Humodour

It baffles me why so many people claim this makes a show good.

The Muffin Man.

Linkin Park's level of popular success in the early years of this decade was nothing short of phenomenal. Their music in this period was actually very simple and formulaic: it could be reduced to a sum of elements such as throaty male screaming, repetitive but unrelenting rap, simple and powerful electric guitar chords, a single ballad melody resounding through the entire composition, a strict intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus formula (with exactly tabulated systems of bridges in relation to the choruses), etc. If we took these elements separately, defined them 'scientifically', then fed them to a 'blind monkey', would the monkey, as you say, random noob, produce something that succeeds at the level of Linkin Park - no, rather, music that sounds like, and is 'as good as', Linkin Park? I don't think so. A media product is never simply a sum of its parts: in that very summation, something that is created is more than that. This is something that you can't explain if you try to import a purely mathematical / scientific mind to something so fluid, and try to 'define' what 'Fallout is', what the core of 'Fallout' is. NMA have been doing that for years, but you look at them arguing over the latest concept art and many of them still disagree with each other. That doesn't mean that 'what Fallout is' doesn't exist: it simply means that it is the wrong approach altogether to try and reduce it down to isolated essences which can be mathematically reconstructed. It's quite simply the wrong model to use. Of course art, music, etc. can be analysed and explained. But all (good) analysis of art, for example, always relates any exploration of a single essence or component back to that whole which is more than the sum of its parts: that which is evident in the work of art itself. Same with Fallout. Now, the fact that it's ab it of 1+1=3? doesn't mean that the study of art or other media is considered to be mystical: that dichotomy between a 'scientific' taxonomy and a 'prehistoric' mysticity is entirely unfounded in this case, because that implies that everything has a scientific-mathematical order with which it is composed, and with enough study, enough technology, enough tools, one can dissect anything to find these independent, atomised elements which follow the general logics of science. That is inverse logic because we are taking the scientific model and applying it to Jack and Joe, and when it doesn't seem to fit, we say "it's just not very clear yet, let's keep going". Art can be demystified, explained, analysed, deconstructed: but because of the nature of art, the way to do it is not to try and define clear, independent, atomised characteristics and say art is the mathematical sum of these parts. That simply flies in the face of art as we experience it, just to satisfy a scientific model. Art and other media have to be analysed in a way that is conscious of this 'more than the sum, etc' and the fact that experience of art and media is always holistic in regards to who consumes it and how. edit: Yeah, that was rambly tl;dr, sorry. But in relation to Fallout, really - it simply means that as Krezack says, it's more than just a sum of its parts, and therefore, making a Fallout sequel which recaptures that 'feel' of Fallout is NOT something a monkey could do. A monkey could reconstruct, say, a table from a blueprint exactly the same, but that's a table; a media product like Fallout is made in a different manner using different base elements which operate in a different manner, and a monkey, without the faculty to understand or adapt to that situation, would not be able to make something that recaptures that 'soul', if you like. Conversely, this means that making a 'faithful' sequel in this sense does not mean that individual symptomatic elements, such as turn-based gameplay or 2D graphics, have to be the same. It would probably be easier if they were, and I'm sure Sand will come and tell me that for him, it's not FO unless it's turn-based (I think it was Sand?). But the 'feel, the 'soul', of a game is not dependent on all such symptomatic elements being exactly the same. That's why making a 'faithful' Fallout would not be a pointless, or silly, or simple venture! <3

TV series I enjoy: Burn Notice Reaper Chuck How I Met Your Mother Black Books Fawlty Towers Daria Scrubs The Big Bang Theory Stargate Dead Like Me Red Dwarf Absolutely Fabulous Clone High Doctor Who Battlestar Galactica Father Ted Daybreak Terminator Jericho

Hmm. Can you explain that a bit more? Not sure I follow.

You should grab: Burn Notice Reaper Chuck Dead Like Me How I Met Your Mother

Games I'm looking forward to (some a lot more than others): Aliens RPG Alpha Protocol Aliens FPS MotB STALKER HL2: Episode 3 The Witcher Mass Effect NWN2 Mildly interested: Jade Empire Fallout 3 Oblivion Dragon Age Bioshock

What time is it? If it's the morning, that means you had a good night. If it's the afternoon, that means you had a really good night.

You just want them all to be mauled horribly, you evil little man.

