How the Sausage is Made, Part 2
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Monday, October 16, 2017
Annotated Appendix: Finale
So here we are.
For the final episode, I actually had much grander plans for how the last few minutes would play: a montage of Richter Mode with the "thank you!" voice over. But, oddly, I had tons of time between the endings playing out and I Am The Wind's interminable running length. In an effort to keep this episode to a respectable running time, I thought the montage would be overkill, so I scrapped it in favor of tightening things up. See? You guys told me that you didn't like silence, so I kept it to a minimum.
It tugs at me, though, that the finale of the video series winds up with I Am the Wind, but it just doesn't make sense to elongate the episode. Sorry if you may have found it slightly anticlimactic, but I hope you understand the reasoning now. If anything, this is the only episode where I wished I had more to talk about. Maybe it was just the grieving process for it ending starting to take hold or something, but I really wracked my brain (and my notes) to include anything else I possibly could, but everything left was stuff obviously read in-game (like how large the dev team was, which is clearly indicated in the credits that you would be watching).
And there we have it. One major project in the books. To answer some questions that I've gotten about this all happened, here's...
How Some of the Sausage Was Made, Part 1
The voice recording was done with a Blue Snowball microphone. I have a friend that freelances as a voice actor and some other pals that podcast, and they unanimously recommended it to me for the quality it delivers at the price it sells for. It really did a hell of a job for a USB mic, and I can't say enough good things about it. I'm sure I could have done more research and found something better, but I'm not an audio engineer, so it was perfect for me.
I recorded all of the voice overs using Audacity, which is a freeware program that anybody can download and use. At first, I found it kind of obtuse, but since I wasn't really doing anything super fancy with it other than recording, editing, and then exporting into .mp3 format, it did the job. I would generally write a script first and then edit it a bit (not a lot, which is a flaw of mine that other editors probably hate about me) before launching into the recording, and then I would edit the recording immediately after. The recording process probably took a little over an hour per episode based on how many mistakes I made that needed to be corrected. I'm not a professional narrator or anything, but I've taken a handful of acting classes when I was in college (English majors could do that as electives, you see), and recalled some of the golden rules when I needed them most. The best, in this case was "slow down," because, like everyone else, the faster you do things the more likely they are to turn out rough, and this includes reading a script that you wrote yourself.
Generally, after editing the sound, I would walk my laptop over to my PlayStation 3 and jump right into the game footage capture, which was done using an Elgato Game Capture HD and Elgato's capture software. This was generously loaned to me by a friend, and not a moment too soon. At first, as I was trying to do this whole thing on a budget and decided to simply emulate everything. The problem is that I'm using a laptop that's a little more than three years old now, and wasn't even close to top of the line when I bought it. Though I was still using a disk to play Symphony using ePSXe, the frame rate would drop at very inconvenient times, and after doing a test run of the game, I just knew in my guts that it would be compromised if I did the final videos this way. Thanks to the good will of a good pal, the Symphony footage in the series was taken off of a PS3.
Everything else you see is emulated, though. Even though I own all of these game in one form or another (except one of them. No, I won't tell you which) (ok, it's Kid Dracula) (Kid Dracula sucks), I didn't have the Elgato handy during the early research period, and found it best to just download roms off of the internet. At first, though, I still didn't have a clear idea how to capture the footage. After a little research, I settled on FRAPS, which is a free software specifically for game capture, but a small fee gives you a few extra bells and whistles, as well as the removal of a FRAPS watermark on every video. It may sound kind of snobby, but having a billboard for computer programs all over most of my videos was not something I was happy about, so I spent the $37 on the full version of the program.
This is where things get stupid, though. When the laptop was new, it was loaded with the horrendous Windows 8 with the promise of a free update to 10 sooner than later. Since I never wanted to deal with 8, I never did a lot of experimenting with it, and when 10 finally came, I had no idea that the on board Xbox software had native video capturing, so most of the older games and side bits of Symphony were captured using that when I finally realized it was there. FRAPS was still useful, though, as some things didn't play nicely with the Xbox software, so the money was still well spent.
Lucky for me, though, I never throw anything out, and boxes full of old-ish stuff really helped me save a bunch of cash on this. A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me his old PlayStation 2 (I had traded up for a backward compatible PS3 when they were new. When it died a noble death, I was stuck with a mountain of unplayable PS2 games for years), but with a busted controller. I went ahead and hunted down an OEM PS2 controller, and just happened to have a USB adapter for it that I had bought on a work trip to Cincinnati when I wanted to play Final Fantasy VIII on my work laptop (maybe around 2008? I can't remember). As my wife and I are people with thousands of compact disks sitting digitized on a hard drive, we looked slightly ahead and bought a 1TB external drive to back everything up a few years ago, and this is where all of the captured video was stored.
All of the video editing was done using Sony Vegas Pro 11, which is now a pretty old version of the program. This was also gifted to me by the friend with the Elgato, and it took some work to get it to do what I envisioned with this series. The learning curve was steep, but not as bad as it would have been without YouTube and the ocean of tutorials on it. I've come to find later that while SVP may not be as ubiquitous in the editing community as the Adobe suite of products, it worked great. I've also found that it's very affordable for what it can do (at least, for what I used it for), so it gets the thumbs up from me.
Finally, yes, I was using the copy of Symphony that my parents gave me for Christmas just after my 18th birthday. It will never leave my possession if I'm still of sound mind.
Tomorrow, I'll post what is a photographic tour of how this all came together.
Thanks again for watching!
For the final episode, I actually had much grander plans for how the last few minutes would play: a montage of Richter Mode with the "thank you!" voice over. But, oddly, I had tons of time between the endings playing out and I Am The Wind's interminable running length. In an effort to keep this episode to a respectable running time, I thought the montage would be overkill, so I scrapped it in favor of tightening things up. See? You guys told me that you didn't like silence, so I kept it to a minimum.
It tugs at me, though, that the finale of the video series winds up with I Am the Wind, but it just doesn't make sense to elongate the episode. Sorry if you may have found it slightly anticlimactic, but I hope you understand the reasoning now. If anything, this is the only episode where I wished I had more to talk about. Maybe it was just the grieving process for it ending starting to take hold or something, but I really wracked my brain (and my notes) to include anything else I possibly could, but everything left was stuff obviously read in-game (like how large the dev team was, which is clearly indicated in the credits that you would be watching).
And there we have it. One major project in the books. To answer some questions that I've gotten about this all happened, here's...
How Some of the Sausage Was Made, Part 1
The voice recording was done with a Blue Snowball microphone. I have a friend that freelances as a voice actor and some other pals that podcast, and they unanimously recommended it to me for the quality it delivers at the price it sells for. It really did a hell of a job for a USB mic, and I can't say enough good things about it. I'm sure I could have done more research and found something better, but I'm not an audio engineer, so it was perfect for me.
I recorded all of the voice overs using Audacity, which is a freeware program that anybody can download and use. At first, I found it kind of obtuse, but since I wasn't really doing anything super fancy with it other than recording, editing, and then exporting into .mp3 format, it did the job. I would generally write a script first and then edit it a bit (not a lot, which is a flaw of mine that other editors probably hate about me) before launching into the recording, and then I would edit the recording immediately after. The recording process probably took a little over an hour per episode based on how many mistakes I made that needed to be corrected. I'm not a professional narrator or anything, but I've taken a handful of acting classes when I was in college (English majors could do that as electives, you see), and recalled some of the golden rules when I needed them most. The best, in this case was "slow down," because, like everyone else, the faster you do things the more likely they are to turn out rough, and this includes reading a script that you wrote yourself.
Generally, after editing the sound, I would walk my laptop over to my PlayStation 3 and jump right into the game footage capture, which was done using an Elgato Game Capture HD and Elgato's capture software. This was generously loaned to me by a friend, and not a moment too soon. At first, as I was trying to do this whole thing on a budget and decided to simply emulate everything. The problem is that I'm using a laptop that's a little more than three years old now, and wasn't even close to top of the line when I bought it. Though I was still using a disk to play Symphony using ePSXe, the frame rate would drop at very inconvenient times, and after doing a test run of the game, I just knew in my guts that it would be compromised if I did the final videos this way. Thanks to the good will of a good pal, the Symphony footage in the series was taken off of a PS3.
