Half Life came out in 1998. The game was owned and created by Valve. In the fifteen years (well, fourteen) years since the game came out, technology has increased dramatically.
For example, here is the Half Life 1 original trailer:
Here is the Half Life 2 trailer:
As you can see, a big jump in quality, people on screen, AI tactics, etc.
One day, around 2004 some fans decided to remake the game. An upgrade is always nice. Technology had improved, and Half Life 3 didn't look like it was coming out. So, they started. They realized they would have to give it out for free, but they kind of knew that coming in.
And then they did more research and found out that they couldn't use ANY pre existing assets from Half Life or Valve.
"No big deal" you may say. "That was the point."
Let me reiterate. This means, no programming, no skinning (I'm not sure about models. I thought not, but some might), and no sounds or voices. They would have to make it COMPLETELY from scratch. Though, they could use the Source engine since Valve lets anyone use that to mod.
Much like Valve, they had to push the date back, a lot. It was originally supposed to in 2009. In fact, the game still isn't done. The Black Mesa mod lacks the Xen chapters. The Xen Chapters are well thought of to be the weak point in Half Life (as they are repetitive and require a completely different style of gameplay) but the group promises they will be finished.
But don't worry about Valve striking back. Valve actually did some promo work for Black Mesa on steam, let it be downloaded from Steam for free and they said they were excited to see it play out.
And, as Valve is known to hire people that impress them... I'd say quite a few of them got e-mails inviting them to work at Valve....
Here is Half Life's "Inbound" level
Here is Black Mesa's
Can we sit here for a bit and be impressed with how legal issues forced people to improve?
I WAS going to talk about the Half Life Source and the reason why it is what it is. There's a lot of legal and technical reasons why and it's fascinating.
Then Nintendo Direct had their conference and everyone starts talking about this:
They are remaking The Wind Waker in HD for the Wii U. To compare, here is Wind Waker run in HD on the Dolphin Emulator (this is NOT mine)
Yep, it's being entirely remade. New models, new backgrounds. There's not much done in the way of programming or models yet. (The woman with the jar is from Outset Island, but the location is Windfall. We also never see Link, Tetra, or Jar girl move) but the little we can see is beautiful.
Now, why are they remaking it and what is the minor controversy?
The official explanation for remaking the Wind Waker is that they are working on the next proper Zelda title, but they are reevaluating what makes the series "The Legend of Zelda" and so the next game will take a long time to make. (One of the things they are reevaluating is the game progressing in a linear order, the other is if it needs to be single player. Personally, I love linear games since it allows for characterization to grow (though I will say FFXIII was a bit TOO linear. I would like to go back and look at things, listen to things, pick up items I have missed) and single player games are a necessity in this day and age. People do want to play by themselves sometimes. Mandating multiplayer might dissuade players from buying it. Now, if it's optional like Journey, that would be okay.)
So, in the mean time, they are giving us this game. There's probably another reason.
They want to get familiar with the Wii U software and programming.
When new software comes out, the games fall one of three ways. Very original games, remakes, (Practically) Simultaneous releases, and sometimes new sequels.
Okay, that sounds like every game ever. Sorry. But with a new system, everyone has to relearn how to program. So, they either make a completely different game that will let them figure out how to program without dramatically hurting their brand (See Catherine, The World Ends with You, Devil May Cry, etc) or a remake/sequel where they already have at least some art and assets that they can reuse. And, even if they don't, they know what things will look like anyway. This allows them to focus on the ins and outs of the programming without worrying too much about other art and assets unless they conflict with the programming.
End result, they know more about the programming as they go onward.
That's not always the reason for remakes though.
As should be obvious by now, I'm a Kingdom Hearts fan. Kingdom Hearts celebrated it's tenth anniversary last year and it's gotten REALLY confusing. (Time Travel has been added to the series. The rules make very little sense. It turned a few minor things into major plot points. Other things got MUCH more confusing) Sly Cooper has also celebrated it's tenth anniversary, but all of the games were on the PS2 and no game has come out for a while.
How does Kingdom Hearts put all the information in one place while Sly Cooper boosts awareness for the (at that point) unannouced fourth game?
Remake time!
The Sly Cooper Collection was released a while ago and gave the new series creators a chance to go over the games, art, and gameplay on the PS3. The Kingdom Hearts 1.5 (a 2.5 is presumed to come out) Covers Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Re:Chain of Memories, and a movie of 358/2 (It was to be the full game, but they didn't have time to program it.) While Square has worked with the PS3 before, they haven't used it for Kingdom Hearts, and the series needs a refresher anyway.
Team Ico?
The Last Guardian will be completely different from the first two, but the first two games are hard to come by, and practice for the PS3.
Devil May Cry Collection?
