[PA Comic] Wednesday, October 10, 2012 - Jambalya

Geth

Jambalya
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/10/10

Champ

The guy in the third panel looks like a hammer head shark.

Pony

oh jesus the fat guy in the friend zone t-shirt with the sideburns

i can't stop laughing

Comedy Reflux

This is some serious advertising for the game. I would love to see so much awesome put together in one story! If they can pull it off.

Groosenat0r

I like whales too...

Black_Heart

Is the black guy in the third panel part Rakatan?



I mean seriously, wtf?

Groosenat0r

Black_Heart wrote: »

Is the black guy in the third panel part Rakatan?



I mean seriously, wtf?

He struck me more as an Ithorian/Rakatan hybrid...

SwashbucklerXX

Comedy Reflux wrote: »

This is some serious advertising for the game. I would love to see so much awesome put together in one story! If they can pull it off.

Oh, they do!

Also, there are ninjas.

Kagera

Are they whales though?

kingworks

The girl on the end ... I keep hearing her say "Whalesh!" in my head.

Lucascraft

Is Dishonored a first person version of Assassin's Creed?

Alucard6986

It's closer to Deus ex or Thief with a little bit of the magic/steampunk bits of bioshock.

JayeEmm

black turtleneck guy in panel 2 - totally Jim Darkmagic's cousin.

TychoCelchuuu

The biggest question about today's comic was whether it would be about Dishonored or about XCOM.

@Lucascraft it's basically Thief + Hitman.

Jacques L'Homme

Yeah, Jim Darkmagic's cousin is either a.) really smug with his rat plague idea, or, b.) really looking forward to the next Andromeda strain.

His lack of a beret leads me to believe he is the latter.

Funky Strong

Pony wrote: »

oh jesus the fat guy in the friend zone t-shirt with the sideburns

i can't stop laughing

It's definitely the funniest part of the comic.

RatherDashing89

All I need to know about Dishonored is that the trailers play a mystic, haunting version of "Drunken Sailor". It could play like Big Rigs and I'd still want it.

TychoCelchuuu

RatherDashing89 wrote: »

All I need to know about Dishonored is that the trailers play a mystic, haunting version of "Drunken Sailor". It could play like Big Rigs and I'd still want it.

The song's available for download, too!

-Tal

**the friend zone**

philman132

Did the first panel of the comic just give away game spoilers? Doesn't all the pre-game information and trailers say the princess is assassinated, not kidnapped?

Cabezone

The kidnapping happens in the first 5-10 minutes of the game. If there is a spoiler it's that she's actually dead, I dunno if she is or not.

TychoCelchuuu

philman132 wrote: »

Did the first panel of the comic just give away game spoilers? Doesn't all the pre-game information and trailers say the princess is assassinated, not kidnapped?

The queen is assassinated, the princess is kidnapped. Not a spoiler, really, since it happens 10 minutes in.

edit: I also don't remember any prohibition in Dishonored, although I haven't made it super far into that game.

Librarian

Newspost is up and it says they both do not like the game very much.

Didact

Groosenat0r wrote: »

I like whales too...

Honestly, Dishonored whales look more like huge sharks to me. The horizontally oriented fluke and lack of a dorsal fin are the only noticeable cetacean specific characteristics.

Fiendishrabbit

Didact wrote: »

Honestly, Dishonored whales look more like huge sharks to me. The horizontally oriented fluke and lack of a dorsal fin are the only noticeable cetacean specific characteristics.

The position of the eyes and mouth too, too low for a shark.
Otherwise the barrelshaped body, pectoral fin (whales don't have one) and the overall shape of the head are quite sharklike.

TychoCelchuuu

Then maybe they're whalesharks or something. The game is set in a fantasy world, they can make up whatever creatures they want. Here's what "dogs" look like:

Dedwrekka

Maybe they're fantasy creatures that were made up by the developers and then they said "lets take what we want from Steampunk, SciFi, and fantasy, be different with it, but then have everyone act like it was normal"? You know, like they said.

In other news this:

Gabe_Post wrote:

Gabe wrote:

Yesterday I had the chance to demo my Thornwatch game for some friends from Cryptozoic. In case you don’t know, these are the guys who make the World of Warcraft TCG, our Penny Arcade deck building games and are also responsible for the totally fucking amazing Lookouts comic book. Cryptozoic makes a lot of great games and I figured if I really wanted to know if Thornwatch had potential, I needed to show it to some professional game makers.

