Battle Royale: The Last Generation Of An SNES-CD Saga
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Fall 2013 (Part 3) - Joanna Dark
Joanna Dark
Joanna Dark is the fifth game in the acclaimed Velvet Dark series, developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. It's a sci-fi FPS starring secret agent Joanna Dark, who must hunt down and kill a sociopathic assassin at the behest of the United States government. The game has a much sharper focus than its predecessors, with most of the RPG and puzzle elements that characterized Dark Humanity removed in favor of more straight-up FPS gameplay, with a decent amount of hacking thrown in. The convoluted, overarching plot arc that characterized the last four games in the series has also been narrowed down (though all four previous games are completely canon to this one, and Joanna does occasionally refer to the events of those games, especially in the second half of this one). For the most part, you'll be deployed on missions, sent to explore various levels and complete objectives, shooting enemies and sneaking around to retrieve items or sabotage the bad guys. The gameplay heavily resembles that of Cyberwar 4, though it replaces the indirect exploration and hacking of that game with more direct shooting and sneaking. The controls are some of the most advanced to date for an FPS title, with aiming and movement simplified to some extent to allow the player an unprecedented amount of control. Weapons and gadgets can easily be switched out in the heat of battle with the use of programmable button commands or a fairly simple control scheme, and the player also has a good degree of physical control over Joanna as well. Joanna can run, climb, roll into cover, and perform numerous other actions to create one of the most intuitive and realistic FPS control schemes yet. Everything in the game has been streamlined and polished to perfection, with the goal of creating an FPS that's easy to pick up and play, and a game that can get new players into the series 13 years after the original game, without needing to know all of the plot points established in previous titles (which hurt Dark Humanity from a sales perspective despite extremely good reviews). Joanna Dark's development team consists of many new people, with many of the people who worked on the previous four games now working on other series or even for other companies. Despite this, the game is able to achieve a continuity of appearance and gameplay with its predecessors, while also establishing a brand new tone. Joanna is no longer brooding like she was in previous games, but somewhat more lighthearted, with a better sense of humor. Some of this comes from the game's overall lighter tone (despite being pitted against a sociopathic assassin, Joanna can at least take comfort in the fact that she's no longer trying to protect her sister or prevent humanity's destruction), while some of it comes from Joanna's own growth as a character. The game also doesn't deal with the issue of AI ethics anymore, as all of the AIs that remain are now in hiding, shepherded by Joanna's AI sister Velvet, who lives in Joanna's home as part of a system of "smart" electronics. Instead, the game focuses on humanity's new goals after its brush with destruction, namely returning to many age-old political conflicts and disputes, while the world's technology has regressed a bit since the end of the AI revolution and now focuses on waging war. Joanna notes the increasing military-industrial focus with worry, and muses on the topic from time to time with her sister Velvet, who she returns to talk to between many of her missions. Joanna (still voiced by Rebecca Mader, along with her sister Velvet) has a new commanding officer in this game, a stern but motherly figure named Eleanor West (voiced by Wendie Malick) who serves as the head of the CIA's successor organization. Joanna also has a love interest in the game, a former agent crippled by one of the assassin's attacks who now serves as an intelligence liaison. His name is Robert Zendine, and he's voiced by Seth MacFarlane (his first purely dramatic role, though he does have some mildly comic relief scenes at certain points in the game). Joanna's old hacker friend Scam returns, though only briefly, and voiced by Adam McArthur, who replaces the previous actor. Finally, the assassin who drives the events of the game and who serves as one of the primary antagonists, who goes by the name of Cloak, is voiced by Steve Blum. Joanna Dark, like previous games in the series, features a local/online multiplayer mode with a huge variety of different game styles, and which forms one of the major focal points of the game's development, acclaimed as one of the best multiplayer modes featured in an FPS in 2013. Despite the game's FPS style being a perfect fit for the Reality's VR capabilities, the VR isn't ready at launch, with Rare instead focusing on making the game as good as it can possibly be. The company continues work on the game, hoping to add VR capabilities in a future update, though it's not high on their list of priorities.
The game quickly establishes Joanna's new role as an agent in the employ of the government. It's been two years since a rogue AI has been sighted, and while the government seems to know that some AIs are still floating out there, new technological protocols prevent them from surfacing without being destroyed. Amidst this backdrop, humanity has progressed with new technologies, most of them driving instruments of war. An assassin named Cloak has become infamous throughout the world for assassinating both world leaders and the agents sent to stop him, and his methods of killing range from dramatic sniper shots caught on camera and broadcast worldwide to brutal executions published on the internet. Joanna has been sent to stop him, knowing full well what Cloak is capable of. However, in order to hunt Cloak down, she must gather information from a variety of sources, ranging from private corporations to hostile government entities, and some of these people don't want their information taken so easily, requiring Joanna to "liberate" it. Using sources both official and clandestine, Joanna learns more and more about Cloak's activities, and that he has a funder: an extra-governmental organization formed out of the shattered government of a once-powerful Asian nation and a corporation that once specialized in AI who seeks to legalize the technology again and to gain a monopoly in its use. Joanna infiltrates the headquarters of this organization and prepares to confront its CEO, only to find him murdered by Cloak, who wounds Joanna as well before escaping. As Joanna recovers, convalescing with both Robert and Velvet, she gathers information pointing to Cloak being an AI himself, and that he murdered the CEO in order to prevent the world from finding out about him. However, Velvet doesn't believe that Cloak is an AI, as his attack patterns don't match up to any other AI on record. With Scam's help, Joanna is able to hack into the system of the former AI company whose creations most match Cloak's patterns, and learns that Cloak isn't an AI, but is in fact a human that believes himself to be one. Joanna, who herself was once deceived into thinking she was an artificial creation, decides to use this pattern of thinking to track Cloak down again and get the jump on him. However, her mission is interrupted by a team of government agents who believe Cloak truly is an AI and who seek to destroy him. Joanna manages to get Cloak alone and tells him the truth, and Cloak goes berserk, nearly killing Joanna, who manages to wound him, but not before he takes out the entire team sent to kill him. Joanna is brought before Eleanor, who says that she knows about Velvet and that Joanna needs to bring her in so that she can be made safe. Joanna refuses to do so and becomes a fugitive, eventually taking Robert with her. Meanwhile, Cloak plans his highest profile assassination yet, but Joanna and Robert work together to stop him. Cloak, however, reveals that it was just a distraction, and he's used the distraction to steal Velvet from Joanna's home, uploading Velvet into his own body to "uplift" himself into an AI construct. Velvet tries to overwhelm Cloak's mind, and refuses to help him, but Cloak uploads a protocol program into himself that rearranges Velvet's programming to his will, forcing her capabilities to augment his. At the same time, Eleanor confronts Joanna again, but this time, agrees to help her retrieve Velvet, leading to the game's final series of missions in which Cloak plans to carry out a series of assassinations that will shake the world to its core (and uses Velvet to help him recruit a private army), but Joanna, Robert, and Eleanor work together to stop him. In the game's second to last mission, Velvet is downloaded out of Cloak's mind and saved back onto her physical vessel, but Eleanor is wounded and Cloak manages to carry out part of his plan. The game's final mission sees Joanna pursue Cloak, taking out the last of his minions and finally cornering and defeating him. Eleanor makes a full recovery, and though Joanna doesn't entirely trust her, Velvet decides to allow herself to be studied by Eleanor's scientists, who then decide to release her back into Joanna's custody rather than destroying her. Eleanor concludes that Velvet is indeed a person and though she and Joanna have some differences, the two are both heroic and care deeply for all of humanity, and it gives her hope that perhaps someday, AI and humanity can work together once more. Velvet returns to her place in Joanna's home as a smart device hidden from the government's agents (but it's implied that Eleanor is launching a secret project to re-instate Velvet as an agent disguised as a human), while Robert and Joanna are implied to start some kind of a relationship (though they're not going steady just yet). The game ends with Joanna being called upon for another mission and her and Velvet saying goodbye to each other before she goes.
Joanna Dark receives very strong reviews from critics, who praise the game's excellent controls and pacing, and its more simplified plot, which touches on AI a bit but mostly focuses on the relationships humans have to one another. The game's production values are also praised, though strong production values are par for the course for Rare. Sales, while good, aren't quite the strong sales that the series used to achieve, though it does still end the year as one of the best selling games on the Reality. It's clear that the series isn't quite as strong amongst fans as it used to be, but it still makes a good amount of money for Rare, easily enough to justify the creation of a follow-up game with a target date of 2016 or 2017. Of course, Rare is busily working on other projects at the time, including their new Dreamers game, Killer Instinct 5, and Slaughtered Planet 2, while also working on at least one brand new series that they believe will push the capabilities of the Reality to their limits. That game won't be released, or even announced, for quite some time, but when it is, it looks to firmly establish a new generation of creativity at Rare, and perhaps supplant at least one of their long running franchises...
Joanna Dark is the fifth game in the acclaimed Velvet Dark series, developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. It's a sci-fi FPS starring secret agent Joanna Dark, who must hunt down and kill a sociopathic assassin at the behest of the United States government. The game has a much sharper focus than its predecessors, with most of the RPG and puzzle elements that characterized Dark Humanity removed in favor of more straight-up FPS gameplay, with a decent amount of hacking thrown in. The convoluted, overarching plot arc that characterized the last four games in the series has also been narrowed down (though all four previous games are completely canon to this one, and Joanna does occasionally refer to the events of those games, especially in the second half of this one). For the most part, you'll be deployed on missions, sent to explore various levels and complete objectives, shooting enemies and sneaking around to retrieve items or sabotage the bad guys. The gameplay heavily resembles that of Cyberwar 4, though it replaces the indirect exploration and hacking of that game with more direct shooting and sneaking. The controls are some of the most advanced to date for an FPS title, with aiming and movement simplified to some extent to allow the player an unprecedented amount of control. Weapons and gadgets can easily be switched out in the heat of battle with the use of programmable button commands or a fairly simple control scheme, and the player also has a good degree of physical control over Joanna as well. Joanna can run, climb, roll into cover, and perform numerous other actions to create one of the most intuitive and realistic FPS control schemes yet. Everything in the game has been streamlined and polished to perfection, with the goal of creating an FPS that's easy to pick up and play, and a game that can get new players into the series 13 years after the original game, without needing to know all of the plot points established in previous titles (which hurt Dark Humanity from a sales perspective despite extremely good reviews). Joanna Dark's development team consists of many new people, with many of the people who worked on the previous four games now working on other series or even for other companies. Despite this, the game is able to achieve a continuity of appearance and gameplay with its predecessors, while also establishing a brand new tone. Joanna is no longer brooding like she was in previous games, but somewhat more lighthearted, with a better sense of humor. Some of this comes from the game's overall lighter tone (despite being pitted against a sociopathic assassin, Joanna can at least take comfort in the fact that she's no longer trying to protect her sister or prevent humanity's destruction), while some of it comes from Joanna's own growth as a character. The game also doesn't deal with the issue of AI ethics anymore, as all of the AIs that remain are now in hiding, shepherded by Joanna's AI sister Velvet, who lives in Joanna's home as part of a system of "smart" electronics. Instead, the game focuses on humanity's new goals after its brush with destruction, namely returning to many age-old political conflicts and disputes, while the world's technology has regressed a bit since the end of the AI revolution and now focuses on waging war. Joanna notes the increasing military-industrial focus with worry, and muses on the topic from time to time with her sister Velvet, who she returns to talk to between many of her missions. Joanna (still voiced by Rebecca Mader, along with her sister Velvet) has a new commanding officer in this game, a stern but motherly figure named Eleanor West (voiced by Wendie Malick) who serves as the head of the CIA's successor organization. Joanna also has a love interest in the game, a former agent crippled by one of the assassin's attacks who now serves as an intelligence liaison. His name is Robert Zendine, and he's voiced by Seth MacFarlane (his first purely dramatic role, though he does have some mildly comic relief scenes at certain points in the game). Joanna's old hacker friend Scam returns, though only briefly, and voiced by Adam McArthur, who replaces the previous actor. Finally, the assassin who drives the events of the game and who serves as one of the primary antagonists, who goes by the name of Cloak, is voiced by Steve Blum. Joanna Dark, like previous games in the series, features a local/online multiplayer mode with a huge variety of different game styles, and which forms one of the major focal points of the game's development, acclaimed as one of the best multiplayer modes featured in an FPS in 2013. Despite the game's FPS style being a perfect fit for the Reality's VR capabilities, the VR isn't ready at launch, with Rare instead focusing on making the game as good as it can possibly be. The company continues work on the game, hoping to add VR capabilities in a future update, though it's not high on their list of priorities.
