the screen at the scenes beginning at 0:27 and 1:46 (which is particularly distracting; anyone not familiar with that scene of the game is going to have additional trouble getting an idea of what's happening), which just ain't good. There's also not much in the way of visual artistry on the part of the AMV's maker; the fades and camera work and so on are just the FMVs' own, with the only touch added by Veccachan beyond scene arrangement being pixel-blurs* for a few scene changes.
So yeah. Really can't say much for the visual aspect of this AMV. I can look past it to an extent, because I strongly suspect that an (unfortunately) obscure mini-series like SMT: Digital Devil Saga probably doesn't have dozens of fans lining up to throw high-quality FMVs up onto the web, so the AMV's maker probably didn't have many/any quality alternatives for the games' FMVs. Hell, it's actually surprising to me that she got'em at all. Nonetheless, it IS a bit of a strike against the AMV.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: As is the case with most AMVs I really like, this one combines the games' visuals and events with the music to convey its message. This AMV uses the song "Holding Out for a Hero," originally an 80s tune sung by Bonnie Tyler. The version this AMV uses, however, is a more recent version sung done by Jennifer Saunders, featured in the largely pointless movie Shrek 2.
The musical component to this AMV is where it really shines and earns its place in my collection. That's actually a surprise from my perspective, because I frankly find this song really annoying in every version I've ever heard, with this variation annoying me the most. But what can I say? Every single moment of this AMV matches up almost flawlessly to the tone, beat, and lyrics of the song. Remember the last AMV rant I did, the Fallout 3 Land of Confusion one, where I extolled how well-constructed its timing and scene selection was, where everything fit into the song and its words excellently? Well, while lacking perhaps some of the spirit of the last AMV, SMTDDS 1 + 2 Sera's Holding Out for a Hero does it even BETTER. It's like SMTDDS 1 + 2's Full Motion Video was made specifically to fit this song. I sincerely doubt one could possibly match an RPG's FMV scenes to this tune in a better way than here. Hell, the paid professionals who orchestrated the part of Shrek 2 featuring this song didn't even do half as good a job!
Alright, some examples of what I mean. At 0:28, the song talks about the "white knight" hero the rest of the song will refer to, and the AMV gives us a zoom-in shot focusing on Serph, the SMTDDS 1 + 2 protagonist who's the "hero" the song sings about. 0:34 talks about tossing and turning late at night, and shows Sera (the damsel in distress for whom Serph is a hero) curled up asleep. At 0:43, the tone of the song changes from quiet and piano-driven, which was shown well in the AMV by simple and quiet scenes, to a more fast-paced style, which the AMV's scenes match with flashy events and action-oriented FMVs, while focusing still on Serph to keep the focus on him being the hero sung about. At 1:15, the tone becomes more tense, and the scene once again matches the song's change. It hits a crescendo at 1:21, with a scene of a demon emerging, and then immediately has the emphasized beats at 1:22 and 1:23 almost perfectly synchronized with the striking moments in the visual part. The part at 1:43, when the song talks about "rising with the heat," is matched well twice over, as you see a scene of one character changing into a demon, which kind of works with that lyric, and as the character doing this is actually named Heat. The tone of the music at 1:55 once again is reflected by the scene shown, with the music's tone suggesting marching into something unknown or epic, and the scene showing the part of SMTDDS2 in which Serph and Sera's souls are flying into the heart of the sun. At 2:13, the lyrics talk about "someone, somewhere watching me," as the AMV shows Schroedinger, the mysterious cat entity that watches Serph's progress throughout the game. 2:21 has the lyrics talking about a "storm" while focusing on a character named Gale. The part at 2:28 is particularly well done--the rising tension in the music is mirrored by the running attack of the character Heat, ending with Heat gouging his claw into Serph as the lyrics hit a climax of "there's a fire in my blood" (which is also another double-meaning scene for the AMV, given that Heat, known for his fire affinity, is putting his fist through Serph quite bloodily, hence the "fire" in "blood"). And it goes on like this--more or less every part of the song has a scene to it to match its tone and direction, and often even its lyrics. Heck, the AMV even manages to find the perfect scene and timing for the part of this Holding Out for a Hero where it gets momentarily and weirdly quiet and sweet, at 3:38. While I haven't seen any other AMVs using this song yet, I would imagine that moment in the song must be particularly confounding to an AMV-maker, as it just seems completely and totally separate both from the song itself and likely from whatever intended message an AMV to that song would have.
But what does it all mean, Basil?: The theme of the AMV is pretty simple to grasp (maybe "blatantly obvious" would be more accurate): to emphasize Serph as a hero, and more specifically, a hero to Sera. In this, the AMV does its job quite competently, focusing on Serph during his action-related FMVs from the game most of the time, and including several scenes that emphasize his heroism with regards to Sera. Nice theme, explored and portrayed pretty well.
This AMV does not have the spiritually gripping power as the As the Warlock Said AMV I looked at for Shadow Hearts 1 + 2 did, the very effective portrayal of a strong and relevant message that the Fallout 3 If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next AMV, or the insightful symbolism and summation of the game that the Fallout 3 Land of Confusion AMV did. It's got a decent basis and message, but not as epic or significant as the AMVs I've ranted on in the past. Nonetheless, I feel it definitely deserves attention and praise for how exceptionally well-made it is. Disregarding the lesser visual quality, this AMV's video component is nigh-flawlessly matched to the music's lyrics, tone, and message from start to finish. You don't have to have played the SMT Digital Devil Saga series to recognize the perfect timing this AMV has, and those that have played the games can appreciate the several clever extras that Veccachan has put into the video (the little things like matching the lyrics about heat and fire to the character Heat, and such). Skill and craftsmanship go a long way in the process of making a truly noteworthy RPG AMV, and Veccachan definitely demonstrates that with Sera's Holding Out for a Hero.
* This is probably not the technical term for them. Have I mentioned that I don't actually know the technical aspects of film and such? Because I don't. Hell, the little research I've done for some of these AMV rants alone has increased my knowledge of cinematography by at least 300%, and I still don't know jack shit.
Whenever I finish playing an RPG, I have a certain process of stuff I do before I move on to the next one. Among other things, I check to see if there are any desktop wallpapers out there about the game that I'd like, I listen to any remixes that OCR or VG Mix have for the game, I check to see if there are any videos available for download of the game's FMVs if I happened to like any (and incidentally, do any of you know a good site for this beyond Blue Laguna and Youtube? I can't find quite a lot of stuff that I'd like to have), and I look on Youtube and AMV.org for any and all AMVs that have been made for the game. Since I typically play RPGs at least a year after their release, and usually much later than that, there's usually a fair bit to sort through.
When I finished the Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga series last year and began this little post-game rite, I wasn't expecting to find many AMVs for the obscure mini-series, and certainly none that would particularly interest me. I was half right--there are very few AMVs for the SMTDDS games out there. But I was also half wrong--an AMV-making individual going by Veccachan did manage to get my attention.
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 + 2: Sera's Holding Out for a Hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bCVcyJgpVc
Poetry in Motion: Visuals are admittedly the weak link to this AMV. There are parts of the AMV that look a bit blurry, and while the rest is fairly decent, it's not what I'd call sharp quality. Also, there's a discolored band right in the middle of the screen at the scenes beginning at 0:27 and 1:46 (which is particularly distracting; anyone not familiar with that scene of the game is going to have additional trouble getting an idea of what's happening), which just ain't good. There's also not much in the way of visual artistry on the part of the AMV's maker; the fades and camera work and so on are just the FMVs' own, with the only touch added by Veccachan beyond scene arrangement being pixel-blurs* for a few scene changes.
So yeah. Really can't say much for the visual aspect of this AMV. I can look past it to an extent, because I strongly suspect that an (unfortunately) obscure mini-series like SMT: Digital Devil Saga probably doesn't have dozens of fans lining up to throw high-quality FMVs up onto the web, so the AMV's maker probably didn't have many/any quality alternatives for the games' FMVs. Hell, it's actually surprising to me that she got'em at all. Nonetheless, it IS a bit of a strike against the AMV.
I Gotta Have More Cowbell: As is the case with most AMVs I really like, this one combines the games' visuals and events with the music to convey its message. This AMV uses the song "Holding Out for a Hero," originally an 80s tune sung by Bonnie Tyler. The version this AMV uses, however, is a more recent version sung done by Jennifer Saunders, featured in the largely pointless movie Shrek 2.
The musical component to this AMV is where it really shines and earns its place in my collection. That's actually a surprise from my perspective, because I frankly find this song really annoying in every version I've ever heard, with this variation annoying me the most. But what can I say? Every single moment of this AMV matches up almost flawlessly to the tone, beat, and lyrics of the song. Remember the last AMV rant I did, the Fallout 3 Land of Confusion one, where I extolled how well-constructed its timing and scene selection was, where everything fit into the song and its words excellently? Well, while lacking perhaps some of the spirit of the last AMV, SMTDDS 1 + 2 Sera's Holding Out for a Hero does it even BETTER. It's like SMTDDS 1 + 2's Full Motion Video was made specifically to fit this song. I sincerely doubt one could possibly match an RPG's FMV scenes to this tune in a better way than here. Hell, the paid professionals who orchestrated the part of Shrek 2 featuring this song didn't even do half as good a job!
