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Who is the best Ace Combat protagonist? This poll is closed. |
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| Cipher |
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79 | 32.24% |
| Phoenix |
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9 | 3.67% |
| Mobius 1 |
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84 | 34.29% |
| William Bishop--lol get out |
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24 | 9.80% |
| SHOOT VISARI |
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49 | 20.00% |
| Total: | 245 votes | ||
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Air Combat 22 indeed stepped it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3s-vPPuGd0&t=160s (seizure inducing idiotic strobe effect massacre up until 2m40s in) Same arcade hardware as Time Crisis, Prop Cycle and their alpine skiing games, and so much better when on a (60hz) CRT or huge rear-projection screen in a sitdown cab.
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Dec 18, 2016 19:45
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Two hints for the balloon clusterfuck: they only appear in that band of jamming on the map and two they are a shitload easier to see aganst the white sky instead of the ground so flying danger close to the ground helps. This is the mission that forced me to learn how use the camera controls to look in directions other than straight ahead. 
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Dec 18, 2016 20:44
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Thefluffy posted:Two hints for the balloon clusterfuck: they only appear in that band of jamming on the map and two they are a shitload easier to see aganst the white sky instead of the ground so flying danger close to the ground helps. This is the mission that forced me to learn how use the camera controls to look in directions other than straight ahead. Another really handy tip: they generally actually do line up with the blips that pop up on the radar, so you can use those as guidelines to steering at them, so you only have to worry about the altitude they're working at. edit: That said, there are phantom blips too. Wouldn't be effective jamming otherwise, I s'pose.
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Dec 19, 2016 09:15
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About 20 seconds' flight in the direction you start, there's a cargo ship on the river right near one of the blips, with a bridge tower the exact color of the balloons. I literally get fooled by it every single time. Edit: I believe the S-rank requires you to kill 24 balloons if you are gonna get the ace, and 26 without. NobleSixFour fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Dec 19, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2016 15:42
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Breaking Arrows Mission 14: Operation Aurora – June 18th, 2005 Overview: Mobius 1 is dispatched to intercept a cruise missile barrage inbound for an ISAF troop convoy in the Ice Creek region of Northern Usea.  Guest Commentator: Dr. Snark joins me again for his fourth straight icy hell hole level in an Ace Combat game.   BROKEN ARROW The title of this mission comes from a semi-obscure piece of US nuclear terminology pertaining to any incident up to and including accidental detonation involving nuclear weaponry. To date, the Pentagon has formally acknowledged 32 Broken Arrow incidents, the majority of which have involved B-52 crashes. The term came to contemporary cultural awareness in the mid-90s with the John Travolta/Christian Slater action movie Broken Arrow by John Woo. It was not a good movie. But as seen with the Named Ace references in Ace Combat 2 (and later Ace Combat 5), someone at Project ACES absolutely LOVES schlocky films of all stripes, so a Broken Arrow shoutout is simply keeping the flame alive. Additionally (with thanks to forums poster HereticMIND), the term "broken arrow" is also used in conventional, non-nuclear battle situations as well. If an on the ground commander calls for a "Broken Arrow" artillery strike, they are requesting bombardment of an enemy position with full knowledge that the strike may or will result in friendly fire casualties due to the enemy's proximity to allied troops. Broken Arrow strikes are usually called in only as last ditch desperation measures.  
Kadorhal posted:Ace Number Fourteen is Abell. Named for George Ogden Abell, born March 1st, 1927. American astronomer and teacher at UCLA, best known for his catalogue of clusters of galaxies collected from the Palomar Sky Survey. His work demonstrated that second-order clustering existed, disproving the earlier hierarchical model of Carl Charlier. The Abell Catalogue of rich clusters of galaxies owes its existence in part to Abell's "Northern Survey" of 1958, supplemented by a "Southern Survey" compiled in 1989 by Harold Corwin and Ronald Olowin.   Tracks featured in Mission 14: DISC 2 nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Jul 5, 2021 |
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Dec 24, 2016 09:16
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nine-gear crow posted:The term came to contemporary cultural awareness in the mid-90s with the John Travolta/Christian Slater action movie Broken Arrow by John Woo. It was not a good movie. It did have one good line, though: "I don't know what's scarier, it happening or that it happens so often there's a term for it."
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Dec 24, 2016 13:48
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nine-gear crow posted:It was not a good movie. What
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Dec 24, 2016 14:16
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Um nine-gear crow. That isn't the last XB-70 chronologically.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:16
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Fun, quick mission. Love it.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:30
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VhenRa posted:Um nine-gear crow. There's a couple in 6 if I remember right, but I can't think of any others.
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Dec 24, 2016 21:50
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Incidentally, if anyone's curious about the status of the Sky Crawlers thing of course it was on hold while I was working on AC3 but now I'm looking at preparations to turn it into a full-fledged LP. If that falls through I'll eventually continue it as-is though.
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Dec 24, 2016 22:34
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Psycho Landlord posted:There's a couple in 6 if I remember right, but I can't think of any others. Yeah, those are the ones I was referring to. One of the sub-operations on that mountain peak level.
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Dec 25, 2016 01:22
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Broken Arrow is a beautifully dumb and cheesy 90s action movie. John Travolta being hilariously over the top while Christian Slater tries to play things straight is a sight to behold.