The game quickly establishes Joanna's new role as an agent in the employ of the government. It's been two years since a rogue AI has been sighted, and while the government seems to know that some AIs are still floating out there, new technological protocols prevent them from surfacing without being destroyed. Amidst this backdrop, humanity has progressed with new technologies, most of them driving instruments of war. An assassin named Cloak has become infamous throughout the world for assassinating both world leaders and the agents sent to stop him, and his methods of killing range from dramatic sniper shots caught on camera and broadcast worldwide to brutal executions published on the internet. Joanna has been sent to stop him, knowing full well what Cloak is capable of. However, in order to hunt Cloak down, she must gather information from a variety of sources, ranging from private corporations to hostile government entities, and some of these people don't want their information taken so easily, requiring Joanna to "liberate" it. Using sources both official and clandestine, Joanna learns more and more about Cloak's activities, and that he has a funder: an extra-governmental organization formed out of the shattered government of a once-powerful Asian nation and a corporation that once specialized in AI who seeks to legalize the technology again and to gain a monopoly in its use. Joanna infiltrates the headquarters of this organization and prepares to confront its CEO, only to find him murdered by Cloak, who wounds Joanna as well before escaping. As Joanna recovers, convalescing with both Robert and Velvet, she gathers information pointing to Cloak being an AI himself, and that he murdered the CEO in order to prevent the world from finding out about him. However, Velvet doesn't believe that Cloak is an AI, as his attack patterns don't match up to any other AI on record. With Scam's help, Joanna is able to hack into the system of the former AI company whose creations most match Cloak's patterns, and learns that Cloak isn't an AI, but is in fact a human that believes himself to be one. Joanna, who herself was once deceived into thinking she was an artificial creation, decides to use this pattern of thinking to track Cloak down again and get the jump on him. However, her mission is interrupted by a team of government agents who believe Cloak truly is an AI and who seek to destroy him. Joanna manages to get Cloak alone and tells him the truth, and Cloak goes berserk, nearly killing Joanna, who manages to wound him, but not before he takes out the entire team sent to kill him. Joanna is brought before Eleanor, who says that she knows about Velvet and that Joanna needs to bring her in so that she can be made safe. Joanna refuses to do so and becomes a fugitive, eventually taking Robert with her. Meanwhile, Cloak plans his highest profile assassination yet, but Joanna and Robert work together to stop him. Cloak, however, reveals that it was just a distraction, and he's used the distraction to steal Velvet from Joanna's home, uploading Velvet into his own body to "uplift" himself into an AI construct. Velvet tries to overwhelm Cloak's mind, and refuses to help him, but Cloak uploads a protocol program into himself that rearranges Velvet's programming to his will, forcing her capabilities to augment his. At the same time, Eleanor confronts Joanna again, but this time, agrees to help her retrieve Velvet, leading to the game's final series of missions in which Cloak plans to carry out a series of assassinations that will shake the world to its core (and uses Velvet to help him recruit a private army), but Joanna, Robert, and Eleanor work together to stop him. In the game's second to last mission, Velvet is downloaded out of Cloak's mind and saved back onto her physical vessel, but Eleanor is wounded and Cloak manages to carry out part of his plan. The game's final mission sees Joanna pursue Cloak, taking out the last of his minions and finally cornering and defeating him. Eleanor makes a full recovery, and though Joanna doesn't entirely trust her, Velvet decides to allow herself to be studied by Eleanor's scientists, who then decide to release her back into Joanna's custody rather than destroying her. Eleanor concludes that Velvet is indeed a person and though she and Joanna have some differences, the two are both heroic and care deeply for all of humanity, and it gives her hope that perhaps someday, AI and humanity can work together once more. Velvet returns to her place in Joanna's home as a smart device hidden from the government's agents (but it's implied that Eleanor is launching a secret project to re-instate Velvet as an agent disguised as a human), while Robert and Joanna are implied to start some kind of a relationship (though they're not going steady just yet). The game ends with Joanna being called upon for another mission and her and Velvet saying goodbye to each other before she goes.
Joanna Dark receives very strong reviews from critics, who praise the game's excellent controls and pacing, and its more simplified plot, which touches on AI a bit but mostly focuses on the relationships humans have to one another. The game's production values are also praised, though strong production values are par for the course for Rare. Sales, while good, aren't quite the strong sales that the series used to achieve, though it does still end the year as one of the best selling games on the Reality. It's clear that the series isn't quite as strong amongst fans as it used to be, but it still makes a good amount of money for Rare, easily enough to justify the creation of a follow-up game with a target date of 2016 or 2017. Of course, Rare is busily working on other projects at the time, including their new Dreamers game, Killer Instinct 5, and Slaughtered Planet 2, while also working on at least one brand new series that they believe will push the capabilities of the Reality to their limits. That game won't be released, or even announced, for quite some time, but when it is, it looks to firmly establish a new generation of creativity at Rare, and perhaps supplant at least one of their long running franchises...
Maybe Nauts? Keeping in the space theme for the Supernova. Or since it was a Gameboy thing, maybe call them Pockets?
Also in regards to this update, interesting as how few Reality games are made with VR in mind. I'm betting these were originally made before the VR was a factor to keep in mind, but wondering how it will the console's reputation.
Nintendo is doing a bit better in Poland, it's certainly not obscure there ITTL. However, it's Apple that's doing the best there, and the Google Nexus has been able to make some big inroads there as well.
It was, actually! The series of driving/crime games that go by The (X) Job (that are still being released, but aren't significant enough to mention anymore) are unrelated, BTW.
Nintendo's not actually trying to push VR heavily on their second/third parties, at least initially. It was a bit late in the console's development cycle that Yokoi was able to get the VR going, so with this first wave of games, a lot of companies are kind of feeling things out with it. There will be more as time goes on, 2014 will be a much better year for VR on the Reality.
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This week of updates coming up is a really exciting one! Probably one of the more significant weeks we've done in a while, hope you enjoy what we have planned.
Fall 2013 (Part 4) - Thrillseekers' Future: Up In The Air?
Thrillseekers: Thin Air
Thrillseekers: Thin Air is an extreme sports video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. Like previous games in the series, it features a group of young adult characters, mostly women, competing in extreme sports while also having an adventure, and splitting those two elements of the game between a free play mode and a story mode. Thin Air focuses on aerial sports, and features the character Elissa Settergren, the last of the six main girls to get her own featured game. Thrillseekers: Thin Air changes up the gameplay formula of the series a bit, with new styles of gameplay to compliment the familiar "perform tricks for points and combos" style that has been the series' hallmark since the original game (which itself borrowed elements from the Tony Hawk series). Most of the game still focuses on getting a high score, but there are new elements to the series that include a rhythm-style gameplay in which tricks must be performed to the beat of various songs. It's not a "strict" rhythm-game setup (you won't lose if the timing is off), but performing the tricks in rhythm enhances your score significantly. The game also features some shorter segments of gameplay, as a consequence of the sports that it features.
Thin Air features five sports in total, though those five sports also have elements of other sports included, so there's technically more than five total sports in the game. Those sports are:
Wingsuiting: The classic aerial stunt sport from the original game and Elissa's specialty sport, not much has changed about wingsuiting, except for the addition of a rhythm element during the main story and the default versus mode. It's possible to play classic wingsuiting also.
BASE jumping/Skydiving: Classic skydiving with a parachute comes to Thrillseekers for the first time, though most of this category involves the much more dangerous BASE jumping.
Hang gliding: Not only are aerial tricks important in hang gliding, but the player is also encouraged (in some cases required) to aim for various targets.
Bungee jumping: Players must not only perform stunts in the air while diving and coming back up, but can also aim to come as close to the ground as possible.
Speed flying/paragliding: Has some similarities with the hang gliding sport, but accuracy isn't emphasized as much as speed, and there's a rhythm element too. It's the game's featured new sport and probably the most popular.
Thrillseekers: Thin Air, like other games in the series, strives to have as good of a visual presentation as possible, with detailed cutscenes and smooth animation. It's the first game in the series explicitly made for eighth-generation systems, though it also comes to the Sapphire and iTwin. It looks excellent on the newer consoles and a significant step up from the Nexus/Virtua ports of Winter Challenge 2 in terms of graphical fidelity. The game includes several dozen real world songs from famous bands in its soundtrack, with Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" featured as the default menu song and Paramore's "Still Into You" featured as the opening intro cutscene song. Though the game's storyline does deal with a number of serious issues, Thin Air has a much more lighthearted feel in terms of visual design than the series' last few games, with Elissa's fun loving and high flying nature expressed through the game's artistic style and general mood. The gameplay is all about exhilaration and freedom, and the ad campaign expresses this quite eagerly, emphasizing the game's high-flying action. The game also makes sure to incorporate the main gimmicks of each of the three new systems, with the Reality version including spectacular VR, the Virtua version allowing for extremely innovative motion controls, and the Nexus version using the game's second screen as a sort of altimeter camera, or allowing players to take in-game screenshots and selfies easily. The game brings back all the main voice actors from the series, with Avril Lavigne returning as Alex and Francesca Marie Smith starring as Elissa.
The main story mode sees the Thrillseekers visiting Los Angeles in order to compete in an aerial sports competition. With teams limited to just four girls a piece, however, Stacy decides to sit out as an alternate, and surprisingly, Elissa decides to sit out as well, despite aerial sports being her specialty. She says she wants to take a break from competition and enjoy aerial sports without worrying about winning or losing, and the team accepts her decision. Instead, Elissa decides to spend some time in the city with her boyfriend Stephen, with Stacy also tagging along (this game probably features less of Alex than any previous Thrillseekers game). As Elissa enjoys the city, she meets a group of aerial sports pros who call themselves the Airstreamers. Essentially, they're a group of aerial thrill junkies who stream footage of their activities on the internet. One of the Airstreamers is a woman named Syrene (voiced by Ashly Burch, in her first major video game voice acting role ITTL), and she and Elissa hit it off almost immediately. Syrene is the game's featured new character, and has one of the most unusual character designs in the series: she's tall and lanky (it's speculated by fans and later confirmed by the developers that she has Marfan syndrome, and the health issues related to that condition will indeed come up in a later game), she's covered in tattoos, and her hair is dyed light green. At first, she and Elissa merely bond over their love of aerial extreme sports, but later, Syrene confides in Elissa that she was in a foster family that viciously abused her, forcing her to run away from home at 14. She eventually realized that she could support herself by doing insane stunts for money, which eventually turned into a career as an aerial sports performer. The Airstreamers want Elissa to perform with them, as Elissa is part of a famous extreme sports group herself. While she doesn't want to leave her friends, she does agree to perform in a series of videos with the Airstreamers because of her friendship with Syrene. While this is going on, Alex, Marina, Vivian, and Kirsten are doing well in their competition, but without Elissa, they're having trouble staying in first place (the player will occasionally perform in one of these competitions, but mostly, they'll control Elissa, Stacy, or Syrene). Stacy and Stephen are worried about what Elissa is doing with the Airstreamers, whose stunts are far more dangerous than anything even the Thrillseekers have ever done. However, when Stacy finally confronts Elissa about it, Elissa confesses that she's never felt more alive, and that she's still tormented by the memories of her and her mother being abused by her father back when she was young. She still struggles with PTSD, and it's only when she's in the air doing something dangerous that she knows she'll never have one of those intrusive thoughts come into her head. Elissa and Syrene also run into trouble after the police attempt to shut the Airstreamers down for performing dangerous stunts. Their efforts intensify after one of the Airstreamers is hurt during a stunt gone wrong, but Elissa and Syrene don't want to stop, and decide to perform a stunt at the finals of the Thrillseekers' competition, which creates more tension with Stacy. Eventually, however, Syrene decides to perform an extremely dangerous stunt, one that even makes Elissa balk, and the only way Elissa can get Syrene to stop is by helping her work through her trauma. However, after Syrene agrees to back down, Elissa realizes that she wants to perform the stunt herself, but doesn't want to make Syrene feel bad by doing the stunt after she did all of that to get Syrene not to do it. The game's final challenge features Stacy subbing in as the alternate when Marina goes down with an injury in the final round of the Thrillseekers' competition, then Alex performing in the final part of the competition, and then finally Elissa performing the dangerous stunt with Syrene, Stacy, and Stephen's encouragement, as all three of them realize she's capable of doing it without getting hurt. The stunt combines elements of the wingsuiting, BASE jumping, and speed flying sports, and must be completed with a very high score in perfect rhythm for the player to be able to "beat" the story mode. Elissa performs the stunt and finishes up just as Alex's team clinches victory in the competition, and the Thrillseekers and Syrene all huddle together and hug, though soon afterwards, the police show up to arrest Elissa. She bails out, of course, and ends up getting a slap on the wrist, and at the same time makes some new friends and works through a lot of her old trauma. The game ends with Elissa saying goodbye to Syrene, who has decided to take a break from dangerous stunts for a while, thanking her for everything and promising that they'll soar through the skies together again someday.
Thrillseekers: Thin Air is released in October 2013, and achieves the best review scores for any game in the series since Thrillseekers 2. Its use of new game mechanics is highly praised by critics, who applaud the game for mixing things up a great deal more than the last two games did. In addition, the game is highly praised for its graphics and use of controls on each of the next generation systems, though even the last-gen ports manage to score in the mid 8s. Sales also see a sharp uptick from previous games in the series, and Thin Air would become the series' best selling title since Thrillseekers 2, achieving million-unit sales on every console except the iTwin (where it manages to sell "only" 600,000 or so copies). Thin Air is widely credited with reviving interest in the franchise just a year after many fans say the series hit its creative, critical, and commercial nadir with Winter Challenge 2. It would also come at the cusp of several new multimedia tie-ins (including brand new webtoon shorts, young adult novels, and a comic series) for the series in the lead-up to the third main installment, a time when the franchise needed a strong new game to revive interest in the property. For several reasons, Thrillseekers: Thin Air would represent both the end of an era for the series and the beginning of a new one, ensuring that the most famous extreme sports stars in video gaming would see their story continue well into the next generation of consoles.
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Thrillseekers: Thin Air would be the last game in the series that Brittany Saldita would provide the voice of Vivian for. Saldita's cancer diagnosis would come as she was halfway through recording her lines for the game, and though she would finish the remainder of the game while undergoing chemotherapy, she knew that her illness might take time away from her commitments for the series, and she wanted to ensure that the character would have a consistent performer going forward. For that reason, she decided to back down from the role, allowing Activision to cast a new actress to play Vivian, and also volunteering to help in the selection process. Saldita's successor would be actress Cristina Milizia, who had come into the industry in the 2000s and was considered a rising star in the voiceover realm. Milizia was hired both for her ability to voice match Saldita closely (using a slightly deeper voice than her normal speaking voice), and also for her acting ability, enabling her to carry Saldita's humor and ferocity as the character into a new generation of games. Milizia would take over for Saldita starting in the new Thrillseekers webtoon series in mid-2014, while her first game as Vivian would be Thrillseekers: Waveriders 2, released shortly after Saldita's death.
