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Ta-metru_defender

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Blog Entries posted by Ta-metru_defender

  2. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 299: Long Live The Resistance
     
    It's really easy to see the original Star Wars as an anti-establishment film. Han, Luke, and Leia are a trio of rebels vying to undermine and overthrow the Man. And given that the movie is a product of the 70s, it just might be intentional. Empire has the Man crackdown on our plucky heroes, and Return of The Jedi culminates in the final usurpation.
     
    Of course, within this framework, any story about plucky rebels can be interpreted as anti-establishment. Mega Man Zero is about Zero and the Resistance exposing Neo Arcadia for the dystopia it is. The Matrix has Neo fighting back against the humanity-controlling Machines. Harry Potter and his friends form Dumbledore’s Army to take on Umbridge.
     
    But antiestablishmentarianism is in Star Wars’ DNA, and not just as an idea as in some other examples. And for that, you need look no further than the prequels.
     
    Which, sounds kinda odd, because the heroes in the prequels are part of the establishment. The Jedi Order is in full swing and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are members. Padmé is a Queen and a Senator. On the other hand, Tatooine, a planet beyond the reach of the Republic, is a lawless land of slavery. The villainous Confederacy is trying to destroy the peaceful Republic. Ostensibly, it’s the inverse of the original trilogy’s ethos.
     
    But the prequels are about the fall of the Republic. And it is not brought down by an external resistance: it is brought down from within. For all the fighting the Confederacy does, they don’t destroy the Republic. The Republic is a corrupt system, full of infighting that prevents anything from being done (as we see with Naboo’s blockade in Phantom Menace). The Jedi Order is all too ready to make the jump from peacekeepers to generals. The Republic is not a good thing: it is old and decrepit, and its conversion into the Empire is a product of its own failings. In the prequels, the heroes may be servants of the establishment, but the establishment is not a good thing. Revenge of The Sith has the Senate, who our heroes have been championing, capitulating to Darth Sidious. No, the prequels don't have Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padmé fighting the Man, instead their loyalty to the establishment is their undoing.
     
    The recent movies carry on this point of view. The New Republic in The Force Awakens doesn't believe the First Order to be a credible threat and are so destroyed, leaving Leia and her Resistance to fight on. They were, to an extent, abandoned by the establishment and left to fend for themselves. Rogue One speaks for itself (if you need a reminder: ragtag team of diverse nobodies take on a monolithic empire).
     
    So Star Wars is decidedly anti-establishment. Cool.
     
    The Last Jedi, however, embraces this ethos with an unrivaled vigor. In the bigger, meta scheme of things, Star Wars is now the establishment. It's no longer this weird sci-fi movie that mixes together westerns, samurai films, and Flash Gordon serials; it's its own thing and its heroes pop culture legends. So The Last Jedi sets out to deconstruct a lot of Star Wars’ tropes, this time turning its anti-establishment lens on its own heroes. The establishment in The Last Jedi takes the form of a variety of legacies; the legacy of the Jedi, the legacy of the Empire, even the legacy of Luke Skywalker. The movie itself challenges our assumptions about these things, challenging us to ask questions about them we may not be too keen to ask. What if the Jedi should end? What does it mean to have been Luke Skywalker? Why do we care so much for legacies?
     
    Some of these questions are answered, and some of these have no easy answer. Sure, there's still a plucky Resistance against an indomitable First Order, but director Rian Johnson wants to figure out what Star Wars really is, and that means bringing a hammer to some stuff you'd rather not. It's excellently done and particularly bold given how safe Star Wars usually is.
     
    I have A Lot Of Thoughts on The Last Jedi, thoughts that I'll need another viewing and many beer-fueled conversations with friends to mull over. But one thing that's abundantly clear is that The Last Jedi has a very clear image of its identity, and one facet of that is as the culmination of an anti-establishment vision.
     
    Which is pretty neat.
  3. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 297: Crossing Animals

    Fetch quests occupy a strange space in video games. They aren't strictly great quests; you talk to an NPC, and then they have you get something for them, or bring something somewhere else. They're usually uninspired and are a transparent effort to pad out the game’s length. Mass Effect: Andromeda mines hours upon hours of gameplay by having the player go to a different planet, talk to someone, and return (for a reward!). Point is, they ain't great.
     
    And yet, there's Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
     
    I downloaded the game to my phone cuz a lotta people were downloading it, knowing nothing about the Animal Crossing games except there are animals that crossed and something about decorating houses. I fired up the game and found myself put in charge of a campsite (which I can decorate!) and told to befriend visiting animals and invite them over to said campsite.
     
    Simple enough.
     
    Befriending these animals, however, is a matter of talking to them and… fetch quests. Jay wants two squids, Filbert wants an assortment of fruits, and Apollo has developed an affection for butterflies. If you bring their desired items to these animal crossers they in turn give you bells (money) and resources like wood and cotton you can then use to craft new furniture for tour campsite. This furniture, besides looking nice, is also used to lure invite animals to hang out at your campsite.
     
    Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is all about fetch quests. Just going somewhere, getting something, and giving it to someone.
     
    And yet, it is such calming fun.
     
    Part of this is due to how gentle the game is. Pocket Camp doesn't have you fighting monsters, you just shake fruit off trees or tap butterflies to catch them with your net. It's easy enough to amass such a stock of items that more often than not, you'll already have what your animal friend is looking for.
     
    But there still a sense of accomplishment upon completing a task. The animal smiles and claps, thanking you profusely. It's a bit of an overreaction, but you still did something. There's the idea that you're getting stuff done, and that getting said stuff done is appreciated by people, er- animals, who call you friend.
     
    What really makes Pocket Camp work, though, is summed up in those darned cute animals. Pocket Camp’s simple mechanics are delivered with a very friendly theme. There’s no fighting monsters, but nor is there much in the way of any conflict whatsoever. You’re all just kinda get along. It’s utterly non-threatening, presenting a harmonious world where idyllic days are spent fishing and foraging and thinking about food.
     
    And so it’s wonderfully calming. There’s no frenetic need to get stuff done, you can do stuff at your own pace and still have that sense of accomplishment. Like The Sims, you’re able to set your own goals within the parameters (do you want to upgrade your camper? Make a dope hangout? Stockpile a horde of Bells?) and go after them (though without the threat of starvation and/or setting yourself on fire). Again, Pocket Camp is a game to relax. Not blow off steam: just chill out.
     
    I think it’s, in that way, a kinda important game. Sure, it’s not saying Something Bigger About The World, and it’s hardly a brain-bending puzzle game. It’s a game where you do stuff, simple fetch quests though they may be, and be rewarded and affirmed for it. Without deadlines or consequences, Pocket Camp feels very much like a safe space to escape to in the middle of the day. Proof that you can get something done and that Ketchup the duck is really happy you did.
  4. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 296: The Economy (Again!)
     
    Star Wars Battlefront II is a really fun game. It course-corrects a lot of the problems of the first one and throws in some fun turns. Dogfighting in an A-Wing and charging through Hoth feel plain fun. But Battlefront II also has a seriously screwed up economy, one that's intrinsically tied to how the game plays.
     
    A lot of contemporary multiplayer games have progression systems, the more you play, the more experience points you get which in turn can unlock new weapons or buffs for your character. There's usually a great deal of balancing gone into this, where that shiny new gun plays differently, but not usually better. Key thing is, this is all tied to you playing the game.
     
    Not so with Battlefront II. Improving your character or class isn't done through experience, but rather through accumulating Star Cards by buying loot boxes (or crates, in the game).
     
    Loot boxes are a thing that have been in games for a while, though are only recently crawling into AAA games. They're a ‘box’ you buy with in-game currency that include a random assortment of gameplay items. They can be cosmetic items, like hats and skins, or gameplay things like buffs and weapons. In a good game, like Uncharted 4, they'll be new ways to play without upsetting the competition. For something like Mass Effect: Andromeda, they're cool new toys that reward you for playing.
     
    But in Battlefront II, they are the only way to improve. You can clock over a dozen hours as the Assault class, but unless you buy a crate, you won't get any of the buffs or different weapons. This isn't a case where you can level up a certain buff by playing with it a lot (as in other games); the only way you can get a buff – and these can be some serious buffs – is from loot boxes. Randomized loot boxes, mind you. Buying a box doesn't mean you'll get a Star Card for the class of your choice, you could get one for the Infiltrator you never play as and a power up for Darth Vader, who you haven't unlocked yet.
     
