#*obviously I can't REALLY prove this or put that much weight in a game mechanic... but this is all in good fun

[sempercry]

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to this! Although I said you would be saving me many playthroughs, the truth is, I love any excuse to replay these games, so now I have my list to go through and try for myself (hiding under a cut in case anyone finds it spoiler-y and because of extra thoughts):

Matt and Emily(But everyone else ends up disliking Matt?) Mike and Jessica(?) Chris and Ashley(?) Mike and Sam(?)

Conrad and Fliss (maximizing earns a trophy, Theatrical) Alex and Julia (maximizing earns a trophy, Theatrical, can also have an empty relationship bar) Brad and Alex (maximizing earns a trophy, Theatrical)

Daniel and Taylor (maximizing earns a trophy) John and Angela (maximizing earns a trophy) Andrew and Angela(? Shared Story only? No gun?)

Eric and Rachel (Theatrical, screenshots coming - these two are being difficult omg) Jason and Salim (Theatrical)

Jamie and Erin (Theatrical) Mark and Kate (Theatrical - 2 different ways: Siding with Kate and/or Rekindled, screenshots coming) Charlie and Mark (Theatrical; can also have an empty relationship bar) Charlie and Jamie (Theatrical) Kate and Erin(? Curator's Cut only?) Charlie and Erin(?) (Basically, shout-out to the Lonnit crew for all of their potential)

If I make them happen, I’ll take a screenshot and link it to each pair. Question marks are beside the pairs that I’m extra curious about, but no one has confirmed yet (or these might have been suggested, but were unsure).

And ok, so, in full honesty 🙈 apart from curiosity (which IS true), this was born out of an added mini ulterior motive to see whether Jason and Salim’s ability to max out their relationship meter could be loosely considered canon evidence of romantic feelings*, given that the majority of the pairs listed are either characters who can interact classically-romantically (openly dating, admitting feelings, married, smooching, etc.) or familial. 👀 And they are not the latter. However! There are interesting exceptions that have popped up that I want to look into, such as Mike and Sam (UD), Kate and Erin (TDiM), and Charlie and Mark (TDiM). John and Angela and Andrew and Angela could potentially be considered outliers, too, except there are some Little Hope-specific reasons to still lump the pairs in with one of the two aforementioned categories.

Shout out to Conrad and Fliss for killing my “there are no other examples we have of complete-strangers-before-the-game meeting and being able to max out” angle ;) Also interestingly, and again, relationship bar spoilers: in Theatrical, Conrad and Fliss can max out before Alex and Julia, despite everything going amazingly with the proposal/at every turn and Fliss being mad at Conrad for flirting with her at the start 😬 Although given Julia’s fear-based hallucinations, maybe this isn’t so much of a surprise...

On a related note, I wouldn’t be mad if it turns out there are more potentials for platonic/friends maxing, too! In fact, I’m all here for it and sometimes even prefer it. Yu-Gi-Oh! taught me to believe in the power of friendship, after all!  😤

Update 7/16: Anddd Charlie & Mark and Charlie & Jamie have kind of debunked it! However, I'm happy for Charlie, given that he kind of gets left out of the romantic stuff within TDiM, so he deserves some good relationships, too! TDiM is unique in a few ways that I'll get into in a later post (hopefully), such as being the first game where the characters don't simply start off at neutral with one another.

Fellow TDPA fans! Need help for curiosity's sake (you'll be saving me many playthroughs):

Which pairs of characters in The Dark Pictures Anthology and Until Dawn can potentially max out their relationship meter together in-game (like FULL bar)?

I'm curious if it's a small club or if it's more pairs than I think, and whether the possibilities seem to lean platonic vs romantic. (And if there's already a list somewhere... please send - I tried to look but had no luck)

Please include obvious ones like big romance subplots and ones that are worth a trophy, just so I don't forget anyone 😆 And it's fine if you only know one or two, any help is great

Thank you in advance!

[retphienix]

There are so many fucking games I want to play for the blog and I hypothetically have the time, but the energy, the attention span, the drive?

In more positive terms here are some various titles I plan to give a shot for the blog.

Let's do a 5am state of the blog kind of thing to clear some thoughts, eh?

Morrowind (Current Game ramble)

For the moment the blog is more or less on break with me playing Morrowind ""For the blog"" but mostly for me, because that's just a game I've wanted to explore. Not that every other game on the blog isn't that, just that I looked at Morrowind and said "That'll be a terrible game to present naturally. That's a stream game, or a condensed video, not a liveblog" and then did it anyway.

I'm loving Morrowind! Honestly the sense of mystery, fantasy, and adventure is just chef kiss levels of perfect to me.

But it's terrible in a photoset, I'm not particularly interested in doing another format for the game, and it's a game with less 'intense narrative themes!' and more 'Incredibly different game design compared to modern Bethesda' in terms of discussion material and let's all be real here:

We're all fucking tired of that conversation lol.

So there ain't much to talk on in depth, it's more of a "Here's a newbie seeing new things!" playthrough with nothing to talk about after the fact, which ain't a strong point for the blog- again- that's a stream/video kind of thing.

ANYWHO- Morrowind fun, about the only news I can offer on that series is that it might abruptly end and become a 'for me' series because I'm not particularly interested in beating the game nearly as much as I'm interested in exploring aimlessly and seeing what happens.

