Videogame artists need your support!! *buys ten copies of Eternity's Child*

So, Double Fine came out with Brutal Legend last year! Though I had to switch the soundtrack to smooth saxophone rhythms in order to play it without getting a horrible pounding headache, I think we can all agree that it was new, interesting, artistically inspired, cleverly written, and ultimately beautiful! You couldn't describe it in a single sentence, though, unless you decided to fudge a few facts: "Jack Black kicks metal ass in a rock-inspired open world" doesn't begin to describe the Pikmin/Sacrifice-ish proto-RTS enhancements they added onto what was initially sold as a God-of-War-style action-slasher game, and ultimately, it was a wash. People defended it to the death, though, citing the genius of Tim Schafer, creator of the stylistically perfect Psychonauts, and how he had done the game industry no wrongs up to that point -- and he really hadn't, but this came with an unintended side-effect. Schafer has unwittingly created for himself a cult of personality, mostly through amazing blog posts and wonderful adventure games; games where the focus is on the writing. Brutal Legend attempted to nudge the focus over to the game underneath the writing, far more than Psychonauts did; as a result, a lot of people -- myself included -- were totally baffled and disappointed. Tim's writing was good, but it wasn't enough to make me want to play a game I didn't sign up for.

eddie riggs in mouse-cursor mode! yech.

Believe it or not, this tragic story has a moral! People, don't buy games just because of the personalities behind them! Games can be artistic masterpieces, but they're also consumer products that you're expected to interact with -- and that interaction can be difficult to get a sense of until you see videos or play the thing itself. Wait until the overall "picture" of any given game is complete enough to see if it's fun, first! If it isn't, you can still feel free to attempt to sway market forces in the direction of an artist, personality, or game development wunderkind, but ultimately, your money is sending the message that you're willing to consume anything a certain person-of-games is willing to throw out onto a disc. This is bad business from a consumer standpoint; it hardly ever works; it only results in bitter disappointment!

hey these 'headbangers' have cromagnon heads and fat necks! that's funny for more than two seconds, right?

Maybe this is a side-effect of an instinctive behavior of Internet people to dramatize something they're passionate about? Regardless, here are some words to live by: Videogames aren't "causes" that need to be "supported". Brutal Legend sold at least a million copies worldwide, according to dodgy site VGChartz. That means it probably turned a profit (especially considering most of its development costs were likely already paid for by Activision), but even if it had failed, it wouldn't have been a death knell for the concept of "good writing" or "decent storytelling" in video games. Plenty of video games are written well -- the Persona series, the Telltale adventures, Banjo-Kazooie, Borderlands, and Prince of Persia are all brilliant examples of games that have excellent and clever dialogue, a few of them have a narrative structure that trumps anything Brutal Legend was capable of, all but one of those games/franchises have seen moderate success, and most of them are way sexier, too! You shouldn't feel obligated to buy a game you feel weird about, just because Internet people tell you it's "important" -- unless, of course, that person is me!

And if a game you're looking for focuses all its promotional media on the non-game aspects of it, wait for a review before you buy it! I've learned my lesson; have you?

Phen's Incredible Backlog, Part 1

Keeping one's library of dragony things in a massive pile is great for lounging and rollng around on top of it, but not so great for keeping things organized! As a result, my massive collection of games to beat and review here -- for that is the true purpose of this blog -- keeps getting buried under other games, movies, peripherals, baseball caps, myself and occasionally a good friend. So, what haven't I been playing lately?

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)

Last known position: Link just turned into a wolf! This game is awesome.

Reason for hiatus: I picked up this game at launch; every time I sit down to play it, something even more amazing comes out and pulls me away. I've been told the game gets better than what I've seen so far; the bar's already been set pretty high!

Resident Evil 4 (GCN)

Last known position: I have to escort the President's daughter through a fork in the road!

Reason for hiatus: it's hard to refamiliarize myself with the game's controls and plot points when I'm thrust headlong into an escort mission! My pear-shaped companion assures me that the Wii version is better; one of these days, I'll borrow hers and start fresh.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)

Last known position: I just fought and bested this game's Mr. Freeze analog!

