Transistor, Yoshi's New Island, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix, Final Fantasy X(and X-2) HD, Rise of Nations: Extended Edition, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, Tokyo Jungle Special Guest: Thomas Johansson of Paradox Games
In which Sean, Julian and Lara talk about silent protagonists. Also, an interview with the Project Lead of Europa Universalis IV, Thomas Johansson, and a spoiler section for Transistor after the credits. Also, apologies for the audio quality of the interview, Thomas was having a few technical difficulties.
To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.
Chairman_Mao's Timestamps
00.02.18 Transistor
00.10.50 Yoshi's New Island
00.12.13 Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD Remix
00.12.33 Final Fantasy X and X-2
00.15.32 Rise of Nations: Extended Edition
00.22.45 Tokyo Jungle
00.23.54 Lego Marvel Superheroes
00.26.53 Interview with Europa Universalis 4 Project Lead, Thomas Johansson
00.50.23 This week's topic: Silent Protagonists!
01.10.09 Your emails!
01.17.11 Spoiler section: Transistor!
Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks
High School Snaps - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 26:22
High School Snaps - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 49:23
Our Ego - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 1:09:39
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I have to ding you guys on your $500 Gaming PC is all you need response to the reader email. Sure a $500 PC will play a good deal of indie titles as well as newer titles at sub 1080P resolution and/or dialed down details but then outside of PC centric controls and indie games why not drop that $500 on a new console which will offer a superior experience?
A more realistic budget for modern 1080P PC Gaming is closer to $1000 if not $1200. Especially given the apparent new trend of limiting (granted somewhat artificially) cross platform titles to lower detail levels unless your PC's GPU has 3GB if not 4GB of VRAM.
Upcoming games are certainly showing us that we can continue to expect the graphical bar to rise as well as the "complexity" factor. Witcher 3 is showing us huge living and breathing cities which require not only GPU muscle but CPU muscle (another thing massively lacking in a $500 PC) not to mention insane draw distances.
I think this is where the latest consoles will start to show their power.. not so much in raw GPU strength (as both will struggle to hit 1080P/60FPS in every title) but in CPU strength and flexibility.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
Delivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.
And yeah, 1080p / 60fps doesn't happen all of the time on PS4, either.
Backloggery
I've been enjoying the way Wasteland 2 gets around the silent protagonist issue (I think by this point it is clear that WL2:Me::DA:Lara).
They keep the dialogue keyword based, and for the most part the "lines" that your speaking character has are intentionally generic, so you can project whatever personality you want on to them. By mouse-overing a keyword, it tells you what you are going to say. Initially I thought they were trying to have their silent protagonist cake while also eating the cake of dialogue, but it actually works really well (to the credit of their writers.)
Additionally, they have three dialogue skills (Hard Ass, Smart Ass, and Kiss Ass) where you get a bit more personality. Because it is a party based game, you can have whoever you want talking. You might be getting nowhere with your smart-alecky "face" character, turn the dialogue over to your "Hard ass" brute and unlock all sorts of new keywords.
It strikes a really great balance in terms of letting personality grow very specifically in your imagination while entirely getting around the trap of it feeling like everyone in the world just talks at you.
I should note that some but not all of the game is VO'd. A vast majority isn't, it is just text, which makes it all work. Key NPCs have VO dialogue and they use a radio to great effect.
LastSuprise: Destroyer of Wallets would be an excellent tag and/or third handle for you.
https://twitter.com/theharpomarxist
There's a LOT of embedded assumptions in there. My son's playing Assassins Creed 4 on a 4 year old dell laptop which ebays under $500 and no, it's not MAXED but its damned playable and good looking. He can also play TF2, WarThunder, a few MMOs, LoL, Minecraft and Titanfall on it just fine.
I'm fairly certain a $700 Alienware X52 will pretty much get you rolling on most crossplatform titles, and the latest toms rundown clocked in at $750 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...) and has better Arma3 scores than my 18 month old, much more expensive build.
But this is a pissing match I'd rather not really dig into ... my point is, for my money, you can get a LOT more for your gaming buck with a Steam PC right now than you can with any current gen console. Previous gen, I'd argue that the 360 with used games might give you a run for your money, but as an owner of everything but a PS4 right now, I'm finding precious little I want to play that I can't get on my PC at the moment.
