#I made this meme before playing the DLC

[nonndrawz]

*Valhalla making Kratos face his Greek past for some unknown reason*

(Also Mímir there for emotional support)

[katapotato55]

how to make your writing be remembered forever and possibly be well loved.

(incredibly stupid and silly fanfiction line at the end of this post) I know that title is incredibly daunting but listen, its very simple. you ready?

MAKE STRONG CHARACTERS

"but kat! surely its not that simple! " nononono listen. bear with me. I want you to think of your favorite thing. Now ask: what do you remember the most about the thing you love? I will go first:

I love team fortress 2. and guess what: this game has been around since 2007, and was in development hell since before I was even born. The game has been around for 16 fucking years. And guess what? in the strong year of 2023 team fortress 2 Is STILL getting memed about. and do you want to know the crazy part? the character designs to the naked eye are not special at all. ok sure from a designer standpoint, these are very well designed characters made so that you can easily tell who they are based on their silhouette. but from the average joe.... tf2 is iconic but overall it looks ok. it doesn't seem special to a stranger to tf2. look at this completely random and arbitrary example of a game in the same genre:

I don't know shit about the characters in overwatch. Yeah i have a BASIC idea on what their personality is like based on voice lines and some videos i guess... but in-game they just exist. these characters are brightly colored, they have beautiful unique designs, hell they have even more diversity such as robots and people from other cultures! but i don't remember shit about these characters. Maybe I remember the ice lady and tracer, but nothing else. and yeah part of overwatch struggling right now is incompetant development, BUT: The characters in team fortress 2 are SO remember-able because the characters have such a vibrant personality. I am an orange box owner, its been a decade and a half and I am still remembering this game and enjoying art about it.

"but kat! that is a comedy game! Overwatch is a very serious game! are you saying comedy is needed to make a character more noticeable?" no. though I think allowing your characters to lighten up every now and then would humanize them. Not full on goofy, just give them something that makes them likeable. and if you cant do that, you can STILL make a compelling character even though they are mostly seriousness. I have an even more awfully thought out example:

kung fu panda is a masterclass in making a serious comedic movie somehow work. Master Oogway.... he isn't a comedic character at all. Yeah we made memes about him, but ignoring that, he is a wise and resourceful person. He is at calm and has faith in this intuition. there are a lot of characters like this. What makes Oogway stand out is that he is also a little bit kooky and sassy.

this youtube clip sums up what I mean. It is a funny line, it fits the character, and It doesn't ruin the seriousness of the moment. Some of the most successful series in history have something about them that has appealed to people. In my opinion: characters with strong personality and interesting traits is always a good way to ensure your writing is successful. The second most important is the characters bouncing off of each other in terms of their chemistry with each other. There is a reason why I spent years playing the first Destiny game and all of the DLC, but I remember fuck all about the characters. I think I maybe remember the bootleg star lord robot guy.

A writing exercise

here is an exercise to get you in the spirit of character making. step 1- get a random character from a random bit of media. In this case let me bring you master Oogway. Step 2- Get a completely different character from a completely unrelated series. I am going to give you Scout from team fortress 2. step 3- write a random ass thing about them interacting. Think about how the characters would react to each other and why. Think about each characters values in life and think about how they would bond and conflict with each other. Think about characters similar to the character they met in the past and how they reacted then, and if they have never interacted, make something interesting with it. Step 4- keep experimenting. Once you get into the spirit you can apply this to any new character you could want to make anyways thats it byeee- "arent you going to do that ?" do what? "make a writing thing about oogway and scout. " ........

Scout: let's go turtle you got nothing on my speed- Oogway: The one who first resorts to violence shows that he has no more arguments. Scout: that sounds like chicken talk! come on tough guy let me have it- Oogway then proceeds to make scout eat shit before vanishing in a cloud of cherry blossoms and dust from the desert. If this post isn't popular I want you to know my dignity was lost for nothing.

[lesvegas]

FNV Quest Mods That Don't Suck

I know I've made modlists before but talk of DLC-sized mods made me want to make another. Big, DLC-sized quest mods are nine times outta ten messy, poorly-made and poorly-written, feel like they should've been fo3 mods, or have numerous other qualities that are detestable to normal people with taste. I've played most of the popular ones and hate nearly all of them. Here are the ones I actually can recommend.

Note: I also highly recommend having a proper modding setup before installing any of these. Everyone and their mother has already recommended the Viva New Vegas guide before because it works and it's beginner-friendly.

Allow me to spare your dash by putting this list under a cut.

"DLC-sized" Quest Mods

Boom to the Moon - A quest where you go to the moon (yes, really) to find out what happened to a man's wife. I promise it's way better than I could possibly describe. Honestly I recommend almost all of Jokerine's mods for her attention to detail and all the cool shit she makes. This quest mod doesn't even end with the moon trip, you'll also get the best-written mod companion I've ever seen. Seriously please give this one a try if nothing else on this list.

Autumn Leaves - A murder mystery in an archival library vault inhabited by Protectrons. Story so good Bethesda stole it to make a fo4 DLC. No combat, no need for weapons or companions. WARNING: if you suck at navigating vaults like I do you may have a bad time finding stuff (there's a walkthrough in the files). Also some of the lines are a bit odd because the author's first language isn't English. Also one character is a bigot in every way possible because he's intentionally designed to be as punchable as possible. Despite all of this it's still easily one of the best quest mods I've ever experienced.

Unfortunately, making quest mods DLC-sized in general leaves ample opportunity for shit to get messy fast, so honestly your best bet for quest mods is smaller scale, vanilla-feeling mods. So while I highly recommend the above mods, I'd recommend the following ones even more for a more seamless experience.

"Vanilla-feeling" Quest Mods

The Collector - A quest given by a broker in which you collect debts from gamblers. Similar to the Atomic Wrangler quest Debt Collector.

Caravan Tournament - Do you suck at Caravan? Skill issue. Play this anyway and tell me how it feels to lose because I'm sure it's just as interesting as winning but I'm too good at Caravan to to see it for myself. If you get good you get to see a tiny Robobrain wearing a hat.

Working On The Chain Gang - A Powder Ganger Quest Mod - Okay, technically this makes a second faction of Powder Gangers that aren't affected by your reputation with the vanilla Powder Gangers (so yes, even if they hate you, you can experience this mod). These new Powder Gangers reorganize themselves into a legitimate faction that blends seamlessly into the Mojave NPC ecosystem.

The Moon Comes Over the Tower - This one is technically cut content, but that just means it's peak vanilla-feel. Restores the rest of the quest where Emily Ortal asks you to bug Mr. House's network in which you actually have to travel to places to do it.

Okay, these ones are silly, but trust me

Among Us But It's Fallout - It's a vault with a murder mystery you get to solve! Memes aside it's honestly really well done and you should try it.

The Hollander Hotel and Casino - For a quest involving a haunted hotel (no jumpscares, don't worry), this one feels a little goofy at times, especially with The Shining references and the guy outside selling nothing but 500 bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla. But you should give it a try anyway.

Legion Quests

Haven't done a Legion run not because you don't like being a bad guy, but because the Legion route feels lacking? Try some of these.

Legion Quests Expanded - Adds more Legion quests and expands several vanilla quests.

A Golden Opportunity - Legion El Dorado Quest - A quest where the Legion goes in and shuts down the NCR's El Dorado station.

Five Card Ante - A Legion Quest Mod - A quest parallel to Three Card Bounty in which you get to eliminate the NCR's First Recon.

Yes I Would Actually - A Legion Quest Mod - You know how Bitter Springs has three quests you can do for the NCR? Well, now you can do them for the Legion instead. You can even recruit help from the Great Khans to fuck the NCR's shit up.

[hatredmadeofgold]

Revenge with a vengeance — The tragedy of Sam and Raiden’s canon relationship dynamic

Alternate title: SamuRaiden is THAT deep, actually.

Side note by author: This essay will get an update eventually since I wrote it before playing the Japanese version of the game.

Although MGR does not have as complex or well researched character lore as the main series, Samuraiden as a relationship is a lot more complex than common fandom tropes and interpretations of their relationship suggest. I don’t mind it when people make funny/meme content about these two, since MGS/R does come with its own flair of humour, it’s very exhausting for me as well as a few others I know who enjoy this ship for it to be reduced to just that — a joke. MGR being perceived as ‘goofy’ is mainly due to how poorly some of the character lines translate from Japanese to English, as well as it being more or less evident that either budget, time or both ran out over the course of development, hence the second half of the game feels rushed and underdeveloped. In fact, the great majority of MGR fans do not understand how serious, dark, hopeless and dystopian its message really is and that is saddening.

The world isn’t black and white, neither is it in MGS/R. Sam isn’t the just the villain (never has been, by the way), Raiden isn’t the just the hero (never has been either, by the way), I’d say it’s rather “depends on who you ask”. They are on opposite sides due to the circumstances of how they meet and not because they wouldn’t get along. Quite the opposite is true, in fact, if they would have met before 2016, they might have become friends based on the fact of how much they can actually relate to each other in many different aspects of their personalities, interests and experiences.

Before we get to fight Armstrong as well as during the Sam DLC (also through very subtle hints during their first fight on the train) we learn that Sam is just like Raiden and that Desperado forced him to become a shadow of who he once was, going against his own morals and values and only Raiden reminding him of who he truly was before Armstrong defeated him 2 years prior, ultimately crushing his spirit — he had no other choice, either die there as a failure or continue to live and become Desperado’s/Armstrong’s puppet [until someone would eventually defeat Armstrong and free Sam from his never ending nightmare — Did I already mention that Sam is a really fucking tragic character?]. Sam joining Armstrong’s laughter at the end of DLC is a reaction of fear, not agreement with him or enjoyment. And if there’s one thing that both MGS and MGR are really good at, it’s the accurate and very realistic portrayal of the human psyche under stressful and traumatic situations.

On the other side we can tell from Raiden’s reaction when holding Murasama after killing Sam that he, for once in the entire damn series, questions if that was the right choice he made. We know that Raiden enjoys inflicting pain and suffering onto others, he enjoys murder — but he did not feel that way when he killed Sam. It’s quite the opposite. It’s very subtle and if you’re not very observant like me, easy to miss. But the way his voice turns a bit softer, how his eyes look listless, almost sad; he regrets it. When Blade Wolf asks Raiden if that outcome was really necessary, he does not answer him, because he knows that Wolf is right, it wasn’t. And Raiden pretty much hates himself for it. To his team he confidently says that Sam isn’t a problem anymore since he killed him, but that’s not the same Raiden that he’s that moment in the badlands (which is another implication to me that Raiden doesn’t fully trust his teammates, although they are friends; he has major trust issues and the only emotions he shares with them is either anger or amusement but nothing outside of that). The way he sheathes Murasama is a way to honour him, and as far as I remember this is a ritual to honour a samurai’s defeat or death.

I believe that there has been a silent understanding between the two swordsmen that they respect each other from the very beginning, but they do not say it out loud. This is a case of “show, don’t tell” but also something I suspect has something to do with the game being written by Japanese authors, and Japanese is a high context language, meaning, very little words are needed to get the meaning across, and I think this may also translate into the words these two exchange with each other compared to how they truly feel about the other. Besides, they probably couldn’t truly speak honestly with each other in the first place because of the unfortunate conditions of how they met and were (more or less) forced to fight each other until one of them would eventually succumb to the other’s blade. Codecs and conversations were most likely recorded by their respective employers, and I highly suspect that in Sam’s case, he was even monitored 24/7 by Desperado since he never was an official member of the Winds of Destruction in the first place, and they didn’t fully trust him either.

At the very end of the game during the fight with Armstrong, Sam’s message plays, and we can hear how Sam also speaks with a different voice to Blade Wolf compared to everyone else (and technically, indirectly to Raiden but I cannot confirm or deny that Sam was aware that Raiden would ever hear this playback), it’s a note softer; Raiden learns the truth, which confirms to him that he was right about Sam after all, that they are alike, that they respect each other, and that there was more to Sam’s story than him being a part of Desperado, he doesn’t know what exactly, but he knows now for sure that Sam was not the person he originally believed he was (and lets his team still believe he thinks that way).

Would Raiden truly say Sam’s catchphrase “Let’s dance” before fighting and ultimately killing Armstrong, if he wouldn’t have been going through a gradual process between originally hating Sam to respecting and liking him but unable to ever express that to him or anyone else?

