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Through The Looking Glass: A Sonic Adventure Analysis [BM Vid]

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by MrMechanic, May 8, 2022.

  1. MrMechanic

    MrMechanic

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    Hello Sonic Retro.

    Some of you probably know me as the guy who makes those stupidly detailed and obscure Sonic history videos, well... for the longest time I've really wanted to do retrospective and analysis videos on videogames and for the last 4 months I've been working on this...



    So whilst I know Geek Critique (Josh) and a few others have made individual threads of their work which has been justifiably well received. I'm not sure I've quite earnt the respect or notoriety to just drop my link and leave, so I'd like to make some margin of effort to briefly explain what I've done in this video and... well... why I think it matters.

    I've recently become very disillusioned with the state of a lot of Sonic game discussion and analysis, in fact, more or less every game at the moment has this problem with these 'analysis videos and discussion,' so many just feel like someone re-telling you the games events and dropping the odd "This is intriguing" or "This is really fun/clunky/a bit problematic," especially when it comes to youtube content. I feel that with a lot of content that's out there, you can predict what they'll say and the layout of the video before you even click on it. Whilst some of it is really good and clearly has a purpose, I feel a lot of what's out there isn't doing the games in question the full justice it could do...

    So I wanted to do my take very differently.

    I decided along with some good old literary and game development theory, I would also bring in actual scientific and medical journals that help explain why this game makes us respond to it the way we do.

    I'm not going to go into epic detail in this thread because... ... ... Fellas... I've spent the last 4 months working on this video... lol I would really appreciate if you at least watched a bit of it so I can pay some bills =p.

    But I decided to break down the argument/analysis into a few different questions.

    * How the game creates engagement, both from the story, narrative, game design and the level narrative/design, the hub world design and even the NPCs.
    * How the first boss in the game is the most important part of the game, how both the character designers and combat designers utilised their skills to make this fight work and teach the player without it being an obvious tutorial.
    * How does the gameplay compliment the characters and how this does or in some cases doesn't work as well for some as it does for others.
    * How do the upgrades change the way someone approaches the stages, and how the developers anticipated this and left clues and hints for players to pick up on, as well as how some later campaigns affect previous campaigns based on the use of upgrades to discover new areas.
    * The legacy of the game: This is essentially discussing that, whilst I think Adventure is a good title, I don't think as fans we're particularly good at explaining why. In a lot of modern games, they try to emulate the memorable spectacle, But adventure is more than that, in this part I explore examples and various evidence as to why this is.

    There's a few more things which popped up during my investigation but they were the core points I wanted to address.

    To give you some idea as to what you can expect...

    After the video went live, I was talking to Modder Speeps Highway and he basically asked me if I'd read the Japanese strategy guide, I said I hadn't, and he explained that there's a lot of backstory to the game in that book, which isn't explained in the game itself, such as how not all the echidnas died in the attack on Chaos, some modified their temple and others evacuated into the sky...

    And I pointed out that, I had no idea about that book, but I've more or less said the same thing, because the game itself actually does explain quite a lot of this within the stage Lost World.

    So the way Lost world is presented is that you see the stage from the Hub world, but it has a really clever subversion hook, initially you start at the bottom and 'drop down' into the stage, you think you're going to go up, but you actually descend. Then the stage starts to drop visual clues that there's more going on than you first think.

    [​IMG]
    The stage has a number of murals and markings depicting perfect chaos as well as several other imagery... But due to the flashback narratives, the Echidna's haven't encountered Chaos, yet their central monument in the present day is full of imagery depicting him...

    This alone presents a contradiction between narrative and the game design, but before you think it's a mistake, the stage also presents some other oddities.

    [​IMG]

    There's signs of irrigation, water is deliberately being manipulated., yes there are traps and hazards involving water, but the temple has clear evidence of it being managed in a no danger to life way.

    Another little oddity...

    [​IMG]
    The temple itself has ruins of smaller structures, suggesting there was actual life and society going on within the walls, such as people living or even business being conducted...

    These are... really odd things to find, why would a temple dedicated to the creature who wiped them out... have these things?

    Well if you've read the Japanese guide, you know the answer, but the game also explains this, I do discuss all the clues and evidence of this in the video quite early so please give it a watch.

