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Bethesda made a great game but it could have been better. I'll put my complaints into fantasy terms and how I'd opt to solve them. It's hardly newsworthy, but this isn't the first time I've felt the need to state my case about the game because I feel so strongly about it and it's potential that I believe was never fully realized. (and it's a good opportunity to poke a bit of fun too)

Let's have a look at the classes.

I'll put it into fantasy terms.


Thief:



If you create a smooth talking acrobat and mercantile expert, you're going to get your arse giftwrapped as soon as you enter a real battle you can't dance away from. Sure you could argue that being a thief, you could nick the best gear and get the best deals and maybe hire someone to fight for you and occasionally eat an errant arrow launched from a trembling bush perhaps?... Not so, the resale on items is rubbish, there's generally nothing worth stealing you couldn't get for 50 bucks and "hiring people" is an exercise in futility... as is getting black clothes in preference to 900 pounds of clanking armor to sneak around in.


Warrior:



The joy of being a warrior is that you can just wade into battle and split some wigs, send some goblins flying and generally conquer by dividing. The thing is, I've experimented with that class and I endeavored to make the most vicious and strongest bastard I could... Which was a 400 and something strength Vampire Orc, decked out in battleship's hull, and swinging a hammer as big as a suckling calf. The trouble is, in battle it still felt as though he couldn't ring the bell at a carnival with it... And all the girls were laughing at me (repress, repress!)


Mage:



Don't hit me, I'ma chargin ma lazarrr! (Sorry to mix my memes) And that's how it is for most of the game, as a mage you do more dancing than the thief does and the spells are either thoroughly devastating or ineffectual. The whole point of magic is to do inexplicable things and the makers couldn't see past chucking fireballs... lightning balls... energy balls... and balls to the chin. What ever happened to teleportation? What ever happened to turning people to stone, shrinking them, making them bigger (that'd be amusing in a small room) using the force and throwing them of a cliff or ditching random objects at their heads! None of that exists in the game and it's the bread and butter of the classic magician.



Actually I lie, there is a power of telekinesis in which you can move things around and toss them at incredible speed! The exploits of this spell are immediately obvious, the first thing I wanted to do was find a goblin, pick him up with my eerie powers, launch him into the air over a cliff and turn humanoid skeet shooting into a gory reality as goblin bits plummet to the earth, Yeah! No... Sorry, telekinesis is only for small inventory items, hence limiting it's use to nicking things in shops and casting irreplaceable quest items into the sunset. But what if I throw a "hammer of excruciation +3" at someone's head? Absolutely nothing, it bounces of as if nothing had happened; which begs the question, why is everyone wearing helmets?



In addition, no matter what class you choose, you can get a character that's good at everything so it defeats the point entirely.

Although these are just a few of the faults I've noticed, others are more technical in regards to AI and other programming concerns, there are other issues that are more of a choice that the producers made. These include the choice to level up your combatants and their gear with you. You don't have to play the game for long until you'll never see a normal steel sword again, quickly replaced by super-fantastic swords whittled from one of Satan's toenails with eerie mystical powers that either come in fire, electrical or hairy form.



Bethesda only used a few VA's to support Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and that other fellow from Krypton, whose name I can't recall. These big names play only a minor role in the game and the same voice talent seems distinctly overused. It also doesn't help that the first beggar you run into in the game has two voices... Possibly the same actor, but two different voices. The dialogue and writing doesn't help either, for such a visually stellar game, they've really dropped the ball when it comes to scripting and scriptwriting, the story is rather dull and uninspired compared to the work they've put into other aspects.



Finally, in the end it all comes down to character, you as the player making an impact and having the game turn around and say, ooh look at that impact and then tailoring the game to your style. Well, in the game there is no 'style' as such. Everything is always handled in exactly the same linear way and just presupposes you're a paladin who's only interested in doing the 'right' thing to further the quest. There are Dark Brotherhood quests that venture into an interesting storyline, but it's over all too soon and you're ushered out of this fascinating underworld leaving your killer-suit at the door and exchanging it for the familiar Hug-a-lot bear suit you've been wearing from the get-go.