Everything else you see is emulated, though. Even though I own all of these game in one form or another (except one of them. No, I won't tell you which) (ok, it's Kid Dracula) (Kid Dracula sucks), I didn't have the Elgato handy during the early research period, and found it best to just download roms off of the internet. At first, though, I still didn't have a clear idea how to capture the footage. After a little research, I settled on FRAPS, which is a free software specifically for game capture, but a small fee gives you a few extra bells and whistles, as well as the removal of a FRAPS watermark on every video. It may sound kind of snobby, but having a billboard for computer programs all over most of my videos was not something I was happy about, so I spent the $37 on the full version of the program.
This is where things get stupid, though. When the laptop was new, it was loaded with the horrendous Windows 8 with the promise of a free update to 10 sooner than later. Since I never wanted to deal with 8, I never did a lot of experimenting with it, and when 10 finally came, I had no idea that the on board Xbox software had native video capturing, so most of the older games and side bits of Symphony were captured using that when I finally realized it was there. FRAPS was still useful, though, as some things didn't play nicely with the Xbox software, so the money was still well spent.
Lucky for me, though, I never throw anything out, and boxes full of old-ish stuff really helped me save a bunch of cash on this. A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me his old PlayStation 2 (I had traded up for a backward compatible PS3 when they were new. When it died a noble death, I was stuck with a mountain of unplayable PS2 games for years), but with a busted controller. I went ahead and hunted down an OEM PS2 controller, and just happened to have a USB adapter for it that I had bought on a work trip to Cincinnati when I wanted to play Final Fantasy VIII on my work laptop (maybe around 2008? I can't remember). As my wife and I are people with thousands of compact disks sitting digitized on a hard drive, we looked slightly ahead and bought a 1TB external drive to back everything up a few years ago, and this is where all of the captured video was stored.
All of the video editing was done using Sony Vegas Pro 11, which is now a pretty old version of the program. This was also gifted to me by the friend with the Elgato, and it took some work to get it to do what I envisioned with this series. The learning curve was steep, but not as bad as it would have been without YouTube and the ocean of tutorials on it. I've come to find later that while SVP may not be as ubiquitous in the editing community as the Adobe suite of products, it worked great. I've also found that it's very affordable for what it can do (at least, for what I used it for), so it gets the thumbs up from me.
Finally, yes, I was using the copy of Symphony that my parents gave me for Christmas just after my 18th birthday. It will never leave my possession if I'm still of sound mind.
Tomorrow, I'll post what is a photographic tour of how this all came together.
Thanks again for watching!
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The Cave and Floating Catacombs
Close to the end, now. We're almost there!
Unlike this Appendix entry, I thought this episode would be a challenge to make, but it came out pretty quickly. EXCEPT when I did a test run of the areas and saved the game without recording anything. Yes, boneheaded move, and yes, it happened before. I had a backup run at what I thought was the same spot, but found that I needed to bum rush a good chunk of the game to get back to the point of recording. So, if any of you detect something off about the weapon loadout, HP count, and conspicuously absent number of relics that briefly appear on the list, this is why. A little bit of sausage-making for you. I was even still equipped with the Spike Breaker armor, which you can clearly see when I fly through the specific room in the FC, much to my own surprise (and delight because I would have probably been killed).
Something I forgot to mention: Most Symphony players know this pretty well, but I neglected to point out that by skipping the Death scene and hanging on to the Alucard Shield, the game is shattered the moment you find the Shield Rod. I didn't mention it in the last video, and I didn't bring it up in this one. There. Mea culpa.
Ok, let's talk about the Galamoth fight for a bit. Someone called out in the comments that I did it in a "broken" manner by showing off the use of the Beryl Circlet, the teleport strikes, and the Alucard Shield/ Rod combo all in succession. I suppose that this is a fair point, but I don't think that there's a "right" way of handling this battle as Galamoth is a pretty hard boss and has a stupid amount of hit points. Sure, I suppose you can attack him little and then turn into Mist to avoid the lightning attacks, as was mentioned in the video, but we don't have time to do it that way with his HP count slowly whittling away. Honestly, I thought just going to town on him with the Beryl Circlet equipped would have been enough, but the clock was ticking so I threw in both other methods to get things over with instead of showing side videos of me just steamrolling him, which was the original plan. Incidentally, the first time I killed Galamoth 20 years ago was with teleport strikes and the Osafune Katana. I had the timing down to frames of animation, and in the right mode, could kill him without losing a single point of damage. But that was a long time ago. I never even heard of the Shield Rod combo until I was in my third year of college almost 3 years later, and didn't know about the hidden room with the Beryl Circlet until probably close to the same time. See? Without ubiquitous internet, we just had to fend for ourselves.
Of course, there are also videos floating around YouTube that prove that he can be hit stunned by getting to the ledge behind him and smacking him in the face. I have never tested this myself, but if I can get to it in the next few days, this might be thrown into the final video.
Here's something: Upon re-watching it, I'm also noticing that a speech impediment has formed when I speak quickly. It's weird because I'm a guy that used to basically talk for a living, and I do so relatively fast. I like getting in front of people and rambling, and had a pretty articulate delivery. As I've gotten a little older, though, I'm noticing that I'm starting to stumble with that delivery and mumble a little bit, and these videos have really confirmed this. Probably more than you wanted to know, but these Appendices are just as much for me as they are for you.
So one more to go. Just to temper your expectations now, the next episode should be on the shorter side from the where I'm sitting at the moment. I know that we're at the end, but obviously, there aren't any more new environments to deal with, so there's certainly less to show. That won't mean that it's only going to be the final boss fight and that's it, though, so please look forward to it.
Thanks again for watching.
Unlike this Appendix entry, I thought this episode would be a challenge to make, but it came out pretty quickly. EXCEPT when I did a test run of the areas and saved the game without recording anything. Yes, boneheaded move, and yes, it happened before. I had a backup run at what I thought was the same spot, but found that I needed to bum rush a good chunk of the game to get back to the point of recording. So, if any of you detect something off about the weapon loadout, HP count, and conspicuously absent number of relics that briefly appear on the list, this is why. A little bit of sausage-making for you. I was even still equipped with the Spike Breaker armor, which you can clearly see when I fly through the specific room in the FC, much to my own surprise (and delight because I would have probably been killed).
Something I forgot to mention: Most Symphony players know this pretty well, but I neglected to point out that by skipping the Death scene and hanging on to the Alucard Shield, the game is shattered the moment you find the Shield Rod. I didn't mention it in the last video, and I didn't bring it up in this one. There. Mea culpa.
Ok, let's talk about the Galamoth fight for a bit. Someone called out in the comments that I did it in a "broken" manner by showing off the use of the Beryl Circlet, the teleport strikes, and the Alucard Shield/ Rod combo all in succession. I suppose that this is a fair point, but I don't think that there's a "right" way of handling this battle as Galamoth is a pretty hard boss and has a stupid amount of hit points. Sure, I suppose you can attack him little and then turn into Mist to avoid the lightning attacks, as was mentioned in the video, but we don't have time to do it that way with his HP count slowly whittling away. Honestly, I thought just going to town on him with the Beryl Circlet equipped would have been enough, but the clock was ticking so I threw in both other methods to get things over with instead of showing side videos of me just steamrolling him, which was the original plan. Incidentally, the first time I killed Galamoth 20 years ago was with teleport strikes and the Osafune Katana. I had the timing down to frames of animation, and in the right mode, could kill him without losing a single point of damage. But that was a long time ago. I never even heard of the Shield Rod combo until I was in my third year of college almost 3 years later, and didn't know about the hidden room with the Beryl Circlet until probably close to the same time. See? Without ubiquitous internet, we just had to fend for ourselves.
Of course, there are also videos floating around YouTube that prove that he can be hit stunned by getting to the ledge behind him and smacking him in the face. I have never tested this myself, but if I can get to it in the next few days, this might be thrown into the final video.
Here's something: Upon re-watching it, I'm also noticing that a speech impediment has formed when I speak quickly. It's weird because I'm a guy that used to basically talk for a living, and I do so relatively fast. I like getting in front of people and rambling, and had a pretty articulate delivery. As I've gotten a little older, though, I'm noticing that I'm starting to stumble with that delivery and mumble a little bit, and these videos have really confirmed this. Probably more than you wanted to know, but these Appendices are just as much for me as they are for you.
