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Messages - Crudblud

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761
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: December 16, 2013, 01:02:27 PM »
Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
Cameras mounted upon a fishing trawler are submerged in gull-blanketed waters, splattered with fish guts, buried under piles of catch, and other fun things in this intense, wordless, non-narrative filmic essay on the harshness of life at sea.

The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Like when I watched 12 Angry Men, I'm left writing a review of a film about which no more can really be said. A well beloved classic of film noir and deservedly so.

Frozen (Chris Buck)
Surprisingly good Disney musical, offering enough twists to their usual formula to make the usual tight visuals, gags and songwriting more than just a case of going through the motions.

Westworld (Michael Crichton)
Proto-Terminator in which mustachio'd vacationer does battle with bald android gunslinger. Great fun from Crichton, who apparently has a thing for deadly theme parks.

Caligula (Tinto Brass)
Disowned by writer Gore Vidal and lead actor Malcolm McDowell, among others, Caligula is an ever escalating orgy of madness that transcends its obvious and manifold flaws to become a grand and absurd comedy. Features a notable performance from the late Peter O'Toole as the wretched Tiberius.

762
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« on: December 16, 2013, 07:35:54 AM »
And now I've beaten Lonesome Road.  To once more quote Sir Drainsalot:

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Lonesome road reminded me a lot of DM - started off well then slowly died. At least the combat wasn't quite to head-bashingly frustrating. But the latter half has all the hallmarks of a ran-out-of-time-and-money job. A sandbox game reduced to a single linear path? Check. Entire plot threads dangled and then forgotten about? Check. Disappointing final boss showdown? Oh yes, without the effort to even animate the guys face, so we'll just stick a mask on there. It says something that the best character in there was an eyebot.

And here's something from Chris:

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I didn't like Lonesome Road, I thought it prescribed too much of your character's back-story. By the time my courier got there he wouldn't have done half the things Ullyses accused him of. I also didn't like the really linear path and the lack of humour.

There was some cool new equipment in this one, like that rocket launcher.  The combat was fairly challenging.  And I really liked the harsh, bleak environment, which seemed like the ideal setting to finally close out the game's story.  That's about all the good things I can say for this one.  I actually feel a little bad for criticizing Honest Hearts after playing this.  I mean, for fuck's sake, this add-on doesn't just feel rushed, it feels unfinished!  Where are the sidequests?  Where are the other characters?  Where are the opportunities for exploration?  Where's the roleplaying?  Where's the opening introduction so we know what the fuck is going on?  Where's the setup for why the Courier is even bothering to do all this shit in the first place?  I'm doing it because I want to play through the DLC, of course, but surely there has to be some kind of in-universe motivation for the character, right?

Speaking of characters and their motivations, Ulysses sucked.  I think Obsidian really wanted to portray him as a super-deep and complex character whose quest to destroy the player is totally understandable, but it didn't work.  At best, he came across as a deranged nut.  And his feud with the Courier had no personal resonance with me at all, because of the simple fact that I had nothing to do with what happened to the Divide.  It was in the past!  Now, if they could have played around with the timeline a bit and tied the destruction of the Divide to something that happened during the main story, something that the Courier did while being controlled by the player, then maybe it could have worked.  But to simply make up an event that predates the main story and expect the player to feel any kind of guilt or responsibility for it?  No.  That's just stupid.

NV, more than any other game in the series so far, is about the past, nostalgia, resisting change; its namesake a relic of the Old World kept in working order by Mr House, a man who can't let go; the central event the battle at Hoover Dam, people across the Mojave fearing the inevitable change that will come no matter who is victorious. In keeping with this theme, all the DLC is in some way about people like Mr House: Thinktank, Elijah, Dog, Dean Domino, Joshua Graham and so on, they all want to cling to what is lost forever. Ulysses is the most extreme example, his tenuous grip on the Old World is his raison d'être, he is adorned with its symbols and resides in a place that likely resembles the world in 2077 (the closest he can physically come to the pre-war world), taking refuge from the chaos of the Divide inside a nuclear missile silo, the physical cause of the Old World's destruction. The final conflict of Lonesome Road is symbolic of the final death of the Old World, Ulysses being something like a steadfast cell, if you will, resisting the death and rot that has consumed the rest of the body. There are countless other examples of this throughout the game: a man who thinks himself a god (recalling Caligula) trying to unite the tribes in a simulacrum of Ancient Rome; the BoS resisting necessary change in the face of sure death; Enclave remnants trying but ultimately failing to leave behind their militaristic past; a ghoul who remains forever attached to a lost love and a former life; former soldiers of The Master's army seeking his likeness and dominion in Tabitha, Marcus and even Father Elijah in Dog's case—there are many more besides.

