PA comic: Friday February 3, 2012 - Transposition

Bogey

Dark Raven X

Guys! More canon talk! GET IN HERE!

This is good times. I read the first Mass Effect book, wasn't that great, but it felt like it fit the universe.

TAFKAP

Shouldn't it be "aththault"? </pedant>

Comradebot

I ain't gonna lie, I'd like to see Shepherd fly in an X-wing and use it to destroy Cybertron. If we're lucky, Micahel Bay won't survive.

darleysam

My problem is that Dietz is just a terrible writer. Reading 'The Flood' was like reading the blandest walkthrough of Halo, interspersed with the tales of Dastardly and Muttley. But somehow bad. From looking at the list of errors, it's not just petty neckbearded 'inaccuracies' like getting the range or muzzle velocity of a gun wrong. It looks more like someone showed him a screenshot of the game and said "write this". I'm not outraged or furious, I'm just disappointed that someone felt he was the right man for the job.

Ashoka

TAFKAP wrote:

Shouldn't it be "aththault"? </pedant>

No, because that would introduce an additional syllable. Which would just be weird.

Evil Multifarious

misused semicolon

i guess he could attribute it to the author he's "quoting"

Maz-

Great comic.

It pretty much hits the nail on the head, too. Some of these "errors" are really, really nitpicky..but then you've got stuff like a quarian wearing something other than an environmental suit and other things that someone who has played the games would never, ever get wrong. The fact that a book of such questionable quality for one of the biggest modern video game franchises is being released is pretty embarassing.

Henroid

I read the first Mass Effect book they put out, since it was a pre-cursor to the first game (That I still haven't played), and it wasn't the greatest of reads. But I felt like I would 'get it' a little more if I read more books or played the games. Then the idea hit me that eventually the books are going to fuck something up colossally. I'm tempted to ask what's so bad in the book, but that would invoke spoilers and I actually don't want to be exposed to them.

darleysam

Henroid wrote:

I read the first Mass Effect book they put out, since it was a pre-cursor to the first game (That I still haven't played), and it wasn't the greatest of reads. But I felt like I would 'get it' a little more if I read more books or played the games. Then the idea hit me that eventually the books are going to fuck something up colossally. I'm tempted to ask what's so bad in the book, but that would invoke spoilers and I actually don't want to be exposed to them.

What I looked it, it really just looks like the author just didn't know anything about the series beyond the few cursory details included in his brief, which would be something about spaceships, aliens, and laser guns. It's not "ugh, this is AWFUL, he said the Normandy is 72 meters long when the bonus Codex entry that you can unlock in ME1 on Impossible difficultly CLEARLY states that it is 68 meters", and more "Commander William D. Shepherd loded his gun and got ready to shot at the alien men as they carred his wife away. 'Not this time you alien scum' he axclamed as he cocked at his Ultra Rifle 'today is the day you feel my massive effect!'"

Iron Weasel

@darleysam, Do - do you have any more about William D Shepherd? 'Cause he sounds like a boss.

Javen

understanding lisps is way more difficult in text form

darleysam

William D. Shepherd looked back at his face in the holo-mirror of his private quarters on the Normandy. It had been one weeks since Miranda had been taken by the Collectors and his face had grown a beard. He frowned in concern and worry for his One True Love, the most beautiful woman who had married him after he stopped the Reapers in Mass Effect 2. Now she was gone and all he had left was an empty space. Maybe Liara or Kelly would love him NO he thought 'NO I MUST FIND MIRANDA'. He was a handsome man despite looking rugged and battle-scared. Everyone looked surprised when he told them he was 46, because they thought he was 25. 'I will get you back my love' he growled 'and make the Collector boss PAY!!"

Okay I'll stop there because it's both off-topic and wildly addictive.

joshofalltrades

Birthday comic

I am pleased

Ashoka

darleysam wrote:

battle-scared

Well, they can be quite frightening.

darleysam

Ashoka wrote:

darleysam wrote:

battle-scared

Well, they can be quite frightening.

You think I write that badly naturally? Gotta work to make it authentic, man.

pirateluigi

darleysam wrote:

My problem is that Dietz is just a terrible writer. Reading 'The Flood' was like reading an austistic walkthrough of Halo, interspersed with the tales of Dastardly and Muttley. But somehow bad. From looking at the list of errors, it's not just petty neckbearded 'inaccuracies' like getting the range or muzzle velocity of a gun wrong. It looks more like someone showed him a screenshot of the game and said "write this". I'm not outraged or furious, I'm just disappointed that someone felt he was the right man for the job.

Oh, no wonder this book sucks. The Flood was one of the worst books I've ever read and it reads a lot like someone showed him a let's play of Halo and said "Now make it into a book".

InXplotch

I just popped i to say, the way Gabe is sitting in the comic is something I do all the time. And, you know, dramatic readings of internet posts are always worth a laugh. I can't say much about the subject at hand, though.

SaraLuna

joshofalltrades wrote:

Birthday comic

I am pleased

I just came here to post the same thing.
Apparently I have the best forum birthday-bro. *fist bump*

joshofalltrades

Fist bump explosion

SaintElmosWire

Ok I've heard a lot about this damn book now... Is it really that bad? And also do people seriously read game literature? I don't think I could bring myself to do it.

Aurich

SaintElmosWire wrote:

Ok I've heard a lot about this damn book now... Is it really that bad? And also do people seriously read game literature? I don't think I could bring myself to do it.

It seems like a great idea until you do it. You like a game's setting, and you want more. One sort of assumes that no one would sink money into publishing a terrible writer. Even after the first bite, most people will assume it was an isolated case, and surely they can't all be bad...

