#understands the full scope of them untill the end. but while becoming the final protagonist and antagonist in this spiral of faith and

[cuntstable]

thinks about jolyne and pucci parallers and dies from a ruptured organ aaaaargh

#like i think ive done my ranting on this before so unless asked idk if ill go in depth again but. something something both starting off the #story as weak and ’unknown’ figures whove both been given these faiths and legacies to carry on by their mentours and neither really #understands the full scope of them untill the end. but while becoming the final protagonist and antagonist in this spiral of faith and #violence (and bad parenting lol) they both manage to embrace and take control of their paths through determination. and we watch both of #them grow in power and confidence and change as people through the story. its soooo interesting like especially compared to other jojos and #their villains like the only other ones who do that to that extend are jonathan and p1 dio!!!!!!! the first ones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #and ofc then jolyne and pucci still work as opposites too with how one ends up embracing the uncertainty of the future by sheer faith in #the people she loves (and bc of that she ultimately wins) vs pucci whos so fundamendally unable to cope with that uncertainty that he ends #up all alone and murdered by a stand belonging to the brother he failed to reconsile with. lol. #wait this ended up as a tag essay OOOPS #jojo #pucci posting

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes on Robert McKee’s “Story” 23: Tearing Down Act Design

☝ Maybe this post will make you throw out the storytelling map your English teacher gave you.

Every single person who has taken a literature class has seen a diagram along these lines at some point. This is the one-track path that all “Good Stories” must take:

But do all “Good Stories” really have to follow this trajectory? And where exactly do subplots fit in on this? In this post, I share Robert McKee’s answers to these questions.

How Many Acts?

First, what even is an act? Let’s make sure we have a clear understanding. 

“As a symphony unfolds in three, four, or more movements, so story is told in movements called acts--the macro-structure of story. 

Beats, changing patterns of human behavior, build scenes. Ideally, every scene becomes a Turning Point in which the values at state swing from the positive to the negative or the negative to the positive, creating significant but minor change in their lives.

A series of scenes build a sequence that culminates in a scene that has a moderate impact on the characters, turning or changing values for better or worse to a greater degree than any scene. 

A series of sequences build an act that climaxes in a scene that creates a major reversal in the characters’ lives, greater than any sequence accomplished.”

Okay. So how many should acts should we have? Most famous works we’re familiar with have three acts, as illustrated in our picture above. But is that the golden rule?

According to McKee and Aristotle, no, three acts is not the golden rule. A good story can have just one act--we may see this in a one-shot fanfiction or a short story. 

A story can have two acts as well, most commonly seen in sitcoms, novellas, or hour-length plays.

However, when a work reaches a certain length, such as a feature film, an hour-long TV episode, a full-length play, or a novel, three acts are the minimum.

Why is this? Who decided that three is the magic number?

“As audience we embrace the story artist and say: ‘I’d like a poetic experience in breadth and depth to the limits of life. But I’m a reasonable person. If I give you only a few minutes to read or witness your work, it would be unfair of me to demand you to take me to the limit. Instead I’d like a moment of pleasure, an insight or two, no more than that. But if I give you important hours of my life, I expect you to be an artist of power who can reach the boundaries of experience.’

In our effort to satisfy the audience’s need, to tell stories that touch the innermost and outermost sources of life, two major reversals are not enough. No matter the setting or scope of the telling, no matter how international and epic or intimate and interior, three major reversals are the necessary minimum for a full-length work of narrative art to reach the end of the line.

Consider these rhythms: Things were bad, then they were good--end of story. Or things were good, then they were bad--end of story. Or things were bad, then they were very bad--end of story. Or things were good, then they were very good--end of story. In all four cases we feel something’s lacking. We know that the second event, whether positively or negatively charged, is neither the end nor the limit. Even if the second event kills the cast: Things were good (or bad), then everyone died--end of story--it’s not enough. “Okay, they’re all dead. Now what?” we’re wondering. The third turn is missing and we know we haven’t touch the limit until at least one more major reversal occurs. Therefore, the three-act story rhythm was the foundation of story art for centuries before Aristotle noticed it.”

Act Length

(For the sake of explanation, let’s stick with the Three Act pattern.)

Take a look at that diagram that you were probably forced to memorize in lit class again. 

Here, we see that all three acts are equal in length.However, McKee provides a different distribution. He stresses that his diagrams are foundations and not formulae, and while his are specifically for the film medium, he believes that they are applicable to the play and novel as well. 

For now, let’s just look at the Central Plot timeline and disregard subplots. In his foundation, he has broken a 118 minute, three act film into the following pieces:

Act 1: 30 mins (25% of film)

Act 2: 70 mins (60% of film)

Act 3: 18 mins (15% of film)

Notice in particular how short the last act is compared to the others. McKee states, “In the ideal last act we want to give the audience a sense of acceleration, a swiftly rising action to Climax.” If we draw out the last act too much, we run the risk of slowing pace and taking away from the momentum we have built up.

Now let’s take a look at Act 2. It’s a whopping 60% of the film. That feels like a lot to me. McKee echoes something that Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing, that it is the second act where things can get claggy and boring. So how can we keep from getting stuck in the swamp that is Act 2?

Add subplots or more acts.

Subplots are such an important topic that they necessitate their own post, so for now let’s just discuss when we would add more acts.

How Many Acts?

“Not every film needs or wants a subplot: THE FUGITIVE. How then does the writer solve the problem of the long second act? By creating more acts. The three-act design is the minimum. If the writer builds progressions to a major reversal at the halfway point, he breaks the story into four movements with no act more than thirty or forty minutes long. 

A film could have a Shakespearean rhythm of five acts: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL. Or more. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is in seven acts; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER in eight. These films turn a major reversal every fifteen or twenty minutes, decisively solving the long second act problem. But the five- to eight-act design is the exception, for the cure of problem is the cause of others.”

So maybe you have a thriller you want to write, and you’re sick of there being a stupid romance in every single story that comes out these days (Oops, are my own opinions bleeding into this? lol), so you want to write just a straight up thriller, with NOTHING else going on but the central plot. Cool! 

In order to avoid the slowdown in Act 2, you may want to consider adding another act, thereby shrinking the length of Act 2, giving you another chance for another exciting twist. 

However, beware because adding acts can cause some of the following problems in your story:

The multiplication of act climaxes invites cliches.

For each act there must be a climax. And each climax must be progressively greater than the last. It is difficult enough to think of the three climaxes we need for a regular three-act story. You’ll be dipping down deep into that well of creativity.

The multiplication of acts reduces the impact of climaxes and results in repetitiousness.

“Even if you have a limitless well of creativity, turning act climaxes on scenes of life and death, life an death, life and death, life and death, life and death, seven or eight times over, boredom sets in. Before too long the audience is yawning: “That’s not a major turn. That’s his day. Every fifteen minutes somebody tries to kill this guy.”

What is major is relative to what is moderate and minor. If every scene screams to be heard, we go deaf. 

This is why a three-act Central Plot with subplots has become a kind of standard. It fits the creative powers of most writers, provides complexity, and avoids repetition.”

So feel free to have more acts, but in moderation. Next, let’s take a look at some non-standard act patterns you may want to use.

False Endings

What’s a false ending? You’ve seen it a thousand times over. It’s a scene so seemingly complete that we think for a moment the story is over. E.T. is dead--it’s the end of the movie. In ALIEN, Ripley blows up the spaceship and escapes, we think. The original TERMINATOR movie has a double False Ending. 

McKee issues this caution regarding them:

“For most films, however, the False Ending is inappropriate. Instead, the Penultimate Act Climax should intensify the Major Dramatic Question: “Now what’s going to happen?”

Act Rhythm

Here, McKee points out the importance of alternating between value-charges. (For a refresher on value-charges, please see this post on the values in your theme, and this post on maintaining balance between the opposite values.)

“Repetitiousness is the enemy of rhythm. The dynamics of story depend on the alternation of its value-charges. For example, the two most powerful scenes in a story are the last two act climaxes. Onscreen they’re often only ten or fifteen minutes apart. Therefore, they cannot repeat the same charge. If the protagonist achieves his Object of Desire, making the last act’s Story Climax positive, then the Penultimate Act Climax must be negative. You cannot set up an up-ending with an up-ending. ‘Things were wonderful...then they got even better!’ Conversely, you cannot set up a down-ending with a down-ending. When emotional experience repeats, the power of the second event is cut in half. And if the power of the Story Climax is halved, the power of the film is halved.

On the other hand, a story may climax in irony, an ending that’s both positive and negative. What then must be the emotional charge of the Penultimate Climax? The answer’s found in close study of the Story Climax, for although irony is somewhat positive, somewhat negative, it should never be balanced. If it is, the positive and negative values cancel each other out and the story ends in a bland neutrality. 

For example, Othello finally achieves his desire: a wife who loves him and has never betrayed him with another man--positive. However, when he discovers this, it’s too late because he’s just murdered her--an overall negative irony.”

☝This gave me a lot of thought. I tend to write for myself, and I like to have up-endings with all loose ends tidied up. Looking back at everything, I have set up up-endings with up-endings in many of my stories, and I can see now why even to me the finale feels lacklustre. 

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

#creative writing #write #writing #writing resources #writing tips #writing advice #plotting #story plotting #novel plotting #creative writing methodology #creative writing theory #writeblr #author #writing inspiration #writing inspo #robert mckee #writing novels #writing fantasy #writing fiction #writing fantiction #writing prompts for friends notes on story #long post

[sfom-unlimited-blog]

Dragon Age: An Overview

Today I’ll be taking a cursory glance at BioWare’s bestselling swords-and-sorcery franchise. In future pieces I’ll hold Dragon Age’s various elements up to a magnifying glass and gush (and sometimes gurgle) about what I love (and occasionally despise) in this series. For today, it ought to be well enough that I introduce it to any of our readers who might not know their Antivans from their Orlesians.

