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sea-adhesiveness537 · 1 month ago

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CAN YOU TELL ME ALL OF THE JELLYFISH DUO LORE?? cuz i think im beginning to hyperfixate on them

also SUPRISE FANART DOODLE JUMPSCARE!! LISTEN UP LUSAMINE GOT SUM TO SAY‼️ (btw sorry if i got anything wrong or missed any details)

Oh shit! Screen Universe doodle fan art REAL!! Idk if you're a daydreamer or not, but if not, the fact that I managed to get a not immersive daydreamer hyperfixate and be obsessed with them is very impressive!!

Ok, they have a whole ass lore doc in the works that was essentially pretty close to having its early release version done that I somehow didn't finish because I have other stuff in my plate. They go very far back! Back before Screen Universe was a thing in my head!

But I will give you the basic gist and summary of it because holy fucking shit, I'm honestly, genuinely very flattered that you like them as a pair! Or even notice that I pair them so much.

Ok, so! On the meta timeline, back before Screen Universe was a thing in my head, they were enemies in the previously active daydream world because I genuinely hated Lusamine at first because of what she did in her video game (very bad things, she's a Pokémon villain). Then one day, on 2017, on the night of the second to the last day of examination week on grade 6, I read a meme comic of Lusamine recreating a scene of the SpongeBob episode, Nature Pants, and it went into chaos from there. They've been paired more ever since then. The more SpongeBob memes I found of Lusamine being portrayed as SpongeBob himself on the internet, the closer they got in the daydreams 😭😔. Eventually, the previously active daydream world's main story came to an end and into its extra content stage, and getting stuff that's even unrelated to it. At this point, both of these Jellyfish obsessed fucks took over as the centering piece from there.

Eventually, Screen Universe was made in my head for them to fuck around in. At first, it was a "dlc" or extra content connected to the previous world, but it split itself from said world and became its own thing or identity in 2019. Screen Universe then kept growing, changing, and developing from there.

Now, on to the in-lore or in-story shit of Screen Universe.

Just a head's up, Lusamine in her original canon isn't... A good person. This would be definitely important to the whole Screen Universe lore bit since there is something in her Screen Universe lore that's tied to her canon lore because of how it affected said lore and her life in Screen Universe's story. Long story short: it was BAD. It complicated her life outside of acting out the canon storyline really quick.

At this point, both of them grew out of their characters and diverge too far or pretty far from it mentally or internally speaking. So don't expect both of them to be similar to their canon selves. This bit is especially important to their lores and themes of Screen Universe, so keep this in mind. I mean, there are characters in Screen Universe who are pretty similar to their canon selves, but not all of them. SpongeBob and Lusamine are two of the people who aren't like their canon selves.

For starters, they're this species called Fictionals. They're made for the entertainment of us audiences, specifically to play roles of the characters and act out their stories. They have this true form underneath their skin, and said skin is just a meat suit resembling a character used to portray said character. Yes, they're actors. Fake versions or imitations of the characters if you will. So you might see them or the other characters mention some meta shit their characters would otherwise not know, and some form of audience even they, the actors themselves, aren't certainly sure if they actually exist or not.

In lore or in the story, this all started when SpongeBob visited the Nintendo Empire (yes, there are big pots of lands based on the big video game and animation companies, they're called territories, and yes, video game and animated characters can co-exist together in the hub world called the Fictional Realm where they take a break from acting out their canons and do their own business there) and encountered Lusamine in a dark alleyway. Idk why, but in all versions of Screen Universe, they'd always meet up either within a dark alleyway or at the edge of a dark alleyway by the sidewalk. It's only the context that's been changed or developed over time. In the current context, SpongeBob made an excuse of just strolling around the Nintendo Empire one more time before going back to his homeland, the Nick Nation. But in reality, he's actually looking for Squidward and scanning the Empire for his whereabouts because of what happened to him in the events prior to this plot point. Then he encounters Lusamine at the edge of the dark alleyway, who was a newly made Fictional who fell from the sky (yyeeeeaaaahhh, they have an interesting way of being born, but basically no one has reproductive organs and their creators are the ones doing the work creating them before dropping them into their realm for safe keeping. But the Fictionals can live for a pretty long time as long as there's projects and acting work to do, so it works out).

