Captain_Photon

Havin' lunch. I know, not terribly climactic.

Not actually a terrible movie, but may have the widest gulf I can think of between the star-studdedness, size, and collective caliber of its cast and the outcome: Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far (1977). Based on Cornelius Ryan's book of the same name about the failure of the Allied offensive codenamed Operation Market Garden in September 1944, this film had so many big stars they couldn't fit them all on the poster and was directed by one of the biggest names in the business at the time.

I mean, check out this list: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Elliot Gould, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, Ryan O'Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Laurence Olivier. And that's just the A-listers. This film also included appearances by the likes of Denholm "Marcus Brody" Elliott and a young John Ratzenberger.

Like I said, it's not a terrible movie. It's no The Big Bus or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's not even Force 10 from Navarone (which was hampered mainly by being the long-delayed sequel to such a stonking great movie that it would have been disappointing even if it was better-than-average). It's just... well, like the military operation it depicts, appropriately enough, it's a reminder that even great figures who are on a roll can overreach. It's so complicated, the cast is so huge and full of prominent talents, that it always seems muddled, like it can never quite catch up with itself and get its feet under it. It ends up being just an OK war movie, and when you start with a director like Attenborough, a cast like that, and a book like Ryan's, "just OK" is a shatteringly disappointing outcome.

Come to think of it, The Big Bus might be a candidate for the original thread topic. Its cast includes, in addition to Channing, René Auberjonois, Ned Beatty, José Ferrer, Larry Hagman, Howard Hesseman, Sally Kellerman, and Lynn Redgrave. It was trying to be a parody of the then-red-hot "star-studded disaster film" genre with a dash of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World thrown in, but ended up just being... the only movie a man who enjoyed Megaforce hated.

This becomes particularly hilarious in the dialogue setting up the Moral Choice in the mission at the end of a particular Praetorian contact's arc. "You set up Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla to be killed, but he escaped. And I don't think Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla is inclined to let you get away with it. Are you, Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla?" "... Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla!" "What do you say, Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla? Should we start with the beating down now?" "Don't you do this, Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla!"

It all gets a bit ponderous, though that probably could have been mitigated if the dialogue was written a little more carefully. Its writer clearly expected everyone going through that mission arc would have a classic short, snappy superhero name, and it rather falls apart if you don't.

So I like your suggestion, and I begin to wonder if it might even be carried a little further - one name that's the character's full nom de guerre, for use by passers-by and in more formal contexts ("So you're Sgt. Sam Hill. Heard a lot about you."), one used for what you might call respectful address (as in your "thanks for rescuing me" example), and one for "among friends"-type dialogue (as when speaking with a contact you've reached Friend or Confidant status with). Sgt. Sam Hill would thus be Sgt. Hill to people he's just rescued and Sarge or Sam to his friends.

That could get complicated trying to explain to new users what the blanks in the form are for, but what the hell, I mean, if one had to, one could make it part of the new "extended tutorial" concept - have the player enter the "full name" during character generation and provide opportunities to select the other two forms during early conversations.

However it was structured, I'd make the Full Name the one with the permanent existence, only alterable by rename token, and the other two free-floating, like the fields for bio and Battle Cry. If you've actually got a short, punchy superhero name, just set them all to the same thing, or ignore the "lesser forms" and they'll default to your proper name. That might make the optional names more open to abuse, I'm not sure, but since only the player him- or herself would ever see them, that may not even be important.

It'd be a pretty big job to go and recode all those dialogue strings to use context-dependent $NAME fields, though. Expect opposition from the Number Slaves and standard code ranters who see development resources as a zero-sum game and don't want their coding time spent on your quality-of-immersion feature.

I just finished Richard J. Evans's The Third Reich in Power and have moved on to volume 3 of the trilogy, The Third Reich at War.

I mean, yes, obviously it's on Praetorian Earth, but I mean, where on the planet, geographically, is it? I haven't found anything in the in-game lore that mentions its location (n.b. this is not me claiming it isn't there). About the only thing I have been able to work out, from one contact's background info, is that it's probably not where Rome used to be.

This information isn't of any practical use, but I admit I'm curious.

My favorite character-name-in-NPC-dialogue moment came in a villain mission vs. Longbow, when I came around the corner and the named Longbow officer I was there to take out blurted my name and nothing else.

And the reason I loved it so much was because that character's name is:



Tragically, I wasn't fast enough on the draw to get a screenshot of that moment; I was too busy just enjoying it. I did get one of this moment from the tutorial, which was almost as good...