So one more to go. Just to temper your expectations now, the next episode should be on the shorter side from the where I'm sitting at the moment. I know that we're at the end, but obviously, there aren't any more new environments to deal with, so there's certainly less to show. That won't mean that it's only going to be the final boss fight and that's it, though, so please look forward to it.
Thanks again for watching.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The Reverse Caverns
Yes, indeed, this is the episode I dreaded making most.
As you'll see in this week's video, there just isn't that much to say about the Reverse (Reverce?) Caverns, and the slow travel and tedious mapping makes for a real slog. Since I've been cobbling together two or three sections of the Inverted Castle, each new episode has been about 20-25 minutes long, and that's kind of lengthy. Knowing that it would take me at least that long to get through this area, though, meant for this section to have it's own unique show, and one that you may find ...uh... kind of boring.
But stick around to the end! All of the really interesting bits are packed into the back half, including two things that I probably should have mentioned: the fact that by skipping the Death encounter at the beginning of the game means that you can essentially break it the moment you acquire the Shield Rod (since you already have the Alucard Shield), and that the wooden bridge that covers the entrance to the Cave magically reappeared at the end of the episode. Thankfully, by leaving the screen and coming back it once again evaporated, but this is a glitch that I had never seen before, and in no way can I recreate it. Since there are several sources on the internet where Iga claims the game is practically held together by Scotch tape and hope, I'm not super shocked to see something like this, but I probably should have busted out the microphone and called it out. Aaaah well.
The good news is that, surprise, this video showed up only a little more than a week or so since the last one. Let's call that a nice side effect of just not having that much going on in this one, but that might be a little reprieve compared to the next two, which should be packed. And yes, there will be two more. I've just decided before writing this that finishing the game in the next episode might be a little too much, and I can use the final battle with Dracula and the credits sequence as a sort of final appendix for stuff that didn't fit anywhere else, like the multiple endings. I know I've said this plenty of times, but I'm writing this on October 3rd, and though there's no specific date that we can refer back to as the actual release of the game in the US, we're in the advent of its 20th anniversary, and that's the end goal. Keep my rickety old laptop and I in your thoughts over the next few weeks.
Thanks again for watching, and enjoy the new video (please).
As you'll see in this week's video, there just isn't that much to say about the Reverse (Reverce?) Caverns, and the slow travel and tedious mapping makes for a real slog. Since I've been cobbling together two or three sections of the Inverted Castle, each new episode has been about 20-25 minutes long, and that's kind of lengthy. Knowing that it would take me at least that long to get through this area, though, meant for this section to have it's own unique show, and one that you may find ...uh... kind of boring.
But stick around to the end! All of the really interesting bits are packed into the back half, including two things that I probably should have mentioned: the fact that by skipping the Death encounter at the beginning of the game means that you can essentially break it the moment you acquire the Shield Rod (since you already have the Alucard Shield), and that the wooden bridge that covers the entrance to the Cave magically reappeared at the end of the episode. Thankfully, by leaving the screen and coming back it once again evaporated, but this is a glitch that I had never seen before, and in no way can I recreate it. Since there are several sources on the internet where Iga claims the game is practically held together by Scotch tape and hope, I'm not super shocked to see something like this, but I probably should have busted out the microphone and called it out. Aaaah well.
The good news is that, surprise, this video showed up only a little more than a week or so since the last one. Let's call that a nice side effect of just not having that much going on in this one, but that might be a little reprieve compared to the next two, which should be packed. And yes, there will be two more. I've just decided before writing this that finishing the game in the next episode might be a little too much, and I can use the final battle with Dracula and the credits sequence as a sort of final appendix for stuff that didn't fit anywhere else, like the multiple endings. I know I've said this plenty of times, but I'm writing this on October 3rd, and though there's no specific date that we can refer back to as the actual release of the game in the US, we're in the advent of its 20th anniversary, and that's the end goal. Keep my rickety old laptop and I in your thoughts over the next few weeks.
Thanks again for watching, and enjoy the new video (please).
Friday, September 15, 2017
Annotated Appendix: East Meets West
Whoo, things are moving along pretty fast, now. But, I suppose that you might not think so. That's fine.
As this episode of the series again reminds us, the Inverted Castle isn't exactly a second full half. If anything, the IC is maybe a little more than a third of the content of the game; there aren't many new enemies, there are very few new relics, and no ability walls to keep us away from wherever we want to go. Though this episode is a little long with some dense stretches of silence (sorry), tackling three sections of the IC in each video has now become the standard for just this reason. If I did them one-by-one like the first castle, you would be be bored to death.
Along with the format change of the episode, the construction evolution really came into play here, too. By that, I mean I just get through the locations at a steady pace and no longer have to stop and stand around so the voice over can finish. It can sometimes make me edit in creative ways (which is really a good thing, I suppose), but now I can write a script, record it, and then just plug things in where they fit, which is nice. It also sort of helps that I haven't really needed to multi-window much in this and the last episode, either. The references the game makes are still interesting, but not so complex that they callback to multiple games in the series anymore. Sure, this could all change when we get closer to the Galamoth fight, but as far as editing goes, this was an easy one to put together.
From a navigational perspective, though, it was really hard. I promise to scan my noted map and share it at some point so this all makes a bit more sense, but two of the three locations in this episode interlock, and that doesn't exactly make things easy to map without some bit of backtracking and a lot of forethought. The next episode, thank God, is made up of three discrete locations, but this one was something I really puzzled over for a long time.
Apropos of nothing: Against all common sense, Konami is releasing a port of the Castlevania arcade game Haunted Castle on the PS4 today. I'd like to think that they know these videos are coming and just want to cross promote them, but that would be stupid because nobody's making any scratch off of this whole venture. Haunted Castle, though, is an unquestionable piece of shit. If you want to give Konami money for it that's your business, but I advise against it.
Again, thanks for watching. See you in a few weeks
As this episode of the series again reminds us, the Inverted Castle isn't exactly a second full half. If anything, the IC is maybe a little more than a third of the content of the game; there aren't many new enemies, there are very few new relics, and no ability walls to keep us away from wherever we want to go. Though this episode is a little long with some dense stretches of silence (sorry), tackling three sections of the IC in each video has now become the standard for just this reason. If I did them one-by-one like the first castle, you would be be bored to death.
Along with the format change of the episode, the construction evolution really came into play here, too. By that, I mean I just get through the locations at a steady pace and no longer have to stop and stand around so the voice over can finish. It can sometimes make me edit in creative ways (which is really a good thing, I suppose), but now I can write a script, record it, and then just plug things in where they fit, which is nice. It also sort of helps that I haven't really needed to multi-window much in this and the last episode, either. The references the game makes are still interesting, but not so complex that they callback to multiple games in the series anymore. Sure, this could all change when we get closer to the Galamoth fight, but as far as editing goes, this was an easy one to put together.
From a navigational perspective, though, it was really hard. I promise to scan my noted map and share it at some point so this all makes a bit more sense, but two of the three locations in this episode interlock, and that doesn't exactly make things easy to map without some bit of backtracking and a lot of forethought. The next episode, thank God, is made up of three discrete locations, but this one was something I really puzzled over for a long time.
Apropos of nothing: Against all common sense, Konami is releasing a port of the Castlevania arcade game Haunted Castle on the PS4 today. I'd like to think that they know these videos are coming and just want to cross promote them, but that would be stupid because nobody's making any scratch off of this whole venture. Haunted Castle, though, is an unquestionable piece of shit. If you want to give Konami money for it that's your business, but I advise against it.
Again, thanks for watching. See you in a few weeks
Monday, August 14, 2017
Annotated Appendix: Death Wing's Lair and the Reverse Colosseum
For this video, I did something a little bit different. Knowing that there's going to be a bit more dead space for the lack of new enemies and items, I altered the usual flow of the videos to basically get through it as quickly as possible. This changes the timing of the recordings, though. Basically, this is how the sausage was made until today:
Other than that, I'm trying really, really hard to keep to a two week schedule from now on. This is obviously not a full-time job for me, and I don't have a ton of time to throw at side projects, so I hope you understand if I slip here and there. But I would like to have the final episode up in time for the game's 20th anniversary of the NA release, which means I need to get moving. I've already laid out a pretty good pace and mapped my next stops, so it's just a matter of getting back to the notes now. Since I'm doubling (and in one instance, tripling) up on locations for the inverted castle, I think I can pull it off.
