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[PA Comic] Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - Commoditized

GethGeth LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
edited January 2014 in The Penny Arcade Hub
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Posts

  • NijhazerNijhazer Sunnyvale, CARegistered User regular
    I pledge to thee, Lady Smudgenose.

  • Monkey Ball WarriorMonkey Ball Warrior A collection of mediocre hats Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited January 2014
    On the one hand, the Bravely Default demo is really good. Good art, good turn buffer gimmick... Assuming the story is passable I could see dumping more hours in than is strictly reasonable.

    On the other hand, I'm not sure I can deal with another RPG where any magic using class/job/whatever I dare use is perpetually MP constrained... Finding or buying ethers is like pulling teeth, and this game doesn't seem to have tents or beds or any other purchasable means to restore it if I get too far from town or get dumped into a plot gauntlet.

    I got especially frustrated when, in the demo,
    I got into the forest and half the enemies spawned new copies on any physical attack that didn't one-shot them... and my red mage was OOM.

    I don't mind difficulty or needing to be conscious of mana pools, but Squenix has a history of making MP a frustrating mechanic.

    Still, it's really good. I will probably just complain loudly while I continue playing it for way too many hours.

    Monkey Ball Warrior on
    "I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Doesn't Gears of War have a thing where you can zap your buddies to make them alive, but they can't zap you alive? Also you can't zap them alive if they take a narrative bullet?

    Video gaaaaaaaaaames. They're silly sometimes but I still love 'em.

  • FiendishrabbitFiendishrabbit Registered User regular
    Pffft. Everyone knows that Phoenix Downs power isn't to resurrect the dead, it's to resurrect the plot.

    "The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
    -Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Also Phoenix Down, as in feathers. I totally didn't get that until someone on Giant Bomb was like "oooooh, down."

  • CasualCasual Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Flap Flap Flap Registered User regular
    Well in final fantasy games it's usually left ambiguous whether zero HP means dead or KO'd.

    So for the most part Phoenix is more like smelling salts than a tonic to raise the dead.

    But then that doesn't explain how it kills zombies. Or how being stabbed with swords in battles knocks people out but the same happening in a cutscene kills them.

    Just suspend your disbelief people, it's for the best.

  • ZxerolZxerol for the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't do so i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered User regular
    Henroid wrote: »
    Also Phoenix Down, as in feathers. I totally didn't get that until someone on Giant Bomb was like "oooooh, down."

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS6CXgloFUg

    it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the "down = down feathers" connection too

  • TubeTube Registered User admin
    Henroid wrote: »
    Also Phoenix Down, as in feathers. I totally didn't get that until someone on Giant Bomb was like "oooooh, down."

    Yeah, someone pointed that out to me last year. My mind went booooooooom.

  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    The age old argument is that Phoenix Down supposedly cures "knocked out" status, and not death! They're the smelling salts of the Final Fantasy realm.

    The real logic break is in Final Fantasy VII where you find Red XIII's dad, converted to stone by poison arrows. There's an item in game that specifically reverses that status.

    Oh brilliant
  • Maz-Maz- 飛べ Registered User regular
    edited January 2014
    Poor Agnes, who stole your nose?

    Also, Bravely Default was amazing, easily one of the absolute best JRPGs of the last decade, everyone should play it.

    Maz- on
    Add me on Switch: 7795-5541-4699
  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    edited January 2014
    Nijhazer wrote: »
    I pledge to thee, Lady Smudgenose.
    Is the lack of noses from the game, or maybe this a new style Mike is trying out for the new year? Possibly he asked Kris Straub for some drawing advice.

    YoungFrey on
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    I assumed it's part of the design of whatever game this is

    or maybe the reason Majesto is royalty is that in the land of the noseless, the one-nosed man is king.

  • TiamatZTiamatZ Ghost puns The Banette of my existenceRegistered User regular
    edited January 2014
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Nijhazer wrote: »
    I pledge to thee, Lady Smudgenose.
    Is the lack of noses from the game, or maybe this a new style Mike is trying out for the new year? Possibly he asked Kris Straub for some drawing advice.

    It's in game. In a more chibi style look. In some of the concept art they have regular noses.

    j6abw6q.jpg

    Edit: Also regular noses in some of the cut scenes in game.

    TiamatZ on
  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Henroid wrote: »
    Also Phoenix Down, as in feathers. I totally didn't get that until someone on Giant Bomb was like "oooooh, down."

    Ooooooooooooh

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    Applies to any RPG, but fuck yeah Bravely Default strip! :D It's almost here! (for us poor NA slobs...)

    On the one hand, the Bravely Default demo is really good. Good art, good turn buffer gimmick... Assuming the story is passable I could see dumping more hours in than is strictly reasonable.

