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What kind of a person can kill? Hello! My name is DeeArr, and I like videogames. Previously I have LPed horror games. This time I am LPing a true game of horror. Welcome to the fever dream of my childhood, and the origin of something truly special.  Drakengard is a hack-and-slash/dogfighting/hell videogame developed by Cavia and released in 2003 on the PlayStation 2. The original title of the game in Japan is Drag-On Dragoon. The player fights swathes of enemies in vast, barren battlefields using steel, magic, and dragonfire. I hear the soundtrack in my nightmares. This is not a good game. It is a strange, dark pit of creative ideas and callous design. It was also a key element of my childhood. For many years I honestly thought that Drakengard sprung from my imagination, until it became unexpectedly relevant many, many years later. But we'll get to that. DeeArr how are you going to make Drakengard even remotely interesting to watch? Consider it a self-imposed challenge. Thread participation is present in that I would love input how how much or little editing I should use. Consider the first episode a baseline. There also may be guest commentators to shake things up, assuming I can rope certain individuals into watching this thing with me. The videos will be pretty laid-back, with editing to minimize repetition in the most repetitive game of all time. I will do my best to be informative, and discuss my personal experience with this series. I hope you enjoy! Oh: and we're going to be getting all of the endings to this haunted game. If you have played or experienced Drakengard before, you understand what this entails.  ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS FOR THIS OR ANY OTHER RELATED GAME, PLEASE. If there is a reason this Let's Play is worth doing, it's because of the ride. Don't ruin anything for those buckling in for the first time! Only discuss stuff once it's shown up. VIDEOS EPISODE ONE: Pact DumbRodent fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 23, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 01:25
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| # ? May 9, 2024 00:00 |
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Oh man. I thought this was going to be the SNES game from the early 1990's, the one where constellations come out of the night sky to attack you. Man, that game was hard, and terrible. But I'll check this out. It sounds... similar in at least a couple ways to the (probably unrelated?) original. Your description of this game could easily apply to the game I'm thinking of.
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Jul 21, 2018 03:44
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Railing Kill posted:Oh man. I thought this was going to be the SNES game from the early 1990's, the one where constellations come out of the night sky to attack you. Drakkhengard? Now that's a terrifying amalgamation.
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Jul 21, 2018 05:20
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 You may want to put in a spoiler policy or else people will be talking about the endgame by page two. ultrafilter fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 05:48
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ultrafilter posted:
Oh god. Thank you for the reminder!
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Jul 21, 2018 06:02
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Super in for this ride.
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Jul 21, 2018 17:05
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Yeah, I read TDI's LP of this game, and the prospect of seeing it 'live' is getting me all  As for votes on what to do, all I ask is that whenever you get his by bullshit, you just cover up the screen with this pic before cutting back to the action: 
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Jul 21, 2018 17:33
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CommissarMega posted:Yeah, I read TDI's LP of this game, and the prospect of seeing it 'live' is getting me all I also enjoyed the first video a lot, I think your editing was quite nice! Unless you left them in just to hammer down the "this poo poo is actually really tedious to play" factor, you could cut out more of the loading times, the long Game Over in the failure video (and the startup of your next try afterwards), things like that. Make it a little snappier. The speed up also works well, I think. It's interesting to see how different the first two weapons are - from the previous LP I had gotten the impression that they were all the same flavor of "hit things until you can make magic happen" and everything is basically just a reskin of each other with maybe more damage/less AOE. And with different hosed up stories, of course. How you show them is also well done. Just curious - was that not a treasure chest between the entry door to the courtyard and the chained-up dragon? You constantly seemed to ignore it and it was in plain view as you started the Pact cutscene and ended the level, it kept bugging me.
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Jul 23, 2018 18:10
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I love this game's soundtrack. Objectively, 99% of it is an unlistenable, atonal nightmare, but in the context of the game, it fits so perfectly. I've heard it described as 'the sound of a mind breaking down', and that nails some of the later themes to a tee. I remember playing it when a friend was over once years ago, and they asked me to turn the game off, or at least turn the sound down, since the music was making them feel physically ill. The end-of-stage music in particular always made me feel uneasy, and I can never quite put a finger on why. Just something about it triggers the old lizard brain and makes me feel like I should get through the sequence ASAP before... something... happens.