Enjoy the new video, folks:
- Take location notes. Copious location notes
- Write the script and then edit
- Record the voice over dialog and edit
- Notate the dialog timing (ie- it takes x amount of minutes for me to talk about y)
- Practice run through the section I want to record
- Capture game footage with the dialog timing list and a stopwatch
- Edit the video together
- Record pickup VO and handle minor fixes
- Render and rejoice
Other than that, I'm trying really, really hard to keep to a two week schedule from now on. This is obviously not a full-time job for me, and I don't have a ton of time to throw at side projects, so I hope you understand if I slip here and there. But I would like to have the final episode up in time for the game's 20th anniversary of the NA release, which means I need to get moving. I've already laid out a pretty good pace and mapped my next stops, so it's just a matter of getting back to the notes now. Since I'm doubling (and in one instance, tripling) up on locations for the inverted castle, I think I can pull it off.
Enjoy the new video, folks:
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Annotated Appendix: Inverted Castle 1
We need to talk about design intention, and pretty badly.
The point of making the Annotated Symphony of the Night was not to give you a history lesson. It was to find a place to curate everything that we could possibly know about the game from what was on-screen to what we can glean from supplemental material. While the meat of what's in there is a catalog of where names and locations come from, very little of it is speculating about what X design decision might mean or what Y location could infer. Just about everything is cited. When it's not, I try to be clear that mine are either calm observations or ancillary thoughts.
The reason behind this is pretty simple, really: unless Koji Igarashi or Toru Hagihara is sitting down with you and telling you what exactly was on their mind when they made this game, we have no clear idea of what their intentions really were. Sure, we know from interviews that IGA is a big fan of Dracula's Curse, so we can infer that it was a good reason to use Alucard as a protagonist and shoehorn the other guys in as bosses, but we don't really know (or need to know) any more than that. I make a point of surmising that there's a rough optimal path that the designers left bread crumbs to find several times in the videos, but without any actual evidence of that we can refer back to for proof, then who knows?
It's fine that you think that I did this because I'm not using a graduate degree in late Renaissance history or something (which I hope nobody actually has, no offense). There's a lot of that in the game if that's all you're looking for. But that's not what's happening here. We actually get design intention and a shiltoad more, but work that's cited and searchable. We're annotating the game, not just a Tolkien reference book, after all.
Having said that, the inverted castle is going to be a logistical nightmare of planning, which I didn't think that far ahead about, honestly. In this video, I say that I'm going to take care of each area in its entirety for the sake of making them easily digestible, but the more I stare at the map and plan the route, the less likely that's actually going to happen. When this is all over, I should probably scan or photograph my notes for you to get a sense of the mess that this was to structure. I think I have a good plan in place, but since there are no discrete doors to gate our progress in the second phase, it's actually harder than you think to get through it all with as little backtracking as possible (and that's one of the golden rules from day 1). I think I sort of painted myself in a corner with where I left off with this week's video. Grrr.
Last thing to note is that, yes, I need to start picking up the pace. I sort of dumb luck-ed into being able to finish this project in time for the 20th anniversary of Symphony's release, and that was where I was hoping to end. But we're talking October, here, which means I only have about three months to go. By my early reckoning, that would be six more videos (SIX!) between now and then.
Guess I gotta get crackin'.
Thanks again for watching. Here's this week's episode.
The point of making the Annotated Symphony of the Night was not to give you a history lesson. It was to find a place to curate everything that we could possibly know about the game from what was on-screen to what we can glean from supplemental material. While the meat of what's in there is a catalog of where names and locations come from, very little of it is speculating about what X design decision might mean or what Y location could infer. Just about everything is cited. When it's not, I try to be clear that mine are either calm observations or ancillary thoughts.
The reason behind this is pretty simple, really: unless Koji Igarashi or Toru Hagihara is sitting down with you and telling you what exactly was on their mind when they made this game, we have no clear idea of what their intentions really were. Sure, we know from interviews that IGA is a big fan of Dracula's Curse, so we can infer that it was a good reason to use Alucard as a protagonist and shoehorn the other guys in as bosses, but we don't really know (or need to know) any more than that. I make a point of surmising that there's a rough optimal path that the designers left bread crumbs to find several times in the videos, but without any actual evidence of that we can refer back to for proof, then who knows?
It's fine that you think that I did this because I'm not using a graduate degree in late Renaissance history or something (which I hope nobody actually has, no offense). There's a lot of that in the game if that's all you're looking for. But that's not what's happening here. We actually get design intention and a shiltoad more, but work that's cited and searchable. We're annotating the game, not just a Tolkien reference book, after all.
Having said that, the inverted castle is going to be a logistical nightmare of planning, which I didn't think that far ahead about, honestly. In this video, I say that I'm going to take care of each area in its entirety for the sake of making them easily digestible, but the more I stare at the map and plan the route, the less likely that's actually going to happen. When this is all over, I should probably scan or photograph my notes for you to get a sense of the mess that this was to structure. I think I have a good plan in place, but since there are no discrete doors to gate our progress in the second phase, it's actually harder than you think to get through it all with as little backtracking as possible (and that's one of the golden rules from day 1). I think I sort of painted myself in a corner with where I left off with this week's video. Grrr.
Last thing to note is that, yes, I need to start picking up the pace. I sort of dumb luck-ed into being able to finish this project in time for the 20th anniversary of Symphony's release, and that was where I was hoping to end. But we're talking October, here, which means I only have about three months to go. By my early reckoning, that would be six more videos (SIX!) between now and then.
Guess I gotta get crackin'.
Thanks again for watching. Here's this week's episode.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The First Great Cleanup
This was both the easiest and most difficult video to put together. Go ahead and watch it:
First, from an actually editing perspective, it was kind of a snap. I didn't need extensive clips from previous games since it was mostly just B roll from Symphony itself, which saved me a lot of resizing/ reframing for the side window, which always makes things easier. Since we've pretty much seen the entirety of the castle at this point except for a few hidden rooms with no real visual splendor to them, there wasn't a whole lot to discuss about actual locations, either (which will be true for the entirety of the second castle, actually), which also makes getting through things a little faster. I could just point out what we found, throw in some clips of what makes them interesting, and move on.
Even though this is maybe the longest video, too, it moves along at a faster clip than the others do, too. I think people will like that about this one, especially with the extra "filler" information that I've had in the can since this series started. Without the need for Alucard to stand around and wait for me to finish speaking, it certainly makes for a more interesting video to watch, but that's also where some of the troubles came in. All of the stuff that I point out that isn't exactly native to what we're seeing on-screen had to be nestled in there or totally re-written and re-recorded. I'm not totally above that, but there's a balance between working smarter and working harder. Thankfully, it all kind of fit. So a few sentences are a little awkward in that I keep saying "series producer, Koji Igarashi," and "an interview recently translated by Shmupulations," (whom does work so great that you owe it to yourself to dig through their back catalog and lose an afternoon or two, and then contribute to their Patreon like they deserve), but I think it gets a pass. It's nice to do a video that's essentially an information dump but winds up being a much more active one.
Last thing about that: boy, I sure did a shitty job getting around those Flea Riders in the Keep, huh? That wasn't by design; I actually thought that I had enough magic that I could make the flight in mist form to the other side of the keep. By the time I got swarmed, I knew I was in for it. But it sure was convenient, though, because the dialog running over that whole clown show fit perfectly. Happy accidents, my dudes. Happy. Accidents.
So a note going forward-- I'll probably do two sections of the inverted castle per video, so things should move along a little faster. Other than the new enemies to talk about, there's just isn't that much to discuss. Sad, maybe, but the truth, so be prepared.
Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in a few weeks.