    On the other hand, I'm not sure I can deal with another RPG where any magic using class/job/whatever I dare use is perpetually MP constrained... Finding or buying ethers is like pulling teeth, and this game doesn't seem to have tents or beds or any other purchasable means to restore it if I get too far from town or get dumped into a plot gauntlet.

    I got especially frustrated when, in the demo,
    I got into the forest and half the enemies spawned new copies on any physical attack that didn't one-shot them... and my red mage was OOM.

    I don't mind difficulty or needing to be conscious of mana pools, but Squenix has a history of making MP a frustrating mechanic.

    Still, it's really good. I will probably just complain loudly while I continue playing it for way too many hours.

    You gotta do the town building stuff. Like, fixing up shops and whatnot. Then it becomes easy to buy stuff like ethers. It's harder to do in the demo, but the full game will allow you to obtain townsfolk via streetpass and also I think your friends can send you one villager a day or something.


    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • LucascraftLucascraft Registered User regular
    It isn't just about Phoenix Downs.

    Characters have spells called "Life."

    Basically, any powers or abilities or items, at all, that characters have in the game world will have no impact on plot-deaths.

  • klemmingklemming Registered User regular
    The age old argument is that Phoenix Down supposedly cures "knocked out" status, and not death! They're the smelling salts of the Final Fantasy realm.

    The real logic break is in Final Fantasy VII where you find Red XIII's dad, converted to stone by poison arrows. There's an item in game that specifically reverses that status.

    Is this the right time to link to VG Cats?

    Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
  • EnlongEnlong Registered User regular
    The age old argument is that Phoenix Down supposedly cures "knocked out" status, and not death! They're the smelling salts of the Final Fantasy realm.

    The real logic break is in Final Fantasy VII where you find Red XIII's dad, converted to stone by poison arrows. There's an item in game that specifically reverses that status.

    Then there's the bit in FFV, where a character fights long past 0 HP, and the characters attempt all types of cure magic and Phoenix Downs, but he's too far gone for that stuff.

  • GaslightGaslight Registered User regular
    http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html
    #153: "Mommy, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?"
    Don't expect battle mechanics to carry over into the "real world."

    This sure is a, er, classic joke.

  • Viktor WaltersViktor Walters Registered User regular
    edited January 2014
    The idea being that making a battle system that routinely kills people and requires Phoenix Downs to make it work is okay, but expecting a battle system to follow simple logic is foulplay.

    Whatevs, man. Final Fantasy games have always been all about that immersion breaking ludonarrative dissonance anyway.

    Viktor Walters on
  • Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    Chibis have no noses? How do they smell?

    [Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular
    Chibis have no noses? How do they smell?
    Awful

    steam_sig.png
  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    People seriously didn't get that phoenix down = phoenix feathers? Even when the item icon is usually a feather? Or when item usage normally shows a feather falling on the KOed person?

    That's mind blowing to me.

  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Smrtnik wrote: »
    Chibis have no noses? How do they smell?
    Awful

    With their bodies' messed up surface area to volume ratio, they have to work overtime to sweat enough toxins. So yeah, they smell awful. Also they die of kidney failure before they turn 20, which is why they always look so young. Because none of them get old.

  • SmoogySmoogy Registered User regular
    Another good iteration of a classic.

    Also, I will second the fact that Bravely Default is fantastic. In the demo, I found if I turned off random battles (which you can actually control!) to run back to town to heal, that solved the MP problem, albeit tediously. Perhaps the full game will provide other avenues of MP heal, ala tents, etc. If you like JRPGs and have a 3DS, it would be criminal not to purchase it.

    Smoogy-1689
    3DS Friend Code: 1821-8991-4141
    PAD ID: 376,540,262

  • DurkhanusDurkhanus Commander Registered User regular
    I've never played a FF, but after hearing my wife talk about it, I knew that down=feathers.

    Now I'm curious. Just what the hell did all of you THINK that shit was?

  • Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    Chibis have no noses? How do they smell?

    Like Pocky.

    Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
  • YoungFreyYoungFrey Registered User regular
    Durkhanus wrote: »
    I've never played a FF, but after hearing my wife talk about it, I knew that down=feathers.

    Now I'm curious. Just what the hell did all of you THINK that shit was?
    I think the problem is that JPRGs are so full of jargon that it'd be impossible to parse out everything you didn't understand. So people ended up missing they could have understood.

  • RatherDashing89RatherDashing89 Registered User regular
    What sorcery do G&T employ to consistently take the oldest, most tired of jokes, and make them funnier than the first time we heard them? What dark pact have they made, and where will it lead? Will the universe allow a funny version of "Peach doesn't have sex with Mario" or "Mario breaks blocks with his head"? Or will it end itself just to prevent such a paradox?

  • JormungandrJormungandr Registered User regular
    Durkhanus wrote: »
    I've never played a FF, but after hearing my wife talk about it, I knew that down=feathers.

