Episode 156 - Celebratorium - TRS 3 Year Anniversary! Green Zone, Final Fantasy XIII, Shutter Island, Street Fight IV iPhone & behind-the-scenes [Discussion]

[dannyt]

Originally Posted by skin87

This was a good last episode for me. I leave for Navy Boot Camp tomorrow and am going to miss the next 9 episodes :-(, but this was a good one to end on.

Good luck in Boot Camp!

[dannyt]

Originally Posted by yokai

First of all, I think you all made some very legit points about Final Fantasy XIII, however I feel like you guys are criticizing the story way too soon. First off,

You're definitely right about that. Wish I coulda played more-- and until I finish the game, my critcisms will have come to soon, but...

Originally Posted by yokai

1) The story is very much supposed to represent the "epic" tales of older Greek stories, in which humans exist among gods. The L'cie are supposed to be those "humans gifted with godly powers" who are supposed to fulfill the gods, or the fal'cie, missions. The overall theme is bending fate, do you do what you must or do what you want? Which, in some ways, is a very Japanese theme, almost Giri vs Ninjou (What you must do vs what you want to do).

LOVE this kinda tale-- from the straight up versions like Hercules and Clash of the Titans to the american classics Star Wars and Superman. I love the openings and first acts of those stories...I did not like that of FF13.

Originally Posted by yokai

2) "Grunting" is probably the worst thing about localized Japanese films / games. In Japanese, it's much more frequent to use "sound effect" type onomatopoeia, which isn't translatable. Stuff like "ara", "wa~" other sounds are common in Japanese speech in real life. In English, we rarely use onomatopoeias except for maybe some slight sounds such as "opps" and "whoa". I guess in other words, It just sounds way less natural in English, and there's no way to translate around that without taking liberties with the story.

Silence is golden. As are pregnant pauses. I don't seem to miss this in the Miyazaki translations.

[quote=yokai;575198]
3) As The fiction of final fantasy games always start mid-way through the stories.you continue, you begin to figure out what the "universe" is. Sahz and Lightning, in this game, acts as your guide and explains many of the elements of the universe. As you continue, you unlock many elements of the story before hand. With Japanese films, or novels, you may not fully understand the whole story until you finish, which also adds to the replay and rewatchability (Each time you watch, you figure out more about the universe, understand "why" things are the way they are) With SOME stories, you won't understand the story even after watching it all, and will take a few re-watches to figure out "oh so that's why" because often times elements are "explained" but aren't touched up on, to keep the feeling of mystery in which the reader / watcher / listener must "deduce" the reasoning behind actions.

Originally Posted by yokai

I can totally understand the story method may be off putting, I definitely feel like your judgment about the universe is a bit hasty, and the story is "intended" to start mid way through! That also isn't a story method ONLY for Japanese story telling, it's called "in medias res" which can be found in some of histories BEST stories, such as Odyssey. Even The Great Gatsby has some element of that as well, so to say that it's an "ineffective" story telling method is a bit absurd.

I don't remember saying that starting a story "in medias res" is "ineffective." I'm not sure how long you've been watching the show but you only need to see our reviews of Inglorious Basterds (note: that opening scene), Let the Right One In, Timecrimes, Moon.. it's not exactly as if I only like my stories spoon fed to me. It's just that I thought the storytelling in FF13 did a REALLY BAD job of handling that. And for the record, so did Advent Children. I was always under the impression that I needed some prior knowledge to know what was going on-- now I realize that I find the storytelling for these properties...not for me.

[cashbailey]

Very awesome of Dan to name-check LOST ODYSSEY.

To me that game was very emotional and touching and IMO that's the best 'unofficial' Final Fantasy game since FF8.

And I think the problem a lot of people inherently have with the gameplay mechanics of JRPGs is due to the Japanese developers stubbornly refusing to really develop their storytelling style and control systems to be a little more (dare I say it?) 'Western-friendly'.

[falen]

Great show and congrats on 3 years!

I liked Lost Odyssey enough to finish it which is not something I can say about a lot of the JRPGs I have played in recent years.
However, it was extremely "traditional", the most original aspect of it was the dream-short story text sequences.

Final Fantasy XIII on the other hand is completely refreshing to me. It looks and sounds beautiful and so many annoying archaic features are fixed, hello check points and non-random battles, full voice-over audio and NPC's will just talk automatically if you are close to them! Sure I kind of miss traditional towns, but I've done the town-dungeon-town thing hundreds of times now, and so far this generation towns have meant lots of annoying loading screens and worthless NPC dialogue.