Would he ever admit to anyone what kind of emotional impact Sam had on him, besides the anger and hatred he openly expressed towards him?

Doubt so. Highly fucking doubt so.

Because sharing his true feelings is a liability to him, and Raiden learnt as a very young child that vulnerable feelings such as sadness or guilt would be used against him, so his psyche is conditioned to discard them immediately. But Sam made him feel those things in their full extent and Raiden is fully aware of that, but he would never share with anybody that he ever felt that way about Sam.

He may or may not take those feelings to his grave.

From Sam’s side, we can only guess how he truly felt about Raiden, but we can only guess by the way he hesitated to finish him off on the train during the prologue, the way he smiled at Blade Wolf before his death (which might be likely another case of a silent understanding between Sam and Wolf that the latter would share with Raiden what he knows about Sam or the playback of their conversation itself, if not both) as well as everything he says with giving Murasama to Raiden. Of course, Sam couldn’t even say out loud to Blade Wolf or Raiden that he planned to give Raiden his sword to take down Armstrong, and he had to be as vague as possible with the information that he shared with the robot dog. Not by choice, no. Most likely because he was being watched 24/7, he knew that Desperado nor Armstrong didn’t fully trust him and if they knew about his plans, they’d make sure to finish him off before Raiden had the chance to do so. Sam knew he would die, and that it would be the only way he would ever be free from Armstrong’s grasp. So he chose suicide through Raiden’s blade, and gave him his sword to finish what he could not back then.

The game’s title is REVENGEANCE — Revenge with a vengeance.

They both translate to the same thing in my native language German, but there’s a subtle yet important difference between these two nouns.

“Revenge means when you get back at your enemy who is responsible for hurting you and vengeance is the punishment inflicted or retribution exacted for an injury or wrong.”

But it was never Armstrong who hurt or wronged Raiden in the first place, and we know he’s an essentially selfish person who does not really care all that much about politics, religion or anything like that and he only fights for himself (I wrote in my essay about Raiden’s ASPD that his motivation to save these children from becoming cyborg child soldiers is a trauma response first and his rather lose and grey morality second) and the few people he cares about, so Armstrong being the one one who ordered to get N’mani killed is not the reason Raiden went after him or was that passionate about getting revenge or retribution on him either.

It was Sam who hurt him — wounded both his body and soul during the prologue — but when Raiden got his revenge, he realised that revenge is empty, that he didn’t feel better, and that he regrets killing him, then we get to the vengeance part. From the moment Raiden held Sam’s Murasama in the badlands, he felt no more hatred towards him and the emotional impact his death had on him made Sam transition from a person he hated to one of the few people Raiden truly cares about.

Armstrong may be the villain of the story, but the person who wanted revenge on him never had been Raiden. It was Sam. Always had been Sam, because it was Sam who got hurt by Armstrong, it was Sam who wanted to get revenge on Armstrong for defeating him and crushing his spirit, it was Sam who wanted to punish Armstrong for making him into a shadow of who he once was, making Sam speak about ideals he didn’t truly believe in (like, who the FUCK even thinks that Sam truly believed a single fucking word of that, because I for sure as hell can tell he never did, he either gaslit himself into believing that for 2 years until he met Raiden or only parroted whatever the fuck Armstrong wanted him to say so he would not get killed on the spot).

Revenge and vengeance are very deep feelings and actions of hatred, feelings that are too deep and complex to be associated with morality, hence why I highly doubt that the title of the game is directed at Armstrong from Raiden’s side at all. That between Raiden and Armstrong is not nearly as personal as it has been between Sam and Armstrong. Raiden eradicating Desperado and Armstrong had been about justice [for the kids being killed and their organs sold], not revenge.

"I said my sword was a tool of justice. Not used in anger. Not used for vengeance. But now… Now I'm not so sure. And besides, this isn't my sword."

But when he says this, followed by “Let’s dance”, it became deeply personal for Raiden as well. Because he could confirm that his feelings about Sam had been right, and that Sam wanted to get revenge on Armstrong.

Raiden decides to avenge him, because Sam couldn’t get revenge himself.

Although Sam never told him directly, Raiden understood him from his actions alone, those subtle hints, reading between the lines what the other truly felt and wanted the whole time, eventually passing the “torch” — his sword — to Raiden, to finish what he could not. So while Raiden’s own reasons to finish off Armstrong were (mostly) justice for the innocent lives he destroyed and planned to continue to destroy, they also became feelings of hatred and anger — Sam’s feelings towards Armstrong.

In the end — revenge with a vengeance — is what Sam could get on Armstrong only through Raiden, after Raiden enacted his onto Sam.

Now the question is — if Raiden would’ve never killed Sam, by the chance of him recognising earlier than in canon that revenge is empty and that he won’t feel better after killing him, would Sam go by his example and abandon his revenge plans on Armstrong as well? Or would they fight Armstrong together and get justice?

We unfortunately can only speculate (or write stories about it).

What we can tell from canon though, is that Raiden’s (= Sam’s) passionate feelings of hatred towards Armstrong quickly vanish the moment he finished him off, and he looks into the camera with an empty expression, covered in blood and a crushed cybernetic heart in his hand.

And I think that is exactly what he feels — empty.

Because again, he got revenge and avenged Sam, led by what Sam felt, Sam’s feelings became Raiden’s feelings during that fight with Armstrong. But once that was gone, there’s nothing left. In the case of killing Armstrong, he doesn’t feel remorse or guilt. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Because revenge is empty.

Raiden defeated his enemies — but at what cost?

By killing Sam, he realised what he had actually lost — a potential friend (or more), someone who understood him in a way that no one else did. Perhaps he thought or felt that, if he avenges Sam, making Sam’s feelings towards Armstrong into his own, he might be able to deal with that loss better, but to no avail.

Because, and I can speak from experience as a person with the same mental health issues as Raiden, that emptiness is worse than regret.

MGR’s ending also implies that Raiden abandons his family and friends to fight his own war; essentially taking the same path that Sam once took in his past, ending up in a personal war and revenge act that knows no end, making one bad choice after the next. If Raiden hasn’t already become the villain of his own story by the end of MGR, then it’s just a matter of time until he becomes that.

And the cycle of violence continues, until the story repeats itself, over and over and over and over and over.

Did I mention already that there is a myth around Murasama being a cursed sword, that will drive its user either slowly insane or make them commit suicide if it doesn’t get a regular ‘blood sacrifice’?

—

“I really enjoy murder, but that one, that I will regret for the rest of my life.”

[ad-hawkeye]

Visual Novel and Otome Recommendations for the Discerning Artem Enjoyer

So, recently, I've been playing a few other otome games. And you know what? I've had to sludge through a lot of crap! It literally took me months to be able to compile a list of four games I feel confident recommending.

Also, each of these games have an aspect that might appeal to Artem fans, especially a-spec ones. Of course, your mileage may vary, but here are my recommendations.

C14 Dating: You're a college student participating in an archeological internship. The game includes friendship routes as well as romance ones. It's very chill and laid back! I have played through all of the routes and enjoyed them greatly. Though, I am specifically recommending this game for one character - Hendrik, a young geologist who is a TA at the dig site. He is canonically asexual, and is the only character of his kind that I've encountered in a dating sim. The subject matter is also handled very well. This game was actually recommended to me by an anon, and I thank them so very much for it!

Trouble Comes Twice: Adrian. That's all. I'm kidding. Unless? But for real, he feels like if you took Artem Wing, but put him in the childhood friend role. It works so well. I am being entirely serious. Sexualities aren't usually outright stated as most of the characters are bisexual, but in Hazel's Adrian route, Adrian explicitly mentions never having had romantic or sexual feelings before. And Hazel is very chill about it. Which makes Adrian canonically a-spec to me! As for the protagonists, Jace and Hazel, they're an acquired taste, but they get much better as the plot goes on. The game is also a little short, but I enjoyed it very much!

Our Life: Beginnings & Always: Part of me regrets playing this game because now I will never get the chance to play it for the first time again. It is so fucking good. The amount of customization is unreal and unmatched. Cove is a wonderful love interest, and honestly? He might even beat Artem in the blushy boy department. He's also canonically demisexual and embodies the "me and the bad bitch I pulled by being autistic" meme. And on top of this, the game is free. DLC (which includes more memories and two additional love interests) is also extremely cheap, and the price of it all combined is still a lot cheaper than most games.

Lovebrush Chronicles: Definitely the closest to Tears of Themis in terms of it being an otome gacha that finally got its global release back in October. Artem fans tend to be drawn to Clarence and Alkaid, but will find reason to also like Ayn and Lars. For instance, I love all of them. Please send help. The game's localization is excellent and makes the love interests feel more human. The game also has no qualms about making fun of its own characters, and the MC will frequently have the chance to lovingly bully the boys. Speaking of the MC - she is incredible and I love her. She takes no shit and is the only otome MC that has made me think, "yeah, I would definitely say that too," and I love her for it.

[intervalart]

I absolutely love your art of Sundown, he’s one of my favorites (next to Akira) 🙂 honestly he’s hilarious in the Dominion of Hate, he’ll literally fight Akira for no reason, he’s got this “tired single dad handling 6 kids” energy to him, and he even like…scolds Oersted? It sounded like? (His voice actor, Reagan Murdock, played Aki Hayakawa in this anime called Chainsaw Man, so i guess he has experience with voicing a guy who needs to wrangle teenagers 😅) do you happen to have any hcs for him?

I'M SO SORRY IT'S TAKING ME SO LONG TO GET TO THESE ASKS, i'm packing to move, so that's taking up most of my time and energy ;;;v;;;

BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH WAAAAAAA, I'm glad you like how I draw the schüt man <333 (who has somehow accidentally become The Muse, whoops lol)

Sadly there are currently no in-game dialogues showing how he interacts with the other party members (party banter like octopath is a common DLC request), but Mad Dog has a line about Sundown "being bad with the little ones", which is either Mad Dog's interpretation based on what he wants to see, or Sundown's stoicism and bluntness really does tend intimidate the kids. (I don't watch CSM so I will take your work for it... But I'm sure Mr. Murdock does a great job! He has a great voice for it...)

But from what we do know for sure (from his recruitment quest and his dialogue to Sin when out of the party of the final 4) is he is very tired, and wants nothing to do with you.

tbh that's part of the reason I'm fascinated with him, is in a whole party full of spunky/quirky anime youngsters who have Psychic powers, martial arts, laser canons, ninja powers, etc. (the oldest being Masaru who's usually hc'd at 25 years old for the meme).... there's just. A guy. Maybe late 30s/early 40s. With a gun.

People joke about Masaru being the Straight Man (which is true to some extent), but I feel like he handles the weirdness a bit better than Sundown does, just on account of his adaptable nature. If Mad Dog's reaction to O. Dio's true form was any indication, supernatural stuff is... Not normal for their time period. So I think Sundown is much more the Straight Man in the DoH just cuz he stands out so much from everyone else. (not that he isn't silly in his own way... he's based on Clint Eastwood ffs lol)

...and I wrote all of this text without even getting to my headcanons, so if that isn't any a warning for how much I can ramble about him at length, then let this cut should tell you. (you asked, sorry not sorry lol)

So warning in advance, there's gonna be a teeny bit of overlap with Mad Dog hcs on some of these because of how much the two intertwine with each other. They kinda come as a package deal.

Some of my hcs you've probably seen in this comic. Most notably; not just the survivor's guilt, but also in the panic of the raid on the town and the flurry of using the Hurricane Shot, he's not entirely sure if he only shot the invading bandits. :( He worried he might have gotten some townsfolk in there too. (Mostly illustrated on pages 5-6 when all the figures kinda blend together)

At the time I made the comic I thought it was just a theory that he'd placed the bounty on himself, I somehow missed the fact that it was canon. But the fact that it is canon definitely drives home both the survivor's guilt, and him fearing death despite having a death wish. (There's much easier ways to off yourself homie, you don't gotta have a bizarre death ritual with randos obsessed with fame and glory... </3)

On the earlier topic, he might not so much be bad with kids, as he is... blunt. He doesn't sugar coat stuff, and he's probably very hands-off. If he really was the respected sheriff of [Unnamed Town], he probably had some experience with kids in the past, but I suspect between the trauma and some degree of wanting to keep everyone else safe, he's cold and aloof on purpose. He was probably more sociable before The Incident. (Much like a certain blond knight)

But he does work well with others in the DoH and is brief but polite to everyone, even the younger characters. (I cry every time he says "thanks" or "sorry" when another party member heals him... TT0TT)

All that aside, some of the more domestic hcs:

• I think Sunny is very skilled at sewing!! Living out in the wilds and not having access to new clothes very often/if at all means he had to get good at repairing his own clothes. And between sleeping out under the stars and the bullet holes, he has plenty of practice... (MD called him girly for it once, and with a completely straight face, Sunny said "Why do you think being self-sufficient is inherently feminine...?". MD never mentioned it again.)