Waveriders 2 would end up being the last vocal appearance of another longtime series cast member: Jennifer Tung, who decided to voluntarily step down from the role of Marina in 2012. Though the Thrillseekers role was a steady gig for Tung, who'd been performing as Marina for a decade, she decided that she wanted to pursue other jobs in the industry, and that she was also starting to experience vocal strain from playing the character in so many different projects. After she stepped down, numerous actors auditioned for the role of Marina, which ultimately went to a newcomer: Videocean influencer Anna Akana, who was 23 at the time she was cast and was starting to pursue roles in the acting industry while continuing her increasingly successful web video career. Though Akana was less of a match to Tung's voice than Milizia was to Saldita's, she was cast for both her acting talent and for providing a "youthful attitude" to Marina that would prove popular to longtime series fans, who generally reacted better to the recasting of Marina than they did to Vivian's recasting. In fact, a significant portion of critics, if not a majority, consider Akana's performance as Marina to be superior to the original, though both Vivian and Marina's voices are the subject of some of the most heated fandom debates outside of shipping circles. Akana would begin voicing the character in the second season of webtoons (starting in early 2015) and would make her console game debut in 2015's Thrillseekers 3 (after appearing in a few mobile games earlier that year).
-from "The Extreme Voice Stars Of Thrillseekers", an article on GamePerformers, posted on January 3, 2020
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November 1, 2013
"Damn, damn, damn... damn!"
Ashly Burch cursed at the television screen as Elizabeta Azarola fell to her death for the second time. Sitting next to her on the couch was Brittany Saldita, who just laughed, having already gotten past this part of the game with ease. The two were at Brittany's house, taking turns playing Assassin's Creed IV on Ashly's save file, and as Ashly made another attempt at traversing the narrow plank between two rooftops while being shot at by numerous pursuers, Brittany was quick to offer a few suggestions.
"Have you tried killing the guys first?"
"They're too far away!"
"Use your spyglass!"
"I'm trying, I get shot up every time I pull it out! Why don't you just hush up and let me play?"
"I can't just sit here and watch you keep killing me, it's embarrassing."
The two were arguing, but they were hamming it up somewhat for the camera pointed at them, a camera on which a video was recording that would, in a few days time, be uploaded to the Nerdist, Videocean, and various other video and gaming websites. Ashly was struggling with this portion of the game, but she was just as capable a gamer as Brittany was, and was flying through the game almost as quickly as Brittany had on her own save file. The two were enjoying themselves, as friends and now as colleagues in the voiceover industry, with Thrillseekers: Thin Air being their first project together. It would also be their last project together, at least in terms of voiceover, though at the time, Brittany thought she and Ashly would be in more games together, maybe even someday starring in them together. The two had met almost four years before, and had become quite close since then, with Ashly being one of Brittany's closest friends during her battle with cancer.
"There, I finally got past it. Now I'm gonna go over and kill those guys for shooting at me. Here's a rope, I'm gonna swing over and kill 'em."
"Yarrr!" Brittany shouted excitedly as Ashly grabbed a rope to swing over. However, instead of landing next to the pirates, she slammed into the side of a nearby building and fell, once again, to her death. "What the fuck?"
"What the fuck?!" Ashly exclaimed, almost simultaneously. The two shared a loud laugh as the Game Over screen appeared once again, and had to set the controllers down and stop the recording, as neither of them could stop laughing. "How did I even do that?"
"I would never have done that," said Brittany, still giggling profusely.
"Shut up, yes you would have!"
"Would you like me to try?"
"This is my save file, if you play on it everybody's gonna say I only got through the game because I got help from the GameTV lady."
The two playfully argued for a short while longer, not caring that the camera was no longer rolling and thus not capturing any more footage of them. The two then began talking about random things, most of them pertaining to Brittany's earlier career.
"I remember when you were on Nick Arcade, and my brother thought I was crazy because I'd always cheer for you. And he'd be like 'no, Ashly, she's the Gladiator, she's bad, you gotta cheer for the kid', and I'd be like, 'no, Brittany is awesome'!"
"I still feel kind of bad beating all those kids," said Brittany, smiling but shaking her head. "I tried to tell the producers, 'nobody is ever gonna win if you put me on there', but they wanted GameTV people and I don't think S+P would let them put Lyssa in a gladiator outfit."
"So Lyssa's boobs are what ended up costing all those kids trips to Space Camp then?"
"Pretty much, although I'm pretty confident she would have beaten all but one or two of them."
"You really feel bad about beating all those kids?"
"I didn't at first, but now that I've got Arturo and Regan, I mean... they're getting to be the same age now as those kids, and now yeah I kinda do feel bad for the kids."
"But you never take it easy on them when you're playing."
"Oh, no, of course not, but there aren't any big prizes on the line! I'm just saying, as a parent, if I saw one of my kids on TV getting beaten by some adult at a video game and losing a huge prize, that would make me feel bad."
The conversation drifted back to the subject of voice acting, and in particular, Ashly's performance in Thrillseekers: Thin Air, and Brittany's performance in Assassin's Creed IV.
"Ashly, let me tell you something, you did not get that role because of me. You're an amazing actor, I think you're more talented than me. You're going to get tons of roles, you're going to be incredible. You can keep acting for as long as you want, I promise you."
Ashly blushed a bit, quite flattered by the praise Brittany had given her.
"You did help, though," said Ashly. "You helped a little bit."
"Maybe a little, but you've gotten a lot more roles without my help, and you're going to keep getting roles because you're amazing. Just take care of your voice and you'll be doing this for a long time."
"I still haven't done anything as good as Elizabeta," said Ashly, pointing at the paused screen. "I mean, you've gotten some serious praise for that game."
"It's been pretty overwhelming to tell you the truth," Brittany replied. "I've never gotten this much praise for anything. It's... it's flattering, but also, it's..."
Brittany sighed, running her hands briefly through her hair, which had grown back pretty much completely but was still somewhat thin from the chemo and from her continued struggles with her illness.
"I wish I could be doing more," said Brittany. "I've been so tired and so overwhelmed and so sick that I've had to give up a lot of other roles. I had to give up Vivian, and I love Vivian."
"You know you could go back and be Vivian whenever you want to, right?"
Brittany shook her head.
"It's Cristina's role now and she's great," said Brittany. "Speaking of Cristina, have you played Miraculous Ladybug yet?"
"Oh no, I've been meaning to check that one out."
"It's incredible," said Brittany. "Absolutely one of the best video games I've ever played, and Cristina... uh, a different Cristina from the one who plays Vivian now, you know Cristina Vee, right?"
"Oh yeah, we were hanging out at Comic-Con together."
"She's amazing in that game. The voice she does for Marinette, it's so adorable but so fierce at the same time! And Regan loves the game too, and I think Arturo has a crush on the Ladybug girl."
Ashly laughed.
"Well, she does run around Paris in that skintight bug costume, that's probably why," said Ashly.
"Yeah, and she does that Sailor Moon transforming thing. The game is wild. But yeah... I guess I'm getting some voice acting award buzz for Assassin's Creed, but I think Cristina's going to win all those awards for Miraculous Ladybug."
"You know, at Comic-Con, she told me about the letter she wrote to you when you were on GameTV, and that two hour phone call you had with her afterward. She told me she never forgot that phone call."
"And now we're competing for awards against each other, I've sowed the seeds of my own destruction!"
Brittany and Ashly shared another laugh together before Brittany sighed and smiled.
"Actually, I'm really glad she's been able to accomplish so much. I'm really proud of her. You too, Ashly."
"Well, you are going to be competing for awards against Cristina and me for a very long time," said Ashly, picking her controller back up. "And probably Regan too in a few years."
Brittany smiled and nodded, going over to turn the camera back on.
"Ready to start back up?" asked Brittany.
"Yeah, turn the camera back on."
"Ready to not die this time?"
"Now I'm gonna die on purpose just to make you salty," said Ashly. Brittany stuck her tongue out before returning to the couch and unpausing the game. As she watched Ashly continue to play, and thought about everything she'd accomplished in such a short time, she felt a warmth come over her, an almost motherly warmth, the kind of warmth she felt when Arturo and Regan succeeded at something. She did want to go back to voicing Vivian someday, even though she wasn't willing to take the role back from the new actress. She wanted to do voices for lots of games, starting with another turn as Elizabeta. But if her disease got the best of her, if things didn't go the way she wanted, she could at least take comfort in the fact that she'd be leaving a legacy, a new generation of talented women in the gaming industry, voicing the heroines of tomorrow, and some of them even today.
Thrillseekers: Thin Air is an extreme sports video game developed by Neversoft and published by Activision. Like previous games in the series, it features a group of young adult characters, mostly women, competing in extreme sports while also having an adventure, and splitting those two elements of the game between a free play mode and a story mode. Thin Air focuses on aerial sports, and features the character Elissa Settergren, the last of the six main girls to get her own featured game. Thrillseekers: Thin Air changes up the gameplay formula of the series a bit, with new styles of gameplay to compliment the familiar "perform tricks for points and combos" style that has been the series' hallmark since the original game (which itself borrowed elements from the Tony Hawk series). Most of the game still focuses on getting a high score, but there are new elements to the series that include a rhythm-style gameplay in which tricks must be performed to the beat of various songs. It's not a "strict" rhythm-game setup (you won't lose if the timing is off), but performing the tricks in rhythm enhances your score significantly. The game also features some shorter segments of gameplay, as a consequence of the sports that it features.
Thin Air features five sports in total, though those five sports also have elements of other sports included, so there's technically more than five total sports in the game. Those sports are:
Wingsuiting: The classic aerial stunt sport from the original game and Elissa's specialty sport, not much has changed about wingsuiting, except for the addition of a rhythm element during the main story and the default versus mode. It's possible to play classic wingsuiting also.
BASE jumping/Skydiving: Classic skydiving with a parachute comes to Thrillseekers for the first time, though most of this category involves the much more dangerous BASE jumping.
Hang gliding: Not only are aerial tricks important in hang gliding, but the player is also encouraged (in some cases required) to aim for various targets.
Bungee jumping: Players must not only perform stunts in the air while diving and coming back up, but can also aim to come as close to the ground as possible.
Speed flying/paragliding: Has some similarities with the hang gliding sport, but accuracy isn't emphasized as much as speed, and there's a rhythm element too. It's the game's featured new sport and probably the most popular.
Thrillseekers: Thin Air, like other games in the series, strives to have as good of a visual presentation as possible, with detailed cutscenes and smooth animation. It's the first game in the series explicitly made for eighth-generation systems, though it also comes to the Sapphire and iTwin. It looks excellent on the newer consoles and a significant step up from the Nexus/Virtua ports of Winter Challenge 2 in terms of graphical fidelity. The game includes several dozen real world songs from famous bands in its soundtrack, with Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" featured as the default menu song and Paramore's "Still Into You" featured as the opening intro cutscene song. Though the game's storyline does deal with a number of serious issues, Thin Air has a much more lighthearted feel in terms of visual design than the series' last few games, with Elissa's fun loving and high flying nature expressed through the game's artistic style and general mood. The gameplay is all about exhilaration and freedom, and the ad campaign expresses this quite eagerly, emphasizing the game's high-flying action. The game also makes sure to incorporate the main gimmicks of each of the three new systems, with the Reality version including spectacular VR, the Virtua version allowing for extremely innovative motion controls, and the Nexus version using the game's second screen as a sort of altimeter camera, or allowing players to take in-game screenshots and selfies easily. The game brings back all the main voice actors from the series, with Avril Lavigne returning as Alex and Francesca Marie Smith starring as Elissa.
The main story mode sees the Thrillseekers visiting Los Angeles in order to compete in an aerial sports competition. With teams limited to just four girls a piece, however, Stacy decides to sit out as an alternate, and surprisingly, Elissa decides to sit out as well, despite aerial sports being her specialty. She says she wants to take a break from competition and enjoy aerial sports without worrying about winning or losing, and the team accepts her decision. Instead, Elissa decides to spend some time in the city with her boyfriend Stephen, with Stacy also tagging along (this game probably features less of Alex than any previous Thrillseekers game). As Elissa enjoys the city, she meets a group of aerial sports pros who call themselves the Airstreamers. Essentially, they're a group of aerial thrill junkies who stream footage of their activities on the internet. One of the Airstreamers is a woman named Syrene (voiced by Ashly Burch, in her first major video game voice acting role ITTL), and she and Elissa hit it off almost immediately. Syrene is the game's featured new character, and has one of the most unusual character designs in the series: she's tall and lanky (it's speculated by fans and later confirmed by the developers that she has Marfan syndrome, and the health issues related to that condition will indeed come up in a later game), she's covered in tattoos, and her hair is dyed light green. At first, she and Elissa merely bond over their love of aerial extreme sports, but later, Syrene confides in Elissa that she was in a foster family that viciously abused her, forcing her to run away from home at 14. She eventually realized that she could support herself by doing insane stunts for money, which eventually turned into a career as an aerial sports performer. The Airstreamers want Elissa to perform with them, as Elissa is part of a famous extreme sports group herself. While she doesn't want to leave her friends, she does agree to perform in a series of videos with the Airstreamers because of her friendship with Syrene. While this is going on, Alex, Marina, Vivian, and Kirsten are doing well in their competition, but without Elissa, they're having trouble staying in first place (the player will occasionally perform in one of these competitions, but mostly, they'll control Elissa, Stacy, or Syrene). Stacy and Stephen are worried about what Elissa is doing with the Airstreamers, whose stunts are far more dangerous than anything even the Thrillseekers have ever done. However, when Stacy finally confronts Elissa about it, Elissa confesses that she's never felt more alive, and that she's still tormented by the memories of her and her mother being abused by her father back when she was young. She still struggles with PTSD, and it's only when she's in the air doing something dangerous that she knows she'll never have one of those intrusive thoughts come into her head. Elissa and Syrene also run into trouble after the police attempt to shut the Airstreamers down for performing dangerous stunts. Their efforts intensify after one of the Airstreamers is hurt during a stunt gone wrong, but Elissa and Syrene don't want to stop, and decide to perform a stunt at the finals of the Thrillseekers' competition, which creates more tension with Stacy. Eventually, however, Syrene decides to perform an extremely dangerous stunt, one that even makes Elissa balk, and the only way Elissa can get Syrene to stop is by helping her work through her trauma. However, after Syrene agrees to back down, Elissa realizes that she wants to perform the stunt herself, but doesn't want to make Syrene feel bad by doing the stunt after she did all of that to get Syrene not to do it. The game's final challenge features Stacy subbing in as the alternate when Marina goes down with an injury in the final round of the Thrillseekers' competition, then Alex performing in the final part of the competition, and then finally Elissa performing the dangerous stunt with Syrene, Stacy, and Stephen's encouragement, as all three of them realize she's capable of doing it without getting hurt. The stunt combines elements of the wingsuiting, BASE jumping, and speed flying sports, and must be completed with a very high score in perfect rhythm for the player to be able to "beat" the story mode. Elissa performs the stunt and finishes up just as Alex's team clinches victory in the competition, and the Thrillseekers and Syrene all huddle together and hug, though soon afterwards, the police show up to arrest Elissa. She bails out, of course, and ends up getting a slap on the wrist, and at the same time makes some new friends and works through a lot of her old trauma. The game ends with Elissa saying goodbye to Syrene, who has decided to take a break from dangerous stunts for a while, thanking her for everything and promising that they'll soar through the skies together again someday.
