Eruditorum Press

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E3 2016: Sony Press Conference

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Almost every year, I like to digitally “attend” the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. Since I started blogging regularly six years ago, I’ve tried to provide readers some written coverage of the show’s numerous press conferences for the benefit of anyone interested in my raw thoughts on the week of product reveals and announcements. This year, I’m pleased to be able to bring my E3 coverage, such as it is, to Eruditorum Press. The following is a part of a series I’m writing on E3 2016, looking at the press conferences and events of three major players in the industry: Bethesda Softworks, Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo.
 
I won’t be buying a PlayStaton 4.
 
Announced last week ahead of E3 by publisher Square-Enix (who don’t have a press conference this year), Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is an expanded re-release of another of my favourite games-The one non-Pokémon JRPG to ever truly capture my heart. To date, it’s only been confirmed for a PlayStation 4 release, but every Final Fantasy reissue has found its way to other platforms eventually, and I have confidence this one won’t be any different. The whole reason I watched Sony’s press conference, which I otherwise had zero interest in, was to see if they would have some more to say about the re-release, particularly if it was going to be a platform exclusive or not, but Zodiac Age was a no-show. That, along with the at that point unnamed and unannounced The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition, was really going to be the deciding factor in whether or not I would bite the bullet and buy a PlayStation 4. But with TESV coming to PC and no more word on Zodiac Age at the big Sony song-and-dance (…literally, as last night’s show was no bullshit fully scored by a live orchestra) I’ve no reason to get a PS4, especially considering how incensed I still am by their subscriber-only online multiplayer service PSN Plus.
 
But I’m not just not buying the system. After last night, in fact, I feel like actively boycotting it. This was one of the most offensive and insulting press conferences I’ve seen in all my years doing this show.
 

 
After a preposterously long and ponderously self-indulgent orchestrated introduction, Sony literally lifted the curtain to show off its first big reveal: A reboot of the fan favourite sixth generation franchise God of War. In this series you play Kratos, a cartoonishly overmuscled he-man who, feeling betrayed by his gods after the death of his family, goes out on a mission to personally brutally murder and dismember each and every one of them. I would argue it is a series that is, to use the language of the hip SJWs these days, “problematic”. The gameplay demo, set this time in a world inspired by Norse mythology instead of the classical Greek and Roman mythology of the original series, shows the new Kratos being a stern hardass with his son, a prospective hunter.
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E3 2016: Bethesda Press Conference

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Almost every year, I like to digitally “attend” the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. Since I started blogging regularly six years ago, I’ve tried to provide readers some written coverage of the show’s numerous press conferences for the benefit of anyone interested in my raw thoughts on the week of product reveals and announcements. This year, I’m pleased to be able to bring my E3 coverage, such as it is, to Eruditorum Press. The following is a part of a series I’m writing on E3 2016, looking at the press conferences and events of three major players in the industry: Bethesda Softworks, Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo.
 
Last year, Bethesda gave its debut press conference at E3. It was a symbolic move indicating that the company, long known for its quality output, ethical business practices and loyal fanbase, had become a major enough player in the industry that it deserved to stand alongside the biggest names in the game like EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft. And though they didn’t actually reveal a ton of new stuff, they revealed enough to keep people talking all throughout the show: Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter stole the spotlight, while Doom and Dishonored 2 were pleasant surprises. This year was much of the same-Not a whole lot of “new” information per se, but enough (including one bombshell announcement I literally cannot wait to talk about, let alone play) to leave us with a good feeling. Over the past five years Bethesda has established themselves as my absolute favourite non-Nintendo AAA development studio and publishing house (basically meaning the only one I can still even remotely tolerate, though that does undersell them), and they sure didn’t disappoint last night.
 

