#HE WASNT EVEN IN SOME OF THE GAMEPLAY CUTSCENES LIKE???? HELP

[cherrirui-official]

Still not over the fact that they added Adventurer Cookie in the Golden Cheese update, infantilized him, used him for shipping fanservice and then killed him

[jeromefart]

HELLO. I PLAYED JEDI SURVIVOR TODAY

i just left coruscant and im chilling in the mantis. its late and i have a busy day tomorrow so i dont wanna stay up all night. heres my first thoughts

it is visually STUNNING!! i was genuinely so shocked at how beautiful the home page is. all of the uis are stylized similarly to jfo, but its polished and new in a way that i really appreciate. a standout addition in the options menu was an arachnophobia safe mode. i think its awesome how they’re making this game accessible to people with phobias like that. i don’t know what this spider monster will be like, but it must be kinda intense to warrant an option like that. but it also made me think, “why just arachnophobia?” because including something like this opens the door to other pressing phobias that can prevent people from playing. i have thalassophobia, and the venator crash section in jfo was very dimly lit and it was so much i almost wasnt able to get the 5 or so chests hidden away in there. underwater sections in games can be a nightmare for me if they aren’t lit well and it freaks me the hell out. i wonder if they considered other phobias like mine, or what exactly drove them to this decision. i guess i need to just wait and see.

the graphics and worldbuilding are incredible. its so beautiful and the level design is noticeably upgraded. i have only been through a short linear area, but it’s great so far. everything is very very seamless (the gameplay to cutscene transitions.. fuck its perfect). there were some portions where the interactable surfaces blended in a bit too well, and i was also not used to the way they looked, and i found myself a little stuck in some parts. not to where its an issue, this happened in the jfo tutorial as well, but it was all just very seamless. coruscant is fucking beautiful and the vast cities, neon lights, and other little design details made me so happy. half my gameplay was just me gawking at the scenery around me.

let’s talk plot. i noticed that a lot of these first cutscenes closely follow what we saw in the first teaser trailer. that man (forogt his name..), cals lightsaber in the case, him losing a battle to an inquisitor, beautiful beautiful coruscant. the only thing missing is the character that cody fern plays, who is clearly very important to this game. but despite his importance, they’re keeping every detail they can hidden from us. i havent seen him yet as i’m not even in koboh, but i can’t wait. i love cody fern and i know he will do a great job in this game. that aside, from what i’ve seen so far, i’m really happy. i absolutely love bode and was not prepared for how much i would enjoy his and cal’s banter. and knowing me, of COURSE i couldnt help but make jokes over and over again about romance between them. my worst one was probably, after the reveal that bode’s baby mama died, i gasped and said “YAY!!!” ..anyway. i FORGET HER NAME but the girl that was apart of cal’s crew stole my heart. i thought she was so cute and i loved her personality and dialogue. and then they killed her off 😭 i knew i shouldnt have gotten attached but i couldnt help myself!!! rest in peace girl whose name ive already forgotten.

the customization is such an upgrade. and it also leaves for some hilarious results. you know i went all out with the blindingly pink lightsaber and blade. i did it to bd too and he looked crazy and i felt bad so i gave him a pink and purple look. i got the deluxe version so i have the luke and han outfits along with some blue and green color choices, bd parts, and lukes lightsaber. im gonna hold off on customizing my lightsaber too much until i get some more parts. the joy of this game is being able to mix and match! and for cal, the no beard option is genuinely scary and he looks naked😭

gameplay is so smooth and SEXY. loving the two bladed sabers so far. i am a double lightsaber girl because of darth mauls influence but i know its better suited for crowds of enemies rather than one on one (in jfo at least). i might upgrade it a bit though because wow the animations are just beautiful for that stance.

i think thats about all i have to say. oh cal is absolutely GORGEOUS. excited to play more of this tomorrow and i am just really happy depression cured 10/10 game

[eframschweigersskincells]

So, Return to Hell was an absolute rollercoaster of emotions and I couldn't have asked for a better ending to the season three dlc missions.

SPOILER WARNING BY THE WAY!

Holy shit was this season a wild ride and with an absolute banger of an ending all I can say is well done rebellion you pulled it out the bag and held it high, I was so happy with everything and just my god its really hard to put down everything I'm so enthralled I can barely think straight.

I remember when the trailer dropped and I was so overcome with both excitement and sadness at seeing what the dlc entailed, I was so happy to see schweiger alive but devastated to see what was happening to him and originally I thought we were going to sacrifice him to help Umbra which terrified me, thank fuck I was wrong I dont think I could handle hurting my boy.

The intro was excellent, it really felt like distressing and that this was truly a moment of despair the way bruno spoke of it was absolutely amazing and I couldn't wait to get stick in. And when it finally gave way to the gameplay the opening area was absolutely stunning!

The way it's so familiar yet so foreign, like I'd seen it before but it had been so twisted that it was unrecognisable, lava around every corner and debris floating as if frozen in time the ground and walls cracked and crumbling and the fiery hues made this a fantastic yet haunting sight I hadn't even begun playing and I already fell in love with it.