    Which, even alone, would hardly be so bad – if these crates were remotely affordable. The Trooper Crate, which contains Star Cards for the infantry you usually play as, costs 4,000 credits a pop (Starfighter and Hero Crates will run you 2,400). For reference, a single match, which can last 15-20 minutes, only gets you 200-300 credits. Optimistically, that's a little over three hours of gameplay for one randomized pack of cards. A randomized pack which, again, mayn't even have anything of use.
     
    Now, you can bypass this by buying the boxes with real money (at around $2.50 a pop), but after a lot of outcry publisher EA has suspended that. But improving your characters is still a massive time investment. And no one’s really happy about that – this is a $60 AAA game, not a free iPhone app. The outcry on the internet has been cosmic, prompting EA to suspend those real money microtransactions and slash the price of heroes like Darth Vader (from a whopping 60,000 credits to a more manageable 15,000). There’s also the promise of more adjustments to come, but what those are is anyone’s guess.
     
    In the meantime, the economy of Battlefront II is completely in the lurch. We’ve already seen the price of some heroes drop by 75%, and though credits can’t be bought outright, they can be obtained through crates. In light of that, there’s (my) hope that EA will cut down the prices of the crates, so it’s less of an outright grind to improve characters (either that or tie progression to actually playing the game, but what are the chances are that?). The problem is, in the meantime, what becomes of your credits?
     
    I’ve bought a couple Crates since the game came out, but I’ve also been stashing a lot of credits (I never dip below 10k, if I can help it [which I can]). Because if EA adjusts their economy (and at this point it’s inevitable), I don’t want to have 'wasted' credits. If they slash their loot box price from 4,000 to 1,000, my purchasing power quadruples. If they adjust credits from a match, well, I’ve a backlog (and they’d have to readjust milestone earnings – another thing I haven’t cashed out on yet because, again what if it changes?). And if they leave it as is, well, still credits in the bank.
     
    But no matter what happens, adjusting EA’s economy’s gonna screw someone over. Maybe it’s someone who’s played for hours and suddenly realizes had they waited their money would be worth more. Maybe someone bought the crates before EA suspended microtransactions and just saw their dollars get undervalued. And no matter what, there’s the chance that it’ll happen because, again, they did cut the price of some heroes by 75%, so there’s a chance for another deflation. I don’t trust EA’s credits.
     
    It’s frustrating. Because there are these features of a game I paid $60 for that I don’t get to experience just yet, or I won’t without some serious time investment. And the shame is that Battlefront II is such a fun game marred by a horrendous, random progression system.
     
    So hopefully it’ll get fixed. In the meantime, I’m sitting on my credits like a crazy old man theorist on gold waiting for the markets to crash.
  5. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 295: Diversity in Middle-earth
     
    The Lord of The Rings is at once both one of my favorite books and one of my favorite film trilogies. And I don't really feel the need to write another sentence justifying that.
     
    In any case, I reacted with some consternation upon finding out the Amazon was, having attained the rights to Tolkien’s world, developing a new series set in Middle-earth. On the one hand, we get to return to that world. On the other, it's hard to top Peter Jackson’s interpretation of that world – how else could Minas Tirith look if not like that?
     
    But then, revisiting Middle-earth means a chance to do some things differently. Like maybe making the world look a little more inclusive.
     
    The Lord of The Rings is very white. That's not so much a judgement as it is a fact. It doesn't make it any worse as a work, it's just how it is. So if we're telling new stories, let's ask why not and mix things up and cast some people of color as these characters.
     
    Now, my own knee jerk response is “hey, let's make all the elves Asian!” because that way you'll be forced to have an Asian actor on screen anytime an elvish character is in play (and also we’ll get Elrond, half-Asian). But equating fictional races with real life ones becomes real hairy real quick. It runs the risk of feeling like stereotyping and, in the case of my own “make all elves Asian” orientalism and exoticism. Because if they don't look like the normal, clearly they must be other, so let's make them not-human. That line of thinking falls back on to the white-as-default mindset, where if you need a normal Everyman you make him a white guy. And let's not do that.
     
    Because if we're diversifying Middle-earth, let's let everyone be everyone. Let's have black elves and surly Asian dwarves, let's have Latino hobbits and an Indian shieldmaiden of Rohan.
     
    Because why not.
     
    The Lord of The Rings, and a lot of high fantasy with it, falls into the trap of looking a lot like Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Which, I suppose, is fair, given that Rings is the forerunner of modern fantasy and that in writing it Tolkien wanted to give England its own myths to rival those of Greece. So of course it's gonna portray a very (white) England-inspired place. But that’s done, and it doesn't excuse modern fantasy works (and the upcoming Amazon show would indeed count as a modern fantasy work) from being very white and European.
     
    Cuz there's nothing in The Lord of The Rings’ mythology that precludes a more diverse cast. Sure, you'd have to ignore Tolkien’s descriptions of characters as fair and golden-haired, but that's not a loss. Heck, even adding more women makes sense; we've already got characters like Lúthien and Galadriel who've kicked butt in their time. Eowyn’s given the title shieldmaiden so she’s probably not the first. There’s no reason not to.
     
    This is a fantasy world with magic rings and enchanted swords (and, y'know, elves and dwarves and stuff), there is literally no good reason why everyone has to be white. The only reason a black elf or Asian dwarf sounds so odd is because it's outside what we've internalized as normal for the genre. We're simply used to seeing these archetypes as white. And that's s gotta change.
     
    And where better for that change to happen than in the world of The Lord of The Rings? This is the book that elevated fantasy from children’s books to something taken seriously. It's what inspired the world of Dungeons & Dragons, it's the basis for just about every modern work of high fantasy. This is a chance to shift the framework, to redefine how fantasy usually looks.
     
    I love The Lord of The Rings (and The Hobbit and The Silmarillion). Why can't I, someone who's reread the books countless times, quoted the movies in the opening to his thesis, and dominated Lord of The Rings bar trivia, get to see people in those stories who look more like me?
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 294: Spoilers and Reveals
     
    Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. That’s a spoiler, right? What about Luke fights Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back? How about Yoda’s the green dude Luke meets on Dagobah? Or Luke goes to Dagobah? Where does it stop being a spoiler and become plot information?
     
    Spoilers used to mean something that’d, well, spoil a surprise, ruin the story. It’d be telling someone that Lando betrays Han in Empire. Since at the point, the story seems to be presenting one thing, but it turns out it’s another. But saying Han and Leia go to Cloud City? That’s just information, it doesn’t tell you anything about the story.
     
    I think we have a tendency to conflate spoilers and plot. Sure, there’s a certain amount of fun to going into something completely blind, but there’s no harm in knowing something. Knowing that Luke goes to Dagobah isn’t gonna ruin Empire Strikes Back.
     
    But then, I’d argue that spoilers don’t always ruin stuff either. I went into LOST knowing that Charlie died, but I still had a ball of a time (and also swore of social media in between the time it aired and I was able to watch it). I started Game of Thrones knowing that Ned Stark died in the first season, but so much of the fun of it was watching how it played out. Saying a spoiler ruins something is indicative of poor storytelling: you know Han, Luke, and Leia are gonna make it out of Star Wars in one piece, but does that make it any less enjoyable? I played MGSV knowing all the twists and turns, yet it’s still a gripping story. A well crafted story doesn’t solely rely on WHAM moments to hook you. But that doesn’t mean I’m trawling through every nugget of information about The Last Jedi. I enjoy being surprised all the same.
     
    Spoilers are a weird beast, is what I’m saying.
     
    Which brings me to Stranger Things 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the first season last year and, of course, was ready for the second. I didn’t watch any of the trailers, but that was more due to apathy than any intent to avoid spoilers. But then they put out a mobile game, which, I’d usually dismiss except this one was styled after Legend of Zelda. And not the 3D ones, but the old school, top down, action-RPGs that I love (Link’s Awakening is the best Zelda game; fight me). When Season 2 dropped, the game updated with a new character, Max, and an extra quest. Cool!
     
    But unlocking this new character, however, reveals that they she has a special ability. And it’s a doozie. Like, major turn of events type reveal. I was… less than pleased. Because this had all the shaping of being a big twist that happens part way through the season and shakes everything up. And here it was in this game.
     
    But what makes this such a spoiler-y thing is that it could be a big reveal, an "I am your father" reveal. The sort of thing I’d rather not have spoiled for something I’m about to watch in the near future. 'cuz I got clued in to some of the plot developments by virtue of, y’know, being on the internet. Like I knew that Steve would be taking on some adventures in babysitting (though none of the details), but that’s hardly a spoiler.
     
