hairy_hen

Demise's "curse" is nothing but an infantile attempt at connecting the games together, one which should never have been made.  See my above comments about Prequelitis.

It also does the character of Ganon a grave disservice, by rendering him nothing more than a second-rate reincarnation of some other lame villain we'd never heard of until now.  I call BS on this—Ganon is far too cool and badass a character to be written off in this way.

The way I see it, these kind of dumb story elements, as well as the annoying gameplay, mean that Skyward Sword isn't actually a real Zelda game at all.  Dismissing it altogether ensures that the perception of the other, far greater games in the series is untarnished by its nonsense.

Mara Jade rules.

Period.

My teacher, who is a total ninja with all things concerning audio and also a Grammy-nominated record producer, recently invited me to intern at his recording studio.  It's only been a few weeks but already extremely interesting, and a very valuable experience in many ways.

I really appreciate the confidence he has shown in me, and that he took notice of my dedication without my having asked for any favors (other than taking his class again so I could practice more).  I don't know where this is going to lead me professionally, or if even anywhere, but it's a great opportunity nonetheless.  I couldn't have asked for a better mentor, or a better friend.

I don't think that's what it is.  There are other places also in the SE's where, when digitally recompositing the original effects, they forgot to include every element.  There are missing lights on matte paintings in both SW and ESB, and a missing lightsaber flash frame when Luke cuts himself free of the ice cave, to name a few that I can remember off the top of my head.

Maybe they couldn't find every element and figured no one would notice, but it's equally likely they didn't notice these things themselves.  Either way, the redone versions don't entirely do justice to the original work, even if they do technically improve on it in some ways.

That guy has far too harsh a face to be suitable for playing Link.  Jeepers.

Anyway, as evidenced by my avatar, I certainly like me some Zelda games.  I've played Ocarina of Time more times than I can count—that and A Link to the Past are definitely the best designed and the most fun to play by far.  I also like Twilight Princess a great deal, as it has the best story and characters of any of the series.  Midna to me is the Zelda version of Mara Jade, so I love her dearly, but I find the end of the game so sad that it's hard to get through it.

The only handheld I've played is Link's Awakening, but it's been a long time since I don't own it.  I can't stand the cartoonish graphics style of Wind Waker, and the gameplay of Skyward Sword is utterly terrible: not only that, SS doesn't even *feel* like a Zelda game at all; just some weird anime ripoff that suffers from Prequelitis of the worst sort.  Not worth bothering with if you like stories that actually make sense.

Since most of the 'main' games in the series had interesting sequels, I'm still waiting for a kickass follow-up to Twilight Princess, so we can see where that version of Link went after he left home at the end.  Doesn't seem like it's gonna happen, though.

When you use Force Speed, your Force power meter immediately drops to half.  It will not begin to recharge until the effect wears off, and if you use any other powers while Speeding, it will drop further still.

At level 1, you will move 33% faster than normal.  At level 2, twice as fast; and at level 3, four times faster.  If your Force meter is at least half full and someone fires a disruptor rifle at you, you may be able to automatically dodge the shot.  If not, you'll get disintegrated.

On behalf of Fo 1, I accept your apology.

I can't speak for Fo 2, though.  That guy's just out of control.  ;)

DuracellEnergizer said:

I watched the OOT years before I ever see the SE, but for some reason or another -- probably childhood naivete combined with hero worship of Lucas, the creator (so I thought) of Star Wars -- I bought into the whole "the SE is better than the OOT because these are the films as they were always meant to be" schtick and came to see the OOT as a hopelessly underdone prototype.

Thank God the shock of how bad the PT was combined with a more mature post-adolescent mind roused me from that delusion, though.

My experience was very similar to this.

While I never thought of the OOT as bad—I'd seen it far too many times as a kid to ever dislike it even a little—I did buy into the hype of the SE's as being better, and for several years only ever watched them instead.  I even tried to like the prequels when they came out, not quite knowing why something always felt a bit off.  It wasn't until the horror of the 2004 DVD's that I realized something was seriously wrong in SW-land (as a sound guy, it was the terrible audio remix that ultimately ruined it for me), causing me to go back and revisit the OOT for the first time since 1996.

Seeing them again was like meeing old friends I used to be really close with, but had later abandoned to fit in with the popular crowd.  Fortunately, we were able to reconnect immediately: they looked the way I remembered, they sounded the way I remembered, everything was just as it had been when I'd fallen in love with them in the first place.  The shock of this caused me to go back and question everything I'd taken for granted, and with a more mature mindset I came to perceive clearly what quality movie-making is really about.

Looks like the Fo 2 sock has taken over.

I heard Fo 1 has pictures of Fink on his Viagra . . .

I think we'd all be better off by not puffing ourselves up as having better projects and instead all work together for the sake of the movies without ego getting in the way . . .

I missed it too, unfortunately, due to some severe girl trouble (I'm probably never going to speak to her again after today, which may be for the best), but I'm gonna check it out now.  I really enjoyed the last live chat and learned some extremely interesting things from it, so I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more.

Mike, you're awesome, and please keep on being so.  ;)

@ Mavericks: I just facepalmed at your entire post.

Talk about missing the point, man.

Smallville got really good in its last few seasons, which really made me wish it had adopted that storytelling style far earlier in its run, since it then ended just as I was getting really into it.

The previous years were filled with potential but wasted it on endless rubbish with the insufferable Lana Lang and Clark's inability to ever think straight around her, which was so bad it's a miracle I ever made it through any of that stuff.

But Erica Durance was so awesome as Lois Lane that it kept me going, since I'd heard it would become great by the end, and it definitely did not disappoint.

If you read the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, you can see that his idea of what the Clone Wars were about was very, very different than it ended up being in the prequels, and far more interesting as well.  He wasn't allowed by Lucasfilm to include many direct details, but it is clear that his scenario involved an evil army of clones trying to take over the galaxy, and that the Old Republic fleet had fought long and hard against them to prevent it.  Many of the clones suffered from mental instability, even outright insanity, due to having been grown too quickly, making them spectacularly dangerous.

Exactly who the unnamed 'clonemasters' were, and why they embarked on this destructive course, is unknown.  But due to Palpatine's possession of a complete cloning complex, it may be inferred that he was involved in the events somehow—probably manipulating everything for his own benefit.  The Clone Wars did not lead directly into the formation of the Empire, having ended some fifteen years prior, but the chaos they left in their wake contributed greatly to this eventual outcome.

To me the true backstory of the original trilogy lies largely within this untold framework established by Zahn, as well as the hints of Vader's downfall from the drafts and novelization of RotJ, and nothing is ever going to convince me otherwise.

There isn't a clanking sound in the original mixes when the stormtrooper hits his head: it's actually a crackle of radio static from another trooper who starts talking right at that moment.

In the SE's, however, they did add a sound for it.  I wish they hadn't.

What can he say, the Sarlaac was askin' for it.  :P

I'm fairly partial to costpads, myself.

If you're wondering what that is, it's when you go to Costco and buy feminine hygiene products in bulk.

It's futile to pick a fight with Frink.  You will never not be the target of humor if you try . . .

The reason the 1993 mix sounds good is because it is derived from the version that was used for 70mm prints, which is by far the best audio mix the film has ever had.

Unfortunately, they saw fit to paste additional sound effects on top of it when making the Definitive Collection laserdisc set.   Some of these are beneficial; but others are loud, distracting, and unnecessary.  The 70mm recreation (made by me) removes these additions, and is included in various fan-made preservation projects.

Just recently I did a direct comparison between the uncompressed PCM from the laserdisc and the 192 kbps AC3 found on the 2006 DVD.  By importing both into Pro Tools and time-aligning them, I could seamlessly switch back and forth during playback by soloing one track or the other.  I found that the lossy version holds up pretty well much of the time—during quieter passages the difference was subtle enough that it didn't stand out too much.  But whenever there is music the clarity definitely suffers: there is a distinct loss of detail in the high frequencies, and the louder dynamic sections of the mix sometimes exhibit harsh digital compression artifacts.

Even the tape hiss is affected, for in the PCM it sounds smooth and pleasant, but after lossy compression it takes on a more harsh and garbled quality.  Being essentially random high frequency noise, it is right in the range where lossy encoders start throwing away detail as the bitrate is lowered, and as an ever-present background to analogue recordings this can be a noticeable indicator that the fidelity has been compromised.  Tape hiss may be considered the aural equivalent of film grain, which likewise is difficult for video compression to deal with accurately at lower bitrates.

I compared the two tracks by listening on hi-fi headphones, so the differences were quite apparent.  With speakers the distance from the ear to the sound source is increased, so it may not be as evident, especially if they are of the type that most people tend to own.  When encoding in Dolby Digital, 192 kbps for a stereo track is approximately equal to 448 for a 5.1 mix, and though far from perfect, this level is generally listenable on most material.  Increasing to 320 kbps for stereo (640 for 5.1) is considerably more difficult to distinguish from PCM, since there are no overt problems with the sound quality at all, and any difference will be quite subtle.  Nothing beats lossless for clarity, though, so you should always listen to that if it's available.

I'll be doing both of these at some point in the future, to go along with the one I did for the first movie.  Not sure when, though.

Mrs. Scum: "I don't like darkies!"

Sleazy Host: "Well, who does?  Hahaha!"

The Pythons never missed an opportunity to take cheap shots at Reginald Maudling and other Conservative politicians, which can slip by almost unnoticed if you aren't paying attention:

Graham Chapman: "Speaking as Conservative candidate, I just drone on and on and on and on never letting anyone else get a word in edgewise until I start foaming at the mouth and falling over backwards . . ."

John Cleese: "Well, I've been in the city for thirty years, and never once regretted being a nasty, greedy, cold-hearted, avaricious money-grubber . . . er, Conservative!"

Go full retard?  You never go full retard.  ;)

I always liked Cardinal Biggles stuttering his way through trying to get the words out:  "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition; in fact, those who do expect . . . er, our chief weapon is, um . . . surprise, and, uh . . ."

And I always lol at the part in the album version where they come into the Architect sketch and try to get by with a shorter version:

"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.  Our chief weapon is surprise—that's all.  Just surprise."

"What about fear?"

"Oh, yes yes all right, surprise and fear."

"And fanatical—"

"SHUT UP!"