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Dec 25, 2016 02:48
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Huh I thought the debrief mentions it being nuclear tipped or is that saved for the next mission's briefing?
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Dec 25, 2016 03:18
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Merry Strangerealsmas. Missions 23 to 25: Swarm, Damage Control, Conspiracy Part 08: My Best Friend Su (wingman: Skippy Granola) Not only is it exam period, that stupid nerd Neumann made friends with the drama club, and convinced them to put on a completely new production for the end of the season. Being in the audience and watching poor choreography is lame, so we'll sabotage the whole performance, which is probably a reasonable reaction. It's not like we're convincing the Sharks and the Jets to fight each other to make propaganda for our own cause; that's another guy. We should probably help keep the peace on that front, though. And then blow up that guy's favourite Parrot drone as punishment. Bad.  Outside of the very first mission, Swarm and Damage Control are the only two no-nonsense, pure air-to-air combat missions in the game (Swarm has ground targets at the end and Damage Control has the non-target element, but still). That's probably for the best, since the total lack of characters and radio chatter means these 10 to 12 minute missions can be fairly fatiguing when both are played in quick succession. One of the staples of Ace Combat are friend and foe alike making comments on the progress of your battles in real time, which does a lot to distract you from either getting from one group of fighters to the next or the time spent dogfighting. It also doesn't help that all of the planes you're tracking are super good, which makes taking them down that much harder. Swarm is helped by Meanwhile, Conspiracy is our first end-of-path mission, originally A Canopy of Stars in JP. It's a fitting alternative name, since UPEO was embroiled in a conspiracy for something like 15 missions, at least. And then instead of us and our last remaining ally taking down our former boss, it's suddenly the leader of Ouroboros? The mission itself couldn't change, so the cutscene and final attack on the copter had to stay, and they don't exactly have a wealth of characters or names to put in the vehicle, but considering how major an enemy Ouroboros and Dision are in the original game, which most of the end-game missions (that we are of course going to play in this version as well) focus on, that was probably the worst call to make.   That's Keith in that mission and you're not telling me otherwise. frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Jan 4, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2016 00:42
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Ace Number Fourteen is Abell. Named for George Ogden Abell, born March 1st, 1927. American astronomer and teacher at UCLA, best known for his catalogue of clusters of galaxies collected from the Palomar Sky Survey. His work demonstrated that second-order clustering existed, disproving the earlier hierarchical model of Carl Charlier. The Abell Catalogue of rich clusters of galaxies owes its existence in part to Abell's "Northern Survey" of 1958, supplemented by a "Southern Survey" compiled in 1989 by Harold Corwin and Ronald Olowin. He also co-discovered the periodic comet 52P/Harrington-Abell and determined that planetary nebulae were formed from red giant stars; he also helped produce two educational TV series (Understanding Space and Time and Project Universe), co-founded the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, served as president of the International Astronomical Union's Cosmology Commission, and was to have been editor of the Astronomical Journal starting from 1984 before his death. The Summer Science Program at New Mexico Tech and University of Colorado Boulder memorialize him by way of the Abell Scholarship Fund. . Died October 7th, 1983, at 56 years old.
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Dec 26, 2016 17:04
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Fun little side-fact: "Broken arrow" is also the term used for when soldiers tell their artillery "I loving know it's danger close and don't tell me that there's gonna be a high body-count of friendlies; there are too many bad guys closing in on this position so start firing already dear Christ!" So if someone calls "broken arrow," poo poo just got loving real.
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Dec 28, 2016 21:10
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Update on Assault Horizon: I had intended to begin recording footage over the last few weeks, but there's been an ongoing medical issue with my cat that has reduced my spoons pool to near zero. Hopefully that should resolve within the next month or so.
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Dec 30, 2016 17:17
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Emancipation Mission 15: Operation Firefly – July 10th, 2005 Overview: ISAF launches a massive ground assault in coordination with the local Resistance fighters to liberate the city of San Salvacion from Erusean occupation. Mobius 1 and the ISAF Air Strike Team are sent in to provide top cover for the ground forces as they retake the city. Meanwhile, the Storyteller Boy and Barkeep’s Daughter have their long awaited reckoning with Yellow 13.  Guest Commentator: I am joined for this mission by Pythonicus, one of our brand new guest commentators for Ace Combat 04. Pythonicus has done LPs of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3, and has also appeared in Lazyfire’s LP of Battlefield 4 (which I also appear in alongside Blind Sally!). He is currently (and by that I mean the LP is on hiatus but technically not dead yet) running an LP of Bungie’s popular “No, Peter Dinklage does not give a solid poo poo about this game” simulator: Destiny.  SAN SALVACION San Salvacion City is the capital of the nation of San Salvacion. Located on the shore of a large lake in the lowlands north of the Lambert Mountains, the majority of San Salvacion’s national population lives either in the capital, or further north towards the coast. The city itself is divided into three key regions, the downtown government complex, where the bulk of the local occupying Erusean military command has been stationed, the Old Towne district, which encompasses the original city limits and is where the interstitial narrative cutscenes featuring the Storyteller Boy and Yellow 13 have been taking place, and the modernized New City district, which is where both Yellow Squadron’s makeshift highway tunnel hanger base and the San Profetta International Airport are located. For over a century, San Salvacion the country has prided itself on its political neutrality and its commitment to peace and modest prosperity. As the largest of the Independent States, the nation has long acted as a diplomatic buffer in the often contentious relationship between the Federation of Central Usea and the Federal Republic of Erusea. When the Eruseans invaded Delarus and seized control over