Oh yeah, at some point during all that, there are other creatures foreign to them that tried to take Lus to their Realm because they... Like her too much. They're called Weblings and they're from another Realm called the Internet Realm. They're the embodiment of people's accounts on the internet, the most common one being the social media kind. SpongeBob saves Lus from being snatched in time and they both try to get away from the Weblings. They both go somewhere to eat, and Sponge tries to drop Lusa off in a place for her to wait for her senior co-stars from her series (in this case, Pokémon) to pick her up. However, she kept following him until it got to the point of stalking him home and hoping on the ride SpongeBob took to get to the Nintendo Empire in the first place. Just so you know, Nintendo Empire is rather far from the Nick Nation, so it'd take a while to make a back and forth trip between places. So when it was found out that his, eeerrrrr, new friend got in the blimp ship, he had no choice but to just go all the way back to the Nick Nation because they didn't expect that to happen or have enough resources to make an extra trip just to return some rookie game Fictional to her supposed homeland. He'd have to think about what to do with her after that.

When they got back to the Nick Nation, Sponge took care of Lus and nurse her back to a proper condition because when she fell from the skies before being found by him, she wasn't doing so hot and was struggling like a stray cat or a street creature back in the dark alleyway.

Then they spent more time together, bonding, Sponge guiding Lus about this new world around her and stuff. At one point, Sponge taught her a bit about morals like what's right and wrong... A bit too early for someone like her. This is especially important to the whole, "Lusamine was so fucked up in the True canon that it fucked up the Screen Universe counterpart's life" thing going on. Basically, that whole morality thing was either fuel or the start of her existential crisis because she later found out she was created specifically to portray a bad person doing bad things.

A month or so passed and the senior co-stars from the Pokémon series called up SpongeBob for them to pick up Lusamine from his place. At this point, they've grown somewhat attached to each other, and Lus didn't want to be separated from Sponge just yet. Luckily, the older human Pokémon actors agreed to let Sponge tag along since he's the closest to Lus and he's the only that helped her grow comfortable and adapt to the environment. They both went back to the Nintendo Empire, and then the first split in the story occurs. They part ways for now and they start doing their own things and go through their own arcs. But they meet up and visit each other every now and then throughout the story. It's mostly Lus doing the visiting since Sponge seems like a pretty busy person to leave his homeland often. He's the literal leader of the place, what more can he do when there's a lot of shit for him to worry about due to the events of the storyline prior to the "introduction to video game people" season/book/part. Then again, he was doing something else aside from that due to something else happening in his side of the story.

Anyways, Lus mostly visits Sponge ever so often during her break times or while she's sneaking off from acting work. She honestly wants to tell him about her new job as an actor and her smaller grievances in said job without spoiling her game's story. She also invited him to check out the live performance of her debut game before knowing her character's true canon nature. She later wants to take that back after knowing what her character is truly like out of fear over Sponge possibly hating her for playing as such a person, but at that point, Sponge already wants to check it out anyway. Dw, he doesn't care or mind about what she plays as as long as the actress herself is not too bad of a person. He's one of few known people who's chill around villain actors, both in the public eye and just in general.

When their respective arcs and sides of the story reach its climax or peak, Lusamine's side of the story interrupted SpongeBob's side because a co-star of hers from a different Pokémon game who plays a pretty similar role as her accused SpongeBob of leaking some major canon story bits from Lusamine's game because during her side of the story and her own arc, her off camera life grew miserable because a lot of people in her homeland mysteriously knew about what her character did in the true canon story and start attacking her over it. SpongeBob told the accuser that Lus didn't tell him ANYTHING about what happened in her canon story, just the behind the scenes stuff and what she and her co-stars are up to adjacent to it or outside of it.

Yes, the (replacement. Very long story) Ghetsis Fictional accused the SpongeBob Fictional of leaking Pokémon Sun and Moon's plot because the Lusamine Fictional got hate crimes for her character's actions way earlier than it should've happened (during production instead of after its release).

