#the whole core of this series is the deep connection and delicate balance of the padawan bond

[mylordshesacactus]

God though the fight choreography in Ahsoka really is next fucking level.

Like. Every so often I think fondly about the lightsaber duels in the OT because, bluntly, there weren't lightsaber duels in the OT. There were a handful of scenes in which two characters who didn't like each other much both happened to be holding lightsabers, and on some occasions they tapped the lightsabers together to make very satisfying noises. But we've now come far enough in the star war that we're getting detailed attention to genuine fighting styles, and fighting styles as character essays in themselves.

I just love it.

This show does SO MUCH characterization through physicality in combat; there's a whole meta-dialogue happening just through the portrayal of lightsaber forms and it has SO MUCH heavy lifting to do and does it WELL.

Like, for example, all the little character details that have to be PERFECT in the first two confrontations. I'm just gonna do the tower fight at the moment because the forest battle is its own whole thing and the wolfwren meetcute tower fight illustrates it just fine on its own.

Things that had to be established with little to no exposition in those two fights:

Sabine and Shin are pretty much equals, overall, in combat; BUT

Shin has her VASTLY outmatched as a duellist specifically, because she's been training in solely lightsaber combat more intensely and for longer; BUT

Shin doesn't KNOW that, because she's never fought Sabine before and all she knows is that she's facing an unfamiliar opponent who was Jedi-trained; AND

Sabine DOES know she's outmatched in this fight--she's unarmored, not a small deal for a Mandalorian, and armed only with a lightsaber that while she has trained with it pretty extensively she explicitly hasn't touched in years; BUT

Sabine is ALSO, separately, a highly skilled martial artist and hand-to-hand fighter even with the disadvantage of not being in armor. She's not a pushover or a flailing idiot.

Like it's obvious before Shin even draws that Sabine is not going to win this fight--and Sabine at least is visibly aware of it.

It's clear from their stances alone. Sabine stands and moves like a novice--not untrained, mind, but a novice. She's very cautious, very aware of her footwork, and while that's a good ready position it's extremely hesitant, she's not comfortable in it. She wastes more movement. Shin on the other hand is solid, confident, and grounded.

But not arrogant. Sabine is moving like someone with experience in combat, and Shin doesn't know her or her abilities, so she doesn't rush in at the first sign of weakness. Shin might be more immediately confident with saber combat, but she is also proceeding with extreme caution.

She lets Sabine come to her, ceding the first move in favor of giving herself a chance to read her opponent before committing to anything. And when they do start exchanging blows:

Don't get me wrong--Sabine is NOT a flailing idiot, for all this specific shot makes it look like she's leaving herself open. She's just....not fluid with her lightsaber. She drops her guard when she runs, because running with a plasma sword without burning yourself is actually extremely difficult and she's keeping that thing away from her body while moving at speed.

Her strikes are decent, but her technique is sloppy and she wastes movement--again, not in a way that suggests she doesn't know what she's doing, but in a way that highlights the gap between knowing what a technique is supposed to look like and actually being able to pull it off in a live-combat scenario.

Shin, meanwhile, is fluid, deliberate, efficient, fully in control of every movement--but, frankly, she mostly looks like an impressive threat in this fight because it's an apprentice-level skirmish between two evenly-matched opponents, and Sabine is at a stark disadvantage.

Don't get me wrong, Shin's doing very well--but in a way that highlights her main strength as being extremely solid on her fundamentals. None of these are high-level moves, almost all of them would show up in a youngling kata, and the few that wouldn't are mostly flair like this dramatic-ass battle pose.

We do see some signals that Shin's saber training is at a meaningfully higher level than Sabine's, though--she's had time to develop some of her own technique! I love the way she uses her cape as a combat asset; that's not something Baylan would have taught her, he doesn't have her highly-mobile fighting style (to put it lightly) and it feels just practical enough.

So they feel like viable rivals, Shin feels like a viable threat, and there's still a visceral awareness in the kind of choreography they're given that if Sabine fought Baylan, or Shin tried to 1v1 Ahsoka, they would not last ten goddamn seconds.

