The Noises Emanating from Mega Man

I've been playing a bit of Mega Man at this point, mostly due to the fact that over the last year+, Capcom has been releasing each of the Mega Man titles of the NES era (I - VI) and I've been gobbling them up as fast as they are being released.  I do not mean that I have been completing the games mind you, just collecting them in my seemingly growing list of games that I have yet to get to.

I did play a bit of the NES Mega Man (Men?) titles around the time of their original release, but I was never able to beat any of them because of perpetually losing those little slips of paper that contained hours worth of priceless passwords.  Coupled with the fact that I never owned a Mega Man game until I bought Mega Man X from the video store I used to work at before they closed, meant that I had made and subsequently lost a lot of little slips of paper.

So Mega Man, or specifically the sounds that emanate from the game.  Both the sounds that Mega Man himself makes as well as the sounds in the world around him.  I will not cover the music however as that would require additional posts although there is a good chance that they were created by on-in-the-same person.  And, as it turns out the music and sound effects were in fact created by Manami Matsumae.

What I find so fascinating about the sound editing or I guess the foley artist for these games, is how well each individual sound effect works not only in this futuristic world, but how these authenticity of the sound effects are not questioned.  I have never gone through a play session in any of the Mega Man games and thought, "I don't think that's what an ball of propelled energy would sound like when it hits a robot made of who-knows-what-type of alloy.  I simply accept it as fact that that is what an energy blast would sound like when it comes into contact with a metallic robot.

I have fired a couple of firearms in the past, specifically 12 and 20 gauge shotguns and two different types (??) of .22 caliber rifles.  That is it.  I know what those are supposed to sound like both with and without ear plugs.  10 feet and a mile away, I know what a shotgun blast sound like.  If I hear that sound, I know what is making it and I do not question its authenticity.  The same way that when I hear that characteristic "brrzzzp" sound, I know that I am hearing an energy blast from Mega Man's arm cannon hitting its target (most of the time anyway).

Even the other sound effects, such as the sound Mega Man makes when he jumps, that obvious "brdrp" sound whenever he lands.  Without that little sound, the game might run the risk of sounding empty, incomplete.

Finally, the last sound effect that I want to touch on is the "explosion" when you die (enemy fire, pit, spikes).  It's that "Dgewdgewdgewdgew" sound.  No grandiose sounds explosion of flesh, oil, electricity/nuclear fusion (or whatever it is that powers Mega Man) and metal as they shockwave out to the edges of the screen. The sound, like the artistic style of the series, is a very cartoony one, but it is the sound we have come to expect from such a demise.  Even in the SNES era of Mega Man games, the sound is the same albeit updated with a 16 bit sound processor.

Why then this disconnect between the cartoony explosion of Mega Man dying and the "Yeah, I think it would sound like that" when an energy blast hits an enemy?  Maybe it is that we subconsciously are glad about the destruction of the enemy robot horde, but would rather not have our own demise mimic reality.

In the end though, "it's all fun and games until the domesticated robots created to help humanity, turn against us.  Then we'll wait for our blue robotic hero to arise."  That's a real saying, isn't it?

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

He Hears The Silence So Loud

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion ~ New Character Story

A while back, I had considered restarting Morrowind with a new character because I had felt that using a Nord of the Skyrim Province who was supposed to be a reincarnate of a heralded Dunmer (Dark Elf) hero was a bit far fetched.  I thought that playing a Dunmer would be more appropriate.  After I had thought about that decision and slept on it, I continued with my Nord, just to see what would happen and if the main quest line would make any more sense with an "Outlander," believing that Bethesda knew what they were doing, otherwise when beginning the game, you would have only been able to choose to be a Dunmer.  In the end, I am very glad that I continued as that decision gave rise to my new character for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the Dunmer Ashlander, Talaq Ashburnab (same-ish name as the other Tal'aq, but different alltogehter.  I just like the sound of the name).

First off, how Valgrin of Markarth, the incarnate Nerevarine of Indoril Nerevar, a Dunmer General from the 1st Era influenced the events that take place in Oblivion.  

