#116: Wolfenstein: In Defense of Probst Wyatt III

It is the year 1946, and the Nazis are an ever looming threat. As the Allies struggle against the overwhelming tide of fascism, I, Captain William Joseph Blazkowicz, am on a mission to cut the head off the snake. Lead by Wing Commander Fergus Reid and with aid from Private Probst Wyatt III and the rest of our squad, I storm the infamous Castle Wolfenstein in order to assassinate General Deathshead. As the source of the Nazis inexplicably advanced weaponry, ridding the world of his evil would cripple their efforts across the theater of war. At first, all goes well. Fergus's leadership, and my prowess on the battlefield, allow us to make steady advances as our Allied forces distract the enemy.

This progress comes at a heavy price, as many of the others in our unit simply don't make it. Ultimately, with just me, Fergus, and Wyatt remaining, Deathshead easily captures us. But simply killing us isn't enough for the depraved sadist. He sees potential in my teammates, Fergus and Wyatt both, for use in his experiments. Unable to choose which one to dissect, this evil man forces me to make that choice for him, or he'll execute all three of us on the spot. Having gotten to know and value the leadership of Commander Reid, and not having as much time to cultivate that same bond with Private Wyatt, I make the grim decision to spare my Commander, leaving an innocent young man to die a needless death.

In doing so, I have made a terrible mistake.

The Texture Pop: Episode 22: Eat All The Wine

This is an interesting episode. Garrett and Sam were each out for various reasons. (You know how it is with various reasons.) As a result, it was just Chris and I. This is not the first time the two of us have recorded something by ourselves, so we knew we would be able to handle it.



0:00:00 Introduction
We have a new (unknowing) sponsor, in personaforums.txt. I follow a lot of strange ".txt" accounts.



0:01:15 Viewer Questions
The guys who sent in questions this week got shafted a little, because only half the cast was here to answer. Still, Chris and I handled our own. This section went by pretty quick this week.

"I want to know if any of you guys have come into contact with a game called The Zoo Race?"
Like I said in the cast, only from the JonTron video.

"Have any of you guys seen that movie, El Arca?"
Nope. And given what I learned in this podcast, I don't think I want to.

Remember, if you wish to send in questions, comments, or something you'd like us to talk about, send it into thetexturepop@gmail.com or submit it to one of the group's various social media accounts. They'll in the YouTube description.



0:07:00 Gaming News
Aliens: Colonial Marines was pulled off Steam
I wish this was Steam doing something to clean up their storefront. Unfortunately, this is mostly about contract disputes. Those are too messy to really get into, because the legal-speak can be difficult for a non-lawyer like myself to parse. A lot of games are in limbo because of that very thing.

Mighty No. 9 is nearly finished
We discuss a lot in regards to this news.
But I'm genuinely interested in hearing what people think about whether or not Mighty No. 9 is a rip-off of Mega-man or not. It's an interesting question.
And now I know Inafune didn't make the franchise, he's just well-known for his work on it. Good to know.

Final Fantasy XV (and female Cid)
I am personally completely okay with the prospect of a female Cid. The only through-lines with Cid is that there is always a character in Final Fantasy named Cid, and he's always a technical expert relative to the technology of the world he inhabits. I see no problem with a sex change, providing the other attributes, which are common among Cids, hold.
BTW, Dukes of Hazard was the movie franchise I was thinking of during this segment. I have no idea how I forgot. The outfit brought back memories of seeing those kinds of movies. Watch the trailer in the link above, and you'll know why.

Awesome Games Done Quick 2015
It's a spectacle to watch, and still on-going as of the time of this publishing. You guys might be interested in checking it out.



0:29:00 I beat Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth.
For the record, I did not even achieve 100% of the game. I wrote an article about my feelings on the game's pacing. Overall, it's a good game, but you need to really like old-school RPG design to enjoy this game. Liking Persona 3 and/or 4 isn't necessarily enough. It's mostly a gateway Etrian Odyssey game, with a Persona wrapper.



0:36:30 I watched Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded (via Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX)
It's so pointless, that I feel extremely annoyed by it's existence. This should have been a small novella at the most, because there's not really enough story to justify it. Fortunately, I didn't have to play it, because 2.5 only has the cutscenes (which is the less painful way to consume this media).
Most Kingdom Hearts fans hate this game for a reason.
It was also 5 hours long, longer than it took me to watch 365/2 Days in 1.5 ReMIX.