The franchise enjoyed a big bold launch in November 2009 with Dragon Age: Origins, but the road to Thedas was paved in blood, sweat and pixels. The game’s first developmental demo debuted in-house in 2002. Yes, indeed, friends -- Origins was a seven-year itch. Creative differences in vision and scope and routine resource reallocation combined with a simple truth about building a brand new world... it takes time.

Before Origins, a pair of novels written by the game’s Lead Writer, David Gaider, introduced that time-taken new world to curious readers. The Stolen Throne and The Calling work well together, revealing additional information about one of Origins’ major antagonists and three-dimensionalizing his depiction in the process. This is not to say Origins doesn’t stand well on its own. In my humble appraisal, it’s one of the best stories to hit the gaming industry in decades. You start out by choosing one of six totally-unique backstories and then you get to watch the last hours of your chosen backstory play out in front of your eyes, leading you toward an inevitable march into an ancient order of warriors from all walks of life who have set aside personal ambition in pursuit of a noble goal: preventing a terrible evil from laying waste to the world.

If the broad plot pitch sounds tired to you, rest assured that there’s plenty of joy in the details. Dragon Age’s rich characterization meets and sometimes exceeds the BioWare standard and its willingness to tackle difficult social themes has put it on the radar of many an equal rights publication. While Origins is not the crown champion of this movement, it does contain a few poignant moments of real awareness on the writers’ behalf for a game from some nine years ago and counting. What’s more, it sold well and created a fanbase rabid to know what happens next. As the DA scribes themselves have noted, Dragon Age’s main character is its world. Thedas invites you in and never flinches from that invitation. So much is tossed at you in Origins that the game’s in-depth codex, a bevvy of supplemental information, becomes a fun must-read. 

The game was a doorway to many plots that aren’t chased until further on in the franchise. Origins was given several DLCs and a full-fledged expansion entitled Awakening throughout the year 2010 and followed by a sequel, Dragon Age 2, in March 2011. Unfortunately, Dragon Age 2 was rather rushed, and unfortunately, it showed. Whereas Origins had an unearthly amount of time for gameplay and narrative ideas to be tossed into a blender, its successor suffered from a swift 16-month development period, and many concepts were left on the cutting room floor, such as a more well-realized hub city. I’d argue that when one considers how little time the creators had to do their thing, Dragon Age 2′s Kirkwall -- a city that players become very much acquainted with throughout the course of the game -- is as good as it can get. More importantly, the game’s cast is terrifically nuanced with plenty of secrets and more twists and turns than such a sadly clipped affair has any business offering. Dragon Age 2 has a lot of problems but personality ain’t one of them. Thankfully, its two major DLCs didn’t lack for personality in the least, as they built on protagonist Hawke’s family history and began to pull back the curtain on the elegantly oppressive Orlesian Empire.

After Dragon Age 2, BioWare needed some time to take a step back and regain the loyalty of some, shall we say, displaced fans. A novel, Asunder, released in December of that same year. Once again it was written by David Gaider and once again it helped to expand Thedas. This time it used its pages to, in part, follow certain Origins-introduced characters in the next chapter of their personal journeys. It also introduced its readers to Cole, a character who would become a playable companion in the follow-up game which would not launch for three more years. Asunder was followed by Last Flight, a story of griffons and Grey Wardens, and before that novel there was The Masked Empire, written by Mass Effect scribe Patrick Weekes, which gave fans so much more of Orlais. It was becoming increasingly clear that this would be an important location in the hotly-anticipated threequel.

That threequel finally arrived in November 2014, five years after Origins. Inquisition is a hell of a game. With EA’s beautiful engine, Frostbite, Thedas comes to life like never before. With a talented team of inclusive and thought-provoking writers, the game’s cast outshines even Dragon Age 2′s, and it finally goes for gold with plenty of difficult themes that preach tolerance and positive identity politics. The base storyline about defeating a half-crazed alleged god figure isn’t the most original concept and does occasionally suffer from some undercooked beats, but the various arcs within this context all shine uniformly, bringing closure to a few of the franchise’s ongoing plots and opening a very wide door to some very intriguing content still to come. Inquisition has remarkably well and boasts reviews to rival its sales. It reinvigorated the fandom; one need only take a look at the game’s thriving community here on Tumblr and on plenty of other social media platforms to understand why. Its three DLCs are all at least solid, but the final one, Trespasser, made August 2015 a month for the history books. I’d rather not spoil, so I’ll simply say that many fans consider it the best part of the franchise to-date.

It’s been three-and-a-half years since Inquisition, but Dragon Age is alive and well. David Gaider has stepped away from BioWare, as has Creative Director Mike Laidlaw, but plenty of Dragon Age veterans remain hard at work on the fourth main game. Comics have been released, a new novel is planned (this time it’s a compilation of the in-universe written works of fan favorite character Varric Tethras!) and every convention from one end of the globe to the next is chock full of cosplayers and talented artists whose love for Thedas knows no bounds. It could be quite some time before the proverbial Dragon Age 4 graces our consoles and computers of choice -- already, it’s been almost as long since Inquisition as folks had to wait between 2 and Inquisition, and we have no reason to believe the fourth game is anywhere close to finished -- but it’s comforting to know that it’s en route. Believe me, there’s plenty in this well-developed universe that craves a conclusion, and plenty of fans who can’t wait to revisit one of gaming’s best fantasy worlds.

There’s also an elf who really, really, really...

...Sorry. No spoilers.

#dragonage #thedas #solas #dragon age inquisition #dragon age origins #bioware #gaming

[rate-out-of-10]

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI REVIEW

Two years ago, Disney launched a new Star Wars saga after their purchase of LucasFilm, with JJ Abrams at the head. The Force Awakens burst onto the scene in 2015, introducing us to new characters, reacquainted us with old ones, thrusted us into a new conflict in the wake of the Empire’s destruction, and spectacularly recaptured the magic of Star Wars to many fans and critics alike. Now, with Rian Johnson (Breaking Bad, Looper) taking up the writing and directing responsibilities, Star Wars: The Last Jedi pushes new boundaries for the universe, and is nothing like any Star Wars we’ve ever seen before, and there’s good and bad in that.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

PERFORMANCES / CHARACTERS

Our cast of new and old returns in The Last Jedi; and they all, universally, put on impeccable performances. Daisy Ridley returns as our promised light-side Force user and puts on her best performance in this one and proves that she can be powerhouse actor. Adam Driver reprises his role of Kylo Ren, our troubled dark side Force user. Driver is amazing in this role, taking all that he learned from TFA and improved in every aspect. John Boyega as Finn puts on a strong show in some areas, but can be unremarkable in others. The writing behind Finn felt a little lackluster in some key spots, mostly in the second act. Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron is brought down to ground level in The Last Jedi. He feels like a real character here, Oscar showing his wonderful range often through the film. Mark Hamill gives us something to awe at in his performance of the legendary Luke Skywalker. Hamill perhaps plays his best performance in the role, wonderfully showing Luke’s age and his conflict. And of course we have the late Carrie Fischer returning as our space princess, Leia Organa. Carrie puts on a great show as her final performance in the iconic role, I did have a flurry of emotions seeing her on screen. Tackling Leia with the passing of Carrie Fischer is a tall order for the next installment, but Leia’s role in this movie was really well done. I only wish we saw more of her. However, Leia’s show of her Force capabilities was a wonderful sequence.

Aside from everyone’s strong performances, the writing team seemed to have the intent to focus on smaller, intimate pieces of each character. Rian Johnson does a great job empathizing with most of the cast. Putting these characters’ flaws on full display and challenging them. While the more intimate character writing should be commended, there are some instances where the writing, the direction, for some characters feels rushed, or some not genuine. Perhaps the most controversial characterization was that of Hamill’s old Luke Skywalker. Luke has always been a symbol of hope in Star Wars lore, so to see him as cold and resentful as he is here, is odd. I will say that I commend Rian for wanting to take the character into new territory, however this Luke doesn’t resemble the Luke we’ve all come to know. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just his progression into this state doesn’t seem to be believable. Luke always saw the light, even in his long-since corrupted father, Darth Vader, and eventually turned him back to the light; so why could he not do the same with Ben Solo (Kylo Ren)? Perhaps the weight of being a mentor factored into his guilt? Some key catalysts behind Luke’s new characterization remain unknown, locked away. I understand the “I blame myself for the rise of Kylo Ren and the death of my new order of Jedi” aspect, but Luke never struck me as a person who’d give up and exile himself. Or even to go as far as cutting himself off from The Force entirely. It seemed so out of character for him, and Rian didn’t quite justify this choice for him enough for me to get fully behind it. I can understand it, appreciate it to a degree, but I’m not fully sold on it unfortunately. But I will say, upon seeing the film twice, Luke’s final sequence, his death, is a wonderful send off for him. Finally being at peace with himself, saving The Resistance, but also in pain after exerting himself so much, he releases himself unto The Force, much like his previous mentors, Yoda and Obi-Wan. Also like his masters, I’m sure we’ll see more of Luke in a Force ghost state.