the Stonehenge Turret Network, San Salvacian ambassadors and diplomats attempted to negotiate a peaceful end to the Shattered Skies crisis in its early days and for the Eruseans to peacefully return control of the STN complex back to the FCU in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and increased foreign aid. When the Eruseans began shelling ISAF facilities with Stonehenge and invaded San Salvacion itself, all diplomatic ties were formally severed with Erusea and any notion of a peaceful end to the conflict was abandoned by the FCU government. In keeping with its geopolitical neutrality and strong culture of pacifism, San Salvacion has no standing army, navy, or air force of its own, and is instead protected under ISAF’s military umbrella. Many brave young men and women from San Salvacion serve in ISAF’s peacekeeping corps., though with the outbreak of armed conflict once again on Usea, many of them have transferred to active duty positions in order to help liberate Usea and their homeland from Erusean occupation. This reliance on ISAF for protection, however, ultimately left San Salvacion vulnerable to invasion from Erusea at the start of the war. Prior to the outbreak of the war, an agreement between Erusea and the FCU saw ISAF forces withdrawn from the San Salvacion-Erusea border in the hopes of restoring functional diplomatic relations between the two Usean power blocs, which had been strained by the one-two punch of the first Continental War of 1998 and Ulysses Day in mid-1999. When ISAF was forced to evacuate eastward following Erusea’s seizure of Stonehenge, San Salvacion was effectively left to twist in the wind. The ISAF remnants left behind in San Salvacion were forced to engage in asymmetric warfare with the Erusean occupying forces by helping to arm and equip the local San Salvacion Resistance forces and keeping the SSR in contact with ISAF GHQ, first on North Point, and later in Los Canas. San Salvacion both as a nation, and as capital city, has a long and unfortunate history stretching all the way back to medieval times of becoming a battlefield in someone else’s war. The country was the site of many battles between the western settlers from Sapin and the Usean natives all the way up through the 1700s. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the country saw turmoil as civil war and revolutions upended weak and corrupt governments. And in the late 90s, San Salvacion fell under the thrall of the Usean Rebel Forces during the Continental War. While San Salvacion itself (along Erusea and the other northern Usean nations) originally opposed the motion by the Southern FCU states to join the Osean Federation, it did not support the open rebellion against the FCU government or the URF’s attempt to stage a coup against the governments of Usea and install anti-Osean military rule over the entire continent. After the Rebels were defeated at St. Ark and Fortress Intolerance, the San Salvacion government helped lead the charge to restructure the FCU Allied Forces into the Independent States Allied Forces in order to help prevent another Usean civil war. The term San Salvacion, or more pointedly san salvación, means “Saint Salvation” in Spanish. And you can see the Spanish influence at play very strongly over the story sections. The architecture of San Salvacion resembles that of an old Spanish or at least vaguely far western European city that’s gone through the throes of modernization. The musical interludes associated with San Salvacion all feature the Spanish guitar and were heavily influenced by Agustín Barrios, a Paraguayan guitarist of Spanish descent. And it’s been pointed out several times in both this thread and the Ace Combat 2 Erusea as an occupying force draws heavily from Franco’s nationalist Spain, which we’ve already briefly touched on earlier in the LP.  NARRATIVE CONVERGENCE As Pythonicus and I discussed over the video, this is the mission where the two disparate threads of Ace Combat 04’s narrative—the Storyteller Boy’s story and Mobius 1’s story—finally merge, albeit obliquely. Up till this point, there hasn’t been any hard evidence pointing to where the Storyteller Boy’s narrative is taking place in, just that it’s been in somewhere still under Erusean occupation and close to Stonehenge. After the mission ends, the follow up cutscene reveals the frame story to have in fact been taking place in San Salvacion all along. In this mission, Mobius 1 and the Storyteller Boy are in the closest proximity to one another that they will get (in the frame narrative, anyway), though as the gameplay story moves on westward into Erusean territory, the Storyteller boy will be hot on Mobius 1’s heels from here on out. Now that the two narratives have basically merged into a single story, they’re not going to be pulling apart anytime soon in our mad dash to the end of the game.  MORE CENSORED MATERIAL The pre-mission cutscene to Emancipation also features our last bit of censored material between the Japanese and North American/European release of 04. The gun the Storyteller Boy pocketed from the drunken Erusean soldier back near the start of the game finally comes into play here. When Yellow 13 confronts the Barkeep’s Daughter over her connection to the Resistance and her role in Yellow 4’s death, the narrator draws his gun on him and threatens to shoot 13 in order to protect the girl. His affection for 13 ultimately prevents him from pulling the trigger, opting instead for a few choice words said in the heat of an anger that had been struggling to find expression since the day his family died. In the North American version, the pistol is not present, and the Storyteller Boy confronts 13 unarmed. This small change shifts the dramatic tension and balance of power in the scene drastically. In the original version, the scene turns on whether or not the narrator is going to shoot 13. With a deadly weapon at the ready and aimed at point blank range, the Storyteller Boy is the threat in this scene, holding the power to kill 13 at his pleasure if he so chooses. The scene turns on the question of how strong the narrator’s lust for revenge is, and whether his (by now shattered) friendship with 13 is enough to stay his hand. In the localized version, the scene turns on how strong 13’s basic human decency actually is and whether he will let the narrator and the Barkeep’s Daughter go before the Erusean MPs arrive and take them into custody and—most likely—to a swift summary execution for being enemy combatants. In this version of the scene, 13 holds all the power and is the threat because he is an adult and a military officer at that who is confronting a pair of helpless teenagers, children really. It’s a “power” position that the gun in the Storyteller Boy’s hand renders instantly impotent. And just as the narrator cannot bring himself to shoot 13 in the Japanese version because of his affection for him, 13’s affection for the two kids, both as friends and as a surrogate son and daughter of sorts proves too strong and he lets them escape into the night rather than do his duty as an Erusean soldier and take them both into custody for being active Resistance