• The trade-off however is that he's... Not an amazing cook. Everything is either eaten raw or roasted over a fire, and he doesn't have a ton of access to spices and herbs in the wilds... Very utilitarian in his cooking methods.

• That ties into the next point; the dude's got a cast iron stomach. If the guy can canonically down an infinite number of glasses of milk (LONG after most adults develop lactose intolerance), the guy can eat pretty much anything. Including whatever rattlesnakes (and cactus) he found to eat.

• This is actually canon, but he does know Spanish. If not fluently, at least enough to understand it but not speak it. (I hc him as fluent though.)

• Sunny is probably a very skilled dancer! If for no other reason other than dodging bullets for years lmao. MD catches a glimpse once. Sunny looks him dead in the eyes and says "No one will ever believe you."

• I've already discussed this, but Sunny probably used to be left-handed, and either due to societal necessity or an injury, he became ambidextrous!

• Now that I'm thinking about it actually, I drew Young Sundown in the comic with much less facial hair to just make him look younger... But it actually makes sense that between the depression (and possibly self loathing), he kinda uses the facial hair as like... A mask? Like, so he doesn't have to see himself in a way? (I might be reading too much into it, the OG art does show he shapes his scruff and it's not completely unkempt, so maybe it started as Depression Scruff, and he just shaves it as best he can with a knife lol)

• I used to hc that he didn't name his horse because he didn't want to get attached. (He just calls it Horse) But after talking to another Really Cool Wild West Artist in the JP fandom, it's not impossible that he could have had the same horse the entire time... So that's not a hill I need to die on lol.

• For obvious reasons, he's a hard guy to get to laugh. If he does, it's usually wry and understated. But on the rare occasion he does genuinely laugh, he's more inclined to stifle it at first, more out of habit than anything else. It takes a lot to get him rolling in the aisles.

...But that's getting into BBFF territory, which is a whole 'nuther post, and definitely not something I have rambled about at length and stored on a hidden discord server.

AND that's not talking about my Mad Dog hcs......

-gripping you anon- Do you see why I am in hell.

[hood-simz]

Directory📝

→PSA/Intro! (read b4 u have a bitchfit)←

The name is Piqt and this blog is 18+. My playstyle features the lifestyles that stray away from the typical "happy-nucleur-family-in-windenberg" type stuff and instead sheds light onto the other side of the pond. I'm on Windows, play with almost every pack due to a beautiful thing called ✨piracy✨, been in the game since the month it released (in case you need to reach out to someone seasoned for troubleshooting), and am currently using 5+ GB of cc/scripts.

WCIF friendly and I hope I can actually help you in that regard through my shitmix of a folder!

Going forward, since you will encounter content in this pinned post that some in the community have had literal tantrums about, I would like to state ✨EA is a leech, delivers broken content again and again for a loaded price and doesn't deserve your morality✨ and I, as someone who has been pirating since 2005, will keep pirating it's content and advocating for others to do so. In the terms of me sharing my own + others mod folders, I also give 0 fucks about someone losing .3 cents of ad revenue as I believe internet ads are literal acidic dogshit and shouldn't exist.

→Tags for this blog←

#thebuildtag [my own builds]

#thescenerytag [scenery edits]

#thelifetag [portrait/life shots]

#thememetag [meme/shitposts/glitches]

#favbuilds [builds i love by others]

#favcontenttag [content i love by others]

The Masterposts!

◤Anadius's Twitter (site in bio)

→Kinda speaks for itself. Kudus to this guy for his work & time in creating such programs for our community!

◤Blogger who compiles DLC content made BGC by various creators

→An absolute godsend before I got the courage to tell EA to go fuck itself and just rip their entire game + all their packs. These creators are absolutely amazing for doing this♡

◤Sims 4 Mod Manager

→Vital in any scenario when sorting mods/cc due to it's access of all the thumbnails, but you just gotta have this if you're gonna download someone's 50+ GB mod folders like I tend to do. Kudos to this guy as well for an amazing, user friendly program!

◤Sims 4 Price Call Out

→A while back I made a post calling out the insane price EA makes for content that lacks its worth + is almost always broken upon release, leaving us to fix it. This post is updated every few months and is there to show you just how much your paying for assets that lack functionality + are bare minimum in terms of design.

◤Paysitesmustbedestroyed + TS4Rebels

→Both sites hold cc content that is blocked behind paywalls.

◤My personal Mod Folder + recommended/best scripts↓

→*take note as its been a few patches since I made this list and folder, both could be out of date though as of today (04/04/24) it works- check with creator pages/popular conflict detectors if worried*

Mod Folder (5+ GB)

Script List w/ links

•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡•♡

Though this blog is mainly a simblr-story type blog, it will also feature CC I find appealing + reblogs of other simmer's gameplay. If you find yourself ever with a broken game, need to find CC, or just need basic troubleshooting help, shoot me an ask/PM and I'll try my best to help!! Also, though it's pretty abandoned, my older storylines are over on insta @ hoodsimz if you want to check it out

[darishima]

puppy your game collection is beautiful i dont know what most of those are except like the disgaeas (because youve explained them before), disco elysium (the occasional meme crosses my dash), roblox, and undertale maybeeeeee you could give me a tour of the others you like and what theyre about and stuff! whats muse dash ouppy that sounds like a rhythm game ^w^

thank you i know its incredible :3c soo here it is again i will go game by game and yap my ouppy little head off im sorry

starting from the left! desmume is a DS emulator that i got to play puyo puyo fever, a fullmetal alchemist ROM and a lucky star ROM and PPSSPP is a PSP emulator i got for uhh. i cant remember which game i specifically installed it for. i think it was puyo puyo fever 2?

roblox is. you know. roblox

my hero one's justice is a demo i downloaded from steam which i have not actually played LMAO i got the demo to see if i wanted to buy the full game but i guess its pointless because i havent bothered to check out the demo

class of 09 and class of 09 re-up (the sequel) are visual novels, hard to explain what theyre about.. basically its all about toxic evil yuri and drug abuse and self harm. its like if needy streamer overload was about coked up high school lesbians

disgaea pc is the second best game ever made

disgaea 2 pc is the number 1 best game ever made. no further explanation necessary

i have not actually played dont starve yet, it was recommended by a friend so i bought it during the steam summer sale for like 2 bucks. from what ive heard, its a survival game, kinda like minecraft if minecraft was way harder and the game hated you

disco elysium is the same, recommended by a friend, i bought it for super cheap during the summer sale, and have not touched it yet LMAO

muse dash is a rhythm game yes and its FUCKIGN INCREDIBLE. AND IM AMAIZNG AT IT. LOOK AT THESE SCORES BONESY ARENT YOU PROUD OF ME

full combo means i hit every note and didnt miss a single one >:3 im genuinely really good at the game not 2 brag,,, and YES you saw that right, hatsune miku and kagamine rin and len are playable characters!! they come with two respective DLCs which also come with a bunch of vocaloid songs and i bought them both <3 these are their sprites in game!

and if you buy it it gives you a bunch of adorable art on the loading screens :3 this isnt even all of them just a few i screenshotted. if i screenrecorded myself killing it in muse dash would you watch the video teehee...

ok back to game yapping. leaf blower revolution is an idle clicker game i got for free on steam, which i got insanely hyperfixated on for three days and played for like 14 hours straight once and then gave up and never touched it again

yume nikki is a little pixelated adventure game where you explore around a girl's weird dreams. the soundtrack is INCREDIBLE especially this song. its transcendental. listen to it while youre high trust me you have to

DDLC requires no explanation i think. its ddlc. you know what it is theres no way you dont

the song of saya (saya no uta) i will be yapping extra about because i LOVE IT. its a horror eroge visual novel about a guy named fuminori who, after a brain surgery, sees the entire world and other people as a disgusting fleshy abomination, whereas everything looks normal to other people. for example this:

is a completely normal hallway. but it looks like that to him. then he meets a girl name saya, who is the only thing in the world that looks normal to him, and he falls in love with her

and i reeeally really dont wanna spoil it cause its really good and i highly recommend you go watch it (theres a full playthrough on youtube) but lets just say saya is Not as normal as she looks.

celeste is a game ive only played a little of, but i love it so far. its a platformer about a trans woman named madeline climbing celeste mountain, and encountering a personification of her self doubt that she has to overcome to get to the top. i lovee the style of the game its so pretty and way easier than i expected it to be, which is great for me because im garbage at every game in the world that isnt muse dash or disgaea

disgaea 4 and disgaea 5 are self explanatory. i ADORE d4, though im not super far into it, but i havent started d5 yet im waiting until i finish d1 and 4

phantom brave is a game set in the same universe as disgaea which crosses over with it, i havent played more than a few minutes of the game but obviously i love it so far cause its similar to disgaea. im waiting to jump fully into it until i finish d1 and d4 though

OFF is an rpg also recommended to me by a friend, i downloaded it online but havent touched it yet 😭 pro at owning games i dont play

omori is also very self explanatory. i downloaded it off my friends steam account and he and i have been playing it together, im not far in but obviously i like it, i knew i would. aubrey is sooo mecore <3 i really need to keep playing it... i should have gotten into omori sooner. actually no i take that back because i think 14 year old me getting into omori would have been so world-ending that it would have shattered my psyche

spore is spore. idk how to describe it. you make a fucked up little creature and you make the fucked up little creature do shit thats the whole game

undertale is also very self explanatory. and boom thats all my games :3 well i also have animal jam classic which didnt fit in the screenshot but theres not much to say about that. other than the fact that i own a super rare nonmember mantis pet and im proud of it. and my den fucks

okay thats more than enough yapping im sorry .. stop asking me questions because i do not know how to shut up. ily though thank you for asking :3c

[randomshipperhere]

Forgot to post yesterday but my God. I can’t believe my playtime went from 23.? hours to 36 hours after doing Baxter’s DLC. Haha. He had me in his clutches since I first met him in 2020. Getting into the mindset of falling for him was hard though because God damn it Cove! I love you too much! I would feel bad when I sidelined him. Had to create an entirely new playthrough with my MC crushing on Cove from the start but not doing anything about it. That’s what got me in a good mood to date Baxter with little regret. Also it added flavor to the subtext when the conversation about first crushes/love happened.

There was so much that happened that made my heart flutter. I’m glad I bought the dlc when it came out (couldn’t play until literally a day ago due to irl stuff) and I was screaming way too much at the screen. I felt like I was reading a victorian romance novel or a slow burn, mutual pining, angst fanfic. It was great.

When we held hands? Janelsidnejishs

When our eyes met at the start of step 4? Ahriowsjrbsjsj

When he placed his hand in the chair MC is sitting on???? AAAAAA

The constant summer/fall shit going on??? I am so unwell.

Then the voiced bits. I can’t. This man has me fr. I mean he already had me before but it’s worse now. I know memes about him say Step 3 Bax is such a cringe lord but I’m in love with him. Sure step 4 him can shit on step 3 him all he wants. Yeah he broke everyone’s hearts. That mess of a man was my (not) lover for the season who entranced me. The only time my MC cried was literally the last scene before he dipped. Also yeah, I forgot what it was called but the first dlc activity, that one- we didn’t end up “dating” because my MC wanted something more serious and his non-committal response turned them off even if they wanted to pursue it earlier during the confession.

There’s so much more that I went feral over, blushing over, pausing to recollect myself moments and I could gush how much I love it all day. When he takes you to the same spot you went to watch the fireworks in Hang *sobs*

But in short. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Literally doing a second run as we speak. This time being indifferent to Cove all the way to step 3. And man, I’m seeing new texts. Imagine not being such a people pleaser even to fictional characters haha. This is a whole new world.

