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In today's video, we meet a new character, play a board game, and prank the local butcher, and if you listen carefully, you might hear some familiar music...   TRAVEL BOOK UPDATES:
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Apr 9, 2020 14:24
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I don't suppose the Emergence Holes in GoW were building up to a sea somewhere becoming an Emergence Sea? Otherwise that'd be the worst missed opportunity.
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Apr 9, 2020 14:34
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A couple of questions. Can the focus beam of light from the mirrors hurt vampires as well? Additionally are the vampires who were up before sundown the vampire equivalent of a morning person? For the Vampire wargames, it seemed alot like wizards chest but even more bullshit.
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Apr 9, 2020 20:44
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Zanzibar Ham posted:I don't suppose the Emergence Holes in GoW were building up to a sea somewhere becoming an Emergence Sea? Otherwise that'd be the worst missed opportunity. Yeah, it's funny because as I recall Gears kinda does go there.
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Apr 10, 2020 04:08
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Man this game is long Like I don't hate it or anything, but it kind of feels like a lot more should be happening.
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Apr 10, 2020 05:13
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Bookthief posted:For the Vampire wargames, it seemed alot like wizards chest but even more bullshit. Vampire Wargame is an awkward mishmash of aesthetic ideas taken from chess, the decimate-opponent rules of checkers, and just doing whatever the developers thought was cool without regards to balance. From what I remember of my Harry Potter lore, wizard's chess was just regular chess but the pieces could move on their own and fight each other when capturing squares (basically a magical version of Battle Chess for the NES). The Philosopher's Stone movie made it a lot more explicit, and Warner Bros. hired an actual International Master, Jeremy Silman to compose a high-level endgame that would match the game Harry, Ron and Hermione faced in the book (forcing a situation where Ron's knight would need to be sacrificed so Harry's bishop could checkmate). For those who can read chess notation, with the endgame beginning on 1.Qxd3...  ...Rc3! 2.Qxc3 Nh3+! 3.Qxh3 Bc5+ 4. Qe3 Bxe3 #mate Just to add more salt to the wound, Silman intentionally created an endgame where Ron had a faster checkmate opportunity that would require sacrificing the black-square bishop (Harry), but came up with this endgame instead. theenglishman fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 15:24
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anilEhilated posted:It honestly feels like the trials were an afterthought with zero effort put into them. Don’t forget the Titan speedrun trials where I did everything almost perfectly and finished with two seconds left on the clock.
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Apr 10, 2020 16:52
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theenglishman posted:Don’t forget the Titan speedrun trials where I did everything almost perfectly and finished with two seconds left on the clock.
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Apr 10, 2020 17:04
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I remember vampire chess annoying the gently caress out of me and ultimately skipping it. It is a bizarre diversionSeraphic Neoman posted:Man this game is long And there's even more to go. You certainly aren't losing out on the content, that's for sure.
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Apr 10, 2020 19:49
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Kibayasu posted:I remember vampire chess annoying the gently caress out of me and ultimately skipping it. It is a bizarre diversion I remember nearly having a heart attack when Vampire Wargame showed up again in the first DLC, only to find out that it was just a simple "match the layout of the board" puzzle.
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Apr 10, 2020 20:11
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theenglishman posted:I remember nearly having a heart attack when Vampire Wargame showed up again in the first DLC, only to find out that it was just a simple "match the layout of the board" puzzle. Seraphic Neoman posted:Man this game is long anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Apr 14, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 23:01
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I appreciate you silently enjoying every single health and magic upgrade.
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Apr 14, 2020 20:09
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Tuxedo Ted posted:I appreciate you silently enjoying every single health and magic upgrade. Heh, thanks. It's our little tribute to slowbeef and Diabetus' silent enjoyment of the elevators from Deep Fear.
