Alright, so it is time for verdict on this submission, and wow, where should I begin?
This site is no stranger to controversial small improvements; especially on popular games. However, the biggest issue at hand here is that a majority of the audience felt it was less entertaining than the previous movie. The problem people had was camera angles obviously. Due to the small improvement (too small for the average user to even spot) many felt it was not worth the 3 frames for the loss of entertainment value. I went through the posts and by my count 16 people specifically said they liked the camera work of this run, 26 said they disliked it (with varying degrees of dislike), and 4 said they were more or less equal or undecided.
This issue pushed the classic speed vs entertainment to the test and divided the community (once again) over this issue. As Warp pointed out, this site's primary goal is to provide entertaining movies, with basic record keeping as a secondary goal. I for one would like the site to do both equally well. The idea of our featured movie of a very popular game not being the "record" is upsetting to me. And I do feel that completion time is NOT an insignificant number. However, I can't ignore the fact that this site's success has been due to the fact that style matters.
The underlying reason why "entertainment" is so important is simple. TASes should be impressive, and show mastery at the game. They should be in complete control of the game, as some kind of super perfect being. Such a being not only can beat the game as fast as possible but can play around, perform stunts, and dazzle the audience along the way, with ease. It is expected that authors do their best to dazzle the audience as much as possible while still achieving the fastest possible time.
In the past we have rejected small improvements where the authors failed to stylistic choices into account (
for example). It is important for everyone in this thread to realize and accept is the fact that we will continue to do so in the future if movies fail to live up to the generally high standards of the site.
However, it is worth noting here that this isn't a case of apathy toward the entertainment value of a TAS. In fact it is quite the opposite. The authors took the sites goals at heart and sought to make a movie that was not only faster, but also more entertaining & innovate with its camera play. I respect and appreciate this. And on a technical level their camera work _is_ impressive and shows a lot of work. Unfortunately a significant part of the site's audience did not agree with their decisions.
However, was it really
that bad? There was at least some amount of hype, and mob mentality here. The camera issues were mentioned early in the discussion and most people (including me) probably watched in focused on this idea. Would I have noticed had it not already been pointed out? I opened this submission and the currently published movie side by side and watched & compared each segment. A fairly large portion of the camera work is roughly the same as the precedent movie. There were several moments where I didn't think this submission was as elegant, and at least one spot I thought this movie showed a better camera angle. The authors attempted to play around with camera, but there really wasn't too many places where it caused much distraction (to me).
In summary, this movie is an impressive improvement, with attention towards stylistic choices, shows a mastery of the game, and takes the site values at heart. As such I am accepting as an improvement to the currently published movie.
However, despite being accepted, I do hope the authors take into account the audience reaction to this movie, and attempt to do a movie with more "graceful" camera work (and hopefully scrape a few more frames of course ^_^).
I want to be absolutely clear though that this is not a precedent setting decision. Try not to take this verdict as a sign that the site only cares about records and will publish any improvement. (Unfortunately no matter what I say some will take it as this). Our guidelines have not changed, nor the high expectations of our audience.
Also, given the divided audience response here, this run will not automatically inherit the star of its predecessor. This run's star status should be discussed & debated on its own merits, in the proper
thread.