I think FF13 has one the best (the best maybe?) combat systems in the series. Usually JRPGs with "tactical" battles are very slow and plodding. FF13 somehow manages to combine hectic speed with strategy.

While I loved Jeff's point about the setting being a great change from the typical Tolkien-middle earth or Starwars vibe, it's basically just a typical (though cool!) anime setting.

[lokified]

It odd that all the FF13 reviews I've seen talk about the revolutionary time-based combat system. The last non-Fallout 3 RPG to really suck me in was Final Fantasy X-2, which also has a high-action combo-based react-as-soon-as-you-can style of combat.

Has anyone played both who can compare & contrast?

Good show, all, and I like Mike's Editing Master Control. He can render from his bed!

[sdornan]

Been noticing a trend in the last several episodes of the show and just wanted to point it out.

In the video game segments, Jeff has a habit of always getting in the last word and doing so in a way that seemingly trivializes Alex and Dan's opinions. Obviously, I know that this is not intentional, but this is just the way that it comes off to me, the viewer.

It happened again in this episode when the guys were speaking about Final Fantasy XIII. Dan and Alex both were kind of "eh" about the game. Jeff loved it, however, and closed the discussion in a way that made it appear as if his opinion of the game was the group consensus, even though it clearly wasn't.

I know Jeff is a huge video gamer and has very strong opinions about the games he likes. However, I would like to humbly ask that all of the guys' opinions be factored in when moving from one topic to another.

Thanks! Love the show!

[heyseuss]

Originally Posted by sdornan

Been noticing a trend in the last several episodes of the show and just wanted to point it out.

In the video game segments, Jeff has a habit of always getting in the last word and doing so in a way that seemingly trivializes Alex and Dan's opinions. Obviously, I know that this is not intentional, but this is just the way that it comes off to me, the viewer.

It happened again in this episode when the guys were speaking about Final Fantasy XIII. Dan and Alex both were kind of "eh" about the game. Jeff loved it, however, and closed the discussion in a way that made it appear as if his opinion of the game was the group consensus, even though it clearly wasn't.

I know Jeff is a huge video gamer and has very strong opinions about the games he likes. However, I would like to humbly ask that all of the guys' opinions be factored in when moving from one topic to another.

Thanks! Love the show!

Do you feel that way about Dan having the last word in the movies segment too ?

[skin87]

Originally Posted by Heyseuss

Think of how cool it will be to have a butt-load of new TRS's backed up to view. 9 ep.'s will require a mighty big bucket of popcorn.

With all the podcasts and webcomics I'll miss it sounds tempting, but I am going straight from bootcamp to Navy Nuclear Power School so I will be lacking free time to the point where I think I will just have to miss some episodes for the first time. Well, among a bunch of other things I'll definitely miss the forum and all your tweets. Take care, everyone!

[falen]

Originally Posted by sdornan

Been noticing a trend in the last several episodes of the show and just wanted to point it out.

In the video game segments, Jeff has a habit of always getting in the last word and doing so in a way that seemingly trivializes Alex and Dan's opinions. Obviously, I know that this is not intentional, but this is just the way that it comes off to me, the viewer.

It happened again in this episode when the guys were speaking about Final Fantasy XIII. Dan and Alex both were kind of "eh" about the game. Jeff loved it, however, and closed the discussion in a way that made it appear as if his opinion of the game was the group consensus, even though it clearly wasn't.

I know Jeff is a huge video gamer and has very strong opinions about the games he likes. However, I would like to humbly ask that all of the guys' opinions be factored in when moving from one topic to another.

Thanks! Love the show!

I've noticed this too, but I never took any negative conclusion from it. I don't think he is trivializing their opinions, Jeff is just the most knowledgeable (qualified...I don't know if that is the right word) one for the videogame section, just like Dan knows the most about movies.
In the FF13 case he wanted to at least point out that there was a western bias as far as the narrative is concerned. Everyone has biases that's nothing to be ashamed of, but it is nice that he wanted to point it out.

[primedawg]

Originally Posted by skin87

This was a good last episode for me. I leave for Navy Boot Camp tomorrow and am going to miss the next 9 episodes :-(, but this was a good one to end on.

good luck man!