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Apr 14, 2020 21:07
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Just wanted to apologize again for the lack of recent updates. Real life is, once again, getting in the way, but I've been slowly recording more footage and I aim to have a decent backlog built up leading up to the endgame. I've also been hoping to record some Mirror of Fate footage soon, if I have the time - I'm still not sure how much of that game I'm going to show off, given that it's not very good but is also kind of necessary to understand 2's story. We'll see.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:11
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It was really bizzare of them to release a 3DS game that was integral to the plot of their PS360 series.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:32
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What's really bizarre is that there's this whole tradition of very good handheld Castlevanias from the GBA (Circle, AoS) and the DS (all three) that ended right there. I mean yeah, different teams, but it couldn't have hurt to take a few pointers.
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Apr 16, 2020 18:43
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Kurieg posted:It was really bizzare of them to release a 3DS game that was integral to the plot of their PS360 series. To be fair, 2 has a slideshow recap of the events of Mirror of Fate, but it's bad and boring.
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Apr 16, 2020 19:06
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Sad news: Keiji Fujiwara, who among other roles voiced Gabriel Belmont in the Japanese dub of Lords of Shadow, passed away on April 12th at the age of 55. For those who want to hear some of his work (since I only showed a small amount of Japanese gameplay in the LP), here's the ending cutscene of Level 1-6, with Fujiwara as Gabriel, Kikuko Inoue as Marie, and Mugihito as Zobek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1DG7uhjjP4&t=207s
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Apr 16, 2020 23:13
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Kurieg posted:It was really bizzare of them to release a 3DS game that was integral to the plot of their PS360 series. Kingdom Hearts did the same thing, so
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Apr 16, 2020 23:17
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Kingdom Hearts did the same thing, so On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand the GBA was the only handheld game in town when CoM came out. Though upon further investigation apparently Mirror of Fate was in development as an XBLA title first, their publisher wanted them to downport it to the 3ds midstream, which just makes the really cruddy HD graphics even more confusing.
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Apr 16, 2020 23:26
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Now that I have some free time this weekend, I'm going to build up a backlog of gameplay for a few more chapters and start editing as soon as I can. Once there's a decent amount of material and I have everything organized with recorded commentary, I'll begin posting again. I am committed to seeing this megathread through to the end!
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Apr 18, 2020 18:07
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UPDATE! I'm not dead, hurray! I have gameplay for the main levels recorded up until the end of the base game. Of the new gameplay videos I've recorded since my hiatus (which has really helped with my productivity since I returned), I have four videos that cover Chapters 7 and 8 exported and edited, ready for commentary with Roy once he fixes an issue with his internet. I will do the Chapters 7-12 trials in a separate video at some point later in the LP. Still left to record: artwork for Chapters 6-12, the DLC levels (excluding trials as I want to keep my sanity), trials for Chapters 8-12.
