Ricky Grove 00:10
Welcome to And Now For Something Completely Machinima podcast. I am Ricky Grove, your host for this and we're talking with Tracy Harwood, Phil Rice and Damien Valentine. Hey guys. This week we're going to review a film that I chose. It's called Let's Play Nomad X by Kristian Andrews. Now, I chose this film this machinima film because of the writing and the performance and the visuals all come together to create something, a reaction, at least in me, of that was funny, and kind of strange and inevitably kind of sad, a little sad. Although humour is the dominating feeling you get through it. It's ostensibly a Let's Play video. But there are actually two, two sorts of stories going on. One is the story of the gamer, who was playing a game called Nomad X, a game that he says that he's played many, many times and that he oftentimes plays it at important events in his life. And then the other second story is one that he sort of mentioned offhand. And that continues to encroach upon the main gameplay. And that's his story about his ex wife, and his meeting her in a grocery store, and her fiance punching him in the throat, when they go out to the car. And eventually, the two stories collide at the end, in a just a wonderful ending, in which both of them come together. And I won't spoil the ending for you, but it's not only funny, but I think sad. Honestly, I love the the vocal performance of the lead guy, it is just so funny. And it has that kind of humour that's contrasting to our last Half Life 3 Game Trailer, which is sort of hit you on the head. humour, witty at times, but still pretty blunt. This is a kind of subtlety, because the guy's timing is so good comic timing, that he'll be talking about the game and then he'll sort of slide in something about his wife, and then he'll correct himself and then come back to the game. And I'm also very impressed with the fact we have another film that we're going to be Tracy two other films that Tracy picked. One is an Unreal Engine machinima, which is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. The game footage in this Nomad X is about as basic as you can get. So here you have the strange contrast of this sad, funny, almost Chekhovian kind of mixture of the two happening with this visual that is so dated, that I think it's an actual genius choice to use it because it pumps up the human side of it in a way that I have never seen in a Let's Play video before. So that's the reason why I chose it. I hope you guys like it. The by the way, the website that he lists. We found this on Vimeo I think it was and he's got several other interesting films there that I liked a lot. Bald Dad in particular, just great. The opposite of this. But the website link is kaput, and his own film website is kaput as well. I don't know what to do. This is pretty old. It's about seven year old film. So it may not have updated it. I don't know. But what did what were your thoughts about this film?

Tracy Harwood 03:59
Shall I start with the 10 year old film Ricky March Alterna Oh my God 2013 Good. You know what a fabulous parody of the of the Let's Play phenomenon this was this really made me laugh. I mean, seriously made me laugh. It was very, very, very well done. You know what, it's obviously not a real game.

Damien Valentine 04:22
But I will wait till my turn.

Tracy Harwood 04:23
Okay. Okay. All right. Well, I didn't think it was a real game. I film and I think inspired apparently. As I was doing some background research on it, apparently by the folks that used to create arcade video games, and let's plays from them, which I confess I don't actually remember. I don't recall those at all. And there's actually a really good interview with the director on directors notes.com about the inspiration for the film. And in it, he says my girlfriend came home late one night and walked in on me in my pants, scanning the surface of an unnamed planet for mineral deposits. Yeah, I can imagine how that might go. But then he goes on to explain that, that he was actually inspired by David Brabbins Frontier Elite 2 game which he said, although it was graphically limited, he said the experience just felt limitless. So he wanted to remake Brabbin's forgotten masterpiece using an army of kind of fellow geeks if you like and crowdfund it and whatnot. But then he apparently found out that it was always being remade, called, Elite Dangerous. And so to console himself, what he did was watched, let's plays about forgotten arcade games. And he said, he kind of found solace in the bizarre characters that were making these very heartfelt mini documentaries. One of his favourites of which is by a guy called Jimplaysgames, and it was a film called Frontier Fundamentals, and we'll put a link to that on. So you can have a little look at that. You know, he says it kind of contains chunks of long lost High School infatuation bits of her then relationship 2013. And then he says, it also is kind of reminiscent of his grandparents divorce as well. So he's kind of thrown lots of ideas into it. Interestingly, I think it there's this, he makes this kind of comment about there being a shared consciousness in the way that games used to be and, and is quite saddened that the experiences were those really special consoles of that period of time are kind of incompatible with gaming now. And he kind of makes the observation that the only way you can relive those kinds of console experiences is through telling stories, as you're making the Let's Plays, which I think is kind of an interesting observation. Because even though it's 2013, this could actually have been made last week, and you'd probably could have got the same kind of comments from it. And then I wanted to do a little bit of digging about who he was because also, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't find a website for him to see what he's been up to. But I did find that he's part of an independent animation studio called Studio AKA. And he's actually a BAFTA nominated animator for his films that kind of unconventional narratives that he often uses. You know, he kind of uses observational drawing as a means to kind of communicate personal anecdotes, which is that Bald Dad thing that that you found as well, right, really, really very interesting. But he intriguingly also referred to Let's Play Nomad X as a three minute parody of the other type of YouTube documentary that typifies something equals 'unclassifiable'. As does his game development work, because he's also worked on developing this game and this game from what I can see is called Barbaraian.

Ricky Grove 08:15
Although Yeah, Rijn. Yeah. Mari and bah, bah,

Tracy Harwood 08:20
bah, blah, blah, blah, yeah, whatever, which is a kind of very retro style dungeon esque type type sort of game, which he released in 2017. So as far as I can see, he's done lots of, you know, graphic styling on adverts, and whatnot, including for people like Johnnie Walker and Joules and Toyota. But I don't see that he's done an awful lot more of creative stuff like this, which is a shame because yeah, you know, he's clearly got a lot of talent. And that's probably been subsumed by the day job. Yeah, but loved it. Thank you.

Ricky Grove 08:56
Thanks for that deep dive on that. And it's a great information.

Damien Valentine 09:00
Yeah, so Tracy, you're right is it was very much inspired by frontier elite to because I played that game so much when I was when it was released back in 92, or 93. And I could relate so much to his experience with it, because if you start it's one of those games, you start off with this very basic spaceship, 100 credits and a simulation of the galaxy as they understood it at the time. And you can just fly anywhere you make money in you play it how you want to do it. And there's no story in it. You can just go where you want and it kind of encourages you. It gives you enough lore and idea of the world that you can make up your own story as you're playing it. And it encourages you to do that. And that's great. The way that this video is presented, it kind of feels like it has things that the game didn't have like, you can see that the beginning of the pilot in the ship you never see you in your ship. But you imagine your pilot in the ship. And it kind of builds on that, which I really liked. I did check to make sure it wasn't a real game because I thought if it was one of those, they released the source code of the original game, I thought someone has taken that source code and made this out of it. I want to play it and I was really disappointed.

Ricky Grove 10:23
That's a testament that is a skill.

Damien Valentine 10:25
Yeah. Because you know, people, they make games now, but with those retro style graphics from the 90s as part of the charm for it, and that really appealed to me, but So yeah, that was a shame. But yeah, Elite Dangerous is the fourth game in the series. Obviously, it's got all the modern graphics, we've cut the covers videos major. Yeah, yeah, exactly. times. So obviously, it's come a long way since the graphical style of the game that this is inspired by, which looks very similar to Nomad X. But yeah, and he just kind of sped up the pace of it as well in the original game is very slow paced, because everything is space is huge. And you have to speed up time to get new otherwise you just be flying there for a solid week. Oh, we got anywhere. Right. And I'm not joking about that. That's it's fully. Space is as big as it should be. And it takes ages. Oh

Ricky Grove 11:25
my god. Oh, my God. Yeah. A lot of patience for that sort of game.

Damien Valentine 11:30
Yeah. But yeah, it brought back a lot of memories. I really tried to film I did like the way that he was intersecting his real life with the characters voicing his real life with what he was doing in the game. I have to say, I haven't. I don't think I've ever played it sitting in my underwear. But you know. Don't think I really took quite that much. But yeah, I really tried to film. I kind of wanted to get the game now. It's just to play a game for that nostalgia value because of it. Yeah. Excellent choice. Thank you,

Phil Rice 12:02
Phil. Yeah, I mean, huge nostalgia factor to back at my beginnings with with video games and such. I'm curious. Tracy, you mentioned about him talking about consoles, early consoles, and I'm like wondering how far back is he going? When you say saying that? Because, you know, to young people today. An early version of PlayStation is the oldest console they can even think of or maybe they've heard of, oh, remember the N64 consoles went way back further than that, folks. You know, Atari and Intellivision and Colico vision and you know, to me this this graphically, and the feel of it, even though there's there's things animation wise that go on in this that those old engines could not have done. That really weren't possible until John Carmack did what he did it software for Doom and stuff with for 3d, you know, binary space partitioning and all that. But still, it's the severely reduced colour palette and the pixelization and all that wonderfully faithfully recreated. It reminds me of a lot of Commodore 64 era games. Damian the one you were talking about with space travel, it reminds me of a game that I got on the C 64 for my birthday. I don't remember which year when I was in high school was called the Halle project. It was released around the time when Halley's Comet.

Tracy Harwood 13:42
Oh, wow. That'd be 1964. Phil. Gosh, that's dating you. Yeah.

Phil Rice 13:46
Oh no. Halley's comet came by during the 80s. Anyway, this game was released. And yeah, it was space travel, at least within the solar system wasn't trying to be the galaxy or anything. And all the travel was in real time. So yeah, if you wanted to, and it was at real speeds, that you that you could go with current, you know, Apollo era technology. So yeah, they had a function where you could speed up the time because it's ridiculous to travel from Earth to Pluto, you know? Anyway, yeah.

Damien Valentine 14:20
So do you try in real time? Oh, of course. Well, no, not

Phil Rice 14:23
in real time. Anyway, this this, you know, so graphically there's that and that that was a wonderful experience and I can't help but wonder what somebody you know born post 2000, what they can even make of that because I don't know there's there's a there's a tolerance that I have even a love for primitive graphics. That I don't know how you encourage in today's let's say kids who are Seeing near photorealistic stuff. And even the oldest stuff they can recall is still ridiculously advanced compared to what we could get on home computers, when I was first using them. So it really makes me curious with retro feels. What's that experience like, because I only know how to experience it as me, where I saw graphics more primitive than this. And found great entertainment value, you know, playing Galaga at Pizza Hut at the one that's built into the table, where your food can actually sit right on top. And you play, right, that was... Space Invaders. I remember when my dad came home and says, You got to come with me, you got to come see this game. And he took me to some restaurant that had Donkey Kong original, when it had first come to the United States, you know, before that, all we knew about was Pac Man. Yeah, you know, so that's how old I am. It's crazy. You guys, you know, you guys all saw some of that stuff. So. So that aside, now just to talk about the story, which I won't do too much, because I don't want to spoil anything, the experience for anyone. But there's some real genius going on here. Like, I just, it's like, I want to sit down and like it just this is a guy, I want to talk to that, that like I wish I could meet in a pub. And just probe the brain of who came up with this. Because the way that it's woven. It's just so so damn genius. It's very, very innovative. I don't want to say anything about it, because it anyone who could get the experience out of it, like I did when I watched it has to do with not knowing what's coming. So I'm not going to I'm not going to do anything to compromise that. But incredible craft. So Tracy, you're telling me that there's more. This is his background to this guy and more feathers in his cap, let's say does not surprise me. A brilliant mind at work on this. And I'm just grateful to have experienced it really a big admirer of that that element. And that element would be true no matter what if this was live action, or if it was advanced graphics. Or if it was text on the screen, that craft would still be there. It's it's really hard to talk about in tangible terms. But you know it when you see it? Yeah, you know. So thank you. Thank you for this pick, Ricky i It lifts my spirits about the planet when I see something with that craft, you know, I'm so glad story is just so important. Yeah. And this is just it's well done.

Ricky Grove 18:00
This is an example of of sort of, in a way, a kind of comment on some of the high quality Unreal videos that we've seen, and others who have this glitter, this absolute beautiful glitter, but they don't have the equivalent excellence in storytelling. And this guy has been able to put the two together in a way that, to me, is influential. I would go back and study this film. Me too, to learn.

Phil Rice 18:31
I think I will actually. Yeah, I think I will study this film.

Ricky Grove 18:36
to learn how he wove elements together so skillfully. Because inevitably, what happens is the two stories that I mentioned, at the beginning of this start clashing with each other. And in a way you sort of see the visual equivalent of his internal strife. Yes, in the game. And again, I won't spoil it for you because it has a beautiful climax really hard not to. It's a beautiful climax, but it is it's, again, it's that Chekhov's genius and being able to create humour and sadness at the same time. Yes. You know, he does that. Excuse me, Tracy, you want to you've been trying to put something in there. What did you want to say? Well,

Tracy Harwood 19:25
I was I was just going to say if he if he's following this at all, because we will try and tell him that we've reviewed it, I would really please want him to do some more work. Yeah. And share it because, you know, the, I think the last piece he put up was about 2017, 2018 but some more creative work would be wonderful to see from him.

Phil Rice 19:47
Yeah. And if you've done any interactive fiction, in your, please let us know about it. I'm a huge closet fan of that. I would love to. For those of you. All of us here know what interact confection is but you know, the old from the 80s, the Infocomm, games of Zork and those types of things. Some, there's still people making that stuff, today. It's a very small community. But and there's been some really interesting innovation in how writing works in that. If he's such if he is a real enthusiast of old days, he may have dabbled in that. If so please, and you hear this show, please let us know. I would love to play through one of your IF works.

Ricky Grove 20:29
Excellent. Well, I'm so glad everybody enjoyed it. Let us know your comments about the this incredible. Let's play Nomad X by Kristian Andrews. What did you think of it? Do you have ideas that we may have missed on it? Or do you also want to see him complete, make more films for us, which you'd like to hear from you at? Tuck it completely machinima.com. And don't forget, Tracy has been putting a lot of information on our blog about artificial intelligence and AI generated art with the recent lawsuit that came up. And all sorts of other interesting news that it's that's it the blog at completely machinima.com and has a lot of extra comment that we don't always put out here in the show. Well, that's it for us today. Thank you, Tracy and Phil and Damien for your comments on this and we'll come back next week with another film. So we'll see you. Goodbye.