The Adventure Zone: Ep. 42. The Eleventh Hour - Chapter Two

June 16, 2016 2:09 PM

What waits for our heroes on the other side of the time-stuck barrier? Seriously, what could be in there? A dragon made out of time? A parallel universe where people eat time like snack chips? A genuinely kind of innocuous, rustic town? Whatever it is, one thing's for sure: There's about to be some trouble in that bubble. Merle does some successful evangelizing. Taako gets caught red-handed. Magnus rushes in!
posted by kmz (7 comments total)

This episode was so so good, though I could see the shape of the end a few minutes early. I think TAZ is my favorite currently ongoing narrative fiction.
posted by kmz at 2:10 PM on June 16, 2016

I'm hoping for a Groundhog Day type situation.
posted by drezdn at 3:30 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I actually started clapping with them as this ended and shouted YES. Griffin is so, so good at not just coming up with ideas, but pure compelling storytelling. I still find it hard to believe this is the first fiction he's "written".

Also: I continue to appreciate that the NPCs are women probably more than half the time.
posted by ariadne's threadspinner at 3:33 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Griffin is so, so good at not just coming up with ideas, but pure compelling storytelling. I still find it hard to believe this is the first fiction he's "written".

IIRC, he did write "kid cop" when he was young.
posted by drezdn at 6:47 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kid Cop? I had to look this up, and boy-howdy it is a wonder to behold.
posted by m@f at 2:38 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is so fascinating to me from a story theory perspective. Gerblins was fun, due to novelty and getting to know the characters if nothing else. Rockport was great, with an awesome closed-room set-up that allowed for an insane finale. Petals started off a little lackluster for me, but went to the highest highs of the series yet.

And then Crystal Kingdom kind of flopped around. It had a plethora of cool ideas, a cool setting, a deep and sorrowful mystery for Tres Horny Boys to suss out, an instantly likable new NPC in No. 3113, call-backs to previous great moments, and a glut of key archplot information. I think maybe it was just that the "crisis" framework didn't actually play out with any actual tension, Lucas wasn't a character we really cared about much, and the "dungeon" was kind of episodic, with a lot of combats that were hard to visualize from the medium we were given. It wasn't awful, and frankly it'd still be an awesome campaign if not for the bar Griffin had already set for himself.

But now this, the ending of this one, where it's immediately clear how cool this arc will be. Griffin has outdone himself here, with a sandbox with clearly defined edges, where the Boys can do whatever because Ditto Knows All and they can't leave until they do this right. And eventually doing it right will mean triumph, while all their attempts doing it wrong will just mean comedy...

I love this set-up. I love it so hard.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:42 PM on February 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

(Oh, and Crystal Kingdom also introduced a ton of fun sound design, which I loved, but in the end it just didn't allow for much in the way of Magnus, Merle and Taako going off the rails and being hilarious, at least by the standards of the other arcs.)
posted by Navelgazer at 9:48 PM on February 13, 2017 [1 favorite]