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nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Arcade Rabbit posted:

Did that "big announcement" from Level-5 happen yet? I'm not as up to date on gaming stuff as I'd like to be, but I do remember a lot of talk about it a short while ago.

They said at E3, so not till June.

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nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013
gently caress me, I have to give my crown back now. The Dark Id's back with mother loving Drakengard 3 of all games.

This LP is now well and truly dead.

Shinjobi
Jul 10, 2008


Gravy Boat 2k
Drakengard 3 is a clunky butthead of a game, but it's got parts of it that you can genuinely like. WKC still wins the war, even if Drakengard 2 can give it a run for its money.


Rest easy, crow. Your fight was not in vain.:911:

SomeMathGuy
Oct 4, 2014

The people were ASTONISHED at his doctrine.

Now, WKC versus Lunar: Dragon Song, there was a race to the bottom if I ever saw one.

Still think WKC is more frustrating just for having some ingredients that, if you squint, could somehow be rearranged into a good game if the development team wasn't headed by Hino. Plus Leonard. gently caress Leonard.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013


Before we say goodbye to White Knight Chronicles once and for all, I figure the last official thing we should do is take a short look back at that original trailer that got the gaming world so hyped for the game before the actual footage of it emerged and everyone went “Oh…? Ooooooooooh.”

I was inspired to do this by a poster in the thread who’s username has eluded me, but they posted a while back that I should highlight this trailer vis-à-vis the actual game just to show what an absolute con-job it was and how loving completely Level-5 dropped the ball on it. If you’re reading this, dear poster, please let me know and I will properly credit you here, because I can’t find the post in question in the thread.

The following screenshots were cropped from the first “footage” of White Knight Chronicles debuted to the public at the 2006 Tokyo Game Show convention. Ah, 2006, George W. Bush was still president, Twitter was just months old and still an internet oddity, YouTube was still a barely-functional piece of poo poo, Saddam Hussein was still alive, and I had no idea what Level-5 was, but holy gently caress I can’t wait to play this White Knight thing they just unveiled.

This is going to be the best PlayStation3 game ever, even better Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which are totally coming out at the same time.

Let’s begin, shall we?


CUTSCENE:Tokyo Game Show 2006 “White Knight” Announce Trailer

The trailer begins with the roundup of the usual suspects involved in perpetrating White Knight Chronicles upon the world.

First up is big daddy Sony itself, who was so proud of the WKC franchise, they buried it in cement and refused to acknowledge it even existed.


Sandwhiched in the middle is SCE Japan Studio, the second-party dev that tried to help Level-5 push the car out of the snowbank only to get covered in mud for their troubles.


And finally…




Good old Level-5, showing off their PS2-era logo here. By the time White Knight Chronicles was finally published four years later, they’d debuted the gray-on-white V logo which they still use to this day.


At this point, the game was still known by its production codename, Shirokishi or White Knight. “Chronicles” would be appended to it at a later date.


OVERWORLD MUSIC:The Continent of Nadias” (Disc 1, Track 15)

The trailer begins in earnest with a shot of the prototype world map screen. This screen would eventually be replaced with the more cartoonish hand-drawn map seen in the finished game.

You can make out some familiar landmarks on it if you squint. Though some places have been shuffled about geographically on the final map, you should be able to recognize Balandor, Parma, Balastor and Greydall Plains, the Lagnish Desert, even the tip of Redhorn Isle in the upper left.


The camera zooms in and a number of names appear on the screen denoting potentially visitable areas. We’re starting at Balandor in the centre. To the south is Balastor Plain, and Greydall Plain is off in the south east by the lake.

Up in the top right of the screen is an area that was apparently cut from the final game: the Eshalar Ruins.

There were apparently three other places cut from the game, most of which appeared on the western half of the map where Faria is: the Xarm Plain, which is right next to the Lost Forest, the Athwani Capital itself, which was supposed to be a separate visitable location apart from Guido’s Hollow, and Ences Temple on top of the massive mountain in the far north west of the map above Athwan.

Xarm Plain is briefly (but not really) glimpsed in the PSP prequel White Knight Chronicles: Origins, while Ences Temple would have been the place where you would retrieve the dummied out seventh Incorruptus, the God of War, for Scardigne, back before Scardigne was reworked into Kara for game 2.


