I have a video suggestion for you: The last Ratchet & Clank project that David Bergeaud worked on was PlayStation Move Heroes. I would be interested in the ways that game's soundtrack references and draws from Bergeaud's previous work on the series.
I played R&C Going commando first. DIdnt even know about Rachet and Clank, just got it for Christmas one year. When I played the original some months after beating the 2nd one it was a sharp increase in difficulty. It was still fun but the lack of strafing made stuff...challenging
While the mod system from UYA and Size Matters were fun, I do like the TOD raritanium system as that mechanic is great for improving the weaker weapons of any game, and is very similar to how most modern games have a gameplay mechanic that allows you to make a weapon and such better. I do however HATE how it is today as seen in the 2016 game and Rift Apart, as I feel like the games rely on it a bit too much and it only truly works when you buy a bunch of mods at once. Also those special mods don't feel special compared to the ones you can get in TOD. If it is going to stay around it needs a big redesign. I think it would help it was more like the TOD version again with how each weapons has a total limit of a dozen available modifications. There should also be a level up/tree system like thing where at first the modification upgrades are cheap, but after that they get more expensive but you are getting a stronger upgrade as a result. Like before buying certain upgrades can get you a special mod, but it should actually be special like for the pistol, you can get a special mod where you have a chance of paralyzing you enemy for a bit. Maybe they could add in a mechanic where you can equip/unequip certain special mods for a weapon. That could lead to some interesting skill points/trophies. The Constructo weapons were fun and IG should definitely bring them back one day with new mods. If they do they should make a new weapon one called the "Constructo Gun", a weapon similar to the Morph Gun from Jak and Daxter where you can quickly switch between several selected mods and its mods are more unique like it would have a sniper mod, flamethrower/freeze ray mod, and a net launcher mod.
The narrative thing i felt. Sinilar to you, this franchise was my childhood. I held off on playing this game because i didnt have a ps5, but also i saw the art work, associated it with RaC PS4 and the Movie, and immediately felt like it would be too cringe. While the rest of the game kind if made up for that, i was dead on how i thiught it would be. Too safe
I love this video. To me, it felt like an unfiltered motivational speech for those seeking to create art with passion and an aim to satisfy one's desires rather than those of an audience. I know you're talking about yourself and your own experience with making videos on RU-vid, but it just seems to resonate with me. Almost as if you're saying exactly what I always wanted to say to myself, but was too scared to try because there was the fear of an audience listening. I want to make videos to share thoughts, ideas, feelings and to create something artistic I can be fond of many years later, with no one and nothing having the power to stop me besides myself. One can't rush art, and pouring your heart into a project is what makes it special. Quality > quantity. Whether my words or my comment will have an impact or not, I can tell you that *your* words have had an impact on *me* and I am so glad this happened. Thank you for creating something special to me.
Insane analysis! Something felt off for me when I was watching and your technical breakdown explained it really well. Your sister's breakdown was brilliant as well.
you mention 'better essayists' with a clip from dan olson, but even up to that point i felt that this video absolutely scratched the same itch in my brain as his 'the art of editing' vids. genuinely fantastic work, i'm gonna check out that highway 17 video.
the show not tell thing was what caught my eye first (and not in a good way). That and the lack of timeline. Things feel rushed (like you said). Also, there was no reason for the episodes to be that short. They had the time and the money to do more than 30 mins episodes.
I think the biggest reason for many of these things is the volume stage and their limit to 40 minutes per episode. I really hope they make longer episodes next season and don't underestimate their audience. Kids can concentrate for more than 40 minutes! The changes for the story were because of over-correction yes, but i think because of times limits, too. I liked the medusa change for example. I loved the "The Wire" scene! I still really liked the show and actuallly thought they captured the spirit of Percy Jackson, but you got sone good points there!
Wow dude great video, it's been a long time since I've been into Percy Jackson but it's great to see my interest of editing bring me back to my childhood.
