cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Skyrim just blew my mind with its metal ingots · 11:55am Aug 11th, 2015
My first time through Skyrim was without any of the DLC, and I lost interest and drifted away from it. However, last summer I got myself the GotY version, and I've recently started playing again.
And since people will ask...
Meet Ka'zul, level 47 argonian, aspiring arch-mage and would-be dragon King. Isn't she just the prettiest little thing in front of her hoard? 
Still, this time I've noticed something in Skyrim I want to nerd out about. That and quite a few pictures below the cut.
You guys remember the dwemer, AKA the Elder Scrolls version of long-lost dwarves?
Remember the bronze like stuff all their stuff is made of, but still looks almost as pristine as the day it was forged?
To quote the wiki:
"No other race has replicated whatever process was used to create dwarven metal. Although it can be easily mistaken for bronze - and in fact many forgers of dwarven materials use bronze to create their fake replicas - it is most definitely a distinct type of metal of its own."
―Calcelmo, Dwarves, v1
But guess what I learned today? Feast your eyes on an alloy named aluminum-bronze!
No wonder the mainly middle-ages world of Tamriel doesn't have a clue how to actually replicate the metal! It uses at minumum about 4% alluminum to a max of about 11,5%!
For those of you whose jaws have yet to drop, let me rephrase that. That's 1/25 to a whopping ~1/8 per weight of a metal that used to be more expensive than gold.
Because before we figured out electrolysis and could actually use stuff like bauxite, pure aluminum was so rare that most emperors didn't bother being that flashy.
And there isn't even a hint about this in-universe, because again, after the dwemer killed themselves and/or ascended to a higher plane there isn't a soul left that knows the secret! Every scrap of the stuff is lore-wise looted from the still standing, semi-autonomous ruins! I might be miss-remembering due to how long it was since I played it, but if I do remember right there was even a town in Morrowind that 'mined' one of the ruins. Sending in heavily armed looters at set schedules, and letting the autonomous guardians repair the place before repeating the high-risk, high-reward process.
Even as the player, AKA the legendary dragonborn, you need to go plunder yourself bits of scrap if you want to do some DIY dwemer metal smelting.
And guess what? In real life aluminum-bronze is highly praised because it doesn't rust, doesn't corrode, doesn't stain, and its even biostatic!
In plainer if longer words: Its expensive, but looks nice and pristine even after decades of use slash misuse!
Just like the dwemer ruins and artifacts! 
I mean, wow, that's some research for what 99,9999% of your player-base is going to take one look at and think: 'Huh, weird extinct dwarf-elves unobtainium, neat. Pretty colors. Wonder how much it goes for back in town?'
Hell, most science-fiction writers don't bother getting stuff like metallurgy right to that level, let alone for a high-fantasy setting. 
Bethesda might get a lot of flack for how buggy their games tends to be, but I think you can see why their stuff sticks with people. There's just this sense of scope and vision all the way down to the details that's almost awe inspiring compared to most other studios and games.
Napoleon infamously had a set of aluminium dishes that he used when the solid gold tablewares just weren't good enough. It was considered monstrously opulent. "And there's the Emperor of France, eating out of an empty Coke can."
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Oh, I'd heard that but forgotten. Thanks for the reminder.
The apex of the Washington monument is also aluminium. At the time of casting it cost more than a years wages for one of the workers that actually put the monument itself together.
Nowadays somebody in the same business could buy three-four such replicas if they managed to pay only the material costs on one hour's worth of wages.
History's neat somtimes.
My personal favourite, in terms of Elder Scrolls "lore," are the 36 Lessons of Vivec, especially the "Three lessons of ruling kings." They're sometimes considered one of the best pieces of video game fluff ever written, not only because they're a really good read, but also because they're secretly a set of instructions for beating the game in the alternate way, the one for which you don't have to go through the storyline.
Kill Vivec. Find Sunder, Keening and Wraithguard. Fight your way into Dagoth Ur's lair, destroy the heart, win the game.
Congrats, the ruling king has removed his maker. You've reached heaven by violence.
Morrowind is the best game.
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Oh yeah, bit dated by now but man is Morrowind a gloriously broken gem of a game.
My own moment of glory in that game was when I figured out that a pair of exquisite pants, a grand soul-gem, a couple of thousand gold and the 'fortify athleticism' effect lets you become Vintage Superman.
'Rocket Pants MRK 5' or something like that I believe I called them. Fun times.
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He can jump over giant crabs in a single bound! Yeah, Morrowind was great for that. It's one of the few games I've ever played that really let you do anything you wanted, including breaking the plot. Ultima 7 would probably be the next-closest. The alternate route I was talking about is actually official, though. It even has its own dialogue.
Also, I bet you would've gotten a kick out of the "Alchemic Omniscience Loop." The thing about alchemy is that potion strength and duration both scale with Intelligence. Fortify intelligence is a possible potion effect. Find a reliable source of two ingredients, stockpile a bit and... well, you do the math. Morrowind stored stats as unsigned 32 bit integers. +60,000,000 intelligence effects that lasted for twenty thousand real-world years were trivial to make after a few iterations. I miss games like that.
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Actually, that's one of the big reasons (plus the horribly dated interface I wasn't a fan of from the start) why I haven't replayed Morrowind.
I just can't help but remember my first character and how I took her from a tired and piss-weak prisoner with only the clothes on her back, to a walking, glass-clad behemoth of such wretched power that I frankly should have been able to punch out the gods themselves if the game had let me.
And sadly, I just can't go back to being as weak as you start in Morrowind. Going from a zero to hero is one thing, but playing somebody so weak they can get laid out by a crab just outside the starer village just isn't for me.
If you really want to break Morrowind, though, I'd recommend a peak at this. Highly amusing 'how not to actually play this' type walk-through.
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Well, technically, you could punch out three. Two, if you don't have Tribunal.
There are ways to get around the startup phase, of course, but yeah, that was really the big weakness of that game - the combat system was really, really shit. Skyrim's still isn't actually fun, but at least your to-hit chance isn't dependent on your stats anymore. I don't know how you can fail to punch a crab ten times in a row. Fucking Bethesda.
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Perhaps I'm a joyless murlock at heart, but I actually really like the combat in Skyrim.
There's just something really satisfying to me to slowly creep into a crypt, and turn the entire population of Not-Quite-Dead Town into extra dead pincushions from every doorway.