 
First up was Quake Champions. All we got to see was a reveal trailer, but that was enough to get me excited. I’ve always been more of a Quake person than a Doom person (though that’s not to say I’m anything like a master of either) because I prefer to take my first-person shooters as old-fashioned multiplayer arena affairs. Suffice to say I have fond memories of Quake III: Arena, and I’m really happy id Software and Bethesda seem to be trying to bring that scene back by filtering it through e-sports to update it for modern audiences, hopefully without losing what made the original concept great. They pulled off the balance with this year’s new Doom, so I’m confidant they can do it for Quake too. Interviews with the developers after the show seemed to indicate Bethesda/id are taking cues from recent games like Splatoon and Overwatch, where you find a character or class of weapon that fits your preferred playstyle and gain mastery in it, or jump between various classes as you see fit, which I think is a great way to utilize and update Quake’s cast of characters. I just really hope by the time it comes out I’ll have a gaming rig that can actually run it.
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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 4.03: Breaker of Chains

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I really find myself wondering what Jack Gleeson thought of that scene.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laud out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister

Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish

Roses of King’s Landing: Margaery Tyrell

Ships of Dragonstone: Davos Seaworth

Burning Heats of Dragonstone: Stannis Baratheon

Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane

Flowers of the Wall: Gilly

Shields of King’s Landing: Brienne of Tarth

Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys

With the Bear of Meereen, Iain Glenn

The Dreadfort is abandoned.

The episode is in eight parts. The first part runs fourteen minutes and is in three sections. The first sections is four minutes long; the opening image is identical to the closing image of the previous episode. The second section is two minutes long. The transition is by implication, from one of Joffrey’s murderers to the other. The third section is six minutes  long. The transition is by dialogue, from Olenna talking about Joffrey to his corpse.

The second part runs six minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Jaime raping Cersei to some hills.

The third runs three minutes and is set at the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya to the yard at Castle Black.

The fourth runs four minutes and is set on Dragonstone. The transition is by hard cut, from Sam to the table in Dragonstone.

The fifth runs two and is set in Molestown, just south of the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Princess Shireen writing to Sam and Gilly riding through a street.

The sixth runs eleven minutes and is in two sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is six minutes long; the transition is by image, from one brothel to another. The second section is five minutes long; the transition is by family, from Tywin to Tyrion Lannister, and by dialogue, with Tywin and Oberyn talking about Tyrion’s trial.

The seventh part runs five minutes and is set at and around the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Podrick departing to an babbling river.

The last runs eight minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen. The final image is of a slave landing on a ladder as he looks at a broken collar.

Analysis

For the most part, “Breaker of Chains” is a standard-issue bit of transitional play, primarily concerned with placing the season on its forward course following the ridiculous fireworks of “The Lion and the Rose.” And yet look at that State of Play: eight parts. That’s insane. The only Season Three episode to have that few parts was “Valar Dohaeris.” All told, the only other episodes in the first three seasons to come in under ten are “Winter is Coming,” “The Wolf and the Lion,” and “Blackwater.”…

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No One

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Hm. I freely admit, this is a slightly tough and weird one for me to review. Not for anything having to do with the episode – just that I watched it twenty-four hours after moving house and socially instead of my previously standard Game of Thrones ritual of pizza and relative solitude. So I don’t know if my sense that it was an oddly disjointed and directionless thing was simply because I was disjointed, or because this was actually an odd and slightly off-kilter thing for an eighth episode. I suspect at least partially the latter – the odd structure of a Lannister-focused episode with a pair of Hound/Arya scenes bolted onto each end (via hard cut in each direction) harkens back to some of the weird and half-baked approaches of Season Three. And there’s a relative absence of driving and climactic momentum that jars for an eighth episode.

The most obvious thing to point to in that regard – and it’s a genuinely peculiar move – is that Jon and Sansa aren’t in it. The preview makes it pretty clear that we’re doing a single location battle episode for our penultimate one, which is good and exciting, but it’s positively bizarre not to include a scene along those lines that might gesture towards the sense of impending climax. Instead the plot leaves that out, which gives the episode an oddly hollow feel, especially since its only vague contribution to that plot is the thoroughly anticlimactic killing of the Blackfish, a move that both departs somewhat abruptly from the books and that raises the question of why the hell we set out on this particular plot line in the first place. He just turns a corner after a dumb line about how Brienne will serve Sansa better than him (as though it’s an either-or choice), and that’s apparently that for a character we went to great length to bring back after three years.