0:41:10 I just beat Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix (via Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX)
I have gone on record several times, criticizing the writing on Kingdom Hearts 2. Atlantica, for example, is distilled awful in one segment of the game for a variety of reasons. In a more general sense, it went from a Disney-plot with Square-Enix characters to a Square-Enix plot with Disney characters. The difference is noticeable.
But it plays just so well. And there is a ton of new content added to Final Mix. Even people who 100% completed Kingdom Hearts 2 back in the day would be well-served by purchasing the 2.5 ReMIX. It's worth it for this alone, but the addition of Birth by Sleep makes it a must-buy.

I must also confess that I took the whole "What do they eat?" thing from Shamus Young. I've mentioned him before, but you should check it out.



0:54:30 I finished my Holiday Movie Binge
X-Men: Days of Future Past and Kick-Ass were alright movies, but not great.
Guardians of the Galaxy, however, was an awesome movie, and a great finale to my holiday binge.



1:01:50 Chris has been playing more Assassin's Creed 3.
And I am loving every single complaint he has towards this game.
There are interesting things to it, but most of the game is so terrible that it's not worth it.



1:08:15 Chris has played Wolfenstein: The New Order.
It is legitimately surprised at how good this game is. As Sam has said before, it almost feels like the Wolfenstein brand name does not severe a game this good. It's well-written, plays great, and brings up some interesting points.
Still, it does have some flaws, and we call a few of them into attention here.



1:16:00 Chris has been playing Destiny...
...and he enjoys it. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's a solid shooter. I can vouch for that from my time with the beta.
It just feels empty. There's not a lot there. That is the part of the game that is lacking.
There are also just so many strange design decisions. Chiefly among them is the fact that you cannot access the game's lore in-game. You need to go online to view them. That just doesn't make sense.
I would love to have been there to see how these design choices were made. It has to be incredibly fascinating.



1:28:20 Wrapping Up.
In which I encourage Chris to embrace his tastes in gaming.

The Texture Pop: Episode 21: Legal Podcasting

The Texture Pop turns 21 episodes old this week. As everyone knows, 21 is the legal drinking age in America. As a result, we took the podcast on its first wild party.

That might explain what happens every episode. In other news, Garrett is back, but still kinda sick.



0:00:00 Introduction
Title drop already.
We'll get to the Far Cry 3 stuff later.



0:02:50 Viewer Questions
"What are some of your favorite overlooked games?"
Dark Cloud 2 is definitely my favorite overlooked game. It takes from so many genres: RPGs, Action-Adventures, Rogue-likes, and Simulation games. It blends them all together so well that it's amazing.
Wild Arms 3 is another. WA3 does a lot to fix many common problems with JRPGs. Spells have a minimum amount of MP needed to cast them, but they are otherwise free. Characters use Vitality to recover HP after a battle. And there are also the random encounter cancelling mechanics I talked about in the cast.
I'd also like to mention Shadow Hearts as another overlooked game. We've talked about it in previous podcasts. Sam's pick of Atelier Iris reminded me of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis, which I like for similar reasons.
I love questions like this, because they give me opportunities to gush about games I loved from back in the day. You should also pay attention to what the rest of the cast thought. Their picks were as interesting as mine, and it shows you what kind of games we all play.

"Do you guys have an old-school genre of video games that you wish to make a comeback?"
The only things that came to mind are non-Nintendo 3D Platformers. Even then, I'd only like them to make a comeback as smaller, $10-15 budget titles so that they maintain what made them great. This was a difficult question, as there were often many reasons why old genres died out. If they were $60, they'd have to be something like Mirror's Edge, with very high production values.

"Is there anything you'd like to see/not see in the new StarFox game?"
I had nothing to add here. StarFox isn't really my area of expertise.



0:34:50 We give Garrett space to better explain his Game of the Year choices from last week.
Since he wasn't present to do so himself, We tried to do it in his stead, but none of us believe we did his picks justice.
I'm going to let this part stand on its own.



