Stolen Pixels #5: Every Shade of Brown

In this episode of Stolen Pixels, Shamus Young observes that nothing spices Guild Wars' dreary brown landscape like a hot chick in lace undies.

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lol, very good. What should we be expecting Thursday Mr Young? More Guild Wars?

I'll admit to not getting very far into Guild Wars. However, the Guild Wars ladies definitely reaffirmed my game character philosophy. "If I get a choice of what kind of ass I'm going to be staring at for the duration of a game, it's going to be a good-looking ass." Never mind Age of Conan. Give me some Guild Wars booty.

I signed up for an account to reply to this, because I'm peeved. You really didn't get far at all in Guild Wars: Prophecies, did you Shamus? Sure, the second beginning* in the game is very brown, but there comes a point not too far in that it becomes very WHITE, and I'm guessing that after that** it gets very RED, or very GREEN, or something else very MONOCHROMATIC.

So, come on, at least go with the RIGHT joke.

*Pre-searing.
**I haven't really gotten far either.

StingRay02:
I'll admit to not getting very far into Guild Wars. However, the Guild Wars ladies definitely reaffirmed my game character philosophy. "If I get a choice of what kind of ass I'm going to be staring at for the duration of a game, it's going to be a good-looking ass." Never mind Age of Conan. Give me some Guild Wars booty.

So when you were a child you played with Barbies instead of G.I.Joes for this same reason?

Seriously, weakest argument/justification ever.

Gah, you're bashing all the games I like, damn you Shamus!

But at any rate, great comic. I'm disappointed at the accompanying text this time.
I suppose it's a rant on what Post-Searing Ascalon looks like, especially in contrast to Pre-Searing. The game sends you everywhere after that area: from snowy mountaintops, to an exotic 'paradise' gone wrong due to a religious cult, onward to a dense jungle, eventually reaching a desert. From there on you'll go back to some more snowy mountains, to finally travel to the Ring of Fire, which resembles an inferno.

Each chapter of the GW series does have a 'brown' area, though. Post-Searing in Prophecies, Kaineng City in Factions, and the Desolation in Nightfall. Eye of the North doesn't really feature brown environments, it just features caves (but not all of them brown!)

About the female character model rant: true, the female image in the game is over-the-top-beautiful, but meh. I'd rather have a character that looks great, than a Terry Schiavo-wannabe.

I knew people were going to complain that the game wasn't all brown.

I played for... eight? Ten hours? It was all brown. Then I found out the coming area was all white. I couldn't take anymore. I quit. I felt like I was working too hard for too little.

ccesarano:

StingRay02:
I'll admit to not getting very far into Guild Wars. However, the Guild Wars ladies definitely reaffirmed my game character philosophy. "If I get a choice of what kind of ass I'm going to be staring at for the duration of a game, it's going to be a good-looking ass." Never mind Age of Conan. Give me some Guild Wars booty.

So when you were a child you played with Barbies instead of G.I.Joes for this same reason?

Seriously, weakest argument/justification ever.

I don't see the part where anyone was trying to justify anything to you. "I prefer X."

(In World of Warcraft characters: I have 7 females, 2 males.)

Thank you so much for informing someone that their personal tastes are incorrect. I'm sure those of us who like looking at female characters will make a point of changing our behavior so as to meet other player's exacting standards for manliness.

Shamus Young:
I played for... eight? Ten hours? It was all brown. Then I found out the coming area was all white. I couldn't take anymore. I quit. I felt like I was working too hard for too little.

If you'd said that in the original post I wouldn't mind, but what you actually said:

Shamus Young:
Guild Wars (Prophesies campaign) is a detailed study in the color brown.

implied that you were talking about the entire campaign, which isn't really fair.

Yeah it was a poor decision to slap so much brown on the screen so early, and then to follow it up with the white mountains, but it's still not fair to claim the entire game is like that.

"Guild Wars (Prophesies campaign) is a detailed study in the color brown, followed by a study in white, followed by some other stuff I couldn't be arsed to unlock because I was so bored."

Shrug. Either way, really.

Actually, I think this would have been much funnier, and more true to the game. I know you don't like the game, but you're looked upon by many as a guy that knows what he's talking about, and so many people might see this and think that the full game really is brown, and nothing else, where that's not so true.

This rewritten complaint is much more true to life.

Ya know, it's pretty common for people in comedy to use exaggeration, especially when doing satire. I don't really see the problem. I've never played Guild Wars nor have I seen many screenshots, but I didn't come away from today's comic assuming that the entire game was brown.

A lot of jokes would be much less funny if they were less exaggerated and more realistic.

I'm carrying this over from your blog, seeing as I can't comment there and I HAVE TO COMMENT ON EVERYTHING!

"And while we're busy being all meta: In the previous strip strip on UT3, my original plan was to have CliffyB deliver the message. But I couldn't really find enough useable pictures of the guy. Plus, I was worried it might seem like a personal dig at him and not a dig at the game. So we got Mr. Stock Photo Guy. I think that worked better, humor-wise. It would have been less funny to have CliffyB claiming he was trying to be "hardcore", because the general consensus seems to be that he is."

