The current problems in the Star Wars franchise

So it goes without saying that if you are unable to differentiate a character from the actor or actress playing them, then you really shouldn’t be watching TV, reading a book or playing a computer game. Of course, this doesn’t seem to stop Star Wars ‘fans’, and I woke up several times in the last week to find that yet another example of Star Wars fandom ripping itself apart on Twitter. Didn’t take long for me to find posts from the official Star Wars page, basically pointing out that you don’t really need to be racist.

I dug a little deeper, didn’t take long and found that the latest trouble relates to a character in the new Kenobi miniseries, no idea who the character is, she has a new one that Disney have created. Never heard of the actress either if I am honest. But it appears that she has been receiving racist and death threats which is completely unacceptable. It’s inappropriate. It’s pointless. It’s stupid. Look, just don’t do it.

The problem is, the Star Wars fandom has become completely and utterly toxic. In fact, it’s probably beyond toxic now. It’s probably into the radioactive death level now. I’ve been a Star Wars fan since 1997 When the special edition was first released, and my late father took me to the cinema. In fact, it was one of the first films I was taken to see (I think it was maybe the fourth) and I loved Star Wars from that moment and collected huge amount of the books, games, music, you name it. I’ve collected it at one point or another; with the possible exception of costumes. That said in the last 12 months or so I completely stepped away from the fandom and the series. It just didn’t have the magic anymore. I’ve written about the reasons for this on my or the page but that’s not really the purpose of this blog.

This blog is intended is to have a bit of a discussion of my theories on why things have become such a mess in the online community. And despite what some people on Twitter think it’s not just racist fans. There are some deeper systemic problems here and a lot of that has to be placed at Disney’s door. Yes, there are plenty of racist fans out there. And I use the term fan in its loosest possible sense. But it’s covering up a lot of other issues just to throw the current problems at that at their door

in my opinion, the first problem with the Star Wars franchise now is the narrative choices that Disney have made. Originally, you had three Star Wars films, episodes four, five and six, and that was it. But the franchise was kept alive by the expanded universe novels and the computer game world. Now it’s fair to say that some of these early novels haven’t stood the test of time particularly well. The original three that people remember the dark force trilogy in particular have not aged well, particularly with the Clone Wars saga that has been released through episodes two and three, and also the excellent animated series. But over time, the books certainly improved became much more stable, though, it still makes me cringe when I think of the Callista arc.

A lot of memorable characters were introduced. And these became immensely popular in their own right. Disney however, decided pretty much from the get go that none of that was going to matter and they were going to take all that work and make it the Legends series. At the time, this struck me is a little bit odd as there was plenty of scope for expansion, though, I will be the first to admit that it had started to creak a bit under its own weight. There were there are plenty of stories and possible spin off characters such as Kyle Katarn, Corran Horn and Mara Jade.

And there was lots of scope for moving forwards and backwards in the timeline. What Disney seemed to want to do was got the entire house but then realised a little bit later that they didn’t actually have the material to redecorate completely, and instead kind of cherry picked, altered and morphed little bits of the old lore to try and put some sort of homogenous storyline together. I’ll be honest, I think the new canon timeline they’ve created is a bit of a mess. The position wasn’t helped by the choice of some of the authors that they made. In particular the Empire’s End author who has entered notoriety for describing Tie fighters as ‘wibble wobbling’

“The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air, careening drunkenly across the Myrran rooftops – it zigzags herkily-jerkily out of sight.”

Frankly this still makes me cringe and I put the book down at that point (and never picked it up again) but he is also famous for his views on the Lord of the Rings novels. Will agree to disagree on that assessment.

Suffice to say he was booted from the franchise for his views on fandom, which to be fair weren’t necessarily out of order, and I certainly didn’t like the personal attacks he received. Equally his attitude and response frankly sucked so it was not a surprise when Marvel comics booted him. He may be a popular author, I don’t know as had never heard of him before his Star Wars books but when stepping into a franchise as established as Star Wars you cannot just dump on the fandom and then accuse them of being homophobic just because they did not like your book. Again, anyone who did criticise it on those grounds is a fool but literary criticism due to the quality of writing should not be abandoned because of the writer’s personal views. Suffice to say things like this caused the Disney era to have a rocky start and for me it never really recovered.

The mess continued with the new films. I have watched Seven, eight and nine I don’t think they are bad films as individual works. Seven was a bit of a rehash of four and nine was probably the ultimate exercise in playing it safe and doing a mishmash of plotlines. I actually quite enjoyed Last Jedi . I thought it’s took the series to some interesting places and it’s set up some potentially interesting story arcs. Rose, and then the suggestion of Ray’s heritage being irrelevant, but all of that then got thrown in the bin and dumped. Disney have made some odd choices with the narrative, and there’s never been a clear overarching structure. They’ve tried recently with the High Republic book series, but that just doesn’t seem to have any magic for me and it just feels very cold and very box tick. Indeed, it was the first High Republic book that made me drop collecting. I’d stuck with it a long time, remembering the mess of the early Star Wars, Expanded Universe novels, but then it just wasn’t improving. So I called time.

The problem is when you don’t have a clear narrative, and you don’t have a clear roadmap plan and structure is you get these little gaps. It seems at the moment that every minor character who gets a little bit of fandom for whatever reason, is suddenly being given a book or a series. And this just creates a massive breeding ground for disagreement, discontent, and also letting the pond life that inhabit any deep community come out and cause problems. There was always plenty of criticism of the narrative in episodes four, five and six and indeed the expanded universe. The New Jedi Order series in particular was very divisive at the time. But that divisiveness was in relation to the narrative plot rather than the characters. Indeed, there are now so many different arcs and storylines flying around in the Star Wars universe. That for me to even attempt to catch up would be a massive effort and a lot of them I just don’t see the point of it.

I think it’s fair to say that Disney have created a rather odd environment with some of their choices though that doesn’t excuse some of the behaviour that we’re seeing. But equally, I do think that if Disney were not just pumping out a storyline for every minor two bit character, it would be much harder for these people to latch on to some of the things that they seem to do. T

hat leads me on to the second issue on the Disney Side. It just feels now that characters and storylines are aimed at demographic box ticking and marketing wet dream. As I said earlier, there were plenty of Expanded Universe characters that had massive amounts of fan support and back story; Mara Jade, originally a character in the dark force trilogy, became monumentally popular, and a main character by the end of the Expanded Universe series. It was common to see her portrayed at cosplay, and there were other characters such as Corran Horn and Kyle Katarn, who again, were really really popular (and I still think Jynn Erso is a really poor alternative to the original death star story featuring Bria Theren and that story linked Han Solo in as well!)

it seems now though, that any character that gets a bit of a positive reaction in a Nielsen rating is given an immediate series or a book I’ve lost count of the number of series that have been proposed. And that constant milking of the franchise irritates a lot of people. It’s something similar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The number of characters that are out there and and now having series is insane. I’ve seen recently that there is a show called Moon Knight, portrayed by the excellent Oscar Isaac, superb actor, but it’s a series about a character I’ve never heard off and I read a lot of comics growing up. Certainly it was not as mainstream as most of the others they have done.

In Star Wars now it seems that any character that gets a little bit of online popularity is now gets a series and it just makes it feel cold. It’s a marketing strategy where they’re saying, “Oh, this is popular. This could sell a subscription or an action figure or a tie in.” It just feels like Metaverse marketing. I have seen some of the new Star Wars stuff, the Mandalorian and it was okay. Wasn’t bad. wasn’t great. Felt a little bit flat but the whole hype around the baby Yoda was insane. I don’t know who came up with that idea. But I hope that the marketing and merchandise department gave you one hell of a pay rise; but it proves the point. Baby Yoda became a bigger character than the series itself and the toys/collectibles spin off gives people with axes to grind more ammunition. They don’t need an encouragement to attack in the echo chambers of social media.

Now of course the original trilogy was hardly small. The original series had quite a big cast, but the main core was kept tight and it became a cultural icon. If you keep expanding it and add more and more characters in though, you will find people that dislike them and you can’t police everything. So by trying to diversify the market so much with the product range. What Disney have actually done is expose a greater volume of product to a greater volume of people. And you don’t need to be a mathematical or statistical genius to say that this extrapolates to more noise on social media and such noise invariably leads to more abuse.

It has to be said it’s not all Disney’s fault. In fact, I would say that a large amount of the current issues are not Disney’s fault at all. Disney may be responsible for creating the environment. But the attitude of a growing number of people is on said people and not on Disney but you can say that Disney has been rather selective implying its morality. I don’t have any issue with a company having a sense of morality, making statements and ethical decisions. It’s to be lauded but with Disney, it feels like morality is employed when it becomes marketable. After Last Jedi there was a torrent of vitriol in relation to the character Rose and her hinted at romance with Finn. I can well remember the few message forums I was still on at that time. The torrent of abuse that flowed and it wasn’t just racists not liking Finn being black or Rose being of Southeast Asian descent. We had the LGBT community kicking off because they felt that the Rose/Finn romance was wrong and instead Finn/Poe romance/bromance would be a better thing. Then we had others wanting the Rey/Finn romance. It just becoming a complete mess.

Indeed, the actress for Rose, Kelly Marie Tran, spoke out about the harm and pain this caused her. Now I actually quite liked the idea of the character of Rose. A non force sensitive, normal person just doing her bit, I think it has massive story potential. But it got dropped. By the time of Rise of Skywalker, Rose had been dumped into such a minor part that I don’t even think she was on the poster. Same for Finn and almost all of his storyline was dropped. And again, in many of the Rise of Skywalker posters he wasn’t present at all. You cannot deny that Disney have not exactly played it straight when they have made so many edits to Star Wars films to accommodate the Chinese market. Indeed, with the current statement they’ve made calling out racism; more than one person has pointed out that “hang on, you’re calling people criticising this new actress racist, which you are right to do but you cut out one of your lead actors from the marketing in the Chinese posters.”

Now had Disney cut turned around and said we were wrong to do that and we’ve learned this lesson, which is why we’re now calling out racism. I’d have a lot of respect for them. But to do one thing a few years ago, and another thing now and not only highlights your own inconsistency, it comes across as rank hypocrisy or supporting a social justice card because you think it’s going to garner a positive reaction. Now I don’t actually care that that probably is the reason. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is, this is business after all, but at least have the balls to come out and say it or at least make a passable excuse for why you’ve changed your stance.

Something similar happened when the actress Gina Miller was dropped from the Mandalorian series. Now, her views are equally reprehensible. But the way that was handled i.e. completely cancel her does seem at odds a with the fact that Disney’s founding father was somewhat nasty in his views and there are other actors who Disney have employed who have behaved in a very poor manner and have been given carte blanche. I stress Disney are right to call out the racism. No problem with them doing that but they need to be consistent in their morality. You cannot turn it off and on when it suits because if you do, it’s not morality. It’s marketing and it will piss people off but it has to be said there were problems here in the community as a whole. There always has been. But in recent years, it has become nuts.

