Listen to the Rain

From Twitter:

【今日は何の日？】本日2月1日に「笑い男事件」発生

『攻殻機動隊 STAND ALONE COMPLEX』における出来事。2024年2月1日、何者かがアーネスト・瀬良野社長の電脳をハックし誘拐。莫大な身代金を要求した後、連絡を絶つ。警察が何の手がかりも掴めない中、2日後の2月3日に事件は大きく動き出す。 pic.twitter.com/YIoQUcDfbQ

— ライブドアニュース (@livedoornews) January 31, 2024

Which reads:

What is today? The "Laughing Man Incident" occurred on February 1, 2024. An event in kōkaku kidōtai ("Mobile Armored Riot Police") STAND ALONE COMPLEX. On 2024/2/1, someone hacked the cyberbrain of and then kidnapped Earnest Serano, head of Serano Corporation. After demanding an enormous ransom, they would vanish. While the police had no leads, two days later on February 3rd, the incident really changed gears.

One of the best anime ever made.

Watch on YouTube

You still sometimes hear fans use the phrase "Stand Alone Complex" to refer to a real thing--copycat incidents based on internet rumors of things that never actually happened. Essentially, a mass movement with no actual inciting incident, just that belief that there had been one.

Maybe I should show this to sashagee.

I would definitely attend High Holidays services at one of these. pic.twitter.com/ceeuNEXmZ7

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 1, 2022

:



Though Slarnos pointed out that the lower-right photo especially has some similarities to the opening cinematic of Deus Ex, which fits pretty uneasily with the game's focus on conspiracies

Lower-left looks like a repurposed warehouse. Upper right looks like those purple panels should endless scroll whatever the weekly parasha is. Upper left is...I guess everyone sits around on the floor while a hologram of the chazzan sings on that disc?

All of these are better than the one on the left in this tweet though.

I've been going to bed late and getting up early, so I'm extremely tired. But time keeps moving forward.

This morning I successfully set the כונה kavanah ("intention") for a prayer as part of Mishkan's morning minyan, and I picked הריני מקבל על Hareini Mekabel Alai, the prayer for "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." I talked about how that's such a simple statement but people keep trying to find a way around it or some way to get out of it, much like with "Black Lives Matter" or with another similar statement I've seen elsewhere, "Women are human." You should love your neighbor as yourself, even if they mow the lawn at 6:30 a.m. on Shabbat, or glare at you when you go out to get the mail, or are Christian or Muslim, or are black. The statement is clear. Then I led the singing, and now Mishkan knows that I can sing, and that might be trouble in the future. I suspect this won't be the last prayer I lead.

I saw an amazing quote on Facebook someone shared from tyree.kimber that ran:

ME, A CYBERPUNK FAN IN THE 90S: Why do they think we'll only talk in weird slang in the future?
ME NOW: Bae, spill the tea on these K-pop stans. When Tik-Tok zoomers yeet the alt-Right it's heart reaccs only.

...and I immediately burst into laughter because I understood every part of that second quote. I shared it and then several people were like "wtf are they saying" which just made me laugh harder. As uriany said, "Null sweat, chummer."

( Farmer's Market Dinner )

I'm seeing sashagee tonight! And other than that, my upcoming plans are fluid. Yesterday lisekatevans and I went on a walk along the Lakefront when it was technically closed, but just like all the other times it's been closed no one cared, not even the group of bike cops we saw go by. We sat on the path, watched the swollen lake lap over the lowest tier and walked on the nearly-swamped pier, and chatted for an hour. Other than the asshole screaming obscenities at several passersby for daring to come close to him during the Plague Year (outdoors, in the lake breeze, when we know that shouting is far more likely to spread respiratory illnesses ), it was incredibly peaceful. Since being outdoors is pretty safe, I feel like I'll be spending more time at the lake this year than I ever have in the past.

I didn't get to go to Mishkan's meditation, but that walk was healing too.

So after a whole weekend of partying and staying up late, I came back to Chicago and...immediately decided to to go to a late-night showing of Blade Runner. I mean, now it's an alternate history movie (as of just under a week ago)! I had to see it while it was still on the bleeding edge of the future.