Bonus points for the times when I get to call forth a minor bow-demon from the depths of oblivion and have enough gems to steal all those tasty druger souls.
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It's fun, no doubt, but it's more like playing Thief than a first-person action game.
...buuuut that's a topic that has been
bitchedwhineddebated to death pretty much all over the internet, so I think it's really not worth getting into here.Back to the original subject, it's always good to see people actually doing the research for their works! I suspect I might be a bit unusual in that I actually knew about aluminum bronze before this, but wasn't aware of its use there (might have something to do with my never having played the game...), and I'm pleased to say it's just as encouraging from the other side.
Also, excellent timing on the post - I literally just finished rereading the extant Mistborn books a day ago. Quite apart from being excellent in their own right (and if you haven't read them you really should), they're quite apropos in that the magic systems all use metals as their catalysts, including some real metals most people probably haven't heard of. The Alloy Of Law (plus its upcoming sequels) is particularly relevant, considering that it's set after aluminum's well-known to their society but before their discovery of the Hall–Héroult Process, and so aluminum is ridiculously expensive even before taking into account its local anti-magic properties. Cleaning out a single train car carrying some smuggled aluminum is enough to finance large-scale thieving operations for months, and the main reason the protagonists escape the first major clash mostly unscathed is that most of the thieves ignored orders to have their aluminum-alloy magekiller bullets loaded and ready, for fear of accidentally wasting shots that are literally more valuable than shooting gold.
(And my personal favorite: aluminum's anti-magic properties mean that wearing an aluminum-foil hat to ward off mental influencing actually works. Quite useful, for anyone rich enough to afford it.)
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I've heard good things about that series and its magic system, but have yet to track down a copy.
Speaking of on topic, though, one thing I really enjoy about the entire Elder Scrolls series is how near to the point of madness detail orientied it is.
Hell, Skyrim apparently contains the entire continent of Tamriel (!), if a rather bare-bones version more or less just so that any player that claws themselves to the edges of the map will get a lore correct view.
Even Shouts, the big new thing for Skyrim, apparently got a small mention in that Redguard game even if back then they were called 'battle cries.'
Something that makes me hope they make a Black Marsh game one day. (The home of the argonians.) Crazy dangerous magic swamp filled with lizard people and sapient trees with mutagenic sap? If any studio can do that justice, its Bethesda.
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Personally, I found it beyond boring. The first book was alright, but Vin is an awful protagonist - all the personality of a wet paper towel. Her boy toy isn't much better. The consistent (but not particularly complex or or interesting) magic system doesn't really make up for that. Well, if you can even call it that. Six or seven different superpowers don't really a system make. It's wordy, but bland.
Heh, nice find.
Post-Oblivion Bethesda deserves every bit of flack. Every fucking bit. For destroying two good CRPG series. By the way, most of people who made Morrowind and my beloved Daggerfall were axed before Oblivion left the production stage.
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Well I'm a fan. The magic system was amazing in the scientifically consistent 'Actually feels like it could be a real thing,' department.
...and Vin was an adequate protagonist...
That being said there is a cast of interesting characters surrounding her so that helps.
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...How unlikable are we speaking about here?
Because I'm one of those that can't force myself to read on if I dislike the protagonist. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant for instance I threw into the nearest wall despite finding the world fascinating the moment he raped a girl due to... no longer having leprosy? What?
A rather extreme example that one, I know, but my point stands. I just couldn't read past that.
...Fallout and Elder Scrolls, you mean?
Think I'm going to have to politely disagree with you on that one. I won't deny I think Fallout 3 is the weakest in the (main) series, but in my book that's like comparing a giant to a quartet of titans.
(The gibbering goblin with rabies and pants on his head is a far greater mark of shame, anyway.)
I won't deny I consider them all time classics but 1&2 are badly dated by today's standards. I mean, things like traps, science and trowing being near useless in both games? How did that ever happen twice and all the way to launch?
Again, I won't deny there are frequent bits that are rather stupid if you actually stop and think about them. Like say, that bit in the original ending were you have to be suicidally stupid for extra pathos or a cold-hearted bastard with no middle-ground. But to me at least it hit all the important bits, performed a well-needed modernization of the game-play and most importantly was really, really fun to actually play.
And well... I'm not even nearly masochistic enough to play a game I don't like to level 47, so I'll admit I'm biased about Skyrim even without the heavy Nordic themes I'm a bit of a sucker for.
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Warning! Spoiler tags are spoilers (duh.)
She isn't unlikable, just less interesting than many of the characters around her like Sazed, Spook, OreSeur/Tensoon, Kelsier, and the even the Lord Ruler is great in the hindsight of the later books.
My biggest problems with her are a bit of blandness, and the damage of living as a street urchin for her young life is a little too easy for her to set aside when she needs to play the role of a noble lady, which she does far too well for the amount of training she has had. It could have been handled better, and she comes off as a very mild Sue at times. I've seen many worse though.
As for the magic systems there are two (technically three,) based on using metals to gain effects. The main one featured involves swallowing small amounts of certain metals and 'burning' them to manifest a particular supernatural effect per metal. The other involves storing attributes in certain metals and retrieving them later, copper for example can store memories, and acts sort of like a shitty computer called a coppermind (and the transfer speed is 'as fast as you can read the book')for storing large amounts of information.
The new series of it he is writing now and taking place a few hundred years in the future explores these magic systems working together in interesting ways.
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Not that dislikable, or I wouldn't even have gotten that far. Just boring. The fake-out protagonist, Kelsier, is a decent enough "innocent prisoner with a grudge" sort. He's vindictive, sarcastic and interesting, but he doesn't stick around. Vin is your standard "traumatized pickpocket urchin" kind of deal that turns into a superheroine within two chapters or so halfway through the first book. It's stupid. She had no personality besides that whole being terrified of everything shtick and no personality left at all afterwards.
...Well, that escalated faster than I expected.
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One of Sanderson's major strengths is coming up with solid and consistent magic systems. If you've heard of Sanderson's Laws, yes, this is that Sanderson. If you want to learn about magic (or technology, or whatever) design for story purposes, it's very worth taking a look at his books and reading his notes/listening to his talks.