Most of the games were on the PS2, and a new game is coming out.
However, most of these games are reusing a lot of assets from the original games and just upgrading the textures. As you can tell from the Wind Waker Wii U games, it's a complete upgrade. New models, new backgrounds, new programming (otherwise they would have more people around and more action)
The minor controversy around the Wind Waker remake is... why wasn't it Majora's Mask? My best guess is that either they didn't want too many remakes and Majora's works better for the 3DS. They already have the assets from Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask in the Nintendo 64 reused most of those assets. Since they already have the work done from Ocarina 3D, it would fit there.
Wind Waker had a different art style, was one of the debut gamecube games, and did a lot of for the series. Wii U would be a different fit. It would make a great impression.
Besides, the Cell Shading is always timeless, but improving it makes a GREAT impression.
When we left Tenenbaum yesterday, she had survived World War II by joining the Nazis for science and survival, discovered ADAM and ignored the consequences, helped create Jack with the specific purpose of overthrowing Andrew Ryan, and had created the Little Sisters in order to create more ADAM and again ignored the consequences such as increased insanity, the fact the little girls would get killed, and how Rapture was tearing itself apart throw increased emotions and super powers.
You'd think this woman is the lowest of the low and I've grown to love a villain.
It's the next part of her life that makes her fantastic. She changes.
The Little Sisters reawaken her maternal instinct and she realizes just how much she HATES herself. So, she takes a step back, reevaluates her life, and begins to change.
And by begins to change, I mean kidnap the little sisters, develop a a Tonic that allows you to remove the slug from the Little Sisters without killing them, kills any Splicer who tries to harm them, sets up a safe house in Rapture where the Little Sisters can grow up normally until she can get them to the surface, and works with the main character of Bioshock in order to beat Frank Fontaine so the Rapture nightmare can end.
And that's just pre/during Bioshock 1!
She makes her first real impression after the first boss battle of Bioshock 1. You have to be detoured through a room. When you walk in, a splicer is threatening a Little Sister, and Tenenbaum shoots him. Brigid Tenenbaum offers Jack the plasmid to save the Little Sisters. Atlas says he should kill the Little Sisters. She then offers advice and items (if you save the Little Sisters) throughout the levels as you learn more. And when you are almost killed for Plot reasons, she saves your life.
She comes up with the idea to stop Fontaine, and she gives the ending commentary.
But that is NOT the end of her journey?
Nope, because in Bioshock 2, she RETURNED to Rapture. She figured out someone was kidnapping girls to be Little Sisters again. She could have stayed where she was. She could have said it wasn't her problem.
Nope, she heads down to rapture, contacts Eleanor Lamb, the first Little Sister, and resurrects the first Big Daddy with the express purpose of saving the Little Sisters and stopping Sofia Lamb from continuing her path of destruction. (I've talked about Sofia already.)
Then, THEN, she works out a way to SAVE a Big Daddy, to turn him back to being a human (a feat thought impossible) and will use that research to find a way to...
Tenenbaum really managed to turn herself around. She's done war crimes, caused the downfall of society, rewrote the laws of nature...
and she also saw that all she did was wrong, should be corrected, shouldered the burden herself, and went above and beyond in order to save the city and the people she destroyed.
THAT is why I like Doctor Brigid Tenenbaum. She's incredibly smart, incredibly flawed, and works on fixing every problem that she caused. She hopes for a redemption she feels that she can never grasp. Who knows? Maybe she can't. She'll probably always torture herself over this.
But, the fact that she does try, and gives it her all, speaks volumes about her character. She does whatever she decides to do, and she does it with focus, with energy, and with a growing compassion.
When I started to pay attention to Bioshock, it was because of the moral issues presented in the story.
After I started to play the game, a character stood out to me. Doctor Brigid Tenenbaum. She's one of our main viewpoints throughout Rapture. She's a genius, she's a holocaust survivor, she caused the downfall of Rapture. She's working on fixing it.
We have a very flawed woman at the core of the Rapture story. And in those flaws she can explore every side of Rapture. Her backstory has her as a Holocaust survivor, but she was a bit more than that. She joined the Nazis because they offered her science and survival. Even though she was Jewish. Even though she was a woman. Even though she was trying to do genetics. And survive she did. She went along with experiments on her own people because she wanted to find out why people were the way they were. Smart, dumb, strong, weak, blond, brunette. What was genetics, how did it control who we were, and could it be changed?
And when she arrived in Rapture, it was for the same reason. Survival. A Jewish ex Nazi female scientists would NOT have done well in the world outside. The Jewish People weren't that well respected, and the fact that she was a female Ex Nazi scientist would have kept people from hiring her anyway. So, Andrew Ryan offers her another option. Survival. Survive in the underwater world of Rapture. Survive in a world where you can do your science no matter what and no one knows who you truly are. She accepts.