First, from an actually editing perspective, it was kind of a snap. I didn't need extensive clips from previous games since it was mostly just B roll from Symphony itself, which saved me a lot of resizing/ reframing for the side window, which always makes things easier. Since we've pretty much seen the entirety of the castle at this point except for a few hidden rooms with no real visual splendor to them, there wasn't a whole lot to discuss about actual locations, either (which will be true for the entirety of the second castle, actually), which also makes getting through things a little faster. I could just point out what we found, throw in some clips of what makes them interesting, and move on.
Even though this is maybe the longest video, too, it moves along at a faster clip than the others do, too. I think people will like that about this one, especially with the extra "filler" information that I've had in the can since this series started. Without the need for Alucard to stand around and wait for me to finish speaking, it certainly makes for a more interesting video to watch, but that's also where some of the troubles came in. All of the stuff that I point out that isn't exactly native to what we're seeing on-screen had to be nestled in there or totally re-written and re-recorded. I'm not totally above that, but there's a balance between working smarter and working harder. Thankfully, it all kind of fit. So a few sentences are a little awkward in that I keep saying "series producer, Koji Igarashi," and "an interview recently translated by Shmupulations," (whom does work so great that you owe it to yourself to dig through their back catalog and lose an afternoon or two, and then contribute to their Patreon like they deserve), but I think it gets a pass. It's nice to do a video that's essentially an information dump but winds up being a much more active one.
Last thing about that: boy, I sure did a shitty job getting around those Flea Riders in the Keep, huh? That wasn't by design; I actually thought that I had enough magic that I could make the flight in mist form to the other side of the keep. By the time I got swarmed, I knew I was in for it. But it sure was convenient, though, because the dialog running over that whole clown show fit perfectly. Happy accidents, my dudes. Happy. Accidents.
So a note going forward-- I'll probably do two sections of the inverted castle per video, so things should move along a little faster. Other than the new enemies to talk about, there's just isn't that much to discuss. Sad, maybe, but the truth, so be prepared.
Thanks again for watching, and I'll see you in a few weeks.
Friday, May 26, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The Clock Tower
Here's the funniest thing about the Clock Tower in SotN: It's not the fact that it's obviously a stopping point for early players, like most armchair critics like myself love to point out. Yes, you can only basically walk into the entrance of the area before finding the need to turn back and explore the castle some more. It isn't because it's a classic area of the series, either. Clock towers were basically baked into just about every Castlevania at this point, so its appearance here is basically par for the course.
No, what makes this particular Clock Tower interesting is that it practically doesn't matter unless you're gunning for the best ending of the game. There aren't any key items to be found in it (the Fire of Bat doesn't count), and by the time you make it to the point where you can properly map it, most of the weapons and items scoured through it are old news. There also aren't any save rooms here, either. You finish it or you don't, and that's pretty much that. I guess for the hardcore, though, this is soonest one can find the Muramasa sword, which takes a ridiculous amount of effort to bring to its full potential. I've already said it enough times, but you never need to do what needs to be done with it to destroy the game, and even if you do, it's assured overkill anyway. But I'm not you, Mr./Ms. Muramasa wielder, so you do you.
From a video-making perspective, this area presents its own unique challenges. For one, it's another of those areas with a lot of wide open space, so I was initially concerned about not having enough to say (which wasn't the problem). The other hard part, though, is the constant assault of Medusa Heads inside the actual CT. It can be hard to stay put while my dialog rolls along while also putting up with that, which is one of the reasons I stop for a while to talk about the Harpies without actually getting in there and dealing with them (SECRET: The other reason is because I sat in that spot expecting to talk about something totally different for way too long, so it made more sense to get through the Harpy explanation ahead of time as opposed to re-recording the video).
This episode also has a bit of obvious re-recorded dialog sections. I never, ever, use the Cross weapon in this game. It's too expensive to toss and doesn't inflict enough damage vs. the Holy Water to justify hanging on to it, and lacks a certain versatility when other weapons/ magic will give you the same effect. So, it's probably been, shit, years since I actually picked up the Cross and used it, and totally forgot that it was basically an item crash and not the boomerang like in other games of the series. That patch of dialog needed some fixing as well as other stuff that you can probably make out on your own. I try to have these videos down to a science, but sometimes, you know, memories and such get in the way.
No discussion question this time. This area's about as straightforward as it comes, and there wasn't anything that struck me as odd that was worth talking about (but I'm happy to be proven wrong). The next episode, though, is going to be an odd one. I need to head back and map all of the hidden rooms and areas that I couldn't without the ability to fly, but backtracking is boring, so I'll use the time to drop in further info and dev tidbits that didn't fit neatly anywhere else. That said, I'm on the fence about taking the slowest possible route or blasting through it to save some stuff for later. Sine there isn't a ton of development info left to talk about, I might lean for the latter. I don't know.
Again, thanks for watching.
No, what makes this particular Clock Tower interesting is that it practically doesn't matter unless you're gunning for the best ending of the game. There aren't any key items to be found in it (the Fire of Bat doesn't count), and by the time you make it to the point where you can properly map it, most of the weapons and items scoured through it are old news. There also aren't any save rooms here, either. You finish it or you don't, and that's pretty much that. I guess for the hardcore, though, this is soonest one can find the Muramasa sword, which takes a ridiculous amount of effort to bring to its full potential. I've already said it enough times, but you never need to do what needs to be done with it to destroy the game, and even if you do, it's assured overkill anyway. But I'm not you, Mr./Ms. Muramasa wielder, so you do you.
From a video-making perspective, this area presents its own unique challenges. For one, it's another of those areas with a lot of wide open space, so I was initially concerned about not having enough to say (which wasn't the problem). The other hard part, though, is the constant assault of Medusa Heads inside the actual CT. It can be hard to stay put while my dialog rolls along while also putting up with that, which is one of the reasons I stop for a while to talk about the Harpies without actually getting in there and dealing with them (SECRET: The other reason is because I sat in that spot expecting to talk about something totally different for way too long, so it made more sense to get through the Harpy explanation ahead of time as opposed to re-recording the video).
This episode also has a bit of obvious re-recorded dialog sections. I never, ever, use the Cross weapon in this game. It's too expensive to toss and doesn't inflict enough damage vs. the Holy Water to justify hanging on to it, and lacks a certain versatility when other weapons/ magic will give you the same effect. So, it's probably been, shit, years since I actually picked up the Cross and used it, and totally forgot that it was basically an item crash and not the boomerang like in other games of the series. That patch of dialog needed some fixing as well as other stuff that you can probably make out on your own. I try to have these videos down to a science, but sometimes, you know, memories and such get in the way.
No discussion question this time. This area's about as straightforward as it comes, and there wasn't anything that struck me as odd that was worth talking about (but I'm happy to be proven wrong). The next episode, though, is going to be an odd one. I need to head back and map all of the hidden rooms and areas that I couldn't without the ability to fly, but backtracking is boring, so I'll use the time to drop in further info and dev tidbits that didn't fit neatly anywhere else. That said, I'm on the fence about taking the slowest possible route or blasting through it to save some stuff for later. Sine there isn't a ton of development info left to talk about, I might lean for the latter. I don't know.
Again, thanks for watching.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The Catacombs
Oh, hi. This one took forever to get out, so let me just start this one off by apologizing for the tardiness. Thanks for sticking with it so far, though. Let's get into the Catacombs.
The big insider dope with the making of this one is the fact that I totally botched my save files, which set everything back about a week. Most of you know this already, but one cannot make multiple saves in SotN, so if you accidentally save the game at a point that's inconvenient (which, really, only happens if you're making internet videos because it's practically impossible to screw yourself in that manner here), you have no choice but to start from scratch. It had been so long since I had made a previous video that I mis-juggled my current playthroughs and saved over what was the master run of the game. Yes, I am stupid.
I guess I'm lucky in this regard in that getting back to that point was only a matter of hours, but it's not the same save file, which slaps the some of the original intent of this series in the face. It's really not that big of a deal, I know, but there was a certain integrity that I wanted to maintain and now I have a flaw that maybe I alone will notice. Oh well, I suppose.
To the actual episode, though, there really wasn't a ton of development anecdotes to relay with this one, but there was a lot of fun research to put into it all the same. This is really where the references to demonology kick off in earnest, and the Tolkien stuff is also starting to mount, too, but sadly, nothing really specific came straight from Iga's mouth here. The best stuff about the Catacombs are its subtext, really.
