#it's so funny how yong yea voices this guy though

[den-ai-d]

FUCK YEAH, I GOT ZHONGLI🤣🤣🤣🤣

Was gonna be super mad if I didn't end up getting him here cuz I pretty much lost SO BAD on the Hellagur banner BUT WE PREVAILED!!!!!!!

[2bstudioblog]

Konami’s wheels are turning... slowly

Lot’s of interesting news heading to our heads this Monday from what I heard from Yong Yea’s video about Konami wanting to outsource their IP’s to 3rd parties.

Obviously, Akira Yamaoka has kinda given away a strong hint that he’s working on a project with Bloober which in this case would be the long awaited SH remake or the direction they had with PT before it got cancelled. Akira Yamaoka also decided that (too late) he wanted to amend the article from his interview and release it later down the line. It’s very unusual that these news happen, but we all know Yamaoka is most famous for his music in Silent Hill.

Which brings me to a funny story about my own involvement of a Silent Hill game. I mentioned this on a podcast that I was part of 2 Konami-owned IP’s that went into another direction and killing off their franchises which have been like dead bodies in a morgue for the last 7 years.

I got the request to write industrial-metal music for a Silent Hill (of course at this time I only knew the IP and their most famous version of the game has been Silent Hill 2.) game. First I was of course very excited to be part of the series, but I jumped to early until I found out it was a Pachinko-machine (A japanese style pinball-game mixed with a touch-screen and a one-armed bandit and a slot-machine in one.), and my heart sank a little. I think I produced 4-5 cues for the machine, but I’m glad that nobody will be able to hear my “mediocre” masterpieces because all you would hear are metal-balls falling into a tray. But the thing about this machine, it had taken cut-scenes from Silent Hill 2, upscaled or even re-mastered/remade the graphics which would have looked great if it was its own game. But it was the same thing they’ve done with all their other IPs when those transfer over to this kind of entertainment. All what was left of it, Jim Sterling turned the game into a Meme and all I can hear is the -”HIT THE LEVER!” and the effects overpowering the music behind it. But I’m glad it didn’t go further then that. Technically here, Silent Hill(s) died with the arrival of the pachinko-slot machine and the series have tried to re-establish itself ever since.

Another game I was a part of was a Castlevania (Dracula in Japan) themed Pachinko-slot machine, with the revolutionary phrase “Erotic Violence” in it’s PR material and video-commercial. I mean, they took the music production part of this machine very seriously because I wasn’t aware of the “EV” part. I just thought it would be a machine praising the history of Castlevania. I was assigned to re-write and re-orchestrate a few songs from Neo-classical Metal music into more Progressive Metal style, and I was super-proud of this one because they had the sheet-music already available for me. All I had to do was re-arrange some parts for a string-quartet (1 cello, 2 violins and 1 viola) and I believe it was engineered and recorded by famed engineer Kenji Nakai who was under and working with famed engineer Mr Bruce Swedien (Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones).

From that moment me and Mr. Nakai stroke a friendship because he has a passion for Progressive Metal and he asked me if I could send more songs his way. From this we both have been incredibly busy on both of our ends, but I hope we can be able to work on something in the future. I have a feeling that might be soon.

So a long story short, Konami spent a lot of money for recording, they approved everything and we were done. But when it turned out to be a pachinko-machine and not a world-wide videogame release, I just had to facepalm myself, asking the question why they keep doing so many poor decisions. Why leaving all those fans out in the cold and really start making Castlevania mean something. This void of “lots of fancy things, but no substance” started right here...

Konami are turning their wheels a little bit too late and too slow until now. After they got rid of Hideo Kojima (Who I believe was thinking of the international-market rather than the domestic one), Konami had only one thing on their minds: Making money quick and domestically. No more wasted time on translations, straight for the gambling crowd. No need to write interesting stories. No need to introduce kids to this adult material. They wanted to earn it back as fast as possible. But we all see their decisions put them on the map as a “black-company”, who mistreat their staff, shaming them out in the office for overstaying their lunch-breaks. Moving staff from one business to another, from a programmer to a Konami-fitness Center-staff, or as a toilet-cleaner at a Konami-owned pachinko-slot gambling hall. The management of the company has been horrendous for the full-time employee. I’m glad I was not part of these later projects and only wrote stuff for them for Pro Evolution Soccer series from 2009-2012. (My work on 2010-2012 was unfortunately un-credited work. :(

Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain In My Ass

When the playable teaser called Metal Gear Solid - Ground Zeroes, came out on the PS3 and later on the PS4, it was an introduction for the new graphics engine designed by Hideo Kojima’s team, simply called The FOX-Engine. Basically this “game” was more of a demo rather than a full-product. But it looked great and with a fantastic score by Akihiro Honda, Ludvig Forssell and Harry Gregson-Williams, it had everything going for it to become something really awesome. It became a standard approach from Hideo Kojima now to produce “Playable Teasers” to show a great concept while offering a 3-4 hour short campaign, showing off the engine’s graphical capabilities.