The demo, and by that I mean 100% pre-rendered video, takes place on Balastor Plain.


Unlike in the base game, where you just automatically move to your next location the map, Level-5 originally intended to show your party’s journey after a fashion with a winding blue arrow.


When you arrive, the horse icon denoting where you started from then moves to your current location. In the final game, this only happens if you visit the area and then leave it immediately and go back to the world map.


A list of quests similar to those that appear in the final game comes up when Balastor Plain is selected. The big change, aside from the UI being a little more detailed in this incarnation, is that the depiction of Balastor Plain in the upper window is animated, unlike in the final game where it’s just a still image.

This was :effortless:-era Level-5, full of optimism and ambition and out to conquer the gaming world, before time, tribulation, and ultimately failure ground them down into :effort: Level-5.




Instead of just fading into a loading screen, Level-5 intended transitions from World Map to storyline segments to zoom directly into the start of that section’s opening cutscene.




CUTSCENE / AREA MUSIC:Balastor Plain” (Disc 1, Track 5)

Well, this is looking vaguely familiar, no?

Remember bland and samey Balastor Plain? The place from the start of the game all of you have forgotten about by now? This is the exact same area; one of the few assets to survive into the actual White Knight Chronicles game.

What a difference a proper lighting engine makes, huh?


Unfortunately, Level-5 scrapped the lighting engine and kept the area map, so it wound up looking like poo poo because it wasn’t lit properly.


I think the various parts of the game were intended to have their own chapter titles at one point, because this one is titled “Quest 3: The Journey of Leonard.” Though another translator also titled it “The Dawn of Leonard”, which is a title I find infinitely disturbing after everything I’ve been through w/r/t Leonard himself.


We also get our first shots of prototype Leonard and Eldore here. Though their models are less janky than their finished counterparts, they also lack the finer details on their individual textures present in the finished product.

Personally, I think the prototype models looks better, even with the blander textures. Hell, Leonard kind of looks like a credible protagonist character in this incarnation.


So this trailer is set after the attack on Balandor Castle. Princess Csina’s already been kidnapped, and the party is running after her.

This is why it’s titled Quest 3, because I’m assuming Quests 1 and 2 were the run to Parma and back and the attack itself, respectively.


The party for the demo consists of Leonard, Eldore, and Yulie. The Avatar either didn’t exist as a concept at this point in the game’s development, or was an asset Level-5 was sitting on because they don’t show up at all in the demo.

So as you can see, even early on, Level-5’s attitude was “gently caress the Avatar.”


In the demo, when characters begin to Live Talk, the rest of the party will turn around and listen to them if you’re standing still. This doesn’t happen in the final game because of course, :effort:.


As Leonard starts down the path, he turns back and waves Yulie and Eldore on. Again, these little details are entirely absent from the final game.




The demo wastes no time priming you for action, as a group of Magi soldiers are spotted by the party just ahead.


At this point, Yulie tells Leonard to prepare for the coming fight. Because I guess even Demo Leonard is kind of a dumbass who needs to be reminded about things most people take for granted.


On Yulie’s prompting, the game’s menu opens up. It looks somewhat similar to the menu we see in the final game, only a little more streamlined and simplified than the one that shows up in the finished game.

Making something more obtuse and unwieldy as you refine it? “That’s our Level-5!” he says in a patronizing 70s sitcom voice.

Menu simplicity aside, the other thing you notice immediately that’s not apparent in these still images is that the party’s menu portraits are animated and reflect their current status and equipment.

gently caress me, 2006 Level-5 was all about :effortless:.


The demo shows off its version of combat set up by selecting Leonard first.




We see here a similar screen to the Command Bar customization screen in the final game.


So here’s something that sort of survived the transition from hypothetical to actual mostly intact.


Switching over to Eldore, however, shows off an interesting aspect of the demo’s Command Bar: integrated combos.


In the final game, combos were separate individual skills comprised of multiple skills chained together based on linking parameters. Here in the demo, you could apparently turn your entire command bar into a combo by linking skills with matching parameters together.

You can see the little arrows going from one skill on Eldore’s bar to the next which weren’t present on Leonard’s bar. It also has icon prompts on the bar that suggest what skill you should put in next to continue the sequence.


Like this.