(And to bring up the obvious comparison: as much as I like Jim Butcher, his magic systems are definitely not as good. They're obviously sufficient to allow for good stories, but they don't really feel entirely natural - especially the Dresdenverse magic, which seems kind of cobbled-together.)
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Don't suppose you could expand a bit more? Believe it or not, you're the first person I've run into who actually dislikes the series (or so it appears, at least), and your thoughts would be informative. Painful too, I suspect, but oh well....
Incidentally, did you read the second/third books in the original trilogy and/or any of the other series? (I'm guessing not, but you can't assume these things.) They might address some of your complaints; if nothing else, at least they should make it clearer that there's more going on than "six or seven superpowers".
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That's going to vary quite a bit based on your personal tastes, but if you can deal with the sort of situations in the Dresden Files, you at least won't end up chucking the books away due to moral dissonance. Most of the characters are a bit more subdued than Dresden or Tavi, so if you only want larger-than-life figures you'll have a hard time, but hopefully that won't be a problem.
Notable POV Characters (Original Trilogy) - needless to say, spoiler risk:
Vin: The one Wlam doesn't like. I wouldn't write her off so blatantly, but it's true she doesn't start off as impressively as some of the other characters: she's used to hiding to try and keep herself from being hurt by those around her, so her crewmates' personalities tend to outshine hers at first. (In a lot of ways, she starts off most like Fluttershy - there's a friend in there, but you'll need to put in a lot of effort to draw her out.) She's healed a lot by the end of the first book, but she still ends up growing as a character all the way through the climax of the third.
On which note, I suppose it's worth mentioning that one of the themes of the books is friendship. Sound familiar? No, not the obvious - you may recognize some crossover with The Dresden Files in that regard. Both touch on how the topic looks in fairly dark settings.
"You still have some things to learn about friendship, Vin. I hope someday you realize what they are." - Kelsier, The Final Empire
Kelsier: The one Wlam does like, and easily the most iconic character of the series. You should definitely notice some similarities to Dresden. Discussing him to adequate depth would probably take quite a while, so I'll hold off unless you have specific questions.
Sazed: Solidly a scholarly mindset, but something of an unusual one. He's just as important a driving force as Kelsier, though much subtler (to the point of mostly not realizing it himself), and the two make for a rather interesting comparison.
Elend: Another one Wlam doesn't like. More of a conventional scholar, and something of an oblivious idealist to start with. Given the setting, that needless to say gets painfully beaten out of him once he's forced to confront the real world. His development focuses a lot on trying to balance what ought to be with what can be, and ultimately ends up developing The Lord Ruler as a character too: helping people involves walking the slippery slope, and his increasing similarity to The Lord Ruler doesn't go unnoticed.
End, for now. I was considering doing the second series, but it's probably better to deal with just the original trilogy at the moment. There is, of course, room to expand these bits (and to add more characters), but I'm currently running out of time. And considering how drastically things change within and between books, some of the others are really big spoiler risks.
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There's some merit to that, but I don't know if I can wholly agree. While I'm thankfully not experienced with the kind of emotional damage Vin has, I can vouch for the effectiveness of immersion training, and it would strike me as a bit odd if half a year of practice didn't produce significant results. Combined with the fact that she's explicitly stated to be using her acting training from life on the streets, it doesn't seem outlandish for her to play the part of an inexperienced noblewoman reasonably well.
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"Escalated" seems a bit dramatic. I don't feel all that strongly about the series, I just don't think it's very good.
As to how far into it I got, I think it was about up to the middle of the second book. At that point I decided I didn't enjoy myself anymore and dropped the series. That said, I'm definitely not the only person I have ever met who didn't like the series. I've discussed it a bit in a literature forum I frequent and opinions seemed to be split pretty evenly along the middle. A decent portion of people liked it, but the ones who don't like it really don't like it. From the excerpts I've been shown, I rather suspect that I wouldn't enjoy the rest of Sanderson's work either. The books seemed to be rather less popular with the older crowd, which I suppose is only natural with genre fiction. I'd really sort it into Young Adult, myself.
As to the rest, Vin is honestly such a blank to me that I couldn't tell you more than two or three things about her at all. She used to be a thief, she has an earring and then she started doing backflips everywhere with her Real Ultimate Power. Her boyfriend (whose name means "misery" in German, by the way, which is a lot like what I felt whenever he was on screen) is pretty similar, except he doesn't even have the tragic background to give him a little bit of color.
The whole powers thing was a bit of a hyperbole (...hypobole...?) but the general point is valid. I can't really call it a system of anything, because there's nothing systematic about it. There's these powers and people use them, but there's no depth to it. The whole thing is flat as a pancake. I'm told that's another thing Sanderson does a lot. He's wordy and descriptive about what his characters can do, but he barely goes into the why of it, which makes them incredibly limited and uncreative. In all honesty, it reminded me more of a superhero comic than something like The Wheel of Time (as bad as that series is in many other respects.)
The long and overly-detailed fight scenes didn't do that impression any favours. When the backflipping starts, my eyes just glaze over and I start skipping over whole sections. It just bores me.
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To be fair even Dresden himself admits that he's not the sharpest spoon in the drawer and the books are from his POW.
That, and its easy to forget but by wizard standards Dresden is basically a snotty nosed brat that keeps getting in trouble. Hell,his own Master has clearly kept some rather serious bits of knowledge from him, even such basic things as I'm your grandfather for fear of how it might be used against both him and Harry himself.
I'd actually argue that the rules in Dresden are really darn hard and rigid by the 'Sanderson's laws' definition.
Dresden the character simply have a flawed and partial understanding of the rules, and I think that's a point deserving acknowledgment given how many fantasy stories just hand-waves everything magic or have characters understanding it 100% perfectly all the time.
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The WoT series really deserves more credit for what a large part of the world it made its magic, and how logically the implications of it all were.
Like that vow of truth for instance. Nobody trusts whatever the word for female wizards was because within months of taking that vow they all turn into such masters of double speak you can't actually trust them on as much as if the color of the sky is still blue.
And how nobody dares to as much as not bow deep enough anyway since... well, they've got magic and nobody has figured out a counter to that except knives in the night. And even that's a last resort since their magic is that useful despite the constant annoyances and trust issues.
Neat stuff like that.
Now, if only Robert could have described sword fights without 'the crane piddles on the rising goat, as the glorious swan died inside, metastasizing into the toad of verbosity in defiance of the bluebird's loathing ...'