Also, the whole audience laughed when this came on the screen:


This showing was the Final Cut, which I've never seen before. The last time I saw Blade Runner was as a university student, when jdcohen and jmenda were astonished that I'd never seen it, so we piled into a disused conference room in Stouffer House along with t3chnomag3, meistert, and some other people I've fallen out of contact with and watched the theatrical release on a projector. As soon as the voice over started, jmenda audibly groaned. I didn't know what I was missing, but I thought it was pretty good.

This was all before I started describing my aesthetic as "cyberpunk elf" or "an extra from Blade Runner."

So that was my half-remembered experience when I went into Blade Runner this time, and I was surprised how much was the same and how much was different. For one, it's not all just Japanese in the background! There's a lot of Chinese too, and occasionally Russian and Spanish. Los Angeles of 2019 is more diverse than the derivative material gives it credit for. This time I did understand the brief bit of Japanese, when the noodle vendor welcomes Deckard and then tells him that two is plenty (二つで充分ですよ！) when he tries to order four fish. There's a Japanese comic about it here that answers the question "What is Deckard ordering and why are they arguing about numbers?"

I forgot how weirdly disjointed the movie was. I can kind of see why the studio execs wanted to add a voice over, though the movie is clearly better without it. There's a lot of confusing shots of rain-slick streets, empty buildings, crowds who almost completely ignore everything going on around them, and scenes with no dialogue and barely any action. It does a lot to immerse you in a world of future shock, where everything is weird and strange and what does it mean to be human--or as my brain insists on search-replacing that with, "What is a man?"--but I was sometimes relying on my memory of what the movie was about rather than what was actually happening on the screen.

I also love all the design aesthetics. The use of chiaroscuro, with the darkness everywhere occasionally lit by flashes of bright light, and the way there are a lot of "unnecessary" details on everything. Deckard's dingy apartment has a bunch of large blocks set together like bricks and almost bas-relief-like murals all throughout. And all the asymmetricality! The apartment is laid out strangely, the clothes have extra curlicues on them, and even the whiskey glasses Deckard drinks out of are strangely designed, as is the bottle of whiskey. A bunch of my clothes are asymmetrical like that now, because apparently that's the cyberpunk aesthetic, I assume entirely due to this movie.

I also completely forgot the middle section, much like when I reread Neuromancer a couple years ago, but I'm not sure if there were any scenes added to it for the Final Cut. And I appreciate how the Final Cut also hints slightly more strongly that Deckard is a replicant, but still leaves everything up in the air.

(I know about Blade Runner 2049, but I haven't seen it)

I'm really glad I went to see it again, since it had been so long and now I'm in a much better mindset to appreciate it, and at the perfect time to do so, too! Now I just need to wait thirty years and then go see Blade Runner 2049 before I die in the Water Wars.

Certainly took me a long time to get to this one.

Back when the original Shadowrun Returns kickstarter came out, one of the questions they asked of fans was where the additional campaign should be set. Berlin was the winner and so they made Dragonfall, but I voted for Hong Kong and I was really disappointed when it didn't win. One of the problems with Shadowrun's development as tabletop game is that the evolving metaplot required new supplements and editions to focus on changes to existing areas and only occasionally cover new places. We know more about Sixth World Seattle than anywhere else on the planet, for example, but most other places aren't nearly so well-described. I don't think there's ever been much published about the Confederated American States, for example, much less southern Europe, southeast or south Asia, anywhere in Africa or the Middle East, and so on. Just bits here and there scattered through the books, so a whole game set elsewhere with a companion sourcebook released with it was amazing.

The game's not as good as Dragonfall, but it comes pretty close.


( Read more... )

​Before I begin, I have a disclaimer: theome bought this game for me for the purposes of he thought I would like it. And so it is with a heavy heart that I say that I...don't.

I had such high hopes! I put Read Only Memories on my Steam wishlist basically as soon as I heard about it. A new adventure game, with pixel art, in a cyberpunk setting with a robot as one of the major characters and made by the people behind GaymerX? That sounds amazing! And when I started it I was having a lot of fun, but as I played the annoyances started to pile up until an event near the end of the game that completely cut me off from caring about the story. Then it was just clicking through a lot of text boxes until the end so I could finish.


