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 ENEMY ZERO WILL BECOME A MORE MOVIE-ORIENTED TITLE, WITH LAURA AS AN ACTRESS. THE MAIN STAGE OF THE WORK WILL BE THE SPACE ITSELF. BUT ENEMY ZERO WILL HAVE AN ASPECT OF AMUSEMENT AS A GAME AS WELL, WITH A LESS WEIGHT. ONE OF THE CONCEPTUAL SUBJECTS OF THE WORK WILL BE "DIGITAL SADNESS" MULTIMEDIA, AS DIGITAL MEDIA, HAS EPHEMERAL FACTORS AND RISKS. THROUGH SHOWING ENEMY ZERO, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THERE ARE SUCH CONTINGENCY RISKS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD OF THE MODERN TIMES. - Kenji Eno I'm not sure if I could give a better description of the game than the director himself. Though, not mentioned in Eno's description of Enemy Zero, is that it would be the follow up to the 1995 FMV horror adventure "D", which was the biggest hit of his career at that point. Enemy Zero was a horror game that combined the FMV segments of D with real-time polygonal areas that allowed Eno and his team at WARP to try their hand at that first-person-shooting that was becoming popular in the mid-nineties. But you know, if you're trying to do something a bit different with your first-person-shooter, and if you also want to try to make the game scary, what do you do to shake things up? You could try making the enemies completely invisible, only detectable by sound. Enemy Zero has you rely greatly on the game's audio, as that's your only way of figuring out if there are enemies about, and where they are. However, this being a Kenji Eno game, the cutscene-to-gameplay ratio is weighted heavily towards cutscenes. There will be many cinematics, there will be CG characters emoting heavily, and there will be a main character who doesn't say anything while nobody else thinks that's strange.  Say hi to Laura! The digital actress is back in her second appearance (out of three). She actually *does* have lines in this game, though she still doesn't talk in cutscenes. You'll see. Also, if you remember D2, you may remember that it seemed heavily inspired by John Carpenter's The Thing. Well, what The Thing is to D2, Alien/Aliens are to Enemy Zero. You may notice some similarities. Now, let's get in our cryo-beds, and wake up in the far off future as it was imagined in the mid-nineties! VIDEOS p.1 - Digital Sadness - Youtube | Download Interlude: Panic Restaurant - Youtube | Download p.2 - Contingency Risks - Youtube | Download Interlude: Sunman - Youtube | Download p.3 - An Aspect of Amusement - Youtube | Download Interlude: Oyaji Hunter Mahjong - Youtube | Download p.4 - Ephemeral Factors - Youtube | Download Interlude: Short Warp - Youtube | Download p.5 - A More Movie-Oriented Title - Youtube | Download Interlude: Real Sound: Kaze no Regret - Youtube | Download p.6 - Conceptual Subjects - Youtube | Download Interlude: You, Me, and the Cubes - Youtube | Download p.7 - The Digital World of the Modern Times - Youtube | Download supergreatfriend fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 28, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 23:45
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Grimwit decided to demonstrate the most important rule of child care for us:
supergreatfriend fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jul 28, 2015 |
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Jul 3, 2015 23:46
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Kenji Eno's games are something very special. I have a German copy of D for the PS1 that I still haven't completed. I think his stuff aged poorly but it's still entertaining and quirky. The book "The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" has a few interviews with people who worked with him (he sadly passed away before the author began work on the book). One of his early game/application ideas was an email client with an avatar a la Bonzi Buddy, which would be sad/happy depending on your email's contents. Eno said he wanted to make it so that people would try their best to have a happy avatar and be nicer to everyone in their emails (and make the world a happier place). The guy was a Suda51/SWERY before them. Also, some recommended reading on WARP for those interested (contains spoilers for ENEMY ZERO). I've never actually looked up footage of Enemy Zero, so I'm really looking forward to this LP.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:02
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Hello Kenji, my old friend. I've come to play with you again. Also please for the love of god tell me this game doesn't have any poets in it. Edit: Was it this game or D2 that Kenji pressured some pianist into doing the music for? MechanicalTomPetty fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 00:17
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Oh, I am very happy that this LP is a thing. sgf's D & D2 LP was my crash course into Eno designed games. I don't think Kenji Eno's games aging badly is anything to be held against it, at least visually. Gameplay's another issue all together. I feel that they're representative of the time that they were created in, very zeitgeist-y.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:18
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RealSovietBear posted:Kenji Eno's games are something very special. I have a German copy of D for the PS1 that I still haven't completed. I think his stuff aged poorly but it's still entertaining and quirky.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:38
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Good to see E0 is following horror conventions and killing off the black guy first.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:47
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Oh hey, SGF is back! Can we all talk about the four minute game intro montage? My favorite part was the beginning where it repeated the same gasp animation multiple times, hah. Game looks interesting, looking forward to more of this. I did love watching the D LPs.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:53
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So certain popular video games have ENEMY ZERO as their digital root on the digital trunk of their digital family tree. Digital Genealogy.
