Though I guess you'd likely disagree I wish Nintendo had revisited SMW with a direct sequel (Yoshi's Island don't count!), balls to innovation on this one, i'd just like to see them make another batch of stages with the SMW mechanics with less focus on the secret stuff, plus Dino Rhino didn't appear nearly enough.
It's funny that everyone remembers SMW for its secrets, even though most of them are "hidden" in much the same way that NSMB tucks away star coins. The rewards were just that much better: usually at least one secret level, if not a whole chain of them, sometimes a switch palace, sometimes Star Road access (and by extension a colored Yoshi), once the Top Secret Area, and a couple times they were just plain required for progression. NSMBU tries, much like it knocks off a bunch of SMW's other ideas, but it just didn't get it.
I wouldn't be opposed to a direct revisit, even as much as I appreciate efforts to freshen up the formula. The Mario-Yoshi-Koopa interaction triangle is one of platforming's all-time high points, and it boggles my mind that they've never completely reassembled it despite having all the pieces in place. It'd also be nice if they took some cues from its level design philosophy (which is pretty different from the SMB3 and NSMB styles in some regards) or learned a lesson or two about making do with less.
Actually, I think SMW handled secrets better than NSMBU did; NSMBU tends to hide things in places you'd think were either completely solid (they're really fond of hiding things behind walls) or would kill you (I believe there are a few pits you're expected to go down, despite similar pits being bottomless), while SMW just tucks them off in ceilings or slightly off the beaten path.
Also, I noticed that in SMW, it's almost always blue pipes that let you go down them. Why? Who knows, but that does seem to be how it works out.
I'm sure when you go back through your next Time and Eternity run (why?!) you'll come to understand the true hilarity of the comedy theme, then you'll be all set for SotY.
No I will not blame this Bean fellow for this, i'll blame you and you should blame yourself as well when in the depths of despair you find that you yourself have become a palette swap in the guise of a more miserable version of yourself.
I can actually skip all the cutscenes I saw on the previous playthrough provided the system data saved that. I'm not sure if I want to get the platinum since it involves a lot of saving and reloading and fuck that. I'm not invested in this game for that. How can the palette swap of myself be even more miserable when I'm already miserable? :/
He quickly shot a message to me apologizing for his transgression. But he's gotta do more than that to make it up to me.
I've already said what I needed to say about Time & Eternity's disappointing soundtrack here:
I'm still very astounded that it seems like Koshiro (and the other composer who did four tracks) phoned it home with this soundtrack. Like everything else, tracks get recycled, so you hear them ad nauseam to the point of growing very weary of them. Typically, when you see Koshiro headlining a soundtrack, you know it's going to be amazing. But this is so off-the-mark, and it dismays me to have to label a Koshiro soundtrack very by-the-numbers with little standouts. Even moreso because he's my favourite composer of all time.
The problem is that it's so typical RPG fare when it comes to music. You have orchestral themes because there's supposed to be orchestral themes somewhere, you have a prissy tea time theme, a horrible comedy theme, sad themes that are predictably played on a piano, heroic themes for heroic stuff, canyon themes that are canyon themes... nothing really stand out. Everything just seems so unoriginal. So unbecoming of Koshiro, who seems to make everything his own, despite the nature of the game he's composing for.
I honestly can't seem to remember a lot of the themes on the soundtrack! I can't remember most of the cutscene music because most of it was so bland. Not even the final boss music because the music cut out for me during the battle and almost froze the game (so djplaeskool wasn't the only one who that happened to--it seemed to work fine for my Towa ending stream, though). Now going back to listening to what the final boss theme is, it's the most by-the-numbers final boss theme you can get with any other RPG with a choral background, synth backing, some weird samples here and there, etc. Very little progression in the theme, too.
It's a huge shame that I simply felt that there were maybe 4-5 tracks overall on this 29-track soundtrack that I actually liked. Part of the problem may have been complete and utter repetition for theme use, but the other part of the problem was that there was little that stood out on this soundtrack that made me say, "yes, this is a Koshiro soundtrack and I will give all of my cash to this man yet again!"
Towa's battle theme is probably the best theme on the soundtrack, and that isn't saying much. I'm very underwhelmed by the soundtrack, period.