I can remember posting on the forums after Last Jedi, saying that the problem I felt was that there was not a clear narrative arc. And I can remember some Twitter clown kicking off trying to be a smartass pointing out that “Oh, well. There were problems with the original trilogy.” To which I pointed out that had he read the post, I would have said and indeed did say the original series had its problems, but it had a clear narrative arc. Pretty clear. This clown though, was determined that everything Disney did was wonderful and anybody who opposed it was either racist, a dinosaur or a variety of slurs that I can’t really remember. I blocked him. I just couldn’t be bothered and I could see was attacking other people and I think most people actually did block him on that thread. That was around four years ago. And things have only gotten worse.

The problem as with all science fiction, and anime type fandoms is that for many, many years, they were not mainstream. I can certainly remember at school in the late 90s That you didn’t admit to being a sci fi fan. You’d have been mocked out of the building, particularly in an all boys school (like I was). People knew you had that interest, but as long as you didn’t advertise it, it was fine. Like the d&d community geekdom was basically underground and that basically made people quite possessive of their interest. They defended it because it was them and they’ve never been able to be open about it. The world has changed and now it’s perfectly acceptable to be an anime or a science fiction fan. Indeed, it’s become very mainstream but that pain and that memory lingers in a lot of people. And then when new people come into the community with different views, and in their own way, absolute views, it promotes a backlash.

Now I have to say that I am in no way, a fan of the massive amount of cultural revisionism that is currently happening. Social justice causes seem clever on paper but for me, it’s the intention that matters and you do not combat intolerance by being intolerant. And Star Wars has become a vehicle for this culture war. The reason is simple. It’s nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s that Star Wars is a massively recognised brand, and that if you basically link in with that, you’re pretty much guaranteed on a social media algorithm to get boosted up the charts. Star Wars is usually trending in some way shape or form. So using a hashtag relating to it, get you seen in a way hashtagging based on a minor character in a Sci Fi Channel independent series does not. There are plenty of people who are determined to look for a cause even when it is based on a story set in a make believe world. Star Wars as a reality doesn’t exist, never existed. It’s the fever dream of one man that people latched on to and yes, it borrows a lot from cultural, spiritual sources, but it’s a fundamentally a story. But people have stopped being able to see that and they’ve stopped being able to recognise that you can criticise something without having an ulterior motive. Criticising a character portrayed by a black person, because the character is rubbish does not make you racist. Criticising a character’s actor or actress based on their skin colour. That is racist. There are plenty of fictional characters I cannot stand. Harry Potter is the one that springs to mind immediately. I cannot stand it because it is an awful character. I find it irritating. I find it flat and one dimensional. That is a literary criticism of a character who for me, has just nothing to offer.

I don’t criticise the actor for playing him and I don’t criticise the actor the character’s appearance. I don’t hate Harry Potter because he wears glasses. I hate Harry Potter because he’s a crap character. In my opinion. Star Wars is similar. There are plenty of Star Wars characters I dislike; and no not just Jar Jar Binks. But disliking the character because it’s poorly written, doesn’t fit or seems a token gesture isn’t a problem. You should not be criticised for that. But in a growing number of communities there are people who cannot recognise that; and that’s the problem that we currently have. There I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who criticise this new character because they thought that the character was poorly written, didn’t fit or made no sense. That is a valid criticism if that’s what they think and they’re prepared to back it up. If it’s just straightforward, I don’t like this character because it’s changed then that’s pointless and achieves nothing. In the current climate though any valid criticism has now been drowned out by the torrent of abuse coming from the other side saying you’re criticising that character because it’s a black woman; ergo you are racist? No. This is stopping Star Wars growth, and I don’t mean it’s commercial growth because it’s a cash cow. It’s stopping it’s literally growth. If a character is poor, then they can be redeemed. They can’t be improved. There are plenty of Star Wars characters in the expanded universe who were pretty poor at the beginning. Some of the Rogue Squadron characters didn’t make a great deal of sense and were bloody annoying. Corran Horn was a pain in the ass at the beginning I did not like the character. But over time, he was improved and became one of my favourite characters. There is nothing to stop that happening in the new fandom but if Disney are only seeing that criticism is being framed in racist terms, even when it isn’t, but the noise is suggesting that it is they’ll have no reason to improve things. So things will stay as they are and that characters flaws will continue. And then it will continue to annoy people but now they will be afraid of speaking up because they don’t want to be labelled as racist. They’re not racist. They just don’t like a character.

So where does Star Wars go from here? Well, the roadmap is pretty clear that they’re determined to throw out as many series as they can and for me I think an awful lot of these are cold, sterile marketing exercises. But more and more and more I am seeing sensible fans who just want to enjoy a good exciting fantasy and science fiction show turning away. They watch it for a bit but they don’t engage. They might watch a series, on a long weekend, but they’re not buying into it like they once did. It will continue to make Disney huge amounts of money. There’s no doubt about it. But it will increasingly polarise opinion. More and more people will take one side or the other. That’s because echo chambers inherently grow. As people say Star Wars is woke, those who dislike woke will flock to that banner and vice versa. The only people that this ultimately hurts are the fans themselves, because they won’t get the quality of content that they deserve. And the Star Wars franchise deserves solid stories. It deserves solid characters but it can’t get them if there is no room for criticism and growth. So Disney face a difficult choice. They can continue down this current road and become constantly embroiled in social media storms and chaos; or they can perhaps take the more moderate view that yes, we want to call out racism. But we also need to hold up our hands to the fact that we’ve been bloody inconsistent in that ourselves the past; but we also want to encourage valid criticism.

That means doing something that they ought to now have been reluctant to do; and that is challenged the white knights who feel obliged to tackle what they perceive as society’s ills, without recognising that in the process, they’re actually causing harm. Now, I suspect that my half thought ramblings above will not be 100% accepted by everybody and that and that’s totally fine, because that’s the purpose of opinion and criticism. And indeed, I’d be interested in hearing from people what they think about the current position of Star Wars under the Disney banner, and do they think it’s going in the right direction? So drop a comment below. Let me know your thoughts and stay safe, and I’ll look forward to catching up with you soon.

Horus Heresy and the sage of marine gender

Well that took even less time than I expected. Before the first day was out there was already a social media storm brewing for the new Horus Heresy rule book. I caught sight of the first post around 11am yesterday and thought is it something new? A piece of lore that has never been seen before and is provoking frenzied debate. No. It’s the below and the old fight over female space marines in the game. It’s also worth pointing how disappointing the massive tide of negativity on some of the larger social media groups from existing 30k players for people getting into and enjoying the new game. I mean how dare people have fun.

lighting the blue touch paper

So cards on the table from the outset. Inclusivity is important in the hobby and more work is needed to get it where we want to go but I have absolutely zero interest in taking a side on this one; if you want to field marines as all men or all women then go nuts; if you turn up at a gaming centre and have an army with aftermarket female heads then I am more than happy to play against them. I may ask to inspect them more closely to see the sculpt quality and ask questions on the paint job but so long as the unit matches the datasheet in terms of weapons, base and stats then all is well with me. There are three reasons for my stance. The first is that I actually personally consider marines to be an androgynous parody of humanity rather than a poster for humanity; I do however think that the Imperial Guard kits should all be mixed gender.

The second is that I usually treat the lore as setting and therefore disregard the bits of it that are not relevant if I am running a themed army; my hobby my rules (though in this case I do think that the safer course of option would have been to leave the entire sentence out). The third is the fact that I am more interested in the person I am playing against and chatting with them than the makeup of their army. The social aspect of the game and the actions of the person I am playing matter more than whether or not the marines they are fielding have female heads or not. That does not mean I don’t care how they make the minis; rock up with some sexually stylised marine conversion to mock or endorse your own kinks and I sure as hell won’t be playing you. Sorry to those with strong views on either side but I just cannot find myself to muster the outrage that many of the people I follow seem to; sorry but I have to much going on in my own life dealing with my father’s passing to get into a row over the gender of toy soldiers.

The female marines argument has rumbled for the last few years and the battle lines are well entrenched. Advocates for them point out the need for inclusivity and also point out that the new rulebook will be used against the trans community in the hobby. Advocates for the other side point out that this is lore which has been long established, there is nothing to stop you fielding them in casual play and that there are all female forces in the game. What usually follows is usually a circular argument with neither side giving ground and when I see it I usually mute the post. I do though want to take a look at each side of the argument in a bit more detail and say that in my views both sides’ arguments have flaws.

Inclusivity

This is a big thing and GW have, rightly in my view, made much noise about trying to include all people in the hobby. The statement about warhammer being for all was not in my view particularly well drafted (that’s with my legally trained hat on) as it gave the incel elements of the hobby ammunition; but the intention and spirit was good and the increase in variation of skin tones and a greater number of female characters is to be lauded. The game should be for all who want to play it and I can see why people will consider the wording in the new book a somewhat hypocritical line to take in light of earlier statements. People are right to point out that there will be people who pick up on this and use it; though I would point out that this is a hobby where a person can rock up at a tournament thinking that an army with totenkopf markings and colours is suitable. Am pretty sure that no where in the warhammer lore do we see endorsement for that.

For me the sad truth is that GW could completely back the female marines and it would not stop the dark underbelly of the game; if anything it would probably inflame them more and give them greater ammunition with the tedious “go woke go broke” line. Yes, it may exclude them from some tournaments but I guarantee it will not remove them fully or even to a large degree because they are using the game as an expression of their own thoughts and feelings. Make female marines and I guarantee there will be grotesque parodies and horrendous conversions to make a point/express their view within the day. Those ‘creations’ will be plastered around the usual reddits, facebook, discord and twitter groups as a badge of honour. I don’t like the fact that these people exist and anyone who I even get a whiff of being like that I block or refuse to play against (I would happily throw a game against scum like that).

Inclusivity is to be encouraged but I am not sure that making marines female as well does it. Especially when you have the somewhat sexualised sisters of battle (boob armour) running round the game; I mean I get that this is a make believe world but but that armour is just playing to a crowd for me. I would much prefer GW to openly say that the lore is just there for theme and if you want to modify gender you can; whilst at the same time seeing tournament rules and gaming centres banning customers who are not meeting a code of conduct (and that includes banning them from there stores). It won’t remove them because you cannot remove them from society but it does help. Sadly nothing seems to remove these elements and even driving them underground does not work; one only needs to look at the likes of the National Front. It’s banned, ostracised and derided but it still exists because sadly there will always be people with abhorrent views and if someone wants to find an echo chamber or confirmation bias then they will.