members. Again, the reasons for this scene’s alteration are patently obvious, namely cultural sensitivities involving depictions of children wielding deadly weaponry, particularly firearms, in mass media. Ultimately, the choice to show the Storyteller Boy with a gun was intended to act as a statement on the corrupting influence of war and occupation on the lives of everyone unfortunate enough to live through it. These situations have happened in real life and in recent memory; children in war zones forced to or choosing to pick up weapons and become soldiers of one sort or another. It’s simply something western audiences aren’t immediately familiar with because it hasn’t happened here. So it’s not exactly like Project Aces was skirting the bounds of the unrealistic here with this sub plot or anything. I get what they were going for and I’m not bothered by it in the slightest, nor I doubt would I have been back when I first played the game as a teenager if I’d seen it unedited then. But that was Namco’s localization team’s call, not anyone else’s. For what it’s worth, PA apparently took the message from getting whacked with the censor stick to heart and has thus far strayed away from broaching any more white hot taboo subjects in Ace Combat games, and as such no other Ace Combat beyond Shattered Skies has seen the Big Red N come down upon it with the cutting room blade. The next time child characters appear in a warzone setting is in Ace Combat 6 coming up two games from now, and when they do they are utterly safe and boring and annoying and I actually kind of wish that little girl just picked up a gun and capped Pasternak with it. It would have maybe made her likable and sure as poo poo would have saved me a lot of trouble… and screaming (though I actually have a bit of a soft spot for the great Flying D-Bag of Easto-Slavia, so maybe not?).  TOTAL UPHEVAL As of Emancipation, Shattered Skies has begun its mad dash toward the finish line and all the storylines have just been thrown into a blender, set to liquefy, and then the blender was tossed into a cannon, which itself was strapped to a scramjet and launched across a dry lake bed. EVERYTHING starts happening in this mission after seemingly being stuck a in a holding pattern for most of the game. Emancipation is the start of Shattered Skies’s “narrative collapse,” a relatively obscure term from certain circles of literary theory that basically amounts to the point of no return for an ongoing story pertaining to that story’s status quo. Episodic stories that suddenly shift gears and enter a final story arc in preparation for a finale tend to undergo a narrative collapse of some sort, usually stemming from a single moment after which any attempt to re-establish the running status quo becomes impossible or can only be done at the cost of fundamentally breaking the story. There is no putting the status quo back together after what happens in the beginning and end of this video. The Storyteller Boy’s relationship with Yellow 13 is broken beyond repair at this point, regardless of whatever lingering feeling he may have about 13 himself. Likewise, with the Eruseans now run out of San Salvacion completely, their confrontation in the street the night before the ISAF assault on the city is basically the last real interaction he ever has with Yellow 13. The follow up scenes with 13 are all shown from a distance, suggesting the boy is still observing 13, but never again comes close to him perhaps out of shame, anger, or some mixture of the two. This is also, without spoiling anything, the last time we physically see Yellow 13 in person in the game. When the Eruseans abandon San Salvacion, 13 does not stick around. So it should come as no shock then that with Yellow 13 out of the picture, and Mobius 1 never crossing paths with the Storyteller Boy physically, that the story segments from here to the end are going to be few and far between. Their story is not over just yet, however, it’s just that the way it is going to be told is going to shift a little now that we have entered the narrative collapse. From Mobius 1’s perspective, the narrative collapse of Ace Combat 04 has also begun in that the war is rapidly approaching its climax. ISAF has effectively retaken roughly 90% of the territory they controlled prior to the start of the game and is about to make the push into Erusean territory for the first time. As Intel says over the debriefing, the retaking of San Salvacion is an important victory both strategically and symbolically. Strategically, ISAF now has a springboard to launch its final assault on Erusea from now that the city has been retaken. Symbolically, liberating San Salvacion was probably an even bigger victory than the destruction of Stonehenge because the city was the last vestige of occupied territory held by the Eruseans. With San Salvacion restored to its rightful rulers and people, the message has gone out around the world that Usea is a free continent once more. Now all that remains is bringing the Erusean military government command to justice for its crimes. At this point, the writing is basically on the wall for Erusea. They have lost this war. The question now shifts to when are they going to realize it and surrender, or are they going to go down fighting to the bitter end? Or are they going to follow Belka’s example into the abyss and let their own stubborn pride goad them into doing something truly monstrous? Let’s find out.  Aircraft featured in Mission 15: Operation Firefly  Ka-50 Hokum A Manufacturer: Kamov Role: Attack helicopter Manufactured: 1990–present Status: In service Primary Operators: Russia, Egypt Quick Facts:
 Tu-160 Blackjack Manufacturer: Tupolev Role: Strategic bomber Manufactured: 1984–1992, 2000, 2008 Status: In service Primary Operators: Russia Quick Facts:
Kadorhal posted:Ace Number Fifteen is Olmstead. Named for C. Michelle Olmstead, apparently born May 21, 1969 according to a non-English version of Wikipedia. American astronomer and computer scientist. Little information, up to and including her actual first name, is available. All that's said is that she discovered four asteroids in September 1990, and co-discovered the periodic comet 127P/Holt-Olmstead. The asteroid 3287 Olmstead is named after her. One of the handful of namesakes who might possibly still be alive, assuming that birth date is correct, who would be 47 years old at the time of this LP if that's the case. Tracks featured in Mission 15: DISC 2  Storyboard sketches depicting parts of San Salvacion:  Production sketches from ACES AT WAR of the bulk of our main cast for the story segments, because this is basically the last time we’re going to see like 90% of them:        The censored frames from the pre-mission story sequence (c/o: Censored Gaming):  
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 06:19 on May 3, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2016 04:49
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An addendum to the Ka-50 write-up: it was the first helicopter that entered service with a fully working ejection seat and it and the Ka-52 are the only heloes to have such an escape system for their crew.