    So when I actually watched the show, the back of my mind was furiously anticipating That Twist. …aaaaand it didn’t happen.
     
    Finding out that Max has psychic blasts would have been a heckuva spoiler, since it’s a big reveal. That it didn’t happen is a nice gag of the developers (inaccurate game adaptions have a long and storied history) that’s a little frustrating because I kept waiting for it to happen.
     
    But Stranger Things isn’t a show that rides or dies on its reveals. It’s a tightly crafted show, with a plot that starts as a slow burn and picks up as it goes; elements are thrown in play and developed to great effect. Furthermore, it's anchored in strong characters with growth and relationships. Sure, a major plot spoiler would take away some of the surprise, but that's not the main draw. Even if it was, though, I don't think it'd have ruined the show. Spoilers aren't that bad, guys.
     
    But if you dare tell me anything about The Last Jedi that isn't in the trailers…
  8. Ta-metru_defender

    Going Further

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 292: Going Further
     
    The LEGO Ninjago Movie came out about a month ago and it was, well, firmly okay. Like, it's not awful — it’s entertaining enough — but it never rises to the delightful postmodern heights of its predecessors. But it didn't have to. While The LEGO Movie toyed with Campbell’s Hero’s Journey by making the chosen one as un-special as possible, and The LEGO Batman Movie used the narrative of a love story to reframe the conflict of Batman and The Joker to craft a hilarious new take on the mythos, all The LEGO Ninjago Movie really had to do was tell a raucous adventure story. Which it kinda does, but it’s very safe, one couched in winks at the audience and a foot still safely in the boat, never taking the plunge.
     
    It’s a shame, too, because The LEGO Ninjago Movie had so much in its hand, it just never went all in.
     
    Let’s just look at the setting. We’ve got Ninjago City, this cyberpunk-by-way-of-future-Asia setting with elevated highways and really cool buildings. But we never get to really explore it. All of our time in the city is set against the backdrop of big fights, which, while cool, are hardly space to get to know a setting. Instead, once the plot begins in earnest, we’re whisked out to a much more generic jungle. And like, sure, a jungle’s a cool enough setting, but it lacks the idiosyncrasy of Ninjago City. Jungles are generic, whereas Ninjago City had this spiffy aesthetic that marked is as different from, say Bricksburg or Gotham from the other LEGO movies or even New York and Coruscant. It wouldn’t be terribly hard to rejigger the central plot to go from exploring the jungle to spelunking in the depths of Ninjago City. There’s more personality there and room for imagination, something the movie really could have used.
     
    Because it plays it all so safe. We have this outstanding (and hilarious) cast who are mostly relegated to bit parts where they can offer commentary on the Quest At Hand. If Ninjago is gonna be a send up of typical adventure movies, then let the main characters be a bunch of savvy wiseacres taking the mickey out of the narrative. If it’s gonna be an actual adventure movie, then let it be that, with the silliness seeping in from all sides. But Ninjago couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, and instead we have a normal adventure story that’s undercut by its love of winking at itself. There’s no commitment.
     
    So let’s take The Princess Bride. It creates a delightfully silly world, replete with six-fingered men, Dread Pirate Robertses, and ROUSes, but with characters who are completely sold on it. Inigo Montoya searches for the six-fingered man, and though he’s a comedic supporting character, because he as a character is serious about it and because the narrative never ridicules his quest, he is given the ultimate catharsis when he eventually finds him. There’s no winking at the audience, where everything unfolding is an in-joke. Sure, it’s a silly world (there is a place called The Cliffs of Insanity) but because the characters are given a level of emotional honesty, the narrative feels whole.
     
    Even Shrek 2 (objectively the best of the Shreks) treats its characters’ arcs with a great deal of respect. Yes, the movie absolutely skewers fairytales, particularly of the Disney variety, but the story of Shrek trying to fit into Fiona’s world is committed to wholeheartedly. As such we still have a great story in this bizarre world (that we also get time to explore).
     
    A lot of its faults can be blamed on The LEGO Ninjago Movie’s absolutely frenetic pace. The movie barely slows down to give us a chance to be. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a fast paced movie, but the movie barely ever fleshes out anything it has in play, never letting us just be in the space it’s created. It’s a rotten shame, too, because there was so much interesting at its fringes, so much mileage to be had with the banter between the characters, so much capacity for cool with some LEGO-ized martial arts action. Plus, you’ve got the Hero With an Evil Dad trope with the wonderful twist that everyone knows Garmadon is Lloyd’s father. But frustratingly, characters don’t fulfill arcs so much as they check off narrative beats. The movie never trusts its assets enough to capitalize on it, it never goes all the way.
     
    Instead, well, we get something that’s just fine.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 291: On Visceral’s Closure
     
    I like Star Wars. I also like video games. So naturally I was very excited back in 2014 when it was announced that Amy Hennig, Creative Director of the first three Uncharted games was heading up a new Star Wars game. And not just any Star Wars game, this was gonna be a big single-player action adventure, the likes of which we hadn't had since 2010’s lackluster The Force Unleashed II. We’d been teased years ago with the announcement of 1313 but that was canceled when Disney bought Lucasfilm and shuttered LucasArts, so this new game seemed like them making up for that. And again, this was gonna be a narrative-driven action-adventure game by the woman who directed Uncharted – a series that codified what a good narrative-driven action-adventure game is.
     
    And it's been cancelled.
     
    News broke on Tuesday that publisher EA was shuttering Visceral Games, the studio working on the game. The assets were going to be repurposed for a new project and the creative team are in limbo at best. EA’s given reason was that it wanted to focus instead on games that “keep players coming back” which, given the publisher’s recent output, sounds like multiplayer games with plenty of space for moneymaking microtransactions.
     
    In any case, Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game, which it turns out was codenamed “Ragtag,” is dead in the water.
     
    Which bums me out and ticks me off.
     
    Because we're not getting a Star Wars game. And because this is another point in the trend away from my beloved linear, narrative, single-player games.
     
    There aren't a lot of major single-player games being made. Sure, Call of Duty may have its campaign, but that's really just a thinly veiled vehicle for the far more popular multiplayer. And the games that do feature robust single player, Mass Effect Andromeda, the Assassin’s Creed series, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Grand Theft Auto, to name a few, all feature open worlds with space for the player to explore. Catered, intentional single-player experiences are few and far between, with Uncharted 4, BioShock Infinite, and Dishonored 2 being the few that come to mind. These are games that aren't open world, but rather games with a deliberate structure designed for the player to experience a particular narrative. But it seems like major studios aren't willing to take a chance on these games, even with a fantastic creative team behind it.
     
    It’s frustrating, because the same thing happened a couple years ago. Via a terrifying demo, it was announced that there was going to be a new Silent Hill. Not only was this established horror franchise getting a new (and long awaited) game, but it was being headed up by frickin’ Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima, the man behind Metal Gear Solid and a developer that deserves to be called an auteur. But partway through production, publisher Konami decided it wanted to shift focus to mobile games that were cheaper to make and had higher profit margins. Kojima, with his elaborate single player games, was laid off, Silent Hills was canned, and now there will be no horror game headed up by del Toro and Kojima.
     
    That “Ragtag” was canceled is not reassuring for me and my love of these catered experiences. It's hard to overstate how much of a sure thing the game seemed: you had a proven director working with a proven studio to make a game based on one of the most iconic franchises of all time. That EA has decided that the game is not bankable enough and wants to instead use the assets on another project is a mindbogglingly huge vote of no confidence. Again, this is EA, a company who hasn't before let a game being bug ridden or devoid of much content prevent it from being published. “Ragtag” was in production for three-and-a-half years when EA pulled the plug, a decision that by all accounts seems to have caught Amy Hennig and everyone at Visceral as off-guard as we were. It’s disappointing, and honestly kinda heartbreaking, that EA doesn't want to follow through with a game that had so much going for it.
     
    But then, EA is a company, and one of the biggest video game publishers at that. Based on their recent output, they want cash cows they can milk through micro-transactions and buyable add-ons. A solidly paced game, where encounters flow into another and finally reach an absolute resolution with little room for later made content or padded sidequests? Who needs that when you have loot boxes that let players pay more money to be more powerful?
     
    Maybe whatever “Ragtag” morphs into will end up being a good game. Maybe other studios like Naughty Dog and directors like Ken Levine will continue to show that these linear, narrative-focused single-player games still have a place. But no matter what, we won't be getting this Star Wars game headed by Amy Hennig.
     
