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airshipvalentine · 1 year ago

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I have seen you post about it forever and yet I still haven’t been able to parse what it is or what it’s about. What’s Fremont County?

HAHAHAHA i was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask this!!

fremont county monster hunters is a monster of the week rpg campaign i've been playing sporadically for the past 2.5 years. (and when i say sporadically i mean we've played 4 arcs in about 6 or 7 ~6 hour sessions over the past two and a half years). and because of how long we go without playing (and because we are moderately obsessive people), we get reeealll hiatus-brained in the interim. i am irrevocably obsessed with it.

the premise is that the party is a group of people who can see through the Glare (like the Mist from pjo), who all attend fremont county community college in *mumble mumble* pacific northwest america. i always imagine it as northern california but i honestly don't know if there's a more specific location?

there's a prophecy involving the world ending in fire, and the five people who are there for it. (presumably to stop it, but the prophecy is pretty vague and the only person who has access to it recently lost their clairvoyance) but before that happens, we fight vampires and stuff

that's the short version. i'm gonna talk more about it though bc i can talk about this campaign forever

i play shay song, photo/journalism major first, reluctant Chosen One second. he found a meteorite sword in the woods a few weeks after his dad died under mysterious circumstances, and he's been fighting monsters ever since! he's down to earth and moderately neurotic, and desperately wants to just be normal. (sucks for him though, because that is straight up not going to happen)

also in the party are:

shamsiel, the divine. she's a cherubim sent by The Bureaucracy, a consortium of angels that's essentially a corporate office. she's been tasked with protecting shay and ensuring the prophecy comes to pass. she's a fish out of water who doesn't exactly know how to interact with people, and she's devoted to her cause above all else. i talk about her and shay most on here bc her player is also on tumblr (hiiiii sofie)

levi, the monstrous. a obnoxious rich boy and literal demon. he's sent by his demonic father to do ?????? carry out his demonic bidding? it's unclear. he likes to hang around the party and make passive-aggressive comments and be helpful when it's convenient for him. he's also shay's roommate! they had a homoerotic streak going that was probably a thinly veiled excuse for my partner an i to flirt with each other in the most roundabout way possible before we started dating. he also kidnapped a beloved npc in the most recent session! we're gonna beat him up

anna baker, the spellslinger. absolute sweetheart and heart of the party. she started learning magic and took on a superhero moniker to fight monsters and crime! (<- this doesn't come up nearly as much as it should, btw. i want a tales of ba sing se episode about cold turkey asap) oh yeah, that moniker was "cold turkey". her catchphrase is "you're about to quit crime... Cold Turkey." she's the best.

claire fitz, the mundane. currently in the "denial" stage of realizing she's a lesbian. she's a culinary arts major who carries around a fireaxe. she's kind of weirded out that she's part of this prophecy, but she's very capable and helps about as best she can. she's also lying to all her high school friends! they all think she's going to yale right now! what's that about???

and mila, the seeker! former cheerleader, constant conspiracy theory enthusiast. she's 100% convinced that aliens are real and will do her best to make sure you believe too. psyched beyond belief that she was right and monsters are real. will hold your hands and say "i don't need you to believe. i just need you to trust me and open your mind to the possibilities." kind of miffed that she isn't part of the apocalyptic prophecy, but it's fine.

also, notable npcs!

don powers, shay's former soccer nemesis. business major. kind of a dick, but we're trying to reform him. buried the hatchet with shay recently due to, uh, a common enemy forming. canonically in love with alder as of arc 4.

alder caine, don's roommate. my favorite. got into some shady deals with demons, and now they're hunting her down! levi kidnapped her in the most recent session!

nin, former clairvoyant. elected to give up their powers recently, with aid from the bureaucracy. it was sus as fuck! also dating anna. they're cute

there have been four arcs so far

from rush till prom, the vampire frat arc

the vengeful spirit stick, the cheerleader ghost arc

the switching hour, the doppelganger bottle episode

the deck of many flings, the tarot/love spell episode

ok that's the broad overview. i could talk about this for hours but i will leave it at that :) there's an in-character twitter feed i made though

#persimnon #ask #fremont county tag

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wordslikesilver · 9 months ago

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Okay I said I was gonna make an adventure quest lore post and I just gotta, so here we go. This is part of and spoils the events of the Burning Solstice Saga, primarily talking about the second last quest called The Question. Lemme give some primer though before I gush over it.

In Adventure Quest you are The Chosen One, you’re pretty much at the center of every major thing that happens in the story, even things that are seemingly happening congruently, don’t worry about it, just know you are The One, The Big Cheese, The Hero. There’s so many countless feats to your name by the time this quest takes place and you are acknowledged by and friends with pretty much every NPC in the story, it’s actually kinda nice being so properly recognized in an RPG instead of perpetually proving yourself to people over and over again. Anyhow, over the course of these wacky adventures, some of the biggest antagonists we interact with are 3 of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Pestilence and Famine. Death is pretty chill, he seemingly has some sort of arrangement with us to let us keep respawning forever as much as we need to no matter how much we die, not really explained why but don’t complain about it, also this will be important later.

Before the events of the Burning Solstice, War is well and truly fully defeated by us with the help of all our might and all our friends. He’s sorta the most recurring one by far and a constant pain to deal with. He’s got three minions, Carnage, Mayhem and Panic and those three usually possess a person to act as their vessel. Mayhem is super dead, don’t worry about him. Carnage has his own body and he’s this absolute lunatic freak meathead with a hammer who makes people go crazy and start fighting their allies while Panic possesses some poor idiot and has fear powers to drive people mad and wear away at their will to fight. The current Panic is actually a real tragic figure of a guy who just wanted to protect people and has been saddled with this darkness but after War’s defeat he managed to break free of his control and run away to figure himself out and no longer be threat to the world, very nice of him, very polite.

Leading up to the quest I’m gonna talk about, a guy named Zhilo has become delusional and started collecting War’s remnants of power, not knowing War was already dead and now thinking he’s gonna be the one to destroy War. Thing is, War is a title, not a person, and as he collects more and more of the remnants of this divine power, his Macbeth level paranoia is bringing him to do more and more stuff War would do. He thinks we’re all under War’s influence and won’t stop fighting us and spreading this madness plague wherever he goes. He imprisons Carnage and drains all the power he can from him, he’s hunting down Panic trying to find where the real War is hiding, trying to kill and drain the power from Panic and collect more pieces of the mantle of War.

At this point the following happens:

To say this final fight literally feels like it sucked the life out of me and felt like I was the idiot who just died fighting that thing is an understatement. It is EXHAUSTING and that’s the entire intention behind it, I swear it felt like it must’ve taken two fuckin hours getting through it. You’re fighting this like, Divine Abomination and the cave is collapsing around you, you desperately just need to buy some more time for everyone inside, just keep fighting. You’re taking constant damage and getting stat debuffs from the sheer exhaustion and god damn it it’s like you’re not even dealing damage at this point but you gotta keep going. You gotta protect those people. Look at this monster,

you can’t let them die to such a thing. It’s this warped and tormented and twisted dragon that’s been crafted into an engine of destruction and agony, my heart breaks for it knowing it had no choice to be turned into that, knowing it can’t stop itself.

And then you die. Rocks fall, your spirit is spent and scattered, you take the abomination with you. You did it. You saved everyone and then you died. But… this death is different than the rest. Thus, we at last reach the events of the quest I just gotta lose my shit over. The Question. Here’s the transcript:

You literally spent so much of your soul fighting that divine killing machine that the whole thing is scattered all across the robes of Death and you gotta piece yourself back together. But I gotta lose my mind over some pieces of dialogue here in particular:

“…Lords you are VAST.”

“As are you, but you are still too blind to see it and in consequence too blind to show it.”

The idea that without being able to acknowledge and know your true self, you will only take on a lesser shape of yourself? Literally slay me, fuck that’s SO GOOD. We are so vast of spirit, our soul and anima are so uncontainable that Death couldn’t hold us even if he wanted to. We literally just wouldn’t FIT. But still we don’t understand why, we don’t clue in to who we are no matter how many hints he gives or how much he explains. The mantle of War belongs to the strongest fighter in the realm the Lore. He calls Zhilo an imposter. We are The Chosen, over and over, again and again for task after task, Fate’s special lil princess, God’s favourite lil guy to pick on.

“…Who am I?”

“Who do you think you are, War?”

Leaves me on the floor in fucking SHAMBLES okay, like I am literally in PIECES at the reveal, that line in red there changed my FUCKIN BRAIN CHEMISTRY. Why is ADVENTURE QUEST, a silly lil flash game from like 2002 or something dropping lines that go THAT HARD???

Following this quest, we rise as the new War and summon Carnage and Panic to help us depose the imposter. Carnage is sane and tells us he feels like he can think clearly for the first time in years and years. He’s changed by us forever and we actually get to learn he’s the father of the man who acts as the trainer for Fighters. Panic swears loyalty to us, knowing us, knowing there is honour walking this path at our side. He will help us save Lore from Zhilo. The quest is INCREDIBLE and at the conclusion we ask the gods if we can go back to who we were and because they owe us, they allow it, but the mantle shall be reserved for us and if we call upon it in full once again, that’s it, that’s who we are now. But that’s a whole other story to gush over and one that’s still in the process of being told. In other words, y’all should go check out what’s good on your old accounts, the game still gets updated WEEKLY and it’s really really good lol, the new writer is incredible and is a SUPER nice dude you can just chat up on their discord whenever you’re confused about plot events.

#my writing #adventure quest #artix entertainment

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hq-reviews · 5 months ago

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Elden Ring: Nightreign (NETWORK TEST)

So, I got into the Elden Ring: Nightreign Network Test, and my feelings on it are…complicated.

Nightreign was surreal to me; it was like if you dreamt about Elden Ring and attempted to recreate that dream. It was familiar, but still so different. One of the most prominent examples of this, to me, was literally the beginning of your run, being at the Roundtable Hold. The Table of Lost Grace was still there, the walls looked the same, the decor was pretty much the same, etc. Then, you start to notice the major differences: rather than being washed over in this golden hue, you’re met with cool blues and purples. Where the Two Fingers would be is now replaced by a crater in the wall, allowing you passageway to the outside- something Elden Ring’s Roundtable Hold never allowed you to do. Nightreign’s Roundtable Hold is located on a small island that you can actually look around, even giving you access to a tiny training ground in which you can test your chosen character’s abilities. In Nightreign, the Hold acts like your beginning safe zone in a rogue-like. You can talk to the other characters, like I mentioned earlier, you can spar and train, and you can give yourself buffs for your next run through a process called “Relic Rites.” At the end of every run, you’re given gems which you can slot to specific characters depending on the gems’ colors. At first, I wasn’t convinced by these buffing gems, however, as I kept playing and progressing further and further per night, I realized that some of the buffs these relics give you are crazy. I remember slotting one on the Wylder character that made it so that every attack I landed built up Scarlet Rot. So, in terms of Relic Rites, I am a big fan. Beyond that, I am a little on the fence about Nightreign’s take on the Roundtable Hold; I think that, yeah, it is larger on a physical scale, however, it feels way emptier. The other characters have little to no dialogue, there are no other NPCs to interact with, etc. Anyways the actual Table of Lost Grace is your key to matchmake, allowing you to be joined by two other random players.

Anyways, before I continue on about the gameplay loop, I want to talk about the characters that were available in the Network Test, the Wylder, the Duchess, the Guardian, and the Recluse. Each character has a passive ability, a special ability, and an ultimate ability. Every character also has access to a new, yet familiar movement system. Nightreign introduced a super-sprint, which is about twice the speed of the regular sprint. Additionally, you also are given access to a wall climb à la Sekiro. Anyways, the Wylder feels like the all-rounder type of character- where he starts with a broadsword and a small shield, and his special ability allows him to use a grappling hook to latch onto enemies, or give himself a boost forward. His ultimate ability is quick- he primes up his gauntlet and then unleashes a huge explosion, knocking himself back. The Wylder’s passive, though, is basically a second life- a free resurrection. The Duchess, arguably the best character in the test, falls under the dexterous, nimble type of character. This is apparent with her passive ability, which replaces her roll with a dodge way more akin to Bloodborne’s dodges. Additionally, double-tapping the dodge button with her while moving backwards makes her do a backflip away, giving her much more range. She wields a dagger which can be infused with magic thanks to the Ash of War on the dagger. Her special ability is insanely good; she can “replay the events” of the last five seconds. In other words, say you damage a boss a lot over five seconds. If you use her restage ability, the boss you’d be fighting takes that damage again. Her ultimate ability is also insanely helpful as she shrouds the entire team, making them invisible to any enemies. Thirdly, we have the Guardian, the tank. The Guardian’s passive allows himself to utilize his shield he spawns with more effectively. There’s less of a stamina cost when the shield is hit, and he takes less damage with the shield in general. The Guardian wields a huge halberd as well and the ability to summon a whirlwind around himself, knocking any enemy in the immediate vicinity upwards. His ultimate sees him flying in the air, then following through with a powerful divebomb. Finally, we have the Recluse, who is possibly the most complicated character yet. She wields a scepter that allows her to spellcast, however, her ability, known as the Magic Cocktail, is what makes her so interesting. The Magic Cocktail works in tandem with the Recluse’s passive ability, which allows her to collect FP from marked enemies and add it to your “cocktail.” Repeating this two more times primes your cocktail to unleash a culminating elemental attack. This culminating attack depends on what elements you gather in your cocktail out of Fire, Ice, and Lightning. Her ultimate basically marks enemies in a vicinity, and any attack on that enemy from any character refills their HP and FP. So far, I think these characters play pretty well, however, they shine best when you fight as a group. I am really excited to see the four remaining characters that were promised on launch too.