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Dec 31, 2016 05:51
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Dang. I did not know that. I've added it to the post. Thanks!
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Dec 31, 2016 05:55
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nine-gear crow posted:Dang. I did not know that. I've added it to the post. Thanks! And for those wondering, the system works by having the rotor blades detach (I believe using explosive bolts) from the assembly and then activating the ejection seat which will hopefully allows the pilot enough clearance for the parachute to open.
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Dec 31, 2016 06:14
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I'll admit to being a moron and thinking story teller boy and mobius 1 was the same person until this point in the game in my first playthrough as a teen 
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Dec 31, 2016 06:37
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Hopefully.
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Dec 31, 2016 06:40
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Lunethex posted:Hopefully. You know what, if you're in a chopper going down any chance of survival is good.
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Dec 31, 2016 23:20
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Ace Number Fifteen is Olmstead. Named for C. Michelle Olmstead, apparently born May 21, 1969 according to a non-English version of Wikipedia. American astronomer and computer scientist. Little information, up to and including her actual first name, is available. All that's said is that she discovered four asteroids in September 1990, and co-discovered the periodic comet 127P/Holt-Olmstead. The asteroid 3287 Olmstead is named after her. One of the handful of namesakes who might possibly still be alive, assuming that birth date is correct, who would be 47 years old at the time of this LP if that's the case. I'm reminded now that one of the late-game missions in the original Ghost Recon has your team sent to a test site at Arkhangelsk to destroy prototypes of both the Hokum and the Berkut. Which is kinda weird considering the game is set in 2008, but eh, I guess that's what happens when you set your game that far into the future.
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Jan 1, 2017 01:23
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nine-gear crow posted:For what it’s worth, PA apparently took the message from getting whacked with the censor stick to heart and has thus far strayed away from broaching any more white hot taboo subjects in Ace Combat games, and as such no other Ace Combat beyond Shattered Skies has seen the Big Red N come down upon it with the cutting room blade. The next time child characters appear in a warzone setting is in Ace Combat 6 coming up two games from now, and when they do they are utterly safe and boring and annoying and I actually kind of wish that little girl just picked up a gun and capped Pasternak with it. It would have maybe made her likable and sure as poo poo would have saved me a lot of trouble… and screaming (though I actually have a bit of a soft spot for the great Flying D-Bag of Easto-Slavia, so maybe not?). To be fair Pasternak is a pretty cool guy aside from the things he does when he fights you which *SPOILERS*. I also freely admit that I have a more dignified nickname for him but it's technically spoilers as well sadly. But we get ahead of ourselves. On more relevant notes, I do really love the atmosphere of this mission with the civilian radio broadcasting and being able to swat Yellows out of the sky. That and the mission's song fits it perfectly.
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Jan 1, 2017 06:03
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So, was the Ka-50 the inspiration for the stealth helicopter from Goldeneye? Because it also had an ejection system that also involved the rotor blades detaching so the cockpit could fly into the sky unimpeded.
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Jan 1, 2017 06:21
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AradoBalanga posted:So, was the Ka-50 the inspiration for the stealth helicopter from Goldeneye? Because it also had an ejection system that also involved the rotor blades detaching so the cockpit could fly into the sky unimpeded. I'd say it's possible, at least. The craft in GoldenEye was more or less an unmodified Eurocopter Tiger, but I can't find any consistent sources on whether it has a similar ejection system. I guess it depends on how much anyone outside of Kamov knew about the Ka-50 at the time.
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Jan 1, 2017 07:23
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After seeing that last video, and the censored frames, it kinda makes me wonder (not sure how to phrase this): Do you think the original or censored version is more powerful? It's probably a bit presumptuous to ask something like that, coming from someone who's never seen nor touched an Ace Combat game before now. Like for me personally I think, having never seen or played Ace Combat 4 before, that I prefer the version without the gun. While the tense armed standoff (and the Boy's respect of Yellow 13 being so deep the mere word "Go!" sends him running) has a certain quality to it, the idea that Yellow 13 so deeply cared for the Boy, that the Boy's mere words could cut so deeply that he lets the Daughter escape almost without realizing it. That he could have done anything (rather than have his actions constrained by the gun) yet the turmoil of his feelings prevented him from acting.