Another bold character choice in The Last Jedi is the fate of Supreme Leader Snoke (played by the versatile Andy Serkis). Now this is a personal anecdote but, I wasn’t a fan of Snoke to begin with. I realize there is a lot of intrigue behind him and JJ Abrams certainly set him up to potentially be the big bad guy, but that’s unoriginal in the scope of Star Wars. Snoke was on the fast track to being The Emperor 2.0, no matter how much we could’ve learned about him, where he came from, why he’s so powerful, etc. Rian Johnson making the choice to end him here was the best choice for this saga to continue into new territory. Now Kylo Ren takes up the mantle as a main antagonist, but he’s not fully antagonizing. He’s a dynamic character, a villain who is very conflicted in what he’s doing, and that’s a game changer for Star Wars. We’ve all come to know these stoic, single-minded villains (Vader, The Emperor, Grievous, Dooku) who all just exude evil. Finally we get Kylo who is established from the beginning as a troubled individual constantly conflicted with the path he’s on. He feels the most human. This makes for a more dynamic and powerful pay off in the final film. Although, as much as I approve of this change in course direction, Snoke’s death did feel anti-climactic. If we weren’t going to learn of him more in this movie (we could still in Episode 9), we needed to at least see his power on full display. Sure, he is given more to do and shows off some of his true capabilities, but we needed to see more of him in order for his death to be earned. He could’ve still died at the hands of Kylo while impressing us with his power. I was a little disappointed to see this “oblivious” stunt we’ve really already seen with Emperor Palpatine.

Now, on the smaller scale, the treatment of an intriguing new supporting character, Captain Phasma (portrayed by Gwendoline Christie), is continuously disappointing. Phasma has a cool image with that chrome armor, but also as a female Stormtrooper leader. But instead of her ushering in a new type of Stormtrooper, we get a lackluster demise. Essentially written off in The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson had the opportunity to save this character, but instead chooses to let her die. Phasma has become a Boba Fett level let down in this new saga.

Each character is given the opportunity to show their more intimate, personal colors in The Last Jedi. Rey, most notably, grapples with her self-worth, her potential, and her lineage. Much of which she comes to terms with on her own, showing her off as an independent, strong character. She continues to own her strong female protagonist role, which is important. One very significant aspect to her character is tackled in The Last Jed: her parents. Another Rian Johnson course correction choice. Rey’s lineage is nothing. Her parents are nobodies, just drinkers and gamblers who sold her off for money. I think this speaks volumes about Rey. Star Wars has always had strong themes of family, lineage, destiny, and the like, but finally we have a character that comes from nowhere, from nobody, and continuously proves herself to be important. We already have a strong role with Kylo Ren dictated by his familial lineage to the Skywalkers. Why would we need two characters like that? Why does she need to be anybody? Tied to Obi-Wan, or Snoke? That would’ve been a weak character choice, because suddenly her power, her strength, isn’t about her at all, it’s about who she came from. Rian Johnson’s move to make her “a nobody” is powerful, and makes Rey far more impressive.

WRITING / DIRECTION

The Last Jedi is a visual marvel, let me start off by saying that. When the action gets going, the movie shines, it soars above a lot of the competition. There are several sequences that are unlike anything we’ve seen in Star Wars before. In many ways, The Last Jedi could be seen as the best film of the whole series yet. The CGI is top notch, and with some amazing set pieces, brilliant cinematography, wonderful performances, and that genius John William’s score, The Last Jedi is a gem in many ways. But there are also a few things that hold the film back from the gold star, gold standard of Star Wars. First of which is its dramatic action. The film starts out wonderfully. It’s exciting, tense, and engaging. But as the second act begins, the lengthier chunk of the film, the movie comes to a screeching halt. The pacing of the film stops in its tracks. We’re taken to three different areas, following our main trio (Rey, Finn, and Poe), but what we experience them doing can feel very unengaging. Rey’s experience with Luke can feel very trivial at times, although it’s the most interesting of arcs in the film. Our interest in Rey’s Jedi future is what keeps us engaged, even when she’s just following Luke around while he fishes and milks some aliens for blue milk (I’m still not sure how I feel about that). Rey carries much of the film through this mid-lull, especially with her chemistry with Adam Driver through their Force connection.

Poe Dameron’s position in the film is supposed to work in the audience’s favor, as he is impatient and eager to make a stand against the First Order, while Vice Admiral Holdo (played by Laura Dern) has plans to play the long game. There are a few reasons why this arc didn’t work too well, but the main reason to scrutiny I have is Holdo. Holdo plays her cards close to her chest very needlessly. While The Resistance is being chased by the First Order (in the slowest space chase EVER), she decides to fly just out of range of the First Order’s cannons for no reason given (until towards the end). She’s immediately unlikable. Poe stages a mutiny against her, and not even that gets Holdo to just share her plan. A lot of what comes into fruition within this plot line is completely undone and rendered useless later on as well. Plus, if Holdo shared her plan, we could’ve avoided the whole Finn and Rose casino sabbatical, side quest all together.

Finn and a new character, Rose (played by Kelly Marie Tran), go off ship to find someone else who can get them onto the First Order’s lead ship, that’s been tracking them through light speed, undetected. The premise of this plot line is weak. It takes us completely out of the main issue at hand. And to add more hurt to the out of place quest, it’s not even an interesting sequence. Any time they cut to Finn and Rose on this separate planet looking for some guy, I felt my soul roll its eyes. Sure Benicio Del Toro is in this part, but his character was a plot device, and a weak one at that. This whole sequence just needed some stakes to it rather than diverting our attention to a completely unrelated area. I was never really compelled with this side quest, it’s the real culprit of why the film seemingly halted. The one good bit that this part of the movie gave us is the introduction to some young, slave kids who seem like they’re going to usher in a new era of Force users/Resistance fighters. Are these kids going to be a part of the saga that Rian Johnson is heading up after this trilogy comes to a close? At least there was that little bit of intrigue.

Something I did want to touch on with The Last Jedi is Rian Johnson’s creative direction with the saga and how it’s in stark contrast to what JJ Abrams seemingly laid out in The Force Awakens. I’m not upset that this movie for taking liberties with some things, as I have stated earlier, but I want this saga to get on some stable ground. Say what you will about the prequel saga, but they were all distinctly under George Lucas’ vision and there’s no disputing that. They may not be the best individual films, but they all felt intrinsically connected to the universe set up in the original trilogy. From The Force Awakens to The Last Jedi, however, it feels like the creative differences between Abrams and Johnson are in direct contrast. This leads the saga to feel a bit shaky. Especially when you consider all the plot points and themes that were set up in TFA and almost abandoned in TLJ. Again, there’s Snoke’s part and Rey’s parents, but also Kylo’s obsession with following in Vader’s footsteps (I did find this to be a positive course change though, kill the past), and the Knights of Ren seem to have faded out into obscurity (however there is room for them to make an appearance in Episode 9). JJ does have his work cut out for him for Episode 9, however I feel like Rian Johnson’s moves in The Last Jedi will force JJ to brave new narrative avenues in the next installment. Much of the reluctance from the fan base on JJ’s return is the fear he’ll just stick to the status-quo of Star Wars. He’ll hit the checklist of “What Makes A Good Star Wars Movie” but won’t do anything to push the envelope and do something a little more daring with the universe and the characters. I don’t think there’s any arguing against what Rian Johnson did was very daring. Johnson takes a lot of risks and I respect that a lot, even if there are a few that don’t quite hit.

FINAL RATING: 7.75/10

The parts in The Last Jedi that work, work phenomenally well; contrarily, the parts that don’t, stick out plainly. There is a lot to love about this movie, but with this movie comes a good bit of uncertainty and unsteadiness. Rian Johnson makes a lot of bold choices, pushing the envelope of what we know as Star Wars, but some of those choices falter in their execution. I will commend this film though for making several call backs to the original trilogy and even the prequels without it feeling like a copy, kind of like The Force Awaken’s basic plot structure and how it closely resembled/imitated A New Hope. The movie can be a lot of fun and provoking, but there’s plenty that this movie leaves to be desired. I think general audiences will come out of this movie very happy with it, but the Star Wars followers like myself have a chance to really enjoy it, but I’m sure will find at least a few things to be irked about.

#star wars #star wars the last jedi #the last jedi #the force awakens #sw #sw tlj #luke skywalker #darth vader #sci-fi #science fiction #review #film review #movie review #out of 10

[aion-rsa]

Shades of Gray in R. A. Salvatore’s Song of the Risen God

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Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in Song of a Risen God? We break down the nuanced morality in R.A. Salvatore's trilogy-ender.

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This post is sponsored by Tor Books.

Readers who have been following R. A. Salvatore’s career since his early days and the introduction of his iconic character Drizzt Do’Urden, know that the author has never followed a clear path that defines good and evil. In his most recent novel, Song of a Risen God (the conclusion to "The Coven”" trilogy), Salvatore doubles down on the idea that both good and evil can be found among any group of people—and that even those striving toward what they believe is "good" will find themselves at odds with others doing the same.

Although Song of the Risen God is the 14th novel set in Corona, it stands on its own remarkably well. It launches like a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, while also introducing two of the pivotal (and likable) characters of the novel: Brother Thaddius and Sister Elysant, two monks of the Abellican Church, discovering treasures of their religion in a long-hidden tomb. 

Thaddius draws on the magic of the holy Ring Stones of his church, while Elysant performs sophisticated and powerful martial arts with her staff to ward off the bandits threatening them. When they face the wraith of a long-ago saint, they accept his blessing rather than seeking to destroy the undead—showing a wisdom frequently lacking among sword-and-sorcery heroes and role-playing gamers alike. It puts the Abellican Church in a good light to begin with these characters. Clearly, this is the group we’re meant to identify with... Or is it?