    Another part of Lost World which helps with engagement and also acts as a nice allegory for the whole game, is the snake room.

    [​IMG]

    So this room, aside from being a... really annoying puzzle, is actually an allegory for the whole game. I'm pretty sure that you've all figured out that the 'snake' is supposed to be perfect chaos? But what you might not have realised is that your actions in this room mirror the actions of Eggman in Sonic's campaign.

    To escape this room, you have to do 2 actions.



    1: Activate the coloured switches to turn on the door lights.
    2: Activate the blue switches to raise the water level.

    [​IMG]
    So how is this an allegory? Well... Each of the coloured switches that you active, in order of how you encounter them, are the same colour as the chaos emeralds that Sonic sees Eggman feed chaos.

    The parallel to the narrative, as you 'active' the switches, the water rises/chaos becomes more powerful, whilst you get closer to the exit, with the now higher water level, the room becomes more dangerous, and this also matches the power of chaos, that he in turn will cause waters to rise and make things much more dangerous.

    I explain this a bit more eloquently in the video... But it's getting late here lol.

    The examples of using medical research to explain the games effect on us. Take Speed Highway as an example. Everybody says that this is the stage 'to go fast in', but... Windy Valley has steeper and in some cases, longer drops... However Speed Highway just feels faster... So I took a look at the design of that stage and realised that several inclusions by the developers create a number of optical illusions that trick our brains into thinking we're going faster than we actually are. For example, the road are equally spaced which mean as you rush past them at higher speeds, they blur and it creates a stroboscopic effect.

    [​IMG]

    (see 27:57 for the actual motion) This results in two distinct visual effects, the first, the shapes blur, it adds to the sense of speed, the 2nd is that the shapes appear to change their direction of travel. Our brains end up concluding 'we're going really really fast' even though we're not. Whereas Windy Valley doesn't have as many of these visual tricks in place, so the optical illusions don't occur, which is why it doesn't feel as fast and why everybody says 'Speed Highway' is faster.

    And then I found some medical journals that proved this is what was happening, the optical effects in speed highway trick our brains and create an illusion of 'speed' which is greater than what is presented from our temporal point in time and space at that particular moment (this is an actual quote from the paper), and if anyone actually goes and reads those and points out the obvious problem, I will respond to it.


    Another aspect of the video involves character analysis. SA1 allows all playable characters to undergo a journey that sees them grow in a manner than means they've changed for the better, except for one... But instead of just talking about the characters narrative, I wanted to explore how the gameplay for some characters compliments their narrative which allows us to strengthen our connection to them, but for some characters, this is done more successfully than others and I felt that Tails and Amy were two good characters to use to explore this phenomenon.

    In this video, I decided to compare Tails and Amy, since on a surface level, they both are similar in terms of their starting point, their journey and eventual conclusions, but from my stance, one is done better than the other.


    Anyway, like I said, I spent about... 4 months writing and editing the video, and I hope at least my efforts in this thread have at least got your interest because, I don't think I could have made this as a thread due to the fact so much media would be required to illustrate the points, so I hope I've done enough so that you don't consider this just to be drive-by post.


    I dunno, if you have any questions about my video and approach, please ask I'll endeavour to answer as quickly as possible. The argument isn't flawless, there are at least 2 obvious open goals, one of which involves one of my issues with Tails' campaign. But I hope you enjoy this.
     
  2. Eesh, that's a LOT of words in that opening post. And here I am about to add so many more...

    I finished the video, and overall I'd say it was pretty good! I did take notes while watching as I had some nitpicks, ranging from tiny to "ohgod just fucking stop doing this already," with most of them the former and not the latter. Please note that although my tone may end up coming out rather harsh in this comment, I do not mean to fully dismiss the video! Like I said, I enjoyed it overall!

    But first, some thoughts on the topic itself, to make this easier to follow for those that haven't yet watched the video:
    Perhaps I'm out of the loop as most of my video game analysis content I watch comes from my long-time friend Josh, but I don't see this trend? I don't see how this video really bucks the trend as described, either; the scientific and medical journals just mentioned the Speed Highway arrows? That's neat, but that doesn't really tie into the goal "explain why this game makes us respond to it the way we do," which I don't feel was really explored much in the video?