She arrives in Rapture and in a chance walk along the docks she discovers what will change Rapture forever. ADAM. She knows that there is a dock worker who had injured his hand in World War II. She knew that as of yesterday that man was still injured. She knows that today she is watching him play catch with the injured hand. He gives her a slug, and she begins her research. This is her way to survive here. In the world of Rapture, your life is dependent on how much and how hard you work. She doesn't run a shop, she doesn't work in a hospital. Her job is to do science. That may not always pay. Especially when you are a female scientist in the strange and new world of genetics. So, she goes to Frank Fontaine. The man with the money. The man with the ties. The black market man. More importantly, money is survival. It's her way to work in Rapture, otherwise, she'll be ignored and beaten by the masses again. Like always, she chooses survival.
And, eventually, chooses her own. She makes the discovery of several lifetimes. ADAM. Something that can rewrite anyone's genetic structure. Something that can fulfill her wildest dreams. It also causes physical degregation, insanity, increased rage, and addiction. She still goes through with it. She gets her money, Fontaine gives her protection. She, as always, SURVIVES. She survives at the cost of Rapture, at the cost of the little girls.
Yes, the Little Sisters. she creates them. ADAM is starting to run thin, the insanity is starting to break out so they have these ADAM filled bodies. And Tenenbaum figures out that putting the slug that creates ADAM into a young female hose will cause it to yield three times the ADAM when the host ingests it. It guarantees her job, so she tries to perfect it. She is probably involved in the Big Daddy side of it, where they turn political prisoners into mindless and ADAM drenched beasts. It guarantees her survival.
Until she spends just a BIT too much time around the Little Sisters. When she finds people who love her no matter what she's done. People who will probably die soon because of how she put survival before everything.
She changes then. Slowly, but significantly, she begins to unwind her ideology and begins to put the other children first.
There's been a lot cut out of Kingdom Hearts. This guy is in fact a minor miracle.
The first game was originally going to end with Chernabog (as either THE darkness or a personification of the Darkness) attacking Sora. Sora would fight his way up Bald Mountain and then the light from Kingdom Hearts would vanquish Chernabog like how the sun/God defeated him in Fantasia.
Lack of time, memory, and system power kind of squashed that idea. Which is a pity, it sounds AMAZING. However, they HAD finished the Chernabog model so it got thrown in as a boss fight in the last world. But, you just flew around and attacked. It was still cool, primarily because of this:
I'm still very surprised at the list of PS All Stars Battle Royale characters. Cole, Sly, Ratchet, Nathan Drake, Jak, etc. Those were no brainers. Raiden making it in over Snake was interesting but understandable. He has a game coming out. Big Daddy is a very happy pick. I adore Bioshock and he is the best option.
Except for Evil Cole (another character could have taken his spot) and a lack of female and PoC characters, the line up is pretty good.
So, why are some series lacking?
Lighting (and Final Fantasy) Have a few new games out, but so far we haven't seen Lightning, Tidus, or Cloud anywhere in the game. Cloud is their symbol, Final Fantasy X is being remade, and Lightning has FFXIII-3 coming up.
No one from Silent Hill or Resident Evil made it in. While the games are cross system, they debuted on the Play Station. Jill, Leon, Wesker... all would have been interesting concepts. Admitedly, all three also fought in Marvel Vs Capcom 3, but I don't know how much effect that would have had on the game now. And Pyramid Head from Silent Hill is always open. He might have been too similar to a Big Daddy though.
Atlus has it's own fighting game, but the Personas didn't make an appearance either. Neither did a stage from Catherine.
J'eanne D'Arc, Rayman, Street Fighter, Sonic, Tekken, WildARMS....
These are all Play Station branded games that would get some play. Why aren't we seeing them in the game?
At least we have DLC. Best of luck to Emmet and Kat.
When Luigi debuted on the NES, he had one role, he was the second player in a two player game. He was a palate swap, an option for friends to play together.
As time went on, he evolved into so much more.
Super Mario Brother's and SMB2, Luigi begins the first attempts to differentiate himself. His sprite is a bit more different and this begins his long standing twist of being able to jump higher while having less traction. This generally was his only role.
Until the Paper Mario series started. In the first game, Luigi keeps a diary. While he doesn't go on any of the adventures, he does talk about them, and how he's scared of ghosts.
That one line has had a dramatic effect on the rest of his characterization. Mario RPG was on the 64. The first game for the gamecube was "Luigi's Mansion" In it, Mario is captured and Luigi captures ghosts in order to save him.
