warning to valve raising the bar = fail (sometimes)

[Boff]

lost did re-invent itself when they found henry gale.

But again Lost did more in it's second series than it did in the first yet it was the second season that killed it for most, as people thought the story wasn't progressing, which was odd as the you the whole of the second series was about unvieling the dharma project, all the first series did was back story, misdirection and have a bright light from the hatch.
I lost track when they started to do the time-travelling bit, and Delenn and kids got wiped out.
I'm wondering how many of the original plane crash survivors have survied the beach massacre, the dharma habitation massacre ,the second beach massacre, the boat massacre.

It started to get a little seven season Star-trek Next generation when the only people on board the galaxy class starship at any one time was 2/3 of the ensemble cast plus three special guest stars.

There was practically one extra IF you were lucky in engineering towards the end there.
Lost having the opposite problem despite the massacres there are plenty of plane crash survivors in any one location.


I was following Battlestar until the mid season cliff hanger, and then thought i'd catch up with the dvd box set but my curiosity got the better, as it was just getting weirder and weirder, with the final five and lot more muddled.

I couldn't be bothered with the wait and read the conclusion on wikipedia and omg,
this is what I was talking about with crazy bezier curve needed to slice through the plot points in order to make sense.
It's an explanation that makes sense.........just.......... They really had to stretch that out, and if you try want to, please go back and make sense of the original plot outline with the knowledge of the ending,
and having loose ends like the halucination Baltar and Six where infact some sort of angles and actually did work for God, is extracting the urine by the bucket loads.

seriously Go watch babylon5,
The writer (JMS) does spider man comic books and has been writing TV for years, he did murder she wrote and a lot of babylon5 goes off the detective story approach.
The facts are on the table from the begining (except CSI) and it leads to one conclusion, until near the end when the detective gets a an additional fact or inspiration, that doesn't alter the other story/characters/their actions, but merely your perception. The story of babylon5 is the same, its writen in the history, you get it told in the begining practictally, but you don't understand it. And you won't understand it until the end.

B5 has a specific start, middle and end, and the characters develop along the stories course, and not of a whim of the producers like oh we need a filler episode, lets do a special episode on genetic engineering, lets make Dr. Bashir genetically smarter than the rest, by his own parents design.
There are so many "special" circumstances that appeared in DS9 it was nigh on impossible to keep track.

Babylon5 trust me, it sucks the first season (as terminology, special effects, weapons, sound effects, general concepts of how the universe worked were still being settled/ironed out by the writer and the producers), but midway through the second season through to the mid section of the third, you kind've get hooked and hadn't noticed.

[gorpie]

Originally Posted by mimaz98

Lost has only gotten better, really, I think. Season 5 was rather unfocused, what with the writer's trying so hard to tie plot elements up in a hurry, but I think the general quality has always been far above that of other shows. Looking forward immensely to Season 6.

You're entitled to your opinion, Mim. I'm entitled to mine. Season 3 (I think)--delayed due to writers' strike. Fine. Season 4--delayed because they'll use it to fill in a time slot for a new program that fails. That irked me, but I watched anyway. When they moved the island, I think I just quit watching.

@Boff - Part of my opinion of Galactica is because I didn't get to see the first 2 seasons. The stupid cable company here didn't carry SciFi (or SyFy) until the 3rd season.

Never got into Babylon 5, though I might appreciate it now.

[mimaz98]

Originally Posted by gorpie

You're entitled to your opinion, Mim. I'm entitled to mine.

I'm sorry, where did I state otherwise?

[MyNameDidntFit]

I totally thought this was going to be abusing Raising the Bar...

[gorpie]

Originally Posted by mimaz98

Lost has only gotten better, really, I think.

Originally Posted by mimaz98

I'm sorry, where did I state otherwise?

I'm sorry, you didn't. I just didn't pay attention to the qualifier you added to your first sentence? While I'm sure I read the whole thing, your "I think" immediately left my brain for some reason. I can only plead lack of sleep or lack of caffeine.

It really annoys me when someone responds to part of a post. Now I just did it. Erk.

[alcator]

I've read your reasoning, but I don't think your points are valid.

First of all, you are basing your Episode 3 assumptions on your own personnal opinion about HL2, Ep1 and Ep2. In your opinion, Chapters like Ravenholm, Water Hazard, Highway 17 or Nova Prospekt are not worth much, since you state that until Anticitizen 1, the game is just a technology demo.
That is one thing most players who gave the game 97%+ scores will disagree.

Secondly, you seem to prefer Episode 1 over Episode 2, while again, most players would rate them in opposite way -- Episode 2 seems to be much better to most players.