Soon, we read a letter from Ag’ardu An’grian, an unknown writer with an unknown master, whose identity isn’t uncovered until the very end of the book. Through this writer, who takes a neutral and multi-perspective position, we learn of the struggle between the xoconai, a people who serve the god Scathmizzane, and the humans, whom the xoconai believe serve the demon Cizinfozza. This puts the xoconai in the light of the conquerors, but we understand that if Ag’ardu An’grian can view humans as people, perhaps the xoconai are not needlessly evil.

And then we meet Aoleyn, possibly the most powerful magic user in the world, who defeated a demon and who would have burned her own people, the Usgar—a people who had violated and controlled her—if the xoconai had not done it for her. While Aoleyn is sympathetic, and clearly fighting for the good of her friends, if not the world, there’s no question that she rejects the culture from which she came, even while using the power she learned from within that culture.

All of this happens by the end of the first chapter, and already, an understanding of who is good and who is evil is completely up in the air. The Usgar with their slave-taking and patriarchal ways are apparently no loss to the world, but are the xoconai any better? The Abellicans, who seem to be a force for good in the world, frequently hold disdain for their female members, no matter how fierce and competent Sister Elysant is.

The elves, who teach rangers to care for the world and appear to have a strong moral code about the good of the world, choose inaction rather than helping any side in this war. The xoconai believe that anyone who doesn’t obey their living god is a heretic whose death serves to power their holy magic, but the Abellicans also believe that outsiders who use the sacred stones of their religion are somehow demonic, and it takes time for Aoleyn to gain their respect and understanding.

Among the dominant human cultures, the clear structure of power is with men at the top. Their feudal kingdoms, even with benevolent rulers, have little in the way of upward mobility for anyone not born to noble families—something one of the kings seeks to change, but change is slow in coming. The xoconai, on the other hand, are egalitarian among genders, and their political leaders are determined through democratic elections on a two-year cycle. If the xoconai weren’t brutally conquering the human lands and sacrificing humans to their god, they’d seem like the better option. But Salvatore prevents readers from ever being able to take the easy road to right and wrong.

Instead, he relies on his protagonists, who keep their minds open and keep their morals pointed unequivocally toward mercy and understanding, to guide readers through the uncertainty of the world. He allows secondary characters full of their own preconceptions about right and wrong to grow and change, becoming surprising allies for the protagonists.

Occasionally, the line between antagonist and protagonist is quite thin, and only the end of the novel shows which characters are on the right side of history (even then, with a certain amount of ambiguity). It helps, of course, that there’s a healthy dose of swashbuckling and a delightful system of magic—which the characters, particularly Aoleyn, use to wonderfully dramatic effect—to move the story forward.

read more: 10 Fantasy Books Series That Could Rival Game of Thrones on TV

Given the scope of the novel and the sheer number of characters and points of view that Salvatore uses, it could become easy to lose track of some of the subplots, but instead, Salvatore seeds them successfully throughout, so that when the threads of story come together, the characters are all in the places where they need to be.

While there are many men who drive the story forward, it’s also refreshing how many female characters are at the center of events. In the final confrontation of the novel, the characters who make the critical decision choosing the path of the world are women.

While I’ll admit a soft spot in my heart for Cattie-Brie, one of Salvatore’s major female characters in his Drizzt books, I was truly impressed by the growth in portrayal of his female characters since those early books; they’re complexly drawn with rich inner lives. Likewise, his worldbuilding, in a world he created without direction from a game publisher, is likewise richer. While it maintains the high fantasy flavor that made his works in the Forgotten Realms so popular, there’s a sense in Corona of an investment in this original world and its history that’s deeper.

Song of the Risen God is absolutely a novel in keeping with Salvatore’s legacy of exploring those gray areas between good and evil—and finding good within a people where only evil is expected. But it’s also a work that shows how Salvatore has grown and developed as a writer over his long career. With this trilogy concluded, it will be exciting to see where his next project will take him... and us.

Song of a Risen God is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

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Feature Alana Joli Abbott

Feb 27, 2020

Fantasy Books

from Books https://ift.tt/2wdVc44

#aion-rsa #Books

[knightofbalance-13]

Gainax Retrospective Review 4: DieBuster, the return of an old friend.

Sequels are a...mixed bag. Some are good, some are bad, some are great and some are just awful. This is for a variety of reasons ranging from poor scripts to bad acting to just not caring. However, one overarching aspect separates the bad from the good: the spirit of the original. SO long as a sequel has the spirit of the original it has a good shot at being a good sequel. This is because at essence a sequel is simply the original work extended. It’s the same show just a little different. And Diebuster does a good job at this. Sadly, it’s only a good job, not a great one.

Made in 2004 as the twenty fifth anniversary special of Studio Gainax, Diebuster follows the adventures of Nono, an eternally optimistic android girl who looks up to a legendary hero and wishes to be a space pilot to fend off the scourge of the space monsters. As she tries to be a space pilot, Nono meets a true space pilot named Lal’c who, in turn, is calm, cool and kind of indifferent in opposition to Nono. Together along with the cold hearted rival Tyrcho and the charming Nicola, they fight against the Space monsters. While the story is short it does have it’s fair share of twists going from our hero Nono ending up being a Buster Machine (heavily implied to have powers that exceed even the original: GunBuster), the things they thought were space monsters actually being protectors of humanity that were assaulting certain members of the human race because they were evolving into the real space monsters and the person that Nono worshiped “Nonoriri” is actually Noriko from the original. SO the plot is a bit more complex and ingaging than before...if it was able to match the energy and focus of the original. GunBuster, while having a mostly straight forward plot, kept a great focus on the story that made it’s short length work as well as it did and had a lot of vibrancy to company it. Diebuster’s focus skips around a bit and the energy at times feels lacking in comparison. In short: The age of the story really shows as it feels like an old person trying to reenact an old event: Impressive but as good as the original.

The themes of the show are...hard to pin down. Again, GunBuster’s focus made this easier as it kept on three themes constantly while Diebuster’s themes jump all over the place. Diebuster has a theme about growing up using the Topless as a metaphor as when a Topless reaches a certain age they lose their power and adults often treat them with contempt...But Topless often curse their abilities and some people have become messed up by it so it’s hard to say if the show is saying if growing up is good or bad. I guess it could be saying that Growing up is hard but necessary but the Topless are depicted as needing that power is it still doesn’t make sense.

The next theme has a bit more focus. This is the theme of character interactions in the story and how the events change them, There is a lot of focus here as throughout the story we focus on the many ways the people interact with each other and how they change one another, similar to Evangelion and FLCL. Except whereas Evangelion only focused on the negative and FLCL focused on the positive, Diebuster tries to take a look at both sides with a slightly optimistic viewing similar to GunBuster’s, it even has a similar talk in it in whether or not humans should try to survive and risk evolving into space monsters (which in of itself could be an observation on how a war slowly turns you into your enemy) or if they should just die with letting people in the future decide whether or not their monsters. Again, the show doesn’t have the focus needed to completely convey this but it does do a better job.

There is also a third theme of achieving impossible stunts through the good ol’ motto of “Hard Work and Guts.” It comes up a couple of times and is used for some spectacular feats and really gets you engaged but I’m talking about it here because...well, there’s another anime that take this concept and busts right through it next time so I’m gonna conserve my thoughts there.

Now let’s take a look at the characters for this round. First person we’re taking a look at is the main character Nono. Nono is an energetic, cheerful girl who wants nothing more than to pilot a Buster Machine just like her hero who is later revealed to be Noriko from GunBuster. Ironically, Noriko and Nono are pretty much complete opposites as characters. Noriko was shy, nervous and not very self confident whereas Nono is energetic, not shy in the slightest and is full of confidence (excluding when it comes to her surrogate sister.) Noriko’s problem came from her potential never being tapped into ,due to her mental failings, Nono’s problem is that she never gets the chance to show her potential. So this makes DieBuster develop in a much different way. Nono, while silly at times, displays immense amounts of seriousness when the situation calls for it and takes her job as a protector of humanity very seriously. She works very well as a contrast to Noriko and they would have made some very interesting interactions with Noriko had they ever met. In contrast, she’s like a happier version of Simon who just never got her chance until everything changed for her and she has some sibling problems like Naota but these are more her fault than the siblings. Another flaw of hers is her inability to read people thus causing her to hurt some people but then this is balanced out by her surprising ability to inspire others through her simple and pure spirit. All in all, a fun character with a quite a few quirks that make her endearing. However, she lacks the conflict of her predecessor that made her so compelling.

The second character under our scope is Lal’C. She is an ace space pilot and a Topless, a person with special powers that allow them to defy pjysics through mechas...And it’s not Spiral Power. Cool, great under pressure and acts as a reluctant mentor to Nono, Lal’C is the Kazumi of DieBuster who acts as a great compare AND contrast to Kazumi: the contrast comes from the fact that while Lal’c acts as the Kazumi of this show she’s actually not that sensitive or kind as Kazumi: She’s blunt, rude, cold as hell and can be pretty damn rash. She does have a kinder side that Nono brings out that is the result of Nono’s positivity that we see but most of the time she’s just rude.The comparison comes from the fact that she’s honestly trying to help Nono the best she can, worries greatly about her and is very close to her. She does her best to help Nono achieve her goals and acts as her superior for a good chunk of the anime until Nono is revealed to be the seventh Buster Machine and the tables turn with Lal’C being forced to rely upon her student. However, what makes Lal’C even better than Kazumi is that the relationship brings out a lot of character development from her while Kazumi for the most part didn’t get too much from Noriko in terms of story. The pilot goes from being a powerful but cold, distant, rude and kind of pessimistic girl to someone who keeps fighting and fighting despite the odds with lots and lots of loyalty to Nono. All in all, out of the three successors to Kazumi I’ve seen, Lal’c is definitely the best one.