Reason for hiatus: said fight was a major pain! The fight itself was a kick in the jaw when I'd gone through the game leading up to it without firing a shot, came into the level without any weapons, and had to restart the mission with more adequate equipment. On top of this, I had to cheese the fight itself, due to poor controls. I'm pretty pumped for Peace Walker, and letting this game collect dust until that one comes out is starting to sound more and more appealing...

So, there it is! As much as I hope to get through these games soon, the next few months promise to be a sexplosion of even more amazing media to consume, so my hopes aren't very high.

Moral Choices

While I don't play as many role-playing games as my pear-shaped counterpart, I've noticed a pervasive trend in her games where the player is forced to make a decision that will upset the very balance of good-and-evil in the game's universe depending on the choice the player makes. This choice typically boils down to selecting between two clean-cut dialogue options or actions; buying a seasonal gift for the crippled boy with the funny accent is Good, while torching his village and laughing as he awkwardly hobbles away is Bad.

I don't mind this perceived open-endedness – it makes the game's plot seem less on-rails, even if it sometimes just forks into two paths of equal length – but it seems like developers keep trying to make the moral choices exceptionally "game-y" by linking them to a slider that arbitrarily shifts between More Good and Less Good. I'm sure this is easier from a design perspective: the plot can fork based on the world's general perception of a character, rather than having the world specifically reference the player's various Good and Bad actions. But it leads to an unintended gameplay mechanic where "morality" becomes another meaningless stat for the player to level up, or down.

Because I have some personal experience with it, I'll loosely use Fallout 3 as an example here. If I pick some guy's lock, my Karma takes a small hit. If I pick several hundred locks, my Karma plummets until I become The Dreaded Baron Phenoix, Picker Of Locks, feared across the lands for my lock-picking ways, and I'll even get a shout-out from the Galaxy News Radio DJ, Three-Dog, about how dreadfully feared I am. However, if I then give some bottled water to a beggar a thousand times, I'm a Paragon Of All That Is Good again and I can venture into a distant town and walk the old lady across the street. Picking all of John Q. Owns-A-House's locks should put me on bad terms with John Q., and rightly so, and I wouldn't find it unfair if John Q. subsequently packed up his locks and skipped town before I could do him any favors. But I would think I could pick every lock in town and still maintain a moral high-ground over someone who dropped a bomb on it.

As far as moral choices in dialog options goes, in Fallout 3, it usually works out like this: if you ask to be paid, you're a bad person. As a result, during my Good Guy run, I did everything everyone asked and refused their rewards at every turn, not because I'd "feel bad" if I asked for compensation, but because I didn't want my Karma to go down. Conversely, on my Bad Guy run, I still did everything everyone asked, but made sure to ask for a hearty reward for my efforts.

Fallout 3 almost does a few things right. For example, it's possible to put a bullet in Three-Dog's head. This isn't the result of a dialogue tree nor is it guided by some sort of prompt, the game simply puts the player in a situation where one is armed and in the same room as Three-Dog. Killing him actually effects the world: he'll no longer DJ GNR and his plot missions and sidequests will be inaccessable. However, this causes other characters to be annoyed with you at worst, and at best indifferent toward you after you've satiated that thirsty beggar a few times.

Maybe on my next playthrough I'll just rummage through Three-Dog's stuff and steal his wallet. That'll show him.

BEMIDJI PIONEER, 07/13/2009: Local Tyrannical Dragoness Admits Self to Museum as Art Exhibit

Ah, sorry about the delay! Immediately after launching the site, I went on a spice-fuelled bender to celebrate the first post of a new era in dragon-to-human social relations, and was confronted the next morning by a pounding headache beating my temples like a kettle drum. The back of my head, which had been shaved the night before, was throbbing vengefully; this area was feeling particularly uncomfortable in areas that seemed to form patterns of linguistic artifice. I spent the entire day finding two mirrors ornate enough to be worthy of capturing either side of my freshly-Bjorked skull, and spent the following week engineering a system of pulleys by which the two could be reflected at each other.

Once I had finished filing the patent, I noticed a chilling 64-character code tattooed on the shorn scales; this took more than five weeks and all the cryptography skills at my disposal to decode. I won't bore you with any further details on the process, aside from this final step:

M E R O P O T S = POST MORE(?)
So, here I am, fulfilling the request as dictated to me by a message written in the most obscure fashion my inebriated brain could muster. I'm a little annoyed with myself; I should have known even then that I would waste my time with this crazy nonsense. She's probably even laughing at me right now.

