Sundown

Actually, they do look like the straight TV cels to me, possibly retouched and sharpened a bit. They have too many proportion and inconsistency problems *not* to be frames from an animation. A cel meant only to be shown statically would have been much more polished and refined, looking more like box or ad art. The reason they might appear so crisp could be that they were photographed or scanned directly, rather than being frames from video capture. That's probably what the *actual* cels look like. Give or take a few photoshop filters. -All

I foresee bad things for this thread. -Al

Now that's a valk that does boobies Justice. -Al

Is it wrong that I almost actually like these? And is it wrong that I find them uncannily resembling the M7 valks-- except cooler, being campy for a reason? -Al

I'm hoping that the surprise is that we get to play as "The Real, Real Snake" in modern times and in Act 2 of the game. Because that'd sure as hell suprise me, seeing how we last got to play as him on the Tanker, and that it looks like we might be gipped again here. The idea of playing as Big Boss is neat enough, but I'm starting to miss our beloved main character, and getting a little bit tired of all the runarounds being forced to play some twisted version/clone/pansy arse-blonde-kid-shadow of his greatness. Wanna surprise us, Kojima? Let us play as good ol' ooging-at-Meryl's-bum Snake again. And throw Meryl in for good measure. -Al

Yep, I can see how something smaller might be more handy. From what I've heard from a SEAL, the Mk23's not quite as ungainly as some make it out to be, but it's not a small gun by far. I've always wondered what 1911's Delta *actually* uses, since rumors have abound that they carry highly customized Wilsons, Kimbers, and what not. Also curious what the marines have replaced their older MEUSOC 1911's with... think those were built on mil-spec Springfield frames, and the LAPD SWAT based their own sidearm on that particular configuration-- but they've now since switched to customized Kimbers as well. Don't happen to know if the FBI Hostage Rescue Team is still using their Springfield custom (commerically designated as the TRP Pro), do ya? I've heard rumors that they've switched *yet again* to something else, even after performing extensive tests on a new 1911 to replace their previous Les Baers built on Para Ordinance frames. -Al

Find that curious that teams using the 226 snub the 23... seing as how the SEALs are the main users of the 226s, and at the same time, are the main folks warming up to the Mk23 again. The 1911's run by Delta are hardly of the "good old" variety. =) Most of the 1911's used by the high-speed teams have been so retooled and customized as to be an entirely different animal altogether. Of those, I think only the MEUSOC 1911's are still using some Colt and Springfield parts... and I'm under the impression that they're being phased out now as well. -Al

*nods enthuiastically* If only. And if Snake could build himself a Ghillie. -Al

Well, the enemies missing the moving grass was a bit much... but it was kind of neat to see him pass snake up when he was decked in bark camo and face paint, and flattenened against a trunk, but to eventually spot him when he wasn't wearing face grease. Now if they had it so that you were required to use *some* form of partial concealment in order to be missed by enemies up close-- where camo would only improve its effectiveness, and that any movement could still give you away-- that'd be a pretty nice deal. Bingo. =) They'll likely set Snake up as field testing various camo patterns for future battlefield use, the results determining what modern day soldiers would be wearing. Imagine if they'd showed a little clip at the end of the game, of modern day soldiers wearing the scheme you most often used. And imagine if you wore fire all game long just to spite them. -Al

Hasn't there been a Free Willy II already? =) And is it more or does the Orca sound vaguely like the Wampa in Empire Strikes Back? And a little like the Tusken Raiders to boot. -Al

See, thing is, the cardboard box is *supposed* to be silly. It's homage to the original MG, and you're supposed to get a laugh at how rediculous it really is. It's also not always effective, especially if a guard catches you moving in the least. Camo's just a little too "real" and gritty to screw up and do cornily. But the alligator suit-- that's comic gold. And MGS3's version of the cardboard box. And thus, A-OK. =) -Al

But ya gotta remember... MGS 1 and 2's got stealth suits that render the wearer nearly invisible in our modern-day time frame... so it's not a far cry to suggest that less sophisticated forms of personal stealth systems were available in the '60s. They'll likely just explain it away as being the crude precursor to the ninja suit. Ta dah! =D Lame. Yes. But less lamer than believing Snake can super-fast change and that he's got 10 full sets of fatigues folded neatly and tucked away in his pocket. And besides, it's Kojima style to make up things to explain away gameplay mechanics that make absolutely no sense in a real world context. And it'd be just the thing for them to milk, taking it a step farther by having you actually collect camo scheme "memory sticks" or what not, as you progress in the game. -Al

Fighter mode looks just a little bit A-10-ish. Like if the Huey Super Cobra and the A-10 had a very illegitimate love child. Vaguely reminds me of that blue helicopter/robot from the old Converters line. -Al

They only bother to ever mention the first law in the trailers... which indicates that the plot doesn't weave itself very tightly into his three laws. I'm wondering how they're going to manage to write themselves out of the fact that robots *are* killing and running about amuck in spite of the laws-- or if they'll even try. They could pull a fast one and whip out the sooper seekrat Zeroth law at the movie's end. But that'd be altogether too clever. -Al

The Mk23 Socom is hardly a Spec-ops "doh" choice, although that seems to the popular misconception on the internet-- that it's an anchor and real Spec-Ops types snub their collective noses at it. It's actually now well received in Navy Specwar teams, and suppliments the P226 for when a corrosion resistant secondary or a .45's needed-- contrary to the perpetuated myth. I dunno, the camo thing actually seems kind of neat, even if Snake's not actually that well hidden to the player. You can always just pretend that he's actually harder to see than he really is on screen =D, especially if the enemy's not looking for him specifically. The lame thing is the constant quick uniform changing, just because you've moved into a clump of grass, or into a shadow. And changing once the enemy's already spotted you is... well... silly. Unless of course... what Snake's wearing is composed of some space age nano-tech material that can change from several stored camo patterns in the memory threads weaved right into the fabric's fibers. In fact, I'm willing to be that'll be their reasoning for the gimmick. What type of weapons snake's going to be hauling this time around'll be interesting enough... since he's in the 60's. Meaning, no M4's. No M92's. No Mk23's. Hrm. -Al

*Hurls.* The first half of the trailer looked plausible enough. That scene where the one robot jumps forth from the thousands lined up was even reminiscent of one of the short stories, where they attempted to trap a deviant robot into exposing himself from the others through the use of logic puzzles. Then corny robot carnage ensued. Nothing at all like the brainy and philosophical surmise of the original novels. Yaargh. -Al

Body ain't so bad. Not digging the red web shooters. Buggy eyes: ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Random tangent. I've always thought John Cusack would have made for an awesome Spider Man/ Peter Parker. He's got the broody sarcasm down, and he's got a dark, brainy edge, with a hint of goofy. 'Cept he's too old. And he might not have the voice for it-- at least not what I imagine masked Spidey sounding like. -Al

That does explain nippled Batman. Got a link to the Alex Ross design? Never seen it yet. -Al

It doesn't retcon Minmei *only* if you consciously disgregard what Macross 7 says of Minmei, and only if you totally ignore the concept of spiritia and its relation to music-- despite the fact that spirita and its direct relation to music is now engrained into the continuity. This is the approach I take, in order to be able to still enjoy SDF as it was originally meant to be. But if one's to take Mac 7 with any seriousness, and to relate the way it defines music and its effects, then reinterpreting Macross SDF naturally ensues. But then again, I doubt Kawamori really thought that far. I'd venture that Kawamori was also *too specific*-- precisely in the way Lucas cornied up the force, when it came to the idea of music and anima spiritia. The moment "spiritia" turned hard to accept was the moment where it became concretely tied with music and its effects, and the moment it became quantifiable, measurable, collectable, and able to be blasted through giant space speakers. That's not some nebulous, philosophical "soul" or "life force" we're aware of, that remains highly intangible, tenuous, and up for individual interpretation. That's magic, collectable in a bottle. If we rename spiritia to "soul" or "life-force", it doesn't change the fact that having souls sucked and harvested by a beam, having soul energy quantifiable on a meter, and having souls blasted through booby speaker pods is any less, well, silly. =) -Al

I got chills. Seems they're going with a slightly darker and more angsty. Which is good... and paves way for even darker with black Spidey. Six movies? Here's hoping they don't fark it up by #3. -Al

It very much retconns *why* she effected the Zentradi. There's a big difference between: "culture shock and the power of love and music-- as the forces we know them to be", and "culture shock, the power of "love" and "music", which are really just mediums of this all power essence know as 'anima spiritia' ". It taints the original plot hook by giving it a mystical metaphysical bent, based on a made up magical force that supposedly governs life, love, the universe and everything. Some dig this bent. Others find it silly. You might not call this "force" magic, but it doesn't change how the concept is unappealing to many. Using a "force" that doesn't exist to explain the forces that do smells of the mystical, and that's what tweaks a many fan. It simply lies in the fact that I prefer not to have the raw power of music and love be boiled down to and explained as some quantifiable life energy. Call it magic, or don't call it magic. It still changes the whole tone and bent of the original series (to me anyway), if you interpret it in M7's light. I'm not sure I exactly misunderstand, as I simply don't know what you're suggesting with your take on the analogy. And if you're postulating that magic exists foundationally in Macross SDF, even though it doesn't *appear to* at first, second, or fifth glance to most (even more so before M7's injection of anima spiritia into the continuity), I don't misunderstand. I simply disagree. -Al

Can't you do both? =) I'd always gotten the impression that these folks tend to be deployed in places as insurance, with the hope that bad things *don't* happen-- rather than in places where one's sure they will. I guess they're basically "mercs"-- but I tend to associate the term (erroneously) with being used on more pro-active missions and tasks. Oh, and the Oakley's thing isn't hardly confined to the Blackwater folks. They're a staple of the no-bs special warfare and law enforcement communities. -Al

I'm not sure if Blackwater is actually a "Merc" shop. I've always heard of them referred to as a training and consulting organization-- and maybe hired on as body guards or for security detail. But I don't think they actually send folks out there specifically to kill people and break things... although positioned where they are, that might indeed happen. Can anyone confirm? -Al

Only sillier in the fact that Minmei's effectiveness and the culture shock stuff was really only an outpouring of spiritia, if SDF were to be explained in M7 terms. It works much better if it isn't, IMO. I suppose you're alluding to the few fans that actually "get it", and that see the originally intended presence of the mystical in SDF. Except that in this strained analogy, there wouldn't have *been* any that disagreed with Aristotle or figured out what's "really going on". There wouldn't be enough evidence-- no matter how hard you looked, and how long it took-- to formulate a more accurate theory, and whatever hypothesis they made would have been one made purely of whimsy. Ie.: Someone who heard Exedore's speech before M7's release, and concluded that "a quantifiable mystic life force" was the foundation of love, the universe, the Minmei attack... would have been righteously scoffed at as daffy. Actually, that lone scrap of evidence *still* remains unconvincing even in hindsight... which is why this debate exists. -Al

Commercial success really has little to do with good story telling or quality. I'm not accusing M7 of bad story telling in and of itself, but it certainly screws up the continuity some as a whole, storywise... not to mention retconning past works and making them sillier than they were. *points at SW prequels.* What sells well isn't always what tells well. He's more like a cook who serves an extraordinary natto, then follows it up with a cheeseburger drenched in Teriyaki sauce, that while vaguely enjoyable by some in its own right, and sickening to others, clashes with the meal overall. But said cook doesn't care that much about the meal in whole, having said so himself. =) A storyteller manipulates beliefs by controlling what's seen and what isn't. The emotions he evicts is tied directly to what he presents. Only Bad Storytellers rely upon some inherent, nebulous spirit in their work that's not obvious to the audience they're writing for. That analogy doesn't exactly fly (no pun intended). It basically suggests that fans who disagree on magic ever being foundational in Macross SDF are simply erroneous and foolish... that their conclusions are due to lack of research and lack of study. That conclusion is even more rash, and not particular flattering. But we're not dealing with horses. We're not dealing with flies. We're not dealing with Aristotle and his lack of microscope and his being unfamiliar with biology. We're dealing with a work of fiction in which the creator decided to change total gears 15 years after its creation. If such a change had been intended from the start, then it is indeed Very Bad Storytelling. This is akin to having God decide that the Circle of Life would be a central theme to Creation--- then dictating that flies would only ever be seen on dead horses-- vieling all observable evidence that the themselves lay eggs and have a life cycle that extends elsewhere, so that no dedicated researcher of truth could ever discern that horses aren't born with fly eggs intact. If this is the reason why Aristotle came to his conclusions, then one might say that he was very much mislead and deceived. And if was the case, you might accuse said Creator of Very Bad Storytelling. He certainly failed-- and indeed actively worked-- against the point he deemed so entirely important, against something he intended to be central to creation from the get go. And the blame for such misinterpretation falls solely on the creator himself. And to beat the analogy to death, unlike the horse and its flies, no matter how closely and for how long you look... no matter what tools you develop and what pools of knowledge you accumulate-- no amount of research, observation or analysis can discern that magic is a central tenet to SDF. The only thing that's ever been found as "evidence" is the aforementioned 10 second stretch of throwaway dialogue, which isn't particularly convincing except for those already inclined to believe what they do about that little snippit. Oh, you're preaching to the choir about the Star Wars prequels and the Matrix sequels. Vader as an annoying kid... then as an annoying teen... baaad. =D -Al