To say that I was nervous was an understatement. I ran them all through a simple encounter against some vampires. As I’ve mentioned before Thornwatch is a card based game. Each character has a deck and a hand of cards that they play their powers from. Each card in their deck is associated with a skill type. There are six types of skills in Thornwatch and each character is a combination of two usually. In the Thornwatch the skills are:

SPIRIT
You know the songs and ways of the secret Gods. You have walked alongside the invisible spirits who shape the Eyrewood and you can call upon them to help or harm. You can communicate with the denizens of the wood and sense the motives of beast and human with incredible clarity.

MIND
All your life you have been drawn to the study of books and scrolls. You have cultivated a sharp mind and you wield it like a blade. Ancient Puzzles and devious riddles unravel under your gaze. You are perceptive and mindful of your surroundings and no detail escapes your scrutiny.

STRENGTH
You value physical prowess above all else. You have spent your life pushing yourself to peak condition and it shows. You may carry a sword but your body is the true weapon. Your strength is a tool that you can use to aid your allies or punish and intimidate your enemies.

WILL
You rely on an internal strength that manifests itself as a steadfast determination to succeed. You have pushed yourself the breaking point and then found new reservoirs of power beyond. Your vigilance and discipline in the face of danger makes you an inspiration to your allies on the battlefield.

DEXTERITY
You are nimble and quick. You have astounding control over your own body and you know its capabilities. You recognize that when pushed, it is the hard bow that breaks and so you bend. You are invisible when you wish to be and a master at getting into things and places closed off to others.

VITALITY
You may be beaten and broken but like the great trees of the Eyrewood you have sent your roots deep and so you are not easily felled. You draw on a well of life that grants you a seemingly endless resilience and ability to survive.

When one of these vampires would bite you I would take a random card from your hand and it would act as a buff for that vampire. So for example, when I bit the Fighter I drew a vitality card from his hand and the vampire gained 5 health. I took a dexterity card from the Rogue and now the vampire could move again after it attacked. It was a really fun mechanic and resulted in some great moments at the table. “Please don’t let it bite the fucking wizard!”

Strength: The Vampire’s attacks deal +2 WOUNDS

Vitality: The Vampire gains 5 Health

Spirit: The Vampire’s + to hit is increased by 1

Dexterity: The Vampire may move after their attack

Will:The Vampire’s defense is increased by 1

Mind:The vampire may attack twice per turn

In Thornwatch enemies deal wound cards that get shuffled into your deck and since they cannot be discarded begin to build up in your hand. When a vampire picked a wound card from a player the vampire was healed and the wound card went back to the player. They could also smell blood so I let them teleport to any player who had a wound in their hand. When a player hit a vampire they could choose to either deal damage or strip off one of the vampire’s buff cards. It made for some fun choices and I could not have been happier with the way they worked.

The guys from Cryptozoic really seemed to enjoy the game and after is was over we had a great talk about the current mechanics and stuff I want to do but have not implemented yet . The main thing is that they thought what I had so far was “awesome” and they want to help me make it even better. So the good news is that this just got a whole lot closer to being something you’ll actually be able to buy in a store!

-Gabe out

Made me very excited and awed.
I get the feeling that "the future of PA" includes many more games being made by Gabe and Tycho, and less being simply made "around them" or "about them".

TychoCelchuuu

While we're talking about Gabe, I find it kind of funny that the "grab bag" of Dishonored turned him off immediately, even though it's so stupendously crafted, internally consistent, and far more interesting than most made up worlds created for games, and yet he has no problem running D&D campaigns that are basically "take every interesting thing from fantasy novels I read and change the names." It seems like if he enjoys the second thing, it wouldn't make sense to be turned off by the first thing.

MichaelLC

Maybe it's more the act of creating those worlds rather than playing them that he likes.

Dedwrekka

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

While we're talking about Gabe, I find it kind of funny that the "grab bag" of Dishonored turned him off immediately, even though it's so stupendously crafted, internally consistent, and far more interesting than most made up worlds created for games, and yet he has no problem running D&D campaigns that are basically "take every interesting thing from fantasy novels I read and change the names." It seems like if he enjoys the second thing, it wouldn't make sense to be turned off by the first thing.

