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I finally had time to watch Alien 3 (theater cut; not sure if I'm interested enough to hunt down the Assembly cut). It wasn't bad, but I wasn't sure what kind of movie it was. I mean Alien was a horror film and Aliens was an action film. What kind of movie is Alien 3?
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Apr 10, 2015 04:29
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My stance is Alien 3 is kindof a thriller with a Xenomorph MacGuffin.
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Apr 10, 2015 04:52
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Tacopocalypse posted:My stance is Alien 3 is kind of a thriller with a Xenomorph MacGuffin. Alien 3 is a prison film which is suddenly interrupted by Ripley and the Alien. Watching it today, I was taken out of the movie as soon as I realized the reason the cast had British accents was probably because they filmed in the UK to save money.
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Apr 10, 2015 05:27
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Mraagvpeine posted:What kind of movie is Alien 3? I saw Alien3 as an apocalyptic movie: The people Ripley cared about are dead, the one glimmer of happiness gets dead, the prisoners hate Ripley with every fiber of their being, there's nowhere to run away to, the thing trying to kill you is also killing you inside, and the final choice is to die or help the thing you hate most. It's almost Mad Max/Road Warrior in bleakness. And Alien3 isn't about "OMG they're all dead! RUN RIPLEY RUN!", it's "Jesus they are all going to die; every, single, one of them." It's game over. Alien was adolescence, Aliens was triumph, and Alien3 was death. In all honesty, it's not the way we expected the Alien franchise to go out, but every story has to end sometime. Bootcha fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 05:50
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 Part 6: Since You've Been Gone In which we begin to feel truly isolated and even miss our erstwhile tormentor somewhat. Thankfully Apollo's on hand to give us new things to worry about.   ApolloSevastopol's AI, Apollo is charged with the important task of controlling the station's androids and systems. Generally this translates to presenting us with obstacles to our progress and even survival at every turn. Basically SHODAN without the comforting warmth of a personality.   ShotgunA much more damaging and thus useful firearm than our wimpy revolver, the shotgun is primarily used to murder androids. As with every other weapon in our arsenal, ammunition is vanishingly scarce.  EMP Mine V.2An upgraded EMP mine with a larger radius. Allows us to more efficiently stun groups of androids in order to escape and/or administer attitude adjustments via wrench or shotgun.  Molotov V.2More fire is always good. I've yet to actually use one yet, but I'm sure I'll get the chance.
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Apr 11, 2015 15:29
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As nice as it is to have an opportunity to explore the environments a bit more freely, the tension really plummets with the Alien gone. The droids and people just don't feel like a threat, especially with Amanda armed to the teeth.
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Apr 11, 2015 19:18
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Stare-Out posted:As nice as it is to have an opportunity to explore the environments a bit more freely, the tension really plummets with the Alien gone. The droids and people just don't feel like a threat, especially with Amanda armed to the teeth. Yeah, the post-Gemini gameplay hits a real slump as far as tension goes and gets to feeling like a slog before long. Fortunately, I've a few things in the pipeline to keep us interested in the meantime.
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Apr 11, 2015 19:49
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I think an even bigger Apollo dick move would be for something outlandish like turret guns to pop out of the ceilings everywhere and start shooting at you. "Oh, NOW the station defenses work!?"
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Apr 11, 2015 20:05
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What do the cameras do if you're spotted?
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Apr 11, 2015 20:47
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Flesnolk posted:What do the cameras do if you're spotted? They wake the nearby Working Joes or alert them to your presence, from the looks of it.
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Apr 11, 2015 21:09
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LashLightning posted:They wake the nearby Working Joes or alert them to your presence, from the looks of it. Yeah, I think they also set off alarm klaxons and lights occasionally, which will attract the alien. Not sure on this, however, as I'm never 100% on whether the game's decided to gently caress me due to sheer happenstance or something I've actually done to deserve it.
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Apr 11, 2015 21:18
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I really like the part with Samuels in this section. Given the movies' (and games) track record with synthetics, you half expect the reformat to work and then have to fight Samuels or something, given what they show of him earlier when he beat the ever living hell out of the working joe, but nope. The tension does take a nose dive without the alien around, and there is kind of a feeling that you can beat anything after spacing the monster, but when your supplies run low you realize that even for all your toys and supplies, the working joes are still a fairly big threat. I can imagine if you're completely out of supplies, you would be sneaking just as hard as if the alien were around because you don't want to tangle with like seven working joes at once. So is there a reason you're ignoring the map stations? I seem to remember Nightmare disabling the map or something, but the stations still work, and they can update your map if you walk up to them and press a button?
