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Edvarius posted:I have to admit that seeing Bessy blow her own head off was a bit shocking. I'm not entirely sure what it was that finally made her decide enough was enough though. Was it James showing up to try and find Patrick? coleman francis posted:I'm starting to think this monastery might not be quite as wholesome as it appears to be  Like this nice fluffy stack of Ubiquitous_ posted:Shadow Hearts 1 has roughly the same playtime as Koudelka, even with 100% completion and showing off both endings.
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Aug 18, 2017 08:18
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discworld is all I read posted:I suppose that is as good a reason as any. Or maybe she wasn't really around when Ogden did super horrible poo poo like hack up ladies? Though that doesn't make sense considering the thief said they would hunt down and hack up people as a duo. Maybe she saw Koudelka as an actual innocent person rather than just another thief or scoundrel looking for easy money, and finally realized that maybe they should stop killing folks. Or maybe she was just tired of the life they were living and she was ready to rest. Welsh cakes are pretty wholesome (and Welsh):  Bessie and Ogden do mention that things have been getting worse in the manor and more monsters have been appearing, so there's at least some indication that the situation has escalated and that Bessie might have been worn down over however long they'd been looking after the monastery. What is the timeframe for that whole backstory, anyway? Like, the sequence of events seems pretty clear at this point: Patrick buys the monastery, Elaine dies, Patrick arranges to steal this manuscript from the Vatican because it can help resurrect dead people, and then he tries to bring back Elaine and turns his house into a monster mash. I haven't been keeping track of the dates showing up in the game, but I get the impression that there have only been monsters in the monastery for a few years at the most.
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Aug 18, 2017 22:52
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discworld is all I read posted:I suppose that is as good a reason as any. Or maybe she wasn't really around when Ogden did super horrible poo poo like hack up ladies? Though that doesn't make sense considering the thief said they would hunt down and hack up people as a duo. Maybe she saw Koudelka as an actual innocent person rather than just another thief or scoundrel looking for easy money, and finally realized that maybe they should stop killing folks. Or maybe she was just tired of the life they were living and she was ready to rest. If you're unfamiliar to the game, yes. But if you know what you're doing, it's actually pretty short. You also rarely, if ever, need to grind. The game also plays much faster than Koudelka, overall.
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Aug 19, 2017 02:08
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  Action! Danger! Plot! This part of the game has it all and there's a good reason for that....and that's cause we're almost at the end of our adventure. Get ready for the full spectrum of emotion in this update as well as we get another nice slab of Roger Bacon and we get a seriously emotional spiel from James. Like seriously, I almost cried listening to this torment in that. Also we've got a whole mess of bonus videos this time around. First, we've got a purely optional boss fight with Charlotte: Bonus 5- Charlotte's Wrath. Second, we've got a super hard optional boss fight against pure hatred: Bonus 6- Gargoyle. And our final bonus is the last bit of reading material in the game: Bonus 7- Research Notes Finally, I find it super amusing that Roger's location to get away from it all is a monastery that we've found to be a dungeon full of grisly torture and murder, a hospice full of the diseased and dying, and finally a mad scientist death farm to revive his dead wife with the use of animal guts, kidnapped ladies, and builders. discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 04:34
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Roger Bacon's voice actor is incredible.
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Aug 24, 2017 04:39
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discworld is all I read posted:Finally, I find it super amusing that Roger's location to get away from it all is a monastery that we've found to be a dungeon full of grisly torture and murder, a hospice full of the diseased and dying, and finally a mad scientist death farm to revive his dead wife with the use of animal guts, kidnapped ladies, and builders. It's interesting that the two are separate. At the point in the research notes where he says he's found a more efficient solution than kidnapping women, I thought that was going to be renting out the mansion to the crown to use as a prison, connecting the two elements. But no, instead it's just the deeply hosed up buying of slave/indentured labourers to kill en masse. I quite like the way the pacing of this game has worked out, though. It's a very steady escalation, and it doesn't look like the game is going to slow down now we've found out exactly what is going on, it's just straight on to dealing with the final boss? It's a short game, but I appreciate that it never really gets sidetracked, story-wise.
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Aug 24, 2017 11:50
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That sword kinda reminds me of Soul Edge. Not sure if its intentional or not however. Its prolly just a generic toothy looking sword maybe? I'm pretty sure I've seen others like it, though SE is the first thing that springs to mind.
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Aug 24, 2017 18:33
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Hooray, it's everyone's favorite terrible old man. 
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Aug 24, 2017 18:37
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Wikipedia says Sacnoth the company was named after a weapon in a short story written by... ...Lord Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany.
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Aug 24, 2017 20:35
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Hirayuki posted:Wikipedia says Sacnoth the company was named after a weapon in a short story written by... Also speaking of Welsh horror, as I was inspired by the game's setting, I decided to check out Arthur Machen. He was kind of a proto-Lovecraft who wrote of terror inducing otherworldly things that drove men to extremes, though it's all very tame by today's standards. But oh man, did it ruffle some Victorian feathers. discworld is all I read fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Aug 24, 2017 |
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Aug 24, 2017 22:00
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discworld is all I read posted:Ahhhhhhhhhh! It's all coming together: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Welleran_and_Other_Stories. This is especially interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me2TXBktgY0&t=240s I love learning about stuff like this, so cool.