The demo will tell you you did it right by flashing a little “Connect!” indicator over the linked skills. Again, this is absent from the final game.






The game doesn’t bother to show off any of Yulie’s skills, because gently caress Yulie, apparently.




I think this part of the demo was supposed to take place on Graydall Plain, but because Balastor Plain was the only place they had finalized at the time, Level-5 just said “gently caress it, nobody knows anything about this game yet, they’re not gonna care.”




BATTLE MUSIC:Prelude to Battle” (Disc 1, Track 7)

Another thing you notice looking back on the demo is that the soundtrack for these parts of the game was already complete. That’s probably why it’s so decent compared to the rest of the game, it came from early :effortless: Level-5, rather than later :effort: Level-5.

Also, one thing to point out; I never mentioned it in the LP itself, but the two versions of the game have different battle themes. Both tracks are called “Prelude to Battle”, but the version here only shows up in the original version of White Knight Chronicles International Edition. Level-5 had a separate battle track composed for White Knight Chronicles II, which overwrites the original version even in the remake section of game 1. You can listen to it here if you care too. I’m torn over which one sounds better. Both tracks aren’t that great all told, but they each have their own unique merits that prevent me from definitively saying which one is “better” than the other as an RPG battle theme.


The basic screen layout for battles is pretty much the same as the final game, expect the party panel is in the upper right of the screen in the final game, and it also denotes MP and actual HP numbers in the final version. Your target identity and health are also transposed on the other side of the screen in the final version.






And here’s where the bullshit part of this whole “bullshit trailer” really starts to come into play. This battle is pre-rendered and motion captured, and is trying to trick you into thinking it’s live rendered.

When enemies attack, your characters will respond by blocking the attack directly with their shields, or parrying with equipped weapons, if they don’t have one, and vice versa for enemies.




Enemies and PCs will react to hits in real time and with realistic reactions. All non-fatal hits are blocked or dodged, only killing or wounding strikes will connect with their target, just like in real life combat.


I think the battle system in the demo is operating on the same sort of principles as Final Fantasy XII’s, Xenoblade Chronicles’s, and The Last Story’s battle systems do, in that generic physical attacks are handled automatically by the AI, though they can be prompted by the player as well, and the player really only manages their character’s more complex attack skills or magic or other special abilities.

This of course was scrapped from the final game, so you had to mash X every three seconds otherwise your character would just sit there and die.






I can sort of see why Level-5 :effort:’d out on the demo battle engine, from a functional standpoint. Yeah, battles in this style look very cool and cinematic, but they would also take their sweet time. Plus I can’t even fathom how many calculations per second it would take to pull this off in real time on the PlayStation3, especially with its hosed up obtuse system architecture.


Still, good loving god, this demo looked so good at the time.




In this video, Yulie’s equipped with just a knife rather than the bow and arrow, so she blocks with the blade of her knife here.






Here’s an example of a fatal hit: Leonard bashes this Magi goon with his shield and knocks him out.








He also does a little sword swirl flourish after he makes a kill in the demo. It’s just another bit of personality that Demo Leonard has which never made it into Final Game Leonard because Level-5 didn’t incorporate any sort of victory fanfare into their battle system.




The demo then switches over to Eldore, showing off a less obtuse version of the final game’s character switch mechanic. It almost leaves you wondering what they actually wound up getting right when they went to make the game for real.


Eldore’s role in the demo is to show off combos. He starts out with his first attack…


Then the cursor immediately moves down the line to his second linked attack.


Then the third as the next attack launches his enemy skyward.










Combos in the finish game sort of look like this, but are less impressive than they are here in the demo. Because Level-5 couldn’t get them up to this level of quality for real.


Also, demo combos can include magic attacks, apparently.


You can’t do this in the final game, BTW.






Magic attacks also leave persistent environment effects after they finish. This also didn’t make it into the final game.


And now back to Leonard for more pre-rendered motion captured play-fighting.




















After Leonard deals with the next Magi goon, Yulie calls out to him to set up something else that didn’t make it into the final game: co-op actions.




While Yulie’s keeping this mook occupied, Leonard sheaths his sword and sneaks in behind him.




When in range, he executes the appropriate command on the Command Bar, and…


Grabs the Magi soldier from behind, locking him into a full nelson.


This allows Yulie to come rushing in…


And roundhouse kick him right in the head.