[phoenotopia]

2019 December Update

The game is officially playable from beginning to end!

That battle has concluded...

Soon begins the war! But first, a brief reprieve for the holidays.

And I must throw in the usual caveats. We're still playtesting, we're still polishing, we still gotta get age ratings, more red tape, etc etc. And most importantly, we need to figure out the launch strategy. Think Megaman, charging his shot for 5 and a half years... We're not allowed to miss at this point. It has to HIT.

Luckily, we're in a relatively stable position where we don't have to rush the game out immediately. It's not LAUNCH or STARVE - it's... take some time to aim a little. We don't want to launch in the shadow of a bigger behemoth game, and we don't want to launch completely unknown either. We have to build up the game's media presence, which has been neglected so far. I know it's annoying to have to continue to wait... but please bear with us a little longer!

Here's what we've been doing for the past couple months.

---------- THE SCRIPT ----------

The script sits at over 80,000 words. I didn't realize the significance until a teammate told me that that's actually as long as a novel! I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a little longer than the first Harry Potter. But unlike Harry Potter, hardly any of these words are wasted on, pffft, narration. It's all juicy dialogue!

(Some of the game's golden nuggets of dialogue)

There was actually a lot of mundanity getting to the end. Pirate, acting as my editor, caught tons of errors and inconsistencies. One of the most recurring issues had to do with capitalization. I like to capitalize things, often inconsistently. Some common questions that arose:

Why is this text highlighted yellow, and this one highlighted blue?

Why is this monster name capitalized, but this monster not?

Why is this item capitalized, and this one not?

... and so on!

All very mundane issues, but all very necessary to tackle. And there was a TON of 'em. (em vs 'em was another thing we had to make consistent). I actually did some research to see what capitalization rules Zelda had. From what I could tell, when it comes to animals and monsters in the Zelda universe:

All monsters are capitalized

All regular animals are not capitalized

The Cuccos are special, and ARE capitalized

(a collage of Zelda pictures I assembled to study)

In the Zelda universe, all regular items are lowercase, but highlighted blue when mentioned in a quest context (e.g. "butter", "hylian wheat"). Items can be uppercase, if they are special named items (e.g. "Sheikah Slate"). We adopted similar rules as Zelda in some cases, and deviated in others. For instance, in the Phoenotopia universe, there isn't a clear distinction between animals and monsters - that fish monster is really just an animal that happens to be the alpha predator in its natural habitat. So most entities are lowercase, but "big deal" entities can be uppercase.

(we made a formal document to consult whenever a question regarding capitalization arises)

---------- A SAMPLING of QUEST AND CHARACTERS ----------

A lot of new quests have arisen in our great writing effort extending over the past several months. And with it, new characters, big and small. I'll tease a sampling of some of them here (warning: some light spoilers ahead):

My favorite new quest is undoubtedly our game's new "Trading Quest". This one takes inspiration from the Zelda series - the trading quest similarly has you roaming the world and its towns in search of needy people who desire a particular item. Deliver them the item they desire, and get a new item. Do this 10 times, and the ultimate weapon awaits you at the end.

I tried some things to vary up the formula. Some NPCs don't reveal what they need right away - steps have to be taken to get them there. It's also possible to go down the wrong route in the sequence, and have to double-back. We try to keep it interesting.

---------- LOOT PLACEMENTS & GAME BALANCING ----------

A great effort was also spent towards balancing the game this past 2 months. Because even one good healing item, easily obtained, can throw the game's whole difficulty off-kilter. And this same principle applies to other areas, like the money economy and player powerup options. Altogether, they form a very delicate ecosystem for enjoyment.

One of the recent things I did for this game was put down exactly where each heart ruby, energy gem, and moonstone could be found. And this was actually a rather involved process because you have a limited number of rewards to distribute (you wouldn't want the final max HP count to be a weird number like 297). Put too many rewards in the beginning, and the late dungeons would have no rewards to offer. Put too much in the end, and the inverse happens.

