Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

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KFan
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Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by KFan »

I know this has been discussed before, but I was watching season 8 today for the first time in months, probably years, and I didn't once see the point in the eye shield.
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HStorm
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by HStorm »

Yes.

I think that covers everything...
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by Pooka »

I'm not sure... they had a lot of new technology to play with for series 8, and with the lack of available room graphics they seemed to have, I don't see what was wrong with the odd eye-shield-based CGI link.
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by knightmaredave »

The eye shield was getting a bit dull and TBH i feel it slowed gameplay down as there were los of repetitive scenes. I think they should have just focused on the reach wand and its potentiasl to do more! i.e. open more doors and traps and clues maybe rather than having the traditional scroll. That would have been an idea!!
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by Gizensha »

Two minds about this - One the one hand the main problem Series 8 had was it involved too much change too rapidly, so yet more change might be seen as even worse, on the other - The eye shield didn't really have much of a point in S8, since S8 was back to almost being inside the dungeon, so just slowed the game down.
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by HStorm »

Gizensha wrote: the main problem Series 8 had was it involved too much change too rapidly, so yet more change might be seen as even worse.
I don't think this would have been a problem, as it would have been a change back to the way things were before. Gameplay without the eye shield would have been familiar territory for Knightmare.
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by Drassil »

The climax of Series 7 offered a good time to retire the Eyeshield. "Oh my goodness, it was the Shield of Justice all along, so the true quest is an inner one, Scarecrow always had a brain, I declare this day henceforth to be known as Barry Day" etc. Obviously that didn't happen - even though the website has a certain T. Child quoted as saying:
A Certain T. Child wrote:'By the way, I also hated the Eye-Shield.'
- History Of Knightmare, Part 3

In Series 8, the Eyeshield seemed to join sight potions and seeing-eye spells as a way of showing off CGI special effects. And yet the sequences on Level 3 at least were worthwhile and rather fetching, in my opinion. So an interesting compromise might have been to have the Eyeshield involved in Series 8 quests more sparingly: the dungeoneer drops into Level 3 and there finds the Eyeshield, prompting a speech from Treguard along the lines of: "So that's where it got to! I suggest you take it, team: technomagic may leave it weakened in this phase, but on Level 3, you need all the help you can get. Especially since the Reach Wand was damaged beyond repair when your dungeoneer landed." ;)
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by Mystara »

I always saw the eyeshield as something symbolic to try and explain how the advisors could see the dungeoneer.

However, the slightly more cynical part of me suspects that it was an attempt by televirtual to move in to the foray of a first person perspective Knightmare, and they could never make it work.
It was only recently when watching the eyeshield-view-through-the-forest video sequences when it become painfully obvious that the team were just being shown a prerecorded video. I always understood that bit was brought in to try and make things more photo-realistic, so maybe that's the tool they brought in to try and achieve it.
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by Helvellyn »

I thought the point of the Eyeshield was supposed to move gameplay along by not requiring the advisors to have to spend time guiding the dungeoneer out of the room when everything of interest in that room had been done. Now this point was completely missed when the Eyeshield was first introduced but they got the hang of it later, so keeping it in Series 8 made sense.
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by SwampyRepton »

KM Fan wrote:I know this has been discussed before, but I was watching season 8 today for the first time in months, probably years, and I didn't once see the point in the eye shield.
The Eye Shield was used as a "break" between the sets, they could show the Dungeoneer walking down a walkway, this would I assume give them the time in the studio to make a new set up.

I would assume they would have maybe 2 set's which they'd swap around to wherever the Dungeoneer would go, although really I think the pathways were set, regardless of which door they took.

As to answer your question, No, I think the eye-shield is/was a good device and should remain even in any upcoming remake (one can hope cant we? :P)
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Re: Should the eye shield have been ditched for season 8?

Post by HStorm »

SwampyRepton wrote:The Eye Shield was used as a "break" between the sets, they could show the Dungeoneer walking down a walkway, this would I assume give them the time in the studio to make a new set up
No in fact. Most players who were on the series say that the breaks between filming scenes were very long, often upwards of an hour. It's not clear when exactly the bits with the advisors watching the Eye-Shield sequences were filmed, but they definitely weren't nearly long enough to cover the change of set lay-outs and chromakey images.
although really I think the pathways were set, regardless of which door they took.
This is probably true. The series was good at 'bluffing' variation, when it seems very likely that most quests were far more linear than that.
As to answer your question, No, I think the eye-shield is/was a good device and should remain even in any upcoming remake (one can hope cant we? :P)
TES is used very widely in the KMRPG cutscenes (although whether they will ever be released is a big sticking point). Personally, I'd rather see the back of TES, but it does give the RPG a feel of authenticity.
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