Quarto said:
Well, most actors don't actually negotiate their own salaries - they employ agents to do that for them. And, needless to say, an agent's job is to get the best deal possible, so they definitely can't try to sell them short .
Good point; did this happen in this case, or did this guy go through the same agent/agency as some of the newer cast? They got the same people to do the other voices for Secret Ops, right? What was so special about this dude that he didn't? Just from the way it was mentioned above, it almost sounded like the whole Halle Berry/X-Men thing - you get this one actor or actress who really thinks they're God's gift to the universe, and they demand to get more face time, larger pay, etc. I guess I'm just wondering in the case of Casey/Petraca if the fault was with his agent (assuming he had one) or him? And where is he today? I thought I saw awhile back that he had some kind of background appearance in Ring Two or some-such; beyond this, is he in anything well-known? And if not, why's he entitled to anything more than peanuts from anybody's point of view? Ehhh it's just a whole side of the world I don't understand. My job ain't exactly great, I'm sure I get paid far less, and the only fantastic acting I do is pretending I have any love for the person on the other end of the phone!
Quarto said:
Although I really liked the dialogue choices, however gimmicky they may have been at times, that particular choice is a really bad example. The whole romance thing in WC3 was terrible, and very poorly contrived.
Yeah, another good point...that WAS a bad example; the whole romance thing just didn't even exist. It was just the kind of thing where you either made Mark Hamill face-suck this person or face-suck that person, and then they're with him at the end. I know it's sci-fi and all, but COME ON!
Anyway, it was the first thing that came to mind that had some distinctions, but perhaps better inserted here would be the winning campaigns vs. the losing campaigns (but even there, it's not dialogue-based decisions, but mission success or failure, right?). So if that's the case, then all the more reason to agree with LOAF on this one. I guess my whole point with the dialogue choice was that people felt just a tad more attached to the character because he didn't have to be the drunk or the good samaritan, he didn't have to back Maniac up all the time, etc. Yeah, it's gimmicky...but it also at least enables you to make the character be the way you want him to be, rather than locked into certain conversations and outcomes. There's probably a better way to do it, but my point was that it DID enable you to connect a little more with the character in the cutscenes. If you wanted to be an evil Blair or Casey by shooting a ship, what if you're not evil but just accidentally landed a stray shot?
The dialogue options in WC3 and WC4 made you connect with the main character a bit more, I thought, than WC1 or WC2. Now maybe there's a better way of handling it or treating it, but take the company Bioware (who made Neverwinter Nights 1, Knights of the Old Republic 1, Jade Empire, Mass Effect)...they made a name for themselves by allowing you to alter your character's fate not just by the battles you chose to fight, but by the things you chose to say. I think if Wing Commander were to make a comeback, it would be shooting itself in the foot to not have such a system in place in some capacity. But it should probably have subtleties to it (free roam around the ship, talk to who you want, choose the different approaches, etc.).
Quarto said:
Also, there's really no need to apologise for "derailing" the thread... especially since you didn't do any such thing.
Yeah, I know I didn't make the first post that started the side tangent, granted, but I did have the longest post talking about something other than what the intial post was about. Others gave a quick blurp; I gave a whole lengthy discertation. If nothing else, I'm apologizing for not being brief in my reply, especially seeing as how it had darn little to do with the original post.
And if that's not a good enough explanation, I was worried LOAF wasn't happy.
And if LOAF's not happy, the community suffers a bit, I think. I'd rather erroneously heap the whole responsibility for stepping out of line for everybody and bring us back to topic to make everything peachy once again.
For my own part in the past, I've been instrumental in sparking some very harsh dialogues (the usual - religion, politics, and even just simple matters like this where conversations get sidetracked) with people online in the past and sowing a lot of resentment because I was pushing too hard with my own ideas to give the other people a chance to breathe. I figured I'd just do my part to help diffuse a potentially volatile situation and get us back to the first topic we were talking about to begin with like LOAF was saying. My ideas and thoughts aren't overly spectacular or generally all that important, so I just wanted to take a step back and let things continue without there being any hard feelings. (Also, I realize this reaction I just explained is based on my own perception rather than universal truth, so hey - everybody just ignore it if it doesn't apply; just thought I'd give the rationale behind it.)
- Falc ~};^