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And, lest we forget that General Noir is also a valid topic of conversation: Anybody else finish The Wolf Among Us first series? It is extremely good, very very good Noir, I would love to LP it if nobody has started one by the time I finish this, and I have like 10 wild-eyed conspiracy theories about it.
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Jul 20, 2014 19:43
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Just seen the thread, can't believe I've missed it for so long. Regarding a comment in the last page, I played the game before I've even heard of Discworld, and it stands very well on its own. I might have missed lot of references, but enjoyed the game anyway (except for a couple too idiotic notebook sequences).
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Jul 20, 2014 20:22
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So, having watched the latest episode and having read the thread since, I'm honestly surprised nobody's commented on how the game seems to be colour-coding scents based on the category of person or thing to which they belong. Granted, sample size is a little small, so a lot of this is gut-feeling correlation, but here goes. The most obvious category is blue colours, which almost certainly indicate human males. - Probably-Vimes was 'navy blue'. - Mundy was 'dark blue'. - Probably-Two-Conkers was 'light blue'. - Probably-Rhodan was just plain ol' 'blue'. - Nobby (perhaps in a play on how he needs to carry a piece of paper to prove that he's human) was the furthest from the colour mean of the group at 'teal'. All of these scents belong to human-ish males - and indeed, when comparing 'navy' to 'blue', Lewton comments that there's a superficial similarity but that they probably aren't connected - much as any two human males would be. There are, however, three wrenches in the works of this theory. - The first (and least explicable) is the troll perfume, labeled 'cyan'. - The second is Sapphire's scent, labeled 'dark cyan'. (I do have an idea about that, though - Malachite's scent is 'a deep, earthy brown'. If Sapphire smelled at least a little similar (some earth tone?), but heavily used the perfume, her scent's colour might logically be a mix between them - hence, a dark-tinted cyan.) - Third is Gaspode, labeled 'unpleasant aqua'. (Jokes about how being able to speak makes Gaspode about as human as Nobby practically make themselves here.) Joking aside, however, I've got no explanation for that except maybe that they hang around the same kind of human-frequented places, perhaps. Now, for environmental smells: - The River Ankh, filled with all the unmentionable crap (some literal, some figurative) of the city, ought to be one solid algal bloom by now. Sure enough - 'bright green'. - The moss smell near Lewton's chalk outline, however, is dark green. This seems broadly consistent. - Red wine is, appropriately enough, red. The last category seems to be human or human-ish women, I think. - Almost-certainly-Ilsa is listed as 'Fuschia', and even without any context is described as 'the scent of a woman'. - The killer is described as 'Carlotta, with less treble'. It's in the same general realm of colour as almost-certainly-Ilsa's fuchsia, but has bizzare inclusions - flashing green-yellow-purple dots. Finally, I don't want to try categorizing 'apple' right now. It's plausible that it might be Mankin - and if it is, his half-elf heritage explains why it's such a different colour from other human-ish males - but it might be something else. Still, let's assume that all this is true for the purposes of argument. There's two interesting things that come of this. The first is the strange magenta with green-yellow-purple dots. Lewton comments that the scent seemed 'supernatural', and given that 'green' might be 'growth' the yellow-green might indicate decay. That suggests that the killer may also be undead. If we're assuming we can use Ilsa's fuchsia as an indication of what the general 'human female' might look like, points to 'female undead', maybe. The other one is equally speculative but seems less plot-relevant. Gaspode IDs our scent as 'mature mold, with an earthy echo'. If something mineral like Malachite is dark brown, it comes to mind that a smell like 'mature mold with earthy echo' might be brown-ish with a lot of some other colour - and it just so happens that the 'background' colour of the world when we're a wolf is a distinctive brownish red. Anyhow, this is almost all pure speculation, so I'll be very interested to see how much of this pans out and how much of this is a function of my overaggressively pattern-detecting brain. vdate fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 02:50
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vdate posted:Still, let's assume that all this is true for the purposes of argument. There's two interesting things that come of this. The first is the strange magenta with green-yellow-purple dots. Lewton comments that the scent seemed 'supernatural', and given that 'green' might be 'growth' the yellow-green might indicate decay. That suggests that the killer may also be undead. If we're assuming we can use Ilsa's fuchsia as an indication of what the general 'human female' might look like, points to 'female undead', maybe. Actually, "green-yellow-purple" sounds a great deal like the way the eighth color, octarine, "the color of magic," is described in the books. Not that this invalidates your general conclusion, as one could argue that the undead should be inherently magical. To my mind, though, the other option is "magic user."
