Enslaved As It Should Have Been
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Why read Journey to the West when they have cartoon series and DVD. Of course you would need to know some Chinese unless the DVDs had subtitles for English, but as for any typical Chinese DVD series, they only have Chinese subtitles and a load of DVDs. My parents have the DVD series of Journey to the West, and I only got to around episode 110, and that was only half of the DVDs....now that I think about it, the special effects are corny to todays standards, but that didn't mattered 10 years ago.
The game is Inspired by JTTW. If it WAS jttw then the argument would be stronger. If i make a game branded "inspired by jam sandwiches" it will be related to jam sandwiches- not an actual jam sandwich.
Ive never read the original chinese mythological tale, and maybe that makes me less offended. But surely the game has to have its own identity?
Ive never read the original chinese mythological tale, and maybe that makes me less offended. But surely the game has to have its own identity?
That does sound pretty cool. A more open world then the more linear actual game which could definitely not be a bad thing.
That is one plausible explanation. Another is that a "strong" character in a video game tends to look like they've been doing nothing but lifting weights and taking anabolic steroids since puberty. Do bodybuilders look strong? Sure. They also look deformed.Blind Sight said:
As I believe this very column has demonstrated, coming up with great game ideas is easy; it's implementing them into an attractive, playable, and (dare I say?) fun games is hard. That said, there must be something between idea and implementation that takes all the good ideas (and as long as your idea isn't "fill-in-the-blank clone," it should be a good idea, it being so easy to think them up) and turns them inside out into insane and incomprehensible messes. So if ideas are easy, and implementation is hard, I guess that retaining the "good" essence of the ideas is incredibly difficult. But it does happen: see Portal as an example of a game that didn't let the implementation get in the way of an excellent idea (thankfully, the implementation itself was excellent, too). I think I'm using that word too much... Anyway.
Mr. Robot, for one. It's a Moonpod game. You're trying to fix a colony ship to keep all the people alive and on their way towards whatever. At least, I think so -- it's been a while. It was a pretty good puzzle/platformer, if I recall correctly.Oyster^^ said:
EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the JRPG-like battles when hacking systems. Yeah, that was a good game.
jetpacks = awesome
sometimes, except when the entire enemy team is using them against you in a certain game's online multiplayer
honestly, I loved the idea of Journey to the West the moment I read a line somewhere that this game was ish like that (but I was never interested in this game from the moment I saw pics/vids of it)
sometimes, except when the entire enemy team is using them against you in a certain game's online multiplayer
honestly, I loved the idea of Journey to the West the moment I read a line somewhere that this game was ish like that (but I was never interested in this game from the moment I saw pics/vids of it)
Based on what I know of the game (previews, reviews, videos, since I haven't played it) it's more like "something like a dream I once had about maybe thinking about reading the Cliff's Notes on Journey to the West, but it was today in a big city, and also there were robots," by which I mean the word "inspired" is used in the loosest possible sense. Yahtzee's contribution was also "inspired" by the original, but in his case, the inspiration is much clearer for people who are familiar with the inspirational work yet still enjoyable and understandable for everyone else. It is true that in order to be inspired by a work, you don't have to stick scene-for-scene to the original (though you can, as Yahtzee suggested), but you do need to deal with the same major themes -- in this case, arrogance, humility, redemption -- in a similar way. You don't even have to have the same character names, that's simply the most superficial part of a story (and are the only parts that Enslaved seems to have retained).hi0marc said:
The very first time I heard about Journey to the West was from the TV movie, The Lost Empire [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0198779/] (which I think was advertised as "The Monkey King" on the then-Sci-Fi Channel). Not long after, The Forbidden Kingdom came out, which furthered my interest in the source-material. I never got around to looking for the book, so I can't really say much about the story in question. (Maybe I'll see about it this weekend, and add it to the stack of books I start and never finish.)
While I haven't played Enslaved yet, I am aware of how less-than faithful the adaptation is, but I'm still wanting to play the game. That being said, I would totally want to see Yahtzee's made-up premise realized, just because it is more of an adaptation than Enslaved seems to be (although, Yahtzee's synopsis sounds an awful lot like Mass Effect, to me, what with the traveling to different worlds).
While I haven't played Enslaved yet, I am aware of how less-than faithful the adaptation is, but I'm still wanting to play the game. That being said, I would totally want to see Yahtzee's made-up premise realized, just because it is more of an adaptation than Enslaved seems to be (although, Yahtzee's synopsis sounds an awful lot like Mass Effect, to me, what with the traveling to different worlds).
Self-aware robots is a plot mechanic, that have been used too many times, in my book. Even so, I won't hold it against the idea, but I WILL say that using robots (as interesting as it may sound in others' ears), depersonalize the characters and their development.
While I'm yet to get, what could be the metaphor for the trash robots, Enslaved is still more appealing to me.
I found it funny, how many of the elements in Croshaw's idea, reminded me of Metal Arms: Glitch in System.
While I'm yet to get, what could be the metaphor for the trash robots, Enslaved is still more appealing to me.
I found it funny, how many of the elements in Croshaw's idea, reminded me of Metal Arms: Glitch in System.
While I like Yahtzee's idea, he missed one thing: The overall story of the original Journey West was about a Chinese monk going to India to bring back Buddhist writings to China (naturally, when they found the scrolls, they were blank.) So maybe something about going back to Earth to find the codes that make the colony ship become a colony. or something like that involving a long journey to acquire secret knowledge and bring it back home.
Btw: There is a Buddhist temple in Xian that, according to legend, is the place where Tripitaka and Monkey both began and ended their journey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Wild_Goose_Pagoda At least, that's what the tour guides tell westerners who have never heard of the Journey to the West anyway.
Btw: There is a Buddhist temple in Xian that, according to legend, is the place where Tripitaka and Monkey both began and ended their journey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Wild_Goose_Pagoda At least, that's what the tour guides tell westerners who have never heard of the Journey to the West anyway.