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Aug 25, 2017 03:26
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  And with that, we have reached the end of Koudelka and boy howdy, has it just been a whirlwind of emotions and feelings and fire and guts. So I'll let people watch this before I go too far in-depth regarding what I thought about this (though I did cover some of my feelings during the ending credits). So let it all sink in and enjoy the dance of death that we have in the ending. Also the final bonus for Koudelka will be what I consider to be the third 'ending' to the game: Bonus 8- The True Ending. It's definitely not canon by any means....but it definitely fits with the overall themes of the game. Additionally if you can't get enough of hearing me talk, or if you want to know my bizarre motivations for doing almost 50 LP's over the last ummmm 7 years, well a gent asked me to do some sort of podcast and it's here: http://wwtqpod.blogspot.com/2017/08/wwtq-085-surviving-horror-with-niggurath.html?zx=c192f3acdec63e9e
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Aug 30, 2017 04:32
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Koudelka's drunken, heartrending monologue is one of my favorite VA sequences. Her modelling work during the sequence really sells it.
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Aug 30, 2017 05:30
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I'm still making my way through the other videos, but I wanted to thank you for LPing this unique and atmospheric game.  Echoing the sentiment from the others about the wonderful mocap and VA.I really like the chemistry between the characters, and how they're only sticking together so that the monsters won't tear them apart. My favorite moment was when the thief gave an  to James about how he's just hiding his shadiness behind a moral front, and Koudelka and Edward  along and agree with him.
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Aug 30, 2017 06:04
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Thank you for LPing this! It's been a ride.
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Aug 30, 2017 07:10
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Thanks for playing the game! I really enjoyed watching it, but I agree that the endings are a little bit weaker than the rest of the game (apart from the one where everyone is melted). There's a lot of strong character writing leading up to the ending and then it sort of concludes with people going their separate ways or dying, rather than getting much resolution, which I was a bit disappointed by. I'm interested to see you play the next game because I've heard of it, but never played it myself. I wonder how the runtime would be if you did the kind of editing you did in Koudelka, where you were cutting out most of the random battles unless they were introducing new enemies or letting you show off new skills or weapons? People were saying 30 hours, but presumably cutting all that would probably bring that number down a lot. It's more work for you to play and make, though 
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Aug 30, 2017 11:12
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I am glad that 18 years later, I've finally seen the ending to this weird as hell rpg I couldn't get very far in as a kid.
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Aug 30, 2017 16:07
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That fuckin horse
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Aug 30, 2017 16:20
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Yeah okay seriously, that's some of the best voice work and motion capture for a PS1 game I've heard and seen. Do we know who the voice actors were?
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Aug 30, 2017 22:15
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Yeah okay seriously, that's some of the best voice work and motion capture for a PS1 game I've heard and seen. Do we know who the voice actors were? Strangely it seems like most of the main voice actors went on to do nothing and the only one that developed much of a career in the entertainment field afterwards was Charlotte's VA. She was the lead actress it seems in the wonderfully tense horror movie "The Innkeepers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbY4rFaaeCg. But yeah, Koudelka's VA did nothing else really, Edward's VA was some random voice in Warcraft III and that was it, and it looks like James' VA was in a softcore porno and that was about it. Which seems a bit strange considering, like you said, their voice work was pretty great in this game. Rigged Death Trap posted:That fuckin horse Red Bones posted:Thanks for playing the game! I really enjoyed watching it, but I agree that the endings are a little bit weaker than the rest of the game (apart from the one where everyone is melted). There's a lot of strong character writing leading up to the ending and then it sort of concludes with people going their separate ways or dying, rather than getting much resolution, which I was a bit disappointed by. That's something I find especially interesting with the story. As opposed to some sprawling adventure going over multiple nations and locations, over the courses of multiple weeks...instead we have just a very painful night for our party. Loves destroyed, emotional baggage unloaded, elderly couples murdered in a sanctuary of corpses. It's a wonderful tale of terror and one of the many ways this game subtly shines. But yeah, I'm not sure what to do next really. A part of me thinks it might be
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Aug 30, 2017 22:47
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Thanks for another great LP. I'd never even heard of this even though I had a PS1 and was into RPGs. It was definitely an interesting game and I'm looking forward to whatever you do next.
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Aug 30, 2017 23:04
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Thanks for the excellent LP! I really enjoyed this game back in the day so it's fantastic to see it get some love. I never knew this was part of the shadowhearts series of games but I would have if the Funco Land store I bought my games from had ever had a copy of it to go along with their shelf box! 