It’s not a total loss – the Jaime and Brienne scene is delightful, and the Jaime/Edmure scene is quite good as well (especially the use of the “things we do for love” line) – but the Riverrun material this week is at once lengthy and mostly tedious. Even Bronn and Podrick don’t really work. And yet a huge chunk of the episode is spent there. Not only that, a huge chunk of work across the season has been spent making it so that we actually remember who the hell Edmure and Brynden Tully are. And yet it seems for the most part to amount to nothing. It’s possible that the tenth episode will manage to find something to do with this plot that redeems it, but right now it seems utterly pointless.

And this isn’t the only moment that plays out weirdly. Daenerys’s return to Meereen is inexplicably limp, coming as it does after a two minute “and now the Masters welch on the deal from four episodes ago” siege that, while a fair amount of money was spent making it look nice, still feels ridiculously perfunctory.…

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How Many Times Can I Use the Word “Eviscerating?”

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Those of you who aren’t already listening to Oi! Spaceman, despite Jack’s constant prodding, may not know that while we started out as a weekly Doctor Who podcast, we’ve recently gone dynamic, with various threads representing different podcasts pitched at different audiences. Did I just outright steal the idea from Pex Lives? Maybe….

Anyway, Phil has asked me to take the Saturday spot and promote the stuff we’ve produced in a given week. These will vary a bit as we’re not on a specific schedule, but we produce at least two podcasts of roughly ninety minutes each week, and often more than that, so you should have plenty of time-wasting audio in your life going forward. 

Over on Oi! Spaceman proper, or The Mothership as I sometimes think of it from the old Law & Order Usenet groups I frequented in years past, Shana and I discussed Horror of Fang Rock with recent Pex Lives guest Kit Gonzo, and as you can tell from the podcast title, things got pretty violent pretty fast. The prospect of Richard Dawkins being brutally murdered by Leela and the connection between Skinsale and Bill O’Reilly are discussed. Also lots of conversation about Leela’s racial encoding, and hints of what I’d end up writing about in my recent post about Four/Leela D/s. 

Shana and I also ended up doing a bonus episode looking at Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, which ended up spending less time looking at the film itself than pop culture icons, subverting narratives, and the ugly legacy of slavery in America. This episode will no-doubt be controversial, as it’s fairly aggressive in terms of language and depressing content than even our fans (few as they may be) might expect. 

Another member of the Oi! Spaceman family is They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, a weekly movie podcast I do with my buddy Lee that often ends up being half drunken-hangout and half in-depth film discussion. Jack showed up a couple of months ago to help chat about Blood Simple and Blue Velvet, and much amusement was had by all. Also a vigorous rant from yours truly about the use of BDSM in Lynch’s film, with specific examination of Rossellini’s performance. 

This week on TMBDOS, Lee and I looked at James Gunn’s 2006 film Slither, in particular its use of horror/comedy tropes and compared it with the works of Kevin Anderson from the late nineties. We also discussed a long piece of internet analysis about 2001, which we covered recently. 

All in all, a very bloody week for the Oi! Spaceman family. I hope we continue to live up to the high expectations the Eruditorum Press audience will undoubtedly bring. By which I mean, we’ll keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing until Phil decides he doesn’t want us around anymore. 

Next week we’re planning to do a Season Five Troughton story (whose identity I will leave for everyone to guess), and hopefully pick back up on the Red Dwarf thread with Waiting for God.…

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Shabcast 21, Part 2 – The Stern Section

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Join me and Josh once again for the back half of our huge natterfest. 

Find out why the Titanic sank! 

Find out what Josh and I think of The Dark Knight movies, and Jared Diamond, and narratives of the end of the world, and the sociology of disaster, and the relationship between the rise of agriculture and the rise of hierarchy/patriarchy!  (Form an orderly queue, kids!)

Hear Josh’s thoughts on the fall of the sacred feminine, and the Aesir/Vanir war, and dazzle ship-camouflage, and Mad Max Fury Road (here‘s my stuff about it… and more here) and loads of other nice things!

Here‘s a link to the article Josh mentions about resilience vs. collapse and paleolithic mysticism.