When I finally moved on and the Baron began his tirade about the state of hell and how it was shaped and molded to fit the subconscious mind of schweiger I was shocked and saddened, to think that this was schweiger's fractured mind was frightening, all his guilt, fear, anger, confusion, sadness became reality and hell took its horrifying form filled with endless undead. I also found it really cool to see events play out from schweiger's perspective, meat locker, hell base and terror lab all playing out in schweiger's memories allowing us a glimpse in to everything that happened to him. He was betrayed so many times, I don't blame him at all for turning on us in deeper than hell, the amount of cruelty he suffered would drive anyone insane.

Being captured and forced to research the occult without any understanding of why, being tricked in to activating the relic allowing hitler to activate plan Z, working your hardest to try and make the world right then have your team infiltrated by nazi bastards who push you in to a hell tower and forcefully tear you from this plane of existence and left to rot in hell. Just when you think you can finally escape you're confronted with the fact you can not leave, only your closest comrades can leaving you in hell against everyone's will, then a voice manipulates you in to believing you were betrayed by your friends you're lied to and tricked in to believing this voice is your only friend who makes you do horrific rituals.

I remember how horrific I felt hearing this and then when Umbra revealed that he did all of this so he could break schweiger's will so he could steal his body I was filled with rage. Rebellion were amazing at putting emotion in to this one I genuinely went through constant emotional shifts realising that everything we had done up to this point was planned by Umbra and that everything we had done was only to fuel his plans. It was never schweiger's fault it was umbras and that knocked me on my arse.

The gameplay was a lot of fun, one of the best parts was that absolutely everything was randomised! The main sections of the map where always switched around no matter how many times you play it at first I went meat locker, hell base then terror lab then my second time I went hell base, terror lab then meat locker! I was shocked when everything cane out of order but it fits so well with everything! Schweiger's mind is so badly fractured that when hell took form as schweiger's subconscious not even hell itself could keep things in order.

I genuinely adore how the old familiar faces of these maps are destroyed, twisted and corrupted they are what we have seen before but warped till they look like different maps entirely, with so much more to explore in some areas it really gives you a sense of walking through broken memories like piecing together a memory Efram barely has a grip on anymore.

I loved how enemies were randomised too, getting attacked by a screamer around the corner then next time you go there prepared for a screamer you get blown up by suiciders or slaughtered by skeletons or an elite or in my favourite case being attacked by zombie alpha squad members! When zombie me jumped out and attacked I was so confused I didnt have time to respond when zombie jun popped out and killed me it was fucking awesome!

All our favourite enemy variations are here too, vampire creepers, electric suiciders, armored commanders, skeletons etc which really made for a really tough but good fight, never knowing what variation was coming to get you made everything even more fun.

And with the spitters now having a variant that spat magma it made what was usually an annoying inconvenience an actual proper threat and I love that so fucking much, maybe the spitters aren't so horrible after all.

That's a lie I still fucking hate them but oh well!

Once we successfully complete all three areas we now return to the main area with a very pissed off Umbra and schweiger who although conscious is barely alive. As soon as we arrive back to were we began we are immediately attacked and dragged off to an unknown place that we only know as the void as coined by Umbra.

Let me tell you when I say the void is creepy I fucking mean it, the void is of course pitch black you cant see anything not even your flash light does anything to the surrounding darkness, all you see when you spawn is the pitch black and eframs body of a slab surrounded by candles with Umbra looking over us and you really get the the sense of "holy shit, this is it!"

I genuinely adored the design of the void, the fact you only ever see your surroundings when a split second of bright red lighting strikes and even then you only see the faint outline of distant places, walking through the endless river of blood that stops you to a near snail's pace while fending of oncoming dead is genuinely spectacular! Holy fuck did rebellion pull it out the bag this round!

Just when you think you're about to have to do something to the incapacitated schweiger, Edie finally fucking shows up and does something useful for once, breaking schweiger out of his trance and giving him enough power to fend for himself when she realises Umbra has no defences! Thank fuck because now we know how to finally end The Baron and let me tell you I couldn't be happier to get the chance at killing the bastard.

The fights were challenging and had me cornered a few times and I'll admit I died a couple times but it was absolutely worth it, there was so much going on but it wasnt overbearing, with how large the areas you had to fight the hordes in were it made the fucking insane amounts of zombies absolutely balanced, I never felt like it was impossible but never felt it was too easy either just the right balance of insanity. And to make it even better I get to listen to schweiger shit talk the Baron as we help Efram regain strength while weakening Umbra.

Listening to Umbra beg and plead for mercy was great, it really felt like we were overpowering hell itself, no matter what Umbra threw our way it did absolutely nothing and listening to schweiger come to terms with what he's done and immediately work towards redemption by putting down Umbra was heartwarming. We were the winners not Umbra.

Then finally we get to what I've been wanting to do since the beginning of the DLC, after two whole hours I finally got to put an end to the Baron, activating that ending cutscene was so satisfying and I got to put down my controller and watch.

I'll admit I was confused when Umbea sprung back to life and actually attacked, where hitler failed to stop us during hell machine Umbra full pounced, he was going to take us with him and for a second I absolutely believed we were going to die with him, the fuck tries ripping our soul out rendering us absolutely useless. Its schweiger that saves us, pulling us away from Umbra then eviscerating the fuck out of him with ease and with that The Baron himself is dead, finally the tyrant is dead and everything we had worked towards was finally put to rest.

Just before that scene ends, we see schweiger smile! He's actually happy for once, free from Umbras grip, he's faced his fears and insecurities and in the end was the one who saved us and destroyed The Baron. To see him smile was one of the greatest things ever and I'm so glad we finally got to see that.