Even Demo Yulie is a loving amazing badass. :allears:


Again, I get why these were cut. They probably proved too complex to execute live, so Level-5 just :effort:’d on them and didn’t even bother.


Now there’s only one goon left.


Leonard readies to go in for the kill, but…


The mook realizes he’s outnumbered handily now, and panicks and runs away.


Leading to a chase sequence that adds a little bit of excitement to standard battles. Once again, enemies cutting and running doesn’t happen in the final game. The AI isn’t smart enough to retreat. All they did is attack you till they kill you, you kill them, or you manage to run out of their field of view.


I’m going to miss going through and analyzing in specific detail the exact way Level-5 poo poo the bed on this game.


The chase is interrupted, however, by a sudden EXPLOSION!</terrycrews>




An explosion which triggers a cutscene. Also, it’s apparently instantly night now.


In another example of how Level-5 :effortless:’d for this demo, the individual strands of Leonard’s hair flutter in the wind kicked up by the explosion. There’s barely any hair movement in Final Game White Knight Chronicles, let alone to this detail.

Once again, Actual Level-5 took what Demo Level-5 did and made it sloppier, cheaper, and poorer.


Again, I’m really disappointed that they eventually went with a more cartoonish design over the semi-realistic one presented here. It probably would have helped people take the game more seriously, rather than end up writing it off as a Saturday morning Y7 anime like Beyblade or whatever the gently caress the latest fad is.


Is Beyblade still a thing? Or am I just mashing words together as a sign of that oncoming WKC-induced stroke I promised back at the start of the LP?




Oh, I recognize that menacing fireglow.


Pyredaemos is back too for the demo.




It also gets a Level-5 Boss Subtitle too.


CUTSCENE / BATTLE MUSIC:A Worthy Opponent Draws Near” (Disc 1, Track 8)

PD’s hidden behind shadows and smoke for the demo because it’s mostly an untextured shadow mass here and Level-5’s trying to cover that up. Personally, I think it looks even more menacing than it did when you got to see the full thing.

Also, note the slight design change from the final version: more emphasis is placed on the creepy doll mask on its head in this version, including a pair of lights behind its eyes.

Demo Pyredaemos is also a lot more fluid in its animations than Final Game Pyredaemos. Again, no surprise, because this was a pre-rendered proof of concept that Level-5 put their best work into, and then slacked off in the final game.


The demo also mimes at giving you a chance to see a boss battle in action here.

One thing to point out: Boss HP gems in the demo were red specifically to denote them as bosses, or maybe to hint at multiple HP bars with different colours overlaid on top of each other, Kingdom Hearts style. This also didn’t make it into the final game.


Taking on Pyredaemos on foot at the start of the game is pretty much suicide, but that doesn’t stop Eldore from leaping at it…


And getting swatted away like a fly. Though as luck would have it, Leonard’s transformation gauge, denoted by the glowing Yshrenian symbol in the lower left, is now full. In the demo, it apparently steadily builds as you fight regardless of whether you’re doing anything or not.


At this point, Demo Leonard also hits the Transform command.


…Which triggers a cutscene.


I’m trying not to make any Leonard gently caress up/stupidity jokes in this update, I really am.




Again, the game is trying to trick you into thinking that this is happening live in-engine.




Weep for this poor child. This is the first and last time he will ever be anything approaching badass or competent in this series.




































So the trailer concludes with the unveiling of the White Knight itself, looking very much like it walked out of a PS2 HD remake.


The White Knight is one of the few elements of the demo whose finished version I like better than the demo version.

It’s very clear just by looking at it that this was a very early-stage rendition of the game’s titular element. That’s why it only shows up for like the last five seconds of the trailer, and mostly obscured by various glow and blur filters.


Like, look at this.


So yeah, the visual aspect of the White Knight is probably the one area they improved on over the trailer. Everything else is an almost hilarious backslide in terms of quality.








And so rather than show off any actual Knight combat, the trailer just ends with Leonard rushing at Pyredaemos and stabbing it with Whitesteel. Probably because I doubt Level-5 had even programmed a single presentable line of code for how the Knights operated in-game yet.








And that’s it. That’s the last I have to say about this game. Though really, by this point, I’ve said about everything there could be said about it, so it’s about time I finally shut up anyway.


