Angry Web

After 8 seasons of the hit show “24″, Fox has decided to pull the plug on this unique action-drama due to rising expenses, lower ratings and the inability to involve Jack Bauer on another intense day. 20th Century Fox, the production company for the show, attempted to pitch it to NBC but was denied a time slot. Though the ratings are still high, it simply isn’t enough to cover the cost of each episode which includes a $5 million licensing fee to the studio.

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed producer Howard Gordon which gave some insight to the series finale:

THR: What’s next for “24″?
Gordon: There are other possible iterations of Jack Bauer and his world — whether a movie or some other sort of scenario. We’re developing the movie, Billy Ray (”State of Play,” “Shattered Glass”) is writing it. It depends on how well it comes out and Fox’s appetite. Most importantly it’s about ending the show right and doing it with the same level of intensity and commitment that we started with.

THR: When’s the soonest that fans could realistically expect a feature film?

Gordon: Obviously the script’s still being written. It could be as early as next year depending on how things come together.

THR: Since the setting shifts to Europe for the movie, will CTU still play a role?
Gordon: Yes and no. Jack is really the center of it, catching up with him emotionally and locationally where he is. The opportunity is not to use the real-time aspect and also to do it on a scale the TV show never allowed.

THR: Is there anything TV-related that you’re looking to do in the future with the “24” brand?

Gordon: There are conversations about that. If one of the writers came up with a good idea, I’d happily pitch to Kiefer and happily pitch the show to the network — whether Fox or someone else. We just don’t have that idea and that’s where everything has to start.

THR: You never pitched an idea for next season?

Gordon: We couldn’t come up with something that really satisfied us. We’ve done everything we feel we can do with that character in this format.

THR: How did ending the show come about?

Gordon: It helped that this was the end of a lot of peoples’ contracts. There was a deal finiteness in place. Also, every year is a high-wire act. We all look at each other and ask, ‘Can we really do this again?’ and it’s not with complete conviction that we say, ‘Yes.’ As an act of faith and effort, we get through it. This year Kiefer said it felt like the senior year of high school.

THR: How do you want “24” the series to be remembered?

Gordon: I’d like it to be remembered as a revolutionary concept. The second thing is that we loved this show so much and never did anything less than our best. I hope we delivered to our fans like we feel we did to ourselves. We loved this show from the very first hour to the last hour, so I hope people think of it being consistently at that quality and that it never dipped too terribly — except for season six.

THR: Can you tease to the rest of the season?

Gordon: We’ve taken a risk in the last eight episodes. It was challenging to the writers to the actors. We’re taking a risk, the show has to do that. Without spoiling what’s to come, it’s pretty dark and complex and a place that was uncomfortable for us to write and for some of the actors to act. We really swung for the fences. Because the show is as old as it is, this season hasn’t really been given its due. But our audience is hanging in there with us and I think it’s been a very successful season.

THR: How has this decision creatively impacted the ending?

Gordon: There have been a couple other season-enders that would have been spectacular series enders. Season four, season five and last year. I was more aware this time of ending something that really felt surprising, but not cheap; emotionally consistent. Some will throw their shoes at the screen, inevitably some will be angry, some will say they hated it the last three years. You can’t please everybody you can only do the best you can do. I’m hoping people lean forward. I’m hoping the first feeling people have is, “Damn I miss it, I want more.”

Fans can look forward to a feature length movie that is to take place in Europe and can expect a “definitive ending” to the season finale which is to air in May.

Okay, who wouldn’t watch this?

Looks like we’re going to be seeing a new Predator movie. Robert Rodriguez of El Mariachi, Spy Kids, Sin City and Grindhouse is producing. The movie, supposed to be a direct sequel to the Schwarzenegger original, is starring Topher Grace, Lawrence Fishburne, and Adrian Brody.

Official Trailer is slated for release on the 18th.

Catch a sneak peak at http://www.predators-movie.com/

Ahh… White Knight Chronicles. I was so excited for thee when you were known as Shirokishi Monogatari (Japanese; Literally – White Knight Stories) back in 2007 when the game was announced. There were rather some high expectations for this game. Developer Level-5 was hailed to be the new contender and rival to Squeenix and potentially produce high quality RPGs as the latter.

Early builds of the game demonstrated extreme detail in combat. Contact between weapons, their targets and shields would act as you would expect them to if you were to see it in real life. Blocking with a shield would properly deflect an attack and the shield and it’s wielder would recoil. Instead attacks animations will follow through and pass through your character model regardless if there was a block animation or not. There were also team attacks that no longer seem to be present in this final version of the game. At one point your party members would be able to restrain an enemy while your character would be free to land an attack. This is not to say the combat is bad, it’s actually enjoyable. The combo system is fun to play with. You learn moves with points you earn from leveling up. Each of those moves will become an individual attack you can select and assign on the combat bar. The combos are stringed together by each of those attacks that you can assign in place of a single move. Each character has a selection of skills he or she can raise. They are common for the most part among all the characters: skills in sword, great sword, bow, polearm, divine, elemental, axes, and staves. Your characters are not limited to one skill set so theoretically you could max everything out.

The equipment system is rather impressive. Each piece of armor will show on the character models, whether it be weapons, body armor, gloves, or capes. The system of upgrading a single weapon tends to keep an early level weapon up to par with weapon shops a few cities ahead of you. You can also combine weapons to create more powerful ones and add elemental attacks to them. The only gripe here is they are done at separate vendors instead of at one place. So if you can’t remember a certain ingredient needed you have to run between the two vendors to get it right.

The story is generic. Save the princess is how it starts off. And there’s is one Super Mario moment (“… but the princess is in another castle”) that really invokes a nice facepalm. The character development is somewhat stagnant and hard to believe. The relationship between Leonard and Cisna feels awkward and forced, but I personally believe that the fault could lie in the poor voice acting. I really wish they included the Japanese voice track, maybe then the screaming in vain wouldn’t be so cringe inducing (Think Darth Vader Episode III).  However the creature and monster design is nice. There is a creature with a city on its back and the White Knight itself is very beautifully designed. The landscape throughout the game is done very well and the scale of the game just in setting alone is grand.

There is also an available online mode where you can use your custom made avatar to play with friends on Level-5′s service called Geonet. You can customize a hometown a la Dark Cloud and partake on sidequests co-op with your friends. The option first becomes available once you buy a quest from a guild in town and you reach the world map and it sort of becomes a mini MMO (Yeah I know that’s an oxymoron). Oddly enough some elements of this game are reminiscent of Final Fantasy XI (Provoke, Pentaslam, Skewer, Last Resort) The avatar you create is at the beginning of the game and oddly is included in your party. He or she does not actually play any role whatsoever to the story, it’s just there, doesn’t talk, doesn’t cause anything to happen or change the course of the story in any way. But if you leave the custom character out of your party, which I did, it still levels up as the rest of your party does so you can use it online.

When it all boils down, this generation of gaming consoles has been lacking on the JRPGs, particularly since the higher caliber RPGs have extremely long development cycles.  And due to that, the variety of games has gone down.  While games like Demon’s Souls were good, they were also fleeting. WKC had the potential to be memorable and a great experience but sadly falls flat. Let’s be honest here, a lot of us are just waiting for March 9th, so it probably wasn’t the best idea to draw out the localization process to release the game a month before Final Fantasy XIII. White Knight Chronicles would have been a great thing to have 6 months after it’s Japanese release, not an entire year.

I’d have to disagree with a few of these, but overall, these are just incredibly bad. Enjoy

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