It's funny that everyone remembers SMW for its secrets, even though most of them are "hidden" in much the same way that NSMB tucks away star coins. The rewards were just that much better: usually at least one secret level, if not a whole chain of them, sometimes a switch palace, sometimes Star Road access (and by extension a colored Yoshi), once the Top Secret Area, and a couple times they were just plain required for progression. NSMBU tries, much like it knocks off a bunch of SMW's other ideas, but it just didn't get it.
I wouldn't be opposed to a direct revisit, even as much as I appreciate efforts to freshen up the formula. The Mario-Yoshi-Koopa interaction triangle is one of platforming's all-time high points, and it boggles my mind that they've never completely reassembled it despite having all the pieces in place. It'd also be nice if they took some cues from its level design philosophy (which is pretty different from the SMB3 and NSMB styles in some regards) or learned a lesson or two about making do with less.
Actually this is kind of what my small issue with the secrets actually is, not so much the secrets themselves but these days if i'm going to play through a platformer I like to just have the levels at the ready so to speak. Now i'm not saying it's a bad angle for SMW to have wildly diverging pathways across the map, some of my strongest memories of the game come from first beating the game by going through star road via vanilla dome because Butter Bridge 1 and Vanilla Castle I just didn't get at the time. But these days it kind of bugs me when I want to play say all the stages in a world but in order to do so have to keep heading back through stages I just did but take a slightly divergent path near the standard stage end, but that's just me.
Often in the NSMB games on my first run i'd end up in a few secret exits that cut out chunks of the map, the first thing I do is turn straight back around and continue on the normal way, a far cry from my younger self. It doesn't help that in these games the new paths just feel more like warps instead of coming across a nice new set of stages like in World, actually that Newer Super Mario Bros fan mod took the world approach at times which was nice.
Actually, I think SMW handled secrets better than NSMBU did; NSMBU tends to hide things in places you'd think were either completely solid (they're really fond of hiding things behind walls) or would kill you (I believe there are a few pits you're expected to go down, despite similar pits being bottomless), while SMW just tucks them off in ceilings or slightly off the beaten path.
Also, I noticed that in SMW, it's almost always blue pipes that let you go down them. Why? Who knows, but that does seem to be how it works out.
Exits in NSMB games are usually handled poorly, quite a few aren't even hinted at and require dumb luck to find, invisible vine blocks in a few NSMB2 stages, fake floors in NSLU that have no reason for the player to think "hmm, i'm going to randomly ground pound this spot because REASONS!". Though I don't recall flinging mario into pits as a frequent occurrence at all, that's more of the original DKC's territory.
Yeah it's not exactly a hard category for SMW to be victorious in even if it due to the forest of illusion's main gimmick most of the exits there are like the most blatant ones going. And yes, it's always the blue pipes, i'd like to think it was planned that way so you'd always keep an eye out for blue.
Of course we all know the true king of the secrets is DKC2, Mario still needs to step his game up substantially to come at the Kong.
I can actually skip all the cutscenes I saw on the previous playthrough provided the system data saved that. I'm not sure if I want to get the platinum since it involves a lot of saving and reloading and fuck that. I'm not invested in this game for that. How can the palette swap of myself be even more miserable when I'm already miserable? :/
He quickly shot a message to me apologizing for his transgression. But he's gotta do more than that to make it up to me.
I've already said what I needed to say about Time & Eternity's disappointing soundtrack here:
It fucking boggles my mind that Yuzo Koshiro was responsible for that mess.
Do you want you palette swap to enter the bestiary under the name Darker Schala? or perhaps Darkest Schala? you'll be given a nice grey skin tone to indicate your soul having vacated your body long ago.
As for Koshiro, well clearly there's even limits to the effort he'll put in if the game is truly bad enough.
One little thing I noticed is that SMW has way more pipe colors than what's become the established RGBY. It's because of palette limitations, but it looks nice and adds some much needed variation to the art that's been lost in the modern world of unlimited colors.
From what little time I've dabbled with Lunar Magic in, I did notice that pipes change colors depending on what 256-pixel "screen" they're on - I believe that if you put a pipe on the division of such a screen, you'd wind up with a pipe that's one color on the left and another on the right. It follows some sort of looping pattern, likely based on the level's palettes. This means they went out of their way to only put pipes where this pattern system would make the pipes blue, instead of wherever they'd be most convenient - and while they could tweak the system by changing whatever entry in that pattern they wanted to be blue, it was still a fairly rigid setup.
Y'know, I never really paid much attention to SMW back when I was younger, and that's partially because I didn't get a SNES until after Yoshi's Island came out. I'd watched people play the game before I did, sure, but you can imagine how I felt when I played YI prior to SMW despite YI not being a Mario game.
I haven't played it yet, but the way you guys are talking about NSMBU, it's supposed to be designed after SMW from what I gather? I always imagined it to be designed after SMB.
NSMB DS -> SMB
NSMB 2 -> Some Collecting thing and it should've probably starred Wario
NSMBU -> ?
SM3DL -> SMB3
Sue me; I'm not that well-versed in my Mario.
------------
Chapter 1 of Time & Eternity done. Way underlevelled, but the funny thing is... in NG+, you keep all the money you have, and all of the skills you've unlocked.
So I've been using magic from the start. qq more knows how funny that is.
I haven't played it yet, but the way you guys are talking about NSMBU, it's supposed to be designed after SMW from what I gather? I always imagined it to be designed after SMB.
...kind of. They've been cherrypicking ideas from the past since the beginning. U is patterned after World more explicitly than the rest, in part as a marketing gimmick but mostly because they're about out of ideas to remake from SMB3. It still recycles almost everything that NSMB DS and Wii dredged up, though, so it has most of 1 and 3's mechanics in there as well, which is pretty much completely missing the point of why World was so great.
...kind of. They've been cherrypicking ideas from the past since the beginning. U is patterned after World more explicitly than the rest, in part as a marketing gimmick but mostly because they're about out of ideas to remake from SMB3. It still recycles almost everything that NSMB DS and Wii dredged up, though, so it has most of 1 and 3's mechanics in there as well, which is pretty much completely missing the point of why World was so great.
So, essentially, you're saying that the NSMB games, or at least NSMBU is more of a mish-mash of different flavours... that don't feel very cohesive? Even while its modeled after SMW, it still feels the need to retain some of the stuff that SMB and SMB3 did to remain under the NSMB umbrella.
What did you think of SM3DL, though? I'm curious about that.
Ahhhh, I'll respond to this in this thread instead of the other without opening a can of worms.
When this game was compared to FFXIII I was expecting so much worse than what we got. There isn't an enormous lack of side quests and sub events that I've seen besides the odd omission of hot springs and a cameo battle (time constraints, I'm guessing). And it's nice not needing a damn guide in my lap to follow to the letter lest I miss a 20-second window for activating a quest. I like the fields better than Graces as well because of the better music, free camera, and more side areas that aren't barred off. The towns have always looked big but were small in reality, and the identical ports don't bother me because Abyss had quite a few ports that were all uniquely designed yet they were just as empty and forgettable as Xillia's.
Milla is awfully predictable and boring though.
It seems to me the comparisons to FFXIII came from lack of time/budget to implement everything they intended, rather than intentional streamlining and focusing on a heavily guided cinematic experience like I was fearing.
Well, I never really thought Xillia was like FF13's equivalent, but I certainly saw why people were saying that. One of the whole things about FF13 was that it didn't have a lot of the FF staples that people wanted. Given that Xillia's an anniversary game and a bulk of stuff in Graces just seemed to be callbacks from other games in the series (the weapons in the Future Arc, for example), people were likely expecting other references to the series like Dual the Sol, narrative references (which you did get in the form of the four spirits and Maxwell), Nam Cobanda Isle, Cameo battles, minibosses likely in the form of Giganto monsters, etc. It's easy to see why people were disappointed given the plethora of Tales games that have done much more than Xillia has.
Hilariously, Xillia 2 does have a lot of this stuff because of complaints from players, but it still manages to get its structural design irritatingly silly. Like I said in the other thread, I don't put too much stock into Tales stories, so even if a Tales game does have a story, I'm not going to call it the best Tales ever because it's only a fraction of the game that acts as the glue to hold it together. It's also the same reason why I probably won't call FFType-0 one of the hypest FFs out there because of all of the dumb stuff it does in terms of gameplay mechanics.
The intentional streamlining is certainly part of it, which you can see in the Shop Build system, the lilial orb system, the fields, and the focus on more cinematic cutscenes. It's more palatable to people who don't play Tales games that often... or at least play more of the ones released in the West because they're more story-focused. There isn't a lot of depth to this game... because I found it relatively easy to break.