19:04 I hadn’t heard this, but this explains a lot. One of Riordan’s strengths as a writer is in the details + in the narrative voice, and if both of those were absent from the show? Well, of course it was lacking compared to what had been promised and what was expected
Yeah basically, i agree. One thing i felt with the show is that the gods were a bit mundane. They just seemed like normal people. I get that's kind of the point in the books, that they have human flaws, but they were lacking gracious in the show. Ps, bet your mic cable was wrapped around the obelisk by the time you were done filming
bergeaud got so much inspiration from totally different music styles and made something out of that the ost just fits in most of the planets it gives so much personality to the game. love the content you make
I disagree with your takeaway from ToD's Raritanium trees: sure, it is a progression system because it's incentivizing you to get more Raritanium to complete the tree, but: A) that works for incentivizing exploration as well (something only GC's system does to a similar degree, and, even then, the limitations of both the currency used and the "tech tree" itself clearly leave a completely different impact and leave the player with a completely different feel) B) the short-term decision-making absolutely matters, both because which upgrade you pick directly impacts your gameplay (especially if you opt for more Raritanium upgrades and more ammo ones) and the currency you get is obtained at a different pace than simply leveling your weapon (so unlike Deadlocked's Alpha Mods), again tying it back to exploration, rather than just grinding your weapon up so that you can unlock more mods and more slots So yes, it won't matter much for the post-game, where you have enough resources to unlock everything, but it absolutely does during the in-game/short-term; that is also the nature of the more heavy RPG ties the series started to adopt ever since 2/GC. Now, I don't disagree that such Raritanium trees shouldn't get too bloated (well, the mere name "Raritanium" becomes more and more ironic with every entry, technically), and it's best I don't even start talking about how Rift Apart completely removed any more in-depth weapon improvement from base leveling to put it in the trees... Eugh; perhaps that's also why I'm not super fond of Deadlocked's system as well, as it essentially does the same thing, only using Bolts instead of Raritanium as the currency. I also think, since you pointed out menuing as a flaw of Constructo Mods, that flaw is shared with Deadlocked's: I rarely messed around too much with the Alpha Mods in that game, in no small part because switching them around required quite a bit of menuing (after the "grinding" required to even get a significant pool of both mods and slots to mess around with in the first place), so, once I found a loadout that worked for me, I pretty much kept it for most of the playthrough(s).
I also like the TOD raritatnium system, but I hate how it is now in the 2016 game and Rift Apart. Hopefully they can make it more like it was in TOD again one day or maybe something new.
Honestly, the returning weapons for R&C 3 being so good helps to reinforce the idea that Megacorp is just absolutely on another level compared to Gadgetron, how even a small handful of weapons smuggled to another galaxy can compete with the best of the best. But then you remember that when Gadgetron WANTS to make an all powerful weapon, their R.Y.N.O. does a lot better than Megacorp's Zodiac. Which is why, despite their ubiquity in the Bogon Galaxy, Megacorp's never really been able to spread out beyond the one galaxy, unlike Gadgetron.
I guess I was one of the lucky ones... Not only did I receive my OW GT the next day after ordering, but I never had an issue until the day my Battery suddenly cut out on me and nosedived at 21.6mph. Shattered my left femur. I wasn't wearing any body protective gear, so it's my own fault I got so banged up that I had to be Life-flighted to the Trauma Center in Roseville CA. Not wearing a helmet proved to be a bad idea also. I'll definitely watch my OW's battery power level next time I ride... soon as I heal up a little better. BTW, I turned 72 yrs old last November and I still love my GT.... just not gonna overestimate my abilities nor that of my GT battery.
(Essay alert) I'm of the age where you would expect me to have played the originals when they came out on PS2 (I wish I had, I got PS2 Crash and Spyro instead) yet the first one I played was Tools of Destruction. Even though it was the big shift in tone in the series, at the time 13yo me enjoyed it a lot. Tbh I have the most nostalgia for the ToD demo on Metropolis, which I played almost every day for a month after I got my PS3 around October 2008. That Metropolis theme by David Bergeau is just ingrained into my mind. I actually got ToD with the PS3 bundled as my first game, but when I started it up there was a loading glitch that would have fixed itself if I left it overnight, but I ended up trading it in next day for Oblivion lol (wish I had kept it instead). Didn't end up playing the game until about a year later, then played QfB and ACiT soon afterwards. My best friend then told me about all the PS2 games he played growing up, which he then lent me for the next couple of years. Honestly I wasn't expecting much from the first game because it was an old PS2 title, but of course ended up being super impressed with it. Most of the game mechanics for the whole series are already present in the first two games, and the graphics, music and general execution are excellent. I was especially surprised by Deadlocked. What at first looks like a super serious FPS, turned out to be a quite entertaining, well written mini story (I think they need to do more of these). I also played through them at a difficult time in my life, when I was very stressed before going to Uni. I have fond memories of the original quadrilogy, although perhaps not in the way most people do. I finally revisited the series back in 2020 (ironically because of the infamous TGBS 'How Ratchet Lost its edge' video). I finally got fed up of the free to play grindfests/PTW games I was playing at the time and decided to get back to some good solid games. I ended up getting physical copies, and playing through, the whole series during lockdowns and finally played the PS3 titles after ACiT. I'm currently going back through the series a second time to plat it. I never got a PS4 and don't plan on getting a PS5. I will get around to Rift Apart on PC eventually though. Despite the creative differences with the new game, there is still something honest about the series. Like they didn't even lock anything behind early access preorder, only early acess to some cosmetics. That at the least makes me happy. You are absolutely right about each game being a product of its time, which also gives me hope because at some point there will be a return to the original themes and writing. At least as long as they don't finish it before then, although given the recent leaks of the long timeframe before the next game, perhaps we might just get there.