    So I had this in my comments regarding the video originally, but.... in the video, the first emerald is rather clearly the purple/magenta emerald, then the blue and green afterwards. The screenshot in the original post is a red switch and not purple/magenta. The other two colors line up, but this whole bit falls apart when the first color doesn't match. There IS a red chaos emerald, but I can't recall the path it takes in the story as it's been.... quite some time since I last played SA1.







    Right, on to the notes I took while watching the video!
    Cut! Cut! Cut! - This was at the top of my notepad file, basically a LOT of this content should have been cut back in the scriptwriting phase. I'm not saying the content should never have seen the light of day - other videos would be fine - it's just that the video feels rather unfocused and not quite worth the hour and a half(!) runtime.

    Opening with Defensiveness - So in the first few minutes you're pre-emptively defending yourself against the Sonic subreddit. I've skimmed it a few times here and there, that place is garbage. Just make your point and ignore them, you don't need several minutes telling them not to be dumb when the video itself is about Sonic Adventure and not about them.

    Approx 6 minutes - Sonic Forces is bad, but this Episode Shadow stuff feels like padding. The game was released at a budget price at launch, and this is just DLC for that. Is this video about Sonic Forces or is it about Sonic Adventure?

    7min 10sec - SA2's introduction to rail grinding is nice, but you're talking about Sonic Adventure 1. SA1 doesn't have grinding at all, this whole segment would be more appropriate for a video about SA2 or *maybe* Generations. On revisiting this comment after finishing the video, it doesn't feel like this subject was brought up much later in the video, either? Again, a good few rounds of editing of the script would have this material saved for another video.

    10min 25sec - Finally back to Sonic Adventure! Did you need to talk about other games for a length greater than Youtube's original maximum video length to get to this point?

    Approx 11 minute - Haw, that quick Lost World "No, not that one" gag got a smile out of me.

    12min 45sec - Yeah in an already lengthy video you're taking time to critique your own writing. This bit could have been excised easily to make your point clearer, and the video would lose nothing of substance.

    16min 29sec - While that British Empire joke was accurate, it's a bit long and breaks the flow. Going over the script a few times should have helped you determined what's an appropriate length of time for this joke, or if it is worth keeping.

    17min 6sec - Why is it a mistake to have Chaos depicted on the temple? You treat this as a given. They haven't encountered Chaos yet, but he's a god of their civilization...
    After completing the video I see where you were going with it, but at the time you hadn't provided compelling evidence for following your train of thought.

    18min 30sec ish - Another one of these cutaways that breaks the flow. With the length of this video, these jokes could have been cut to help make it more concise.

    19min 30sec ish It's a monster that (presumably) the police have had reports of. I hadn't considered the parallels, though! That is a really insightful point to make.

    21min 43sec - So hey, here's the bit I mentioned earlier. Here are the notes I had written while watching the video:
    While this is an interesting parallel on paper, red is not magenta. If there were no red chaos emerald then maaaaybe this could work, but calling the lights the same colors as the emeralds when they are clearly not is kind of odd. I was actually about to go look up cutscenes to see if the colors line up before you showed the clip, so kudos for including it!

    23 min - Who's to say that the mural didn't pre-date these events? I feel like this needs a deeper investigation.
    After watching the video, again I see where you were going with this. Including this comment for completeness' sake; I wrote it while watching the video the first time.

    29 min - "Why does Speed Highway feel faster than Windy Valley?" - This is an interesting discussion, but what does it add to the main topic of the video? Are you analyzing the game itself or just discussing topics related to the game?

    30min 25sec - Haw, making fun of Fallout 76 may be beating a dead horse but that quick joke still got a smile out of me.

    30min 40sec - Just from the title of this segment - "Teaching to be Free!" - I feel like this will be an entire video in and of itself. Again, other than the fact that both parts are discussing Sonic Adventure I feel like these could be two separate, more focussed videos instead of being mushed into one. I'm ready to be proven wrong, though!

    34min 55sec - Is starting with a tutorial boss that rare in 1999? I'm interested in the data on this. I can't think of examples offhand, but I trust my memory as much as I trust a politician.
    The cutaway to being exasperated regarding comments ties into my thoughts of the other cutaways - they break the flow of the video and are borderline annoying.