ThreeCubed

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Birthday comic

I am pleased

Happy birthday, dear.

@Sassori needs to get in here and declare Birthday Comic as well.

pirateluigi

SaintElmosWire wrote:

Ok I've heard a lot about this damn book now... Is it really that bad? And also do people seriously read game literature? I don't think I could bring myself to do it.

There actually are some decent ones but they are few and far between. Nothing great, but definitely readable.

OmnomnomPancake

first 3 books weren't amazing, but they were fun little expansions of the universe that helped flesh things out, much like the halo novels.

also much like the halo novels, it seems dietz' contribution is by far the worst.

i'd rather have a Karren Traviss on it.

B:L

pirateluigi wrote:

SaintElmosWire wrote:

Ok I've heard a lot about this damn book now... Is it really that bad? And also do people seriously read game literature? I don't think I could bring myself to do it.

There actually are some decent ones but they are few and far between. Nothing great, but definitely readable.

For pulpy goodness:

Sassori

Margarazzi wrote:

joshofalltrades wrote: »

Birthday comic

I am pleased

Happy birthday, dear.

@Sassori needs to get in here and declare Birthday Comic as well.

Yay birthday comic!

agoaj

Not all video game books are bad.

Roger Wilco

Just to clarify. Tycho hasn't finished a Clash of Kings because Martin is too descriptive of food, but he sat down and read a Mass Effect book?

TychoCelchuuu

Roger Wilco wrote:

Just to clarify. Tycho hasn't finished a Clash of Kings because Martin is too descriptive of food, but he sat down and read a Mass Effect book?

Reading a Mass Effect book takes like, a couple hours, tops. Clash of Kings is 1000 pages.

SaintElmosWire

B:L wrote:

pirateluigi wrote:

There actually are some decent ones but they are few and far between. Nothing great, but definitely readable.

For pulpy goodness:

Ok, those Myst ones have great covers. And holy crap do those Doom books look like proper old pulp sci-fi... You know, since I'm judging them by their covers and all :P

EmperorSeth

InXplotch wrote:

I just popped i to say, the way Gabe is sitting in the comic is something I do all the time. And, you know, dramatic readings of internet posts are always worth a laugh. I can't say much about the subject at hand, though.

Kind of awkward when it happened to me, though.

Darkewolfe

The Myst books were really good, or at least my 14 year old self thought so. Definitely made me enjoy the games more.

Kagera

The myst books made me want to see a movie about it

DJ Eebs

It's probably really easy to do a Doom book that doesn't contradict canon, since canon is "there are demons on that mars moon and later they're on earth"

Korlash

Argh, Tycho misspelled "oeuvre" in his post. Using a French word in the middle of an English sentence loses its fancy quality when it's misspelled. Unfortunately, I'd estimate that roughly 90% of the time anglophones put French words in their text, they manage to misspell them. I wish this was an exaggeration.

Sorry, this is a major pet peeve of mine. My language...

Taramoor

I must admit, looking at some of the errors listed in the codex, those are pretty nasty. Up there, in my opinion, with Lando drinking hot cocoa and talking about a far away planet called "Earth".

The ones I thought were pretty bad, from a brief skimming of the error codex
-Human character visits an auction house on the Batarian homeworld
-Gillian is no longer autistic
-Batarians raid the Turian homeworld for slaves
-Volus wearing masks that don't fully cover their faces.

The autism thing is just a violation of basic writing standards. The other three are pretty basic lore in the universe. The Batarians don't raid far into Citadel space so they're ignored for the most part. Batarians would NEVER allow a non-Batarian onto their homeworld... ever, and the Volus would die without full covering.

Henroid

The Geebs That Is A Pony wrote:

It's probably really easy to do a Doom book that doesn't contradict canon, since canon is "there are demons on that mars moon and later they're on earth"

Well, don't forget about John Stalvern and Cernel Joson.

Tofystedeth

darleysam wrote:

William D. Shepherd looked back at his face in the holo-mirror of his private quarters on the Normandy. It had been one weeks since Miranda had been taken by the Collectors and his face had grown a beard. He frowned in concern and worry for his One True Love, the most beautiful woman who had married him after he stopped the Reapers in Mass Effect 2. Now she was gone and all he had left was an empty space. Maybe Liara or Kelly would love him NO he thought 'NO I MUST FIND MIRANDA'. He was a handsome man despite looking rugged and battle-scared. Everyone looked surprised when he told them he was 46, because they thought he was 25. 'I will get you back my love' he growled 'and make the Collector boss PAY!!"

Okay I'll stop there because it's both off-topic and wildly addictive.

Now we just need Takyris to come by and take up the mantle.

Aurich

Korlash wrote:

Argh, Tycho misspelled "oeuvre" in his post. Using a French word in the middle of an English sentence loses its fancy quality when it's misspelled. Unfortunately, I'd estimate that roughly 90% of the time anglophones put French words in their text, they manage to misspell them. I wish this was an exaggeration.

Sorry, this is a major pet peeve of mine. My language...

In French class in high school, one of our substitute teachers told us a tale about how this order of monks was commissioned to create a written language for the hitherto spoken French. Supposedly, these monks were paid per letter, which is why French has so many dang silent vowels.

I guess my point is that maybe you guys should have thought of that before you made your words so fancy.

Henroid

I just glanced over the Google doc Tycho linked, just looking for the red-highlights throughout. Pretty much an author not checking anything established before he started tapping away at his keyboard I guess.

I do think it's kinda funny that sexuality is a thing in all this.