Thirdly, movies are not very good analogy to games. The reason for this is that there is no way to test the quality of a movie until it's too late -- you can't screen "Matrix" to test audience until you've spent 95% of your budget to add all those things that make Matrix a Matrix, and if then the audience says "Boring!", there's not much you can do.
With game development (Valve-style anyway), you build a little, thoroughly test it, improve, test again, improve, test again... and only when the core gameplay is fun, you spend all the money on decorating it to perfection.

So, while I respect your concerns about possible failure with Half-Life 2: Episode 3, I think you don't have to worry. With the fabled Borealis, darker Alyx, invincible Advisors, kick-♥♥♥ Vortigaunts (and, of course, "The Claw"! ;-) ), we are in for a hell of a ride.

[Boff]

You are right in many aspects of your rebuttle except one,
gamespot, giving HL2 9.2, says this about the game

"Surprisingly, Half-Life 2's story is one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. The first half of the game feels a bit unfocused, while the second half seems rushed."

it's not as if the canal sequence doesn't have it's moments, nor the airboat chase, but they do lack story telling cohesion of explanation of who you are and what you are doing and why, all you get told to do is get going dr freeman, and you don't know why you should get going or what on earth the rush is about, to get to Eli.
Am i not allowed to stop and ask a few questions like what is going on with these alien invaders and has anyone else seen a creepy guy in a suit sneaking around?


but by ep1, valve had sorted out the pacing problem with ravenholm style chapters, (which are good but pacing wise they learned a few tricks afterwards)


Don't get me wrong, i'm totally freakingly excited about ep3, and I love the Half life series more than any other game, hence the nickpicking,
but during "the long wait for ep3", I have random fears that valve may miss the target,
more than likely unjustified fears,
however,
if my expectations are low then i can't be dissapointed if they fail and
if they succeed the I can't be dissapointed either.
So having low expectations mean, I can only be amazed

[mimaz98]

Originally Posted by Boff

it's not as if the canal sequence doesn't have it's moments, nor the airboat chase, but they do lack story telling cohesion of explanation of who you are and what you are doing and why, all you get told to do is get going dr freeman, and you don't know why you should get going or what on earth the rush is about, to get to Eli.

Am i not allowed to stop and ask a few questions like what is going on with these alien invaders and has anyone else seen a creepy guy in a suit sneaking around?

Half-Life 2 never offers a literal explanation as to why things are the way they are, because this ultimately allows the game to have a sense of narration in which the player becomes an active participant. While this could arguably be held up as a criticism of the game, in that it raises more questions than it can answer, there's also evidence Valve respects its audience and wants to offer scope for us to come up with reasons ourselves. Not only that, but the narrative form the developer uses to tell its story is essentially utilised to expertly take advantage of a number of aspects evident in its first-person viewpoint. Snippets of information are revealed in a variety of places, and saturate us within places heavily layered due to exceptionally high levels of detail. An example of this form of narration would be Eli's lab, which reveals small parts of Alyx's history along with what has partly happened during the intervening years since Freeman has been absent. However, the important aspect here is that the narration is never burdened on the player and is only effectively realised through their willing exploration within the environments themselves. It's up to us how much of the available story we may want to discover.

Originally Posted by Gabe Newell

"For us it's really important for the character of Gordon to be transparent, that how the player feels about what's going on and what the character is supposed to be feeling are relatively in sync. At the beginning of the game, you're confused. The character is confused, and the player is confused. What's going on? What's happened to the passage of time? The last thing I remember is this other event, and now there's a fair amount of distance from that - Spatially and temporally. I'm not in Black Mesa anymore - What happened? So even if you walk into the situation never having played Half-Life, you're going to be OK because you're going to be surprised by things whether you played Half-Life or not. That was one of the choices we made early on, to keep the player in sync with the game character as well as to accommodate people who hadn't played the original game - It sort of works on both levels."

Originally Posted by gorpie

I'm sorry, you didn't. I just didn't pay attention to the qualifier you added to your first sentence? While I'm sure I read the whole thing, your "I think" immediately left my brain for some reason. I can only plead lack of sleep or lack of caffeine.

It really annoys me when someone responds to part of a post. Now I just did it. Erk.

It's quite all right.

[tkrow21]

Originally Posted by L. Power

Ending? There won't never be no not an ending!

What the ♥♥♥♥?

[Jinoru]

Originally Posted by tkrow21

What the ♥♥♥♥?

dude, if you don'ts know what's going on right now here then you can LEAVE!!