    Now I'm curious. Just what the hell did all of you THINK that shit was?

    I think I just sort of thought about Phoenix Down as some sort of essence of phoenix right at the time of their death (down as in death / destruction / falling from the sky) thus preserving the resurrection magic for my party members.

    Listen, it was a Final Fantasy thing, and I wasn't interested in spending too much time thinking about why they called things what they did. A friend of mine who also played set me straight years ago, and it was similarly eye-opening for me as it seems to be for a bunch of people in this thread, which gives me joy.

  • halkunhalkun Registered User regular
    Especally when it's Phoenix Feather in the original Japanese

  • Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User, Moderator, Administrator admin
    edited January 2014
    I think when I played Final Fantasy I on the NES, it was FenxDown or some shit like that because of character restrictions that constrained the length of item names (it's been ages, I've slept since then, yadda yadda). So I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to be. I think this got carried over in at least one iteration of a future US Final Fantasy as Fenix Down, which made it a bit more clear. I had no idea what a "Fenix" was supposed to be either (I and everyone I knew pronounced it "FEH - Nix", so it was nowhere near the correct idea), and we didn't have much of an internet back then (dialing up BBSes, Compuserve, AOL, that sort of thing), so no search engines of any import. I'm not sure when they finally got it to "Phoenix Down", but that's when I went "Ohhhhh. So feathers from a Phoenix. Got it. Moving on."

    Hahnsoo1 on
    8i1dt37buh2m.png
  • BlitzAce1981BlitzAce1981 Registered User regular
    The age old argument is that Phoenix Down supposedly cures "knocked out" status, and not death! They're the smelling salts of the Final Fantasy realm.

    The real logic break is in Final Fantasy VII where you find Red XIII's dad, converted to stone by poison arrows. There's an item in game that specifically reverses that status.

    Which then was somewhat fixed in Final Fantasy IX, where you needed a super version of that item to cure a certain petrified NPC.

    PSN ID - BlitzAce1981 FFXIV - Raiden Solitaire (Sargatanas)
  • The Beast of Yucca FlatsThe Beast of Yucca Flats Registered User regular
    TiamatZ wrote: »
    YoungFrey wrote: »
    Nijhazer wrote: »
    I pledge to thee, Lady Smudgenose.
    Is the lack of noses from the game, or maybe this a new style Mike is trying out for the new year? Possibly he asked Kris Straub for some drawing advice.

    It's in game. In a more chibi style look. In some of the concept art they have regular noses.

    j6abw6q.jpg

    Edit: Also regular noses in some of the cut scenes in game.

    It's also not uncommon in Japanese comicking/cartooning styles, in general, to imply the nose or cheekbones with shading as opposed to linework.

  • JackdawGinJackdawGin Engineer New YorkRegistered User regular
    Assuming Final Fantasy games operate off anime logic then 0 HP just means you've lost the will to fight and/or have stopped believing in yourself.

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Nightslyr wrote: »
    People seriously didn't get that phoenix down = phoenix feathers? Even when the item icon is usually a feather? Or when item usage normally shows a feather falling on the KOed person?

    That's mind blowing to me.

    I seriously just dismissed it as translation goofery, and the only people who say "down" ever are people who are into feather bedding. Which is the worst. I laid down on a down pillow once and my neck was stabbed by the ends of the feathers. NOPE NOPE NOPE

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Gaslight wrote: »
    http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html
    #153: "Mommy, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?"
    Don't expect battle mechanics to carry over into the "real world."

    This sure is a, er, classic joke.

    I hope you don't consume much comedy material because you're going to run into similar jokes / concepts a lot and I wouldn't want you to waste your time pointing every instance out to the internet.

  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    So that's what Trenchnose looks like in the FFT character style.

  • Grey PaladinGrey Paladin Registered User regular
    edited January 2014
    Henroid wrote: »
    Gaslight wrote: »
    http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html
    #153: "Mommy, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?"
    Don't expect battle mechanics to carry over into the "real world."

    This sure is a, er, classic joke.

    I hope you don't consume much comedy material because you're going to run into similar jokes / concepts a lot and I wouldn't want you to waste your time pointing every instance out to the internet.
    Look, this joke is at least two decades old at this point. It is the "What's the deal with airline food?" of the genre. If Tim Buckley would've posted a comic like that we would all point at it and laugh. "Haha, that's so Buckley!" we'd say.

    Grey Paladin on
    "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
  • November FifthNovember Fifth Registered User regular
    Zxerol wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    Also Phoenix Down, as in feathers. I totally didn't get that until someone on Giant Bomb was like "oooooh, down."

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS6CXgloFUg

    it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the "down = down feathers" connection too

    My reaction to this was the exactly the same as Jeff's. I always chalked it up to a localization issue that persisted due to tradition.

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