Zero Punctuation: Broken Age: Act 2

[iller3]

Yahtz, you know you could get twice that amount if you so much as hinted at it. You just love the freedom of developing for free.

Yeah you could literally smell the self-awareness in his tone almost like he was contemplating it. And yet we must also visualize that villainous elevator bumming familiar(imp) on his shoulder at the same time whispering how the price of expectation and becoming what he hates from too much money thrown at a humble man who......JUST WANTED TO GO INTO SPACE

Does every thread have to devolve into GG vs SJWs and vice versa?

2 Of those quotes were taken completely out of context if that's the conclusion you got from it. I'd say you're projecting pretty heavily there but even suggesting someone is "Projecting" is apparently also a video games politics dog whistle now. Honestly I just miss the days when we could call a spade a spade without some kind of "Party Affiliation" being assumed.

 

[Uratoh]

Damn. I wonder if this will kill a bit of the hype that Kickstarted games carry.

To a degree, toning back the raw hype is a good thing. Of course we want people who will actually be able to produce to get the money we need, but people need to look for clear warning signs...and we actually had them with Broken Age, just not from sources we wanted to listen to. Bobby Kotick may be 'satan' to a lot of gamers, but he said, outright, that Tim has no idea how to budget and constantly goes over, etc...and look what happened, EXACTLY what he said. I don't think I'll ever like the man, but he called it spot on.

On the flip side, people shouldn't hold this against all other kickstarters, just use it as a cautionary tale. look at the background if you can, and remember, this is *NOT* a massive preorder, it's a fiscal risk, so temper your dreams accordingly.

With Bloodstained, I'm actually kind of concerned about the 'backer/funder' he needs to 'prove' this to by getting enough money...I'd like to know more details about that.

 

[xxobot]

I would hate to see legitimately awesome kickstarted games hurt from overfunded shenanigans like this. Anyway as much as I'd hate to interrupt the banter up above...

...Am I the only person who noticed that the paintbrush near the end kept changing colours?

 

[elthingo]

It's about the patriarchy. No joke. A guy floating around being coddled by the world and not having to do anything at all. A society where women are expected to sacrifice themselves, and where all but one woman love the thought of it, eagerly awaiting their "death". His coddling leads to more women being sacrificed.

Tim Schafer is a pretty big social justicey type. Not too surprising really that he decided to go with this symbolism. It's not like there's any other option, really. Like Yahzee said, other "good" theory was ruined by the 2nd half. It's just "men are given everything on a silver platter while women have to sacrifice their lives to fuel men's coddledness". So, yeah, Schafer living in the social justice fantasy world, which looks suspiciously similar to the 50s.

 

[Squilookle]

I really, REALLY thought he was going to drop another "scrotum" midway through or after the credits there. Is it wrong to want more scrotum?

 

[Uratoh]

I really, REALLY thought he was going to drop another "scrotum" midway through or after the credits there. Is it wrong to want more scrotum?

Given how much 'scrotum' is in the game...probably not. This image is a big spoiler, so follow it at your own risk. it doesn't tell you much of the overall plot, but much scrotum.

Spoiler

scrotum.

 

[tzimize]

Another thing that bothered me about the game, when you play as Shay everytime you hear about Vella she's pictured as some divine entity who helped everyone in her way and is completely infallible and pure and kind etc. (except the tree).

Every time you hear about Shay while playing Vella he's portrayed as bumbling completely helpless idiot, even by his mother! Can we get more double standard?!

I have played neither part 1 nor part 2 (only seen some videos of part 1), but this sounds like a prime example of the Guybrush Paradox:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B320XBWCEAARjSJ.jpg]

That image hit me right in the feels.

It just gives me that "I want to slap humanity untill it betters itself"-feeling.

 

[THM]

Snip

That is a fantastic explanation. Also, very depressing.

OT: Yahtzee with that amount of money would be interesting to watch. From a safe distance.

 

[iller3]

EDIT: Response Retracted

 

[Fsyco]

I can't be the only person to have noticed that Broken Age is basically just Dark City but with significantly worse writing.

Spoiler

They're both stories where people exist in an artificial environment for the sake of some bizarre experiment-type thing so that some weird superhuman/alien race can continue existing. Except where the Strangers' memory-mixing experiments in Dark City at least made some sense, Broken Age's setup makes almost no sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and none of the answers they give are really satisfactory. Why do the bad guys need to convince people that they're in space? There's a single throwaway line designed to answer it about the 'collectors' "going native", but they never really explain what that means. Why do Shay and his parents look normal while the bad guys from the same region look like H.R. Geiger's rejects? Why exactly do they need maiden-DNA? Dark City's Strangers at least had a good, well-defined reason for their experiments.