Anyway, this is the post where I tell you all what to expect on the Two Timid Dragons Web-log of Fantastic Excellence. As I'd mentioned before, we cover video games, but not in the manner expected of your average 16-year-old's source of "news, views, and your daily dose of gaming goodness." Nothing here will be about the celebrity-style gossip about "developers" and "lead designers" and "Chief Executive Officers", unless it involves actual slapfighting. Because the honorable Phenoix and I spend our days lazing about in a dragonly manner, none of us will be on the scene wearing (nothing but) fedora-with-press-ticket, asking hard-hitting questions and providing you the straight dope on important topics that affect you, our dearest readers. If you want that, don't worry; news aggregators exist everywhere! Find one that jibes with your interests.


So, if not that, what can you expect? Well, lucky for you, I've determined that our greatest assets are only ourselves; sitting in our respective caves with only our game systems and the Internet (and several other items of extreme luxury) to entertain us, all we can do is comment on the entertainment media we find worthwhile. If a new game, old game, news item, or video emerges from the Sargasso of the Internet that either of us ends up finding just ducky, it will appear here, run through our distinct filter of dragony excellence (unless we're distracted by something else. There will also be video content here, but I know enough to not promise anything until after a plan is in place. A good rule of thumb is this: Expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't arrive.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a fortune cookie to eat.

Salutations!

I see Svet's already taken the wind out of my sails, as waterborne dragons are wont to do. Nevertheless, from my cozy little crevice in Mount Hood to yours: greetings, welcome, and, as my number-one comrade has so eloquently put, hi there.

For those of you not living in a cave -- and I suspect there are still many of you -- I am Phenoix, resident Eastern-descendant dragon of the Two Timid Dragons web-log. Like my pear-shaped partner, I have cut back on townsfolk and livestock in favor of modern media-based consumables: good videogames, bad movies, pulpy books, and so on. Such things are easy to obtain; a few daring locals have taken to conquering the slopes on this side of the mountain, and those who fail along the way make for particularly easy prey. I am of course referring to preying on their wallets, and sometimes a thing or two for my hoard.

Oh, and sorry about your snowboard. You know who you are.

Well, hi there, world

Greetings! It is here, sitting at my drawing desk in a luxurious cave outside Lake Bemidji, I write to you the following words: Welcome to the Two Timid Dragons Game-Analysis Web Page, in which I, the dragoness you must already know as Svetlana, and my far-too-attractive partner-in-crime Phenoix, intend to spend our days jotting things down about the amazing modern media we experience on a nigh-hourly basis. We mostly keep to ourselves, but in the fusion reactor of the Skype line that connects my cave to his, big, sexy ideas have been known to take place!

So again I say, welcome, comrades, to the dawn of dragony criticism on the Internet (at least twice as bearable than criticism from humans and about a million times moreso than that of gryphons); an altruistic effort to make the online social sphere objectively better through the presence of glittering personalities such as that of myself.

For the few that remain out there who haven't seen me chasing them down as I fly about on my morning/evening patrols, I am Svetlana, an American dragon with family hailing from places as far as Scotland and Uzbekistan. When I'm not out terrorizing townsfolk, I spend most of my time playing video games while sitting on a pile of their jewelry. The reason for this is that modern society has made it extremely easy for mythological beasts like myself to survive. I no longer have to swoop over the local wilderness, keeping my eyes peeled for wildlife to snatch up in my greedy talons, tear open and eat raw in my dimly-lit cavern; these days, all it takes is to shake down the right person with the tip of a claw to get them to give me the smelly slips of cotton paper I routinely hand to the frightened supermarket clerk so she can give me the hot-pockets I crave.

Since things are so easy for dragons like me and Phen, we have a lot of free time, which we mostly spend in our respective caves making use of modern appliances like the electric fan, the microwave, and the Xbox. Sites for the other two will come soon; until then, we expect to deliver a suite of fantastic game-related content to all those who insist upon reading it, the details of which will be arriving soon if you wait patiently enough. Until then, safe travels -- and take care that you see neither of us when you're next out of doors.