    37min 40sec ish - Okay, what's with the Bill Nye Omochao joke? It's repeated a few times now, but I don't get the context.

    38min 50sec - A random cutaway to the narrator drinking tea? Why did the gameplay footage need to cut to this instead of continuing as a voiceover?

    47min 45sec - ...huh, I hadn't heard of the Curse of the Colonel. That's a neat bit of trivia that I didn't know! Aaaand there's another annoying flow-breaking cutaway, this time commenting on the script again. PLEASE stop doing them in future videos!

    51min ish - This whiny line is bad. The video script really doesn't need "ugh this is so much work" lines, if the narrator isn't into the subject then why should I, as a viewer, care? I mean this time it's nearly an hour into an hour and a half long(!) video, but it's still bad writing. Cut it out.

    53min 30sec - And now dissing on the audience. Don't do that, it's making me roll my eyes.

    55min 44sec - What? No! How does Tails' gameplay undermine the story? Tails' character-specific shortcuts are showing that he takes his own route to get there faster. Why would they hinder his progress? Like this whole segment is poorly thought-out and could have used another few drafts, but I understand that that's not easy when it's a video of this length.

    59min 25sec -ish - Archie comics are not canon to the games, and the game presents it as "no, *I* fought this boss" which ties into the multiple perspectives of the same story that the game does. Aaand there's ANOTHER obnoxious cut-in! Stop. doing. these.

    1hr 1min - Ohgod that presentation of the cutaway is cringey as hell.

    1hr 3min - Eh... I feel like this is building up to the realization that he *can* do all of this on his own. And damn, ANOTHER cutaway? The tone of this one's dumb, too.

    1hr 9min - "It's her natural maternal insticts" Bruh...

    Up to 1hr 15min - Did the Terminator parallels to Amy's story really need this much time in this video? They could be an entirely separate video, only only briefly mentioned here for follow-up in said separate video.

    1hr 17min - "Everyone has tried to use the Light Speed Attack against the Egg Viper Boss" Nah, by that point the game has made it abundantly clear that this is a super-situational move at best that is mostly-ignored after unlocking that door, and most players likely forgot it even exists by the time they reach the final boss.

    1hr 21min - Developers taking the wrong message from focus groups isn't the fault of fans...

    1hr 22min - Yeah, that was the Japanese release but the "9.9.99" Dreamcast launch date was the biggest marketing push in the Dreamcast's lifetime. It looks like the UK launch was a month later on 1999-10-14, so it's odd to make a big deal about the JP release date?
     
  3. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    I did as a kid and was confused for a long while because the game lets you actually hit him with the Lightspeed Dash for the first hit, and ONLY the first hit.
     
  4. MrMechanic

    MrMechanic

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    *Reads the notes*

    Are... Are you sure? :eng99:

    lol it's fine... it's fine.

    Some of the things you've pointed out I disagree with and a few things I do agree with, e.g. the line I say when I talk about how Amy picks up the bird is a terrible, but by this point I was 3 months into the video and... it was one of those moments where you think "Is this worth re-recording narration and trying to fit it into the pre-existing audo" and for such a small line it wasn't.


    Now I do want to address a couple of criticisms, though these are probably not the ones you were expecting.

    Why the long intro & What's with the 'tea'?

    2 reasons.

    1: This is... technically the first video I've done like this on my channel, but my intention is to do a lot more, because it's kind of outside my usual content, I want to address what my intentions are with the series in order to tell my usual viewers what's going on, and for new people who will see this video and follow the series, they have some idea as to what to expect with my approach and ultimately why it's worth their time.

    But unfortunately, this means the first vid now has a long bit explaining that, however future videos won't be as long with this since everybody is now informed.

    2: So the Coffee drinking and the cuts back to me. There's a few sub reasons for this but it ultimately boils down to "I don't have a choice, I have to do this."

    Whilst you can probably find several exceptions to this rule, channels in which a 'person' or 'character' appears and speaks directly to the audience tend to do better in the long term. Why is this? There's a combination of different reasons and I could really go deep into basic psychology. But it almost always boils down to having a familiar face that people can get to know and relate with, people are more likely to return and support you if they can clearly see it's you. Unless you are absolutely vile in your presentation and as a person, people are more likely to come back if you can establish a connection to your audience.