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Jul 21, 2014 14:21
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Confused Llama posted:Actually, "green-yellow-purple" sounds a great deal like the way the eighth color, octarine, "the color of magic," is described in the books. Not that this invalidates your general conclusion, as one could argue that the undead should be inherently magical. To my mind, though, the other option is "magic user." You know, I've read the Discworld books and I somehow managed to forget about octarine. I am ashamed.
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Jul 21, 2014 15:35
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I'm finally catching up on video 9 - Hi Kryten! What's this trash about accents? Does Robert Llewellyn do any other voicework in the game?
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Jul 21, 2014 16:03
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Pidmon posted:Does Robert Llewellyn do any other voicework in the game? Quite a bit of it! This game had like four voice actors. Pretty sure he was the Von Uberwalds' butler, for example.
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Jul 21, 2014 20:18
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It's certainly possible. He's credited as: Jasper Horst / Mr Scoplett / Left Palace Guard / Various Characters (voice) Edit: Also, very, very impressive detective work up above! This is more or less what I did the first time I played, and one thing I really like is games that reward this kind of outside-of-the-given-clues thinking. I guess we'll see if it pays off, but keep paying attention like this!
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Jul 21, 2014 21:30
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Bacter posted:First a quick pro/con: CrookedB posted:I've got to say I wasn't expecting new gameplay mechanics to be introduced after we died. That's pretty neat. Though sorting through all those more or less similarly-colored scents looks like a bit of a headache. Tenebrais posted:It really doesn't seem to be using many book characters, really. Vimes and Nobby have a perfectly good reason to be at all these crime scenes. There's Leonard da Quirm, and Gaspode, but I think that's it so far for characters that have been in books? We haven't even seen Death yet. Bacter posted:Obviously, nothing you bean counters say is going to overcome my (or your) love for the game - it's absolutely a blast - but I would be very interested in seeing where and how they insert the fanservice!
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Jul 25, 2014 11:47
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All I can imagine with the tutorial is that having less of an introduction playtested badly, and it was too near go time to rework everything.
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Jul 25, 2014 12:54
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Tiggum posted:A lot of the dialogue with Gaspode is strangely bad though. There's all that stuff about the dog guild which is just basically just "BOOK REFERENCE, BOOK REFERENCE, BOOK REFERENCE!" for no reason.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:06
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Bacter posted:I actually didn't play through the WHOLE game before I started this Snarkplay, so thank goodness my prediction wasn't contradicted by something later - this update contains my favorite moment. So you leave through the loading dock for no reason other than it locking behind you so that on breaking back in you set off an alarm? I think that beats "rat on a roller skate."
