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 The Nomad Soul (PC 1999, Dreamcast 2000) was the first game released by Quantic Dream, studio of lauded haute couture videogame creep David Cage. The game was an unfocused mess, but received much attention for the involvement of musicians David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels from the Cure. The Nomad Soul served as a cross-promotion platform for their collaborative album Hours, and aside from licensing their music for it, Bowie also voiced a character based on his likeness. Aside from the music, the game was noted for its grandiose promises of a reincarnation mechanic; if you were to die in the world of Omikron, someone would walk by, touch your body, and you'd jump into theirs. In practice, this promise proved to be... rather overblown.  A guy called Kay'l pleads with you to take possession of his body and save his world. You find yourself in the city of Omikron, an oppressive world of sci-fi, magic, and demons. You can transfer your soul into other bodies, but unless you stop the demons, you will never truly leave Omikron... oh no! Hey, here's a quick trailer I made:  The game combines open world adventuring with abrupt sections of hand-to-hand fighting and first person shooter segments. Instead of integrating these different genres together, it feels more like they tried to make them as distinct as possible. None of them are very good.  I bought the PC version on release, enticed by a review. The game came on a whopping three CDs, one of which also served as an audio CD with the Hours tracks on it. I weathered the terrible controls and awful puzzles until I encountered a game-stopping bug and gave up. Years later, with the aid of the experiences of others so unfortunate, I finally got through the rest of the game. I've developed kind of a weird, Stockholm-syndromy liking towards it, unearthing more details about its development and many failures. Think of me as that weird friend who tells you "hey look, this cut on my arm got totally infected" and you turn your head to look before the words make you realize you shouldn't have. By now, David Cage is known more for his later, more narrative games (and for allegedly promoting an abusive work environment at his studio). However, this is the only one of Quantic Dreams' games I've played myself, and the more I've found out about it, the more I want to share my strange experience with it. Let's go! Twitter: @davidspackage                    
davidspackage fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Jul 27, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 17:32
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Not gonna lie, this will be very interesting to see an LP of this game that a) is done by someone who knows what they're doing and b) has a begrudging admiration for the game.
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Jun 6, 2021 17:49
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davidspackage posted:I've developed kind of a weird, Stockholm-syndromy liking towards it, unearthing more details about its development and many failures. Think of me as that weird friend who tells you "hey look, this cut on my arm got totally infected" and you turn your head to look before the words make you realize you shouldn't have.
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Jun 6, 2021 18:37
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And somehow, we've already had a scene where a female character walks around in nothing but white underwear. Yup, this is defiitely a David Cage game. I have actually played only Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, both of which feature such a scene, so I don't know if he still does it or not in his later games as the utter stupidity of Heavy Rain made me never want to have anything to do with another David Cage game. Im also completely unsuprised that he turned out to be a real-life creep too. Does this one also feature French voice actors pretending to be American? This was particularly hilarious in Heavy Rain with the kid actors. 
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Jun 6, 2021 18:58
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ivantod posted:And somehow, we've already had a scene where a female character walks around in nothing but white underwear. Yup, this is defiitely a David Cage game. For some reason, I didn't notice until I did this LP that Telis changes her outfit for the bedroom. Creepy fact: Telis's underwear model is called "TELIS NUE" (Telis nude) in the game files. Make of that what you will. I think all of the voice actors are from a small pool of Americans living in France and who've voiced every English language game made in France in the 90s and early 00s.
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Jun 6, 2021 19:30
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I only heard about Omikron because I'm a fan of Bowie. Hours... is generally considered to be one of his worst albums, released at the end of his worst decade. We've already heard the only song I really like from that album, "New Angels of Promise." Anyway this looks endearingly terrible. 
