Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Gods speed, may they have mercy on your soul.

(Also, they are ad blitzing this movie hard, which to me screams it'll be meh at best)

# ¿ Mar 13, 2018 06:00

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:58

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Here's why those three would be good: over time more and more languages are disappearing, and some anthropologists and linguistics experts feel that in a certain timeframe (read: sufficiently long enough, but well within the next few centuries), we'll be down to those three and English, though some say Hindi will disappear as well.

Latin is just dumb.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 15:29

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

chitoryu12 posted:

It actually does, though not magic specifically. More that even in a non-PvP zone you can still gently caress with each other as long as you aren�t directly attacking other avatars.

Kiting world spawning boss monsters is very much a thing. Funny too!

Naturally I A. expect this to happen now and B. handled terribly

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 15:41

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

chitoryu12 posted:

Also if you were hoping this book wouldn't get really racist later, well....

I heard that it's transphobic too.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 15:52

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

... how bad is this fanfic?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 18:33

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

steinrokkan posted:

My only question is

Why, in an age of perfected VR, does anybody give even the tinies gently caress about some beep boop toaster games from the 80s / 90s, even 00s?

Movies I can accept.

Have you seen the price of NES games and consoles these days? That's not even getting into the (S)NES Classics selling out practically instantly.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 18:44

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Orthodox Rabbit posted:

Wouldn't it have made more sense for the rich nerd guy to use a d&d reference as his first test as something that he actually had a hand in? Like a module he helped write or a famous dungeon he once made for his friends or something that was an important memory from his childhood? It seems strange that the first of his big important tests just takes place in a dungeon he played with his friends once I guess. And that way his entire test couldn't be outsmarted by just downloading a pdf of the tomb of horrors Prima strategy guide. But I guess that wouldn't tick off the [ X ] DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS NERD REFERENCE box quite as well.

Wade says he finds a ton of gold coins in the tomb which automatically converts to a bunch of OASIS money. But he can only pick up so much of it and that's why he doesn't just make himself filthy rich off of it. But since it automatically converts he doesn't actually need to exchange the gold anywhere to make credits from it so why can't he just pick up an assload of it? Or come back later and just keep picking up more and more to make himself a ton of money?

He also says picking up the money gives him a bunch of experience. Which is fair because that's how it worked back in old d&d. But does this mean that it works like that everywhere in OASIS? The rich automatically get to be level 50000 and broke people are level 3 scrubs? Or does experience only work this way because he's in a d&d area? In which case why wouldn't people find a game area with rules that give out incredible amounts of easy exp because that's how it worked in those games and just power-level this way. Which if this is true it means that he must be really really dumb if he's still only ever made it to Level 3 over the course of his life.

This was thinking into this terrible book way too much but his lovely throwaway nerd lines don't make any sense with what he's written about OASIS.

The thing is, I can sort of see where he was coming from in this. Tomb of Horrors is relatively well known, even by those who don't play DnD. So it allows him to make a DnD reference and not have it be obscure enough to fly over heads.

Never mind that when he does make the more obscure references he explains them right away.

E: My eyes rolled so far back when it was "WE SHALL BATTLE... by playing Joust!"

iospace fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Mar 16, 2018

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 19:06

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

chitoryu12 posted:

The masturbation stuff.

The what?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 01:34

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but does it feel like one massive PvE fest? Like, there's no conflict between the MC and other player characters.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 05:28

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

"MTFBWYA"?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 18:05

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

See, part of the problem would have been solved if, you know, the VR tech came out in the 80s and such in the story, not "I LOVED THIS SO MUCH YOU MUST LOVE IT AS I HAVE" shoehorn.

But that would change so much in terms of basic plot and gods this story is a mess.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2018 18:59

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

I....

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 01:04

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Sixers prevent you from posting for six hours :downs:

.

Also, oh yay, actual conflict in that "someone else might find it now."

Never mind that "virtual antimatter bombs" are openly sold on eBay which breaks all suspension of disbelief.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 15:33

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

When you strip away the more superficial elements...

You get nothing.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 17:26

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh transphobia.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2018 18:47

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Orthodox Rabbit posted:

Wade earlier in the book talks about how he only ever made it to player level 3 and never really got to explore any other areas of OASIS because he was too broke. He says transportation costs around OASIS are the biggest expense in the VR world. This means that either OASIS is really terribly designed because you can't grind enough bear butts to ever actually make it out of the starting area; or it means that Wade is just the actual dumbest person in the entirety of OASIS.

OASIS is described as an escapist fantasy world for everyone with entire planets of shopping and entertainment. It wouldn't be an escapist world for nearly the entire world's population if the regular person can't make enough money to leave the starting zones to go do stuff. None of the shopping mall planets, or night club planets, could operate regularly if there aren't any patrons. Which means other people don't have the problem of being too broke to move around OASIS.

So really Wade is just actually the worst gamer on the entire planet. Even poor grandma Gilmore who got blown up made it out of Goldshire when Wade couldn't (that's a reference to the human starting zone from the popular game World of Warcraft)

According to Wade, he hitchhikes to the grind spot he uses, then has to spend all his money to get back to school. Because reasons.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2018 15:13

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Renegret posted:

when does carrot top make an appearance

If he appears only to get immediately offed, I will say the book is redeemed.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2018 15:20

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

chitoryu12 posted:

Oh yeah the next update is where poo poo gets weird and uncomfortable.

You mean it hasn't already?

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 21:47

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 23:19

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

You know what? gently caress it. I'm done. This is beyond jumping the shark. It did that loving ages ago.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 23:19

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

(I'm still going to keep on reading the thread, but if this were me reading the book I would said gently caress it)

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 23:23

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

theflyingorc posted:

Why would you bring up the sex robot if you're just going to have it exit the story

*unfurls a giant list of things that have been used once only to be discarded*

# ¿ Mar 21, 2018 23:59

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

To me, the biggest problem with RPO is the fact that the whole overarching plot, solve a series of riddles and puzzles to win big, while overdone over the course of literary history, is fine.

The problem is it became a delivery method for 80s pop culture and it becomes completely and utterly flat. If my extrapolation is correct, then I'm guessing Spielberg just distilled it down to that goal of "be the first to win the game", adapted it to a more modern setting, and probably purged a lot of the more "oh gods why" bits.

We'll see though.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 15:49

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

The dumb loving thing is he'll get her back.

BECAUSE OF COURSE HE WILL.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 16:05

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

FORTRAN is still being used today, believe it or not. It has some very niche roles and is still getting updates to the actual language itself (and a lot of legacy code being maintained).

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 17:20

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

So what you're saying is the movie might actually be serviceable as a popcorn flick?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2018 22:39

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

I'm afraid we might have to institutionalize chitoryu12 :ohdear:

# ¿ Mar 24, 2018 16:38

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

I just wear men's clothing. Problem solved. Plus pockets!

Then again I'm probably about as massive of a tomboy as you can get :shrug:

# ¿ Mar 27, 2018 02:01

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:58

iospace: Jan 19, 2038

Tunicate posted:

Russian aluminum magnate ends the final battle by backhoeing the main trunk line

What is this, Eve? We can't have real life shout outs in this book!

Plus, that happened in the 2000s.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2018 15:15

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read Ready Player One - The Ultimate Showdown as a book