90sgamer92 on 31/7/2015 at 09:45
Many of you probably are members of OtherSide Entertainment forums, where I already advertised this thing, but I guess it doesn't hurt to mention it here as well.
I recently made a video on the history&influence of Looking Glass Studios. I also cover some Origin titles briefly, and talk about some design ideas in it (why Looking Glass games are so good and what many modern games do wrong). It's aimed more at console gamers who aren't familiar with LGS so it probably isn't very informative from a historical point of view to ttlg veterans.
(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fh1tPVG-j0)
There's some distracting background noise in the intro that I couldn't get rid of with Audacity and the video/picture quality isn't always that great (I only had 6 days to edit the thing), but the later sections have better sound quality. If you're wondering about the lack of mid/late game footage in most titles, it's because replaying every game from start to finish just to get some footage would've taken too much time
I usually stick to game reviews, so I'm interested to hear what people think of this new format :) I might attempt to make more developer retrospectives in the future, though I'm not as passionate about other great developers the way I am about Looking Glass. It's like they weren't just a mere developer but rather an ideology!
Shadowcat on 31/7/2015 at 14:33
Cool. Thanks!
As someone who counts all three of the Flight Unlimited titles (especially 1 & 3), and also British Open Championship Golf amongst their memorable (and excellent) titles, I can only contest your claim that Looking Glass lacked diversity in their output. You greatly underestimate their "expertise" in the flight simulation arena. Those were quality sims, and they did things that <em>no one</em> else was doing at the time. Microsoft's MSFS series took another five years to even start to replicate some of the features in FU3. These games might not have had the same target audience as the land-bound first-person titles, but dismissing them like that is a wee bit wrong. (I think it would be better to have said that you were only going to concentrate on certain titles, rather than to imply that the remainder were unworthy.)
Nevertheless, I look forward to watching the rest of this :)
90sgamer92 on 31/7/2015 at 18:05
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
As someone who counts all three of the Flight Unlimited titles (especially 1 & 3), and also British Open Championship Golf amongst their memorable (and excellent) titles, I can only contest your claim that Looking Glass lacked diversity in their output. You greatly underestimate their "expertise" in the flight simulation arena. Those were quality sims, and they did things that <em>no one</em> else was doing at the time. Microsoft's MSFS series took another five years to even start to replicate some of the features in FU3. These games might not have had the same target audience as the land-bound first-person titles, but dismissing them like that is a wee bit wrong.
My intention wasn't to dismiss them, I just don't have any experience from flight simulators so I didn't feel qualified to write about them (I do mention in the epilogue that Flight Unlimited did new things). That's also why I didn't talk about their console games, I wanted to keep the focus on the FPV games (and their influence), so that the script would feel more cohesive. In the case of other developers, I'd try to cover every single game that they made.
I do know that some people only know/remember Looking Glass from their flight sims!
I can understand your resentment, I once saw a Troika retrospective that practically omitted Temple of Elemental Evil!
henke on 31/7/2015 at 18:44
Well made video, 90sgamer. I've only watched the first half yet but I like it so far.
It's "day us ex" tho, not "do sex". ;)
Starker on 1/8/2015 at 04:05
Quote Posted by henke
It's "day us ex" tho, not "do sex". ;)
Latin is much easier to pronounce for a Finn than for an English speaking person. Unless you're one of those unfortunate Brits who had to learn it in school.
PigLick on 1/8/2015 at 04:43
I always used to pronounce it as "deuce".
90sgamer92 on 1/8/2015 at 11:14
Quote Posted by Starker
Latin is much easier to pronounce for a Finn than for an English speaking person. Unless you're one of those unfortunate Brits who had to learn it in school.
That's the problem when you write scripts for some one else to read, the guy who does the narration/voice over in my videos doesn't always know how to pronounce certain names (games he hasn't played, developers he hasn't heard of etc). But I think it's better than the alternative (doing english vids with a finnish accent, but pronouncing names correctly :D)
I've always pronounced Deus "dejus", which I guess translates to "day us" in US english alphabet like henke put it.
Harvester on 3/8/2015 at 09:26
If I can remember my Latin correctly, it would be pronounced as: "day oos ex", in Latin the u is pronounced oo. But the creators of the game pronounce it "day us ex", so go with that, although I'm pretty sure in the Latin speaking world of yore you would be laughed at. ;)
Thirith on 3/8/2015 at 09:40
*putting his nerd hat on*
The diphtong in "day" [ei] isn't altogether correct; it's more like the pronunciation of the first part of "dentist", stopping just before the n sound. "Oos" is too much of a long [u:] sound; it's more like Sean Bean would pronounce the pronoun "us" in his native dialect.
*tries to take his nerd hat off*
*finds that his nerd hat is firmly stuck in place*
Vae on 3/8/2015 at 22:11
Thank you for your retrospective, 90sgamer92.
Comments:
- It would be best to level the volume of the voice over commentary with the game audio excerpts...Specifically, bringing up the low-level commentary to match the excerpts.
- The proper term is "sound design", not "audio design".
- You stated..."Dark Project and its expansion, Thief Gold, are sometimes criticized for levels filled with undead enemies that you must kill. But the second game (TMA) is a pure stealth experience, and is often considered to be the best stealth game of all time."
This is a false conception...There are no "levels filled with undead enemies that you must kill", in TDP/Gold...Both TDP and TMA are "pure stealth experiences". Actually, objectively speaking, The Dark Project is the superior game from a macro stealth perspective, due to the greater dimensionality of stealth challenges provided by the wider variety of Ai types.