But like I said in the game's official thread (the Japanese one):
I... well, I know I put it in my GOTY list last year, but I can't help but to feel like I enjoyed this playthrough more than I had originally (like, my first playthrough I rushed, the second playthrough, I skipped most cutscenes that weren't new). I mean, yeah, the flaws are definitely still there but I did more battling this time and learned to play with pretty much everyone in a more proficient manner and it made comboing fun. Taking advantage of the combo exploits I know from the first two times through (ex: spam (chapter 4 skill spoilers)
Sylph or Negative Holder
) helped out a lot.
Xillia has quite a bit of design problems, but it's still a fun game to play, imo. Like, whenever people criticize Xillia--for me at least--I'm criticizing some design flaws, some system flaws, one of the characters, the execution of the boss battles, and the lack of variety in terms of subquests in the game. I also feel like the endgame and Act 4 itself was rushed. It's not like I hate the game, and apparently acknowledging flaws and expressing things you dislike about the game = you really hate the game and you're consistently bashing it when you say stuff like that. But that isn't true at all. I like it; I like 5/6ths of the cast, the scene direction, the anime cutscenes, the music, etc. I just don't like that it seems to have fallen short in some areas. It seems like it was supposed to be an ambitious game but fell victim to perhaps stuff like dev time or something? You can't help but to not feel like it was rushed along, especially by the time you get to the end.
I also have to say that I passed the part in Act 4 where
all six of the characters are talking to each other at night and the characters who contrast each other the most strike up a conversation? I love the scene direction there. Especially for the Alvin & Elise conversation which I still think is the best one. At the end on the next day, I couldn't help but to feel like the group had a deeper sense of friendship than maybe the Graces cast, but that's because the character writing, I felt, was better in Xillia than Graces.
The game was rushed to meet its 15th anniversary in some spots. You can easily tell that by Chapter 4 given how short everything about it is. From the dungeons to the fields to the final dungeon to the boss. Even then, though, you can tell that the game's structure and how it's designed and laid out from early before that is meant to facilitate a more narrative-friendly approach (and the big thing about Xillia was to create better cinematic story scenes, hence the dialogue is the way it is and the scenes are directed the way they are). That's another reason why some people like to compare it to FF13, but in that case, I like to compare it to FFX.
There certainly seems to be an idea floating around that I hate the game or something, which absolutely positively is not true. But I guess that's the price I pay for pointing out the flaws that irked me quite a lot when I played the game four effing times and platinumed it twice.
Is it bad that whenever I really "Milla" these days, I tend to think of Freedom Planet's? Like, I know you're talking about Xillia. I just can't help it. <_<
Is it bad that whenever I really "Milla" these days, I tend to think of Freedom Planet's? Like, I know you're talking about Xillia. I just can't help it. <_<
Sometimes I wonder if Strife's doing enough to promote his game, though. Like, he'll post small updates to Sonic Retro, the official FP message board, Kickstarter, the Steam Greenlight page... but never all at once. Now, I'm pretty good at following all of these threads at once (because I'm far too obsessed, clearly), but for somebody who only follows one of them, you'd be missing out on things he's showing off. He hasn't shown off the tweaks he's doing to Milla's sprite anywhere outside of Sonic Retro, for instance, and that Milla video hasn't made it to the Greenlight page (albeit it was always intended to be for Kickstarter backers only, to my understanding - and definitely has a few tweaks here and there, such as Milla no longer shooting her shield forward, and her little "huh" noise when fluttering only playing the first time, until he gets her actress to record a longer, more Yoshi-like noise).
I'm not sure if he's doing that deliberately - the Greenlight page, at least, I understand saving it for when it's properly done and all and ready to show to the world. But if I wanted to get as many opinions on something I'm working on, I tend to post the relevant content everywhere applicable. I suppose I should just ask him about that...
That said, he did get a brief interview about Kickstarter on a Denmark news show yesterday, so it's something!. (Which, naturally, is unavailable outside of Denmark. Swell.)
So, essentially, you're saying that the NSMB games, or at least NSMBU is more of a mish-mash of different flavours... that don't feel very cohesive? Even while its modeled after SMW, it still feels the need to retain some of the stuff that SMB and SMB3 did to remain under the NSMB umbrella.