White Knight Chronicles! It literally peaked during its announcement trailer.

nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 08:36 on May 14, 2015

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013
And that right there is my final word on White Knight Chronicles. The LP is done, I've finished copyediting it (or just gave the gently caress up on it) and I'm PMing baldruk right now to start the Archive prep.

So whatever you have to say about the game, say it within the next three days because I'm closing the thread on Saturday night.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Finally.

Ulvirich
Jun 26, 2007

Magnificent. Thank you for playing this so we don't have to!

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.
A game with all the potential in the world that it punted away forever will always make me sad.

Arcade Rabbit
Nov 11, 2013

Onmi posted:

A game with all the potential in the world that it punted away forever will always make me sad.

God, it really is the worst though isn't it? Seeing something that could have been so good get squandered and wasted by idiots, executive meddling, and hideous budget cuts. I'm sorry WKC, you deserved better than this ugly half-life you were given.

Oh well. See you for the sequel, Crow!

Onmi
Jul 12, 2013

If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

Arcade Rabbit posted:

God, it really is the worst though isn't it? Seeing something that could have been so good get squandered and wasted by idiots, executive meddling, and hideous budget cuts. I'm sorry WKC, you deserved better than this ugly half-life you were given.

Oh well. See you for the sequel, Crow!

Especially if you played something like Dark Cloud/II or Rogue Galaxy or Dragon Quest VIII, were they the best games? no, but they had a lot of heart and fun. And they all shared a lot of similar system, the weapon evolution in DC1 to the photo crafting in DC 2, to the Frog in Rogue Galaxy to the pot in Dragon Quest, to, even weapon binding here. but it's just terrible in this game when they got it right 4 times in the past!

Like Rogue Galaxy is basically Star Wars Anime but it's so fun and got a lot of obvious love, and the same for the DC games, and then Dragon Quest, well check the LP going on right now, it's so lovingly charming.

For some reason, WKC had everyone at Level 5 go loving loopy.

SomeMathGuy said it was a race to the bottom between this and Lunar Dragon Song, and the thing is, LDS had no where to fall, it killed a series but it was poo poo from the start. Look at that trailer, look at their track record, look at the concept! It had so far to fall from grace...

And I'm loving depressed again because there's nothing you can do! you can't go to the alternate universe where the game was given the love it deserved. All you can do is go back to the good games.

http://lparchive.org/Rogue-Galaxy/

I'm gonna go rewatch that LP and remember the Level 5, and even Hino wasn't insane (like he was when he suggested he could sell multiple millions of a Gundam Game if they just gave him an anime to promote it.)

Space Kablooey
May 6, 2009


Thanks for suffering for us, Crow. :haw:

By the way, is there any way for you to update the LP archive after it goes up? I wanted to make something for the ending of this LP, but the materials haven't arrived yet.

StrifeHira
Nov 7, 2012

I'll remind you that I have a very large stick.
It, it's well and truly over, right? There's nothing else they can torment you with, right? :ohdear:

God, Crow, the dedication you put into this terrible game "series" is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Congrats.

Dr. Snark
Oct 15, 2012

I'M SORRY, OK!? I admit I've made some mistakes, and Jones has clearly paid for them.
...
But ma'am! Jones' only crime was looking at the wrong files!
...
I beg of you, don't ship away Jones, he has a wife and kids!

-United Nations Intelligence Service

If nothing else, at least Crow will be able to rest easy for a while.

It's been a hell of a trip, and while WKC may have sucked, this LP was undoubtedly the best way to experience it. You did good, Crow.

May WKC rest in peace.

gently caress Leonard.

Artix
Apr 26, 2010

He's finally back,
to kick some tail!
And this time,
he's goin' to jail!

StrifeHira posted:

It, it's well and truly over, right? There's nothing else they can torment you with, right? :ohdear:



It was even released in Europe, so you don't have to translate it! :devil:

Shinjobi
Jul 10, 2008


Gravy Boat 2k
God, no.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013
Origins doesn't deserve to be LP's :catbert:

HardDisk posted:

Thanks for suffering for us, Crow. :haw:

By the way, is there any way for you to update the LP archive after it goes up? I wanted to make something for the ending of this LP, but the materials haven't arrived yet.