    And that really sucks.
  10. Ta-metru_defender

    Giant Robots

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 289: Giant Robots
     
    It is no secret that I absolutely adore Pacific Rim. Granted, and watching giant mechs and giant mechs beat the stuffing outta each other is only a part of it. See, there’s the pure childish glee to it, the great speech, and, of course, its youthful and hopeful worldview. Pacific Rim is a movie about giant mechs and giant monsters, but it’s because it’s so much more than the battle between Jaegers and Kaiju that the movie made the impression it did, it’s why it matters more than you’d expect.
     
    A sequel was up in the air for a while, and, eventually, Guillermo del Toro stepped aside from directing again and Steven S. DeKnight filled in as writer/director and the project officially went into production. There were rumors online about the studio ousting del Toro, but given that he still has a producing credit and DeKnight was in touch with him, it’s safe to say his vision is still there.
     
    So naturally, I watched the trailer for the sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising as soon as I could. And man, it delivers on more giant mechs fighting giant monsters. And a multinational team, which is something very important to me, obvious. And it’s a glorious trailer, with new robots fighting new monsters in a city and stuff getting destroyed and swords slashing and all that cool stuff.
     
    But all the same, it seems to me that there’s a bit that’s being lost.
     
    Let me preface the following with this: It looks awesome. Mecha action is something near and dear to my heart, and getting to see a glimpse of those behemoths fighting is, of course, a joy. I’m here for it.
     
    But.
     
    Guillermo del Toro’s a self-described pacifist. He deliberately avoids making movies about war, and Pacific Rim was no different. The leader of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps isn’t a general, but rather a Marshal (named Stacker Pentecost, but the ridiculous awesomeness of that name is unimportant here). The Jaeger pilots aren’t Captains or Lieutenants, but rather Rangers. Pacific Rim avoids much militaristic imagery, and there’s no room for jingoism in a movie about an international team fighting monsters. This is all deliberate, as del Toro "…wanted was for kids to see a movie where they don’t need to aspire to be in an army to aspire for an adventure."[*]
     
    Even the action in the movie follows this trend. Sure, there’s epic destruction, but the operating protocol for the Jaeger pilots is to keep the Kaiju away from the city. When a kaiju attacks Sydney, it’s because it breached the wall that was supposed to keep them out. The fight in Hong Kong is after the defenders have been overwhelmed, and much ado (and a subplot) is made out of making sure civilians evacuate to shelters. When the punching and hitting starts, it’s a lot of punching and outlandish weapons. Gipsy Danger has an energy blaster and a sword, Striker Eureka rockets and knives, Cherno Alpha is really good at punching stuff. It’s fantastical, it’s fun.
     
    There’s a shot in the Uprising trailer that looks like one out of the matrix, with empty bullet shells falling to the ground behind a Jaeger. It’s cool — because of course it’s cool — but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it gave me a measure of concern. Part of what made Pacific Rim so wonderful was it being removed from reality; once the Jaegers started going there wasn’t much in the ways of actual guns. All the violence was out there, fantastical, giant robots punching and giant swords and rockets.
     
    I love Pacific Rim. And I wanna love Uprising too. But lightning in a bottle was caught once, and I’m wary of a followup. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe DeKnight’s got more going on than the trailer lets on. Maybe it’ll be as hopeful and idealistic as the first one. But as we get set to enjoy more mecha versus kaiju action, I want to remember how darn special Pacific Rim is, and how much a sequel has to live up to not only in quality but also in theming. Maybe Uprising won’t have the special sauce that made Pacific Rim so good.
     
    But.
     
    It’s still gonna be giant mechs beating up giant monsters.
     
    And I’ll take it.
  11. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 290: The Illusion of Choice

    When not raiding Soviet bases to 80s hits in Metal Gear Solid V, I've been playing Until Dawn with my roommate. Now, I don't really do horror, like, at all. But Until Dawn features a supposedly robust choices and consequences system, which I am, of course, a sucker for.
     
    We’ve finished the game and there's been a good deal of payoff to some of the choices we've made. The big thing we're looking forward to, though, is playing it again and making different choices to see what would happen.
     
    Because right now a lot of what happened feels like a direct result of the choices we've made and I wanna know how much of that is really because of what we did. Every little plot turn can’t be the result of our decisions, even though it can feel like it.
     
    A lot of the time, when we play a game with multiple choices, we want everything we do to be impactful and for it to create a tailored set of consequence that are entirely dependent on what we did.
     

    Doesn’t that sound cool? Every choice you make has consequences! Siding with Miranda or Jack when they argue aboard the Normandy in Mass Effect 2 could spell disaster down the line! If Walker doesn’t spare that guy in Spec Ops: The Line what will it mean for the future?
     
    The problem is, games are a finite medium. What’s done, is done, and has to have been doable. There’s a limit to your free will, a limit set by the game developers and their bother and/or budget. It turns out that choosing Kaiden or Ashley has no real choice on the rest of Mass Effect, as the survivor fulfills basically the same role in the sequels. Picking Udina or Anderson doesn’t have much bearing on Citadel politics, because Mass Effect 2 doesn’t have much of it, and by the time 3 rolls around, Anderson (if you chose him) has stepped down so that Udina represents the humans and the intrigue on the Citadel proceeds accordingly.
     

     
    Now, I am kinda picking and choosing some examples, Mass Effect does have some brilliant moments of consequence (whether or not you saved Mealon’s research in the second game has a massive impact on the third – it’s that it’s one of the few choices of that nature that make it stand out so), but a few different playthroughs, the cracks in the game’s design start to show. No matter what, Udina will end up on the council. The Rachni will return whether or not you kill their Queen. Whether or not you sacrifice the Council in the Battle of The Citadel doesn’t mean much ultimately. To quote Eloise Hawking in LOST: the universe has a way of course correcting.
     
    Which is a bummer, because what if, to beat a dead horse, picking Anderson or Udina made for totally different plot lines in Mass Effect 3. Maybe Anderson as Councilor meant that Cerberus never managed to attack the Citadel, but in exchange made the mission to Earth that much harder without him in your corner. It does mean a lot of resources, but it also means a more personalized experience.
     
    I think that might be why I’m hesitant to jump back into Until Dawn. Right now everything happened as a result of my choices. Little tweaks to the game’s horror were because of my answers to questions posed to me (Snake-Clowns with Needles, though the snakes never showed up). Playing the game again (which I absolutely want to do to, why else, see what would happen) will probably show where the seams are and reveal how little impact my decisions had. That it doesn’t on the first play through speaks to good writing.
     
    Because choice in games are an illusion, and will continue to be until you have an infinite number of monkeys typing up an infinite number of outcomes to an infinite number of players’ decisions. But until then, players can be tricked into thinking we have a decision. If the game’s narrative makes the causality feel like it had to happen, like that your choice led you here no matter what, then the illusion isn’t broken. Just spackle those cracks with good writing and we’re onboard.
     
    For the first playthrough or two, anyway. After that it boils down to just gaming the system as much as you can (how can I make sure everyone dies in the most gruesome way in Until Dawn?).
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 288: Don’t Need No Adaptation
     
    Your Name is an anime film about a couple teens that randomly wake up in each others bodies. One’s a guy at an elite school in Tokyo, the other a girl who lives in a more traditional, rural town. Naturally, hijinks ensure, and I’m left weepy in the cinema as the credits roll.
     
    It’s very much a body swapping love story, but it’s one that holds extra depth due to its intense focus on longing. Much of the romance that blooms between Taki and Mitsuha is due to them knowing each other so well but being unable to really meet. It’s further accentuated by the anime’s gorgeous animation, with some fantastic visual touches that could only be done in an animated movie (seriously, even if you ignore the magnificently crafted narrative, Your Name is a visual wonderland).
     
    Point is, I really like this movie, it is really good, and you should watch it.
     
    It was also just announced that Paramount pictures was teaming up with J. J. Abrams to adapt it into a live action film.
     
    Which is as pointless as it is frustrating.
     
    Look, I’ve nothing against Abrams, he’s a fine director who’s made some of my more favorite films in recent memory (The Force Awakens, Star Trek, Super 8), but you can’t help but to wonder why this movie even needs to happen.
     
    Well, you can: money. Your Name was a ridiculously successful hit in Japan, and, to quite an extent, overseas. It stands to good reason that by adapting it to a more 'conventional' medium (live action film) it will make Even More Money, which, well, cynically, is the goal of a lot of art.
     