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Apr 11, 2015 22:21
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IBlameRoadSuess posted:I really like the part with Samuels in this section. Given the movies' (and games) track record with synthetics, you half expect the reformat to work and then have to fight Samuels or something, given what they show of him earlier when he beat the ever living hell out of the working joe, but nope. I'm a big fan of the  route they took with Samuels. He's been 100% straightup with us all the way through and really seems to have both Taylor and Ripley's best interests at heart. He's definitely a lot more like Bishop than Ash. I imagine he also prefers the term "artificial person." The whole run-up to his entering the reformat chamber sets up a really foreboding vibe and we're never quite sure how it's going to go thanks to the grisly trail of busted Joes he leaves in his wake, but the game subverts expectation really nicely.IBlameRoadSuess posted:The tension does take a nose dive without the alien around, and there is kind of a feeling that you can beat anything after spacing the monster, but when your supplies run low you realize that even for all your toys and supplies, the working joes are still a fairly big threat. I can imagine if you're completely out of supplies, you would be sneaking just as hard as if the alien were around because you don't want to tangle with like seven working joes at once. Around this point in the game it really does give the player a sense of relief. The alien's gone, we're back to facing androids and we're given enough firepower to laugh them off. While it can be a bit dull, it certainly seems like a calculated play to sink us into a complacent, comfortable rut. Since the game's still rolling, I guess it's not really a spoiler if I say that the rug is going to be pulled abruptly from under us at some point. IBlameRoadSuess posted:So is there a reason you're ignoring the map stations? I seem to remember Nightmare disabling the map or something, but the stations still work, and they can update your map if you walk up to them and press a button? As far as I know, on Nightmare the ingame map's completely disabled, so that's pretty much why I've been ignoring the terminals so far. It's worked somewhat in my favour, I think, as without bringing up the map every five seconds it's a bit more immersive and tense trying to find my way around and it might break up the flow a little otherwise. For the DLC missions I've downgraded myself to hard just so I can use the map, chiefly thanks to my relative unfamiliarity with the Nostromo's floorplan, so you guys'll get to see me use it as a crutch before long.
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Apr 11, 2015 23:14
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Will you be doing Corporate Lockdown and Trauma?
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Apr 11, 2015 23:28
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Is it me or is the way Samuels dispatches that Working Joe while Amanda was in the vent very similar to when we first saw a Working Joe murder a survivor for the first time? Knocking 'em down and then bashing their head in?
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Apr 12, 2015 01:28
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Samuels...  One of the things he says sticks out to me: "You talk as if I had a life." Which raises the question: what do Weyland-Yutani androids do when they aren't on space missions? They're required to have one on WY spaceships but are they kept in a facility somewhere, or simply deactivated until needed? Are they permitted leave to mingle with humans or are they unheard of outside of corporate culture? It doesn't seem like there is any mass produced option a la Seegson's Working Joes... but at the same time, every android seen in the series has been a lot more sophisticated- with individual personalities and goals- than you would expect a tool for a purpose to be. So... huh?
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Apr 12, 2015 01:33
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Flesnolk posted:Will you be doing Corporate Lockdown and Trauma? I'm certainly going to have a go at them. I find survivor mode is ridiculously tough, but hopefully after a full nightmare playthrough I'll be Yvonmukluk posted:Is it me or is the way Samuels dispatches that Working Joe while Amanda was in the vent very similar to when we first saw a Working Joe murder a survivor for the first time? Knocking 'em down and then bashing their head in? The droids really do have a brutally simple, simply brutal way of taking people out. I think since they were never programmed to be violent towards humans they all adopt the same rough and ready improvisational style of just beating the everloving gently caress out things. Samuels kicking rear end and taking names was definitely very reminiscent of our first introduction to the Joes, though. resurgam40 posted:Samuels... I think it's very much left up to the individual writer what rules the androids follow. I do hope that Samuels wasn't just filed away in a storage closet until he met us, that would just break my heart. Certainly by the time Aliens comes around 
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Apr 12, 2015 02:13
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TomViolence posted:I think it's very much left up to the individual writer what rules the androids follow. I do hope that Samuels wasn't just filed away in a storage closet until he met us, that would just break my heart. Samuels IDs himself as a WY executive, and also tells Ripley he chose to bring her on board because he read her case file when the black box find "came across his desk". The implication is certainly that Samuels at least is a desk jockey at WY of some description.
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Apr 12, 2015 02:22
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Break a leg!