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Jul 4, 2015 00:55
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Always good to see Best Digital Actress Laura again. Oh...and Kimberly is here too. Great. That save system is certainly the Kenji Eno middle fingers to the player taken to the extreme. Especially since you have to burn batteries to hear the stunning depth of emotion and narrative vision conveyed by Laura's voice actress.
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Jul 4, 2015 01:00
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These guys were extremely dedicated to their job:
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Jul 4, 2015 01:34
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Edit: Was it this game or D2 that Kenji pressured some pianist into doing the music for? This is that game. I mention it in the next video, but Eno kept asking Michael Nyman to do the score until Nyman agreed out of exhaustion.
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Jul 4, 2015 01:59
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I have been waiting for this, my life needed the final Kenji Eno epic.
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Jul 4, 2015 02:45
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Welcome back, SGF. I hope you know what you're getting into. I hope someone has the story of how Eno got the composer to work on this game too. 
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Jul 4, 2015 03:19
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Oh I'm pleased to see this. Such a... special game.
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Jul 4, 2015 03:24
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Good to see you back, SGF. Looking forward to experiencing some Digital Sadness. Also I love it when games have interesting developmental backstories behind them, so I really appreciate the trivia section. Who knew Kenji Eno was the clear, proven, indirect cause of the Souls games? Incredible.
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Jul 4, 2015 03:55
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W/B SGF, I hope you had a good break! Stoked for another LP, especially if it has Alien(s) inspiration.
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Jul 4, 2015 04:05
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So then judging by the sound it makes the monster is some kind of malevolent bong?
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Jul 4, 2015 05:18
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This is a Bad Game, but there's something so hokey about it that I can't help but kinda like it.
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Jul 4, 2015 05:50
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Extra Tasty posted:This is a Bad Game, but there's something so hokey about it that I can't help but kinda like it. That's kind of the Kenji Eno experience. I cannot say I enjoyed D2, but it's difficult to forget D2. Enemy Zero's been on my to-do list for years now. I may have to finally dig out the Saturn and get the hell to work.
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Jul 4, 2015 06:21
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I know everyone probably remembers the Michael Nyman Talk about dedication to your trade and your fans. On a personal note, I have an old copy of Sonic R for the PC that I got a few years back. Inside the CD slipcase is an ad for some other PC ports of Saturn games, including Enemy Zero. Hartseeker fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 06:36
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It's been a while and I'm very glad that you're back, SGF. This game was so ahead of its time. This low-res pixelated mess is an aesthetic that a lot of the music industry's top artists are trying to achieve in their videos.
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Jul 4, 2015 07:22
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Hartseeker posted:I know everyone probably remembers the Michael Nyman I really hope he showed up, slapped the recipient in the face as hard as possible, handed them the game, and left wordlessly.
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Jul 4, 2015 09:13
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I'm glad you're back SGF 
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Jul 4, 2015 09:18
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StarkRavingMad posted:I really hope he showed up, slapped the recipient in the face as hard as possible, handed them the game, and left wordlessly.
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Jul 4, 2015 09:30
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My biggest beef with these old FMV games is that they didn't seem to understand the first thing about camera drives. Every scene feels like someone just gave the camera some keyframes with position and orientation and used the same interpolation function to transfer between these two keyframes. The result is the camera taking really weird paths especially for changing its orientation. A big thing in today's digital film making is to make sure the camera drives are performed as if someone was doing the filming with a live camera. I randomly googled a scene from Ratatouille and the camera work feels like it was filmed using conventional means, even if smoothed. The thing that really separates these is that the camera work is not consistent in these FMV games. Comparing an old FMV game to a full digital film is probably a bit unfair. D4 already seems a lot better. There's also some tendency to use first person camera (like with the black guy being killed), possibly because this was a connection to the FPS games. I've seen only one film where this seemed like a good idea: Doom, that awful film from 2005. That WARP logo gives some pretty strong MODE vibes. Ronny sounds like an official "How to play" guy from those Philips CD-i interactive medias. The save system sure is something. There are all these horror games where you find audio logs that give you world fluff and hide security codes in them as an incentive to listen to them, but almost never you actually see anyone recording their audio logs. Least of all the player.