[icharchivist]

Please answer this venting some more about ff7remake

^ you and me rn

aww <33 such a cute meme to illustrate it hi <333

Before i dive into it, a few disclaimers

-I've been fan of the franchise for over 15 years and there's definitely an aspect i'd say of having sat with the previous games for so long that there is a chance there will be bias against anything new. I try to be as objective as i can but as it's a game that means a lot to me, I doubt i would fully manage to be so

-Rumors of a Remake has been brought up ever since the release of Crisis Core because of how the mid-credit scene was adapting the beginning of the OG, and also because of test footage for a possible Remake then. And then when the Remake was announced in 2015 it really took fans by storm and we had to wait 5 more years before seeing the first part, which means a lot of hype and expectations have been built around this Remake which probably also colored the way fans will approach it.

-In the end i'm just one random fan with my own opinion and therefore this will be colored with my own feelings, and i think if people feel any other way about what i say, their own interpretation also matter, so it's a nonexhaustive aspect of all of it

-It's going to get long. In fact this whole ask is over 10.5k long. I'm so sorry.

-I'm going to spoil major aspect of the compilation, or at least won't try to dance around spoiler if i have to mention them.

-I am not touching the Yuffie DLC because i havent played it yet, and that contrary to the Remake it's not an "adaptation" of plotpoints from the OG and should be an original story and i'll judge it as such.

-It is just about Part 1 of the Remake, if i mention Rebirth i'll be vague.

Under the cut!

The Remake is based on the very first few hours of the original game, which is a very tight narrative to start with. If we follow the canon OG, it means they would have to stretch things out and pad in addition to have a proper game runtime.

As such the Remake isn't a straight adaptation of the beginning of the OG, but also will fill in with some original material. Call backs to the other game, supplementary lore, or fully new materials, as well as reworking previous scenes.

But it also includes a completely unique storyline that ends up taking center stage, and said storyline is a sequel to Advent Children. This one story therefore comes with its own problems.

Therefore there are different angles on which to judge the remake, both as an adaptation and a continuation of the franchise.

But frankly i'm allergic to the continuation aspect so bad that i can only see how it doesn't work, instead of how well the game is delivering on this scenario.

I should also mention that i started watching a cutscene movie of the remake in 2020 but stopped after the Wall Market scene because i wanted to play for myself but also was bummed by the way the plot was taking. then i started playing the game in 2021 when it released on computer and i dropped it right before Wall Market because i was seriously getting bummed out by the developments it took, and it made me disconnect with the saga for years just because i was bitter. So that also colors my vision of it that it managed to make me uninterested about a saga that's so close to my heart. I've only decided to give the game a shot again because i ended up rewatching the movie recently and was so emotional i wanted to see through with the remake.

Let's go:

First, the Good.

-The Fighting Gameplay is fantastic. It's a good middle ground between the fast paced action game and the timed turn by turn from the original. It preserves a lot of what made the fights memorable while modernizing it fantastically. In term of pure fighting gameplay, the game is a treat to play.

-Adding to it the equipments menu is a massive upgrade and you have no idea how grateful i am to be able to access each of the characters' set up and switch their materias from one chara to the next without needing them in my party. The scars of the OG are too real. Also very happy that everyone level up at the same rate even if they're not in your party for a while. The OG doesn't give exp to characters who aren't in your party when you play and if you don't switch out regularly, once the game forces you to play specific character, you run the risk of being massively underleveled. So happy the remake doesn't do that.

-The Enemies fights are fantastically adapted. In the OG because of the turn by turn format, the attacks weren't as distinctive from one another as they could be. Being able to really see how each enemies move and work was a pure treat.

-The environment design. The places are either faithfully reecreated or updated in a way that makes them very vivid and interesting. My only grip was with how bright the undercity looks on the regular, but the way to adapt it by having the brightness pushed as much as it does when the Sector 7 plate fall still made for a horrifying perspective, and i do think there's values on the aspect of putting the player in the same mentality as the people in the undercity thinking it's not so bad after all.

-Also adding in, character designs and updates have been really great and faithful to the compilation and it's a treat

-Also big mention to the new English cast that, i think, are almost all perfect replacement. Except Zack, which i think is a terrible replacement, but one miss out of all the wins is honestly not stopping it from being a plus

-Additional scenes of each characters that don't have them talking about the whole Whispers thing are usually pretty good. Barret especially gets to win a lot in personality by constantly seeing how he reacts to things. The OG didn't have as many character centric moments and it rarely shows us the intra-dynamic of the group outside of Cloud (rarely, but not never), and the remake was allowed to really allowed to bring it up a notch in a way that really makes you feel on how those characters care about one another.

-Fleshing out NPCs especially linked to the Sector 7's incident were good moves. Jessie, Biggs and Wedge taking more room in the game developping them especially with the full chapter dedicated to them was great and really allowed you to feel for the devastation of what would happen to them.

-Most of the New NPC are really cool and interesting and i'm very glad we got Andrea for instance. Linked to that, getting rid of the homophobic elements of the Honey Bee Inn to replace it with Andrea in particular genuinely healed me a little inside i think. Also i really like Roche.

-Every Turks scene are incredible as far as they're concerned. I really like the dive into their point of view and the way to prepare for their late game shift. Genuinely no complains there.

-Added quests in Sector 7 and Sector 5 to get to know both sectors. I genuinely think it's a good way to really develop an attachement to those places and the way they matter to our protagonists.

-The whole storyarc added to the Sewer and the Train Graveyard was genuinely great and served to really show how Tifa and Aerith grew closer, and ways to explore some specific character angst for both of them, and i really liked it.

-I was surprised at first but i do like replacing the climbing of the wall to reach the upper city with climbing the ruins of Sector 7 instead. It's another case of taking away a section with unique gaming mechanisms, yeah, but i also think it hits much harder and help you really sit on the devastation that occured in a way the OG couldn't show us. I think it was genuinely a good change.

-The adaptation of the infiltration by the stairs was also incredible.

-Seeing Shinra constantly trying to restart a war with Wutai and using the terrorists for this really drive home the propaganda that was in the work at Shinra and it's really neat to see.

The On-The-Fence.

-The Deep Ground stuff. Genuinely liked the first time it's quickly mentioned by the NPC, and actually connecting it to the researches around Jenova during the lab portion was interesting, but i think they kinda overplayed their hand a little.

-Everything about the lore of Avalanche outside of Barret and his crew. Having a main cell sometimes helping or not, and the Mayor being part of it, are choices i can't really say where i land on about. I found the Mayor reinterpretation fine but it came at the cost of all the gameplay that got changed because of his inclusion for example.

-The Reinterpretation of Wall Market. On one hand i do like the more flashy approach to the Market and really feeling how Corneo's fingerprints are basically everywhere. On the other i find it unsettling how "Glam" the whole approach to enter Corneo's house was. There's a huge difference between getting the help from the little folks who are ready to help you as you make your plan yourself, and having just to impress 3 of the authority of the whole town.

-The Return to Sector 7 plotline is very difficult adaptation wise for me because i think it shouldn't be there, but it's the one section of the game that really gives Barret time to shine and i really like what they do with him, and i do think it makes sense for him to want to come back and hope for the best. Barret carries this section because everything else makes it jarring.

-The Sunlamp sections to reactor 5. Way too long and overstuffed but it helps really setting up just how wasteful and hypocrite Shinra's energy use is.

-The removal of ambiguity about the action of Avalanche especially. This one is difficult to explain. Since we rarely leave Cloud's POV we don't really see if Shinra, say, provoke a bigger explosion to the Mako Reactor and then pin it on us, or if our actions genuinely hurt people. The Remake is constantly reassuring you that the worst of our actions are only because Shinra are making them worse on purpose. The OG doesn't really give you this reassuring. I'm... miffled about it because i think losing this nuance is particularly a problem for the set up of the Barret/Reeve conflict in late game, because there's never a moment Barret can just brush off they didn't do anything wrong. The question is more, are you willing to sit with the consequences of those actions, of the people who may die as you try to achieve the greater good? Which is also exactly in parallel to Reeve who, after seeing Sector 7, will be the one to kidnap Marlene to pressure Barret because, just like him, he's doing an "specific sacrifice" to stop harm from happening. But the remake constantly absolves Avalanche from any of that by making it clear it's Shinra's propaganda. And i do think it's making this plotline an injustice.... while also recognizing that perhaps it's necessary to spell out considering how otherwise people would easily side over Shinra, especially in a world post 9/11. And meanwhile this whole discussion between Barret and Reeve late in the OG might not happen at all because in Rebirth, Reeve doesn't kidnap Marlene. We're in a situation where the two men who considered maybe one sacrifice for the greater good, aren't even doing sacrifice anymore because they're too morally good for it. It cheapens their plotlines, but at the same time i don't know if i'd trust audience going into this conflict anyway. So it's difficult. It feels like the conflict was simplified and dumbed down, and i'm torn between "well it's necessary because audience needs to understand their pov" and " 'gratz on the loss of nuance everyday".

-The Further inclusion of Project G and S in the storyline when Hojo talks about it. I'm really on the fence so it's not easy to say, but i found it really jarring when Hojo mentioned them. Since the Remake itself doesn't bring much more answer as to how those Projects are implemented in the story, my memories of CC made it seem very weird. A friend told me about how it's used in Rebirth and it may be a good point but... wait and see.

-Related to that, the Mako degenerecency addition. Or more like. We knew Mako Poisoning was a thing, we knew of Project G and S Degenerecency, and it's not a stretch to think Mako will destroy its host on the long run -- but it's never been outright said in the OG nor addressed outside of CC, and i'm on the fence about how i feel about it. It seems to have a bigger part in Rebirth so i'll genuinely hold my judgement until i see what they do with it i think.

The "That could easily have been better."

-Back to Wall Market, the big de-queerification of the plotline despite the Honey Bee Inn section. The 1997 portion wasn't great sensitivity wise, but there was this clear element of how Aerith and Cloud agreed together on the crossdressing and worked their ass off specifically to cross dress Cloud together. In doing so you meet also Jules, who's a drag queen and will challenge you to a squat off in exchange of one of his wig, and you inspire the dressmaker by helping him discover he could try making dresses for other purpose than cis-women. The dressmaker find solace in the queer approach to his work. In the remake you have no mention of Jules being a drag queen even if he looks more gnc, the dressmaker just needs a reminder that girls dancing is hot to be inspired again, and Cloud crossdressing is imposed on him at the very last minute without him having prepared nor agreed with it. Andrea replacing all of the homophobic elements of the Honey Bee Inn, mainly the fact that the male hosts from it are making move on Cloud that makes him uncomfortable even if it helps for the crossdressing, and that in itself is great because Andrea ends up the mouthpiece of queer positivity replacing the most hiffy queer part of the original game. But it came at the expense of de-queering literally every single other plotlines of this part and robbing Cloud of his agency in his own crossdressing. Meanwhile to replace the quests in which Cloud is actively looking into crossdressing himself with quests in which Cloud has to prove he's the Manly Man. It's so jarring to me.

-Cloud's mental breakdowns. Hear me out. I'm a huge fan of Cloud's mental breakdown in the OG that starts pretty early. On one hand, i like some of the way they implanted more mental breakdown. The one Cloud has while Biggs talk about him being attached to his sword? amazing bit, for exemple. On the other, they really struggle with showing them in a way that's like... genuinely interesting. A lot of the early mental breakdowns in the OG usually black out the screen, pause the music, and then you only have white words showing up on the screen. The Remake cannot help but being flashy with them in a way i find particularly tacky. Re: "Back Then, i only got scrapped knees", when he falls from Mako Reactor 5. In the OG it's a reminder of when Tifa was the one who fell that day and Cloud tried to help her, fell with her, only got scrapped knees while she was in a coma, and then he was shuned out by the rest of the village because he was believed to have caused the incident, and Cloud developped his first survival guilt out of this one. When he falls in that scene, it is because Tifa was the one endangering herself to try to save him, and it flashed him back to it. In the Remake you get to see a model of him adult in a white landscape trying to talk to him, until Sephiroth hijack the whole situation and makes it about him. The whole tension is ruined like that. Likewise, when Cloud remembers Sephiroth calling himself an ancient, same "black screen, white text, no music", instead being interpreted with a weird flashback on a white background before Sephiroth hijack the scene to spell out that Cloud's fear of "being unable to save anyone" is seriously starting to eat him alive. Or how, in the whole new Deep Ground section, Cloud flashes back to when he was prisoner in a tube, and you see it clearly again. Yes it's realistic for Cloud to break down, no he doesn't break down seeing tubes in the OG, but showing flashes of him being in one is so vulgar for the audience. And meanwhile we completely lost one of the most terrifying mental breakdown Cloud has in an optional scene in the Honey Bee In where a copy of himself jumps on him to strangle him for the way he is denying the reality that's happening to him. like man. It sucks.