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Yvonmukluk posted:Is it me or is the way Samuels dispatches that Working Joe while Amanda was in the vent very similar to when we first saw a Working Joe murder a survivor for the first time? Knocking 'em down and then bashing their head in? It's also probably the most effective way of taking one of them out of commission barehanded, assuming you have the strength. And assuming that their core system is contained in the head, which I hope is the case since that's the body part we keep shooting at.
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Apr 12, 2015 02:25
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TomViolence posted:I think it's very much left up to the individual writer what rules the androids follow. I do hope that Samuels wasn't just filed away in a storage closet until he met us, that would just break my heart. Certainly by the time Aliens comes around At the very beginning of the game, when Samuels approaches Ripley about the journey to Sevastopol, he says "when this case crossed my desk" So if we assume that it isn't just a metaphor to keep her in the dark about him being an artificial person, they very likely actually act as any other "working joe" (har har  ) in a corporation. They might have longer/indefinite hours, but assuming that all of them aren't just sent off on space missions, they could be doing anything from maintenance, to data logging, to just about anything else. The seegson synthetics are very much a low-tech factory job type worker, but the WY artificial people very much seem like they could be put into just about any position, given their ability to assimilate with normal humans.e:fb
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Apr 12, 2015 02:32
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resurgam40 posted:Samuels... There's no hard and fast answer in either the main canon or the EU, so I suspect the answer is "Whatever the plot requires". Essentially, as far as main goes, there's only three androids (Ash, Bishop, Call), and the idea of there being an android church (EDIT: And a failed rebellion/genocide, because drama... Forgot that part) is somewhat suspect due to the place Resurrection has in the timeline (Outside nearly every other part of the drat thing). If we count the games, then androids aren't to legally be used for combat purposes, but this doesn't stop the more shady portions of WY, merc outifts, or other nasty folks using androids without Asimov Protocols. Androids do exist in the team hierarchy on the legal side, and each platoon must, by USCM regs, have at least one android, sometimes two (Generally as a Platoon Commander's Tech/Science XO, although they can also assist in a medical position, or as a backup pilot/driver.) That last bit is definitely canon, being mentioned (briefly) on p. 12 of the Aliens Technical Manual. Keep in mind, in the AvP series, they're used as anti-xenomorph (Xenomorph or Predator) forces without a problem, because it's an anthropocentric universe, and the "Do not allow humans to come to harm" rule is followed to the letter, not the spirit. Androids are also used as body doubles, and at least two (of the President of the UCSA, and of Ripley) have been fitted with nukes because they were needed to fool an extra-terrestrial threat for long enough to make it very, very dead (Although, in both cases, it was presented as a needlessly dickish way of doing things.) Isolation is literally the first time we've seen an android in a purely maintennance/assistant role that I'm aware of, and even here, it's subverted (presumably because of extremely strict, yet easily abused containment protocols) into "Androids as heartless killers." At least so far, no idea if that's going to change at any point (Although signs so far point to "Not really"...  ). Nearly everywhere else in the EU, when they exist at all, they're there for whatever the writer needs them to be, and they rarely seem to get used as "just characters"... More's the pity  EDIT: And, surprise, surprise, at least one of the EU novels has a throwaway paragraph about sex droids in Earth Hive... There is no long or hard enough...
JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 02:36
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Something I really like about the Joes is that everything about them fits so perfectly into Seegson's role in the story. They're inferior to WY droids in just about every way, most obviously in their appearance, something Seegson has even incorporated into their marketing. They literally come out and say "our droids don't look human" and use people's anxieties about more lifelike synthetics in their advertising. It's also easy to see how this backfires, since the creepy bald mannequin bastards manage to be even more disconcerting. But something that didn't strike me until just now is that Joes are designed as a mechanised workforce for unskilled, assembly line labour. And the hilarious thing is, there's no way in hell an advanced android is going to undercut a human being in cost effectiveness. Well, okay, maybe in the long term it'll even out since it's a one-time purchase versus salary or wage labour, but think of all the maintenence costs one of Seegson's lovely droids is gonna incur. This being a dystopian future ruled by amoral corporations, human beings are cheaper, more versatile and more disposable. Weyland Yutani's droids are as capable as any human of undertaking a vast range of jobs, if not more so, while Seegson's Joes are janky pieces of poo poo that are costlier and less effective than the humans they're supposed to replace. They are the perfect signifier of Seegson's hilariously bad decision-making. It's easy to imagine some corporate douche pitching this idea without any idea of the logistics, an idea that looks downright revolutionary on paper but is just full of holes when actually implemented. And then, when it fails they desperately try to salvage it with spin, rebrand their weaknesses as strengths, and even that they do ineptly. It kind of reminds me of the "I'm a mac, I'm a PC" ad campaign (the UK one with Mitchell and Webb), where the mac just came across as a pretentious douchebag's desk ornament and the PC came across as solid and reliable, if a wee bit stodgy.