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Jul 25, 2014 23:10
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It's the weirdest sequence. All I can figure out is that they had that art asset and figured "well, we've got to use it SOMEHOW"? Things get Even Weirder next update though. I am seriously looking forward to it. TIME FOR ANOTHER NOIRish RECOMMENDATION! I've just finished "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's very good, and I recommend it, with a few reservations AS FOLLOWS! The Good! To me, this book is sort of the inverse of Blade Runner (not as much Do Androids Dream). It tells a story with many of the same elements, but with a radically different setting. This is one of the few future-noir books I've seen that deals so heavily with lack. We're out of oil, almost out of coal, constantly-mutating agricultural pathogens threaten our food supply and our lives. The world has regressed, then expanded, then regressed again, and we're maybe perched on the verge of another expansion, and we're scrambling to figure out what's next. We're genehacking to stay one step ahead of the curve, and Thailand has a leg up in this that the rest of the world wants to get at. The action takes place in Bangkok, as the kingdom of Thailand is one of the only bastions of stability in Southeast Asia. The plot is super complicated, but what I enjoyed about it is how it sketches together many, many disparate interests into one boiling action-y roil. There are different government factions fighting, a Cop That Plays By His Own Rules, a shady company man looking out for the best interests of a huge agri-business, unions and slumlords and refugees all fighting for a piece of the pie. Maybe this won't be as interesting to you if you don't like getting snapshots of competing factions, turbulent politics, and, it has to be said, some fairly in-depth descriptions of the future tech. And how hot it is, they spend a lot of time on that, but based on what I understand about Thailand, a world with air conditioning would merit those descriptions. The city is below the water level, and relies on a system of pumps to keep the ocean out. Usage of coal power grids is tightly regulated, and lots of labor is physical, involved in winding up springs that can be used to power things later. It's a completely fascinating economy to me, and it's very well fleshed and thought out. The other thing I like is how they don't elevate any character. Protagonists, antagonists, even supposed puppetmasters, nobody is REALLY in control of the situation. They are better or worse at turning things to their advantage, but everybody (with one exception I mention in the next section) can be surprised. That makes for compelling reading, because you can't figure out the ending based on how characters are presented. It's sad that that's rare, but there you have it. The Bad! Unfortunately, the titular Windup Girl is the very least engaging part of the story. I'm basically sorry she's there, except that she throws some more technological and cultural light on one faction in Bangkok. The windup girl is a genetically modified human from GLORIOUS NIPPON, another bastion of stability. She is a rarity, and regarded as a soulless abomination by the Thai people who have fought military models of the modified Windup People. She has built-in stuttery, staccato movements that make her look like a windup doll, and public hatred is such that if she were caught out on the street, she'd be mulched and used to power the methane lamps. She works at a strip club/pleasure hall because the owner took her in. Her entire arc up until 4/5 through the book is that she is genetically programmed to be super subservient, and to seek a "master". The agribusiness guy from America, Anderson, takes a shine to her in a creepy, possessive way, which she just laps up like a dog. She gives him the -sama honorific, which, if I'm remembering my Japanese, is PRETTY INTENSE. Also, and I'm not a guy who throws this around lightly, but basically every scene with her would be a big 'ol trigger warning for anybody who's undergone any kind of sexual abuse. She Has A Bad Job, I get it book, you don't have to go through pages and pages of what she actually goes through. I skipped most of them, because I got it early on. I guess what I'm saying is that there's just a smidgen too much time spent on how servile she is, and how awfully she's abused, and how she clings to Anderson-Sama. It starts to seem like a morbid fascination. I don't like her portrayal OR how they tread a rogue geneticist later in the book - both of them seem like people copy-pasted out of some bad anime, she all creepily-needy suffering, and he all dumb obvious philosophy and chessmaster-like control of the situation. OVERALL RECOMMENDATION Give it a read! It's a very fascinating world, the plot is good, the characters are good. Give the parts with the windup girl a skip unless you're a creep who likes reading creepy stuff. I'll be honest here. I'd rather the book was called "the many interconnected but warring factions of post-oil-collapse Thailand". I'd be all OVER reading that, and I wouldn't feel weird that the titular character was the only one I didn't like.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:48
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I really like that smell investigation mechanic. It works really well in the confines of Ankh-Morpork, but it'd probably be broken as hell anywhere else.
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Jul 27, 2014 14:32
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Wooo new update woooo So this is one time I'm exercising executive LPing judgement - I recalled while playtesting this next chapter that the Count's residence will be more enjoyable if we've got a bit of information on the murders first. I won't say more than that, other than this is a very satisfying sleuthing chapter. After all those twists and turns, it's good to see Lewton slip back into his element - smooth talking info out of suckers, showering contempt and hard-boiled dialogue wherever he goes, and dripping on things. He's almost on auto-pilot, his mind clicking away at the deeper mysteries of the night. Yours might as well! Count is up next time.