 

[Dalisclock]

I can't be the only person to have noticed that Broken Age is basically just Dark City but with significantly worse writing.

Spoiler

They're both stories where people exist in an artificial environment for the sake of some bizarre experiment-type thing so that some weird superhuman/alien race can continue existing. Except where the Strangers' memory-mixing experiments in Dark City at least made some sense, Broken Age's setup makes almost no sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and none of the answers they give are really satisfactory. Why do the bad guys need to convince people that they're in space? There's a single throwaway line designed to answer it about the 'collectors' "going native", but they never really explain what that means. Why do Shay and his parents look normal while the bad guys from the same region look like H.R. Geiger's rejects? Why exactly do they need maiden-DNA? Dark City's Strangers at least had a good, well-defined reason for their experiments.

You know your plotholes are pretty bad when pretty much the entire plot hinges on the question.

Spoiler

Why don't they just use drone ships, so they can avoid the entire convoluted mess? Not to mention they could cram in as many maidens as they wanted, because they wouldn't be wasting so much space on creating a fantasy world for the kid

 

[Fsyco]

I can't be the only person to have noticed that Broken Age is basically just Dark City but with significantly worse writing.

Spoiler

They're both stories where people exist in an artificial environment for the sake of some bizarre experiment-type thing so that some weird superhuman/alien race can continue existing. Except where the Strangers' memory-mixing experiments in Dark City at least made some sense, Broken Age's setup makes almost no sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and none of the answers they give are really satisfactory. Why do the bad guys need to convince people that they're in space? There's a single throwaway line designed to answer it about the 'collectors' "going native", but they never really explain what that means. Why do Shay and his parents look normal while the bad guys from the same region look like H.R. Geiger's rejects? Why exactly do they need maiden-DNA? Dark City's Strangers at least had a good, well-defined reason for their experiments.

You know your plotholes are pretty bad when pretty much the entire plot hinges on the question.

Spoiler

Why don't they just use drone ships, so they can avoid the entire convoluted mess? Not to mention they could cram in as many maidens as they wanted, because they wouldn't be wasting so much space on creating a fantasy world for the kid

They sort of address that, but it's in kind of a hand-wavey type of way mentioned in a couple sentences.

Spoiler

They mention that they need the boy's "intuition" to find the "un-nameable quality" that the bad guys are looking for, but that's really just an excuse to skip over the details of the plot. They could also just breed them in massive maiden-farms or something. Furthermore, how does this allegedly advanced society not know what the hell is wrong with their DNA?

 

[Dalisclock]

I can't be the only person to have noticed that Broken Age is basically just Dark City but with significantly worse writing.

Spoiler

They're both stories where people exist in an artificial environment for the sake of some bizarre experiment-type thing so that some weird superhuman/alien race can continue existing. Except where the Strangers' memory-mixing experiments in Dark City at least made some sense, Broken Age's setup makes almost no sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and none of the answers they give are really satisfactory. Why do the bad guys need to convince people that they're in space? There's a single throwaway line designed to answer it about the 'collectors' "going native", but they never really explain what that means. Why do Shay and his parents look normal while the bad guys from the same region look like H.R. Geiger's rejects? Why exactly do they need maiden-DNA? Dark City's Strangers at least had a good, well-defined reason for their experiments.

You know your plotholes are pretty bad when pretty much the entire plot hinges on the question.

Spoiler

Why don't they just use drone ships, so they can avoid the entire convoluted mess? Not to mention they could cram in as many maidens as they wanted, because they wouldn't be wasting so much space on creating a fantasy world for the kid

They sort of address that, but it's in kind of a hand-wavey type of way mentioned in a couple sentences.

Spoiler

They mention that they need the boy's "intuition" to find the "un-nameable quality" that the bad guys are looking for, but that's really just an excuse to skip over the details of the plot. They could also just breed them in massive maiden-farms or something. Furthermore, how does this allegedly advanced society not know what the hell is wrong with their DNA?

Yeah, I remember that. My response was "Ah, so they're evil, inbred and incredibly stupid. That explains so much".

 

[Ryallen]

I just finished watching an LP of the game, and I actually don't know what Yahtzee was talking about when he referred to a puzzle that required him to sit around with a thumb up his butt. The LPer that I was watching didn't wait in place for something to be solved. Anyone have any idea what he was talking about?

 

[Fsyco]

I just finished watching an LP of the game, and I actually don't know what Yahtzee was talking about when he referred to a puzzle that required him to sit around with a thumb up his butt. The LPer that I was watching didn't wait in place for something to be solved. Anyone have any idea what he was talking about?

There's a puzzle early on in Act 2 of Shay's story where you have to get a snake to suffocate you. Instead of getting rid of the snake, you have to let it attempt to murder you for about a solid minute, and then pick up the snake after it gets tired out.

I can't be the only person to have noticed that Broken Age is basically just Dark City but with significantly worse writing.

Spoiler

They're both stories where people exist in an artificial environment for the sake of some bizarre experiment-type thing so that some weird superhuman/alien race can continue existing. Except where the Strangers' memory-mixing experiments in Dark City at least made some sense, Broken Age's setup makes almost no sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds, and none of the answers they give are really satisfactory. Why do the bad guys need to convince people that they're in space? There's a single throwaway line designed to answer it about the 'collectors' "going native", but they never really explain what that means. Why do Shay and his parents look normal while the bad guys from the same region look like H.R. Geiger's rejects? Why exactly do they need maiden-DNA? Dark City's Strangers at least had a good, well-defined reason for their experiments.

You know your plotholes are pretty bad when pretty much the entire plot hinges on the question.

Spoiler

Why don't they just use drone ships, so they can avoid the entire convoluted mess? Not to mention they could cram in as many maidens as they wanted, because they wouldn't be wasting so much space on creating a fantasy world for the kid

They sort of address that, but it's in kind of a hand-wavey type of way mentioned in a couple sentences.

Spoiler

They mention that they need the boy's "intuition" to find the "un-nameable quality" that the bad guys are looking for, but that's really just an excuse to skip over the details of the plot. They could also just breed them in massive maiden-farms or something. Furthermore, how does this allegedly advanced society not know what the hell is wrong with their DNA?

Yeah, I remember that. My response was "Ah, so they're evil, inbred and incredibly stupid. That explains so much".

You know what this game's plot reminds me of? The X-files. They were clearly making it up as they went along, and never provide any satisfactory conclusion to the initial intrigue. Plus, slogging through all the old locations while trying to reach the conclusion is alot like having to watch all those MotW episodes before you get to a myth-arc one.

I think I'm mostly just disappointed, since there's a lot of genuine potential in the writing. They either needed a new, revised draft, or some extra room to explain the story. Actually going to the bad guy's hideout would have been nice.

 

[Dalisclock]

You know what this game's plot reminds me of? The X-files. They were clearly making it up as they went along, and never provide any satisfactory conclusion to the initial intrigue. Plus, slogging through all the old locations while trying to reach the conclusion is alot like having to watch all those MotW episodes before you get to a myth-arc one.

I think I'm mostly just disappointed, since there's a lot of genuine potential in the writing. They either needed a new, revised draft, or some extra room to explain the story. Actually going to the bad guy's hideout would have been nice.

Hell, seeing the city(more then just a single flyby) would have been nice. You know, get some decent context for Operationandelion.

Which begs the question of what did they do during the last year and a half? They had half the story written, a great set up
to a nice twist....and apparently couldn't think of ANYTHING else to do with it. They obviously didn't spend any time on creating new locations(save one) or characters(save one). And with what they had set up, you'd think that would have narrowed down the possible plot-lines they could derive from it, so why they went all Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy on us is bizarre.

 

[Fsyco]

Hell, seeing the city(more then just a single flyby) would have been nice. You know, get some decent context for Operationandelion.

Which begs the question of what did they do during the last year and a half? They had half the story written, a great set up
to a nice twist....and apparently couldn't think of ANYTHING else to do with it. They obviously didn't spend any time on creating new locations(save one) or characters(save one). And with what they had set up, you'd think that would have narrowed down the possible plot-lines they could derive from it, so why they went all Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy on us is bizarre.

Personally, I get the impression that they kind of just stopped caring about the project. In the intervening time between Acts 1 and 2, they released a game from early access, and released another game into early access. Yahtzee said the game seems rushed and like it was brought out to fulfill an obligation, and that's the exact impression I got too. They blew their creative load, so to speak, on making Act 1, and then moved on to wanting to make other projects. Then when they got around to finishing Broken Age, they just slapped a lot of old assets together and made up a bunch of stuff as they went along, simply because they had to deliver something, not necessarily because they wanted to anymore.

 

[Sergey Sund]

There even was a "get me rich" parody Kickstarter campaign because too many people just got belted in the face with dollars and then either never delivered or delivered some sorry excuse of what they promised (because: contractual obligations).
It has worked out in a couple of cases, but the odds seem to be akin to playing numbers at the roulette table. One guy is a pay-off, and aaaaaaall the rest will immidiately make you regret your descision (read that: 2 years later when you realise that your 50$ didn't buy you diddly squat).

 

[4Aces]

I like how KS hides all these failures from public scrutiny. I guess they really do earn their 10% and whatever kickback they get from forcing everyone to use Amazon. I will not back anything on kickscammer.