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Yeah, you can say what you want about the characters - and boy, can you say things about the characters - but the worldbuilding is solid like a rock that is also half iron made of diamonds. Some of that stuff has stuck with me enough that I can recite it from memory, even though it has been at least ten years since I last read one of the books.
Oh, by the way, the whole sword fighting is supposedly a reference to real-world Wushu fighting, which actually has flowery names for its moves like that. Loved the way you put it, though.
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Yeah...
I'll give the bunch of whiny brats this much: All of them have some serious freakin' flaws to overcome.
Rand keeping that damn lithany of all the women that's fallen for (Or by his hands even!) him —and only the women— still sets this tiny flame of anger in my heart whenever I think about it, though. I'll say that much.
I'm certain all those husbands, sons and brothers you've outright thrown away due to pride and idiocy just grew on fucking trees, you insensitive twit with a martyr complex!
...
Sorry, but I think I needed that off my chest.
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I think it's supposed to be a part of him going crazy with his past-life voice in his head (because, you know, he killed his wife and children), but yeah, that got so fucking tedious. Then again that whole series is sexist as hell. Not necessarily in an insulting way, most of the time, but still super sexist.
Oh, btw, amusingly, the Dresden Files magic system is only partly something that Butcher made up. About a quarter to half of it is actually more or less stolen relatively intact from real-world "occultism." The whole thing about circles, at least, the words stuff, pentagrams, etc. It's kind of funny, actually.
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Thanks.
But yeah, one of my strongest memories of that series is, sadly, having a second bookmark, just so I could actually understand what the hell was going on in the sword fighting scenes.
I even outright remember thinking: '>Wow, this would be so cool if actually described, but all these made up and silly animal names just kills all haste and excitement in it. Its like reading a freakin' IKEA manual in the wrong language and a lexicon at your side, just with a slightly higher chance of dismemberment.>'
So... yeah, I don't think that quite worked as well in practice as in idea.
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First, it was console-only, so doesn't mattered for PC series.
Personally, I heard about it when undead body of Interplay started to develop grave wax.
Second, it's spin-off (just look at passable X-COM:Interceptor or ridiculous Enforcer) and last, but not least, speaking of this atrocity is like saying aloud at family gathering why child of first cousin Joe and first cousin Mary is so slow.
Because Herve Caen, curse be upon him, wanted moneys, that's why
Every time when I hear these words I wonder what they are even mean. Wizard's Crown IS dated (though its combat is mostly top notch). Aklabeth IS dated. Fallout surpasses modern standards for "RPG" in every regard.
Very, very useful in many parts of the game. Temple of Trials, safes and so on.
You have all Glow and Sierra for your science needs. Fuck, it even sometimes used in dialogues, like that New Reno "guide".
I know guy who finished both Fallouts using ONLY throwing. But he is pretty crazy.
You mean almost all parts, right. From transforming quite simple (compared to some games like Pool of Radiance) but very enjoyable combat to poor FPS with "I win" VATS button to dialogues written by high school dropouts. Don't forget about ineptly lulzy world, even F2 tried to be more serious.
And don't even let me start about Oblivion. Daggerfall was one of the most ambitious games ever and though Morrowind removed and simplified some things (just compare Daggerfall's main quest http://www.uesp.net/dagger/images/quest.gif with in essence linear main quest of Morrowind
http://www.uesp.net/morrow/quest/images/questmap.gif) but it improved many things. Oblivion was utmost, terrible decline and death of the series.
Crush! Kill! Destroy! Mutilate! Bake potato! Knit mittens!
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In all fairness, given Daggerfall's literally computer-generated overworld and the cut-and-paste towns, I still distinctly prefer Morrowind for its hand-crafted world that actually felt like place worth exploring, even if that meant streamlining the quest content. Daggerfall was vast, but it was also utterly empty of anything worth seeing. Let's not even talk about the dungeons that were literally so broken you couldn't finish them. TES games were never about their riveting plots and under the bottom line, I think Morrowind is the superior product, if in a much smaller-scale.
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It was just faithful to its Arena roots.
It's not true. There were a lot of hidden nifty things like covens, shrines and all that. Don't forget that all main quest dungeons were hand-crafted. I still fondly remember rift in this King of Worms' demesne.
They were vast and confusing, but always finishable. When you thought that it's unfinishable - quick press of [ or ] in debug mode confirmed that you've missed secret candelabra or trapdoor.
A definitely step above typical Arena's dungeon (main quest one sometimes were good) where you've just dissolved all walls with a spell on your beeline to next stairs/quest object (usually Oghma Infinium).
Of course, they were mostly about player's freedom (through procedural generated worlds
) and Daggerfall have much more methods of expressing it. Sometimes unfinished and buggy, but remember how I called it "ambitious" game.
Just look at reputation system! It completely and utterly bonkers, but you can't refuse sheer brilliance and scope of it. Dozens of interconnected factions!
Heh, I still remember that my hilarious "Brave Linguist" walkthrough.
Morrowind was still neat, though.
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Were you planning to finish the series? That could be an interesting point of comparison, since (at least as far as I'm aware) Sanderson does a fair job of imitating Jordan's style. The transition isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than most replacements manage.
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First off, just to clarify: the magic systems in Butcher's books are not bad or anything. I may not think they're as good, but "somewhat worse than someone really good" is still pretty good indeed. And I definitely agree that they meet Sanderson's Laws pretty well.
My reason for saying Dresdenverse magic seems a bit less natural is that some of the effects don't seem to fit together as well as they should. I suppose you could also ascribe that to Dresden's narration, but if his descriptions aren't accurate then you end up with a whole host of unreliable-narrator considerations that don't really match up with the rest of the text. If I had to justify it, I'd probably go off the mention of that magic's rules change over time, but I don't think that's quite enough.
Out-of-verse, of course, it's obviously due to the "all myths are true" take. In that respect, it's much stronger than it looks at first glance - considering how disparate folktales are, hammering them into any sort of consistency takes some significant effort, so rough edges are to be expected. In hindsight, I really should've focused on Codex Alera instead: so far as I know, the magic systems there are all devised for the series rather than borrowed, so they're much easier to usefully assess.
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Ok, "escalated" is a bit misleading, but I wasn't expecting more than maybe a response by the time I got to check back in. An actual discussion/debate was a bit of a surprise.
