so the other day me and some friends got to talking about star wars because two people didn't watch it until this year so it was all "omg you've only watched it now???" "what order did you start?" "how did you survive???" kind of thing

anyway

one of them mentioned that they enjoyed the prequels more because it didn't look as dated as the OG three. and you know, i can see where she's coming from because the effects in the prequel trilogy match the CGI if that time. but if you were to look at the original trilogy practical effects with "modern-day" CGI, it looks....off.

there are too many extraterrestrial animals in the background, certain scenes are added just to show off CGI that slow down the story, and you can just tell that the CGI doesn't mesh well with the rest of the films (the animals look too saturated for example).

so, for someone to only now hop on and watch these films, i totally get what they mean by labeling 4-6 as "dated". the added CGI only adds to that fact that these movies came out in the 70s and 80s not the early 200s or 2010s (although those can look dated as well but those are more from outdated lines imo). you can clearly see the blur line where the green screen would be, you can tell that a landscape scene was just a tiny recreation of the setting, the puppets looked like puppets.

however, i don't think that should take away from the films. a lot of older movies show their age, but somehow that makes them more endearing. "Gone With the Wind" is super dramatic and the soundtrack is very reminiscent of plays or operas, "Back to the Future" is campy and very 80s that you wouldn't want it to be anywhere else, "Indiana Jones" has the classic epic tropes of an adventure man (not to mention you can point out which backgrounds were painted or not): all of these films show their age but nothing about that makes them not good enough to watch. they're just a film that was made to the best it could be with the materials their time could provide.

therefore, it is my opinion that george lucas should had kept the OG trilogy as they were because it keeps the magic that captivated many and shows off its quality. choosing to add in CGI later hindered 4-6's quality and made the films too cluttered. moral of this post, stop shoving CGI in older films to make them modern enough for younger viewers because not only are you diminishing the film's quality, you are implying that the practical effects used in your films were not good enough and aren't high quality.

Your thoughts on the new Star Wars?

[Disclaimer: The following is sarcasm targeted at social trends and contrarians the world-over. If it offends you, buck it up and have a fucking sense of humor.]

A Completely Serious Breakdown OfStar Wars: The Last Jedi

by Anita Sarkeesian & Rachel Maddow

To begin, let’s just say the best format in which to write anything on the internets is by breaking it down into a comprehensive list for no goddamn reason, other than maybe the idea that lots of people like to read lists or something because it feels a lot less like reading, and lots of people dislike reading. Right? Right.Thus, the following is a list of reasons why Star Wars: The Last Jedi is an atrocity bordering on Nagasaki levels of horror.WARNING: The following will contain spoilers and angsty disappointment.

1. Not enough transgender charactersThis one is clearly a no-brainer. Every respectable sell-out of a Hollywood screenwriter ought to know by now that their movie should contain at least one transgender, one gender-fluid, one gender neutral, and one tri-sexual character, if not more. And this is especially true in bombastic, overblown blockbusters. It disgusts me to see them disregard such a large percentage of their viewership. I know they tried to placate us with the pink-haired drag queen admiral who takes command after Leia is incapacitated, and the Asian kid who is running around with Finn the entire movie, but these characters seemed more like afterthoughts than anything else. To see them be so cavalier and conservative with their dramatis personae is just shameless.

2. It supports animal murderRight off the bat, we’re treated to a horrific scene in which Luke Skywalker, previously a shining beautiful example of a peaceful pacifist Zen master, is shown violently murdering an innocent fish with a barbed spear, then casually carrying the poor slaughtered animal back to his hut like a caveman. If that’s not enough, we later see Chewbacca, previously the most non-violent and docile character in the entire franchise, roasting a poor decapitated penguin on a spit over an open fire like some uncivilized neanderthal. Did he skin the creature while it was still alive? Perhaps we’ll never know, but it was clearly murdered with an intent to eat, and the Wookie carelessly roasts the creature’s remains in full view of its mournful cousins who must be wondering which of them will be next for bloody execution. This blatant disregard for the lives of the magical, peaceful animals of nature is truly horrifying. I can’t imagine how the filmmakers could be this vulgar. For achieving such advanced levels of technology, the people of this galaxy sure behave like feral savages.

3. Not enough wacky comedyI know there was a scene in which a confused elderly woman plays the general of an army, a riff on Karate Kid, an awkward reference to deep throating, a robot doing its best Solid Snake impression, a little kid getting mercilessly whipped by a character from a Pixar movie, Yoda acting like a weirdo again, furry anime creatures making cute noises, a guy getting unexpectedly electrocuted, enough bad dialogue to fill a Star Destroyer’s cargo hold, a fucking prank phone call scene in a Star Wars movie, and Benicio Del Toro’s face; but still. This movie could’ve used more comedy. This is made by Disney, after all, the same studio who gave us Guardians of the Fallacy, I mean every gag in that movie is just such a fucking knee-slapper, you know? Goddamn.