In last few moments of the ending, we wake up on the side of a cliff with Dr schweiger by our side and as the camera zooms out we see nothing but an endless sea of lava and I'm left thinking.

What the fuck is Projekt Ragnarok?

[midyearflowers]

ok normally i dont like looking at leaks but i couldnt help myself with age of calamity and so i watched all the cutscenes as a movie and i have thoughts (heavy spoilers ahead obvs)

oooooooohhhhhhhhh my god. look i dont even care that they retconned botw’s canon getting that happy ending was awesome. like yea im disappointed that its more of a fantasy version than what actually happened but also i didnt have to watch all the champions die horribly and alone so i think its a good trade off. it was kinda expected cause the warriors games arent actually direct canon but whatever. im still absolutely gonna get it once i get a switch (god knows when that will be) but im excited for the gameplay. the demo looked fun, and the story is pretty fun too tbh so im gonna love playing it for myself. i definitely wanna check out all the boss fights, especially the final few

the champions of the future coming back in time to help the champions of the past was a great touch and yes i cried like a baby during miphas section. she gets to see her baby brother all grown up :’) also when sidon shows up going “no you cant take her again” my heart shattered. theres definitely a split timeline cause the future champions obviously mean that the real calamity happened, and they acknowledge that in their future the champions are gone (nintendo came to my house and killed me instantly with the zora stuff i swear to god) them then getting sent back to their own future aka the doomed one was kinda bittersweet cause like they get to see and assist in a victory but they dont actually get to keep that happy ending so its like F

the fortune teller dude never got a name i think, but he wasnt too remarkable tbh. there wasnt really any backstory about who he was and how he was related to all this and how he even came to be working with the yiga clan. or how he got a hold of the corrupted egg guardian/how it ended up corrupted in the first place. so that was a little disappointing but since he died at the end im assuming he doesnt have any importance in actual canon so it was probably just “we need a mastermind behind it all and kohga aint it” kohga realizing that he was on the wrong side and joining the good guys was nice imo. after seeing the fortune teller literally rip the fucking souls out of the yiga members (that was fuuuuuucked up) he knew he messed up and had to help stop what was put in motion. i know most people dont like 180s for villains but i like them so.

holy shit this calamity ganon form was so much cooler than the base game!! like damn dude we couldve had it all but instead we got fucking macgyvered frankenstein spider shit. this form looked so much better, it had the signature hooves and was mostly humanoid like ganondorf or bipedal beast ganon. the red hair was there and the way it was styled i got major demise vibes which is awesome, it kinda feeds into the theories of this ganon and what we saw in the sequel trailer

i still hate the king tho. we at least got him admitting to zelda that he was being an ass but the flashback with the egg guardian having been built/repaired by young zelda and shared with her mother then being taken away by the king seemingly right after her mother passed away (basically the equivalent of taking a childs comfort toy away saying “youre too old for this/this is garbage”) and i will never forgive him for that. no amount of apologizing could make up for how he treated her, especially from such a young age after experiencing the death of her freaking mother. like i get youre grieving and have to prepare your kingdom for a huge threat but maybe have some compassion for your daughter? maybe? just a little??

the way zelda awakened her powers in this story was great too. still happened cause she wanted to protect link but her refusing to run and leave him to die so she can live hit right in the feels. despite having no fighting skills or powers she wanted to act instead of run. anyways i love and stan this incarnation of zelda

overall it was a very epic feeling story and im pretty pleased with it despite the changes they made. i knew not to take it too seriously from the start, its just a fun button mashing game where you take out hordes of enemies at once but set in the old hyrule. i cant wait until i can play it for myself

[episodeshadow]

ok im still letting a lot of the game sink in and while i had a genuinely good time playing forces theres a couple things i just gotta get off my chest as criticisms.

spoilers under the cut

ok so gameplay wise, i liked it! especially custom hero and tag team stages. modern sonics stages were almost as good, but there were times when reactions wouldn’t happen, or trying to turn was less responsive, he just felt a little too loose and slippery, but still pretty good. the classic stages were alright but after playing some of mania they just felt kinda eh :/

ok

one thing that bothers me is how tails was written... he’s depicted as helpless and can’t fight back, completely ignoring how capable he is.  in sa2 when he thinks sonic is dead his reaction is to fight eggman more determined than ever because sonics not there so he has to act alone.  in forces.. well knuckles says that he lost it a little but its not really said what.. but he isnt helping the resistance.  tails would have been at the forefront of the war effort with knuckles amy and the rest but instead hes off doing god knows what because?? and i know if he really thought sonic was dead it would be a lot for him to handle but i dont think the way they portray him accurately represents that. he only comes back when he finds classic. and anytime he is approached by an enemy he only ever cowers away even though its established he is very capable of defending himself in a fight. i dont feel like this game did any favors for tails. :/

also.. why is classic there? like story wise it just didnt feel like his presence was a big point in the plot, overall tails and classics little side story felt like just that - a side story that didnt quite gel w the rest of the story.  he was added to appeal to the 2d sonic fans but i feel like that wasnt necessary.. we just got mania, and if they hadn’t tried to shoehorn him in the dev team couldve spent more time working on modern sonic and custom hero’s gameplay and really adding depth.  instead, we get classic gameplay that feels just a bit too lackluster and modern gameplay that, while enjoyable, felt a little too shallow.

