Stumbling together through Unreal Tournament 3 - Part 1

[davidn]

I'm opening another Stumbling Through, which if all goes to plan, I'll do alongside a new Team Hatoful project! This one is a small change of pace from Super Metroid to a game about flying through space shooting each other with big guns - it's Unreal Tournament 3, and rakarr and I are going through the cooperative mode together. (It's still an old game, though - it came out six years ago. Frightening, isn't it?)

It's probably one of the very few cooperative videos around over the past six years because I didn't realize at first the Unreal Tournament 3 requires a degree in network engineering to get it to run - I was hunting through masses of config files to set it up how we needed it, and I install distributed medical software as part of my job so I'm used to doing that to set things up, but I forgot that... games aren't usually like that. Now I see why, despite being a great sequel to the UT99 at heart, the game never really took off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-TfGGzrnDw
Doing a cooperative play introduced its own unique editing challenges, and super-professionally, the style of this video changes halfway through - we didn't do this for every match, but going forward with the series, I'll be putting his view inset on my own where we have it. But at least here you can watch the completely unnecessary introduction, followed by us finding our feet against the computer-controlled tutorial-bot and later ally Jester.

Comments

[kjorteo]

Now, granted, I am aware that the whole point of this story (at least at this point in this stage) appears to be that they are in a Holodeck-like simulation environment where nothing is real and the game is actually still a game even to the characters. I am also aware that I am ... probably not the first person one should ask about what normal healthy brother/sister relationships are supposed to involve. :)

But ... "here you go, big brother, let's take these rocket launchers and repeatedly blow each other to a fine red mist :D" is the player supposed to be comfortable with that?

[davidn]

As I, too, noticed during the game! Reaper (the side of beef with a head as played by me) says the same thing during a part of the introduction that I cut out, asking if the plan was to save him and then blow him to bits. The idea is that they now have Respawners on the battlefields that allow them to have infinite reinforcements and no casualties - so there is real death, but now death is something easily reversible and not anything like the career obstacle that it used to be. He complains that dying hurts if you get killed too often.

There could be some intelligent commentary on how it's treated so casually in this world, but I don't think the game even realizes this!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I just had to wonder why they had to go to such effort to fix him if they could have just taken him to a respawner and blown him up with a rocket. Apparently that's all it takes to come back all hale and hearty, as the ever-persistent and ever-immaculate Jester can attest to.

[davidn]

Like Metal Gear Solid's magic rations, they can't work on storyline injuries :)

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

Slow motion bullets are the answer to respawners!
Maybe I can get FRAPS to tank my frame rate again.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

You'll be pleased to know that after my comment about the oddness of her apparently flirting with her brother I very specifically mentioned that I wasn't making a statement one way or another about incest.

And then David cut it out post-production. HMM.

[davidn]

Aha, sorry - you did! I just felt it was... sufficient on its own :)

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Now I'm rewriting that last sentence as if said by Sara... I'm sorry, this is just too easy. :P

D.F.

[kjorteo]

They do not have that kind of relationship!! D:

(Also, Teo is not Sara's big brother; Sara is the elder by about ten months.)

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Ah - I didn't mean it like that! Sorry, I'm not doing very well at expressing myself tonight!

And, whoops, I screwed that up, about the ages. This'll teach me to post when I'm running a temperature. Unreserved apologies; please ignore me!

D.F.

[kjorteo]

That's fine, it's not like their ages come up very often or anything. I just figured making her ten months older would be good for making them roughly the same age, while still technically making her the big sister so that can tie into their personalities. :P

And I just meant I can't really see them murdering each other, even if they respawn! The parasite comic is non-canonical, and the sequel is unauthorized with no input or approval or involvement from me whatsoever. D:

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Hah, the parasite comic was the thing I was thinking of, actually - "here you go, big brother, let's take these squirming alien parasite things, and..." etc. :P And yes, I remember the... direction the 'sequel' went in, and your posts around the time of its sudden appearance, and figured they were less than intended canon for your and Sara's story.

Again, sorry for the confusion; I've been ill the last few days with a cold, and my brain doesn't explain itself very well when it gets like that.

D.F.