Let's Play The Way

A moderated forum to discuss topics surrounding the Way series

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Let's Play The Way

Postby EmperorJeramyu » Fri Jan 30, 2009 2:59 pm

This was something I was planning on doing a while ago (that was my "audio project", but I was also going to replace the midis with .wav soundfont transformations that would make the music mp3 quality), but technical problems marred me from ever starting. Fortunately, someone else had the same idea.

Let's Play The Way

In case you're not familiar, "Let's Play" is a youtube concept where someone records what amounts to a video walkthrough of a game with their own commentary over it. Sometimes it's bearable, sometimes it's not. I haven't really listened all of these videos all the way through, so I'm not going to make a call.

Only Episode 1 is covered right now, but there may be more to come. In any event, it's cool that someone's doing this and I thought I'd just point it out.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Sling » Sun Feb 01, 2009 9:27 am

They're pretty good although I found it annoying how that guy kept reading out what some of the characters were saying, I would have just preferred a commentary. Still, it was funny.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Malefact » Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:40 pm

Hullo! Thought I'd best pop in over here and say thanks again for linking to my LP. I'm starting the playthrough of episode 2 now, and my intention is to cover the entire series.

I've had a couple of people mention the line-reading thing, so I'm going to endeavor to read lines less often.

Another thank you in advance - I doubt I'd be able to remember to get all the notch items or show off some of the hidden things from now on without the work of the people on these forums. Also, as I remember when I used to lurk these forums way back, the post-episode 6 discussion theories got me thinking for hours and hours.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby EmperorJeramyu » Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:11 pm

Hi!

I tried to comment on your videos before but it just would not work for some reason. Good to see you're continuing with Episode 2. Thanks for giving The Way exposure.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby War » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:48 pm

EmperorJeramyu wrote:Hi!

I tried to comment on your videos before but it just would not work for some reason. Good to see you're continuing with Episode 2. Thanks for giving The Way exposure.


Jeramyu just wants you to do the badass 5 missions in E6. :D
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby tridon777 » Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:34 am

I thought the introduction was good. I just didnt have the patience to go through all the videos I watched the first 2 and the last one. lol :lol: Though looking back on the way Ive realized that ep1 is really dull to start off with. That may be a turn off to some people.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Malefact » Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:58 am

tridon777 wrote:I thought the introduction was good. I just didnt have the patience to go through all the videos I watched the first 2 and the last one. lol :lol: Though looking back on the way Ive realized that ep1 is really dull to start off with. That may be a turn off to some people.


Yeah, I figured that as well, which is why I thought I'd leave gaps in between the episodes to allow people to catch up / take an interest in the series if they hadn't played the games. Not that I think that episode one is dull, just very slowly paced compared to most of the rest of the game.

War wrote:
EmperorJeramyu wrote:Hi!

I tried to comment on your videos before but it just would not work for some reason. Good to see you're continuing with Episode 2. Thanks for giving The Way exposure.


Jeramyu just wants you to do the badass 5 missions in E6. :D


Heck, *I* want to do the 'badass 5 missions' in episode 6. Episode 6 is actually my favourite episode, although I know a section of people didn't like the way it was done / considered it a shame because they thought that with more backing or resources Lun might have had time to do it differently.

About exposure: I daresay you've considered this before, but have you tried sending an email to either TimW (timw@indiegames.com) who runs the indie games weblog, or Derek Yu (yu.derek@gmail.com) who runs tigsource, to suggest "The Way" be listed? I sent one out a recently, but I'm sure that if more people or more influential people got in touch, then it would be, and that would probably lead to thousands of hits on the site. It's not as if 'age' is a problem, either, as I remember "The Frozen World" being featured on tigsource less than six months ago.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Sling » Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:43 pm

Malefact wrote:Hullo! Thought I'd best pop in over here and say thanks again for linking to my LP. I'm starting the playthrough of episode 2 now, and my intention is to cover the entire series.

I've had a couple of people mention the line-reading thing, so I'm going to endeavor to read lines less often.

Another thank you in advance - I doubt I'd be able to remember to get all the notch items or show off some of the hidden things from now on without the work of the people on these forums. Also, as I remember when I used to lurk these forums way back, the post-episode 6 discussion theories got me thinking for hours and hours.
Hey!

