John Connor & Marcus Wright

I am personally a bit nostalgic over some of the action flicks made in the 80s and early 90s. There was a particular air of excitement for me to go and see Terminator: Salvation in the theatres. I must admit the trailer was pretty awesome.

If you haven’t seen the movie stop reading here.

While the action elements were good it felt like too little time was spent slowing down the pace for the audience take a breather and get a chance to actually care for the characters.

“It’s about the emotion, silly” – like Allan Ball said jokinly on a Comic-con panel mentioning the rule of thumb to write good scripts.

Losing Salvation
A big issue in Salvation was that it never made showed how the weight on the world on John Connor’s shoulder affected him. Also it never showed how the internal conflict in Marcus Wright had affected him. This was never really explored that well in the movie.

The dynamic between Marcus and Blair Williams seemed to have been lost in the script and only supported some few plot elements. They could’ve dropped it completely because Marcus Wrights background was never really explored. The character Blair Williams could’ve been used as a great counterpoint for Marcus to reveal some of his back-story.

The audiences never really got to feel what Marcus’ “Salvation” really was about because we never really got to understand the inner conflict in Marcus. SALVATION was the title of the movie and they messed up using it as theme by not exploring that back-story of Marcus. What was Marcus’ redemption really about?

If Kyle Reese dreamt of the future in T1, why couldn’t Marcus Wright dream of the past and make the audience understand who he was? Again, it is about the emotions silly, the action really is secondary – even in a Terminator movie.

Also never ever have a kid in a SF/Horror if you don’t plan on killing them off right away. It’s like dogs in disaster movies – directors never have the stomach to kill them off without losing the audience which sadly makes the movie more predictable and less exciting to watch.

The pacing was all messed up and the horror that the first terminator movie really stirred up got lost in the more classical action elements. John Connor did stand up after a serious blow from the model Arnold has potrayed in three movies. The same model that once killed his father with one deadly blow. As a storytelling tool, perhaps the machine should have killed off a supporting character just to show how scary terminators can be.

Post-apocalypse Now! – Understanding that the world has ended
Salvation could’ve used flashbacks as a tool to aid character development to try and help the audience understand the emotions the characters goes through in the movie.

Like flashbacks in T1 with Kyle Reese that created the emotions, the sense that the world was going to end. That feeling, that the world did end, never really resonated strongly in Salvation because the audience never got time to see that reflect in the character’s emotions. Which in a way is a big failure.

Also beyond the action and explosion (and the lost horror elements) the movie could’ve utilized different emotional themes in the same manner as the first and second movie succeeded in doing.

In the first two it was the fear of not being able to stop judgement day. In Salvation it could’ve been the fear of being forced to accept the futility of the entire situation.

The fear that the loss of lives, and all the sacrifices would in the end be for nothing. This is a classic post apocalyptic theme where the hero most of the time need to sacrifice himself in the struggle for a better world.

Yet, Salvation went with a mix of classic action hero themes – and it never paid off well.

Kyle Reese – John Connors dad

The importance of the human drama and building a trilogy story arc
Salvation never replicated similar situations like the great moments in T1 and T2 where time was taken to delve deeper into the emotional state of the characters. T2 had some great moments where the story really took a breather. Where John played with the Terminator which helped build on the theme of a lost father figure or when Sarah Connor had a nightmare, seeing Los Angeles burn which showed her fear of futility and her view of “no fate” – an excellent little gem from that movie.

Salvation missed some of those great critical moments. Like John’s relation with Kate and his unborn baby or him questioning himself as a leader or just addressing classic problems like post-traumatic trauma that John without any doubt would’ve got plenty of. While these moment in previous movies would’ve seem trivial, they helped us care for the characters more. It was hard to sympathize with John Connor in this movie.

I hope they try and keep the setting in the future but it sure is a major challenge to make an overall story arc of a future war against an army of machines to work. They can’t just destroy another Skynet base – that would be repeating itself. Also like The Matrix proved, a deus ex machina ending like a truce with the machines would be an epic fail and lazy storytelling. The ending of an epic storyarc like this needs to be smarter, different and the ending needs to be as interesting as the journey to it.

Also, like most sequel it’s not only important to develop the mythology and here’s the tough part. I terminator movie is great because of the human drama. Salvation addressed that where support and main characters encountered wastelanders and fought against the leaders in the resistance. The sequels need to develop this human drama further. Not every surviving human in the world is part of the resistance right – other factions should exist. Perhaps not all of them is loyal to the resistance.

Pregnant Kate Connor & John Connor

The lost family drama
Funny how the now cancelled serier Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chroniclses succeeded in using the theme of fear of futility and the fear of the inevitable judgement day and set it around a family drama. In the Salvation script writers should have addressed John’s fear of losing Kate and her unborn child in combination with his fear of saving his future father, Kyle Reese. The family elements could’ve been much stronger dealt with to make the drama in Salvation even better.

An interesting plot point could’ve been to make Connor not only trying to save his future father, Kyle Reese, but also being forced to save Kate and his unborn child. That dynamic balance would’ve been more interesting to see explored.

Perhaps an extended edition of Salvation could repair some of the issues I have with Salvation. It feels like the writers strike and too many cooks in general messed up this movie that should’ve been handled with much better care.

The sequel
McG now plans on going back to basic with a new terminator hunting John Connor. Even worse the futuristic setting might be moved to a more contemporay setting. Instead of addressing issues and write better characters and a better overall war story arc it seems like McG might go with a more lazy approach instead of developing a working war drama with the Connor family set in the future.

Perhaps there may be some Salvation in McG’s plans for a sequel. Perhaps not.

Like a Steam contact said to me: “The Scout is easy to play – hard to master.” Perhaps that’s why I like this particular character class. I mean come on, you have this scrawny cocky dude carrying a sawed off shotgun, small pistol and a bat while going against grenade launchers, miniguns or rocket launchers. While it is very annoying to die constantly, it’s when your quick nimble underdog succeeds in making an elegant kill, that makes this class more rewarding and fun playing than classes equipped with much more heavier weapons. Also it reminds my of those old school quick reaction skills players neeeded during the Quake days – only this time you have to do it without the rocket launcher.

It will take some time to get better at dodging bullets, rockets and grenades – but I’m not giving up.

I was lucky no apparent damages was done. VAC-rep seems intact and all.

I just became a poster child for a classic Steam scam. I just got owned by a punk. Only this time I wish that fucking punk some terrible pain and suffering and not that retributional online teabagging. I don’t think that form of sortie really would send the right message in real life.

All I can do now is check my e-mail hoping they send new login information to me as soon as possible. The next question will be, should I start buying game DVDs again? If we are going to use digital distribution in the future, do we have good counter-measurements against scams like these. Should Valve do anything different or will other smart scams stop users from embracing the digital distribution model? Should the anti-cheat software Punkbuster make housecalls with baseball bats? (Kidding)

It’s going to be interesting to see how quickly the Steam support service will get back to me in this matter. I guess how this crappy situation turns out could be a turning point for me deciding how I will buy and play games in the future.

Oh, and (BTE) Apples, for being so kind and stealing my account – fuck you.

Without going all “Perez hysterical” and doing that whole “I-am-a-human-being-speech” (which in a terrible way is unintentionally funny btw) and how things like this hurts the gaming community, let’s just say that knowing I am not the only one who lost their account, someone will eventually figure out who you are.

What goes around comes around.

Perhaps I’ll buy a copy on the PC for multiplay if I find it entertaining. (I have an abundance of multiplay games to sink my teeth in right now)

No bashing on the PC/Steam camp. BC will probably as usual look much better on the PC.

I agree on some of the things he says about the piracy issue but it is funny when Newell says that price is one of the least important aspects of Steam.

If you don’t buy games on Steam, perhaps. But if you do, the question becomes: Do you still want to pay twice as much for a game on Steam just because you live in the wrong market region? In a way internet do erase these invisible borders because global distribution is now possible for electronic media, yet companies feel obligated to use market regions like before.

And what about gamers investing in game development. Interesting thought however the question is how a business model should be constructed and how consumer investment in game development could be marketed. One thing is for sure – it will take time. Enough time that it will not solve Steam’s current pricing issue.

Hopefully my current residence is more permanent. I now reside in Sweden’s capital pretty close to the city’s centre which is very nice. (15 minutes by tube.) Some might even call me a lucky basterd. I rather like to say that sometime even a basterd needs a lucky break.

Which reminds me that I have to see that new Tarantino flick soon…

I am playing some Fallout 3 at the moment. The game has a rather traditional set of game mechanics with some more modern features for an RPG. I haven’t progressed too far in the game’s story – yet I am hooked. Guess I just like to shoot things right now.

Funny how post-apocalyptic settings in the entertainment industry has become so overly popular in the last couple of years. From the classic Mad Max trilogy, to previous years’ I am legend and Children of men, and now the critically acclaimed movie adpation of the novel The Road written by the brilliant author Cormac McArthy coming this fall, and after that The Book of Eli coming in the beginning of next year, just shows the popularity of this broad genre setting.

While I reminisce on the experience of seeing the previously movies set in this genre I figure it is a great setting in a video game as well. And while Fallout 3 is visceral in it’s presentation, and right and wrong is proven to have place in that world, it still has not gone to that extreme where the player really, really can feel that sense of loss, where he/she can feel the harshness of a world that once died.

While I try to play the game with a good karma option I wonder if a game like Fallout wouldn’t benefit from a more conflicted main character and where it becomes more apparent to the player about the futility of it all. A theme which eventually will show that one person cannot save innocence without sacrificing himself in the end.

Perhaps Fallout 3 will give me a glimpse of that theme when I have played some more. Because even if the main character can inspire hope, it should never be easily achieved, and there should always be consequences. I therefore really hope that a thematic counterpart, like “the loss of hope” will be seen somewhere in the story. Because it is that sensation of hopelessness that brings that “heart of darkness”, which keep this kind of genre it’s raw cruel energy. Creating that heavy “lump in the throat sensation” when a story really resonates with you and you realise that the world once did really end.

The question is whether this released DLC most of time is based on a marketing strategy where the DLC actually could’ve been content that could’ve shipped with the game in the first place. This seems to have become a common practice, to earning some more money by simply separating some game content to different times of purchase, adding something that perhaps should’ve been there in the first place.

In a way the geek in me like new stuff to a game I like. At the same time I know that I am practically getting scammed most of the time. By an extra map or an upgrade for a particular player unit in the game.

The PC market is used to this practice through expansion packs. Although these expansions were usually a little bit bigger and usually gave enough new content to constitute the practice.

The question becomes – where do we draw the line? What DLC is acceptable, what DLC is not? Should developers try and market bigger expansion packs for games or is it enough with cheaper DLC with less content?
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Now, I don’t really think it ended that friendship, really, but it puts up the discussion on how strongly gamers (and music nerds and film buffs) invest emotionally in their interests and how it becomes problem when they feel the need to compare their tastes with others.

In a way maybe it has to be an issue about different opinions. Perhaps some people really think that a game with “Fitty” is the peak of game entertainment. And perhaps some people really really, until-hell-freezes-over fucking don’t. When those worlds “collide” it can be illustrated like this:

“Guess what games I just bought!”
“Street fighter IV?”
“Saints row II!”
“Oh…”
“And Fitty’s latest game.”
“But doesn’t Killzone II come out this week?”
“Killzone? Nah, that’s too much fantasy.”
“But didn’t you like playing Halo III multiplay?”
(Yes, I don’t like the Halo games)

I guess (even though the example may be extreme) some people recognize my friend’s argument on how different tastes in games can be straining on buddies who spend a lot of time playing games.

Why invest time in game talk if you can’t even agree on what games you like and don’t like? Instead, if you’re not as annoyed by his/her taste in music, movies or whatever – spend time talking about that instead.

Bad tastes cross breed however so it’s probably not worth seeing that art house movie together – especially if that person loves teabagging kills in Halo. (I know I. really don’t like Halo.)
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