and thats another point i wanna make, is time.  the whole game feels rushed, both plot-wise and game-play wise.  the game itself is not long, i cant remember how many hours it took but it was not many, the stages were all. pretty short. it would have been cool to see a few more locations maybe? and more variety of boss fights or at least showing up in the stage. like why add chaos in the game and then not use them at all.  shadow wasnt a boss fight but he got his dlc so. metal and zavoks fights were ok too. they just. couldve done more. theres only so much story/cutscenes, with the passage of time just shown as text.  it doesnt really let the player feel  the consequences.  oh sonic spent six months in prison? its fine tho here he is again five seconds and one cuscene later.  it wouldve been stronger if we got to see at least a little bit of what happened in those six months.  how battles were lost. its implied a lot of people died, and while they likely wouldnt have shown that, they could have depicted the struggle.  the heroes fighting against eggman but without sonic they find themselves outmatched and caught off guard for the first time, and they tell themselves its ok its just one battle.  But slowly, over time, they win less and less, they see more and more people in terror realizing that this man who they saw as just a ridiculous scientist whos always defeated is suddenly a much more real threat.  We are told that 99% of the world is conquered by Eggman, but I don’t know if it’s just me, but it’s kind of hard to see that.  I just think it would be easier to get emotionally invested and really feel the sense of danger and urgency if we could actually get to see what led up to the point they were at.  They were all inside one bunker.  How did the whole planet become under an iron grip of Eggman that there were hardly any safe places to group?  I also can’t help but feel like the world was “reclaimed” too quickly.. all you had to do was take out the base and the whole area was free again? was the base the only thing that eggman had there? sure you take out enemies in the area but somehow it doesnt feel quite so impactful.  Although i will admit they do acknowledge this during the end, how the effort isn’t over and theres still a lot or work to be done.

likewise, theres just a lot of elements in the game that seem like they are supposed to be dramatic but don’t carry a lot of weight because they were not given time to stew... sonic was thought to be dead for six months but we don’t see them struggle without him and he seems just fine when he comes out of the prison; he’s ready to jump right back into action.  you could have just said he went on a space vacation and the effect would be essentially the same.

then theres the episode shadow dlc, where infinites “backstory” comes up.  we are told that infinte is a mercenary and was working for eggman, as a part of his army?? he was defending eggmans base, the rest of his squad had already been taken out by shadow.  shadow beats up infinite, infinite gets pissy bc he lost and decides hes not gonna be weak anymore, wears a mask and has the ruby.  Why did he react like this? He yells out that he’s not weak, almost like a mantra, even though Shadow never specifically called him that, just worthless and pathetic (damn, Shadow, chill).  Had he been called weak before? A problem he was already dealing with and Shadow just drove him over the edge? We don’t know. Actually, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about Infinite. He’s a guy, he was weak but then he wasn’t, and ? That’s it, the game doesn’t divulge anything about the Jackal Squad, we don’t know where Infinite came from, and we don’t even get to see his face in-game.  Although it could be argued that they left his story vague on purpose so that we could all apply our own theories, but.. there’s just so little to go on.  It’s hard for me to come up with specific questions because there’s hardly anything there to ask about.  

that was the main issue with me, everything was rushed.  i think i was expecting the game to go a lot deeper than it did.  Forces seemed to just gloss over a lot of the kind of details that would have made the story so much more gripping and worth getting emotional over.  Instead it felt more like going over a bulleted list of events; the cover summary instead of the novel.  Maybe I was expecting too much but I do think that they had a lot of potential that just wasn’t used to the best it could have been.  The story was there, it just, needed to be fleshed out a lot more. I’m sure there’s some plot holes too but I can’t remember off the top of my head.  Basically, I was hoping there would be... more.

ok thats what i wanted to say, i know im forgetting things and i dont know that any of that made sense but i just wanted to express the things i felt could have been done better/ be improved... i enjoyed the game despite all these things though and now that i typed up this lil mini essay im free to focus on the positives! :)

[archer3-13]

SS doesnt bother me quite as much, if only cause i feel it sport superior visual presentation and its major characters dont bug me quite as much as botw does. again, i tend to be out of sync on these things cause i actually rather like fi for instance even if shes definitely one of the weakest helpers/companions of the zelda series. still id say ghirahim is the real highlight of everything, if only because hes a lot of fun in how overdramatic he is.

but then id note a lot of games tend to be more so heavily driven in their story by game designers first and foremost rather then story writers, its the default of the industry even. and yet i feel botw is at the least still worse then most in that regard.

as for each point:

- that really doesnt surprise me because even in just the once memory cutscene i was fully convinced that botw zelda is possibly the weakest written zelda in the series, which is frankly surprising to me considering a good handful of the zeldas are basically magic mcguffins for the end game. and i think thats cause most zeldas feel like they're written with more agency then this, TP zelda makes a conscious choice to be a hostage to save her peoples lives and even then shes willing to undermine her captors, OOT zelda is actively planning to stop ganon well shes a little kid and takes on the sheik identity as an adult. BOTW zelda... i feel like they really wanna hammer in this idea of her being a victim of fate who perseveres regardless but in doing so they reduce her down and prevent her from making meaningful decisions. Like, if its suppose to be a tragedy then just let/make this zelda kinda an awful person in the shinji ikari model who fucks everything up for everyone and thus has to find redemption through self sacrifice.