The other angle of the PC spectrum is -- nearly by definition, everyone has one. I literally am not sure I know anyone over the age of 14 who doesn't have SOME sort of personal computing device. With that assumption, we're talking about a $500 increment to what they would already have.
So, we can quibble on the dollars all we like, but I think these first years of new cycles are almost always renaissance eras for PC gaming.
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"If I knew you could claim podcast hosts that way, I would had peed on you back at Tamo." - AgentWred
I'm of the mindset the advantage of PC gaming is you can get a superior experience..not a duplicated experience.
Your point on unique PC controls and games (RTS, SIM etc..) is of course a big deal and I'm not discounting that. But even some of those experiences will IMO be best on a PC that is equipped to fully utilize the engine (Star Citizen for example)
So in that I wouldn't tell someone to get a $750 PC that spec wise will run roughly the same experience at 1080P than a PS4/Xbox One. Especially now that we are seeing games punish a PC that has only 2 cores and/or 2GB VRAM (as listed at Tom's Hardware). That's not to say that games still wouldn't look good with dialed down settings and play well since they would..My point is that PC gaming is still "special" to me because we don't have to settle for medium details
I'm seeing the opposite though to what you are seeing.. I see the new family generation fleeing PC's.. many people I know are down to their Work laptop as their sole "PC". They have tablets and smartphones now. And while those $500 laptops that parents buy their teenagers for school can run games on their Intel HD5000 on board graphics its a HUGE stretch to call that PC gaming IMO.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
Delivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.
Huh. Interesting. Different coasts. Different demographics maybe. My daughter's heading off to highschool. Decent laptops are actually on the school's requirement list. Every one of my son's friends has access to a PC to play games on. Only a handful have a game console. Smartphones and tablets are also just everywhere, for sure.
I'm definitely with you that spending MORE gets you a better-than-console experience. But the question I'm most often asked is "how do I get the most gaming for the least money" and it's really hard for me to say anything but PC there. THe back catalog/indie/steam world just provides ACRES of fantastic content for fractions of the price of the content on consoles.
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"If I knew you could claim podcast hosts that way, I would had peed on you back at Tamo." - AgentWred
This message was redundant.
I am quite happy gaming on a $550 PC and playing titles not available on a console.
What's brilliant about PC gaming is that both rabbit and Gameguru can be right. Yes, you can get a $500 PC that plays the same games as the consoles, as well as a bunch of PC exclusive stuff. It's flexible. And because of that flexibility, you can a build (or upgrade) a system that runs those console ports better than the consoles themselves. Will you spend a bunch? Potentially. But that's your choice.
That's exactly why you should get a PC: openness.
That's not going to be everyone's cup of tea -- some people want something that just works. This is where the Steam Machines are actually a smart idea. They'll be very appliance-like, with SteamOS for most people acting as a simple interface to get to your games. But the moment you want to work outside of that appliances' confines, you can. Because it's a PC, not a console.
I'm still pretty DIY about PC gaming, but I've used a lot of gaming systems at PC Gamer and there are some super solid options for systems you don't have to build yourself. You will pay a little more for that hands-off experience, especially before the Steam Machines are out in force. But remember that a PS4 or an Xbox One are not $500 fixed costs, either. Extra controllers, subscription services -- and don't forget buying games. If you're on this site right now, chances are pretty good that you have a Steam account, where 3000 games are available to play right now, on your old or new PC. That's valuable.
PS4 and Xbox One are great machines, and they're going to get better as more software comes out. But there has never been a better time to play games on the PC, from both a hardware and software perspective.
"$10 - Exclusive Sean-cam where he just shakes his head, over and over." From Pyro's Kickstarter, "Endless Pit of Human Misery Livestream"
I'll be that guy and say something about Earthbound:
3DS: 0087-3589-3831
Maybe I'm crazy, I certainly seem to have taken something different from the end of Transistor than everybody else.
seriously, don't click if you haven't finished the game:
Steam: Caterin6
As much as I enjoy reading Quarter to Three, I really have to wonder if Tom's Transistor review is going to go down in history like his Deus Ex review Although he is right in his comparisons between the game and JRPGs. There's definitely a fair bit of JRPG trappings leaking out.
Welcome back Lara!
+1. I'm one of those weirdos who dabbles in a bit of everything gaming-wise and Cory hit the nail right on the head here.
