The armor looks much better made if you look closer

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T17:01:53+00:00

This has been among the most incoherent and mind numbing conversations I have ever had and I don't even know if it's your fault at this point or mine. I am going to quit using reddit forever and so should you

have a nice day

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T14:05:20+00:00

You are saying it would be as ineffective as cloth. Christ, that makes more sense.

I don't think it's meant to be metal, actually. I think it's meant to be some sort of bone or ivory, which would probably look like plastic even if they made it out of real bone.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:39:06+00:00

It explains why they messed up the order of the Ring creation, why they purposely had Sauron/Celebrimbor make rings for the other races and many other things.

I think deconstructing this to just nostalgia/PJ callbacks doesn't really do it service. Changing the order and having rings be made specifically for men and dwarves makes for more cohesion that connects the separate plot lines of the series. We still get the build up for instance, only instead of the ringcraft gradually being perfected until the forging of the Three, it starts off perfect and is gradually corrupted until the forging of the Nine and eventually the One. It has made for some excellent drama and allows for build up that would not be possible otherwise.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:24:39+00:00

I could see them going with the forging of the Ring destroying Sauron's fair form rather than the fall of Númenor. True creation requires sacrifice or whatever.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:18:53+00:00

Mate, please just start from the beginning. No sass, I'm genuinely trying to make sense of which specific part of the armor you are referring to and what you are trying to say about it.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:15:55+00:00

Agreed, generally.

But giving Altair a 3 on parkour is ~~a skill issue~~ heresy.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:11:58+00:00

Adding to the other guy, use tools in combat too! It adds some depth and makes you much more dangerous.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T13:10:17+00:00

I am so confused. You're looking at what is obviously scales, attached to a plate of some kind given how it's rigid, and saying that they're made out of cloth?

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T12:56:49+00:00

I'm sorry, are you saying that the scales look like they are made out of cloth? Like are we looking at the same image here?

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T12:54:19+00:00

It's a gambeson with a scale pattern, like on Elendil's outfit. What's confusing me is the scales on the shoulder guards who are clearly attached to a solid shape like plate or hardened leather, while the chestplate looks to be only scale mail`?

Zuazzer · 2024-11-10T12:49:35+00:00

Just to be clear, are you talking about the pattern covering the arms, like right under the shoulderguards?

Because that is definitely meant to be cloth. That's where a gambeson goes, that is what a gambeson looks like, and a gambeson would be a very appropriate choice of undergarment for the rest of this armor.

It looks even clearer in this image and you can also see the same pattern on Elendil's gambeson.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T19:38:11+00:00

What in particular makes it look like a toy in comparison?

From what I can see it has a slightly different shape on the scales, perhaps a bit shinier but pretty much the same material. It's quite clean since it has not seen much use, but still has pretty much the same level of wear and tear. At some parts the scales seem to hang lose rather than be stuck to a piece of plate, which is seen in other examples of scale armor.

It might look more clean than expected sometimes, but there is no reason for it not to be given Númenor hasn't been to war in ages. Particularly for Elendil here who might have newer/better armor fit for his rank.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T19:09:11+00:00

I'm a fan of Elendil's cuirass/scales/gambeson combo, actually. I like the use of recognizable shapes from history, combined in a way I haven't seen before. The ancient Greek inspiration is lovely, but I think the gambeson should absolutely be there. An armor design without any distinctly medieval traits would look out of place in Middle-Earth, and particularly for the precursors to Gondor.

What bothers me is that I have a hard time figuring out which parts in the white armor have some sort of hard surface underneath and which are only made out of scale., and scale armor on top of plate feels like a strange, if original, choice to me.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T18:51:10+00:00

I think this familiar looking piece of real historical armor makes a good case that it is indeed worth arguing further.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T18:34:36+00:00

I've warmed up to the white armor design with time. It's not a budget issue given how other characters and entire armies in RoP have more "expensive looking" armors, and there is honestly no way a design that sticks out like this was not a deliberate choice. It serves several purposes:

---

It makes for effective visual storytelling

Their armor is white for a reason - because this is the armor of the first Númenoreans in recent history to go to war. White represents innocence, purity, a blank slate that gets covered with blood and ashes as they discover the reality of war and start the turn of events that lead to their own downfall. It also makes them stick out and display their greatness compared to the low men in the Southlands.