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Apr 24, 2020 14:37
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Sorry to keep everyone waiting for almost a month. At long last, we're back on schedule! (Mostly.) I'm going to try and spread out our updates a bit more so I don't run into the same slump I did last time, if that's okay with everyone. In today's episode, we climb and fight through the snowy outskirts of the Dark Lord's castle, play a silly board game, and, well...we get a shock.  Roy and I had a lot of THOUGHTS about this episode, so I'll include it in spoilers below: I can suspend my disbelief that vampires harnessed electric power hundreds of years before humans did (from the way I understand it, China had made some advances in harnessing small amounts of electricity in the 12th century, but Europe didn't have any major advantages in electric technology until at least the late 1500s). Maybe someone can write a huge  post about how Frankenstein was secretly able to divine such technology in the 11th century, I dunno.However, I have never, ever been able to buy that: a) Gabriel doesn't blink an eye at the sight of electric arcs, shockwaves and sparks, b) he instantly knows without help how to manipulate this heavy technology, and c) the hint scroll implies that the other, deeply religious members of the Brotherhood recognize the electricity as the work of a mad scientist and not as vampire magic or the work of the Devil. Even an extremely intelligent and well-read man of science in 1074 (which I doubt is the case for Gabriel, as he is an orphan raised by the Brotherhood) would look take one look at Frankenstein's experiments and assume it was witchcraft, not science gone wrong. Does this bother anyone else, or is it just me? TLDR the second level in this update isn't horrible (albeit with a bad puzzle at the end) but thematically it makes zero sense. TRAVEL BOOK UPDATE:
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Apr 28, 2020 16:05
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Can't watch the video right now, but when it comes to ancient electricity, things that could be reasonably used as batteries were discovered in medieval digs in the Middle East; if they were indeed batteries, the most-theorized use for them is electroplating gold when making jewelry. Of course, this game owes much more to mythology and crackpottery than history and there's a pretty widely-spread conspiracy theory that the ancient Egyptians knew electricity because how else would they build those big pointy things. Now if you go by Castlevania history, I vaguely recall reading that IGA was against having a clocktower in Castlevania 64 since the mechanical clock hasn't been invented yet at the time it's set in... And so the game includes a "Tower of Science" instead - which boasts, among other exhibits, a model zeppelin. e: On the other hand, come on, Frankenstein's monster is a Castlevania tradition and this is a nice fresh take on it. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Apr 28, 2020 |
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Apr 28, 2020 16:27
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anilEhilated posted:there's a pretty widely-spread conspiracy theory that the ancient Egyptians knew electricity because how else would they build those big pointy things. Oh man, that reminds me of the funniest part of Odd TV's Flat Earth "documentary". The Egyptians built the pyramids so how could they be wrong about anything?! 
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Apr 28, 2020 16:39
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theenglishman posted:I'm going to try and spread out our updates a bit more so I don't run into the same slump I did last time, if that's okay with everyone. NO! As a thankless consumer of your free entertainment, I DEMAND you provide it on a daily basis! And this monster would've been fine if it had two giant bolts in its neck. That's all I need to see out of my Frankenstein's monster.
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Apr 29, 2020 00:27
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That chess challenge looks really annoying given how the pieces you control are selected by chance.
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Apr 29, 2020 01:42
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Given how little Gabriel comments on his surroundings beyond getting around obstacles I'm alright with him not saying anything and just rolling with it. Just kinda "huh how do I use this to progress?" Though that in itself is a larger point of concern, that Gabriel can be so curt that half his character is informed by In less literary news I pumped my fist at the Young Frankenstein bit. 
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Apr 29, 2020 03:22
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NGDBSS posted:Given how little Gabriel comments on his surroundings beyond getting around obstacles I'm alright with him not saying anything and just rolling with it. Just kinda "huh how do I use this to progress?" Though that in itself is a larger point of concern, that Gabriel can be so curt that half his character is informed by I don't know how familiar you are with the end of the game, but pretty much all the hard work of Gabriel's character development leading up to the climax happens off-screen. It's really jarring. Roy and I even make fun of it in the one of the episodes we've already recorded.
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Apr 29, 2020 03:34
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theenglishman posted:I don't know how familiar you are with the end of the game, but pretty much all the hard work of Gabriel's character development leading up to the climax happens off-screen. It's really jarring. Roy and I even make fun of it in the one of the episodes we've already recorded.
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Apr 29, 2020 04:11
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NGDBSS posted:In less literary news I pumped my fist at the Young Frankenstein bit. e: Beaten to the diegesis issue. The way they handled the story is jarring because it had the potential to be pretty great in a dumb, campy way and they had some genuinely good ideas to go with it (Zobek being an unreliable narrator, for one) but the execution just drags it all down. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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Apr 29, 2020 11:38
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Yeah that's the thing, it feels like it's on the cusp of coming together but it never does. I know Castlevania protags don't really react much to their weird-rear end surroundings, but I think it woulda done Gabe a lot of good to do so. Or at least interact with the villagers he saved or something.
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Apr 29, 2020 17:48
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It would be another thing if Gabriel was portrayed as really smart or a man of science in general. As stated, I can deal with his reaction to this Frankenstein Monster being "Oh, it's a spider, but made of metal. Just another monster". Maybe he just literally sees it as another form of magic, which he himself uses. Now it's "Oh, this magical barrier exists between these two points, and if I hit this button, the barrier moves between these other pylons. If I move this pylon, it absorbs and redirects the magic. Eh, you've seen one magic barrier, you've seen them all. Next."
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Apr 29, 2020 18:07
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The above discussion has also led me to think of something else: the format of Lords of Shadow's level design borrows a lot more from God of War than its combat does, even if the highly segmented, replay-for-goodies mission structure is closer to a Hideki Kamiya game. Kratos was, beyond his brute strength, a Spartan general, and the puzzles in God of War helped to show the player that, when needed, Kratos could use his wits as well as his brawn, often in tandem. These kinds of puzzles, I think, ended up being translated as game design shorthand in its inclusion in Lords of Shadow as a feature to be expected in an action game, rather than level design serving as an expression of the main character's abilities, since the relative complexity of the puzzles and the ease with which Gabriel can solve them is at odds with what we know of him as a person.
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Apr 30, 2020 02:19
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Well, it shows that he's at least as clever as the player, since it's not like any of these puzzles require any specific education to solve. Just because he's an orphan raised as a warrior monk doesn't mean he's dumb and can't overcome thinking obstacles.
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Apr 30, 2020 02:28
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Schwartzcough posted:Well, it shows that he's at least as clever as the player, since it's not like any of these puzzles require any specific education to solve. Just because he's an orphan raised as a warrior monk doesn't mean he's dumb and can't overcome thinking obstacles. That's a solid point. It's always a tricky balance between challenging the player with a brain-teaser and establishing whether the player character could solve it on their own. I think it becomes more plausible with the hint scrolls lying around, though. Still, I think it's worth pointing out that the level design language for this particular type of 3D puzzle comes from games that want to establish a character's smarts as well as their skill in combat: whether it's Lara Croft's background in navigating ancient sites as an archaeologist, Kratos' pragmatic problem-solving during combat, or the Prince of Persia and whatever his backstory is this week.
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Apr 30, 2020 19:35
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It's time to finish up Chapter 7 with one of my favourite levels in the game.  TRAVEL BOOK UPDATES:
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May 1, 2020 16:52
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Did I miss or forget something? Does Gabe actually cheat in that chess game somehow, or is it a 'I couldn't have lost fairly, you must have cheated!' sorta deal?
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May 1, 2020 20:23
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The latter. Kid throwing a tantrum. Which is kind of interesting given what happens later. Anyway, I really like the color lens gimmick (being done in a very stylish way) - and thoroughly despise the dash puzzles. What the video doesn't really show of is how incredibly easy it is to miss the timing on one of these things; I spent ages on this level and it's nice to see how it's done when you're actually competent at the game. e: I get that shadow magic is bad for your brain, but what about the other one? Does it make you more pious? anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 20:36
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anilEhilated posted:Anyway, I really like the color lens gimmick (being done in a very stylish way) - and thoroughly despise the dash puzzles. What the video doesn't really show of is how incredibly easy it is to miss the timing on one of these things; I spent ages on this level and it's nice to see how it's done when you're actually competent at the game. In order to more accurately change direction, you have to completely let go of the analog stick and then tap in the new direction. I remember being frustrated during the dash puzzle during my first playthrough for the exact same reasons you were, because I was holding the analog stick the entire time and then tilting it to the direction I wanted, which makes Gabriel do a wider turn and is meant for combat (spoiler: the dash is next to useless in fights and does basically no damage). anilEhilated posted:The latter. Kid throwing a tantrum. Which is kind of interesting given what happens later.
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May 1, 2020 21:28
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