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Jan 2, 2017 15:21
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They're both pretty powerful but for wildly different reasons. I never knew about that particular edit so seeing that scene with such a massively different tone behind it is interesting.
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Jan 3, 2017 07:44
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Psycho Landlord posted:They're both pretty powerful but for wildly different reasons. I never knew about that particular edit so seeing that scene with such a massively different tone behind it is interesting. That's the way I feel about it too. I've mulled it over in my head for a while now as to which version of the scene I prefer and I can't make the choice. In the Japanese version, the focus is on the narrator and his thwarted moment of vengeance. There's a whole slew of reasons why he doesn't shoot 13. He doesn't shoot him because he knows it will give away their position to the MPs searching the street for them, he can't do it because of how much he admires and respects 13, he can't do it because in the end he's just a quivering ball of impotent anger and hurt and was just bluffing like any 13 year-old would be in that situation, and of course there is the implication that in not shooting him he was functionally forgiving 13 for what had happened to his family. He decides revenge is just not worth the price he'd have to pay for it and just let it go. In the English version, the focus is on 13's moment of thwarted vengeance. With the gun out of play, he has the person who functionally killed the woman he loved in his grasp and has her dead to rights as an enemy combatant. All he has to do is hand her over to the MPs when they arrive, and Yellow 4 gets a measure of justice for her untimely death. But just like the narrator, 13 also realizes that the price 4's "justice" comes at is too high, because it means handing a teenage girl and an otherwise innocent boy over to a secret police force whom we've already seen blackbag several people over the course of the story. When 13 lets them both go, he too is functionally forgiving the both of them; forgiving the girl for her role in 4's death, and forgiving the boy for lying to him about his true feelings towards him, and about the Resistance. This all still plays out in the Japanese version, it's merely overshadowed by the Storyteller Boy's choices in that moment. Again, saying which one is the more powerful is kind of a hard ask. You could say so much about this one moment simply because of the ambiguity of it and even the question of whether the Storyteller Boy is a reliable narrator or not. It's the examinations of the moments like this that made me want to do this LP project in the first place.
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Jan 3, 2017 08:23
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Sadly there's no way to know which is more powerful when everyone can only experience it for the first time once. I remember feeling an intense nervousness when Narrator confronted him in the localised version, since he was taking a massive risk (what I thought at the time, obviously now more like "giving up") on what little stability and makeshift family he had in 13 and the occupying forces to stick up for Daughter, her (their) cause, and be true to what he believed. Oh, I've got a one as well. Missions 26 to 29: Intercept, Plumber, Pathfinder, Ouroboros Part 09: Aerial Sea Mammal Rampage (wingman: Skippy Granola) I only noticed now that I was counting the missions incorrectly by like five. We're actually quite close to the end of the Intercept is actually a really tightly-timed mission for the A-rank. If the enemy craft even get close to the satellite the mission is failed, so cleaning up everything in the area is a job almost solely for the Su-43 and later unlocks, all of which comprise the end-game planes. It can be kind of surprising how fast you get here, and how quickly the stats on your planes ramp up from the EF-2000. There is nothing the Su-43 can't do; as long as you can control it, it's the best plane for the mission. In a modern Ace Combat, something like this and the F22 would be your final unlocks that are virtually unstoppable in combat. But Electrosphere isn't a modern Ace Combat, nor is it Ace Combat 2. If the boss fights can't be over-the-top, the planes will have to do. So Intercept and Plumber are the final two missions with a central gimmick in them, one a plate-spinning exercise and the other another stealth approach. Despite being incredibly short and simple, Plumber is actually one of my favourite missions for some reason, despite not being that big of a deal in the original game either, and Intercept is really good as well as a demonstration of the power you now wield with the 43 at your disposal. After those two comes what was another important story mission, now reduced to another two-phase city assault mission, and then round two with the Sphyrna. Three of these four missions were really important in the Japanese game's story, and the latter two are considerably lacking without the dialogue and cutscenes framing them. Like the first Sphyrna fight, it's a short mission with not much going for it otherwise. The variety and length of the others keep it from being noticeable, but the Sphyrna fight missions are usually little more than Sphyrna fights, and without being aware that those two missions are in different cities and the understanding that they couldn't be merged into a single mission with a boss fight at the end, it can seem like padding. It's been a rough ride for Electrosphere to make frameworks for these missions without a real story backing it up. But it won't go down without a fight, and, if nothing else, the next trick up its sleeve will surprise and amaze the mind of a ten year-old. That has no idea of the localisation issues. And was already diligently reading the mission text as if it was important. And hasn't played any other Ace Combat.  Hot drat.
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Jan 4, 2017 12:17
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It's taken me a while to realize/admit this to myself, but properly tuned, the Forneus in Joint Assault is easily the best handling plane of any Ace Combat I've ever played. You can almost do a complete aileron roll by blowing on the stick, pitch response is utterly instantaneous, and outside and inside turns perform the exact same. It might actually handle better than the UAVs in the 6 boss fight.
