Five Reasons Why Tales From the Borderlands is Telltale’s Masterpiece

In hindsight, it’s funny that I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing Telltale Games’ take on Gearbox Software’s zany science fiction FPS/RPG hybrid. I love Borderlands, and I love Telltale, but I just didn’t see much common storytelling ground there. I was quite wrong, obviously, as Tales from the Borderlands has turned out to be easily one of the best games of the year and the culmination of everything that has made past Telltale adaptations brilliant.

Take the hilarious writing of Tales from Monkey Island, the epic action set pieces of Jurassic Park: The Game, the emotional highs and lows of The Walking Dead, the sheen of noirish cool that permeated The Wolf Among Us, and wrap it all up in the Mad Max-inspired insanity of Borderlands with a fresh twist and you’ve got the makings of a genuine magnum-opus.

Playing through Telltale’s latest was like an extended shot of pure storytelling joy. Around every corner there was something that either made me laugh, think, feel, or just plain kicked ass. It made me want to go play the games it was based on with a new appreciation for the world they created, which is probably the highest praise you can bestow on a game like this. The following are five ways that Tales from the Borderlands proved itself to be at the top of the heap of an already extremely impressive collection of stories Telltale has adapted from film, television, comics, and video games.

Catch a riiiiiiiide!

Setting the pace

Gauging proper pacing is an elusive thing sometimes, especially when delivering chapters in an episodic format every few months. At times the individual stories in each episode can feel somewhat disconnected from one another and….well, episodic. Trying to find a balance between making each one stand alone somewhat like with The Walking Dead: Season 1 and crafting an ongoing escalating narrative is tricky, but for Borderlands, Telltale really seems to have found the best possible way to do it.

Discarding the notion of stand alone episodes with different variations of the same theme and a grand finale at the end, what Telltale did instead was use each episode to show us different aspects of the Borderlands mythos, each with its own build-up and climax, while telling an ongoing story and using every scene to craft characters’ relationships to one another without feeling the need to be all things in all episodes. The stakes just keep getting higher and higher as the story unfolds, but as ambitious as it is, the story somehow it never loses its sense of playfulness and surprise, deftly turning tragedy into comedy, comedy into triumph, and triumph back into tragedy. It’s not an easy thing to do effectively. In fact, it’s extremely rare, but they did it.

Beginning as a simple story of a corporate stooge and a street smart con-woman retelling their stories in flashback after being taken by mysterious captor, the number of elements and twists and turns that come into play is astonishing. After going into outer space and back again facing giant monsters, old Borderlands friends and foes, and life-or-death decisions, going into the final act almost seemed like overkill. Like, what else can this game possibly throw at me? But then it made me laugh, cry, cheer, laugh and cry and cheer again and I wondered how anything could be that perfectly measured and surprise me at the same time. From its humble beginnings and through all of its wild changes in scale, setting, and tone, the story always flows perfectly, and that’s a big piece of this awesome puzzle.

Psh. I’ve seen shinier.

Do-it-yourself comedy

One of the things that makes this particular work of interactive fiction stand out in the ever-widening field is its approach to humor. While the light tone often reminded me of the delightful Tales from Monkey Island, in that game the dialogue was more like an old RPG where you cycle through all dialogue options to hear the responses. In Tales from the Borderlands, you actually get to dictate a lot of the comedy yourself, or even tone it down if you’re looking for a more serious approach.

Whether you decide to repeatedly yell “enhance”  at a computer in a mockery of the trope where saying that magically makes an existing picture higher resolution, immortalize a fallen comrade with a Cowboy Bebop reference, downplay another character’s feat of awesome before failing mightily at the same task, quote an epic Jaws’ one-liner while pulling the trigger on the final boss, or go for a less nerdy approach to these situations is completely up to you. And having the option to mock a bad guy’s hair and later be given a choice of which elemental bullet to shoot him with -opening up the opportunity to set said hair on fire- is just too good.   

The fact that this game has so many jokes and clever callbacks and some of the best ones are completely optional and often reliant on certain sequences of choices speaks volumes about the depth and quality of the writing here. I remember when Borderlands 2 caused ire in some parts of the internet by appropriating dozens of memes and Telltale seems to have taken that lesson to heart. While there are dozens of pop culture references, they are more timeless geek homages than attempts to pander to the temperamental millennial demographic that date the humor. Any game that recreates the pretend gun battle scene from Spaced on a John Woo scale is fine by me, and if it isn’t with you, you probably suck anyways..

Bass-dropping intensifies.

Music makes the people come together

Telltale has run the gamut when it comes to incorporating music into their art. From the evocative score of The Wolf Among Us to the closing credit folk tunes of The Walking Dead and the straightforward use of the film score for Jurassic Park, a lot of approaches have been tried with varying degrees of success. But Tales from the Borderlands trumps them all with its awe-inspiring use of music in its credit sequences.

While the score is normally more understated like Wolf Among Us’s was (aside from some EDM-fueled action sequences), Telltale treats each chapter like a Bond film in that they all start out with an awesome scene to hook you and then segue into a musical number for the credits to kick it up a notch. For all of the praise that the dialogue deserves, the scene montages during these opening credit sequences is where Tales From the Borderlands does some of its finest work.  A lot of the devices used in these sequences have been done before, such as dramatic time slowing and credits appearing as part of the scenery,  but I have never seen them used more effectively.

I’m going to resist the temptation to expound each opening sequence, but I’ll just say they might be worth the cost of each episode by themselves. Artistry, humor, character development, and a variety of emotions from joy to sheer desolation are portrayed in these wordless sequences that set the stage for each section of our protagonists’ journey and the accompanying music is pleasantly diverse and fits each scene to a T. And if you ever thought you’d never be genuinely inspired by a cheesy 80’s-style power ballad, think again. Episode 4’s “Back to the Top” is my new go-to pump up anthem.

It’s the characters, stupid

Arguably, the most important thing in modern storytelling is the people in the story. You need to care about them, or at least relate to them in some way. This isn’t the 1900’s anymore. To make a truly great story these days, even the villains have to be worth rooting for on some level. While I might argue that Telltale knocked nearly every aspect of this game out of the park, they really outdid themselves with the cast of Tales from the Borderlands.

Not to bring the quality of the writing up again, but anybody who can effectively make the word “hi” spoken by a monotone-voiced robot a catch phrase is doing something very right. Rhys and Fiona by themselves are memorable protagonists, but the ragtag crew they put together over the course of this story is one for the record books. Drawing from the familiar, but always offering someone new as well, this is one of the best gaming casts ever.

Fiona in particular is a heroine for that ages. We don’t often enough get characters where the primary means of conflict resolution is acheived through intelligence as opposed to brute force, and she is a prime example of how to do it right. Dressed to kill with a knack for withering sarcasm and an elegant derringer up her sleeve just in case things get nasty is my kind of lady. Rhys makes for a perfect foil with his polar-opposite background and bumbling, self-deprecating nature, but at the same time the two share distinct similarities that illustrate that there is no cultural divide too large to stop decent people from connecting, cooperating, and coexisting with one another in spite of friction.

How these two characters interact and shape their relationships is largely up to you, but that was my experience. Yours could be different depending on your own choices, which brings us to my final point.

Ummmm….spoilers, maybe? Also, what kind of asshole wouldn’t brofist Vaughn? That’s not bro, bro.

My story, your story

One thing that really sets Tales from the Borderlands apart from the rest of Telltale’s ever-growing catalog of massive successes is that it really feels like a game where you have genuine consequences based on your decisions. Not just a different ending based on a dialogue choice or two or whatever, but things that work out in unexpected ways.

Obviously, we’re not at a point that every single decision you make leads to an entirely new version of the game like so many people seem to expect. The stuff that’s happening in the story is going to happen, and until we find a much cheaper way to make video games, that’s how it’s going to be. But sometimes the little things can really change your personal experience with a game.

Who’s available to join your vault raiding team for the final act is directly affected by your actions over the course of the story. Even apparent throwaway dialogue to strangers can have an effect on your reputation and future options. If you save your money or decide to give somebody who betrayed you a second (or third) chance, you may be pleasantly surprised. One particular plot thread was only resolved because my choices were narrowed and it ended up making my story so much more satisfying in the end. Even your apparent mistakes can have surprising silver linings.

It’s really cool to see things work out in different ways based on your decisions and have some positive and negative consequences based on what seemed like flippant choices at the time. Player choice is the biggest thing that separates interactive entertainment from more traditional media and the more it can be worked into the narrative, the more satisfying a virtual story is going to feel in comparison. It makes for a more immersive experience, adds replayability to the game, and helps make Tales from the Borderlands stand above even the best tales that Telltale has told.

Five Awesome PlayStation Franchises I’m Just Not That Into

I’ve had this off-again/on-again love affair with Sony’s consoles since the mid ‘90s. I was satisfied holding onto my SNES for years and while I had fun playing Tekken and Tony Hawk on my friend’s PlayStation, I wasn’t really sold on the brand. Eventually, franchises like Resident Evil and my favorite, Final Fantasy lured me around. In fact, the minute I laid hands on Final Fantasy Tactics I knew it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I’ve got nothing but great memories of the original PlayStation, but its successor impressed me less and I ended up on Team Xbox for the next gen and most of the one after that. But in spite of years of “PS3 has no games”, I ended up buying one as Sony came on strong at the end and Microsoft faded a bit. But I had a lot of catching up to do.

In the time between getting a PlayStation 3 and upgrading to a PlayStation 4 (what can I say, Sony won me back), I had a lot of ground to cover to play all of the game I’d missed. But not all of them turned out to be what they were cracked up to be for me. Not all games are for all gamers. I mean, I’m not making a list of games I knew weren’t going to set my world on fire like LittleBigPlanet (not a platformer guy) or Jak and Daxter (just…..eh).

The following are games that look right up my alley and I should be a fan of. Games that other people love and I want to love, but just don’t for whatever reason. Here are five traditional PlayStation franchises that should be blowing my mind, but have either left me moderately pleased at best or hesitant to even give a chance in spite of universal praise.    

Disgaea

I mentioned earlier that Final Fantasy Tactics was the game that inspired me to buy a PlayStation in the first place. It remains one of the my all-time favorite games and the deepest SRPG I’ve ever played. I’ve been looking for another game like it ever since. That curse is probably best illustrated in its subsequent brethren series, Disgaea, which has so many great things about it but has somehow failed to make a fan out of me.

I’ll admit that if I’d never played the definitive SRPG, I’d probably have been an instant fanboy of this series. But having played FFT way back in the ‘90’s and then firing up Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice last year to find a game with mechanics that seem inferior in almost every way was disappointing to say the least.

I loved the music, the goofy tone, and the overall concept, but the deeper I got into the game the more shallow the actual game seemed. There was a ton of stuff to do (max level is 9999…and you don’t level very quickly), but very little reason to do most of it. The story itself was cute and clever, but eventually became a revolving door of repeating gags that were hilarious at first, but got old over dozens of hours. The last straw was diving into a dungeon to upgrade a weapon (every item contains a dungeon and you can level them up from within) and grinding with no save point for hours only to end up in a battle that was literally an impossibility to win. That’s just shitty game design.

It’s one thing to get wiped in Persona or whatever because of a bad choice or crummy luck and lose hours of progress, but at least you had the possibility of victory. Dated gameplay and repetitive humor I can deal with, but insanely overleveled enemies that you can’t escape from in virtually infinite dungeons with no save points are just not cool. Ever. I’m not saying I’ll never play another Disgaea game(I probably will), but I have to say that against all odds, I was pretty disappointed with my first experience with the series.

 

Twisted Metal

This was the game I was most iffy about going in. I love blowing shit up and the almost satirically edgy style looked like it might be up my alley, but as a general rule I’m not into driving games. Then again, Mario Kart and Burnout are awesome and they don’t even have flaming psycho clowns driving ice cream murdermobiles.

I was looking forward to getting into the PS3 reboot after having missed out for so many years and hearing people praise the franchise. And with full multiplayer support, what could go wrong? Not much, I reckon, but it just failed to grab me. Halfway through the first story mode I was inexplicably bored. Like I’d done it all before. Drive. Shoot. Drive. Yawn. Shoot. Drive. Repeat. A few different vehicle options was the only real variation.

Maybe I’m just getting old, but throwing chainsaws at people from a suped-out chopper just was not as fun as it felt like it should be. I love battle-royale combat. I’ve always loved it. So why did I not love this game? Only the gaming gods know for sure.

Uncharted

This is a big one. Everybody loves Uncharted. You love Uncharted. Your significant others and parents like to watch you play Uncharted. Hollywood wants Uncharted to be their next big franchise. Uncharted is really cool and fun. But no way would I ever pay $60 for an Uncharted game.

What the hell’s wrong with me? How could I not want to preorder Naughty Dog’s video game sensation? Sony’s pride and joy? It’s like the second coming of Indiana Jones, man! A bro Tomb Raider! All true facts and fair points. But as the article title says, I’m just not that into it.

I respect the franchise and have genuine affection for the characters, but when playing I find myself going through the motions of shooting/climbing/shooting/climbing/puzzle somewhat joylessly. The set pieces are beautiful -some of the best in gaming- and the puzzles are often imaginative and just plain cool. Nolan North is the man, and the rest of the cast is great too, but as smooth as it is, the gameplay itself just doesn’t thrill me.

All of the jumping and swinging and shimmying is just a time-consuming excuse to ogle the killer level designs from different angles, the combat has nothing at all to set itself apart as an action game, and the excitement of button-prompt cliffhanger sequences lose their luster after a while. I like Uncharted, but I just can’t bring myself to love it like everyone else does.

God of War

Now this one I really should love. And in some ways, maybe I do. Clash of the Titans is one of the most important films of my life and I rented it countless times at my local VHS place as a kid. I’ve always had an affinity with Greek mythology and it’s actually really weird to me that so few games take advantage of its rich history, iconic characters, and general epicness. God of War takes that vacancy and stabs its eyeballs out before ripping its arm off and then using it to tear off its head in a shower of gore.

Yeah, badassness is what Kratos is all about. So much epic badassness. It’s all very epic. And badass. I love epic badassness. I’m even up for silly sex scenes where you move the thumbstick around to be the sexiest sexer ever to sex on top of the killlingest killer ever to kill, because you’re MOTHERFUCKING KRATOS, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!!

Yeah, you see what I’m getting at. Too much edginess can become a form of comedy unto itself. But I can appreciate this ironically if for no other reason. And let’s admit it: even if maybe it tries too hard to obtain maximum grittiness, the overall aesthetic is pretty damn cool. In fact, if any video game series would make a visually amazing film franchise, this is probably the one we should be looking at. It’s not like there’s a lot of character and story nuance for Hollywood to miss, you know?

But still, I find that after button-mashing through hours of combat and minutes of climbing and shimmying, it all ends up just becoming a vehicle just to see the next button-prompt cutscene where Kratos destroys another Godzilla-sized monster or deity in insanely brutal fashion. It ends up being less about the joy of playing the game. I think I owe this lack of joy in part to Bayonetta, which had similar combat but was just way more fun all around to play. What I remember about that game was how fun the combat was. What I remember about God of War 3 and Ascension was how epic and badass the cutscenes were and how the combat just got in the way after a while.  

Metal Gear Solid

This franchise has since gone universal, but MGS had primarily been a PlayStation series at its core for most of its existence, so I’m qualifying it. What should disqualify it is that this is one series here that I have yet to actually try. But seeing as how I’m fated to try it out and I have had a long debate with myself about it, I figure it’ll make an interesting discussion to anchor this list.

Fun fact: the last time I played as Snake was in Metal Gear. No “Solid” to be found. That’s 1987’s NES title, so it’s been awhile. The weird thing about this is that I enjoy stealth/survival games and shooting stuff too so I really should have stumbled upon a Metal Gear game since, but I somehow have not. I meant to play MGS on the PlayStation, but never got around to it (blame my 10th playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics if you must).

My lack of a PS2 locked me out of that gen and by the time I’d gotten a PS3, the franchise had developed a rather interesting reputation. Reading about 45 minute cutscenes with multi-hour endings to nonsensical stories managed to offset the borderline universal praise Kojima’s work had garnered because if there is one thing that enrages me, it’s a “game” that doesn’t let you play it. I remember demoing Devil May Cry 3 and shutting it the hell off after being interrupted over and over with entirely unnecessary cutscenes.

So I never ended up playing a Metal Gear Solid game, even though I knew I should. But with MGS V being praised almost across the board for giving players freedom to play without excessive endless self-indulgent cutscenes, it looks like I’ve found my entry point at last. So maybe, just maybe, this will be one franchise that can win me over as a fan. 

Sword Art Online and the Reality of Virtuality 2: A Certain Victory

Popular anime/manga series Sword Art Online wrapped up its second season run on American television last month and did it with style, just in time for the new game, Sword Art Online: Lost Song, coming out next month. For a show that destroyed its titular digital world halfway into the first season and seemed to have covered all bases in its exploration of near-future virtual reality technology and its potential effects and hazards pertaining to gaming culture along the way, it left a lot of questions as to what a second season would even look like. What, just another generic fantasy adventure anime that happens to take place in a video game world?

How about nope. While covering a ton of emotional and conceptual ground in its groundbreaking first season (which I discussed previously here), I think it’s possible to argue that the second season somehow even improves on it. Many of the criticisms were addressed and in getting a little further away from the constant danger of the actual “SAO Incident” (in which gamers’ minds were trapped in a MMORPG that would kill them irl if they died in-game), the widespread subsequent brain-hacking of gamers, and damseling of Asuna the series actually blossomed with a somewhat lighter, more casual tone. After all, gaming is supposed to be about fun, right?

But while SAO2 has somewhat lower stakes than the first season, it makes up for it with more of the show’s trademark strong conceptualization and exceptional character building. Maybe thousands of people’s live aren’t in danger and maybe nobody is being held prisoner on servers and virtually molested by villainous businessmen using their creations for ill, but there is still a lot at stake for the characters and not everybody is making it out alive. The second season resets the standard for integrating gaming culture and concepts into popular entertainment in a thoughtful and exciting manner. Spoilers follow.

SAO 2 opens with our heroes and heroines living virtual lives in their home away from home, ALfheim Online, a VRMMO (Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online, naturally) game where most of the protagonist Kirito’s friends migrated after Sword Art Online disintegrated. I mean, one life-threatening forced two year imprisonment inside a video game isn’t going to put off a hardcore gamer from VR gaming, now is it? This setup is interesting in itself because ALO isn’t just a place to quest. It’s where they go to socialize, watch feeds of other games together, and sometimes even sleep. Gaming is not just about adventuring or achieving anymore in this series; it’s literally a lifestyle unto itself.

Kirito is recruited to investigate unexplained deaths in a post-apocalyptic game named Gun Gale Online in another case of the show bucking any preconceptions you have about it. Not only is Sword Art Online not a thing in the show of the same name anymore, but now it’s going to take place in a world dominated by guns instead of swords to boot. DEAL WITH IT! GGO is the only VRMMO that people can make an actual living playing, so it’s serious business and less than inviting for a noob.

Putting Kirito out of his element was a good thing as he now had to make new friends to show him the ropes. The humor here is that his assigned avatar is female, giving the protagonist a peak through the eyes of an online female gamer and implying some interesting things about gender identity and expectations.

Just from a pure gaming perspective, GGO is a blast to explore and a welcome change of pace. The open-world deathmatch tournament concept “Bullet of Bullets” is awesome and I really hope the next SAO game takes place there. When Kirito shows up there are debates about the viability of AGI and STR builds regarding recent game balancing that any geek is going to latch right onto. Details like this are what make the show feel so legit. It makes the viewer almost want to jump into the screen and create a character.

Alright, that’s enough setup. This show thrives on going above and beyond most shows to really get into the unspoken philosophies that move gamers in their everyday lives and the hidden psychological aspects that lead us to invest ourselves so heavily in these digital experiences. SAO takes things that are already here in gamer culture and simply pushes them forward a few decades to a place where we will have the ability to almost abandon reality entirely. The first season showed a lot of the pitfalls of that, but season two shows how gaming could change lives for the better or even give a fulfilling existence to people who are unable to have one in their real bodies.

While exploring GGO Kirito makes a new friend, Sinon (who was just helping out a fellow girl gamer…or so she thought). Her story is an incredibly interesting one. When she was a child, she got caught up in an armed robbery and ended up shooting and killing the assailant; an incident that scarred her for life and gave her a crippling fear of firearms. Her way of overcoming this fear was to join GGO and become comfortable with guns in a virtual environment where nobody could get hurt.

Kirito is investigating apparently impossible real world deaths from in-game wounds received from a mysterious player creatively named Death Gun. And no, this isn’t like it was in the first season as that tech has been done away with and replaced with something less invasive. It turns out that a pair of murderous gamers are coordinating the murders. One breaks into the victims’ homes and kills them while they are immersed in the VR at the same time that the other kills them in-game. That is to say that Sinon’s virtual coping mechanism is going to be put to the test irl.

A line in this season states that “wherever you are right now, that’s your reality”, further driving home the show’s theme of virtual experiences being potentially as valuable (or harmful) and “real” as the physical world. I mean, there are actual scientific theories that the universe is nothing but a computer simulation itself. If it’s real to you and makes you feel real emotions and share genuine experiences with people you care about, what does anything else matter? Why discriminate between physical and virtual at all?

And that brings us to the second arc of SAO2, in which we go back to Alfheim Online. This is the point where the first season went bad, with series co-star Asuna being damseled in humiliating fashion. This time, things fare much better with Kirito taking a back seat for the first time and Asuna getting a chance to do her own thing. She’s a strong enough character to carry the show, and getting to know her as well as we know Kirito is arguably what makes this season better than the first.

Asuna’s story is that she uses VR to escape from her real life. Now we’re getting somewhere. She prefers the excitement of ALO’s procedurally-generated adventures (in spite of its AI’s occasionally apocalyptic tendencies) to the prim, proper, and privileged regimented life she lives in Japan, observing “in the real world, I don’t have any power”. Naturally, her parents neither understand, nor approve. The resolution of this arc comes when Asuna -unable to confront her mother in real life- invites her to log in with her. While showing her mother the life she’s built for herself in ALO and the sentimentality attached to the digital construct, mother and daughter are able to understand each other in this virtual space in a way they never did while occupying the same home.

The final story of SAO2 cranks up both the feels and the practical conceptual possibilities for utilization of VR technology to better lives. Asuna challenges the most powerful player in Alfheim, Yuuki, for kicks and ends up joining her guild for their final quest together. The reason it’s their final quest? Yuuki is terminally ill. In fact, the entire Sleeping Knights guild is made up of people on their last legs; hence the urgency. Yuuki hasn’t logged out of the virtual world in years because her body just doesn’t work, hence her overpowered in-game build. It’s one thing to play a lot of games, but it’s something else entirely to never stop.

In spite of her extended convalescence, Yuuki has lived a rich and full virtual life in that time. At one point, Asuna connects her to a shoulder-mounted camera designed to share real life with her and Kirito’s in-game AI daughter Yui and tours the town with her in another practical extension of the VR tech that the show explores. In the final episode, she passes away quietly in Asuna’s arms as thousands of players fly above to pay their respects to the most hardcore gamer of all. It’s a beautiful moment punctuated by her tearful assertion that even if it was only in a virtual world, she was truly alive there.

See you, cyberspace cowgirl…

While considering her time with the Sleeping Knights, Asuna observes: “A safe fight, a certain victory. There’s more to a game than that”. It’s true in gaming, it’s true in life, and it’s true in storytelling. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Without loss and strife, there can be no true satisfaction in accomplishing, and if you do it right you’ll always take away more than you lost. The satisfaction of having given your all to achieve your goals -whatever they may be- on your own terms is what makes any undertaking a success and the experiences along the way are what make your life yours.

Sword Art Online could have relied on good will from the first season and become just another shonen series about indomitable male heroes getting stronger and facing increasingly ridiculous foes or aped the games it represents and just had a bunch of quests and good times cruising on the strength of established characters and accepted tropes. But instead it chose to break its viewers hearts yet again and explore both the meaning of life (however brief it may be) and the reality of our online experiences in a single character. Not a safe fight, but one that turns out to be a certain victory after all.

SAO  2 took chances and arguably topped itself when so many had written it off halfway through the first season with little regard for anything but telling great stories that will emotionally resonate with anyone who’s ever devoted themselves to a work of fiction to escape from harsh realities and found a welcoming like-minded online community waiting for them.

Virtual reality technology is coming and this show may be the single best exploration of what that could mean for us as gamers of all stripes. And make no mistake, gamers will pioneer this frontier and adapt it into a new way of life long before non-gamers come around to the possibilities. Sword Art Online recognizes this reality and has crafted itself around it in a way that respects video games and the people that play them in ways that are unheard of in Western popular media. And that’s something you’ve just got to appreciate.