It's a bit unfortunate that you stopped halfway through the second book: despite your distaste for it, you might have appreciated a couple of things that come to fruition later in the story. If you haven't been spoiled on them yet (and still have the book), risking your time might be worth a shot.
The age thing seems plausible, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's due to the differences in culture between generations rather than age itself. Does that forum have any relevant info available?
I'm not sure what definition of "system" you're using here, but it doesn't seem to match up with the typical sense. Whether or not you like the systems, they are certainly systematic according to the dictionary definition: the incomplete information the characters have by the end of the third book is sufficient to let the reader predict the rest with impressive accuracy, including changes to how they work as a result of events during the story.
Gotta admit, I'm not entirely sure what you're intending to say here. It does, however, remind me of a discussion I had about how much an author should explain, which seems to be a surprisingly heated topic, at least in certain circles. I personally prefer stories that make you think about what's going on rather than just spoon-feeding everything to you, but apparently that view's distressingly uncommon.
Incidentally, would it be safe to assume you don't care much for sci-fi? Sanderson takes a fairly intellectual approach to his stories, so maybe that's part of the problem here.
Considering that I've never actually read any superhero comics, I can't comment on the validity of that assertion. Anything particularly relevant worth explaining?
I suppose there's nothing wrong with disliking fight scenes, but it does lead me to wonder how that ties in with the bit I've seen of your taste in stories. Do you see any particular difference between Sanderson's and other authors', or is it more a case of that you just skip them all anyway?
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I had kind of lost interest long before Jordan even died. I may at some point, but it's not really the author that's stopping me so much as just being kind of sick of it. I just picked it as an example because it came to mind as a well-developed and complex system that is regularly added to over the course of the story without feeling tacked-on or like anyone is "cheating" by breaking established rules, like what happens with Vin in the showdown with the Lord Ruler.
I'm afraid I don't know, it's just something I picked up on while talking to people about it. I'd check, but the place doesn't really seem to exist anymore. It was rather a while ago and German-language anyway.
I like it, I'm just picky about it. There's a thin line between science porn with no interesting characters or action and an adventure story that has replaced wizards with ray guns. It's somewhat finicky to get the balance right, in my opinion, and too many novels fall either into the former or the latter category without managing the balance.
No, I suppose it doesn't. It's a bit difficult to explain. With Wheel of Time, every time some new weave was introduced, I was both surprised and not surprised. "Surprised" because it was something that hadn't been shown before and "not surprised" because they were somewhat logically derived from what had been already established about how channeling works. It had these basic, interconnected principles that could be combined in a relatively consistent way to create new abilities that I could follow the reasoning for. Axioms, you might say.
With Mistborn, everything is very static. It's a lot like Superman's powers: he can use them in many different ways, but there's really no way to expand on them without making up new ones ad hoc or changing the rules on old ones. There's the ferruchemy loop trick, but otherwise it's the same stuff all the way though. That's why I think of more as a collection of superpowers than a magic system.
It's a general thing. I don't enjoy fight scenes for their own sake, it's key actions and the outcome that mostly matters to me. Above a certain length they start to feel gratuitous to me and I don't really care anymore about the specifics.
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I'm pretty sure there were a few that had actual disconnected rooms that made them unsolvable, but I suppose it's not really that important.
I won't deny that it's ambitious, but ambitious alone doesn't make up for "well-executed."
Welp. Mind has been thorougly blown, I'm off to bed. Know what game I'm playing in the morning, though.
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Actually, interplay is still kicking. Even slowly but surely clawing themselves back from the brink from the looks of things, thanks to a slow but steady drip of income from now actually selling (some of) their classic titles on Steam.
Link.
Granted, their coming titles aren't what I'd call that promising. A new version of Battle Chess currently in Steam early-access, and a PC-only revival of Clay Fighter slated for next year.
Still, props for hanging in there.
...I'm going to have to politely disagree with you on that last one. They might be really damn impressive for their time, but it has been 18 and 17 years respectfully. Not only tech, but design as well have moved forward.
Shadowrun: Returns has better 2D graphics. Alpha Protocol has a better way of making your choices actually feel important, plus a really impressive (if divisive) dialogue system. Mass Effect, the first at least, really felt like it took place over an entire galaxy with many different world types. Bloodlines had more impressive voice-acting...
I could go on, but even for the late 90's time period, I'd personally argue that Planescape: Torment is the superior RPG in every category except combat.
I game, I might add, that never made me feel as lost and confused as I got in spots with Fallout 1 & 2. despite being about an amnesiac immortal waking on a slab in a city at the center of the multiverse. Hell, I got stuck on that damn 'puzzle' with the rope and the elevator shaft for literal IRL days when I first played Fallout because I missed that one rope you need to steal in Shady Sands.
Not to mention, how I lost this one character I'd spent near fifty odd hours on once despite keeping three-four saves. I mean, fine, the radiation was more scientifically accurate in 1 & 2, but it sure wasn't fun to find out the easy way my character was hot enough to melt with my earliest save being at the bottom of that nifty sounding 'The Glow' area I'd stumbled across.
Of course, I was learning English at the time —thus that itty-bitty face-melting The Glow mistake. but I still had a better grasp of the 'rules' and who was doing what for what reasons in Planescape than Fallout despite playing them in that order.
Again, I do consider 1 & 2 all-tie classics well worth playing, but I honestly don't even have them on my own personal top-ten. They're just too obtuse and wonky to actually play for me.
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That's why I called it "undead".
Let's don't. It's fun to horse around sometimes.
Forward. Ha! It's a good one!
Played only old console ones, so dunno.
Eh... It had dialogue wheels. Dialogue wheels! One of the most atrocious dialogue mechanics that I ever saw. Frankly, I'll fain return to constant "name job buy" and "guess the word" than will use dialogue wheels. It's so lazy and cheap mechanic that words fail me.
Star Control 2
Personally, I rarely think about it, because read faster than listen.
I compared Fallouts to modern RPGs, that's horse of another color. I love PST to death, still I think that Fallouts are closer to RPGs of Golden Age. For example, exploration aspect of Fallouts is better.
If you think about it, Sigil is pretty small. All greatness of it is mostly comes from dialogues and quests.