Really? Who really thinks CliffyB is "hardcore"?

Who thinks anyone called CliffyB (eventhough we're not allowed to call him that anymore..) could ever be "hardcore"?

He's famous for having an aggressive, in-your-face style. In the sense that "hardcore" can mean "intense", I think it fits.

Loved it, ty Shamus

"Yeah it was a poor decision to slap so much brown on the screen so early, and then to follow it up with the white mountains, but it's still not fair to claim the entire game is like that."

Well, it continues with green, then brownish red and then light brown, back to white and finally black.

Prophecies bored me too much to make me ever make me complete it, Nightfall is also slow, not as much, my favourite is Factions though, but I seem quite alone on that. You should really have tried out Factions Shamus! (This is really just my excuse, you probably wouldn't have liked it either).

Now the comic, complaining is not something I will do, I mean, making jokes on the bad points in a game I like? I have nothing against that, if you can't laugh at what you like, you are not qualified to laugh at what others like.

Shamus Young:
He's famous for having an aggressive, in-your-face style. In the sense that "hardcore" can mean "intense", I think it fits.

Sounds like "hardcore" means "bit of a dick", then. ;)

qrter:

Shamus Young:
He's famous for having an aggressive, in-your-face style. In the sense that "hardcore" can mean "intense", I think it fits.

Sounds like "hardcore" means "bit of a dick", then. ;)

In general, the two often are highly interchangable. :P

The thing that bugged me is that one of my favorite things about Guild Wars is the scenery. Shamus just happened to bog down in one of the few areas that aren't awesome, and it's supposed to be a depressing desolate wasteland.

Aside from Ascalon, Post-Searing, the scenery was great when you could look at it and not look at a swarm of burrowing creatures that the NPC party members chase after, to our mutual destruction. Scenery doesn't bug me if it's a bit bland. The pointlessly winding nature of the scenery is frustrating. But I enjoyed it for what it was. Anyone who enjoys it, hats off to you.

Plactus:
The thing that bugged me is that one of my favorite things about Guild Wars is the scenery. Shamus just happened to bog down in one of the few areas that aren't awesome, and it's supposed to be a depressing desolate wasteland.

There is no excuse for the art designer and texture artists to not make every area awesome, especially the first area(s) where you are introducing a story; thats the time they have the best opportunity to create atmosphere and immersion.

I'll grant you, many things do tend to look similar after they've been razed, but everything? not so much.

I think we may be taking the "Study in Brown" out of context. For instance the game starts(the tutorial) in a green lush paradise. Then the main conflict (which Noble Bear points out) razes the greenery. Eventually you get to a Jungle, Desert, Underground, some flat lands. It may be as subtle as a ten ton hammer, but the Devs were clearly trying to drive players to push forward and explore.. wouldn't you want to leave the brown?

Although it was a comic and is rather funny I do have to agree you put forward a few misconceptions about the game.

1. Its called Guild Wars because the biggest emphasis of the game is on PvP where players Form Guilds and fight or have "wars" with each other.

2. As has been previously mentioned the game has a very varied landscape but tends to have a theme to each area. Post-searing Ascalon is the only bit I didn't really like.

I didn't find the first frame of this comic very funny either.

That was awesome.

How are you supposed to find the Stolen Pixels comics if you don't already know they are here?

I couldn't find any mention of it on the Home, Features, News, Columns, or Videos pages. Seems like you would want to make it easy for casual viewers to find, if you want the number of readers to grow.

I only know about it because I came here from Shamus's site.

Know this is over a month old now, but still.

I loved the scenery in Guild Wars. I got through a lot more of it than Shamus did. And I laughed so hard at this comic I couldn't breathe. Then I saved it to my computer to show my friends. (Thanks for not including any DRM guys! ^~)

If you base your entire opinion about a game on one person's mocking comic, tough cookies for you. If you take everything literally, more tough cookies for you. If games are so important to you that having a game you liked be laughed at causes you such distress, well, you are abounding tough, tough cookies.

Me, I like my cookies soft and chewy.

Linkusmax:
1. Its called Guild Wars because the biggest emphasis of the game is on PvP where players Form Guilds and fight or have "wars" with each other.

2. As has been previously mentioned the game has a very varied landscape but tends to have a theme to each area. Post-searing Ascalon is the only bit I didn't really like.

1. No, the story and the PvP have about the same empasis (they are linked, but RPG and PvP are essentially different game types)
The "Guild Wars" were a time before the original campaign, where wars between guilds were fought. I think pre production, they were planning to set the game in that time period (where wars with guilds make more sense to the storyline) but they changed the system (after they had announced the title.

This can be easily interpreted as a butt sex joke.

I think it is, it's the only real joke I could get out of the comic, still funny though.

Stripper Wars :)

Man I noticed that too. Stolen Pixels is one of the funniest comics I've ever read.. even when I haven't played the game it's talking about before. Keep 'em coming.