Right. So, please define what the "soul" of Fallout is, so the discussion can progress. Unless it was a matter of Divine Revelation for the original team, there must be some comprehensible aspect to it, that so far, nobody has been able to quite place their finger on. This doesn't seem to conflict with the fact that folks here are certain that Beth will fail to capture that. Funny. Haha, I'm pretty sure the definition of "greater than the sum of its parts" is that you can't define it fully in terms of other things, so what you're asking is kind of illogical. Fallout was a delicate balance of various concepts and mechanics - it's that balance and choice of concepts/mechanics to use that is the 'soul', I guess. That said, I doubt I'm the only one who feels art is more than the sum of its parts, and I believe that's actually a fairly widely held notion. But just because humans find it hard to capture the essence of something or explain it fully by referencing its parts doesn't mean it is divinely determined. Heck, this is the main reason so many computer games fail these days - the 'parts' don't come together well, or one of the 'parts' is poor quality and drags the entire game down. Marketing is the other reason for failure, of course. Edit: added quote.

If you don't smear Vegemite behind your ears when you're travelling around Australia, you leave yourself extremely vulnerable to dropbear attack.

Zoma said there has been 3 leads.

That's assuming they will remove said things (as opposed to update), and assuming they will not replace them by equally good things. That's a lot of assumptions, and to me, it's blindly jumping in the hatewagon. Don't let that stop you from hating away at your leisure, though. Because it's the cool thing to do. That's assuming that I said that they will remove them and assuming that I said that they will not replacing them with something better, which I didn't. You are now changing the argument, because my argument was about the definition of "ruining the series" rather than that the fallout series will be ruined. I said, assuming that someone believes that the series is ruined would that imply that Fo1 and 2 will suck. I never said anything about what Fo3 will be like. That's your assumption. Still it seems (from Krezack's post) that I was wrong, so I will pass. Err, I'm not saying FO3 will make FO1 and 2 suck. I'm saying that it will potentially destroy the uniqueness and atmosphere of the series, I guess. It's like with a TV series how people say "it sucks now" - adding more and more seasons can ruin a show. I'm hoping for new seasons of Burn Notice, but at the same time, I think season one was pretty damn ace, and I don't want to see something less than that. Picture somebody telling you that Bethesda was going to do a sequel to Planescape: Torment.

Mmm. I just made 4 pieces of vegemite on buttered toast. I used about 20g of vegemite. Delicious!

Eh, no. Well a lot of us have. Poor quality sequels and such dilute the atmosphere of the original.

See, this doesn't worry me. It should have something like a year and a half in Chris's hands, so the earlier two leads can be seen as 'variety introducers'. You know, like a boiling pot of ideas where in the end the best few are selected by peer review and worked on the most extensively. Or something.

^ Actually, it's about preserving the atmosphere of Fallout, really. Ever had a good book/movie/TV series ruined by sequels?

Yeah, I saw that too. I was reading that thinking "wtf?". It was clearly faked, but why did that guy have such a personal vendetta against Soule? He wrote like 10 pages. It was horrible garbage.

Uh, no, the entire point is that they are becoming individuals and that each one is mortal. I thought it was fine. a) It had been building up for many episodes how she was paranoid six was going to steal Hera, and then suddenly she sees that playbook about 6, and finds six cuddling Hera and stuff. Maternal instinct, boom. b) You could tell she was determined to end the threat. I thought that part acting was fairly obvious.

I guess it's OK, but it's only 1 season long and then it got cancelled. Screams "unfinished" to me.

Upon reflection, I'm becoming more and more inclined to think Gaeta is the fifth. 1) They're giving him a large amount of air-time, even though he's relatively 'useless' and unimportant. (c.f. Dualla, even Lee) 2) Why bother with the leg amputation? To me it screams "plot device". An effective way to truly show how human Cylons are - who would suspect a nice guy who had his bloody leg chopped off to be a Cylon, phantom limb and all? 3) He's singing. Haha. And yeah, I appreciated Natalie's little 'mortality' speech that episode. I actually bought it - it was nice. I hope she survives.

You are now my favourite employee. I'm fickle like that.

Tactics was a great game, but it wasn't Fallout in many ways. The violence and crude humour were way over the top, for example. The art direction also shifted a bit for the worse (especially deathclaws and mutants). I also was annoyed that in the late-game, melee/stealth basically got abandoned. They could have really made them good.

Spoiler for next episode (two weeks away):