To start the run, we’re given a cutscene of the three Nightfarers walking out to the edge of the Roundtable’s island, to be picked up by a gleaming blue hawk. You’re then taken on a flight in the Hawk’s talons, giving you a gorgeous aerial view of our new Limveld. I can’t lie, this cutscene gave me Call of Duty: Warzone vibes, but, it’s fine. I can learn to look past that. On top of that, though, something that I did not vibe with was the landing. After being picked up by the spectral hawk, the player has no say in where to land; in other words, the landing is scripted.

So, now that we’ve hit the ground, what’s in store for the average run of Nightreign? Well, anything, really. You can go anywhere in Limveld for a limited amount of time before the rain starts falling, and the circle forms (more on that later). There are many locations that are like remixes of locations in Elden Ring. There are others that are straight up just ported over, namely, Fort Haight. Each location marked is like a tiny dungeon with a mini-boss waiting. When killing a mini-boss, it drops a “soul” which drops rewards you can claim. Compare this to actual bosses that occur at the end of each night, in which the bosses drop souls that you can only claim one reward from. Anyways, around the map, you can also find spectral merchants (which are just Kalé) that sell consumables/items/bolstering materials. The loot in this game is color-coded, similarly to any other battle royale game. I mention this because certain bolstering items will only apply to certain rarity items. For example, instead of the numbered smithing stone system, you just have smithing stones from the merchants. These will upgrade any weapon ranging from the lowest rarity (Gray) to the mid-tier loot (Blue). That isn’t even to say that anything that isn’t Legendary is bad; in fact, something I appreciate about Nightreign is that because of the lack of emphasis on build-crafting and stat dispersion, the variety of weapons you can use feels much broader. Every weapon you find, no matter the rarity, has a built in Ash of War depending on where you find the weapon. Certain locations on the map will have a small icon highlighting the infusion of the Ash of War you can get. For example, a church could have the bleed icon on it, and the mini boss in the church would be pertaining to that; in my experience, a bleed icon meant you were going to fight a Sanguine Noble. The rune acquisition and the leveling experience is pretty straightforward; the Graces the player is so used to in Elden Ring return in Nightreign, however, they function quite differently. A Grace, when standing near it, now restores your HP and FP in its entirety. Additionally, when interacting with a grace, you are taken to a small menu that simply runs down the statistical benefits of leveling up. If, in this menu, you click the interact button again, you level up.

As we get deeper into the run, the player gets a message along the lines of, “The rain grows heavier,” signaling that the circle is closing in. This, I think, is my biggest point of contention with Nightreign. I don’t know if a Soulsborne game needed elements such as a closing circle, normally found in a battle royale. This closing circle also minimizes exploration of the entire map, which is like the antithesis to Elden Ring. Something else that I found sour in my time with the game was the difference between Days 1 and 2. At the end of a night in Nightreign, you must relocate to a safe circle, highlighted by a fragment of the Erdtree towering in the sky. In this circle, your team must fight off one or two bosses. I thought that Night 1’s final fight only consisted of a Demi-Human Queen and a Demi-Human Swordsman, however, in one of my runs, I faced the Centipede Demon from Dark Souls. That is what makes Nightreign so exciting to me. To have this updated combat system with a mix of boss fights– old and new –it’s genuinely interesting. Unfortunately, though, let me get back to my issue; after you beat Day 1, the whole map becomes shrouded by clouds, only for the veil to part, revealing…the same map. Unchanged. Enemies you killed in Day 1 don’t even respawn for Day 2. It kinda struck me as odd? However, with that flaw, there is something cool in Day 2 as well. Personally, after a few rounds, Morgott spawned in on Day 2 as a pursuer type of enemy, and he came back with a vengeance. Morgott moves way faster and has a few new tricks. His throwing daggers now fan out in sets of three, and fire really fast. Additionally, when he gets his curved sword out, Morgott now spawns like twenty bloody slashes in the vicinity that can crush your health completely if you’re not careful. I think, for this game, recycling bosses as recent as Morgott is fine, as long as the moveset is shaken up a bit like Morgott’s was. Beyond just being a pursuer enemy, he can also spawn in the final circle of Day 2. Like Day 1, after defeating the boss, it’s time for the next night, only, Day 3 takes a different (better) approach.

Day 3 takes you to a separate map which just consists of a tiny area with a merchant and a forge, and the giant gateway leading to the Nightlord. In the network test, the only available Nightlord was called the Tricephalos, or, Gladius, Beast of Night. It’s basically a fight with a cerberus wielding a chain sword. Personally, I think that’s awesome. Gladius is a completely original boss that you can tell was designed for Nightreign. It has wide-sweeping attacks with its chain-sword that can wipe the entire team if you’re not careful. Eventually, Gladius splits into three fireballs, which then materialize into three separate hounds that each Nightfarer can fight. Awesome stuff; I hope that all the Nightlords are original bosses when the full game launches.

I think I was perfectly whelmed by Nightreign. As many things as I enjoyed, I was also a little unsure of. I will give this game the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that this is the Network Test, which is like a really early build of the game. I hope that by launch, certain things are added to make the overall experience more enjoyable, like either adding new maps or changing things up on the base map between nights. To me, the replayability of Elden Ring comes from three things: the bosses, the exploration, and the weapons. Nightreign emphasizes two out of three of these elements and completely ditches the exploration and lore aspects of the game, which, on my first few playthroughs, really did not rub me the right way. Of course, though, I had to learn what I will caution everyone reading this: This game looks like Elden Ring, but it plays very different to it; if you go in expecting major lore drops or a sense of scale and exploration like Elden Ring, you will be setting yourself up for disappointment. This is, for all intents and purposes, a multiplayer-oriented game to experiment with new systems, new play-styles, and new bosses.

#video games #elden ring #elden ring nightreign #nightreign spoilers #night reign game #fromsoftware

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eclipsecrowned · 1 year ago

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For any of the deen dee ocs in any combination: // anonymous

due to the number of prompts (which i love, not going too bonkers but still giving e a wide array to work with) i'm putting the questions themselves under a cut and answering each with a muse chosen by a random generator. page stretcher under this readmore, consider checking it out on my blog.

What plot points would change due to the inclusion of your character in canon?

None, she's ostensibly a trophy in Orin's bedroom :)

Realistically, though? If there was another prisoner in the Goblin Camp, a beautiful and feral woman wrapped in several lengths of chain waiting to be uncovered by the party? I mean, you have a genuine Evil companion even in a Spare the Grove route, the Lady MacBeth and fierce angel of death in one at your Tav's ear. She unsettles. Other Companions probably aren't too fond of her. Maybe unimportant NPCs start dropping after long rests -- or maybe Miruna paces the camp at night, praying to deaf gods for the patience the player shows her. Perhaps a final battle plays out differently, with two Chosen against the player, vying together for dominance of the Brain, or perhaps she is only staring in shock at the body of a former beloved, then looking to the player wordlessly, begging with her eyes that they not leave her as this man did.

The player having the chance to mold Miruna. For acceptance or rejection of her to change the shape the narrative takes, especially into Act 3. The player has multiple ways to interact with her that will shape her ultimate fate, whether with disdain for her Urges, support for her redemption, or agreeing with her stance that 'I am not evil, but the demands made of me are.' Does the player believe in second chances, or is there a point their tolerance of her runs out -- after a particular scripted death, after the reveal of her history, in a Temple where she is killed to stifle her dark father's influence on the world, or in the end, where the player can no more ignore what she is or the damage her choices have wrought?

What changes do you think would be made between your muse as they exist in your head vs how they would be treated as part of canon?

I mean. Canon for 3 already soundly nuked my PC's narrative from orbit. His wife was ousted from the party and her character butchered in the aftermath, his post-game adventures were routed by the canon GW settling down in the Gate, Ismail just cannot catch a break. And to top it all off, the novels keep trying to make him some basic white boy named Adrian or something? Wild.

Jokes aside, if Ismail was treated as the canon GW/Bh**lspawn, I think canon would definitely whitewash him -- but not in the traditional sense. I think his being a True Neutral who only really makes a stand in the face of great evil (such as his father) and otherwise believes in balance would be a little too spicy for the era of game he existed in. He'd get a nice new paint job over his morality to be an In Name Only Neutral. He'd also likely get mischaracterized from the straight man of the party off of which his Companions can shine to a willing buffoon alongside his sequel besties Haer'Dalis and Jan.

Knowing Bioware in that era, he's a white guy, too.

God help me I fear what his romance with Vi would be made into. From a genuine respect and sympathy to 'I Can Fix Her' bait or a young guy who got caught in the talons of an sexy sexy but oh so evil seductress. Comments by returning companions in 3 that his son was the only good to come out of that union or something equally insulting to the Ismonia dynamic.

What would their haters dislike about your character? Is it a petty complaint? A mischaracterization of the character or their intentions? Are they just a woman in a largely male-centric series?

Gruff, not conventionally attractive, not romanceable by the majority of players' (cis dudes) Tavs... Aurelia'd get the Astarion treatment where people probably need to sit down with haters of a certain degree and go 'no put in words to me what about this character makes you uncomfortable, show me on the doll what aspects of her character are so viscerally repugnant to you.'

People could be petty, racist, misogynistic, and lesbophobic in a single swoop. Instead of someone with flat affect who is clearly teasing half the time, she'd be taken for a stone cold bitch who is needlessly cruel to companions. Everything she does is the worst. She's a cheap Lae clone. Her pragmatism is evil rather than practical. Her neutrality is evil, actually. Fandom has already proven that a canonical Druid talking about the element he works with is so annoying and cringe and they're aiming that at a white dude. Aurelia would get it worse for talking about nature. The thing she also protects as a Ranger. Her habit of slapping nicknames on her Companions? How disrespectful. Also her hitting on Lae'zel/Karlach/Shadowheart/the PC is clearly predatory and uncalled for. She's literally as bad as Cazador for being open about her attraction/appreciation for women. Also her being half-Gur is just crudely shoehorned in and for fake woke points.

She was also totally the last character developed and it shows in her writing. Clearly just there to meet a quota. She's just so annoying. Ignore that if she were canon she would definitely not be a last minute addition and have a clear arc/narrative to accomplish in addition to helping the PC beat a brain into submission.

What controversies/drama would your character incite in fandom?

I have briefly touched on this before, but unless someone was playing teen Tav or followed the HC that Lae'zel is also incredibly young, Sybelle is the youngest member of party at a stated 20. No problem, right? She's a professional in her field and by the standard of her society and race is a grown adult. Any greenness is actually the result of being a reclusive academic for her entire coming of age, not of any inborn immaturity/innocence/childishness related to her age, and damn sure not as a result of her autism.

Good luck convincing fandom of any of that, however.

She's 20. If you ship her with any character beyond Wyll (canonically ~24) or Lae'zel (fanon early twenties) then why do you support grooming/exploitation of children? Shipping her with Gale/Shadowheart/Karlach is right out unless you want the discourse of all discourse -- and forget about shipping her with Halsin, Astarion, the Emperor, or any character with an extended lifespan and centuries of life experience. And sure, people are allowed to be uncomfortable with age gaps, or to not want to see certain characters shipped for any reason. But there'd be a lot of unnecessary moralizing around someone, say, preferring to see Gale and Sybelle's dynamic as mentor/mentee or father figure/heartwarming orphan. It's not just that someone doesn't like the ship when romantic or is discomforted by a different read, it's that the ship is predatory and only backed by degenerates.

Also she's autistic, so she's so babygirl and a sweet bean and if you even think of 'sexualizing' her by acknowledging she is a grown adult who is capable of feeling sexual or romantic attraction, then you're some kind of pervert. I mean, she's never been out in the world before! What a wholesome innocent baby. Not a single sinful thought behind those big baby cow brown eyes. There's not a chance she's actually interested in living life rather than reading it and making a double entendre at the player about anatomical studies -- No, wait, go back, delete that footage, you can't sexualize an autistic child of 20, the devs are perverts too --

Also she's of Shou descent, so any attempt to depict her as an attractive young woman is fetishizing her. I'm too white to get into this except to say I have seen some friends on the dash grump about how my peers in fandom like to gatekeep how characters of color can be portrayed even by those of shared background. And I just know Sybelle is not getting out of that hellhole unscathed.