Alright, some examples of what I mean. At 0:28, the song talks about the "white knight" hero the rest of the song will refer to, and the AMV gives us a zoom-in shot focusing on Serph, the SMTDDS 1 + 2 protagonist who's the "hero" the song sings about. 0:34 talks about tossing and turning late at night, and shows Sera (the damsel in distress for whom Serph is a hero) curled up asleep. At 0:43, the tone of the song changes from quiet and piano-driven, which was shown well in the AMV by simple and quiet scenes, to a more fast-paced style, which the AMV's scenes match with flashy events and action-oriented FMVs, while focusing still on Serph to keep the focus on him being the hero sung about. At 1:15, the tone becomes more tense, and the scene once again matches the song's change. It hits a crescendo at 1:21, with a scene of a demon emerging, and then immediately has the emphasized beats at 1:22 and 1:23 almost perfectly synchronized with the striking moments in the visual part. The part at 1:43, when the song talks about "rising with the heat," is matched well twice over, as you see a scene of one character changing into a demon, which kind of works with that lyric, and as the character doing this is actually named Heat. The tone of the music at 1:55 once again is reflected by the scene shown, with the music's tone suggesting marching into something unknown or epic, and the scene showing the part of SMTDDS2 in which Serph and Sera's souls are flying into the heart of the sun. At 2:13, the lyrics talk about "someone, somewhere watching me," as the AMV shows Schroedinger, the mysterious cat entity that watches Serph's progress throughout the game. 2:21 has the lyrics talking about a "storm" while focusing on a character named Gale. The part at 2:28 is particularly well done--the rising tension in the music is mirrored by the running attack of the character Heat, ending with Heat gouging his claw into Serph as the lyrics hit a climax of "there's a fire in my blood" (which is also another double-meaning scene for the AMV, given that Heat, known for his fire affinity, is putting his fist through Serph quite bloodily, hence the "fire" in "blood"). And it goes on like this--more or less every part of the song has a scene to it to match its tone and direction, and often even its lyrics. Heck, the AMV even manages to find the perfect scene and timing for the part of this Holding Out for a Hero where it gets momentarily and weirdly quiet and sweet, at 3:38. While I haven't seen any other AMVs using this song yet, I would imagine that moment in the song must be particularly confounding to an AMV-maker, as it just seems completely and totally separate both from the song itself and likely from whatever intended message an AMV to that song would have.
But what does it all mean, Basil?: The theme of the AMV is pretty simple to grasp (maybe "blatantly obvious" would be more accurate): to emphasize Serph as a hero, and more specifically, a hero to Sera. In this, the AMV does its job quite competently, focusing on Serph during his action-related FMVs from the game most of the time, and including several scenes that emphasize his heroism with regards to Sera. Nice theme, explored and portrayed pretty well.
This AMV does not have the spiritually gripping power as the As the Warlock Said AMV I looked at for Shadow Hearts 1 + 2 did, the very effective portrayal of a strong and relevant message that the Fallout 3 If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next AMV, or the insightful symbolism and summation of the game that the Fallout 3 Land of Confusion AMV did. It's got a decent basis and message, but not as epic or significant as the AMVs I've ranted on in the past. Nonetheless, I feel it definitely deserves attention and praise for how exceptionally well-made it is. Disregarding the lesser visual quality, this AMV's video component is nigh-flawlessly matched to the music's lyrics, tone, and message from start to finish. You don't have to have played the SMT Digital Devil Saga series to recognize the perfect timing this AMV has, and those that have played the games can appreciate the several clever extras that Veccachan has put into the video (the little things like matching the lyrics about heat and fire to the character Heat, and such). Skill and craftsmanship go a long way in the process of making a truly noteworthy RPG AMV, and Veccachan definitely demonstrates that with Sera's Holding Out for a Hero.
* This is probably not the technical term for them. Have I mentioned that I don't actually know the technical aspects of film and such? Because I don't. Hell, the little research I've done for some of these AMV rants alone has increased my knowledge of cinematography by at least 300%, and I still don't know jack shit.
Friday, February 12, 2010
General RPGs' Voice Acting
Thanks a hell of a lot to Ecclesiastes for his idea for this rant.
In the past, I resisted the idea of voice acting in RPGs. Well, not really resisted it, persay--more like I opposed the notion that it should be considered a significant factor in their quality. I thought that it was going to always be unimportant in enjoying a game for the reasons that I do find important: its plot and characters, the creativity and skill of the writing behind them. I insisted that a voice actor was unimportant to a character's portrayal and development, and that it would always solely be, as it had in the past, the character's dialog and actions that developed him, her, or it.
Now, I wasn't entirely off--the above two aspects of a character are still the greatest defining parts of that character in an RPG. And, as a plethora of RPGs from the NES, Genesis, SNES, Gameboy/Gameboy Advance, and even PS1, PS2, Game Cube, and PC prove, you can have fantastic characters without any voice acting at all.
Plus, further in my defense, the time period during which I formed this opinion on RPG voice acting was back in the days of Playstation 1 and N64. Back then, RPGs' strides into voice acting were both small (due to, I imagine, budget and space constraints, voiced parts of the game were usually restricted to a few important scenes and FMVs) and, well, just not very good. There were occasions where I liked the voices and the acting okay in the game--Lunar 2 and Grandia 1 come to mind--but "adequate" was about the highest praise you could give to that era's voice actors, and they usually didn't even warrant that much of a compliment. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the RPG genre was still working out some last but very stubborn and noticeable vestiges of bad translation. The speech between Belmont and Dracula in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night may not be acted well to begin with, for example, but the fact that half of it doesn't really make much sense (even if it's memorable) worsens the problem.
So you clearly don't NEED voice acting to get a great character, and I think I had fair reason to think voice acting wasn't a big deal when it came onto the scene. But I've since had to relent in the face of many modern RPGs, and reform my opinion. Voice acting CAN make a significant difference to a character's quality and appeal. I still stand by the idea that it isn't a factor that can make or break a character, mind--Final Fantasy 10's Yuna sounds like she was voiced by an illiterate who hadn't slept in at least 2 days, but anyone who frequents these rants will know that I think very highly of her character. Conversely, I thought that Fran in Final Fantasy 12 had quite a competent voice actress, who affected an accent that was noticeable and distinguished the character, but did not distract from or become an obstacle to her dialogue...yet that doesn't stop me from seeing Fran as yet another boring automaton lacking any strong personality trait, like most of the other characters in FF12.
But if a voice actor, no matter how good or bad, can't change whether or not someone is actually a decent character or not, they CAN, at least, enhance that character's personality and quality through their performance. Makai Kingdom's Zetta's power-driven egomania is clear from his actions and dialogue, but his voice actor really drives that personality home with loud, commanding tones and challenging, boasting bursts of laughter. Tales of the Abyss makes it clear time and time again through his dialogue just what a snarky bastard Jade Curtiss is, but his voice acting just seals the deal entirely, enhancing every dry, witty line he says. And Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2...man, she would be a fascinating character without a single spoken word to match her dialogue, but the actress behind Kreia reaches vocal acting perfection with the role, flawlessly enhancing fantastic lines with an emphasis on Kreia's mix of age, wisdom, cunning, and darkness.
Now, I've gone over the subject, offered up an opinion about its importance, and thrown in a few examples here and there to illustrate my thoughts. It's usually at this point in the rant that I would state how the RPG industry should improve on this matter, and why.
Thing is, I can't really do that. With regards to voice acting, RPG companies have been more or less consistently going in the right direction from the Playstation 2 generation onward. Major RPGs generally include voice acting to a significant degree nowadays, making most or even nearly all their main dialogue voice acted. The voice acting quality is generally improved, too--games are more and more often hiring experienced professionals to do their voice acting, and even those RPG voice actors who don't have a long history of voice work seem to be being encouraged to do a better job, because it's uncommon to hear a character now whose voice actor isn't at the very least competent.* And it helps a good bit that the translations for the acted dialogue are, as a rule, much better than they used to be.
Game companies continue to put an emphasis on voice acting and take it seriously, and the effort shows in the good results it yields. Western RPGs like Mass Effect 1, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age Origins all have the kind of excellent voice acting which betters the characters and story-telling that you would expect--but more and more often, Japanese RPGs with entire casts of talented voice actors are popping up and rivaling the Western RPGs' voice acting quality on their own home turf. Japanese developer Nippon Ichi gets just the right voices to portray its games' characters just as often as Western developer Bioware does, it seems, and the localization team for Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4 might have made their Japanese RPG that actually takes place in Japan seem more accessible and natural in its voice acting to the average American than even Fallout 3 was.
Voice acting may not be critical, but it is important. Luckily, RPG companies, with few exceptions,** have come to recognize this, and continue a trend of improving quality--and I'm pleased to see it happening.
* Uncommon, but not unknown--Suikoden Tierkreis is a recent game that I'm playing through now, and there are several characters who just aren't voiced well, most notably the protagonist. Non-named Suikoden heroes typically have an accepted "canon" name that fans dub them with (Riou in Suikoden 2, Faroush in Suikoden 5 (what a stupid name), etc), but Suikoden Tierkreis seems to have fans split between the names "Sieg" and "MotorMouth," and I throw my lot in with the latter. I swear the actor is racing against the text being printed on the screen as he blurts out his lines, and he's winning that race by a long shot. Still, my point on the general quality of voice acting improving stands; Suikoden Tierkreis is one of the only non-SquareEnix RPGs I've played in the last 5 years or so to have noticeably bad voice acting.
