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Poops Mcgoots posted:The hosed up thing imo is that Cline could've gone for another Hideaki Anno Mecha anime and brought in Gunbuster, but I guess that would've required doing research on a deeper reference and we can't have that! The Buster Machines are completely overpowered, too, and make the EVAs and many other Super Robots like dwarfs.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:30
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I'm looking forward to the update with a huge robot fight where all the robots get destroyed in a couple of sentences and there's no description of any action.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:36
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chitoryu12 posted:Also notice how the two main mechs in this final battle (Mechagodzilla and Leopardon) are from the 70s and Ultraman is from the 60s, so the most prominent artifacts we've seen aren't even from the 80s in a book that's exclusively about 80s nostalgia! Hilariously, EVA units are mid-1990's too. Poops Mcgoots posted:The hosed up thing imo is that Cline could've gone for another Hideaki Anno Mecha anime and brought in Gunbuster, but I guess that would've required doing research on a deeper reference and we can't have that! GUNBUSTER would actually loving -be- 80's! Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Apr 2, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 20:19
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quote:A brilliant flash of light accompanied the detonation, momentarily blinding me. When it receded, my eyes focused back on the castle. The shield was down. Now, nothing separated the mighty Sixer and gunter armies but open ground and empty space. All right, time for a huge battle scene! On one side we've got the original Gundam, Minerva X, Raideen, and Leopardon. On the other side we have Mechagodzilla and a bunch of variable fighters and EVA units. Clearly this is finally the time for Cline to show off whether or not he can write a compelling fight between such powerful robo-- quote:The Sixer mechs were already taking an immense amount of fire from all directions. Sorrento was getting hit more than anyone, because his mech was the biggest target on the battlefield, and no gunter with a ranged weapon could seem to resist taking a shot at him. The intense barrage of projectiles, fireballs, magic missiles, and laser bolts quickly destroyed or disabled the other Sixer mechs (who never even got a chance to form Voltron). But Sorrento’s robot somehow remained undamaged. Every projectile that hit him seemed to ricochet harmlessly off his mech’s armored body. Dozens of spacecraft swooped and buzzed around him, peppering his mech with rocket fire, but their attacks also seemed to have little effect. ARE YOU loving KIDDING ME CLINE quote:“It is on!” Aech shouted into his comlink “It is on like Red Dawn!” And with that, he unleashed all of his Gundam’s considerable firepower at Sorrento. At the same moment, Shoto began firing Raideen’s bow, while Art3mis’s mech fired some sort of red energy beam that appeared to originate from Minerva X’s giant metal breasts. Not wanting to be left out, I fired Leopardon’s Arc Turn weapon, a gold boomerang that launched from the mech’s forehead. Of course the only important female character gets the robot with giant laser boobs. Mechagodzilla is so powerful that only the Tit Beams can deal any damage, disabling its right shoulder cannon. In retaliation, Mechagodzilla opens its mouth and unleashes a giant blue energy beam that vaporizes dozens of avatars and vehicles instantly. Their only opening is that it has to recharge. Wade suggests that he distract Sorrento while the other three race to the castle. Shoto agrees....then makes himself the bait. quote:Aech cut across Sorrento’s right flank and Art3mis banked left, while I rocketed upward and over him. Below me, I could see Shoto facing off against Sorrento, and the difference in the size of their mechs was disturbing. Shoto’s robot looked like an action figure next to Sorrento’s massive metal dragon. Nevertheless, Shoto cut his thrusters and dropped to the ground directly in front of the Mechagodzilla. While the opening is clear, Shoto decides to continue fighting Mechagodzilla to get some payback for his brother. Raideen's swords cleave Mechagodzilla's arm almost completely off, but Sorrento recharges his lightning breath and vaporizes Shoto. quote:I heard a brief screech of static on the comm channel. I called out Shoto’s name again, but he didn’t reply. Then a message flashed on my display, informing me that Shoto’s name had just disappeared from the Scoreboard. It's not that stunning though, right? Shoto's avatar is dead, while Daito is dead dead. He's one of hundreds of avatars that have been lost in this battle. I can't really