Aiding the anti-LBTGQ+ people

This is a hard one for me because it seems to rely on a absolutist view and I don’t ever like that. I think that in particular the transgender debate is one which has become extremely inflamed by hard line zealots with a win at all costs mentality and that does annoy a lot of people who point out that just as gender is not necessarily a black and white issue neither is the argument about transgender rights. There are nuances and ramifications (especially in relation to women’s sport). I have no issue with any persons orientation or gender; I judge on actions nothing more, but I do see why a lot of people are made uncomfortable with the encroachment into women’s rights and the absolute dog piling that seems to happen in this area. I don’t have an answer to the argument, I doubt anyone does; but the absence of sensible and rational debate undermines, for me, the valid points that more sensible and rationale campaigners do have.

It is indisputable that the line in the rulebook will be used in a negative way by some but then any line in the rule book would be used if it did not meet a person’s objective. Saying that women can be space marines would trigger the comment that trans women are not ‘true’ women from the usual crowd. Say that any human can be a space marine and they will twist that as well. These are people who want to have their own male centric view and will have it any way they can get it. There is nothing that GW can say to stop them, and whilst that does not mean they should not try, it equally means that there needs to be recognition that they will never be able to word it in a way which does not annoy someone. Personally in this case I do think it would have been better to remove the whole section (though no doubt the absence of it would then have caused another row about ‘missed opportunity’, ‘going woke’ etc).

The lore

“The lore says…” Ah the argument of someone who does not actually have a cogent argument and is simply falling back on what someone else has said or written. Used by gatekeepers across every fandom going for me this is the very definition of confirmation bias and is a logical fallacy. For me the fluff in a warhammer rule book is to create a theme, an idea and then I extrapolate it out. Take the arming ceremony for marines or the prayers tech priests use. I don’t have a phase in a game where I have to chant something before my techpriest tries to repair a tank. It’s a theme that tech is venerated and needs to be treated as alive; it is a theme which you can choose to ignore or not and is just there for immersion. It is not holy writ as it can and has been changed. Squats being gone was lore for decades but hey they are back because commercially it makes sense for GW to bring them back; just like making marines male in the early days made commercial sense.

I mean how many times did GW say “no” to these guys coming back?

GW write the lore and can change it any time they want (you only need to look at necrons to see that) but it has to make commercial sense for them to do it. I would be very interested in seeing what would be the result in an in store poll (not online as that would become an echo chamber) where you were shown a sculpt of a male and female space marine (not stylised with boob armour but basically a female head swap and maybe a little smaller) and told to vote on which they would buy or a ‘either’. I am pretty sure that either would be the winner because most people are genuinely inclusive in the hobby and would not have an issue either way with female marines. Why? Because they are not treating the lore as holy writ and instead view it as what it is. A thematic setting in a parody and made believe world using toy soldiers. Relying on the lore of a made up world in a commercial product which has editions (which by definition change) is inevitably going to see you defending a position which has changed or become redundant.

All female factions

This usually gets trotted out alongside the ‘does that mean men can be in the sisters of battle’ and is a circular argument. The lore (which they so venerate) explains why they are all female and the lore being holy write usually gets trotted out alongside this argument; conveniently forgetting that the lore is a method to garner interest in a commercial product. Now personally I dislike the sisters of battle range for a few reasons. One is the level of religious iconography; it makes me a little uncomfortable if I am honest and is also a faff to paint when you are a shit painter like me. Second is that it feels a tokenistic force. Marines are men so sisters are women and I dislike that kind of absolutist thinking; coupled with the stylised look on the armour they are a faction which feel a bit off for me.

It’s an iconic image but tight black and boob armour.

I have no problem with an all female force in the game but think that the design of the sisters is aimed more at the male fantasy than actually women playing the game; it always put me in mind of the Red Sonja film from the eighties. The newer sculpts are better but there is still a way to go there. I have no problem with a stylised image of men and women but such an image is not all that inclusive and usually gives rise to personal comments comparing people who want change with the image. The female guard sculpts so far have, for me, been far more successful in portraying women in an inclusive manner than the sisters but there is also a limelight argument. Advocates for equality rightly point out that the sisters get comparatively little coverage, though it has to be said they’ve had more love recently than some, and are not the poster army for the game. That’s certainly a fair point and there could be a change made there but you would end up back in the arguments I have listed above.

Conclusion

This argument will run and run frankly. If GW come down on either side then it will make the whole thing worse than it already is as one side will think they have ‘won’ and the other will form a ‘resistance’. Things will become even more toxic than they already are. I have to say I rather suspect that the inclusion of the line was an honest oversight and it was just lifted whole as a text file from the previous edition. It would have been better to omit it entirely (though that would have not stopped the debate over heresy as the whole ‘beakies’ thing has shown) and just ignore any questions on the subject. They didn’t and this does perhaps call into question the editing/reviewing process undertaken but as GW keep things like that secret so as to avoid a Matt Ward situation we do not know what happened there. Some suggestions of having more women involved in the reviewing are only fine if there are not already women involved in the process but it does open up a minefield of where you draw the line. Who else do you include as the more you include and send out the greater the risk of leaks, revision on revision and nothing ever making it out there. The reality is that the line is out there now so social media will become even more toxic for a bit.

Personally I would like GW to include mixed gender and race in the upcoming guard refresh and the signs are promising with the new Creed model (though not that bloody helmet). Equally I would like to see the sisters’ armour design take more of the approach that Rings of Power seems to have taken and move away from the over-stylised boob armour. If you are going to make an all women faction then make it an all women faction and not just fetish warrior nuns. I think it is also important that hobby and gaming centres do all they can to ensure that tournaments are not giving people platforms and are genuinely inclusive; many do but not all and that does need to change; though I accept it is not necessarily an easy thing to do though I do think having photos of the army being used be submitted before the tournament has merit. If nothing else it mitigates the risk of the totenkopf incident happening again.

I have no doubt there will be plenty who disagree with me over my views and that’s fine. I don’t mind disagreement but please can we remember that these are toy soldiers being sold by a company interested in money. Judge people by what they say and do and not whether or not there marines have a man or woman strapped inside the suit.

Future plans

Hello all, hope that you are keeping well?

Just wanted to ‘pen’ a little update about this blog which, as you may have noticed, has changed a bit. As I am no longer getting much tabletop hobby done due to real world issues and complications I have decided to expand things a bit. I really do want to grow the blog and am slowly finding a style I like. Ideally I would like to get to ten subscribers by the end of the year (look at the ambition!!). To that end I have started to expand and will continue to expand by covering:

  1. Game reviews. Mainly RPG and JRPG but the odd RTS or simulator may creep in;
  2. book reviews from the fantasy and sci-fi genres
  3. Anime, sci-fi and fantasy products which I may buy from time to time
  4. The odd anime (though not that many as I seldom watch tv at present).

I will be steering clear of politics and social commentary unless it directly relates to one of the above. I am not unaware of those issues but just want to try and keep this from becoming to heavy a hobby! Youtube is not in the current plan this year but I may look to create a channel or a podcast in the future. Would be delighted for any feedback people want to give on the format, content and approach of the blog articles and of course any sharing of the site on social media would be greatly appreciated.

Just wanted to explain things and, as always, I hope you are all safe and well.

Diablo Immortal, a troubling study in the psychology of manipulation

So, Diablo Immortal, the latest free to play game released for mobile this week. Part of the immensely popular IP of the same name this game was announced to a degree of scepticism as many fans wanted a full PC game, not a mobile; but its release has certainly generated a great deal of publicity and online chat, which in the world of Blizzard Entertainment is probably not anything particularly new. Now I’ve never played Diablo and to be honest, I don’t have any particular burning desire to play this game. Indeed this blog isn’t a review of Diablo as a game but rather a comment on what it represents.

I probably would have let its past me by completely and not paid a great deal of attention, I have never been tempted by the franchise and any heavily pushed mobile game usually gets a block from me. What caught my eye however was a post I saw on another blog site (cannot even remember the name if I’m honest). That blog stated that it would cost $110,000 to fully upgrade a character in the game. Now I’ll be honest, I thought this was a typo. I thought that the decimal point had been moved too far to the right. After all, no one in their right mind would pay $110,000 On a mobile game. I mean, in some places that would get you a house or at least a heck of a chunk of a house. So I did some more digging and found oversights corroborating that the cost of fully upgrading a character would be £88,000 pounds. Now this would be the worst case scenario assuming you had really low luck levels but to fully level up you’re still talking of one hell of a lot of money. Now there’s nothing new in pay to win mobile games. It’s a fairly common part of the genre. Indeed, I play mobile games I’ve played Azur Lane for a couple of years. And I’ve played other games which have all featured very predatory mechanics. I have to say, though that Diablo is a level above anything I’ve ever seen before in any game.

Now I haven’t played the game but I’ve seen plenty of screenshots of questionable UI design, with text overlapping and odd wraps in place; equally though the gameplay run throughs I have watched look pretty good. It seems to run well and it is not uncommon for there to be a few bugs in a new release. But then again, if this is a new release that has the potential of you spending £88k i would be expecting near perfect graphical fidelity, gameplay and next to now bugs. Maybe I am being overly demanding in that view but personally I abhor this new habit of effectively releasing a game in beta mode (cyberpunk I’m looking at you). To be fair though Diablo does not look to have done that and does seem to be mostly finished and polished. Credit to Blizzard for that at least.

Now as I said above, I play a couple of mobile ; I’ve played Azur Lane for a few years and I do occasionally drop money on it mainly for skins.I played Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes for quite a while and that had significant Pay for advantage and Pay to Win mechanics. I generally stay as a free to play player and for about 18 months my main game was Genshin Impact which is very much a gasher mechanic but I just couldn’t get my head around the concept of £88,000 to fully level up a character in a mobile game. And there will be people stupid enough or rich enough to drop that kind of money. The desire to be number one in PvP, for youtube clicks and just the possibility for general flex we’ll have people putting this money down. Now none of this means that a free to play player cannot enjoy the game. Indeed, I’ve seen plenty of posts from people who say they really do enjoy it and that’s brilliant. If you are enjoying it then long may that continue for you. I really hope that you get months and months of joy from this game but I am pretty sure that you wont unless you pay. A lot. I am sure that you probably can get to the level that a player can effectively buy to but it would take a free to play player years. Now I want to be clear again that I have no objection to games being monetised with cosmetics, skins and even extra missions/levels. I’m not overly adverse to pay for advantage for limited boosts and xp boost for a couple of days or some form of pack. As I say it’s common in most mobile games. It’s a common small company method of generating revenue after the game has gone live and cashing in on success, and whilst not always pleasant, and often abused in Diablo it does feel different.