- havent gotten that far in yet to learn to much more about the king, but ill note that well his tutorial nonsense in the great plateau felt kinda excruciating he did seem rather interesting in a whimsical sense well he was messing with link in the process of helping him.

- only really encountered mipha so far, but yeah sidions a hell of a lot more interesting/likable then she is. and even then i feel hes kinda underdeveloped/explored which is a shame but its better then just dumping a character soliloquy thats a lot more trite then it thinks it is to try and desperately add substance to a character that has none. cough mipha cough.

- see the first zelda note cause i havent quite got that far.

- see the first zelda note, cause it really does sound like a shame what theyre doing with her.

- i didnt bring it up but i hard agree with this sentiment yeah. id go further even and say that even in gameplay hes one of the less expressive links in the series.

- yeah i really dont get it either, cause at first i thought it was that it was prophesied 10000 years ago that ganon would return and then they built the mechs in between then and now because 'prophecy!'. but no, its that 10000 years ago the same events already happened and everyone's just gonna try again in hopes of achieving the same effect. that the monks knew it wasnt gonna work kinda makes the whole thing even more infuriating.

- the royal family in zelda has pretty regularly had some shady history or aspects to it, which is a detail i've always enjoyed so botw also doing it doesn't surprise me. that it feels so secondary and just kinda 'btw' this time though does.

Do I hate BOTW? I cant say i do no, its a perfectly functional game if overhyped to oblivion. The combat grates on me because its both inelegant and constantly stopping and starting despite the heavier emphasis on it compared to previous entries, but its a perfectly functional if simplified combat system. it strips out puzzles and solid dungeon design for a whole lot of surprisingly hand holdy faffing about but ill admit... it could have been worse.

i dont think i hate it as a game so much as im unimpressed by it, for all the details and time it puts into more environmental effects and design and 'applications of realism', for all its efforts to provide a more 'cinematic' experience, it all feels like such wasted effort to me. the environmental design as a lot of neat details here and there sure, but due to the scale of everything in the game set pieces like zoras domain feel like a drop in the bucket compared to previous iterations that were technically speaking much smaller. and sure its neat to have a temperature gage or how lightning can react with equipped metal or how 'big' everything is, but again its just... faffing about especially when a lot of the details obviously incorporated with the interest of 'increased realism' feel so arbitrarily applied and the core gameplay loop feels stripped down because of it. even the asperations of cinema, marginally impressive compared to previous entries sure but its all so route and generic in its application on top of making the gameplay process feel so needlessly excruciating in how its constantly pulling you out of it to show off some cool new thing or angle they just thought up. or, even worse, to show you the same damn thing youve seen a billion times already, its excessive posturing that helps exaggerate the general stop and start game feel botw is riddled with.

but no, even with all that said i dont find myself unable to play it. i return, whittle away out of curiosity if nothing else. i cant see myself jumping onto botw2 the search for more money anytime soon after its release, but i havent lost interest yet.

no, its the story of botw i hate, i hate the presentation of its story, i hate the communication of its story, i hate the characters of its story, and i especially hate the guardians and zelda in said story. not a frothing hatred mind, but definitely an exasperated hatred that caused my gut reaction to anything mipha said and most of what zeldas said so far to be 'please shut up, i dont care', and i legit like navi in ocarina of time. and those posh accents are not helping.

but then this entire experience has convinced me that zelda characters should never speak recognizable words ever and just stick to simlish.

[tumblunni]

Bunni continues to play Richard And Alice! Random thoughts and stuff!

* I’m really not good at point and click advantures, so i dunno if my opinion is very valuable, but this one just seems... not good, gameplay-wise. The sections are all different lengths and difficulty levels in each chapter, and not in a fitting way. Like so far the only one where I had to combine two items was the first chapter, it took me ages to figure out what the game wanted me to do with the bedsheets. And then the second chapter had like zero point and click at all, you just had to find one toy brick and stick it to block one hole, then it was just story cutscenes. And now in chapter three we have a suddenly huge snowfield to explore with your painfully slow walk speed, yet there’s only like one thing you need to find and just... I’m getting surprisingly anxious worrying if I missed something cos i only found that one thing! There was a whole section i didnt explore cos i didnt realise you couldnt go back outside after you managed to open the door. And what was with the misdirect of Alice saying ‘maybe i can reach this window if i have something to stand on’ and then instead she just shot off the lock on the door? Does that mean there were multiple solutions to this puzzle and thats why the place was so huge?

* Anyway, the story continues to be intriguingly good! I continue to be really engaged in poor Alice’s journey through this post apocolyptic snow world with her lil son, and I continue to be really worried what happened to that son, since this is a flashback and Alice met Richard alone... Also I like the continuity that Barney is continuing to talk about the close call they had last time with a monsterous bastard who kidnapped them. This poor lil 7 year old is struggling to keep up and struggling to keep smiling so his mum won’t be sad, and its just SO COLD and he doesnt understand why they left ‘the safe house’ because he doesnt understand they were prisoners there. And god, its so sad cos you can understand how Alice might be getting frustrated with him, and you can understand that she KNOWS she’s being irrational, but she’s just so scared that she sucks at keeping up a brave face for her kid. But I think she’s doing a great job, she’s way more of a badass survivor than anyone else would have been in this situation! And Barney is being incredibly good too, he’s being really patient and obedient to his mum and he’s a really considerate kid, he gave his mum his toy car cos she was getting sad remembering when her husband was alive and they used to ‘go on adventures’. (”But we’re on an adventure now, mummy!”)