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Apr 12, 2015 03:08
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Just getting caught up in this thread, though I'm going to hold off on episode 6 to binge the movies. But really this thread just makes me miss Alien Loves Predator
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Apr 12, 2015 04:49
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resurgam40 posted:but at the same time, every android seen in the series has been a lot more sophisticated- with individual personalities and goals- than you would expect a tool for a purpose to be. So... huh? The synthetics we see appear as very high-end equipment used for specific, very important tasks. In Ridley Scott's films, David and Ash are both sleeper agents who are inserted into the mission for their technical/scientific aptitude and unquestionable loyalty. David wears a lot of hats: he pilots and maintains the Prometheus alone while the rest of the crew is in hypersleep en route to LV-223, he sees to Peter Weyland's medical needs, he stages scientific experiments, he's an impossibly ingenious linguist, etc.; most importantly, David has no moral compunctions and is completely obedient to Weyland to the point of death. Ash is on the Nostromo for the same reaons. He has a scientific and technical proficiency that few humans could match, making him a perfect choice to study whatever the Nostromo might recover on LV-426, and he can be trusted absolutely to carry out W-Y orders. Synthetics are probably extremely expensive but these are capabilities you just can't buy--even if you could find a person who was a genius in a bunch of different fields, there's no way you could count on them being suicidally loyal. Bishop is a slightly different case because he's attached to the Colonial Marines and he has no ulterior mission, but the reasoning behind the USCMC sending synthetics like him on missions seems clear. He functions as science officer, engineer, medical corpsman, pilot, and probably any other technical role that might come up, so he pretty much obviates the need to bring at least a half-dozen and probably more personnel with high-level skills in a variety of disciplines. It's also evident that space travel in this setting is highly automated. The Nostromo hauls a gigantic refinery with a crew of just seven. The Sulaco is larger than the USS Nimitz but has no crew at all and is apparently operated entirely by computer. The Auriga from Resurrection is city-sized but has a crew of just 49 supporting all of 7 scientists. And of course we know that for interstellar travel the crews go into hypersleep and the ships just run themselves. Crew complements are evidently kept as small as possible, so having a synthetic crewman probably represents a large initial investment that pays for itself over time. With respect to Samuels, I think it's unlikely that he's just hanging around in a storage closet. He's a piece of expensive, highly capable machinery. It makes no sense to just have him idling. He was probably doing something administratively for W-Y and then he was diverted onto this mission as Taylor's aide. The mock ads that were released to promote Prometheus teased the idea of David-8 series synthetics being the perfect executive assistants and admins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvXKN5Fz_OE I was thinking there's a certain dark humor value in Samuels being an HR robot. He cares about what happens to the W-Y personnel and even wants to help Ripley find "closure" ... maybe he's acting on deep-seated programming designed to make Ripley a better employee by resolving her psychological distress. TomViolence posted:This being a dystopian future ruled by amoral corporations, human beings are cheaper, more versatile and more disposable. I sort of read it in a different way, because it seems like the kinds of basic assembly-line jobs that Working Joes can handle are obsolete even for humans. In the last video, Ripley platformed through an automated assembly line--presumably the assembly line that manufactures Working Joes, since that's the only thing Sevastopol is mentioned as producing. We've seen Working Joes mainly in roles where their usefulness is really dubious, like as receptionists, retrieving goods from the storage shelves, and so on. They seem like janky pieces of poo poo that have no particular niche, which is why Seegson is bankrupt and Sevastopol was screwed.
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Apr 12, 2015 05:25
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Listening to this on headphones really makes me appreciate how amazing the sound design is in this game, it's really drat good. EDIT: I like the Alien callback with the rolled up magazine stuffed in the poor guard's throat, nice touch. EDIT2: Where the hell did Taylor get off to? Dreadwroth fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Apr 12, 2015 |
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Apr 12, 2015 05:40
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While the comic in itself was pretty terrible overall, I did like the androids (except the destroyer-droid) in Aliens: Stronghold, specifically the doctor and most of all Jeri. Though it has been years since I read it last and it could actually be terrible, but the latter I thought was particularly... endearing? Or rather, easy to feel empathy towards.
