NOW IT IS THE BEGINNING OF A
FANTASTIC WEEKLY FEATURE!!
Here’s how it works: Each Friday, I will post a fearsome ART CHALLENGE. You have a week to do the challenge and post your work to the Kreativity Korner Klan forum. The next Friday, I’ll post the winning entry (and maybe some runners-up), and the next challenge.
The winner gets to commission a drawing from our young friend Tim! Remember Tim? He did this and this and this, and he loves to draw videogame characters. Like this:
Simple enough, non? I AM FRENCH I AM SAYING ‘NON’ TO YOU.
OKAY.
This Week’s Thingo
It is a comic. But the comic is not finished; OH NO! Your job is to finish it. You can simply add words, or, more complicatedly... well, I don’t know! You show me, HO HO HO!
The big version (for editing) is here; please post your entries here.
That’s it! See you in the forum, and also next week. (And also during the week, doing other things.) GODSPEED.
Well, at least that's what I got out of thisAlpha Protocol interview, in which Obsidian devs Chris Avellone, Ryan Rucinski, and Matt MacLean get so sick of answering stupid questions that they start openly mocking the interviewer. Observe:
Jonric: Would we be correct to guess that the game will take us to a variety of locations in order to complete the missions?
Chris Avellone: It is as big as planet Earth itself, and man, do you go all over it. You don't go to the moon, though... or Antarctica. However, we have about four or five hubs, each with its own goal and operation, as well as a number of other missions that take place outside of them. It's enough to whet the world traveler appetite, in our opinion.
Which, paraphrased, boils down to this:
Jonric: Does your game have different locations, or does the whole thing take place in a basement?
Chris Avellone: You're an idiot.
This is pretty good too:
Jonric: To what degree will it be possible to customize his physical appearance? Will we be able to configure his facial and body parts?
Matt MacLean: This isn't really an interview, is it? It's more a Q&A in the style of node-based dialogue, and you keep clicking on questions to ask us. I like how the whole thing got kicked off with the "name" and "job" questions – how very Avatar-esque.
I mean, that's just blatant. Hilarious too. And the best thing is that this is only part one – there's a whole other part still to come! If the Obsidian guys are bored and sarcastic now, I can't wait to see what they're like by the end. Here's a prediction:
Jonric: Will Alpha Protocol have graphics? If so, what will they be like?
Yeah, I’m sick of doing these (THEE-EEEE-EESE), so this is the last one. Also, I’ve lost some enthusiasm for promoting Captain Rainbow ever since I was told by people who would know that there is not even a tiny chance of the game being released in English. If there’s one thing I’ll never give up on, it’s defeatism!
Of course, I will still welcome Captain Rainbow fanart that’s good. But I will no longer post just any old half-arsed crap, like this contribution from Dylan Richardson for instance:
“I know he is a colourful hero,” writes Dylan, “but I didn’t colour him ‘cause I’m not.” Now don’t talk that way Dylan; you are one of God’s precious children.
This next thingy is from Ashley Day:
Ashley writes: “In a wonderfully postmodern twist I decided to draw the art in a game of Archime-DS, thereby linking two of the coolest games to come from the minds at Skip. So while the ‘quality’ of the illustration may be in question, the level of my fandom most definitely isn’t.”
What.
What, you want some kind of PRIZE, Ashley? Is that it? You think you’re CLEVER?
Get out.
This one is from Miss Eien K, and heeeyyy, it’s actually pretty good!
Oh and hey, remember how some guy called Matias Kallio sent in a game he made, that had nothing to do with Captain Rainbow? Well he made another one, that also has nothing to do with Captain Rainbow! Golly smackers! It’s called Transparent Senses, and it will probably give you a headache, but it’s still more fun than any Final Fantasy game.
And, uh... that’s it. Huh. I thought there was more.
But since we’re on the subject of fanart, I’ll leave you with this completely incredible Eegra picture, emailed to me by Kitty Alcapaz.
There’s Orson, and Mister Blobbypants, and Daniel, and a lady who looks a bit like me! Kitty, is the suggestion that there is something effeminate about my bearing? I’ll have you know that the only womanly thing about me is all the women who are around me all of the time, because of how manly I am! Goodness me.
Much has been made of ludicrous, convoluted puzzles in adventure games; how they frustrate you for days, and, when you finally stumble upon the solution, make you emit distressed, high-pitched noises, and search frantically in vain for a way to strangle your computer. “What were they thinking?!” you angrily type, years later, on an internet messageboard, and you link to that Old Man Murray article to underline your argument.
Well, today you may finally learn the answer to that question. To mark the game’s tenth birthday, my hero Tim Schafer has released the puzzle document for Grim Fandango as a PDF, for everyone to download and marvel at.
This is amazingly great! How often do design documents for famous videogames get released, in their entirety and for free? Never, that’s how often. Maybe you get to see a few pages of notes and sketches at the back of a Capcom art book. But this is the whole puzzle document! For an adventure game! That’s like the most important document there is.
If you’re a fan of Grim Fandango, or at all interested in videogames and their history, you’ve probably clicked that link and downloaded the PDF already so I don’t know why I’m still typing even.
UPDATE: Okay, the page over at Double Fine has vanished! I'm sure we can all guess what happened. But this is the internet; you shouldn't have much trouble finding the document elsewhere.
Much has been made of ludicrous, convoluted puzzles in adventure games; how they frustrate you for days, and, when you finally stumble upon the solution, make you emit distressed, high-pitched noises, and search frantically in vain for a way to strangle your computer. “What were they thinking?!” you angrily type, years later, on an internet messageboard, and you link to that Old Man Murray article to underline your argument.