** Unfortunately, one of those exceptions is a rather prominent one: SquareEnix. I'm not sure what the deal is, but SquareEnix just seems to be 2 steps behind everyone else in the field of voice acting. From the very beginning, they were behind the ball--sure, they stuck some voice acting into Xenogears, but look at the Playstation 1 installments of their iconic Final Fantasy series. Of Final Fantasies 7, 8, 9, and Tactics, not a single one had any voice acting whatsoever, not to mention the same being true of Chrono Cross and Parasite Eve 1. They finally got with the program with FF10, and put in a crapload of voice acting there, but all of it ranged from Average to Just Outright Bad. Who DIDN'T want to slap Tidus and Yuna in the face several times after listening to that godforsaken laugh scene? Then came Grandia 3--listening to Alfina in that game is like letting molten candy seep into your ears right to your brain, where it cools into crystals that tear your mind to shreds. And what about Final Fantasy 12? I can see FF10 having a bad time with voice acting when it's the first major venture into spoken lines SquareEnix took, but with the exception of Balthier and somewhat Fran, the only distinguishing characteristic to any of FF12's voice acting is the occasion obnoxious whine of Vaan. And what about the bland and lackluster vocal talents of Valkyrie Profile 2? These are recent games; it's not like they don't have examples of games with consistently excellent voice acting, like Tales of Legendia or Makai Kingdom. SquareEnix just seems shockingly backwards on this matter.***
*** Though, to be fair, they're not ALWAYS a miss--the Kingdom Hearts series's voice acting is good enough, and Star Ocean 3's was decent. But in general SquareEnix seems pretty out of it.
In the past, I resisted the idea of voice acting in RPGs. Well, not really resisted it, persay--more like I opposed the notion that it should be considered a significant factor in their quality. I thought that it was going to always be unimportant in enjoying a game for the reasons that I do find important: its plot and characters, the creativity and skill of the writing behind them. I insisted that a voice actor was unimportant to a character's portrayal and development, and that it would always solely be, as it had in the past, the character's dialog and actions that developed him, her, or it.
Now, I wasn't entirely off--the above two aspects of a character are still the greatest defining parts of that character in an RPG. And, as a plethora of RPGs from the NES, Genesis, SNES, Gameboy/Gameboy Advance, and even PS1, PS2, Game Cube, and PC prove, you can have fantastic characters without any voice acting at all.
Plus, further in my defense, the time period during which I formed this opinion on RPG voice acting was back in the days of Playstation 1 and N64. Back then, RPGs' strides into voice acting were both small (due to, I imagine, budget and space constraints, voiced parts of the game were usually restricted to a few important scenes and FMVs) and, well, just not very good. There were occasions where I liked the voices and the acting okay in the game--Lunar 2 and Grandia 1 come to mind--but "adequate" was about the highest praise you could give to that era's voice actors, and they usually didn't even warrant that much of a compliment. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the RPG genre was still working out some last but very stubborn and noticeable vestiges of bad translation. The speech between Belmont and Dracula in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night may not be acted well to begin with, for example, but the fact that half of it doesn't really make much sense (even if it's memorable) worsens the problem.
So you clearly don't NEED voice acting to get a great character, and I think I had fair reason to think voice acting wasn't a big deal when it came onto the scene. But I've since had to relent in the face of many modern RPGs, and reform my opinion. Voice acting CAN make a significant difference to a character's quality and appeal. I still stand by the idea that it isn't a factor that can make or break a character, mind--Final Fantasy 10's Yuna sounds like she was voiced by an illiterate who hadn't slept in at least 2 days, but anyone who frequents these rants will know that I think very highly of her character. Conversely, I thought that Fran in Final Fantasy 12 had quite a competent voice actress, who affected an accent that was noticeable and distinguished the character, but did not distract from or become an obstacle to her dialogue...yet that doesn't stop me from seeing Fran as yet another boring automaton lacking any strong personality trait, like most of the other characters in FF12.
But if a voice actor, no matter how good or bad, can't change whether or not someone is actually a decent character or not, they CAN, at least, enhance that character's personality and quality through their performance. Makai Kingdom's Zetta's power-driven egomania is clear from his actions and dialogue, but his voice actor really drives that personality home with loud, commanding tones and challenging, boasting bursts of laughter. Tales of the Abyss makes it clear time and time again through his dialogue just what a snarky bastard Jade Curtiss is, but his voice acting just seals the deal entirely, enhancing every dry, witty line he says. And Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic 2...man, she would be a fascinating character without a single spoken word to match her dialogue, but the actress behind Kreia reaches vocal acting perfection with the role, flawlessly enhancing fantastic lines with an emphasis on Kreia's mix of age, wisdom, cunning, and darkness.
Now, I've gone over the subject, offered up an opinion about its importance, and thrown in a few examples here and there to illustrate my thoughts. It's usually at this point in the rant that I would state how the RPG industry should improve on this matter, and why.
Thing is, I can't really do that. With regards to voice acting, RPG companies have been more or less consistently going in the right direction from the Playstation 2 generation onward. Major RPGs generally include voice acting to a significant degree nowadays, making most or even nearly all their main dialogue voice acted. The voice acting quality is generally improved, too--games are more and more often hiring experienced professionals to do their voice acting, and even those RPG voice actors who don't have a long history of voice work seem to be being encouraged to do a better job, because it's uncommon to hear a character now whose voice actor isn't at the very least competent.* And it helps a good bit that the translations for the acted dialogue are, as a rule, much better than they used to be.
Game companies continue to put an emphasis on voice acting and take it seriously, and the effort shows in the good results it yields. Western RPGs like Mass Effect 1, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age Origins all have the kind of excellent voice acting which betters the characters and story-telling that you would expect--but more and more often, Japanese RPGs with entire casts of talented voice actors are popping up and rivaling the Western RPGs' voice acting quality on their own home turf. Japanese developer Nippon Ichi gets just the right voices to portray its games' characters just as often as Western developer Bioware does, it seems, and the localization team for Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4 might have made their Japanese RPG that actually takes place in Japan seem more accessible and natural in its voice acting to the average American than even Fallout 3 was.
Voice acting may not be critical, but it is important. Luckily, RPG companies, with few exceptions,** have come to recognize this, and continue a trend of improving quality--and I'm pleased to see it happening.
* Uncommon, but not unknown--Suikoden Tierkreis is a recent game that I'm playing through now, and there are several characters who just aren't voiced well, most notably the protagonist. Non-named Suikoden heroes typically have an accepted "canon" name that fans dub them with (Riou in Suikoden 2, Faroush in Suikoden 5 (what a stupid name), etc), but Suikoden Tierkreis seems to have fans split between the names "Sieg" and "MotorMouth," and I throw my lot in with the latter. I swear the actor is racing against the text being printed on the screen as he blurts out his lines, and he's winning that race by a long shot. Still, my point on the general quality of voice acting improving stands; Suikoden Tierkreis is one of the only non-SquareEnix RPGs I've played in the last 5 years or so to have noticeably bad voice acting.
** Unfortunately, one of those exceptions is a rather prominent one: SquareEnix. I'm not sure what the deal is, but SquareEnix just seems to be 2 steps behind everyone else in the field of voice acting. From the very beginning, they were behind the ball--sure, they stuck some voice acting into Xenogears, but look at the Playstation 1 installments of their iconic Final Fantasy series. Of Final Fantasies 7, 8, 9, and Tactics, not a single one had any voice acting whatsoever, not to mention the same being true of Chrono Cross and Parasite Eve 1. They finally got with the program with FF10, and put in a crapload of voice acting there, but all of it ranged from Average to Just Outright Bad. Who DIDN'T want to slap Tidus and Yuna in the face several times after listening to that godforsaken laugh scene? Then came Grandia 3--listening to Alfina in that game is like letting molten candy seep into your ears right to your brain, where it cools into crystals that tear your mind to shreds. And what about Final Fantasy 12? I can see FF10 having a bad time with voice acting when it's the first major venture into spoken lines SquareEnix took, but with the exception of Balthier and somewhat Fran, the only distinguishing characteristic to any of FF12's voice acting is the occasion obnoxious whine of Vaan. And what about the bland and lackluster vocal talents of Valkyrie Profile 2? These are recent games; it's not like they don't have examples of games with consistently excellent voice acting, like Tales of Legendia or Makai Kingdom. SquareEnix just seems shockingly backwards on this matter.***
*** Though, to be fair, they're not ALWAYS a miss--the Kingdom Hearts series's voice acting is good enough, and Star Ocean 3's was decent. But in general SquareEnix seems pretty out of it.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Mass Effect 1's Saren: A Better Villain Before the Book "Revelation"
In honor of the recently released Mass Effect 2 (which I HIGHLY recommend you obtain right this second if you've played ME1, and if you haven't played ME1, I HIGHLY recommend you obtain ME2 right the second that you finish playing ME1, which is even MORE highly recommended that you get right this second. Wrap your mind around that if you can), I thought I'd do a rant on ME1. Of course, this is an odd honor, for this rant is going to be about an aspect that I didn't like about it, but, y'know, whatever.
Mass Effect 1 was a terrific RPG. New, different, and exceptionally created, it had good characters and a terrific plot that took place in an epic sci-fi setting, that wonderful kind of science fiction creation that not only gives you a great story immediately, but has the heart, the creativity, the imagination, the depth, and the scope that just begs to be expanded on. I hadn't gotten so fired up and interested in the vast creative potential of a science fiction setting since seeing the original Star Wars movies.