Third up is Tynco, the Jun Freud of our little sequel. Another Topless that is constantly trying to surpass Lal’C, displaying a great amount of disdain with her fellow Topless and is a complete cynic when it5 comes to their powers, believing only in cold hard cynicism. But we latter see that this is due to the fact that she was unable to help her dear childhood friend who died despite all her powers as a Topless, thus leading her to who she is today. But through Nono’s constant exposure and her dedication and optimism she regains that hope  in her powers and becomes a much softer and kinder person. While this is all well and fine, she is simultaneously both a weaker and stronger Jung Freud parallel. Stronger because the anime takes time to develop her and have her change feel more in depth and natural but weaker because that test of character Jung went through never really happens to Tynco and what test of character she does have feels...out of place. She’s a nice character and everything but she just feels too out of place and...bricky.

Finally we handle Nicola who is the reflection of Coach Ohta at first. He’s handsome, smart, wise, older, been in the battle far longer than most of the characters ect. He flirts a lot with Lal’C which does lead to some interesting scenes with him and Lal’C and he does do some work to try and find out what is going on, Nicola is juts not that good of a character. In fact, he’s rather bland and uninteresting beyond the flirtiness of his character. He doesn’t hold Coach Ohta’s firmness yet understanding, his love for humanity, his ability to see the inner depths of characters or even his presence. He isn’t as morally ambiguous, intelligent, manipulative or complex as Gendo. he’s not as wacky, intelligent, funny or entertaining as Kazumo making Nicola the weakest incarnation of the Coach character. Not to mention he tries to rape Nono at one point so...I think we should move on.

The sound of the anime is still very good. It’s opening song Blue Magic is uplifting and smile inducing benefiting the less serious DieBuster and it’s protagonist although it is a pop song so you might not think that it is all that great. The rest of the music uses the good ol orchestra to convey the feelings of the scenes which it does a great job at doing, especially the part with Tynco getting back into action. It also uses a few pieces from GunBuster which are utilized excellently. The voice acting is pretty good as Nono and Lal’C have teh perfect voices to match their characters but this show is only in Japanese so I can’t make a full judgement.

The animation and art have taken quite the leap from before. Even though FLCL was very well animated top where even it’s messier scenes befit the wild atmosphere of the show, DieBuster seem to take bits and pieces from every Gainax show before with the large expressive eyes and colorfulness of the original GunBuster, the more realistic bodies and faces of NGE and the wild energy and glowing effects of FLCL, marking it as an evolution in the art styles. The mechas are heavily personalized and stand out which makes them a joy to watch in battle and the enviroment5s are very well made in that they always capture the scene and it’s tone like Nono’s leaving in the dark and cold signifying a tough road ahead. The animation is very well done, the fights scenes are fluid and a treat to watch, the wacky moments are wild and uninhibited and the casual, more heartfelt scenes are subtle and beautiful.

All in all, DieBuster is a good show whose greatest flaw is that it lacks the focus of the original GunBuster. It works as a 25 year anniversary show in that it contains a lot of references and gags to GunBuster if not a few to FLCL but it doesn’t work as well on it’s own. DieBuster is fun to watch and entertainingt but it lacks the depth that the original had and makes mistakes that the original didn’t. In the end, it feels like the old girl tried to pull off the magic that happened before but all those years worn on her and she could only perform a valiant effort. Although the animation and art as well as sound were great, the other aspects didn’t hold up.

So at the time it seemed like Gainax had hit something of a wall: What could they do next when even the sequel to their greatest anime so far didn’t work? It looked as though their first shot was going to be their last, especially as Hideaki Anno took a good chunk of the people at Gainax to found Studio Khara. But little did anyone know, their greatest work was about to happen a mere three years later. A show that held the heart of GunBuster, the intelligence of NGE, the energy of FLCL and the style of DieBuster while pushing the limits of everything before it and beyond.

Ladies and Gentlemen, ten years ago, that very anime was aired. And it is the aniem I have been building up to. The Magnum Opus of Studio Gainax and the subject of our final review: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!

Prolouge GunBuster Review NGE Review FLCL Review

#gainax #studio gainax #diebuster

[admittedlynotspartacus]

2017 Best Picture Nominees Ranked

This year in film, Colin Farrell ate a bunch of Big Macs for The Lobster and then slimmed out for Fantastic Beasts, only to be replaced at the end by Johnny Depp; Natalie Portman cried in close-up for two hours; Patrick Stewart played the year's second scariest white supremacist; and Paul Dano rode a flatulent Daniel Radcliffe across the sea. Of course, none of these are nominated for Best Picture, because the Academy still consists of a bunch of old white guys who were alive during the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, yet still gifted La La Land more nominations than Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg COMBINED. However, moving on... here are the 9 films nominated for Best Picture ranked in my oh-so-humble opinion from "You can probably skip this" to "Run out and see this immediately."

9. HACKSAW RIDGE

Director: Mel Gibson Starring: Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn & Hugo Weaving The Plot: Mel Gibson uses the inspirational story of a religious man who refuses to carry a weapon into battle as an excuse to make the most violent movie since Passion of the Christ. Thoughts: Gibson executes the battle scenes effectively, and Andrew Garfield turns in a good-but-not-great performance, but there's no real maturation as a director here. He paints with broad colors a story that could've had tremendous power had there been more nuance. There was more to explore with this character's relationship to God, but it's largely eschewed for Old Hollywood beats and brouhaha. Overall, a fairly mediocre war movie, but this time with Jesus. Nominations: 6 (including Picture, Director, and Actor) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

8. LA LA LAND

Director: Damien Chazelle Starring: Emma Stone & Ryan Gosling The Plot: Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are adorable, talented, and wonderful and you love them... right? Thoughts: The entire gimmick of this Hollywood throwback musical is that it is a Hollywood throwback musical. It's in CinemaScope, everything looks Technicolor, and most of the numbers are filmed head-to-toe in one shot. It's technically proficient work by a clearly talented filmmaker, yet there is so little joy (and talent for singing and dancing) on display in the musical moments that it's hard to even understand the point. Ryan Gosling's too-cool-for-school hoofing and Emma Stone's whispery vocals are nothing compared to Gene and Debbie, Astaire and Rodgers, or even Judy and Mickey. And because there are so few songs, most of the film is occupied by textbook rom-com beats (however charmingly acted). See it for the instrumental score, which is on full display in the film's final ten minutes. Nominations: 14 (including Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Original Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

7. FENCES

Director: Denzel Washington Starring: Denzel Washington & Viola Davis The Plot: Dude says he's gonna build a fence, but mostly just acts like a shithead. Thoughts: Your enjoyment of this film is going to be largely based on how you handle the "stagey" factor. Denzel has effectively shot the classic play, rarely opening it up beyond the backyard set. In this way, it bears resemblance to the films of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Glengarry Glen Ross, but he lacks the directorial panache of Nichols and Foley, so the scenes often operate all on the same level with little dynamic change. For me, this got exhausting for 2 and a half hours, and the text (which remains beautiful poetry by the late great August Wilson) could've used trims, particularly when we see in Denzel's face the suffering of Troy so clearly that he doesn't need to talk about it much. Such is the power of the close-up, and even though it captures two phenomenal screen performances by Denzel and Viola, it ultimately robs the play of the power it would yield were we just watching them do it onstage. Nominations: 4 (Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress & Adapted Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

6. LION

Director: Garth Davis Starring: Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar & Nicole Kidman The Plot: Young boy separated from his mother has no interest in finding her until he becomes rugged Dev Patel, is mildly insulted at a party, and has access to Google Earth. Thoughts: The first hour of Lion is among the most beautifully shot pieces of cinema this year. Sunny Pawar is a magnetic protagonist, and Garth Davis and cinematographer Greig Fraser find a visual language for the story of a young boy who is separated from his family and tossed into an overwhelming world that is both epically Dickensian and visceral. It's unfortunate that the moment he grows up into Dev Patel (in a very game performance), much of the film's engagement is lost and we are subjected to long scenes of Patel staring at a computer screen that oftentimes come across as advertisements for Google Earth. Still, if you don't weep like a baby at the ending, I doubt you have a soul. Nominations: 6 (including Picture, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress & Adapted Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

5. HIDDEN FIGURES

Director: Theodore Melfi Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae & Kevin Costner The Plot: Nasty women get shit done. Thoughts: The most conventional of the Best Picture nominees gets its power from two key elements - that it's a story we don't really know, and that it's about three black women. It's a refreshingly old-fashioned American film about unlikely heroes that tells the familiar story of the space race from a surprising angle. And so, through familiar beats, the film is able to make an epic story personal, while also hitting the nerve of a country currently knee-deep in issues of race relations. Nominations: 3 (Picture, Supporting Actress & Adapted Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

4. HELL OR HIGH WATER

Director: David Mackenzie Starring: Chris Pine, Ben Foster & Jeff Bridges The Plot: Proof that everyone is getting screwed over by banks, including bank robbers. Thoughts: A tense chase movie set against the backdrop of an economically-paralyzed Texas, David Mackenzie’s “Western” transcends our 21st century understanding of the genre (loud gunfights, chases, and anachronistic music) without tipping its hat too hard to the classics. Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay is dynamite, featuring three principal characters brimming with emotion and trading dialogue that feels both true to life and wonderfully cinematic. It’s these characters and their dualities that give the film its epic scope.  And this is to say nothing of the final sequence, which finds a power in silence of which most films only dream. In a summer full of duds, this was the one to see. Nominations: 4 (including Picture, Supporting Actor & Original Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