You may be entirely right, although I think that's me not Sean (grin).
Last.fm | Twitter
"If I knew you could claim podcast hosts that way, I would had peed on you back at Tamo." - AgentWred
I'll agree with this. I have several consoles, and a PC which is capable of playing games like Tomb Raider in far greater fidelity than I can get on any of my consoles. However: No word that I know is sufficient to describe how much I detest playing games on a computer. The only time that I will play a game on it is when I have no other means of playing it.
On-topic: I think Skyrim is a good example of a silent protagonist, since the game is much more about exploring and creating your character rather than it is about the story.
Off-topic: I think we have to be careful about the term "PC gaming." For most purposes, it means "Windows PC gaming." Linux and Mac are catching up, but they represent only a fraction of games on Steam. Steam OS is Linux based, so even a Steam Box will not have access to much of the Steam library.
Most places: Aristophan | Switch: SW-7774-7919-6764
It is still largely Windows gaming, but more and more it means "open gaming." Games on OS X have quadrupled in the past five years -- okay, I made that stat up but there are so many more games on the Mac than there used to be. And Linux is on its way, too: More than 10% of Steam's library runs on Linux, and SteamOS will push the industry heavier into Linux support over the next five years. Civ V has a Linux port now, and anyone who owns the Windows or Mac version now has access to that Linux port if they ever leave Windows behind. That's huge, and you'll see more and more big publishers supporting Linux soon.
So then the fear is, will PC gaming mean "Steam gaming?" I'd like to think there will always be alternatives (Origin, GOG, Desura) but it's a concern. But for sure, PC gaming won't just be Windows gaming for too much longer.
"$10 - Exclusive Sean-cam where he just shakes his head, over and over." From Pyro's Kickstarter, "Endless Pit of Human Misery Livestream"
If that were the case, then...
Also my name is spelled Lara, not Laura.
Thank god I'm not the only person who feels this way. As a writer, I'm on a computer 8-10 hours a day for work, and the thought of sitting at a desk and plunking away at a keyboard after hours fills me with dread. Only for very short games -- or very special ones, like Transistor -- will I make an exception.
"Today's Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you, Kat. You." - Haakon7
I am so sorry, I managed not only to confuse Julian with Sean but, also refer to you with the wrong name. Banner trip to the forums for me!
Any interpretation of art is valid and I really enjoyed listening to you and Julian discuss yours. Too few sites host thoughtful discussions like this.
Thanks GWJ for making the internet less lame!
Steam: Caterin6
I do see that trend as well. Running the Steam search this is what I found:
So Mac accounts for about 25% of Steam, and Linux about 12%.
BTW: STEAM SALE!
Most places: Aristophan | Switch: SW-7774-7919-6764
WHAT ARE THE 4 GAMES THAT DIDN'T COME OUT FOR WINDOWS?!@!@#?
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
Delivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.
I like the idea of Transistor being short and not like Bastion. I love short, quality gaming experiences (like Journey and Limbo). Also, while Bastion was fun, the game play wore thin quicker than I thought it would.
The challenge for me with a Mario or Yoshi game is explaining to my wife that it's not "just a kid's game." Those conversations usually end with me calling her a "poopie head."
Final Fantasy X is one of my favorite games in the series, despite its flaws, because I liked the story and the combat/leveling system was a lot of fun. However, there were enough mandatory annoying parts to make me avoid the HD remake.
Kingdom Hearts fell apart thanks to its platforming, annoying camera, and poor companion AI. Hopefully they address those issues in KH3.
The husband/wife playlet was brilliant. I hope that becomes a regular thing on this show.
"Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal, huh?" -Corey, from "The Wizard"
Great to have you back, Lara!
Steam: doctorandy | PSN: ilduce620 | Battle.net: doctorandy#1524 | Bethesda.net: doctorandy
spider_j wrote:Pass ilduce on the left hand side
!! For some reason the spoiler tag doesn't seem to be working for me (or it's just not showing on my browser). If one of the mods can help me fix it up or let me know how to add them correctly I would really appreciate it. For now, anyone who hasen't played Transistor yet please skip this post (and go pick up a copy of the game because it's really fantastic). !!