I mention in the video that the area is basically split in half, and I'm almost 100% certain that this was an early design choice. On the left side of the map, Alucard can fight it out with Granfaloon and obtain the Mormegil, which is a proper Dark elemental weapon. This is for the crowd that may not map the whole castle because Mormegil is a weapon that can turn Richter Belmont into mush. Since it takes some exploration and a little experimentation to get through the pitch black spike room on the right side of the map, the designers want you to take this new weapon to the top of the castle, finish the game, and remain curious about what you didn't uncover. This means a return trip to the area after obtaining the Echo of Bat. It's honestly not all that deeply hidden, all things considered. "I can go here, but I can't go there, yet," is, in this genre of game, all the enticement necessary to eventually get there. It's why we crossed oceans and go into space. People just want to see what's out there.
The other big nod is the combination of Orphic myth and Dante's Inferno. I make it pretty clear in the video, but just to reiterate: Alucard is descending to the lowest reach of the castle. Like in Greco-Roman mythology, he was transported there by a boatman only to be met with a watchdog sentry before breaking his way in to fight a demon that was mentioned by name (which is fairly rare) in the Christian Bible. He literally goes into the underworld, complete with fire at his feet. The prize for killing it is a means to finish the game, but only one facet of it, so this Hell that Alucard is in must be explored thoroughly or fought through a second time. For those of you in the know (which I'm pretty sure is everyone reading this), we get to see much later the difference between a Hell that we thought was under our feet (as our ancestors may have thought) and the Hell that's an upside down reflection of reality, which, in a lot of ways, is a whole lot worse.
Not much of a discussion question this time around, but after doing my share of reading into the origins of catacombs, I kept thinking of Edgar Allen Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and wondered if there were any subtle references to it in the game. I have a feeling that one of the statues in there might be, but that's too much of a stretch. Curious about that you all think in the comments.
Thanks again for watching, and we're off to the Clock Tower.
The big insider dope with the making of this one is the fact that I totally botched my save files, which set everything back about a week. Most of you know this already, but one cannot make multiple saves in SotN, so if you accidentally save the game at a point that's inconvenient (which, really, only happens if you're making internet videos because it's practically impossible to screw yourself in that manner here), you have no choice but to start from scratch. It had been so long since I had made a previous video that I mis-juggled my current playthroughs and saved over what was the master run of the game. Yes, I am stupid.
I guess I'm lucky in this regard in that getting back to that point was only a matter of hours, but it's not the same save file, which slaps the some of the original intent of this series in the face. It's really not that big of a deal, I know, but there was a certain integrity that I wanted to maintain and now I have a flaw that maybe I alone will notice. Oh well, I suppose.
To the actual episode, though, there really wasn't a ton of development anecdotes to relay with this one, but there was a lot of fun research to put into it all the same. This is really where the references to demonology kick off in earnest, and the Tolkien stuff is also starting to mount, too, but sadly, nothing really specific came straight from Iga's mouth here. The best stuff about the Catacombs are its subtext, really.
I mention in the video that the area is basically split in half, and I'm almost 100% certain that this was an early design choice. On the left side of the map, Alucard can fight it out with Granfaloon and obtain the Mormegil, which is a proper Dark elemental weapon. This is for the crowd that may not map the whole castle because Mormegil is a weapon that can turn Richter Belmont into mush. Since it takes some exploration and a little experimentation to get through the pitch black spike room on the right side of the map, the designers want you to take this new weapon to the top of the castle, finish the game, and remain curious about what you didn't uncover. This means a return trip to the area after obtaining the Echo of Bat. It's honestly not all that deeply hidden, all things considered. "I can go here, but I can't go there, yet," is, in this genre of game, all the enticement necessary to eventually get there. It's why we crossed oceans and go into space. People just want to see what's out there.
The other big nod is the combination of Orphic myth and Dante's Inferno. I make it pretty clear in the video, but just to reiterate: Alucard is descending to the lowest reach of the castle. Like in Greco-Roman mythology, he was transported there by a boatman only to be met with a watchdog sentry before breaking his way in to fight a demon that was mentioned by name (which is fairly rare) in the Christian Bible. He literally goes into the underworld, complete with fire at his feet. The prize for killing it is a means to finish the game, but only one facet of it, so this Hell that Alucard is in must be explored thoroughly or fought through a second time. For those of you in the know (which I'm pretty sure is everyone reading this), we get to see much later the difference between a Hell that we thought was under our feet (as our ancestors may have thought) and the Hell that's an upside down reflection of reality, which, in a lot of ways, is a whole lot worse.
Not much of a discussion question this time around, but after doing my share of reading into the origins of catacombs, I kept thinking of Edgar Allen Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and wondered if there were any subtle references to it in the game. I have a feeling that one of the statues in there might be, but that's too much of a stretch. Curious about that you all think in the comments.
Thanks again for watching, and we're off to the Clock Tower.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Annotated Appendix: The Abandoned Mine
Sorry for the break between episodes, but a nice chunk of freelance work has come in. Some of it was harrowing, all of it was awesome. Head over to USGamer.net and bask in its majesty.
Ok, then. The Abandoned Mine. Let's get to it.
This was a nice place to ease back into movie-making because it's the smallest section of the castle, except for maybe the Entrance. There's still a lot to say, though, and it even has a very cool. cleverly hidden reference to a mythic story of a Gothic king.
To get there, though, we needed to nab the Demon familiar, and have him hit the switch in the more mountainous-looking sections of the zone. Not that big of a deal to those in the know, but in practice, it's a finicky behavior for the little devil to take part in.
Here's why: whenever you summon a familiar from your Relic menu, they'll say a few words to you to sort of announce their presence as long as Alucard is standing still after you leave the submenu. This is a neat little extra feature that doesn't have any bearing on the game other than this one spot (and its counterpart in the Inverted Castle), because if you bring in the Demon while you're standing still, it will come down to your side and mumble something and not fly upward to hit the switch like its supposed to. The other weird quirk that I found with this is that it won't consistently press the button if you go from the Fairy familiar to the Demon, either, which has got to be some sort of weird bug. I can nearly always get it to behave the way I need it to when I start with the Sword familiar, though, which is why you see me equip it immediately as this episode starts. What you don't see is about 20 minutes of previous recordings as I try to get the little bastard to do what I want without starting with the Sword. This right here is why these Appendices exist. Inside baseball!
Anyway, as you work your way through the secret passage, you fight it out with a few random Thornweeds (Unes) and a Venus Weed (Alura Une), which is a pretty tough enemy if you don't come into the fight prepared. Notice the Venus Weed's shape, though, that of a giant rose (and, sure, the naked woman that sprouts within it). The next room is where Alucard finds the Ares Ring, which is called Laurin's Ring in the Japanese version. The video tells the story of Laurin the treacherous dwarf king and his rose garden. You just busted your way through a giant rose, and since half of this level looks more opulent than the more cavernous sections (like where you pick up the ring), the game sort of implies that this whole section is a representation of King Laurin's mountain palace. That's pretty cool.
The other thing (that I'm asking about in the comments) is the Peanuts room where the Power of Sire is found. This is a stretch, but I always sort of considered this room as something of a lament for Alucard. Follow me here: in the West, there's a certain cultural cliche of a father playing catch with his son, whether it be a bonding experience or a teaching exercise or whatever. Traditionally, professional baseball games sell peanuts by the truckload. Since the small room has a smattering of peanuts lying around next to one of only two Power of Sires found in the game (a bomb item that displays Dracula's image in two separate ways), I always connected these items as going to see a ballgame with your dad, and maybe it represents the strained relationship that Alucard and old Vlad have. Or, since it's a secret room within a secret room, it's more from Dracula's perspective that it represents a botched fatherhood. I wonder what you think. Talk about it in the video's comments, if you please.
Speaking of subtext, the whole next episode, the Catacombs, will make Alucard's descent into Hell complete. I honestly have no idea when I can put it together, but hopefully in the next two weeks or so.
Ok, then. The Abandoned Mine. Let's get to it.
This was a nice place to ease back into movie-making because it's the smallest section of the castle, except for maybe the Entrance. There's still a lot to say, though, and it even has a very cool. cleverly hidden reference to a mythic story of a Gothic king.
To get there, though, we needed to nab the Demon familiar, and have him hit the switch in the more mountainous-looking sections of the zone. Not that big of a deal to those in the know, but in practice, it's a finicky behavior for the little devil to take part in.
Here's why: whenever you summon a familiar from your Relic menu, they'll say a few words to you to sort of announce their presence as long as Alucard is standing still after you leave the submenu. This is a neat little extra feature that doesn't have any bearing on the game other than this one spot (and its counterpart in the Inverted Castle), because if you bring in the Demon while you're standing still, it will come down to your side and mumble something and not fly upward to hit the switch like its supposed to. The other weird quirk that I found with this is that it won't consistently press the button if you go from the Fairy familiar to the Demon, either, which has got to be some sort of weird bug. I can nearly always get it to behave the way I need it to when I start with the Sword familiar, though, which is why you see me equip it immediately as this episode starts. What you don't see is about 20 minutes of previous recordings as I try to get the little bastard to do what I want without starting with the Sword. This right here is why these Appendices exist. Inside baseball!
Anyway, as you work your way through the secret passage, you fight it out with a few random Thornweeds (Unes) and a Venus Weed (Alura Une), which is a pretty tough enemy if you don't come into the fight prepared. Notice the Venus Weed's shape, though, that of a giant rose (and, sure, the naked woman that sprouts within it). The next room is where Alucard finds the Ares Ring, which is called Laurin's Ring in the Japanese version. The video tells the story of Laurin the treacherous dwarf king and his rose garden. You just busted your way through a giant rose, and since half of this level looks more opulent than the more cavernous sections (like where you pick up the ring), the game sort of implies that this whole section is a representation of King Laurin's mountain palace. That's pretty cool.
The other thing (that I'm asking about in the comments) is the Peanuts room where the Power of Sire is found. This is a stretch, but I always sort of considered this room as something of a lament for Alucard. Follow me here: in the West, there's a certain cultural cliche of a father playing catch with his son, whether it be a bonding experience or a teaching exercise or whatever. Traditionally, professional baseball games sell peanuts by the truckload. Since the small room has a smattering of peanuts lying around next to one of only two Power of Sires found in the game (a bomb item that displays Dracula's image in two separate ways), I always connected these items as going to see a ballgame with your dad, and maybe it represents the strained relationship that Alucard and old Vlad have. Or, since it's a secret room within a secret room, it's more from Dracula's perspective that it represents a botched fatherhood. I wonder what you think. Talk about it in the video's comments, if you please.
Speaking of subtext, the whole next episode, the Catacombs, will make Alucard's descent into Hell complete. I honestly have no idea when I can put it together, but hopefully in the next two weeks or so.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Annotated Appendix: Underground Caverns
Now, for the video; it's kind of trivial, but the long drop into the more cavernous sections of the Underground Caverns is maybe my favorite callback to an older game in the series. I think it was just one of those things that I remember noticing the first time I played it (the other getting the meat out of the staircase in the Entrance while I was killing time at a Babbages when the game was new and having an employee impressed by its old-timey-ness) and wondering if other people would pick up on it, too. I played the game several times back-to-back-to-back when it was first released, and part of the fun for me was to mine any kind of references that I could. But in 1997, this was all from memory since I no longer had an NES to play and older games to go back to. That's maybe where this whole odyssey started, now that I think about it. So you have this section of the game to thank, or something.
More into the specifics, I was really concerned with the amount of silence on my end when putting this one together. It was the easiest one to compile so far, which is probably why it came out only a week or so after the last, but the small amount of new foes to fight and interesting stuff to say about the development of this zone left me a bit nervous that people would call me out for being mute. Thankfully, that hasn't happened, and I think I had enough ground to cover that the quiet places don't stick out as much as in others. Big shoutout to Icebrand and the Nunchaku for that, maybe.
I actually recorded myself going through this section of the castle twice. See, SOTN is a pretty easy game, all things considered, but you wouldn't know it by my playing because I've been getting my ass kicked up and down the street in almost every video. Granted, showing everything that I can in the game means that I have to put myself into some ugly situations, but I just about got killed fighting Orlox in the last video. That shit can't stand. Worse, my Gravity Boots traversal was downright terrible during my first crack at recording. For whatever reason, it took at least two minutes to get back up the waterfall, and I knew right away that it would translate to film the same way Jordan did in Space Jam. Lucky for me that playing this game zone-by-zone is pretty short, but this turns out to be one of the larger places in the game by area (strangely enough), so I wound up with a solid hour of video by the end. And I still beefed it a few times on the Gravity jumps. Man...
One thing that a commentor on this week's video pointed out that I probably should have brought up was how Maria is locked in a cell in an area that's practically the same as the Underground Cavern in Rondo of Blood. Sure, the castle is a "creature of chaos," which is a convenient way of having it be a different layout in every game, but I could probably have made a case for her cell being where the Holy Symbol is found since it's at the end of a long stretch of water in a locked room. Thanks to Billy Greggory for reminding me (and no, I'm not remaking this video to include it) (for now).
This was the first episode that I had a discussion question in the comments, and I'm glad that people chimed in. I always took the toad and frog enemies for being replacements for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because they were reptiles that dropped "NY style" pizza. One of the commentors shares my thoughts that turtles were probably just dumb enemies to put into the game, and since frog sprites already existed from Rondo, I had always guessed that they stretched the reference a bit to make it work. I can't confirm it, though, so in the comments is where it stays. I guess if someone that worked on the game in some official capacity wants to reach out to me and say yes or no, maybe I actually will redo this one to include it. BUT THAT'S ON THEM.
Lastly, this is probably the only video that should have been labeled "NSFW" with the Succubus art attached to it, but I didn't do it. Maybe it was a mistake, but I'm open to hearing opinions on this. If folks want me to, I'm happy to update the episode title to put the distinction in there.
The next video might be one that stretches two sections of the castle: the Abandoned Mine and the Catacombs. The Mine is relatively short and there isn't a ton to say about it, so maybe combining the two might be the way to go. Then again, I have a fair amount of freelance work in the pipeline over the next month, so maybe a shorter video could be in the cards to keep things moving along. We'll see, I guess.
Thanks again for watching, everybody.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Annotated Appendix: Library and Orlox Revisited
When I originally envisioned these videos, I wanted to both tell as much of the story around the building of the game and its references to other media as possible and also show as much of Symphony's weird subtleties as was I could. Yes, there's a lot to say about this game, but it's still a complete playthrough with unique enemy behavior to uncover. The problem is, these can sometimes be at odds with each other.
Take, for example, the fight with Orlox in this week's video. Normally, I would have farmed or bought an iron shield to tear through him with the Shield Rod spell, or just continued to shower him with Holy Water subweapon attacks, making the battle a total shit show in my favor. But that's not showing the game; notice how Orlox has a variety of special attacks in his first form from summoning ghosts and bats to shooting blasts of energy from his hands and the floor. It's cool stuff, actually, but it's easily missed. With the way my Alucard would run into this fight equipped with the Holy Water, a constant dousing on Orlox pushes him into the second phase without breaking a sweat, but that means not showing these special attacks in the video. Then there's the second part which, while not exactly a cake walk, isn't super challenging with the Faerie familiar floating around, but it's a time-consuming throwdown with Orlox's boosted defense. Notice how his behavior becomes more aggressive as I whittled down his HP. That's not something that can discerned by bum rushing the battle.
But without specifically pointing these things out over the mic, this is a quiet moment for me because, well, there just isn't that much to say about this fight that wasn't already covered on the way up there (itself a silent slog if I let it be). Balancing the voice over minutia with actual gameplay has always been a problem of these videos that I've worked hard to address, but sometimes there just isn't a way around it. I could tear through this game --it's really easy to do-- but that's not what this video series is made for. With that, some silence must be understood by the audience.
HOWEVER, there's a big difference between watching me quietly mow down Bloody Zombies and standing around like a jackass, which is this episode's biggest (and most recurring) flaw. Part of that had to do with improper math on my part. I think I've mentioned this before, but the way I make these things is to write a script, record the voice, annotate the script for timing, and then play through the scripted section with a list in front of me and a stopwatch by my side. Usually, it works out fine. In videos like these where there's not clear end point, though, makes it really, really hard. That doesn't change the fact that I could have probably cut at least 15 seconds of inert waiting like a dummy, though.
The latter fact I just mentioned, though, was what made this particular episode so hard. Sine I have to show a run of the game as efficiently as possible --meaning, the least amount of backtracking that I can get away with-- there was a lot of script revision, map study, and video-watching. At one point, my wife walked by me while I stared face-in-hands at the map wondering if I was getting sick or something. No, honey, I'm deciding the best course of action to pick up a floating sword that talks. Olrox's Quarters is a fairly contained area, which is nice, but one that branches back into a previously-covered area, so the question for me was which exit do I take to get to the next location. When sussing out the next part of the map to cover in the next video, the obvious answer is to leave the way we came, but that can be boring for the viewer.
And now, I hope you see the struggle, here. Yes, a little silence is golden, but no, you don't want to be bored with seeing things we've already covered. It's a tightrope.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video. We're going into the waterway next, which might be a slightly NSFW.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Ok, We Can Get to Dawn of Sorrow Some More
First, let me say that, honestly, there isn't that much to say about the game as a whole. It does everything that its predecessor, Aria of Sorrow, had done, just a little more of it. In fact, you could say that it's classic sequelitis: the second game looks better, plays similarly, and shoehorns in unnecessary added story and play mechanics. Perhaps playing the first right after the second did this game fewer favors than it probably should have, and that's fine. There were enough years in between one game and the next that it didn't feel like a redundancy ten years ago when I first played it. But in the here and now, Dawn of Sorrow took a great game and stuffed it so full of junk food that it came out covered with pimples. There. That's a weird analogy for you.
In the continuum so far, we have Circle of the Moon, which I haven't played in a few years and have been purposely avoiding for this exercise, but I still think is a pretty good game. Harmony of Dissonance came after, and it felt too much like Iga's team shuffled in and said, "let's do that last game, but better," and it sort of wasn't. Then they hunkered down, came up with a nifty system to keep people playing during their commutes, and made Aria of Sorrow, which turned out to be a light, fun tear through the formula with a hefty grind involved. In scope of that, Dawn of Sorrow almost feels like the Harmony of Dissonance to Aria's Circle of the Moon. The team went back in, found that they wanted to do the same game over again but better, and made something that wound up feeling bland in the end.
Here's where I defend it a little, though: Dawn of Sorrow through a certain lens is kind of a cynical game. From what I've read on Wikipedia, Aria of Sorrow didn't sell up to expectations, which is a shame. A lot of work went into the design of that game, and I think it shows by the sheer craftsmanship of the characters and backgrounds and how much time and effort must have went into designing the Tactical Soul system. I get that the team --and maybe Iga specifically-- probably took a good long look at the systems specifically and said, "no, guys. This was too much to just give up on," and went to work finding ways to expand on what they had instead of tossing out the baby with the bathwater (as most of the other games had done successively). By this time, the Castlevania franchise was starting to fall into some shaky times. The 3D console games didn't set the world on fire, and the handheld releases were starting to feel more esoteric with further complex entries. The DS, only a year old when Dawn of Sorrow was released, was finding an audience with both younger crowds and a wider demographic than both its predecessors and its console competitors, so they knew that adjustments had to have been made. In that respect, what DoS does make a lot of sense.
So the character art changed. It kind of bounced off of me at the time, but it's fine now that we're ten years removed. And, again, I get it; the moody, ethereal style of the Ayami Kojima key art and box covers don't really appeal to a much younger set, and might scare off parents stumbling through a GameStop. The Tactical Soul system, even though we had already seen it before, fed into the "catch 'em all" mechanic du jour that handheld games had adopted in a post-Pokemon world. Maybe, they thought, the second time was the charm. It's possible, even, that Iga and his teams knew that producing console Castlevania games was too resource intensive, and they went back to the well with the castle and system design from Aria to keep things fast and cheap. He's even said himself over the years that he had a rep for getting his games done on time and under budget, and anyone that's followed the games industry over the past decade or so knows that reusing assets and design plans is the number one method of saving a buck.
What this all comes back around to, like every Castlevania game I've been looking at in granular detail lately, is context. Iga only produced two more games for handhelds after this, and a multiplayer cash-in game that was nothing but reused art made on the budget of whatever you probably have in your pocket right now. The series was not only falling into a rut, but its chief architect was slowly being shuffled along away from a franchise he had a hand in saving. The DS entries had the good fortune of being released on one of the most successful dedicated video game machines ever produced, but it looks like even Igarashi was starting to see the writing on the wall. I'm starting to think that the next game, Portrait of Ruin, was something of a response to all of this, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. I have to go through that with a finer-toothed comb.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Ok, We Can Get to Dawn of Sorrow, Now
Suddenly, I was totally fine sitting in my hotel room for hours on end, because I bled every possible second of playtime I could get out of DoS. By that point, I certainly knew it existed having followed the previous handheld Castlevanias and the 3D console games that had been developed in the preceding years. But though I was finally living in my own apartment with a job that I kind of liked, I still didn't have the dough to throw around on video game consoles that weren't my ancient PlayStation 2 and its vast library of RPGs. But that shit was still in Cleveland and I was four hours away. I justified my GBA purchase years prior to wanting it specifically for Castlevania games, and it seemed like an equally good idea in 2006 (and it turned out be true).
I just wish it was as good a game now as I thought it was back then.
Ok, be with me here, because it's still a very good game. Time, though, hasn't been so nice to DoS as it has some of the other franchise games. Is it in the sewer level with other games like Castlevania Adventure? No, it's built way better than that. But after what has to be close to 1000 hours of Symphony and the two previous IGA-produced handheld games within the last few months, it's a distant horse in the race for the top.
First, the good stuff. It was years between playing Aria of Sorrow on a Game Boy Advance and Dawn on the DS, so it never quite hit me back then how much of a visual leap the series had taken. Now, after playing them back-to-back, it's a dramatic switch. Backgrounds looks really spectacular and ooze character, specifically the chilly small town in the first section of the game where snow falls off of parked cars when lept upon. The character animation is routinely beautiful, too, but much clearer with the DS's added resolution. And, really, there's not enough great things to be said for a second screen with this franchise; having to halt the action to bring up a map has always been a minor nuisance, but having one right in your face the entire time makes it downright irritating to go back to older games after this.
But the flaws of Aria's design instruct too many of Dawn's, which is harder to swallow now that we're 10 years past its release. If you remember what I said a little while ago about Aria giving up on clever clues to point you in the next direction in favor of enemy soul farming and tedious grinding, you'll find that Dawn makes this blatant with locked off doors that require specific enemy souls to open. It's not bad enough that the player has has to stumble around to find the required powers to pass these walls, its that they have to recall where the specific enemies are located to obtain them, and then kill them ad nauseum. It's not totally terrible, I guess, but I wouldn't really call it fun. Worse, these games were built on the foundation of nearly 10 years of post-Symphony of the Night expertise, so you would expect a better level of level design. Aria of Sorrow, in this case, takes the taco by suggesting a certain level of redundancy to finish the game. Dawn or Sorrow requires it, and it's a drag.
If you know anything about this game, then you will know its chief criticism lies in the idiotic touch screen controls. If you don't, then let me set the stage for you: you spend mounting wasted moments of your precious life, which you often feel fragmenting away from you in greater and heavier chunks, by learning the patterns and reactive measures to final complete a challenging boss fight. Weapon loadouts have been altered. Statistics have been adjusted. Every possible advantage you have has been employed. And then, upon delivering the final blow to that giant evil whatever that you've been matching skills with, a convoluted game of connect-the-dots flashes on the screen, and you need to drop everything to fumble around with the DS's stylus to complete it. You will not get these the first time, and the boss fight extends. Then you lose, because your nerves are mangled. This was profoundly stupid to write, and is that much dumber in practice.
These are two very damning pieces of evidence against an otherwise very good game. Even as far as the Metroidvania end of this series goes, the castle is still fun to explore and looks great, but constantly reliance to grind and (what I am assuming is) a misguided stipulation on Konami to use the touch screen on Nintendo's fancy pants new handheld makes this game lesser than its pedigree would suggest. From where my memories rest, I'm as surprised as you.
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