You don't need to steal rope in Shady Sands from that farmer, you have one free in outhouse. (Oh, I see that you did here!) Ropes are pretty common, sellable and USABLE (thus you should already knew solution to the Glow's "puzzle") in the Vault 15.
It's aforementioned choices and consequences. You have made poor decisions - game is lost. :shrugs: Frankly, you've found glowing ruins in the middle of radioactive desert in the game about post-nuclear war world. Do the math.
Your story is one of these stories that should be remembered fondly. Instead, you took your errors against the game.
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Huh. Weird how the subjective experience can vary like that. I actually always felt that I had a lot of direction in the Fallout games, for all that they're open-world. I was never really lost for where I needed to go - in Fallout 2, there's a very neat trail of clues leading from Arroyo to Klamath to Den to Vault City to NC to Vault 13... well, you know the rest. The individual puzzles were a bit obscure sometimes, but I never really felt lost.
Then again I had the advantage of playing that game translated into German, which of course would make quite a difference. It wouldn't be a problem today, but 20 years are a long time to get better at a language.
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I'll agree with that. It's supposed to be a bloody roleplaying game. I'm supposed to be able to pick what my character says, not get a multiple-choice movie reel where you can decide on the relative snarkiness level.
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Eh, I've heard the idea of 'losing is fun' before, but I frankly disagree with it. To me, winning, or at least hearing more of the story, is fun.
But frankly, I don't mind consequences. I've lost probably millions of souls in Dark Souls. Hours wasted due to dying in metroidvanias.
But that felt fair. If I'd played better and smarter, I would have won.
Shamus Young put it far better than I could, though:
I didn't get that feeling in Fallout 1 & 2. Geiger counters, rad-x and rad-away are all quite rare, and outside one or two areas utterly useless. I sold mine the first time through because the game tricked me into an false sense of security. Outside of a few 'Gotcha!' spots —just like traps, they might as well have skipped the radiation system entirely.
And frankly, I consider that rather bad design about a game in a post-apocalyptic,nuclear-war game.
Hell, for all its faults Fallout 3 really made the Capitol Wasteland feel like a radiated hell-hole with hot-spots everywhere. Its magic Hollywood radiation that should have faded years ago, sure, but it frankly felt like it made sense in that universe. Not only was the constant radiation a ever-present threat needing to be balanced just as much as your health, but it actually got reflected in the plot and lore.
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Yeah. Again, I barely spoke English when I started playing games.
I will freely admit it might not have been the fairest first impression, but when I tried playing Fallout for the first time I didn't even know what the title actually meant.
But again, I don't think its a totally unfair impression either because —again, I was far less confused and had a far easier time with the game were you travel the planes, solve puzzles by killing yourself, and your first companion is a floating skull with a potty mouth despite the same language barriers being in place as for Fallout.
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Well, sorry, but I liked it.
I know quite a few hate the timed dialogue in that game, but to me it actually made it feel like a conversation was going on. Instead of an actor reading lines at me while I picked the next cue-card.
That, and the focus on consequences really sold the game for me. Really made every bit of conversation feel tense and like there was a real risk of screwing up if you didn't think qucik and paid attention.
Not saying its a perfect fit for every RPG. But the type of action-RPG with a tense spy-thriller atmosphere like Alpha Protocol was? Yeah, I'd go so far as to say I'm rather sad the backlash probably killed that concept, because to me it added really heavily to the tension.
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It may sound weird, but for all that it has a ridiculously weird setting, Planescape is honestly really uncomplicated as a game. It's really linear and there aren't really any permanent ways to screw yourself over - enjoying the talky parts as you go along is really more or less what the focus lies on. It's only perfunctorily an RPG and it probably would have worked just as well as a point&click adventure. The early Fallout games were much more in the "simulationist" or "game-y" kind of mindset, I suppose. They gave the player a lot more freedom to screw up on his own terms.
It's an ok concept, I just think it's bad RPG design. It makes me feel more like I'm pushing along someone else's character on a little wheelchair rather than playing something of my own. I think it would work better in a pure action-adventure kind of game.
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I sort of stopped for the same reason, so it wouldn't really be fair for me to try talking about the WOT system. Regarding your example, though, I can at least say that it's not an example of cheating (and neither are the other apparent-inconsistencies you haven't brought up) - it's just framed to look like it, because the characters don't know what's really going on. Whether or not you think it's a good idea to do so, you have to admit that subverting deus ex machina kind of requires setting things up to look like an actual deus ex machina. And no, that's not common to all Sanderson's stories - he likes playing with tropes, not repeating specific uses.
It's worth keeping in mind that the original trilogy is in many ways a single story split across three books (and yes, I should've brought that up earlier). A lot of the questions raised early on don't get explicit answers until the last book, just like you wouldn't expect to see the driving questions of a standalone story answered in the first hundred pages. But that doesn't mean stuff you don't know has no effect on events - the universe changing its rules in response to the reader's knowledge would be massive cheating.
Too bad about the forum, especially since the language thing seems like it also might be a factor.
Can you suggest any sci-fi books/stories you think get the balance right? Hopefully I'll have read them too, but if not, it's hard to complain about recommendations for new reading material.
The "superpowers vs magic" idea will take a bit to deal with, so I'll need to come back to that - we've got a thunderstorm moving in, and I probably should've posted what I have and gotten off a while ago. It does strike me as unfortunate that you started with Mistborn, though: pretty much all of Sanderson's other books use magic systems that are much more flexible in the sense you seem to want, and you probably would have found them more appealing.
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I'm not really fond of that whole "tropes" thing, personally. I think it's uncreative and encourages cobbling together a story out of pigeonholed setpieces rather than letting it grow organically. That said, I understand your point, I just don't agree with it. If the "subversion" is impossible to tell apart from the regular thing, is there really a qualitative difference? Sanderson told us the rules of the story and then went "ha ha, gotcha" at the end anyway. I don't see the point of a detailed explanation for everything if you're just going to misinform the reader anyway so you can set up a plot twist later. Yes, it was all planned out, but it's not different from just changing the rules in its practical result.
As for scifi I enjoy, Iain M. Banks Culture series comes to mind. It takes its technology and AI-heavy setting very seriously, but is still highly character-driven in terms of the plotlines. It's also pretty funny a lot of the time. If you haven't read it yet, I would recommend starting with Player of Games. The first book was relatively mediocre.
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I'm sorry if this sounds slightly insulting, but this trope discussions reminds me a bit about the 'Flesh For Frankenstein' and 'Blood For Dracula' movies.
Paul Morrissey hated the schlock filled horror movies with loads of blood and nudity in bad 3D of the seventies, so he made two schlock filled horror movies ironically filled with loads of blood and nudity in bad 3D.
Art!
Oancitizen did two really good reviews/analyses of both as part of his 'Brows Held High' series I highly recommend
http://blip.tv/brows-held-high/brows-held-high-andy-warhol-s-dracula-4309427
http://blip.tv/brows-held-high/brows-held-high-andy-warhol-s-frankenstein-5684241
He's currently transferring all his stuff from Blip but those two are sadly not yet on YouTube, so watch them quickly if it sounds interesting.
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I don't get video streaming on this network, but think I feel pretty much the same way about it. The difference between sucking "ironically" and sucking because you are just bad at what you do has never really been all that clear to me, either.
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They're actually quite fun movies in a: 'Wow, just look at that acting that would make Shatner blush' type way.
But yeah, I don't quite get why gore and tits gets a pass just because Andy Warhol was attached to the production.
Well, except the obvious but rather cynical reason.
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That initial reaction to the idea of tropes is fairly common, and I felt somewhat the same way myself on first brush. However, a lot of it comes down to a misunderstanding of the meaning used in this context: a trope is any building block of a story, not just a cliche or something, and it's essentially impossible to build a story without them. Not knowing about (or disliking) the term doesn't mean a story or series doesn't use them. (Note that the Culture examples list is highly incomplete, based on what I know of the books, but it hopefully serves to illustrate the idea.)
Now, does using tropes intentionally lead to bad stories that using them unintentionally doesn't? Probably, but not as a result of the process itself. Any misused concept is going to cause problems for the story, and it doesn't matter where the idea came from - I'm sure you're aware of plenty of terrible stories by people not consciously familiar with the idea of tropes. People who find the idea of using tropes in different ways appealing are going to experiment more and take more risks, rather than sticking to the old, safe, and in some cases boring ideas others have already established, and so they're more likely to stumble just as a result of covering far more ground.
You're correct in thinking there wouldn't be a relevant difference, but this use doesn't fulfill that criterion. The important distinction is that this use is impossible to tell apart only at the time, not ever. Ending a series that way would be a terrible idea, but when you're only a short ways into a story and have made it obvious that the reader doesn't know everything, explaining it later on shouldn't be a problem. (And it's worth pointing out that doing so is much more realistic than always explaining things before they happen - read through any book on the history of scientific progress, and you'll see that the vast majority of new phenomena are discovered first and only explained much later, rather than explained beforehand and sought out.)
Of course, that does mean that if the reader quits early for some reason, they're going to walk away with a mistaken impression of events. There is a reason reviewers need to finish the whole of whatever they're reviewing, after all - later events can cause you to radically revise your understanding of what's going on, and in some cases cause you to like a story you really didn't or vice-versa. Sanderson was presumably willing to take the risk because of the solid reception his debut received: his existing fans knew he could wrap up a story satisfactorily, so they wouldn't run off just because things looked sketchy for a time.
Have you read The Curious Incident Of The (Robot) Dog In The Night-time? That was my first concrete encounter with the idea of The Culture (as opposed to simple recommendations), and I'd be curious to see how well you think it captures the spirit of the series.
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The idea of "take a bad concept and use it to good effect" shares a lot of background with "ironic use", as you described it, and they can definitely overlap. Unfortunately, a lot of people try to pass off bad works as good by pretending they're supposed to be insightful or ironic, which both gives actually insightful or ironic works a bad name and makes it harder for you average person to see the differences between the ideas. And of course, cases where someone tries to make an insightful or ironic work and screws up job don't help either, though at least those authors are a lot more likely to admit they got it wrong.
If the concept interests you, or if you're still dubious about it, I encourage you to take a look at other reconstructions. Terry Pratchett's Discworld books do a fair bit of reconstructing in-between all the satire, parody, philosophical stuff, and so on, and Jim Butcher's Codex Alera has reconstruction as a foundational concept. (The series was literally started on a bet: someone thought certain ideas are inherently unworkable, and Butcher disagreed.) Or if you don't want to track down physical books, you could always stick with stuff on this site: the "The Most Dangerous Game" contest ended up inspiring several fairly good short examples, and of course others existed well before the contest popularized the concept.
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I'm thoroughly familiar with what what the whole TVTropes thing is about (it actually is responsible for unleashing me on this site by linking me to getmeouttahere's Exchange), I just find that this type of attitude tends to result in something I can only call "lego storytelling." Actively, consciously remixing them as part of your creative process never quite seems to result in something that clicks with me.
Which is pretty much exactly the only point in time about which I care. I tend to judge the effectiveness of a story by the reactions it gave me while reading it the first time, not by what I think about it in retrospect. That it was intended as a red herring from the beginning does not retroactively make me enjoy the ending of the first book, which is, frankly, the only thing that really matters to me about when reading genre fiction: how much I enjoy it.
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed a classical education and can debate literature and poetry as well as anyone, but I don't read fantasy novels for the artistic merit, if you get where I coming from. The fact remains that at the time, it just made me roll my eyes and think "oh, fuck that noise, because Chosen One Exceptionalism was just what that story needed after it had already killed the one character I liked."
Gave it a quick read right now and can't really say that it does. It pretty much doesn't get anything about the tone right at all. The Culture books have this sense of whimsy and humor to them even while they're being dead serious. It's hard to explain except as being basically what Pratchett would sound like if he wrote science fiction and didn't go for puns and absurdism quite so much. To give an example, the nearly god-like AIs of the series have names like " So Much For Subtlety" or "Zero Gravitas" and spend most of their time in complex mathematical simulations they call "maximum fun space" - and yet none of that comes across as ridiculous while you read it. It's really something you just need to experience for yourself.
Frankly, that's pretty much exactly what I was missing about The Last Empire. It's neither insightful nor ironic - it simply plays the entire "whoa, everyone had it wrong until now!" thing completely straight. It doesn't actually add anything clever to it that would make it an interesting subversion of the concept. It just uses it as-is. Pratchett, on the other hand (one of my favourite authors, been reading his stuff since the early nineties) always manages to not only surprise you with the twist itself, but also by doing it in a way that's genuinely comedic and provides a commentary on what the cliché he lampooned was actually about.