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And once again, some pertinent links about the Olympic liners:

Here‘s the website for the Titanic – Honor & Glory game project, complete with a chilling computer animated video of the ship sinking in real time.  And here‘s their Facebook page.  And here‘s their Tumblr.  And here‘s some info about the Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship, as a war ship.  And here are some more photos of Olympic.  (Thanks for Josh for sourcing all these links.)

And here is the website for Ken Marschall, an artist whose visions of the Titanic have inspired Josh and many others.

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Astonishingly, I haven’t intruded into anyone else’s podcast lately… so that’s yer lot.

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Comics Reviews (June 8th, 2016)

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From worst to best of what I bought. At the end is a list of my planned purchases for next week. Anything you’re gutted to see absent from that list, take it up in comments.

Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1

A hot mess, but potentially a forgiveable one – certainly I’ll continue with the first issue or two of the actual Rucka run, as I have historically liked his Wonder Woman. But this barely deserves to be called a comic – the overwhelming majority of it is simply an internal monologue on Wonder Woman’s part. And not an internal monologue with tension and drive, nor, for that matter, with much artistry. It’s mostly just a restatement of the fact that Wonder Woman’s origin story is thoroughly and completely fucked. Then Wonder Woman punches a mirror and goes to Olympus for answers, only it’s apparently not really Olympus and there aren’t any answers given. Or, actually, questions asked. Seriously, I don’t think Marvel and DC have managed a feat of synchronized suckage as bad as Rebirth and Civil War II since Zero Hour and the Clone Saga were bowing at the same time twenty-two years ago.

New Avengers #12

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this issue, but there’s not much that’s massively compelling about it either. The character bits are fun – Ewing does some excellent Squirrel Girl bits, a great Hawkeye beat, and some nice setup (it’s good to see the Maker back, for instance). But on the whole, it’s kind of dismaying for this to already be caught up in another crossover I’m disinclined to read, and I suspect this’ll be my last issue barring reader intervention.

Darth Vader #21

Solid rising action, with the requisite things you expect from Darth Vader. Vader intimidates and kills people, Aphra and Triple-Zero are funny, everything moves inexorably towards a conclusion. but Gillen’s Darth Vader arcs have all been end-loaded, and his last one looks like no exception. 

The Wicked + The Divine #20

Hm. I can’t say I’m overly thrilled with this issue, mostly because it handles the “how Laura survived” issue in a way I generally dislike, which is to reveal that what we saw was presented in an actively misleading manner. It’s not a bad issue – the entire “Nergal” section is absolutely hilarious, Cassandra is consistently delightful, and Matthew Wilson is doing some really cool, weird stuff with the colors. But as big reveals go, this one is at the moment leaving me a bit cold. Although I’ve high hopes that it’ll work out, because it’s Gillen and WicDiv.

Injection #10

The second arc ends with lots of chilling, meaty stuff, beginning with Ellis doing the classic detective “bring everyone together to explain the plot” resolution, and ending with a nice, disturbing sequence of strange horrors inflicted upon the world by the Injection. In the middle is some fun discussion of money, magic, and religion, and also discussion of sex with ghosts. I hope the break before this comes back isn’t too brutally long, as it’s an utter delight.…

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Ship’s Log, Supplemental: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine

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Here’s where I must make my “Fake Geek Girl” confession to all of you, dear readers. Though let’s be honest, it’s not like I ever pretended I was a real one.

All throughout, my coverage of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has rested on the unspoken assumption that I was a fan of said TV series, or at least a casual viewer, at the time of its airing. I was not. I hint at it a couple of times during the preceding chapters, but the more accurate truth of the matter is that I was actually a fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine and the tie-in comic book series from Malibu. I did not watch the television show called Star Trek: Deep Space Nine during its original run (at least not regularly), although to be fair to me I *couldn’t*: Due to the way syndicated television worked in the late 80s and early 90s, local affiliates of large national networks could buy programming packages to show whenever they had empty space in their broadcast schedules when they weren’t airing network TV or local news. So this meant that a show made for syndication, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, had no fixed airdate or station and could come on literally whenever and wherever. This was fine when there was only one show, but as soon as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came along things got dicey, and in some regional areas (like, say mine), rival networks would actually air the two shows in competition with each other during the same time slot. No matter what the new Star Trek series looked like, it was always going to be a hard sell to ask me to give up my weekly time with a cast of characters who had become like another family to me.

