Author Topic: EP339: “Run,” Bakri Says  (Read 24163 times)

Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #50 on: May 22, 2012, 02:35:11 PM
This story was great!  Ferrett is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, between this story, "As Below, So Above", "Devour", and others.  He has the imagination to come up with new ideas or to put new twists on old ideas, add some patented Steinmetz flavor, add some interesting philosophy and emotional depth, and make it into something really brilliant.  At this point, I'm watching for his name in publications like I watch for Tim Pratt's (with anticipation of a riproaring tale).

This one I especially enjoyed because of its tie-in to video games, but there was plenty of food for thought even without it being related to one of my favorite pastimes.  I thought her change from trying not to kill anyone to ruthless killer was in-character and made complete and total sense.  If you see these guards making the same reactions every single time it would be very hard not to think of them as robots, or a science experiment (stimulus A prompts reaction B).

Sometimes I wonder about the stuff that I find funny, but I laughed loudly when she first shot Bakri, and then continued to shoot him for target practice.  What's even better, it totally made practical sense--she has had no weapons training, and has never killed a person before.  Especially with a trained sniper involved, doing your gun training in an active combat zone is foolhardy--even with automatic re-spawns it's not very productive.

The discussion that came up earlier about how 3-5 retries may make for a satisfying conclusion, but 10-20 becomes too frustrating, I can agree with that.  It brings a few games to mind:
--Ghouls and Ghosts and other games from a similar time period.  There are no saves.  You are a lone knight, with just a couple lives and a suit of armor.  If you get hit once, you lose your armor and run around in your undies.  If you get hit again before regaining your armor you lose a life.  If you lose all your lives you go all the way back to the beginning of the game and have to play through every damned level all over again.  Argh!  You thought the constant loading from save from frustrating!  I find that I just can't play this kind of game like I used to, partially because I don't have daily slots of many many hours to kill and no money to buy new games like I did in my teenage years.  And modern games have spoiled me, because they're never designed this way anymore.
--Deus Ex:  Human Revolution.  I played this game a few months ago, and generally liked it.  The game overall let you take the mission with a variety of tactics, blasting in the front door and killing everyone, incorporating hacking, stealth, to incapacitate your enemies quietly or to just sneak around them.  You could save anywhere at anytime, so generally the game wasn't too bad along the lines of saves.  And then you hit the first boss.  The making of the boss characters was outsourced, and it's pretty obvious that the makers didn't know what kind of game they were working with, because it's built as a fight more suited for Doom, wherein you must out-tank a tank character.  Unfortunately, at this point, I'd made inventory and augmentation choices to support my strategy of going through the game as a non-lethal stealth character (I had killed no one up to that point, just leaving heaps of unconscious guards wherever I went).  Even worse, the boss fight starts with a cut scene that leaves your character stupidly stranded without cover in front of this tank character.  It took me probably 50 tries over the course of an hour, most of those lasting only 30 seconds or so as I tried a weapon on him to judge its effectiveness and then got ripped to shreds.  Eventually I did beat him, but I was just relieved at that point to have the stupid thing over.
--Bio Shock.  I'm playing this game now.  I like the way that this one is set up.  If you die, you are just re-spawned elsewhere, whatever you had done before you died is still in effect including the enemies that you've killed and the items you've picked up.  I still try not to die, but this lets me be a bit more bold, a bit more daring, if I know I won't lose everything in it, and I find that I'm enjoying that.



LaShawn

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 550
  • Writer Mommies Rule!
    • The Cafe in the Woods
Reply #51 on: May 24, 2012, 02:37:07 PM
DAMMIT FERRETT FIRST DEVOUR AND NOW THIS?!?!?! HOW DO YOU WRITE SO GOOD?!?! DAMN YOUUUUUUU!!!

So yeah. Loved this one too. Ferrett is turning into one of my favorite writers. Loved the protagonist in this one, and the rhythmic repetition. Wow. Wow. Wow.

--
Visit LaShawn at The Cafe in the Woods:
http://tbonecafe.wordpress.com
Another writer's antiblog: In Touch With Yours Truly


hardware

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 192
Reply #52 on: June 22, 2012, 01:22:40 PM
This was really good. Here is a writer with a good grasp of what he want's to say and how the best way of saying that is. He is also concerned with actual relevant modern themes that hasn't been flogged to death already. I get that he didn't do much with the middle eastern angle, but I still found it a nice touch, that helped to anchor the story in our world. In the end, this is a story of what makes things meaningful: choises, and that they have consequences. Without those consequences, good or bad, everything loses it's meaning. I agree with several people here that Ferrett has become a name to look for.



Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #53 on: June 17, 2014, 05:21:30 PM
I put this as #29 on my Best Podcast Fiction of All Time list:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/the-best-podcast-fiction-of-all-time-21-30/



Cutter McKay

  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 952
  • "I was the turkey the whoooole time!"
    • Detention Block AA23
Reply #54 on: June 17, 2014, 08:46:10 PM
I put this as #29 on my Best Podcast Fiction of All Time list:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/the-best-podcast-fiction-of-all-time-21-30/


This story remains my all-time favorite EP episode. Ever. Of all. Forever and ever, amen.  ;)

-Josh Morrey-
http://joshmorreywriting.blogspot.com/
"Remember: You have not yet written your best work." -Tracy Hickman


Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #55 on: June 18, 2014, 03:17:16 PM
I put this as #29 on my Best Podcast Fiction of All Time list:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/the-best-podcast-fiction-of-all-time-21-30/


This story remains my all-time favorite EP episode. Ever. Of all. Forever and ever, amen.  ;)

Ummmm...  On my list it is the 8th Escape Pod episode.  But considering the size of the pool those are coming from there's not that much difference between those numbers.



Marlboro

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 202
Reply #56 on: November 03, 2019, 03:41:44 PM
Episode 309: "All your base are belong to Irena"

 I enjoyed this episode. The premise is great and I thought the ending was perfect.

 My only complaint: the time travel machine was really silly. A kid growing up in a war zone in the early 2000s makes a working time machine out of old X-Boxes? You don't have to go all hardcore hard sci-fi or anything but least throw in a flux capacitor or something.  Or maybe set the story in Iraq circa 2200 A.D.