Still, the story was under progress and I knew early on that Hideo Kojima really didn’t want to do it after he always felt that Metal Gear Solid 4 was final. But here is the curse of the die-hard fans, and I’m sorry to say it. No matter how many Iron Man movies Marvel crams out, at the 3rd movie, I started to feel “This does not feel like Iron Man anymore”. But that’s what the fans wanted and is a standard in the movie industry. Always produce a trilogy. Indiana Jones has always been the 3 movies from 1981-1989. The 4th one doesn’t really need to be called Indiana Jones at all. It was there I felt, just like with Metal Gear Solid V, they were beating a DEAD RACE HORSE.

I can’t deny the talents on display for Metal Gear Solid - Ground Zeroes. It laid down some really cool foundations for the gameplay, but I still believe the better game-series for stealth was beaten by the likes of Splinter Cell and most recently Thief. Stealth in MGS has always felt a little bit childish and I only really enjoyed MGS 1, MGS 2, tried to play MGS 3 (still have it one my Vita!) and will try to finish it. MGS 3 has felt like the TRUE Zeroes experience, with the inception of the story and lore behind the cloning of Big Boss. MGS 4 finally brought it all to a great finale and I felt, there is NOTHING more to tell. MGS 1, 2 and 4 is the Trilogy, MGS 3 serves as the Prequel and I see nothing wrong with that.

Mission - Erase Kojima’s Legacy

The making of MGS V - The Phantom Pain is kinda true to it’s title. Can you feel the nostalgia? Or are we just imagining the sensation of a Metal Gear Solid game past it’s prime? The missing link? The missing limb? And with the worlds biggest cop-out  of everything that had to do with story was completely missing.

Each mission is playing out every time the same, with an intro to a TV-show, giving away massive spoilers to who would appear in the mission, you do your thing (not so much of story, just a “go-here, do that approach, sneak back out, head to pick-up) rinse and repeat. I wonder how much of this was Kojima’s fault? I don’t think he was up to it. I’m sure he fought for more story but the big heads didn’t want to listen to what makes a MGS game a MGS game. The new management had now already played the hand to disown the man who put Konami on the map for games since the mid 80s.

The game is no longer marketed like before. The tagline “A Hideo Kojima Game” no longer exists and will never be part of Konami’s mission of erasing the person who gave them their fame and the recognition that a game carrying the name Konami was a brand of quality for any gamer out there. Me myself, personally only played PES because of the stellar animations, but its recently since 2012, I stopped playing the series. FIFA had already cheapened itself, PES likewise. Updating the graphics, but the same old animations have been recycled back to the PES3 days. Maybe there’s been an update in the collision engine, but otherwise everything stayed the same, with the huge amount of data collected from previous years of motion-capture, why do it all over when its all about the brand recognition? Saving money on processes wherever possible. Simple Math. And here it is. MGS V is not a MGS game.

We already knew it was going to be a massive budget behind the game of MGS V. But what can Konami do to save money on MGS V? They already have the Fox Engine running from Ground Zeroes. The assets for “Snake” (I’ll let you know why I put quotation-marks around it) and standard models will extend somewhat. Oh, yes, let’s save money on a character that doesn’t speak (Quiet), over-sexualize the character to start a fan-base of people who just dig character design, animated a sexy “shower” routine for the character for boys to go nuts over. What about voice? Let’s not really try to sync the voices to the mouths. Let’s have the guy from “24″ record his performances onto tape-logs. Kiefer Sutherland would have been a good “Snake”, but I understand now that you are not “SNAKE”. The game explains pretty soon at the end that you are just a Medic and all the tapes you’ve been listening to is the original Big Boss. You never where the character of Snake. Even though this all could have been handled better, Konami wanted to save money wherever possible. We also knew David Hayter was not asked or put forward to return as “The Voice of Snake”. But in this case I start to wonder myself, David Hayter might have dodged the biggest bullet in the most expensive, commercial and very controversial game of all time once Konami decided to kill everything that built up their reputation.

Even during production Kojima managed to start working on PT. The game Konami “silenced” after it was released on the PS-store. Guillermo Del Toro and his friendship with Hideo Kojima’s dream-game was put on ice. All because Kojima was about to get frozen out of the company that was according to Konami “Wasting too much bloody money”. I might get blacklisted for saying this, but once the new management started to mess with the other IPs for just domestic/gambling market, that’s where everything went sideways. Konami wasn’t treating their heritage with respect.

