EXPLAIN Whiplash (video game) - Wikipedia
is it just terrible?
The first thing you see after Nintendo and Treasure’s logo’s in Sin and Punishment is the camera very slowly push in to this frame of a digital clock in the center as the focal point as your character (Airan) cries out for Achi. I remember this shot very well being the very first thing you see before hitting start (as prompted to at the top) but watching this again Treasure does something quite clever for a sequence that only lasts 25 seconds.
The camera suddenly tilts down then snaps back up to the armed volunteers opening fire and killing you as your POV moves up again before falling sideways goes from clear to red to white.
An interjection then begins with some small talk between the general and the squadron but this wide shot adds ambiguity between when exactly this takes place as judged by the amount of bodies in the background where Airen is in relation to the warehouse until…
Both the blood splatter AND the time shows how fresh these events are and reconfirm this as a linear sequence despite the perspective shift. Most examples of this type of editing would likely show the blood appear on the clock as it ticks over or give some passage of time as a detail in a busier frame but the way the camera continues the slow push into the shot’s centre strike’s me as a touch that’s quite rare for game cutscenes (including a track that even sounds a bit like a heartbeat). What’s also noticeable is after this shot there’s a hard fade to black before another vignette with Achi on the top of a tower.
For a scene that functions like an attract screen in an arcade there’s a remarkable economy to what Treasure’s attempting here. Scrubbing through a long play this continues with a lack of exposition over most of the cutscenes and I do wonder how differently they’d be recieved if they ever went for something a bit more highbrow (This releasing between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga makes a lot of sense given the bombast of the former and the minimalism of the latter).
Airan’s voice actor is the current narrator of House Hunters.
CODA:
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i think a lot about how the nintendo magazine i read as a kid misgendered Saki in their preview coverage of Sin and Punishment
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tbf you can make that a reality in smash ultimate
EDIT: They literally bring this up in the trophy descriptions for SSB4
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Etrian Odyssey got me thinking about how in the Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star games I’ve played, as you advance in levels all the characters get beefier and gain powers that are more and more similar, with the differences largely being about the “type” of damage, and characterization things. That characters start out very different and converge as they gain power, while in DnD type games and the first Etrian, the charcters all start off sort of the same in their incompetance and becomes increasingly specialized as they advance, and that this is probably a big part of why DnD game balance sort of falls apart entirely by level twelve
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thinking about yoshi’s drink
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The youtube title is so solid
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Look inside-a me, Mario
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just saw this commercial for the first time
and realized
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are…. there enough of these to start a thread?
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The mario kart world bowser jr redesign
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Rewatched Funeral Parade Of Roses and remembered that the entirety of Peter’s voice work in Video Games is Caim (lead) in Drakengard 1&2, Michael (the dragon) in 3, Grimoire Weiss in the original Nier and the main villain in Yakuza: Dead Souls
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i’m going to be thinking about that a lot too god damn
oh my god i used to quote this to hell
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