Hey as an indie dev i really appreciate and approve of your take on this and want to extenuate on your point because of course no one that doesnt work in an industry can understand what its like to work in that industry But as a fan i was and still am really interested in what was leaked because i want to see what theyre working on and see their progress and i wont deny that, ive seen and been told a few things about it and whenever things leak, i guess its natural that fans are going to look into and t a lk about it but i agree its extremly important to keep in mind that this was a hack and breach of security that shouldnt be overlooked
I'll be also 34 when we will get R&C game. I feel so sad because I won't have anymore time to even look at this IP. I understand it's a bussiness but c'mon...
My feelings are conflicted. On one hand, ransomware hackers are the worst of the worst, but on the other, Sony has totally burned all goodwill with the way it denied crossplay, and lied about the Microsoft Activision purchase. I don't want ordinary staffers affected, but honestly, eff Sony.
I apreciate your actual insightful and empathazing commentary, it's sad that is something rare to see this days. Lot of people like to throw punches at the screen as soon as they can without doing a minuscle amount of research, or look away and pretend like nothing happened. This is definitly something that should be adressed, but in a "humanitary" way, not just from a consumist stand point. As you said, pretty much every worker at Insomniac got their lifehood exposed and in danger, and yet, people rather scream at them because the games they are developing are not yet finished, like, come on, have some consideration. I really hope more people can look past the headline and see the true underlying issue here, but i really hope and pray for the employes to be safe and paid. Thanks for adressing the issue!
In terms of age, the equivalent game I had was Runescape 2 which came out in 2004 (your 2004 video made me think about this as well) and I played when I was 9-10. That game was also pretty impactful, but nowhere near minecraft. I recently added a 2 hour long old school Runescape music video to my background music playlist here on YT. Even just hearing the music in the background triggered memories. I could visualise the area of the game and remember the general feeling of it for most of the tracks. I could even anticipate the music sections as I listened to it even though it has been probably over 12 years since I listened to it. Being so young and listening to it over and over almost drilled it into my mind like some sort of trance. I remember it was some of my early interactions with people online, even though I generally avoided other people. Like I would make full sets of armour for random people because I could (I was into the mining and smithing a lot). I remember getting scammed because I thought an iron axe bank note was actually a rune axe, and yes he said 'lol noob' as he ran away. I started playing minecraft in september 2011 around the beta 1.8 release when they added a whole bunch of stuff like endermen, then the released the 1.0 update soon after that that added the End and hunger mechanics and all that stuff (but screw potions, never bothered with them lol). After playing with some of the individual modpacks like buildcraft and industrialcraft, I found out about OG Tekkit, where I wasted countless hours when I should have been doing my A levels revision (this became a running theme). I built big architectural bases because I'm not satisfied by a hole in the ground or a cobblestone cube. I built like a mini marble and basalt Parthenon for one of my bases on a roughly triangular island. I then built a perfectly equilateral triangular marble wall around it and the edge of the island, just because, with all my railcraft lines going to buildcraft miners around it. I dabbled a bit in computercraft but then the server crashed and got corrupted, although some parts survived. I even joined a minecraft society at University lol. There was one guy there who was on a Comp Sci course who did a lot of custom modding (unsurprisingly). I would play modded minecraft but right now I have other things occupying my time. It's definitely a game you never stop playing, just take extended 'breaks'.
Despite being only 3 at the time, you somehow nailed the feeling of game development then. I was 9 in 2004, so I can remember the PS1 (just about, we only had a Tony Hawks game and crash warped with no memory card lol) all the way through to now. Things were developing so fast in retrospect, although it felt normal when I was growing up, maybe I was just lucky to grow up through that time, although I took a lot of it for granted. Even whole genres like RTS came and went in that time. Runescape was my equivalent to minecraft, it was the first massively multiplayer game that I spent ages wasting my time in and it's where my username originated from. I've gone through many phases of games I was interested in, including MMO, FPS and MOBA, but now I have come back to these old PS2 games recently like the R&C series and Sly Cooper (definitely give it a play through) and having lots of fun with them. Back when most games didn't take themselves too seriously or demanded inane amounts of time or money to enjoy playing them (i.e. free to play game models). You actually owned the physical copy of the game (kind of) and jumped in whenever you wanted to enjoy it. It felt back then like there was more genuine passion and exploring creativity went into these games, perhaps because they were less resource intensive to develop (I would take less fidelity if everything else about the game was better, maybe AI asset generation fills this gap?). They had more genuine artisitic motivation than commercial. Nowadays the science and psychology of extracting the most from the customer is everywhere, and more people getting in with degrees in game design (probably, just my guess) to the point where everything becomes algorithmic and derivative (or literal remakes of old games). There are still great games but it feels like they are fewer and farther between. I hope we go through some renaissance in gaming at some point, and come back to more genuine artistic creation, although tempered with the experience of good game design, in future games.