Some of that could be due to it being an established and large IP. Diablo has a big following and Blizzard are a huge company and despite their recent PR issues over culture, they are not a small indie startup. They have dropped some of the biggest games in the last couple of decades and have solid financials. They are not surviving month to month as it were. So to drop a game with openly predatory crap cash grabbing with massive loop holes and exploiting psychology is a worry, because Diablo immortal will be a success. It will be downloaded millions of times it will be played a lot. It will get lots of reviews, lots of screen time and reviews.

But from blizzards points of view and with many computer game designers of any publicity being good publicity, this game has already succeeded. Seeing this there will be people in marketing who are there thinking well if we’ve done it with a mobile game, what else can we do it with? Now loot boxes have come in for justifiable bad press in recent years. Indeed, immortal is actually not releasing in several European countries because loot boxes are banned. Now Diablo Immortal itself has actually been banned in some countries in Europe under the same gambling laws which govern loot boxes and that should be an instant red flag for anybody who is looking to play a game that has been banned as being gambling. You have to ask the question of what does Blizzard actually think of its players here. It would have been possible to make a game which could be free to play but still make money with skin and small pay for advantage elements. The size of the IP would have made it hugely profitable given the massive scale of the mobile market but instead of that Diablo has blatant pay-walls right from the start with temptation and psychological ploys being rolled out left right and centre.

now already the internet is bitterly divided over this. You’ve got people saying well, you don’t have to pay and you can still have fun. To a degree that’s true. You don’t have to pay but being a free to play player in a game that seems to have a strong grinding element is difficult. I have seen plenty of parties in play throughs dropping free to play users who do not have high level crests for dungeons because they want fellow whales to help them. This is generating clear factions and battle lines n the social media sphere.

So where does this leave the mobile market? I’d say it leaves it in a very interesting place. Diablo may end up having the best gameplay of any mobile game ever made. It may not I don’t know. But there will be big companies watching how the market react to this and there are plenty of other IP owners that would happily look to make a massively manipulative and monetised game. If there is a way that they can make it pay and get away with the loot box structure, then why wouldn’t they go along with it? After all, it’s easy money and with a little bit of thought and some creative verbal gymnastics you can get around the ‘gambling’ title on many of the paid features. Equally this could end up being a massive own goal for Blizzard. Part of me hopes that it is not because I have any particular beef with Blizzard. But I just think that the sheer predatory nature of this game is shocking and I fear that it is only a matter of time before we see stories of players who have gotten into massive financial problems because of this game. Yes, they should be able to control themselves but the psychological ploys here are so numerous, so insidious and also so fundamentally broken that I can see why plenty of people will fall into the trap.

If there is a sufficient backlash, it’d be interesting to see what Blizzard do. After all, the game seems to be structured and built around a pay to win mechanic. So to change that and make it less pay to win would be a fundamental redesign and what you do for those people who’ve already bought massively powerful items? You can’t turn around and say all actually we’re going to reset you to the same level or a lower level. They’ve spent good money and possibly an insane amount of it. So it may now be that Diablo immortal cannot actually be made less predatory; even if there was a desire to do so. I rather suspect that there is not.

I stress again this does not stop you having fun with the game. If you are playing without paying and you’re enjoying it and it’s giving you a laugh, then great, fantastic. Long may that continue but as a player, you deserve better, in my opinion. You’re not there to be an easy cash cow for a large game studio to milk just so that you can progress in the game that they have designed. Character overlays decorative items, pets, things that may even give a tiny boost. That’s fine. I have no problem with paying for those because it’s choice and you can beat the game without them; but to pay to complete or progress or even just keep up with other players? That just doesn’t sit right with me.

So I’d be interested in hearing what other people think about this and not just anti Blizzard rants. I know Blizzard has a culture problem and a lot of what they’ve done is unconscionable. But this is just about the mechanics at play in this game.

So drop a comment below. Let me know what you think. Do you think that Diablo will be a great success? Or do you think this will be a commercial disaster for Blizzard? Do you think that there will be other big gaming studios looking on with interested thinking that they want a piece of the action? Or will they be thinking we don’t want to go near this with a 10 foot pole?

As I say let me know what your thoughts are. I hope everyone is safe and well and I will catch up with you next time.

Lord of the Rings and the danger of adapting books for TV and film

So this week the first screenshots of the Lord of the Rings adaptation Rings of Power have been released. Up to now we had only had teasers and little hints, but not really much to give an insight into the world that Amazon are creating. Now at this stage, there’s not a lot to go on, and I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail about them as a result. It’s fair to say though, that the reception has been mixed. For most people the design of the world look promising and you can see clear similarities to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. There has however been concern expressed about the plot line seemingly focusing around Galadriel. Now I’ll be honest the route they seem to be following does strike me as slightly odd; as the teaser information suggests that she’s been cast as some sort of callow elvish youth. Without wanting to go too deep into Lord of the Rings lore, a very dangerous area to go into unless you’re a Tolkien scholar, it seems odd that Galadriel is being portrayed this way. After all, this is a sister of Feanor, who lived through the entirety of the War of the Jewels and has seen the light of the valar. In the literary world, she is far older than Elrond and said to be far more powerful. So portraying her this way seems a little odd. There are narrative ways to get around it after all Tolkien makes no mention of her in the Silmarillion after her first appearance, so there could be an argument to say that she never directly fought in the War, and the reference to her having much to learn could in fact relate to her fighting in the first war of the rank.

I will say however that in my view it’s sensible to make Galadriel one of the key characters here as this series is set during the War of the Ring, and Galadriel would probably have played a part in that given where Lorien is positioned in relation to both Eregion on and Khazad Dum. We’ll see what comes with the series, but I’ll be honest, I’m not holding out a great deal of hope. Not because it’s a Lord of the Rings adaptation, but because it’s a book adaptation. There have been a number of popular IP adapted for television series recently including some of my most favourite series, and not one of them has hit the mark. Indeed, the only book adaptation I would say that has achieved great success in recent years has been Game of Thrones but Game of Thrones wasn’t a finished work (Indeed it still isn’t a finished novel series). This gave the writers more creative scope though many fans argue that they failed to nail the end. Others though have either failed or just been massive disappointments. The ones that stand out for me would be Dark Tower, Wheel of Time and The Shannara series.

Now adapting a novel is difficult. There’s no two ways about it but it’s also a tempting thing to do. A popular novel series has a ready made fan base. If you can tap into that it makes it an awful lot easier to gain traction and support for the film or series. But the other side of that is that fans of the novel series tend to be very knowledgeable about it. They don’t just read the book once and never read it again. They read it many many times over, and they often know it inside out. This causes problems when a series needs to be produced because any large novel series cannot be directly adapted to screen. It’s simply not possible. You would end up with something bloated and horrendous. Even Lord of the Rings underwent massive changes when Peter Jackson cut it down for his original three films. The Council of Elrond for example, is an awful scene to try and adapt for screen. It’s effectively a very badly chaired committee meeting with lots of people talking over each other vast amounts of exposition and argument. In TV terms it’s as boring as hell. What Jackson did was cut it down to the key points and keep the scene in but keep it as short as he could get away with.

So this highlights one of the big problems with adaptations. You cannot adapt literally. You cannot take page one of the book run it through page 300 and do each screen as it is just not going to work. You’d end up with something absolutely massive and it would have absolutely no flow and pace at all. So I do have a lot of sympathy for Amazon here. Adapting Tolkien’s work is difficult, especially when the First War of the Ring hasn’t ever been fully fleshed out in novel form. There are essays and bits here and there in various different books and appendices, but there’s no full material to work with. That means they can use creative licence. The problem with creative licence is that it’s very, very personal.

That doesn’t mean that a film adaptation or TV adaptation of a popular novel franchise cannot be done. but there are several things that I think anybody looking to do this would need to consider.

The first and most important is to decide what it is that you’re trying to achieve. Are you trying to do an adaptation of the book as closely as possible? Are you trying to make an entertainment series based on the book? Or are you just trying to make something set in the world or kind of inspired by series? And these are all very different things.

The First Lord of the Rings was pretty much as direct an adaptation of the books as you could get away with. Yes, there were events cut out; there had to be you just couldn’t get everything in. And some of those exclusions were unfortunate, but they weren’t necessary for the story. It is also worth remembering they’re not expressly excluded. They’re just not referred to. So for example, Tom Bombadil doesn’t appear in the films but there’s nothing to say that that event didn’t happen.

The problem with adapting it this way is unless you managed to nail everything (the story, the casting, the music and the design) you’re not going to be as successful. The Lord of the Rings movies were unique when in that it managed to get everything right but Over adaptations have not been anywhere near as successful. And this is evidence with the Hobbit films. There were changes made for cinema (and arguably marketing) reasons. And it just didn’t have the effect of the original films. For me the Hobbit was a valiant effort but it didn’t work.

Likewise, adapting for entertainment is a risky venture and I think this is possibly the route that Lord of the Rings Rings of Power is going down. Adapting for adventure gives you a wider audience. It taps into that Game of Thrones demographic with the sword and sorcery kind of world. Wheel of Time also tried something similar. The problem with that is you run slap bang into the fan groups who consider the source material as holy writ. I have to be honest I find considering a source novel as sacrosanct odd and its not a view I’ve particularly shared. It’s a bit strange. For me to be so passionate about defending a fictional world. So long as the key themes and there is a solid effort made then I’ll judge it as it comes.

But equally when some of the changes are made just for the sake of box ticking, demographics, or so so called correct thinking; it never really sits comfortably with me. We saw this with Wheel of Time. There were changes made to character backstories and indeed, the whole key premise of Rand for being the Dragon Reborn was pretty much dropped in at the beginning as an “Oh, well”. Changes for the sake of change or desire to just to tick boxes always seems to weaken things. This is how it felt with Wheel of Time, the reveals in the first episode robbed the series of a lot of its impact. Indeed, I didn’t follow it again after the first episode and this is my absolutely favourite novel series. I should have been lapping up but the whole story had effectively been revealed. Yes, there will be plot story and fill in But the idea of one of the three being the reborn dragon lose lost its effect when it was given away in essentially chapter one.

The final option of adapting using the book as an inspiration is fine. I think it’s what happened with the Dark Tower film. Dark Tower was not an adaptation of the book of the same name. It used some of the characters and it used the idea, but it was not a literal adaptation. But the problem was the series or rather the film in this case, wasn’t built that way. It was billed as an adaptation. So when it wasn’t fan groups kicked off and fan groups tend to be very noisy and have a lot of media clout. The end result being the film gang has negative reviews and people don’t go and see it.

So deciding from the start, what you intend to do, and more importantly being clear to the market. What you are doing is important.

Second thing that any adaptation needs to do is consider its audience.

Audience is important because it decides casting, tone, marketing, and I would arguably say duration of a series.

This was where the Shannara Chronicles fell down. Now I love the Shannara books. I have all of them. They’re fantastic stories set in a really deep and interesting world. Whilst the final book of the series was a little bit disappointing for me, I read them regularly and I really enjoy them. I’m not a gatekeeper for it by any means and I’m sure that there’s lots of nuances I’ve missed. So I was a really enthusiastic when the Shannara Chronicles was first announced and it was an enjoyable series. No two ways about it. It seemed well produced. The design was fantastic. And the music was pretty good.

The problem was, it never decided who it was going to be aimed at. Was it aiming at the teenage young adults market. Was it aimed at fans of fantasy drama series? Was it aimed at fans of the books (like me). It just seemed to be trying to do all three at once and it ended up as a complete hodgepodge. You had a frankly annoying main character, who, if I’m honest, actually reminded me of Dawson from Dawson’s Creek (for those of a certain age and remember that character) but I have no doubt he appealed to the teenage market. New character relationships were added to appeal to the MTV audience but it made it very, very hard to relate to as a older because it seemed to be pitched to young yet at the same time, it wasn’t fully in the fantasy show sphere and by removing an awful lot of the stuff that I would have expected I couldn’t relate to it as a fan of the books.

The original Lord of the Rings trilogy was aimed predominantly at fans of the book. Peter Jackson knew that fans of the book would be critiquing the work, even though in that time, there wasn’t the instant social media witch hunting available as there is now. So he kept to the design of the book. He involved a lot of the most famous artists and everything was done with the books as a touchstone. That gave it depth and at the same time because of the sheer scope of visual nature it was able to tap into the fantasy demographic. It was clear that first and foremost the audience had been set as fans of the book.

I don’t know if Amazon have decided on an audience but a given some of the casting and story choices. It seems that they’re taking the option of entertainment for the fantasy demographic and that’s absolutely fine by me, no problem with that. But if it’s not clear, and they’re trying to bridge both sides, fans of the book and just general fantasy fans, I can see them running into issues

The third thing I think any adaptation needs to consider is how they handle changes. Changes are inevitable in any book adaptation. Any writer or fan of a novel series who believes otherwise is misguided. You cannot adapt page for page it won’t work. Now some books are written in a very visual style; its something I am familiar with as that tends to be my writing style. I would say this is Lord of the Rings. Things are described in great depth and detail and the prose itself gives you everything that you need

Wheel of Time was similar in describing things in immense details. To film this though things would need to change. You’d need to cut things out, move things around, change some characters around and that is fine, I have no problem with a line that was attributed to character X in the book being given to character y in the series. If it makes the series make more sense then no complaints from me. The problem comes when changes are made for the sake of changes.

And I’m not talking about casting actors or actresses of certain ethnicity for roles. No. Unless a character is expressly described as a certain race or gender, then I have no problem with them being changed. So in the Dark Tower the casting of Idris Elba didn’t really bother me as to the best of my knowledge it had never been confirmed, only hinted. that the gunslinger was white. ‘ll stand corrected on that though, because I’ll be honest, I’ve not read the whole series as often as I’ve read other IPs.

Likewise, with the Rings of Power, there was the initial outcry over the casting of black actors for the dwarves. This thing nuts to me because again, to the best of my knowledge, there has never been anything in any of Professor Tolkien’s work to say that dwarfs were not black.

So for me, those kinds of changes, even if done as a box ticking exercise to appeal to the marketing and PR types don’t cause me a great deal of problems. I know it it does for certain people. But their opinions motivated for different reasons anyway.

What I do have the issue is when changes are made, for the sake of changes, or to push a philosophy of the part of the show’s runners. This happened a lot for me in Wheel of Time. I got the sense in wheel of time that there was a very much ardent feminist ideology going on. Now the books are set in a female dominated world, but they’re set in a female dominated world for a reason. Yet the series basically from the beginning made changes to several key lines to basically say it’s allman’s fault and all men are evil. Whereas the Wheel of Time books do not say that. They say a group of men were evil and the problems of the world are a group of men’s fault. Group not all. And indeed later in the books they actually explore it in much more detail and give a more balanced and nuanced view.

But the change in the series felt very much like a change for the sake of pushing your philosophy. And I’m never comfortable with that. If you’re adapting an author’s work, particularly on a popular IP you should be focused on adopting the work not pushing your own agenda. If you want to push your own agenda, do your own work.

Wheel made other changes, it changed significant parts of Matt and Perrin’s backstories for example. Now those backstories didn’t need changing. They were quite powerful stories. And indeed it sets up narrative depth that will force those characters to take different paths to the books. There was no need for those changes. Those characters were popular in their own right and their stories were well fleshed out in the books. It just felt again like a bit of a flex from the show runners. Look at us, we’ve changed this popular piece and guess what, you’re going to live with it.

The problem is fans don’t live with it and they protest and there was a lot of protesting about a lot of the changes in Wheel of Time. I stress again that I have no problem with changes being necessary for a story but it seems that too many producers now are looking to alter old works for the sake of it; and failing to recognise and many of these works are indeed old. Written in a different era with a different worldview.

Now it remains to be seen what changes lord of the rings, rings of power makes to the bits of lore and published works related to this era. I’ll certainly be watching the first episode just to get a flavour but I do still have my reservations.

I’d also be interested in hearing what my readers think of film adaptations and TV adaptations of popular books. Do you think it’s something that should be attempted more often? Do you think the idea been done to death? Maybe you think that there’s been so many failed are weak adaptations that it’s time for a bit of a breather and people to focus on new and original IPs.

This is something that I’m really keen to discuss with people. It anybody does have strong views on the above, or indeed strong views on Rings of Power from what they’ve seen so far, to drop a comment below. And as always, if they’re polite and well reasoned, I’ll respond.

So we’ll see what comes in September, but in the meantime, I hope everybody is safe and well and I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Final Fantasy X; is it worth a go?

I will begin this review with a confession. I’ve never actually finished a Final Fantasy game. Ever. The reason is the same every time; I reach a point where I need to do such a massive amount of grinding to clear that I cannot be bothered and give up. Coupled with the fact that I have always been an xbox player it means that most of the series I have never played. The two I have tried the most at Final Fantasy Type 0 and Final Fantasy XIII (the latter is a series I liked; especially XIII-3 but my 360 died and by the time it dropped on xbox one I had moved on). I was though aware of Final Fantasy X when it launched though I never paid that much attention. I was aware of character of Yuna but the image I knew was her look from the X2 game and not the original. As a result I had no preconceptions about the game when I picked it up second hand from Cex; though a friend had warned me that the voice acting was perhaps not the best. I also was aware that despite being a re-master this is a twenty year old game so in many ways it would never be able to compete with more modern JRPG; that being said the game is being sold at full price on the Nintendo store I.e. £44.00 at the day of writing this. At that price then sorry I will treat it as if it were a brand new game.

Booted the game up on the switch in hand held mode and it loads smoothly and the opening load screen and accompanying cut scene look impressive. There is no odd glitching, pausing or other issues and I start a new game. We then get a repeat of the opening cut scene which seems a bit odd but whatever. We then get a lower quality cut scene rather than a full animistic which introduces us to Tidus who I immediately took a dislike to, more later on that. Tidus is a blitzball player and we get an extended opening scene which ends with a giant ball of water attacking the city of Zanarkand. This is the main antagonist Sin but that’s about all we know at this stage before we are thrust into the tutorial missions alongside the character of Auron who happened to just be there when the attack happens. Combat is Final Fantasy standard with turn based mechanics and a mix of normal attacks, skills, items and special attacks called overdrives. If you have played any Final Fantasy games in the series before FFX then you will know what you are dealing with. It feels fine though I do miss the skip turn and defend options as it robs the game of tactical options but it’s a small thing. The tutorial ends with Auron throwing us into the sphere of water and we then wake up in the ocean before being recognised by a group of masked people who do not speak the language we do. One however does and this is Rikku and she explains that the ship belongs to the Al Bhed and we need to earn our keep. When she asks where Tidus is from she breaks the news that Zanarkand was destroyed a thousand years earlier but says nothing more. We then have an underwater/swimming mission and again the game play initially feels fine. The resolution is a little low by modern standards but it’s not unpleasant or jarring. What is jarring though is the camera control or rather the lack of them. The camera is fixed position and you cannot pan around which is a real pain on an RPG map as explorations is much harder. We get our first boss fight and we are introduced to teamwork mechanics to defeat it. The fight is not bad and is not overly long and once done we return to the ship where we are still treated as an outsider. There has been the introduction to the side quest to find primers to learn the Al-Bhed language and Rikku chats to us but we are then attacked by Sin again; this time looking like some sort of underwater leviathan and we pass out after being thrown overboard.

Wake up and we are near an island and a floating football, well blitzball, and we get a cut-scene of Tidus performing an acrobatic move which greatly impresses an audience of men with a distinctly Polynesian vibe (and a design which was clearly heavily influenced by MC Hammer). Their leader is Wakka and he doesn’t believe Tidus when Zanarkand is mentioned but he agrees to take us to the nearby village and Tidus agrees to help him win an upcoming blitzball tournament. More cut scenes and we end up going into a temple to try and locate the missing summoner. Temples in FFX are puzzles and they are often quite difficult. On this occasion though the puzzle is easy but where to put the final sphere is hard because the slot is so hard to see because it is at the far end of the camera range and on handheld mode is very hard to see. More cut scenes and we meet Yuna and if the cover of the game box did not make it clear that there was a romance element between the two then this cut scene should end it. Foreshadowing? Its a billboard which is beautifully rendered but is not subtle. It is agreed that Tidus will join Yuna’s party and the party head for the port, stopping along the way to do a fight using Yuna’s aeon. Along the way there are the random encounters and we get enough experience to level up skills and we see the sphere grid and my god this is horrible. I’ll explain why later but this is a horrible skill tree.

Boat journey time and more cut scenes including one with Yuna and Tidus where the latter’s daddy issues come to the fore and the fact that Yuna insists that Tidus’ father died ten years ago which seems at odds with Tidus being told his home is a millenia dead. Sin attacks again and we get a mini boss scene which is straightforward but does have some nice tactics before more cut-scenes and we see the party’s destination being heavily damaged by Sin’s attack. Arrive for the aftermath and get a beautiful cut-scene of Yuna ‘sending’ the souls of the dead to the farplane. This is where the game does shine and with the music it is probably one of the best cut-scenes I have seen in any JRPG I have played.

Another map and path to a temple with more random encounters ending in more puzzles before we are off to Luca. More cut-scenes and a bit of exploration and the setting looks great with paths, hidden places to explore and a nice vibe. We then discover Yuna has been kidnapped so whilst Tidus, Lulu and kimahri go after her and fight a boss battle with some excellent scenery mechanics which needs you to charge a crane; Wakka and his team start the tournament. Rescue Yuna and we end up playing the blitzball final and I hate this entire scene. Games withing games are common in RPG games, the witcher has gwent, Old Republic has pazzak but they are relatively quick. This blitzball bit takes nearly 15 minutes and kills the pacing of an already slow story dead. Wakka’s team wins (despite never winning a game; guess power of positive thinking is stronger than I thought) and then he steps down to focus on being Yuna’s guardian full time. Auron reappears in time to help fight and joins the party, insisting that he is assistance is contingent on Tidus coming along and then it is off to the Highroads.

This zone was interesting. A couple of battles including one with a choccobo eater and we then catch up with Seymour and are told that the Al Bhed and a group of follows of Yevon will be luring Sin to try and destroy him. This predictably goes badly wrong and there is the first layered boss battle here. This was pretty tough one due to my relatively low damage output at this stage but once clear we get some more cut-scene and a brief period playing as Seymour is a change but the main thing I took from this section was the little scene between Auron and Kinnoc which show that the disaster was a set up to purge the Yevon church of non-believers (and weaken the Al Bhed). This is a nice twist and it is a shame it is not really carried on but the idea of faith vs science is a really strong narrative hook. The party head for Djose and another temple before reaching a giant elephant which will take the party to the next location. On the way Yuna is kidnapped by Al Bhed (again) and we fight as Tidus and Wakka against some kind of mecha octopus. Beat that and the story has us meet Rikku who had been controlling said machine but now joins us (After a brief scene of her stripping down to shorts and tank top with the camera coming to a stop just behind her backside. Really game? Really?)

We spend some time in Guadosalam and meet Seymour again. He proposes to Yuna for political reasons, we visit the Farplane

and then cross the thunder plains (annoying due to the constant lightning strikes which just slow us down) and we cross into Macalania. Yuna tells us she has decided to marry Seymour out of duty but before she can leave the party the Al Bhed attempt another kidnapping. Mini boss battle with the crawler which can stop magic attacks unless you destroyer a little drone which is a nice touch. Then we enter a temple and learn that Seymour committed fratricide and Yuna clearly knows this and is trying to stop him. Boss battle time and I get wrecked by anime. Is this the blocking moment that so many Final Fantasy games have reached when I have played them? Reload my save and when fighting the crawler I learn I can heal my aeon, maybe a tutorial said I could and I missed it, but interesting. That changes things. Before that though I interact with Lulu at the save point and get the line,

“I’ll add you to my list. Good luck, you’ve got a lot of work to do boy.”

The delivery of this line is beyond suggestive. Is there a romance side to this game? I check the wiki and find there is an affection system and it seems I had maxed it with Lulu. To be honest I just interacted her first at the save point scenes as her voice lines were the most interesting. Would have been nice if the game actually told you this system existed though. Anyway, a cut scene where we get Lulu riding side saddle and nearly learning that Jecht (Tidus’ father) is Sin and retry the Seymour fight. This time I wreck him using Shiva’s overdrive and more cut scenes. Another boss battle and then the party fall through the ice. Cut scene and then the party separates with Tidus waking up in the desert. Grind through and reunite with all the party bar Luna and we end up in the Al Bhed home. This is under attack by the Guado and we escape on an airship and after more cut scenes we go to rescue Yuna who is about to be married to a Seymour who is seemingly not dead. An annoying boss battle with a dragon type thing before a flash gordon-esq entry scene which ends with a wonderfully rendered scene of Yuna seemingly sacrificing herself but in fact she is just escaping via Valefor. A little cringy in terms of voice acting but it looks amazing.

Another temple and by far the hardest to date. I had to google in the end and seriously if you cleared this on the original game without a guide then serious credit to you. Fight another summoner and then it is Seymour round two but this time I was prepared. This fight is much easier than the first and in three turns it is done and it is time for the next zone.

You may have realised by now that the comments on each zone in this review have become shorter. The reason is simple. I was utterly bored by this stage of the game. I finished the game and the story and cinematic are amazing; the ending has great power and if you do not feel a measure of pain and empathy with what Yuna goes through then you shouldn’t be playing JRPG. Yet despite this massively powerful story I was fundamentally bored with the game and there are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly I felt no connection to the world of Spira. The zones look fantastic even though they are now two decades old; they have stood the test of time and whilst some of the NPC characters look like a cross between a bikini model and an MC Hammer tribute act there are plenty of them. And at no point did I care what happened to them. When researching after I finished I saw there were some side quests but there is not the usual collection of side quests you find in most RPG. Yes, these can be used to pad and draw the game out but as FFX is already quite slow paced this would not really make things worse. Without the quests you just feel you are passing through places with no connection to them. As the main story scenes are quite drawn out there was nothing else to hold me in and I just became bored.

Second is the sphere grid. I hate this. The grid has the character skills laid out in a sphere with a pathway between them and you move along the path by levelling up from killing enemies. Again fine in principle but the grid navigation is very clunky and padded out with blank nodes. These nodes convey no skills or stat boosts but you need to spend a movement point to get around them. This draws out the whole process of levelling up and you end up needing more levels than there are actual benefits and stat boosts. It feels like they wanted to stop you becoming overpowered too soon but this is a frustrating solution to the problem; it would be better to just level lock skills than pad things this way. The skill trees in most final fantasy games annoy me generally as they often constrain your character builds and give the illusion of choice rather than an actual choice and the same is true here; but as this applies to most games in the series I’ll leave that be.

Third is the party interaction; or rather the lack of party interaction. The interaction between Tidus and Yuna is fantastic, albeit a little heavy handed, but between the other characters it’s practically non-existent. I mean I completed the ‘romance’ element with Lulu without even realising I’d done it. I get that this is now an old game but it was released around 3 years after the original Baldur’s Gate and that had a massive character interaction element. Knights of the Old Republic came two years later and that had party interaction and quests using the same generation of tech. The whole point of a party RPG is learning about and working with the party but here it is missing. Rikku and Wakka have some scenes where the whole faith v science is discussed and there is so much scope for plot, conflict and growth here. I mean the whole Yevon plot line revolves around loss of faith, corruption of faith and ensuring compliance through fear and ignorance. It could be an incredible plot hook but it just gets lip service and this is not a system resource issue; but rather a design choice. There are good characters here, yes Tidus is annoying and I never quite got the point of kimahri but Lulu, Wakka and Auron are all solid characters who are never given a chance to shine.

Fourth is Yuna, or rather her game play mechanic. Yes at times in the plot she is a bit of a Mary sue but it’s not unbearable. In game play terms though she is a problem and one that most games using the white mage mechanic have, here though it feels amplified. Game designers seem to want to make sure you use the character so they boost the magic stats so you have a good healer but in FFX I was able to max out on potions at every trader without running out of Gil due to the drop rate and frequency of the random encounters. This meant I never really needed to use her a healer outside of boss fights and her aeons, whilst having powerful overdrives, were not really that useful in the general game as Lulu gave much of the same skills. Later on though Yuna becomes massively overpowered when I have her the -ga spells using black magic spheres and she proceeded to do 7k damage with standard weapons against the dedicated black mage’s 2 to 4k damage using the same spells. This meant that in the post Seymour fights I was one shotting a lot of enemies with her and Lulu and it became a dull grind. By the time I unlocked holy I was hitting 9999 damage without using any damage breaks or celestial weapons. The whole white mage build suffers if you initially constrain them as an uber heal stick but then give them black magic powers. Either give them white magic attacks early on and level it up (like Octopath Traveller did but that had balance issues) or don’t give them attack powers at all.

FFX is by no means a bad game, in fact in most measurable ways it is a solid and decent game. From a technical standpoint I respect it enormously but I just cannot bring myself to love it and it never grabbed my imagination in the way that even now KOTOR does. I can see why it ranks so highly but I can also see why it never eclipsed FF VII. The older game managed to be ground breaking and undoubtedly changed the genre whereas FFX feels like it is a bit of re-skin with some enhancements. There is nothing hugely new here and you get the impression that Square were playing it safe. FF XIII is divisive but at least it tried to do something different. It may have gotten it wrong on a lot of levels but it tried. If you have never played it then FFX is well worth picking up and giving a go and it is a rock solid entry in the JRPG charts but for me it definitely remains in the shadow of its older sibling and KOTOR.

Score 7/10

The halo series – where has it all gone wrong?

“Just one question.  What if you miss?

“I won’t”

It’s an iconic line which confirms that the Master Chief is indeed the superhuman hero of humanity that the halo series had portrayed him as. It’s been clipped countless times and is one of the most popular moments in the halo game series which is unquestionably iconic; but in recent years has felt like it has lost its way and magic.

Halo is microsoft xbox’s flagship game and served as one of the main launch titles for the original xbox and the 360.  Eighty million units have been shifted since it first released on 15th November 2001 and it is one of my all time favourite game series and the only FPS I have sunk double digit hours into.  From the original game it has span off into music, books, figures, table top game, comics and tv with a total value of the IP now in the region of $5 billion (as of 2016).  The love and respect the series had though seems to have declined in recent years and the question has to be asked whether the series has in fact simply been milked to death and the IP is now essentially a metaverse product rather than what was once considered one of the finest FPS series out there.

What is Halo?

Halo was released on the original xbox as a FPS game where you play as the ‘Master Chief’.  An armoured, faceless character of relatively few words who runs through the game with the help of the AI cortana fighting initially an alien race called the Covenant and later a second race called the flood.  On the first glance this could be any one of a number of FPS games where you just run around shooting things but Halo had something different. It had a story that was rock solid and way beyond other fast paced FPS games like Doom.  From the very start the story is clear and tight. Humanity is in a war against the Covenant and is losing. Badly. Fleeing the destruction of the main human base the Master Chief finds himself over a massive alien artifact called Halo.  The Covenant feel this is a holy relic whose activation will ascend them to godhood but in fact it is a weapon of mass destruction and a containment facility for an alien parasite called the flood.

The first three games of the series tell the story of the above and the storytelling is tight and relentless.  You finish one mission and are immediately onto the next with each game following on from the next.  Halo 2 expands to add in the Covenant Civil War but continues the narrative and everything is in the context of the halo rings and what they are for.

Character creation is great and secondary characters actually have character and roles rather than being generic NPCs. Avery Johnson is almost as classic a character as the Chief is and the AI cortana gets a story line and is not just a simple voice in the speaker in the first three games. 

The whole thing is immersive and coupled with the amazing music (seriously, just listen to pieces like this https://youtu.be/QAeeYohFL1Y and tell me that it does not get your blood pumping) the original three games remain one of the best gameplay experiences I, and many others, have had.

The problem?

The problem is that in the recent trilogy of games this experience has been at best, muted and at worst is not there at all.  There is nothing technically wrong, though Infinity has undeniable issues, but I will list below why for me the new trilogy is not even close to the original. The sales figures remain healthy enough but the wider availability of game pass does skew things I suspect; as a result it is probably not a good metric to use.

Metacritic scores show that the newer games are generally less well received than the originals. Below is a grab of an image listing the metacritic average scores and the old clearly outscores the new.

So where did it all go wrong?

The story

The original story was, as I said earlier, tight and relentless.  You finished one mission and went onto the next with a clear understanding on where you were in the universe.  If you wanted to know more then there was the novel series etc but you did not need that to know what was essentially the state of play.  The new series though is markedly different and puts me in mind of the latest Star Wars trilogy with no clear overarching theme or plot thread.  Four is about the didact, five is Cortana and infinity is…well I am not totally sure.  The banished? the harbinger?  I did actually check out halopedia on this which does emphasise the point.  I had finished the game and did not actually really know what had been going on.  No doubt the other media will fill in the gaps but for me that is not how it should be.  The books should be the cherry on the cake and not the cake itself.

The series also tried to include other characters in Halo Five and this had been done before with the arbiter. The problem is that the Arbiter was fleshed out (especially in the remastered cutscene version – seriously find the youtube videos as they are amazing) but Locke and the others just felt like strawmen with nothing to add.  Infinity seems to have dropped that and gone back to just the Chief but that game does have other issues which I will detail below.  The point though is that without the story that the original trilogy enjoyed the new trilogy leaves the player feeling disconnected from what is going on and without that connection you need to fall back on the gameplay itself.  Halo’s gameplay has always been fluid for me but I have never felt like it was groundbreaking and super gripping.

Music

The original score for halo is legendary. There is no other way to describe it and I was blown away when I first heard it; personally I always preferred the Halo 3 score but all three were great.  The scores for the second trilogy have been ok but none of them have ever stood out for me.  I can easily name tracks from the first trilogy but ask me to name any from the new and I would struggle.  I was particularly disappointed with the score in Infinity.  This seems to have carried over into the TV series where the classic music was not able to be used due to licencing and royalties issues (seriously game companies just pay people their due).  I have not seen much of the tv series bar clips but there is one doing the rounds of a battle scene where a fan has rescored it with the classic music.  The difference is frankly immense.  The original is not bad at all, yes the iron man shots are a bit odd, but the fluidity is a joy to behold but the score is just so flat.  The Mandalorian fell into the same trap with Luke’s return and again the rescore is so much better. 

It’s easy to overlook music but a great score can lift a game or show beyond normal levels and whilst a fan may not understand it; they appreciate it. More importantly they notice when something amazing is not present and the absence in Halo feels more noticeable than most games, especially in the boss battles and key stages.  I was expecting the strident battle theme which usually had me checking for cloaked elites or a pair of hunters; instead I got a passable bit of music but not the heart rate increase.

The infinity problem

Am not going to lie, Infinity was a massive disappointment for me.  I don’t play multiplayor so I was not overly concerned about the issues which I knew were present but I did have high hopes for the campaign.  After all campaign mode has been a key part of halo since the beginning because that’s all there really was. After years of delays and promises though it just felt slow and flat.  It wasn’t bad and the grapple mechanic was actually really good fun but the rest just did nothing for me.  The story was just so flat and whilst I like the idea of side quests the ones in Infinity are essentially the same and they kill the pacing stone dead.  The original trilogy took you from stage to stage with only the cutscene to catch your breath but in Infinity you don’t get that.

I do get the impression that the design scope for Infinity changed many times in the dev stage.  Is it an open world game like the Witcher? A pure FPS like Doom with its boss mechanics or a narrative driven FPS with just one key final boss like the original games?  I still don’t know but Infinity had elements of all three but does not blend them seamlessly together so it all feels disjointed.  Coupled with the delay, no ability to replay levels at launch and the fact that the multiplayor was released half baked and this just feels like a game that was released because the beancounters realised they had run out of time and hoped that brand loyalty would avoid a cyperpunk style backlash.  The problem with that thinking though is that Infinity had taken so long to release, and Halo 5 had been so divisive that the loyalty was no longer there.  As a result there was a backlash (though not CP77 levels) and almost every poll I have seen has people saying they played it once and never went back.  I completed the story  and then pretty much immediately uninstalled. 

Infinity not being a finished or nearly finished game is for me an indication that the studio wanted to make the most money they could from battle passes and microtransactions on the new series x console but when it became clear that this was never going to have enough units to make it work they shoved it into the xbox one and almost washed their hands of it.

A brand more than a game

This, I think, is the root of the issue. Games are no longer happy with just being game. Companies no longer want to drop a game with maybe a bit of DLC over a few months; instead they want a money making vehicle which runs for a much longer period. I understand why of course, dev time is expensive and these are not cheap games to make. The problem is that the only way to keep making money is to paywall content which is accessed via microtransactions. Infinite is not pay to win but the boosts given to people who got in on day one give them a huge advantage what with boosts and achievements over players who came in later. The need to get the money coming in also drove the release of the game before it was finished in my view. This was the same as cyberpunk which never really recovered from its messy launch; though it did better than Fallout 74!

Halo has always had tie ins but it seems now that there are more than ever and the fact that the key figures on the new TV show admit they never played the games suggest that the game is no longer important. It is the brand that matters now. Stick Halo on it and its likely that you will pick up some fans of the game by default. Disney have done the same thing with Star Wars, though to a much greater extent. The problem with that thinking is that by simply assuming your fans will accept any product simply because it bears the name; you actually show a degree of contempt for them and they respond in kind by voting with their feet (or rather the uninstall key). I think this has happened with Guardians and Infinite; this was not a halo game that they knew; instead it was a passable game with a halo skin and name slapped on the box. I feel this is especially true with Infinite.

Conclusion

So is Halo doomed to die? No.

Any suggestion that the franchise is on its last legs is ridiculous and it remains a very profitable brand for Microsoft. There does however need to be an awareness there that brand loyalty is not what it was and people no longer simply play a game because it is in the series they once loved. They are more critical now and as money gets tighter they are more selective in where they spend it. As a result any future releases of games, movies, or TV shows needs to factor in that fact. No fanbase is ever fully happy but equally disregarding them has its risks and trying to constantly milk a cash cow ultimately drives people away.

It remains to be seen if Infinite gets a successor. I suspect there will be one but whether the diminished brand loyalty is enough to weather another long absence with only paywalled drops of content for Infinite and ‘inspired by’ type TV shows is another matter altogether.

Bushido – miniature step by step

So after a rather long delay caused by her sudden bereavement in the family, I've decided to start miniature painting again. I was working on some Imperial Fist Primaris Marines, which I was doing with contrast paint, and to be honest; I wasn't really happy with them. Given that I was working on them at the time my father died; I don't particularly want to work on them, especially as I'm not happy with them. So that'll be some time in the biostrip when I get some and I'll restart them at some point in the future. To be honest though I am not that interested in 40k at the moment anyway. It just feels a bit repetitive and I had painted a lot of it in March. Just before the unplanned stop though, I did receive the new starter set from Bushido, the miniatures game inspired by Japanese history and mythology and I decided I would use this to get back into things.

I have not actually played the game yet. But I had been impressed with the previous box set which had the six metal miniatures in. I'd seen the reveal of the new version at adepticon this year and pretty much ordered it on spot. I'll attach some images of the box and everything in a future post. But I have to say the slightly increased price point was offset by the fact that it's now ten Miniatures rather than six and the fact that these are in resin rather than metal was a nice surprise. Whilst I accept that metal is more solid, I do find working with it a little bit of a faff though, equally, I'm not a huge lover of resin after years of having to struggle with Games Workshop or Forgeworld models. So I picked one at random which is the one below no idea of what she's called. I'll figure that bit out later.
My immediate thought on seeing it was that the quality is really crisp, plenty of detail. looks sharp can't see any particular mould lines that are obvious part of smile bit on the top of the head, which will be easy to remove. And everything looks pretty well cast. The spear is actually very flexible and looks relatively straight. To should be relatively easy to work with. But I was pleasantly surprised with was the fact that when I turn it around, there is a slot or a groove actually cast into the back, which is fantastic. It's clear this is where the spear goes. And it means I'm not going to be stuck with an absolute minuscule point of contact that will snap off fly off at the slightest impact. Probably not going to pre assemble. Before building though I'll do a test fit and just have a look just in case this filling needed. If this fill in needed then I'll probably have to pre assemble. But if I can get away without doing that. And paint them in sub assemble it then I would prefer to do it. But next up on this one is a little bit of cleanup. Then soap wash just to get any release age enough. And then we'll give it a go get it primed, weather permitting and see where we go from there.
Okay so as we can see once the model have been cleaned and then primed using Halfords grey primer, the details look pretty sharp. I did overlook the little burron top of the head so had to remove that and then just do a little bit of a touch up with a matching paint but all in all, it took the paint pretty well. I did a test fit with the staff and it does look like there's not going to be any filling required; which is great means I can work on it in sub assemblies. 

Decided to start first with the staff using a flat matte black. I chose the pure oxide black paint from instar paints I must be honest I do like this range. Sometimes need a couple of coats but it is very easy control what with with it being pre thinned and is great value for money. The pommel and the cross brace I did in Retributor Armour from GW. It is probably one of their better metallic paints and quite easy to work with. For the blade at this stage I just put on a medium grey from the Dungeons and Dragons pigment range that I have with a highlight just on the edge of the blade with a lighter grey and then a fine edge of pure white. I may go back and have another crack at an NMM in the future, but we'll see. The biggest problem I had here it was what I thought would be a problem and that's the springiness of this bit of the model. It's great that it's flexible in that it's going to be more resilient, but it did make painting it a little bit fiddly. I found myself having to try and hold it at each end. Paint it to stop it moving around, and certainly wouldn't fancy free handing any details on the shaft. It's definitely better than the rigid casting that Games Workshop have done with models like the Necrons; but this does feel like it's going a little too far the other way. 
I then turned to to the flesh on the hand and the face. So for the flesh I did a one to one mix of Rekarth flash (GW) and elf flesh(vallejo). However, this was a little too grey and alabaster so  I mixed in a little bit of pale flesh (vallejo) to give it a little bit of colour. I did want to keep it quite an aged look so tried to avoid going to strong on the colour. Applied that mix in a couple of thin coats and then did some shading, I am not very good with faces and skin tones but by adding a little bit of Reikland flesh shade (GW) into the colour mix it seems to work pretty well. I did have a crack at the eyes using a pale grey and then edge lining with black but it made it look like a panda. So I've painted over that. Think the mistake I made there was going on the top and the bottom of the eye. When I go back at the end I'll probably just do the top as that looked okay. 

For the moment that face well they then started to work on the main body of the model. So the on the piece of the robe I did using the pure oxide yellow from instar paint and then add in some shade in layers of Agrax earth shade (GW).

Next up was the tabbard. Did this using zandri dust (GW) with the recesses shaded with a little bit of agrax earthshade. The edges were then carefully done in a pure white from army painter. The same white was used for the edge of the under robe and the hair piece below the crown. The crown and band looked a little bit flat so I shaded lightly using basillicanum grey (GW) very heavily thinned down with water+ (instar) and applying in a few thin layers.

That left the robe which was painted using army painter goblin green. I then tried to shade it using the greenskin but it was not giving the effect that I wanted so I ended up using the black-green ink from Vallejo and then using a drybrush of instar lime green to highlight. The ends of the sleeve used zandri dust and I went back to the retributor armour for the thread on the front. The final bit of hair was done in matter lack with a dry brush grey for a highlight and an aged look. The end result is below.

All in all I am pleased with how this one turned out. I will need to get a texture roller to make the base I want but for my first effort in a while this was a really enjoyable model to work on.

Sword Art Online volume 24. Is it worth a go?

So I hadn’t planned on putting book reviews on this site. However, given that I’m reviewing anime games and anime JRPG it sort of makes sense to include light novels here rather than on my Goodreads page. So as I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of the SAO series and after a bit of a wait, due to Amazon having difficulty sourcing it, volume 24 of the light novel series finally dropped this week. When I say dropped, I mean the English version because of course, the original version has been out for a fair chunk of time. So volume 24 follows on pretty much where volume 22 left off. Volume 23, of course being a collection of short stories. We start off with Kirito and Argo meeting up with his former employer (despite him supposedly being in hiding, out of the public eye etc) and being told that there has been some unauthorised access to Underworld. Yes, Underworld is back in the story even though it’s had a full arc and seemed largely paid off. After this meeting Kirito returns to the Unital Ring setting with a relatively short period of him exploring with Alice before meeting up with Argo, and we get to our first real plot twist of the of the novel.

Whilst infiltrating a meeting of a large number of players, ostensibly to discuss strategy, a rogue mage unleashes a spell that effectively forces all of the attendees, including Kirito, who gets caught in the crossfire protecting Argo, to agree to her demands, otherwise they’ll be killed. The demand being quite simple; that the group support work together and attack the homestead that Kirito and the others have built. After that, story pivots away and we have a short interlude in the real world where Asuna’s 18th birthday is discussed and the gift storyline is paid off. Then it is back into Underworld which is now seemingly in some sort of internal disarray where incarnate (magic) users either haunted down persecuted )it’s never quite made clear). It ends with Kirito having a brief encounter with an individual who seems to resemble his dead partner from the Alicization stories Eugeo. The story then pivots again and we have the conclusion back in Unital Ring, which ends with the party meeting up with some new players from another game including Agil’s wife, rather disturbingly portrayed as an insect. The story ends up with the boss fights and the revelation that said boss is none other than a reskin of the Skullreaper from the original Aincrad arc.

I’ll be honest, this story felt a little bit like setup and filler. I get the impression that the author was planning to get as much of the exposition out of the way he could before moving on to the next book indeed. In the author’s notes at the end he says the story is finally starting to move. So it does feel that this is a bit of a setup book. As a result, there’s not a great deal that happens. There are however, some good features starting wit the switch from traditional RPG to survival MMO type game as a setting. I do think that the pure RPG element has been rather played out and it pretty clear but there’s been a fair chunk of research into how survival games operate. Certainly the storyline with the player versus player , and the idea of a band coming together to take on another player is something that will be familiar to anybody who’s played any sandbox survival MMO RPG games. It’s definitely a nice touch. The storyline round Asuna’s 18th birthday is also well done and the payoff with the gift is quite pleasant. It’s quite a touching little section and the Abec illustration is very sweet.

The author does skirt close to what seems to be something of a hobby horse with this obsession of what is real and what is virtual reality but steers away; in the end focusing on what is a touching scene between Kirito and Asuna. Argo is certainly becoming a fully fledged character in this arc which is welcome. I’ve written before on my reviews on Goodreads how it’s good to see her getting some screen time in the excellent ‘Progressive’ series. I always felt she was a character that definitely needed a bit more screen time from the original arc so seeing her flushed out here, playing an active role and also getting a tiny bit of character development is a good thing.

There are however, bad things in this book The main one is the plotline involving the rogue mage. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense on a number of fronts. First and foremost a spell that is used to bind the people is something that seems massively overpowered; even the characters in the game say they can’t figure out how such a strong spell can exist after only three days in the game. Given that Kirito’s party includes an advanced AI that has previously hacked pretty much every game the party have been in and is usually able to find out pretty much what’s going on before anybody else; it seems very OP. So there’s definitely questions around this rogue mage and of course no background is provided. Part of me is wondering, does she relate to the mysterious transfer student that introduced herself to Asuna in volume 21? Given that there’s been no repeats of that character and no real payoff with that storyline, it’s possible I guess. Alternatively could it be that this person was in the original SAO game as a member of Laughing Coffin? After all, the author has returned to that storyline more than once; though it would be rather lazy in my view to fall back on it again. Is this somebody related to the original fairy dance arc and Asuna’s captivity and arranged marriage that ended rather badly? At this stage, it’s it’s hard to say for sure, but the whole premise of the decision to attack the Kirito homestead doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Yes, survival MMO RPG see a lot of PvP but the rationale given is that this mage wants the players to band together to complete the game (presumably for the prize or in the hope the ‘normal’ games will be restored). This seems a strange rationale as a result going after one of the strongest to potential players in the game, so early on doesn’t work for me. Especially when said player hasn’t really expressed any interest in breaking the game or doing any of the usual Kirito things. It all feels a bit flimsy. We’ll see how it pays off. But this feels like a good idea poorly executed.

The next big issue is the total absence of most of the support cast. Apart from a few brief scenes Asuna barely gets mentioned. Likewise, Lisbeth, Silica and Sinon on all pretty much vanished from the story despite having some promising setups in books 21 and 22. This is something that’s been a bugbear of mine throughout the series. Leafa likewise, barely gets a mention though given I’m not a massive fan of that character, I could probably live with that. It does feel that the author only brings these characters in when he either has no choice or he wants to fall back on the rather tired sexual assault tropes that one of my main criticisms of the series. It’s happened to often and in my view, one of the justifiable criticisms that get levied at it. The absence of the back cast is really frustrating as it does feel that he’s created some interesting characters but he just doesn’t make use of them or when he does he just does a setup and then pretty much thrown away. Alice seems to get a lot of page time. I have to be honest, I find her a bit of a flat character but that’s just my view. It just seems a shame that some of the others have just so badly neglected. Again, it’s unclear how long this arc is going to be and it may transpire that they get some time in the future but will see.

The final big issue that I have with this one is it’s not developing the relationship between Kirito and Asuna at all. In ‘Progressive’ even when they’re not in the life or death situations there are plenty of occasions when they just do normal things. They go to the shops, they take in the scenery. It gives them a greater depth of character, and it also makes the relationship feel much more real. Here though, aside from the brief and present giving scene, the whole relationship is pretty much ignored. There’s barely any time the two of them seem to spend together in the real world either. It sort of feels like the author doesn’t really know how to move the relationship forward after the events in the Mother’s Rossario arc. I’ve seen some leaked images online that suggests that the next book does have the two of them fighting together again and that would definitely be an improvement.

In conclusion, this is not a bad book, I was able to read it in about two hours. I wouldn’t say it was unputdownable, and it’s definitely not the strongest in the series. As I say feels a bit like a setup shot. Hopefully, volume 25 and 26 can pick up but at the moment the ‘Progressive’ series of books at the moment are more enjoyable for me. I just think that they’re offering more but we’ll see where they go as there is a lot of narrative debt being banked there. As usual, the artwork from a back is fantastic with some really nice images (which I have copied from the SAOpedia site). Part of me does wish they were all coloured, but even in the black and white they do look really, really good. So that’s really all I can say on this one. I’d say check it out if you’re a fan of the series, but I wouldn’t go in with too high an expectation on this one.

Asuna – Alicization Unblading statue unboxing

So again life rather got in the way this weekend and this one’s a little bit delayed. Just wanting to do a quick unboxing of the new Asana UK statue from Sword Art Online, which ties in with the Alicization Blading mobile game (which I have played before but it was called something else then. It was ok but a bit to gacha for me). I’ve said before that I am a big fan of SAO and I do have a couple of the other statues that have been released. A couple of Asuna ones, one of Leafa and one of Sinon. This one was ordered a while back and at the price point of around £40.00 after postage to the UK; I wasn’t expecting a great deal from it. That said I’ve had others at a similar price and I’ve been impressed with them. The delivery from BigBadToyStore arrived at the end of last week but as I say I have been tied up with other things.

So immediately when the statue arrived, the first thing I thought was that it was rather small, though, I’ve never had any of the Bandai figures before. None of the ones I’ve had have been from the Sega range and below the box is a standard table mat. This is therefore not a big statue. It was at this point that I did remember that the pose on this one has the character kneeling down unlike the others I have bought. Figuring it could be this that was making it seem small and noting that the weight suggested it was pretty solid. I carried on.

Opened it up and as you can see below, again, everything’s securely wrapped and packaged, all intact. It’s a two piece model, you’ve got the figure of Asuna herself and the sword as a separate piece.

First impressions of the model were that he seems a little flat on the hair and face the face does seem a little bit odd. Doesn’t seem quite right. I can’t quite put my finger on it, whether it’s the shape or the tone, but it doesn’t look quite as good as some of the others that I’ve had in the past. And the hair does seem very flat just like it’s been sprayed one colour. Apart from the tips the shading is definitely lacking a little bit.

On the whole though it’s not too bad and the detailing seems accurate. The rapier is perfectly straight, which is a pleasant surprise from some of these I voted in the past and it slid into the hands quite easily.

All in all the final model doesn’t look too bad but it is a little disappointing that there’s no stand or plinth to put it onon. Normally, I’d expect to have something like that. So I’ll have to look into something from that because it’s quite easy to see how the paint/plastic could get scratched. All in all, this one’s okay. I have to say it’s not brilliant. It’s definitely not as impressive as some of the others that I’ve had before of Asuna and certainly not as good as the Sinon one from Alicization that I recently bought. But for the price it’s not bad and will look okay on the shelf. Do have a couple of others on order. Will need to see if they’re a little bit better.

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