    If I just purely do a voice over, it's much harder to establish that connection, and it's easier for people to 'switch off', both literally and in-terms of even their subconsciously watching.

    Another reason is that, whilst the guy in the video is 'me' it's a slightly exaggerated characterisation of me, the coffee drinking for instance is going to be a running trait, aside from having a bunch of cool mugs that I wanna show off, I want to make these videos as informative as possible, whilst avoiding falling into the trap of being preaching or a bit clinical, and for reasons I don't quite understand but has apparently been proven multiple times... if your presented has a warm mug or some other drink with them, it gives the video a more welcoming and somewhat warm homely feel to it. In fact if you look at other popular video essayists like Some call me Johnny, Sara Z, Lyndsey Ellis and... good grief there's literally tons I could list off. They all do the mug of tea/coffee trick... It was popularised by David Letterman and is used in quite a few TV shows and now the video essayists have picked up on it too.

    So that's why I drink the coffee. And I also really like it.

    There's a lot of other reasons too as to why, it's not just 'I'm trying to be random', some cases it's a simple as 'if I suddenly change the pace/presentation' it can help cement a point I've just said or about to say.
     
  5. Crappy Blue

    Crappy Blue

    Knuckles' Chaotix is a perfect game with no flaws Member
    If I got a timestamped, itemized receipt of a comment on a video of mine like this, especially one that repeatedly requests throwing out an entire editorial style just because the writer didn't like it, I'd be dead for the day. This is an intensely frustrating way to be spoken to over an hour+ video you put presumably 50 times as many hours into. And that's not to say "don't criticize this video because it took a lot of time and effort to create", I'm saying coming off the heels of a large writing, recording, and editing project just to be met with a wall of feedback half in this tone:

    That would drain the will out of any creator.
     
  6. Honestly, I was a bit worried my notes were too negative. I really did enjoy the video, and I learned some neat things I didn't know! I look forward to future videos, but I will say right now that I won't be doing detailed breakdowns for future videos.

    No worries! It's your video series, I'd be more worried if you just caved to all of my suggestions without thinking over whether you feel they fit or not. Again, my tone was perhaps too harsh but I do want you to succeed and do awesome! I opened Notepad during the intro to try to find the words to express my thoughts on it, then while I was working on that I also made a note at approximately the 6 minute mark and I ended with a full thing. Perhaps a few more rounds of editing on my part could have resolved some tonal issues with my post, but I'm hopeful that some of the feedback may prove useful!

    I do acknowledge your first bit about the intro and accept it, I just don't have anything else to add regarding it and I don't want this to sound like a tear-down of your reply.

    Cutting this here to make this reply shorter, although you do make several good points in the following paragraphs. I've always found the exaggerated characterizations obnoxious at best, and perhaps that's why I never got into Nostalgia Critic, Angry Video Game Nerd, Lindsay Ellis, or anything like that: the few of their videos I've watched it felt like they were more about their characters than the content they were discussing. I do again concede that this is your video series, however! If you're insistent on the playing up an exaggerated character thing then the video series may end up not being for me, but I'm just one voice among many so you are free to do your own thing. I didn't really have a space to mention it before, but I do want to say that that is a pretty cool mug! I'm looking forward to see what others you have in future videos.
     
  7. kyasarintsu

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    You look at the game from a lot of fresh and interesting angles here. You bring up many different ideas and relate them to your arguments in good ways. You go to all sorts of places, regarding other games and all sorts of things about the player environments both past and present, and mine some gold out of them. You go over aspects of the game that are often overlooked. A good video overall and I don't regret the time I spent watching it. This game has always been special of mine because of its art and many elements of level design, so seeing someone excitedly explain this and open my eyes to some details I may have missed was quite a treat.
    Oh, and the bait-and-switch during the character development discussion segment put a big smile on my face.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2022
  8. kitsunebi

    kitsunebi

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    While I agree that the criticism was very direct and could have been worded a bit more softly, I think having such a lengthy and detailed response as was given by SoNick would be invaluable constructive criticism for anyone who wasn't simply seeking praise. The reason it came off as harsh was because it focused almost entirely on the negatives. While there's nothing wrong with addressing them (even in such great quantity), giving detailed time-specific feedback on all of the positives as well would be equally useful for a creator trying to determine what works and what doesn't.