4. Too much explicit sexualityI was very glad to see that in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Disney decided to completely sever all of the vulgar and explicit sexuality depicted in every previous Star Wars film, particularly making certain this new portrayal of the galaxy was as sterile and sexless as a Dominican cloister. However, they’ve decided to flush that newfound dignity down the fucking toilet with this film. You all know what I’m talking about. There is a single scene in this movie where one character kisses another character on the lips. I know it’s just a little peck, but that’s just too much. This movie is vulgar, kids should not see it. Don’t even get me started on Kylo Ren’s sexy shirtlessness, Snoke’s pervy sex offender vibes, and all of Rey’s wet t-shirt scenes.

5. Not enough Han SoloHan Solo isn’t in this movie. ‘Nuff said.

6. Female heroine needs a manRemember Rey? That amazing, strong feminist icon from Episode VII who could do anything, fix a ship, fly a ship, shoot a gun, wield a laser sword, speak any language, and conquer anyone who stood in her path? Yeah, that girl decided to take a nap in this movie. You guessed it, she’s all fire and energy, yet the moment she sees Kylo Ren’s sweaty shirtless abs this new Rey can’t resist and falls head-over-heels for a guy who tried to slice her in half the first time they met. I mean, nothing comes of it, thank god! But seriously Disney? This is just lazy writing, and feminists everywhere should boycott this movie and fire-bomb any theater still showing it, along with all the homes of those who buy tickets to support it.

7. Too much talkingAgain, this movie was made by Disney, right? So why the hell is all the talking filled with so much boring character-driven dialogue, and not a goofy joke or lyrics in a sing-a-long? I cannot imagine how they expected to tap their drooling Marvel MCU fanbase with this many narrative-relevant scenes of people talking which don’t include funny gags or nerdy references from a Tony Stark-esque character. What a disappointment.

8. Not enough racial diversityI know there’s a Spanish-Puerto Rican man, a black man, a Guatemalan man, two Vietnamese women, a few white people, another black guy, a Wookie, the previously mentioned drag queen, a Mon Calamari, some other aliens visible when they go to Monte Carlo, and whatever alien that one dude was; but still. That’s only representing a few out of, like, hundreds of thousands of other ethnic groups all over the planet, not to mention the millions if not billions of alien species throughout the galaxy whose children have no characters to look up to in this movie. The distinct lack of Jews was most jarring for me, and I wouldn’t hazard to call this film anti-Semitic exactly, but it does make you pause for contemplation.

9. Glorification of violenceDo I really need to say this out loud? Holy shit. There is so much violence in this movie it makes me nauseous. People blowing people up, decapitation and dismemberment, savagely beating each other to death with clubs, animals being whipped, children being whipped (even if it’s funny, it’s still violent), casino patrons being violently trampled to death by stampeding anime creatures, bodies being engulfed by fiery explosions, explosions engulfing explosions, and at least two cases of fanatically intentional suicide which result in the violent death of hundreds if not thousands of others. All told, it’s one of the most violent movies released this year, with a body count that likely surpasses Man of Steel and the first Avengers film combined. How can audiences be this bloodthirsty? It’s just, I don’t know, sickening. You fandom kids should renounce yourselves and practice self-flagellation, as far as I’m concerned.

10. It supports child slave soldiersIn the very first scene, the character Poe Dameron supports a group of Resistance bombers who are trying to destroy a First Order dreadnought. We see the flight leader protecting the bombers is a young girl who couldn’t be older than twelve piloting an A-wing fighter and mercilessly blasting TIE fighters out of the sky. Forgetting the fact that war is already traumatic for fully grown adults, how is the Resistance okay with putting a child in harm’s way like that? I’m astounded. This is so controversial, I can’t believe it isn’t being hotly debated by mouthbreathers all over the internets.

11. Not enough lightsabersLikely the film’s biggest transgression of all. It’s a well-known fact that the mindless drooling fans who attend the cult gatherings known as Star Wars Celebrations and sew their own costumes to wear to premieres (only to turn around and hatefully review the film later on YouTube) only really want to see one thing: lots and lots of lightsaber battles. That’s the only thing Star Wars has going for it these days, after all. And this time nobody bangs a lightsaber against another lightsaber even once. Not once in the entire movie! Jesus, Joseph, and doggy-style Mary! What pointless drivel. I’m considering petitioning the studio for a bid to get my money back after seeing this farce. Don’t they know anything about what makes Star Wars great?