-Special mention to how i'm sad they removed Aerith scamming people with her flower business. Because it was always funny to me and sad not to see in the remake. At least the remake is a major step up from every single appearance of Aerith after the OG that tends to make her too pure and sweet (and i include Crisis Core in it) while in the OG she can be a menace, and the remake did manage to make her more of a menace than not, so it's nice-- but i want her to scam people. god forbid a girl does anything.

-Cloud and Choices. So i discuss about it often but in the OG during the whole first part of the game, you're often the one having to determinate how Cloud replies to some things. Said things will somewhat shape the scenario, most importantly: who are you going to go on a date with between Aerith, Tifa, Yuffie and Barret. On a metatextual level, those choices are also clearly supposed to indicate the different personas Cloud pulls off around people, in order to really have it hit home the moment he regains his memories and you can't control his words anymore.

The OG could more easily do it because the game isn't voiced, so it's easier to prepare, and the Remake couldn't do as many of those and honestly, that's fine.... the problem is how they replaced it.

Example: the Special Affection Scene with either Aerith, Tifa and Barret. The requirements for either of them is how many quests you did with Tifa on Sector 7, how many quests you did with Aerith in sector 5, who you decide to wake up first when the two of them fall in the Sewer, and if you tie or if you have less than 3 points with them you get the Barret cutscene.

... those aren't real choices to influence the cutscene imo. Except maybe the "who you wake up", just "doing sidequests or not" isn't indicative at all of who you'd have an affectionate scene with. and Barret instead is only there if you fail with them.

now, in the OG, the Barret scene does happen only if you failed with the other girls, but he actually had options giving him point too, like calling him Cloud's boyfriend when Corneo flirts with Cloud, or giving the flower to Marlene.

The Remake doesn't give you any of that. There's a fake choice in the first scene with Aerith where she gives you her flower and then you have no choice but to give it to Tifa, where in the OG you could give it to Marlene there. ok whatever.

but those are fake choices.

Likewise for the dresses: they're determined by how many quests you did, not about your actions, not about what you decide to collect, it's literally just filling a check list. and most aggravating, no matter if you do good or bad during this scene, Cloud will be picked as Corneo's lover no matter what, because he distincts himself by calling Corneo's pathetic. In the OG, if you don't crossdress Cloud in the perfect outfit, one of the girls get picked instead.

And it feels so.... anti-game in a sense? why do you remove anything that had the player interreact with the story in some way? or more like, if it was to be replaced why give conditions this lackluster?

this is maybe a nippick and all and it could be dealt with, but considering the thematic linked to Cloud and choices and persona this feels like such a lackluster way to replace it.

-Weird timing with some of Cloud's flashbacks? It bothered me but it might be nippicky. But we regularly see Cloud flashes back to when Tifa was a kid, which i believe he shouldn't (reason in a further down section). The only one that is important is the promise under the stars one, but they moved it to be triggered on Cloud when he's out with Jessie and the gang, while in the OG this scene is triggered after Tifa tries to remind Cloud of it, and it's because they have a conversation about it that we get to relive it with Cloud. I think it's a problem because it makes Cloud the one who initiates remembering those instead of Tifa, which is a problem to commit to the gaslight storyline with Sephiroth, when Sephiroth will manage to convince Cloud he never existed by cornering Tifa into saying she doesn't remember Cloud in one of his biggest memories. Because as long as the only flashback is one prompted by Tifa, you can argue that it's Tifa who plants the idea in Cloud's mind and therefore maybe Sephiroth is right. But the more Cloud remembers things unprompted to himself, the more you'd question Sephiroth's manipulation since "well no it doesn't make any sense if Cloud remembers things like that on his own."

-Reeve was great but showing Cait Sith early was a mistake and i think this set up is going to influence Rebirth in a bad way

The Bad

-The Padding. That's the core of all the problems of the game is that they wanted desperately to extend the runtime and therefore would use any excuses to make you waste time. Some exploration can be great, but eventually you'll really feel it when scenes start to seriously stretch out

-The Removal of puzzles and exploration in order to constantly guide you from one battle to the next and one cutscene to the next, and eventually very long mini game. It's probably hard to explain but it became very jarring to me. The OG kinda have you doing things yourself, and everything i can think of were replaced by very vulgar "quests to cross" type. Like Cloud's dress in Wall Market depends on how many quests you've done which are unrelated to how Andrea sees Cloud, while in the OG you have to find each pieces of the perfect dress on your own, make individual decisions for each of the piece and hoping it works in the end.

The Integrality of the Shinra's exploration puzzle were replaced as well to instead focus on cutscenes with exposition. The archives are supposed to be a puzzle game to get a password from the mayor to get to the next level. In the remake, the Mayor gives you an extended cutscene to say he's on your side and gives you a key to move forward and he tells you to talk to another Avalanche helper. You're supposed to overhear people talk about "last time i was in the bathroom i swear i could hear voices" to figure out you can infiltrate the vents to eardrops on the meeting. The Remake just downright tells you to go to the vent, but only after you proved you can fight. And even there rather than telling you to look for something, there's always clear quest markers to guide you, you dont need to think. After a while the game just gives up with adapting the others floor, including the elaborate puzzle where you have to sneak into a vent maze to get into locked rooms.

Instead they give an extended Lab Dungeon that doesn't exist in the main game, that is very weird from Hojo at this point, and for the "puzzle" it is, the characters are always telling you what to do and it's mostly finding ways to open door in very easy way to get to more fights. There's no intentions of genuinely having you work out how to play. Meanwhile instead the mini games take too long and are often just new mechanisms for one scene and then you move out. I like the mini games, but the balance has been very jarring to me. That said this is colored by the fact i'm playing the pc-port with keyboard+mouse and the port itself hasn't been well optimized for the mini games making them a lot more frustrating than they would be on controller.

I think it's wild also that for a game desperate to pad its runtimes, it refuses to let you just get lost into a puzzle to, yknow, lose time.

-The Fear of Committing to the Fucked Up aspect of the game. The major problem i have with that is that the remake specifically set up how those elements could become even more Fucked Up, and then genuinely refusing to follow through with them. No one you know survive Sector 7's fall of the plate. Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, they all die miserably at the pillar, and everyone you've met at Sector 7 don't seem to survive. The Remake develops all of this in a way that it will make it devastating to experience... and then they pull back at the last minute. Actually everyone you met and who mattered are fine.

Sephiroth's massacre of the Shinra's Lab Floor that covered everything with trails of blood are replaced by the fact Jenova is in a remove area only Hojo accesses to, and so the trail is just Jenova's purple goop and Sephiroth probably didn't murder anyone (other than the president) this time. Lol. Lmao even. Adding to prev point, the discovery of Jenova having been taken away was totally anticlimactic compared to the way the OG delivers on it, because of the muted music, lack of build off, and refusal to show the death that surrounds her tube.

Present Shinra gets an extended scene to shame Barret and then when Sephiroth stabs him, he only leaks black mist, compared to the team going to the President Office to see he has been impaled. The Hell House, that haunts you in the Collapsed Sector, is now a thrilling action piece of a show. Cloud's most fucked up breakdown (seen above) is removed.

Hojo's plans to force Aerith to breed with Nanaki to experiment on their offsprings that would live for a long period of time thanks to the length of Nanaki's species' lifespan, is replaced instead with Hojo talking about breeding her with human experiments who are degenerating because of the Jenova cells, because it's not about the lifespan anymore but just having many experiments in case Aerith dies. Still fucked up and all, and it can work out fine, but it's still the remake getting cold feet about the bestiality aspect, and therefore Nanaki's introduction has to be different from when he just happened to be in the same cage as Aerith. It just constantly pulls back from going all in when it can afford it. the Train Graveyard is the only place they really are allowed to show fear, but even there it's more creepy than the majorly unsettling set pieces.

And i heard it happened in Rebirth too, where the whole haunted section with monsters being people who were experimented on to an horrifying degree and you are the ones who have to put those living people down, be replaced by a full VR experience.

Like, i think pulling away from one of them wouldn't be so bad - i'm like, also willing to hear the bestiality replacement point for example, but when it's a pattern like this it starts just to cheapen every scenes that have a punch into it.

-speaking of i hated the speech President Shinra gives Barret and the whole "you only care about clearing your name, not about making things better for Midgar". in the OG there IS an aspect of Barret's desire to save the planet being a selfish wish for revenge. He cares for the planet yes, but this revenge is what he holds on to to cope with the guilt of having believed in Shinra once. Still his desire to save the planet is real, and he does actually want to dismantle Shinra no matter what. This aspect of his character is what creates a conflict with Reeve later on, and it's where the conflict shines well because we have two morally ambiguous characters having to come to term with why they want to make the world better and what are they actually willing to sacrifice for this. This Discussion with Reeve later on doesn't really pick a side (even though later in the game Reeve will do everything to help the gang and fully switches side), but it's two sympathetic characters who are trying to make the world a better place who come to a clash because of the different motivation and willingness to commit.

Having Barret run in about clearing Avalanche name, which i don't recall him being that dedicated about doing in the OG (if only because the propaganda was less pointed to because of what will be my next point), is the thing that allows the President to have a gotcha and point out that Barret had no long term plan to help people and he was a scam, and that the president might be a bad person but at least he thinks about it.

I really hate it because if it's about outlining that Barret is more in for revenge than for ecology, it's giving President Shinra, a one dimensional villain, the benefit of having the upper hand on Barret. And Barret is left speechless because he lets this guilt settles in, rather than how he fights for his own POV against Reeve later.

It's like they're trying to prepare the Barret/Reeve conflict but the way they went at it was leaning too hard on letting the President have his moment, while also framing Barret as much more selfish as even his dreams of revenge from the OG let him be.

and at the same time it's weird in the remake because the remake goes hard on how much Barret is into Planetology, much more than the OG, so the guy has done his researches and has invested a lot more into ecology for it to just be a selfish barging.

And like i mentioned, this whole scene doesn't exist in the OG because we have an earlier confrontation to the President when we get arrested and Barret is mostly still mad at him for having killed his friends, not for how they're being framed, and the president is so one dimensional villain he barely invest himself in this conversation, and the next thing we see, the president is dead. They made the President more cunning in the Remake which i don't /mind/ (it helps setting up the kind of person Rufus is without having to expose that Rufus will bring a real shift to Shinra's policies, by having his father already show you what Rufus may have been raised into thinking, which means that Rufus' appearance can only be about vibes and threats without needing to expose who he is, especially this late into the remake), but by allowing him to be alive in this situation it ended up being a terrible look on Barret on something that isn't an issue in the OG.

-The whole arc between Sector 7's fall and running to Shinra to save Aerith. This one is a doozy. Everything they had added up to this point had at least a good reason to be there for the timing of all things. Like the Jessie chapter happened at night on a point in the OG where nothing happens between two big plot point, it fits organically, it's nice.

But this one really had me annoyed because i think the previous arc extended even more on why Tifa and Barret would jump right away into wanting to rescue Aerith like in the OG, but instead this is the moment the two of them pull back from going to help Aerith so instead they can focus on totally new plotlines.

On paper i don't mind the idea of them going to Sector 7 in the hope to find people who survived it, because i do think they would need this closure. In the OG there's no secret passage under the doors of the sector though, so they don't have any means to get back to the Sector. I get it in term of characters' motivation, but it also somehow manage to put the tight plot into a halt.

Now it takes them a few days to think about saving Aerith, because first we need to be reassured everyone who matters in Sector 7 is fine, saving Wedge, discovering more Deep Grounds, having Cloud has new "i shouldn't be there" flashbacks, and then doing all sort of missions for people in the aftermath of the fall of the plate, until having to help Leslie on a whole sidequest for him to tell us how to climb the wall. All of which are interesting ideas on paper but i think ends up padding the time so badly it ends up frustrating and removing completely the urgency of "Aerith was taken as a lab rat because she tried so save a stranger".

And this arc births the problem i was mentioning in my prev point that therefore the trio remains in the slums for at least two days of hearing Shinra's propaganda and the way they frame Avalanche in the way that cause Barret to be so upset it's the thing he challenges the President about, while in the OG he's still mourning first, the anger is due to the loss and grief, not on how his friends are remembered.