* And MAN I am REALLY WORRIED for this poor kid, he’s been showing signs of getting sick as they were travelling the snowy wasteland and I hope they can at least get a break now they’ve found this abandoned house to sleep in. BUT NOPE! Alice finds mysterious scary notes with some sort of log of... people...? It definately doesnt feel like just someone recording visitors or survivors they met, its got a weird sort of... priorities, to what was written down. ‘Fem. caucasian. 20s. Compliant. 65lbs.’ And then what struck me as especially weird was that someone would classify a kid as ‘Female. age 7. 21 lbs’ instead of like.. actually writing that it was a kid. This is someone seeing these people as.. merchandise. You never really get an answer in this chapter but I think it’s someone who was offering survivors fake shelter and then cannibalising them T_T The chapter just ends with Alice finding an ambiguously scary room with a bloodstain, but this is the only shelter they have, so all she can do is lock the door again so her kid doesn’t see, and barricade the front door in case this cannibal cult comes back for their home base... *shudder*

* But also seriously, why did I collect like five other red herring letters as well as the cannibal one? And a rusty saw and ammo for a different gun. Was that JUST red herrings or did I miss an optional puzzle?

* Its actually a weird relief to get back out of the flashback and back to our slightly-less-horrible horrible situation in present times. Sure, Alice and Richard are locked in prison, but in this apocolyptic scenario its a relief to be somewhere where you get daily food and working electricity. There’s even a tv that only sometimes doesnt work! And they have each other, and they’re building up a nice friendship now, and it just feels quite optimistic. Richard’s even getting a bit of a crush on Alice, even though the attempts at flirting between the two of them are failing horribly cos they’re both total goobers. i dunno, if they do get together in the end, I totally wouldnt mind it! I dont think its really necessary though.

* Aww but the more we learn about everyone’s backstory, the more I really wanna hug em! We still dont know very much about Richard, but we’ve learned now that he had an ‘average childhood’, at least, by his definition. And he lived in some sort of small country town, and he joined the army in order to see more of the world. But it went really badly and he got sent to prison for rebelling against a superior officer who made a clearly immoral order. JUSTICE FOR RICHARD, GRARR!! And then Alice continues to be way more well developed and interesting, even though I do still feel sympathetic for richard, yknow. Just a lil frustrated that it took us so long to even hear that lil bit about him, when he’s supposed to be the ‘main character’. Seriously he seems like just a framing device for us to talk to alice and see her flashbacks! Anyway, now we’ve learned that Alice didn’t have much of a childhood, because she was hospitalized for a long time. And she talks about how she felt like a burden and felt suicidal and how she never even got to make any friends til she grew up and became a lil more healthy, and then she sorta ended up in an unplanned pregnancy with the first man she ever dated, and never had a chance to pursue her dream career and just... wow Alice dear god, someone up there in the heavens hates you! God, I hope this game has an actual happy ending, please! And also it makes me EVEN MORE WORRIED about what happened to her kid, now im starting to worry if maybe he inherited her childhood disease and like.. it only first started manifesting during the apocolypse and she wasnt able to find a doctor in time.. or something... MAN THIS GAME IS GIVING ME A MILLION WAYS THIS SWEET BOY COULD DIE

* Oh but one random complaint... much as I care about Barney, he kinda isnt a very well written character. They fall into a lot of super outdated ‘fake movieverse child’ cliches instead of like.. bothering to listen to what actual kids talk like. He’s always using that fake cutesy talk like ‘i made you a waffle but i eated it’. Its rather jarring! ...but still I WILL DEFEND MY VIRTUAL SON FOREVER dont you dare kill him off just because his dialogue is poorly informalized!

* The next chapter is kinda boring, its not really even a chapter but just an intermission to show us some more gameplay and nothing else. Richard and Alice do nothing but have an awkward fetch quest to find enough stuff to make a pole to reach the termostat outside the jail cell, and then after all that it ends up failing anyway. I guess at least we do get a bit of character development cos we get to see them both frustrated and having a bit of an argument, then making up again, and etc. But meh, bring on the next actual plot flashback!

* “Why does Daddy live in the ground?”

* thats it im done this is how bunni is slain fucking hell

* god, I dunno if I made the right choice but I chose to be honest with the kid and try and explain what death is. I got to hear the backstory of how the dad died, so i THINk that was the right choice? It seems he died back when barney was too young to even really know him. It was at the start of the apocolypse and the family was doing semi okay living in a shared shelter with a bunch of other people. But then it was the start of government aid breaking down and society crumbling, and a gang stole the last food ration pack from them and the dad thought he could reason with them. And its just so sad cos Alice is thinking of all the ways it could have been prevented! ‘We’ve gotten used to surviving with less now, what if we’d just let that food go? we could have lasted’ And what if they’d shot first and asked questions later, instead of trying to be diplomatic. And apparantly back then things were a little less abd so there actually was a trader they could have got more food from, but resources were limited so they decided it wasnt worth it at the time. And the after the gang killed the dad and some of the other leaders of the shelter group, it seems like things just collapsed in a power struggle and thats how Alice ended up alone... And you just have this sad sidequest to gather flowers for his grave and then Barney is all ‘i dont really know him and i dont understand so i feel bad that i cant cry’ and then he’s asking if dead people can hear you from down in the ground. And I picked being honest again, and Alice didnt say yes or no, she just admitted that nobody really knows what happens after you die, and you have to choose what you want to believe. So Barney chooses to try and tell his dad about how they’re having a good day playing in the snow on this adventure, and Alice tells him that Barney’s grown up so big and strong, and Barney says ‘Yeah! Strong like a lion! Or you, daddy!’ and BUNNI’S SOUL SHATTERS INTO A MILLION PIECES