I'm not playing Morrowind for the end goal of beating the main quest, or beating the DLCs. I'm playing it to wander into caves and find new pants, so if I reach a point where I'm satisfied with what I've shared and my motivation has not borne a new end goal then I'll end the live blog and move on to a new game :P

Backlog

The short statement I'll make is that this blog is a hell for my backlog.

Even without infinite money on hand I've ended up with so many physical and digital games just sitting here waiting to be played either because they caught my eye or because of recommendations by various people over the years.

I keep sitting down, cataloguing my backlog, realizing it's pointless to catalog, deleting it all, and then starting over yet again.

The fact is, if anyone recommended it it's probably still sitting in a text document somewhere, or physically on my shelf, and I don't remotely know when I'll get to it.

I've yet to hit the point where I decide to turn this blog into work, so I have never sat down and gone "Well, Retphienix NEEDS to post! Sit down, 8-12 hours minimum, let's play the next game!"

And part of me wishes I'd do that, but the fact is this isn't a job. There's no money here, there's the opposite even! I don't remotely see it that way, but if you squint and tilt your head I've spent a lot of money on this blog over the years.

Capture devices (a lot of them!), consoles specifically bought for the blog, controllers out the wazoo, I've gone through multiple computers for this thing, and the games, my lord the games- so many games.

And that's fiscally, what about manpower? So many hours have gone into this blog, so many hours poured into the background of making all this work, researching shit, putting my all into formulating my opinions clearly for posts, writing, hell video shit even though it's mostly clips as my one step into edited content became an impromptu awkward hiatus from doing more lol.

What was I on about.

Despite all that nonsense, Retphienix is a passion project. Not a job.

If I lack the passion in some sense then the work doesn't get done "just for the sake of the work". And I don't mean lost passion as much as "No motivation on x day; tired on y day; interested in doing something else on z day" etc.

If things aren't clickin' I don't force it, so the blog has all this backlog and isn't put together in a way that facilitates burning through it quickly.

I do sometimes wish things were different though, I know I'd still enjoy such a playstyle, but I can't justify "faking it til you make it" in a format that literally isn't built to pay and was never intended to.

I can't work myself for nothin'.

Hypothetical "Next" games

While the backlog is a wild wasteland of titles, there are some that just kinda guarantee their spots sooner rather than later.

Yakuza 6 and 7 along with Judgment, obviously. The series is one of my all time favorites and I generally have some of my absolute most fun on the blog side of things with those games, so it's a winner on two fronts. It's just fun to react to, post out of context things for, and talk with other fans about and for whatever reason tumblr has a healthy enough fanbase for the series that my meager blog gets some attention there.

Dragon Quest has a strangely weighted chance all things considered. DQ has many of the same advantages as Yakuza- it's a series I adore, it's fun to talk about in this format, and the fandom is big enough to occasionally spill my way making the blogging experience a bit more fun. It's also a series where I don't know what'd come next to be fair. Probably DQ4? I mean, might as well continue on from that point since I have 1-3 done. I can't exactly justify replaying the entirety of DQ11 no matter how much I want to! Turning on the games above gave me DQ goosebumps which kinda settled how likely it is to show up sooner rather than later, lol.

Jeez. I looked at one of my surviving lists and that's like all that's popping out at me.

Other series feel like giant leaps with no gas in the tank, like do I want to start playing Kingdom Hearts? Not really, not right now. Do I finally play Lisa? Eeeeeeh. Persona? Hmmmm.

I haven't the fuzziest. There are so many one off interesting titles, but if the drive ain't there they might as well be textbooks.

Perhaps instead of any major next game I'll just do some afternoons exploring random titles for a bit here and there with no intention of beating em.

The idea is enticing as hell, but the feeling of not giving the game's a "real shake" feels bad.

We'll see. The only certainties seem to be Yakuza and DQ, as much as I'd prefer far more.

Side project hypotheticals

Outside of the basic live blog stuff I'm still interested in exploring scripted stuff. Mostly to prove to myself that I can overcome some anxieties and break from the meandering pace the last effort gave- I can write! That much I know! So just gotta trick myself into writing for a video and then make the video after the fact lol.

Current thoughts are on a video exploring the monster taming sub-genre. It's a genre near and dear to my heart, and one I know some weird things about as is- but mostly it's a genre I KNOW I know very little about despite that, so I'd like to give it an overall look, or perhaps just explore some random entries, I haven't a clue lol. I'd mostly like an opportunity to talk about some interesting entries in the genre, things like explaining my adoration for DWM while explaining how the flaws make it really rough today, or the interesting mash of genres that is Lost Magic, or the more modern take that mashes idle-like mechanics with Siralim Ultimate.

Won't lie, playing the demo for Monster Hunter Stories 2 threw a wrench in that plan because it made me want to talk about it and how the genre might have a new breath of life after really grinding to a halt as pokemon became what it is today, but all to be seen or not lol.

As far as other things like streams? Not really.

The concept of writing a bit more on games is tickling the back of my head lately, but that mostly just means "more posts that aren't live-blogging" as I haven't the fuzziest where I'd share such nonsense.

Really it's all up in the air as far as retphienix content is concerned, beyond the live blogging obviously.

5am closing

It's fun to explore what games have to offer, both on the individual level, the personal level, and as a whole- as a medium.

So I like Retphienix.

And I like all I've made here.

I hope to continue for a long, long time- no matter what future formats might look like.