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Jul 28, 2014 08:56
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I love how the door of Patrician's office has the crest of Ankh-Morpork on it. For those who didn't notice, it's two hippos and an owl. Great attention to detail there. Anyway, I'm still trying to piece together when this happens in the DW timeline and am thoroughly puzzled by the fact that Dead Man's Pointy Shoes is still around, since if I remember correctly Ridcully put an end to that pretty early on in the series. I'm probably taking the timeline just a tad too seriously. On a side note, the game is usually pretty good about it but the low amount of voice actors really shows here - this video only has at least three people voiced by Nobby.
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Jul 28, 2014 10:58
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anilEhilated posted:I love how the door of Patrician's office has the crest of Ankh-Morpork on it. For those who didn't notice, it's two hippos and an owl. Great attention to detail there. Blame the history monks. But the short version for anyone who is interested is that after the Sourcery incident, Dead mens pointy shoes no longer applies in Ankh Morpork because as part of the fallout from that they appointed Ridcully the Brown Archchancellor. Now Ridcully had been out of the university for thirty years and was the one senior wizard who genuinely had nothing to do with the whole incident. What the Wizards thought they were getting was an amiable old duffer who wandered the forests and talked the animals who could be bumped off after a few months and normal service could be resumed. What they got was a man who did talk to the animals but he mostly said things like "winged you, you bastard!" and did a lot for endangered species "he made sure they stayed endangered for a start." He also had a habit of sleeping with a loaded crossbow under his pillow and jumping out behind would be assassins and beating them to death with his wizards staff. This made him effectively unkillable and ended the tradition of promotion by murder.
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Jul 28, 2014 11:21
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Incidentally, and not to be the endless apologist here, but this change in policy is EXACTLY the kind of thing no wizzard would bother to inform the staff about. And, knowing Discworld and the kind of people who manage to work long-term at Unseen University, it's exactly the kind of change in policy that'd be resented by the long-term staff. They may be almost happy to see it come back - makes for some interesting gossip, if nothing else!
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Jul 28, 2014 12:25
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Fun Fact: The Merchant's Guild was formed during the events of the Color of Magic because Two-Flower made them realize they could make money of tourists. They're responsible for the book Wellcome to Ankh-Morporke, Citie of One Thousand Surprises and describe the Shades like this: 'a folklorique network of old alleys and picturesque streets, wherre exitement and romans lurke arounde everry corner and much may be heard the traditional street cries of old time also the laughing visages of the denuizens as they goe about their business private'.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:13
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To be fair, a commentary also adds "In other words, you have been warned."
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Jul 30, 2014 16:54
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Yeah, say what you will about The Shades, they do a decent job of resisting gentrification. And the gentry, for that matter.
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Jul 30, 2014 17:19
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This is where we start getting weird. Start. The flying kid we killed was merely a visitor from this strange land, and now it is we the visitors! DIVE IN, SUCKAS
Bacter fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Aug 2, 2014 |
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Aug 2, 2014 19:13
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The main thing that stands out to me in this section (apart from the reused voice actors) is the conversation between Vimes and the Patrician. It just doesn't work for me at all. The voices are both terrible and the dialogue just doesn't fit the characters.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:34
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It seems like there's a whole hell of a lot of game left in Discworld Noir. I'm a little surprised, but I imagine they really wanted you to get the most out of your wolfin'.