feel terrible about it? Wade pulls the ejection lever above his seat, blowing the canopy off and allowing him to leap from the robot as it crashes onto the castle steps, exploding and killing another few dozen or so avatars. This feels like a death just as embarrassing as accidentally crashing into the shield while trying to reach the battle. Landing on the ground with the aid of his jet boots, Wade has to blast off almost immediately as Mechagodzilla attempts to step on him. quote:cut my jet-boot thrusters and tucked my avatar into a ball. I hit the ground rolling, tumbled forward, then came up on my feet. I squinted up at the metal lizard’s head. Its eyes weren’t glowing again—not yet. I could fire my jet boots again now and make it inside the castle before Sorrento could fire on me again. He wouldn’t be able to follow me inside—not without getting out of his oversize mech. All right Wade, this is your moment to do the right thing. Shoto sacrificed himself, so there's only three members of the High Five left. If you die doing something stupid, IOI is probably going to win. All you have to do is turn around and you'll win the ga-- quote:But I didn’t move. Instead, I took out the Beta Capsule and held the small metal cylinder in the palm of my avatar’s hand. this is a video game you're not actually getting revenge for murder you dumbass quote:There was a blinding flash of light, and he sky turned crimson as my avatar changed, growing and morphing into a gigantic red-and-silver-skinned humanoid alien with glowing egg-shaped eyes, a strange finned head, and a glowing light embedded in the center of my chest. For the next three minutes, I was Ultraman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqe0OISmA5Q I will admit, the movie would have been a lot better if it used one of the 1960s transformations exactly instead of using the Iron Giant. Ultraman is just as tall as Mechagodzilla. A countdown timer appears in the corner of Wade's vision, showing how long he has to turn back into Parzival. quote:Below the timer there was a menu listing Ultraman’s various energy attacks in Japanese. I quickly selected SPECIUM RAY and then held my arms up in front of me, one horizontal and the other vertical, forming a cross. A pulsing beam of white energy shot out of my forearms, striking the Mechagodzilla in its chest and knocking it backward. Thrown off balance, Sorrento lost control and tripped over his own mammoth feet. His mech tumbled to the ground, landing on its side. Oh, looks like Wade was in no danger at all because Ultraman is basically invincible. Good to know. Also, I'm still trying to figure out exactly how HP and armor work in this game. OASIS is established to have such powerful simulation capabilities as being able to simulate wind, planetary weather patterns, currents, and insects, so having extremely lifelike destruction physics should be within its capabilities. But we also know that leveling up grants you HP, so presumably an avatar or vessel would have some kind of non-fatal reaction to being shot. But would that mean something like a completely naked Level 99 Parzival getting shot in the head by a Level 1 newbie and not even having a bullet hole in his head? Or would it be like GTA V where you end up covered in bloody bullet wounds but are still at half health? Yes, I know. I'm putting more thought into this than Cline did. Same with every other drat chapter. Wade flies into the castle, returning to his human form with only 15 seconds remaining (wait, how did that battle last 3 minutes? Wasn't he on the steps of the castle when he crashed?). He knows Sorrento is probably angrily kicking someone out of their haptic chair so he can take over, so they don't have long. Aech and Art3mis stand over the smoking, bloody bodies of a dozen Sixers that are slowly fading away. The crystal door awaits. quote:“No fair,” I said, cutting my jet boots and dropping to the floor beside Aech. “You could have saved at least one of them for me.” I agree, Wade. You're a selfish rear end in a top hat. And a loving moron because you could have made this battle a complete waste of time and effort by losing a fight, all so you could do the equivalent of giving Darth Vader a wedgie instead of getting in the escape pod. quote:I examined the keyhole in the center of the door, then looked at the words printed directly above it, etched into the door’s faceted surface. Charity. Hope. Faith. Finally, a happy ending!
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Apr 2, 2018 20:21
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Eh, I can’t judge Wade too hard for wanting to punk Sorrento. Delivering petty humiliation to rich, murderous assholes is a time-honoured tradition. Consider, for example, all the people lining up to gently caress with Trump (and if you think ‘murderous’ is an exaggeration there, consider Puerto Rico).