Symbolism.
( Read more... )

Return of the colons.

I had heard that "Dragonfall" was much better the original campaign (my thoughts about which you can read here), and they weren't really understating it. "Dead Man's Switch" suffered from too much thematic change, going from a local story about a friend who wants you to avenge his death to having to uncover a world-changing conspiracy to helping stop one of the greatest threats to the world. It's a bit like some of the Final Fantasy games with the constant escalation, and the problem with constant escalation is that everything later overshadows and devalues the human elements that are initially put in the forefront. When I'm fighting off ancient spirits who seek to corrupt and destroy all that is good, does one serial killer matter?

Also, the whole thing was a giant railroad.

That's not a problem in "Dragonfall." Sure, there's dragons, as you could probably tell from the name. But once the opening run goes down and the stage is set, the world opens up and you have a long-term goal and can choose your own ways to fulfill it. It's not entirely open world, because sometimes one mission has to be done before another mission can open up, but it's not a chain of missions that lead one into the other with no way to step off the trail and make your own choices.

The other great plot element is having a constant team. Monika, Dietrich, Blitz, Eiger, and Glory being persistent characters (within the limits of the engine, anyway, about which more in a bit) that you can interact with between missions makes you care about them a lot more than any of the disposable shadowrunner companions in "Dead Man's Switch." Sure, I always hired the drone rigger just because I liked having the extra target to soak up enemies' bullets, but I don't remember their name and the game didn't let me say anything to them at all. It's not like the struggle to earn the team's trust in "Dragonfall." Hell, Dietrich even grilled me on my character's backstory at one point, which had no mechanical effect but really made me feel like I was the new runner that the other team members were trying to fit into the existing social structure.

Also, much to my surprise and delight, choosing all the sycophantic nice guy dialogue choices often has other people assume you're putting up a front to ingratiate yourself with them, which admittedly is probably true from both an in-character and metagame perspective. Nice, puppy-petting philanthropists don't usually go into careers shooting other people in the face for money, after all.

The mechanical aspects were mostly the same. There hasn't been any upgrades to the way combat flows, though I personally discovered Overwatch about 75% of the way through the game and got really annoyed at myself for failing to notice it earlier (and if you missed it, it's the grey button on the right side of the weapons display). The campaign was built much better in terms of taking other people's skills into account, though. There were some times I was annoyed in "Dead Man's Switch" because my scrawny elf mage couldn't pass a strength check to pry something open even though I had a troll physical adept with me, or how I couldn't hack anything even if I brought a rigger. "Dragonfall" showed that this was just bad design, because there was a lot of "Decking 5: Hack door" / "Have your decker hack the door" dialogue choices that took into account that shadowrunners work in teams because they tend to be specialists and cover each other's weak points.

The equipment pacing wasn't that great, though. At least playing as a mage, I had just about everything I needed maybe 40% of the way through the game, and one of the major flaws that remains in the mechanical design that is every time you return to a previous area the game engine treats it as a new area that happens to look like the old one, and the same with the people. That means that it's impossible to persistantly upgrade your team members or even to give them more medkits or combat drugs, though maybe modders are working on that now. There's a way to carry dialogue choices and variables forward into new maps, so maybe character stats and inventory can be carried too? Having seen the breadth of mods out there, I wouldn't be surprised.

Also, you can save anywhere you want now. Even in the middle of a battle. So that's amazing.

It's still not as good an adaptation of Shadowrun tabletop as the Genesis game is, but that's an open-world RPG that came out in 1994 before anyone even knew what "open world" meant. Also, it has the best Shadowrun-style Matrix ever. But "Dragonfall" demonstrates that people willing to put in the time probably could make that style of campaign if they wanted to, and indeed they've been working on something similar for a while. If you haven't played Shadowrun: Returns, don't even bother with "Dead Man's Switch." Much like Neverwinter Nights' main campaign, it's more of just a tech demo for the game's capabilities. Play "Dragonfall" instead. You won't regret it.

So, last night I beat Shadowrun Returns...or at least, I beat "Dead Man's Switch," the official campaign that shipped with the game. I still have the Berlin expansion coming that I'll get for free for backing the Kickstarter and there are various fan modules people are working on that I could play, but I'm going to let the game rest for a bit before I try any of those. Like Skyrim and New Vegas, I want to give some time to the modding communities to mature before I really dive in. I mean, look at this. Once that's done...

Anyway, it's pretty much exactly what they promised. Turn-based, old-school tactical combat, conversation trees, isometric views, the whole nine yards. There are a few things that seem conspicuous in their absence, like a stealth skill or any way to avoid notice, or how all weapons have infinite generic ammo and spells don't cause drain, or the inability to use NPC skills outside of scripted sequences (so that, for example, NPC deckers can't help you make decking conversation checks), but overall there's way more done right than not. Skill lists, weapons like the Ares Predator, Rugar Super Warhawk, and FN HAR, deckers jacking in, elves with mohawks, hiding behind cover, shooting guards in the knees, the works. It's great.

The visual design is good too, though I can't be sure how much of the classic cyberpunk aestheric is due to Shadowrun and how much is due to being set in Seattle where it rains all the time. :p There are neon signs, some in Japanese (because this is cyberpunk, so of course Japan is taking over the world), bits of trash, people standing around burning barrels, "Lone Star: We're Always Watching" advertisements, and the random tree with the Chinese lanterns on it and the glowing 夢 ("dreams") for the bit of beauty in the sprawl. The one thing I thought was odd was the character portraits. Orks and trolls were much less...well, orky and trolly as compared to the art in the tabletop game, and the elves had almost World of Warcraft-sized ears. Some of this is just the exaggeration necessary to make 3 cm-tall on-screen models visually distinct and the carry-over into the conversation portraits, true, but the orkiness isn't, and I missed it.

On the plot: Simply put, it's a love letter to fans of the tabletop game. It's set in 2054, so back during the chrome and pink mohawk era of Shadowrun design, and the main story starts out as an investigation into a dead friend's mysterious death and then spirals out to encompass a lot of the backstory. Spoilers within: ( Slot this, chummer )
It was like catnip injected direction into the nerd nostalgia centers of my brain.

The major problem I had with the campaign was with how linear it was. I was hoping that it would be closer to the Sega Shadowrun game, where you could beat it in an hour or so if you had infinite money, but you had to go on random runs to get the cash and build your rep and contacts. Instead, it was more like the SNES Shadowrun game, with a full plot and no real deviation from it. I've heard a rumor that the Berlin campaign might be more like the Sega version, though, which would be fantastic. The conversations all seemed like they were just funneling me in one direction, with my responses serving no purpose other than to provide some characterization to how my character talked (though I only played once, so I don't know if that's the case). And that's what conversations there were--most NPCs couldn't be talked to, and most areas had only a couple non-plot-critical items that could be interacted with.

A lot of this is pretty conditional, because I don't know if the linearity and lack of reactivity is an innate property of the game engine or if it's just what was in the campaign that shipped with it. Maybe someone will come out with a great mod that lets you make an entire team, run random missions, and run around an open world and talk to civilians and have them react to your missions. Based on the kinds of things I've seen in other games with mod tools, like my own Morrowind and Oblivion installs, I expect it'll only be a matter of time.

There is one thing that's hard-coded into the engine that might be a deal-breaker for people, though--there's no hard save system. There's a checkpoint system, and there's a way to roll back to previous checkpoints so you don't end up totally screwed because you misclicked once or took the wrong loadout to a mission, but if you get interrupted halfway between checkpoints and have to quit, you're out all your progress. Checkpoints seem to be spaced in between maps, but I don't know if that's a hardcoded limitation or if it's possible to add them after plot-critical moments even if the map stays the same.

As shipped, I'd give it ★★★★☆, but I highly suspect it'll get five stars in a few months once more content starts to come out for it. I spent a ton of money on it, and I don't regret it at all. Highly recommended, even if you're not a Shadowrun fan, and if you are, why aren't you playing this already?