…Sometimes life gives you lemons even though you have no
idea as to how to make lemonade. Sometimes it does give you lemonade instead,
even though you were not expecting it, (or really needing it, truth be told).
But – a silver lining on any cloud and so forth. Where were we?
Ah yes, FH has finally revealed all of its new characters. Let
us look at them. We already discussed Nuxia yesterday; today we are beginning
with the Shaolin monk – as opposed to a Hungarian short track speeder skater,
whose last name is also Shaolin. Yeah, real life sometimes is simply bizarre. We
have talked about him yesterday too, in regards to the hook swords – the gun staff was another one of his
weapons, though it fell short of its’ Maori counterpart – a staff-slash-club.
Seriously, there was no reason as to why Maori should not have won, and yet he
lost the fight – but we talked about it yesterday too. The Shaolin monastery is
also famous for its’ Kung Fu, but there was little of it in DW, and FH is all
about the weapons, so it is doubtful that we will see any especial martial arts
in the upcoming update. The Nuxia, of course, had some unusual moves, but then the
hook swords are unusual, exotic weapons, so naturally her moves are unusual;
the Shaolin’s are more straightforward…
Speaking of swords, next we got the Tiandi and his dao saber. Well, maybe it it’s the dao saber, but that’s what it looks like
– the blade that was used by DW’s Ming Warriors, when they faced-off against
the French Musketeers – and lost. Were the weapons mismatched? Not exactly; the
Musketeers’ had more derived weapons, still not as good as the modern ones, but
already more derived, reliable and better than the Ming Warriors’ were.
Any weirdness? Perhaps the fact that the face-off took place
on a mountain pass of some sort that the Musketeers were storming, and the Ming
were doing their best to hold them off; spoiler alert – they failed. The
Musketeers won; their rapier triumphed over the saber, but it should be kept in
mind that they also had a parrying dagger with them. Here is where DW would
bend its’ own rules some – sometimes one team had ‘an extra’ weapon over the
other team. The hosts didn’t really offer much justification, and even if they
did, still having the Americans have 4 weapons, while the French had only 3,
(the S3 premiere), for example, looked rather dishonest. The Americans love to
win, but they prefer if it is done fairly…or at least not by obvious cheating, as it happened on DW.
Then again, DW got its’ comeuppance – it is still cancelled these days, and there
is no talk of it being rebooted. Pity, for it was a good show despite its’
flaws…but FH is filling its’ gap in the game world, at least.
Finally, we got the Jiang Jun. Apparently that is a literal
name, not a title or whatever; it is the name of some mythical Chinese warrior
or hero. His weapon is the guandao, which is the ancient Chinese version of the
naginata used by team Samurai already – or the western glaive. The glaive’s
main difference from a lance is that it was
not used from horseback, but more on foot, against cavalry. It has a bigger tip than the lance does, and in
case of both the naginata and the guandao, it is curved, more like a saber than
a lance, rapier or spear, which are straight, and can stab instead.
This brings us to another Ubisoft game that was launched
this year – their latest Assassin adventure. Apparently, Ubisoft hasn’t severed all of its’ ties with AWE
Me YouTube series, as it had commissioned them to make the broken spear of king
Leonidas, (featured in the 300 Spartans movie), and a khopis. The spear is a
spear, save that its’ haft is broken, so it can be used as a sword or a rapier
of some sort, while the khopis is a Greek adaptation of the traditional ancient
Egyptian khopesh, which was a sickle-shaped blade, and according to some
sources, the sharp edge was the inner,
not the outer one, meaning that
perhaps the khopesh was more like some sort of a military sickle than a saber.
The saber is mentioned here because the khopis was exactly
that – a saber of the Antiquity. In DW’s S2, it was one of the weapons of
Alexander the Great, put against Attila the Hun’s Sword of Mars, aka a
longsword. Just think the Samurais’ nodachi (or katana), put against the
Knights’, well, longsword. The difference is still there…and Alexander lost to
Attila, but that face-off was one of the worst in DW from the technical point of view, (and that is
unusual – usually DW had the technical side of things done completely right), so we will not go into it this time…
And this is it for now – see you all soon!
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