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Aug 7, 2014 14:15
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Glazius posted:It seems like there's a whole hell of a lot of game left in Discworld Noir. I'm a little surprised, but I imagine they really wanted you to get the most out of your wolfin'. There is plenty of game left. This is I believe disc/act 3 of 4, so end of 2 would be about halfway, if I remember correct. Personally I prefer the first couple of acts, not entirely sure why, but the atmosphere seems better to me. Maybe it's just that I feel it's got a deeper sense of mystery/exploration to it? I don't know how to explain it. But like when you're on the Milka looking for clues, that sort of thing... I suppose because you haven't met many characters yet and you don't always have access to them. It feels much more isolated, I think, and I really think that works amazingly well for a mystery. See- KotOR 2's first bit.
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Aug 9, 2014 04:24
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Yeah, I hear you. There's some inevitable disappointment with any mystery, I imagine. The path from knowing nothing, exploring the game universe, and being able to imagine anything happening, to having a concrete plot and characters, always means giving up on some of the excitement and speculation. That said, I really do like how this story unfolds. I obviously won't reveal anything, but they do a fine job of making it interesting, and, like I said before, there is something that really didn't hit me until my second replay that, just, guys, it seems SO GLARING to me this time. Something unusual, that nobody has pointed out, but is right in front of you, if you think about it.
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Aug 10, 2014 13:36
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Bacter posted:Yeah, I hear you. There's some inevitable disappointment with any mystery, I imagine. The path from knowing nothing, exploring the game universe, and being able to imagine anything happening, to having a concrete plot and characters, always means giving up on some of the excitement and speculation.
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Aug 10, 2014 14:06
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Christ, I've been watching these videos from the start, and only now it hits me - the half-elf is named Mankin. Jesus, the elves really are assholes.
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Aug 10, 2014 14:31
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Ha! I had not noticed that! Man that is pitch-perfect.
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Aug 10, 2014 14:50
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anilEhilated posted:A troll being buried at a mausoleum - don't they turn into stone or something?
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Aug 10, 2014 15:19
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Tiggum posted:They're made of stone while they're alive too. And the mausoleum contained a pile of rubble (which Malachite insisted wasn't Therma's remains). That's what I'm getting at, she's gotta be still around and completely dropped off the plot by now. That makes her suspicious in my book.
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Aug 10, 2014 15:34
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Well, we DO have some idea that there might be a plaster surgeon operating in A-M...
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Aug 10, 2014 15:38
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There's something that bothers me about this. All the trolls we've met thus far (all three of them, to be fair) had mineral names - Sapphire, Malachite, and Jasper Horst, who wins the double-word-score since both of those are at least geologically related. But Therma? That's not a geological name. 'Madame Lodestone' was, but that might just have been a very clever singer who made the lodestone = magnetic = attractive connection. I mean, our cast of non-troll females is only marginally larger than our cast of female trolls, but I'm just saying, Therma doesn't seem to be named like a troll. I wouldn't get too locked into thinking she is one.
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Aug 11, 2014 01:03
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Bacter posted:Yeah, I hear you. There's some inevitable disappointment with any mystery, I imagine. The path from knowing nothing, exploring the game universe, and being able to imagine anything happening, to having a concrete plot and characters, always means giving up on some of the excitement and speculation. You don't seem to have PMs, is there any way I could contact you to ask what that thing is you're talking about to see if it's what I think you mean?
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Aug 11, 2014 18:23
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bacterletsplay@gmail.com, yo!