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Apr 2, 2018 20:36
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chitoryu12 posted:
Somehow I get the feeling that Ernest Cline doesn't know how to write a fight scene.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:36
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chitoryu12 posted:Also notice how the two main mechs in this final battle (Mechagodzilla and Leopardon) are from the 70s and Ultraman is from the 60s, so the most prominent artifacts we've seen aren't even from the 80s in a book that's exclusively about 80s nostalgia! Oh, but it gets even stupider, my friend! First thing I noticed was him having recognized MG from "turn of the century" flicks. WTF? I was born the same year as MG, 1974, and I'm pretty sure no one has ever described that period as "turn of the century". He goes on to mention the shoulder mounted cannons, and then Sorrento activates MG by yelling "Kiryu". That's when I realized: he's basing this off the 2002 revival of Mechagodzilla . MG was only called Kiryu from that point on, ditto for the shoulder cannons. So it's not even nostalgia for watching bad dubs of the originals on tv, as one poster suggested. He really does mean the turn of the century one. He's not 6 years too early, he's 22 years too late. My guess is he thought of using MG as the final boss, did a cursory search for the meanest looking one and/or one with a Japanese name, and patted himself on the back for being able to name-check Kiryu. "Heh, only real nerds will get this reference!" But he shot himself in the foot, because real kaiju nerds like me actually know these useless details. Itt, JD getting angry about mechagodzilla facts
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Apr 2, 2018 20:37
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They all blew up. Except for the Big Bad that was too Big to blow up. He blew up my friend, so I blew up my machine and blew up in size into a giant and blew the Big Bad up. Then we solved the puzzle and everything blew up.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:39
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everybody died. no moral.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:41
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Darth Walrus posted:Eh, I can’t judge Wade too hard for wanting to punk Sorrento. Delivering petty humiliation to rich, murderous assholes is a time-honoured tradition. Yeah but this is more like Mueller finally getting all the dirt he needs to have Trump impeached and indicted, only to stop on his way to the office to throw rocks at the White House until the Secret Service tackles him.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:46
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The Ultraman sequence isn't even very interesting (even if it was well written) because just a few chapters ago we already got an Ultraman fight scene. That scene was also somehow more interesting despite it just being Daito fighting off some random sixer nobodies instead of the big bad guy in a giant robot.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:52
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Chin Strap posted:I finished 372 Pages, and now I want more. Are there any other good bad book podcasts? I know of the myriad of bad movie ones but I kind of enjoyed the long form of this. Along with the other ones mentioned, I like The Worst bestellers because they often approach things from a queer/feminist direction and they have a habit of reviewing lovely Christian and Right Wing bestsellers that other shows miss.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:52
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loquacius posted:Unfortunately Cline will never acknowledge writing this book himself and doing it the way he did as a mistake, because it did sort of allow him to devote the rest of his life to counting money He's only going to keep the bills printed in the 80's
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Apr 2, 2018 21:00
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:The Ultraman sequence isn't even very interesting (even if it was well written) because just a few chapters ago we already got an Ultraman fight scene. That scene was also somehow more interesting despite it just being Daito fighting off some random sixer nobodies instead of the big bad guy in a giant robot. I think that one big problem is that it’s so depersonalised. It’s not a final ‘gently caress you’ from the hero to the villain, it’s one big monster fighting another big monster. There’s no interplay. It may get (quite understandably) mocked, but there’s a reason heroes and villains in mecha shows tend to start yelling at each other during their final battles.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:01
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chitoryu12 posted:I think I'll move on to Monster Hunter International after finishing Lacero in this thread. I've had the first MHI book on my shelf waiting to be read for almost two years. One day I'll probably get around to it. Maybe when you do a thread on it, I'll read along then.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:08
