Preview Friv: DeathSpank
It's time to remember again with a kind word the well-known merry fellow and cheerful developer of humorous quests Ron Gilbert. The last time we talked about it in the reviews on the Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island - is another author's statement on "How I did the pirate adventure of their dreams." Trying to call Gilbert's most recent public performance 100% successful and accurate, like a hundred Indian shooters, is by no means possible. It was just a good, and in some places - frankly unconvincing nod in the direction of Guybrush Threepwood. Gilbert , to our great regret and surprise, somewhat overestimated his strength, giving out a meager ten jokes and two and a half interesting locations for a full answer Telltale Games (not to mention the pixel masterpieces of the early to mid 90s). DeathSpank undertakes to help the master dry up his tarnished reputation.
DeathSpank is primarily a new comedy character created by Gilbert, and only then is the game of the same name. As in the case of "Monkey Island", the new quest undertakes to cheer and fool around in full on the chosen topic. This time it will turn out to be a medieval fantasy, in the scenery of which it is customary to build epic role-playing about an invincible lone hero, fearlessly fighting against the dark forces of evil. In the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, we recall that the pirates and everything connected with them got the nuts. Now the classic stories "about the Great Evil, the even more Great Good, which will boldly deal with it in the end" fall under the distribution.
With the relevance of the chosen object for the banter Gilberta little late. If the game was launched at least last year, then the effect of getting to know it would be maximum. There we had Dragon Age, Risen, and Divinity 2 together with Venetica - how many reasons to show your sharpness of mind, you must agree.
Let's go back to our character and immediately try to gently transcribe his name just in case - we get something like Defspank. As befits the protagonist of a large-scale fantasy production, our bearer of epic armor and a sword of the eightieth level has a great goal, the achievement of which will stretch throughout the game - the search for a unique and mysterious artifact. In typical RPGs, this item is usually bestowed with the most provocative and catchy name like "The Holy Grail". Gilbert decided to do it much easier and at the same time gracefully - the developer just reasoned that things should be called by their proper names. So the artifact is called obscenely simple and understandable - Artifact.
At DeathSpank, this practice of "ripping off the masks" will be used quite often. Gilbert thus shared his vision of modern role-playing games - the developer rightly believes that behind the screen of exotic names and poorly read terms are hidden very ordinary, elementary things and characters. But the depth of his humor does not lie in just renaming all objects. It is important for the creator of Monkey Island to prove that fantasy without an orchestral soundtrack and boring codex recordings can also be made not only interesting, but also insanely fun.
DeathSpank is perceived as a real protest, wagging bare butt in front of famous developers like Bioware . Everything they work on in their lavishly appointed offices is reflected here in an accusing and derisive crooked mirror. Take the same dialogues. As usual, in such cases, they are made up of omissions, pathos and pomp - for an ordinary person, far from the world of video friv games and not perceiving them as a separate culture, the antics of firebrands fashioned in the appropriate editor will seem like sheer delirium, if not more. Gilbert understands this perfectly and makes conversations with the same NPCs as informative as possible, but does not load us with empty chatter at all. He is also keenly aware of the need to cater to DeathSpank's immediate target audience.- RPG lovers who, in addition, are not averse to mocking.
And now we will tell you how these dialogs look. Defspank approaches any NPC and, by turning to him, immediately makes us understand what value a random person is for him: "Hello, a minor character that is not particularly important to me!" Or: "It is very nice to meet a person who will probably give me a lot of additional tasks."
So, you should already clearly understand the philosophy of the inner world and, what is important, accept: mockery of the Dragon Ages and Gothic by methodically exposing their weaknesses, which the developers, as a rule, expose to be extremely strong and convincing.
Fortunately, DeathSpank is not only about author's humor in dialogues. Gilbert's brainchild is also a game. Of course, there should not be any restraining boundaries of the genre here - everything looks like reflections on the topic "we despise fantasy about orcs and elves." At the same time, here, too, Friv5Online Games Studio decided to laugh at the conventional scheme, according to which it is customary to build gameplay in role-playing friv games. Chatting with NPCs, traveling across locations, fiddling with the quest log and, of course, indispensable showdowns with these very "spawns" of all sorts. Well, you get the idea.
With dialogues and NPCs, everything is already clear - there, incriminating speeches together with graceful simplicity decide everything. With the marking of quests in the corresponding book, things are the same: no wise notes and comments. For you, the tasks in the diary will be carefully divided into two categories: important and unimportant. And they will be called that way.
The designers and level artists promise us the most pleasure - they also gave themselves free rein and went on interesting creative experiments. Not in the eyebrow, but in the eye, as they say, the visual style of DeathSpank hits . The palette of colors is quite bright and cheerful - no hints of harsh and merciless gameplay.
The world itself is three-dimensional - we are able to rotate the camera as we please. But all other objects on the map will be two-dimensional. These are useful gizmos that the hero will find, and all kinds of buildings and structures where he can go. In this way, Gilbert is trying to assert that the two-dimensionality, and therefore, to some extent, the "cardboardness" of the surrounding objects is a special sign. Sign indicating artificiality in performance and unnaturalness of scenery and characters in RPGs.
In the organization of the combat system, purposeful simplifications have reached their climax - a typical fight in DeathSpankis a bloody meat grinder, which can be controlled with a couple of buttons. As in any middle-class slasher, you just have to poke the "attack" button and change weapons depending on the enemy's coordination and resourcefulness. All kinds of flapping, picking and gut-releasing spears, swords and clubs will provide an insane amount. At the same time, the developers separately stipulate that a primitive action game and a rich arsenal are very compatible concepts. The main motto of the DeathSpank combat is : each enemy - a personal weapon for his own effective and quick kill. That is, the slasher rule works here again, implying an individual approach to each hostile personality.
Least of all, this game is similar to an RPG, thanks to a modified role-playing system. No class restrictions on leveling, selection of weapons and armor. Defspank has the right to pull on any visor and hide behind even a leaf of ficus. Imagine Sacred , who, with the help of a special code, opened the possibility for a magician to wear the wings of a seraphim - DeathSpank works by similar rules. Personally, Gilbert himself is infinitely proud of such liberties.
A protest game, a bullying game. To competently and subtly ridicule a whole genre, you need to be at least the creator of the story about Guybrush Threepwood. Ron Gilbert, of course, falls under these conditions. Will he be able to rehabilitate his good name after an unconvincing performance withGhost Pirates of Vooju Island - we 'll find out this year.
PRODUCING THE BULLET JACKET
All our bullet jackets are made from gilding metal, a copper alloy composed of 95% copper and 5% zinc. In order to match our different bullet requirements and meet stringent quality objectives, we buy nineteen different strip sizes of gilding metal and require three times more dimensional and quality control than is considered standard in the copper manufacturing industry. In fact, Olin Brasshas a special alloy exclusive to Sierra Bullets. This enables us to build extremely high uniformity into every one of our finished bullets.
The bullet begins to take shape during the manufacturing process when the jacket material is first blanked and then brought through a series of drawing processes. Special tooling made in our own tool and die shop ensures that the jacket is drawn evenly and that uniform wall thickness is maintained for accuracy. Jackets which have been drawn to the proper wall construction are then trimmed to a length with a tolerance of +/- 0.001.” This ensures consistent weight and proper forming when the bullet is assembled.
After each step, the bullet jackets are washed and rinsed using a special cleaning process developed by our experienced personnel. During each phase of production, roving quality control inspectors check specifications to ensure that the only part to move on is a perfect one. Reports on the quality of parts being manufactured are maintained in every department and are periodically reviewed by shift supervisors.