Hi GWJ crew, I've been listening for a while and just want to say keep up the great work, I really enjoy your show. The spoiler section on Transistor this episode is actually what prompted me to make an account and post for the first time because I cannot disagree more regarding the ending of the game. I apologize for the long and ranty post, but I loved this game so much that I have to put all my ~feels~ down in words.
But first, as a lady gamer I really want to give props to Supergiant Games for writing and animating Red as a distinctly female character, instead of someone who could easily be replaced by a male counterpart. The way she cradles/rocks the Transistor when she hums, her graceful twirl when you flourish, as well as the way she sighs then tucks her hair behind her ear in those corner dialogs are some of the best character building that I've ever seen.
I'm also super happy that Boxer (this is the name of the man in the Transistor from people who went through the game code) shows a lot of emotional vulnerability, which we really don't see often. A big thumbs up for the voice actor who conveyed this beautifully, and at the same time displaying his strength, protectiveness and love for Red.
I'm a bit surprised you guys didn't mention the subtle but wonderful LGBT representation in the game. For example,
Now onto the ending, which I enjoyed immensely and found perfectly in character for Red.
First of all,
Finally, I want to mention that I really enjoyed the setting and all of its links to computer science, which I'm majoring in right now. I think it's very interesting they use the word
I just wanted to leave this here as something to chew on for the setting of the story. I can definitely see each new game+ as
And it seems like this has officially turned into an essay. Thanks again for reading if anyone's made it this far, and keep up the good work GWJ!
First off, welcome to the forums, Moonveil. Hope you stick around!
There were a lot of points you made in your post, and I can't possibly address them all, but I will address the few that stuck out for me the most.
It was actually in my notes of things to mention, but alas, we only had so much time (plus, we skipped past the natural point to bring it up and I never found an organic time to come back to it). But I'm glad you brought it up, because like you, I had feels about it too
You ding us for this a couple of times, and I'm not sure why we should have read Transistor in any other context but a Western one. I mean, in a meta context, Transistor is a game made by a Western studio, written by Western writers and developers and released for Western audiences. And within the context of the story, there is very little within the plot, aesthetic, character backstories or even place and character names to indicate that we shouldn't read this as a Western-style city with a Western-esque society. Compare that to Bastion, which had sort of an Indian/Hindu motif going, via the sitar-esque music, the repeated imagery of bulls, the pantheon of gods, etc. I just didn’t get the same feel for Transistor.
More specifically, you say:
Anyway, thanks again for commenting in. You gave me a lot to noodle over.
"Today's Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you, Kat. You." - Haakon7
I have nothing to add to the wonderful dialogue going on here in the spoiler tags, but am madly in love with the GWJ community for being a place to make me think so hard.
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"If I knew you could claim podcast hosts that way, I would had peed on you back at Tamo." - AgentWred
Still haven't played Transistor yet, so going to have to put the spoiler section on the "eventually" list.
In regards to silent protagonists, personally, I don't mind them at all. I just finished played Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD, and without having to speak at all Link managed to convey quite a bit of personality. In fact, characters that don't speak might actually be a very fitting thing for video games. It forces you to convey a story visually, making use of expressions and other visual tools that are also a lot faster to convey ideas. That brevity is key, as one of the complaints of cut-scenes is that they break up the gameplay too much.
Of course, this also only works if you're telling a more simple story, or happen to be masters of the craft. Even WALL-E had to introduce speaking characters eventually.
But then you have the Gray Warden in Dragon Age, which doesn't convey much personality outside of the text options you choose. I liked this for a game like Dragon Age, though, as it allowed me to feel as if the Gray Warden was my character in a way that a D&D character feels like they're mine. Contrast this to Mass Effect, where Shepard never feels like my character, just a manipulated version of Bioware's character that they're super obsessed with (I'm honestly not sure who is more in love with their sci-fi Christ figure of a hero, Bioware or Bungie).
All of that comes down to a matter of preference, though.
But when you jump into Metroid, well, you guys pretty much hit the nail on the head. Metroid isn't about Samus, or at least not until Fusion or Other M. Metroid is about the world that Samus is occupying, and in some ways even intruding. She is a vehicle of agency upon that world, but it's not her story. It's about the Chozo ruins of Zebes that have been overrun by Space Pirates, or about the fallen colony of Talon IV (also overrun by Space Pirates), or how the Luminoth became a dying race. Samus goes in and fixes these problems, but she's not the protagonist in a traditional sense. She doesn't drive the story. She finds the problem and fixes it. It's actually a very intrusive role, and it works best if she's silent. It allows the game to keep the focus on the world itself, which fits the exploration based nature of the franchise.