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Also, the final battle suffers from a huge problem in that there's really no stakes until Wade decides that taunting his opponent is more important than winning. None of the avatars here are actually in physical danger and many of them can't even get into the castle because they don't have the Crystal Key, so the only risk to the gunter side is that a bunch of people have to start at Level 1 again. There's even fewer stakes for IOI because none of the Sixer avatars are personalized and they all have hacked rigs and a huge system of infrastructure and supply lines, so theoretically they could just jump right back into a new body and get geared up to return to battle within minutes. The only time this battle actually starts to have any kind of tension is when Wade has the opening to unlock the Third Gate and willingly does something stupid, risking everything they've been fighting for, to try and get one up on the bad guy. And he's so Incredibly Online that he thinks this is some awesome revenge for literal real life murder and terrorist attacks. Even then, the tension is almost instantly deflated by Ultraman being so powerful that he just shreds Mechagodzilla without taking a single scratch.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:10
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Darth Walrus posted:I think that one big problem is that it’s so depersonalised. It’s not a final ‘gently caress you’ from the hero to the villain, it’s one big monster fighting another big monster. There’s no interplay. Yeah, there was absolutely no weight to any part of this big showdown. The hyped up robots did nothing Shoto e-died Tons of people got e-killed The biggest battle in Oasis history E-Killing the Big Bad Guy All of these get like 1-2 non-descriptive sentences and then immediately dropped with no other attention. There's also something just specially stupid about the big final battle coming to a close by 3 turbo nerds walking up to a door and reciting schoolhouse rock. chitoryu12 posted:Also, the final battle suffers from a huge problem in that there's really no stakes until Wade decides that taunting his opponent is more important than winning. None of the avatars here are actually in physical danger and many of them can't even get into the castle because they don't have the Crystal Key, so the only risk to the gunter side is that a bunch of people have to start at Level 1 again. There's even fewer stakes for IOI because none of the Sixer avatars are personalized and they all have hacked rigs and a huge system of infrastructure and supply lines, so theoretically they could just jump right back into a new body and get geared up to return to battle within minutes. It also loses any sort of sense of victory because Wade even quickly mentions that Sorrento is just going to grab someone else's avatar and come right back. So good job mildly inconveniencing him??
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Apr 2, 2018 21:14
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If I had to keep the final battle when rewriting this, I'd probably have IOI do the equivalent of desperately yanking wires to cheat as the tide turns against them. They use their ownership of so many ISPs to just start disconnecting whole cities from the OASIS, forcing gunters to log out. They can't get the international gunters or ones who are using non-IOI service providers and they end up taking out some of their own troops who aren't physically based out of Columbus, but it evens the playing field by reducing the number of avatars fighting. All of the giant robots are conveniently in Columbus, so you can still get your big robot fight. In the epilogue to the book, you can also mention all the real world side effects that IOI's plug pulling had. People suddenly got disconnected from OASIS-based services like schools, suicide hotlines, poison control, etc. that may have been in the middle of helping them in emergencies.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:18
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Or just real life murder the people who showed up to fight you since it's been made pretty clear there are absolutely no consequences to IOI killing people and everyone in the world being shown definitive proof.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:20
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:Shoto e-died Oh yeah, you'll see in the next chapter that Shoto's avatar dying mattered even less than it seems and he really should have been interacting more with the survivors after his death. Cline actually adds something that makes logical sense for the location, but unfortunately only serves to deflate the tension even more and accidentally make Wade just as bad as the Sixers when it comes to cheating.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:21
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chitoryu12 posted:If I had to keep the final battle when rewriting this, I'd probably have IOI do the equivalent of desperately yanking wires to cheat as the tide turns against them. They use their ownership of so many ISPs to just start disconnecting whole cities from the OASIS, forcing gunters to log out. They can't get the international gunters or ones who are using non-IOI service providers and they end up taking out some of their own troops who aren't physically based out of Columbus, but it evens the playing field by reducing the number of avatars fighting. All of the giant robots are conveniently in Columbus, so you can still get your big robot fight. Russian aluminum magnate ends the final battle by backhoeing the main trunk line
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Apr 2, 2018 21:30
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:Or just real life murder the people who showed up to fight you since it's been made pretty clear there are absolutely no consequences to IOI killing people and everyone in the world being shown definitive proof. I thought about that, but realized how difficult of an undertaking would be. The battle sounds like it's barely lasting an hour, so you'd have to have IOI assassins stationed in just about every city sitting waiting for gunters in the enemy forces (who may have their name tags turned off) to be identified and have their data transmitted to the right agents. Logistically, it makes more sense for an evil "conquer the planet while laughing evilly" terrorist organization than an outwardly legitimate communications company that tries to keep its killings secret. Whereas it's very easy to go "Oops, we've suffered a massive outage across the country for half an hour". That's a thing that happens now.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:31
