For the early Final Fantasies, what they lacked in processing power they made up in creativity and silliness.
For example, in the middle of Final Fantsay VI you have to act in a full 12 minutes opera on the SNES until a purple octopus tries to get revenge by dropping an anvil on you.
No, I'm not joking.
As it was on the SNES, it was revolutionary and amazing for the time, but everyone has at least some idea what an opera should sound like, so there was always the knowledge that - as amazing as this scene is- it fell flat.
Several years ago, Nobou Uemetsu started a traveling orchestra. He recomposed the songs so they could be played with a full orchestra and we could finally get a sense of what he was trying to make all those years ago.
"Maria and Draco" is ripe for that kind of remake. It had a few lines added to finish up the opera (in the original version, all the actors are knocked out and Locke adlibs until Setzer interrupts the performance) and we get a beautiful, operatic, video game music and how it should have been played all those years ago.
The show is well respected, known for crossing age and demographic lines, is lauded for it's fleshed out all female cast, and would not exist if Hasbro didn't decide to start a TV channel.
When you start a TV channel, you have two options. Make wildly original shows or show repeats. MLP fell into the "Original Shows" Category and has been a boon for Hasbro and it's marketing department.
The PS4 is speculated to be announced on February 20th.
The Xbox 720 may be announced before then.
Everytime something new comes out, there are the two instincts. Do something new, and do something old. Mario and Pokemon WILL sell systems. That is without a doubt. So will Nathan Drake. Sly Cooper still has buying power. Infamous might, but the way Infamous 2 ended who knows if it can go on to Infamous 3 with Cole.
As for Valve, Valve has Half Life 3/Half Life 2 episode 3. That is their ace in the hole. No matter what, people will buy the steambox to play this game. It's not going to be on GOG. No one really sells PC boxed games anymore, not when Valve made Digital Download so easy. If Half Life 3 comes preloaded and several months before it's released to the public on steam? Sweet Celestia, the sales would be enormous. People would buy it anyway, but that would push people on the edge over the edge.
People always crave the new and the familiar. The familiar can help them grasp something easier. It's why Mario and Luigi are used to sell Nintendo systems. People know how they work. People know they will be good games, or at the very least pretty decent.
People also crave the new. They have something in front of them, they want to know what it can do!
And that fresh blood is always critical. New creators give fresh ideas. Portal is a very original puzzle game. It started because Valve hired some new and forward thinking college students. They got a new, popular, and reasonably all ages series out of it.
If people and games just retread the same paths, they become stale. Others retread but mix it up to become more interesting. That doesn't always work out (I'm looking at you, Sonic Unleashed. Day parts were good, fun, and typical. Night parts... interesting but not as much fun)
But is important is that games try and learn. It's why Journey, Flower, and Shadow of the Colossus are well regarding, because they are unique. They take ideas and concepts that shouldn't work, and do.
It's also why Final Fantasy is having difficulty. They are trying very hard to change and keep their formula, but it is having trouble gelling. Fresh blood must come into Square Enix.
Then again, with a fresh system (A bit of Fresh Blood on it's own) we get The World Ends With You which is one of the most original and FANTASTIC games I've played.
Everything needs a new idea, a new system, so new blood. It gets creative juices flowing, allows old ideas to become fully fleshed out and realized, and let's people resee classics in a new light.
To the Steambox, WiiU, PS4 and Xbox 720 (or whatever you'll be called) ! May we have fresh games and wonderful ideas to look forward to in the future.
The last game in the Ace Attorney trilogy wrapped up a saga of love, law, and trust. (Obviously spoilers ahead)
I'm going to be focusing on the third game. The first covers so many different kinds of love and the law in the Ace Attorney series is pretty messed up.
Trust, however, is a major point in the game. Phoenix relies on trust because he may not always know what he is doing, but he knows what he is going for, an aquital.
He has trust in Maya, he has trust in Mia. He has trust in Pearl, Miles, Larry, Gumshoe, and even Franciska has worked her way into his trust.
This all comes to a head in Case 3-5 where every bond he has built up gets tested.
Miles Edgeworth is the main testee. Miles Edgeworth starts off in the first game as the rival. As the unbeatable opponent. As the man who would do ANYTHING to bring his opponent down. He turns into someone much more complicated and worthy of the trust. I've talked about this before.
Maya on her end always feels like she is never worthy of trust, but has fought and loved for the last three years so her trust can be given. In the second game, it looks like nothing can help her, she doesn't even know if she is innocent, and yet she places her trust in Phoenix and he continues his eternal trust in her.
Mia, despite being dead, has a large presence on the series because her family is a family of spirit mediums. As a result, Maya or her cousin Pearl can summon Mia when needed. As they can only have her there for limited times, Mia MUST be trusted because they can't really cross her or double check her information.
Franciska throughout the second and a bit of the third games rapidly proves herself to be -while out for revenge- also interested in justice and does not cross lines. While she may hide some information, she will never manipulate facts.
Pearl is a little girl. She can be trusted, partly because she has a horrible poker face.
Larry is an old school friend. While he may unintentionally cause trouble, he will never intentionally act malicious or lie (even if he forgets things). You may not like it, but you can trust him.
Detective Gumshoe works for the police, but he's also interested in justice being done to the right person. He helps Phoenix out when he can. Sometime's it's physical help, sometimes it's information, but he does not lie and he has been fired for helping.
This trust proves critical in the last case of game 3. Maya has disappeared, her mother has been found dead in two places at the same time. Pearl has also vanished. Phoenix fell through a burning bridge and landed in a cold and swift river known for killing people, and no one is quite sure what happened.
Edgeworth trusts Larry enough when he says Phoenix is in danger to come back to the states. (Phoenix did have a bad cold but that's it.) Phoenix trusts Edgeworth enough to have him do the work and help out in court despite how Edgeworth is a prosecutor. And when spirit mediums and psychelocks come up, Edgeworth trusts Phoenix enough to just go along with it and accept it. Gumshoe trusts everyone enough that they will do the right thing; that Edgeworth will protect the innocent, and that he will punish the guilty. Franciska is trusted to help Phoenix when everyone is missing. After all, she won't let anyone else get hurt. Mia and Pearl have critical information that they can not reveal right away. They are trusted when they appear that their witholding was not malicious or deliberate, and they know the truth.
If any of this was doubted, if anyone had lied. If anyone was not worthy of the trust they were placed with when studying the case, then Maya would have been found guilty of matricide, the manipulator would have had the last laugh, and the killer would not have found his redemption. (And, yes, that sentence makes sense in context.)
I need to replay this level again. The trust is heartbreaking and I'm lacking details. Though, you all should have played this game through before! It's worth it.
If you watch Doctor Who, the idea of "You can't change history" has popped up.
If youtube cooperated, I would show you that.
However, the fact remains that games do frequently rewrite history when they take place in the real world. Let's look at Bioshock Infinite and their new trailer which has led me to this post.
Yes, I'm a sucker for Bioshock. Anyway...
Any search in the history books will reveal that while the world's fair did happen, Columbia was not involved. The Boxer rebellion did happen (it was a revolt in China against the British, Chinese Christians and other foreigners and foreign powers.) but it ended in 1901 with an alliance of western nations defeating the imperial Chinese army and taking over Beijing. It's view over history is rather complicated so we're leaving it there. However, China was very much NOT bombed in the original run.
Why do companies change the past for their stories?
Partly because it makes it easier to set in an alternate continuity. We know that Columbia didn't actually bomb the Boxer Rebellion. We know that the US won the American Revolution. We know that King Henry the Eighth created Anglican Protestantism in order to divorce his wife. These are very much facts. So when something significant changes, we take it not only as an "Alternate Universe" but because something is wrong. This is something we know is false but presented to us as true.
Bioshock Infinite had hinted at it previously.
Seeing "Revenge of the Jedi" is quite a shock.. Return of the Jedi part of our culture.
Most video games present an alternate future. It's usually a dystopian since utopian futures can get boring for a game. Fallout can be considered the main Dystopian future game that takes place in our timeline. In Fallout, a nuclear war is started over the lack of non renewable resources. In the end, civilization collapses, humanity is hanging on by shreds, and most of the rest of the world is instead heavily mutated from the nuclear fallout. I have the game on my GOG account so I'll have to play it sometime and then give more details.
An argument can be made for Command and Conquer, but it seems to heavily involve timetravel so that's both a past and future game. Again, something I need to play. According to Wikipedia, it's set in the future of an alternate timeline where Albert Einstein went back in time to kill Hitler which then led to an unchecked Soviet expansion in the 1950's.
But while Bioshock Infinite is the most obvious example, there are others. Gunparade March, Iron Storm,Resistance, and Enigma: Rising Tide are among others. (according to Wikipedia. I will admit I've only heard of Resistance.)
Gunparade is about life when Aliens invade before the end of World War II. (The historical difference should be obvious).
Iron Storm takes place in 1964 in the fiftieth year of World War I. In this world, (Looks over history) Okay, long story short a Russian General was NOT defeated and instead is trying to make a Russian/Mongolian empire and the war depends on the allied nations stock market. I need to learn more about World War I.
Resistance is again Aliens invading, but this time it's during World War I.
Enigma also involves World War I, but with the Lusitania never sinking. As a result, the US does not enter World War I so Germany takes over Britain and France.
Wars, especially the World Wars, have a dramatic effect on history and the World Wars are the most dramatic wars in recent memory. This is probably why when it comes to alternate histories, these are the defaults. Even if we don't know all the details (glares at Iron Storm) we do know that things did not end up that way.
But, no matter the reason, an alternate history gives weight to the story. We want to fix it, we want to get back to "our" history. It gives the story writers a freedom while not explaining everything and still giving it weight. The writers get to explore what could have happened if something changed. So much of history depends on near misses and oversights. What if things HADN'T come to pass. What if Amelia Earhart wasn't the first woman to fly solo. What if King Henry had stayed married to Catherine of Aragon? What if Disney stayed with Oswald?
That still doesn't mean the game will be good, but it does make it a bit more interesting.
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.
