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Weekend Confirmed Episode 51
by Garnett Lee, Mar 11, 2011 12:00pm PSTThough they're missing PAX East, the Weekend Confirmed crew can't complain about the amazing SoCal weather, and Shacknews's Xav de Matos is up in Boston to cover the show. EGM's Sterling McGarvey joins Jeff and Garnett in the studio for this week's show. There's still plenty of leftovers from last week's GDC along with new releases to fill Whatcha Been Playin? The highlights include Fight Night Champions, Dragon Age 2, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and Alice: Madness Returns. GDC panels and your comments on apologizing for Bulletstorm get the Warning going strong. And news in the Front Page includes several game announcements, sales records for Kinect and Pokemon, and cloud save game backups for the PS3.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 51: 03/11/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameCenter application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 51 directly.
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 1: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:30:43
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:31:28 End: 00:58:20
- The Warning: Start: 00:59:27 End: 01:33:28
- Featured Music "Spirit" by Tabernacle MCz: 01:33:28 End: 01:36:46
- Front Page news: Start: 01:36:46 End: 02:13:57
This week's featured music is the track "Spirit" by Tabernacle MCz. The Genesis for this new Aquarian Gospel comes in the name of Tabernacle MCz Featuring Panama Redd a.k.a Deacon Dwindle Ducketz, Shaheid known as Father "BreakYoSelf" Tithes, and the Apostle Born Allah alias Sweet Daddy Grace. These ministers of the Aquarian Gospel are backed by “The Get Dat Money Boyz Choir”, also called the Choir Boyz. You can keep up with them at Facebook, ReverbNation, BandCamp, and Twitter
Jeff can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
For the former, I see the classic games like Mario and Sonic being designed this way (hence a more iconic IP) and of recent, Unchartered where Nathan (and friends) show so much personality with the game basically playing the "everyman in extraordinary situations", God of War where so much of the focus revolves around Kratos' quest for vengeance, and Sam and Max for obvious reasons.
On the other side, you have a lot more games that fit the "world before characters" design such as the whole Fallout series and the Elder scrolls series where your character is what YOU build them to be, but the world within the game really have that depth behind them, Bioshock and the Half-Life series where you essentially play the "faceless protagonist" but are given the opportunity to fully absorb the wonderment of the world and get a sense of the feeling the developers were trying to convey in the world, and Assassins Creed, where the world begun with the historical context, but the character you play is essentially an avatar representing you, visiting the past.
Either seems to be valid, though for character design first, trends more towards a linear yet structured gaming, and for world first, a much more of an exploratory experience where you are encouraged to absorb the settings.
Thoughts?
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 6 replies.
Put it this way. How many characters do you remember in the last decade stands out to you more than the game world itself? I had trouble thinking of one beyond Nathan Drake and Kratos.
As for that "fat fuck" Mario. Because the character has been relatively unchanged throughout the whole lifetime, it is no different to having episodes of Seinfeld where the world revolves around them but characters stay the same.
The Fallout games like Oblivion seemed to me that the attraction was to let you revel in the world, but also had the main story. Yet it was the depth behind the world that made it fascinating. The first Fallout and the second one even let you play through the game once you've completed the main story, as it expected you to keep digging through the extra content. Especially the extra weird ones.
Heavy Rain (just thinking about it) is essentially putting some "everyday folk" into extraordinary circumstances. That to me is a slightly different way of doing characterization; your characters don't stand out, yet you are engrossed with how they deal with the situations at any given moment. To me this was built on simple premises, but done exceptionally well. Shame about the voice acting though... JASON!
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