That's what's wrong with oblivion, don't get me wrong, there's so much right with it, I think you'll agree it's just the subtleties that suffer. I have my fingers crossed for Fallout three, the spiritual sequel to Oblivion.
M.

Don't misunderstand the direction of this post, it's not about the film at all and rather the motivation behind it. As you're all probably aware, Peter Jackson is a director who has in recent years directed such epic films as King Kong, the Lord of The Rings Trilogy and the much anticipated "Halo" based on the game of the same name. But how exactly did a person of modest means and resources, located in probably the most remote place in the world (New Zealand) get to be one of the most desirable directors in the world. The answer is, Bad Taste.

But not just the film in itself, it's the way it was made that shares similar ties with George Romero of the "-of the dead" fame, in that it was made by friends, family, out of his own modest pocket and done on the weekends between his REAL job. For Jackson, this was lithography- Romero's history isn't as forthcoming as it seems he's been involved with the cinema all of his life right from the beginning including such memorable instances as being arrested at age 14 for throwing a flaming dummy off a Bronx rooftop while filming "The Man From the Meteor" in 1954. Jackson was no different as he made his own films from the moment he was able to lift the family's first camera.



This camera... It had no sound, it had no freeze function, no video editing and none of the amazing things we can do today. Yet he worked with it and experimented with the medium, his first special effect for instance was punching pinholes through a negative to simulate gunfire. It sounds primitive but a similar technique was used in Bad Taste, in fact, EVERY technique was used in Bad Taste. It was originally a short to practice his art which evolved into four long years of shooting, ending up with a 90 minute feature which won him great acclaim at Cannes.

What did Peter Jackson need to accomplish this feat? Simply put, Peter Jackson! And that's what I find so inspiring, the fact that he not only wrote, directed, produced, shot, composed, armored, provided special effects, and personally acted about a dozen different parts in the film, including one scene where he throws himself off a cliff! - yes you read that right. As the film progresses, the filming gets notably better, the stunts and special effects improve dramatically, near the end they do things that are incredibly technical and made me wonder how they ever managed it! And it all stemmed from his garage, his parent's oven and his own mind.

A salute to Peter Jackson, he tried and failed... and then he tried again!



The bottom line is... Don't make excuses for yourself and procrastinate, don't be an academic of your own life and don't keep yourself from success for fear of failure.

Just do it, for whatever the outcome you will be victorious!
Michael Danton.

P.S.
I watched this film on youtube recently and I throughly encourage you to do the same. If you do, don't miss the making of- which is also present. I guarantee you'll gain a whole new perspective of it.

In 1968, brilliant artist/pretentious weirdo Andy Warhol made a very strange, now famous prediction. "In the future," he said, "everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Though he had no way of knowing it, that prediction has proven incredibly true. Today, thanks to the wonders of Web 2.0, all it takes for someone to nab their 15 minutes (or more realistically, their couple of weeks) is a webcam and an imagination. And nab them, they do. Sites like YouTube, Myspace, and hell, even niche corners of the Interwebs like Newgrounds and 4chan are filled with cultural phenomena and "celebrities" that appear quickly and disappear even quicker. Will this always be the case? Can the entertainers of the Internet aspire to more than just heavy YouTube traffic for a week or a couple chuckles at a funny picture of a cat? I certainly think so, and the evidence is everywhere. It's an exciting time to be a consumer of entertainment, and it's an even more exciting time to be us Fourth Perspectivites, the creators of entertainment.

Allow me to make a prediction of my own. In the future, anyone can be world-famous forever. With the advent of the Internet and the decreasing cost of complex equipment, the line between amateur and professional is becoming more and more blurred each day. Modern technology, especially the Internet, provides virtually anyone with the tools to create and distribute art to an audience of millions, potentially billions. The only thing that separates us from them is money, and on the Internet, the final frontier of entertainment, money is irrelevant. Our chances of success aren't that far off from those of the big studios, and as technology continues to become more affordable to the masses, the playing field will continue to even out. Just look at all of the Internet sensations of the past and present. We're succeeding where the big companies are failing. And while one person will probably never be able to make a $200 million Hollywood blockbuster in their garage, the Internet also makes it so that even us amateurs don't have to go it alone. People on opposite sides of the globe can connect with each other and collaborate on projects. It's happening all over the place, from the innumerable Newgrounds collabs to a musical being written right here on Fourth Perspective.