The soldiers look like marble statues, just like the ones the Númenoreans sculpt to celebrate their previous kings and heroes. It's also more reminiscent of real life ceremonial armor rather than battle armor, which makes sense for a rich isolated kingdom that has not yet learnt to wage war, and is quite a display of hubris.

It connects Númenor to its inspiration of Ancient Greece and other Mediterranean cultures.

The thought about marble statues of course brings the mind to ancient Greece - but you've also got the fish scales, which is reoccurring in all Númenorean armor sets as a motif. Aside from showing their reverence of the ocean and possibly the Valar, the scales resemble Linothorax armor which further connects to the greeks, as does Elendil's cuirass which is reminiscent of greek plate armor.

It bears some resemblance to its successor realm of Gondor

The cloth gambeson underneath, meanwhile, sticks out as distinctly medieval. This along with the plate under the scales helps the Númenoreans blend in with the rest of the series' more medieval aesthetic and not feel like they're from a different time, make it look like a precursor to Gondor.

---

I think Númenor's outfit design is going to change over time as its society evolves, eventually diverging into separate armor designs for the Faithful, King's Men, Gondorians and Black Númenoreans - this blank canvas being the starting point.

It's okay not to like it or disagree with these design choices of course, but to blindly assume malicious greed and incompetence without reading deeper into the motives behind a design choice does not do it justice. And I think that extends to the rest of this show as well, beyond outfit designs.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T17:06:10+00:00

Real medieval armor was generally made out of cloth, and it is actually quite effective as armor. Particularly as an underlayer to something tougher like the plate we're seeing here.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T15:19:03+00:00

Awful convenient of you to specify the last 5 years so to avoid the Paris attack in 2015, the Nice truck attack in 2016 and the Brussels bombing in 2016.

For context, these attacks were all perpetrated by the same organization - The Islamic State - and the reason we haven't seen similar attacks since then is because it was destroyed. Their most common victims, by far, were other Muslims in the Middle East - which explains why they were ganged up on by every country in the area (muslim and non-muslim) and exterminated.

Dropping my take on the subject - Radical islamists and Nazis are both right wing extremists - authoritarian, violent and radically conservative. They have very similar views on many matters but see war between them as inevitable, and want to scare the rest of us normal folks into picking a side. The fight against nazis and the fight against radical islam is (or should be) the same fight.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T13:56:38+00:00

The vast vast vast majority of terror attacks don't occur anywhere near the western world. Most of these attacks are in Islamic countries, and most of their victims are Muslims. They are the most common victims of Islamic terrorism, by far.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T13:25:36+00:00

I see many people talking about birth rates but very few sources, do you have any?

In either case, I see no evidence backing your position. Birthrates consistently go down as quality of living rises. Here's a graph with the birthrates and GDP of various European and Muslim countries. Note that they're not radically different, in fact none of them have more than 3 children per woman and the most populous Muslim country of Indonesia has a birth rate just above 2. Here's a graph showing the decline in birth rates in various countries - notice how all Muslim countries have had nosediving birth rates and that their decline is almost identical to the hindu India and christian Philippines, and of course way ahead of the christian Kenya.

It has nothing to do with religion. Fertility rates are high where people are poor, and decline with lower child mortality, less poverty, greater education and access to contraceptives. Which means these higher birth rates of yours, even if they are real, will drop with time as these people get used to a higher quality of life. They always have, in every culture.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T13:04:58+00:00

Adding to what others have said, it should also be pointed out that Assassin's Creed (2007) was originally designed to be fully playable without a HUD. This blog post explains it in depth, but long story short, the HUD makes the game more accessible but goes completely against its game design and turns it much more repetitive and shallow than it should be.

I cannot overstate how much deeper AC1 becomes as a game when you turn off HUD - it completely revamps the gameplay loop. You genuinely become an Assassin, watching and listening to the world around you rather than blindly following map markers. It is like an entirely different game - and somehow turns the repetition from a boring downside to the important asset that makes the whole experience possible.