    Let me preface this by saying: I think it's awesome that you put so much work into making this type of video. There's a lot of garbage on Youtube made with little effort or enthusiasm, so it's always nice to see actual valuable CONTENT getting created as well. And here's the but:

    I haven't seen the video and am unlikely to do so for a couple of reasons. First, though I like Sonic Adventure quite a bit and think it does an admirable job of moving Sonic's gameplay into a 3D envirnoment, I find the story to be incredibly weak (made almost unbearable by unskippable cutscenes), so I admit I was (probably unfairly) turned off by the fact that the first reason given for the creation of the video was to show "how the game creates engagement, both from the story, (and) narrative." Again, it's perhaps a petty reason to be turned off, but it's sort of like someone telling me, "sit down and let me tell you all the reasons that Budweiser is a delicious beer." Thanks, but no matter what the argument, it's not going to convince me.

    But more importantly, and less dependent on my own personal feelings about the game...is the length. Maybe it absolutely needs to be that long, I don't know. But I DO know that the single most necessary advice almost every beginning filmmaker needs is "CUT CUT CUT MAKE IT SHORTER CUT THEN CUT SOME MORE." I imagine there are fans who would excitedly sit through even a 5-hour documentary on their favorite game...but the further you stray from the hardcore fan, the more concise you're going to need to be to hold people's attentions. I realize this isn't particularly helpful if your video can't possibly be shortened in any way, but I just wanted to point out that the length quite literally resulted in me not giving it a chance, and there may be others like me out there. So long as you're OK with only getting views from people who are more hardcore fans than I am (granted, that's probably most people), no need to worry. But judicious editing is almost always the most significant difference between a decent video and a great one.

    Anyway, feel free to ignore all of this. You could certainly write it completely off as a pointless "I haven't seen your movie but let me tell you what I think about it" diatribe. It sounds like you've got a pretty great video that took a lot of love (and time) to make, and I hope it reaches all the right people. It also sounds like with some tightening up in certain places, your future videos will be even better.
     
  9. Swifthom

    Swifthom

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    Completely agree - for film making.
    Having watched this a few days ago (through Youtube not through this forum) I'd say the video is trying to treat this as close as possible to an academic article - one designed to flesh out ideas in extreme detail and explore the overlap between multiple coherant concepts.

    For the average joe that will be ghastly, boring and an instant switch off.
    For the right kind of person intellectual gold dust.

    (I enjoyed it - discovered it through twitter with the 1 minute clip on the flower in windy valley - had noticed them before but never thought about them with that level of detail)
     
  10. Watching video now. I'm not far in but I've never seen Cook and Becker sponsor a video before, so I'm already impressed by that lol. Did you reach out to them or did they find you?

    Edit: Great from what I saw but one quick comment - You said "dissidence" a few times when you meant "dissonance." I know people hate to hear they used a word incorrectly when you can't go back in time, but it's better than making the mistake again in the future.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2022
  11. Laura

    Laura

    Brightened Eyes Member
    Just one thing from the first 10 minutes. You use SA2 as a reference for organic rails and Gens as using rails in a morr abstract gamey way. But I thought that was a bit unfair since SA2 uses rails in an abstract floating in the air for no reason way throughout many levels. So when you said SA2 did it well you were really only talking about City Escape. I think you could have acknowledged that about SA2 because it makes it appear that the whole game does rails more organically when it doesn't.

    I'll be watching the video over segments over several days. I like it so far. You always make good content. I'm not a fan of the editing and humour but it's popular on YT. I think you do it well.
     
  12. MrMechanic

    MrMechanic

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    So I decided to take a few days... away... just because I was... Kinda exhausted lol. I figured I'd reply to a few things brought up since I last visited.


    The video's argument isn't one of 'hey this is actually a really good story! this is why!" it's more "This is how the game tries to create interest and how it uses the design of it's stages to help communicate those narrative ideas".