I found myself going back into earlier areas and plundering their rewards to fill the later areas. And then to ensure a relatively even spread of rewards within each area themselves, I drew crude maps of the dungeons & their reward spots, so that they could be studied from a bird's eye perspective.

But it was still not enough. With NPC quests and towns also taking up their own allotment of the rewards, I found myself running low on things to distribute. So I went back to the books and upped the number of rewards across the board. Before there were 44 Heart Rubies to collect - there are now 55. Before each Heart Ruby boosted your max HP by 5, but now each one now boosts your max HP by 4, so your final max HP count would still end up the same. It's kinda similar to what happened with Twilight Princess, where they broke with tradition and made 5 heart containers required to gain a new heart instead of the usual 4. Overall, the final tally for treasure to find is:

55 heart pieces

30 energy gems

108 moon stones

Who's crazy enough to collect them all?

---------- BADGES / ACHIEVEMENTS ----------

As one of the game's finishing touches, there's a menu for BADGES - they're this game's version of achievements. This is an ongoing task that we hope to stamp out this December. A few favorites of mine from the original flash game will return ("Pillow Connoisseur" is among them).

(The menu looks like this before any badges are earned)

I allocated slots for just 33 badges, so we're selecting the badges very carefully. We got rid of most of the fluffy ones that appeared in the flash game - we wanted to reduce the number of badges that you would earn automatically for just playing the game (so no more "1st boss", "2nd boss", "3rd boss" achievements). We're aiming for a healthy mix of easily earned badges, hard earned badges, collectathon badges, secret fun badges, and so on.

The badges have another twist - they bear miniaturized portraits of characters from the game! In the initial brainstorm mockup phase, I wasn't really fond of the badge designs. You got a medal of a heart because you collected some hearts, and you got the medal of a moonstone for collecting moonstones, etc. It just seemed so... expected.

(various badge mockups)

How could we engage the players on a more fun and deep level? The idea came - what if we attached pictures of the people you meet on your journey? And these people's stories and character would have a connection with the achievement? That could keep the player guessing which character would come attached with an achievement, or even reveal a hidden detail about the character you didn't know.

---------- MUSIC ----------

Will has just one more task to do. And that's to recut the song for the trailer. One of our other goals for this December is to make a really good trailer... again. There's actually 2 other trailers we cut and never made public for reasons. Maybe I'll talk about them one day in the post-mortem.

Since this may be the last conventional update, we wondered with which song to best leave the audience. And we decided that the most suitable song is "Sanctuary". It's a song that the player will often encounter often when they happen upon a quiet resting place in the world.

There's a little story behind this song. Two and a half years ago, I linked Will the Earthbound song, "Buzz buzz's prophecy", and told him, make a song like that!

In response, Will made "Sanctuary".

Give it a listen HERE. What do you think? Did Will hit close to the greats?

---------- FAN ART ----------

Three fan arts have come in the last couple months. I display them here proudly:

Another submission by Cody G! Gale looking shy as she flashes the V sign for the camera. I like how Cody G's art is continually evolving. Note the additional detail on her eye, and how her hair is drawn extra fluffy. Very nice!

Shafiyahh is another consistent contributor, and made one in the spirit of Halloween. I really like their costumes! Gale as an angel, and Lisa as a demon, fittingly captures their relationship, since Gale is the responsible one and Lisa is the troublemaker. So cute!

A contribution from a new artist, Negativus Core! Wow, Gale looks so bada-- here! We often forget about Gale's tough side due to the cutesy graphics. This is probably how her enemies see her. And the gummy (slime) is a cute touch!

---------- FINAL NOTES ----------

Similar to last year, this will be the last update for a while. If things run too slow, I'll post a status update come end of February 2020.

It's possible, and this is a BIG IF, that something notable happens sooner than expected - like we're going to a con or we have reason to drop the trailer sooner than later. If so, this blog will update earlier than expected. BIG IF. Otherwise, it's end of February till next you hear of us.