That’s not to say I wasn’t interested in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, of course. I would have loved to watch it more often than I did, I just didn’t want to give up Star Trek: The Next Generation for it. So for the first season, I was limited to tantalizingly brief out-of-context snippets of random episodes, the odd trailer and assorted PR Stills in magazines. Even that was still enough to fire my imagination, however, and I pined for the day I’d finally get the chance to give the new show my undivided attention. By the second season, things had changed a bit: I still wasn’t able to watch the show regularly, but what I did have access to this season that I didn’t in the first was the Starlog-published Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine. Granted it launched in 1993 alongside “Emissary”, but, as with most things like this, you have to remember I live in the back and beyond of everything: Pop culture stuff takes a while to trickle down to me. I only started reading with the second season issues and, even then, like all the things I was interested in, my corner market only got the magazine in sporadically at the very best.…

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Pex Lives 33: Ghost LIght

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Kevin and James are joined by “their friend Thomas,” according to the episode description, which doesn’t sound suspicious and like it’s just going to be James putting on a funny voice at all. In any case, they talk about more classic westerns (Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) before moving on to evolutionary horror with a discussion of one of the flat-out greatest Doctor Who serials of all time, Ghost Light.

You can listen to that right here.…

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Lost Exegesis (Confidence Man)

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Sometimes everything you need to know about an episode of LOST comes from the title.  That’s surely the case here.  Confidence Man is an episode about the art of the con, and the different confidence men (and women) who practice it.  And it’s certainly the case that the episode title is a clue to character connections, or at the very least represents the prevailing sort of relationship at this juncture in the Losties’ adventure on the Island.  In fact, I think we can safely say at this point that everyone featured in this episode is either a con artist of one kind or another, and many of them are simultaneously marks as well.

Obviously, of course, we have Sawyer, both on the Island and in the Flashbacks.  We’ll get back to him in due course, for this is what we’d expect given the episode title.  Instead, let’s begin with some of the less obvious con artists running about.  Because, I mean, it’s not exactly apparent that everyone is a  con artist, or who their marks are.  Some, of course, are obvious simply from what we’ve seen prior to Confidence Man.  Kate, for example.  She lied to the farmer, Ray Mullen, about her identity back in Tabula Rasa, when she was a fugitive on the lam hiking across Australia.  When hiking up the mountain with Sawyer, Sayid, Shannon, Boone, and Charlie, after Sawyer shot the polar bear, she feigned ignorance regarding how to use and dissemble a handgun.  And yet, in this episode, she doesn’t seem to be conning anyone: she’s the subject of Sawyer’s con to get a kiss. 

But upon closer examination, doesn’t she kind of go out of her way to figure out Sawyer himself and his story?  She doesn’t have to get so deeply enmeshed in the episode’s drama, but she dives right in anyways.  The seminal moment, I think, is when they kiss.  Because up to that point, she’s expressed a tremendous amount of disgust towards Sawyer, but that kiss betrays a passion that’s the antithesis of disgust.  She’s played the part of “the good girl” with him, with a certain amount of righteousness, but this is just cover for her true feelings.   Kate, as it turns out, is really good at the art of con.

Charlie is, too.  He wants Claire to move to the Caves with him, but she’s all, like, preferring to stay on the beach and shit. However, there’s something she really wants – peanut butter.  So she manipulates Charlie into finding peanut butter on the Island.  Of course, Charlie can’t find any peanut butter.  There isn’t any to be found, much to his consternation.  So Charlie does his best to con Claire by pretending that he has, in fact, found peanut butter.  But all he can actually offer is an empty jar.  Only through the power of his imagination can he convince her to enjoy the creaminess of emptiness.  And he succeeds.  She agrees to move to the Caves. 

Another con artist actively plying the trade is Sun. …

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