0:42:25 Gaming News
PlayStation Network and Xbox Live got hacked on Christmas Day
The worst part of the whole thing is that the entire reason for the hack is that the hackers thought it was funny. There was no statement to be made. There's no good reason for hacking into a network anyway, but that just makes it hurt that much more.
It is also interesting to note that Sony was hit much worse than Microsoft. Sony really does not seem to have a solid grasp of cyber-security. They should probably get on that. After all, this is far from the first, or even the biggest, hack they've had in recent history.

Hatred reinstated on Steam Greenlight
Since we didn't talk about it last week with the Game of the Year stuff, we talked about it on this episode instead.
I think an interesting debate over the open-garden versus closed-walls approach to marketplace curation. There are merits to both approaches, but Steam doesn't really adhere to either philosophy. Were they to show more consistency, I would be okay with their decision. It's the inconsistency that is the problem.
The argument of censorship is another thing entirely. This isn't censorship, end of discussion.



1:06:50 Sam played Destiny (on Xbox One).
Such is our fate.
It's a good shooter, with solid mechanics. There's just nothing to do with those mechanics.
And nothing to the story at all, except the stuff that you have to look for online.



1:20:00 Garrett has been sick with the flu.
And it sucked. (This is mostly why he couldn't make the podcast for a while.)



1:25:20 Garrett saw Frozen on Ice
And we also talk about me watching the movie, since I did that this week. It's a Disney movie. I don't need to say anything else. I am a sucker for Disney movies, so I loved it. People who dislike Disney movies won't like it either.
I like how it subverts typical heroic and villainous roles by making the Ice Queen the hero and the stalwart knight the villain.
We also detour to discuss movie theaters and other things movie-related.
The Destiny video we talked about during this segment is here.



1:33:00 Garrett talks computers and Steam Sales.
Windows, computer parts, the works. Not much more to add here.

On the topic on Steam Sales, this current sale (as of the time of writing) hasn't really been that great. My wallet has been mostly safe. I bought a couple of things, but nothing worth talking about here.
But Chris did...



1:37:30 Chris played The Walking Dead: Season 2.
And he highlights the two biggest problems of the new season.
First, the new cast doesn't really stand out all that well from every other group of survivors in a generic zombie apocalypse. They don't feel as interesting as the original group from the first season.
Second, we have already wisened up to the Telltale formula, where none of your choices made a difference. It is more of a movie where you affect the tone of the interactions, for better or worse.



1:43:50 Chris had Christmas Oreos.
So we talk Oreos briefly. It took him a whole three days to do it.



1:46:20 Chris discussed his Christmas haul.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
The Ratchet and Clank HD Collection
$10 Nintendo EShop Card (for Megaman X on Wii U)
Guilty Gear Xrd

Not a bad haul. A lot of quality games in this assortment.



1:48:10 Chris played the Ratchet and Clank Collection
It is interesting to see how those games evolved over the years. The first game is easily the worst of the three, and they got so much better over time. Even as the worst, it's still a great Ratchet and Clank game. As they series went on, the developers learned many lessons about both characterization and gameplay. You can see it in the design. The thing we talk about with Ratchet being a huge jerk was one of the biggest problems. Like we said, they performed this same routine better in Tools of Destruction.

The Going Commando/Up Your Arsenal Developer Commentary LP can be found here.

We also discuss HD re-releases in a general sense in this segment.



1:58:50 Chris also got Gears of War: Judgement
He didn't play it, so we didn't discuss it. However, we get into a really interesting conversation about the class of games that exist purely to milk a successful franchises. Games like Gears of War: Judgement, God of War: Ascension, and Halo 4. We all know why these games exist, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.



2:01:10 Chris played a bit of Assassin's Creed 3.
This is, by far, the worst main series Assassin's Creed game. He just finished the best part of the game, and it's all downhill from there.
I absolutely cannot wait until he gets through Sequence 8. Everything after Haytham's segment was bad, but that segment in particular was awful.
The mission design was bad. The story was bad. The protagonist was boring. It is so terrible. Hearing Chris complain about the game will be Catharsis.



2:05:20 I played more Persona Q.
The biggest issue by far with the game is its pacing. It is about the same length as Persona 3/4, but it is purely dungeon-crawling. You can take breaks to talk to the people in your team, which coincidentally happen to be the best parts of the game.
The combat isn't even a problem either. It's fun. The reason the pacing is so bad is because every single floor in the Labyrinth is a massive puzzle that takes about 10 minutes to solve, but about an hour to draw a complete enough map that you can solve it.