If I can, I'll unlock this thread and update everyone. Otherwise just keep watching the Prince of Persia and/or Killzone 2/Liberation threads because I'll post it there too.

Mraagvpeine
Nov 4, 2014

I won this avatar on a technicality this thick.
afaik you can't update on LP Archive. crow could delay putting it up on there until you're ready.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Mraagvpeine posted:

afaik you can't update on LP Archive. crow could delay putting it up on there until you're ready.

baldruk can edit entries if you ask him to. We had to change a video link on the Shadows of the Empire LP like weeks after it went up and he did it.

But I can ask him to hold off though if it's something that'll be ready soon.

xedo
Nov 7, 2011

Thanks for an amazing, saddening, and maddening LP, crow!

SomeMathGuy
Oct 4, 2014

The people were ASTONISHED at his doctrine.

The trailer makes for a nice capstone as I hadn't bothered to hunt it down before. It's like an unsettling mixture of what could have been and what actually came to pass, and certainly knowing now just how much of a bullshot it was provides a more critical appraisal than I'd imagine any of us had or would have had at the time. A strange curiosity representative of a kind of magic that was never really there, like tears in rain or something.

In any case: gently caress Leonard.

chiasaur11
Oct 22, 2012



nine-gear crow posted:

The party for the demo consists of Leonard, Eldore, and Yulie. The Avatar either didn’t exist as a concept at this point in the game’s development, or was an asset Level-5 was sitting on because they don’t show up at all in the demo.

So as you can see, even early on, Level-5’s attitude was “gently caress the Avatar.”


An attitude shared by Asami Sato and almost every party member in Fire Emblem Awakening.

Interesting to see the trailer. After such a long time spent wallowing in why the game was bad, it's helpful to have a reminder why people were disappointed, instead of just amazed how bad it was and forgetting it. There's some neat stuff there. Also a lot of stuff that seems cool in a trailer but would probably just be a pain in real life. Well, we got what we got. For good or ill.

(Ill.)

Space Kablooey
May 6, 2009


nine-gear crow posted:

baldruk can edit entries if you ask him to. We had to change a video link on the Shadows of the Empire LP like weeks after it went up and he did it.

But I can ask him to hold off though if it's something that'll be ready soon.

I'll PM you the link when I make it, no need to hold on.

Crystalgate
Dec 26, 2012
Had WKC been good, I would probably have gotten a playstation 3. I assumed that Kingdom Hearts 3 would eventually be released there and that it would have other good games as well. Not that I doubt there are good PS 3 games, but there are none that made me think I should get the console. Incidentally, Ni No Kuni was also a game which made me think "I'll get a PS 3 if it turns out to be great" although was less hyped this time around.

Anyway, the Hollywood fighting style could have made it to the final game at some extent. It would be a pain if the majority of your attacks were parried, but cosmetic attacks would be possible. Each time you attack, there's a recharge before you can act again. If both your character and the enemy it's facing have enough recharge time left, the game could have launched an attack that's entirely cosmetic and will never connect. Like Baldur's Gate does except both the attacker and the target has an animation instead of only the attacker. This would not be an easy task though.

However, what I think the 2006 trailer has over the finished game the most is tone. The tone is far more heroic and far less silly in the trailer. When I saw it, I got the impression that the characters consisted of one experienced veteran and two people who are novices, yet brave and skilled. This is not the impression I got when I watched a Youtube playtrough of it. Mostly I saw a blundering author rather than characters.

nine-gear crow portrayed Leonard as incredible incompetent. That was not what I thought though. I didn't actually think anything about Leonard at all. Instead of "Leonard failed because he's a moron" I always thought "Leonard failed because the writer needed him to fail" and whenever he said anything period, I didn't feel any personality from him. His dialogs are mostly noise thrown in from JRPG main character cliches without the author having any firm grasp on what cliche's Leonard does and doesn't conform too. This was a general trend with WKC cutscenes, they made me think of the writing itself rather than the actual story it was supposed to convey.

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Onmi posted:

For some reason, WKC had everyone at Level 5 go loving loopy.

I think WKC's problem was that it had so many grand ideas (It was going to be an epic JRPG franchise! And an MMO! etc), but so few resources to do it with, causing it to collapse. If they had focused on the JRPG bit, tried to make it closer to the trailer, it really could have been a classic.