3. ARRIVAL

Director: Denis Villeneuve Starring: Amy Adams The Plot: In which Amy Adams can talk to aliens, but still can't win an Oscar. Thoughts: Denis Villeneuve, of Sicario and Prisoners note, is one of the best contemporary filmmakers at creating a feeling of dread and anxiety. The opening sequences of his latest (shot beautifully by cinematographer Bradford Young) play with a kind of hypnotic, slow-burn tension that’s seldom seen in movies these days, let alone a big blockbuster like this one. Anchoring it all is Amy Adams, proving once again to be one of our greatest actresses. Her interactions with the truly alien-looking aliens, through a rectangular glass window on the other side of a room filled with white haze, are the centerpieces of a film which flirts with timely notions of global unity and boasts a few twists and turns as well. When it starts dealing out reveals, it becomes less and less effective, but the overall vision and feel of the film, grounded by Adams’ performance, make it something to behold. Nominations: 8 (including Picture, Director & Adapted Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

2. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Director: Kenneth Lonergan Starring: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges & Michelle Williams The Plot: Casey Affleck could learn some chill from his ginger nephew. Thoughts: The latest in the line of the “Boston grief drama” is among the most depressing things you’ll see this year. It’s also one of the funniest. Kenneth Lonergan has always walked the line of humor and heartache with painstaking accuracy, but never as well as he does in this masterful work. His picture of life is one where a never-ending litany of stupidities is ever present. Just because you’re dealing with the death of a loved one doesn’t mean you stop getting bad cell reception, stubbing your toe, or forgetting where you parked the car. It’s a tricky balancing act, one that major Hollywood movies eschew altogether, presumably because they don’t trust an audience to be able to parcel out what’s funny and what’s tragic. But in Manchester, the two emotions trade off, sometimes coinciding, to remarkable effect. And nowhere is this more embodied than in a grade-A performance by Casey Affleck; it’s one of those performances that is so perfectly realized you really feel like you know the guy; you understand the whirlwind of grief and anger that exists within him and how he’s masked it with a detached veneer. The acting overall is tremendous; Lucas Hedges is phenomenal in a breakout performance, and Michelle Williams makes the most of her limited screen-time. Lonergan and co. so fully commit to this truthful vision of a world wherein nobody gets an easy pass; sometimes you can beat it, and sometimes you just can’t. Nominations: 6 (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress & Original Screenplay) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

1. MOONLIGHT

Director: Barry Jenkins Starring: Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Janelle Monae, Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali The Plot: It's black gay Boyhood. Thoughts: It is absolutely baffling as to how this movie, based on a Tarell Alvin McCraney play, featuring not a single white actor, and focusing on the maturation of a gay protagonist, ever got made. But that’s not even the tip of the iceberg of the miracle that is Moonlight. It’s one of those movies that is so utterly transporting, so richly detailed, and so very very real that even though one knows painstaking work went into it, it feels as though it emerged fully-realized from a collective consciousness and fell into our laps right when we needed it most. The film begins in the familiar territory of hip-hop mythology - there’s a role model drug dealer and junkie mom, for instance - and yet it soon becomes clear we are being presented with the cliches and tropes of this type of film to shatter them and ultimately come back around to say, “Look at these people. They’re human. They’ve always been and always will.” There is beauty in nearly every moment, from the stunning cinematography (the scene in the water… the cooking) to the subtle score, to its performances (Alex Hibbert’s, Ashton Sanders’, and Trevante Rhodes’ collective turn as Chiron is staggering, and Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali will surely be recognized come Oscar time). It’s all in service of a singular vision - one that isn’t easy to pin down or put into words, but one that will surely stay with me for a long, long time.

But alas...

#oscars #oscars2017 #moonlight #lalaland #manchesterbythesea #hiddenfigures #hellorhighwater #hacksawridge #arrival #fences #damienchazelle #ryangosling #emmastone #barryjenkins #amyadams #academyawards

[nezothecat]

Chapter 3

There is a saying, that an A-rank adventurer can change the outcome of a battle, but an S-rank adventurer can end a war.

As soon as their conversation ended, Naell quickly went to the library to read on their family’s history. He sported a simple plain black polo and pants.

Fharom Beryldot:

‌Former B-rank adventurer. The artist of dual swords. He was injured after saving the Duke and King of the Western continent thus ending his career, as a peak B-rank adventurer. After the War of the Continent, he was given nobility as the Baron Of Beryldot. A small estate under Duke Mard of Arigare.

‘Duke Mard is actually the father of Naell’s ex-fiance. I did not know they go way back. This was not in the story, how frightening. Considering my father’s accomplishments and friendship towards the King and Duke, that is probably why my actions had been taken lightly.’

“But still to marry a Duke’s daughter to a Baron just because of friendship. I think I’m really taking this all too lightly as well.”

After some hours of reading, the bloodshot eyes of Naell scared a lot of people in the library. Especially since his reputation in their estate was somewhat still the lowest.

He was overwhelmed by the scope of their history.

Alicia Witner Beryldot:‌

‌One of the few S-rank adventurers in the world. Also known as the [Witch of Winter ] Married to a B-rank adventurer, Fharom Beryldot. Died in the Noble Summit after stopping the bomb, that would have started another continental war. Student of Sebastian Claus, former mage captain of the Western Continental Front (WCF).

Naell couldn’t express how surprised he was to know. The first villain of the book he read had these amazing parents and a butler that was the equivalent of a peak B-rank adventurer.

‘I guess the author wanted to erase the presence of this strong individual that would ruin the main protagonist’s limelight.’

‘Lucky for the author, I do not wish to join the battle that will soon unfold at the end of Volume 3. Heck, I can’t even write with both hands so do not expect me to wield two swords.’

Naell became curious and somewhat looked forward to seeing if he could use magic.

‘If I can use some sort of elemental magic, I could start flames when I’m cold. Cool myself when I get hot. Sell mineral water that’ll surely boom well and make vases or sculptures out of the earth’s free dirt.’ Naell shook his head out of embarrassment as he thought of those childish things.

‘Of course, I would never willingly taint my family’s name further by doing any of those. This cursed seed has done enough harm.’

‘After all, I am the son of Alicia Beryldot, fufufu.’

Luckily, the library wasn’t that packed when Naell unintentionally laughed like the villain he was once. But those people who did hear it, started spreading the new mystery within the Beryldot Library--- The Shrieking Book.

“Hmmm”

‘If I have time after reading all these books, I might as well ask elder Sebastian to train me with magic.’

Rumor has it that their young master, Naell declined the high school recommendation in the capital. Even the Duke who revoked his daughter’s engagement with the young master felt pity and tried his best to stop the tradition.

But even someone as high as a King could never stop something that was agreed upon by their ancestors without sound judgment or rightful reason; Therefore, as early as that moment in which Naell declined, Baron Fharom Beryldot had prepared for them to leave their nobility, only in which the young master was ignorant of the tradition.

This tradition stated that the successor of a noble should have his/her son/daughter admitted to the capital high school in which they will partake the rights of claim to the said position. In a case wherein the son/daughter declines the admission, the noble should prepare another successor in which he/she should also be capable of passing the high school entrance exam.

The problem in the Beryldot estate was that Lily was a normal girl just like her mother, Lilia without having any affinity to martial arts/magic. Not to mention, Baron Fharom was injured and incapable of holding the title without a successor in place. It was only possible at first because Alicia Beryldot, the first wife was capable of the title of Baroness.

Even back on earth when Naell focused on some books or works, he tended to forget or be unaware of his surroundings. That was why the Beryldot Family misunderstood Naell’s actions as somewhat determined to leave his nobility aside. It might’ve been selfish to some, but for the Beryldot Family who was living their lives as commoners in the past, it was more understandable.

Baroness Lilia came from the Northern Continent as a commoner. Her family was one of the casualties of war during which she was rescued by the Western Continental Front. In there, she worked as an artist at Duke Arigare estate. There she met Baron Fharom, a widower, and the rest was history.

It was in the middle of the afternoon that Naell decided to go home earlier because the library that day was quite full.

The Beryldot mansion was not big enough to have their own facility such as a library. Baron Fharom decided that instead of reconstructing the mansion into a bigger one, he would split the facility that would then be open to all his people.

As Naell was walking towards home, he spotted his sister, Lily with her toys—- or so he thought.

“Lily, what are you doing, isn’t it hot to be playing outside?” Naell concerningly asked as he saw Lily under the sun. What seemed like Lily’s toys, at a closer look, was a wooden sword and a stick. What seemed like playing outside was actually a stick and sword that was being swung.

During the course of the weeks, the relationship of Naell towards his family and people improved that only small misunderstandings occurred towards him. Especially with his cute sister, Lily finally having a brother that would play with her.

Upon hearing Naell’s voice, Lily hugged her brother then went back to grab her stick.

“I need to learn the arts and magic, brother.”

Lily was puffing her chest while swinging her stick and yelling loudly,

“fire, fiRE, FIRE!”

Naell smiled at her cute little sister trying her best to learn, but he couldn’t seem to understand her eagerness to do so, nor why she said “need”. He felt fear all of a sudden. He quickly dissipated the idea as he jokingly thought.

‘Tingling spider senses aren’t a thing on earth, more so in this world.’