* i am gone i am deceased at this deceaseness aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

* And there’s like an optional note you can find that tells the story about some unnamed kid who was living alone with their friend Lucy and they were trying to survive without any adults to help, and its all SCARILY VAGUE and I hope we get to learn more about them later cos it just says how the same gang who killed the dad was just.. ominously circling around the area and Lucy was acting weird and then dissappeared, with a letter saying she chose to leave for [insert name of far away settlement here] but it was really suspicious and the unnamed kid thinks that the gang was threatening lucy and they must have kidnapped her and faked this note and then the diary just ENDS it just ends with the kid talking about how much they love lucy and cant live without her and we dont know if they found her or if she even really was kidnapped?? ITS SO VAGUE! its so vague that honestly im only just assuming the diary writer was a kid too, i mean maybe they were lucy’s parent or sibling or something? or maybe both them and lucy are older? but the way it was written sounded like they were like early high schoolers or something (then again this game is bad at writing kid characters so maybe not) I MOURN FOR YOU, UNNAMED DIARY PERSON AND LUCY OF MYSTERY

* OH GOD DOOM when it went back to modern day, now its got all mysterious and weird and sad too, AAAARRRGH the heroes are still in prison, but the guards have stopped coming to their cell and theyre stuck here scared and worrying and you dont know if the obvious has actually happened... i mean maybe the prison has been abandoned or everyone died and now they’re stuck here locked in their cell and AAAA eventually the cold will start seeping in and kill them too and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

* okay im gonna go get back to playing this game

[mobianstrip]

sonic forces me to analyze the game

this is by no means a full, in depth review of sonic forces. however, since im working on a Forces au i think its only fitting to talk about my personal gripes with the game. just to be clear, i dont hate sonic forces by any means! there are some really neat concepts about it that i enjoy, which ill include my thoughts on as well! though with that said, theres a lot about it that could have been dealt with better. this post is gonna be a bit long and messy, sorry!

now i cant speak for what the gameplay controls itself are like since i havent actually played it with my own hands, so my primary focus will be the story and general format of the game. everything under the cut!

ill start by saying that in hindsight, i think the general premise of the game is actually really neat (had the war framing of the plot not been so overly glorified and bland. more on that below). eggman taking over most of the world is very reminiscent to the initial circumstance of mobius in the early archie sonic publication. it seems especially reflective of the comic in the fact that sonic forces takes place on a planet setting more akin to that of Mobius than that of Sonic’s World/Earth, the difference being the lack of human beings aside from Eggman. while this does somewhat bother me for the fact that it paints an inconsistency with the setting, im also all for the planet being strictly Mobians + Eggman again tbh. the concept of sonic being on earth populated by humans, complete with a mock version of the united states, never really settled well with me. it always felt like just a means to make sonic more relatable, which is true, but not done because it made anything more interesting. a problem that then arises is that the origins of shadow and silver/blaze would be radically different or at least would need some retcon alterations to make sense...but thats a topic for another day

overall, looking past the inconsistency with the setting and its implications, i enjoy how the premise of the game feels like going back to the basics. but even the premise still has its problems...which is never a good sign, and this point practically sealed forces’s fate of inconsistency: the theme of war and how it frames the story is so, so poorly written

starting with whats presented at the beginning of the game, sonic is captured by eggman as a prisoner. if the writing had just left it at that, fine. however, the exposition goes on to say that sonic has been there for six months being tortured...and that tails has completely lost it. again id be fine with this - the theme of war is a darker one so these two events would make sense in this circumstance. however, that tension is just totally lost in a matter of a few episodes. you rescue sonic who is just as cheery and jokey as ever, somehow able to fight a boss despite being supposedly locked away and tortured for six months

of course i understand that its not like they could give sonic ptsd and make him look tortured and weak and so on - but why even mention the torture thing at all? the same problem is apparent with the first cutscene with tails. tails is hardly given enough time to seem like he has "lost it". i will say though that tails WAS given a bit more of an emotional response to work with than sonic overall. particularly when tails is about to be attacked by chaos, and he ducks his head in fear and calls for sonic to help him even though sonic isnt there - i actually enjoyed this small segment bc it does reflect some of what was said about how he reacted to sonics capture (aside from also being across the planet...for seemingly no reason except bc he "lost it" and to get him away from the main group so that classic sonic can appear)

frankly speaking from these two points alone, the games tone just feels kind of confused. its obvious the writers wanted some parts of the darker theme of war...and its also obvious that going all out wasnt gonna be an option bc of the nature of sonic as a character and franchise being about more lighthearted, easier to relate to stories about sonics heroism. which im fine with that being the case; sonic is a hero and more importantly a mascot that profits off of kids being able to relate and look up to. my issue is simply that the premise of this game makes consistent writing kind of doomed from the start if the writers are trying to appeal to both the kids AND older fans. they cant go to the lengths necessary to adequately build the narrative. cant go too dark, cant go too lighthearted, and not finding a balance between to two gives you a confused and bland story 