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Jun 6, 2021 19:36
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ivantod posted:I have actually played only Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain, both of which feature such a scene, so I don't know if he still does it or not in his later games as the utter stupidity of Heavy Rain made me never want to have anything to do with another David Cage game. Im also completely unsuprised that he turned out to be a real-life creep too. Well he got sued for having a naked model of EDIT: VVV Whoops, you're right. My bad. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 19:51
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^^ remember, it's Elliot now. e: thanks! Solumin posted:I only heard about Omikron because I'm a fan of Bowie. Hours... is generally considered to be one of his worst albums, released at the end of his worst decade. We've already heard the only song I really like from that album, "New Angels of Promise." I was curious how Hours is regarded, as I'm not much of a Bowie fan myself. I know the collaboration with Gabrels didn't last and will get into some of that in later videos. I've grown fond of some of the game's tracks, though I wouldn't listen to them outside of this game. davidspackage fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jun 6, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 20:08
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I hate to tell you OP but your silly voice is not in fact silly enough Just do that stupid badass wannabe voice from the Blackstar lp and much hillarity will follow. Well that's my personal opinion anyway.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:22
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By popular demand posted:I hate to tell you OP but your silly voice is not in fact silly enough Can I just say: gently caress, because I already have most of the videos done. Luckily, there will be other characters, and thus other voices.
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Jun 6, 2021 22:35
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A friend of mine had a copy of Omikron. I was a console kid, he was a PC kid. Blew my mind when I first saw it, thought I never actually saw much of the game past the initial area. I really digged (dug?) the Bowie track at the time. I have a huge soft spot for games like this. Trying to go waaaay beyond what the studio is capable of, ending up a big mess but still having a certain something to it. Something that keeps you coming back. Excited to finally see this thru.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:08
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So, I wasn't entirely sure how Youtube would handle the Bowie songs in the videos; I mean, other people had clearly gotten away with it, but I had no idea what to expect. Turns out it's alright. Maybe it drops an ad or two on that (I generally browse with adblock, so I can't tell), but apparently it only blocks the video for Syria, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Anyway, I had a contingency plan.
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Jun 7, 2021 17:50
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Loved to hate the other Quantic Dream games and I've never seen Omikron, so I'll follow this along for sure! Not really surprised to see that the very first image you get from the other world is a sexy stripper dancing sexily, and that you don't make it to the second update before living DC's cuckold fantasies. Stay classy, David EDIT: although I'm surprised at how much better the voices are compared to later QD games. Mostly the fact that people don't sound like a bad Inspector Cluseau caricature, I mean.
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Jun 7, 2021 18:56
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That's a fine tribute to David Bowie and is sure to win you a platinum record OP. IF YouTube forceably monitises your videos l know that Jim Sterling found a way to circumvent this.
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Jun 7, 2021 19:48
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By popular demand posted:That's a fine tribute to David Bowie and is sure to win you a platinum record OP. EDIT: this is the video where everything is explained better than I could https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8i6aMG9VM That Italian Guy fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jun 8, 2021 |
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Jun 7, 2021 19:55
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That's funny and fascinating, like a tug of war in perfect balance. I did run tests uploading private videos with the other licensed songs and the content ID system mainly told me I couldn't monetize the videos, which I don't generate enough traffic for anyway, so I won't need to do more covers.
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Jun 7, 2021 21:13
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That Italian Guy posted:EDIT: this is the video where everything is explained better than I could I'm not sure if this works anymore, because when I turned off my adblocker I got 2 ads before this video played and another 4 at intervals. All three ad breaks were the 1 unskipable 10 second ad and 1 skipable after 5 seconds ad in pairs.
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Jun 7, 2021 21:28
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davidspackage posted:So, I wasn't entirely sure how Youtube would handle the Bowie songs in the videos; I mean, other people had clearly gotten away with it, but I had no idea what to expect. Turns out it's alright. Maybe it drops an ad or two on that (I generally browse with adblock, so I can't tell), but apparently it only blocks the video for Syria, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Anyway, I had a contingency plan. This is amazing, thank you.
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Jun 7, 2021 21:47
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I don't remember if any of the LPs of this game on the forum ever finished, or if I just stopped following, but looking forward to your knowledgeable playthrough.
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Jun 8, 2021 12:33
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I watched supergreatfriend's play this blind, and it looked like a miserable experience. This game is a mess. I look forward to seeing how things go when you know what you're doing.
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Jun 8, 2021 13:53
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Solumin posted:This is amazing, thank you.
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Jun 8, 2021 14:02
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FruitPunchSamurai posted:I watched supergreatfriend's play this blind, and it looked like a miserable experience. This game is a mess. I look forward to seeing how things go when you know what you're doing. I do feel SGF went out of his way to make it even more miserable; either that, or his sense of humour whizzed right over my head. Not that it's a very good game, but his janky, obtuse "roleplaying" certainly didn't make it any better.