Are there ship wars? Are they a popular character to ship, or the kind of character that gets shuffled off and away from shipping for whatever reason?

I can see the many branching paths off of this. Roxelena is a big tiddied bard who is both poor little rich girl and desperately seeking purpose. She's so latchable for Power Fantasy Self-Insert types to push their fav they're projecting on towards -- imagine the edgiest straight guy trying to write fic where Lena is the standard hero reward to a wildly OOC Percy or Artemis type.

On the other hand, she's a big beautiful woman so she's automatically a fat slag to most. There's definitely a contingent of fandom who oh my god just didn't realize that they didn't write Lena into their shipfics, or into any fic at all! It's totally not fatphobia gaiz! She's just such a girlboss that doesn't need a disgusting man! Ignore the fact she's pretty open and available sexually and easily distracted by men's asses!

On my mutant third appendage, the back and forth about her sexuality. To wit, Lena is bi, and was initially designed as a ship oc for a genderfluid PC in a certain piece of media. But she attended an all-female bard college where she remains infamous for her... plucking techniques, shall we say. She's also not conventionally attractive, so she must be a lesbian. But wait, what about her being bi? Well, she's not actually attracted to women, because she flirts with a character who is masculine -- even if more in the way a peacock is masculine. She's straight. But what about her being bi? This point can no longer be heard over the screaming match between the other two.

In like actual real life Lena 'fandom' I think Pupper is aiming for her to be part of a Half-Orc/Tiefling sandwich, while I paid him actual legitimate money to draw the other party Tief touching her boobs. Vote now for Team Mollena or Team Fjorlester.

How does fandom characterize/mischaracterize your characters ship in fanworks?

So here's the thing. Unless the party -- be that in tabletop play, as a Companion in 3, or played in a podcast -- were to go to Evertide for some reason, Mystery's canonical partner will never be seen. She's not a ghost in the narrative, dialogue allows Myst to talk about her and their daughter and get a sense of her history with him, but she's never present in it, either.

Canon would likely state she's a human, she and Myst arrived as outsiders to the city around the same time, and he gave her a post at his shop to get her out of a life scrubbing chamberpots. They've been together for over a decade now and have a daughter to show for it. He's out in the world trying to find whoever tried to hurt her in an attempt to rob the shop several years ago. There's a bit of an age gap between them, but he'll note that their experiences measure up when tallied.

This would give fandom a lot of ground to play with or ruin. Is she a former Adventurer herself? A farm-girl come to the city to make her fortune? A traveler who fell on hard times? How does this reflect on her dynamic with the worldly and charismatic Myst? Is the age gap significant and shift the perspective of the ship as equal, no matter what Myst says, or is it negligible and Myst is only being self-conscious about his own mid-life crisis? Does the fact he was once her employer change the power dynamic inherent to their interactions, and does it become better or worse depending on where the age gap falls? Does his refusal to marry her or recognize her as anything beyond 'partner' denote a mutual doffing of convention, or hint at a deeper hesitance to commit or even a questioning of the relationship, and if so, is he the one resisting, or her?

The gamut runs from 'old married in every way but ceremony couple who tease/fuss but are clearly devoted to one another' to 'wife guy myst and his sweet younger housewifey' to 'myst is a bad bofriend actually and his partner is a victim of that power imbalance' to 'they're actually qpp life partners and just happen to share a kid.'

Be honest. What song is playing over an AMV/tiktok of scenes between your character and their love interest?

I spun three times and landed on Lena each time. God Himself is trying to get me to shame myself on a public platform. Fuck it. Mollena hours.

Angstier ones that acknowledge canon/his fate probably go feral for Francesca. The themes of loving despite the imminent heartbreak, the determination of love in every life, the attestation that love was worth any pain, it'd all play wonderfully over animatics or beautifully edited fanart compilations of Lena not just with Molly but his... Other halves, as it were.

Her being a bard, I can see bardcore covers being popular for both of them. I keep thinking specifically of that one cover of Willow. The idea he's this enigmatic force of nature that dragged her out of her sheltered existence and gave her a taste of chaos and adventure. I beg of thee please, take my hand, foil my plans, thou'rt my man...

#mirunatbt #ismailtbt #sybelletbt #aureliatbt #lenatbt #mysttbt #anonymous

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sukaitsuriarchive · 8 months ago

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Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (8/8)

the second aspect in smt2 that stands out: the crazy twist obviously

i still have mixed feelings over how weirdly written the law ending is but nevertheless the concept of an artificial messiah group was dope. they're pretty much what i'd like to see being explored in fanart the most

aleph felt linked to all these other lab creations and he must watch their fall caused by the fake roles assigned to them that in the end god would never truly approve of

i guess this must be why zayin got so convinced they should keep going even without yhvh

that being said, sadly aleph's connection to them is not really put as much weight as it could've been, he feels super detached because their interactions are very sparse, tbh i think it could've helped if all of them... were playable at some point like mt2 ryu or the smt1 friends. i was fine with the small amount of dialogue in mt2 and smt1 but smt2 is where i felt it ended up really diminishing the impact

i unironically ended up being more fond of the "what could've been" situation between aleph and our dead beth than hiroko lmao she has such an insane reveal behind her but the whole thing goes just "lol. crazy. anyway let's keep going"

izanami randomly appearing to comment "oh you two remind me of my marriage that is fucked up but for entirely different reasons"

oof how could i forget to show earlier

aside his sunglasses form zayin also turns into this cool shape with six boobs. iconic

the theme connection between smt2 and smt4a that i finally could confirm from that interview was that even back then they did think smt2 satan leaned towards neutral despite being from the law route, with killing yhvh and all. that's why they made him neutral in smt4a

and now for the third and last thing it's... finally the game where demon fusion gets fun but most importantly: where kaneko starts slaying HARD on demon designs. crazy amount of exclusive designs he was able to draw, a lot even beyond of what they could do relevantly with

alright let's go for the bad!

1. it's a replay nightmare. full of bugs. it somehow has a worse interface than smt1's. gotta mention AGAIN that you can't auto guns. by far the smt where you get lost the most and you gotta write down several passwords to enter locked doors

the dungeon design in smt1 wasn't super diverse either but smt2 it's just... excruciatingly boring. "shitload of doors with nothing" the game. you don't really have reason to fill the whole map because they don't put any reward whatsover be with items or npcs with information

2. THE SOUNDTRACK SUCKS period. it's the same composer from mt1-2 so my disappointment for how cheap the snes games sound in comparison is abysmal. they aren't improved much in the psx rearrangements either

instead of a final boss theme they use the same music from several major bosses (regardless of alignment) and it's just... this

youtube

compare it to the super special one from mt2

and now 3... this might surprise you guys since i just talked abt them being better at writing the law and chaos sides and to be fair this is on a subjective perspective but... i didn't like the alignment choices in this game

smt2 to me was essentially a game with dope worldbuilding and dope story concept all ready to be deliciously consumed on a plate but the execution ended up not feeling satisfying on the stomach

i think what made me like smt4&a way more than smt2 is that it showed more impact from the choices happening around the protagonist in a way that i could say "yeah this alignment makes sense for what he's feeling"

basically there's already very few relevant alignments choices and they went too far on making aleph an incognito for the player to insert their own thoughts into so the final result is that he ended up being awfully hard to read and sympathize with

guy is probably not even a year old, no hint of childhood, had fake memories but got them wiped (double brainwashing??) so he was literally a blank state with no humanity inserted into by the time he was found and taken by the gym uncle

he had no mercy in killing when he was a gladiator too so the likely options for aleph's personality is: 1. church tool (fake memories) 2. basically him copying the gym uncle and the normal citizens around him (after his memory got reset)

anyway i think you can guess where i'm going with this, a lot of the buildup to aleph has him either instinctly acting on the law side since it was what he was made for or he gradually replacing his default persona with feelings of compassion from living with normal people

the thiiiiing is, the biiiiiig problem i have with how the alignment system is written in some games that is ALSO a thing here is that when they want to make the player decide between law or chaos they don't discern between dark/light actions (aka being selfish or being selfless)

you'd think being a church tool would make aleph a cold-hearted guy. but no! remember the subplot with the workers in sweatshops? if you decide to release them from being incarcerated, it gives a LOT of points towards being law instead

the chaos side on the other hand wants to protect the underworld and the abyss residents from being exterminated but if you wanna join them you have to act like a selfish jackass in some instances like refusing to help hiroko, wanting to kill daleth or violently coercing demons

so tldr my frustration is that it was just really confusing why aleph would switch from law to other alignments. it got extra ?? with the whole "fake" yhvh and "true" yhvh thing. i don't think they even put down a proper explanation for why he'd prefer killing lucifer in neutral

like geez lucifer is so goddamn selfless in this era! he had his own agenda but prioritized giving help to the weak until the end instead of going on a rant of 'hurr the strongest wins'

man i can't stress enough that law was a big punch on the gut not only for zayin going 180º but also because the game gave you the impression you were gonna be "the kind law guy" and instead you got betrayed and forced to genocide the whole planet into oblivion

anyway that's what i fucking mean when i say aleph is hard to read 🙉 when aleph showed compassion to workers it was a buildup to abandon them in the limbo. when aleph was violent to mutants it was a buildup for him siding with them against the oppressors. like wtf

so yeah something something this game is biased towards being neutral since it was a sequel/alternate future to smt1 just like smt4a was to smt4. it's the best standpoint for how to make his actions make sense, whatever. aleph neutral hooray i guess

END

#shin megami tensei ii #game #review

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willsnerdcorner · 2 years ago

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So, I’ve been playing D&D since 2014ish(?), and as one could guess I have created a lot of characters since then. I also love getting art of them (something I didn’t start doing until 2018/2019) as well as notable NPCs and villains. So, I’m going to post the art and talk about the characters because why not? Let’s talk about my gunslinger Kate, not my favorite but still second as well as my longest running character (3.5-4 years I believe?).

Anyway, this lovely piece drawn by my friend Veronica (ArtStation in the link) is of my high elf gunslinger Kate. Quick description of the character since this is more of a discussion of the thought process of the character:

Katelyn Evelyn Sulyvahn Van Doren was born to the Van Dorens, a noble house run by a fair family and mostly beloved by their people. When she was 60, her family were overthrown by rebels and killed off mostly. The only survivors of this massacre were her, and unknown to Kate her older sister. The people who overthrew her family enacted an old punishment so cruel most people thought it was an urban myth (more to come on that since I want to make sure I TW that section). Eventually she was freed by a man named Oberon who took her under his wing as a bounty hunter as he showed her new weapons he had stolen/replicated, guns.

She suffered through intense PTSD and it was only through Oberon she was able to go from unfunctional to functioning somewhat. A ten year process that would have felt like a flash of time for someone who would be as long lived as Kate. She wanted to kill her tormentors, but not out of a sense of vengeance. She wanted to be able to sleep at night without worry they would bring her back to these people. Eventually, Kate would meet up with the party and travel with them after a scuffle landed Oberon in hot water so they had to travel separately. Thus began her adventure…

From this point onwards I will discuss the making of her character as well as potentially upsetting things. For those in need: trigger warnings of torture, body image issues, and mental illness. You have been warned.

When I designed Kate I knew that there would be some comparison to a much more famous gunslinger, Percy from Critical Role. I’d be lying if some of his story beats didn’t form the base of this character. It’s only natural, but the key was to have the same beats differently. Percy is a character driven by vengeance that threatens to consume him. Kate I wanted to make a character that needed to kill some of these people to be left alone. Kate never really wanted vengeance but these people who tormented her were extremely present and powerful in the setting. With the main one she interacted with being one of the major antagonists of the last arc. She could not just let them be, they would always come to find her unless she could prove that was a bad idea or just remove the ones who would hunt her most of all.

This is a character colored by her traumatic past, and while I did try to include things in that made her a character versus a pizza cutter (jury is out if I did that or not) it informed a lot of her attributes so that she was only her traumatic past. When creating this character, I included a lot of little details that tried to show a softer side to this character that might not be readily apparent. A love of oranges, a desire to still be able wear dresses, finding an owl familiar she named Jareth, and eventually taking up guitar. She couldn’t be all trauma or else that would just make for a poor character.