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Jan 4, 2017 15:32
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Considering the differences in power at play pointed out by crow, I am actually quite impressed that the scene plays out as coherently in both versions when the narrator does/does not have his weapon. I remember being kind of shocked when I first played it and it was certainly one of my favourite parts of the story. I'll also look forward to sharing thoughts on Pasternak when the time comes.
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Jan 6, 2017 01:54
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Finally remembered to post something that I keep meaning to, then forgetting to. I don't think the Erusian aircraft are from squadrons with color names. Rather, I think they're using the Russian practice of referring to individual airframes by the tail/nose number and the color of that number. A real world example is the Su-37 prototype known as "711 White", after which the default Terminator livery in AC0 is modeled. (I wanted to link a Wikipedia article, but "bort number" doesn't seem to have one.) Additionally, I was watching another LP of AC4 and noticed that the XMAAs have a large amount of blue on them (at least on the FA-18), which I believe would designate them in the real world as dummy, practice munitions. Probably just a case of only having those available to model.
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Jan 6, 2017 16:35
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I had my own words about the censored versus uncensored version of the cutscene in this video, but I ended up not posting them and then nine-gear crow more or less said what I wanted to say in a far better manner than I could. That said, having first played the game a long time before discovering it even was censored in any way, I always felt something was off about the censored version of the cutscene - the kid just turns around the corner and shouts at Yellow 13, what sort of backup plan does he have if the grown adult who is also a trained ace pilot decides to not play around with people more or less directly responsible for the death of his closest friend and wingmate? Learning that the kid originally had a gun to point at him as he did so just makes so much sense. That said, I do think I like the censored version a bit more. Whereas the boy finding himself unable to kill the man responsible for his parents' death because he's grown to respect him is nice, it's more or less the same sort of thing we already know from when he discovered the Resistance and mentioned how they were the "real heroes", while he found a haven with the Yellow Squadron. Meanwhile, the Erusian ace finding himself unable to do anything but let the kids involved with the Resistance and their bombing of their runway go, and then not do anything to bring it up when the kid keeps hanging out with them afterwards, is a nice demonstration that not all of the Erusian military are the kinds of assholes like that one guy from mission 11 who basically told a more conscientious wingmate to shut the gently caress up and shoot down the civvie planes. Granted, there's a good demonstration of that later on in both versions as well, so either version of this one could work. NobleSixFour posted:Finally remembered to post something that I keep meaning to, then forgetting to. I don't think the Erusian aircraft are from squadrons with color names. Rather, I think they're using the Russian practice of referring to individual airframes by the tail/nose number and the color of that number. A real world example is the Su-37 prototype known as "711 White", after which the default Terminator livery in AC0 is modeled. (I wanted to link a Wikipedia article, but "bort number" doesn't seem to have one.) I don't have much to say about the squadron bit other than to remind people that Yellow Squadron is officially designated Aquila (Latin for eagle). The practice munition thing, though, makes sense given what I know about modeling weapons. Even modern AAA FPS developers don't seem to have the ability (or enough fucks to give) to get actual weapons to model off of and keep having to settle for airsoft or just ganking models from whatever another dev under the same publisher put out last year, it'd make sense that the same would happen regarding aircraft munitions. I guess it's a spoiler for a plane we haven't seen yet, if you haven't been following the threads since Zero started more than a year back (in which case what is wrong with you  ), but the "S-37" in this game more or less has the same issue, there were still no proper references for the real craft at the time (it didn't even undergo its final name change to the Su-47 until the year after this game came out) so the in-game model is a hybrid of the real thing and the more fictional Su-43 from Electrosphere. Particularly, the twin tailbooms at the rear, the in-game model has them the same length, rather than the left-side one being shorter as in reality.
Kadorhal fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jan 7, 2017 |
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Jan 7, 2017 02:59
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And then when they CAN get a real weapon to model, they model it with the fire selector on safe...
