Always watching. Always judging.
There was a time, dear LusiCommer, when my life consisted of cycles that started with hurtling toward a deadline, becoming suffocated yet strangely invigorated by stress, then just completing the project by the time the deadline came along which would move me into a period of being unable to properly process time which would lead me into a period of jubilant carefree silliness which would eventually turn into restlessness which would end up taking up the form of a project which would inevitably create a deadline and as the deadline would come closer, the cycle would begin anew.
This cycle got more and more stretched as I got older and soon the “massive looming deadline” aspect of it sort of disappeared and with it went my sense of urgency. This is not something I really even realized until this past week. It is no secret that I am launching a website project of my own tomorrow (although I will be here another few weeks, dear reader, do not fear!) and this is the first time I have had a hard deadline in quite some time. The closest recent experience I have had to this one was when I released the gameplay trailer for Lusipurr’s Fountain of Perpetual Disappointment and that did not have all the elements of a typical deadline because the development cycle had no firm schedule and ultimately collapsed. It did, however, include the terrifying element of public reaction.
Anyway, the point is that – although I imagine it is quite obvious – my mind is very much in the “suffocated yet strangely invigorated by stress” stage. I went to bed around 6am last night and I am trying not to think about how much needs to get done on the site before it goes live tomorrow. Also, have I played any video games the past week? Let us find out.
Nah, not really
For the first time in a very long time I have been truly too busy for video games. I have a non-game on my phone that I have been returning to for a few days, but that has been acting like a stress ball, and is not even worthy of mention by name. I suppose there was all the video from the Final Fantasy XV demo, but I have not watched it and am fine with that. I am extremely excited for the game and think it will be a fascinating play, whether it is amazing, terrible, or – most likely – something complicated and hard to define in between. Like many games.
So, crap, how am I going to fill this Editorial Miscellany? I guess I played about forty minutes of Twilight Princess but even I have some Zelda exhaustion, so I would rather just wait to talk about the Wii U one when there is more information. Although, because it is pretty much the one video game I played this week, I suppose I should say something.
Twilight Princess
Whatever.
I will say more in the alt text than I did in the main text.
Ugh, now we are back to this
I did not have a lot to say about Twilight Princess. I suppose I was playing Stick of Truth a few weeks ago and never really talked about it, but I do not have a lot to say about that game either. Not now, anyway, I am too removed from it. Well here, I just remembered something I can talk about.
Bloodborne development video
This video produced by IGN was such a treat to watch to see how these developers think about game creation. It is starting to make more and more sense to me that video game sequels should be developed this way. Like with Final Fantasy and – to a lesser extent – Zelda, there seems to be great benefit to starting up a world from scratch without too much need to retain characters or design from previous games in the series. I feel like a big reason why Assassin’s Creed got so terrible so quickly was because once they refined the tech-demo nature of the first one, the company stopped thinking about making their games better and instead focused on making the same game over and over again more quickly, while also making the games more bloated in a misguided effort to give the series a sense of gameplay progression.
Bloodborne is not beholden to its predecessors, but it is in their debt and From Software knows both of those facts. Stringently holding onto mechanics or ideas just because they are familiar is lazy and money-oriented.
If they had made more than two games, I might have included Team ICO in the same category as From Software, but I am starting to think that if I were to walk into those offices, I would just see Fumito Ueda cuddled up with a griffin. I imagine the beast would stand up and roar in a protective rage while Ueda-san curled into a tighter ball and whimpered. There is your image of the day.
I guess I played more Sticker Star
But please do not make me talk about it.
Final Thoughts
As I transition to a different website and also a different stage of my reanimated work cycle, I hope you all know how grateful I am to you for always putting up with my antics. I can be loud and brash and opinionated one second and then hopelessly silly the next and everybody here has always gracefully rolled with the punches. I love this website and will absolutely still be around as a reader and a commenter once Lusipurr finally unlocks my ankle-cuffs (I will, after all, still be chained by the waist-cuff). Anyway, does anybody have any wacky stories from the week? Let us hang out in the comments!