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Apr 12, 2015 09:34
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EvanSchenck posted:And of course we know that for interstellar travel the crews go into hypersleep and the ships just run themselves. I might be going a bit off topic here, but is it said anywhere how long these trips tend to take? If every journey is as long as the fifty years Ellen was stranded in space between Alien and Aliens, I'd think nothing could ever get done.
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Apr 12, 2015 09:57
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Flesnolk posted:I might be going a bit off topic here, but is it said anywhere how long these trips tend to take? If every journey is as long as the fifty years Ellen was stranded in space between Alien and Aliens, I'd think nothing could ever get done. Every indication is that Ellen Ripley's 57-year drift was very much the exception. She's shocked and appalled when Burke tells her, she has to have special medical treatment because she was in hypersleep too long, etc. It's evident that she expected to be spotted and picked up in much less time than that, even in consideration of the fact that she was in a lifeboat rather than a fully equipped interstellar ship. The best indication of travel times in normal circumstances is from Aliens. The Sulaco is dispatched after communications with the Hadley's Hope colony fail, and they get there in time to rescue Newt. Then, after the loss of most of the marines and the dropship, Hicks explains that if they dig in and wait for rescue, it won't arrive for 17 days. Presumably this includes a stretch of time before they're regarded as overdue and another ship is sent, so interstellar travel time might be a little less. However, the rescue ship might be stationed somewhere relatively near LV-426 so it doesn't have as far to go, and one would suppose that military ships carrying out their missions might be less concerned with fuel economy than civilian tugs on commercial runs. But a range of weeks to months, rather than years, seems right. Hypersleep seems to be used not because the crew would age dramatically over the course of a trip, but because they aren't actually needed for routine shipboard operations. Like with the Nostromo, the crew probably prepped the ship for launch, slept on the trip to the ore refinery, woke up to dock with it and started hauling, and went back to sleep in expectation of waking up at their destination to drop the refinery off. As it happens, they're awakened early to investigate the beacon, and presumably if something else comes up, like a maintenance issue that needed to be addressed, they'd be awakened for that, too.
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Apr 12, 2015 14:45
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Hey, does the protective visor on the plasma torch not actually block out the flame? Even when they splurge, Seegson half-asses everything.
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Apr 12, 2015 15:12
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Dreadwroth posted:I like the Alien callback with the rolled up magazine stuffed in the poor guard's throat, nice touch. I noticed this too. Its a nice touch
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Apr 13, 2015 04:26
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Rockopolis posted:Hey, does the protective visor on the plasma torch not actually block out the flame? Even when they splurge, Seegson half-asses everything. It's a direct callback to the small emergency welders used by the marines in Aliens, which also had the flip-up polarized windows instead of the typical protective mask. To be fair, it's better than a poke in the eye, but I would definitely not want to use that welder unless I absolutely had to. Considering the way the fresh weld's cut seems to drip a few times after the panel drops off, I'm surprised there hasn't been any stray gobs of metal landing on Amanda's arm yet.
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Apr 13, 2015 04:59
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They got Yaphet Kotto to do a little voice part? That was neat.
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Apr 13, 2015 14:32
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They got the whole Alien cast for this game, except I think Ash.
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Apr 13, 2015 17:18
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Flesnolk posted:They got the whole Alien cast for this game, except I think Ash. Ash and Kane, Ian Holm licensed his likeness but someone else did the Voicework because he was busy/unable to and John Hurt wasn't involved at all, presumably because the 2 DLCs take place after Kane dies.
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Apr 13, 2015 18:15
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Sel Nar posted:It's a direct callback to the small emergency welders used by the marines in Aliens, which also had the flip-up polarized windows instead of the typical protective mask. To be fair, it's better than a poke in the eye, but I would definitely not want to use that welder unless I absolutely had to. I would presume that Amanda has had a lot of random burns from welding as part of her job, I doubt she would even notice. She seems pretty drat tough.
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Apr 14, 2015 05:06
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Thanks for the LP, I'm (slowly, because I'm a big babby) working my way through it.
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Apr 14, 2015 08:32
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 Crew Expendable It came out of Kane and now it's killed Brett. The creature's grown very big in a very short timeframe and now it haunts the ventilation system aboard the commercial starship Nostromo. Crew Expendable, the first of our DLC missions, will hopefully scratch that alien itch for anyone who's been missing our playmate.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:04
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Ooooh, that's interesting. You get to choose who goes into the airshaft? That's a clever way to mix things up, but the vent section definitely looks more frustrating than scary.
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Apr 14, 2015 17:35
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That vent chase looks hella frustrating.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:54
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That's a pretty good Ian Holm sound-a-like they got.
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Apr 14, 2015 19:02
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