on that note,  i personally find the theme of war to be...uncomfortably glorified and unchecked (adding to the tone confusion and blandness). sonic forces is named so because...yknow. armed forces. armies. the whole point of the game is that theres a war going on and youre on the good guy side. i mean its not as if youre fighting against other living creatures, just infinite and eggmans robots, but still. i think what put me off the most is the first comic with the soldier cat. after they save the day, the last lines are "I'll do better. I'll be better. I'll become a real soldier and a real hero." now slap that as the tagline to a united states army corps commercial and suddenly its really...sour tasting

war is just one of those subjects that i think needs to be handled with a bit more care. i mean think about it: the primary gimmick of forces is that you get to make your own character, to be the sonic version of yourself in this world. the plot of the game is that theres a war, and your character joins the resistance to defeat eggman. this game is pretty blatantly glorifying the idea that joining in on a war can make you a REAL soldier, a REAL hero. to some kids, that might sound pretty cool. but theres no nuance to it whatsoever, nothing thought provoking on the subject. no one steps back to be like ‘its good to do good things but wars are tough and not fun, and being a hero isnt everything’. none-a that

now do i think a sonic game could get it into a childs head that they should join the army for real? no, not necessarily. i think its possible, but i think that would also be due to a larger issue of military glorification present in modern culture in general (especially in america). mostly i just find the implications at play with glorifying the theme of war in conjunction to the avatar gimmick to be in poor taste and also entirely avoidable because...

i dont think the war and army framing even had to be a thing. not only is it just so sloppily done in general, with that fact that the supposed soldier forces on the Resistance side are literally never seen on screen except for some dialogue boxes in one episode and the rest of the time only being mentioned through other characters, but i seriously think never saying the words “war” or “army” and not including literal soldiers would have worked just as well and even been the better route. they could have just been like yeah heres eggman taking over the world, heres the resistance fighters that have come together to stop him, they are opposing forces and you play as your avatar to stop eggman - and just leave it at that. it wouldve made the glorification of war less obvious and the handling of the topics at hand appear less confused, appealing to a more lighthearted tone rather than weighing it down with frankly out of place hints to a darker subject of war

finally i wanna talk about the story as it relates to how its told through the game. the plot itself is fairly standard - eggman starts war, captures sonic, takes over planet. you rescue sonic, and together you fight eggman and infinite and ultimately defeat them. thats all good and well even if its cheesy sometimes. the REAL problem is how its executed. a lot of the exposition is given not through cutscenes, but through spoken dialogue with text box subtitles over the episode select screen. and it just feels so...stiff. it doesnt feel like world building, it just feels like being forcefed information with no substance behind it

i get that fully rendered cutscenes throughout can be expensive and time consuming, but shoot id take in-game rendered cut scenes at least. (like in sa, sa2, shadow 2005...) anything that could have provided the world building with a bit more ground to stand on would have been great. sure, there are levels to traverse which look cool...but they dont provide any sense of scale, they dont tell us what the area is like, and more importantly, you never see the other characters who are supposedly on the battlefield "alongside" you in a couple episodes. the storyline from the exposition along sounds like it could be an epic journey - but the way its told with the given game mechanics (i.e.: stage-based gameplay with no open worlds to explore) leaves a lot to be desired

i feel like the stuff explained in the comics should have just been cutscenes or exposition or something to pad out the game a bit. the comics are so short anyways so why just put it in the game? maybe not the first comic about the rando soldier saving the day or w/e...but the comic with silver and knuckles fighting chaos? the comic about infinites origins? all of that could have easily been included. at LEAST the comic with shadow was part of the DLC...but even thats just so gimmicky. they provide important background to the main plot of this game so i really dont understand why it was sidelined to comics and not just included from the beginning

the tension that the exposition already fails to build up is brought down even worse when coupled with the confusing timing of the stage complete screens, where you get your completion rank and see what new character creation items you unlocked. listen, i know immediate gratification for completing the level is important and all...but i swear, having these screens between the end of a boss fight and the cutscene showing what happens to them after being defeated seriously impairs the flow of the game. maybe having it there allows for the cutscene to load up in the background to improve efficiency, but personally id prefer seeing a loading screen as the break between a boss fight and the following cutscene after it and THEN the stage complete screen to finish the sequence off. the boss fight end cutscenes arent that long anyways for the most part, so its just nonsensical to have the stage complete screen interrupt the action when theres only a two minute scene left to it

i cant stand how streamlined forces is to the point of the main plot. what happened to games that actually take the time to explain stuff, show us extra bits to the story and how they connect? and even when forces' does explain SOME stuff, its through audio/text only dialogue. nothing visually interesting, just...dialogue. and then its off to the next level. forces' feels very bare bones honestly. the story is supposed to feel big and epic but it just wasnt given enough to bring that feeling into fruition. this is probably the only thing that saves forces’ from the war glorification issue because the game simply fails so miserably at telling a compelling story due to poor writing and poor formatting that the war stuff gets lost in the mix - and thats just sad

all of this brings me to my conclusion. fuck i wish sonic forces was a better written and executed game, because i do think it could have been so cool. i really like infinite as a villain, in both his design and personality. yeah hes kind of a whiny, edgy bitch - but he had potential. and its really gonna suck if this game killed off all that potential in one fell swoop

(then again, thats why we have fan content and aus :3)