The Patreon Letters - June 17, 2017

Friends, welcome, one and all, to the Patreon Letter. Things are extremely busy for me and I've found a moment to breathe for a couple hours and write this for you so let's get right to the updates:

• Yesterday, we released our first Meta Mapping! These are just old episodes of the show, with new segments where we look back on recording them and how far things have come. This one is of our very first episode, and as such there are a bunch of rough edges; I cannot stand the sound of Young Me's voice.
• The Amory Score hits episode 5! This is where things really take off and progress into a fever dream of nonsense plotting and incomprehensible lyrics. I got a need... a need for Mayo.
• Second Officer Slog yelled a lot about Bashir and Section 31 this week. This is easily mine and M's favourite podcast that we do, and I hope our Star Trek joy is infectious to you. Come on in and have some Star Trek fun.
• M's Life Is Strange Let's Play is progressing! Come and join them as they watch the ridiculous sad teens be sad and ridiculous.
• We recorded Goof Zone last weekend! Look for that sometime this week, it's a little on the short side because those recordings always take it out of me mentally, but I'm excited to get back into the routine.
• Tomorrow, we open up the voting on next month's Abnormal Mapping game! If you want to add your suggestion to the mix, you have one more day to let us know what you want us playing.

Okay! That's the updates. In addition to being busy as hell, this week has also been E3, so even less has gotten done than normal as we all gather round the internet to watch video games we will never afford. So please enjoy a little introspection on what I've been thinking about in this E3 world.

Yesterday, I was chatting with M about cutscenes in games, specifically the part where they are almost all uniformly terrible. Here's a trailer from E3 for the new Uncharted game that shows a simple scene where our heroes do some incredibly basic puzzle solving. Have a little watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6IOOWnOXlw

I like the first shot and the first cut. The beat of Nadine looking out onto the water is good, and the way the awkward conversation keeps Chloe slightly out of focus in the background is also good, and builds up to a cut which makes Nadine's turn seem super loaded. It's functional, decent stuff. Then it kind of just peters out, as the scene is taken over by the rote-as-hell exposition. The actors are clearly giving it all they've got, the game is simply illegally beautiful, but the way the scene is written and shot let it down. This is the Cinematic Series, from the Cinematic Developer, and its actual understanding of cinema is... not good. 

Which isn't a problem in and of itself: I like The Last of Us a lot, I think Naughty Dog's strength is in quiet moments and intimate spaces, and their reputation as a cinematic powerhouse is needless and overstated. So for the last day I've just kept thinking about the general trend of how as AAA games get more and more expensive and lean further and further into cinematic aesthetics, they haven't exactly been pairing that with a better understanding of how to use those aesthetics well. Long (and short) time twitter followers know only too well of my roaring hatred for the hilarious ineptitude of MGSV's cutscenes.

And that's a shame, because it's not like that's something games can't do. When we were chatting about games with legitimately great cutscenes, we kept coming back to Final Fantasy VIII, a big budget spectacle ends that literally ends with this beautiful visual cacophony as Squall's entire identity is destroyed and reconstructed before our eyes. Games like Virginia and 30 Flights of Loving are incredibly successful attempts at translating the editing and montage into games in a way that makes them core to the moment to moment play. And Injustice 2's story mode is 100% just aping the aesthetics of modern blockbusters, and pulling it off. So it is possible, I just wish it was more common.

Aside from thinking too much about video game cutscenes, I've also been watching a bunch of 30 Rock, which - and I don't mean to shock you here - is a really good show. The way it mixes cartoonish absurdity with genuine moments of earnestness was always going to be something that appeals to me, so I'm pleased to report that it landed strong. Pete is my favourite. Again, shocking, I know. I might have more #takes on it as I go through, but right now I'm enjoying the fact that for the most part I can just enjoy it and laugh and my feelings don't get that complex. 

Anyway, thank you for reading this week's Patreon Letter, I hope you enjoy what we've got coming up over the course of this month! Thank you so much for your support and we'll see you with another one of these next week.

Jackson <3