I missed this week’s Jumping the Shark in order to play a little Witcher 2 preview build (post coming soon), but somehow the gang manages to carry on without me. (Perish the thought.) This week, courtesy of some more legwork from Brandon (who also edited), brings you an interview with Mark Yetter from Timegate Studios, makers of Section 8: Prejudice. From there the gang goes on to chat about Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, Portal 2, Zelda, and Mario. Enjoy!
iTunes Link
Past Episodes
(Embedded feed included after the break.)
I liked Danielle’s bit about revisiting the games we played in childhood, except my Mario was Guybrush Threepwood. I picked up the special edition of Monkey Island 2 recently and it was a hoot playing through it again. So, thanks!
Now to can summon up the steel to go back and finish Alex Kidd in Miracle World…
Ocarina of Time was a fantastic game. It was brilliantly designed, packed with cool gadgets that helped solve puzzles in completely intuitive ways, and dotted the landscape with dozens of bonus treasures perched just out of reach, tantalizing you to come back once you discovered the proper tools to reach them. Beating that entire game without the use of any FAQs or strategy guides, including the water temple and hunting down every last golden skulltula is one of my proudest gaming achievements.
Majora’s Mask took all those great things and made them better. Multiple abilities were tied to Link’s form, allowing you to map a broader ranger of skills to each button. The overworld was somewhat smaller but also much less sparse, culling out the vast empty spaces in favor of a more focused and fully formed design for each area. There was a more consistent sense of purpose, too. Instead of traveling around collecting a chain of trinkets in pursuit of an climactic showdown, each region was grappling with its own distinct set of problems and figuring out how to set things right was key to saving them all.
The biggest deal for me was the the new time mechanic. The binary past-future system of Ocarina was neat, but except for a few instances, it felt very much like the Light World-Dark World shift from Link to the Past. Majora’s Mask was far more ambitious, adopting a 72-hour Groundhog’s Day-style time loop that influenced every other aspect of the game. Only your possessions and your memory were permanent, with everything else slaved to a relentless cycle of turmoil and destruction. Major quests had to be completed within the three day limit or the world would reset around you. Others relied on your ability to find pivot points in the timeline, learning when, where, and how you needed to intercede to solve a problem before it could occur. It was absolutely brilliant.
Great bit with Mark Yetter. I bought Section 8: Prejudice right after that segment and I’ve been enjoying it. Unfortunately I’ll be unsubscribing from the podcast though. One minute you’re saying you don’t want to spoil anything about Portal 2 and how you dislike getting anything spoiled, and then you spoil significant details about the game. This is third time or so I’ve been spoiled by something on the podcast. I’m totally fine with people talking spoilers but every other podcast I listen to is pretty good about saying when they’ll spoil something and if they say the won’t, they actually don’t. Make up your minds and stick to your spoiler policy.