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Jul 23, 2018 21:00
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Simply Simon posted:Same here. I always entertained the thought of playing this game myself, mindless grinding and all, but maybe with a patient friend and a couple of beers at my side; never happened, so this is the next best thing. I was really curious to see the gameplay itself. A couple of beers is the best way to experience this game, and how I went about most of the recording process... I'm glad you like it so far! I mostly left the Game Over screen in because I think the music is nice and wanted to show it off. The loading screens, however, slipped my mind! I'll definitely keep them to a minimum in the future. Thanks for the advice! We'll be seeing most, if not all, of the weapons in action. And we will be at least collecting all of them. Which is definitely a thing. Oh, that treasure chest actually contains a health orb! There are quite a few of those scattered around the more combat-intensive areas of the game. I'll make sure to address that in the future! Kaboom Dragoon posted:I love this game's soundtrack. Objectively, 99% of it is an unlistenable, atonal nightmare, but in the context of the game, it fits so perfectly. I've heard it described as 'the sound of a mind breaking down', and that nails some of the later themes to a tee. I remember playing it when a friend was over once years ago, and they asked me to turn the game off, or at least turn the sound down, since the music was making them feel physically ill. The end-of-stage music in particular always made me feel uneasy, and I can never quite put a finger on why. Just something about it triggers the old lizard brain and makes me feel like I should get through the sequence ASAP before... something... happens. I do poke fun at some of the soundtrack (especially First Chapter Above Ground) but I think that it's very good at accomplishing what I think it sets out to do. The repetitive, droning nature of the music is as important to Drakengard's uniquely malicious atmosphere as anything else; I really like the off-kilter sound of the music in the scene where Caim meets the dragon, actually. I also love the soundtrack; this game was the first that taught me how much I enjoy games that behave actively aggressive and mean-spirited towards the player, because I am a lunatic. I'll be talking about the warped aspects of Drakengard as we go through, and not just dunking on it constantly, rest assured!
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Jul 23, 2018 22:42
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Ground loving floor on this train wreck. I love this lovely game. I’m also in the camp of people who had this game as a bizarre pubescent nightmare long before it got exposure on this site. This game’s legacy is almost as weird and baffling as the game itself and I’m still not quite sure how we got to where we are today. Totally down for this trip down memory lane. The soundtrack is definitely one of the more inspired parts of the game. It’s an assault on the senses and it fits perfectly
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Jul 24, 2018 19:19
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:I love this game's soundtrack. Objectively, 99% of it is an unlistenable, atonal nightmare, The first time I heard this soundtrack, which was I think last year, it sounded to me like somebody composing a new soundtrack out of only samples of symphonies. Not all from the same symphonies, but a whole bunch of different, unrelated symphonies, cobbled back together like Frankenstein's Concerto, here to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting listener. It's among the most amazing things I've ever heard.
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Aug 12, 2018 08:50
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That's almost exactly what it is. Cavia got the New Tokyo City Orchestra to record a bunch of classical tracks (if you listen really hard you can hear bits of Mozart and Debussy and Wagner and stuff), then basically fed the resulting music into a woodchipper and handed over the samples to Takayuki Aihara and Nobuyoshi Sano, who are Satan's DJ's.
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Aug 12, 2018 11:10
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Woo, Drakengard! Count me in as one of the people who've actually played this thing, and, like anyone who has, I've played a lot of it. I have no idea how you're going to pull this off but I'm excited to find out. While in retrospect I could have spent those hours were lost and wasted, Drakengard has stuck with me in a way few other games ever have.
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Aug 14, 2018 04:37
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Augus posted:Ground loving floor on this train wreck. I love this lovely game. I’m also in the camp of people who had this game as a bizarre pubescent nightmare long before it got exposure on this site. This game’s legacy is almost as weird and baffling as the game itself and I’m still not quite sure how we got to where we are today. Totally down for this trip down memory lane. Yeah this terrible nightmare video game has a very important place in my heart and I'm glad I'm not the only one. YggiDee posted:That's almost exactly what it is. Cavia got the New Tokyo City Orchestra to record a bunch of classical tracks (if you listen really hard you can hear bits of Mozart and Debussy and Wagner and stuff), then basically fed the resulting music into a woodchipper and handed over the samples to Takayuki Aihara and Nobuyoshi Sano, who are Satan's DJ's. That's... actually really interesting. I'm going to need to read up on some of this stuff if I can; thanks for bringing it to my attention! Also, sorry for the long wait-- there's a reason I didn't mention an upload schedule. My recording setup is going to be a little crisper tomorrow, though, and I plan to get things rolling at that point.
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Aug 18, 2018 18:36
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I think the credits list all of the works that, uh, inspired the soundtrack. It's a pretty good selection.
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Aug 18, 2018 20:35
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is this dead?
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Oct 4, 2018 09:55
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