Emperor Uriel Septim VII sees that in the future he will be assassinated, his death is already foretold.  In this vision a prisoner helps him seal the gates of Oblivion which his assassination have brought about.  This is the in-game plot for Oblivion.  In the game Morrowind, Uriel Septim VII sends a prisoner who is born under a specific star sign, whom he believes will fulfill the Nerevarine Prophesy and release Morrowind and those living in Vvardenfell from the blight brought about by Dagoth Ur, who is residing at the heart of Red Mountain, in the center of Vvardenfell.  This is the in-game plot of Morrowind.

In Morrowind, I chose to be a Nord because it seemed like a good idea, having just played 150+ hours in Skyrim and I knew that I wanted to play a tank-like character.  Thus, Valgrin of Markarth was brought into being.  During the main quest, your character comes upon many different factions of Dunmer throughout Vvardenfell.  One of these is a tribe of Ashlanders, the Urshilaku, who are the group that sets your character ahead on his quest to fulfill the Nerevarine Prophecy and the first group/clan/tribe to recognize him as such.  I decided that this is where Talaq would originate from.

So Talaq was influenced by an Outlander being the Nerevarine.  This opened up his view of other races and began to deteriorate his prejudices of other races that were not Dunmer.  Knowing that the Nerevarine was a Nord (using my game from Morrowind as a canon storyline), Talaq wished to visit this land that the Nerevarine came from.  Being an Ashlander, a relatively poor nomadic tribe of Dunmer, Talaq had very little in the way of way of payment to find travel into Skyrim.  In the village of Khull, the Khajiit shipmaster S'virr tells Talaq that he can give him free passage to Skyrim by way of Solstheim after picking up/dropping off a shipment.  Free passage is dependent on Talaq transporting goods to both Fort Frostmoth and to the port in Windhelm.  Talaq agrees to this.

Unbeknownst to Talaq, S'virr fell in with the Nord smuggler Brurid and is smuggling Skooma and Moon Sugar.  While disembarking, members of the East Empire Company call attention to S'virr's boat and Imperial soldiers begin searching the cargo and find the contraband.  The imperial guards begin questioning Talaq on the docks.  A group of Dunmer witness the Imperial's verbal and physical abuse of Talaq and rush to his unasked-for aid.  During the skirmish, one Imperial is killed along with the two Dunmer who attempted to help.  Talaq was imprisoned as he was believed to be connected with the two dead Dunmer.  Because Imperial soldiers were killed, Talaq was taken to Cyrodiil and imprisoned under the charge of "an assault on the Emperor's men, is the same as an assault on the Emperor".  

While being processed, Talaq chose the surname "Ashurnab," after the Daedra shrine Assurnabitashipi to the west of the Urshilaku Camp.  Talaq did not wish to disgrace his family, yet chose and slightly altered a word/name that he already knew.  Coincidentally, in reality and in-game, the Assurnabitashipi shrine is dedicated to Mehrunes Dagon, the instigator of the Oblivion Crisis.

The way that I see this story unfolding, is that Uriel Septim saw an Ashlander at the time of his death and his visions regarding the Nerevarine Prophecy came to him, he saw a way of bringing an Ashlander, a group not normally seen outside of Morrowind, to Cyrodiil.  Uriel, however did not know anything about the Ashlander that he saw in his visions, only that by perhaps helping to fulfill the Nerevarine Prophecy, would this Ashlander somehow end up in Cyrodiil.

And now, I present to you Talaq Ashurnab, freshly released/escaped from prison:

Without a helmet on, Talaq sports the traditional Dunmer top knot.  I do wish that I could have figured out a way to make his cheeks a little more gaunt, similar to the way that the Dunmer look in Skyrim, or you know, Danny Trejo.  I didn't have a specific age for Talaq, hence not bringing up the year of his birth in relation to the storylines of Morrowind and Oblivion, and really, it's probably not that important.

I see Talaq as someone who, having seen the power and influence of an Outlander Nerevarine believes that helping people, to a certain extent can be beneficial.  As with other Ashlanders, he will not question the decision to kill someone who insults or threatens him.  And as with most/all Dunmer, he has a strong dislike/disgust for necromancers (which is how I justified diverging from the main quest so early on and routed a keep full of necromancers and their ilk.