2:07:30 I beat both Wolfenstein: The New Order and Far Cry 3.
Which I wrote an article about here. I took a lot from the conversations Sam and I have had in the past when I wrote that.
I spent most of this segment complaining about Far Cry 3, because the story of the game is a bunch of horseshit. Both games play very well. I'd easily recommend them both, but Far Cry 3 grinds my gears. Vaas was easily the best part of the writing. Once he left, the wind was blown right out of the game's sales.
I find the discussion here, comparing Tomb Raider to Far Cry 3, to be very interesting. There are many parallel's between those games. And overall, I found Tomb Raider much more palatable. Having said that, there are merits to both games.



2:22:30 I started my Holiday Movie Binge.
Inception
It wasn't anywhere near as trippy as people said it was. Still, it's a great movie. Leonardo DeCaprio and Ellen Page pull off great performances.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
If you like video games, you'll get a huge fan of the film. I really liked it. Micheal Cera plays a great maladjusted mid-20s dude.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
I like the difference in tone this movie had to other Marvel movies. It's a bit obvious in terms of social commentary, but overall I loved it. It's still a superhero movie, but a much more "grounded" one.

Frozen
See above.

Thor: The Dark World
Tom Hiddleston is a great Loki. There really is no other person I would have in the role. Aside from his performance, the movie isn't bad, but it is not as good as the other Marvel movies.

The LEGO Movie
I really enjoyed this movie. Up until the plot twist, it is a very cute movie with great, if obvious, social commentary. Once the plot twist is revealed, it becomes a very emotional story. The movie does so many things right that I would easily recommend it. Everything is awesome!



2:44:30 Wrapping Up.
My Wolfenstein/Far Cry 3 article is here.
Sam's itch.io article is here.

#80: Far Cry 3 Vs. Wolfenstein: The New Order: A Discussion of Aesops

Though this may surprise the people who read my articles, I play more than just RPGs. Surprisingly enough, the last two games I have beaten have something in common. They attempt to teach similar aesops through their stories. However, one performs this task very well. The other fails so miserably that the writing can only be called marginally better than a David Cage game. These two games are Wolfenstein: The New Order and Far Cry 3. This week, I plan to compare the two in order to help explain how one failed and the other succeeded. The reason is that I strongly feel that they were both making an attempt at the same thing. That is, they wanted to mock the kinds of protagonists we see in the shooters that are released year after year.

To that end, they have a similar tone in terms of gameplay style. Both Wolfenstein and Far Cry 3 have a very arcade-like style to the way they play. By this, I mean that they can throw many enemies at the player and feel reasonably confident that the player has the ability to take them all out. Missions, especially towards the end of the game, tend to have enemies swarm the player in waves. Typically, these enemies die very quickly, but there are a few enemy types that require more skill to take down. Furthermore, because health and ammo do not fully-regenerate, there is an element of resource management required. Players must mind either their total health and/or the number of healing items they have, on top of their body armor and the number of bullets left in their inventory. Excessive use of these resources will make future battles more difficult. Combined, these elements give off a sense of power, but require tactics in order maintain their advantage.

On top of that, both games have sections with stealth elements. In these areas, the objective is to eliminate the opposition before they have the chance to raise the alarm and call for reinforcements. Players can just charge-in guns blazing, but they are better off if they take the time to stay undetected. Various tools in their arsenal can assist them by giving them silent attack options. Minor RPG elements are also included. With them, players can develop their character's skills and physical abilities in order to perform better. They can customize their character in order to best suit their playstyle, be it stealthy assassin, commando, or somewhere in between. With this, both games offer a sense that the protagonist is slowly developing over the course of the game, yet never lacks in skill.

