Annotated Appendix: Urien

While the Ibuki video might have been the hardest one to put together so far because of how little I knew of the character, the Urien video was challenging for the opposite reason -- I might know too much.

I'll explain. This video is the one I've been waiting to make all along. When I originally envisioned this project when closing in on the finish line of the Annotated Symphony of the Night, I thought how interesting it would be to make a video out of Urien alone. Collectively, the internet has figured out quite about the character already, and the official supplemental material filled in the gaps nicely, but it never felt concise to me. Sure, everyone kind of figured out how he's basically a bronze Greek statue come to life (figuratively), but that was largely the depth of it. Nobody got into the minute physical characteristics, or the implications of the name, or the dopey miss-localisations of his attacks. For that matter, I had never seen a video or piece of physical media that tied those things to his gameplay. That's where this series started to take shape; it was a thought experiment that I tried to make work as a series of character studies. So, when I say that he is probably the thesis statement for the whole project, I hope it makes a little more sense. It all started with this character, and I'm happy so far that there are plenty of interesting things to say about everyone else that it didn't end with him.

Except there's just so much going on with this guy that I found myself getting really deep into the weeds with his script. After a while, I took a step back and cut a few large chunks out of it because it was already getting long. These happened from the gameplay side, mostly. There's some much going on under the hood of most fighting games, this one in particular, that it gets hard to draw a line between what the world should know about a character and the game that he's in and what only the hardcore need to know. You've probably figured this out so far, but I've used each character in the game to illustrate one or two little things hidden within 3S's mechanics. Urien ultimately has four that I went over: the EX Super (or hidden supers), charge partitioning, alternate input commands for special moves, and the unblockable setups. For most other characters in the cast, this is too many for one individual video, but in his case, each of them define his high-level gameplay because players exclusively use his Aegis Reflector super in tournaments. It's true that I could have waited to use one or two of them for other characters (say, Remy showing off the alternate inputs), but I felt that these characteristics define this one individual more than most, and into the script they went. It's likely I'll run out of neat, "hidden" stuff to talk about in the future and will feel that Urien bit me in the ass here, but that's the point I'm making, I suppose: it's tough to know when too much is just enough.

I promise you that the Akuma video coming up will be just as meaty, but will come loaded with the same problems for me. There are a few "hidden" things to discuss about the inner workings of the game, which makes sense given we're talking about a perennially hidden character, but I've already axed plenty from that script because it's just too hardcore, and the hardcore already know about that stuff. Perhaps I'll circle back around to those things when I start to run out of that kind of stuff to say, but I suppose we'll find out.

I've also realized that I should be linking to some tutorial videos or something for some of these characters. Maybe I'll start doing that soon, but for now, let's talk about actual gameplay for a sec. I know Urien gameplay pretty well, but I'm shit at charge partitioning, which is an important component to high-level play. For all of the reasons I stated above, I purposely didn't go over the specifics of it because there are piles of videos on the internet about CP. For whatever reason, I figured each video would give people interested in learning the finer points of gameplay incentive
to do some further digging, but that might assume too much. Therefore, here's a few links to vids that each about CP that I found better than most:

Partitioning for Dummies
Urien Charge Partitioning 101

Plans are still sort of formalizing for a final episode, and it will probably include shoutouts to 3S true believers like The Shend that have been spreading the word for the last 20 years of competitive SF3 play. Let me know if that sounds good or not.

Anyway, thanks again for watching these. Please leave comments and ask questions. Sadly, I have some freelance work to get to over the next few weeks so the Akuma video might be a little slower coming than I'd like, but I can at least promise one about every month, so let's tentatively shoot for mid-April. After that is a full video on the parry system, though that will probably be much shorter (and harder to edit) (whoa is me).