Does the widescreen mode work as intended?
What about the cutscenes? In the original version of the game, the music in the cutscenes was precisely timed to the frame rate. Does the faster frame rate create issues on NSO?
In general, how is the performance of the NSO version?
The scene always makes me feel most keenly the strangeness of the film's premise. Something about the velociraptors stalking through a glossy kitchen, deep within an island facility that few people on Earth even know about. At the very same time, the rest of the world is following its usual rhythms and routines. I find this incongruity fascinating. Something so unprecedented, so unbelievable, unfolding in secret in this one kitchen.
Why do I often think of this here specifically? Instead of during the tyrannosaur attack, or the brachiosaur introduction? I'm not sure.
But I do know this sense of secrecy and remoteness is key to the appeal of the film. Maybe it's why Koepp is so hesitant to write about dinosaurs on the mainland. In fact, Crichton was likewise hesitant. In a 1993 interview with Cinefantastique, Crichton said:
>You wanted the thing that never happened in history: people in the forest and swamps at the same time as dinosaurs. Once that notion began to dictate how the story would proceed, then everything else fell into place, because there are certain things that I wanted to avoid, like the dinosaurs in New York City -- that’s been done.
This series is at its best when it feels like a secret the reader/viewer is being let in on. On multiple levels, the story of the first film is a holiday getaway of sorts. It needs remoteness. The audience is at a safe remove, able to enjoy the seclusion even during the chaos. It's a window into a secret place, and a secret event. A large part of the mystique of the series faded when the rest of the world became aware of the existence of Hammond's dinosaurs. (And the opening of TLW is so memorable, in part, because almost no one believes Malcolm.)
Speaking of, does anyone remember a quote or behind-the-scenes story where Spielberg insisted on having the raptors in the kitchen? Basically, he wanted something noticeably contemporary/modern combined with something incongruously prehistoric. He specifically sought out the tonal clash of the kitchen and the velociraptors.
What changed, out of curiosity? Wasn’t this app limited to the J series at one point? I thought you needed a Bravia TV that was made after 2021, and the 900H and 950H and others were excluded due to technological limitations. But it seems that’s no longer the case. Why can these older TVs handle the higher bitrate now, but apparently they couldn’t before? Or am I misremembering something here?
If you’re using an older TV, does it exclude the Pure Stream functionality or something and limit the bitrate?
Not a criticism; the game is fantastic. Just an observation. I’m curious how others fared at this same point, or how common it is (or was, back in the day) to be stumped for a bit in terms of figuring out the intended strategy. I’ve only completed it on the lowest difficulty (Agent), so I’m not yet sure if it gets even more complicated on other difficulty settings.
My mistakes:
I interpreted the “shrine” to encompass anything in the battle room. The IR sensor marked out those destructible slanted beams above the altar. They’re the only beams that the Skedar leader’s projectiles cannot strike, so I figured at first I had to destroy those with a rocket or grenade launcher.
I also wondered if a prompt (like Elvis chiming in) would activate after the leader took enough damage, like something would suddenly become destructible? The briefing only mentions needing to destroy something before “the final blow.”
I kinda wrote off the statue early on, as it seemed to have no reaction to my gunfire even when the Skedar leader was healing. Seemed 100% shielded. I knew I had to eventually cut off his access to the statue, but I kept thinking it must require some other intermediary step.
These ideas were dead ends, and I wound up replaying the stage a fair bit as I was troubleshooting, which I actually found nicely nostalgic. Felt very much like an old-school boss fight in its somewhat mysterious quality.
After revisiting this unsettling episode, a new question occurred to me. Why should Don's dream of Rachel Katz (née Menken), who appears to him in the guise of a model auditioning for the Wilkinson ad, end on this very specific note? Why a glimpse of an ominous yet chipper Pete, who orders Don "back to work" before following Rachel out the door? It's not an arbitrarily chosen image.
For starters, it grounds the dream in the reality of the episode's opening scene, where Pete and a few other colleagues attended the Wilkinson auditions.
It also nudges the scene toward unreality, since the close-up on Pete seems especially unnatural (as are many details throughout this episode, which in some vague way feels a bit like Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks).
But still, why Pete? Then I realized it's a dreamy recapitulation of those climactic events from season one, where Pete's blackmail attempt indirectly prompted the end of Don's affair with Rachel. By then, Rachel had already met with her sister to discuss the prospect of Don leaving Betty. Rachel was clearly in love with Don, and taking seriously the idea of their future together...
But after Pete's threat, Don -- or, rather, Dick -- panicked and raced into Rachel's office, urging her to run away with him that very instant. The scales fall from Rachel's eyes. She belatedly realizes that Don (at that stage of his life, at least) is a man who primarily thinks in escape fantasies, not realities. She breaks things off with him in the same scene, recognizing that she too is another escape fantasy. Pete, in his indirect way, contributed to this "life not lived."
The dream scene in 7B recasts all of these old tensions, dredging them up from the subliminal. It's the wine stain exposed anew from under its flimsy (bed) cover, Don's memory and heart still bearing some hint of the past. Rachel appears in the dream and Pete, as before, shows her the door. (Interesting, too, that Rachel in the dream all but refers to herself as Don's "missed flight," given Pete's own aviation-related baggage and the show’s idea of the wrong “travel” plans resulting in a sense of loss.)
And in an ironic reversal of the season one conflict, Pete is no longer conspiring against Don's job. Now he's the taskmaster ordering him back into the agency's coal mines. And later, in the waking world, Pete talks about how his supposed "fresh start" in California now seems like just a dream. Recalling his use of Adam Whitman's box, Pete again becomes a spokesman for the cold, hard facts of reality. He's a destroyer of dreams in this way. The dreams of others and his own dreams. And almost a decade after finding Adam's box, Pete slips into Don's mind and puts salt in the wound, waking him up from yet another dream. But there's no trace of Pete's old malice and jealousy here. Only a cheerful sense of resignation ("Back to work"), which seems in its own way just as cruel.
(But then again Pete is also many other things, as shown by the previous seasons, and the remainder of 7B.)
I'm trying to do the Bekkler game at the fair to get the doll and I keep hitting the wrong inputs on my PS5 controller. I don't see any way to remap it in the settings. Does anyone know what each fo those buttons (X, A, B, Y) defaults to when using a PS5 controller?