Parthian shotsDespite all of these many, many flaws, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is not entirely without merit. There are some cool CGI effects in almost every scene, for one thing. Throughout the film we also learn some very valuable life lessons, such as:- Anime creatures have invulnerable faces that can smash through anything without the slightest injury.- Shields work best when gunfire is coming from very far away.- Any man in a position of power is either irredeemably evil or an impulsive and weak-willed incompetent fool.- All roads lead to failure.- The best way to be good at something is by sucking at it.- It’s okay for bystanders to be violently trampled to death so long as they’re rich.- All law enforcement officers are evil corrupt bastards.- Freeing captive animals is more important than freeing the slave children who tend to them.- And the only way to win a war is through the magical power of love, even if the enemy is in the process of blowing up your friends while you’re deliriously saying so.

   Huzzah.

       侍   headless

The mind-blowing legacy of David Cronenberg’s Scanners

A filmmaker obsessed with the emergent relationships between technology and humanity, David Cronenberg has been one of the most perceptive and prophetic observers of modernity for over half a century. Combining a cold, analytical gaze with a penchant for the gleefully grotesque, his visions of the present and the near-future have always been troubling, though it has sometimes taken a while for our own reality to prove how troublingly accurate they were. This was certainly the case for his 1981 sci-fi horror Scanners.

The film concerns artificially-enhanced individuals with extraordinary psychic abilities, and a shady corporation’s hunt for one member of the titular group, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside), who has been wreaking havoc with his powers as part of a plan for global domination. Four decades on, Scanners is still probably best known for an early scene in which Revok shows what he’s capable of. During a conference on the new “scanners” phenomenon, a low-level psychic invites him to come on stage as part of a demonstration, only to have his own head unceremoniously blown to smithereens by Revok’s advanced telekinesis.

An instantly iconic shot, the exploding-head sequence was achieved by filling a plaster skull with latex, wax and old hamburgers, then blasting it with a shotgun. Like many of the most memorable images in Cronenberg’s work, it’s the kind of satisfying old-school practical effect that just wouldn’t hit the same if it was done with CGI. Indeed, the scene’s infamy contributed to the film achieving a degree of box office success – something of a commercial breakthrough for Cronenberg.

Scanners also marked a thematic transition for the director. He had long been fascinated by infestations, incubations and metamorphoses, but here his brand of body horror took a more cerebral turn. Though he would later expand on this more fully in Videodrome and The Fly, Cronenberg was already starting to explore the idea that humanity might be complicit in its own traumatic transformations.

The film’s initial release pre-dated the invention of the internet by two years, but a basic description of its premise – a global network of individuals have a direct connection to each other’s thoughts that’s almost impossible to tune out, often leading to shocking acts of violence – seems uncannily familiar in our extremely-online age. Today, we’re just a click away from an unfiltered stream of ideas and opinions from people all over the world, as social media has allowed us to merge into a kind of all-consuming hive mind.

There was a time when this new interconnectivity felt liberating. With tech breakthroughs allowing people to form connections that were hitherto impossible, previously excluded communities were starting to be empowered more than ever before. But it’s become harder to maintain a positive outlook, as the spread of misinformation and divisive rhetoric has terminally weakened our democratic institutions, while our frazzled nervous systems have been rewired by the overuse of mobile devices and social media. What Scanners suggests is that this process may have been set in motion a long time ago.

An early example of what would become Cronenberg’s signature aesthetic, Scanners combines sterile lighting, uncomfortable close-ups and occasionally stilted performances to create an atmosphere of social alienation. Its opening scene is shot from the point of view of a homeless scanner who triggers a seizure in a woman, but only after she makes a cruel, judgemental comment about the man’s shabby appearance and mental state. Beneath the film’s supernatural phenomena and corporate conspiracies, we can feel the more mundane, impersonal violence of the modern world. And while the scanners’ psychic powers seem to offer a way to transcend this, they can only lead to further suffering and destruction.

The parallels with the past few decades are all-too clear. If real-world connection in our late-capitalist society wasn’t already in a state of retrograde, then it’s unlikely the social innovations of the internet would have taken hold in the way that they did. And our own version of mental interconnectivity has ended up driving us even further apart, exacerbating pre-existing sociopolitical divisions. Rewatching Scanners, you get the impression that Cronenberg saw all this coming. Yet the film is no finger-wagging screed about the dangers of technology or the nefarious schemes of those in power. It sees the drive towards interconnectivity and neurological enhancement simply as an evolution of our identities, and in the process makes us question who we really are.

In the film’s show-stopping climax, a fiery psychic battle sees bodies and brains pushed to their limit as Revok is confronted by Cameron Vale (Stephen Lack), the powerful scanner sent to take him out. After both men have been lying apparently dead for a while, Revok eventually wakes up. Looking out through Vale’s eyes and speaking with Vale’s voice, he declares ambiguously, “We’ve won”. With both minds subsumed into a new collective consciousness, it’s no longer possible to tell who has power over whom.

What if we’ve already become part of something much larger and more complex than ourselves? And what if, instead of hostile forces devising an elaborate plot, there’s now nobody in control of what’s happening to humanity? Scanners is an eerie reminder of just how little influence any of us can have over our own minds, in a dehumanising global society that’s also irreversibly interconnected. But, like all Cronenberg’s best work, it’s still fascinated by how we’re changing, and curious about how our new technologically-modified selves might turn out.

The post The mind-blowing legacy of David Cronenberg’s Scanners appeared first on Little White Lies.

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Python 3 for Absolute Beginners

Python 3 for Absolute Beginners Download Introduction So, you want to learn programming. Welcome to one of the great adventures of the twenty-first century. Programming requires little in the way of specialized equipment; the software tools can all be downloaded for free off the Internet, and it can be practiced in the safety and comfort of your own home, without having to ask anyone’s permission. This chapter will ease you in gently by introducing you to the software you will need to create your programs: a command-line interface, which allows you to use Python in interactive mode, and a text editor for writing scripts—nothing more complicated than that. I will also show you where to go to find help and documentation, so you can decode the sometimesimpenetrable jargon that seems to surround this, the geekiest of all technical disciplines. To begin with, you will need to make sure that you have a decently recent version of Python installed on your machine or follow the steps later in this chapter to install it (see “Choosing the Right Python Version” for a definition of decently recent). This chapter explains how to make sure that you have everything set up correctly and that you have suitable references at hand before you start your journey. Python is an excellent language with which to learn programming. There are many reasons for this, but the simple explanation is that it’s easy to read and fast to write; it doesn’t take long to come up with working code that does something meaningful. Python has a very human-friendly syntax, which makes writing elegant code easy. The basic language is fairly simple and therefore easy to remember, and then it has an extensive library of predefined functions that you can use to facilitate most common computer tasks. Writing effective applications in Python can be as simple as playing with conceptual building blocks. It works really well for writing a little two-line application to perform some routine system administration task or to provide interactive functions on a web page, but it has enough power and flexibility to comfortably create much larger and more complex applications with graphic interfaces indistinguishable from the programs you are used to running from your computer’s main menu. If you follow the suggestions laid out in this book about writing self-explanatory code, in several months, even years, you will be able to come back to your programs and see immediately what they were supposed to do and what your original intentions were; this makes maintaining programs much simpler too. OK, let’s make sure your system is ready for you to start running Python programs. Chapter 1: Introducing Python This chapter has explained some of the technical terms that you will encounter as you study the art of programming and has introduced you to some sources of further information to help you as you grow in understanding. So far, you have made sure that the right version of Python is installed on your system and you know how to get to the Python command prompt. You should have selected a text editor to use for writing and saving your scripts, but you haven’t written any code yet. In the next chapter I will show you how to start designing programs from the initial seed of a problem that you wish to solve. Chapter 2: Designing Software Congratulations! You have completed your first turn around the software design cycle and produced your first Python program. In the process, you have discovered how to identify and analyze problems and have created a simple framework by breaking the problem down into simple steps. You wrote your first lines of Python code and learned how to assign values to variables. You also obtained user input using your first function and then tested it out, and you learned how to use error messages to help detect and correct coding errors. Finally, you learned about the importance of documenting your intentions, expectations, and results. This chapter has concentrated mainly on preparing ideas in order to turn them into effective applications. In the rest of this book, I will focus on the specifics of the Python programming language, and you will learn how to construct more complex applications. Chapter 3: Variables and Data Types In this chapter, you have learned how to assign different types of values to variables, how to manipulate simple text strings and perform basic mathematical operations using expressions and statements. Now, you know how to construct and run a simple Python script that can perform a useful calculation. In the next chapter, I will show you how to make decisions that can alter the way the program runs based on those calculations Chapter 4: Making Choices You now know how to get your programs to actually do something. Much of the fundamental action of a program is controlled by the use of comparison operators, logical operators, assignment operators combined with the arithmetical operators that were covered in the previous chapter, and in accordance with the rules of operator precedence. You have learned about the fundamental control structures used for decision making (if, elif, else) and looping (while, else, and for...in...else) as well as how to get out of loops cleanly using break and continue. You have also started to learn how to refine the design and deal with logical errors using trace tables and flowcharting. In the next chapter, I will introduce the first of several more complex data types—the list—and show you how you can manipulate entire sequences of data at once. Chapter 5: Using Lists You have taken on a lot of new information in this chapter, culminating in developing the ideas from previous chapters to create a much more complex program that processes several related pieces of information and returns a rather verbose human readable response. This level of sophistication was made possible using Python’s data structures—strings, tuples, and lists (which are all kinds of sequence) and dictionaries (a mapping). You have also learned that some of these structures (i.e., strings and tuples) are immutable, whereas others like dictionaries and lists are mutable, which means they can be modified. You know how to access items of a sequence using indexes and slices; you can test for membership of a structure using the in keyword or iterate through an entire sequence using the for keyword or a list comprehension. You have encountered several different uses of lists as stacks, queues and matrices of information and you know how to create dictionaries out of key-value pairs. You also now have at your disposal a number of methods you can use to manipulate your data to produce useful output. Combined with looping techniques, these data structures provide the logical building blocks with which you can process your data. In fact, using what you have already learned, you could probably write a program that will do most things you can think of. However that code will be very long-winded, possibly difficult to read, and not really reusable. So, in the next chapter, I will introduce the next stage of program development, known as abstraction, which means you get to create your own functions. Chapter 6: Functions In this chapter, I covered how to abstract and generalize your code into functions. Functions allow you to make your code more readable, maintainable, and efficient. And it’s not just for your main application; your test code can also benefit from this. During our discussion, we covered passing data to functions and working with variable scope. Variable scope allows us to keep information where it belongs, whether it belongs in the global scope of an application or in a function only. All this means you can now refactor your early Python programs to make them easier to work with and more elegant. To prove this, we refactored one of our sample applications. Chapter 7: Working with Text As you’ve seen, text is integral to most Python programs, and you saw how often of our examples use it. We take text input from users, manipulate that text, and display messages in response. This is why Python comes with so many text-related features. In this chapter, you learned how to split and join strings; format, edit, and search for strings; use regular expressions to search for patterns within strings; and work with the files on your file system. We then applied much of this in our example application. Chapter 8: Executable Files, Organization, and Python on the Web A lot of information has been covered in the short space of this chapter. You have learned how to create stand-alone applications, organize your projects, lay out your code, use modules to accept commandline arguments and input from stdin, execute and evaluate arbitrary strings, and create a custom namespace. Finally, you have learned how to write a simple CGI script that can receive input from a web-based form. You can now create proper programs that will work in the same way as any other application you have installed on your system. Your end users don’t need to know anything about what language you wrote it in or the details of the code; they only need to know what commands are available via the interface you have created for them. It’s up to you whether the program is self-explanatory or in what form you provide help files. If in doubt, there is nothing wrong with plain text You are now ready for the next coding paradigm shift—full object-oriented programming. Nearly everything in Python is an object of some type or another, and in the next chapter, you will learn about classes and see how to create and implement your own. Chapter 9: Classes You have covered most of Python's main coding constructs now and have started on the path of objectoriented programming. You have learned about concepts with brash new names like polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation. You have grasped the basic usage of attributes, methods, and their related properties. Now you are happily creating subclasses and overloading operators using magic methods. If I have done my work well, you will also understand the meanings of all these terms. The last remaining constructions you really need to know are the ones involved in handling Errors and Exceptions. You saw an example of a try: ... except: construction already in Listing 9-2. Chapter 10 will fill in the details. Beyond that, the power of Python lies in its sprawling standard library. The remaining chapters of this book will give you insight into the functions and classes contained in some of the more commonly used modules. Chapter 10: Exceptions You can now include sophisticated error handling techniques in your Python repertoire. You have seen how the try...except...else...finally statement is used to handle exceptions and you now know how to create exception classes of your own based on the existing exception class. The next chapter looks at some of the most useful modules in Python’s standard library Chapter 11: Reusing Code with Modules and Packages Python comes with a lot of useful functionality, but it can’t do everything. To make up for this, it gives you the ability to add whatever functionality you want in the form of modules. This allows you to organize and reuse your code and to use modular code provided by other Python developers. We had a good look at Python’s module system and built modules of our own to see how easy it is. This allowed us to talk about the different ways to import and use modules, another flexible aspect of Python modules. We also covered some of the more advanced aspects of modules, such as reloading them and how they work internally. The power of Python modules can be seen when you consider the wealth of material provided by the Python community. It’s fair to say that almost any piece of functionality is out there in the form of a Python module (and if it’s not, then get to work on it and get it out there). Chapter 12: Simple Windowed Applications Award yourself the rest of the day off, or failing that, your favorite beverage and a light snack. You’ve just finished the final chapter in the book. We covered a fair amount in this chapter too, including four major tools for building GUIs in Python. It’s clear that Python 3 isn’t yet the best language to use for GUI programming, but this chapter will give you enough to look into it when Python 3 is ready for GUIs. As for the book as a whole, you know Python. You will probably be more aware of what you still don’t know about programming than when you started reading this book. Good. Over the coming months, you will want to familiarize yourself with the parts of Python’s standard library that look like they might be useful. Just take one module at a time, and construct an application that does what you want it to do. As we’ve done in this book’s examples, start with a pseudocode design or flowchart, and improve the design until you have ticked all your user requirements boxes. Once you have done that, move on to the next thing. You now know how to go about designing applications with command-line, windowed, and webbased interfaces from a basic set of requirements. As you progress, you will develop your own methods through experience and come into contact with more sophisticated programming ideas, which you may want to integrate. I hope this book provides a first step on the path of programming that you can always come back to when you want to remind yourself of the basics. Happy programming! Via TimoBook

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Feature Article

God Of War PS4’s Progression System, Explained

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God of Progression.

by Matt Espineli on Apr 20, 2018 08:00 AM

God of War on PS4 introduces a surprising number of changes to the series. The latest game does away with the linear structure and progression from past games. Now you can explore an open-ended environment, earn XP to unlock abilities from a skill tree, and even acquire armor sets that improve your stats. In addition, you can collect accessories known as Talismans and Enchantments that further improve your equipment’s stats and give you special perks.

There are a lot of systems in place this time around, and it can get overwhelming trying to manage it all at first, especially if you assumed this game was going to be just like its predecessors. To help you get a better understanding of God of War’s upgrade progression, we’ve compiled details on its major systems and mechanics. For more guides, check out our feature detailing 11 tips you should know before starting. And be sure to read our God of War review.

Table of Contents [hide]

Character Upgrades

Armor Sets

Enchantments

Axe Pommels

Talismans

Combat Upgrades

Skills

Runic Attacks

Character Upgrades

God of War slowly introduces you to its mechanics, encouraging you to explore and pick up resources scattered about the world–but for reasons not quite stated. As you progress, it’s revealed that the resources you pick up can be used at shops to purchase and upgrade Kratos’ equipment. There are a variety of different avenues to upgrade and strengthen Kratos and Atreus. In the sections below you can find detailed explanations of each.

Armor Sets

Take time to think about what statistics you value the most.

Armor plays a big part in God of War, not only for increasing your stats to improve your chances of survival, but for specializing in traits that you value in combat. For example, if you like using Runic Attacks, you should equip armor that increases Runic Attack damage. Take time to think about what statistics you value the most, and stick with them, as the sooner you can funnel your resources into crafting and upgrading the armor that best supports that, the better.

The same philosophy applies to Atreus. At the blacksmith shop, you can buy him armor sets that enhance his characteristics in different ways. For instance, one set increases his arrow damage, while another improves the damage he does when strangling enemies. Atreus can be incredibly effective in battle, so it’s important to think about which armor set best suits how you want to use him.

Enchantments

Enchantments are special accessories you can slot into your armor that further enhance their stats. Each piece of armor can hold at least one Enchantment, as long as it has an available socket. If an armor piece doesn’t have any, you can unlock sockets by upgrading them at the blacksmith shop. Throughout your journey, you’ll get your hands on a ton of Enchantments, so always make sure to check your inventory to see if there are any that you should replace from your current loadout.

Make sure to check your inventory to see if there are any that you should replace from your current loadout.

Oftentimes an Enchantment has a special perk that gives you attack buffs and resistances that are either inherent or activate randomly during battle. While it’s useful to be aware of Enchantment perks, you’ll generally want to focus on equipping ones that best increase your stats, as they give you the most significant boosts compared to other items in the game.

It’s important to note that whenever you purchase a new armor set, make sure to re-equip all of the Enchantments from your old armor onto your new one. Unless you’re a fan of playing at a disadvantage, don’t make this mistake.

Axe Pommels

Prioritize Axe Pommels that offer the best perks.

Axe Pommels are special items that further increase the Leviathan Axe’s power. Similar to Enchantments, they offer perks that activate either randomly or after you perform a specific action in battle. For example, the Deadly Grip of Fury has a perk that grants you a Rage Burst after a successful axe kill. Since you can only equip a single Axe Pommel, you want to lean towards the ones with the best perks, as they often don’t offer the most substantial stat boosts. But the choice is up to you; you’re not punished for focusing on stats over perks.

Talismans

Talismans are special accessories you can equip that allow you to perform a special ability in battle. They come in two varieties: active and passive. Active Talismans can be triggered manually by pressing a special button combination. Passive Talismans are activated by performing a specific action in battle, like dodging an attack at the last second.

You generally want to focus on equipping a Talisman that best suits your needs in battle.

While Talismans also offer boosts to your stats, you’ll generally want to focus on equipping one that best suits your needs in battle. For example, if you’d like to have a little insurance when nearing death, the Talisman of Concentrated Vitality allows you to manually give yourself a health boost mid-battle by pressing L1 and the circle button. It’s best to be practical when it comes to choosing a Talisman. Their stats boosts may provide an initiative to equip one over the other, but it’s their perks that are most important, as they can directly impact and change the tide of battle.

Combat Upgrades

God of War’s combat is fairly limited at first, but once you start acquiring more Skills and Runic Attacks, battles start becoming more complex. Enemies only get tougher as the game goes on, so it helps that there are ways to defend yourself. Below we run through the two avenues you have to increase the power of your fighting prowess.

Skills

Choose your skills wisely.

The first way to increase your strength in combat is by unlocking combat abilities in the Skill tree with the XP you earn in battle. Skills are special moves you can perform, like combos, charging attacks, and active attack buffs. Both Kratos and Atreus have their own skills you can upgrade, which are all available for you to unlock right at the start. You eventually unlock more skills from the tree after acquiring or purchasing key items that boost the level of your weapons.

You don’t earn a lot of XP early on, so it’s important to start thinking about which skills best suit your playstyle. But don’t fret, you’re not forced to unlock certain skills over others the whole way through; you’ll eventually nab enough XP to unlock every ability on the skill tree. Until then, choose your skills wisely.

Runic Attacks

While you might be inclined to utilize the default attacks and combos available to you to dispatch foes, don’t forget to use your Runic Attacks. These powerful special moves can be equipped to your weapons and are triggered by holding L1 and pressing R1 or R2. There are two types of Runic Attacks: Light and Heavy. The game features a variety of different Runic Attacks to equip, each sporting their own unique effects, attributes, and cooldowns.

Don’t underestimate the power of Runic Attacks.

It’s possible to upgrade Runic Attacks with XP to enhance their power. You might feel inclined to upgrade combat skills over them, but don’t underestimate how they can aid you in battle. A well-placed Runic Attack can give you the upper hand when your chances of survival seem low. Upgrading them improves their damage, stun, and overall capability. Do not forget to use and upgrade your Runic attacks. They’re well worth it.

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Matt Espineli

Matt Espineli is an Associate Editor. He loves MGS, film noir, westerns, and adventures at sea.

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The post God Of War PS4's Progression System, Explained appeared first on trend views word.

Dialogue reference

As I have stated, this project is about trying out new techniques and new ideas within my creative practice. One of these techniques I want to try is the recording of dialogue and sound for film. It crossed my mind to just do a musical soundtrack to accompany the visuals but I think a more effective way of firmly getting the ideas and context across would be to have a narrative element within the audio. The issue with just having the musical element is, you get the tonal changes in mood through key changes (major and minor reflecting happy and sad feelings) but it’s hard to convey a narrative within them, especially if - as I’m thinking - the videos are only quite short respectively. A dialogue element will much more effectively help convey the messages as we have both tonal aspects as well as content and words to help. 

My first reference for this inclusion of dialogue is the monologues and narration of ‘The Narrator’ in the film Fight Club. This film in itself is a film dealing with mental illness and depression that manifests in a split personality disorder. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exL51n3py6g

This clip from the start of the film, is an impressive CGI rendering of a virtual IKEA catalogue highlighting the way in which the narrator’s life is run by the draw of capitalist, mass produced products in order to fit in with his idea of ideal society. Over top of the sweeping slider movement, tracking the character on the phone ordering more furniture, we hear the narration explaining his need for these products and how he justifies this compulsion. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykdmnS-MtXI 

It is this scene in particular that stands out for me, most specifically the last 5 seconds as the narrator lies apathetically staring at the TV informercials. The visuals combines with Edward Norton’s emotionless, droning voice really communicates the state of lifeless depression. The way he reads the dialogue is as though the words just fall out of his mouth, said with conviction but without emotion. You know in another life he is a smart and well spoken person, he just lacks the confidence to run with it. No joy is to be found in his monotone voice, even as he describes the furniture he supposedly loves, theres no emotion or spark to his voice that suggests he has any actual enthusiasm for his belongings. Spending money gets him superficial joy. 

The visual element of this scene too resonates with my experience of depression at it’s worst. You don’t laugh or cry, you just seam to exist waiting for something to happen, often in the middle of the night. So you sit and watch TV, but you’re not really watching it, you’re just staring at the changing colours and shapes, thinking. I want to homage this scene in my own work due to it’s (and it’s a rather cliche thing to say now about this film) importance in my life as a creative person. 

I first looked at poetry back when I was first considering my final project. My initial idea was to take a poem of a selection of poems and build a story from that in a more traditional form. Since then, I have moved from a more formulaic approach to a more art-film based idea, meaning that I needed to adopt the style of narrative I was going to write. For a more formulaic film, you can get away with being a bit more descriptive and use exposition to guide the audience. Thus, you can do more and move around in time more within the narrative. However, for a more art-film medium, you can be more expressional with the narrative but it also tends to lend itself to a more generalised one. I started by looking at popular social media/ forum site, Reddit. On Reddit you can find a ‘sub-Reddit’ for near enough every topic you could think of and so I went and found the ‘r/poetry’ sub. On here I posted this question: 

To which I got 17 replies of people recommending me different poems specifically and poets in general for me to have a look at. One of my favourite suggestions was Aubade by Phillip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   Till then I see what’s really always there:   Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   Making all thought impossible but how   And where and when I shall myself die.   Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse   —The good not done, the love not given, time   Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   That slows each impulse down to indecision.   Most things may never happen: this one will,   And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without   People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave   Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   Have always known, know that we can’t escape,   Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

This is a very cleaver and resonant depiction of what it’s like to deal with depression (from my experience) on a day to day basis. The thoughts that go through you’re head that become debilitating and issues that make the difference between simply being down and having depression. 

“Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   Making all thought impossible but how   And where and when I shall myself die.   Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.” 

This part of the first stanza is a great example of the early signs that I was pre disposed for this illness, from a very young age, I have feared death. What does it mean, when will it happen and how will it feel? I think these lines sum that up, the words “dread” and “being dead” on context bring up ideas of the mystery of the situation, the unknowing. Whereas “thought impossible” “interrogation” and “hold” sound very similar to the way in which these thoughts can become incapacitating. Often, you fixate on one thing and it causes any other thoughts to stop. This idea that I have about death was one of the original ideas I wanted to explore when coming into this project - the infinite scale of the universe and the subsequent meaningless feeling of our fleeting existence. 

“—The good not done, the love not given, time   Torn off unused“

and 

“The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always“

Again, these lines summaries that feeling of uselessness and meaningless.

“Postmen like doctors go from house to house.“

The final line is very powerful, it shows (to me) that this is a viewpoint that is held by many people, it’s the every-day person that feels these feelings and that you are not alone with them, which is a positive ending in my mind. The postman acting as the every man but then followed with “like doctors” show that even the people who deal with death are subject to this way of thinking too. 

As a dialogue for my film, it’s a very good starting point for me. However, if I am to have these three separate films, splitting up this poem for each part (bad days, normality, and good days) may not leave me with a long enough reading to work the visuals around. It may also not break up perfectly anyway. To really get the idea across that these are different points of view, the poetry needs to mirror these points of view. Overall, Aubade is a very somber poem with only small hints of positivity at the end. Instead I need to make a selection of poems for each shot that fits better with the desired length and mood. 

Voices - Nationwide

Voices is a marketing campaign from the mutual finance group, Nationwide. Nationwide have commissioned a series of short films depicting “real customers” reciting poetry and spoken word pieces about 21st century life. There’s a total of 16 adverts that run between 20 seconds and 2 minuets. The shorter videos obviously being more practical for T.V. advertisement and the longer videos suited to social media due to the cheep cost of marketing through the likes of Facebook and Twitter promotion. T.V. too has more regimented pre-existing formats to enable lots of adverts in a short amount of time where as social media (especially Facebook and Youtube) lends itself to longer videos. Once the viewer is interested in a product, they are more likely to watch the entire video, whereas on T.V. audiences would get bored. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLw3Em2mGRE&list=PLF9206AD222A37AA8&index=4

The content of the videos is very simplistic in methodology, very simple documentary style filming in a montage style edit. The obvious ‘hand held footage’ shooting style and natural lighting (not obviously lit externally) sells the idea that these actors are every day people talking about the business. This in turn subconsciously says to  the audience that the people have sent in this footage themselves because they love the products they provide so much. 

The above video is one of my favourite from the series. The narrator in this case - Sugar J (again, use of informal names similar to how they would appear on a magazine write in column, sells the idea that these are every day people, not actors) - talks about the idea that technology, because of it’s inherent ease of use and connectivity, causes us to actually drift apart as a society. Sugar J proposes that we instead should see the ease of use as a means to connect on a real world basis. The spoken word in this project serves as a device to propose a deeper reading of the content. Because it’s not spelt out in simple terms, the audience have to think about what’s being said and what it means in relation to what’s trying to be sold. 

“...Sometimes, advertising is at its most effective when the hand of the client and agency can be least detected.” VCCP’s (Nationwide’s lead creative agency) deputy executive creative director, Jim Thornton says that he thinks the success of the project is because of it’s raw format, it’s simplistic nature and how it’s been taken back into the hands of the masses. However, when you look at the Youtube comment section, you see a different story, almost the opposite. People have taken to slandering the campaign for being blatant propaganda and soul-less. 

This is the tendency for internet and social media - youtube in particular - to dismiss something without properly understanding the background. A lot of people are dismayed thinking that Nationwide is a bank, whereas they are in fact a mutual finance so the profits of investors are put back into the company, not for the financial gain of the companies elite and outside investors. There’s also a dismissal from a certain proportion claiming that it’s pretentious and pompous. This is interesting when considering my own project as this could possibly be a reaction to my work too once I post it online. However, my work is being made for different purposes, as an art project not a commercial one. This will attract a different (and hopefully more open minded) audience and give context to the use of poetry. 

I think this campaign highlights (regardless of context and political agenda) the potential that spoken word and non linear dialogue methods hold in creating an engaging and thought provoking narrative. This is essential when creating more abstract or speculative work, and especially when discussing mental illness.