Just assuming here but he may have thought:
1) The mixed aesthetics made the world feel less real. Like a van driving through Isengard.
2) The mixture felt like a bit of a minstrel show. Throwing together a lot of popular genres in order to attain some semblance of their popularity, while at the same time doing them no favors in the process. Rather than appearing to be a creative combination it may feel like a bit of a money grab.

Myself, I think it looks like an excellent Gaslamp Fantasy game, even if that wasn't directly intended. The mixture of genres and aesthetics actually goes a long way to making the world look like something crafted by the Foglios.

Faceless Coward

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

While we're talking about Gabe, I find it kind of funny that the "grab bag" of Dishonored turned him off immediately, even though it's so stupendously crafted, internally consistent, and far more interesting than most made up worlds created for games, and yet he has no problem running D&D campaigns that are basically "take every interesting thing from fantasy novels I read and change the names." It seems like if he enjoys the second thing, it wouldn't make sense to be turned off by the first thing.

Yeah, that's immediately what I thought. I'm only a few hours into the campaign, but I'm enjoying it immensely. There are few worlds in games more immersive than the one found here.

Sure it does seem like a bunch of weird concepts and tropes thrown together but you can't call it bland or unoriginal which is the norm nowadays. And it's a strange thing that medieval sword and sorcery fantasy has become so stale that it feels normal instead of the concept of fantasy today.

Dedwrekka

Faceless Coward wrote: »

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

While we're talking about Gabe, I find it kind of funny that the "grab bag" of Dishonored turned him off immediately, even though it's so stupendously crafted, internally consistent, and far more interesting than most made up worlds created for games, and yet he has no problem running D&D campaigns that are basically "take every interesting thing from fantasy novels I read and change the names." It seems like if he enjoys the second thing, it wouldn't make sense to be turned off by the first thing.

Yeah, that's immediately what I thought. I'm only a few hours into the campaign, but I'm enjoying it immensely. There are few worlds in games more immersive than the one found here.

Sure it does seem like a bunch of weird concepts and tropes thrown together but you can't call it bland or unoriginal which is the norm nowadays. And it's a strange thing that medieval sword and sorcery fantasy has become so stale that it feels normal instead of the concept of fantasy today.

Tycho describe's Gabe's reaction as "For Gabriel, it never got beyond pastiche."

A pastiche is a work of art, literature, film, music or architecture that openly imitates the work of a previous artist, sometimes with the intent of satire. The word can also describe a hodge-podge of parts derived from the original work of others.

I don't believe Gabriel felt that the setting, and ideas that the setting was culled from, were handled well enough to be anything but an ill-fitting copy.

Didact

Dedwrekka wrote: »

Faceless Coward wrote: »

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

While we're talking about Gabe, I find it kind of funny that the "grab bag" of Dishonored turned him off immediately, even though it's so stupendously crafted, internally consistent, and far more interesting than most made up worlds created for games, and yet he has no problem running D&D campaigns that are basically "take every interesting thing from fantasy novels I read and change the names." It seems like if he enjoys the second thing, it wouldn't make sense to be turned off by the first thing.

Yeah, that's immediately what I thought. I'm only a few hours into the campaign, but I'm enjoying it immensely. There are few worlds in games more immersive than the one found here.

Sure it does seem like a bunch of weird concepts and tropes thrown together but you can't call it bland or unoriginal which is the norm nowadays. And it's a strange thing that medieval sword and sorcery fantasy has become so stale that it feels normal instead of the concept of fantasy today.

Tycho describe's Gabe's reaction as "For Gabriel, it never got beyond pastiche."

A pastiche is a work of art, literature, film, music or architecture that openly imitates the work of a previous artist, sometimes with the intent of satire. The word can also describe a hodge-podge of parts derived from the original work of others.

I don't believe Gabriel felt that the setting, and ideas that the setting was culled from, were handled well enough to be anything but an ill-fitting copy.

What's it copying?

TychoCelchuuu

Exactly. They're copying... uh... well, the painterly style looks a tiny bit like TF2, and since the guy who designed the Combine also designed much of Dishonored, some of the architecture looks like Half-Life 2. But the steampunk technology? Way better than "brass gears glued to everything" that most steampunk looks like. The magic? Barely intrusive and not at all derivative of anything in particular. All the spell effects are very toned down and can't be said to look similar to much of anything. The sound design? Stupendous and as far as I can tell not really cribbing from anything in particular. Even Thief, a good thing for them to have cribbed from, was much more silent than Dishonored. The... voices? I guess there are a lot of famous people in Dishonored.