Park Your Amusements Here

[Sajainta]

Just to be clear, the doctrine of the Trinity is that they are three persons yet still the same one God.

Yeah, I know.  That's basic theological knowledge and I've known that since I was about two, and that is what I meant.

Like I said, drunk.

[Bard_of_Time]

Voice acting on a whole gets me very interesting and makes me giggle. In this day and age, though, we still use a lot of the same talents for stuff. For example, the man who provides the voice talent for SpongeBob SquarePants also gave us the Mayor of Townsville, Cupid, Rin from FFX... the list goes on.

Now, that's all well and good. Rin does not sound like Spongebob Squarepants. However, it's not always the same. I picked up Psychonauts the other day.
Ignore everything in this video EXCEPT for the young man with the goggles on his head.
And here, ignore everything EXCEPT for the brown beaver.
And here, everything but Zim.

My mind is blown, man.

[Mr Bekkler]

He's Tom Kenny. He's also in a lot of sketch comedy and played Heiffer in Rocko's Modern Life.

Meet my idol: Billy West. He played Doug from Doug, the Red M&M, Stimpy, occasionally Ren, like 50 percent of the male characters from Futurama, and tons of other characters you probably remember. Including Zim, for the pilot episode, that is.

[Licawolf]

Has somebody actually counted the enemies in Magus castle? Are they exactly 100? 

Okay, I discovered that Magus castle has 118 enemies and 4 bosses, thanks to this article: The Architecture of Dreams, which analyses a little of the narrative of CT.

[FaustWolf]

That's a fascinating article, I loved the discussion on whether "videogames aren't the right medium to tell stories." And I love that the author defends videogames as an important storytelling art. Is CT's story dated? In some ways, sure. But heck, Star Wars is dated too. And yet, both of these showed hints of astounding genius that continue to resonate with us on a cultural level. Every story teller has to mature and Level Up over time. Aside from whatever corporate meddling got in the way and my misgivings regarding its game design, Final Fantasy XII represents the pinnacle of storytelling for me and sent more chills down my spine than many movies do nowadays. Hell, look at Xenogears, Tactics Ogre and Vagrant Story. These products flowed out of the Japanese videogame industry only after the SNES-era teams had the wherewithal to make storytelling a serious priority.

Ugh, how sad this debate has become; if you look at the markets where production costs are most tight, certainly the opponents of real storytelling have the upper hand. Awfully convenient how making this argument cuts out the professional writers' salaries from videogame production, hmmm?


(And looking at that graph...interesting that the "breather level" contains the essence of what drew many of us most powerfully to Chrono Trigger -- the Kingdom of Zeal story arc is what clinched everything else together in my mind).

[Mr Bekkler]

I think both still seem fresh because they didn't shy away from cliche. Rather, they embraced it and went ahead full-steam. (That is to say, Chrono Trigger and Star Wars). and ended up doing it better than anyone else.

[tushantin]

You know, that article brings an innovative idea to mind (hey, I'm an aspiring filmmaker, after all):

The best storytelling mediums that grasp attention are those that help the audience to immerse themselves within it, but only provided they do not take too much of their time with boredom. What they seek most is entertainment (which makes Mario so popular despite proper story), and the most defining features of Chrono Trigger was its story, surprises and time travel. The surprises caught people attention, the art was simply beautiful, and the story involved people emotionally. It was very well planned.

But think about this for a moment: when playing a game, the audience becomes the protagonist. When watching a movie, the audience sees it in third person. Which has more effect? The movies improve with other defining features, such as surround sound (giving a realistic atmosphere) and 3D with realistic depth of perception. What if we completely immerse the audience within the story? Let's say, the heroes go to Alaska, and suddenly cold winds blow in the theater? Desert scene, and the theater mildly warms up?

Similarly, if CT was a movie, visiting Zeal would take the audience completely by surprise. They suddenly transport to an unfamiliar, yet pleasant world. Sounds of bells, mountainous atmosphere. What better than Zeal? 

[Mr Bekkler]

I rarely feel like I am the character in a video game. Rather, I choose one to relate to and hope they're on the team as much as possible. Similarly, I find myself constantly assigning friends' names to characters in whatever stories I get into, trying to match the dynamic to my own life and put it into perspective from that angle.

There are amusement park rides that employ methods similar to what you're talking about tush, but similar to 3D before (and arguably after) Avatar came out, nobody takes it seriously so the content is sparse and gimmicky rather than immersive. I think the problem is they don't focus on sensory input, they focus on what's easy. Hydraulic air pumps and hidden waterguns and little ropy things that spin forward and touch the back of your feet. These all end up taking you out of the experience unfortunately. I think a slightly different approach, inspired by your suggestion of "mountainous atmosphere" would be more effective. Aromas released, designated for each scene. Speakers on your seat behind your head for a more "true" surround sound. Heat-controlled seats. Smoke machines.

And you know what? Surround sound pisses me off. They never do it in a way that actually puts you into the film. Like if there's a character off-screen and a character on-screen why do their voices come out of the same speaker when the room gets ambushed and bullets and music come out of other speakers? Is there a film anywhere that actually surrounds you with "surround" sound? This problem exists for two reasons. 1 theaters play movies so loud it doesn't matter how the sound is mixed. 2 sound engineers figure if you have surround sound at home you set it up wrong because you're a consumer and therefor stupid so all the voices come out the front (occasionally left and right if you're really really lucky, but still... that's stereo) and the music comes out the back and sides.

[chi_z]

mitsuda interview

speaks a bit about CC arrange album (keeps stating it'll be out this year).

here's his blog translated into french, translated that into english with googs

[FaustWolf]

Oh snap, what an excellent and thorough interview with Mitsuda. The fact that you got to it first shames all other English-speaking Chrono fans!    Say, did we ever investigate whether Kato might be maintaining a blog? I recall his Twitter account went down, but that's the last I'm aware of.

I've got the interview backed up as a series of .mht files but they're too big to upload to the forum; we'll have to see what ZeaLitY wants to do about potentially archiving this.

[Kodokami]

Now I'm all excited for the CC arrange album again. It's gonna be great.

[chi_z]

can't you just screen cap with the 'print screen' button and copypasta 6 jpegs or tiffs or gifs or pngs into mspaint?

[tushantin]

Captain America - E3 2011 Game Cinematic

Is it just me, or does it seem like Captain America is simply Zack Fair / CT Cyrus in disguise?

[Lord J Esq]

It wasn't until my second read a few days after the first that I realized the secret of this week's Subnormality comic.

http://www.viruscomix.com/page547.html

First I got to thinking that the security guard was probably referring to the same person in both instances (the beautiful woman and the weirdo). Then I noticed that the Free Internet sign was different from panel to panel. When I spotted the vandal, finally I realized the events were taking place out of order throughout the same day--except for one panel which takes place some time later.

Put it together in order, and you get a whole extra layer to the story. Craftsmanship like this is why Subnormality is probably my favorite webcomic in publication today.

[Zephira]

Oh, how I've missed these threads.
I am greatly amused by the fact that, after being away for who knows how long (I'm very forgetful), I'm still on the "Most time online" list. While it might be physically impossible to top Vehek, I'm sure as heck gonna try this time.
Another amusement would be this cat, Rudy. He crawled between the wool and velvet while I was out buying more thread, and I nearly sewed him inside. He slipped out and landed on my lap when I was halfway done. He was just as surprised as I was!