Actually i think that sums up a lot of the problem with the Remake when it comes to the thematic of grief, which in the OG is about how you have to accept this grief as a part of yourself because else you're going to lose yourself to its stages (and Barret therefore is kind of more this representation of the anger side of grief, compared to Cloud being stuck on denial) , and instead changing it more on "how you are remembered", either by denying the death from happening at all, or having Barret just wanting that the way his friends are remembered in death to be honorable.

-The Hojo Lab Arc. Boy is this one ways too long. Clearly wanting to compensate for the Shinra's floor that has been removed by giving this sort of exploration episode in the unsettling Jenova/Deep Ground's lab. On one hand, the atmosphere for this is chilling (at first) and it does make sense to move Jenova in a more secret floor room.

But the gameplay ended up being lackluster, just going from one obvious step to the other with the characters repeating to you want to do, only so you can get into fights, and i can think of like ONE moment that was genuinely scary, but the rest was really just.... the most padding things could get.

I also think it lampshade Hojo as a villain too much this early into the game. Also while i'm at it i hate that Hojo remembers Cloud in this timeline now. I think Hojo's disinterest for failed experiments meaning he wouldn't even consider Cloud noteworthy is an interesting way to build tension, and i hate that Hojo is aware of things and now is just maniacally playing his cards for now just for fun to see what Sephiroth will do next. Hojo is a very interesting antagonist, and while i do think he would love to commit unethical experiments with however he meets, this whole sequence was too much. Also the fact he mostly "tests" the gang by having them fight advanced weapons and like a couple monsters that happened to escape, it kinda takes away from the mad scientific vibe when he's just trying his new toys, rather than actively trying to do something more interesting and fucked up. They frame it as him wanting data on Cloud knowing he's been experimented on, but again, i don't like that he knows that, but also i think those tests weren't exactly interestings for this exact data either. and meanwhile showing him actively letting Sephiroth get away remove any type of possible tension about where Hojo stands in this whole company.

but yeah the Labs could have been a great concept but it took the most boring way to execute it and instead it just felt like dragging.

The Terrible

-No respect for the mysteries of the saga. Everything that the OG built a mystery around is spoiled in the Remake, or teased in flashforward. This is so aggravating to me.

Like, it feels to me that the devs were so convinced the game will be played by people who played the OG, or who would play the OG for themselves, that they did not bother with keeping any of them out. Sephiroth keeps popping off being more ominous than he should be. The mention of Zack gives Cloud a mental breakdown so much so they mute Aerith to really point out that something weird is going on with Cloud and Aerith's ex, compared to how in the OG Aerith just don't originally mention him and when the name Zack is finally uttered, Cloud is too far in denial to connect anything at this point.

Cait Sith coming on the scene of Sector 7, while not linking him to Reeve yet (but i heard Rebirth jumped into doing so right away), therefore setting up that Cait Sith has at least an emotional reason to be joining the crew, therefore setting up the plotline once you have everyone in your party about how there's a mole in your group into making sure the players have suspicions about Cait Sith to start with.

Zack appearing in the ending of the game, showing he's close to Cloud, showing he has Cloud's sword, totally exposing the existence of this character while he is a mystery the whole game.

Hojo telling Cloud he was never in Soldier, Cloud getting recognized in Shinra HQ by people who therefore confirm he once existed, Cloud flashbacks about being experimented on....

All new stuff that instead of working as foreshadowing end up lampshading things that should have been more quiet mysteries, element to explore later on.

There's also so many "spelling the lore out in the remake way earlier than in the OG" like having a whole Shinra propaganda room about them looking for The Ancients' secret while if i recall correctly, this was a secret endeavor only revealed further into the game.

And then the flash forward, especially in the last part of the game but not only. Cloud having a flash forward to the plate falling. To Aerith's dying. Literally showing the intro of Advent Children as the future they're trying to avoid to tease Meteor, Aerith's death, Cloud fighting Sephiroth.... and Nanaki running in a world post-civilization centuries later? this one is the most bewildering one to me because this specific scene should mean nothing to the characters about what the future has in store for them, but they played it up because it only matters if YOU know the saga. God this part was annoying to me.

I feel like the game is expecting so much that the player has played the OG that they're just begging them to tune in for part 2 because things might be different this time since we have NEW mysteries to worry about now! Will the horrors happen? teee hee who knows!

and for new players, it's confusing, but it also ends on "we're not following the OG anyway" so you kinda just have to stick with part 2 when it comes out instead.

i find it so aggravating and it takes me out of the story every single time. It's like none of the mysteries matter to be treated seriously for someone who might discover the saga.

But it therefore also comes at the price of completely ruining some characters' motivation.

Speaking of.

-Sephiroth.

Now to start with something positive, this Sephiroth is supposed to come from the Advent Children timeline, and on that regard, he's beautifully characterized. Yes, Sephiroth in Advent Children would be saying those things. Yes, he would try new ways to torment Cloud, yes he would play his cards differently, yes he would be hyper homoerotic and want Cloud by his side more than ever. All of that tracks very well with his character by Advent Children time.

.... glad to see new audience will never know how Sephiroth was before that then???

Sephiroth has one of the greatest villain built up in video games because of how slow burn his appearance is. First you hear about him in a flashback in good light, then you hear his name in a second flashback but this time in horror. Then Cloud collapse with a memory of Sephiroth, and then when they go to rescue Aerith they get to escape because the floor they were on has been massacred by Sephiroth, Jenova is gone, and the president has been found impaled on Sephiroth's sword. Cloud and Tifa react in horror as people who know Sephiroth, and then you have to escape, and once outside of Midgar, they will start discussing "what's up with Sephiroth actually"

and then once you're at Kalm, Cloud will give you an extended flashback of the Nibelheim incident with Sephiroth as a playable unit and you see he's mad strong. You try to pass through the cavern guarded by a Midgar Zolom which will be your first terrifying boss experience because of how hard it is to beat, only to pass this by stealth to see Sephiroth just empaled one before you. AND THEN you go to Junon where Sephiroth is rumored to have been and once on the boat going to the Costa Del Sol, you will run into him. Cloud will challenge him, and Sephiroth will barely recognize him, and then let them fight a bodypart of Jenova. And it's only from this point on that Sephiroth will seriously start to pay attention to the crew and will slowly but surely try to manipulate Cloud, developping an obsession toward him.

the Remake ends when you leave Midgar. So Sephiroth shouldn't have appeared. And clearly the Remake was scared that not showing the fan favorite will cause problem, so they justified a way to have Sephiroth into the story early by having him be late-development Sephiroth.

which just means that if you haven't played the OG, you're getting a wrong impression of Sephiroth and the way he specifically approached Cloud. As well as completely missing out on the slow built of his capabilities.

But if you have played the OG you therefore get to really notice how he hijacks scene and therefore change them into things they're not. I hate his appearance in Cloud and Aerith's first meeting, completely changing the mood of this scene to make it all about him. I hate that everytime Cloud has a mental breakdown, Sephiroth appears to take advantage of him.

AC!Sephiroth would! but this is a horrible way to build him for a first time audience, and it's so vulgar in the way it spells things out for him.

And you know he's going to play his cards differently because of how he lost the previous time; For example in the Rebirth trailers they did the whole marketting around Sephiorth wanting Cloud to doubt Tifa, saying about how she shouldn't be alive and will manipulate Cloud. It's a direct response to the fact that neglecting to take into account Tifa is what caused Sephiroth downfall because she was the only person who knew Cloud so intimately that she was able to guide him through his memories, thanks to how much Cloud trusted her. Sephiroth, therefore, logically, need to make sure Tifa is not going to get in the way this time.

.... and that's swell and it makes sense but we're getting a whole other story aren't we?

The remake was adverticized as a remake and instead a huge chunk of it hinges on the fact you know the saga and because of Sephiroth and the characters knowing Fate is oncoming, it's actually a sequel.

And it's deeply frustrating to play because aside from Sephiroth and Aerith, no one knows what the previous timeline was. (coming back on Aerith in a bit). All of the cast suddenly is working to change a fate they do not even know about because Sephiroth and Aerith want to challenge this fate.

As a player it removes you from fully connect with the story because the characters don't even know what they're fighting for!! They don't have the context of what the bad things are going to be!

And like okay you either like it or you don't, but personally i hate it a lot.

-Desamorcing any emotional scene by the new mysteries.

The remake wants you to be invested in the new mysteries around Sephiroth and the Whispers so bad that scenes get to be completely hijacked by those characters ruining the tension any scene is supposed to build in.

Cloud and Aerith first meeting is supposed to be a quiet scene as he runs into her after the Reactor exploded. You can also completely ignore her and she'll move on, but otherwise it's a really quiet and simple scene. The Remake builds a whole Cloud hallucinate Sephiroth scene out of it, has Aerith tormented by the Whispers, she approaches Cloud to thank him, and Sephiroth will appear to threaten Cloud about how he intends to let fate repeat, implying the threat of killing her. The whole sweet scene starting of to establish a dynamic between those two? had the focus changed on Sephiroth instead to be ominous.

Fighting Reno in the church is a good addition and all, but Cloud trying to murder him only so the Whispers can come and take him away so the whole "escaping the Church" bit is all about the Whispers? You had a good tension over two characters physically interreacting and you had to ruin it.

And the worst for me was really the whole Sector 7 incident, constantly seeing the whispers just to stop us from getting to the pillar, seeing the whispers everytime one of the Avalanche Three is having a big moment just so you can then see them as they make sure they die. Scenes that should be about Cloud and Tifa realizing they are losing people they're caring about, Cloud starting to have his whole "i can't save anyone" panic settles in, and it ends up being distracted by the Whispers doing their things and making it look like the only reason those characters die is because it's meant to be, not because yknow, they got killed?

Oh and Hojo recognizing Cloud and the Specters taking him away was so damn bad too.

It's like. Any scene that are trying to build a tension, perhaps even a good one!! suddenly gets ruined by the whole "let's keep things on track" antagonist. Scenes that would have emotionally hit hard instead becomes confusing because of a whole new plotline that only works on a meta textual level. Embarrassing as hell.

-Zack. Why would you do that. Why would you show Zack why would you create a whole alternative timeline.

oh, well, i know why. Zack is too popular not to and you gotta include him. But the fact Zack is a neat character because of how much you can feel his absence when you know why it is there, the way they just dangled him in front of our face is so insulting, especially as being the scene right before our heroes go to defeat fate. It's something that only matter to hardcore fans, who would also be fans because of how Zack haunts the narrative, and so now instead we get an alternative timeline story that would be all swell and game in fanfictions, but is bond to be confusing for non-fans, and just really antithetical to what made Zack so beloved to start with.

Every Zack fan i've talked with after the remake did that had the same reaction of being both happy he lived, and then "but what the fuck are they doing with that". It's a mystery, a zinger for the next game, to try to keep you invested

... but it feels cowardly, as well as the Sephiroth stuff feel cowardly. It feels like the game had no confidence in it doing well without fan favorites, and therefore included them in the game no matter what, even if it defies why they are fan favorite to start with.

-The Fate plotline. I've been rambling over this one a lot at this point so i don't know what much to say. I hate that the Remake is a story about defying fate. About how things are not written in stone and all of that. I feel like the game is basically in denial of the original game if only to lure the player into this state of denial. And it could work to mirror how Cloud will go through his journey, considering the OG is a lot about grief and Cloud is specifically about the harmful aspect of denial, but i think this is imposing ways too much metatextual commentary over the actual text to the point you're denaturing what the story was about.

At the end of the game, everyone have to accept together to change fate, a fate they know nothing about, a fate they just imagine could be bad. the PLAYER knows what they're talking about, but them, themselves, do not. At this point the characters don't really react out of their own arc and motivation, but on about trying to change an abstract idea they have no idea about.

Except for Aerith who knows about stuff in the future and is so determined to not let it be set in stone, Sephiroth who is implied to come from the AC timeline and wants to do things differently, and Nanaki who understands the Whispers and knows vaguely what to expect.

In a bitter way it puts any hardcore fan who expected to replay the plot of the OG in the position of the bad guy for implying that changes are wrong, actually, regardless of why fans would think this way.

To me, it's antithetical to the plot of the OG. Final fantasy manages to do stories about fate, FF15 is a great story about not being able to defy fate, Crisis Core COULD have been a story about fate due to its ending but it decided not to be, but the OG was not about fate in any way and pushing this as the core theme feels alien to the story.

The characters barely know what it's about aside from out of context flash forward and are supposed to make their stand to correct this.