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Jun 8, 2021 18:20
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Sgf is very cool and funny but, tragically, is cursed by tunnel vision and a horrific sense of direction which is rather crippling in these highly polygonal streets.
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Jun 8, 2021 19:44
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Quicksilver6 posted:Sgf is very cool and funny but, tragically, is cursed by tunnel vision and a horrific sense of direction which is rather crippling in these highly polygonal streets. You aren't wrong. Even in a game he knows well its clear his sense of direction is awful. It seems to have gotten worse even, since going back to watch his older videos isn't nearly as frustrating. I also don't really like Blind LPs, no matter who is doing it, but his particular style and quirks make them even more excruciating. I have honestly wondered about this game for years, but no one has tackled it from the same position our host is. Having finally gotten a chance to watch the first video, gotta say, it's absolutely a David Cage game. I'm looking forward to seeing where this game actually goes. Pretty sure you've already made more actual progress in 1 episode than the last LP I tried did in 3.
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Jun 8, 2021 20:32
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I absolutely adore this terrible and janky game. It was one of the first PC games I bought with my own earned money and many an unsober hour was spent with friends trying to drinkenly decipher what the gently caress was going on.
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Jun 9, 2021 07:27
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Glad to see I'm not alone in my weird enjoyment of this game. Sorry for blowing out the mic a bit in the conversation with Captain Lea, I think I got a little too excited.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:46
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Some of the NPCs in the security centre look like David Cage, especially Tarek. Thanks again for playing this for our amusement, the plot gets pretty wild but the gameplay is awful the whole way through.I I watched an interview where David Bowie spoke with some enthusiasm about the multiple worlds concept but it's very obvious that he held no interest in games beyond a mild artistic curiosity, I'd be surprised if he ever played the game enough to discover it's poo poo.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:24
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I'll give Omikron this: a lot of other games have a lot more boring starts than this. At least things are happening, even though they make no sense. You'd think the security forces would care a little bit more about your sudden reappearance. But then again, your wife hardly cared either. By popular demand posted:I watched an interview where David Bowie spoke with some enthusiasm about the multiple worlds concept but it's very obvious that he held no interest in games beyond a mild artistic curiosity, I'd be surprised if he ever played the game enough to discover it's poo poo. I think he spent the 90s trying out all sorts of different things: a non-solo career (Tin Machine), new genres (Black Tie White Noise and especially Outside), running an ISP (BowieNet), and doing soundtracks (this one and Buddha of Suburbia).
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Jun 10, 2021 00:49
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I can believe he was very impressed initially, they probably brought him into a studio plastered with concept art and ambitious ideas, maybe showed him some early game footage. For someone who wasn't very familiar with videogames it probably looked quite grand. No one told him 95% of that wasn't going to make it into the game.
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Jun 10, 2021 05:47
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Of course it wouldn't be a David Cage game if it didn't drop some porn on us that no one asked for or wanted.
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Jun 10, 2021 19:09
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Time for some action. I've scheduled an update every third day for now, we'll see how it goes.
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Jun 12, 2021 17:39
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A. Bullshit Unfun shooting arcade minigame. B. Drug your captain. You might be forgiven for not immediately realizing that B is the best choice here. Also:  KRAVE THAT KOOPY™
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Jun 12, 2021 18:18
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Usually in games like this when you get to take over some piece of heavy fighting machinery that's a high point, because you can cut loose and do some damage. Also like... I love how the entire station does not give a gently caress that one of their battle robots just went insane and blew up like a dozen of its brethren. I would be unsurprised if anyone ever notices. Also also I love how clearly the "girlfriend" just does not react to being told you're just puppeteering her boyfriend.
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Jun 12, 2021 21:07
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I just wanted to thank you for that little discussion on the voice actors in the second episode. I'm a huge fan of the obscure alternate-history FPS Iron Storm, the only game French developer 4X Studios ever made back in 2002, and as it turns out Gay Marshall and David Gasman were on the voice cast as well. For another Quantic Dream connection, Paul Bandey was the only other English speaker on IS's cast, and he's been in a few Quantic Dreams games as well, including Omikron. I also wanted to ask if you might have any ideas why the Super Best Friends playthrough of Omikron turned into such a clusterfuck? Their LP seemed to be plagued with technical problems that were only partially self-inflicted, and they always had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do and how to use the game's systems. You seem to be pretty comfortable working with Omikron, so I was wondering if you might have any particular insights on what they did wrong.