He is still pretty naive though, because he is still pseudo-young so he's bound to do some stupid things.  Sure, why not.

So that's my character that I've created to play, at least through the main questline, in Oblivion.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

First Impressions: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a sordid history with me, which is why I didn't jump on the bandwagon back in 2006 when the game first came out.  Prior to 2006, I had heard nothing about The Elder Scrolls series on any platform, most likely due to the fact that I wasn't a big PC gamer until recently and I didn't own a 360 or PS3.  

The symbol for the school of Conjuration.

I recall seeing the boxes in Target and upon first inspection, I thought that I had stumbled across a video game series based around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthuhlu mythos.  The cues for me were the similarity between the "Elder Gods" and the "Elder Scrolls," as well as "Oblivion" being a frequent theme of sorts in Lovecraft's writings about the various.  Even the logo I thought was an artistic relic based around the image of Cthulhu.  Granted the symbol looks a bit more like fangs, but now that you have Lovecraft in your mind, seeing what I had thought might become a bit more clear.  So at this point, I figured I would get around to playing this Oblivion game.

The house I live in during 2006, we had a housemate whom we will simply call OnlineGamblerGuyWhoLivesInAMercedes, or Axe for short talked a bit about the game then showed myself and Chreekat what the game was like.  He described it as a kind of fun fantasy game played in first person and I immediatly thought of the Neo Geo game, Crossed Swords.  Axe said that by the end of the game it had gotten repetitious and that you can simply jump while moving and you raise in experience levels.  He said that it while it was a decent game, just that by the end, it got pretty boring.

This was my first impression of not only Oblivion, but of this apparent Elder Scrolls series.  It was not a favorable impression.

Ring in 2012.   Skyrim had been out a year by the time I bought the game and delved deep into it's depths (not nearly as much as Conklederp has mind you).  Thus my impression of The Elder Scrolls forever changed and for the better at that.  In March of 2013 I began playing Morrowind (Chapter III) and this January (just over a month ago), I began playing Oblivion.  

My feelings about this game continue to be conflicted.  I understand the immense leap from Morrowind to Obilivion, the changes in gameplay mechanics (the ones I know about anyway), the graphical improvements over the four years between the two games.  However, in the back of my mind are those first feelings of negativity because of the review of a housemate and finding out that the conjuration sigil had nothing to do with anything related to H.P. Lovecraft.

One other sad thing, for me at least, is that I'm not a fan of the intro song, which is just a fanfaric and slightly sped up version of "Nerevar Rising" from Morrowind.  Yes, I know it was used again in "Dragonborn" from Skyrim, but there it's done with a choir and all bombastic, which I tend to like.  Basically the song, "Reign of the Septims" using the "Nerevar Rising" theme, plays it too fast for what the song is doing.  I don't know if that really makes much sense, but that's how I feel.  The rest of the music in the world I do enjoy as it is very Jeremy Soule and fitting for Cyrodiil.

Presently, I am 14 hours into the game, which isn't far by Elder Scroll standards and for those of you who know, I just joined The Blades at Cloud Ruler Temple and that is where I have left the game since the middle of January.  Rather than be all rhetorical, I have not stopped playing, but felt that I could now diverge from the main storyline to do any half dozen of those side quests that always populate these open world games.

There are certain things that I do like so far in Obilivion such as the lushness of the land.  I mean, just look at all these lupins (??)

and I just escaped (was allowed to escape) from prison!  I like the facial feature-thing mechanic that I will/might get to in a later post.  I like building my character and having them focus their abilities along certain paths.  And as is the case with any game, there are certain aspects that I'm not too fond of such as the menu system, the pudginess of faces due to the facial feature-thing mechanic, the ability to fast travel to locations you have not yet gone to but know of their existence and how small Cyrodiil feels, but maybe this last part is normal having come from such a vast expanse in Vvardenfell.

I will come back to Obilivion very soon, I think I just needed some time to figure out my current feelings for the game and how they conflict with how I first felt about the game.  Well, that's about my quota for the month for talking about feelings.  


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Shall Return From Out Of The Fire
P.S.  Have a good (snowy?) weekend all.