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I wasn’t too fussed about Shoto’s e-death because it was mostly framed as what it was - not a tragic loss, but an ‘oh poo poo’ moment as the heroes lose their most powerful military asset right at the crisis point. Shoto‘s fine, but he can’t help them any more while the bad guys are minutes away from solidifying their control of the world. Give the final battle a little more of a sense of urgency (maybe a global announcement that players have started the final challenge, with a bunch of Sixer usernames in it), and it could work pretty reasonably. Maybe have Sorrento quip after downing Raideen that Shoto’s moved to the top of his kill-list for scratching his paint or something. Show that now he’s almost running the OASIS, he doesn’t care about hiding his crimes from puny mortal governments.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:34
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Darth Walrus posted:I wasn’t too fussed about Shoto’s e-death because it was mostly framed as what it was - not a tragic loss, but an ‘oh poo poo’ moment as the heroes lose their most powerful military asset right at the crisis point. Shoto‘s fine, but he can’t help them any more while the bad guys are minutes away from solidifying their control of the world. Give the final battle a little more of a sense of urgency (maybe a global announcement that players have started the final challenge, with a bunch of Sixer usernames in it), and it could work pretty reasonably. Maybe have Sorrento quip after downing Raideen that Shoto’s moved to the top of his kill-list for scratching his paint or something. Show that now he’s almost running the OASIS, he doesn’t care about hiding his crimes from puny mortal governments. Or have Shoto be smuggled out of Japan in secret because Og knows they're all being watched (except for Aech, who's kept her identity secret enough that they don't know anything about her other than that she stays mobile), so Sorrento starts trying to taunt Shoto during their battle by telling him that they know where he lives and that they're waiting to  if he doesn't surrender.Shoto does just like Wade at the beginning of the book and ignores him, leaving IOI's goons to break in and find an empty apartment. And now they have even more video footage from the thousands of avatars and news cameras recording the battle showing Sorrento making real world death threats.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:48
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burial posted:When someone rewrites this, how is the SA gunter clan going to be portrayed? Having now read the big battle scene, the obvious answer is... Legions of goons swarm on the castle. They are daunted by the sudden appearance of Mechagodzilla. Then one brave goon pulls a toy from his pocket, and invokes the magic words: "SuperMechaGodzilla." Suddenly a 600 ft tall goon appears, and with a piercing metal cry screams a criticism of the entire work. "THE OPPOSITE READING IS TRUUUUUEEEESHROOONNK!" Everybody's head explodes in a rush to defend, deny, or express disgust over his posting (or Weaponu Postu, if you're a cool nerd like me) JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Apr 2, 2018 |
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Apr 2, 2018 22:52
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Seriously, how can you not love this prose. It's all so redundant, but it gets away with it from being first-person. "A brilliant flash of light accompanied the detonation, momentarily blinding me."
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Apr 3, 2018 00:01
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You'd think OASIS would just simulate that by having the screen turn white, rather than actually creating a flash bright enough to cause the player eye damage. Or do lasers traced on your loving eyes work differently?
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Apr 3, 2018 00:33
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chitoryu12 posted:Or have Shoto be smuggled out of Japan in secret because Og knows they're all being watched (except for Aech, who's kept her identity secret enough that they don't know anything about her other than that she stays mobile), so Sorrento starts trying to taunt Shoto during their battle by telling him that they know where he lives and that they're waiting to Maybe, but I was thinking about ways to ratchet the tension up, not dial it down. This is the final battle against a gigantic, ruthless megacorp. It should be at least somewhat scary.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:39
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I read this book in 2012 and I enjoyed it even though I felt it was really hollow. No re-reading it here, I realize just how empty and stupid it is. I'm not old nenough to know more about 80's pop-culture than Cline but I do.
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Apr 3, 2018 00:49
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Three things: -Was Wade able to read Japanese before this chapter? Maybe he studied kanji flash cards between guitar lessons. -Where is Goonfleet? No way thousands of anonymous Gunters would simply line up and remain silent when Wade tells them to. Nobody is detonating nukes in the crowd for fun, or flying asteroids into the planet? Or spamming gold farming ads during Wade’s moment of silence? -Shouldn’t IOI have had a backup wizard with an 2nd orb? Or if it’s unique, a dozen decoy wizards with the real one entombed underground with an air tank, earning triple time?