What did you think of SM3DL, though? I'm curious about that.
Hm... that's one way to put it. The series has always been about giving the player something new to experience in every level, so it doesn't necessarily make sense to throw out all the stuff from past games that still works, but it does exacerbate the problem of the player never getting to use what he's learned later in the game. Having the occasional one-off is fine, especially when it's something like Torpedo Ted that can carry a level all on its own, but I feel like it's starting to go too far. They keep finding new ways to mix things up, so it's not like they're just doing direct remakes of old levels, but none of these games have their own identity.
Don't have a 3DS, haven't played 3DL. I'll probably get to go through 3DW when it comes out, though.
I thought SM3DL felt fairly distinct, honestly. I mean, yes, it's borrowing liberally from pretty much every other Mario game in existence, and its most unique selling point is that it properly translates the classic Super Mario Bros. formula to 3D, instead of deviating significantly in design like Super Mario 64 onward do, but the fact that nobody'd actually gone and done that beforehand somehow works toward making it stand out for me. Helps that it's a very solid game all around, too; it might be too easy
until the extra half of the game
, but I don't think I ever particularly minded.
It's partly why I remember the first New Super Mario Bros. so much more fondly than the later iterations, too, even factoring in that it's objectively the inferior game. It was the first proper 2D Mario game since Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins (I don't count things like Wario Land or Yoshi's Island, honestly; they're so far removed from the source material that they're essentially their own thing entirely). That made it stand out for me when it was new. They didn't really build on it significantly since then, though, merely content to refine it a good four times (Super Luigi U being the fourth, I guess), so the later games don't stand out nearly as well in my head.
I'm concerned Super Mario 3D World will fall prey to the same issue the New Super Mario Bros. series has... I'm hoping not, though, especially with the Super Mario Bros. 2 nods. We'll see.
I wish 3D Land didn't overuse a few stage staples as much as it did, the flip panels and Beat Blocks from Galaxy 2 were great fun and I'd wished they got more use in that game, 3D Land granted my wish but decided it would overuse them instead (moreso for the flip panels than the beat blocks which instead gets like the same stage repeated 3 times with different beat patterns)
Of course it's not helped that the game has its second quest equivalent which leads to many of the stage ideas and even layouts reused with minor twists. It's for this reason that I actually prefer the first half of the game, sure it's incredibly easy but it's not retreading old ground but this time with a timer or shadow Mario or a timer AND shadow Mario.
Not that I have anything against its back end, it's still a great addition, I just think it gets a bit too much praise, more so when I consider that it's really not that much more difficult anyway.
My only issue with the alternate area of 3D World was that a lot of the stages kept featuring Cosmic Mario and that guy is really annoying to have chasing you all over the stage, especially when they kept adding other things for you to worry about like collecting clocks for more time. I was just hoping they could have come up with more ways to increase the difficulty other than that. Though the music when he showed up was pretty spiffy.
I like the idea behind Cosmic Mario, especially in Galaxy 2 where you can create a cosmic conga line of tiptoeing mario's. You also had to think about where you led them in some instances as to not foil yourself when doubling back (I recall the hidden star in cloudy court galaxy was like this).
In 3D land the concept wasn't quite as fun, instead you just got one Mario, sometimes he'd get bigger so you got chased by a giant one you had to lure him into a few obstacles that he'd break. But as you said the bigger problem this time around was that it was a kind of forced way to make things more difficult, the hardest instance I recall being the stage that's heavy with the flip panels, it's easier to screw up the panel flipping jumps with a Giant Mario breathing down your neck but that's not so much an actual challenge as it's just rushing you through a previously used stage. It's in the later stages of the 3D Land special worlds that this approach to difficulty begins to take too much control, likely a sign of the game being rushed.
Chase stages are some of my favourite concepts in a platformer but in this case it was more that they just shoehorned a chase into an already existing stage not really designed around the idea so in effect it doesn't really play out as enjoyably.
Though I should reiterate that they were still fun, just that it was a crutch they relied upon too much towards the end.
I've actually been finishing more books since during my shifts I cannot have any electronics out at all because of professional conduct and stuff. Sometimes I finish books in one sitting or something. So it's good that I've gotten back to that. I even bought a few books used last week. I cannot just bring my tablet around with me because my shifts just don't facilitate it, and it's much easier to put a book in my purse and carry it around with me if I need to.