It took them 7 years to realize their mistake! And now, for those who wants to be part of 3rd party developers who would get a crack at a new Castlevania, a new Metal Gear Solid (remake I hope), Konami has realized that the only way they will survive (Yeah, Metal Gear Solid Survive killed them HARD) is to let other’s take over. Maybe my dream of scoring a Metal Gear Solid game would be somewhat more possible now rather than working in the confined space of limitations posed by the higher ups at Konami. Let 3rd party developers breathe life into the IPs because I know there are smarter ways to tell a story and I would gladly like to see the return of David Hayter in the seat, without having to deal with the blank-face approach that he was faced with every time he had to audition for Snake in MGS 2, 3 and 4! David Hayter is a fantastic writer, actor and voice-actor. He has the chops and I think we are all ready for either a re-make or a better follow up to MGS 2 and the time between that one and MGS 4.

[some-far-far-away-land]

Chesca’s Current Status

This weekend was amazing and gave me so much happiness, something I feel like I haven’t been in a long time. You know that the rest of this post is gonna explain why lol

So earlier last week I heard that a friend was selling tickets to the Alex Aiono and William Singe concert that I had been eyeing since like I think December or January, whenever they had released their tour dates. I was debating about it but by the time I decided tickets sold out already. So when I heard about my friend selling her ticket, the whole week I thought about it. I told her I’d tell her by Friday night. The week goes by and I was still debating, I was pretty broke and i knew if I went I would spend a lot of money on like getting there and back, and then food, and subway. What actually made me decide was that after class friday Nat Jose and I went for coffee with our old Don and I mentioned I was debating in going to toronto for this concert and Nat was like, “yo, lets go, i need a getaway and celebrate finishing design.” Plus Nellie was throwing a late bday party for Paul Saturday but I knew that Lisa would be there and that Thavi could potentially be there too. I honestly just didn’t want another repeat of gfx. I wouldn’t have been comfortable and I didn’t want that to translate on a celebration. Plus thinking about being in the same room as those two made me really anxious. I mean I know I didn’t do anything wrong but its the bad vibes and negativity I know those two people have for me that would make me uncomfortable. I mean if you had a choice I think you would choose a weekend in toronto by yourself, going on a few dates and going to see one of you favourite Youtube singers live, over a few hours of not knowing how to act around two people who use to be the closest people in your life who have now come to hate you for who know what reasons? 

So yea after a night of drinking and dancing at Phil’s with Nat, Jon, and Jose, which by the way was super fun because of the drunken talks and the company. Nat and I ventured off to Toronto Saturday morning. We went and got Pho in Chinatown, and then went to Eaton’s to shop and pick up some stuff. We ate there and didn’t go to Celene and Abby’s place till around 6pm. Funny story about where we ate for dinner. We went to the like cafeteria type place. I went to the coffee and pastry section since I was still full from Pho. I got an iced latte with a cheesecake. While I was in line, there was a hella rude customer who was on his phone telling the guy behind the counter (who was pretty cute btw) that he wanted more syrup on his waffle. He was also waiting for his drink and when the girl called it out he didn’t think it was his, when it clearly was. When he had left the cute guy behind the counter and another co-worker who I realized were filipino started talking about how rude he was. I listened and laughed cuz I know their struggles too and when the guy gave me my drink i smiled and said Salamat, and he was thrown off by it and he smiled back and I went on my merry way. 

Conversation with Nat was pretty good, we go pretty deep into my stuff, just with dating again and how I had been feeling the past few weeks. After that we went back and I redid my make up and taxied to the venue. I thought I was gonna be late but the show didn’t start till 8pm, line just started to move at 7pm. We get into the venue and its just standing so no seats. Its pretty packed and it was cold in there. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Jezeth but she was in the middle and I couldn’t find her so I just chilled where I was. When alex came out I had an amazing view of him, like most of the people there were girls who were with their girl friends or girls with their boyfriends, plus most of the people were asian so they were all shorter then me all I had to do was tippy toe a bit and I could see alex so well! The girls I ended up standing with and eventually befriending were super fun! They were drinking too so their vibes were legit and we danced and fangirled the whole time together! 