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Apr 3, 2018 00:52
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Option B for ramping up the tension, since we’d thought about going the ‘hallucinogenic descent into pop culture hell’ route - whatever Halliday left in the OASIS system freaks out at Sixers and mercenaries getting so close to the end-goal rather than the True Fans he wanted, and everyone suddenly has to deal with a lunatic replica of a broken mind that has vastly more control of the system than IOI ever managed to attain. Bank accounts get wiped, people get booted from OASIS at random, and the digital infrastructure that most of the world depends upon goes haywire, leaving Wade and his crew to talk down Halliday’s ghost before he burns everything down.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:04
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The battle should have happened before the shield went down. Their super shield only covers the castle which has minimal defenses put on it. Then there's a sixers army camped out on the field around it, too big and tough for anything but a concentrated push by all the gunters and thus serving as the main deterrent. Wades drone plan only comes out when Sorrento is standing on the battlements yelling "you've beaten my army, but good look breaking my impervious shield!" And when that's down Sorrento turns into Mechagodzilla and starts thrashing everyone else who has roboted up by now; Shoto goes down early but then pops up as Ultraman to take out Sorrento. He doesn't have enough time to make the gate before the remaining sixers, and tells the other three it's been a privilege and to win the prize for gunters everywhere.
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Apr 3, 2018 01:09
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chitoryu12 posted:I thought about that, but realized how difficult of an undertaking would be. The battle sounds like it's barely lasting an hour, so you'd have to have IOI assassins stationed in just about every city sitting waiting for gunters in the enemy forces (who may have their name tags turned off) to be identified and have their data transmitted to the right agents. Logistically, it makes more sense for an evil "conquer the planet while laughing evilly" terrorist organization than an outwardly legitimate communications company that tries to keep its killings secret. That would have been cool if Cline has been able to write them as a competent super corporation. Since he can't we're left with a blundering EVIL CORP that's infinite money and resources but lost every single battle or encounter in the book to unorganized groups of gunters. The only actually evil thing they've been able to accomplish has been real life murders. The evil corporation's entire reason for wanting to take over the digital world is so they can charge a subscription and put ads into a free-to-play game. That's their entire nefarious plot. Cline isn't very good at making them evil. there wolf posted:The battle should have happened before the shield went down. Their super shield only covers the castle which has minimal defenses put on it. Then there's a sixers army camped out on the field around it, too big and tough for anything but a concentrated push by all the gunters and thus serving as the main deterrent. Wades drone plan only comes out when Sorrento is standing on the battlements yelling "you've beaten my army, but good look breaking my impervious shield!" And when that's down Sorrento turns into Mechagodzilla and starts thrashing everyone else who has roboted up by now; Shoto goes down early but then pops up as Ultraman to take out Sorrento. He doesn't have enough time to make the gate before the remaining sixers, and tells the other three it's been a privilege and to win the prize for gunters everywhere. Wade's signature car, the delorean, that's never been mentioned again but wade said is sitting miniaturized in his pocket, could turn invisible and phase through matter. Why didn't they just load up into his car and drive right through the castle walls to the gate after he blew up the shield?