When I was younger and doing less schoolwork, I used to finish multiple books throughout a single week. I always liked books. I just stopped reading recreationally when my schoolwork became more dedicated to reading papers and journals instead.
I'm not sure if he's doing that deliberately - the Greenlight page, at least, I understand saving it for when it's properly done and all and ready to show to the world. But if I wanted to get as many opinions on something I'm working on, I tend to post the relevant content everywhere applicable. I suppose I should just ask him about that...
That said, he did get a brief interview about Kickstarter on a Denmark news show yesterday, so it's something!. (Which, naturally, is unavailable outside of Denmark. Swell.)
You probably should. But yes, it'd kind of weird not to see a lot of media for that (I understand waiting until it's completely done and ready), but some people might forget that the game is in the works if they're not keeping up with it.
Probably waiting until it's perfect and capable of being shown.
Well, I never really thought Xillia was like FF13's equivalent, but I certainly saw why people were saying that. One of the whole things about FF13 was that it didn't have a lot of the FF staples that people wanted. Given that Xillia's an anniversary game and a bulk of stuff in Graces just seemed to be callbacks from other games in the series (the weapons in the Future Arc, for example), people were likely expecting other references to the series like Dual the Sol, narrative references (which you did get in the form of the four spirits and Maxwell), Nam Cobanda Isle, Cameo battles, minibosses likely in the form of Giganto monsters, etc. It's easy to see why people were disappointed given the plethora of Tales games that have done much more than Xillia has.
Hilariously, Xillia 2 does have a lot of this stuff because of complaints from players, but it still manages to get its structural design irritatingly silly. Like I said in the other thread, I don't put too much stock into Tales stories, so even if a Tales game does have a story, I'm not going to call it the best Tales ever because it's only a fraction of the game that acts as the glue to hold it together. It's also the same reason why I probably won't call FFType-0 one of the hypest FFs out there because of all of the dumb stuff it does in terms of gameplay mechanics.
But like I said in the game's official thread (the Japanese one):
The game was rushed to meet its 15th anniversary in some spots. You can easily tell that by Chapter 4 given how short everything about it is. From the dungeons to the fields to the final dungeon to the boss. Even then, though, you can tell that the game's structure and how it's designed and laid out from early before that is meant to facilitate a more narrative-friendly approach (and the big thing about Xillia was to create better cinematic story scenes, hence the dialogue is the way it is and the scenes are directed the way they are). That's another reason why some people like to compare it to FF13, but in that case, I like to compare it to FFX.
There certainly seems to be an idea floating around that I hate the game or something, which absolutely positively is not true. But I guess that's the price I pay for pointing out the flaws that irked me quite a lot when I played the game four effing times and platinumed it twice.
It doesn't bother me that Xillia is missing a few things that have been in most Tales games before it, despite being an "anniversary game." I don't think it was even marketed as such outside Japan.
And the Gigantos almost are in the game as part of the Fell Arms quest... I mean, they aren't the size of a mansion, but they're ridiculously hard optional monster bosses. Works for me.
I'm not sure what happens in Chapter 4 that throws the game for a loop balance-wise or story-wise, but Abyss and Vesperia both had very exploitable mechanics to cheese battles and they both lost steam in the last 1/3rd of the game so I was already expecting that.
The intentional streamlining is certainly part of it, which you can see in the Shop Build system, the lilial orb system, the fields, and the focus on more cinematic cutscenes. It's more palatable to people who don't play Tales games that often... or at least play more of the ones released in the West because they're more story-focused. There isn't a lot of depth to this game... because I found it relatively easy to break.
For the most part I don't agree that these are examples of streamlining. Not when you compare them to the series as the West knows it. The Lillium Orb isn't simpler than EX-Gems in Symphonia, C.Cores in Abyss, or weapon skills in Vesperia. Having choice in what shops to invest in and how much isn't streamlined compared to each shop having a set inventory. The fields are pretty barren, but I get the impression that's due to a lack of time rather than intent. You've got some places like the beach area at the beginning and the deepwoods that are more interesting to navigate and then you've got some places that are just big fields you walk straight through. It's strange.
I don't see how the "cinematic cutscenes" really have anything to do with streamlining... they're just animated and directed better.