Bioware, the company that created Mass Effect, seemed to have a good idea of the potential of their creation. In addition to the game, two books were published about events occurring before and after ME1--the first book, Revelation, by Drew Karpyshyn, who is also one of the major writers behind the Mass Effect games, set several of the plot elements of ME1 into motion, while the second book, Ascension, by the same author, set up a side-story after ME1's events that (so far) has only minimal ties to the games' main plots. Now that ME2 is out, Bioware's got some more stuff hitting the markets to further expand its sci-fi thriller's depth--a comic book series, I think, along with another book or 2. I'm not sure, but I know I'll be checking them all out later, being the fanboy who is commercially easily-led that I am.
In general, a good idea--the Star Wars universe is at its very best, after all, in many of the published fanfiction by authors like Timothy Zahn, who expand the ideas and concepts of the Star Wars movies until a universe of exceeding depth and complexity has been formed from their contributions to it over the past few decades.* And in practice, a lot of the expanding that the Mass Effect books do is good stuff--gives you some more perspective on the Cerberus group from the games, a more detailed look on the past history of David Anderson (important bloke from the game), and so on. Aside from the stupid final part of the Revelation book which drops all the subtle foreshadowing of the game's events that the book had been doing so well until then and bonking you on the noggin clumsily with its plot set-ups ("OKAY IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT SOMEHOW THIS IS THE BIG IMPORTANT THING HERE DO YOU SEE IT HERE HERE HERE LOOK"), I think the books accomplish what they're trying to do quite adequately.
Save for one significant problem: Saren. The antagonist (though not main villain) of Mass Effect 1, Saren in the game is a fairly good villain--I wouldn't call him great, but he's a cut above the standard RPG villain fair. Spoilers ahead, although I can't imagine many people who haven't played ME1 are going to bother to read this.
1. Saren has depth--as a Specter, Saren's goal ultimately is to protect galactic peace. When he encounters Sovereign and learns of the threat of the Reapers, Saren concludes that there is simply no possible way for the united people of the galaxy to resist the Reapers and win--a reasonable conclusion, given that the Reapers have systematically destroyed cultures in the past of equitable size and better technology in the past. He hopes that by serving the Reaper vanguard Sovereign, he can prove that the people of the galaxy can be useful to the Reapers if kept alive, thus preventing galaxy-wide genocide and saving trillions, maybe quadrillions of lives. He's weighed his options, and against such hopeless odds of victory, he feels that the way to protect the galaxy's people is to sacrifice their physical and mental freedom to save their lives.
2. Saren is a good opposite to the protagonist, Shepard--at least, if we assume that Shepard is a Paragon, and not a Renegade.*** Saren is willing to give up freedom to preserve life; Shepard will fight to the death to protect self-determination. Saren wants to play it safe and appease the superior force to save life; Shepard understands that the life without freedom is meaningless to have and will risk it all to protect its worth. Saren's morality can only see the big picture; Shepard's morality sees the small acts of heroism, courage, generosity, and unity that the big picture must be made from.
Basically, Saren in Mass Effect 1 is clearly the game's villain, but as that obvious villain, Saren has a good deal of depth and subtlety to make him both interesting and a good contrast to the game's protagonist.
The thing is, though, the book Revelation, which chronicles an adventure a couple decades before ME1 begins that prominently involves Saren, paints a very different picture of this character. Book-Saren has absolutely none of the elegant depth that made him more than just a sci-fi Snidely Whiplash. He's brutal, relentless, and without a conscience--he'll not only sacrifice innocents to meet his objectives without a second thought, he'll go out of his way to do so. Saren in the books is a deadly jerk who kills civilians indiscriminately and often. His job as a Spectre just gives him the excuse and the authority to murder anyone and everyone.
Saren from the game and Saren from the book both have an "ends justify the means" philosophy in what they do, but that's more or less where the similarity between them ends. Game-Saren pursues his twisted goal of saving the galaxy with unwavering purpose, taking whatever steps are necessary to achieve that goal--killing those who pose a threat, lying to those he can manipulate, and generally being a jerk--but a jerk with a plan. Book-Saren just goes out of his way to kill, his actions and demeanor suggesting that his work and goals take second place to his desire to end lives.
I mean, take this one scene from the book. To try to track down his quarry for his mission, Saren interrogates a hospitalized woman who may have information he needs. She's in a real bad way, having barely survived a building's exploding right next to her, so to get his information, Saren forces her awake--a dick thing to do, given that she's in excruciating pain from her injuries. This much rings true for the game's Saren--he'd have no qualms about doing such a thing in order to accomplish his goals. But then, when Saren's gotten all he can out of her, he doesn't give her the injection that can put her back to sleep and potentially save her life. He actually takes a moment to personally watch her die from his inaction, and then, when she dies, gives her the injection to cover up what he's done. There's no reason given for this, nothing he can possibly gain from it; he just does it because he's that much of a bastard.
This clumsily evil, spiteful, and murderous villain does not fit the image at all that the game gives us--that of a misguided villain who, although contemptible, at least has a purpose he strives for that he believes is noble. Book-Saren, in fact, actually creates a semi-plot hole--not only does he lessen the worth of the overall character of Saren, but he also creates the question of how such a brutish fiend wound up becoming a misguided villain. I mean, it just seems unlikely that a cruel, psychotic murderer who found Sovereign and found out about the Reapers' threat to the galaxy would say to himself, "Gee, up until now I've given every indication of having no interest in anything beyond killing people...but now that I've found something that could kill everyone everywhere, I think I'll attempt to save as many lives as possible from it!"
I suppose there are ways to explain it away--Sovereign's Indoctrination affecting Saren and causing him to change his mind, perhaps, but I can't see what Sovereign's motive would be in that, and the game implies that Sovereign's influence over Saren is minimal since Saren remains strong and efficient--but overall, Mass Effect 1's Saren was a far better villain before Revelation further developed (or perhaps "devolved" is a better term) him.
* Well, actually, the Star Wars universe is also at its best in the Knights of the Old Republic RPG series, too, but that distracts from the point I'm trying to make.**
** The small KotOR series, incidentally, got its start from Bioware--the Mass Effect folks. These people kick ASS!
*** Although it would still work fairly well--Renegade Shepard values power and dominion over all races, so Saren's still the logical antagonist, because the dominion over all life that he wants to give to the Reapers is the same dominion that Shepard wants for him/herself.
Mass Effect 1 was a terrific RPG. New, different, and exceptionally created, it had good characters and a terrific plot that took place in an epic sci-fi setting, that wonderful kind of science fiction creation that not only gives you a great story immediately, but has the heart, the creativity, the imagination, the depth, and the scope that just begs to be expanded on. I hadn't gotten so fired up and interested in the vast creative potential of a science fiction setting since seeing the original Star Wars movies.
Bioware, the company that created Mass Effect, seemed to have a good idea of the potential of their creation. In addition to the game, two books were published about events occurring before and after ME1--the first book, Revelation, by Drew Karpyshyn, who is also one of the major writers behind the Mass Effect games, set several of the plot elements of ME1 into motion, while the second book, Ascension, by the same author, set up a side-story after ME1's events that (so far) has only minimal ties to the games' main plots. Now that ME2 is out, Bioware's got some more stuff hitting the markets to further expand its sci-fi thriller's depth--a comic book series, I think, along with another book or 2. I'm not sure, but I know I'll be checking them all out later, being the fanboy who is commercially easily-led that I am.
In general, a good idea--the Star Wars universe is at its very best, after all, in many of the published fanfiction by authors like Timothy Zahn, who expand the ideas and concepts of the Star Wars movies until a universe of exceeding depth and complexity has been formed from their contributions to it over the past few decades.* And in practice, a lot of the expanding that the Mass Effect books do is good stuff--gives you some more perspective on the Cerberus group from the games, a more detailed look on the past history of David Anderson (important bloke from the game), and so on. Aside from the stupid final part of the Revelation book which drops all the subtle foreshadowing of the game's events that the book had been doing so well until then and bonking you on the noggin clumsily with its plot set-ups ("OKAY IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT SOMEHOW THIS IS THE BIG IMPORTANT THING HERE DO YOU SEE IT HERE HERE HERE LOOK"), I think the books accomplish what they're trying to do quite adequately.
Save for one significant problem: Saren. The antagonist (though not main villain) of Mass Effect 1, Saren in the game is a fairly good villain--I wouldn't call him great, but he's a cut above the standard RPG villain fair. Spoilers ahead, although I can't imagine many people who haven't played ME1 are going to bother to read this.
1. Saren has depth--as a Specter, Saren's goal ultimately is to protect galactic peace. When he encounters Sovereign and learns of the threat of the Reapers, Saren concludes that there is simply no possible way for the united people of the galaxy to resist the Reapers and win--a reasonable conclusion, given that the Reapers have systematically destroyed cultures in the past of equitable size and better technology in the past. He hopes that by serving the Reaper vanguard Sovereign, he can prove that the people of the galaxy can be useful to the Reapers if kept alive, thus preventing galaxy-wide genocide and saving trillions, maybe quadrillions of lives. He's weighed his options, and against such hopeless odds of victory, he feels that the way to protect the galaxy's people is to sacrifice their physical and mental freedom to save their lives.
2. Saren is a good opposite to the protagonist, Shepard--at least, if we assume that Shepard is a Paragon, and not a Renegade.*** Saren is willing to give up freedom to preserve life; Shepard will fight to the death to protect self-determination. Saren wants to play it safe and appease the superior force to save life; Shepard understands that the life without freedom is meaningless to have and will risk it all to protect its worth. Saren's morality can only see the big picture; Shepard's morality sees the small acts of heroism, courage, generosity, and unity that the big picture must be made from.
Basically, Saren in Mass Effect 1 is clearly the game's villain, but as that obvious villain, Saren has a good deal of depth and subtlety to make him both interesting and a good contrast to the game's protagonist.
The thing is, though, the book Revelation, which chronicles an adventure a couple decades before ME1 begins that prominently involves Saren, paints a very different picture of this character. Book-Saren has absolutely none of the elegant depth that made him more than just a sci-fi Snidely Whiplash. He's brutal, relentless, and without a conscience--he'll not only sacrifice innocents to meet his objectives without a second thought, he'll go out of his way to do so. Saren in the books is a deadly jerk who kills civilians indiscriminately and often. His job as a Spectre just gives him the excuse and the authority to murder anyone and everyone.
Saren from the game and Saren from the book both have an "ends justify the means" philosophy in what they do, but that's more or less where the similarity between them ends. Game-Saren pursues his twisted goal of saving the galaxy with unwavering purpose, taking whatever steps are necessary to achieve that goal--killing those who pose a threat, lying to those he can manipulate, and generally being a jerk--but a jerk with a plan. Book-Saren just goes out of his way to kill, his actions and demeanor suggesting that his work and goals take second place to his desire to end lives.
I mean, take this one scene from the book. To try to track down his quarry for his mission, Saren interrogates a hospitalized woman who may have information he needs. She's in a real bad way, having barely survived a building's exploding right next to her, so to get his information, Saren forces her awake--a dick thing to do, given that she's in excruciating pain from her injuries. This much rings true for the game's Saren--he'd have no qualms about doing such a thing in order to accomplish his goals. But then, when Saren's gotten all he can out of her, he doesn't give her the injection that can put her back to sleep and potentially save her life. He actually takes a moment to personally watch her die from his inaction, and then, when she dies, gives her the injection to cover up what he's done. There's no reason given for this, nothing he can possibly gain from it; he just does it because he's that much of a bastard.
This clumsily evil, spiteful, and murderous villain does not fit the image at all that the game gives us--that of a misguided villain who, although contemptible, at least has a purpose he strives for that he believes is noble. Book-Saren, in fact, actually creates a semi-plot hole--not only does he lessen the worth of the overall character of Saren, but he also creates the question of how such a brutish fiend wound up becoming a misguided villain. I mean, it just seems unlikely that a cruel, psychotic murderer who found Sovereign and found out about the Reapers' threat to the galaxy would say to himself, "Gee, up until now I've given every indication of having no interest in anything beyond killing people...but now that I've found something that could kill everyone everywhere, I think I'll attempt to save as many lives as possible from it!"
I suppose there are ways to explain it away--Sovereign's Indoctrination affecting Saren and causing him to change his mind, perhaps, but I can't see what Sovereign's motive would be in that, and the game implies that Sovereign's influence over Saren is minimal since Saren remains strong and efficient--but overall, Mass Effect 1's Saren was a far better villain before Revelation further developed (or perhaps "devolved" is a better term) him.
* Well, actually, the Star Wars universe is also at its best in the Knights of the Old Republic RPG series, too, but that distracts from the point I'm trying to make.**
** The small KotOR series, incidentally, got its start from Bioware--the Mass Effect folks. These people kick ASS!
*** Although it would still work fairly well--Renegade Shepard values power and dominion over all races, so Saren's still the logical antagonist, because the dominion over all life that he wants to give to the Reapers is the same dominion that Shepard wants for him/herself.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Final Fantasy Series's Old School Vs. New School Arguments
Thanks to good sir Jolt for giving this a look-over to resolve some concerns I had with it.
Old Vs. New, the eternal debate. Which was better, the original Batman movie by Tim Burton or the new ones? Which did you prefer, The Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the 80s, or the 90s Extreme Ghostbusters? Which is more annoying, a heavy-handed dose of guilt ineptly dumped on you by a rapping, psychotic bat, or by a blue cat alien thing?*
The question of whether things were better in the old days or are better now is one which even the relatively new video game industry is besieged with, and that definitely includes the RPG genre. Although there are plenty of examples of this, the RPG Old Vs. New argument I hear most often is about the Final Fantasy series. And good God, it is getting tiring.
The first problem I have with it is the way people argue it. Regardless of what camp they're on, they seem to believe that ALL games that fit into their school must be good simply because of the time they were made. They're always making blanket statements, like "The old games were better because they didn't let graphics distract them from characters and plot!" and "The new games look better and are more creative!" The problem here is that the blanket statements are just never entirely true. You can't say that the old school games had superior plot and character focus when the old school of Final Fantasy features the bland and generic Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, and the boring and outright stupid Final Fantasy 5. Nor can you say that the new games necessarily look better--the sprites and backgrounds may be slightly more advanced in Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Advance 1 than in the SNES titles, but it's not by much, and in the end it's still super-deformed little blocks marching around on a simplistic background--or are more creative, given the insanely dull Final Fantasy 12, whose few plot twists are just old devices taken from other rubbish (really, Basch? You're going to pull the soap opera "My Evil Twin Did It" thing?).
It's not that I don't think some installments in the series shouldn't be compared and contrasted with others (or even RPGs outside the FF series). It's just that the people who make these Old vs. New arguments about Final Fantasy never seem to be interested in actually debating the merits of the games, nearly always make the stupid generalizations I mentioned above, and just appear to want to find something to be negative about without actually thinking about whether the negativity is justified.
The next problem I have is how the devil you even qualify what constitutes Final Fantasy Old School from New School. Traditionally, Old School is everything made before Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy 7 begins the New School. Well, this might have been a fair distinction to make back in 2002 when FF10 was brand new, but at this point in time, Final Fantasy 7 is over 10 years old. Not only that, but it was the first game on the Playstation 1, a console from 2 system generations ago. You can say that FF7 took the series in a totally different direction, but most FFs are departed from the rest of the series in their styles, and that original FF style has returned for several titles since FF7's release--FFT, FFTA1, FF Crystal Chronicles, FF9, and so on. Hell, I'd say that FF12 took the series in a new direction far more drastically than FF7, creating a strongly different hybrid of fantasy and technology that was totally different from all previous games' mild mixes of the two--not just that, but FF12 also added a heavy dose of MMORPG style with its battle system, a greater step beyond previous installments in the series (save FF11, which IS an MMORPG) than FF7 was from FFs 1-6.
So if it's not accurate to judge a game over a decade old as being the turning point between old and new, where DOES the line fall with the series? FFT, a distinctly medieval-style game akin to the traditional idea of "old school," came out soon after FF7. FF8, another of the traditional "new school," is also over 10 years old. FF9 can't possibly count because it deliberately molded itself to fit the old Final Fantasy style. So is FF10, first Playstation 2 Final Fantasy, the turning point now? Because then things seem really off--the Old School will include FF7 and 8, which are radically different from the rest of the Old School, the New School will be composed of only 3 (soon to be 4) all-important numbered titles to the Old School's 9, and practically half of the New School's Final Fantasies are spin-offs of Old School titles (FF7, most notably). Not only that, but with FF11 being an online RPG, and FF12 being a mix of Star Wars, online RPGs, and Final Fantasy Tactics, making it, as I mentioned, more drastically different from practically every other FF than even FF7 was from its predecessors, the entirety of New School is a confused jumble of dissimilar styles and directions.
So the School arguments don't work because their respective games don't have enough in common regarding quality to qualify for blanket statements, and because there's no logical spot to draw the line between Old and New. But that's not even the most important reason this heated debate makes no sense! The biggest reason is that the quality of games on each side is all over the place. Seriously, how can anyone say that New School is better than Old School when newer FF games include the lethally boring Final Fantasy 12 and the unspeakably repulsive FF10-2? How can you seriously say that Old School is boring when you have the imaginative, brisk storytelling of Final Fantasy 6? How can you say that the writing for the New School always sucks when it has the deep and dynamic characters of Tidus and Yuna, and the great themes of FF9?
I mean, I know I've said SquareEnix sucks lately, and I'll stick by that statement, but I'm not saying that the games are bad because they're new or all conform to certain new trends--they're bad because they're bad on an individual basis. Being new or old has no bearing on whether the game is good or not. When (or maybe I should say if) SquareEnix makes a good new Final Fantasy, I'll be happy to remark upon it as such--hell, I actually quite enjoyed the recent Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, so there must be SOMEONE in the company still who has some talent. But dismissing a Final Fantasy (or any other RPG) because of the year it was made? That's ridiculous.
Old School Vs. New School with the Final Fantasy series is stupid, or at least the people debating it are, along with their rationales. I've got a visual aid here that, I feel, properly and mathematically describes this situation, borrowed courtesy of good lady Iris Amergin, or Hezul, or Zionga, or whatever she calls herself (woman changes screen names way too often), and altered just a bit. I feel that it is as proper a close to this rant as is possible.