Meanwhile the story also goes into so many loops to try to make you curious about the Whispers, or the way they fix the timeline, like when they save Barret's life, but everything is artificially contrived for my taste and every single scenes with the Whispers made me wish i had never been hype about this whole project to start with.

-Aerith and Nanaki becoming dev's mouthpieces at the expense of their own character arc. There are many scenes when those two will suddenly stop in their track just to do exposition dump about fate and destiny.

Nanaki is noteworthy because legit 80% of his dialogues are about Fate and Destiny, and his introduction to the squad literally had to rely on Aerith showing him a glimpse of the other timeline so he knows they're supposed to be friend, which is infuriating to think about. Because Nanaki developping a natural friendship with the gang is too much to imagine i guess. For a story about defying fate they sure make sure you know Nanaki only is talking with you because Fate told him so.

Meanwhile for Aerith it's so.... So much to me because at some point it's like her being a character stops and suddenly she ends up discussing exactly how there's a fate in front of them that will be scary to change. She wants to change it because of her own fate into it, but also fear changing it and all of that...

Which plagues Aerith with worries she didn't have at first, which means that for a bit, Aerith stops being her own character on her way to her character arc because she needs to look straight at the audience to explain them the themes of the story in case they didn't catch it up. It is so sloppy to me and i hate the idea of turning Aerith's gradual arc of reconnecting with her heritage and realizing she's the only one who can change something, into one where she's already wise and having it all figured out.

I saw someone comment on how Rebirth feels like a 5D Chess game between Sephiroth and Aerith both trying to change fate in their favor, but while i love their natural antagonistic dynamic, it genuinely bugs me how their independant actions are taking a cosmic weight right from the start of the remake. The more Sephiroth pulls in one direction the more Aerith is pulling on the other, and this natural nemesis relation where Aerith is constantly trying to one up Sephiroth and the other way around took a much bigger dimension now that Sephiroth comes from the Future and Aerith is aware of Fate.

-"Tee Hee Maybe They Won't Die :3c"

It's the frustrating aftereffect of destroying the keeper of fate, is that now the game is showing you a timeline in which Zack is alive, and is trying to act like "maybe Aerith won't die this time". Which feels cruel to me because either they go through with it and keep them both alive and we removed all the stakes from this story or why the game has a lot to say about grief, or they go through with it and they specifically manifactured a way to raise our hopes up for the sake of wanting to see them again.

Aerith and Zack are easily my favorite characters with Cloud, i've read countless of Fix It fanfic, AU where they come back, i know this denial, this desire they'll be okay.

and i know i don't want it from the main game because their death matters too much for what the story is trying to tell.

Zack needs to die for Cloud to even become who he becomes. Without his death, Sephiroth won't be able to manipulate Cloud properly. It's the reveal that Cloud has usurped Zack's life that will lead Cloud to the pure mental collapse that will have him give Meteor to Sephiroth and Sephiroth would trigger the apocalypse. Grieving Zack is a major element to explain the lowest of lows in Cloud's life.

The alternative timeline therefore lose those stakes, and may instead try to prove that Zack has to die else bad things will happen. After all, Cloud doesn't wake up in this timeline, so clearly Zack being alive means his own timeline may get unlucky as it goes.

Meanwhile Aerith's death is necessary for the powerstruggle between Sephiroth and Aerith, with the fact that by killing her, Sephiroth actually made her more powerful.

Sephiroth decides to kill Aerith because her power as the last of the Ancients and the Holy Materia are the only things that can reach out to the power of the Planet to counter everything Sephiroth wants to do. The moment he realizes She is the Menace, he will use Cloud to try to kill her, and when Cloud breaks the mind control, Sephiroth kills her himself. That way he ultimately have two birds one stone by both getting rid of Aerith and being able to break Cloud's mind and make him his and therefore getting Meteor.

But since Aerith was deep into a ritual and when she died she returned to the Lifestream, she managed to keep doing what she was doing from the otherside, more powerful than ever, and it's why the ending is as it is, with Aerith unleashing the lifestream as a way to shield the world from the fall of Meteor.

Aerith's death is essential to how to stop Sephiroth, on the aspect of, by killing her, Sephiroth dug his own grave.

But now what? Either they're keeping her alive and the 3rd part of the game will go in a complete different direction, or they'll kill her still after having raised people hope that she may survive.

-So the saga is setting itself at ending on a totally different note as the OG, at some point it will have to stop trying to adapt the OG at all because it completely went off rail... Or things will go back on rail and we've been played all along.

So yeah it's either the remake will follow through with the major plot beats and will therefore betrays its own new themes because turns out you can't win without following fate after all, or it will go completely off the rail and it will just Not Be The Plot Of The Original Game.

I'm sure we can try to see it as a sequel, i'm sure some people may be able to, but the more i get reminded of how close it is to the OG the more the things that go off rail just feel out of place, because it clashes with the themes of the OG.

I can't enjoy the fully new "sequel stuff" because it's always coupled with a reminder of the OG i love and this sequel just seems wrong there.

-It feels unfinished. And despite all of this, the game doesn't feel finished. You may add as many stories you want to give meat for the game to keep going, but ultimately you just barely introduced the concept and the characters since you legit only adapted the prologue, you left mysteries opened that are not being answered to keep people on a hook, but you end the game basically feeling you just started this trip. After a 60h+ long experience at least, you are left on a cliffhanger telling you to tune in next time.

This was always going to be the risk by cutting the game in part and even more so when the part one decided to only be about Midgar. I mentioned how i think the remake could narratively have tried to push to Junon since it would have ended with a battle with Sephiroth like they wanted.

but by finishing the Prologue, seems just seem rushed, nothing is finished, and there's a lot of plots that open at the end of the game. Like Rufus, for example, who is one of the major antagonist of the game, who can only come last minute. And because he comes in this late to the game, you can't actually have him explain what he's going to do as the antagonist. So he's just there for the vibes and it feel slike a weird addition that is just a cliffhanger for what's to come.

-"If you want to play the plot of the OG you just need to replay the OG or Ever Crisis"

Then you shouldn't have called the game a remake.

^ this is something a dev said btw and it still annoys me to this day. then you should have been transparent about it not being a remake. And saying that if people want to replay the OG they should play Ever Crisis, which is a GACHA live service game that will inevitably be unplugged one day because Square Enix doesn't have a good track record with taking care of their gacha (starting by what happened to the First Soldier, which was closed after one year of service), genuinely made me annoyed.

All in all, in the end, i'll take their word for this because it sure means i have no reason to be interested in the remake. So i will replay the OG instead.

And then they weep when Rebirth do less sales than the Remake. Lol. Lmao even.

But also just this mentality saddens me. Many people won't try the OG because it looks and feels old. It's a great game, but when the rest of the saga has only HD elements, it's difficult to get into or recommend. That's why people wanted a remake. Just being dismissive about it seems sad to me.

DEEP SIGHS.

CONCLUSION.

I didn't come to the remake wanting to hate it. In fact at first i really tried to rationalize everything it was building itself for.

But i powered through the remake more and more irritated and the irritating part took over all of the way i could interreact with the remake.

And the game isn't even that bad. It still genuinely feels like you return to the characters you know and love. I spent more hours having fun than i've had not having fun.

but the problem is that the good things are in the details and in the small interractions here and there, and that the flaws are the Major Plot Elements that you genuinely can't ignore.

And i'm torn, because i love those characters and want to see more, and the gameplay is so fun!

But by the time of the Ending of the Remake, i was just genuinely tired. Like the whole ending portion of the Remake broke me a little because no matter how in character Sephiroth is compared to his AC self, no matter how fun and camp the scenes are in isolation: this is still such a shitty choice to make about the thing that was called a remake.

I'm sure i've forgotten things despite how long this ask is. but yeah. That should be a good run down of my problems with the game.

..... sorry if you expected anything shorter. Turns out it just ended up being a good opportunity to sort out my thoughts and well. well....

Anyway hope you had a good read if you read all of it, and take care o7

[tundrakatiebean]

Non spoiler memes I have made playing the pokemon dlc so far (no story spoilers just pokemon and ones we’ve seen before)

And I couldn’t decide which of these I liked better

[doom-nerdo-666]

How "Eternal" is Doom?

(The image of now is from a lost official UAC website)

Doom is "eternal" because of its longevity; Not just fans simply talking about it or playing it, but also because of the modding and creative cultures around it. The source code of the first 2 games was released some time in 1997, which extended the potential of the creative scene that the classics already had before. But what about other Doom games? Specially in an age of topics such as video game presevation, documentation, accessibility, lost media, streaming services, games seen as art and so on. Think about mods, fanmade maps, fan ports, assets ripped from games, wikis and anything that involves exploring a game from inside out.

Doom 64 and old console ports

Doom 64 took over 20 years for an official re-release. This game never had its source code released, so fans took time to reverse engineer the game and rip files to make fan ports; Doom 64 EX was the best at the time and its lead developer (Kaiser) was involved in the official new port even.

Other console ports such as PS1 had their history with reverse engineering projects.

Doom 3

Doom 3 had later ports changing and removing content to the point that fans declare BFG edition and some others as inferior versions, even if they had some parts others liked. When Bethesda and id updated the Steam listings of some id titles, users get to own both versions of some games, including the original and BFG versions of Doom 3. And while D3 has modding still, its multiplayer may still require online connections even with bots unless you use modding tools (From what i remember, at least). D3's multiplayer even had unique power ups not seen in any campaign.

Mobile games

The mobile phone games are more obscure and the RPG games do have reverse engineering projects and some documentation, even if it took years. The BREW version of D1RPG was almost lost, but the D3 on-rails shooter "Doom Resurrection" might as well be gone entirely due to modern updates of modern phones making it unplayable. (Also, cannot forget the comic made for D2RPG, which is the intro to the game but was a seperate thing for some reason).

Doom 2016

Doom 2016 eventually gave away its DLC content for free, but who knows about its multiplayer, SnapMap, scores in Arcade Mode, player deaths in Ultra Nightmare etc. I recall that even when using bots, the multiplayer still requires internet. When an online portion of a game dies, you rarely get a situation where developers let the players still use these features in some manner, like for personal matches between friends and such. Or anything that allowed players to gain control of that, for a game they've bought with 60 bucks. Let's also not forget that 2016's engine uses content that means the game will never have proper modding tools (Hence SnapMap in the first place). Modern games also receive updates, so there's always a reliance on internet connections and changes affecting historical content. Both multiplayer and SnapMap have unique assets with some appeal, be it for lore, mods or other reasons and even if some fans didn't like one mode or the other, others fans liked them.

At least SnapHak is a thing, so some fans are trying to save SnapMap from some of its limitations.

Doom Eternal

Eternal is more obvious over this because of stuff like BethesdaNet (Now gone), Slayers Club, Twitch Prime, skins, podiums, emotes, banners, icons, events in general and all those challenges etc. Even something as simple as that Doog/Korone easter egg is a piece of history that lasted for a short while (Yes, it's a meme easter egg referencing a VTuber but i also try to see things in a "less bad, more good" logic; Because even if people don't care, they still don't advocate for it to be gone). Gameplay challenges and rebalances also affect strategy videos and content around it like speedruns and analysis. At some point, Mick Gordon's main menu theme was replaced by Andrew Hulshult's before id offered an option to switch between one or the other. At least it has better modding tools (Even if still limited). Let's also not forget how the mode Invasion was cancelled and so was almost anything to do with Stadia. Or content that may have been cancelled like skins and Master Levels. There was even a Bob Ross/artist theme that never made it but people still saw it through datamining. A lot of skins ran a second time before being sold for actual money, though i think some skins are still unavailable. In general, there could be some irony with the name using the word "Eternal" when there's aspects of it that feel "FOMO/mobile game-ish". There's also that one Denuvo anticheat controversy, even if it's a thing of the past now.

Another mobile game

Mighty Doom is a modern phone game in the sense that it even has some same problems as other phone games. But regardless, it's still prone to being forgotten by history due to how it's built. In a way, it's expected for this game, even if there could be some things people will like, even if this game has more bad things in it. As of writing this, the Mars Core level in Mighty Doom is still removed.

An old UAC website

Outside the games, id Software once put up an official UAC website, which even had lore that was related to the Doom 3 novels and RPG games. It ran on Flash, so you can tell that this site is gone and available through the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine. Even Martian Buddy from Doom 3 had a site that's also gone.