The game's development has reached a new uncharted territory. We're going to take the time and figure out exactly what our next steps are. In addition, we'll still be doing some playtesting and script polishing. And we'll be taking a break too. It is the holiday season, things move kind of slow around this time of year. We'll enjoy the company of our family and friends.

Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

[video-drone-blog]

No Cartridge: Everyday Conspiracy

((Hi all! as we move into our final piece on Firewatch, a reminder that you can support No Cartridge at patreon (www.patreon.com/hegelbon), paypal (www.paypal.me/hegelbon) and on twitch (www.twitch.tv/hegelbon). We also will soon be moving to another, singular website, so keep your eyes peeled for that! Onward and upward, thanks to your support!

Oh, and spoilers, as always.))

One of the more underreported weirdnesses of the American wilderness is just how many damn people go missing on a yearly basis in our national parks. Well, underreported may be unfair -- it’s not as if there are a lot of misconceptions about the dangers of parks, how easy they are to get lost in, and what can happen if one veers off the trail. But the cavalcade of paranormal stories -- some along the lines of r/nosleep style fiction, others in the realm of true conspiracy theories -- are a bit more subterranean.

Popularized largely by David Paulides Missing 411 series, the nefarious reasons for disappearances in our national parks have gained steam in a national moment where frankly most of us would rather learn about aliens, conspiracies, and the occult than actively engage in the world surrounding and vexing us. So whether it’s just the deeply fatal quality of the wilderness, tragic missteps, or something darker, we’re drawn to stories about the events we can’t readily explain that happen in areas we more often than not don’t really think about. Is it any wonder then that some of these theories end up looking more like questions about shadow governments, surveillance, or unseen forces? No, of course not -- but what’s underlying those theories, anyway?

The most gripping storyline in Firewatch, as I discussed in my previous piece, is the story of Brian Goodman and his father, Ned. Ned, years ago, had the job of the player’s avatar Henry, and Delilah, his friend, confidant, and psychological lover in the tower across the way, grew to have a fondness for Ned’s son, Brian. Brian was in the Shoshone National Park in defiance of state rules banning minors from the park during forest fire season. Delilah knew about Brian, but said nothing as he seemed to be enjoying the outdoors and was getting some time with his (fairly bad) dad.

You end up learning about Brian in fits and starts, first finding his backpack full of ropes that allow you to rappel down steep cliffs, and then hearing stories about his (importantly generic) Dungeons and Dragons campaigns that he played with Celia. By the time you reach the fort Brian had set up outside the cave systems that undergird the Shoshone, he’s almost like a third character in the game, a phantom that refers metonymically to the world outside of the park, the past and future of all the world spinning outside of your own personal soap opera.

And as it happens, you need a phantom to keep the massive complexities of the park and its residents in perspective as your own massive problem and conspiracy unravels in front of you. After finding two girls firing off fireworks and lecturing them to mixed results, you find your guardtower trashed, the phone lines cut, and a taunting set of panties left to identify the vandals. Unfortunately, the girls are missing when you find their trashed campsite, and they go missing completely.

Immediately, you are a suspect, as your character is the last to see either of them alive, and even Delilah delicately asks what happened to them and if you know...anything at all. You don’t, and suddenly the specter of disappearance is brought up -- a sheer drop, a drowning, a murderer. It’s unclear, but it’s also potentially incriminating to Henry.

And this is exacerbated by the discovery of “Wapiti Station”, a seemingly abandoned research station that is surrounded by a massive fence and is inaccessible to everyone, including rangers. The discovery comes after the girls go missing, and directly afterward, Henry is assaulted from behind after finding notes that dictate his and Delilah’s conversations, copying routes and exact diction. Suddenly, the two realize they’re being watched, and the teens disappearing seem like an harbinger of future danger than an isolated tragedy.

The danger continues to mount as both Henry and Delilah start to doubt each other, begin to see the entire forest as a sinister set of unspoken threats or misrepresentations. Quickly, after the introduction of Day 75, where Henry is sitting, legs dangling on a rock face eating a sandwich, the whole relationship unravels under the force of the threat of Wapiti Station, one part Paulides, two parts the spy novels littering the rangers’ stations in the Shoshone. The facelessness of your confidants suddenly become deeply suspect, and no one can be trusted -- the conspiracy is too wide to comprehend.