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Jun 12, 2021 21:56
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PurpleXVI posted:Usually in games like this when you get to take over some piece of heavy fighting machinery that's a high point, because you can cut loose and do some damage. Even for a video game in which standards are lax, to say the least, they just plowed through with the plot without letting implications and what could have been only edge case damage slow them. Also I'm not sure why the cuckold thing was included.
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Jun 12, 2021 22:26
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Marshal Radisic posted:I just wanted to thank you for that little discussion on the voice actors in the second episode. I'm a huge fan of the obscure alternate-history FPS Iron Storm, the only game French developer 4X Studios ever made back in 2002, and as it turns out Gay Marshall and David Gasman were on the voice cast as well. For another Quantic Dream connection, Paul Bandey was the only other English speaker on IS's cast, and he's been in a few Quantic Dreams games as well, including Omikron. Thanks! My videogaming peak was in the late 90s and I've gradually come to learn just how many of my favorite games from that era were French-produced, but it's remarkable how incestuous the English voice actor pool for those games is. Voice actor credits for videogames were (until recent years) just lumped together as "voice talent: (names)", but for this LP specifically I started making kind of a game out of taking a voice I recognized from multiple games, cross-reference the actor names and see if I could puzzle out which one it is. I'm unsure of the voice actor who does the irate cop who accuses Kay'l of being on the take, I think it might be Allan Wenger? He's also the opening narrator for Hopkins FBI and while I didn't play much of it, the general(?) from Outcast. Marshal Radisic posted:I also wanted to ask if you might have any ideas why the Super Best Friends playthrough of Omikron turned into such a clusterfuck? Their LP seemed to be plagued with technical problems that were only partially self-inflicted, and they always had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do and how to use the game's systems. You seem to be pretty comfortable working with Omikron, so I was wondering if you might have any particular insights on what they did wrong. Their Omikron sufferthrough is still one of my favorite things they've ever done, even though at the time I sometimes thought "maybe they should stop, they seem to be getting seriously burned out over this." I think the biggest problem was that none of them had played much of the game, and they were using a guide that logically assumes you have and are only using the guide to get past a hurdle. It's hard to follow advice that tells you "go talk to Namtar" when you haven't engaged with the game enough to remember where Namtar is or even who he is again. Though, at times it was just stuff that was their own fault, like when Woolie refused to read far enough ahead in the guide to tell Matt he had to go find Meshkan's door (I presume because Woolie wanted to not spoil his own reaction at whatever the game might throw at them), or when they ignored objectives that came up in dialogue because they didn't want to pay attention. davidspackage fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Jun 13, 2021 |
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Jun 13, 2021 08:56
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What wrong Kay'l? You've barely touched your brown rectangular meat prism, its your favorite.
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Jun 14, 2021 02:35
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So I'm just posting this after watching the first video but... My experiences with Omikron amount to "I remember seeing the odd print ad for it", buying it years (decade?) later on GOG and bouncing off hard from the control scheme, and shamefully constantly getting David Cage and David Lynch mixed up. It doesn't help that they've both worked with Bowie, are known for "odd" projects and share the same first name. This game... well, after the first episode, the plot seemed like something I would have been into when it came out, and the control scheme probably wouldn't have been as painful to deal with then.
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Jun 14, 2021 12:55
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https://twitter.com/davidspackage/status/1404841594164060166?s=20 We stop by the morgue, then head to Omikron's red light district, Qalisar, to question a murder witness, and one of the game's more benevolent glitches makes an appearance. This episode has the first of the three secret concerts of the Dreamers: a subversive rock group inside Omikron, portrayed by Bowie, Reeves Gabrels, and Gail Ann Dorsey. They're basically full length music videos for a few songs from Hours. I considered just making separate videos of the concerts so whoever wants to can check them out, but ended up choosing to just stick them at the end of existing videos and not doing any commentary over the performance; if you enjoy the song, you can stick around, if not, you can stop watching and not miss anything.
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Jun 15, 2021 17:48
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The character animations have not aged well.
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Jun 15, 2021 19:39
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