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Aug 31, 2017 00:11
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Glad I caught up today! That true ending. If you're looking for input on those next LP options, Extermination seems interesting. Haven't heard of that one.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:25
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Having caught up to the updates, that was a hell of a way to end things. Koudelka's drunken rambling was an amazingly acted scene. I love the way she shot down Edward romanticizing her as a JRPG protagonist by laying out the reality that she's a homeless pariah who has no stable income or education, and had to do questionable and downright awful things just to survive. That she still holds a spark of idealism in using her powers to help others instead of lashing out is pretty  It's amusing that instead of the boss monster causing the entire structure to crumble, the party torches the place first so that they can corner the boss. Speaking of Elaine, the CG team really did a great job with her. You have a split second to think of "Uhhh, naked lady?" but then she starts to move and it's all so wrong and unsettling.  discworld is all I read posted:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272164/?ref_=nv_sr_2 This. It's amazing to me how...intimate the story is. There's no grand plot to take over the world, no maniacal gloating from a mastermind, no wondrous and colorful locales. You're a group of people stuck in an oppressive structure trying to survive the night, same as the thief and the caretakers. Patrick already finished his plot, but paid for it with his life, and now it's up to you to clean up his mess. This game is a huge contrast to most JRPGs of its time.
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Aug 31, 2017 05:02
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I loved that the designers used the making of the nitroglycerin as an opportunity for character development, rather than have it be a lovely chemical mixing minigame.
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Aug 31, 2017 05:07
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That drinking scene with Koudelka and Edward was probably the best in the game in terms of characterization and voice acting. Having an ending be from losing the final battle is really cool. Most games, if they do anything special, just give a non-standard game over, not a full and proper ending. Outside of the deus ex machina I kinda liked it more than the "good" ending. The ark of the covenant ending was definitely the best of the lot, though. Thank you for an excellent LP. This game was a treasure and I definitely need to play it for myself at some point in the future.
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Aug 31, 2017 05:23
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discworld is all I read posted:But yeah, I'm not sure what to do next really. A part of me thinks it might be If you're looking for weird games to play, I tracked down one a while ago called Netherworld: Beyond Time I Stand, which is actually (and fittingly) The Lost, Irrational Games' cancelled action/horror console game that they developed between System Shock 2 and Bioshock. It got cancelled, and then reskinned and released in India, and then un-skinned, translated into Russian and released in eastern Europe, and then finally was released in English by some bargain bin publisher. I never got so far as playing it though (that shop link broke shortly after I found it, but it seems to be working again now), so I have no idea if it would be entertaining or just very mediocre. amigolupus posted:Speaking of Elaine, the CG team really did a great job with her. You have a split second to think of "Uhhh, naked lady?" but then she starts to move and it's all so wrong and unsettling. The PS1 survival horror/rpg genre definitely has a thing for unsettling naked women, and yeah, her immediately scuttling around was great. The tree of life on her chest was a nice touch too, to tie into the whole tree thing that was going on there.
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Aug 31, 2017 10:45
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The unsettling nude women is a form of the monstrous female, which is a part of the concept of the abject in literary/film critical theory. It's an interesting subject to read up on.
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Aug 31, 2017 15:18
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Thanks for another awesome LP!
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Sep 1, 2017 07:17
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Has it really been almost 50 lp's?? drat son. Been an honor to be along for the ride. Does this officially make you LP James Brown, the hardest workin man in the LP business? Thanks for Lping Koudelka, was nice to finally see it through. I liked the ending, it didn't make me mad like so many horror games. I just picked up a copy of Extermination too add to my collection a few weeks ago, maybe this is fate??? 7 loving years. Been watchin' LPs for longer than that. So many memories lost already, like frames on a bad stream.
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Sep 3, 2017 22:38
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coleman francis posted:Has it really been almost 50 lp's?? drat son. Been an honor to be along for the ride. Does this officially make you LP James Brown, the hardest workin man in the LP business? But yeah, still a bit up in the air as to what to do next. I feel bad for people that seem to want to see more Shadow Hearts but I seriously don't think it would be entertaining to see through 5 solid minutes of text based cut scenes every 30 minutes. Sometimes I think I should give another swing at LP'ing the rest of the Clocktower series, especially making a 'good' LP of 'The Struggle Within' since most LP's just focus on bringing up the fact that it's a mostly poo poo game. Or I found a good copy of a PS1 horror adventure game called 'Silverload' that's some reasonably nice voice acting but is mostly tedious to play. It's just to think of something that would be as great for people to watch like Koudelka rather than just something rare and unique, but utterly tedious to do/watch like 'The Note'.
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Sep 3, 2017 23:37
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Great LP! Seems like a neatass game, loved the creepy monster designs and weirdly funky music.
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Sep 4, 2017 01:14
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quote:James did not need any help knowing when to start running. An excellent game and an excellent LP came to an end. Many thanks for showing off this beautiful art piece. It's been lovely!
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Oct 3, 2017 07:45
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EagerSleeper posted:James did not need any help knowing when to start running.
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Oct 3, 2017 08:16
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discworld is all I read posted:Good to hear you enjoyed it; hopefully it'll be added to the archive soon. And if you're curious, I just started an LP up for Alone in the Dark 2008: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3835970 Cool, I'll be sure to check it out then.
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Oct 3, 2017 09:14
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