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Jul 4, 2015 13:21
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SirDifferential posted:The save system sure is something. There are all these horror games where you find audio logs that give you world fluff and hide security codes in them as an incentive to listen to them, but almost never you actually see anyone recording their audio logs. Least of all the player. Yeah, regardless of the design of the save system being brutal, it's interesting to see.
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Jul 4, 2015 14:27
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SirDifferential posted:There's also some tendency to use first person camera (like with the black guy being killed), possibly because this was a connection to the FPS games. I've seen only one film where this seemed like a good idea: Doom, that awful film from 2005. One example of first-person perspective in cinema I can think of is the opening scene from Dark Passage starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. It's a really good film. There is nothing inherently wrong with POV shots, imo. A lot of horror films use POV to "show" the monster without actually showing the monster. This seems to be the case here. You can tell what the creature is doing through the movement and speed of the camera despite its invisibility. And More fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 14:47
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I have a copy of this and played it a lot when I first got it. I have to say this is actually the most playable of Kenji Eno's games, as FPS sections are quite tense and the adventure sections are nice bookends to the action sections. That being said, I never finished it as my shotty tv audio made the midgame sections basically impossible for me.
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Jul 4, 2015 16:20
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Huh. VPS. What's going on with that VPS? Also, I see that Kimberly is the ship's Counselor Troi, so I'm sure we can look forward to her talking about all our emotions a great deal. (Even though I didn't myself have much of a problem with Kim in D2.) Anyway, I'd like to thank SGF for the timing of these LPs; it's appreciated by those of us who are a bit lacking in the "enjoyable things to do" department when it comes to holidays. (Well, this person, at least.) Blenheim fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 16:42
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If only I had a copy of Alien lying around, I could do shot comparisons. Like, I know a lot of that opening was exactly the opening of Alien when the mining ship was going through space and text appeared on screen. (Also, welcome back from break. I'm glad you've returned.)
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Jul 4, 2015 17:29
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Hell yeah, I love this game! It starts you off with a nonsense puzzle and it has a terrible difficulty curve, but the combat is so tense and exciting that I enjoy playing the game regardless.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:08
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So happy to see this thread for a whole bunch of reasons, most of which have already been mentioned above. My favorite thing about Eno's "digital actor" concept is that part of it apparently involves the actor always having the same first name for no reason. It just seems like a rule he decided on and never questioned because everyone was scared of him.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:19
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a spooky ghost posted:My favorite thing about Eno's "digital actor" concept is that part of it apparently involves the actor always having the same first name for no reason. It just seems like a rule he decided on and never questioned because everyone was scared of him. The thing I find interesting is that particularly in this day and age, where we actually now have recognisable 'voices' in the games industry, I can kind of imagine the whole digital actor concept working quite well. I mean, what if Jennifer Hale/Troy Baker/Nolan North/David Hayter et al actually had specific 'faces' to go with their voices, at least when they had major parts and weren't just being given NPC-filler lines...
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Jul 4, 2015 18:23
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Someone should make a game where we actually play as all those famous VAs. The setting could still be fantasy or sci-fi or whatever, but we'd literally be playing as a band of voice actors playing themselves saving the world. Even better would be if they voiced the villains too. I don't think I can count all the times Steve Blum has waged war against himself. vvv Saints Row 4 had Keith David as Keith David also. We're getting closer. Kenji Eno was just ahead of his time. Suspicious Cook fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jul 4, 2015 |
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Jul 4, 2015 18:27
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The_White_Crane posted:The thing I find interesting is that particularly in this day and age, where we actually now have recognisable 'voices' in the games industry, I can kind of imagine the whole digital actor concept working quite well. Infamous: Second Son and COD: Advance Warfare both used Troy Baker's face as well as his voice.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:33
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Nolan North, Jennifer Hale, Laura Bailey, and Troy Baker battle against the nefarious Steve Blum as Keith David acts as their wise mentor.
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Jul 4, 2015 18:43
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He probably got the idea from Osamu Tezuka's Star System.
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Jul 4, 2015 19:37
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Yuri Lowenthal was basically voicing himself in Siren: Blood Curse, except 20 years younger.
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Jul 4, 2015 20:06
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Laura looks so put-upon, so done with it all, as though she remembers plant monsters, melting children, and being nagged to bits by the disembodied voices of her parents-- even though those things technically happened to different people in unrelated stories. Her little screen-punching tantrum after Parker's death feels less like "oh no, my friend was just horribly slaughtered," and more like, "why does this always happen to me?"
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Jul 4, 2015 23:06
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