* And while we're at it, which is a more evolutionarily unsound creature: a lizard that sings loudly to all its potential prey within hearing distance about how it's hungry, or a bug whose escape mechanism is to jump up and spin around while glowing neon pink against a predominantly dark blue forest background?**
** Yeah, yeah, I know. You've probably heard about a million jabs at Avatar for being Ferngully meets Disney's Pocahontas meets a million other times you've seen the same story played out. So sue me; I don't feel bad. Millions and MILLIONS of dollars were spent on Avatar that could have gone to worthy causes--at the very least, better movies--and what's the finished product? A movie with a plot so unoriginal and hackneyed, characters so shallow and stereotypical, and a romance so generic and unexamined, that comparing Avatar to Ferngully and Pocahontas is an insult to THEM, not it.
Old Vs. New, the eternal debate. Which was better, the original Batman movie by Tim Burton or the new ones? Which did you prefer, The Real Ghostbusters cartoon from the 80s, or the 90s Extreme Ghostbusters? Which is more annoying, a heavy-handed dose of guilt ineptly dumped on you by a rapping, psychotic bat, or by a blue cat alien thing?*
The question of whether things were better in the old days or are better now is one which even the relatively new video game industry is besieged with, and that definitely includes the RPG genre. Although there are plenty of examples of this, the RPG Old Vs. New argument I hear most often is about the Final Fantasy series. And good God, it is getting tiring.
The first problem I have with it is the way people argue it. Regardless of what camp they're on, they seem to believe that ALL games that fit into their school must be good simply because of the time they were made. They're always making blanket statements, like "The old games were better because they didn't let graphics distract them from characters and plot!" and "The new games look better and are more creative!" The problem here is that the blanket statements are just never entirely true. You can't say that the old school games had superior plot and character focus when the old school of Final Fantasy features the bland and generic Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, and the boring and outright stupid Final Fantasy 5. Nor can you say that the new games necessarily look better--the sprites and backgrounds may be slightly more advanced in Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Advance 1 than in the SNES titles, but it's not by much, and in the end it's still super-deformed little blocks marching around on a simplistic background--or are more creative, given the insanely dull Final Fantasy 12, whose few plot twists are just old devices taken from other rubbish (really, Basch? You're going to pull the soap opera "My Evil Twin Did It" thing?).
It's not that I don't think some installments in the series shouldn't be compared and contrasted with others (or even RPGs outside the FF series). It's just that the people who make these Old vs. New arguments about Final Fantasy never seem to be interested in actually debating the merits of the games, nearly always make the stupid generalizations I mentioned above, and just appear to want to find something to be negative about without actually thinking about whether the negativity is justified.
The next problem I have is how the devil you even qualify what constitutes Final Fantasy Old School from New School. Traditionally, Old School is everything made before Final Fantasy 7, and Final Fantasy 7 begins the New School. Well, this might have been a fair distinction to make back in 2002 when FF10 was brand new, but at this point in time, Final Fantasy 7 is over 10 years old. Not only that, but it was the first game on the Playstation 1, a console from 2 system generations ago. You can say that FF7 took the series in a totally different direction, but most FFs are departed from the rest of the series in their styles, and that original FF style has returned for several titles since FF7's release--FFT, FFTA1, FF Crystal Chronicles, FF9, and so on. Hell, I'd say that FF12 took the series in a new direction far more drastically than FF7, creating a strongly different hybrid of fantasy and technology that was totally different from all previous games' mild mixes of the two--not just that, but FF12 also added a heavy dose of MMORPG style with its battle system, a greater step beyond previous installments in the series (save FF11, which IS an MMORPG) than FF7 was from FFs 1-6.
So if it's not accurate to judge a game over a decade old as being the turning point between old and new, where DOES the line fall with the series? FFT, a distinctly medieval-style game akin to the traditional idea of "old school," came out soon after FF7. FF8, another of the traditional "new school," is also over 10 years old. FF9 can't possibly count because it deliberately molded itself to fit the old Final Fantasy style. So is FF10, first Playstation 2 Final Fantasy, the turning point now? Because then things seem really off--the Old School will include FF7 and 8, which are radically different from the rest of the Old School, the New School will be composed of only 3 (soon to be 4) all-important numbered titles to the Old School's 9, and practically half of the New School's Final Fantasies are spin-offs of Old School titles (FF7, most notably). Not only that, but with FF11 being an online RPG, and FF12 being a mix of Star Wars, online RPGs, and Final Fantasy Tactics, making it, as I mentioned, more drastically different from practically every other FF than even FF7 was from its predecessors, the entirety of New School is a confused jumble of dissimilar styles and directions.
So the School arguments don't work because their respective games don't have enough in common regarding quality to qualify for blanket statements, and because there's no logical spot to draw the line between Old and New. But that's not even the most important reason this heated debate makes no sense! The biggest reason is that the quality of games on each side is all over the place. Seriously, how can anyone say that New School is better than Old School when newer FF games include the lethally boring Final Fantasy 12 and the unspeakably repulsive FF10-2? How can you seriously say that Old School is boring when you have the imaginative, brisk storytelling of Final Fantasy 6? How can you say that the writing for the New School always sucks when it has the deep and dynamic characters of Tidus and Yuna, and the great themes of FF9?
I mean, I know I've said SquareEnix sucks lately, and I'll stick by that statement, but I'm not saying that the games are bad because they're new or all conform to certain new trends--they're bad because they're bad on an individual basis. Being new or old has no bearing on whether the game is good or not. When (or maybe I should say if) SquareEnix makes a good new Final Fantasy, I'll be happy to remark upon it as such--hell, I actually quite enjoyed the recent Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, so there must be SOMEONE in the company still who has some talent. But dismissing a Final Fantasy (or any other RPG) because of the year it was made? That's ridiculous.
Old School Vs. New School with the Final Fantasy series is stupid, or at least the people debating it are, along with their rationales. I've got a visual aid here that, I feel, properly and mathematically describes this situation, borrowed courtesy of good lady Iris Amergin, or Hezul, or Zionga, or whatever she calls herself (woman changes screen names way too often), and altered just a bit. I feel that it is as proper a close to this rant as is possible.
* And while we're at it, which is a more evolutionarily unsound creature: a lizard that sings loudly to all its potential prey within hearing distance about how it's hungry, or a bug whose escape mechanism is to jump up and spin around while glowing neon pink against a predominantly dark blue forest background?**
** Yeah, yeah, I know. You've probably heard about a million jabs at Avatar for being Ferngully meets Disney's Pocahontas meets a million other times you've seen the same story played out. So sue me; I don't feel bad. Millions and MILLIONS of dollars were spent on Avatar that could have gone to worthy causes--at the very least, better movies--and what's the finished product? A movie with a plot so unoriginal and hackneyed, characters so shallow and stereotypical, and a romance so generic and unexamined, that comparing Avatar to Ferngully and Pocahontas is an insult to THEM, not it.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Fallout 3 AMV: Land of Confusion
I've mentioned before that Fallout 3 makes for a good AMV subject. It's got lots of strong visuals, lots of good, varied content in its plot and characters, a ton of freedom since you can get an editor program for it for free that lets you tinker with it as you please, and the general feel of the game is dark, gritty, and powerful, which makes it work well with songs of the same style--something most RPGs, which come from Japan, don't share the spirit of as well. So expect quite a few of these AMV rants to be about offerings for Fallout 3--I've had one before, today's is another, and I've got a third on standby for a later rant, too.
Today's AMV is actually 2 in 1. Basically, a creative bloke by the name of Joylock made an AMV for Fallout 3 to the song Land of Confusion, by Genesis, a mid-1980s rock song. Joylock also, however, copied the visual sequence of the AMV he'd made and put it to the recent remake of Land of Confusion, redone by Disturbed. While the general tone of the music is much different for the Disturbed version, turning the song to a louder, heavier rock, the lyrics and pace of it is identical to the original Genesis version, so each AMV is virtually identical. So I figured, why not just post'em both and review them together?
And be warned twice over (or is it 4 times over, given that I'm giving 2 warnings for 2 videos?): 1. The content of this AMV requires some discussion of minor bits of the plot of Fallout 3, so Spoilers, and 2. Fallout 3's a pretty gory game, and although the AMVs don't really emphasize it one way or another, there IS some blood-and-guts content in there.
Fallout 3: Land of Confusion (Genesis): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGrOErmPvY8 (Kept on my channel due to its disappearance on Joylock's)
Fallout 3: Land of Confusion (Disturbed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRPKghuKPus
Poetry in Motion: The visual component to this AMV is...well, it's pretty great. I mean, yes, the zooms and general movement of the camera is at times slightly jerky, but it's in-game footage. It's forgivable, and so small that it's barely worth even mentioning.