At the point at which Henry and Delilah decide to explore the caves -- convinced something must be down there that will lead to the Truth -- they think they are being framed for setting a fire at Wapiti Station, they assume they are being surveiled by sinister forces, and they fear for their lives. The conspiracy has deepened to an incredible degree, and the stakes have risen to levels that, had you asked in Day 1, would seem absurd. The cave, our firewatchers and the player all think as one, is where the solution will be found, the thread that unravels this entire terrible puzzle.

And of course it is. They find the dead body of Brian at the bottom of the cave and all intrigue stops. In quick order, the fire ravaging the Shoshone requires extraction of our protagonists, and we find out that Brian’s death has been the moving factor of the whole campaign of conspiracy. Ned, Brian’s father, has been trying to scare you and Delilah off the trail of his dead child, a child he has left to mummify in a cave while he hung out away from the law in a national park. The girls turn up in a local jail, and the intrigue of the game turns into nothing more than dueling codices -- trying to connect all of the dots while Delilah begs you just to leave it all be and get out before the forest burns around you.

But in the end, anything but the true conspiracy underlying the game is a disappointment to Henry and to the player, one that requires concerted effort to re-litigate. In the end, there’s nothing there but a body, but the conspiracy masks this much more tragic banality with the promise of horror and barely speakable governmental darkness. Killers, creatures, aliens, spies -- it all comes down to a kid who didn’t keep his balance while his dad forced him to climb.

This let down is natural, and a part of what’s at the core of all comic book, videogame, or otherwise “nerd” culture. There is no cabal of rich, callous murderers in Ciudad Juarez, there are just banal and horrifying killings of women. The loss of a child in a park is not an abduction by an alien or a cryptid; it is a deeply unfortunate and unavoidable moment of tragedy. Pop culture helps us to believe that the banal moments of our life that impact us the most are not base trauma -- the things that keep us from owning or engaging with our lives to the fullest -- but mobilizing forces to our continued revelation of a more profound world. There is no tragedy here, in other words, that isn’t a door to perception.

But this is also what conspiracies do for us. We use them to convince ourselves that there is some sort of deeper logic to the world around us as opposed to a series of unknowable tragedies. And who would a conspiracy appeal to more than a man who lost his wife to Alzheimer’s and a woman who lost everyone she ever got close to. The protagonists of the game need a conspiracy in the same way many lonely people through time have needed one. As The Last Podcast on the Left has surmised: people need the Hollow Moon to fill some sort of deep hole in their lives.

But what Firewatch shows us is that there is nothing at the end of the narrative other than a dead body and a lack of explanations. Videogames for ages have been teasing massive conspiracies only to provide let-down compromises, the actions of a few crazy men or women read into larger significance in order to justify the machinations of a larger videogame narrative. Firewatch seems to be going that way, and while any seasoned gamer is probably ready to be disappointed, the gut punch full-stop of the actual truth is worse. There’s nothing that can steel us for the actual truth, the fact that there is no darker secret to most of our lives than the fact that none of them ride on a clear narrative.

Firewatch gives us a ton of narratives, too -- Henry’s relationship with Delilah; the missing teens; Brian and Ned; the notes found throughout the park; the research center; hell, even the fires themselves -- all of which resolve into dust by the end of the game. There’s no ultimate point to anything Henry does in Firewatch, and that’s certainly not for lack of trying on Henry’s part. It’s due to the fact that, despite our best efforts, the banality and everyday randomness of life is more likely to hit us than a true novelistic arc. Far more common in real life, and far rarer in fiction, Firewatch gives us a look at what happens when we turn over all of the rocks and follow every lead to its very end: we feel cheated by the materiality of the real world, that ubiquitous presence that reminds us of the solidity and the unremarkable quality of life.

Conspiracies, in the end, are nothing more than a set of snapshots taken by a stranger.