We do need to talk about the source of her trauma if we want to discuss the character overall. During the 30 years her captors kept her imprisoned they were merciless in how they tormented her. I do not want to go into details, since outside of the DM as well as one player, I didn’t not super disclose those details to the party since I didn’t think it was needed because it was always way scarier to have them guess and also I did not think she was a character who would want it brought up. All the party knew was she was covered from her neck down in scars and magical chain tattoos that no one until one Yuan-Ti shaman later could remove as well as she been tortured by these people. The chains were the most concerning and distressing to her as they were a constant reminder of the fact that she never would be truly free of them. In the same way, I often had her in pain for long treks or needing to lean on things to rest when she had to exert herself often. The weather playing havoc when the pressure dropped and her body was in constant pain as a result.

The body scarring and tattoos did come from a slightly personal place, body image. I have a lot of them, and this sort of informed the character. Both Kate and I wear a lot of clothes to hide our skin so people can’t see it. Albeit for different reasons (her’s are the result of intensive torment), a part of her journey was slowly becoming more at peace with what she was dealing with as she looked for a way to fix the damage done to her. To at least not be freaked out whenever her clothes ripped or anyone saw her old wounds. This played a part of a person who was sort of hampered by pain that eventually managed to overcome it by the end. Overall, how she handled it was inspired by how I have hidden my own insecurities. So I don’t want to say this is a great allegory for handling body image issues overall, but the how was at least personally inspired on what I’ve had go through my head.

Kate was also special since she was the first queer PC I had ever made. It took me a long time to accept my bisexuality, and I only came out to my family in the last year or so. So, I tested the waters by making my characters LGBTQ to sort of prepare for that. Kate is a lesbian, and her story ultimately ends with her raising her niece on a nice plot of land with Oberon, a gnome named Crawshack, and her girlfriend later wife Inari (who didn’t take Kate’s last name since they would have run out of room on the marriage certificate). She gets her happy ending, with a loving souse and a family on a farm somewhere where she can live undisturbed.

A lot of folks have also asked me why a gunslinger? I was playing a lot of Red Dead 2. That’s literally it. Some things don’t have a deep reason.

Probably should stop here, but if folks like this I might write up more of my characters later. Let me know!

#dnd #dnd art #dnd character #gunslinger #high elf #dungeons and dragons #dungeons and dragons art #dungeons and drawings #dung #character write up

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glowing-gravity · 2 years ago

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hey, I've played all the Persona games, I can weigh in!

first up- there's no need to play the games numbered games in order, though you probably would want to play persona 1 before persona 2 because some characters return in minor roles, and play persona 2: innocent sin before persona 2: eternal punishment because that one's a literal sequel. persona 3, 4, and 5 have some very minor references to previous games, but it's nothing major at all, so you don't really miss anything if you don't recognize the references!

a lot of people start with persona 5 because it's the most recent! like previous said, though, if you start with persona 5 and then want to go back and play the others, you'll have to adjust to having fewer and fewer of the quality of life features, haha, so keep that in mind.

onto the specifics per game, which might answer your question a little more thoroughly:

persona 1's PSP port is good! you just don't want to play the original ps1 release of it (aka Revelations Persona) because they REALLY "localized" it with weird errors, edited all the characters' sprites to make them white (except one teammate they made black), and cut the entire second storyline out. persona 1 also doesn't have really any dating to speak of- I think there's maybe once where the protagonist gets asked which female teammate he's interested in? it's very much a dungeon crawling jrpg, that basically goes from dungeon to cutscene to dungeon with little in the way of "breaks" in between, and most character interaction takes place during cutscenes or areas where you can briefly talk to your teammates

persona 2: innocent sin also got a PSP port at the same time! this one's also the best way to play it, and it's honestly even smoother than p1's port imo. persona 2's sequel, eternal punishment, doesn't have an official english release of its own PSP port, unfortunately, but there's a fan group that translated the game if you don't want to play the somewhat-janky original ps1 release! persona 2 is currently the most outright lgbt-friendly persona game, as the protagonist in innocent sin is canonically bisexual, and can pick a male teammate as well when asked who he's interested in, and one of the male teammates is interested in him as well. there's two wlw npcs, and some nameless trans npcs around the city that can be encountered. keep in mind, however, that innocent sin's PSP port came out in 2011, so there may still be some things about the portrayal that feel a little dated. also, persona 2 is still very much dungeon crawling with cutscenes, though there's a bit more freedom to it and what you can do with your time

persona 3 is best played on its PSP port as well (persona 3 portable), with the most quality of life features and a female protagonist option, though only the ps2 rerelease (persona 3 fes) has the epilogue of the game. it does have a remake coming out in early 2024 as well, which should have quality of life improvements on par with persona 5, but lacks the female protagonist option and epilogue, so it's still not perfect. also, please be aware its theme is "death", and it features suicidal imagery (most prominently in that teammates need to shoot themselves with a fake gun to summon their personas), so it may not be for everyone! it's probably the heaviest persona game, and while very emotionally impactful, it's worth knowing what you're getting into. persona 3 is the first one to feature the Social Links prev mentioned, which means you balance an everyday life and friends with the dungeon crawling and story aspects, and can also more properly hang out with and date characters. there aren't any male characters that the male protagonist can date via social link, but there are two female characters that fall in love with the protagonist regardless of the gender you pick, and one male character that states he'd feel the same about the protagonist regardless of gender.

persona 4 is best played in its rerelease form (persona 4 golden), either as its original ps vita release, or its steam/switch port. persona 4's theme is truth, which involves a lot of characters confronting things about themselves they were denying, with a clear LGBT theme. however, it has a reputation as the "gay and homophobic" persona game for a reason- while there's one character who's heavily implied to be gay, and another heavily implied to be trans, the game walks back on these at the last second, and there's a lot of homophobic comments from some characters. it's very blatantly a product of the time it was made, which makes it feel authentic in its presentation of what the characters grapple with to some players, and uncomfortable to others (and sometimes even both at once). the protagonist can't date any male characters, however there is scrapped content where he was originally going to be able to date one. with the steam port, people have made mods restoring this link (along with a mod to stop the game misgendering the trans character), so that sort of thing may be of interest to you if you'd like to try persona 4!

persona 5 is best played in its rerelease form (persona 5 royal) as well! it originally came out on ps4, and was since ported to steam and switch. persona 5's theme is rebellion (against society, primarily), and the playable characters act as phantom thieves who change the hearts of really terrible people in an attempt to reform society. as the most recent numbered release in the series, it has by far the most quality of life improvements, and the best graphics by a distinct margin. there's a ton of stuff to do in this game besides the dungeons, and even besides the social links really. you still cannot date any male characters in it, though. there is a drag queen who runs a bar you can visit (she's great!), but there are also two cutscenes with very stereotypical gay men, where the joke is that they're pushy gay guys (which was at least improved from the original persona 5 game, where they were predatory gay guys).

as for the best place to start, that really depends on you! p1 is perfectly fine if you like to start things from the beginning (or if you otherwise plan to play every persona game, and don't want to feel like you're "losing" features if you go backwards), p2 is what I'd recommend if you're most invested in having LGBT characters present, p3 is a really good place to start if you want to begin with a more "modern" persona game (ie, that has the social link system and isn't almost entirely dungeon crawling), p4 is what really started putting the persona series on the map and probably the goofiest tone persona game overall (despite some of its obvious flaws), and p5 is the most recent one that a lot of people start with simply because it's newest and showcases everything the series has to offer!

sorry, that was a lot of info! I wanted to try to answer the question as thoroughly as I could, both for the anon and anyone else who might be interested, hah! feel free to shoot me an ask if you want me to elaborate on anything; I tried to keep this as spoiler-free as possible while still getting the info in there that felt most important!

Hope this is okay but I'm curious about the Persona games because of this bracket tournament and I'm hoping someone can recommend where to start? Do you need to play all of the games in order? Which game has objectively the best dating options? Which if any games are the most LGBT+ friendly?

I've never played a persona game before but feel free to infodump in here people!

#i speak #I have so many persona thoughts. in my brain. you understand #I also emulated p1 - p3 so I can help with that too haha

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nikos-oneshots · 3 years ago

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maybe a hero and reader? where reader really likes drawing and often draws hero without him knowing, either showing him the drawings it he finds them? thank you if you do! <3

-☘ anon

Hero with a Crush / Partner who Loves to Draw.

|| Request Information ||

Warnings: None!

Word Count: 775

Pronouns: Unmentioned / Second Person

Notes: Welcome to the blog ☘ Anon! Glad to have you here!

You were always quiet, not shy, but quiet. You never really talked to anybody unless they were to talk to you first and because of that, nobody really spoke to you

A few people caught your eye that you might want to interact with, but you never managed to talk to them. Major NPC energy.

Your favourite place to sketch was the park, it would get you out of the house and give you many ideas on what to draw. You just preferred to sit in a nice place and sketch whatever came to mind.

One day you would be drawing all the pets you had seen, next would be mythical creatures along with infrastructure design and the next would be the people you have seen around Faraway.

You had a couple pages in your sketchbook dedicated to the people you would draw. You liked how unique everybody's appearance was so it was your favourite thing to draw.

You wouldn't actually tell the people you were sketching that you were sketching them. They usually wouldn't notice so you had an easy time with your work. You don't think many of them knew you existed.

One beautiful, summer day was spent by you at the park, as usual. You had been sketching some flowers that were growing by the tetherball court since nobody had been around that day.

You began to hear a group of people walk by near the entrance of the park. You look up and saw a group of 6 walk over by the basketball court. You had seen them around before but had never interacted with them.

One of the guys in the group caught your eye, he was tall and had neatly-styled brown hair. He appeared around your age. You had only remembered seeing him maybe once?

You instantly started sketching him as he sat against the tree right beside it, giving you the perfect opportunity to sketch him properly.

After a bit, you noticed he managed to catch on that you were sketching him, but he didn't say anything right away. You felt embarrassed that somebody noticed you when you were so used to feeling like they never did.

You were so close to done with the sketch, but you honestly wanted to leave and never see that guy again. You decided that if he didn't walk up and talk to you, it's okay if you stayed to finish it, so that's what you did.

After a bit, you finished your sketch of him, you started to get up to quickly make your exit but as you were about to leave, someone stopped you. It was him.

"Hey! Sorry if this sounds a little self-centered, but I couldn't help but notice that when you were sketching, you were looking right at me. Where you sketching me?"

He was met with a lot of stuttering and muttering from you. He didn't seem weirded out by your nervousness, he actually kind of seemed understanding in a weird way?

You eventually told him that yes, you had decided to sketch him. He was immediately curious and asked to see the drawing. Since you thought it would be weird to say no, you let him see it. You didn't want him to feel like you were hiding something.

He was amazed at your skills. "It looks so accurate! You must have an eye for detail!".

You liked that you were getting praised for your work, maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to stay and finish it after all.

As you began to relax around him, he invited you to come to meet the other people he was with. You met his brother Kel and his friends, Aubrey and Sunny. You could tell Kel liked you right from the start, Sunny and Aubrey might need some time to get to know you.

Sunny and Hero were just visiting which made you sad, but on the bright side, Hero went to college in the same town that Sunny lives in, so you could keep in touch with both of them easily.

Now because of that interaction, because you decided to draw the pretty boy you saw in the park, you had an amazing group of friends! You began to hang out with them often and soon, Sunny and Aubrey began to warm up to you as well as you met one of their friends, Basil!

Your favourite thing to draw went from the faces of people around Faraway town, to one specific person in under a week, that person being Hero. You managed to memorize how his face looked, even without seeing it in person.

Sorry for the short post, I'm planning on doing a part 2 to this! I have more to say about Hero and his Artist S/O so look out for that! Also sorry if I have seemed dead for like a week. Last week was really busy for me, I had a huge exam for English which I'm pretty sure I passed and last night I just saw the Cavetown Concert in Toronto! It was so much fun for my first concert and I even got the tour shirt! Anyways, I'm sure to get requests done, I'm excited to write for them!

Lots Of Love

-Niko🥞

#Omori #omori headcanons #omori x reader #omori game #omori hero #hero omori

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ladyofsnark · 2 years ago

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So I got around to restarting Skyrim for the first time in a few years and I’ve finally nailed down what it is that bothers me about the narrative:

It’s too broad.

I’m not talking about how the Dragonborn basically becomes a living God who rules all of Skyrim, because that’s pretty par for the course in a Bethesda game.

I mean more in an interactive fiction, choose your own adventure way.

Skyrim’s pretty famous for being able to just do whatever, to the point that you can actually avoid the main plot entirely. If you skip the first couple quests in the main story arc, you don’t become the Dragonborn and you can play a “no dragon” play through where it’s just you fucking up Skyrim as a regular bitch.

And that’s fun. That’s great.

But since all of the NPCs have voiced lines, things have to be kept EXTREMELY generic. If you are playing a proper play through and you join any one of the guilds (or all of them if you want), they never recognize you as the Dragonborn. Even in the half-second you can tell someone from the Mage’s guild “I’m the Dragonborn” in a post-main quest play through, that’s it. That’s the extent of it. Even when you’d think that the mages would literally be the most eager to accept you and study what you can do. That’s the only acknowledgement.