So let me talk about Alex, this man, omg he was so much cuter in person, his smile 10x warmer and his voice.... like fuck me, lol Like I thought that it wouldn’t sound as good as his videos but honestly he sounded exactly the same, even better live actually. I could listen to this man sing and play guitar for hours! I totally jus vibed out during his set, really took in the moment and just enjoyed being in the same space as him. *sigh* his gf is so lucky! lol

So after Alex it was obviously William and I only knew him from the songs he and Alex collabed together on. I honestly was not prepared, like this man, was sooooo good live, like his falsetto is on point, his covers were amazing! I love his style, his r&b swag and even his original songs... man. He got me feeling feels too. A little bit into his set my phone died and I actually am so glad it did. I really jus experienced the night and really enjoyed myself without worrying about getting things on camera. I just lived in the moment. I was just so happy and loving life. Alex ended up coming back later on and they sang the songs they did together and I almost died, like I felt like I went to heaven lol

After the concert, which ended around 10:30pm I decided to walk back, well partially. I had to find a place that was open where I could charge my phone. So I went the Tims on College and Yonge. Stayed there for a bit and then took the street car to Abby’s place. Decided to get BK cuz i was hungry and then waited for Nat to come back since she went to go and hangout with Jack while I was at the concert. When she got back we talked a bit before we went to bed. I let her sleep on the bed and I took the ground, which wasn’t bad actually.

So we wake up and we originally planned on having brunch with Jack and Bri but Jack was too sick and Bri’s schedule was too busy so we went for lunch with Celene, her man, and Abby. The place we went to was near Koreatown and we ate at this cute restaurant that had the best eggs benedict I’ve every had in my life. I go mine with baby spinach and the home fries was covered in this sauce and like i died! The conversation was good too and it was nice hanging out with friends. It was such a beautiful day too! Like the nicest day of the year so far I think. I mean I didn’t wear a coat and walked around the whole day. after lunch nat and i walked around koreatown, got my favourite fish dessert and just chilled. She had a carpool a 5pm since she was having dinner with her roomies so she went back first. I actually had a date for that afternoon but he cancelled saying he had worked out too hard in the morning and pretty much felt sick. I wasn’t too bummed about it since I still got to hangout with my friends and eat good food. We’ve been having good conversations on facebook and he seemed sad we couldn’t hangout, but its okay things happen for a reason.

When nat left I went for a bbt date with this guy I had been talking too for a week now. He was Korean and was actually pretty nice and sweet. Like physically he was okay but conversation was nice and he spoke english pretty well despite only living in Korea until like 4 months ago. He was super sweet and even walked me to my subway. it was cute date, i’d talk to him again lol

I was supposed to meet up with other friends for dinner but they cancelled last minute because something came up. Another guy I’ve been talking to for a week asked if I was free to grab dinner since he wanted to see me while I was still in town. I said yes of course, and we ended up getting dim sum in Chinatown and it was honestly sooooo good! This guy is filipino and he’s one of the ones I enjoy talking to via text all week so i was excited to meet him. He was actually so much better looking in person and his voice, sounds so nice. Like its deep and he has a filipino accent which I didn’t think i’d like but I totally did. Our conversation was so good and i just felt comfortable with him. after dim sum he offered to subway with me all the way to yonge and sheppard. thats like 30 mins on the subway. My carpool was at 10:30 so we went to the meet up spot and the carpool cancels last minute! At first I was annoyed and furious cuz now I’m stuck here till tmrw morning. But what happened after made up for it. 

We subway back to Abby’s place and then we decided that we wanted to walk around for a bit. guys, we ended up walking 3 km together. We went down beverley st. all the way to queen st. down john st., past front st. and all he way down to the harbourfront. We sat by the water for 30 mins, just talking about life, relationships, school, etc. The spontaneous nature of the whole night was something I honestly have never done before. Probably one of the best first dates I’ve had. we ended up walking up spadina from the rogers centre and made a full circle back to Abby’s place. We walked for 3 hrs almost. When we said our goodbyes he hugged me so tight and I was gonna kiss him on the cheek but i ended up giving him a peck on the lips, and then he hugged me again and then this time he kissed me and then just walked away all shy like. It was so cute and like the best way to end my night.

I went to sleep around 2am I think. Woke up at noon, and went and got starbucks with celene and her man. Then took a go train to bramalea and then a bus to kitchener go, then the 8 bus to asian grocery, then walked to campus and made it for the 5pm meeting. We then set up at 6pm for our event, and then EOT was at 7PM-10PM.

So that was my weekend getaway with myself. Honestly I’m so happy I decided to go away, even though now i’m hella broke, it was so worth it. I mean like I finally know what I want to do and what I’m gonna tell my parents my plan is. This weekend gave me motivation to get my shit together and just go after what I want to do and what I want to pursue. I swear I’m meant to live in Toronto and based of the events of this weekend I feel like in my gut its where I’m supposed to be.

I plan on going back in 2 weeks, after I’ve made some money and you know finished school stuff lol