    But let’s ignore that for now.
     
    If Your Name, a movie that came out barely a year ago in Japan, is being made into a live action western film, then there has to be some need for it, right? Your Name is a beautiful story, one that I can’t recommend strongly enough (as was insistently recommended to me and I then passed on). It’s something of a shame, then, that it’s an anime and thus will only fall into a niche audience of a) people who will watch an anime film, and 2) an anime film that’s relatively 'realistic' and not as pulpy as the medium is known for.
     
    In which case, yes, by all means, let’s bring this story to a wider audience.
     
    But why?
     
    Why is it that a film like Your Name needs to be 'uplifted' by removing it from where it came? Is it because anime, as a medium, isn’t good enough? Sure seems that way. There’s this weird prejudices against certain medium as not being good enough. A movie can get discounted just because it’s an anime film, just as a story, no matter how moving, can be dismissed if it’s found in a video game. There’s an artistic pecking order, as it were, where certain genres are more artsy than others (drama more so than comedy), and in turn certain mediums are more artsy than others (books over comics). Adapting Your Name to a live action film would, in this mindset, make it more artistically pure. Which is a load of nonsense; mediums are a means of storytelling. There are some stories that only work in one way, (500) Days Of Summer wouldn’t really work as anything except a film and Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye would lose so much if it were anything but a comic book. It’s a matter of we, as an audience, getting over the fact that Your Name is an anime.
     
    Because there are some things that cannot be adapted. Sure, you can make The Lord of The Rings into a twelve hour saga that’s incredible in its own right, but there’s no way to turn Joyce’s Ulysses into anything but its tome without losing so much of what makes it special. Similarly, Your Name is so rooted in not just its Japanese-ness, but in its anime-ness. Many of the visual touches are of the sort you can only do in animation. So much of what makes the film so magical will be lost with the 'realism' of live action, but any attempt to stylize reality (a la Scott Pilgrim) runs the risk of trampling over normal life-ness that makes the heightened reality of Your Name work. The film masterfully straddles an extraordinarily thin line, and it’s one that only works because it’s an anime, not in spite of.
     
    If this adaptation really gets off the ground, then maybe the best course of action would be to just taking the very kernel of the idea (city boy and rural girl sometimes wake up in each others’ bodies and hijinks ensue) rather than trying to adapt it proper. Don’t gild the lily, let Your Name exist and excel in its own right with all of its idiosyncrasies.
     
    And besides, adapting it means losing its
    .
  14. Ta-metru_defender

    Stepping Away

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 286: Stepping Away
     
    Ed Skrein – the dude who played Ajax in Deadpool — made headlines recently. Not for taking a role but rather for stepping down from one. See, he was tapped to be in the reboot adaption of Heckboy. But the character he was slated to play, Major Ben Daimio, is Japanese-American in the comics, and Ed Skrein is decidedly, er, white. Upon finding out that his casting would be whitewashing, Skrein stepped down from the role in order to not be part of that machine that decides to make people-of-color white.
     
    And good on him! This is a guy who’s not a Big Actor and had the opportunity for a Big Role, but turned it down after getting hired because, well, whitewashing. So seriously, cheers to him.
     
    'cuz whitewashing’s an issue. The movie 21 took a team of mostly Asian mathematicians and made them mostly white. Aloha famously cast Emma Stone as a part-Asian character with the last name Ng (as a part-Asian, I can attest that Emma Stone neither looks nor fits the part). Then there’s the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie which takes the wonderfully Inuit and Chinese inspired cast/cultures of the cartoon and makes the main characters white.
     
    I can go on.
     
    And what the heck, I will!
     
    Dragonball Evolution made Goku white. Extraordinary Measures stars Harrison Ford as Dr. Robert Stonehill, a character whose achievements are based on that of Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen. Scarlett Johansson plays Major in the American adaption of the decidedly Japanese Ghost In The Shell.
     
    In light of all of that, seeing an actor walk away from a project because he’s a white guy playing an Asian guy is absolutely remarkable. Maybe I have half-a-horse in this race, but there’s a noticeable precedent for making Asian characters (and real people) white in adaptions. Sure, I’ll give something like Doctor Strange a pass for playing around with a stereotype, but there’s a point when it is just recasting a character of color because Scarlett Johansson will get more folks to theaters than Ming-Na Wen.
     
    It's in this context that Ed Skrein’s choice to step down from Heckboy so remarkable. Or at least unusual. Not too long afterwards, it was announced that Daniel Dae Kim, known for Lost and, more recently, not continuing his role in Hawaiian Five-O because the studio did not want to pay him as much as his white co-stars, would be playing Major Ben Daimio in Heckboy. Which, wow, an Asian actor playing an Asian character (albeit a Korean actor playing a character who’s Japanese)? That sounds like a regular fairytale happy ending.
     
    Now, Ed Skrein should never have been cast in the first place. Duh. But the fact of the matter is that this happens far too regularly. It's not that there aren't enough Asian actors to go around, or even (actors of color), it's that there aren't that many roles in these big-budget movies for them. And even if there is one, there's still the chance it'll go to some white dude instead.
     
    Diversity and representation isn't just about creating roles and characters, it's also about making space. It's partially why I find Star Wars’ new stable of characters so wonderful; they're consciously making room in their movies and video games for women and people of color. Making the protagonist of Battlefront II a brown woman also means making the choice to not have a white guy in the lead. Something’s gotta give. It's not always just an easy decision.
     
    So here, at the end of it, there's a part of me that wants to be hopeful. We got to watch whitewashing happen and then be undone. Maybe this means we’ll see more room for Asians and other actors of color in these big films. And then maybe after that we can split hairs about a Korean-American actor playing a Japanese-American character.
    But baby steps!
  16. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 285: The First Seventeen
     
    I was recently on a plane back to New York from Montréal (if you wondering: poutine’s really good, the Canadians are onto something). It’s a short flight in a relatively small plane, but apparently, still one that lets you have those screens in the seatbacks. Which is nice because, y’know, you can watch a movie or something. Good time to catch up on movies you've missed or watch different because you wanna.
     
    Thing is, the flight from Montréal to New York is a little over an hour and a half, which, you'll notice, is a hair short of the typical two hour runtime of a movie. Which means when you watch something, you won't finish it and that leaves you in a lurch that I don't like. Means you get a lotta set up, but the payoff doesn't complete. Take my girlfriend, who decided to watch Alien. She got to the chest busted scene, a little further, and we were in New York. No showdown between Ripley and the Alien, just, y'know, the build.
     
    Seeking to avoid that, I looked for a movie around ninety minutes. The plane had Office Space, one of those movies I know I should watch and just haven't gotten around to. I decided to get around to it.
     
    Seventeen minutes in, however, it stopped. Like, ended and returned me to the main menu. I was confused and kinda annoyed. The movie was getting into gear and I was getting into it. Also I knew I’d be cutting it close and the couple minutes it'd take to load it back and find my place could make the difference between seeing the ending and, well, not. So I cued it back up and started fast-forwarding to my spot, whereupon I noticed that the timecode for the ending was at, coincidentally, seventeen minutes. Sure enough, when I reached where I was before, it stopped and I was returned to the main menu and Air Canada’s friendly hello.
     
    Office Space has returned to the list of movies that I will watch eventually. But the first seventeen minutes are a lotta fun. Equally importantly, they serve to set up (what I presume) is the plot of the movie. We're introduced to our protagonist and his two work buddies and we learn that they all really don't like their job. There are hints of a scheme to screw over their company, the motivation of being free to do whatever they want with a load of money. We’re also given an antagonist in their smarmy boss a ticking clock with their company’s downsizing to speed along the plot. And, of course, it takes a minute to introduce us to our protagonist’s love interest. In short, everything is set up for the movie to come.
     
    Beginnings are important. Duh. You're still reading this either because you like me or you found my lengthy preamble about inflight entertainment sufficiently charming. A strong start is what keeps the reader, viewer, listened, or player engaged.
     
    But beginnings might matter even more from a narrative point of view. One of the things Aristotle believed to be key about stories was the ultimate catharsis at the end, that great release of emotion (i.e.: blowing up the Death Star). To get that catharsis, you've gotta fill your reader (etc) with those emotions (i.e.: take Luke from Alderaan, destroy Alderaan, and lose Ben Kenobi to Darth Vader). You don't get that release without doing the work (blowing up the Death Star just isn't the same without all the build up).
     
