voyage to mars
Aaand I'm back in Norway. Again. I am the human yo-yo, and the Atlantic Ocean is my string. I'm staying put for over a month now, which feels like a luxury. A weekend at home! I can finally vacuum!
The trip was great, despite the mostly awful 'spring' (pft!) weather in New York. I wish I could have stayed another week, but work beckons, and the road to E3 is getting shorter by the day.
Dreamfall will have a sizeable presence at the show, and the game needs to look absolutely top notch. More on that later.
I promised to say a few words about
Monty Python's Spamalot, but I never got around to it, so here goes: The show was great, and I laughedalot. The first half stuck very close to the original movie's script - the movie being, of course,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - but the second half was a bit more adventurous, and all the better for it. (After all, I've seen the movie a dozen times, and know the funnies by heart; there's only so much amusement you can get out of seeing the same sketches re-enacted on stage.) The spoofy musical bits were, for the most part, right on the mark, and the actors were suitable Pythonesque. It's absolutely worth catching, if you're into that sort of thing (musicals and Monty Python, that is).
On the negative side, they left out my favourite line from the movie: "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."
So I got my hands on not one, not two, but
three Sony PSPs yesterday, as well as a solid selection of software. The best of the lot was
Lumines, a Tetris-like puzzler that has proven to be very addictive.
I secured the first PSP by standing in line outside Best Buy for one-and-a-half very chilly hours, which wasn't half as bad as it sounds. The other two I purchased at Circuit City, where the lines were a lot shorter, and where they still had some in stock yesterday evening. Lesson learned: Go to Circuit City. Apparently, no one else does. Those who tried their luck at either GameStop or Electronics Boutique were out of it. (Luck, that is.) They'd pre-sold every single unit, and laughed mockingly at anyone who dared to walk in and ask for one.
So how is it? The screen is magnificent. It's sharp and clear and oh-so-susceptible to dust, fingerprint, and scratches. The whole unit feels very expensive and high-end. The buttons are solid, though the analog 'nub' will take some getting used to. The speakers are adequate, but headphones are a prerequisite. The games? They look like PS2 games, no question about it. This is one powerful system. The DS will, unfortunately, languish in handheld ghetto - at least until Nintendo come out with some better games. I don't know if I'll be using the PSP for movies; I'm definitely not going to buy any on UMD, though I might transfer TV shows to a Memory Stick. (If you have a Mac, I can recommend
PSPWare. It's a great - and cheap - applet for transferring music, videos, and photos to your PSP.)
Ultimately, the PSP's future will depend on the games, and it looks like that's as close to a sure thing as it gets, with games like
Grand Theft Auto on the horizon. Nintendo must be shaking in their pants.
Firefox is really starting to piss me off. It's become my browser-of-choice on all my computers, PCs and Mac, and it's a world beyond Explorer in functionality and speed...but it keeps hanging. Whenever I hit a page with lots of Flash and/or Java applets, Firefox gets bogged down, and eventually it doesn't respond to input at all. If I leave it alone for a few minutes (minutes!), it usually recovers, but unless I navigate away from the troublesome sites, it'll just hang again. And again. And again. The IGN sites, in particular, seem to trip Firefox up, and those are sites I visit every day, and most of them need Flash enabled in order to function properly. So what to do? I don't want to switch again, since I've grown to like the way Firefox works, but it's frustrating to see a piece of software that prides itself on stability being so fundamentally unstable.
It's sort of snowing, in a weird New Yorkian way. First it drizzled, then it hailed, and now there are big and wet - but scattered - white flakes falling from the sky. It's like the weather gods haven't quite made up their minds about how to torment us today. Nevermind, I'm staying inside until they settle on one of 'em.
Yesterday I kept an eye out for
Parker Posey's dog while she bought her latte at the Starbucks on 2nd Avenue and 9th. I don't know why Parker Posey asked me to look out for her dog, but there you go. Only in New York. And I mean that in the fondest way possible.
Tomorrow the PSP launches, and seeing as a) I'm on vacation, and b) I'm a game geek who travels a lot, I'll be heading over to the 86th Street Best Buy at 8 AM sharp to try and get hold of one. I'm actually excited about the PSP. The Nintendo DS has, so far, been a huge disappointment - where are the games? - but the PlayStation portable is getting some fantastic support, and the first batch of games actually contains some must-haves:
Ridge Racer,
Wipeout Pure, and
Lumines. And I can stick TV shows on a Memory Stick (hah!) Duo to while my airborne hours away.
Speaking of airborne, on my way over here, KLM upgraded me to business class, and I've never been so upset to land an hour ahead of schedule. Damn you, strong cross-Atlantic winds! Working for a budget-conscious company - and living mere inches above the poverty line - I'm always stuck in economy seats, and being able to stretch my freakishly long legs as far as I could was heaven, pure heaven.
All right, it's snowing heavily now, so the gods must have decided: Winter is returned. Crap, etc.
Oh, and tonight I'm seeing the new Monty Python musical
Spamalot, which should be fun, seeing as it's been getting some solid
reviews. I'll offer my own thoughts tomorrow - after exhausting myself on the PSP, of course.
That last post took almost a week to get out there, as every time I tried to finish it up and send it off, Blogger decided to act up and be unresponsive. It's honestly been a real pain in the ass.
Prolonged absence aside - lots of work and travelling getting in the way of every non-critical activity - I'm currently in New York enjoying a few (much needed) days off. I'll be here until Monday.