Even in terms of story, there are many similarities. Both games have the player go against foes that are irredeemably evil. Wolfenstein: The New Order, as one might expect, has Nazis as the primary opponent. Far Cry 3 pits the player against kidnappers, slave traders, and drug dealers. In this way, they do not focus on the effects of violence on the enemy you are fighting. Rather, the focus in more towards the protagonist and how they change as a result of being thrown into the violence, becoming an active participant in it. Wolfenstein shows how years of fighting Nazis have affected BJ Blazkowicz's mental health. Meanwhile, Far Cry 3 demonstrates Jason Brody's decent into a spiral of death and violence after being kidnapped and ransomed by Vaas and his pirate crew. Though Far Cry 3 also uses the progression system to better demonstrate the transition, both games take close looks at their player characters.

However, there are crucial differences in these stories. The compound effect of all of these differences helps to explain how one game succeeded while the other game failed. The first difference is in the likability of the protagonist and his supporting cast. In Wolfenstein: The New Order, BJ Blazkowicz is shown in a pretty positive light. Throughout the course of the game, he often goes out of his way to assist the people he fights along-side, and not just in terms of completing missions for them. He is also frequently seen talking with other US Army and Resistance fighters, helping them cope with the realities of the world they live in. For example, early in the game, a younger recruit is visibly shaken by the war with the Nazis. BJ approaches him with tips on how to calm oneself down after going through traumatic events. We are also given reason to care about the supporting cast. Each character has their own quirks, personality, and reasons for fighting the Nazis. While some occasionally slip into jerkwad territory, they always have a reason to do so. The character Fergus, to demonstrate the point, gets a little angst when he realizes that he is an old man and is not able to fight as well as he did way back when, feeling like he is holding the team back. Overall, the characters are very well written.

The same cannot be said for Far Cry 3. In that game, almost every character that is on the protagonist's side, including Jason Brody himself, is insufferable. The game opens with them holding several wild parties and imbibing massive quantities of alcohol, using their rich parents' money. Then, they complain about their love lives and other such nonsense. All of them are the exact same character, just with different faces and genders. Even when Brody changes over the course of the game, he simply becomes another flavor of jerkwad. He transforms from a stupid, rich, white boy into a stupid, rich white boy with drug-induced delusions of being some great warrior. If anything, he becomes even more irritating as the game goes on. Unlike in Wolfenstein, the cast of characters is completely unlikable, which makes it hard to care about them when they go through their ordeals and change as a result.

Another major difference is the time-table for the ordeals in each game. In Wolfenstein, BJ fights against the Nazis for decades. At the end of the game, he reaches a point where he realizes that he has been fighting Nazis for so long, over half of his lifetime, that he can no longer do anything else. As a result, he is okay with sacrificing himself to save the world from their evil. Since he cannot live in the world he helped to save, it is preferable to end it all when he is no longer required to fight. It is a distinctly dark moment, but an important one. Most video game shooter protagonists can experience much horror and return to civilization at the end of the day as if nothing happened. Wolfenstein decided to instead play their protagonist completely straight by having him struggle for decades and realize that he cannot do the same.

Far Cry 3, meanwhile, takes place over the span of at most one or two months. Because of this significantly shorter time-frame, Jason Brody's “growth” from a novice into a full-fledged fighter is much less believable. Vaas, the game's (technically) secondary antagonist, makes a remark that best underscores this point. Paraphrased: “You think that you get a couple of tattoos and a few guns and suddenly you're a 'warrior', white boy!?” Though said by a character who is certifiably insane, this statement is no less true. No matter how much training and conditioning one undergoes in a month, they cannot make such a dramatic change like that. Those fundamental changes take years. The events of Far Cry 3 would be traumatic. However, they would not just turn some nobody into a cold-blooded murderer, at least not so quickly. As a result, any commentary Far Cry 3 is attempting to make on video game protagonists feels meaningless.

Ultimately, though Far Cry 3 is obviously the more well-known and popular of the two, it fails on a much more fundamental level than Wolfenstein: The New Order. Wolfenstein is more successful at subverting its mechanics and teaching the aesop at the center of both games. Even in a general sense, Far Cry 3 is terrible in terms of its storytelling. Having said that, both games are still really fun to play. The stand-alone Blood Dragon DLC for Far Cry 3 better demonstrates this by re-contextualizing the mechanics with a story that takes itself significantly less seriously. It is so much better than I would easily recommend it over the original game. From what I can gather, the writers of Far Cry 4 also learned a lot for the failures of the previous game in the franchise. Wolfenstein is also worth taking a look at, if you can find it at a discounted price.