In LR we learn that a package The Courier delivered to the Divide a long time ago was in fact a bomb of some sort, sent by whom and for what reason we do not know. Ulysses doesn't know either, so who else has he, in his nostalgic madness, to blame but the one who made the delivery? When he sees that The Courier would be next in line after him for the Platinum Chip delivery, he quits the job so that they will take it, knowing that he is effectively signing their death warrant. When this plan fails, his obsession and desire for revenge grows even stronger, and he decides to do the job himself, calling The Courier out to one of the most inhospitable places in the west, knowing that, if they don't die on their way there, he will do everything in his power to destroy them with his own hands. Ultimately he cannot do this and, one way or another, lets go of the past. This fits with the idea that The Courier is the agent of change and bringer of closure to the inhabitants of the Mojave, with LR as the ultimate act of closure and Hoover Dam as the ultimate act of change.

763
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 15, 2013, 03:09:35 AM »
I shall resume my super-serious discussion with Crudblud later, btw.

Ooh, ooh, is it my turn? H-here I go: Ahem.

Since they keep putting in the Enclave, but the amount of people gets smaller and smaller, I do hope we get one last Enclave soldier, with one leg and 3 fingers. In Fallout 5, there can be an ear found somewhere named Enclave.

I missed this before, somehow. Upon reading it just now I almost sprayed coffee all over my monitor.

764
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Music as energy.
« on: December 14, 2013, 06:01:40 AM »
Plato had similar ideas about music's relationship with society:

Quote from: The Republic
The overseers must be watchful against its insensible corruption. They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that that song is most regarded among men “which hovers newest on the singer’s lips”, lest it be supposed that the poet means not new songs but a new way of song and is commending this. But we must not praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet’s meaning. For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a hazard of all our fortunes. For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and social conventions.

I don't believe we live in a time when music could have such profound effects on society; in less "civilised" lands it is possible to conceive of music produced by people for their village or tribe, or indeed by a village or tribe as a whole for themselves, and this music forms an important part of regular life there, but in the First World we essentially have two kinds of music: the mainstream and the specialised. The former of these is a commodity, any impact it has on anyone is more often than not due to images or ideas that are associated with it in marketing and the environment in which it is presented (e.g.: a club, in which the music functions as sonic wallpaper) rather than the music itself which is essentially stagnant, recycling itself near constantly; the latter avoids commodification by being "about itself", it is not designed with a purpose outside itself and is almost entirely divorced from the extramusical things which the former relies on to appeal to consumers. Milton Babbitt's article The Composer as Specialist (originally published against his wishes under the title Who Cares If You Listen?) is an interesting and controversial text on the subject of this "specialised music" and its purpose, or lack thereof.

tl;dr: Music is irrelevant to society because it is inherently meaningless, it can be augmented with things outside itself: words, images, functions, fashions, ideologies, activities etc. but can never escape its fundamentally abstract nature.

765
Suggestions & Concerns / Re: FES Video
« on: December 13, 2013, 05:13:20 PM »
I agree with it being an animation with no actual person in the video. Those are simply much more interesting to most of the internet, I think, whereas showing an actual person with a chalkboard is probably going to look comparatively amateur and kinda shoddy. Think slightly grainy, poor acoustics (almost definitely) that makes it seem filmed by some student for a school project...which is really just more a case of I doubt Rooster has professional recording equipment.

Whereas with a smaller animation and simply a voice-over, all we really need is an animator and a good microphone (which Crudblud might have, I don't know?).