The Companions treat you like a whipping boy (for all of five seconds until they decide you’re their new chieftain), Brynjolf just “has a feeling” you’re special, the Psyjics during the College’s story line don’t even say shit about it and they literally know the future. And it’s literally not like it’s a secret that you’re Dragonborn. Random NPCs comment on it, you can kill dragons right in the middle of major settlements and have twenty witnesses to you consuming its soul, leaving just a dried husk of bones in the middle of the main thoroughfare--

But none of the branching quests acknowledge this. You have to prove yourself to them, even though the rest of Skyrim is tripping over themselves about your very existence. This is especially wonky in quests for, say, the Thieves Guild. Where you being the Dragonborn would probably make you an immediate threat to Mercer Frey--or the Guild in general-- and they’d want to avoid you. Because while they don’t operate in secret, you’d think some level of anonymity would be welcomed and you become a household name in the first 5 seconds of the game.

And narratively that’s a MASSIVE disconnect all for the sake of “Choosing your own story”. It’s literally “freedom” at the cost of a cohesive narrative--the MAIN narrative no less.

Don’t get me started on the Stormcloaks. It’s outright stated that Tullius doesn’t believe in the Dragonborn, so his being blatantly unimpressed with you MAKES SENSE. Ulfric on the other hand is basically obsessed with being a “true Nord” and should logically be doing all he can to court your favor because YOU are literally a figure from Nord mythology come to life. That straight up doesn’t happen.

(Which is fine. If Ulfric respected me it might be just a tiny bit harder to enjoy eventually lopping his dumnb, racist, traitorous ass head off.)

#The Elder Scrolls #skyrim #dragonborn

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livefreeforfun · 3 years ago

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Sonic Frontiers Review: Aptly Crossing a New Frontier.

Sonic Frontiers is the latest 3D platforming game to be released in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, following the releases of Sonic Forces, Sonic Colors Ultimate (SCU), and Sonic Origins, their previous three 3D platforming titles. Forces, SCU, and Origins’ releases were met with a lot of criticism due to not meeting the fanbase’s expectations for a variety of reasons, so in the days before Frontiers’ released, I was excited but chose to keep a healthy level of skepticism just in case the game wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Suffice to say, the hype for the game was extremely well earned, as I had an absolute blast playing through Frontiers. To help me get all my points across as to why I like this game so much, I’ll be dividing this review into two parts: the gameplay segment and the story segment. I’m doing this for two reasons: the first being that I believe both need to be talked about separately so I can really dive deep into what makes them so good, and the other is so that people who only want a gameplay review aren’t spoiled on some of the more major plot points of the game. With that being said, here are my thoughts on Sonic Frontiers!

Future Updates

As I was in the process of putting this review together, Sonic Team revealed that over the course of 2023, the game would be getting a series of 3 free updates, and the last of those updates would contain a story update involving more playable characters, showing pictures of Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. Obviously, this is massive and very exciting, but since it’s not out I can’t exactly factor any of what’s coming in updates into this review. Hopefully if I have the time and remember to do so, I’ll make an addendum to this review or separate posts going over each update. Anyways, NOW this review can start!

Gameplay

Sonic Frontiers sets out to tackle a new style of gameplay it calls Open Zone gameplay. Sonic Frontiers takes place on a series of islands, with each island being an open zone. As soon as you unlock the island, you’re able to go anywhere on the island right from the start, defeating minibosses and collecting Memory Tokens wherever you please, but more on that in a moment. The zones are fairly big in size, giving you plenty to explore at Sonic’s mach speeds and never really feeling cramped.

While exploring the islands, Sonic will be able to find rails, springs, and other such platforming obstacles that you’d find in your typical Sonic level. These will lead Sonic into short platforming segments, and by completing them he can earn Memory Tokens, which are essential to completing the game. Think of them as bite-sized levels. They’re typically pretty fun, though some of them lock you into playing in 2D, which kind of defeats the point of an open zone, but outside of that I enjoy these small chunks of platforming.

Memory Tokens are used not only to progress the story, but also to have smaller, more bite-sized interactions with other characters. Engaging with characters doesn’t take away any Memory Tokens from you, so if you have enough to initiate a conversation, go have a chat with them! However, every island has a different type of Memory Token, meaning that tokens you collect on the first island won’t help your progress on the second. Sometimes collecting the tokens felt like a pain, but I enjoyed the experience of exploring the islands regardless.

Scattered around the island are various puzzles that, as a reward, give you seeds. These seeds can be taken to an NPC to increase your attack or defense, depending on the type of seed you have. While I’m sure it isn’t necessary to raise your stats, I’d highly recommend doing so, as some enemies towards the end of the game are quite difficult.

The Cyloop is Sonic’s main new ability in this game and it’s used for puzzle solving and combat. The Cyloop is essential to solving many puzzles in the game, and using it on enemies can put Sonic in an advantageous position during combat. Simply drawing a circle will give you rings and drawing an infinity symbol will give you infinite boost in the open zones!

Exploration in this game is a breath of fresh air for the franchise, helping to break up the monotony of just playing level after level after level. I keep finding myself thinking of how cool previous games in the franchise, namely Forces, could have been if they had tried a similar Open Zone system. I hope the development team behind future Sonic games try and implement Open Zone gameplay into their future games, as I had a blast with it in Frontiers.

There is one more ability that Sonic has to use to help him explore, and that’s the Dropdash. I think it’s really cool that it’s in this game, even though I don't think it contributes a ton as I rarely found myself using it. The one oddity about it though is how it handles speed: the Dropdash uses momentum similar to how the classic games do, as in when you go down a slope, you gain speed, and when you go up a slope, you lose speed. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a complaint! It’s fun to roll down various hills to see how much speed can be built up. But if they’ve implemented that kind of design for the Dropdash, why can’t the whole game play this way? Why limit it to exclusively the Dropdash? I know that this is definitely more of a nitpick but as soon as I noticed it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Shifting focus more on combat now, inhabiting the islands are many strange looking robots for Sonic to take on with his myriad of new combat abilities, and by defeating them he can earn skill points to unlock more abilities. The only ability essential to beating the game is the Cyloop, but the others can help speed up combat in very flashy manners so long as you know how to combo them together properly.

The combos in this game are incredibly stylish and perfectly fitting of the blue blur, it’s always a blast to experiment with linking different skills together against different enemies. You can tell that the developers really put a lot of thought into making these skills and their effort certainly were not in vain.

One skill you don’t need any skill points to unlock is the ability to Parry. Parrying lets you deflect any enemies attack right back at them and counter with a flurry of your own. While having the ability is nice, it has a very noticeable flaw: you can hold your parry for as long as you want. In my opinion, this does ultimately take away from the combat as it means that as long as you hold your parry, you’re not in any real danger. Holding it in midair also causes Sonic to awkwardly float which, while funny, definitely looks just a little strange.

While exploring the islands you’ll encounter named opponents that serve as minibosses, one such example being found in the gif above, named Ninja. Being minibosses, they’re naturally tougher than the generic enemies Sonic will run across in the open zones, but defeating them is essential, as they drop Portal Gears. The bosses come in many different shapes and sizes and will attack Sonic in many different ways, so you should be ready for anything. These can range anywhere from incredibly fun to just a slog to fight (looking at you, Tank).

Overall, the combat in this game is incredibly flashy and fun, and I hope we see more combat like this in the future. There are a few key areas where it can be improved, such as the aforementioned issues with the parry and some of the less enjoyable minibosses, but ultimately it’s a very well done system that I hope makes a return in future games.

Oh yeah Big’s fishing is also fun and the theme that plays is an absolute vibe, easily the most important part of the game.

Story

Alright, story time. If you don’t want to get spoiled about the story, now’s the time to leave. The story of Sonic Frontiers is 100% best experienced blind and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. I’ll also be omitting gifs from this section as well.

So I’m just gonna pad this out a little bit in case someone scrolls a little too far on accident.

Ok, still here? Cool, I’ll just dive right in then.

The story of Sonic Frontiers is, without question, the best story we’ve gotten since SA2 or Unleashed. The characters are written absolutely incredibly in a setting filled with unique mystery that culminates into some of the biggest lore developments the series has ever gotten. I genuinely believe that this is the best that these characters have ever been depicted, and the addition of Sage to the cast of characters is one of the biggest Ws the franchise could have possibly gotten.

The dynamic between Sage and Eggman is one of the best parts of the story by far and it really spices up Eggman’s characters, something that he’s been needing for a long, long time. You can really feel the connection the two of them have together, from the way Eggman talks about her in his memos to his scenes at the end of the game. Watching Eggman look up at the falling stars, hoping to see his AI, his daughter, return to the planet and watching him realize that she’s not coming back almost made me genuinely cry. Then watching him work to restore her in the final scene after the credits and seemingly succeeding was such a good moment for the doctor. I hope Sage comes back for future games, it’d be such a shame if she didn’t.

The Ancients not only being from space, but bringing the Chaos Emeralds with them from their homeworld and being the ancestors of Chaos is an interesting development to the lore, and I’m excited to see if they go anywhere else with it. The Ancients being related to Chaos was pretty obvious by just looking at their appearance, but them bringing the emeralds from outer space was a development I definitely was not expecting. They’re still a very mysterious civilization that we may never learn more about, but what we do know about them is absolutely fascinating. They did so well with integrating the Ancients into Sonic’s World.

Unfortunately, this is where the story admittedly falls apart a little bit. The End is interesting, to say the least. I don’t think it’s ever made clear whether it’s a god or a mortal, but what we do know is that it’s powerful enough to destroy the Ancients’ home. Then it follows them to Sonic’s World and forces them to trap it inside an entire digital dimension showing that despite how advanced their technology is, they couldn’t even kill it, which makes this thing feel menacing. So with the reveal of The End being the villain, I was really hoping that the boss battle would be the best we’ve ever gotten. It was… not that. The boss battle itself was unfortunately a let-down, which was a massive shame because Frontiers’ has absolutely incredible bosses at the end of each island. There’s a lot in game that points to The End being rushed, such as Sonic’s speech to the Ancients he gives just before the fight itself, and the instruction screen telling you to fight with the Titans, plural. It seems like they really wanted to do more with The End but for whatever reason couldn’t, which is a big shame. It’s definitely not enough to sour the whole story for me, just a bit of a let down.

Sonic Frontiers’ story heavily relies on the mystery of the Starfall Islands, and it uses said mysteries to craft an absolutely incredible story only held back by the gameplay of its final boss. This is the type of story I hope we get to see more of from Sonic games in the future.

Final Rating

If I had to rate the game on a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a very solid 7. The team behind the game’s development very clearly listened to what people wanted from the franchise and gave it to us, and while it’s not perfect by any means, it’s 100% a step in the right direction. If the development team behind Sonic Frontiers keeps giving us games of this quality, I'm sure that the future of the franchise is a very bright one.

#sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic frontiers #review #video game review

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garrothromeave · 4 years ago

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let’s talk about minecraft diaries rebirth.

and why it’s literally amazing. (warning: this will contain spoilers. lots of them. also, long post ahead.)

i think a lot of people hate mcdr because they were expecting a remake; but the point of rebirth is for jess to rewrite it. it wasn't supposed to be exactly the same.

honestly i went into mcdr with a closed mind. as an og mcd fan, i thought that this was going to suck ass and that i'd rant about how bad it was to my friends later. but actually watching it, i just... couldn't help but immediately fall in love with it.

ik im probably the only motherfucker that likes mcdr, but honestly how could i not? for one, garroth and zenix actually have personalities at the beginning. AND; the villagers? actually amazing. donna made me smile, visher made me laugh and cry, brendan was just bein as good as ever. like... i even didn't despise emmalyn with every ounce of my soul like i usually do?? the characterizations of them were GOOD, man.

and honestly, aphmau like--the way she spoke, her whole thing. it was reallyyy well done in my opinion. she was oblivious to things, but it wasn't overdone and wasn't done in a way to make her annoying. she's a very appealing character in mcdr, a main protagonist i do not mind following along with. her dynamics to the characters are really cool and all very unique. gonna cut it here so i don’t clog y’all’s feed cuz i got a lot to say :)

the early use of aphmau’s powers was actually pretty cool as well, it also really showed how clueless aphmau really was to everything going on around her. AND UH, THE FACT THAT SHE THOUGHT THAT GARROTH FELT FAMILIAR? GOLDEN. absolutely golden.

AND GENE OH BOY, the early introduction of gene? ik a lot of people are upset about it, but god DAMN i love it so much. his role in the story is very important in original, and i cannot express how much joy this brought me learning that he was actually getting the proper attention for it. and the fact that gene and aphmau were working together?? i mean ik gene was just trying to use her to get back to the "shadow abyss" (pretty pog replacement for the nether, gg) but god DAMN i loved every moment of it. i found their dynamic to be pretty fuckin funny to be honest, would absolutely love to see more of it.

i might be biased considering gene is one of my absolute favorite characters, but i honestly think that introducing gene this early on in the story was a good move. again, he's literally the right-hand man to the shadow lord. it makes you really wonder why he didn't have as much of an important role in season 1 or even 2 of the original mcd plotline. also, we get some of that good-ol-fashioned exposition with seeing early on how vylad and gene interact. vylad’s at a very strange point in the story right now; his motives are unclear, even to the side he’s ‘supposed’ to be taking (aka, a shadow knight.) another early introduction to a character is zane! this, my friends, is good. really good. i’d say that zane is the main antagonist of season 1 in the original series--and he wasn’t even introduced until like, episode 50. it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but him being introduced this early on really gives the audience a better understanding of what threats are out there and what our protagonist will have to encounter in the future. in the original series, there’s not much explanation as to why lords are disappearing/dying left and right--and while yes, that was supposed to be the mystery of it, having some of that early information is a better move in terms of writing.

AND IVAN?? BEING A PART OF THE JURY OF NINE?? I COULD NOT HAVE ASKED FOR ANYTHING MORE LIKE GOD DAMN that was a very pleasant surprise i'll just say that, thank you jess :)

and no i did not loop the 4 minutes of screentime laurance got in that one episode haha who would do that i would never do that anyways

SPEAKING of laurance, im so glad jess actually wrote him in this early :) she totally could have just waited for the first time aphmau visits meteli and meets him there, but no! she put him in an early episode. i dont even care if she did it just to shut up the fans about laurance but man that made me so happy seeing him, even if it was only for a bit.

okay i kinda wanna go over the guards real fast firstly; garroth. ignoring how weird the helmet showing emotions is, i really like how garroth is portrayed. he's under a lot of pressure because the village is putting a lot of the blame on him for malik's death, and he's trying his hardest to keep things running. the fact that garroth utterly refused the to take up the position of lord and even got a little snappy about it was actually really cool to see as well. and while he doesn’t have that same “reserved, quiet, observant” feel as the original mcd version of him had, this version of garroth is absolutely awesome. he’s more direct and blunt, is significantly more sarcastic, and isn’t as stiff or as much as a pushover as he is in the original. he even has a sense of humour. also, no homo, but he’s kinda adorable. plus, the desperation that he goes through during the whole thing is just--it’s really cool to see how hard he’s trying to prove himself and help the village. my rating for mcdr garroth? 9/10. the helmet... the helmet is the main thing throwin me off, i can’t lie. next, zenix. oh BOY do i have a lot to say about this man. first of all, his and garroth’s dynamic is incredible. when i saw how the interacted with each other, my first thought was: father and son. zenix has this immaturity to him that is so fucking fun and interesting to watch, and seeing how garroth scolds him is so fuckin good man. and! seeing how he interacts with the rest of the village... honestly, if jess ever picks this story up again, i would probably cry when zenix (literally) backstabs garroth. HELL, i hope that’s something that still happens, it’d be heartbreaking to witness this character that we’ve come to love hurting his mentor, the man who took him in. he’s just a really good character all in all, and much more appealing than the original mcd zenix. ...except season 3 zenix. no zenix can be better than that one. either way, zenix is amazing written to be the comic relief and he’s just an all-out lovable character in this series. finally, dale and brian. yes i’m going to group them up because there’s not much to say regarding them, but i do want to address them. for starters, we have brian; who’s already 16 when the story starts. good on jess for doing that, because in the original aphmau watched brian be born and age INCREDIBLY quick, haha. THOUGH i do feel like there’s a slight connection lost there--one of the hardest things about brian’s betrayal in the original series in the fact that we watched him grow up in phoenix drop. we were there from the moment he was born, to the second he betrayed phoenix drop. BUT OF COURSE, this version is a lot more realistic, so it’s understandable. i just think that if it’s brian who’ll be betraying phoenix drop again (if it even goes down that same route), it won’t hit as hard unless jess really takes the time to grow the connection between brian and aphmau. as for dale; gotta admit, love it. and like, i think one of the main things about how good of a call it was to make him a drunkard from the beginning is considering how much the village is struggling. the fact that the second-in-command is literally drunk all of the time really conveys the message of, “yeah. this village needs help.” plus, he’s another good comic relief character. i loved seeing molly and dale’s relationship too, it was very funny. PLUS. we were blessed with a well scene, in which aphmau had to help villagers out of the well. i don’t know about you guys, but that was one of my favorite nods to the original series. i cannot thank jess enough for that, there was a smile on my face the entire time. another amazing thing--visher’s character. instead of just being introduced to this quirky lil merchant who only had one or two interactions with aphmau like in the first one, we got to sit there and really get a feel for someone worth remembering and worth mourning over. we had a reason to be sad over his death, it wasn’t just some npc getting blown up suddenly. this was different, and this hurt. one of the major things that i hope is to come out of this is for jess to fix the major mistakes she had when writing the first series. she’d expressed how unhappy she was with some of the decisions she made, and i’m glad that she’s getting that second chance to undo the things she didn’t like. this series also gives her a second chance to really, really dig into characters and their motives. like, gimme laurance backstory in better detail. or like, garroth and zane’s relationship from back when they were kids? or how vylad died and who killed him? etc etc. she’s already done an excellent job so far, and i can’t wait to see where this goes. that is, if she ever continues it. god, i wish there were more episodes so that i could seriously let you guys know how beautiful of a series this is. there’s so much i want to say about rebirth, but i think i’ll stop here. i might say some more shit about it later, but if there’s anything i’d want you to take away from this, it’s: give minecraft diaries rebirth a chance. there’s a lot of potential, and this is a chance for jess to really change things for the better! ... but again, that is if this ever is continued.

#aphmau #minecraft diaries #minecraft diaries rebirth #garroth #laurance #gene #zenix #vylad #rant

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we-are-ringmaster · 3 years ago

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4 and 7 for the ask meme (and sorry for the delay!) -Sorcerer

4. What has been your favorite d&d character you’ve played? (NPCs count for DMs)

Each one of my PCs hold a special place in my heart. However, I think there is a special something about your first character. Mine was a college of lore bard named Anika.

She went to college to be a bard, specifically at the Winter University. Upon graduation she had a lot of student load debt, having borrowed from people that there would be high stakes if there was no repayment. Anika got a job on a trade ship that was attacked by pirates. in exchange for her life, she played a song that impressed the captain so much she offered Anika a spot on her crew. Over the next 10 years she hopped from ship to ship, crew to crew, adventuring across the seas, paying off her debts.

For a period she was with the crew of Captain Firebeard, a particularly ruthless pirate. He demanded a “mandatory gift” from the governor of a small island who refused to back down. Anika warned the governor of Firebeard’s plans to attack, giving him time to prepare a response. While the governor and his spouse passed in the attack, they were able to get their children to safety and Firebeard’s forces took heavy casualties.

Firebeard figured out Anika’s betrayal and left her on an abandoned island. Eventually she was picked up by a ship belonging to the Winter University and held prisoner as a pirate criminal.

“Wait, aren’t you one of our alumni?”

Anika went on trial** for a variety of her many legitimate offenses. These included the murder of the governor and his spouse, charges that were later dropped for lack of evidence, removing her from harsher punishments. Instead she was sentenced to be among the first in a criminal rehabilitation program being developed by students at the Winter University.

It was through this that Dean Ellion became aware of her and arranged for her to be a criminal guide for a group he was sending to find a stolen artifact on a pirate kingdom island. Thus began the Winter Guard’s first campaign arc together.

(** It’s /my/ criminal justice system, I can make it better than it is here)

7. How do you go about making a character or NPC?

When I make a character I usual start with an aesthetic of some sort. I love making playlists for my characters and have made major character decisions based off songs that just sorta Fit Their Vibe (specifically Honey Whisky by Nothing but Thieves).

Specific examples include a pretty picture of a beta fish, an offhand suggestion from @amstelhavian-nights , and a name taken verbatim off a gravestone in a little, middle-of-nowhere, country cemetery. Poppy, the muse of this blog, was inspired during the first 45 seconds of The Greatest Showman (2017).

When I make an NPC I first consider what role the character needs to fill. First, who are they and what do they do in the world? Who would reside in the location the players are in? Secondly, what necessary interactions would they provide to the players? Make those NPCs the most narratively accessable but keep all the characters present in some way. It can be tempting to make a character based around whatever the PCs are doing. However, a character who only *maybe* happens to cross paths with the PCs, someone with their own goals, is far more compelling.

*✧･ﾟ:* Thanks feyariel/Sorcerer! *✧･ﾟ:*

#each npc could be their on PC is what I'm saying #and thats a metaphor for life baybee #the ringmistress takes the stage #also Anika wasn't a bad person #just someone who got caught up in a slow slide into bad things #and her whole arc was about her becoming a better person and forgiving herself #also getting over her commitment issues #homegirl was a mess <3 #anyway

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self-proclaimed-chaotic-good · 3 years ago

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Somebody to Love | Steddie (3/?)

Chapter Three: Fragile Baby Bird

Word: 1569

A/N: Finally some Eddie and Robin interactions. Hints at homophobia, but it's really brief, and torture from S3. Steve is only mentioned in this one.

Summary: Eddie's back and he's on a mission to complete the seemingly impossible task of graduating. He realizes that he's not as alone as he thought he was.

[Somebody to Love Masterlist]

“You do realize that you were supposed to be helping me study, right?” Eddie huffed as Robin paced back and forth in his peripheral vision.

Normally, he would have indulged in her ranting and gossip, since she always listened to his rantings, but he really wanted to graduate this time. After everything he went through, he needed at least this.

Robin halted, spinning on her heels to face him. He was lounging on her bed, textbooks and notebook spread open before him with a bunch of flashcards scattered across the bedsheet. Eddie looked up at her tiredly. He can stay up for hours reading up rules in the Dungeon Master Manual and thinking up adventures, riddles, and NPCs for the campaign, but reading and taking notes on U.S. History lessons that he missed for half an hour felt too much for him.

“Were you even listening?” Robin narrowed her eyes at him.

He shook his head vigorously, his long hair shaking with the movement. She sighed, plopping herself down next to him and jostling the bed. Eddie made a noise of protest, maneuvering himself so that he was cross-legged next to her as she lied down.

“Have you ever felt you want something so bad? Something right in front of you, so close within your reach but you’re scared to touch or else it might bite you. Then you just…,” she paused, raising a hand towards the ceiling, “reach out and it lands in the palm of your hand and you’re freaking out because you don’t want to hurt it or scare it away like it’s a baby bird or something. Maybe it fell into your palm by accident and it didn’t mean anything. Or maybe it trusted you enough to catch them when they fell. And then… and then, that baby bird looks up at you like you’re their whole world and everything’s okay and you forgot why you were so scared in the first place.”

Robin dropped her hand to her chest and sighed again. She tilted her head to look up at Eddie, a deep frown set on his face.

“To be honest, Buckley, the first part is a yes. The second part… no. I reach my hand out and bam!” He smacks his hands together. “My finger gets bitten off, my eye bruised up. Even without all that, my heart gets shattered. I’m the freak of Hawkins, remember?”

“There must have been someone!”

“Maybe one or two, but they can’t handle it after a while. You’ve seen how people started treating you when you lent me a pencil in class or said hi to me in passing.”

Robin huffed. “We need to graduate,” she said with determination, shooting up and grabbing her textbook from the ground. “Where were we?”

After finishing up two chapters, they took another break. At this rate, Eddie wasn’t sure if he’ll be able to keep up with the studying, but with words of encouragement from Robin, his confidence in finally graduating came back. She brought over snacks and drinks, warning Eddie not to spill anything on her bed. Their notebooks and textbooks were tossed back on the floor as they sat on opposite ends of the bed facing each other.

“What are you going to do after you graduate?” Robin asked.

Eddie huffed out a laugh, setting down his bag of chips. “I don’t know. I always thought of running from this town as soon as I could, but I don’t know. You?”

“I always thought I was going to major in music. Maybe join a college marching band. Now, after dealing with Russians hidden under the mall and an evil wizard hunting down teenagers through our minds, I don’t think I’m ready to pretend that everything’s fine, that I can go and talk to someone that doesn’t even have a clue of what I’ve gone through, but… it’s been getting easier now that I have Vickie. But… I don’t want to be stuck like this.”

“If only we can just forget. Rid ourselves of all those nightmares that keep coming regardless if those gates are closed or not.”