    From what I saw of it, Office Space certainly lays some strong groundwork. We know the problem — office life sucks — and now it's a matter of remedying that. I know it somehow involves beating up a printer, but past that I'd have to actually watch the movie.
     
    I'll get around to it eventually.
  17. Ta-metru_defender

    The Economy

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 284: The Economy
     
    In this day and age, I think it’s time we talked about The Economy.
     
    In video games.
     
    A lot of games have an economy of some sort, where you earn something and spend that something on a something beneficial. In Super Mario Bros. and Crash Bandicoot you collect coins and wumpa fruit (respectively) and when you get a hundred of them it’s an extra life. It’s a simple enough exchange, one that, like provides impetus and rewards for doing stuff.
     
    You’ve got the other end of the spectrum, of course. Finance simulators like Zapitalism (a wonderful game from ’97 that I played a lot of in the early 2000s and remain wonderfully inept at) has you running a store by managing upkeep, stock, prices, a stock market, salaries, import rights, building permits, government bonds, betting on how long someone can stand on one leg, corporate sabotage, loans, insurance, etc. It’s a delightfully complex game, and really is a game all about economics. Now, while Zapitalism teaches you many principles and pitfalls of unrestrained capitalism (eg: having money makes it easier to make more money and so the rich get richer), it’s not quite the economy I’m thinking of right now.
     
    For that, let’s talk about Pokémon. Any of them, really, but we all know Gold and Silver are the best. You get money in the games by beating other trainers, money that you can then spend on PokéBalls or healing items like potions. If you wanna catch 'em all, you need that money to catch more Pokémon. Now, if you lose a battle and all your Pokémon faint, you black out and lose a chunk of your money; thereby providing consequences for running your team into the ground. The nice thing about Pokémon is that money is a renewable resource, insofar as there’s always ways to get more money; even after you beat the game you can still challenge the Elite Four for their precious precious money. Earlier in the game you can also sell items you’ve collected along the way for an influx of cash. Even though there are (economic) consequences to losing, they’re remediable enough.
     
    Not so in Mass Effect 2. The money (credits) in this game is earned by going on missions, in other words you get credits for advancing the story and pursuing optional side-quests too. It’s a clever system, since these credits are what let you buy new armor and weapon upgrades. Basically, the more of the game’s story you explore, the more stuff you can get. The problem is there is a finite amount of missions in the game and thus a finite amount of credits. Which wouldn’t be that bad, except for the fact that Fuel and Probes cost credits, and depending on how you play the game, you can bankrupt yourself on Fuel and Probes and thus not have enough credits for, y’know, making your guns shootier.
     
    Speaking of making guns shootier, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker introduces a resource management aspect. Your combat unit generates GMP (Gross Military Product, you are running a non-governmental/national private military force out of international waters, after all) which you can then in turn use to research and develop new weapons and other tools for use in the field. It’s a fairly simple mechanic, of the GMP earned you allocate x amount to whatever project, do a mission, the project completes, you can then reallocate those funds elsewhere.
     
    It’s the sequel, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that takes things several steps forward. Your combat unit still earns GMP, but this time it’s earned periodically and once GMP is used it’s gone until you get more. Rather than the budget allocation that defined Peace Walker’s economy, Phantom Pain is built upon the more 'traditional' earning and spending of funds. The twist of the game’s economy is that research and development programs aren’t the only things that cost GMP. Going out into the field will cost you GMP, in that you have to pay for your ammunition, weapons, helicopter fuel, and so on. Once out in the field, GMP is spent if you want to call in a helicopter for air support, swap out your sniper support for your pet dog, extract enemy combatants/vehicles by balloon, and even get an ammunition resupply or catch a ride out of the area of operations by helicopter.
     
    Sure, you get more GMP by completing missions and side ops, but making aspects of missions cost funds encourages the player to play a little smarter and has them taking economic factors into consideration when planning missions ("I could swap out my sniper rifle for a rocker launcher to take down that enemy chopper, but if I sneak into the enemy outpost and get control of their machine gun nest instead I could save some money to develop a new shotgun"). It adds another dimension to what could easily be just another Open World Shooter, plus it has the player make more interesting choices ("Alright, I didn’t' bring a rocket launcher, looks like I’m gonna sneak up to that tank and extract it via fulton balloon") which, hey, isn’t that what games are about?
     
    Though somehow I doubt anyone expected an action-stealth series like Metal Gear Solid have such strong focus on financial planning.
  19. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 279: Top Nine Movies of 2016
     
    There comes a point in time when you realize you aren’t going to get around to watching those movies on your list. And then it’s almost August and you’re still thinking about 2016 movies and honestly it’s just embarrassing at this point.
     
    But then again, that’s why it’s a Top Nine, to save one space for that extra movie. Because there are movies out there I know I’d like, like Swiss Army Man or maybe Patterson. And Midnight Special. Man, I can’t believe I still haven’t watched Midnight Special. Maybe even some others that I’ve forgotten. But not La La Land, La La Land was awful.
     
    Look, I had a busy year. So with no more excuses, here are, in a vague semblance of order that is liable to change, my top nine of 2016.
     
    9. The Magnificent Seven
    I know that, objectively, this movie is just kinda pretty alright, but I can’t help but to really like it. And of course it’s because it’s about a multiracial band of cowboys doing the hero thing. If your movie gives me a #AsianCowboy, of course I’m gonna be game. I want more movies with teams like this, so, here we are.
     
    8. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    I don’t know how I feel about the whole Cloverfield branding thing, so let’s ignore that. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a masterclass in suspense, where half the horror of it comes from your own brain trying to piece together what’s going on. It’s terrifying, without ever resorting to cheap scares.
     
    7. 20th Century Women
    It’s hard to put exactly into words what I liked about this movie. It feels like a snapshot come to life, like an attempt to capture a very specific point in time with a very specific group of people. It’s wonderful and bittersweet, the sort of movie that leaves you feeling that this has been something.
     
    6. Rogue One
    I have said a lot of things over the past year about why I love this movie. In summation:
    Epic battle against good and evil
    AT-ATs and Star Destroyers
    The good guys aren’t just white dudes
    Again, the main heroes are women and PoC.
    Star Wars, yo.

    5. Zootopia
    A movie about a bunny cop and a sly fox teaming up to solve a crime sounds overly cutesy on paper, but Zootopia succeeds in telling a pretty raw story on prejudice, but without it feeling overly moralistic. Plus there’s a gorgeously realized world in it that you just wanna explore.
     
    4. Captain America: Civil War
    Yes, the Marvel movies always get high praise for me. Especially Civil War, which levied the MCU’s eight years of history into a really affecting conflict. It’s an excellent example of causality in fiction, where just about every plot and character beat feels earned and is either pay off or set up for another. It’s excellent all around.
     
    3. Sing Street
    I’m not quite sure why I fell in love with his movie. Maybe it’s fresh on my mind because I read the script recently, maybe it’s because it’s such a great coming-of-age story, maybe it’s because it plays out a teenage fantasy so well. More than anything, though, the movie feels honest. There’s no winking, no tongue in cheek; Conor’s quest to start a band and woo wannabe-model Raphina is treated as being perfectly legitimate and not an adolescent flight of fantasy. It may not go quite as far as it could, but it remains a wonderful film.
     
    2. Moonlight
    A lot of people have probably said why this movie works better than I can. It’s a beautiful, almost haunting movie. It’s gorgeously intimate, almost to the point of being uncomfortable. Stories let you live someone else’s life, and Moonlight does that so well.
     
    1. Arrival
    There are movies that, when hooked on an interesting premise, will be really happy about it and make its whole thing. Arrival has a great twist to it, but it’s not one done just for the kicks nor does it self-congratulate itself for it. Rather, it’s born out of a story about understanding, language, and otherness. Arrival is an incredibly unified movie where everything, its visuals, plot, and characters, all revolve around its central theme. And it’s an excellent movie to boot.
  20. Ta-metru_defender

    Backlog

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Y'know how when you're younger you figure when you're an adult you can buy all the LEGO you want? And then when you're an adult you realize you gotta budget for it? And then you do budget for it (by rearranging some priorities [movies and alcohol took a hit])? And then you get an employee discount? And then you save your money until double VIP points roll around and then you buy a bunch? And then you get a backlog?
     
    Yeah.
     

  21. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 275: Why Am I Reading This?
     
    There aren’t a lot of books that take place in Singapore. Wikipedia’s category page for Novels Set in Singapore lists only twenty-six. Now, there are books missing from that list (I added one to the list while writing this), but let’s take this as a sample group. A cursory glance shows that many of these books are not set in contemporary Singapore, but rather around the second World War or before the country was established as it is now. None of them are books you’re probably gonna happen upon, and a few are long out of print.
     
    Point is, not a lot of books about modern Singapore.
     
    Which is why, upon finding it on display in a bookstore in the Village, I added Crazy Rich Asians to my reading list. The blurb sounded interesting enough; a Singaporean-living-in-New-York (Nick) brings his ABC girlfriend (Rachel) to Singapore for a friend’s wedding and to meet his parents (who are crazy rich). Should be fun.
     
    Of course, the main reason I picked up the book and read it was because it was a book by a Singaporean about Singapore. I haven’t read a book that would fall into either category since… well, I can’t remember.
     
    And for most of the book, it’s why I kept reading. The prose of Crazy Rich Asians, is passable at its best, perfectly perfunctory and rife with massive chunks of exposition. Most frustrating of all, it is bereft of a voice. It could almost be excused as just lackluster writing, except that we catch glimmers of one in the footnotes used to translate bits of Singlish or explain a reference to a Singaporean institution (but, for some reason, not to excise the paragraphs of stilted exposition that exist in the text). Writer Kevin Kwan does shine through in parts, particular when capturing the idiosyncratic speech pattern of Singaporeans, or small details about the food (and importance thereof) in Singapore. But it is, for the most part, a bit of a dull read.
     
    But I can forgive lackluster prose. Michael A. Stackpole is not the most deft writer, but his X-Wing books are well-plotted and offer a fun, pulpy read with distinct, memorable characters. Crazy Rich Asians, however, has only the barest bones of a plot. Rachel gets a chunk of culture shock when she realizes how rich Nick’s family is, meanwhile Nick’s mother tries to break them up, seeing as Rachel doesn’t come from an established family. There’s also Nick’s cousin who suspects her husband of infidelity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these plots, except that they’re all stretched out over the book’s five hundred-odd pages, with little development for whole swaths of the book and interspersed with small subplots that offer little insight into characters or the bigger, overacting plots. It’s like an open-world video game with too many sidequests in book form. The big issue, besides the whole pacing thing, is that so much of the conflict is contrived. Which, again, wouldn’t be an issue were the characters interesting; but Nick, Rachel, et al. feel more like ciphers than characters, hollow shells who act and react however best to move the plot along or, more often add to The Drama. When the book finally resolves with the most overdone trope ever, it’s more an eventuality than a culmination. Characters don’t make choices, character’s don’t have inner conflict, characters don’t have character.
     
    So why the heck did I keep reading? Besides, y’know, my aversion to complaining and criticizing material I don’t watch/read/play. Simple answer: Singapore. I’ve spent around half my life in that country at various points and have a complex relationship with the place. There’s a thrill to seeing it in fiction and recognizing places and foods. I suppose for people without a connection to the country would find the book intriguing for the, well, exoticness of Singapore and it’s super-rich elite. It leaves a weird feeling in my gut. To me, Singapore isn’t exotic; it’s pretty normal, so exoticizing someplace like Singapore is odd in and of itself, and downright bizarre when the book’s appeal seems to hang on that hook. We get it, Singapore is a unique place, but you’ve gotta do something with it. Tolkien didn’t just create an encyclopedia of Middle-Earth, he sets epic stories in it to flesh it out. Kwan’s characters never become more interesting than Singapore, and a location, no matter how exotic, shouldn’t be what drives a story.
     
    There are two more books in this series, and I’m mildly curious about whether they improve. But as it stands, Crazy Rich Asians is an immensely frustrating book. I want to see Singapore and all its idiosyncrasies in fiction, I just want to see it done well. I guess I kept reading with the hopes that hey, it’d finish well, but so much for that.
  22. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 272: But What About The Men??? 2: Sexy Lamps
     
    Back at a con panel in 2013, Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer of Captain Marvel, etc) coined the Sexy Lamp Test. Its rubric is that if you can take a female character out of a story and replace her with a sexy lamp and your plot still works, then "you’re a [beeping] hack." Like all tests used to judge stories (ie: Bechdel), it’s not perfect – mostly because it’s a little too vague. But it still provides a good starting point to examine fiction.
     
    Like I love The Dark Knight, but Rachel in the movie is very much a sexy lamp. She doesn’t do anything that affects the plot in a major way. She’s there for Bruce and Harvey to pine over and then to be 'fridged and give Batman some angst. Still a great movie, but there are issues with how the film handles women.
     
    Conversely, Star Wars aces it. You can’t replace Leia with a lamp that goes along for the ride, she does way too much – her first appearance is giving the Death Star plans to Artoo and setting the movie’s plot in motion. Throughout the film she does stuff, she has agency, she makes things happen.
     
    You with me so far? Because here’s where we’re gonna talk about Wonder Woman. And dudes.
     
    Steve Trevor is The Male Character in Wonder Woman. Sure, we’ve the villain and the other soldiers, but Steve Trevor is The Guy. He buddies up with Diana early on in the film and they go out and Do Things. Given that Diana is the protagonist of this movie, Steve becomes, quite naturally, the deuteragonist of the film and fulfills what in any other movie would be the 'girlfriend role.’
     
    This is one of Wonder Woman's acts of brilliance: the film flips the roles. Steve is the one who buoys Diana's force of character, he's her tie to the real world, and he's the one whose main role is to support her and her arc. Like I said, he’s the girlfriend.
     
    Consider Peggy Carter in the first Captain America. Though this was later remedied in her tv show, she doesn't really affect the plot much in the movie. She supports Steve Rogers and helps out here and there, but at the end of the day doesn't really change the plot much more than a talking sexy lamp would. Oh, she's still a really great character, but the plot doesn't position her in such a way that she does stuff. This is one thing the Sexy Lamp Test exposes: cool characters who don't actually have much agency or effect on the plot. Like Boba Fett, who outside of going to Cloud City offscreen, has no more narrative impact than a lamp in dope armor. Except Peggy is actually one of the main characters of The First Avenger.
     
    Steve Trevor of Wonder Woman, however, does quite a bit in the movie; considerably more than your typical 'superhero girlfriend.' Without spoiling too much of the film, it's his actions - particularly one he does of his own volition and not under orders - that set most of the plot in action, and in the final act he gets to make a Big Choice that changes the course of the climax.
     
    A sexy lamp Steve Trevor is not. And maybe that can be chalked up to good writing, but I’m gonna blame it on Steve being a guy. Imagine this; it’s the climax of the film and the main male character does nothing. Maybe he drives a car so the main female character can go save the day, but elsewise he watches. It’s basically unheard of, and uncommon at best (look at how much Peeta and Gale get to do in the climaxes of The Hunger Games movies). But it happens all the time for female characters. It’s what Peggy does in The First Avenger. It’s what Pepper does in Iron Man 2. Sexy lamp or not, it’s easy to cast aside the supporting female character, the 'girlfriend role,' at the climax. But Steve Trevor still gets to Do Stuff, and Important Stuff Of His Own Accord at that.
     
    For all its subversions of norms, Wonder Woman doesn’t neuter the agency of its male lead. Which, woo, equality! But at the same time, it shows how unfair the treatment of women in blockbusters – especially superhero films – is. We’ve got the first female-led superhero in over a decade and we still have a dude who goes around saving some of the day. Oh, it’s still Diana’s movie; but Steve gets an arc just about any other female character would kill for in just about any other film. Even in a movie about Wonder Woman, the dude still gets special treatment.
     
    Which in this case means fair treatment.
     
    And therein lies the problem.
     
     
     
    For the first But What About The Men???, go here.
  23. Ta-metru_defender

    Fast Car

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    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 come from a home with functional parents in a healthy relationship; I never had to work to support my family or put my education on hold to care for my parents. The "I" of the song and I have little to nothing in common.
     
    "Fast Car" speaks to something deeper than the surface it transcends circumstances. It’s not hard to relate to wanting something more than you have, to wanting to drive away from your lot in life. But Chapman doesn’t just try to paint the picture of those emotions; instead she describes the circumstances that create the feelings. Instead of telling us how to feel she crafts a narrative that elicits it. Specificity lends it empathy; by describing the events in such detail, Chapman is able to really dig into that wanting. It’s so vivid, it’s real. The fast car drives from metaphor into reality.
     
    But it’s still a very particular narrative, that of a poor, black woman. It's a story about her and her experiences. So what business do I, a half-white half-Asian man who’s not living in poverty, have listening to it?
     
    Now there's the universality of art. You don't have to have lived on a boat to appreciate John Masefield's poetry. Homegoing is still a brilliant piece of literature whether or not you have any relation to the African diaspora. Good works bring you into a world and state of mind, often through specifics. It's how you make an unknown world known, how you spark a feeling that you can't describe.
     
    The stumbling block here, especially with something like "Fast Car," is adopting a narrative or set of experiences as your own. "Fast Car" isn't my story and it would be disingenuous of me to suggest otherwise. I love the song and I love singing along, but fundamentally I know it's not my song. It's the difference between appreciation and appropriation. If you were to make a video adaption of "Fast Car" and make the leads middle-class and white, you'd be completely missing the point.
     
    This is something I'm thinking through, and a lot of this rant essay is me spitballing. I was introduced to "Fast Car" (and Tracy Chapman proper) when an indie band I love covered the song four-odd years ago. Now, they didn't change the pronouns or the lyrics at all, but it's still a white guy singing. Does that fundamentally affect the song? What about me and a friend singing it a karaoke? Am I thinking about this way too much?
     
    In all honesty: I probably am. When Barcelona sings "Fast Car" they aren't making any claims to the narrative. It’s a thirty year old song and a really good one at that; maybe a cover of it costs some of its subtext, but I don’t think there’s anything, well wrong with it. Maybe it’s like reading a good book, where you get to experience another life as your own for a bit. I don’t have a point to all this, more I’m curious about the way I interact with art, especially with narratives that aren't about me.
     
    In any case, "Fast Car" is a great song, and I do really like both Barcelona’s cover and Tracy Chapman’s original.
  24. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 270: So My Apartment Building Caught Fire
     
    My apartment building caught fire yesterday.
     
    Which is heckuva way to start a morning. I'm fine and, by virtue of being in the back on the sixth floor, my unit was somehow untouched.
     
    But it did mean I was outside on the New York sidewalk at 5:30 in the morning watching firemen fight a fire from the pizza place I live over under control.
     
    Then it started to rain. A cold, early morning rain. The sort that makes you wish you'd grabbed another jacket, never mind the smoke.
     
    Just when we were wondering how long we'd have to stand in the rain waiting for news, a woman from the YM-YWHA a few doors down told us all we could wait inside there, warm up, use their bathrooms, and drink their water. Even though most of us weren't members. The firefighters and police said they'd keep those inside updated.
     
    Thus, with some of Maslow's hierarchy taken care of, we continued to wait. But what I really wanted was some coffee.
     
    In walked two people carrying boxes of donuts and coffee. They brought fiber bars and bananas. They brought cellphone chargers. They'd gotten them for us. They weren't affiliated with the Y, not did they know any of us. They were just, as they said, doing what any good neighbors would do. They stayed and talked with us too, just mingling and hanging out.
     
    The morning wore on. News broke that several units were inhospitable. The Red Cross came through with blankets and to help get people to temporary housing. The director of the Y and the leader of the synagogue next door stopped by to let us know that if we needed anything, they would help; if anyone needed clothing, housing, or food, they would reach out to their community to be taken care of.
     
    There are reasons I believe that humanity, deep down, always wants to do good. And New York is a place that reaffirms it. During the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, people with generators sat outside their buildings with power strips so people could charge their phones. People showed up to work at a pizza place and a supermarket so locals could buy food and supplies. Food carts offered free food. My friends and I were waved down by a worker from a ramen joint to be given free food (I still go to that place to this day).
     
    I've seen strangers comfort sobbing people on the subway, I've seen an old woman yell at a cabby who ignored a pedestrian crossing sign and almost hit a guy. Half-a-dozen friends of mine showed up, when asked last minute, to help me and my brother move out of our unit a day early.
     
    This is why I don't believe those stories, those movies and books and tv shows, that declare all of humanity to be depraved and hurtful monsters. It's why I don't believe critics who call superheroes unrealistic. Because when something awful happens, when someone evil crops up, there are always those who step up, who protect, who help. For every Awful in this world, there are a dozen heroes.
     
    It's one of the reasons I love New York. It's a city that doesn't give a darn about who you are, but it will always have your back when things go wrong.
     
     
     
    Or, as Fred Rogers put it:
     
    There was something else my mother did that I’ve always remembered: “Always look for the helpers,” she’d tell me. “There’s always someone who is trying to help.” I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.
  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 268: The Problem With Narrative Sidequests
     
    One of the most striking features of the planet Elaaden is a huge derelict Remnant ship. Sticking out broken over the desert planet, the ship could hold answers for the mystery of the old killer robots that populate Mass Effect: Andromeda. The latest game in the Mass Effect video game series has a strong focus one exploration, namely that titular distant galaxy. There’s so much to see, so much to find out.
     
    But I still haven’t gone to the ship, despite having done basically every other sideqeust available on the planet. This isn’t so much a case of saving the best for last, as much as it is putting off what I expect will be a fun-if-pointless mission.
     
    Because the Remnant Derelict is not a Priority Mission (that is, a story mission), it’s highly unlikely that any Major Plot Twisting Details will happen. If there is some massive revelation about the Remnant waiting in the wings, whatever’s aboard that ship will either tease it or corroborate it, depending on when I play it in relation to that story mission.
     
    Andromeda is an open world RPG. There are Priority Missions I play one after another, these make up the main plot. I complete Mission A, then I can do Mission B, and so on until the game ends. Meanwhile, there are these sidequests, things I can do around the galaxy be it earning my squad’s loyalty or blowing up a Kett tower. Those sidequests can be done in any order and at any point after you’ve unlocked them (usually by completing another sidequest, or progressing to a certain point along the Priority Mission chain). This means that I could have explored that Remnant Derelict when I first found it a couple Priority Missions ago, or I could wait and only explore it after I’ve finished the main story – and the central plot played out. Thus, the mission has to accommodate either timeline. This in turn limits the developments that the sidequest can have, nothing can happen here that would affect a Priority Mission in a big way.
     
    Consider, if you will, a hypothetical game based on Firefly and Serenity. Midway through the movie, we find out that the Reavers, a savage group of spacefaring barbarians, were in fact accidentally created by the Alliance (spoiler). In the hypothetical game, you wouldn't find this out in a sidequest, it'd be a paradigm-shifting story quest that would affect the crew through any major plot developments. Thus if there was a sidequest where you could explore an old Reaver ship or an Alliance Databank, this twist wouldn't be there. Anything you found would be cool, but self-contained.
     
    This is the hurdle that open games have to deal with. Something more linear, like Uncharted or Halo, progress in one direction like a movie, scene 1 into scene 2; there's no scene 1.5. Every level/chapter/scene will affect the plot in someway. Giving the player a choice means the game's writers and programmers have to have planned whichever path the player takes.
     
    In Kingdom Hearts the player can visit a variety of worlds in whatever order they want. They'll pal around with Aladdin, Alice, and Ariel, then have to go to a specific world where More Story happens. This isn't too pressing most of the time, but as the plot picks up, visiting Halloween Town or Monstro’s belly feels like a filler episode in the larger narrative of Sora and Mickey's adventure. They can't impact the plot too much because the player may have another world to complete before the next Big Story Moment.
     
    There are game critics, Ian Bogost and Johnathan Blow among them, who argue that games and stories don't mesh well. And in some ways they do have a point. Either you have a linear game (like Uncharted) where the player is given no narrative agency (and so is a glorified interactive movie) or you have the case of Andromeda or Kingdom Hearts where the extent of then player's agency affects the distribution of the game's narrative. Either the narrative ignores you or you strain against it. Digital gaming can't seem to catch up with good old tabletop rpg's, where the game master is making stories on the fly in response to their players' decisions.
     
    But video games are still a young genre. The amount of player agency in Andromeda would have been unheard of twenty years ago. It's a bummer that it can't anticipate and account for everything, but who's to say games won't in the future? Exploring a virtual world in Andromeda is a great experience, even if it exposes some of the issues with open world games. Yes, the narrative failings are frustrating, but it's a step forward towards what games could be. Risks propel the medium forward; who knows where we'll be in twenty years.
     
     
    Of course, I could be totally wrong and that derelict ship may have a load of secrets about the Remnant and it turns out Andromeda has untold variations of its Priority Missions prepared in its code with each one voiced and animated ready to go. But the point stands; for all the issues with open ended video games, the potential remains. And that's exciting. Bring on the AI game masters!
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