Another important thing, I think, that a lot of people overlook, is that we should make sure to check the voice-over first. Moreso if Thork does it—no offense, it's just that Crudblud seems more like he'd be more inclined towards professional-sounding readings. I'd done acting and voice-over stuff in school for years, so I get overly critical about this stuff and get really upset with amateur readings where it's clearly from a script. :P

I completely forgot this thread existed. My microphone is not exactly high end, but it is clean enough with the right settings. As for the voice-over coming across scripted, it's not just the reading but the text itself that heavily influences this, if it's clunky and unnatural even the best orator (which I am certainly not) is going to have a bad time with it, so I would also like to volunteer my services as a script doctor. I don't want to get in on anyone else's part in this project, but I can do words good and I have a feeling we might end up with some "data node" type sentences which will need to be parsed into more fluid language to come out at all "naturally."

766
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Cazazza Dan
« on: December 13, 2013, 04:03:04 AM »
What, my thread's not good enough for you?
I tend to release more regularly than anyone else here, it seemed like I would draw too much attention away from others if I post an average of four releases a year where they maybe post one or less, so thought it best to start my own thread.

767
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Cazazza Dan
« on: December 12, 2013, 07:24:54 PM »
And here's a fresh one right now (yes, I was waiting until it was ready to start this thread).

Emergent

Piece for Cristal Baschet, two Ondes Martenot, steel drums and Cloud Chamber Bowls.

Stream on Soundcloud

768
Arts & Entertainment / Cazazza Dan
« on: December 12, 2013, 07:23:42 PM »
I make music and stuff and in this thread I'm going to post about it and you can make fun of me or whatever it is you want to do. On the old FES I used to make a new thread for every release, but this time around I've decided to just do a general thread and bump it with fresh content when it's ready to go.

Back Catalogue (anything I had posted on FES previously; will be updated with each new release)

Sailin' Tuns! (2012)
Hello (2012)
Salami XIII (2013)
Night Music (2013)
Frozen Bob's Estranged Wife (2013)
Emergent (2013)
Urgynes (2014)

769
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 12, 2013, 07:15:27 PM »
I managed to get them on my account, although I had to attempt to login several times before I could actually get on it. Anyway, I understand that once the game is on your account you can download it any time?

770
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: December 12, 2013, 10:14:51 AM »
Apparently the fairytale Frozen is based on actually featured a female hero trying to rescue a platonic male friend. it's a shame they went down the traditional Disney route.
Actually, the old Disney formula has been spiced up with a few subversions and twists. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but it's certainly different enough to make it stand out among the Disney princess back catalogue.

771
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 12, 2013, 04:30:06 AM »
Rumours of the Massachusetts Commonwealth as a setting have been around since before Skyrim, though. I do think it would be cool to go there, in F3 it is suggested that this is perhaps the most technologically advanced and civilised area in North America, and I really hope Bethesda can deliver on that promise, but I'm not holding my breath.

772
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: December 11, 2013, 08:59:26 PM »
I agreed to go and see Disney's new movie Frozen not knowing it was a two hour-long musical. Someone else paid for me so whatever. It's a typical Disney fantasy with princes and princesses and talking snowmen and trolls and castles and songs about true love and following your heart and all that crap, it delivers on the comedy front with the usual tight slapstick and one-liners, and the visuals and animation are top notch. If you like Disney's Aladdin type stuff this is going to be right up your alley, and it comes with a cool short called Get A Horse which combines Steamboat Willie era animation and modern CG in some pretty inventive ways, it does get a little redundant before too long, but while it's good it's good. Overall, Frozen is a highly competent and tight piece of work that doesn't feel half as long as it actually is.

773
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 11, 2013, 12:51:23 PM »
It was the same FEV, so it makes sense that the SMs would be similar.  Perhaps they could have gone for a little more variety, yes, but I imagine they were worried about getting a reaction from the fans of "That's not what the SMs look like!  Betrayal!"
Actually, Vault 87 FEV is a modified strain, and supposedly inferior to Mariposa FEV—kind of weird that a test vault in the government's back yard would be using inferior FEV, come to think of it. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any traditional looking SMs either, just that it would have been nice to have some variety in an enemy that you spend a lot of time fighting. Also, I'm glad they brought back centaurs, since they're creepy as all hell, but the creation process was a specific invention of the Master, it seems kind of odd that a bunch of effectively retarded SMs who don't really have any connection to their Mariposa counterparts would know how to make them.