The future is bright. I can envision a day not too far from now when all people, fed up with the crap churned out daily onto their television screens, will turn to the Internet not just for a couple of quick punchlines, but for more genuine, sincere, passionate, funny, serious, brilliant art than the studio system could ever give them. Or even better, they'll create it themselves. But until then...



P.S.
Yeah, I write for the front page now. Dream big, kids.

Yes folks, I'm talking about Fraggle Rock. Created by Jim Henson on January 10 1983, and written by a host of writers, most notably Jerry Juhl and famed poet bpNichol. Similarly choreographed by a dozen directors including Jim Henson who at that time was experimenting with the more realistic styles found in the appropriately named "Dark Crystal".
Despite the amount of creative influences this series has received, it has always in my mind stayed homogeneously brilliant and true to the style and character unique to the Fraggles themselves.

On face value this series is full of brightly coloured characters that spend their days singing, dancing and having fun; but underneath all that lies an underlying core of dire seriousness that would make the most hardened survivalist cringe. The Fraggles themselves are constantly under siege by bizarre creatures, plants and even the things that are normally taken for granted in children's stories such as the very light itself, without which the Fraggles soon enter a deep sleep and never wake up. Their only food source comes from a garden seemingly in a parallel dimension as it occurs in the same space as the real world except this one is occupied by a single family of giants (Gorgs) who grow the Fraggle's staple food of radishes in order to make potions to prevent themselves from... Non-existence!

Of course they hate the Fraggles for this reason, but they seem too large to perceive the tiny "Doozers" that share Fraggle rock with the Fraggles, endlessly creating crystaline structures that the Fraggles eat on occasion and don't seem to serve any other purpose than to keep the Doozers busy. Although Fraggles can talk with Doozers, they're not considered worthy of talking to. In this fantastic world Jim Henson has created, there is a muted but definitive howl of hostility that the fraggles are oblivious to, but always have a method of handling through common lore... The last episode I saw had members of a Creeper Control Force deploy against a mat of choking vines that would crush a Fraggle to death and drink it's blood, a similar sentiment met with a laugh and a little dance.

These are some of the most psychologically 'weighted' stories I've encountered and they're not a Hitchcock thriller or Shyamalan twister. This is a children's musical show taken entirely to the next level and will always remain a true classic that cannot be immitated or repeated.

Keep on singing and dancing Fraggles! Because if you don't, you'll die.
(I'm not kidding)
M.


P.S.
Will the horror ever end?

Syntacticians, grammarians and linguists attempt to quantify a language into certain terms to the point that it breeds uncertainty amongst their peers who have equally obscure and convoluted theorems, applying logical programs to a prosaic means of communication that can’t be broken down into ones and zeroes. The flaw in applying absolute terms stems from the incontrovertible fact that speech has derived from necessity and is the prodigy of primal posturing and emotional desire.

We describe an idiom as an ostensible meaning, understood within the bounds of common colloquy. Any statement, question or utterance can have an ulterior meaning and we never actually say exactly what we mean, coupled with audible, physical, emotional and contextual clues that say nothing on their own, but combined, speak volumes; none of which can be entered into an equation or provide a product of absolute numerical truth which seems to be the object of the specialist’s obsession.

If language could be quantified in this way, lawyers, politicians and diplomats would become irrelevant. How we say a thing is just as important as what we say, sometimes it appears language and logic completely fall prey to delivery. Case in point, consider the illusionist and master of psychological conditioning Derren Brown, who can approach a stranger on the street and ask them for their wallet, mobile phone, house keys and anything else simply for the asking. Can the request for ones personal belongings by a stranger be interpreted in any other way? Or is this a demonstration that the unspoken aspects of language are not only important, but can completely dominate and thoroughly override not only the face value of a logical (and peculiarly unreasonable) request but also the understood conventions of communication and propriety.



Nuff said.
M.