Other than that negligible flaw? Terrific. This visuals do everything they should, everything they're meant to, and do so in good quality. The video pretty much looks as good as the game itself does, and the various post-apocalyptic settings and characters of Fallout harmonize quite well with tone and ideas of the song playing. There are also many visual bells and whistles thrown in here that grab one's attention. Joylock multiple times fades from one scene to another using a central image to connect the scenes--as an example, early on you see this happen at 0:11, where a scene of the US flag changes to a view of a wall poster that has a soldier holding the flag aloft, then changes again to a different poster that has the flag in the background. This sort of thing is neat, and it's shown up in previous AMVs I've shown you all, but Joylock seems to do it with extra skill--using the example I just cited, the scenes go from showing the object (the flag) live and proud, then just proudly depicted, and finally only depicted in the background and in poor shape. Joylock's not only doing the connecting-scenes trick, but he's also using that trick to show the focused object (and all it symbolizes) decomposing. Quite neat, ties in well with the song (as I'll get into below)...and all within the first 15 seconds of the AMV. Other examples of this focal-point-scene-change-thingy: 0:32, where the Eyebot of the Enclave becomes the scene of the Enclave's computer president, 2:17, where you see avenues of various locations in Fallout 3's world, and particularly 2:24, where you see a montage of almost all of the characters who can follow you,* and each is centered and zoomed in on so that their faces are all occupying about the same spot on the screen. There's also the scene-change effect at 2:37 that goes to 2:46, which is a continually spinning shot of a playground where a person is standing on one of those turning playground things (dunno what they're called, actually) that changes from seeing an adult on it to seeing a kid on it, and goes from color to black and white to color again, which is neat, and leads to 2:49, which has some hokey little non-Fallout footage of a family dinner setting from the 50s, that shifts into a scene from the game so that the speaker in the 1950s clip becomes the Fallout 3 main character's father. And there are plenty more in there, but if I go over EVERY neat detail of this video, this rant will seriously just never end.
My favorite visual effect, though, has to be 2:58, where a side-scrolling scene of an idyllic neighborhood goes by a Speed Limit sign, which obscures the rest of the scene as it passes and, halfway through its passing by, changes to the dirty, washed-out Speed Limit sign of some ruins of the regular Fallout 3 setting, giving you a great before-and-after shot that transitions flawlessly. Damn cool.
The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music: This is an AMV that is mostly centered around its song. The last AMV I reviewed, the Shadow Hearts 1 + 2 As the Warlock Said one, basically had a story to tell that it used its song for, but here, the opposite's true--the AMV is set up around the music, made to tell the story the song relates rather than have the song emphasize the video's purpose. And it works extremely well--Fallout 3 matches the tone of each version of Land of Confusion near perfectly, having both the disjointed, askew mysticism of the 80s rock in the Genesis version while also epitomizing the harsh, relentless chaos of the heavier Disturbed remake.
In addition to picking a great game for the song's mood, Joylock also matches the scenes shown to the music's lyrics and pitch masterfully. Almost every, if not just every single, lyric line has a scene that coordinates with it--showing various blackened skeletons to the words, "Been haunted by a million screams," showing the characters Gob and Nova listening to the news radio to the words "Did you read the news today," a scene of a far-off nuclear explosion to the words "Burning into the night," a zooming-out shot of one of the many desolate parts of the wasteland to the words "This is the world we live in," a scene of the defaced Lincoln monument to the words, "Superman, where are you now"...all of those are just in the first minute and a half, and I didn't even mention half of the examples from that opening period of the video that I could have. It all still has the feeling of the one component (Fallout 3) being made to work with the other part (the song), without feeling completely meshed and synchronized the way the last AMV I reviewed did, but the scenes and music are nonetheless perfectly coordinated from beginning to end.
But what does it all mean, Basil?: As I said, the feeling of this AMV is that the game was taken and matched to the music's ideas, rather than the other way around. This is usually a bad idea with AMVs, because it often results in a video that's just throwing a game's visuals in there without having them really tied to the message being conveyed in any particular way. Usually--but definitely not here. The ideas expressed in Land of Confusion are a perfect match to Fallout 3, the story of struggle to make the world a good place to live in, against overwhelming adversity. The very core of Fallout 3's plot is that of a few good people going to outstanding lengths to better their hellhole of a world for all who live in it, proactively trying to fix it rather than simply accept and be corrupted by it, even though it's filled from one end to the other with the evils of humanity that made it this way. And Joylock just...completely and utterly ties the song and game together by their shared theme and really gives the viewer something neat.
The major theme in this AMV, from what I gather, is to show the struggle between those whose evil ways perpetuate the hell of Fallout 3's world, and those individuals who throw themselves into their work to better the world, to make it, as the song says, "a world worth fighting for." The AMV starts by speaking of the fallen dreams of the past, showing us symbols of the United States of America, and then drops us into the reality that those dreams are nothing more than dreams with scenes of armed soldiers running through a town's street firing. The chorus, though, is where the real heart of the song and of the AMV lies. "Too many men, too many people," is accompanied each time it plays by the greatest villains of Fallout 3's wastelands--Tenpenny, a rich, deluded asshole who only offers protection in his tower from a world of horrific danger and violence to those who pay him and who is willing to nuke a nearby settlement of people because it obstructs his view, Eulogy Jones, the leader of the huge slaver operation in Fallout 3's area of the wastelands, the Vault 101 Overseeer, who shows that even a man with only a small amount of power can still be a tyrant if put in the proper setting, Ashur, whose good intentions paved the way to a hell of his own creation, a tyrannical society built off the brutalized backs of hundreds of slaves, and of course, the leaders of the Enclave, who want to kill all the people of the wastes to claim the land for themselves in their deluded attempt to resurrect a twisted form of the United States, among others. These villains are powerful symbols of human vice, the evils that caused the Fallout world's ruin in the first place.
At the same time, though, the AMV shows the people of the Fallout world who devote themselves utterly to making their world a place worth living in--Moira, who aims to write and distribute a book on how to survive in the wasteland, Dr. Lee, who works to improve the food and more importantly water of the wastes, Three Dog, who relentlessly spreads the truth across the wastes via his radio station, the guardians of the secret grove of trees to the north of the wasteland, who hope that the forest could one day spread far enough to cover the wastes with greenery and life, Sarah Lyons, the greatest warrior of the one group brave and good enough to take an open stand against the Enclave and Super Mutants that imperil every innocent inhabitant of the wastes, and various other individuals whose list of worthwhile causes range from simply defending a tiny town all by themselves to relentlessly protection of the Declaration of Independence, one of the greatest symbols of freedom and self-determination in history, to an old adventurer whose idealistic explorations in his youth provide a heroic example for next generation. Just as the villains of Fallout 3 embody our greatest vices, the people shown on the other side, working in their own ways to improve their world, embody our greatest virtues--truth, duty, honor, hope, selflessness, heroism, and so on.
The video shows these contrasting groups of people, and also shows the conflict between them, the battle for the future of this desolate world. You see the Joylock's version of the main character, the Lone Wanderer, defeating several of the purveyors of vice that are shown,** while also watching scenes of the battles between the evil Enclave and the virtuous Brotherhood of Steel, along with general fighting among the wastelands against mutants, the residents of Big Town learning how to defend themselves, and so on. You also see the conflict between evil and good in a less tangible sense, with the video contrasting the good and hopeful past with the desolate present, and then finally ending with a glimpse of what could be--a world where pure, non-radiated water flows plentiful, where the wastelands are being covered once again by grass and trees (all with the help of the Fallout 3 editor program; such scenes certainly don't exist normally within the game). The song is both dark and inspiring, speaking of a world full of vices while acknowledging the possibility that it could be turned around people working to make it better, and the AMV shows this perfectly, portraying Fallout 3's world and the conflicts within it that make it seem hopeless, but nonetheless showing the spark of hope that exists within it and ending with a hopeful vision of the future, and a shot of the 2 greatest heroes for the Capital Wasteland's future, Sarah Lyons and the Lone Wanderer, along with the Bible passage that started the game's major quest and struggle.
In all honesty, this is one of the greatest AMVs I've ever seen. Every time I watch it over again, I'm filled anew with respect for how well it's put together. Not a full 10 seconds go by at any part of it where the AMV's story isn't being perfectly told, and for anyone who's played Fallout 3, the AMV's relation to the actual events and people of the game are more than just accurate--they're insightful, making you look back on those aspects of the game with a new appreciation and/or interest in just how symbolic they actually are. It has a message, it portrays its message through unity of sight and sound excellently, it has serious skill in its execution, and it even gives new perspective to old content. I am genuinely impressed by this AMV.
(Oh yes, and as far as which version is better...I personally like the Genesis version of the song better, the Disturbed one being too loud and annoying for my tastes, but I think the Disturbed version might be a slightly better fit for Fallout 3. Like I said before, each has its merits and ties in with the game's world and events, but the harsher tone of the Disturbed version of Land of Confusion just harmonizes better with Fallout 3's chaotic, destructive world, and also better emphasizes the conflict between good and evil shown in the AMV).
* WHERE THE HELL IS DOGMEAT?
** Including one where the Lone Wanderer punches Tenpenny's goon right off the tower. Now that is awesome.
Today's AMV is actually 2 in 1. Basically, a creative bloke by the name of Joylock made an AMV for Fallout 3 to the song Land of Confusion, by Genesis, a mid-1980s rock song. Joylock also, however, copied the visual sequence of the AMV he'd made and put it to the recent remake of Land of Confusion, redone by Disturbed. While the general tone of the music is much different for the Disturbed version, turning the song to a louder, heavier rock, the lyrics and pace of it is identical to the original Genesis version, so each AMV is virtually identical. So I figured, why not just post'em both and review them together?
And be warned twice over (or is it 4 times over, given that I'm giving 2 warnings for 2 videos?): 1. The content of this AMV requires some discussion of minor bits of the plot of Fallout 3, so Spoilers, and 2. Fallout 3's a pretty gory game, and although the AMVs don't really emphasize it one way or another, there IS some blood-and-guts content in there.
Fallout 3: Land of Confusion (Genesis): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGrOErmPvY8 (Kept on my channel due to its disappearance on Joylock's)
Fallout 3: Land of Confusion (Disturbed): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRPKghuKPus
Poetry in Motion: The visual component to this AMV is...well, it's pretty great. I mean, yes, the zooms and general movement of the camera is at times slightly jerky, but it's in-game footage. It's forgivable, and so small that it's barely worth even mentioning.
Other than that negligible flaw? Terrific. This visuals do everything they should, everything they're meant to, and do so in good quality. The video pretty much looks as good as the game itself does, and the various post-apocalyptic settings and characters of Fallout harmonize quite well with tone and ideas of the song playing. There are also many visual bells and whistles thrown in here that grab one's attention. Joylock multiple times fades from one scene to another using a central image to connect the scenes--as an example, early on you see this happen at 0:11, where a scene of the US flag changes to a view of a wall poster that has a soldier holding the flag aloft, then changes again to a different poster that has the flag in the background. This sort of thing is neat, and it's shown up in previous AMVs I've shown you all, but Joylock seems to do it with extra skill--using the example I just cited, the scenes go from showing the object (the flag) live and proud, then just proudly depicted, and finally only depicted in the background and in poor shape. Joylock's not only doing the connecting-scenes trick, but he's also using that trick to show the focused object (and all it symbolizes) decomposing. Quite neat, ties in well with the song (as I'll get into below)...and all within the first 15 seconds of the AMV. Other examples of this focal-point-scene-change-thingy: 0:32, where the Eyebot of the Enclave becomes the scene of the Enclave's computer president, 2:17, where you see avenues of various locations in Fallout 3's world, and particularly 2:24, where you see a montage of almost all of the characters who can follow you,* and each is centered and zoomed in on so that their faces are all occupying about the same spot on the screen. There's also the scene-change effect at 2:37 that goes to 2:46, which is a continually spinning shot of a playground where a person is standing on one of those turning playground things (dunno what they're called, actually) that changes from seeing an adult on it to seeing a kid on it, and goes from color to black and white to color again, which is neat, and leads to 2:49, which has some hokey little non-Fallout footage of a family dinner setting from the 50s, that shifts into a scene from the game so that the speaker in the 1950s clip becomes the Fallout 3 main character's father. And there are plenty more in there, but if I go over EVERY neat detail of this video, this rant will seriously just never end.
My favorite visual effect, though, has to be 2:58, where a side-scrolling scene of an idyllic neighborhood goes by a Speed Limit sign, which obscures the rest of the scene as it passes and, halfway through its passing by, changes to the dirty, washed-out Speed Limit sign of some ruins of the regular Fallout 3 setting, giving you a great before-and-after shot that transitions flawlessly. Damn cool.
The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music: This is an AMV that is mostly centered around its song. The last AMV I reviewed, the Shadow Hearts 1 + 2 As the Warlock Said one, basically had a story to tell that it used its song for, but here, the opposite's true--the AMV is set up around the music, made to tell the story the song relates rather than have the song emphasize the video's purpose. And it works extremely well--Fallout 3 matches the tone of each version of Land of Confusion near perfectly, having both the disjointed, askew mysticism of the 80s rock in the Genesis version while also epitomizing the harsh, relentless chaos of the heavier Disturbed remake.
In addition to picking a great game for the song's mood, Joylock also matches the scenes shown to the music's lyrics and pitch masterfully. Almost every, if not just every single, lyric line has a scene that coordinates with it--showing various blackened skeletons to the words, "Been haunted by a million screams," showing the characters Gob and Nova listening to the news radio to the words "Did you read the news today," a scene of a far-off nuclear explosion to the words "Burning into the night," a zooming-out shot of one of the many desolate parts of the wasteland to the words "This is the world we live in," a scene of the defaced Lincoln monument to the words, "Superman, where are you now"...all of those are just in the first minute and a half, and I didn't even mention half of the examples from that opening period of the video that I could have. It all still has the feeling of the one component (Fallout 3) being made to work with the other part (the song), without feeling completely meshed and synchronized the way the last AMV I reviewed did, but the scenes and music are nonetheless perfectly coordinated from beginning to end.
But what does it all mean, Basil?: As I said, the feeling of this AMV is that the game was taken and matched to the music's ideas, rather than the other way around. This is usually a bad idea with AMVs, because it often results in a video that's just throwing a game's visuals in there without having them really tied to the message being conveyed in any particular way. Usually--but definitely not here. The ideas expressed in Land of Confusion are a perfect match to Fallout 3, the story of struggle to make the world a good place to live in, against overwhelming adversity. The very core of Fallout 3's plot is that of a few good people going to outstanding lengths to better their hellhole of a world for all who live in it, proactively trying to fix it rather than simply accept and be corrupted by it, even though it's filled from one end to the other with the evils of humanity that made it this way. And Joylock just...completely and utterly ties the song and game together by their shared theme and really gives the viewer something neat.
The major theme in this AMV, from what I gather, is to show the struggle between those whose evil ways perpetuate the hell of Fallout 3's world, and those individuals who throw themselves into their work to better the world, to make it, as the song says, "a world worth fighting for." The AMV starts by speaking of the fallen dreams of the past, showing us symbols of the United States of America, and then drops us into the reality that those dreams are nothing more than dreams with scenes of armed soldiers running through a town's street firing. The chorus, though, is where the real heart of the song and of the AMV lies. "Too many men, too many people," is accompanied each time it plays by the greatest villains of Fallout 3's wastelands--Tenpenny, a rich, deluded asshole who only offers protection in his tower from a world of horrific danger and violence to those who pay him and who is willing to nuke a nearby settlement of people because it obstructs his view, Eulogy Jones, the leader of the huge slaver operation in Fallout 3's area of the wastelands, the Vault 101 Overseeer, who shows that even a man with only a small amount of power can still be a tyrant if put in the proper setting, Ashur, whose good intentions paved the way to a hell of his own creation, a tyrannical society built off the brutalized backs of hundreds of slaves, and of course, the leaders of the Enclave, who want to kill all the people of the wastes to claim the land for themselves in their deluded attempt to resurrect a twisted form of the United States, among others. These villains are powerful symbols of human vice, the evils that caused the Fallout world's ruin in the first place.
At the same time, though, the AMV shows the people of the Fallout world who devote themselves utterly to making their world a place worth living in--Moira, who aims to write and distribute a book on how to survive in the wasteland, Dr. Lee, who works to improve the food and more importantly water of the wastes, Three Dog, who relentlessly spreads the truth across the wastes via his radio station, the guardians of the secret grove of trees to the north of the wasteland, who hope that the forest could one day spread far enough to cover the wastes with greenery and life, Sarah Lyons, the greatest warrior of the one group brave and good enough to take an open stand against the Enclave and Super Mutants that imperil every innocent inhabitant of the wastes, and various other individuals whose list of worthwhile causes range from simply defending a tiny town all by themselves to relentlessly protection of the Declaration of Independence, one of the greatest symbols of freedom and self-determination in history, to an old adventurer whose idealistic explorations in his youth provide a heroic example for next generation. Just as the villains of Fallout 3 embody our greatest vices, the people shown on the other side, working in their own ways to improve their world, embody our greatest virtues--truth, duty, honor, hope, selflessness, heroism, and so on.
The video shows these contrasting groups of people, and also shows the conflict between them, the battle for the future of this desolate world. You see the Joylock's version of the main character, the Lone Wanderer, defeating several of the purveyors of vice that are shown,** while also watching scenes of the battles between the evil Enclave and the virtuous Brotherhood of Steel, along with general fighting among the wastelands against mutants, the residents of Big Town learning how to defend themselves, and so on. You also see the conflict between evil and good in a less tangible sense, with the video contrasting the good and hopeful past with the desolate present, and then finally ending with a glimpse of what could be--a world where pure, non-radiated water flows plentiful, where the wastelands are being covered once again by grass and trees (all with the help of the Fallout 3 editor program; such scenes certainly don't exist normally within the game). The song is both dark and inspiring, speaking of a world full of vices while acknowledging the possibility that it could be turned around people working to make it better, and the AMV shows this perfectly, portraying Fallout 3's world and the conflicts within it that make it seem hopeless, but nonetheless showing the spark of hope that exists within it and ending with a hopeful vision of the future, and a shot of the 2 greatest heroes for the Capital Wasteland's future, Sarah Lyons and the Lone Wanderer, along with the Bible passage that started the game's major quest and struggle.
In all honesty, this is one of the greatest AMVs I've ever seen. Every time I watch it over again, I'm filled anew with respect for how well it's put together. Not a full 10 seconds go by at any part of it where the AMV's story isn't being perfectly told, and for anyone who's played Fallout 3, the AMV's relation to the actual events and people of the game are more than just accurate--they're insightful, making you look back on those aspects of the game with a new appreciation and/or interest in just how symbolic they actually are. It has a message, it portrays its message through unity of sight and sound excellently, it has serious skill in its execution, and it even gives new perspective to old content. I am genuinely impressed by this AMV.
(Oh yes, and as far as which version is better...I personally like the Genesis version of the song better, the Disturbed one being too loud and annoying for my tastes, but I think the Disturbed version might be a slightly better fit for Fallout 3. Like I said before, each has its merits and ties in with the game's world and events, but the harsher tone of the Disturbed version of Land of Confusion just harmonizes better with Fallout 3's chaotic, destructive world, and also better emphasizes the conflict between good and evil shown in the AMV).
* WHERE THE HELL IS DOGMEAT?
** Including one where the Lone Wanderer punches Tenpenny's goon right off the tower. Now that is awesome.
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