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Aug 12, 2014 03:52
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Well, since it seemed to receive at least a positive response from Bacter last time, and because dropping hints about something being 'SO GLARING' is the mystery fan's version of throwing down the proverbial gauntlet, I decided I'd go back and scour some of the earlier videos for hints as to what that might be. From the earliest videos, one of the interesting groupings of hints relate to the von Uberwald family. Consider: - the Count is in exceedingly poor health, but implies that he could still take Lewton in a physical altercation - the Count ALSO implies (and Bacter noted this as creepy), that "blood is very important to the von Uberwalds", and that they are all connected by 'ties of blood'. This led me to my initial idea, that the family are vampires - they are from Discworld Transylvania, after all. Couple of things don't tally there, though - for one, I have no idea whether vampires are actually capable of getting sick. That's relatively weak evidence compared to the next one, though - here's the relevant bit of the relevant video. For those of you that don't care to click that link, it's video 6, where Carlotta kisses Lewton. The relevant bit of narration is as follows: "When she kissed me, fire burned in my veins, and I felt alive...Something changed in me at that point, and I knew I'd never be the same again." As the latter line is being spoken, the camera pans past the picture of the old Duchess, up to the stained glass window above, which we've only been able to see once previously, in the external shot of the mansion. The window, appropriately enough, depicts a wolf howling at the full moon. So! Assuming that's not just the game messing with us (and with this game's sense of humour, I wouldn't put it past it), I think that's the best guess we've got as to who turned Lewton into a werewolf. It also follows that if Carlotta is a werewolf, she's got to be the 'other human-ish female with magical inclusions' scent we've been seeing at every crime scene. What doesn't follow is the idea that the person belonging to that scent killed Lewton - after all, why would she kill us in a way she knew wouldn't stick? In point of fact, why would she kill us at all? ...and yet... Here's the thing. (I actually only found this one while I was writing the post, as I decided to error-check my theory on a whim.) Go back. Go back and watch video number 9, the bit right at the end, starting at ~47ish minutes. Watch the chase closely. See anything familiar? It's amazing, really - when I saw it for the first time, I actually wondered about the weird green lighting effects everywhere, and managed to forget by the time I started typing this post. It's not lighting effects at all, of course. It's a scent - the all-pervasive scent of the Ankh. OK, that's fairly strong evidence that Carlotta stabbed us with the sword. We've also got a decent guess (better than any others I've got, anyhow) as to when we became a werewolf, and if that guess is true, Carlotta was similarly responsible. So if she did turn us - why? Possibly to save our lives...when she subsequently stabbed us? Here's where I run out of explanations, unfortunately. What say you, thread?
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Aug 13, 2014 06:32
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Oh, poo poo, I forgot about the kiss. Forget vampires, they don't work that way - seems pretty obvious that Carlotta is a werewolf and that kiss was how Lewton contracted lycanthropy, so I'd say you got that right. I still don't think she stabbed Lewton - and I'm still not convinced a werewolf would stab him as opposed to just ripping out his throat - but he was definitely chased by a werewolf there.
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Aug 13, 2014 07:45
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According to Gaspode, the Wonder Dog, whoever stabbed Lewton couldn't have been a werewolf, because a werewolf would have known how to finish another werewolf off properly. So either whoever stabbed Lewton wasn't a werewolf, or... whoever stabbed Lewton didn't intend to kill him after all.
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Aug 13, 2014 08:47
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Well, that'll teach me for posting as an attempt to deal with not being able to sleep. My original logic did have some things I didn't address. Mzbundifund points out that there's no reason our pursuer should be a werewolf, since they'd know to kill us with claw and tooth rather than stabbing us. anilEhilated points out that there's no reason our pursuer should be Carlotta, for the same reasons listed above, but agrees that the pursuer was a werewolf. There are two solutions to this problem that come to mind. Mzbundifund again suggested the first - that our pursuer was a werewolf (presumably Carlotta), who did know we were a werewolf, and stabbed us without the intent to kill us - possibly to keep us out of whatever sword-finding-aftermath happened while we were six feet under. The second is that we were chased by a werewolf, and stabbed with intent to kill us, but that the werewolf did not know that we were also a werewolf, and therefore expected the stabbing to take. If this is the case, then it follows that the werewolf that chased us almost certainly is not Carlotta. There are problems with this second theory - the odour patterns seem to suggest a female werewolf (assuming earlier speculation on scent-colour patterns is true), and we're short on suspects for who that might be other than Carlotta (Therma, maybe?). Personally, I'm on board with 'Carlotta stabbed us with intent to temporarily inconvenience rather than kill us', but that might be because I think it'd make the ensuing story more interesting.
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Aug 13, 2014 20:45
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E: reply is not etc.
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Aug 13, 2014 22:41
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