“It is a good thing to learn dear sister, especially if you like it.” But after Naell had said those words, he saw Lily tearing up.

*sniff*

“I do not like arts nor magic. They are quite scary, but I need to learn in order to make this our permanent home.”

Naell was dumbfounded upon hearing Lily’s tearful determination. He realized the anxiety he felt was a bigger thing than he thought.

“...What do you mean?”

*******

*sigh*

After learning about their situation from her sister Lily, Naell went back to the library and studied more about that world’s law.

‘What the fudge have I been doing until now.’ Naell could only sigh as he was contemplating his actions till recently. Furthermore, he realized why the family of Naell Beryldot ceased to exist in the book.

In the novel, during the aftermath of his beating, Naell did not attend the high school in the capital.

’That is why even in Volume 2’s Noble Summit, Fhar--- My father did not attend it since he was no longer noble.′

Being a commoner itself was not a problem but one issue appeared starting from Volume 3 of the book.

‘War will engulf the continent, and there will be a big chance that the commoners will be part of the fatality of the war.’

Volume 3′s war wasn’t really a large-scale battle like the War of the Continent. However, it was a war involving a terrorist group that spread havoc throughout the continent by means of bombs. It was briefly explained in the book since the protagonist Andrew was still a student in the capital, but the economy during Volume 3 plummeted due to the trading of goods becoming dangerous.

‘Some nobles will prioritize themselves so many commoners starved and were sold as slaves. Not to mention, the bombs that exploded in some populated areas, resulting in the devastating loss of goods and human beings.’ Naell could only clench his fist as he imagined the consequences it would bring not only to himself but to his family in that world.

‘I took it too lightly, thinking we would be in the capital by that time, the safe haven of all places.’ He recalled how safe the capital was. The protagonist, Andrew always prevented any terror from approaching the kingdom. Most families of the nobles that weren’t capable of fighting, went to the capital for protection.

‘Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure if we have a residence there.’

The house of Beryldot was not poor as they managed their lands well, but they also weren’t rich enough to have the luxury of other nobles.

After hours of reading and contemplating, Naell decided to meet his father.

*******

*knock*

“Come in.” Baron Fharom said while taking a break from all the documents he was receiving regarding their lands.

Naell quickly opened the door and bowed down upon seeing his father.

#Transmigrated into a Noble's beaten son #isekai #transmigration #slice of life

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 370: Final Fantasy (1987)

This title screen doesn’t occur until a couple of hours into the game.

           Final Fantasy

Japan

Square (developer); Nintendo (publisher)

Released in 1987 for NES in Japan, 1989 for MSX, 1990 for NES in North America

Remade numerous times for various platforms, including mobile, between 1994 and 2016

Date Started: 11 June 2020

                     I decided it was time. There are a few things that I want to do in the future that all require me to have had a look at the first game in this apparently never-ending series. I had an original plan to cover the game in a single entry, as I’ve typically done with console games, but it’s clear to me now that to do it justice, the entry would have to be the size of small novel. Keep in mind that I’m fitting this in between my regularly scheduled titles, so I’ll cover as much as I can in this initial entry, you can all tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I can pick it up again at a future date.      We’ve seen eight Japanese RPGs prior to 1987 on this blog, representing a fairly wide range of subgenres, including a text/RPG hybrid (The Dragon and Princess, 1982), a Wizardry-inspired first-person dungeon crawler (The Black Onyx, 1984), and a number of console-style action games with limited RPG elements (Dragon Slayer, 1984; Deadly Towers, 1986). While these games don’t share much, they do have characteristics common for a genre in its toddler years–lots of unevenness, stumbling, and experimentation along ultimately unproductive paths.          

The game’s status screen. Those four orbs in the upper-left are going to become important somehow.

          To me, 1987 feels like the first year that Japanese RPGs learned how to walk. (We do have to keep in mind that there are more than 40 untranslated games between 1982 and 1986 that might change my mind.) The Ancient Land of Ys, Sorcerian, and now Final Fantasy feel like whole products in the way that their predecessors do not. That doesn’t mean that they’re original; Final Fantasy, as we’ll see, is mostly a composite of several American RPGs, particularly Wizardry, Ultima, and Phantasie. But when borrowing elements from a previous title, there’s a difference between doing it blindly and doing it craftily. In playing most clones, you get the sense that the developer of the clone didn’t know any better; that he included an element because he couldn’t think of an alternative; that he didn’t have enough experience with the scope of previous RPGs to truly understand when something works and why. Final Fantasy is something of the opposite. It strikes me as a product of someone who has really analyzed the best American RPGs and has deliberately created a composite of their strongest characteristics.       In fact, I’m willing to venture that at the time, it might not have been possible to create a better console RPG experience. It exemplifies the simplicity that we have come to expect from a console of the era. It doesn’t bog itself down in character creation or in a long backstory, and it requires minimal preparation in terms of reading a manual. It is the very essence of plug-and-play. As I started playing, I initially saw its approach as an object of criticism, but as the hours wore on, I began to understand. The game has a relatively detailed backstory; it just chooses to feed it to the player in small bites. It comes with an 84-page manual, but the first two pages cover everything you need to know to get started (the rest quite literally walk you through the entire first half of the game). Its one-line dialogues seem less like a limitation of the platform and more like an effort not to exhaust the player with too much text. I don’t always like the result, but I admire its success in what it wanted to achieve.            

The only backstory you get.

          So little has been provided on the backstory so far that I’m not even sure how to summarize it. A single-screen opening text crawl says that the world is in trouble (for some reason), but a prophecy says that four warriors will set things right. Enter your four warriors, “each holding an ORB.” That’s enough to start you off, but with every town and castle you visit, you learn just a little bit more. Not in the way–I hasten to add–that you learn more about the main plot of, say, The Legacy or Ultima VII. Those games have mysteries that you slowly unravel, but at least it’s perfectly clear from the beginning who you are and what your basic mission is. In Final Fantasy, on the other hand, you get the sense that your own characters know more than you do. After all, they each have an ORB. Why? Where did they get them? Why do people keep calling them “Warriors of Light”?      Character creation allows you to select four characters from six classes: fighter, thief, black belt, red mage, white mage, and black mage. Aside from the “black belt,” these seem mostly inspired by Wizardry, with the white mage taking the role of the priest (mostly defensive and healing magic), the black mage taking the role of the mage (mostly offensive spells), and the red mage taking the role of a bishop (able to cast both). The inclusion of a “black belt” class made me chuckle with remembrance of a time in the 1980s when “black belts” were considered the ne plus ultra of martial artists, and you had several games of that title and movies with black belt protagonists. And then dweeby kids we went to high school with started getting black belts, ruining the entire illusion, and we started worshiping more nebulous figures like ninjas whose designations couldn’t be bestowed by the local used car dealer running a “dojo” on the side.           

Party creation is just names and classes.

         Each character is assigned starting attributes in strength, agility, intelligence, vitality, and luck, this list coming from Wizardry but lacking “wisdom.” From these are calculated a variety of derived statistics: damage done, hit percentage, damage absorbed, and evade percentage.          

My white mage’s statistics towards the end of this session.

           Once you’ve selected a party, you’re locked in for the game. I selected poorly. I wasn’t paying attention to what the manual said about the different mage classes, and I went with a fighter, a thief, a black belt, and a white mage. A couple hours later, I realized that I really wanted two mages, or at least a red mage instead of a white. The thief doesn’t seem terribly useful–there really isn’t any thieving to be done in the game–and if I could do it over I would have replaced him with a black mage. My selections mean that I miss out on most of the offensive magic in the game. However, each class later gets a “prestige class” upgrade that introduces some more magic options.           

The opening scene.

         Gameplay begins outside a castle with an attached town (it looks like six attached towns, in fact, but the town icons all lead to the same locations). Towns have shops that sell weapons, armor, spells, resurrection, and potions and magic items, the selection getting more advanced as the game progresses. Inns are one of the few places where you can legally save the game (like Zelda, the cartridge came with an internal battery), the others being a variety of temporary magical structures (tents, cabins, and houses) that you can purchase from the magic shop. (Inns restore all hit points while these magic items restore only some.) Either way, save points are limited, and you have to pay to save.     

Buying an initial selection of weapons.

Checking in at the inn.

           Towns also have about half a dozen wandering NPCs, each of whom deliver a sentence or two when you approach them. From the ones in this town, I learn that someone named Lukahn foretold our arrival, and that he has gone to “join his colleagues at Crescent Lake”; the princess has been kidnapped; and the city of Pravoka lies to the east.            

I get a hint from an NPC north of two magic shops.

           At the nearby castle, we learn that Princess Sara has been kidnapped by someone named “Garland,” a former knight until something happened. (If the name seems familiar, it’s also the name of the duke in Zeliard.) He took the princess to a temple to the northeast. For a while, I’m dumb enough to think that this will be the main plot of the game.           

The king asks for my help. I suppose we’ll find out who “Lukahn” is later.

          So far, we’ve encountered a character system similar to Wizardry (classes, attributes, prestige classes, leveling) and a top-down exploration system with towns and NPC dialogue similar to Ultima, but outside we run into combat that couldn’t come from anywhere but Phantasie. Enemies face the party on the combat screen (left-to-right here, instead of top-down). You specify an action for each character–attack, cast a spell, use an item, drink a potion, or flee–and the game threads your actions with the attackers’ based on an underlying initiative score. As each character acts, his icon leaps forward and has an accompanying animation. This is cute at the beginning but (like Phantasie) soon just adds unnecessary time to the encounter. So does the silly dance that the kids do when they’ve won a battle.          