There's another article over at
GameSpot that might be of interest to some of you, since it talks about storytelling in games, and features interviews with people like Tim Schafer, Hideo Kojima, and myself. Haven't had a chance to read it yet, but with comments from such luminaries (myself excluded), it ought to be very interesting.
Bad Blogger. The bloody thing's acting up again. I've had trouble connecting for the past few days, and this morning I lost a post. Minutes of work down the drain! Let's hope this one survives, fingers crossed, etc.
Home again, at least for a couple more days, and we're putting the final touches on a
Dreamfall demo. Don't get your hopes up, however, as this demo is not for public consumption. It's strictly for the three P's: Publishers, Partners, Press. And it's looking quite lovely, to the point where (with the addition of voices, of course) I'd be quite happy releasing the first few chapters of the game. There's that 'whole rest of the game' bit to worry about, however, so we'll keep working on it for a while longer.
Speaking of press, there's a new preview up over at
GameSpy. They get a number of details wrong: Tim Willette is
not the composer; Leon Willett, however,
is - and the year is 2219, not 2290. Also, if you want to avoid spoilers, click elsewhere. Journalists sure love spoiling stuff when they get the chance. Overall, it's a very positive preview, despite the fact that they're not totally convinced (yet) about the fighting. To answer their (rhetorical) question: Yes, this game does need fighting. To meet violence with violence, even though that's not typically the best option, is nevertheless something the player ought to be able to do. Freedom to choose - and the consequences thereof - is important.
So I'm sitting in my hotel room listening to Morcheeba and browsing the iTunes Music Store, when I notice that Todd Hollenshead - id Software's CEO - is sharing his music collection for the entire hotel to see. Hi, Todd! The man is, obviously, into rock, and has pretty good taste. In the spirit of game development, I've shared (parts of) my collection as well. So if you're staying at the W on 3rd Street, open your iTunes and feel free to peruse my music. I can recommend Maria Rita.
The W is the kind of hotel where the reception and the lobby bar have merged into one large party zone. Everything in this hotel is sort of gothic and dark and bluish, like a live-in nightclub. I sort of prefer the old-fashioned type of hotel where you can find your way to the elevator without a flashlight, but I'm in a nice suite so I shouldn't really complain. We're doing presentations in our room every day, on a pretty sweet 24" LCD with a 7.1 surround sound setup, which makes
Dreamfall look and sound pretty fantastic. It's amazing what difference a good setup makes. I'm telling you now, don't play this game on anything less than a 21" screen, and make sure you've got great speakers, preferably surround. It's an audio-visual feast.
Tomorrow will be another packed day, as will Friday, and on Saturday I fly back home. Few chances, then, to take a breather, although I'm hoping there will be moments before then when I can walk over to Market and do a little shopping. I need more iTunes Music Store gift cards, a new shirt, and I'd hoped to be able to pick up a few games and DVDs. What I
really need is a personal assistant.
Just a heads up: The GameSpot
video interview has been posted, along with the first ever footage from
Dreamfall. Also, check out their
preview of the game, but watch out for spoilers - there be plenty. (The same goes for the IGN preview. If you want to stay spoiler free, don't read anything from now until the day the game is released!) I haven't watched the interview (I can't watch myself speaking, it's very painful), nor the in-game footage (crappy broadband connection), but I have to admit that I am very torn about showing anything from the game at this point, especially when I'm unable to control the way it's used. Things are still very much under construction, and the visuals will continue to improve until the day we go gold. We hope to be able to release a video before too long, and that will probably be much more representative of how the game will look, play, and sound. For the time being, however, consider it a rough sneak peek at the world of
Dreamfall. I hope you all like what you see. It's always frightening to toss our babies - warts and all - into the public arena.
Finally, a moment to myself during our busy San Francisco/GDC schedule. I left the IGN party early (which, if you've ever been to an IGN-hosted party, is not an easy thing to do; these guys know how to arrange a shindig, and, hey! free food and drinks!) to catch up on some work back at the hotel - funnily enough, just when IGN posted a
three page preview of
Dreamfall. Haven't read it myself yet, but based on the presentation earlier today, it should be pretty comprehensive. Look out for GameSpot's preview as well, which should appear later this evening. These guys work hard and fast. I wouldn't survive a week as a game journalist. The latter includes a video interview with yours truly. (If I sound a bit incoherent, it's because I really had to go to the bathroom. Honestly.)
San Francisco has been nice and warm this week, and I've enjoyed my stay thus far, despite the packed schedule. We had Sunday off and did the typical touristy things, which, even after visiting San Francisco many, many times, I still enjoy doing. It's just such a beautiful city, one of my absolute favourites. The rest of the week, however, will be too busy to do anything aside from work, work, work - and, of course, attending a number of parties. Always with the parties. Is it possible to get sick of free food and drinks? Absolutely...but I'm not quite there yet.
Twenty-four hours to go until we're done with this
Dreamfall milestone, and things are looking good. We've got the first few chapters - including our super-secret prologue - up and running at a quality we're all happy with, and now it's just a question of ironing out the bugs. Because there are always bugs. Until the day we slap the gold disc on our president's desk and say (in our best Cartman voices) "screw you guys, we're going home", there will be bugs.
Also, we're secretly trying to add as many cool things as possible while we've still got the time - and energy - to do so. Right now we're putting some nifty special effects into three different set-pieces, adding a bit of visual whipped cream to an already tasty pudding.