Fusion was the first to give her a voice, and it was met with mild backlash. It also had a rather bland world, a recreation of Zebes on a spaceship for no greater purpose than to have The Water Area, The Fire Area, etc. Metroid: Other M did the exact same thing, but also gave Samus a slow, droning Ben Stein voice to explain all of the feelings she experienced that clashed with this idea of a capable woman notorious for not only finding trouble, but essentially solving everyone else's problems for them before heading out to the next adventure without even receiving a thank you.
There is a possibility for an interesting character to Samus, but giving her a voice is not the way to explore her. I'd argue the best method they could have is something along the lines of returning her to the world the Chozo trained her at, where there will be records of how they trained her, how she mourned for the loss of her family and home, and how she was taught by Chozo philosophy. I find it odd that of all the things Other M decided to dive into, it was "Here's Samus going through typical military training, but she was the only girl on the squad" as opposed to "Here's Samus, lone survivor of a space pirate attack on her colony, being trained and taught as the last legacy of an ancient, war weary race preparing to leave the galaxy like the elves sail to Valinor in Lord of the Rings".
I mean, really, which of those sounds like a more interesting character?
But then the question becomes, do we need to know all that? Or does the mystery speak more about who this silent hero is than anything explained? I like Samus being a mystery, myself.
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I think, regarding the first email question about pc upgrades, I would say the plateau is whatever it takes to get 1080p gaming since that's more or less console-grade and in-network streaming and Big Picture Mode is becoming more of a thing so that you could actually have the pc and console versions of games running on the same output device.
I'm not sure $500 would do it though.
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Friend code: 0447-8302-5512
The discussion about the silent protagonist makes me wonder if that is the main reason why we have not seen Half-Life 3 yet. Has Valve designed that game into a corner? If Half-Life 3 came out with a silent Gordon, it would probably seem awkward by today's standards, especially considering how story-heavy the series has become. Even in HL2:E2 I found it awkward that Gordon was still silent.
However, if they gave us Half-Life 3 with a talking Gordon, the game would probably feel out of place in the series. It would also probably anger the hard-core fans of the series.
The third option is a full reboot of the series that has Gordon Freeman as a speaking character from the start. The story is already pretty solid, so no need for major changes to that. Bring back Merle Dandridge as Alex Vance (one of my favorite characters in gaming). The more I think about this, the more I like the idea.
Question: Who do they cast as the voice of Gordon Freeman?
As mentioned above, I have to give credit to Nintendo for making the modern Link one of the best (nearly) silent characters around. I watched several play-throughs of Wind Waker HD, and his facial expressions are priceless. He does not talk, but he does grunt and yell during combat. Just the sound of him grunting while lifting a bomb is charming as hell.
"Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her, pal, huh?" -Corey, from "The Wizard"
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Nby7pg
Challenge accepted...though I agree with you... I put together the best $500 system I could come up with and ordered it... Note it's a bit cheating since no OS but let's just assume one day the Steam OS is mature enough to run as many games as a Windows PC. I will put Win 8.1 for the sake of this experiment and run this PC against my Xbox One and PS 4 with some subjective tests of 1080P gaming.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
Delivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.
Awesome! [size=6]Cause I wasn't about to spend the money[/size]
Battle.net RolandGilead#11706 (Overwatch and Destiny 2)
Friend code: 0447-8302-5512
Thanks for the welcome! I forgot to mention in my first post that the GWJ Conference Call is actually the podcast that got me into podcasts. When I first started listening to podcasts 2 years ago, I was kind of put off by some of the gaming content ones I came across. The hosts were too "dudebro"-ish and pretty insensitive/dismissive when it came to certain topics such as representation in video games. Luckily I found the GWJ crew podcast, where everyone is very respectful and the community seems awesome as well. Now I have a healthy list of great podcasts I listen to regularly and it all started here!
Hopefully the tags will work properly for me this time, but if not my apologies again to the mod that had to help fix up my post!
Thanks again for the reply, I had a lot of fun reading through your comments! I'll definitely be sticking around the community, listening to the podcasts, and occasionally coming out of lurkdom to word vomit out super long comments like this one. XD
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