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Apr 3, 2018 01:11
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Sandybro9001 posted:I read this book in 2012 and I enjoyed it even though I felt it was really hollow. No re-reading it here, I realize just how empty and stupid it is. I'm not old nenough to know more about 80's pop-culture than Cline but I do. Before Armada came out I honestly assumed the hollowness was an intentional choice by Cline; that Wade isn't a great writer and his constant citing of his references was because he was writing within universe and that the "audience" for this story are people in 2060 who have probably never heard of the Atari or Ladyhawke (I don't think this was a GOOD choice BTW but I wasn't going to say 'this is bad writing' at the time). Armada, without the different time period, had the same horrible writing and soulless references which took away any justification for Cline's awful prose. I also remember reading the book during a heavy depression and the idea of an escapist MMO that contained every IP faithfully recreated for full immersion was really appealing for my broke brain and that made the soulless consumption and pointless referencing less grating. Never mind we never actually got to go to any of these cool places, imagining it as a possibility made the book more interesting. I think that's actually why some folks defend/enjoy the book so much, it's less about the actual book but the implications it engenders, those "underlying themes" people talk about are things they've probably imprinted onto their own engagement rather than the story itself. there wolf posted:The battle should have happened before the shield went down. Their super shield only covers the castle which has minimal defenses put on it. Then there's a sixers army camped out on the field around it, too big and tough for anything but a concentrated push by all the gunters and thus serving as the main deterrent. Wades drone plan only comes out when Sorrento is standing on the battlements yelling "you've beaten my army, but good look breaking my impervious shield!" And when that's down Sorrento turns into Mechagodzilla and starts thrashing everyone else who has roboted up by now; Shoto goes down early but then pops up as Ultraman to take out Sorrento. He doesn't have enough time to make the gate before the remaining sixers, and tells the other three it's been a privilege and to win the prize for gunters everywhere. What? Give a character that isn't Wade a moment where they do something cool and plot important? What book do you think you're reading? Renaissance Spam fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 01:13
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burial posted:When someone rewrites this, how is the SA gunter clan going to be portrayed? quote:im permabanned poster sixerstomper58. i first started gunting when i was about 12. by 14 i got really obsessed with the concept of "the 80s" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like “sixer balls” and “i love making GBS threads inside suxorz assholes” in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing things in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia. im now on antipsychotics. i always wondered what the kind of “80s” style of gunter humor was all about; i think it’s the unconscious leaking in to the conscious, what jungian theory considered to be the cause of schizophrenic and schizotypal syptoms. i would advise all people who “get” gunting to be careful because that likely means you have a predisposition to a mental illness. peace.
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Apr 3, 2018 04:52
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Orthodox Rabbit posted:
Too easy? I just wanted to spin off a version where the drone thing worked because that kind of three-steps-ahead manoeuvre is actually fun when used correctly. Either setup that part of Wayne's spy caper in IOI was to figure out a way around the shield, or have it be a surprise obstacle that Wayne, surprise, already thought of a way around. Better yet, have Morrow do it. Have him loudly declare that it's time to level the playing field and then drop that suckered starting the battle. Cline describes it like a walk-through. When you're in the IOI level, you need to take a moment to order a drone because later you can use that to drop the shield instead of having to solve these ten quests to get the counter spell...
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Apr 3, 2018 05:13
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chitoryu12 posted:
Gee, good thing someone has a spare quarter. chitoryu12 posted:Even then, the tension is almost instantly deflated by Ultraman being so powerful that he just shreds Mechagodzilla without taking a single scratch. So, as a reward for finding the final key, each person is rewarded with a Super Rare, Mint In Box giant robot. Which also happen to be less powerful than a random drop already existing in the gameworld. Reminds me of playing Skyrim where the Jarls would reward me with legendary weapons and armour for completing impossible tasks only for them to all be utter crap compared to the gear I was already using. So, at least that part is accurate. Megillah Gorilla fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Apr 3, 2018 |
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Apr 3, 2018 08:20
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Gorilla Salad posted:
iirc it wasn't even a random drop, it was the reward for a quest chain. So there's no reason why Sorento wouldn't have a pile of them from having a couple sixers farming them with a series of new accounts since the item clearly isn't account bound.
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Apr 3, 2018 08:33
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Why do the Sixers even have a Mechagodzilla anyway? Isn't their whole thing meant to be 'souless corporate machine'? They should be using some untextured blob they programmed themselves that doesn't look like anything but gets the job done because they don't care about '80s poo poo, just money. And all the other sixers should be goonswarming the heroes because they don't give a gently caress about simulating a cool robot battle and are just cheesing the hell out of the respawn mechanic to win. Like, there's no clash of cultures or anything, the Sixers are indistinguishable from the protagonists. It's just two bunch of assholes obsessed with the same pop culture playfighting.
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Apr 3, 2018 09:28
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Angry Salami posted:Why do the Sixers even have a Mechagodzilla anyway? Isn't their whole thing meant to be 'souless corporate machine'? They should be using some untextured blob they programmed themselves that doesn't look like anything but gets the job done because they don't care about '80s poo poo, just money. And all the other sixers should be goonswarming the heroes because they don't give a gently caress about simulating a cool robot battle and are just cheesing the hell out of the respawn mechanic to win. I think the robots were rewards from the previous quest step. It's hard to keep track though when one's eyes keep glazing over.
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Apr 3, 2018 10:01
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