Yeah, I noticed that you stopped reading as many lines. I think you have the right balance between line-reading and commentary atm. I also enjoyed watching your Tower of the Sower LP. Keep up the good work!!!
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby tridon777 » Sat Feb 14, 2009 4:08 pm

Sorry, your are right ep1 is not dull just slow. Though what if Lun went back and spiced up ep1?
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Sling » Sun Feb 15, 2009 12:28 pm

No. The only option would be to combine each Episode into a single game and I'm not entirely sure that is a good idea.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Malefact » Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:13 pm

I think the gaps between the episodes actually add something to the story, especially the gap between episode five and episode six...

I guess more people would stick with the Way if it had a faster paced beginning...but it's natural for some stories to have 'fast' beginnings and others to have 'slow' beginnings, right? It reminds me of the conversation between Lyrra and Rhue when she steps in to take over his story at the end of episode one: "It's usually a good idea to introduce a hook early on...but sometimes it can be well worth waiting for."
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby tridon777 » Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:37 pm

I can think of a few games that start off fast, but have bad or unclimatic endings. FF 4,5,6, heck any of the 2d ff games not that they were not good just that the ending made you want to scream at it for more story at the end. It was a happy ever after ending for F1-6 which is alright sometimes, but the endings were so..... basic.

The Way on the other hand has so much story at the end that parts of this forum are dedicated to it. Maybe to improve the beginning have more tie ins to ep6 on it :?:
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby Angel_OA » Sun Feb 15, 2009 2:48 pm

Sling wrote:No. The only option would be to combine each Episode into a single game and I'm not entirely sure that is a good idea.

I agree. But 3 games would also work quite nicely with the story. 1+2+3, 4+5 and 6 as a stand alone.
I'm sure a hell of a lot of people have played through E1 and stopped there because it really doesn't pick up till E2...
But then again, The Way IS a cult game experience.

By the way Malefact your vids have got me playing The Way again, dammit!
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby EmperorJeramyu » Sun Feb 15, 2009 3:05 pm

I once addressed the Episode 1 issue in the form of rebuttals to imaginary criticisms. This is what I came up with:

Complaint: The prerendered maps are too simplistic and identical.
Rebuttal: Most people who makes this complaint have usually only played through half of Episode 1. Episode 2 only has 1 or 2 used in the intro, while the rest are highly interactive chipsets. Past that, the prerendered backgrounds become highly diversified, depicting a gamut of distinct environments (Episode 5 in particular). Later episodes make them fairly interactive as well, and while it's true they're never as dynamic as chipset based maps, the fact is only about 2% of the actual gameplay takes place on these maps, where as the big, interactive dungeons and cities are entirely made from chipsets.


I'd also like to note out that I've tried my hand at preparing and implementing Bryce 3D renders in RM2K, and neither part of it is very easy. Some of the panoramas Lun prepared blow my mind that he was even able to make them, let alone make them look nice for RPG Maker (see: Episode 5).

Complaint: The plunge is boring and you're always scripted to lose.
Rebuttall: Another complaint stemming from those shallow enough to give up halfway through Episode 1. Past the end of episode 1, there isn't a single plunge where you have nothing else to do but lose. And by the time links, blade arts, risk attacks, and finishers factor in, the rock-paper-scissors element is actually one of the less important elements in the plunge, creating a much deeper system that's more about the strategy of storing up and choosing special attacks then picking the right corner of the attack triangle.

Complaint: Episode 1 is slow and boring or too difficult to get in to.
Rebuttal: This is of course a directly related to the last two, and it's a bit harder to defend than the others, mainly because it's most subjective. Personally, I was hooked instantly by the interesting premise and gorgeous atmosphere, but others want something more tangible right away, I guess. Part of the reason it's so slow is because with episodic gaming, you want to do a more gradual reveal of more systems and gameplay elements to keep each episode fresh, so the first episodes are always going to be a little sparse, and the later ones complex. And I'm loathed to make the comparison, but even most professional console RPGs these days have a Tycho-coined "sawdust eating phase" at the beginning (hello, Tales of Symphonia), but I like to think The Way has better reasons for being slow other than building up to some melodramatic story point. And yes, the scene where you can murder 5 "Brian" (RPG maker speak, ignore it if you don't know) clones in a row is utterly ridiculous, but hey, can't win 'em all.


Honestly, I thought the slowest Episode was Episode 3, but that's not a complaint. Episode 5 and particularly Episode 3 were the only episodes where you really got a tangible feel of "Wandering The Way", which is an experience too good to put into words.
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Re: Let's Play The Way

Postby tridon777 » Sun Feb 15, 2009 3:28 pm

The orchestra and techno music to be honest kept me going in ep1. lol :lol:
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