Geostomp
Oct 22, 2008

Unite: MASH!!
~They've got the bad guys on the run!~
What surprises me even more than combat that actually looks decent is that Leonard seems to be a reasonably smart and effective protagonist in this trailer.

Aw well. Farewell, White Knight Chronicles. May your relentless failure serve as a cautionary tale for all JRPGs.

GeneralYeti
Jul 22, 2012

Look at this smug broken asshole.
I know I've said this before, but crow, thank you so much for suffering through these games. Play it so we don't have to, yadda yadda yadda.

And I was about to do an LP of this when you started this. :shepicide:

Crystalgate
Dec 26, 2012

CommissarMega posted:

I think WKC's problem was that it had so many grand ideas (It was going to be an epic JRPG franchise! And an MMO! etc), but so few resources to do it with, causing it to collapse. If they had focused on the JRPG bit, tried to make it closer to the trailer, it really could have been a classic.
I seriously doubt that. The story is flat out poorly written by an incompetent writer. As for the gameplay, I think the multi player is only partially to blame. A good multi player has an entirely different design paradigm than a good single player, so it makes sense to think they cannibalized on each other. However, Ni No Kuni, another Level-5 game, had the same problem with dumb as a brick AI and no non awkward way of issuing orders to your AI companions. So, the bad story and the AI frustrations would most likely have been there either way. What we are looking for is at best an upgrade from train-wreck to mediocre.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

GeneralYeti posted:

I know I've said this before, but crow, thank you so much for suffering through these games. Play it so we don't have to, yadda yadda yadda.

And I was about to do an LP of this when you started this. :shepicide:

Really? Wow. Well now I'm curious. How would you have handled an LP of the game? What were you planning to do with it?

It's always been the one question that's bugged me over this LP: how would someone else do this?

GeneralYeti
Jul 22, 2012

Look at this smug broken asshole.

nine-gear crow posted:

Really? Wow. Well now I'm curious. How would you have handled an LP of the game? What were you planning to do with it?

It's always been the one question that's bugged me over this LP: how would someone else do this?

I was planning on doing a hybrid LP, somewhat like this; I was planning on using screenshots mostly for the town stuff and videos for the out-of-town stuff like combat and adventuring. Naturally it would be highly edited, because this game is boring as poo poo.

Since I'd already been corrupted by my immense hatred for this game (gently caress you Brimflamme and gently caress you Leonard) I was going to have a co-commentator coming into it blind just to watch his enthusiasm for this game slowly be ground away under the tedium and poor writing.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

GeneralYeti posted:

I was planning on doing a hybrid LP, somewhat like this; I was planning on using screenshots mostly for the town stuff and videos for the out-of-town stuff like combat and adventuring. Naturally it would be highly edited, because this game is boring as poo poo.

Since I'd already been corrupted by my immense hatred for this game (gently caress you Brimflamme and gently caress you Leonard) I was going to have a co-commentator coming into it blind just to watch his enthusiasm for this game slowly be ground away under the tedium and poor writing.

How would you have handled the Avatar?

GeneralYeti
Jul 22, 2012

Look at this smug broken asshole.

nine-gear crow posted:

How would you have handled the Avatar?

About as gracefully as the game itself did :v: Nah, I was planning on making the Avatar a mage and using him as the main party 'leader'.

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.
I finished reading this LP. You really put a lot of effort into this. Like way more than Level 5 put into the game. That trailer analysis was a nice way of giving people some perspective on why people were disappointed. What wasted potential.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
"It peaked during its announcement trailer."

A sad fate, but perhaps not uncommon?

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013

Dr. Fetus posted:

I finished reading this LP. You really put a lot of effort into this. Like way more than Level 5 put into the game. That trailer analysis was a nice way of giving people some perspective on why people were disappointed. What wasted potential.

Thank you very much for that. And thank you, too, everyone for making this experience as enjoyable as it was at times tedious and frustrating. You were the best audience one could ever hope for. Thanks for going along with everything as well as you all did and for all your individual contributions to the LP, be it artwork, writing, ideas, criticisms, ideas, or just support. I probably wouldn't have seen this thing through without all of you.

See you all on the LP Archive.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013
The End.

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Sally
Jan 9, 2007


Don't post Small Dash!
*pantywaist moan*

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