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Jan 7, 2017 14:02
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Whiskey Corridor Mission 16: Operation Sandstorm – August 15th, 2005 Overview: The Eruseans have fallen back to their last organized line of defense at the mouth of a strategic desert bottleneck, the Whiskey Corridor. ISAF’s ground forces plan to smash through the Erusean lines at the abandoned Anchor Point City ruins and have requested close air support from Mobius 1 specifically. With ISAF pushing into Erusean territory for the first time, the alliance’s goals now shift from liberating lost territory from Erusean occupation, to reaching Farbanti and forcing the Erusean military government to capitulate to a surrender treaty before Megalith can be brought back online.  Guest Commentator: Making his third straight appearance in an Ace Combat LP as well in this video is my dear friend, The Mad Welshman, JamieTheD. His Wipeout megathread may have sadly been claimed by return of the Archive Lock because “lol radium,” but he has recently started up a new megathread examining Screwfly Studios’ back catalog of games, notably Zafehouse: Diaries, Deadnaut, and Fear Equation.  WHISKEY CORRIDOR A vast dry desert valley nestled in a narrow stretch of land between the Amber and Lambert mountains well inside the Federal Republic of Erusea, close to its national border with the rest of Usea. Whiskey Corridor (so named because it was once an infamous rum-running route between Erusea and San Salvacion during the days of Prohibition in the 1920s) is one of the most arid and inhospitable stretches of land on Usea thanks to its location in the Amber Mountains’ rain shadow. A river once flowed westward down from the Lambert Mountains across the valley, but has since dried up due to climate change. Whiskey Corridor was also once the home of a thriving border town, Anchor Point City, which now lies in ruins, largely reclaimed by the desert after Ulysses Day. A particularly large fragment of Ulysses 1994XF04 struck the desert roughly 50 miles outside of Anchor Point, producing significant debris and ejecta from its impact crater (now known as Goldberg Crater). The survivors of the asteroid strike were forcibly evacuated from Anchor Point by the Erusean military and relocated elsewhere in the country after Erusean Supreme Command deemed the city unsafe. The abandonment of Anchor Point, now known as Old Anchor Point City, was later seen as emblematic of Erusea’s further severing of ties from the rest of Usea. One of the few major highways into Erusea from San Salvacion and the FCU ran through Anchor Point and was largely destroyed by the asteroid fragment impact and ultimately buried under tons of sand as the expanding desert reclaimed it. It can now only be found on old maps or using highly attuned geological survey satellites.  THE LEGEND OF MOBIUS 1 As of Whiskey Corridor Mobius 1 has basically attained legendary status among both sides of the Shattered Skies war. The stories of his accomplishments have spread so far in the Usean military (and cultural) zeitgeist that practically every soldier knows of him. It’s a pattern we’ve seen before in the late game of the previous Ace Combats we’ve looked at. The Belkan and A World With No Boundaries soldiers fretted over the “Demon Lord” as Cipher approached a battlefield in Zero, while the URF rebels constantly lost their poo poo over the “Firebird” whenever Phoenix sortied in Assault Horizon Legacy. Again, I said Shattered Skies was the game where Ace Combat functionally became Ace Combat, and we get to see where another key facet of the franchise’s vaunted implied storytelling comes from. The Erusean soldiers’ resolve begins to break at the mere idea that the “Ribbon” ace is up there above them in the skies, literally calling Mobius 1 the Grim Reaper, seeing as how he’s kicked Erusea’s poo poo in from one side of Usea to the next, not to mention how he single-handed destroyed Stonehenge and has so far scored the only confirmed shoot down kill of a member of Yellow Squadron since the start of the war. On the ISAF side, Mobius 1’s presence on the battlefield serves to inspire the troops’ morale and help them fight better. The ISAF grunts see Mobius 1 as the great protector and equalizer in the skies. A lot of the friendly radio chatter in Whiskey Corridor and the next mission coming up centers around the ground forces’ reaction to Mobius 1 flying above them, or even just the idea that Mobius 1 might be up there. There’s one line in the next mission which is randomly triggered and I don’t think it actually played during the footage I eventually settled on as being “acceptable” given the utter nightmare of a time I had trying to record unfucked up video of Farbanti, but basically one of the ISAF ground commanders says word-for-word, “I don’t care if it’s a lie, just tell them Mobius 1’s already here!” Which I find basically emblematic of how much of a vital propaganda weapon Mobius 1 himself has become over the course of this war. Even the Storyteller Boy, after the Eruseans are driven from San Salvacion looks up ponderously to the sky and wonders if that’s Mobius 1 flying above the liberated city come daylight the next morning after Operation Firefly ends. Of course, the Storyteller Boy is something of an unreliable narrator, as we’ve seen a few times already, and is paraphrasing his experience from memory for the sake of his narrative, but it’s basically all but a fact that he knows who Mobius 1 is by both role and name given how close he was to Yellow Squadron and Yellow 13 specifically, who had developed something of an obsession with Mobius 1 both before and after Yellow 4’s death. Unlike Cipher and Phoenix, whose existences were hushed up due to political reasons (or Nemo because lol electrosphere), Mobius 1 won’t exactly be fading quietly into the background of Usean history any time soon. Aircraft featured in Mission 16: Operation Sandstorm  Su-35 Flanker-E Manufacturer: Sukhoi Role: Multi-role air superiority fighter Manufactured: 1988–present Status: In service Primary Operators: Russia Quick Facts:
 
Kadorhal posted:Ace Number Sixteen is Kwee. Named for Kiem King Kwee, yet another astronomer who somehow has no information anywhere that I can find beyond the year of birth, which the Dictionary of Minor Planet Names places in 1927. Seriously, I thought this would be interesting stuff! Why does no one care? Anyway, he, she, whichever, is notable for co-discovering a periodic comet in August 1963, 59P/Kearns-Kwee, while in search of the lost 55P previously discovered by our old buddies Tempel and Tuttle. One final check for information before posting indicates they also had a hand in Gart Westerhout's The Rotation of the Inner Parts of the Galactic System in 1954. A 2013 edition of the aforementioned Dictionary indicates they were still alive at the time of publishing, which would have placed them at 85 or 86 years old at the time, though it's hard to tell whether they were actually still alive at that point or if that dictionary simply couldn't find anything more personal about the guy either. Supposedly there's a 2014 biography on some archival website that may shed some more light on them, but for the time being I'm unable to access it because "free info" apparently means needing to pay to see it. Tracks featured in Mission 16: DISC 2 Production sketches of the Whiskey Corridor and Goldberg Crater:   
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 06:19 on May 3, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2017 14:15
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My morale'd be lost instantly if a plane loaded with almost a hundred missiles came bearing down on my location.
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Jan 7, 2017 14:51
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