#John woo

[rosamundpkes]

Nathalie Emmanuel in The Killer (2024)

[moon-yean]

LESLIE CHEUNG (12 September 1956 – 1 April 2003)

A Better Tomorrow (1986), dir. John Woo Farewell My Concubine (1993), dir. Chen Kaige Days of Being Wild (1991), dir. Wong Kar-wai Happy Together (1997), dir. Wong Kar-wai Once a Thief (1991), dir. John Woo

[teethburied]

CHOW YUN FAT + TONY LEUNG CHIU WAI in Hard Boiled '辣手神探' 1992, dir. John Woo

[theactioneer]

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

(via @filmhistories)

[anim-ttrpgs]

Exerpt from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. The Woo Roll is one of my favorite mechanics in a game full of my favorite mechanics.

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[boardsdonthitback]

Jean-Claude Van Damme - Hard Target (1993)

[screenbeanz]

The Killer (1989).

[jca-archive]

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

[logray]

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996) dir. Brian De Palma MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (2000) dir. John Woo

[mysharona1987]

Me watching Mission Impossible 2 and realising people consider this the weakest of the bunch:

John Woo basically did what Sam Raimi later did on Dr Strange 2.

Just decided to over-direct the fuck out of something. And it’s fun.

[of-fear-and-love]

Dragon's head money clip from Face/Off (1997)

[moon-yean]

LESLIE CHEUNG in A Better Tomorrow (1986) | 英雄本色 dir. John Woo

[sonjackcarl]

[theactioneer]

Hard Target (John Woo, 1993)

[anim-ttrpgs]

I was looking over the itch.io page for Eureka, and surprised that Blood (1997) was listed as an inspiration. That’s the build era shooter right? If so, I’m curious how the Blood inspiration shows up in Eureka (either mechanics or lore). I’m a huge fan of that game!

Oh yes, that Blood, the best build engine game.

We put Blood on the list of inspirations both because the unpublished novel that Eureka gets a lot of its world building from takes a lot of inspiration from Blood, and also because we want Eureka combat to feel a bit like Blood when the heavy-hitter monsters like vampires get involved.

The unpublished novel gets a lot from the ludonarrative of Blood in its first part. In Blood, a powerful cultist guy, Caleb, is betrayed and killed by the demon he worships, but rises from the grave and fights his way through the whole rest of the cult on a quest for vengeance. Though he isn’t exactly a vampire, he is undead, and can take a few more bullets than your average guy, but he isn’t invincible. A hail of gunfire can drop his HP to zero real fast.

The unpublished novel bears some similarity to this in that it is about a vampire that goes on a gun-slinging rampage in revenge against a powerful cult, though this ends up focusing a lot more on her own self-acceptance and learning to embrace being a vampire and the selfishness that necessarily comes with that rather than making herself as unintrusive to the lives of others as possible to the point of starvation. The antagonists, a sort of gnostic-inspired sect that consider the world a prison designed to inflict maximal suffering, and humanity to be both the wardens and the prisoners of it, purport that the death of all humanity is the only moral course of action. This mirrors the vampire’s own struggle with and eventual rejection of the idea that, as a vampire that can only exist by draining others of life, suicide is the only moral course of action.

And also, like Caleb, she’s undead but she’s not invincible. Normal bullets can put her down for a while in a high enough volume, so success in these shootouts becomes about making the most clever use of vampiric powers that she has thus far in her unlife felt too ashamed to utilize under any circumstances.

As for Eureka, we also just kinda want Eureka gunfighting combat to feel like Blood combat. Bullets can put Caleb or a Eureka investigator down quick, even if they’re a vampire. The guns in Blood are “hitscan”, so instead of there being a physical projectile represented in the game engine, when it is pointed at Caleb there is basically a dice roll as to whether he gets hit or not representing the aim of the enemies. In most games of that era that had “hitscan” enemies, there was nothing the player could do to avoid it or reduce the chance of being hit short of breaking line-of-sight completely. However, in Blood, moving fast, jumping, diving, crouching, etc. actually *do* reduce the enemy’s accuracy. This encourages a fast, high-energy style of combat. So surviving a gunfight in both games is about doing everything one can, from cover, ducking, running, etc. to reduce the chances of dying from a hail of bullets - or just throwing a stick of dynamite into the room.

Eureka is a very intentionally realistic game, but it works a lot with ‘heightened reality,’ meaning, like, the most interesting things that still fall within the realm of possibility. Normal mortal characters are still usually best served by keeping their heads down, but characters like vampires who can take a few extra bullets, and don’t die permanently when they go down, can really push their luck with bold, aggressive maneuvers more reminiscent of John Woo films like Hard Boiled, or the gameplay of Blood.