    It's not so much a case of 'the story is really good or bad' it's more an argument about how the devs structure the game to communicate the narrative, and if you get into it, the engagement.

    That's precisely what I'm going for. I know that in terms of my channels popularity and *lolz moneyz!* I would be better to just make 10min vids which are shorter, but I can't help but feel that longer term it's better for your reputation and also for your regular audience to get them something that they can feel is worth your time. I know that for me at least, I really enjoy videos more if I've learnt something from them, I think that's true for a lot of people, yes funny videos make you laugh, but people just like to learn things or get new ideas from media they consume.

    Even if they end up disagreeing with you, if you can actually make the viewer think about what you've said, I think it can establish a greater connection in a strange way.

    So the Cook & Becker thing, whilst I was editing this video together, I had another 2 projects which I had to complete for 2 other 'clients,' 1 was a review of the new Sonic Mini Statues, and the other was the Jewellery from King Ice. That's at least 2 weeks of work just to complete those, and 2 weeks not working on this project.

    Anyway, right as I was working on these 3 videos, Cook & Becker emailed me asking if I'd like to review their Pac Man book, since I'd previously reviewed both the original and updated Sonic History book of theirs (bought with my own money). So I got back in touch and said 'I'm probably not going to be able to do a full video unboxing/review, just because I'm too busy', but I did say that I was working on a large video which didn't currently have a sponsor segment, and if they wanted to I could place a promotional segment in that where I show off both the Sonic and PacMan books.

    They agreed and a few days later, Pac Man arrived. So the 'payment' was the £100 book which... I'd rather it were £100 in actual cash lol, but since I don't have an active sponsor, I'd love to have one! Please someone sponsor me for money XD, it was very unlikely I was going to find anything better to fill the sponsor segment outside of say an Amazon affiliate link thing.

    So lol bit complicated! Technically it's not a sponsorship, they wanted a full review and sent it with the hope I would give it a full review, despite saying multiple times I wouldn't have time to do that. But last week I sent them the video and told them the time stamp for the endorsement and... they actually loved it. They agreed it was a far better fit for my channel, the video and also their brand (fact I included both Pac-Man and Sonic) and well... there's a possibility of a future partnership which... I can't really say anymore about right now.

    And also 'legally' it's safer to treat something like this as saying "This is a sponsorship".

    Anyway, that was a bit longer than planned!

    You said "dissidence" a few times when you meant "dissonance."

    Yeah I... Don't know why I've done that, only thing I can think of is as I've just mis-read it and it's stuck as I've recorded the script.


    This was something I was a bit conscious about when I was writing that segment, because you're right, SA2 does go abstract. However, and I do try to cover this in the video by saying "This segment in Generations could be argued as to be an abstract representation of crossing a bridge... but what is this supposed to represent..."

    Originally this segment had a longer explanation, which will probably come about once I get to more recent games and cover generations itself.

    But with SA2, you can almost explain every grind rail in terms of what it's supposed to represent, both literally and in terms of an abstract concept. You have the literal in the form of city escape, and the power cables in the ARK stages.

    But even some of the most abstract ones like in Sky Rail, I've always felt that the rails in this stage are supposed to represent the idea of Shadow jumping between different mountains and even 'falling' in order to build up speed to fly through the canyon. In the intro for Sonic Heroes, there's a few moments where Sonic is running between two 'cliffs' and jumps between them and over a few platforms, this is a more literal representation but I've felt that in Sky Rail it's a more abstract representation of that intro.

    Generations GHZ on the other hand, the first is definitely an abstract representation of crossing a bridge, but there's others which... I'm at a loss, even before the wooden dam there's a few grind rails that I didn't show which... I have no idea what they're supposed to be. A few maybe you could argue are parts of the dam, but the ones in the cave I'm legitimately confused as to what they are or why they're there. One thing I cut from my script was a chunk about how you could contextualise this if there was an Eggman base or some kind of 'dock', since you have the giant fish badniks, this cave could have been some kind of secret base or dock where they were being construted, the pips are then contextualised to the base... But because it's just a cave, I'm honestly at a loss.
     
  13. Pengi

    Pengi

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    The grindable objects in Radical Highway, Green Forest and Metal Harbour make sense contextually.