Bombin' the A.M. With Cara Ellison

Dishonored was a stealth game for people who don't like stealth games. I hate the narrative that it "fixed" the "problem" of stealth games, where you are underpowered and must hide if you get spotted. That's like saying Resident Evil 6 fixed the problems of earlier survival horror games by eliminating that pesky puzzle solving and giving you enough firepower so you never have to be nervous about enemy encounters.

I have no problem with someone liking Dishonored, even though I did not. I do have a problem with suggesting that it is a better stealth game than all that came before it because you can shoot everyone if you want to.

On the subject of how the Nintendo vs Sega movie could be made, I recommend people watch Pirates of Silicon Valley, the movie about the creation of Apple and Microsoft.

Calling the combat bad is a valid criticism of an action adventure game. That's not what this is. For Thief fans, it's known that Garret can't fight for shit. He's a Thief, not a warrior, nor an assassin. Corvo was a essentially an elite palace guard, so it makes sense he'd have all of those abilities. Does this make Dishonored a better game? Yes. Should Thief be damned because you don't like Stealth/Reload games? No. I look forward to reading Alex's review.

Here are two others:

One mediocre: http://www.polygon.com/game/thief/3678 (Arthur Gies)

One good: http://www.joystiq.com/2014/02/24/thief-review-for-the-hoard/ (Ludwig Kietzmann)

It's not about it being a valid opinion or not because Thief is some kind of "unique stealth experience". If it's not fun for them, then it's just not fun for them. Your mileage may vary, but just because they thought it was a shitty experience when something like Dishonored did it better for them, it doesn't devalue their criticism of Thief (nor does it devalue your opinion if you enjoyed Thief).

The first game I thought about when you brought up "flow" was Mark of the Ninja.

I liked this episode a lot. It being Cara's second episode there was a lot less time spent on introductions and more diving right into the show.

Can Cara just please become a member of Giantbomb crew already? She's great and would add a fresh point of view on a number of things.

Great show, but I think Alex needs to try and control his enthusiasm for guest better. I also hope Patrick finds a painless way to detach his beard from that pop filter.

@patrickklepek: Hey, where's The Scooping of Isaac? Missed it earlier. Did something bad happen?

Whaddya mean? Do you think it was too low or too high?

first? sorry couldn't resist

So one reason why Thief is bad was because he could not attack and kill people? It is almost like Alex doesn't know what a stealth game is. He seemed annoyed that he could not just run through hacking people up. That's fine if you want that thing. In a stealth game you should be punished for being spotted. You should die if you can not hide when spotted. It seems weird that Alex doesn't understand that.

In Dishonored I was trying to have fun blinking around being stealthy but that doesn't work so well. I had more fun hacking away. That game felt like it was meant to be an assassin game and not a stealth game.

It seems that Thief is a so-so game. That's not a good thing. I am sure I will still have fun playing it but will end up disappointed. The main story is bad. Fine, so is most games. That plot Alex says is in Thief is how you can explain most games these days... bland and dull.

Alex dropping a 'Lester Bangs' reference is pretty great. Following it up with an 'Almost Famous' reference not so great.

I second the Cara Ellison for GBC 2014 campaign.

When Cara says, "We're quite good friends." How do you ever trust what she has to say. It's like when video games media were tweeting about jobs for Irrational people. It's altruistic, but I'll never trust them again. The relationship that "the media" has with the developers is unprofessional.

For example when Jeff celebrated Thanksgiving with Adam Boyes, Gio Corsi. It's super unprofessional. While I still trust Jeff, but when he's hard on the Xbox One (and rightfully so), when you're spending the holidays with Sony executives it puts you in a bad light. https://mobile.twitter.com/JohnVignocchi/status/393832969372041216

I really like the energy that Cara brings to the show. Make her a semi-regular!

I am very interested in the article/study/topic that Patrick mentions about disconnecting cognitive thoughts with action, and just having it be second nature. Not really even trying to find work in the context of video games but just that general topic. I'm trying to find reads about that but am having trouble. If anyone finds something, please do link it!

Shame that the missing audio is still absent. I would have liked to hear the reasoning behind that unfortunate EDF review she left over on Eurogamer. It told me next to nothing about the game, which seems to make it more of an editorial than a review. I would have perhaps enjoyed it if it had been framed that way, but as a review it was lacking pretty much everything I could ask for in one. Disappointing.

Here is Cara's generally fantastic review of EDF 2025 for those who care. Good to have her on again.

Cara, you do great work. Would love to hear you back on the show again some day!

Uh I haven't played every stealth game in existence, but I remember plenty of stealth games that came out way before Dishonored that does what Patrick continuously says is wrong with stealth games.

I think Patrick confuses the idea of the game making you aware that you failed at being stealthy with the game making it difficult to be anything but stealthy. It's not the idea of not being able to get past the alert phase that makes Patrick want to restart the level. It's the idea that he, the player, failed and constantly reminded of that with the Alert alarm for however many seconds or minutes.

Oh man, I thought she said "in bed with" dot tumbler dot com.

That site is definitely not about games.

You know if Giant Bomb does add personalities, Cara Ellison would be a great get imo.

She's fun, seems like she meshes well conversationally with Alex and Patrick, obviously is a strong self starter given her recent kickstarter embed thing and most importantly has a pretty different insightful perspective from everyone else.

So much controversy over the "Japanese man's wank fantasy" remark.

I didn't like her review of 2025, it doesn't sound like she played the last three quarters of the game and seems to be expected it to be a completely different game to what it sets out to be, a bit like criticizing Mcdonalds for not sitting you down at a a candle lit table and serving you fancy French food.

Wow! Came here expecting to maybe clear out some negative comments but everyone here is super nice! I personally love Cara's work and I'm more than happy to see her return in the show.

@grimdaddy: #chemtrails

@rmanthorp: You are right, this is a conspiracy on the level of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Release the secret audio, the people have a right to know about opinions on bug killing while screaming EDF.

@patrickklepek So, I just realized, there's now two videos on the site titled "Bombin' the A.M. with Cara Ellison"
Shouldn't these videos have the date in the title to avoid mixing them up? Just a suggestion. :)

There is a date of when it is posted underneath the video though you wouldn't know it until you open the link so yeah the date in the title would also help.

@demoskinos: All the yes. Would love to see Cara on the site full-time. Reading her reviews and embed work, it's pretty fucking great writing. Of course, I have no idea what the logistics of that would be, or how she might mesh with the SF personalities, but if GB has room for someone, I'd vote for her.

I'll have to stay far away from Theif, because all the problems they are having with it sound like how I felt about Dishonored. I had high hopes and loved the art. But Dishonored just felt broken to me. I mean speaking of corridors. Dishonored. In sewers wondering how a guy saw you when he clearly didn't. having hardly 2 different routes to take and then throwing a bottle to distract the enemy and they don't even pay attention to it AT ALL. Like you never threw it. Then they come walk right over to you and !!! "OMG I FOUND SOMEBODY!" So yeah needless to say I would probably hate Thief because I was just disappointed in the clunkyness and half-marriage to sneaking that was Dishonored.

There is combat in Thief, yes? If the combat is bad, how is calling that out "not a valid criticism"? If Garret was never meant to fight dudes, then there should not be combat in the game. If there is combat and it's straight-up bad, then that's a failing of the game. Mark of the Ninja was a stealth game where you're a NINJA and it did not have combat. No one is saying stealth games HAVE to have combat. But if it's there, it should be good. If we turn this around, it'd be the same as saying "you can't criticize Lords of Shadow 2/Game X for having bad stealth sequences because it's not a stealth game!" Well, they still put stealth sequences in there, so the developers done goofed.

I would choose her and Jim Sterling.

They need to steal Danny O'Dwyer from gamespot first! :p But indeed, Cara and Jim would be great personalities to have with Giant Bomb :)

I see the Seth Rogen video-game-book-movie as not actually having much to do with the real events or people of that situation.

I see it as being more of a loose historical comedy about a made-up guy representing Nintendo (who is probably played by Seth Rogen) and a made-up guy representing Sega (who is probably played by James Franco) becoming increasingly antagonistic and machiavellian as they play out this historical battle over what is, in the grand scheme of things, a silly and minor subject-- but one which almost everyone remembers at least a little bit.

And the whole thing would be awash in 90s parody and nostalgia, and James Franco would have the horrible 90s-man look of the long curly hair and small round glasses, and there would be all kind of references to grunge and Nickelodeon and Jurassic Park, and Eddie Vedder would probably have a cameo, and the movie would end with the two main characters out of their minds on drugs, punching the shit out of each other on the streets of San Francisco.

Because I kind of doubt Seth Rogen would write a realistic courtroom movie.

How many times did she say "like"...

Anyone catch the name of the bullet hell game she was talking about?

I don't get it - she's an interesting person, but GB material? Are we really at that point already? :/