Page 1 of 2

LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:14 pm
by SierraFan1885
Anyone watch his Let's Plays of QFG1 and 2 on youtube? He does some great voice overs and commentary, he recently started a LP of Shadows...a great way to pass a few hours till tonight...

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:24 pm
by Schloss Ritter
You bet I have.

Erpy/mods, may we post a link to his Youtube playlists here?

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:35 pm
by whoooooopi
The thought process of how he'd get the dirt into the Air Elemental was hilarious.

Well worth a look.

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:58 pm
by oughtobe
Yea he does all the character voices and narration... he really gets into it... also has some funny commentary here and there...

It's good way to go over the old QFG2 and kill some time waiting for the new QFG2...

But I did do a Paladin/Thief/Fighter/Wizard play through a few days ago.. i had to suck blue frogs to keep my honor up because i stole stuff and killed the griffin..

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 2:29 pm
by Schloss Ritter
Anyone else?

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 2:57 pm
by Erpy
Go ahead and post it.

Image

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:54 pm
by whoooooopi

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:40 pm
by Schloss Ritter
erm, that's like halfway through QfG2...


QfG1 starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M-jz0Mqgmg
QfG2 starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIxhK5u21yE
QfG4 starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_EPs5QqzzA

He's also done a series on Police Quest 3 and miscellaneous one off videos.

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:23 am
by Asrai
It's fascinating to watch, I'm having trouble stopping. It's really interesting to see how somebody else goes about playing through the game and hear his thought process. He definitely plays differently than I do, but we both get there in the end.

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:04 pm
by Schloss Ritter
Fortunately I was able to catch up when he was half done with QfG2.

SierraFan1885 (if you're still checking in here) or a mod or such could do it if he's not... could you edit the title of this thread to be something a little more descriptive than "LateBlt" (as people may not know who that is). Could you make it: "LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube"

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:16 pm
by GloriousHeroine
Haha he's AWESOOOOOME

*subscribed to him a long time ago when he was reviewing QFG1*

Re: LateBlt

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:38 pm
by MusicallyInspired
I've exchanged a few emails with Latebit. Good guy. I love his videos as well.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:25 pm
by Quest For Glory Fan
I recently found him and was actually googling him to find his email as I wanted to do a thief playthrough of QFG2 similar to how he did with his audio over the game and post it on my youtube account (which I just created to post comments on MIs videos) anywho back on track, I was googling him to dig up some contact info and I came straight back here even though my initial page I googled from were these forums :lol First time I've ever really gone full circle on the internet.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:02 am
by Brainiac
Speaking of LateBlt, you all knew this was coming...

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 9:07 am
by Erpy
Wow, quickly annoyed dude. First time I heard someone complain about the very existence of character portraits. (they weren't ripped, btw...Brit all handdrew them)

Image

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 11:25 am
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
First he said he doesn't like them, then at the end he complains that the guards at the palace don't have dialogue pictures. Guess they must have grown on him real fast. :lol

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:16 pm
by Schloss Ritter
I did leave him some feedback for some of the issues, especially about the portraits.

Yeah, he's usually a pretty nice guy, but he can get a bit nitpicky at times, as he admits to. I've got to admit that sometimes new character portraits can be a bit jarring :eek when you have squinted and imagined so long as to what a pixelated character actually looks like. I was taken aback at first from some of the portraits in KQ2+ too, but they quickly grew on me. It's kind of like hearing voice acting in a game for the first time and it not matching up with what you imagined the voices to be like.

Ah well, I think he's really opposed to the point-and-click system in any game, not just yours, so I wouldn't take it personally. :)

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:41 pm
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
I don't take much personally anymore, just a little baffled as to why he'd post a video clip on youtube about something he didn't overly enjoy, particularly if a lot of people in the Sierra community tend to respect his opinion. Youtube videos can have a viral effect and being the first QFG2VGA video on youtube, I hope that perceived negativity won't drive away people from playing or trying the remake, because it's not an accurate opinion of the general consensus. But he's entitled to his own opinion, of course.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 2:39 pm
by Kaelon
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:I don't take much personally anymore, just a little baffled as to why he'd post a video clip on youtube about something he didn't overly enjoy, particularly if a lot of people in the Sierra community tend to respect his opinion. Youtube videos can have a viral effect and being the first QFG2VGA video on youtube, I hope that perceived negativity won't drive away people from playing or trying the remake, because it's not an accurate opinion of the general consensus. But he's entitled to his own opinion, of course.
To understand LateBlt's celebrity is also to realize that he is popular because he portrays himself as a crotchety old-school gamer (even though he's only in his early 20s). I think that the design choices made by the AGDI Team -- namely, using a cursor/icon interface instead of the classic parser interface -- more or less sealed the fate of QFG2VGA as a game that probably wouldn't appeal to people who were desperate for a old-school retro-style parser game. Then again, most parser-fans (LateBlt included) prefer the classic clean-style art of EGA over the dithered gradiants of VGA.

That said, I really like LateBlt. I first met him a few months ago while following along his "Let's Play Quest for Glory 2" (and then re-watched his Hero's Quest 1, which taught me that someone else out there was as fanatical as I was about retro Sierra games!). He and I have exchanged a few e-mails and private messages, and it's clear that he has a cult-following in a tiny niche of Sierra aficionado gamers, and that's why he is so effective.

The biggest danger with remakes, especially when they are managed by people who weren't part of the original design team, is that they have the tendancy of treading on holy ground for purists who have come to expect things to be done a certain way. Quest for Glory 2 VGA was bound to upset some people, but it does sadden me that LateBlt's celebrity was (unintentionally) leveraged in a quasi-grumble-rant about the things he didn't like about Quest for Glory 2 VGA. Nevertheless, he was also comparing Quest for Glory 2 VGA with Quest for Glory IV, and saying the reasons why he didn't like one also mostly applied for the reasons why he didn't really like the other.

So we're in good company. :)

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:06 pm
by Brainiac
Yeah, LateBlt's a lot like Rich over at IA...very, very pro-parser. You have to take everything he says with that fact in mind.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:33 pm
by GrahamCracker4
I completely understand people who prefer the old-school parser, and it definately seems more adventure-like and more flexible in some ways. LateBlt wasn't that hard on it, but you could definately see his bias against it (imo if the worst thing you can complain about the game has to be alright).

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:59 pm
by papste
Being a fan of the parser myself I was afraid the P&C interface would hurt GFG2VGA. There's nothing more i hate in adventure games than having to go over several lines of preset dialog trees that guide you through the course of the game. In my opinion the latest Sierra games suffered from this (with the exception of Gabriel Knight 2 which i enjoyed very much, but that falls into a different category, being a full FMV game). I usually like to explore things myself rather than have the game tell me what i should do.

However after hHaving played QFG2VGA (i chose the parser interface for the dialogs), i actually thought that having the point & click interface for all the other actions and pure parser for the dialogs was a really cool feature. Honestly i enjoyed the game very much and i thought its uses the best of both the parser and the P&C interface. No more having the tedious typing of the actions (like cast flame dart, open door, mount, eat, etc), and at the same time you can use pure parser for the dialogs and direct all the conversations where you want them and not where the game wants you to.

I also have to say that i like lateblt and i have seen most of his "let's play" stuff on you-tube, but i really think that he is being unfair with his criticism of the game. Its obvious that he has some fixed ideas about what an adventure game should be, and that being said, i think he is biased toward games that don't fall into that category. Nevertheless everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

One thing that surprises me from lateblt's video is he is using a combination of parser and P&C interface instead of the full parser for dialogs. If he is so biased about the P&C interface why didn't he just chose the pure parser for the dialogs anyway. I understand that its only for the dialogs and not for all the actions, but why chose something you obviously don't like and then go on to complain about it?

Just my 2cents about this :D

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 3:26 pm
by Crowley9
Wow, I had no idea this thread existed until LateBlt himself mentioned something like this. The one criticism I fully agree with him are the portraits. It's not that they exist in the first place, but the style that irks me. Far too cartoony in my opinion. None of the women look all that attractive, and Rakeesh is almost like out of a Disney cartoon. Ugarte and Ferrari are probably the worst of the lot. Hey, I do like the game overall.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:13 pm
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
Every QFG game, save for QFG3, had those style of portraits (QFG5's 3D portraits don't really count). But who says QFG2 is a realistic game which demands 100% realistic portraits? In my mind, QFG2 seems more comic and cartoony than realistic, which would make such dialogue pictures well-suited to QFG1, QFG2, and QFG4, and realistic dialogue pictures more appropriate to the serious setting of QFG3.

LateBlt's caught-up on so many small details about what he doesn't like, that he's missing the entire point of why we remade this game in the first place: to make the excellent STORY accessible to people who have never played QFG2 before. Now, don't get me wrong. It doesn't affect me one iota who likes the game or who hates it. But sometimes other peoples' logic is entirely lost on me! Why on earth would we remake QFG2 with a parser and no dialogue pictures when the original game is already like that? That's precisely what turned so many people off playing QFG2 in the first place. Making it to his specifications would attract the exact same crowd who enjoyed the original game, and scare away the rest. Now that, I would be a monumental waste of my time. To each their own; if you like the original, then stick with the EGA versions. If you prefer remakes, play them. No good reason to complain about variety when neither option is taken away from you. You can still experience the game in the way you enjoy. We didn't go all "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" on this. Same game, same story.

Re: LateBlt's Let's Play QfG on Youtube

Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 6:26 pm
by LateBlt
My God, I had no idea any of this was going on.

I registered just to respond, since I feel like folks here deserve a response. I think most people have pretty much forgotten about it by now, but just to explain myself a bit: I really enjoy the remake. It's wonderful. I hadn't originally planned on making a video about it, but so many people sent me messages about it that I finally made the video just so people would know that yes, I've seen and played the game. Then, when making the video, I commented on the things that most stood out to me, and since I'd just finished playing through the original game again and making a video describing lots of things in detail, most of the things that stood out were the things that were "different." That means the mouse interface, the character portraits, and the additional side quests--basically, everything that was added and wasn't absolutely faithful to the original was evil and terribly wrong because it wasn't exactly like the original game. >_>

I put the result up, not really considering how it came across and certainly not considering it to be a "review" of the game at all. Had the video actually meant to be a genuine critique of QFG2VGA, it would have been a lot more balanced; as it was, the video was more like "Let's look at what's different about this remake." It was done for the benefit of people who'd already played QFG2 and wanted to know what might be different if they were going to play the remake. So yeah, I focused on the things that surprised me because I hadn't expected them.

I actually got a text response on the video from Eriq Chang (!), but it wasn't until a couple of people told me about this thread that I realized what had really happened. Against my expectations, my videos are apparently not only pretty popular here, but a lot of people apparently anticipated and watched my video about the QFG2VGA remake. Given that I spent most of that video panning the remake, I can understand the results: Disappointment.

I don't really know the best way to handle this. I put up another video which tries to address my original comments, and I was considering deleting the original, but I opted to leave it up since most of my original comments still stand; they just weren't appropriately balanced out with all the things that are great about the game. Essentially, this really is a fantastic remake of one of my favorite games of all time, and the graphics, sound, and overall atmosphere are all top-notch. The remake does add elements which will probably irk some people because they're "different," but those things don't impede one's ability to enjoy the game.

To anyone who felt that my original video about this remake was unfair: Please accept my apologies for what was not in any way meant to be a comprehensive put-down of the game. My videos are not meant to be critiques; they're just silly little videos of me playing the game. Honestly, if I really didn't think a game was worth playing, I probably wouldn't make a video about it in the first place. To everyone who spent so much time and hard work in crafting this remake: Thank you, thank you for allowing a new generation of gamers to enjoy a game that would otherwise be inaccessible to our contemporaries. I'm glad that the remake has been popular and met with great success, and I hope the gratutide of your fan base makes it all worth it.

EDIT: Oh, and just to respond to the questions why I'm using the "combo" interface if I hate point-and-click so much: It really isn't that I dislike point-and-click as that I like having options. Point-and-click just annoys me because it limits what you can choose to do, not because I actually dislike the concept itself of operating a mouse. This is also why I gave kudos to the remake for allowing you to choose between the "classic" street layout or the "simplified" street layout: It gives people the option of sticking to the original if they want to, or using a simplified street layout if they don't think it's fun to spend hours getting lost in the streets. In my mind, you can almost never go wrong with giving the user a choice; if they want something, let them choose it, but if they don't want something, they should have an option to disable it. However, as has been correctly pointed out, all of this misses the point of making a remake in the first place: The point of the remake is so today's gamers can enjoy the wonderful atmosphere of Shapeir, not to make exactly the same game all over again. There'll always be people who want everything to be the same and get upset when anything's different; those people should have the option to live in their ancient realities. The existence of those people does not, in any way, invalidate new things. Speaking for myself, I really do like the remake, and the fact that some nitpicks about the interface bother me does not change that reality.