The game was very good, if a tad repetitive and short. It also was the first Mario series game to let Luigi take a starring role. (Yes, we are ignoring Mario Is Missing) And, in it, we do see that Luigi may be braver than Mario. Mario has no problem with going into pits of fire to save Peach. Luigi is terrified of ghosts and still does it anyway.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, we see glimpses of him having his own adventures, that he continually lies about.
In Super Paper Mario? He's an outright villain. Okay, he was brainwashed, but he still attacked the heroes and was part of the final boss. The reason why he was the perfect host for the final villain was never said... but Super Smash Brothers has a few hints.
But before I get there, there is one other aspect to Luigi. His job in the Mario and Luigi series is to provide a comic relief. However, in doing so, he also reveals various aspects of his personality. He is either a heavy sleeper or is completely unfazed by Bowser. He will try to save his brother. He doesn't like it when he is lied too (though, again, he does lie himself) and he has some sort of dark secret in his past.
Now, onto Brawl.
While Luigi debuted as a palette swap of Mario in the first game (with his normal jump higher/less traction schtick) , his skill set in Melee grew a bit more diverse. In Brawl, he only has the basic Mario moves, he is faster than Mario, and his Final smash involves weaponizing "The Dark Side he embraced in his brother's shadow." Yep, Luigi has an evil side and he CAN conciously use it to distort reality.
So, to recap, we went from "a bit taller than his brother while jumping higher with less traction" to "A comic relief character with a penchant for lying, who will face his worst fear in order to save his brother, has become a villain at some points, and can distort reality through the power of his evil side."
Makes him a bit more awesome, BA, and frightening. Doesn't it?
What goes unmentioned is how PC gamers need to pull that off. Namely, they have to invest in higher end PC's or build their own. While I have no problem with that, I do have a problem with the continual investment. In order to play games so they look their best, you must always have the top of the line PC. And this level is constantly increasing. When I bought Psychonauts off of GOG for my laptop, it was unplayable due to my processor not being up to snuff. 4 years later, my standard House PC can play it fine. There's no stuttering, the images are smooth, and I can finally enjoy it.
With a Console, you make a one time investment. Okay, you could upgrade every six years or so, but at that point things will have improved dramatically. Here is Castlevania on the NES:
Here it is on the SNES:
Here is the N64:
And now, I'm skipping to the PS3/Xbox:
Will the PC version look better? Probably. I'm not denying that point. Do I play PC games? Yes. I love GOG.com and when I can bust out steam, I do.
But, in the end, does the particle effects truly effect the story? No. Will it effect your ability to play the game? Nope.
Someday, I may invest in building my own PC that I can upgrade. Steam and GOG has quite a few exclusive games I do want to try. I learned how to play chess thanks to Lego Chess, which has no Console equivalent. The mods for PC games can be fantastic and it's a lot easier to find deleted content with a PC than it is with a console.
But until then, I'll be quite happy with my portables and my consoles. It gives me exactly what I want to do at a less, overall, cost.
Specifically, how it relates to "The World Ends With You".
TWEWY was an original property developed by Square Enix. It was developed to help them understand DS programming for "Kingdom Hearts 358/2". Honestly, I think it's better then 358/2. We have complex characters, fantastic artistic design, an amazing story, changing relationships, and that's not even mentioning the gameplay.
But, moving on, what's more interesting right now is the revived interest in the project by Square Enix.
SE had casually brought up the game before, but no one new the severity until a recent Tokyo Game Show. Why? Because the KH3D demo had Neku in it. As time went on, Joshua, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all appeared. Tetsuya Nomura (the director of the Kingdom Hearts series and character designer for TWEWY) was asked about this, and he implied that the voice casting was for a future project. (Shiki, Joshua, Beat, and Neku had a few lines in game, but most "speaking" was done through text)
Well, KH3D was released, the TWEWY fans were very happy, then yesterday the SE PR department twitter tweeted out a link to the above website.
We know very little, but between the "Calling" background music, the style of the timer, and the Shibuya style background, it appears we are going back to Shibuya for another game set in TWEWY universe. (If you want a sneak peak, adjust your date on your computer. The art and music assets up to day 2 have been preloaded onto the site).
So, what is next?
Well, nothing until that timer hits zero. Tokyo Game Show will finish in the next few days so the timing is rather odd. Why is the timer set to expire AFTER the game show? If something was to be announced, why not set the timer for earlier? Is it a set up for the Square Enix Production Department show? But they should be focusing on the Final Fantasy's 25th Anniversary party.
Sorry for the massive delay you guys! I'm apart of Operation:Rainfall (as in, I'm helping with the website, articles, etc.) And was very busy up to and during E3. I'll try to get some analyses up later this week. What was your favorite announcement during E3? In the mean time: Tomb Raider!
I have never played any Tomb Raider Games. I'll have to change that.
