Ronnie

Watched the last two episodes of Discovery season 4. The penultimate one was excellent, not the most original concept but executed pretty well and really compelling. The final episode was ok but back to the usual Discovery brand of melodrama, OTT action and forced lovey-dovey crew stuff. Then watched the first two episodes of Strange New Worlds. Fantastic! Finally a bunch of likeable characters! They're all great. The first episode storyline wise was a bit meh and forgettable, but the second was really good. Nice to be back to episodic story-telling too. And the humour was well done too. But man those opening credits, apart from one shot, are fugly. Not helped by yet another forgettable theme tune and John Eaves making the Enterprise a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. Still, excited to see where the show goes!

Good thinking to get rid of Facebook. Ebay is easier anyway, Facebook you have to see who happens to mention they don't need tickets anymore then message them etc. It's just a QR code though so easily transferred. Yeah it's pretty extortionate pricing tbf, unless you plan on getting lots of autographs. Also, there is so much to buy from vendors on the show floor, you'll way prefer putting all that extra £££ towards that. god I hope they walk that back next year. Disastrous in what felt like an otherwise really well received 'con. Tbh the main show floor at Anaheim was enormous but there was a lot of empty space surrounding the vendors, so if Excel is a bit smaller I don't think it'll be an issue really. Argh that reminds me, PM me your address and I'll get those posters sent to you next week.

Wow looks like 4-Day passes are already sold out! It took a couple hours for Anaheim and that was after a ton of people had already transferred their spots from 2020.

Wow that's good going, you must have been one of the first in. My queue was only 15 minutes but VIP was all sold out! For what it's worth I think you made the right call, I'm going with others and it wouldn't make sense to get VIP. Also the lottery system only officially got me into the Bad Batch panel but I bought passes for the other three off eBay/Facebook from people who didn't need them for about 50 quid each, so there'll be other ways for you to get in if that's what you're thinking. And yeah all sorted, got tickets for me, my sister and my nephew

It's a shame we might never know what went on behind the scenes, be interesting to see if Holt is given another Star Wars gig, be it in season 2 or elsewhere. See this is why I should stop attempting to sound smart when it comes to soundtracks and themes and take you on in a nuanced discussion about it I think it's fantastic you're clearly so passionate about this kind of thing (obv not trying to sound condescending). Apart from the obvious stuff it kind of goes in one ear and out the other for me until it's an instant classic soundtrack like Mando. Now if you want to get into a multi-page discussion about the look and feel of Star Wars space-battles and exactly how starfighters should fly and be shown on screen, I'm all yours To be fair, much as I loved the series, that moment was pretty forgettable in hindsight, probably for the reasons you suggest. Yeah that's fair enough, social media like TikTok have helped condition everyone into having short attention spans so headlines need to grab your attention instantly.

Heads up @Julius and anyone else, Celebration tickets now on sale. Three devices open, two saying an hour + to get through the queue, the third saying 17 mins

Totally agree with most of that @Julius, like I said I think the Holt part of the soundtrack to Kenobi is pretty poor/forgettable and absolutely a sprinkling of familiar themes when the time called for them would have been good, similar to Yoda's theme being introduced for a few seconds in Mando S2 when Ahsoka talks about him. The show is for the most part about familiar characters like you say. The decision to hold off Vader, Anakin and the Force theme until the end of the series I still think was a creative choice, one which I personally was fine with given they were different people at the end of the series than how they were and it was another way of passing the torch. Re: Imperial March/Vader theme I think if you ignore the 'throw it at a wall' instance at the end of ROTS and the bit in Fallen Order (I know Lucasfilm will have had their hands all over that game, but it's still not top tier content), then the moment where Vader is forced to let go of Kenobi and move on to being the man we see in the OT makes sense, but mileage will vary on that front I guess. Now I wouldn't say the use of the Force theme at the end of Part 6 was particularly elegant, it seemed quite of cellotaped on, but I think it made much more sense there than if it had been used say when he saved Leia from falling in Part 2. Maybe a few notes of it might have been good, building towards the full theme at the end? Anyway long story short, I totally agree that the Holt part of the soundtrack was poor. My original post up there ^ was more to do with fan edits and "fix" culture on YouTube which really winds me up a lot of the time, and promotes, if not quite toxicity, then a level of apathy to a piece of entertainment, which is already bad enough thanks to social media and negative YouTube culture. I'll admit it can be a force for good, the guy who 'fixed' Luke at the end of Mando now being employed at Lucasfilm, but that was a technical achievement, rather than an artistic choice like the Force theme over the Mando hallway scene.

I'm not going to begin to argue with you about music and soundtracks because I know next to nothing about it, but the whole thing about re-scoring new scenes with old music really, really rubs me up the wrong way. The music when Luke comes in to save the day in Mando is AMAZING. Like legit incredible. And yet you still had people going back and putting the same Force theme that's been used a thousand times before over it. A huge chunk of people (to clarify, genuinely not talking about you here @Julius) have been conditioned these days to eat up nostalgia and call backs at the expense of the 'new'. It's why people on Twitter talk about "not caring about Reva, give me more Vader" and so much of entertainment these days panders to what's come before. And it's the same with these re-edits with the familiar tunes. I'm definitely not saying the soundtrack to Kenobi was good or memorable, because honestly, apart from the Inquisitor (Reva?) theme and the Star Destroyer chase music, I don't really remember much of it, but the new has to be given a chance. The decision to only use the Imperial March or Leia's theme once they transitioned into their new (OT) mindset at the end of Part 6 was actually quite a good choice in my opinion, but obviously that isn't the most popular choice on here *tiptoes on ice* Vader, being forced to move on from Kenobi and Leia choosing to lead in her own way. I personally thought it worked.

Have to say the visuals look a little rough all of a sudden and quite basic in places. Maybe I'm misremembering but the first game was so vibrant and full of life, this seems a bit barren and empty. There are also a couple of massive background glitches, like the one at 1:56.

It's funny whilst I thought it would have worked better as a film (with the increased budget that goes with that), I still think it worked as a series. It was one storyline, broken up into smaller chapters. Ep 2: Daiyu, Ep 3: Mapuzo, Ep 4: The Fortress Ep 5: Jabiim. It goes back to what I love about Mando in that each episode of that show is its own mini adventure. Glad they brought the inquisitors in from the original script though, and the Path opens up a lot of new story-telling possibilities. The lottery for the first (big) panel of each day was done well in advance, they gave you a week to apply and then they just emailed you if you were successful, but all the other panels you could reserve a spot on the day in the morning, and if that didn't work you just queue up on a standby line. It was hard to argue with how they managed any of it tbh, seemed fair enough.

When you get to ordering tickets, this prob won't be necessary unless you want VIP, but I'd suggest opening the link 5 mins early on 2 or 3 different devices (on different networks). The way they do it is randomly assign you a place in the queue and it's complete luck where you end up. It was the same at the convention itself when it came to reserving a spot in the smaller panels, the first 3 days it took over an hour for me to get through the queue and by the time I did all the places were booked, but on the last day I was in in 5 minutes when people around me were struggling.

It looked like Covid was a much bigger deal in the US than over here when I was over, so if a big convention can go ahead there, the UK will have had zero worries I think. I'll probably aim for VIP, if it hasn't sold out, but I won't be too bothered if it does. My nephew and sister are joining me next year on 2 or 3 days so that kind of complicates things. Hope you can make it too!

Celebration London tickets on sale on Thursday

Anyway, looking forward to Mario + Rabbids 2 and maybe some Silksong? I suspect we'll get a Splatoon Direct in July or August and a proper Direct in Aug/September. There's so many games coming out around now they simply don't need to do a main one, imo.

Wouldn't be surprised with a third party Direct, fingers crossed that includes Mario + Rabbids 2. Usually their June Direct is for new game announcements but there isn't much need for that atm. Nintendo are stacked this year for their own games, Mario Strikers and Fire Emblem Warriors just came out, Xenoblade and Splatoon 3 round the corner, then Pokemon and Advance Wars (?) coming out. Plus stuff like Zelda, Bayonetta etc.

Great finale, great season. Wrapped everything up so elegantly. Seeing Obi-Wan's transformation from episode to episode has been a real pleasure, and it expertly connects ROTS and ANH. Fantastic work. My only negative, omfg someone at Lucasfilm please ban Deborah Chow from using a shaky-cam ever. again. Horrendous. It worked in one, maybe two, instances throughout the series, but the rest of the time, just no. Roken and Haja, fun, relatable, down to earth side characters (something the Mando-verse is in desperate need of). Vivien Lyra Blair, top notch work. Channeled Leia (and Padme?) really well. I'll have Obi-Wan's theme stuck in my head for days. I went into this show excited but not particularly hyped, and I ended up really loving it, perhaps because of that. God I love Star Wars.

Of course they wouldn't. But they would happily offer specifics, if said specifics were true. My point is I don't know why you're so surprised when they've been saying over and over they want the Switch to last longer than most console generations in the past. Wii popularity fell off a cliff early. The Switch is still incredibly popular. You can't compare the two cases. Not to mention there's a long list of reasons why the Wii U failed, but 'waiting so long to release it' would be at the bottom.

It's almost as if they've told us over and over exactly that. Nov 2021: "the Switch is at the mid-point of its lifecycle" Feb 2022: "The Switch is going to exceed traditional hardware cycles" Ultra-conservative Nintendo keeping one of the most successful products on the market for as long as possible? Who'd have thought.

Ok, now I'm in...

Don't let a bit of measured common sense get in the way of people jumping to conclusions, knee-jerk reacting and stating things as if they were fact. Nintendo have absolutely done back to back presentations, or ones very close to each other. It's usually a Smash presentation or an indie showcase, but in 2019 they had a Pokemon specific Direct one week, and an E3 one the next. Same as 2017 with a Dragon Quest XI Direct. Who knows if that'll actually happen this year, but the Xenoblade 3 doesn't rule anything out.

Makes perfect sense.

The series has been building nicely. Obi-Wan slowly getting his mojo back has been a joy to watch. He was never going to be a badass from the start like some people might have been strangely expecting. Most important of all though the show has bridged the gap between 3 and 4 really well. This was of the most intense Star Wars, probably ever, heart was pounding and I was on the edge of my seat throughout, which is pretty incredible given most of the episode took place in or around a cave!

That was outstanding.

That's why you're (probably) not a game designer. The beauty of games like these is that they have layers of different types of content, which you pick and choose to do depending on whatever mood you're in, be it following the main quest, doing shorter side missions, or just chilling running around the world and gathering resources or progress ticking boxes. And it's not a case of 'get rid of the more casual content' and add another 5 hours to the main or side quests. It has to be a full spectrum. If you watch the video, he quite clearly explains that once you procedurally generate a handful of planets (out of necessity for the core story), it's not much of a leap to do that 1000 times. Plus, let's be real, the entire premise of the game is about exploring the universe. Having 5 hand crafted players is the antithesis of that. Outer Wilds is great (or so I hear) but it's a different game, with a completely different design/purpose, and that's ok.