Robin shook her head, scooting closer to Eddie. She leaned in, as if telling him a secret. “That’s the thing, though. I think I would have stayed in that box that I stuffed myself in for a long time if all this shit hadn’t happened. I mean, who would have thought that I would end up decoding a Russian transmission and be drugged and tied up with the former King of Hawkins High? And that guy, the guy that I used to be obsessed with and despised so much, turned out to be my Platonic with a capital P soulmate. We literally went through hell and came back out of it alive and helped save Hawkins and the world.”

“Dude, we’d be tossed into the looney bin if we told anyone about that,” Eddie said with a snort.

“Oh, definitely. It’s why we’ve all tried to stick together even when the world’s not ending. My first time through all of this, I ended up sleeping over Steve’s a couple of times because I couldn’t close my eyes without feeling a phantom needle jabbing into my neck or seeing a giant slimy monster made out of melted people looming over me,” she said casually while picking at her nails, a habit Eddie noticed whenever the others brought up their previous encounters with the Upside Down.

Eddie knew that Robin and Steve were close, that they had done at least one stunt with the Upside Down together. Brothers in arms and all that. They never fully explained what happened and how exactly their friendship started. Only bits and pieces thrown into conversations with brief inside jokes and silent exchanges between them.

Before all this, he didn’t know that Steve Harrington was a great guy, either. He was the rich popular guy, co-captain of the basketball and swim team. Dressed preppy and took good care of his voluminous brown hair. When Eddie took the ugly ducklings that were known as Dustin, Mike, and Lucas, under his wing, he didn’t expect to hear that they looked up to Steve or at least trusted him with their lives.

Especially Dustin who wouldn’t stop talking about how cool Steve was and how he always dropped what he was doing to drive him somewhere no matter how much he complained about it. He even remembered seeing Steve drop Dustin off for their DnD sessions at the school, ruffling the younger boy’s curly hair before he climbed out of the car.

If Eddie wasn’t convinced that Steve was a changed man then, finding out that he was best friends with a band geek and constantly putting himself between the kids and interdimensional creatures almost every year surely did it. Eddie couldn’t catch a break, could he? Falling for Steve Harrington, a former womanizer, of all people. Could have been worse, but the worse was clearly impossible and Steve, just like that baby bird thing that Robin was talking about, was right there in front of him. Close, yet so far.

Robin bumped his knees with hers. “You doing okay?” she asked softly.

Eddie nodded, resting his chin on his knees. “Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking… you guys all seemed unfazed by all of this and I still haven’t had any proper sleep since I came back.”

“Hey, it’s all about being able to deal with it better. If you're having a hard time, you can always call us. Our frequent haven has been Steve’s so far. His parents are rarely home and, between you and me, he really loves the company.”

Of course it was at Steve’s. Steve and his fancy house in uptight Loch Nora neighborhood, a stark contrast to the trailer park that Eddie used to live in and often been threatened to go back to.

“Thanks, but I don’t know if he’d want me there. He’s barely spoken to me since the party beyond common courtesy greetings and small talk.”

Robin frowned. “Hard to speak to you if you’re also avoiding being alone with him. Besides, he even spoke to Dustin about letting you guys use his dining table for DnD once we graduate.”

Eddie blinked. Well, that was unexpected. “What?”

“Yeah…,” she shifted around so that she was sitting right next to him, their shoulders and thighs touching, “You won’t be able to use the drama room for games, so he said that you guys could come over to his place instead.”

“Well, why didn’t he discuss this with me? I’m the DM.”

She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. She had been watching them dance around each other for days and it was honestly torture. They had trouble keeping eye contact and wouldn’t stay in the other’s presence for long. Then, when they’re alone with Robin, they start off their conversations with casual mentions of the other’s name before going on a full rant about them.

“‘Cause he’s a dingus and you’re also a dingus.”

“Hey!” His hand flew to his chest, looking offended.

“Listen, all I can say is that Steve isn’t avoiding you for the reasons that you think. We’re having a movie night this weekend. Join us. Please,” she added the last part softly.

After a long minute, Eddie nodded. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to be alone anymore, Eddie.”

#Steddie #steve harrington x eddie munson #steve x eddie #eddie x steve #steveddie #eddie and robin #steve and robin are platonic soulmates #platonic with a capital p #stranger things fic #steddie fic #stranger things imagine #steddie fluff #steve harrington fic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson imagine #steve harrington imagine #eddie has a crush on steve

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jawsandbones · 5 years ago

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if i remember correctly you run some campaigns for dnd, i’ve been trying to dm a campaign for a few years and i’ve finally found a group. do you have any advice for new dms?

Hello anon! I do indeed run some campaigns.

I’m currently running my second major campaign. I will fully admit that the first campaign I ran was basically my first experience with DnD and it was 100% a shit show BUT I learned a lot, and now you get to benefit from my blunders!

There’s a lot involved in preparation for a campaign or even a session, but these things are so personalized to the style of each DM. I, personally, like to be overly prepared and took a few months to really brick up lore and details of NPC’s, cities, environments, major homebrew elements, potential story beats, etc etc... I will say that if this is your first experience DM’ing, I recommend staying away from homebrew. I really regret not starting with a pre-made module as they give a lot of great advice and show different aspects to quests and checks. But again, that’s just opinion so I’ll stay away from the prep aspect aside from one golden rule: as the DM you are not the sole arbiter of the story.

You’re building that with your players. This isn’t a book and you must bend to your players character’s decisions, even if it goes entirely where you don’t expect. This is a team game that definitely includes the DM. So with that said: that respect goes both ways. Talk to your players, and they’ll talk to you. Respect their character decisions, they’ll trust and respect your story decisions. If a DM is doing their job correctly, all of this is pretty moot, because if your players have the correct resources, hooks and information, chances are they’re going to do what you expect/want anyway. It’s just up to the DM to give them those correct resources, hooks and information. If there’s a disconnect, it’s because that was broken along the way.

All that being said! Here is my list that I keep stickied to my monitor

The players never miss. Failure needs active opposition, be in combat, during dialogue or a check. Even from level one, player characters are absolute badasses compared to the rest of the population. It sucks when the game doesn’t reflect that. So instead of “lol you miss”, what happens if that becomes, “the bandit is just barely able to block your blow, gasping as they reel backwards out your reach - for now”? Feels a lot better.

Along those lines, if your players are adding combat flavor to their attack rolls, don’t punish them for participating and make them do checks for it. Not everything needs a roll. Let them be cool.

Answer “will this work” from the perspective of the character asking. This could go for anything a player asks. Try and answer in a way their character would understand. Someone from the cold regions of the north and someone from the swampy regions of the south will have differing thoughts/opinions/knowledge of things. PC’s live in the world. Put their lived experience into their rolls.

Insight also follows this. Insight shouldn’t just be, “he’s telling the truth” or “he’s lying”. If the particularly perceptive bard who is the charismatic face of the party is doing an insight check, they might pick up the twitch of an eye, the sweat on a brow. If the distracted monk holding the party’s adopted kenku is asking the question, they might not notice these things.

Let your players talk and interact. Don’t be in a hurry to move things along if the party is bonding or looking into things. This doesn’t mean let them linger forever - if you find things have stalled, then of course a “so, what would you like to do now,” never hurts. I mean in the way of interjecting to participate. A DM is a part of the group but isn’t, yeah?

The less you share/hint to your players the better. Don’t let them know what they got or what they missed. What they have is what they have. Sometimes it’s fun to let them know of a potential thing that could have happened, but generally... don’t be an active participant in those conversations. Essentially, with your players, be ‘excited for Vague Future Stuff and Things’ (literally I just copy paste that into the chat when I’m planning out stuff and can’t repress the need to blurt out excitement), not next session’s x event.

The internet is your friend. There are so many resources, everywhere you look. I am particularly fond of the subreddits /r/DnDBehindTheScreen and /r/DMAcademy. Don’t be afraid to pull inspiration from your favourite media as well - bring the The Trouble with Tribbles to your adventuring crew, you won’t regret it. You’re going to burn yourself out fast trying to out-do yourself as well, and there are a lot of pre-made drop-in adventures. This is a patchwork quilt you are making with your friends, go fucking wild.

A list of my favourite resources!

Treasure Generator

NPC/Merchant Generator

Town Generator (seriously this one is god-like)

All Shops and Items (base things)

Random Generator and D100 lists (this one also fantastic)

Besides that: take good notes, communicate openly with your players, discuss sessions after they’ve concluded to find what worked and what didn’t for everyone. Don’t be afraid to say no. A lot of other things, it’s just going to take time and experience.

Good luck, have fun, roll well!

#I should also say all of my experience is online #and in these COVID times it's really nice to have #d&d beyond discord and roll20 are your friends #I tried really hard not to make this a wild 5 page rambler on the weird shit I've learned and am employing #jaws talks #dungeons and dragons #dnd #Anonymous #me: formats this all nice #tumblr: no :)

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felassan · 5 years ago

Text

Dragon Age development insights from David Gaider - PART 3

This information came from DG on a recent SummerfallStudios Twitch stream where he gave developer commentary while Liam Esler continued playing DAO from where they had left off in Part 1 and Part 2. I transcribed it in case there’s anyone who can’t watch the stream (for example due to connection/tech limitations, data, time constraints, personal accessibility reasons, etc). A lot of it is centered on DAO, but there’s also insights into other parts of the franchise. Some of it is info which is known having been put out there in the past, and some of it is new. There’s a bit of overlap or repetition with topics covered in Parts 1 and 2. This post leaps from topic to topic as it’s a transcript of a conversational format. It’s under a cut due to length.

The stream can currently be watched back here. Next week LE will be streaming a different DAO playthrough with commentary from another guest. Two weeks from now LE and DG will return to continue this playthrough for another stream session like this one.

(Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

[wording and opinions DG’s, occasionally LE’s; paraphrased]

The Battle of Ostagar cutscene is one of the first big cutscenes that got made during production. When it was shown to the team for the first time, it was one of those moments where DG felt like “Awesome, this is a game!” Context: During the development of a game it feels more like doing a series of disconnected tasks and assets rather than working on a game, so seeing stuff come together at times like this is rad. The first time it was shown, it had temporary placeholder voiceacting.

Pathfinding is always a nightmare to do, especially in games which involve a party of NPCs. As soon as other characters are involved alongside the PC, it’s exponentially more difficult and takes up a lot more resources. The PC is the most complex thing going on visually on-screen, with so many moving pieces, and in party-based games you have four [etc] of them. So, some critique that’s made of the DA games in regards to this subject which compares it to games like The Witcher doesn’t really make sense, as The Witcher has a solo PC.

‘Weird mage hats’ didn’t really become a trademark ‘DA thing’ akin to their place of random pieces of cheese around the world until later games. For DAO, someone probably asked the artists to create “mage helmets”. Mage hats actually looked better in the concept art than they did in-game. What happened was that they were already modelled and then they didn’t have time to re-do them.

DAO was made for PC first. The plan from the get-go though was that it would be an all-platform release (PC/360/PS3). Games like these are always made for the “lowest common denominator” from among the various platforms that they’re being planned to release for. Games have to be made for the most stringent/basic of the platforms because this makes for less conversion rate. At the time of DAO’s development, the PS3 was getting weak graphically and getting old, and this was quite a limitation: “Why do we have to limit [crowds?] because of this one platform?” “Well, we just gotta”. The original models were a bit too detailed. Later on, the artists started making models that had lower polycounts that they could put in a bit more of. DA was never really focused on making environments realistic in an ambient manner (making environments less “gamey” and more lived in, like having crowded places). They could have put more emphasis there but this would have led to a resources issue. Ambience basically wasn’t a high priority. As a writer DG isn’t keen on this decision and naturally he wanted the world to look more realistic, but he noted that it’s easy for him to say this when this would be work that he didn’t have to do personally.

During DAO development, they might have just had a dev sphere originally that was called “tech design”. DG thinks this was later broken up into systems design, combat design and maybe level design. Level designers are the people that are the implementers of the plot. Narrative design is a branch of the level design spoke. System designers respond to requests from lead designers. Narrative designers and writers don’t interact with system designers much unless they have to. As an example of interaction here, system designers might come to writers and say, “Alright, so we’re doing combat, what are the sorts of things a mage can do in this world?” The writers would be like “Ok, these are the sorts of spells we imagined.” The system designers might then come back with “Ok, that fulfills 2 of the 10 things we need mages to be able to do in combat. Is it possible that mages could do [this]?” Sometimes it is, and other times it would be like “No, that’s really outside of the lore”. Still, sometimes said original-lore-breaking things would be added to the game a week later due to necessity and DG would be like “Oh ok”. This kind of stuff is an insight into how some aspects of the lore came to be or changed over time during development.

