Essays, Not Rants! 252: Gaming Morality So here's the basic concept of Dishonored 2: the empress has been deposed. You play as either said deposed empress (Emily) or her royal protector (Corvo) and carve a path of revenge against the usurper and her cabal of those who dishonored you (hence the title). Along the way you meet the Outsider who gives you a bunch of magical powers, ranging from teleporting and stopping time to linking enemies together (so if you kill one you kill 'em all!) to strai
Essays, Not Rants! 097: Gamey Education For some reason, my high school World History teacher saw it fit to skip over the entire Ottoman and Byzantine Empires. This thus left me with the general feel that those empires were a completely disposable era of history. That’s high school in South Carolina for you. This all changed when I begun playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The basic conceit of the Assassin’s Creed series is built around genetic memories; that is the idea that your DNA
Ghosts That We Knew is officially funded! As in all production costs are covered! I owe this to a couple of you for helping with the movie; expect to get a link to see it when it's done sometime in December. Still want a chance to get in on this? Any additional funds will enable me to go bigger with post-work for a more polished finished product. There's one more day for it! Again, thank you all.
Warning: More Grownup Cyprinidae Coming: It's not that being an artist assistant is bad, it's just that it's kinda taxing, and the pay-by-hours isn't enough. But if I get this other gig, do I want that even though the pay is less, it's harder work, but maybe more hours? Do I want to do both? Hold out for something better? Can I hold out for something better? Am I selling myself short? But I need work.
Essays, Not Rants! 360: Frickin’ Damsels The original Kingdom Hearts follows a pretty typical story structure. Boy is childhood friends with Girl and Rival. Home gets destroyed, everyone gets separated. Boy sets out to find Girl and Rival. Girl is captured by bad guys, Rival turns to dark side. Boy rescues Girl, helps redeem Rival. In the third game, Kingdom Hearts II (don’t ask about the numbering), the Girl, Kairi, winds up being captured by the bad guys again and the Boy, Sora, sets out t
Essays, Not Rants! 210: Four Years I’ve had this blog for about four years now. Four years. And I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve missed my self-imposed midnight EST deadline. Why? I’ve been hard at work on my movie, The Conduits, and today marked us being half done with shooting. Which is good. In the meantime you should check out the Facebook page (linked back there) and the Kickstarter here. And tell your friends. But anyway, keeping this blog has been a real experience. B
Essays, Not Rants! 078: Formulaic Formulas Originally posted September 14th 2013 There are a lot of people who, when it comes to movies, say there’s a distinct formula to how everything works. Some people blanch at the thought, others say it’s blame for the derivative nature of, y’know, everything. Well, there is a formula. Sort of: there are these certain moments you can use to plot the course of a movie’s story. Just about every good story will hit these beats. They may not always be as
Essays, Not Rants! 109: For Want of a Glass of Water Kurt Vonnegut once said, “every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” This piece of advice functions as a very simple and straightforward way to ensure a character has some semblance of depth. What's important about a goal? A goal gives a character purpose and gives an audience a reason to invest. In Star Wars, Luke wants to leave Tatooine. In How I Met Your Mother, Ted wanted to meet the mother (or at leas
Essays, Not Rants! 344: First Man(liness) I’m a little tired of manly manliness in cinema. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always have a soft spot Predator, Die Hard, or a good Spaghetti Westerns. But it’s 2018 and I’m kinda tired of that being the MO for male characters, especially manliness for the sake of manliness, like that 50s stoic, silent masculinity. In short, I’m really tired of 'traditional' masculinity, especially when it’s idolized and unquestioned. Which leads me to First Man, the new
Today was my first day of class at New York University. I graduated from high school back in 2009. Since then, well, army, heart disease, Singapore, blah blah blah. But hey! I'm a college kid now! In New York City! At NYU's Galltin School of Individualized Study! Let's hope my education gap doesn't make me suck!
Essays, Not Rants! 134: Financial Teamwork One of my favorite things about the internet is the democratization of media. Anyone can do anything and put it out there for a wide audience. Where once upon a time either no one would see it, now you can put it on YouTube and spread it around. There’s not just an audience, there’s a mean to one. Recently, it’s also meant the ability to do bigger projects. This is crowdfunding, where a project is funding by a, er, crowd. Because hey, if there are a
Essays, Not Rants! 039: Final Exam: The Hobbit It’s finals time at NYU. Folks are churning out essays and cramming a semester of information in their heads. So here I’ll be doing something different (but not really): let’s look at The Hobbit. I saw The Hobbit’s midnight showing at the IMAX here. It was good, clearly. Perfect, nah, not quite. Not Return of the King, but then what is? So where’d The Hobbit go right and where’d it go wrong?’ Right off the bat, it’s a great adaption. It went r
Essays, Not Rants! 359: Final Boss A mainstay staple of video games is the final boss. After a number of levels (or dungeons, chapters, what have you) you finally fight the Biggest Baddest Boss, the defeat of which leads to winning the game and the ultimate resolution. It’s the climax of the game, both from a gameplay perspective and narrative one: everything has led to this. It’s important that the Final Boss feels like a Final Boss, though. I love Uncharted 3, but one issue the game has i
Essays, Not Rants! 116: Feels Like It Ever played Star Wars? No, not Force Unlesahed or Rogue Squadron, we’re talking the Star Wars game, the original 1983 arcade game from Atari. It’s not the most complex game out there. In lieu of sprites the game uses crude vector graphics to give you an outline of TIE Fighters (that shoot fireballs), laser turrets, and the classic trench run. Using the yoke you fly through space, attack TIE Fighters and dodge obstacles. Like the Millennium Falcon, the game
Essays, Not Rants! 209: Fear of the Unknown One of the wonderful agonies I found when I started watching Lost years and years ago was the show’s tendency to show a character’s reaction to a revelation/object/monster rather than the revelation/object/monster itself. It became characteristic of the show, and something emblematic of Abrams’ style. Granted, J.J. Abrams had little involvement with Lost past the pilot, but he did work with Damon Lidelof to lay much of the show’s groundwork. Inclu
Essays, Not Rants! 271: Fast Car I really like Tracy Chapman’s "Fast Car," and I realize I’m saying this as someone who’s around thirty years late to the party. Beyond its great musicality, there’s the poetry to it. It speaks to a wanting for a life that’s more than you have, one beyond your circumstances; but also to the dashing of that dream when reality ensues. All in all, it’s a beautiful, melancholic song. Which I don’t really relate. Or more, can’t. See, I’ve lived a privileged life. I
Essays, Not Rants! 181: Expository Conflict Othello really hits the ground running. The first time we see the titular character in Shakespeare’s play he’s on trial in a war room. Now, it’s important to note that this is his introduction, this is when we learn who he is. The easiest way to clue the audience in would be to just give us an infodump. Have people go “This is Othello, the Moor, who’s a general, and married to Desdemona, a senator’s daughter” in some fashion. No, it’s certainly not