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This probably goes back to what I was saying earlier about them wanting to start off slowly with their world-building and get new players accustomed to the Fallout universe.  However, there is one thing that the Enclave had in this game that they didn't have in F2 - Malcolm McDowell.  Come on, you have to admit that you liked Eden at least a little.  McDowell gleefully chewed the scenery anytime he spoke, and he was obviously having so much fun with the role that it was impossible not to enjoy it along with him.  In fact, I'd say that he was one of the best parts of the game.
As much as I love Malcolm, that's window dressing, and doesn't change the fact that the Enclave as presented in the game doesn't need to be there. I think Eden would have been better as a living breathing character equal in influence to Autumn, that way the tension between the two could have been brought out in the form of an internal conflict or faction split. That would have been awesome. Still, I have to admit that a supercomputer with Malcolm McDowell's voice is one of the better things in the game.

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When you make a complaint like this, is it any wonder that Bethesda decided not to throw in any new twists with the Enclave?  In any case, it's made very clear all throughout the game that this chapter of the Brotherhood has abandoned its original mission, and that the higher-ups are not at all happy about it - but what can they do?  Go to war?  Send over more men and slaughter them all?  You could make the argument that this conflict of principles wasn't handled very well, and maybe it wasn't, but the concept itself isn't a bad one, and it's quite plausible that a situation like this would arise at some point during the Brotherhood's long history.  After all, Lyons wasn't the only member to grow disillusioned with the Brotherhood's goals and purpose; he just took it further than anyone else.
If they already knew the changes would be poorly received by anyone who knew the series prior, why did they bother making them at all? It all comes back to my feeling that at some point Bethesda's goals became a hybrid of wanting to please both the Elder Scrolls audience (i.e.: people who perhaps don't know Fallout and will buy the game because it's a major Bethesda title) and old fans, ultimately missing the mark when it came to the latter. Anyway: I never said that it couldn't happen, just that there's no way Lyons would have faced so little resistance, nor that the outcasts would be so few in number.

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I can't disagree with any of this - well, the one thing I will say is that the guy in Girdershade is a badass who's capable of protecting the two of them, but it's still a silly setup, and so are all the other places you mentioned.  Someone down the line must have thought that eccentricity was the way to go for pretty much everyone in the game.  Maybe they thought it would be funny?
I seem to recall Girdershade-man just straight up dies if you convince him to the Nuka-Cola factory on his own, but maybe I'm remembering that wrong. Eccentricity is fine, and indeed has its place in the originals, but it's just so hamfisted here that I would rather have the whole game played totally serious. If you can't do humour, don't.

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Yeah, I think Bethesda was more interested in depicting a post-apocalyptic world than one that was post-post-apocalyptic.  That certainly wasn't what Fallout was about.  And I also agree that the comedy, writing, and voice acting were almost entirely crap.  I think the funniest part of the game is when Autumn is interrogating you, and you have the option to reply with "Fuck you," and follow it up with, "No, seriously.  Fuck you."  That really tickled me for some reason.
I wouldn't be complaining about the setting if they'd set it at a more reasonable point in the timeline, say in between 1 and 2, but having it set so far after either just makes it seem silly. I think Bethesda has tried to TES-ify the universe, this is apparent right off the bat as the main action takes place in 2277, 200 years after the bombs fell (incidentally, that's why the “2299” thing made this hoax so believable) and combined with the biblical quote about the water of life, the hailing of the Lone Wanderer as some messianic figure by Three Dog, a sort of wasteland prophet in his own right, the fact that you are expected to sacrifice yourself to complete your father's work and so on, the whole thing reeks of the prophecy and fate stuff that is rampant in TES games. All that stuff works in those games, but you can't just transpose it to some completely different universe and have it work as well, if at all.

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Anyway, thanks for the lengthy response.  I don't suppose you've played the DLC, by any chance?
I have played them all. I liked Mothership Zeta best because it was just goofy fun, and a welcome tonal contrast to the vanilla game. It felt like an expanded version of one of the silly random encounters from the original games, and in fact I'd say it's the closest they got to the humour of the originals, like the holodisk where the aliens are trying to interrogate a cow. Of course, the obvious criticism there is “how come aliens with highly advanced technology are using holodisks?” and yet, taking the DLC as a send-up of hammy science fiction shows, that kind of technological gaff is at just the right level of conceit. I really wish there had been more silly fun in this vein and less of the omen and portent of the main quest in the game proper.

Broken Steel at least fixed the super-dumb ending, but it's yet another totally pointless resurrection of the Enclave. A name like “Broken Steel” suggests something else; the chapter in turmoil, Lyons being taken to task for his betrayal of the Codex, internal faction wars, the player perhaps becoming a key figure in determining the future of the chapter. Something like NV's Brotherhood/Veronica side-story but on a grander scale.

Point Lookout had promise, I really like the opening sequence, the hallucination sequence is pretty good too, but overall it's just more of the same bland colour scheme and 90% of everything you encounter trying to kill you. Also the “English” ghoul who is obviously an American doing a sort of posh-ified take on Brick Top from Snatch just doesn't sit well with me.

Operation Anchorage, which I think most people disliked, I actually thought was one of the better things in the game. It was a part of Fallout's history we hadn't seen up close and personal before, and I think it was handled pretty well. It was also nice to have something other than green and brown on the screen. Incidentally, I think the other VR sequence in the game, Tranquility Lane, was perhaps the best moment in the main story.

I have a feeling that The Pitt could have been the best of the bunch, but for me it lost its punch rather quickly. I like the atmosphere of the opening, but by the time the story is in full swing I feel like I'm missing something. Ultimately your choice of whether the baby is with Ashur or the other guy doesn't seem to matter, nothing happens either way, and this makes the baby seem not so much a person of great importance as a possession, and the player the middleman in a petty argument between two people who both claim sole ownership of a block of wood. It's difficult to make player decisions genuinely weighty, but I just couldn't take this one seriously. File under “missed opportunity” along with Point Lookout and Broken Steel.

774
That didn't answer the question.  You need to defend your snobbery.
NIN doesn't really have anything to do with the industrial scene, and not much than a passing resemblance, if any, to the music of groups like Throbbing Gristle, Coil, Foetus etc.

775
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Make music!
« on: December 10, 2013, 04:43:53 AM »
I have a few projects in the works at the moment, I doubt any will be ready before the new year, however. I don't really want to say much about them because I tend to lose interest in a project when it's out in the open like that, it feels like the piece is already finished even though it does not yet truly exist.

776
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 09, 2013, 09:51:04 PM »
@Saddam: Thank you, too. I'll get back to you later.

Ahem.

I said "later." I was being deliberately vague in case I got bored.

777
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: December 08, 2013, 02:50:01 AM »
David Lynch's Hotel Room
Finally watched all 3 episodes. It doesn't come close to Twin Peaks for me, but it's still one of the better shows I have seen. Amazing atmosphere and some really great dialogue. I liked the 1st and 3rd episodes the best. I still feel like I missed some details, so I will be going back and watching it again soon.
This about sums up my feelings regarding the series, too.

778
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 08, 2013, 02:49:01 AM »
Or were they just trolls?
I would have believed that if I hadn't met people IRL who boldly proclaimed, with a straight face, that New Vegas was the second game in the series.

779
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 07, 2013, 10:22:41 PM »
Even though it's in the name?

Did the game with a huge ass "FALLOUT 3" title on the box not, you know, give it away?

Yes, they really were that stupid.

780
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Survivor2299
« on: December 07, 2013, 09:47:49 PM »
lol@gulliblefanboys

Anyone, I want to hear more bawing.  Has anyone else played the original games?

I remember I looked on reddit's Fallout board once, it was terrible. Some people didn't even realise F3 was the third game in the series.

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