The system designers on DAO got a better idea of what could be done and what could not be done according to the lore as things went on. At first, DG had to keep telling them things like “It’s not that big a deal, but in the lore mages can’t teleport. Instant teleportation isn’t possible in the world”. The system designers needed a spell where someone could get from spot A to spot B really fast on the battlefield. DG said that that’s fine in itself, “have them turn into a cloud of bees or have a light that moves between the two places. We can use magic as a transition or as a speed thing, but what is against the lore is instant teleportation, to traverse distance like that”. At first the system designers weren’t on board with it, but they got on board with it later.

This sort of thing doesn’t just depend on the system designers. It also depends on what the tech artists are willing to do. Sometimes a certain request made of them was too hard and they said they weren’t able to do it. Other times it was a matter of DG not communicating the request properly, or the tech artists had already done the work and so throwing out all their work to re-do it just because he didn’t communicate clearly wouldn’t have been cool. So sometimes the originally planned lore got contravened, and sometimes things other parts of the team implemented in the game became the new lore.

LE made an insightful observation at this point: You can’t think of game development as a cohesive series of decisions that everyone on the team is involved in. This simple isn’t how it works at all, especially on large complex projects. There are processes at some studios for decision-making, but most of the time, a bunch of decisions get made by system designers. Others get made by level designers, still others by narrative designers. Situations then arise where someone notices a certain decision and that that decision and another one contradict each other. This is where conflict arises and a solution has to be negotiated. This is why often in games we get elements in the end product that are dissonant, because it was discovered too late or by the time it was realized, it was too difficult to change. It’s actually a miracle that on a game of DAO’s depth and scope that all these things largely hold together. [My note: With this insight and the context below on documentation, it makes sense how BW sometimes appear to ‘forget aspects of their own lore’ or end up contradicting parts of the lore in different parts of the franchise]

Sometimes such things would be noticed in time and DG would go and say, “Can we not do that or do something else instead?” and the relevant parties would be totally accommodating and do it (depending on how much time they had or how much time it would take to remedy). Sometimes this worked out and sometimes it didn’t. For the most part, everyone wants to work together. DG couldn’t be involved in every aspect of systems design “like some kind of All-Watchful eye of lore”, so he had to rely on the people who were there knowing enough from the documentation. Not everybody reads every document however. There was so much documentation even back during DAO. DG can only imagine the sheer amount of world/lore documentation that now exists now in the run-up to DA4; he said he thinks that nobody at this point on the current team has read it all, as editor/lore-wrangler Ben Gelinas isn’t with BW anymore. Lots of legacy documentation accumulated very quickly. Sometimes, the old document would still be there. Over time it became harder for people to discern which was the most recent version of a particular document. Sometimes people didn’t update the relevant documentation after changing things. Lore documentation was particularly bad for this issue. BG wrangled all the documentation and created an internal reference wiki (essentially acting as a lorekeeper). He was constantly coming in and picking DG’s brain to clarify conflicting aspects or obtain the correct, in-date information etc (“Good on him”).

DAO was the first time DG was involved in voice-recording. Prior to that he was only on the receiving end, in that the recordings would come in and he’d review them as they did so. DAO is when BW set up their own VO department and where Caroline Livingstone came on. CL wanted DG and Mike Laidlaw to be more involved in the casting process. As a result, the writers then were to write casting scripts: like, ‘For Morrigan, can you write a 1 page script that goes through 3 big emotions? [like regular talking for a bit, then here’s a bit of heightened emotion such as anger, then here’s a part where they’re being funny if they were a comedic character] These scripts had to be kept short so that the recording that was made from it wouldn’t be more than 30-40 seconds in length.

For the initial VA sessions, DG and CL flew down to Technicolor studioin LA and they had all the major castmembers there (later on, recording sessions were done a lot more remotely; this became easier as BW’s setup got more sophisticated). The idea was that they would both be present live in-person for the first 2 or 3 sessions to help each VA find their ‘voice’, and for DG at the first session to sit down with each VA and walk them through who their character was, what DA was about, and help them figure out how their character should talk. Claudia Black was the first of these sessions and he was “a wreck” going into that one. It got easier after that however. CL gave directions into the soundproof booth and DG was present to give notes on things like pronunciation or the intentions behind some lines. He says he learned everything he now knows about VO direction from CL. The things and tricks CL can do to get a performance out of an actor are amazing. Sometimes an actor would get a bit fixated or stuck on a particular way of delivering a line. CL had atrick to help them past this; “I want you to clear your mind, and I want you to give me a version of this line that’s more yellow”. The idea is that they just had to break out of where they had been stuck in that mindset, and the thing was that it doesn’t matter what “yellow” meant, but what was important was what “yellow” meant to the actor. They could then take that new varied delivery and progress from there.

Alistair’s dialogue when the PC talks to Flemeth outside her hut was the first complex conversation DG wrote for DAO. It was the first one that had a lot of branching and fiddling to it. The hardest conversations to write are the ones with a lot of exposition, and when they do have exposition still making this interesting and natural. At this point in the game, the player has no agency, just reactivity. The devs talked a lot about this subject when they wrote the origin stories. Some of the stories allow the player to initially say no and refuse to join the Wardens, but you always end up being railroaded (the devs here ended up doing a form of the trope ‘But Thou Must!’). Do you give the player the option to say no? Is it important to allow them that option? At some point, writers have to accept that the player has some level of buy-in and is game to play. They discussed a lot where they sat on this and what is agency. “Maybe don’t worry about offering the player every possible choice, but about having reactivity.”

Loghain wasn’t okay with letting Cailan die. He didn’t sit and angst about it openly where the player could see, and once the decision had been made, it being Loghain, it was Made and Had To Be Done (he felt that it was something that had to happen). But he didn’t kill the son of the woman he’d once loved dearly as a random off-handed thing.

The Solas twist was planned from the beginning, from the DAO dev days. Such big things/broad strokes have stayed the same. However, some of the details have changed or been added along the way. They didn’t know for instance that Solas was going to be a companion; that was something they came up with when they were planning DAI. Flemeth’s true identity has never changed.

Zevran says Rinna was an elf, but WoT says she was a bastard child of a noble in line for the Antivan throne (the Antivan royal family being human). When asked if this was an oversight, DG said yes she was a bastard, but she may have been really far down the line of succession, i.e. technically in line, but would probably never have been allowed to take the throne in practise had that scenario ever actually arisen.

DA was maybe inspired a bit/some by ASOIAF. This was way before it was on TV of course. DG at the time had read the first book or so. He liked the fact that it was a fantasy setting but low-magic, and was about the people in the world and their politics rather than magic, prophecy and other high fantasy stuff.

It was only by DAI that the system designers decided that it was okay to think of banter as an “activity that players engaged in”. In previous games, the devs had inadvertently managed to ‘train’ players to immediately stop when companion banter fires so that they could hear it all (because if you do something else, it gets cut off). When the level designers put together the spaces, they accounted for what players would be doing i.e. how much time between combat. They didn’t however account for like “You’re travelling down this hall and there’s a banter for half of that space. This is an activity, so it’s okay not to put anything in there”. This is how the inadvertent training happened, when originally banters were supposed to be a thing that ran as you move around the world (as opposed to stopping and standing still).

When asked if the Blight resulted from the creation of the Veil or pre-dates it: “I think you’ll probably have to wait on the game[s] for that answer, if it ever explains it”. He was also asked whether Arlathan is the Golden City. He won’t answer such questions naturally because they are “DeepLooooooore™~~ ♫”.

DG isn’t sure that he will play DA4 when it comes out. It’s not that PW and the team won’t do a good job, they will, it’s just that when DG plays RPGs he has an analytical mindset going on and finds it difficult to slip into the game and just enjoy. For DA4, as he was previously so involved in DA, there’ll naturally probably be an extra level of that with feeling like “What would I have done [for particular parts of the game’s design]?”. Alternatively he might instead feel like “Wow, this is awesome, here’s a game I would have made but didn’t have to do any work on!” DG stressed that it’s important to him to be fair about the work of his former colleagues - he wouldn’t want to come out and be like “I wouldn’t have made [this or that] choice”. He also noted that just because something might be a call he personally wouldn’t have implemented in the game, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad call. There are people out there where if DG intimated at all that there was an aspect of DA4 that he wasn’t keen on, he’s worried that they would pounce on it and use it as ammunition against the current team (who are his friends that he really cares about and wants to do well). He walked away from DA voluntarily and is happy his game will continue on. PW popped by in chat at this point and agreed that it’s definitely hard to play something that you used to work on.

Other assorted tidbits:

DG really opposed the part at the Battle of Ostagar where mabari are set to charge the darkspawn horde - “That’s not how you would use dogs [in war]”

There was supposed to be a cutscene where Flemeth rescues the HoF and Alistair from the top of the Tower of Ishal in her dragon-form. This was cut. DG remembered being angry about this like “nobody is gonna buy that you fall unconscious and then wake up in the hut totally rescued. [...] I guess I’m not always right”

When DG went to Beamdog there was a period where they thought about making a Baldur’s Gate 3. They put together a pitch and had a long series of discussions contemplating things like “What do we need from BG3? What do we expect it to have in order to have the BG name? What is needed and not needed to connect to from the previous games?”

DG isn’t sure who designed the DAO inventory system

PW in chat recalled a game writer from another company who was really ragging on DAI on the Christmas Day after release

Narrative designer and system designer are very different positions/roles with very different responsibilities

Simon Templeton as Loghain did all his voicework stuff in one take, which was very impressive

It would have been the marketing department that chose 30 Seconds To Mars for music. DA was really good at choosing up-and-coming acts for this that weren’t huge when they used their songs, but became huge afterwards

During work on Baldur’s Gate 2 was the most DG has ever crunched. He slept in the office a few times

“As soon as you get both Alistair and Morrigan in the party, that’s when it’s like ahh yes, this is a BioWare game”

Were Flemeth and Morrigan’s interactions with each other and the PC when Morrigan is being told to leave the Wilds and go with the Hero an act, considering that Morrigan did know about the OGB plan? No. That was The Plan, but said plan wasn’t like “Ok, she’s going to leave Right Now”

The elves and the inversion of the traditional elven trope are DG’s favorite part of the world/world-building

One of the original intentions for DAO was to make it so that the player wouldn’t need a healer in the party, or that there would be different kinds of healing, or that healing itself wouldn’t be a thing, but this just didn’t work out

The Imperial Highway used to be a really important part of the lore but it kind of got forgotten a bit

It’s kinda funny that after release some players expressed that Corinne Kempa’s accent as Leliana was “sooo fake”. It’s not fake, she’s actually a Brit that moved to France when she was young, so she has the exact type of accent that Leliana would have (Leliana was born in Orlais and is culturally Orlesian, but her mother was Fereldan and she considers herself as such)

They talked some about the need for documentation and how doing this can feel beurocratic and uncreative and how like you’re not working on a game or writing. PW in chat expressed that there was a year where they spent a lot of it working in PowerPoint and Excel, “so I feel this”

When they switched art directors to Matt Goldman, his first big complaint was about all the brown. He came to DG like “Is there a lore reason for or are you particularly in favor of the brown for story reasons?” DG was like “Uhh no” and Matt was then like “Ok good”

Console codes/commands aren’t usually stripped out of a game before release, they are usually still in the built, just disabled. The system itself is not removed but how to access said system is

BW doesn’t crunch as bad as we hear some companies do, and kind of prided itself on “not being terrible at crunch”. But BW’s “not terrible at crunch” is still crunch. We obviously don’t commend abusive family members for only abusing people on certain days of the week or whatever

Kate Mulgrew is American but she at times did the same thing a lot of the British VAs did, which was that the devs had a lot of struggle with getting them to say “darkspawn” correctly, with the emphasis in the right places. They’d say “dark SPAWN” as if it was two words with an adjective, and the stress put in the wrong place

Lack of children in DAI was a resources thing. They only had time to make a certain number of models. There was a series of meetings where they had to decide what things to cut. In the last meeting it was like ‘Here’s a bunch of things you don’t want to cut, we need to cut 4 of them’

They decided to put horned qunari back in DA2 because then they had the resources to do so. They then ended up having to explain why there were hornless qunari at the same time, and make this an in-world explanation as opposed to just ‘We didn’t have the resources, that was totally intentional’

Lots of players missed out on recruiting Leliana and/or Sten on their first playthrough and didn’t even know they existed/could be recruited. “Apparently we weren’t that great at pointing players in the right direction”

Tevinter is inspired by the Byzantine Empire (which wasn’t called that at the time incidentally, this is a name given by historians after the fact), what used to be the Roman Empire after the western part fell. This is the era Tevinter today is meant to encapsulate: decadent but clearly in decline, far away from the heyday and the heights of the former empire [source]

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

[Part 6]

[‘Insights into DA dev from the Gamers For Groceries stream’ transcript]

#dragon age #bioware #video games #morrigan #queen of my heart #alistair theirin #fav warden #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #solas

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