Thrillseekers: Thin Air is released in October 2013, and achieves the best review scores for any game in the series since Thrillseekers 2. Its use of new game mechanics is highly praised by critics, who applaud the game for mixing things up a great deal more than the last two games did. In addition, the game is highly praised for its graphics and use of controls on each of the next generation systems, though even the last-gen ports manage to score in the mid 8s. Sales also see a sharp uptick from previous games in the series, and Thin Air would become the series' best selling title since Thrillseekers 2, achieving million-unit sales on every console except the iTwin (where it manages to sell "only" 600,000 or so copies). Thin Air is widely credited with reviving interest in the franchise just a year after many fans say the series hit its creative, critical, and commercial nadir with Winter Challenge 2. It would also come at the cusp of several new multimedia tie-ins (including brand new webtoon shorts, young adult novels, and a comic series) for the series in the lead-up to the third main installment, a time when the franchise needed a strong new game to revive interest in the property. For several reasons, Thrillseekers: Thin Air would represent both the end of an era for the series and the beginning of a new one, ensuring that the most famous extreme sports stars in video gaming would see their story continue well into the next generation of consoles.
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Thrillseekers: Thin Air would be the last game in the series that Brittany Saldita would provide the voice of Vivian for. Saldita's cancer diagnosis would come as she was halfway through recording her lines for the game, and though she would finish the remainder of the game while undergoing chemotherapy, she knew that her illness might take time away from her commitments for the series, and she wanted to ensure that the character would have a consistent performer going forward. For that reason, she decided to back down from the role, allowing Activision to cast a new actress to play Vivian, and also volunteering to help in the selection process. Saldita's successor would be actress Cristina Milizia, who had come into the industry in the 2000s and was considered a rising star in the voiceover realm. Milizia was hired both for her ability to voice match Saldita closely (using a slightly deeper voice than her normal speaking voice), and also for her acting ability, enabling her to carry Saldita's humor and ferocity as the character into a new generation of games. Milizia would take over for Saldita starting in the new Thrillseekers webtoon series in mid-2014, while her first game as Vivian would be Thrillseekers: Waveriders 2, released shortly after Saldita's death.
Waveriders 2 would end up being the last vocal appearance of another longtime series cast member: Jennifer Tung, who decided to voluntarily step down from the role of Marina in 2012. Though the Thrillseekers role was a steady gig for Tung, who'd been performing as Marina for a decade, she decided that she wanted to pursue other jobs in the industry, and that she was also starting to experience vocal strain from playing the character in so many different projects. After she stepped down, numerous actors auditioned for the role of Marina, which ultimately went to a newcomer: Videocean influencer Anna Akana, who was 23 at the time she was cast and was starting to pursue roles in the acting industry while continuing her increasingly successful web video career. Though Akana was less of a match to Tung's voice than Milizia was to Saldita's, she was cast for both her acting talent and for providing a "youthful attitude" to Marina that would prove popular to longtime series fans, who generally reacted better to the recasting of Marina than they did to Vivian's recasting. In fact, a significant portion of critics, if not a majority, consider Akana's performance as Marina to be superior to the original, though both Vivian and Marina's voices are the subject of some of the most heated fandom debates outside of shipping circles. Akana would begin voicing the character in the second season of webtoons (starting in early 2015) and would make her console game debut in 2015's Thrillseekers 3 (after appearing in a few mobile games earlier that year).
-from "The Extreme Voice Stars Of Thrillseekers", an article on GamePerformers, posted on January 3, 2020
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November 1, 2013
"Damn, damn, damn... damn!"
Ashly Burch cursed at the television screen as Elizabeta Azarola fell to her death for the second time. Sitting next to her on the couch was Brittany Saldita, who just laughed, having already gotten past this part of the game with ease. The two were at Brittany's house, taking turns playing Assassin's Creed IV on Ashly's save file, and as Ashly made another attempt at traversing the narrow plank between two rooftops while being shot at by numerous pursuers, Brittany was quick to offer a few suggestions.
"Have you tried killing the guys first?"
"They're too far away!"
"Use your spyglass!"
"I'm trying, I get shot up every time I pull it out! Why don't you just hush up and let me play?"
"I can't just sit here and watch you keep killing me, it's embarrassing."
The two were arguing, but they were hamming it up somewhat for the camera pointed at them, a camera on which a video was recording that would, in a few days time, be uploaded to the Nerdist, Videocean, and various other video and gaming websites. Ashly was struggling with this portion of the game, but she was just as capable a gamer as Brittany was, and was flying through the game almost as quickly as Brittany had on her own save file. The two were enjoying themselves, as friends and now as colleagues in the voiceover industry, with Thrillseekers: Thin Air being their first project together. It would also be their last project together, at least in terms of voiceover, though at the time, Brittany thought she and Ashly would be in more games together, maybe even someday starring in them together. The two had met almost four years before, and had become quite close since then, with Ashly being one of Brittany's closest friends during her battle with cancer.
"There, I finally got past it. Now I'm gonna go over and kill those guys for shooting at me. Here's a rope, I'm gonna swing over and kill 'em."
"Yarrr!" Brittany shouted excitedly as Ashly grabbed a rope to swing over. However, instead of landing next to the pirates, she slammed into the side of a nearby building and fell, once again, to her death. "What the fuck?"
"What the fuck?!" Ashly exclaimed, almost simultaneously. The two shared a loud laugh as the Game Over screen appeared once again, and had to set the controllers down and stop the recording, as neither of them could stop laughing. "How did I even do that?"
"I would never have done that," said Brittany, still giggling profusely.
"Shut up, yes you would have!"
"Would you like me to try?"
"This is my save file, if you play on it everybody's gonna say I only got through the game because I got help from the GameTV lady."
The two playfully argued for a short while longer, not caring that the camera was no longer rolling and thus not capturing any more footage of them. The two then began talking about random things, most of them pertaining to Brittany's earlier career.
"I remember when you were on Nick Arcade, and my brother thought I was crazy because I'd always cheer for you. And he'd be like 'no, Ashly, she's the Gladiator, she's bad, you gotta cheer for the kid', and I'd be like, 'no, Brittany is awesome'!"
"I still feel kind of bad beating all those kids," said Brittany, smiling but shaking her head. "I tried to tell the producers, 'nobody is ever gonna win if you put me on there', but they wanted GameTV people and I don't think S+P would let them put Lyssa in a gladiator outfit."
"So Lyssa's boobs are what ended up costing all those kids trips to Space Camp then?"
"Pretty much, although I'm pretty confident she would have beaten all but one or two of them."
"You really feel bad about beating all those kids?"
"I didn't at first, but now that I've got Arturo and Regan, I mean... they're getting to be the same age now as those kids, and now yeah I kinda do feel bad for the kids."
"But you never take it easy on them when you're playing."
"Oh, no, of course not, but there aren't any big prizes on the line! I'm just saying, as a parent, if I saw one of my kids on TV getting beaten by some adult at a video game and losing a huge prize, that would make me feel bad."
The conversation drifted back to the subject of voice acting, and in particular, Ashly's performance in Thrillseekers: Thin Air, and Brittany's performance in Assassin's Creed IV.
"Ashly, let me tell you something, you did not get that role because of me. You're an amazing actor, I think you're more talented than me. You're going to get tons of roles, you're going to be incredible. You can keep acting for as long as you want, I promise you."
Ashly blushed a bit, quite flattered by the praise Brittany had given her.
"You did help, though," said Ashly. "You helped a little bit."
"Maybe a little, but you've gotten a lot more roles without my help, and you're going to keep getting roles because you're amazing. Just take care of your voice and you'll be doing this for a long time."
"I still haven't done anything as good as Elizabeta," said Ashly, pointing at the paused screen. "I mean, you've gotten some serious praise for that game."
"It's been pretty overwhelming to tell you the truth," Brittany replied. "I've never gotten this much praise for anything. It's... it's flattering, but also, it's..."
Brittany sighed, running her hands briefly through her hair, which had grown back pretty much completely but was still somewhat thin from the chemo and from her continued struggles with her illness.
"I wish I could be doing more," said Brittany. "I've been so tired and so overwhelmed and so sick that I've had to give up a lot of other roles. I had to give up Vivian, and I love Vivian."
"You know you could go back and be Vivian whenever you want to, right?"
Brittany shook her head.
"It's Cristina's role now and she's great," said Brittany. "Speaking of Cristina, have you played Miraculous Ladybug yet?"
"Oh no, I've been meaning to check that one out."
"It's incredible," said Brittany. "Absolutely one of the best video games I've ever played, and Cristina... uh, a different Cristina from the one who plays Vivian now, you know Cristina Vee, right?"
"Oh yeah, we were hanging out at Comic-Con together."
"She's amazing in that game. The voice she does for Marinette, it's so adorable but so fierce at the same time! And Regan loves the game too, and I think Arturo has a crush on the Ladybug girl."
Ashly laughed.
"Well, she does run around Paris in that skintight bug costume, that's probably why," said Ashly.
"Yeah, and she does that Sailor Moon transforming thing. The game is wild. But yeah... I guess I'm getting some voice acting award buzz for Assassin's Creed, but I think Cristina's going to win all those awards for Miraculous Ladybug."
"You know, at Comic-Con, she told me about the letter she wrote to you when you were on GameTV, and that two hour phone call you had with her afterward. She told me she never forgot that phone call."
"And now we're competing for awards against each other, I've sowed the seeds of my own destruction!"
Brittany and Ashly shared another laugh together before Brittany sighed and smiled.
"Actually, I'm really glad she's been able to accomplish so much. I'm really proud of her. You too, Ashly."
"Well, you are going to be competing for awards against Cristina and me for a very long time," said Ashly, picking her controller back up. "And probably Regan too in a few years."
Brittany smiled and nodded, going over to turn the camera back on.
"Ready to start back up?" asked Brittany.
"Yeah, turn the camera back on."
"Ready to not die this time?"
"Now I'm gonna die on purpose just to make you salty," said Ashly. Brittany stuck her tongue out before returning to the couch and unpausing the game. As she watched Ashly continue to play, and thought about everything she'd accomplished in such a short time, she felt a warmth come over her, an almost motherly warmth, the kind of warmth she felt when Arturo and Regan succeeded at something. She did want to go back to voicing Vivian someday, even though she wasn't willing to take the role back from the new actress. She wanted to do voices for lots of games, starting with another turn as Elizabeta. But if her disease got the best of her, if things didn't go the way she wanted, she could at least take comfort in the fact that she'd be leaving a legacy, a new generation of talented women in the gaming industry, voicing the heroines of tomorrow, and some of them even today.
Oh goddammit......one of these days you're gonna make me cry in public and I won't be able to stop....
😢 😢 😢 😢 😭
😢 😢 😢 😢 😭
In that case, let's hope that you first read about her death ITTL in the comfort of your home, because I don't think you'll ever live down that moment.
Love all the recent video game updates.
RIP Brittany, that chapter you just did made me actually feel really sad
Just curious, could I see a list of the 10 highest grossing worldwide films? Or a list of all films that have made over $1 billion worldwide. I know Star Wars is #1 with $2.3 billion and Of Gods: Awakening has over $2 billion, but that's it.
RIP Brittany, that chapter you just did made me actually feel really sad
Just curious, could I see a list of the 10 highest grossing worldwide films? Or a list of all films that have made over $1 billion worldwide. I know Star Wars is #1 with $2.3 billion and Of Gods: Awakening has over $2 billion, but that's it.
Fall 2013 (Part 5) - Miraculous, Simply The Best
Miraculous Ladybug
Miraculous Ladybug is an open world action/adventure/life sim game developed and published by Ubisoft exclusively for the Google Nexus. The game is the combined work of Ubisoft game designer Michel Ancel and Miraculous Ladybug concept creator Thomas Astruc, and is TTL's version of OTL's animation franchise. As IOTL, Thomas Astruc originally conceived the idea for Miraculous Ladybug while working as an animator on the animated series W.I.T.C.H., and was eating lunch one day when he saw a woman in a ladybug shirt and decided eventually to create a ladybug-themed superheroine. While such an encounter is highly susceptible to butterflies, it's possible if he was working and eating lunch in the same place as he would have been IOTL that he would have seen the same woman in the same shirt at some point eventually anyway, and so, ITTL, he also gets the concept for his ladybug-themed hero. IOTL, he intended to make a comic book, but met up with Jeremy Zag who convinced him to make the show an animated series instead. ITTL, he instead meets up with fellow Frenchman Michel Ancel, who convinces Astruc to turn his idea into a video game in 2008 (Ancel, who was finishing up his Beyond Good And Evil trilogy, would have been looking for an original game concept around that time). Astruc was reluctant at first, as he does not enjoy violent games, but Ancel proposed an idea that would allow the Ladybug character to be a superhero while using a minimum amount of violence on her foes, and Astruc finally accepted the proposal. Work on the game took four and a half years, and it was originally intended to be a multiplatform title, but became a Nexus exclusive for two major reasons: Google agreed to co-fund and co-produce the game, allowing it to have a larger budget than Ubisoft would have been willing to allow, and the second reason is the second screen, which Ancel and Astruc wanted to use for various functions that would make the game unique and enhance the life-sim aspects. Miraculous Ladybug combines aspects of sandbox titles, beat 'em up games, and life simulators, and takes inspiration from titles such as Beyond Good And Evil, Shenmue, and particularly, the Syrielle series, which is said to be the closest comparison. However, whereas Syrielle has always featured a fairly closed world and a limited combat system, leaning much more heavily on the life-sim aspects of the game, Miraculous Ladybug is almost completely open, allowing the player to explore a massive version of Paris with all the familiar landmarks, giving the player the option to use either the subway to get around or to go on foot. About a third of the city is exploreable right from the start of the game, with more of the city opening up as players progress through the story. The game plays a lot like the modern open world Ubisoft games of IOTL, such as Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed, with a huge map and lots of icons on the screen and things to do. However, unlike in those games, there is not a single repeated or generic quest in Miraculous Ladybug. EVERY SINGLE SIDE QUEST is relevant in some way to the game's story, even if it merely advances a character along their relationship/story path or communicates more of the game's plot to the player. If you see an icon on the screen, you know it will lead to a quest that will push a character's story further along or reveal more of the story, and there are usually dozens of icons to explore at any given time. There are two main elements to the game: civilian life, and superhero life, and about 80 percent of the game is spent as just Marinette, either talking to people, helping them, training, or performing a civilian activity. Some of the things Marinette can do will help her as Ladybug, while others simply enhance her relationships with other characters. Relationships in the game work a lot like they do in the Persona series: there are 26 different named characters Marinette can interact with, each with twelve relationship stages that can be enhanced. Some of the characters include her friends and classmates, others include her family, still others are Parisians she can meet along the way. Enhancing Marinette's relationships will open up new cutscenes, open up new quests, grant Marinette items or stat enhancements, or a combination of the three. Sometimes, Marinette will need to do these quests as Ladybug, and there are also things Ladybug can do (saving people, helping them some other way) that will enhance Marinette's relationships with people, even if no one else knows that Marinette is in fact Ladybug. Marinette can build up XP in a variety of areas, such as empathy, intelligence, helpfulness, athleticism, etc., which can help her in civilian life or as Ladybug. Conversely, as Ladybug, you can build up stats such as strength and speed that can help out in combat.
The game's combat system is both familiar and unique: it's familiar in that it's a sophisticated "hack and slash" style system with acrobatic leaps, running, sliding, punches, kicks, and throws, and is comparable to the combat in games like Devil May Cry, going at a faster pace than the Assassin's Creed titles. However, the main element of combat in the game, and what makes it unique from every other video game made before it, is that in combat, you are usually not directly hurting people. Ladybug is able to strike and block, and she does knock enemies away from her, but her combat moves are largely intended to set up "rescues", in which Marinette prevents harm from being done to innocent bystanders or hostages. In fact, Marinette performs rescues at about the same rate that a character like Bayonetta would perform specials or torture attacks. The rescues are context sensitive, and can be as simple as pushing people away from falling debris or as complex as rescuing someone tied to a flagpole and slingshotting them to safety while also keeping a bus from plowing into a building. The combat is designed in such a way that even though Ladybug isn't pummeling someone or tearing them apart, it's still immensely satisfying and fast-paced, and instead of seeing blood and body parts flying like you would in God Of War, you'd see, for example, Marinette knocking an enemy to the side with a lightning-fast kick, pulling two kids to safety, and assisting her friend Cat Noir in setting up his Cataclysm. Speaking of Cat Noir, many battles in the game will involve partnering with Cat Noir (aka Adrien Agreste, Marinette's love interest and close friend), and combo attacks with him are key to stopping enemies and saving civilians. Fighting in close proximity with him will open up new combat options for Ladybug, and is the key to winning certain tough story-based fights. Certain segments of the game will actually allow the player to take control of Cat Noir or Adrien, and Cat Noir fights more conventionally, aiming to strike the enemy with direct attacks, but usually to set up Ladybug's akuma-extracting blow. Depending on what the player does, about 5-10 percent of the game will have the player controlling Adrien or Cat Noir, and though these segments are more directed, it is possible to build up Marinette's stats and relationships during these Adrien missions. Of course, for story-based bosses, which usually involve akumatized supervillains like in the TV show, you'll be defeating them much like how they're defeated on the show, by extracting their akuma and transforming it back into a butterfly with Marinette's Miraculous. In order to set up for this, the player will need to usually use both the Lucky Charm of Ladybug's and Cat Noir's Cataclysm, which are context sensitive but usually depend on building up Ladybug's Hero meter, which builds up similarly to how an enemy's health bar would be depleted in a normal game. Striking the enemy and rescuing civilians from danger will build up the meter and allow Lucky Charm to be used (or sometimes Cataclysm). For Marinette's Lucky Charm, the player is given an object and required to figure out how to use it to stop the bad guy. However, usually the player will be given some hints if it takes them too long to figure it out (they might have to earn those hints by building up the Hero meter a bit more, however). The game makes sure to carefully teach the player the ins and outs of the combat system, which is fairly easy to learn, with skills that are quite transferable from other hack and slash games. It's possible to skip these tutorials and lessons, but they're easily accessed from the menu should the player ever need to refresh them.
For those familiar with OTL's television show, most of the characters, locations, and themes of TTL's video game are quite familiar. Marinette, Adrien, Alya, Nino, Chloe, Juleka, Rose, Kim, Max, Hawkmoth/Gabriel, Nathalie, and Mr. and Mrs. Dupain-Cheng are all nearly identical to their OTL incarnates in both personality and appearance. There are a few new characters original TTL, though none of them play a huge role in the overall storyline of the game. The game's story primarily follows the events of season one of the TV show, though those events are rearranged for the pacing of a video game and are told in a much more serialized fashion. The game's visual and graphical presentation is similar to that of the OTL TV show, with animation and detail fairly good for a Google Nexus game (obviously the animation isn't quite as good as OTL's TV show, but it's fairly similar). The game's English version utilizes most of the same voice actors as OTL's television show. Cristina Vee voices Marinette/Ladybug, Bryce Pappenbrook voices Adrien/Cat Noir, Carrie Keranen voices Alya, Selah Victor voices Chloe, Mela Lee voices Tikki, and Keith Silverstein voices Gabriel/Hawkmoth. A few TTL voice actors are different, including Nino, Lila, Juleka, and Rose. The major difference in presentation between OTL's television show and TTL's game is the music, which is much more epic and orchestrated, with Michael Giacchino brought in (here's where Google's money comes in) to compose a score that sounds somewhat like his OTL Incredibles score with Eurobeat/techno influences. Daft Punk was also brought in to contribute a few tracks (tying in with the recent release of their Random Access Memories album, though their tracks for this game are all original and mostly influential). The only song from OTL's show that features in the game is the main lyrical theme song, which is identical to OTL's.
The game's storyline, while following the first season of the OTL television series, does so in a way that's more sequential and cinematic. It starts out with Marinette living her normal civilian life, starting out at a new student at her private school, meeting Alya for the first time and also realizing that she's in a class with her crush, the young model Adrien, son of the superstar and ultrawealthy fashion designer Gabriel Agreste. Events conspire to bring Marinette into contact with Master Fu, who sees Marinette's bravery and good heart and eventually decides to give her the Ladybug Miraculous, a magical earring artifact that allows her to transform into the superheroine Ladybug, using her powers to fight supervillains created by Hawkmoth. Hawkmoth does this by identifying people in emotional distress and sending an akuma to influence their minds, transforming them into villains and turning them temporarily evil. When one of these villains starts attacking the city, Ladybug springs into action and manages to stop the villain (in the game, Adrien isn't given his own Miraculous until a bit later on, meaning that for the first couple of bosses, Ladybug is without Cat Noir). Marinette is now Paris' superhero, and must juggle her new identity as Ladybug with her normal schoolgirl life as Marinette. Marinette is able to transform into Ladybug to help people in the city, but the player has only a temporary amount of time that they can become Ladybug during combat and outside of storyline missions, and must find sweet rolls for Tikki in order to gain more time as Ladybug (this is a potentially frustrating mechanic that is handled fairly well in the game, with sweet rolls rather plentiful and the player never able to not transform into Ladybug with a little bit of work). As the game progresses, akuma transformations become somewhat more personal, with some of Marinette's classmates transforming (though major transformations like Alya into Lady Wifi and Chloe into Antibug are saved for the game's second half to maximize their dramatic impact). Meanwhile, the player is able to build Marinette's relationships with a variety of people. Building relationships with close friends like Alya and Adrien is fairly easy, but Chloe's missions are hard and time-consuming, and the player has to put in a LOT of work to get to Level 12 on Chloe's relationship meter (doing so will give the player some satisfying scenes with Chloe in the game's second half, though like in the show, Chloe never properly befriends Marinette, instead merely tolerating her with a Level 12 meter). Building a proper balance between Marinette's superhero life and her civilian life is key to getting the most out of the game's storyline, but it also helps Marinette in battle, as inspired friends tend to do things like helping get civilians to safety, wiggling out of ropes after being taken hostage, or even throwing themselves in front of akumatized bosses to shield Ladybug from mortal blows. They also help Marinette build up both her civilian and superhero stats, so it's ALWAYS worth it to build up a character's relationship meter (but, like in the Persona games, almost impossible on a single playthrough... though in Miraculous Ladybug, it is possible to get all of Marinette's relationships to maximum on one playthrough with the use of a guide). About midway through the game, the character of Lila is introduced. She starts out as friendly, but eventually comes to resent both Marinette and Ladybug, and will be influenced by Hawkmoth in more ways than mere akumatization. She eventually becomes something like an apprentice to him, and is the secondary antagonist of the game. The game culminates in a massive showdown with Lila as the akumatized supervillain Volpina, who plants illusions all over the city and eventually forces Ladybug to surrender herself to Hawkmoth. This is where Marinette's friendships come in: the more people who have maxed out relationships with her, the easier it ends up being for Cat Noir to rescue Ladybug from Volpina. Otherwise, it's a very difficult boss fight. Afterwards, Ladybug manages to free herself with Cat Noir's help, and battles Volpina, who gets direct help from Hawkmoth during the last stage of the fight. Volpina is defeated and de-akumatized, and Lila is returned to normal... though after all of that, she still resents Marinette and Ladybug. The actual final boss fight involves Ladybug and Cat Noir battling Hawkmoth, but though it seems he's defeated, he manages to escape without his Moth Miraculous being taken away. Ladybug and Cat Noir's identities remain concealed to everyone else, and though the battle against evil continues, Marinette has adjusted to her new life at school and as a superhero and the city of Paris stands strong with Ladybug and Cat Noir. The final cutscene of the game features Adrien kissing Marinette on the cheek (though if the player has maxed out Adrien's relationship with Marinette, which is fairly easy to do, that cheek kiss turns into a quick lip smooch), and though Marinette still hasn't admitted she likes him, she knows she'll be with him someday.
Miraculous Ladybug is released worldwide on October 11, 2013. One of Ubisoft's most expensive games ever, the game is heavily hyped and considered one of their biggest releases of 2013, but even Ubisoft doesn't expect just how commercially and especially critically successful the game ends up being. The game is showered with exceptionally high praise, almost unanimous critical acclaim. The game is praised for both its unique combat system and its intense and compelling life sim mechanics, which go far beyond any previous title ever released save for hardcore simulation games with no action/adventure aspects. Marinette is considered one of the best new video game characters of the year, and despite the game's extremely lighthearted and family-friendly tone, it proves almost as successful with older players and critics as it does with kids and families. Seen as a breath of fresh air in a somewhat stale genre and also as a wake up call to the entire industry about violence and conflict in games, it's considered a revolutionary open world title, the anti-Grand Theft Auto, and the apotheosis of the adventure/life-sim genre that Syrielle gave birth to in 1997. Thomas Astruc is hailed as a genius, and Michel Ancel has a worthy successor to his Beyond Good And Evil games (and has also raised the profile of his Rayman series). Reviews for Miraculous Ladybug average in the high 9s, making it not only one of the best reviewed games of the year, but of all time. Sales are spectacular, not just in the United States (they're actually only mildly spectacular in the States, where the game would finish just outside the year's top 10), but in Europe and Japan as well, and the game becomes a killer app, spiking Nexus sales into an important holiday season, and pushing Nexus sales heavily in Japan (where they had been quite sluggish before). The success of Miraculous Ladybug is somewhat of a death knell for Syrielle, which saw a slight resurgence in popularity with the release of its (now ended) Fox Family live action series and a couple of moderately successful games, and while the series would live on (in the form of mobile titles), there wouldn't be another console Syrielle release for many years. Its creator, Suzanne Collins, has moved on as well, returning to television writing (where one of her ideas would be greenlighted for an HBO series before the end of the decade). Miraculous Ladybug sends a powerful wave through the game industry, though it would be a few years before the game's affects would be fully felt. Meanwhile, Ancel and Astruc have already started working on a sequel, expected to be done by 2016, that would introduce brand new heroes to the game's world and would perhaps see Hawkmoth defeated once and for all.
Miraculous Ladybug is an open world action/adventure/life sim game developed and published by Ubisoft exclusively for the Google Nexus. The game is the combined work of Ubisoft game designer Michel Ancel and Miraculous Ladybug concept creator Thomas Astruc, and is TTL's version of OTL's animation franchise. As IOTL, Thomas Astruc originally conceived the idea for Miraculous Ladybug while working as an animator on the animated series W.I.T.C.H., and was eating lunch one day when he saw a woman in a ladybug shirt and decided eventually to create a ladybug-themed superheroine. While such an encounter is highly susceptible to butterflies, it's possible if he was working and eating lunch in the same place as he would have been IOTL that he would have seen the same woman in the same shirt at some point eventually anyway, and so, ITTL, he also gets the concept for his ladybug-themed hero. IOTL, he intended to make a comic book, but met up with Jeremy Zag who convinced him to make the show an animated series instead. ITTL, he instead meets up with fellow Frenchman Michel Ancel, who convinces Astruc to turn his idea into a video game in 2008 (Ancel, who was finishing up his Beyond Good And Evil trilogy, would have been looking for an original game concept around that time). Astruc was reluctant at first, as he does not enjoy violent games, but Ancel proposed an idea that would allow the Ladybug character to be a superhero while using a minimum amount of violence on her foes, and Astruc finally accepted the proposal. Work on the game took four and a half years, and it was originally intended to be a multiplatform title, but became a Nexus exclusive for two major reasons: Google agreed to co-fund and co-produce the game, allowing it to have a larger budget than Ubisoft would have been willing to allow, and the second reason is the second screen, which Ancel and Astruc wanted to use for various functions that would make the game unique and enhance the life-sim aspects. Miraculous Ladybug combines aspects of sandbox titles, beat 'em up games, and life simulators, and takes inspiration from titles such as Beyond Good And Evil, Shenmue, and particularly, the Syrielle series, which is said to be the closest comparison. However, whereas Syrielle has always featured a fairly closed world and a limited combat system, leaning much more heavily on the life-sim aspects of the game, Miraculous Ladybug is almost completely open, allowing the player to explore a massive version of Paris with all the familiar landmarks, giving the player the option to use either the subway to get around or to go on foot. About a third of the city is exploreable right from the start of the game, with more of the city opening up as players progress through the story. The game plays a lot like the modern open world Ubisoft games of IOTL, such as Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed, with a huge map and lots of icons on the screen and things to do. However, unlike in those games, there is not a single repeated or generic quest in Miraculous Ladybug. EVERY SINGLE SIDE QUEST is relevant in some way to the game's story, even if it merely advances a character along their relationship/story path or communicates more of the game's plot to the player. If you see an icon on the screen, you know it will lead to a quest that will push a character's story further along or reveal more of the story, and there are usually dozens of icons to explore at any given time. There are two main elements to the game: civilian life, and superhero life, and about 80 percent of the game is spent as just Marinette, either talking to people, helping them, training, or performing a civilian activity. Some of the things Marinette can do will help her as Ladybug, while others simply enhance her relationships with other characters. Relationships in the game work a lot like they do in the Persona series: there are 26 different named characters Marinette can interact with, each with twelve relationship stages that can be enhanced. Some of the characters include her friends and classmates, others include her family, still others are Parisians she can meet along the way. Enhancing Marinette's relationships will open up new cutscenes, open up new quests, grant Marinette items or stat enhancements, or a combination of the three. Sometimes, Marinette will need to do these quests as Ladybug, and there are also things Ladybug can do (saving people, helping them some other way) that will enhance Marinette's relationships with people, even if no one else knows that Marinette is in fact Ladybug. Marinette can build up XP in a variety of areas, such as empathy, intelligence, helpfulness, athleticism, etc., which can help her in civilian life or as Ladybug. Conversely, as Ladybug, you can build up stats such as strength and speed that can help out in combat.
The game's combat system is both familiar and unique: it's familiar in that it's a sophisticated "hack and slash" style system with acrobatic leaps, running, sliding, punches, kicks, and throws, and is comparable to the combat in games like Devil May Cry, going at a faster pace than the Assassin's Creed titles. However, the main element of combat in the game, and what makes it unique from every other video game made before it, is that in combat, you are usually not directly hurting people. Ladybug is able to strike and block, and she does knock enemies away from her, but her combat moves are largely intended to set up "rescues", in which Marinette prevents harm from being done to innocent bystanders or hostages. In fact, Marinette performs rescues at about the same rate that a character like Bayonetta would perform specials or torture attacks. The rescues are context sensitive, and can be as simple as pushing people away from falling debris or as complex as rescuing someone tied to a flagpole and slingshotting them to safety while also keeping a bus from plowing into a building. The combat is designed in such a way that even though Ladybug isn't pummeling someone or tearing them apart, it's still immensely satisfying and fast-paced, and instead of seeing blood and body parts flying like you would in God Of War, you'd see, for example, Marinette knocking an enemy to the side with a lightning-fast kick, pulling two kids to safety, and assisting her friend Cat Noir in setting up his Cataclysm. Speaking of Cat Noir, many battles in the game will involve partnering with Cat Noir (aka Adrien Agreste, Marinette's love interest and close friend), and combo attacks with him are key to stopping enemies and saving civilians. Fighting in close proximity with him will open up new combat options for Ladybug, and is the key to winning certain tough story-based fights. Certain segments of the game will actually allow the player to take control of Cat Noir or Adrien, and Cat Noir fights more conventionally, aiming to strike the enemy with direct attacks, but usually to set up Ladybug's akuma-extracting blow. Depending on what the player does, about 5-10 percent of the game will have the player controlling Adrien or Cat Noir, and though these segments are more directed, it is possible to build up Marinette's stats and relationships during these Adrien missions. Of course, for story-based bosses, which usually involve akumatized supervillains like in the TV show, you'll be defeating them much like how they're defeated on the show, by extracting their akuma and transforming it back into a butterfly with Marinette's Miraculous. In order to set up for this, the player will need to usually use both the Lucky Charm of Ladybug's and Cat Noir's Cataclysm, which are context sensitive but usually depend on building up Ladybug's Hero meter, which builds up similarly to how an enemy's health bar would be depleted in a normal game. Striking the enemy and rescuing civilians from danger will build up the meter and allow Lucky Charm to be used (or sometimes Cataclysm). For Marinette's Lucky Charm, the player is given an object and required to figure out how to use it to stop the bad guy. However, usually the player will be given some hints if it takes them too long to figure it out (they might have to earn those hints by building up the Hero meter a bit more, however). The game makes sure to carefully teach the player the ins and outs of the combat system, which is fairly easy to learn, with skills that are quite transferable from other hack and slash games. It's possible to skip these tutorials and lessons, but they're easily accessed from the menu should the player ever need to refresh them.
For those familiar with OTL's television show, most of the characters, locations, and themes of TTL's video game are quite familiar. Marinette, Adrien, Alya, Nino, Chloe, Juleka, Rose, Kim, Max, Hawkmoth/Gabriel, Nathalie, and Mr. and Mrs. Dupain-Cheng are all nearly identical to their OTL incarnates in both personality and appearance. There are a few new characters original TTL, though none of them play a huge role in the overall storyline of the game. The game's story primarily follows the events of season one of the TV show, though those events are rearranged for the pacing of a video game and are told in a much more serialized fashion. The game's visual and graphical presentation is similar to that of the OTL TV show, with animation and detail fairly good for a Google Nexus game (obviously the animation isn't quite as good as OTL's TV show, but it's fairly similar). The game's English version utilizes most of the same voice actors as OTL's television show. Cristina Vee voices Marinette/Ladybug, Bryce Pappenbrook voices Adrien/Cat Noir, Carrie Keranen voices Alya, Selah Victor voices Chloe, Mela Lee voices Tikki, and Keith Silverstein voices Gabriel/Hawkmoth. A few TTL voice actors are different, including Nino, Lila, Juleka, and Rose. The major difference in presentation between OTL's television show and TTL's game is the music, which is much more epic and orchestrated, with Michael Giacchino brought in (here's where Google's money comes in) to compose a score that sounds somewhat like his OTL Incredibles score with Eurobeat/techno influences. Daft Punk was also brought in to contribute a few tracks (tying in with the recent release of their Random Access Memories album, though their tracks for this game are all original and mostly influential). The only song from OTL's show that features in the game is the main lyrical theme song, which is identical to OTL's.
The game's storyline, while following the first season of the OTL television series, does so in a way that's more sequential and cinematic. It starts out with Marinette living her normal civilian life, starting out at a new student at her private school, meeting Alya for the first time and also realizing that she's in a class with her crush, the young model Adrien, son of the superstar and ultrawealthy fashion designer Gabriel Agreste. Events conspire to bring Marinette into contact with Master Fu, who sees Marinette's bravery and good heart and eventually decides to give her the Ladybug Miraculous, a magical earring artifact that allows her to transform into the superheroine Ladybug, using her powers to fight supervillains created by Hawkmoth. Hawkmoth does this by identifying people in emotional distress and sending an akuma to influence their minds, transforming them into villains and turning them temporarily evil. When one of these villains starts attacking the city, Ladybug springs into action and manages to stop the villain (in the game, Adrien isn't given his own Miraculous until a bit later on, meaning that for the first couple of bosses, Ladybug is without Cat Noir). Marinette is now Paris' superhero, and must juggle her new identity as Ladybug with her normal schoolgirl life as Marinette. Marinette is able to transform into Ladybug to help people in the city, but the player has only a temporary amount of time that they can become Ladybug during combat and outside of storyline missions, and must find sweet rolls for Tikki in order to gain more time as Ladybug (this is a potentially frustrating mechanic that is handled fairly well in the game, with sweet rolls rather plentiful and the player never able to not transform into Ladybug with a little bit of work). As the game progresses, akuma transformations become somewhat more personal, with some of Marinette's classmates transforming (though major transformations like Alya into Lady Wifi and Chloe into Antibug are saved for the game's second half to maximize their dramatic impact). Meanwhile, the player is able to build Marinette's relationships with a variety of people. Building relationships with close friends like Alya and Adrien is fairly easy, but Chloe's missions are hard and time-consuming, and the player has to put in a LOT of work to get to Level 12 on Chloe's relationship meter (doing so will give the player some satisfying scenes with Chloe in the game's second half, though like in the show, Chloe never properly befriends Marinette, instead merely tolerating her with a Level 12 meter). Building a proper balance between Marinette's superhero life and her civilian life is key to getting the most out of the game's storyline, but it also helps Marinette in battle, as inspired friends tend to do things like helping get civilians to safety, wiggling out of ropes after being taken hostage, or even throwing themselves in front of akumatized bosses to shield Ladybug from mortal blows. They also help Marinette build up both her civilian and superhero stats, so it's ALWAYS worth it to build up a character's relationship meter (but, like in the Persona games, almost impossible on a single playthrough... though in Miraculous Ladybug, it is possible to get all of Marinette's relationships to maximum on one playthrough with the use of a guide). About midway through the game, the character of Lila is introduced. She starts out as friendly, but eventually comes to resent both Marinette and Ladybug, and will be influenced by Hawkmoth in more ways than mere akumatization. She eventually becomes something like an apprentice to him, and is the secondary antagonist of the game. The game culminates in a massive showdown with Lila as the akumatized supervillain Volpina, who plants illusions all over the city and eventually forces Ladybug to surrender herself to Hawkmoth. This is where Marinette's friendships come in: the more people who have maxed out relationships with her, the easier it ends up being for Cat Noir to rescue Ladybug from Volpina. Otherwise, it's a very difficult boss fight. Afterwards, Ladybug manages to free herself with Cat Noir's help, and battles Volpina, who gets direct help from Hawkmoth during the last stage of the fight. Volpina is defeated and de-akumatized, and Lila is returned to normal... though after all of that, she still resents Marinette and Ladybug. The actual final boss fight involves Ladybug and Cat Noir battling Hawkmoth, but though it seems he's defeated, he manages to escape without his Moth Miraculous being taken away. Ladybug and Cat Noir's identities remain concealed to everyone else, and though the battle against evil continues, Marinette has adjusted to her new life at school and as a superhero and the city of Paris stands strong with Ladybug and Cat Noir. The final cutscene of the game features Adrien kissing Marinette on the cheek (though if the player has maxed out Adrien's relationship with Marinette, which is fairly easy to do, that cheek kiss turns into a quick lip smooch), and though Marinette still hasn't admitted she likes him, she knows she'll be with him someday.
