Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Sometimes you get a
feeling that it is not so bad, that you are getting the hang of it, and then
you get to feel like a bloody pawn in someone else’s game, with less than half
the available information being, well, available to you beforehand. I sometimes
really have the life in general, not just specifically generic, but sometimes…
This brings us to today’s topic, with Pathfinder: Worldscape
taking a hiatus for a foreseeable feature, because that’s Pathfinder for you – let
us talk about FH instead. Earlier today they declared that their S5 is coming
this February – 2018. Yay? Hard to say.
One thing that is
good is that they have ironed out the technical problems…at least some of them.
Yay! Fixing them is an important move
forward, to be sure, but it is only one of them. The crew of FH seems to have
also invoked Apollyon, and that is something else.
Who is Apollyon? She was the main villain in FH S1 story
mode, and one of the reasons as to why FH went through some tough times was
because it had a weak story mode. Let us recap.
The bulk of FH are the face-offs, not unlike what went down
in DW. No, not just the TV show, (more about it below), but the actual video
game, which wasn’t unlike that of Injustice 2, for example, or Mortal Kombat
franchise: two characters face off time after time, one pair after another, and
the last fighter standing wins. Simple, and FH has done something like that –
in fact, it has done exactly like that, with one important difference: unlike
DW or Mortal Kombat, it allows for multiperson teams too. FH also has a
sufficiently complex system of scoring, of damages, armor points, hit points,
etc. The technical side of FH was one of its better aspects, and so it is no
surprise that they have fixed it, because they are good at it. But the
storytelling…
On the other side, FH tries to be more like Overwatch or
Injustice 2, but both of them, and especially Injustice 2, have a very strong
story mode on top of the all technical advantages and virtues. With Overwatch,
it is different – their world and characters are already so varied and diverse
that the players can already create their own storyline easily, with the crew
just occasionally providing backstory for one character or another, (they may
even be in the process of becoming an e-sport), while FH…isn’t in those leagues
yet.
Another important difference of FH as a game is that all of
its characters appear to be ‘masters of one’. I.e., Peacekeeper has her dual
swords, Kensei – a nodachi/greatsword, Raider – a greataxe, etc. This makes FH
different from, say, DW, where Vlad the Impaler has, as example, a kilij sword,
a halberd and a hand cannon, just as he had on the show, when he faced-off with
Sun Tzu.
That actually deserves a discussion/rant of its own: I
discussed AFO at length, might as well discuss DW too, (something that I did
not do for a while now). In the episode ‘Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu’, Vlad
won because he had the better weapons – supposedly. Well, no, they were not ‘better’
as in ‘higher quality’, they were ‘better’ as in ‘more advanced’. You can talk
about ‘the dread arithmetic of war’ or all that crap, but there is some truth to it; Vlad’s firearm, no
matter how primitive, (‘a hand cannon’, really?) was a better killing weapon
than Sun Tzu’s ‘fire arrows’…basically ordinary arrows that had a wad of cotton
tied behind the arrow tip, and then set afire. As literal fire arrows,…they
just were not very efficient; when used on a field that had been soaked in
sesame oil or similar substance beforehand…moreso, but still. Once firearms did
evolve beyond the single-shot ‘hand cannon’, they did push bow and arrow, and
even the crossbow, out of real life warfare…so there!
Vlad won because he had the better weapons…or at least the
weapons that the show’s experts, (well, hosts, really), liked better. Sun Tzu’s
jian sword was just as efficient as Vlad’s kilij, but team ST did a worse
showing of it than team Vlad did with the kilij, and-
…The kilij is a sabre, or a scimitar. It is a cavalryman’s
blade, designed to give further momentum to the swinging strike of a rider on a
horse, in kilij’s case the tip is even weighted down to give the blow more
force. Okay. And on the other hand, we have the jian sword, which is a
straightforward, straight, stabbing sword, which can also slice as well as stab, (the Chinese called their sabre ‘dao’, and it was also
featured on DW, in the episode ‘Ming Warrior vs. French Musketeer’ or something
like that). It was more of a foot soldier’s weapon, seeing how it was much more
versatile, and foot soldiers did not have as much momentum for a big wide swing
as the cavalry did. ST and Vlad had their face-off on foot, so ST should have
had the advantage here, just as in S3 Washington had it over Bonaparte…but here
Vlad won in part because the kilij got more kill points than the jian did…why?
It sliced through the bone? The jian did as well, just not as in obviously
demonstrative way.
This brings us back to the points. The first two seasons of
DW were very big on points and doing everything by the book…only they did not. As
they showed repeatedly throughout the first two episodes, they ignored the
points whenever they could, declaring anything that they wanted; for example,
back in S1, they declared that the knight’s broadsword and the pirate’s cutlass
were equal, but the points that each of the blades scored were different. Thus,
two possibilities.
A, the points are right and the hosts were wrong, in which
case the entire grading system is wrong; it isn’t the deadliest warrior who
wins, but the most impressive one; or b, the points are wrong and the hosts are
right – in this case the entire grading system is pointless and unnecessary:
the experts/hosts can declare who is the winner, who is in the right, and that
is it. That is how it went in AFO, remember? Why couldn’t DW go the same way?
Who knows, they stuck with it until the end of S3 and the series finale, and
while DW is missed, it seems to be
largely gone, especially on YouTube™,
so there is that.
Back to FH? (Sorry for the DW-related rant, but I needed it,
apologies again). There is not much left to say. The promo for FH S5 has all of
the characters appearing in the background, done in an identical,
black-and-gold color scheme, making them all look semi-identical, like pawns of
a chess game, (see intro to this
piece). Not sure if that is the best idea that FH ever had, but we will have to
wait until February of 2018 to see what happens next.
That’s it for this time – see you all soon!