Art, music, assets and so on

Then you have stuff like concept art and music, which is why i thought that in-game galleries showing art and jukebox/music playlists could work. There's always cut/unused tracks that could still be played in the game even if not from a cutscene or level. And most Doom art books still lack plenty of concept art and sketches that you can see online through Twitter or ArtStation accounts of artists that worked in the games and other places (Like art for Doom 3, cancelled Doom 4, 2016, Eternal, even stuff for Doom 64 and the classic games). Basically a way to preserve even cut/unused content. Or even details and things that EXIST in the game but are rare or unseen. In a way, id could learn something from sites like Spriters Resource or The Cutting Room Floor Wiki. Hell, a museum like in some Ratchet and Clank games could be cool. Again, even if you don't care for basic skins or lame features, it doesn't mean you want them gone and erased from history.

Merchandise

Also, since Doom Eternal's collectible toys exist to be turned into real merchandise, imagine the opposite: Real life Doom merch recreated in a game, so the merch is "preserved" digitally since there's obscure Doom merch too.

More comments

This also puts into prespective how videogames changed in a way that a single game will never feel "complete" in the next 20 years, if there's parts of it that could be gone or just hard to get back. It's also worth noting that John Carmack's release of the Doom source code came from a mindset inspired by "hacker culture", which is a mindset that may be different to what's going on at modern id or at least the higher ups at ZeniMax. After all, John Romero was once sharing unused assets related to Doom until ZeniMax told him to stop.

In a way, replayability is not just about a game's quality, it's about the state of its existence. Games are interactive so if there is no way you can ever play a game again, then it might not exist. Some games don't need mods, multiplayer or additional content to be replayed but can you still play or even emulate them? You might have some 6th gen/2000's game that did great on Windows XP but not W10.

id Software has proven to have higher standards than some other game companies, even if they're not perfect and still chased a few trends. But it'd be great if id does the impossible by making sure than Doom and more of it has a true longevity and its legacy gets stronger. This can also be said about Doom fans because the fans are why Doom lived for so long, so it's important that older fans make sure newer fans carry the torches and follow some traditions. Because old and new Doom fans reflect different generations, so some may have to learn things from others to ensure the series' staying power. Specially with how vocal and loyal new fans are for being into Doom, even if they're not as deep into Doom as some boomer that knows a lot about wads and weird nerd stuff.

Wiki and documentation stuff

Also, speaking of wikis and documentation: You know how the Team Fortress 2 Wiki has a Youtube channel that displays stuff like weapon stats and how taunts work? Always thought Doomwiki could benefit from having official videos where content is analyzed, specially because of that one classic Doom Youtube channel that posts videos showing off specific gameplay stuff but also secrets in some maps. Plus channels like Decino and Elysium Gaming have analysis of stuff from different Doom games. Then you have videos of stuff like old interviews or behind-the-scenes stuff like how Gregor Punchatz has an old video of a recording showing the models used for the demon sprites (Spider Mastermind and Mancubus were the focus on those videos).

Either way, i think this topic is relevant enough that i wish someone said this better than me (In case i got something wrong, am forgetting something or just my grammar and vocabolary).

EDIT: I just thought of 2 things:

If they ever make a "Art of classic Doom" book with concept art and unused/cut sprites related to D1/2/64/etc and they look into the press release stuff of Doom alphas/betas, even cut levels, the leaked D64 stuff and what Romero still wanted to share etc. I'd still see this as stuff that could show up in a game.

Because of the focus on LORE: Digital versions of manuals and booklets or strategy guides, so people get to know more of classic Doom's "little story" (Unless id really wants people to forget that D2 already covered the background of cybernetic demons lol).

[colfy-wolfy]

LOLL battle for ascension!!

this actually reminds me of that object oc I made based off the hot sauce marshmallow back when that was still relevant lmao

Does anyone remember that from the indieland stream?? lol they were putting clown facepaint on and eating marshmallows with hot sauce instead of playing downpour. this was like 2 months before the dlc came out iirc. it was a meme for a while, I think now it just turned into an inside joke for the people who were there 💔

guys what do you think of my new object oc Iteratory

[cryoriku]

general final fantasy for the ask meme as well! <3

ok this took forever because we kept switching so we couldn't get one person to answer, but then we decided we would both answer so i hope that's ok! (we are a system)

Cecil's Response

Favorite Male Character - Sephiroth<33 estinien and alphinaud are close contenders

Favorite Female Character - sure lemme (unrolls scroll of list of ffxiv characters the devs killed off or abandoned after an expac. the scroll drops to the floor and keeps going) but esp ysayle and lyse! alisaie's a fave too. and vanille. and cissnei. i like girls

Least Favorite Character - steiner my behated. idk he just bothered me. i never got far in ffix before my ps3 died tho u_u

Favorite Ship - sephzack is my biggest ship out of any fandom ever. but i enjoy any (age appropriate) sephiroth pairing really! i also like estiraha (estinien/graha) and most estinien ships... yes i love to see my fave boys winning

Favorite Friendship - g'raha and alisaie tickle me so much they're great. also vincent and shelke, shelke boomerifying vincent's phone so he would actually use it killed me

Favorite Quote - "My soul corrupted by vengeance, hath endured torment, to find the end of my journey in my own salvation... and your eternal slumber." - Loveless Act III

Worst Character Death - i was melancholy for 3 days over ysayle. WHY DID SHE HAVE TO DIE!!! YOSHI P ANSWER ME-

This Moment Made Me So Happy You Have No Idea - that crisis core bit where sephiroth is scheming with zack to purposely botch their mission and zack goes "for real!?!?" sephiroth laughs and goes "yes. 'for real.'"

Saddest moment - THE END OF STORMBLOOD!!! more of a horrifying kind of sad than a boohoo sad, but you get me.

Favorite location - just all of norvrandt... it makes me habby :)

----------------------

Roxas's Response

Favorite Male Character - Prompto and Hope mean so much to me as an emo kid you have no idea

Favorite Female Character - will my bias be showing if I answer Lightning LOL

Least Favorite Character - never liked cat sith (ffvii)

Favorite Ship - .............promptis has a grip on me still i'm sorRY i also enjoy wolraha i don't play xiv much really but catboy hot

Favorite Friendship - Hope and Vanille, also Cloud and pretty much any of the girls

Favorite Quote - "People die, and Yuna dances. When will she stop dancing." I'm sorry that my reasoning is my friends and I meme on it a lot cuz I never finished x (died with my ps3)

Worst Character Death - Lunafreya. not cos it impacted me the most but actually the opposite. i straight up did not care that much, i wish they would have given her more justice and wrote her better

This Moment Made Me So Happy You Have No Idea - i've got so many my brain decides to show me none of them. canon gay snogging in ffxvi was pretty top tier tho

Saddest Moment - EPISODE PROMPTO..... the entire build up on the train and shit from Noctis's end too ofc, but that dlc got me so bad. kinda tmi but as someone who struggles with self harm.... it was hella cathartic for me.

Favorite Location - Costa del sol (ff7)

[gorandomshesaid]

Dragon age ask meme: 4, 6, 7, 14, 19

4. What does your worldstate look like going into DAV?

Pretty rosy? I try to go for the best possible endings, I do think I fucked up one thing and that was letting Iron Bull sacrifice his crew because a) it made sense at the time that there was a larger objective, and b) I didn't know there would be consequences! I can't remember much, guess I'll have to check the tapestry. Also, pretty sure Leliana is the Divine.

6. Do you have your Rook(s) planned out to any degree? If so, would you share some details or ideas you have?

Elven. Mage. Always. Except Hawke ofc.

7. Which character from the previous games or other media are you most hoping will make an appearance in DAV?

If we're in Tevinter, Dorian would make sense. Generally the companions I think would be cool and I'm happy that the Inquisitor at least cameos. I am hoping against hope that the Warden shows up but that's severely unlikely.

14. What's one thing you've seen confirmed so far that you're NOT a fan of?

The Mass Effect effect on my companions. I want three fully controllable friends running around with me, not essentially NPC followers.

19. Are you planning to replay any of the previous games, watch Dragon Age: Absolution, or read any of the books/comics/short stories, or are there other games you want to play in the meantime?

Oh, I will definitely replay the previous games, they've been on the docket for a looong time and also it will take me at least a year maybe two before I even look at playing Veilguard; I want to buy games when they're finished and we know EA doesn't make finished games both in terms of bugs and in terms of DLCs, so I'll be waiting, lest I be hit with another Trespasser-like thing that gets added long after the fact and recontextualises the whole bloody story.

[monriatitans]

Ta-Da! List: Friday, June 21st

The image was made in Canva; check it out at the [referral] link here!

I share my “Ta-Da! List” every day so everyone gets a daily update and I have a reminder of what I’ve accomplished.

To learn more about “Ta-Da! Lists”, and other ADHD life hacks, check out @adhdjesse’s book Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD.

Abbreviations

- O&T: Opinions & Truth Blog - NRL: The Neverending Reading List - WGS: The Weekend Game Show - COTMQ: Cause of the Month Quote - ASO: Artist Shout-Out - IG: Instagram - BMAC: Buy Me a Coffee - TDL: Ta-Da! List

Ta-Da! List

✧ throughout the day: - kept emails manageable - loaded the dishwasher - filled out today’s TDL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the mobile phone: - IG/Hive: shared today’s NRL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the bedroom setup: - Movies: watched The Nightmare Before Christmas - O&T: shared today’s TDL to the WGS Ko-fi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the office setup: - WGS: finished preparing drafts for July’s COTMQ posts; prepared the drafts for July’s ASO posts; prepared the ASO for tomorrow, June 22nd - O&T: shared today’s NRL, The Secret of Clouds, by Alyson Richman, on social media; added dates the NRL posts were shared to the Tumblr page and BMAC post; shared today’s TDL - Gaming: played Final Fantasy XIV - YouTube: watched and/or listened to: 1. Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)’s videos “I’m Not Saying Emulators Are Cool, BUT…”, “Roadmap To Nowhere”, “Football Jock Games vs. Drama Nerd Games”, “Roadmap To Nowhere”, “Fear & Fury: How The Rockstar Sausage Is Made”, “Look After Your Workers Or Get Out Of Games”, “Article 13 And The ‘Meme Ban’”, “Ubisoft And The Division Of Content”, “Tellfail Games”, “The Social Shitshow Cycle”, “A Frustrated Post-Mortem Of Lawbreakers, Radical Heights, And The Culling”, “A Spicy Anthem Hot Take”, “A Video Discussing Whether Or Not Hello Games Lied About No Man’s Sky”, “YOUTUBE DEAD!? AD-FRIENDLY CENSORSHIP $$$$ IN CS:GO!”, “Content Divided: Death To Pre-Order Culture”, “Steam Refunds”, “Arkham Shite”, “The Silent Hell That Is Konami”, “A Bitter Post-Mortem Of Modern Warfare Remastercarded”, “Shenmue Is The Waterworld Of Videogames”, “Prepare For Titanfail”, “Sky Hype”, “Ten Worst Types Of DLC In History”, “Game Not Included”, “The Deadly Spiral Of Live Services”, “Yakuza’s Open World Is Biggest And Bestest”, “So Are “AAA” Loot Boxes Done?”, and “The Art Of Being Awful” 2. illymation’s video “Video games that haunted my childhood” 3. Listen2Kristen’s video “Stop mistreating women for plot: a controversial opinion (somehow) | Blood at the Root Review” 4. Upper Echelon’s video “Sweet Baby EXTORTING Black Myth Wukong? — I Dont Think So” 5. Robert Reich’s video “How Legalized Bribery Works in America I 10 Economic Myths Debunked #4” 6. Philosophy Tube’s video “Should Politicians be Honest or ‘Electable?’”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ chores and miscellaneous: - Food: had coffee for breakfast; had leftover Extra Crispy Chicken Thighs with Potatoes for lunch and dinner; had hot cocoa - Chores: started, then unloaded the dishwasher; checked the mail

—

Well, these are all the updates I had for today! Thank you for reading!

May every decision you make be *in the spirit of fairness* and may the rest of your day *NOT go to $#!7*!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Enjoy what I do? Please consider supporting via Buy Me a Coffee (BMAC)! Like what you see and want to know when there’s more? Click here to subscribe for updates and/or hit the Follow button! This post contains affiliate links.

Watch MonriaTitans on Twitch, YouTube, and Rumble! For more about MonriaTitans, click here!