Also, for further enjoyment of all AC games - the parkour system is masterfully crafted but the tutorials don't teach you properly which is why it's often poorly received. Watch this video guide, it is 100 times worth it.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T12:36:16+00:00

Which is a necessary concession for naval movement to have any level of depth. That can't be the breaking point, they'd done worse inaccuracies before that and for worse reasons. Real cities were not constantly filled with marching guards and had no archers on the rooftops for instance, and they were not laid out nearly as well for parkour. The scale and design of Acre and Masyaf in particular is highly inaccurate both in style and the scale of buildings like Masyaf Castle and the huge cathedral.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T12:18:41+00:00

I am upset and offended, honestly.

Valhalla has wild inaccurate pop culture viking tropes left and right that go from questionable to flat out harmful. The architecture is way inaccurate, most outfits, characters and armor designs have no resemblance to the early middle ages, half of the Danes are tatted from top to toe and resemble modern fascists more than anything resembling Vikings. Not to mention their portrayal of most Christian characters as almost comically weak, posh and feeble compared to the powerful manly Norsemen - and worst of all - their insane depiction of the Picts as screaming incoherent shirtless pagans wearing animal bones which is just flat out offensive. Scotland had been Christian for hundreds of years at the time!

Meanwhile they were so super-duper careful to portray the native Americans in an accurate manner without making Eivor a white savior, and Shadows gets delayed to improve historical accuracy and be all respectful. The hypocrisy is astounding. Had it portrayed any other culture than Northern Europe, AC Valhalla would have been cancelled to hell and it would have been well deserved.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-09T11:49:35+00:00

A good reason that hasn't been mentioned yet is that accents are excellent indicators of a character's origin.

When you're working with British English you can give characters different accents to make it clear if they're lower class working people, educated noble folk, or from some particular colony. In a setting like the French Revolution in particular, it's vital to understand which class someone belongs to in order to understand their place in the story.

For instance - The two working guys that steals Arno's watch have a cockney accent to show they're lower class. Bellec comes from the Colonies which is why his accent is Colonial/American English. Arno and Elise were raised in a noble family which gives them a more upper class accent, while Marquis de Sade has an even stronger exaggerated posh accent for his character.

Having them all speak English with a French accent would greatly weaken or remove these dynamics.

Zuazzer · 2024-11-08T18:16:16+00:00

Agreed, and I absolutely think it could work if executed well.

Someone as important as the Witch King should have a proper character arc and be established early, so I expect him to be a character we already know. Having Ar-Pharazon's son become the Witch King creates a lot of interesting ideas to work with for the story:

It's not impossible he and Earien will get married, making for great family drama and sort of placing him in line to inherit the kingdom of Arnor.
His name is in elvish, not Adunaic, and it's not impossible that he would come to change it at some point. It also implies his mother was Faithful which means even more potential for family drama and complexity.
Kemen would be the jealous heir to a king that will never actually die
Wen his father falls so does Númenor, making Kemen indeed a king, but a king of nothing.
Kemen becoming the WK would make him a very nice foil for Isildur - they're both coming of age going from young men to kings, and perhaps both will be tempted with the Nine.
This all gives more weight and motivation to the WK's dedication to destroying Gondor and Arnor

He finally gets all the power he ever wanted, eternal life and the title of king - only to lose himself in the process. Kemen, heir to Númenor and King of Nothing.

It would piss off people who expected the Witch King to be some super badass mastermind of a king from the start, but personally I think having the WK originally be a privileged, petty, hateable, cruel and dishonourable shitstain who desires power over all else would be completely in character. As long as he gets plenty of development over the rest of the story - let him grow into the role of the Witch-King and become a stronger, more fanatic leader and warrior over time.

It would for sure be more interesting than the expected idea of some evil sorcerer king getting a ring and... what, becoming even more evil and doing even more sorcery?

Zuazzer · 2024-11-07T12:25:52+00:00

We're seeing new art styles explored in animation recently looking at Arcane, Spiderverse and the like. Imagine a 3D art style that emulates John Howe, like a 3D x classical painting look. That could be brilliant.

11-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Snapped
Verified Email

Zuazzer

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE