Here's an interesting easter egg in Yoshi's Story that I've never heard before
http://youtu.be/SuamdWBjZuw
http://youtu.be/SuamdWBjZuw
I can't even see Agahnim like how you seem to have seen him all these years... the version that it's trying to point out seems to me the obvious view of the sprite.
You could've just googled him
The story of Sequoyah is famous, isn't it? Inspired by the English-speaking civilization around him, he made up a syllabary for his own language, Cherokee, which enabled his people to become literate. Even today you cad find signs and books in Sequoyah's writing system.
Much less famous is the story of the Vai language and writing system, in Liberia, developed in much the same way by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ (also spelled Momolu Duwalu Bukele; explanation for those 'short e' and 'short o' signs follow). He and his people had been illiterate until he had a dream in which a bearded white man read to him in his own language from a book. When he woke up, he had forgotten what the letters looked like, but the idea had sparked in his head, and he set out making up a symbol for each of the 200-odd syllables that occur in Vai.
Why am I talking about this?
Well, if you've played Assassin's Creed: Liberation (please, no "no, I haven't; no one has a Vita" jokes), you've seen the Vai writing system, though you may not have noticed it when you did.
(Minor Chapter 4 spoilers for ACL follow.)
Aveline is down in Chichen Itzá and has occasion to explore some watery underground caves. We see some Mayan writing on the walls, which is not surprising, but then at the deepest point, we see stone pillars with these inscriptions:
There are two, and they're identical except that parts of one of them are cut off.
Having learned about Vai in grad school when reading Scribned and Cole's The Psychology of Literacy, a study of Vai literacy in Liberia, I recognized the writing right away.
I don't have Vai fonts on my computer, so I can't type them out, but as far as I can tell, it says the following. Note that Vai has the short e, written [ɛ], for the vowel in "pet" or "men", and short o, written [ɔ], for the first vowel in "fall" or "former". There are also nasal vowels, written here with tildes ()
over them, and an "ng" sound written phonetically with this ligature ("ŋ"). Otherwise consonants are as in English:
mgba gi gɛ je nde ndi mɔ ya dɔ gɔ
be bo lu gɔ wɛ i go
ya so dɔ wo nyɛ ŋgã
nji gẽ le da ŋgã nji fe cha [three unintelligible glyphs]
nji nde mɔ we mgba [reversed lu]
Here's a better view:
See that Latin-letter ŋgã jumping out at you in the third line? My guess is that the creators were misreading a chart of Vai syllables and didn't notice that the "ŋgã" was the pronunciation of the character below it -- which they also used, in the fourth line.
Specifically, this chart here seems to be the exact one they cribbed from, because it has "ŋgã" in just the right font, and the "go" at the end of the second line is a little too light or underprinted in just the same spot as the one on the pillar is:
They also seem to have taken the letter "lu" and reversed in in the very last line.
Google for "Assassin's Creed Liberation Vai" yields no hits -- aside from Italian sites telling people to "go" and do something or other -- so this might be the first discovery of this little secret.
I really like it given that it's a shout-out to Aveline's African heritage, and to a culture that doesn't get enough credit for what it developed... but Mr. Bukele had his literacy dream in the early 1800s, so it leaves me wondering how it could have been there in Chichen Itzá in 1769.
And I know nothing of the Vai language, so I have no idea if this inscription means anything. I'm betting, given the mistake it contains, that the letters are just random.
Awesomeness
You could've just googled him
In a series that revolves around First People and genetic memory, I'm sure there's any number of avenues to hand wave it away should it ever be noticed by anyone but yourself.I really like it given that it's a shout-out to Aveline's African heritage, and to a culture that doesn't get enough credit for what it developed... but Mr. Bukele had his literacy dream in the early 1800s, so it leaves me wondering how it could have been there in Chichen Itzá in 1769
That's just what a bunch of blind GAFers thought he looked like.So the part with the white eyes and such is actually not his face? Wtf
In a series that revolves around First People and genetic memory, I'm sure there's any number of avenues to hand wave it away should it ever be noticed by anyone but yourself.
Nice work though, you're possibly the only person in the world to pick this out.
Really? I don't remember AC1 having any (written) Arabic.In AC1 the Arabic on some of the towers was gibberish
And even if they were referring to the transformation masks you still have the Giant's Mask.Ikana also has 4 masks.
So the part with the white eyes and such is actually not his face? Wtf
Really? I don't remember AC1 having any (written) Arabic.
You could've just googled him
no it is his face which is why the skin color matches his arm color. the part on top that the visually challenged think is his face is simply a gold tiara/crown.
The reason why Super Metroid is fun to watch be broken is because the game has lots of soft gating as opposed to hard gating, allowing skilled players to easily get to places they shouldn't and sequence break.
I'm afraid I'm one of said visually challenged people. I completely accept the other argument, but I've never quite been able to establish where the top of his head is in that example - everywhere I try to imagine it, it's ends up with the "long head" problem on the original image.
Corollary: Think of how crowns sit on the head. Now explain what's above that.
Edit: When I get home, I'm going to try removing the crown, see what that looks like. Looking further, I *think* the black bit immedately above the top of the crown should be read as the apex of the cowl (and therefore the top of the head). Which if I'm right does work, but we're back to the freakishly-tall-head issue.
no his head is normal you have to think of perspective. the red mouth is a jewel. he's not standing up straight but hunched over a bit with hands up.(it's what evil wizrds and witches do) he's not wearing a hoody it's some sort of puffy wizard hat.
Has anyone ever explained why Agahnim was drawn this way multiple times but never appeared that way in game?
Does that help?
Does that help?
Eh, if the fringes of his cloak were pink and his crown... thingy... were gold, it'd be close enough for jazz.Honesty? Not really, the sprite is still amazingly different.
It's the same color as his hands, so I'm reasonably sure that's what it's supposed to be...
Holy shit. I just spent a half hour seeking out everything I could in that thing.
I remember having my mind blown when I first noticed this - some time after playing the game; I'd forgotten about that fact since, but it came back to me when I brought it up in another thread so there's a *chance* it'll blow someone else's:
no his head is normal you have to think of perspective. the red mouth is a jewel. he's not standing up straight but hunched over a bit with hands up.(it's what evil wizrds and witches do) he's not wearing a hoody it's some sort of puffy wizard hat.
What a racist picture, look at his lips.
What a racist picture, look at his lips.