Miraculous Ladybug is released worldwide on October 11, 2013. One of Ubisoft's most expensive games ever, the game is heavily hyped and considered one of their biggest releases of 2013, but even Ubisoft doesn't expect just how commercially and especially critically successful the game ends up being. The game is showered with exceptionally high praise, almost unanimous critical acclaim. The game is praised for both its unique combat system and its intense and compelling life sim mechanics, which go far beyond any previous title ever released save for hardcore simulation games with no action/adventure aspects. Marinette is considered one of the best new video game characters of the year, and despite the game's extremely lighthearted and family-friendly tone, it proves almost as successful with older players and critics as it does with kids and families. Seen as a breath of fresh air in a somewhat stale genre and also as a wake up call to the entire industry about violence and conflict in games, it's considered a revolutionary open world title, the anti-Grand Theft Auto, and the apotheosis of the adventure/life-sim genre that Syrielle gave birth to in 1997. Thomas Astruc is hailed as a genius, and Michel Ancel has a worthy successor to his Beyond Good And Evil games (and has also raised the profile of his Rayman series). Reviews for Miraculous Ladybug average in the high 9s, making it not only one of the best reviewed games of the year, but of all time. Sales are spectacular, not just in the United States (they're actually only mildly spectacular in the States, where the game would finish just outside the year's top 10), but in Europe and Japan as well, and the game becomes a killer app, spiking Nexus sales into an important holiday season, and pushing Nexus sales heavily in Japan (where they had been quite sluggish before). The success of Miraculous Ladybug is somewhat of a death knell for Syrielle, which saw a slight resurgence in popularity with the release of its (now ended) Fox Family live action series and a couple of moderately successful games, and while the series would live on (in the form of mobile titles), there wouldn't be another console Syrielle release for many years. Its creator, Suzanne Collins, has moved on as well, returning to television writing (where one of her ideas would be greenlighted for an HBO series before the end of the decade). Miraculous Ladybug sends a powerful wave through the game industry, though it would be a few years before the game's affects would be fully felt. Meanwhile, Ancel and Astruc have already started working on a sequel, expected to be done by 2016, that would introduce brand new heroes to the game's world and would perhaps see Hawkmoth defeated once and for all.
If we could send that picture to ourselves back 2013....would be like WTF..and i would think the below picture was a japanese game
To go through all of the changes between OTL and TTL would be like going to the top of Mount Everest to yodel like a Swiss immigrant. It just wouldn't make sense.
Fall 2013 (Part 6) - Half-Life 3
Half-Life 3
Half-Life 3 is a first person shooter developed and published by the Valve Corporation for the PC. The game continues after the events of Half-Life 2 and its two expansions, which chronicle the struggle of humanity to free itself from the alien conquerors known as the Combine. The events of Half-Life 2 played out somewhat differently ITTL, with Gordon Freeman taken captive by the Combine at the end of Episode 2, while Alyx Vance, reeling from her father's death, remained on Earth and formed an uneasy alliance with the G-Man to help overthrow the Combine while leading a rebellion to take them down. The game is actually fairly similar to its predecessors in terms of basic gameplay, instead choosing to implement new gameplay elements and improve the presentation and quality of life of the game rather than re-inventing itself too much. This gives Half-Life 3 the feel of a fairly "basic" FPS when compared to its contemporaries, but it makes up for that by presenting a wide variety of gameplay scenarios and challenges for the player that bend and break the simplified rules placed in front of them. The game is divided into two distinct halves, with the first half keeping Gordon isolated and separate from Alex, before returning to Earth to help fight the Combine in the second half of the game. During the first half, the player switches perspectives between Gordon and Alyx from time to time, giving them about the same amount of gameplay focus. While Alyx's segments are more straight-up FPS fare (with a bit of weirdness and sci-fi elements due to the antics of the G-Man), Gordon's segments combine traditional FPS with stealth and puzzle gameplay, including the implementation of a Portal Gun and several segments very similar to OTL's Portal, though not as extensive as the portal traversing segments in that game. As Gordon works to escape the Combine mothership, he'll need to retrieve several items and weapons, dodge Combine soldiers, free his fellow prisoners, and solve numerous puzzles along the way, and the game does most of its experimentation with these segments, with each captive that Gordon rescues (three in all) introducing a new element of gameplay. Meanwhile, Alyx's journey gives the game the opportunity to flex its action muscles, with some fairly spectacular shooting segments and even a big boss enemy or two. These segments, while sticking closest to traditional Half-Life gameplay mechanics, are also mostly big open areas and the furthest departure from the closed, claustrophobic areas we've seen in previous Half-Life games. They're meant to give the player a sense of the epic scale of humanity's war against the Combine, especially as Alyx interacts with G-Man and learns more about the wider multiverse. Graphically, Half-Life 3 is one of the most advanced games ever made, with cutting edge graphics that especially shine on higher-end PC rigs. The game is playable on lower end units with the settings turned down, but it's definitely recommended that the player have the best PC they can afford to play. The game's voice cast largely consists of fairly obscure/unknown actors, with Alyx and G-Man's actors from Half-Life 2 reprising their roles. There are a few decently well known actors in the game, with the three captives Gordon Freeman rescues all played by veteran voice over actors or TV regulars (one of them is voiced by Michael Bell, one is voiced by Yvonne Strahovski, and the third is voiced by Craig T. Nelson).
Half-Life 3 begins with a sequence not unlike the beginning of the original Half-Life, as Gordon Freeman is brought on board the Combine mothership, giving him the opportunity to have a "tour" of sorts, and foreshadowing the challenges the player will need to overcome to have him escape. The player gets to solve a little puzzle to try and escape the cell, but it's a tease, and Gordon is knocked out by his captors just as he's about to escape. Back on Earth, Alyx is still in mourning and rage from her father's death, but she doesn't have much time to mourn, as she has to lead a squad of rebels past some Combine troopers in the game's first big action sequence. She eventually encounters the G-Man, whose superiors have told him that he's no longer allowed to interfere in human matters, but that there's an issue of dire importance he needs to take care of: a dimensional travel device has been misplaced, and is potentially in Combine custody. Alyx could use this device to rescue Gordon, while the G-Man just needs it found and brought back to him, unable to retrieve it himself without violating his prime directive. As Alyx goes to look for the device, we return to Gordon, who finally manages to break himself out and begins exploring the Combine ship. He frees the first of the prisoners, an old Black Mesa executive named Robbins (Michael Bell), who knows a way to sabotage the ship, and who guides Gordon through a series of stealth segments. After this part of the game, we return to Alyx, who fights off more Combine troops, gets a bit sidetracked on a rescue mission, and eventually puts a team together to storm the Combine lab where the portal device is said to be kept. We return to Gordon, who meets up with Chell (Yvonne Strahovski), and the two manage to liberate a Portal Gun from Combine control. Gordon and Chell use the Portal Gun to make their way into a secret section of the mothership, but get separated after being attacked by an experimental Vortigaunt beast, and Gordon is forced to flee into the ship's reactor area. Meanwhile, Alyx manages to get the device, but is unable to use it, and is forced to return it to the G-Man. However, it causes a strange space fluctuation when it's used, causing the G-Man to get warped away and causing a massive Combine division to descend upon Alyx's position. Alyx and Gordon manage to make contact after a harrowing action segment, and then we return to Gordon, who frees a civilian named John (Craig T. Nelson) who just wants to get back to his family. Even though Gordon remains silent, the two seem to bond as Gordon bails him out of numerous jams, and eventually John manages to help Gordon reach an area on the ship where he's able to open a warp to Earth, but unfortunately, is stopped by a returned Breen and the ship's commander. This leads to a sequence where Alyx and Gordon have to coordinate crashing the Combine ship on Earth, as Alyx battles an elite Combine trooper and Gordon battles the ship's captain and Breen. The ship's captain is killed, while Breen disappears as the ship crashes in a spectacular dust cloud, but Gordon emerges from the wreckage and reunites with Alyx, kicking off the game's second half.
The second half of the game sees Gordon and Alyx working together to take down the Combine as events on Earth grow stranger and more dramatic. The player will control Gordon for the vast majority of this half of the game, though they return to playing as Alyx once or twice for certain segments where Gordon is absent or incapacitated. Robbins, Chell, and John all return during this segment of the game for various scenes, with Robbins ultimately being killed by Breen in a late-game segment, Chell joining Alyx's resistance as a heroic soldier, and John reuniting with his family, finally, in the game's ending segment. The G-Man begins making appearances again, this time much more covertly, as in previous games, but seems to be subtly guiding both Gordon and the Combine to a final confrontation. Gameplay during this half alternates between combat and puzzle/exploration segments, as Gordon infiltrates several facilities in order to disable a shield keeping the Combine's main forces protected. Alyx, meanwhile, creates diversions with her rebel squadron, but also learns the truth behind her father's experimentations, and also ultimately comes to learn the truth behind the G-Man and why he is interfering with events (though the game keeps some of his goals shrouded in mystery, even after everything is wrapped up). Eventually, after Gordon is able to deactivate the Combine's shields and leave them vulnerable to a massive attack, he coordinates with the rebels for one final strike. However, Gordon himself doesn't participate in the final battle (at first, anyway). Instead, he goes to a secret Black Mesa facility, where Breen has retreated to and where the G-Man has subtly directed him to go. He makes his way through the facility via the use of open combat, stealth, and at times, his Portal Gun, and the facility infiltration represents a sort of "final exam" of everything the player has learned over the previous three titles. He eventually confronts Breen, who tells Gordon that Alyx and her squad are going to die fighting the Combine, thus fulfilling the last end of his bargain with the G-Man and his mysterious organization. He unveils a plan to take over the Combine from within, enabling him to control events in the universe and eventually oversee the past, present, and future, which he will be able to unite with the technology he's procured for himself. Gordon realizes that he cannot stop Breen and save Alyx from the Combine, but is able to manipulate events in such a way to allow Alyx to overcome an otherwise killing barrage. There's then a "boss fight" with Breen that takes the form of a sort of action/puzzle hybrid and doesn't actually involve any shooting, but instead, has Gordon eventually overriding the reactor at Black Mesa, killing Breen. It also seems as if Gordon will be killed, but the G-Man interferes, allowing for Gordon's escape, though this also creates a situation where the G-Man will be shunned by his superiors. Gordon returns to the battle, and has a brief action sequence fighting alongside Alyx, before the player takes over as Alyx to begin the game's true final boss battle against a massive Combine battlemech. Alyx disables the battlemech significantly before Gordon jumps in and weakens it further. Then, the game's final sequence begins, a strange inter-dimensional combat sequence in which Gordon battles the mech in "betweenspace" while Alyx and Chell fight it in "realspace". The mech is finally dealt a fatal blow, but Alyx realizes she has to sacrifice herself to end the Combine threat on Earth while protecting humanity from extinction, as the Combine put a sort of "dead man's switch" in place to destroy humanity in the event of their main fighting force being destroyed. Alyx looks every bit the hero and is fully prepared to sacrifice herself, but at the last moment, Gordon takes her place. He pulls her close and seems to whisper something to her, though we hear only silence and see Alyx's reaction as his body fades into the nothingness of betweenspace. Alyx collapses to her knees, as humanity rejoices its newfound freedom from the Combine. Alyx will be hailed as Earth's hero, but what Gordon Freeman did for humanity will never be known outside of a select few.
The game's ending, a 30-minute series of cutscenes, wraps up pretty much every loose end in the series. John returns to his family, Chell reunites with a long-lost loved one she mentioned repeatedly during her dialogue sequences, Black Mesa is fully disbanded (and while some of its secrets end up helping humanity, others are sealed away in government vaults), and Alyx is able to finally properly mourn her father and enjoy some semblance of a normal life. The G-Man is "reinstated" with his unseen superiors, though he seems to be under some kind of probation, he has a satisfied smile on his face as he disappears (and as mentioned before, the game keeps some of the motives of the G-Man and his superiors a mystery, something that players will speculate on for years to come). Finally, we get a narration... from Gordon Freeman himself, voiced by Bryan Cranston. The narration plays over scenes of Alyx enjoying her new life, and seems to be a repetition of what he whispered into Alyx's ear. Gordon says that he has seen far too much of the universe to ever be satisfied with anything resembling a normal life, and that most of what he has seen has honestly horrified him. He says that he did what he did to give humanity a chance, and that he doesn't want to be seen as a hero. He survived as long as he could, but by the end of it all, he didn't care about surviving anymore. He tells Alyx to enjoy her new life, and to tell everyone she meets to do the same. As for Gordon himself, he's tired, and he's done. The game ends on the hopeful note of Alyx looking to the stars. Unlike Gordon, she's not horrified of the multiverse after all she's seen and done. In Alyx's hand is the dimensional portal device, stolen back from the G-Man. She can go anywhere she wants now, and there are so many places she wants to go.
Half-Life 3 is released on November 5, 2013, to resounding and overwhelming praise from critics and fans alike. The combat is praised for being an old school FPS throwback with just the right amount of quality of life improvements to make the game feel like a modern shooter, the storyline is praised for being appropriately epic and sweeping, the presentation is praised for being an example of groundbreaking graphical technology, and the new gameplay mechanics are praised for being unique and fun, especially the Portal Gun segments. The game lives up to the overwhelming hype, and maybe even exceeds it a little, and is hailed as not only the best FPS in years (and maybe ever), but a major front-runner for Game of the Year, with an even higher Metacritic and Gamerankings score than Miraculous Ladybug. It becomes the fastest selling PC exclusive of all time, narrowly breaking the five year old record set by SimSociety (though its sales legs won't be nearly as strong), and drives major PC hardware sales over the last few months of the year, the first major example of a PC "killer app" in a very long time. The game is a huge success for Valve, wrapping up what will come to be considered perhaps the best trilogy in video game history. The game would get DLC in the months afterword that would include a stand-alone Portal Gun game (which unfortunately wouldn't be nearly as good as OTL's Portal titles but would still be mostly positively received) and a multiplayer deathmatch spinoff, though there would be no DLC chronicling story events taking place after the game. Half-Life would indeed be done, and would represent Valve's final foray into game development, instead leaving future game development to their acquired Bioware studio. Gabe Newell was now fully focused on his Steam platform, hoping to continue to make it the best and most lucrative platform in the industry.
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"There's still no plans to bring Half-Life 3 to home consoles, but Half-Life 3 COULD be coming to a TV near you if rumors about Valve's "Steam Machine" platform hold true. Valve has been rumored to be working on such a device for years now, but the success of Half-Life 3 and the acquisition of Bioware has brought the company's plans into fuller focus, and Gabe Newell has just announced that work has already begun on a kind of unified Steam gaming platform that could be available in stores as early as 2015. Specs are likely to be comparable to a mid-to-high priced home gaming rig, and while that will likely make the Steam Machine a fairly expensive endeavor, and certainly more expensive than even the Virtua, it could also make PC titles available to a wider range of casual players. Another rumor we've been hearing is that Microsoft, which pulled out of the hardware business in 2011 after the failure of the Xbox 2, may be involved to an extent with the development of the Steam Machine. Valve and Microsoft had a notable falling out back in 2007, but where there's money to be made, strange bedfellows are sure to follow, and you can certainly imagine Bill Gates echoing Michael Corleone's classic line from The Godfather Part III: 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!'"
-from an article on PC Backwater, posted on November 20, 2013
Half-Life 3 is a first person shooter developed and published by the Valve Corporation for the PC. The game continues after the events of Half-Life 2 and its two expansions, which chronicle the struggle of humanity to free itself from the alien conquerors known as the Combine. The events of Half-Life 2 played out somewhat differently ITTL, with Gordon Freeman taken captive by the Combine at the end of Episode 2, while Alyx Vance, reeling from her father's death, remained on Earth and formed an uneasy alliance with the G-Man to help overthrow the Combine while leading a rebellion to take them down. The game is actually fairly similar to its predecessors in terms of basic gameplay, instead choosing to implement new gameplay elements and improve the presentation and quality of life of the game rather than re-inventing itself too much. This gives Half-Life 3 the feel of a fairly "basic" FPS when compared to its contemporaries, but it makes up for that by presenting a wide variety of gameplay scenarios and challenges for the player that bend and break the simplified rules placed in front of them. The game is divided into two distinct halves, with the first half keeping Gordon isolated and separate from Alex, before returning to Earth to help fight the Combine in the second half of the game. During the first half, the player switches perspectives between Gordon and Alyx from time to time, giving them about the same amount of gameplay focus. While Alyx's segments are more straight-up FPS fare (with a bit of weirdness and sci-fi elements due to the antics of the G-Man), Gordon's segments combine traditional FPS with stealth and puzzle gameplay, including the implementation of a Portal Gun and several segments very similar to OTL's Portal, though not as extensive as the portal traversing segments in that game. As Gordon works to escape the Combine mothership, he'll need to retrieve several items and weapons, dodge Combine soldiers, free his fellow prisoners, and solve numerous puzzles along the way, and the game does most of its experimentation with these segments, with each captive that Gordon rescues (three in all) introducing a new element of gameplay. Meanwhile, Alyx's journey gives the game the opportunity to flex its action muscles, with some fairly spectacular shooting segments and even a big boss enemy or two. These segments, while sticking closest to traditional Half-Life gameplay mechanics, are also mostly big open areas and the furthest departure from the closed, claustrophobic areas we've seen in previous Half-Life games. They're meant to give the player a sense of the epic scale of humanity's war against the Combine, especially as Alyx interacts with G-Man and learns more about the wider multiverse. Graphically, Half-Life 3 is one of the most advanced games ever made, with cutting edge graphics that especially shine on higher-end PC rigs. The game is playable on lower end units with the settings turned down, but it's definitely recommended that the player have the best PC they can afford to play. The game's voice cast largely consists of fairly obscure/unknown actors, with Alyx and G-Man's actors from Half-Life 2 reprising their roles. There are a few decently well known actors in the game, with the three captives Gordon Freeman rescues all played by veteran voice over actors or TV regulars (one of them is voiced by Michael Bell, one is voiced by Yvonne Strahovski, and the third is voiced by Craig T. Nelson).
Half-Life 3 begins with a sequence not unlike the beginning of the original Half-Life, as Gordon Freeman is brought on board the Combine mothership, giving him the opportunity to have a "tour" of sorts, and foreshadowing the challenges the player will need to overcome to have him escape. The player gets to solve a little puzzle to try and escape the cell, but it's a tease, and Gordon is knocked out by his captors just as he's about to escape. Back on Earth, Alyx is still in mourning and rage from her father's death, but she doesn't have much time to mourn, as she has to lead a squad of rebels past some Combine troopers in the game's first big action sequence. She eventually encounters the G-Man, whose superiors have told him that he's no longer allowed to interfere in human matters, but that there's an issue of dire importance he needs to take care of: a dimensional travel device has been misplaced, and is potentially in Combine custody. Alyx could use this device to rescue Gordon, while the G-Man just needs it found and brought back to him, unable to retrieve it himself without violating his prime directive. As Alyx goes to look for the device, we return to Gordon, who finally manages to break himself out and begins exploring the Combine ship. He frees the first of the prisoners, an old Black Mesa executive named Robbins (Michael Bell), who knows a way to sabotage the ship, and who guides Gordon through a series of stealth segments. After this part of the game, we return to Alyx, who fights off more Combine troops, gets a bit sidetracked on a rescue mission, and eventually puts a team together to storm the Combine lab where the portal device is said to be kept. We return to Gordon, who meets up with Chell (Yvonne Strahovski), and the two manage to liberate a Portal Gun from Combine control. Gordon and Chell use the Portal Gun to make their way into a secret section of the mothership, but get separated after being attacked by an experimental Vortigaunt beast, and Gordon is forced to flee into the ship's reactor area. Meanwhile, Alyx manages to get the device, but is unable to use it, and is forced to return it to the G-Man. However, it causes a strange space fluctuation when it's used, causing the G-Man to get warped away and causing a massive Combine division to descend upon Alyx's position. Alyx and Gordon manage to make contact after a harrowing action segment, and then we return to Gordon, who frees a civilian named John (Craig T. Nelson) who just wants to get back to his family. Even though Gordon remains silent, the two seem to bond as Gordon bails him out of numerous jams, and eventually John manages to help Gordon reach an area on the ship where he's able to open a warp to Earth, but unfortunately, is stopped by a returned Breen and the ship's commander. This leads to a sequence where Alyx and Gordon have to coordinate crashing the Combine ship on Earth, as Alyx battles an elite Combine trooper and Gordon battles the ship's captain and Breen. The ship's captain is killed, while Breen disappears as the ship crashes in a spectacular dust cloud, but Gordon emerges from the wreckage and reunites with Alyx, kicking off the game's second half.
The second half of the game sees Gordon and Alyx working together to take down the Combine as events on Earth grow stranger and more dramatic. The player will control Gordon for the vast majority of this half of the game, though they return to playing as Alyx once or twice for certain segments where Gordon is absent or incapacitated. Robbins, Chell, and John all return during this segment of the game for various scenes, with Robbins ultimately being killed by Breen in a late-game segment, Chell joining Alyx's resistance as a heroic soldier, and John reuniting with his family, finally, in the game's ending segment. The G-Man begins making appearances again, this time much more covertly, as in previous games, but seems to be subtly guiding both Gordon and the Combine to a final confrontation. Gameplay during this half alternates between combat and puzzle/exploration segments, as Gordon infiltrates several facilities in order to disable a shield keeping the Combine's main forces protected. Alyx, meanwhile, creates diversions with her rebel squadron, but also learns the truth behind her father's experimentations, and also ultimately comes to learn the truth behind the G-Man and why he is interfering with events (though the game keeps some of his goals shrouded in mystery, even after everything is wrapped up). Eventually, after Gordon is able to deactivate the Combine's shields and leave them vulnerable to a massive attack, he coordinates with the rebels for one final strike. However, Gordon himself doesn't participate in the final battle (at first, anyway). Instead, he goes to a secret Black Mesa facility, where Breen has retreated to and where the G-Man has subtly directed him to go. He makes his way through the facility via the use of open combat, stealth, and at times, his Portal Gun, and the facility infiltration represents a sort of "final exam" of everything the player has learned over the previous three titles. He eventually confronts Breen, who tells Gordon that Alyx and her squad are going to die fighting the Combine, thus fulfilling the last end of his bargain with the G-Man and his mysterious organization. He unveils a plan to take over the Combine from within, enabling him to control events in the universe and eventually oversee the past, present, and future, which he will be able to unite with the technology he's procured for himself. Gordon realizes that he cannot stop Breen and save Alyx from the Combine, but is able to manipulate events in such a way to allow Alyx to overcome an otherwise killing barrage. There's then a "boss fight" with Breen that takes the form of a sort of action/puzzle hybrid and doesn't actually involve any shooting, but instead, has Gordon eventually overriding the reactor at Black Mesa, killing Breen. It also seems as if Gordon will be killed, but the G-Man interferes, allowing for Gordon's escape, though this also creates a situation where the G-Man will be shunned by his superiors. Gordon returns to the battle, and has a brief action sequence fighting alongside Alyx, before the player takes over as Alyx to begin the game's true final boss battle against a massive Combine battlemech. Alyx disables the battlemech significantly before Gordon jumps in and weakens it further. Then, the game's final sequence begins, a strange inter-dimensional combat sequence in which Gordon battles the mech in "betweenspace" while Alyx and Chell fight it in "realspace". The mech is finally dealt a fatal blow, but Alyx realizes she has to sacrifice herself to end the Combine threat on Earth while protecting humanity from extinction, as the Combine put a sort of "dead man's switch" in place to destroy humanity in the event of their main fighting force being destroyed. Alyx looks every bit the hero and is fully prepared to sacrifice herself, but at the last moment, Gordon takes her place. He pulls her close and seems to whisper something to her, though we hear only silence and see Alyx's reaction as his body fades into the nothingness of betweenspace. Alyx collapses to her knees, as humanity rejoices its newfound freedom from the Combine. Alyx will be hailed as Earth's hero, but what Gordon Freeman did for humanity will never be known outside of a select few.
The game's ending, a 30-minute series of cutscenes, wraps up pretty much every loose end in the series. John returns to his family, Chell reunites with a long-lost loved one she mentioned repeatedly during her dialogue sequences, Black Mesa is fully disbanded (and while some of its secrets end up helping humanity, others are sealed away in government vaults), and Alyx is able to finally properly mourn her father and enjoy some semblance of a normal life. The G-Man is "reinstated" with his unseen superiors, though he seems to be under some kind of probation, he has a satisfied smile on his face as he disappears (and as mentioned before, the game keeps some of the motives of the G-Man and his superiors a mystery, something that players will speculate on for years to come). Finally, we get a narration... from Gordon Freeman himself, voiced by Bryan Cranston. The narration plays over scenes of Alyx enjoying her new life, and seems to be a repetition of what he whispered into Alyx's ear. Gordon says that he has seen far too much of the universe to ever be satisfied with anything resembling a normal life, and that most of what he has seen has honestly horrified him. He says that he did what he did to give humanity a chance, and that he doesn't want to be seen as a hero. He survived as long as he could, but by the end of it all, he didn't care about surviving anymore. He tells Alyx to enjoy her new life, and to tell everyone she meets to do the same. As for Gordon himself, he's tired, and he's done. The game ends on the hopeful note of Alyx looking to the stars. Unlike Gordon, she's not horrified of the multiverse after all she's seen and done. In Alyx's hand is the dimensional portal device, stolen back from the G-Man. She can go anywhere she wants now, and there are so many places she wants to go.
Half-Life 3 is released on November 5, 2013, to resounding and overwhelming praise from critics and fans alike. The combat is praised for being an old school FPS throwback with just the right amount of quality of life improvements to make the game feel like a modern shooter, the storyline is praised for being appropriately epic and sweeping, the presentation is praised for being an example of groundbreaking graphical technology, and the new gameplay mechanics are praised for being unique and fun, especially the Portal Gun segments. The game lives up to the overwhelming hype, and maybe even exceeds it a little, and is hailed as not only the best FPS in years (and maybe ever), but a major front-runner for Game of the Year, with an even higher Metacritic and Gamerankings score than Miraculous Ladybug. It becomes the fastest selling PC exclusive of all time, narrowly breaking the five year old record set by SimSociety (though its sales legs won't be nearly as strong), and drives major PC hardware sales over the last few months of the year, the first major example of a PC "killer app" in a very long time. The game is a huge success for Valve, wrapping up what will come to be considered perhaps the best trilogy in video game history. The game would get DLC in the months afterword that would include a stand-alone Portal Gun game (which unfortunately wouldn't be nearly as good as OTL's Portal titles but would still be mostly positively received) and a multiplayer deathmatch spinoff, though there would be no DLC chronicling story events taking place after the game. Half-Life would indeed be done, and would represent Valve's final foray into game development, instead leaving future game development to their acquired Bioware studio. Gabe Newell was now fully focused on his Steam platform, hoping to continue to make it the best and most lucrative platform in the industry.
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"There's still no plans to bring Half-Life 3 to home consoles, but Half-Life 3 COULD be coming to a TV near you if rumors about Valve's "Steam Machine" platform hold true. Valve has been rumored to be working on such a device for years now, but the success of Half-Life 3 and the acquisition of Bioware has brought the company's plans into fuller focus, and Gabe Newell has just announced that work has already begun on a kind of unified Steam gaming platform that could be available in stores as early as 2015. Specs are likely to be comparable to a mid-to-high priced home gaming rig, and while that will likely make the Steam Machine a fairly expensive endeavor, and certainly more expensive than even the Virtua, it could also make PC titles available to a wider range of casual players. Another rumor we've been hearing is that Microsoft, which pulled out of the hardware business in 2011 after the failure of the Xbox 2, may be involved to an extent with the development of the Steam Machine. Valve and Microsoft had a notable falling out back in 2007, but where there's money to be made, strange bedfellows are sure to follow, and you can certainly imagine Bill Gates echoing Michael Corleone's classic line from The Godfather Part III: 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!'"
-from an article on PC Backwater, posted on November 20, 2013
oh wow, it's way past the mid-2013 US release date I thought of for pop'n music TwinBeat -fantasia-, and the iTwin doesn't even exist anymore. So what does anyone think about the future of the series? Depends on Ubisoft's attitude to KONAMI games (what is it?)