Battle options against a party full of pirates.

          Unlike Phantasie, there isn’t much consideration of enemy rank–any character can attack any enemy. There is a consideration of character rank. The character appearing first gets about 50% of the attacks, the next 25%, then 15%, then 10%. It’s thus important to keep the strongest, most well-armored character at the top. This is particularly annoying because certain enemy effects, like stunning and poison, plus fleeing battle, seems to cause the party to spontaneously re-arrange, and you spend a lot of wasted time untangling them.      The magic system is a hybrid. Final Fantasy uses spells with names and effects similar to Phantasie, with numbers indicating relative power, though all shortened to four characters for space reasons. So instead of “Healing 2” and “Fireflash 3,” we get HEL2 and FIR3. There are four spells per level and spellcasters can only learn three of them, which must create real agony for the red mage, who is mixing white and black magic. Anyway, instead of Phantasie‘s magic points system, Final Fantasy uses the “slots” system of Wizardry, in which each character gets a certain number of spell allocations per level, all of them restored when you rest.         I find the combat system fun and relatively tactical when exploring dungeons (where you can’t save or rest) and facing boss-level enemies. You have to carefully ration your spell slots, strategically use fleeing to preserve your resources, cast the right spells for the foes you’re facing, and find the right balance between concentrating your attacks and spreading them out, so that you kill the most powerful foes as quickly as possible, but don’t waste extra attacks on creatures killed by an earlier character.        

The white mage doesn’t get many damage spells, but she does get one that only works against undead.

           In general, however, combat becomes exhausting quickly. Both outdoors and in dungeons, you get yanked into combat (it’s always a surprise; you don’t see enemies on the screen) every 5 to 10 seconds of travel time. As long as you keep an eye on health levels, most of the outdoor combats are of negligible danger, so all they do is sap time. NESTopia comes with an “alternate speed” mode that you can activate by holding down the TAB key, but it only goes to a maximum of 240%, not the “warp” of other emulators. So I spend a lot of time just holding TAB and mashing my way through combat.    The game is pretty relentless in its generation of “random” encounters, too. If it decides that in 8 seconds, you’re going to face 3 ogres, and they’re going to get a surprise attack, there’s no fiddling that you can do to save yourself, not even using emulator save states. You can’t pause and wait until they pass like you can in Dragon Warrior because their appearance is based on movement rather than time. Duck into a town and the clock happily pauses until you leave again and then resumes. And the list of numbers generated for combat must be different than those generated for other purposes, because you can’t avoid the encounter by, say, casting a spell to force it to use the next set of numbers for a different purpose. You’re going to face those 3 ogres, and that’s that–unless you want to save and shut down the machine. There isn’t a lot of reason to avoid any one specific encounter anyway, but I thought it was amusing how futile it is to even try.              

Multi-level dungeons, where you cannot rest or save for long periods, are hard to survive without grinding.

          You don’t want to avoid encounters anyway because you need the experience. This is an extremely grindy game. I’m aware that some party combinations–four fighters?–might lessen the amount of grind early in the game, but overall it’s clearly designed with grinding in mind. The manual even tells you to go grind (or, in its words, “power-up by battling”) in strategic locations. You not only need grinding for leveling but also for gold, as each new town offers more expensive weapons, armor, and spells. Easily half the time I’ve spent on this game so far has been spent grinding.           

The manual makes it clear that grinding is expected.

          Leveling up happens immediately after the battle in which you cross the threshold, and like Wizardry, you get boosts in a random selection of attributes. The frequency of leveling has thus far been satisfying enough.          

My thief levels up at the end of combat.

          That leaves the game’s plot, which has been distressingly linear for this session, at least. What looks like a relatively open world map artificially channels the player through the use of terrain. At the beginning, the player can’t leave a small strip of land between the castle and the temple being occupied by Garland. Finishing the first mission is a simple matter of entering the temple and finding Garland in the first room. He attacks alone and dies quickly; the random monsters roaming throughout the temple are harder than him.        

Battling the first “boss” enemy.

         The princess is freed and returns to the castle, and one of the nice things about the game is that NPC dialogue in the castle and nearby town changes to reflect her rescue. The king and queen now offer thanks, and other NPCs who had lines about the princess have substitutes instead. Even in its later editions, Ultima didn’t often make such concessions to the changing game world, and it’s one of the several small signs that more care and craft went into Final Fantasy than the typical RPG of the 1980s.    In gratitude for her rescue, the princess gives the party a lute. The king has a bridge built from the land you’ve been able to explore to the main continent, extending the party’s range. He also tells the party to “make the ORBS shine again,” which is another clue as to the developing plot. As the party crosses the bridge, the title screen finally appears, suggesting that the game so far has been a prologue. A few text windows add here that the ORBS used to shine with light 2,000 years ago.             

Everyone in the area has different dialogue once you’ve rescued the princess.

             The party next encounters a witch named Matoya living in a cave to the north. She demands the return of her crystal. If you talk to one of her magically animated brooms, you get a secret key combination that brings up a map of the world with the party’s location and the locations of places to visit clearly annotated.

            The game world. You start north of the inner sea on the southern continent.

         Moving on, the city of Pravoka has been invaded by pirates. If the party wins a single battle against the pirates, the pirate captain (Bikke) capitulates and gives the party his ship. This opens up the game world a little. The problem is that the ship can only embark and disembark at docks, and the dock to which it is attached is on the continent’s inner sea. There are only a few places to land from here. A variety of sea monsters attack the ship, but frankly I wonder why we bother to stop and fight some of them. You can imagine that that the “sahags” are clambering aboard the ship and engaging us in melee combat, but why are we fighting sharks?

           This game likes to include Dungeons and Dragons enemies but with skipped letters. I suppose “sahags” are sahuagins, but they could also be seahags.

          West along the sea, the party comes to Elfland, another structure with a castle and town. The castle was sacked a few years ago by someone named Astos, who put their prince in a magical slumber. Only some herb from Matoya will awaken him. While searching for Matoya’s crystal, I come across a castle where the king says that Astos betrayed him. He asks me to get his crown from the Cave of Marsh.

         We find our ship waiting in Pravoka’s port.

           The Cave is easily the hardest part of the game so far. A three-level dungeon, it is full of tough random encounters, including plenty of enemies that can poison the party, for which we need to keep a large stock of curing potions. I had to grind, try, grind, and try again for several hours before I was able to survive the journey to the third level, the boss combat against several wizards (who are guarding the crown), and the journey back.  

           A difficult combat that I had trouble winning with all my characters alive.

        Returning the crown to the mysterious king, we find that he has tricked us and that he’s Astos. His triumph is short-lived, and soon the party has left the castle, Matoya’s crystal in our hands, Astos’s body on the floor. Thus begins a lot of backtracking. We have to circle back through Elfland to the ship, take the ship to Pravoka, then walk to Matoya’s cave. Matoya takes the crystal and gratefully gives us the herb for the prince.

              The prince needs an herb. It has a different connotation if you say it that way.

            We thus reverse our travel and go all the way back to Elfland. The prince is awakened, and he gives the party the mystic key.

            I feel like we could have saved ourselves a lot of time by taking it from him while he was sleeping.

           I was wondering when I’d finally get this. Throughout the game so far–at both castles, the temple, and the Cave of Marsh–there have been multiple locked doors that require this mystic key. Now that I have it, I have to backtrack through just about every location I’ve visited so far. It’s mostly worth it, as some of the items I find are powerful weapons armor, but it’s still a lot of time.

             The runesword is a decent weapon.

           All the way back at the original castle, the key opens a door to a treasure chest that contains TNT, which turns out to be prized by the king of the dwarves, who is building a channel between the inner sea and outer. Once we deliver the TNT to him, he finishes the channel and now the ship can sail just about anywhere, finally opening up the world. I suspect I’ll still continue to find plot linearity, but we’ll see. 

            Now we can get around.

           I’m used to console games making things easy for the player and not requiring the type of mapping and note-taking that a computer RPG often requires. This game is a little different; if you don’t take some notes, you’ll swiftly lose track of who wants what object and why. The manual tries to instill a note-taking ethos in the player by suggesting bullet points at the end of each city. That’s fine for me, in 2020, at the computer, but I don’t know how I would have felt about it in 1990 on the couch. To the extent that console RPGs have any appeal to me, it’s that I can play them somewhat mindlessly from a semi-recumbent (or, let’s face it, sometimes fully recumbent) position. If I reach for an end table, it’s going to be at most for a potato chip or bottle of soda. 

         I haven’t spoken much about the graphics. I like the monster graphics. As for the protagonists, they are what they are. As usual, they look like children. The manual is clearly written for children. There’s something childish about all RPGs, perhaps all video games, but I wish that Japanese RPGs didn’t have to emphasize it so much. You have to imagine that it limited their markets. Kids may not mind role-playing kids but probably also don’t mind role-playing adults. Adults, meanwhile, probably don’t want to role-play kids. I hear a lot from readers who had Nintendos in the 1980s when they were kids and still look upon the games fondly. I don’t think I’ve heard from a single person who was an adult in the 1980s and started on the Nintendo. This is not true, of course, about personal computers.

                The manual not only walks you through the first part of the game step-by-step, but it also provides a summary of the walkthrough.

              But beyond the graphics, there’s an intriguing complexity to this one, and it helps me understand why the series became so popular. There’s still a lot to say about the influence of the game and the people who made it, so we’ll have a second entry after I’ve won The Legacy and Ultima VII.

         Time so far: 7 hours

         source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-370-final-fantasy-1987/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost