(Aug 21st, 2018, 06:30 PM)percussive maintenance Wrote: [ -> ] (Aug 21st, 2018, 07:18 AM)Bollywood Wrote: [ -> ]Thank you! Ranting old men are great, and lite-nibbles are alright I suppose....Maybe....
As far as Vaporwave goes I found the art quite appealing (columns, purple and 90's stuff is rad) but didn't fall in love with the music right away? However it grew on me. Especially the stuff that still follows generic theory-- once you get to projects that purely exist for the deconstruction of the genre I can take it or leave, though some of that is pretty interesting as well.
I am curious why you associate vaporwave with 90s? My understanding is experience with it has been almost been always 80s, (Macintosh Plus was form the 80s as is the song Vektroid sampled to make the now famous song), most of the 80s were defined by neon which you see in many/most of the art work associated with vaperwave either in its coloring and/or 80s motifs. Then when used as a means to critique consumer culture its almost (in my limited experience) done with 80s songs and mostly those would would have found playing in American malls at the time (which also was the peak of American mall culture)
90s would look more "saved by the bell" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59GESf2Rhyc ) or the 90s solo jazz cup (bloody hell they were everywhere) then "lets all go to the mall today!" or Farcry Blood Dragon.
It also doesn't help I watch quite a bit of people who explore dead malls and they almost always play (I guess you can call it "smooth vaperwave" as vaperwave started as a subculture in the noise music scene) with 80 songs/motifs in their videos.
But that is my experience with the genre, I am interested to hear yours.
I would certainly say that 80's is just as much, if not more, of an influence than the 90's. As you said Macintosh Plus used Diana Ross to make what is probably the messiah of vaporwave songs. I think my nineties association comes from artist more on the Blank Banshee spectrum using samples from water levels from Sonic 2 and Donkey Kong Country (If we are getting technical though, Blank Banshee would be a sub-genre called vaportrap.) However music aside and looking at art I would say a lot of the nineties I get from it would be from the CGI music videos I've seen from a few vaporwave artist that is almost "ReBoot-ish" in it's production quality (just imagine palm trees and water instead of...well....ReBoot's weird barren world.) Also the constant use of Windows 95 as a motif in vaporwave art is perhaps a culprit to my nineties association?
Also, my introduction to vaporwave was a trail left by the seapunk genre-- so perhaps that is partial to blame because they also heavily use early 90's pop culture stuff in their imagery (such as AOL symbols and whatnot.)
I would say that the mall aesthetic is quite prevalent but I think I thought 90's because the early internet imagery and glitch art really hit-home with me since I was developing during that era. Then again, with all the greco-roman imagery I might as well say it's very 320's BC
Fun Fact: my phone case it the Solo Jazz cup, and I to this day haven't played Blood Dragon and have been wanting to for so long-- hahaha.
(Aug 21st, 2018, 07:01 PM)ShiraNoMai Wrote: [ -> ]Welcome, Bollywood! I see you are one with quite a sumptuous taste in games. Out of all the games you've played, which character do you think was the most well-written out of any of the games they were featured in? 
Whoa. I'm sure my answer on this could change often and I think the angle I approach the character could definitely impact my answer.
I think a popular (perhaps even cliche) pick would be Kreia from
Knights of the Old Republic II. Her dialogue is written very well even though consumers didn't get the full game until the release of a content-pack mod on steam. Kreia's constant appraisal is usually because KOTORII is a deconstruction of the Star Wars Game genre simply because of Kreia as she doesn't enforce the black and white morality of good vs evil. Kreia doesn't just question the choices the exile (protagonist) makes throughout a playthrough of the game but also can make you, the player, question morality as well. Any character whose existence can be somewhat "meta," or more accurately thought provoking beyond the setting and lens of the game itself is powerful.
Though I would like to give props to Lee from Telltales the Walking Dead. I think given what the genre of the game is and how it is played, they couldn't have picked a better protagonist for you to take control of. We are never
really told all the details of Lee's incident with his wife and the murder. Was it out of rage? An accident? Heck, you can even utilize the dialogue options to make it seem like he's innocent. This piece of history of the main character follows him throughout the game but the only credibility as to what actually happened is the dialogue choices you make. Certain choices that are brutal in nature may even make viewers believe that he was very intentional with his murder-- yet my play through Lee was passive and reluctant to make any decisions. As a player I had the assumption that Lee was innocent because of what an officer said to him in the opening scene of the game-- so I played it that way. Giving players the ability to establish that head-canon and not have anything in the game ruin it is definitely noteworthy, even if he isn't "well-written" in the traditional sense.
I'll leave it at that? Sorry if it was a mouthful, hahaha. I could certainly go on and look at a few more though.