I know, a bet about combining Pokemon and the lost Roman legion. It's what I think sets him apart from the typical schlock author - he can take an idea like that and still make it work through strong characterization and by bringing in actual original ideas of his own. Dresden started the same way - writing the most clichéd thing he could think of while actually making it good, just to show up his creative writing prof.
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That seems to run counter to your statements further down about Pratchett's and Butcher's stories.
Definitely a difference in approach there. No insult intended, but at first glance, that sort of attitude strikes me as a lot like saying "I don't actually care about what I'm reading, I just want to waste some time". I hope that's a misrepresentation of some sort, because I don't see how that attitude is compatible with the idea of someone choosing to read for their own enjoyment.
Not strictly true: the payoff is solidly intertwined with the events and climax of book three. (The first comparison that springs to mind is the party in Grave Peril - some of the stuff that set up still hasn't been used. I'm sure there are better examples, but I hope you at least get the point.) Obviously, it's not going to do much for readers who don't choose to keep going with the series.
It would, of course, be better if the setup had more immediate value in addition to the long-term value, but I think that qualifies as more of a minor concern. I'm not going to tear up the early Discworld or Dresden Files novels because of instances where Pratchett or Butcher didn't write well - I'd much rather introduce a new reader to the series, not turn them away simply because the early books contain tons of mistakes that the authors grew past making.
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With Pratchett, I'll have to disagree. He uses clichés to criticize them with parody and satirical humor, while often giving a kind of social commentary while he's at it (sometimes clever, sometimes less clever - I really don't like the Lancre witches). It's rather different from just taking those concepts and using them uncritically, which I think makes all the difference. Butcher I'll kind of have to give you, though. On paper, it doesn't really sound like the kind of thing I would enjoy. I tried reading the supposed "next best imitator" once (Iron Druid, I think?) and pretty much hated it. Dresden is something I really read more or less entirely for the character himself and for the way it's written. That's what I like about Dorklord's stories - he pretty much imitates the tone so well I could believe it was an actual entry to the series, if it wasn't for the technicolor ponies.
That's... actually not all that far from the truth. I read books the way other people watch TV. On a boring afternoon, I can go through one or two entire novels. Fantasy, cheesy "Star Trek" grade scifi and (more recently) fanfiction is basically my equivalent to watching a sitcom, just with less commercial breaks. I do read some stuff critically and because I actually enjoy the skill behind it - Roger Zelazny is one of those. The guy is one of the underappreciated geniuses of the 20th century, in my opinion.
Gives me the shivers every time.
As a general thing, though, I treat genre fiction like potato chips or a cheeseburger - I know it's not actually well-made or good for me, but it's enjoyable to consume.
I honestly wouldn't blame you if you did. I'm not personally invested in that kind of thing. I never saw the point of forcing yourself past a bad beginning because it "gets better later" - why not read something I can enjoy all the way through instead? It's why I recommend that people start with the second Culture book. The first one just isn't really all that fun to read.
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Because the value of later parts of the story can justify the extra effort to reach them. For example, unlikely though I suspect it is, it's conceivable that I won't care for the second Culture book very much, but will love the later ones. If that were to be the case, I'd be very glad I kept going despite not enjoying myself initially. It's not always going to work out, but I generally find the risk worth taking.
It is, I think, tied pretty strongly to the different approaches we take towards reading for fun. I may not get how your approach can actually result in enjoying what you read, but it does make sense that if you don't care much about the specifics, it'd be hard to come up with a story where the ending justifies less-interesting bits beforehand. On the other hand, if you do get invested in a story, the work as a whole can provide much more enjoyment than a uniformly-passable piece, even if it takes some slogging to get through earlier parts.
And of course, it is worth noting that enjoyment isn't the only reason to read stories such as genre fiction - you can learn a lot by seeing what works well and what doesn't. One thing I'm extremely grateful for is that I can usually study a story I'm reading for fun without making it any less enjoyable, which makes learning to read and write well a lot easier.
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I wouldn't say it like that. I do care about the specifics, just more in a moment-to-moment sense - writing style, humor, tension, basically everything that's immediately "fun" and entertaining. The retrospective is what mostly doesn't really matter to me for that kind of story, unless it's set up to be enjoyable in a way that doesn't detract from the former.
True. Considering that I'm rather older than the average here and well into my Master's degree, it's not something that's particularly important to me on a personal level anymore, though.
I suppose the only thing I can really say is that when I'm asked for my opinion, the only thing I give is my opinion on something. I more or less actively disregard other possible perspectives because I don't feel obligated to take anyone else's preferences into account for judging how much I like something. It's more or less implicit to me that I don't judge the objective quality of most fiction, just how well it worked by my standards. Technical concerns like grammar, spelling and things like voice differentiation excluded, of course.
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I have to admit that I personally thought the Dresden series hit the ground running and have only picked up speed since Storm Front.
Still, I get what you two mean. I've even heard that some people only consider the series to have become readable post Sue (!).
I will however admit that I personally can very seldom force myself past a bad start like that. Only example that comes to mind even for me is the Lord of the Ring series.
Great series, but man is the first book a snooze fest full of whimsy, 'songs' and insufferable tiny people with some type of eating disorder all the way to the gates of Moira.
(Eating habits that should have either exhausted the food supply within the first week or driven the hobbits near mad with hunger, come to think about it.
)
Still glad I read them, but I honestly doubt I'd done so if I'd seen the movies first. They just distilled the experience so well, cutting out so much of the pointless
poemspadding, that I doubt I will ever go back. Even the Tom Bombabill stuff —despite how important Tolkien claimed that scene was frankly felt like padding to me.And worse, padding that gave the beat-down Fellowship a breather on what's supposedly a quest against evil itself.
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Early LoTR is kind of a bore, yeah. It does have my favourite poem, though:
Freely translated from German and shaky memory.
Also, I was really annoyed with Thomas the Evil Rape-Pire that started with Small Favour. Yeah, I know, Dark Fantasy, but there's dark and there's "I eat mascara and shit bats" grimdark. Just kind of an unpleasant thing to read about in my cheesy B-movie fun.
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I still love to cite Sam's answer to Yama in the most inappropriate places.
Lord of Light is a brilliant book and one of the my all time favourites. Best buy of 1991.