SpongeBob let the accuser and two other Pokémon co-stars (Cynthia and Lysandre) stay over a little longer and get to know them a bit better. I mean, he has heard of them and knew them at some point, but they're from mentions, the news, and other sorts of second or third degree information, never directly interacting with them outside of the time when they had to pick Lus up for her actor job at an earlier point of the story

At this point, it's SpongeBob who's now doing the visiting because of the news and the accusation. To the point where he even stays in the Nintendo Empire for a little longer in one of his visits that's closer to the game's release date (some time in September, mid or late October, or early November, I didn't decide when did he do that visit, but it should be one of those).

There's a story point where Lus ripped her skin off out of distress, fear, anxiety, and guilt from playing the character, the grave implications that imprinted on her, and her society conditioning her to feel those things because they hold their highest regard over what character and role someone plays as. And if anyone plays the villain of their canon story, they strip the actor's rights and normalcy, and sometimes even their life if it especially goes REALLY bad. It gets worse for the actor the more psychotic/fucked up the original villain character is.

And that's why and how Actress Lusamine despises her character so much (and to some extent, her creators for making the character that way and forcing her to not only play said character, but bear or keep the character's name and body too). She thinks it's the character's fault that she got into this sort of situation this early into her life. But at the same time, a part of her hated herself and felt guilty for acting out those scenes. As if, in some cruel cosmic sense, it's her fault for having such a role in the first place even though it was out her control.

Luckily and conveniently, SpongeBob was in the Nintendo Empire when Lusamine did the whole Peel Her Skin Off thing and found her in the same area where he first met and saved her. During all this, her other few major co-workers, both from her own Pokémon game and from other Pokémon games, went after her and looked for her together with SpongeBob. SpongeBob then tries to persuade and convince her to go back in the suit or else she might cave in to the intense and horrible pain she put herself into from being outside the character meat suit and die permanently (yeah, there are two kinds of deaths, permanent and temporary death. Temporar is more like fainting after going down to zero hp and being very exhausted. Permanent is a true death where they'll never wake up again). It took awhile, but eventually after reassuring that Sponge wouldn't hate or attack her for whatever might happen in her true canon, and that she can be whoever she wants to be despite being stuck to the body and name of a character, she goes back to the skin suit.

Then release of the game rolls around... And then the main antagonist of the story approaches. It's Mickey... Mickey Mouse. Throughout the video game characters' intro season/book/part/whatever segment of the story, he's shown to be harassing past actors in the flashback sequences and arcs, which includes the older Pokémon actors. That's why Cynthia, a character who's otherwise not a bad guy in canon, gets involved or intertwined with the villain actors' shenanigans and the Ghetsis actor had to be replaced with another Fictional to carry that role. Mickey did something to them that caused them to be in the situations they are now in during the present day. Mickey, along side with his group or organization, is also tied to SpongeBob's side of the plot and the acceleration of SpongeBob's issues and angst.

I feel like there's more to explain about... All of this, but we'll get to that some other time or post since this is supposed to be a Jellyfish Duo centric post.

Before going into the next section, I want to talk about Live Performances and how they work. A Live Performance is basically the actors reenacting the events of their source materials in their little workplace where they usually do recordings of their work. It's like their way of showing other actors what they do and can do, impress other actors, and often times, a tradition or a rite of passage for the newbies to exhibit what they learned and done during their production/development stage of their debut project to the older ones. Their workplace is a pocket dimension studio world thingy that has everything an actor needs for their work.

Anyways, now in the present events, instead of SpongeBob going first to try the Live Performance of Pokémon Sun and Moon the game, it was Mickey because, would you look at that, the game released on the same day as when Mickey as a character was born and debuted as a concept of a cartoon character, November 18. And as expected, the Pokémon LARP session went BAD! Lusamine almost died to the mouse she's trying to entertain multiple times because, "character=bad, therefore character's actor=also bad" bullshit and Mickey would always coincidentally get into a psychosis/delusional episode at the peak of a live game's story, which explains the suffering and bullshit the other actors had to go through to not be murdered by the mouse. Some even suspected that Mickey's bullshitting just to have an excuse to get off to his sick kicks, but they're not so sure about that. People tried to ban him from their own Live Performances in the past, their government was like, "money :)" and, "he besties with emperor Mario, so Mickey good :)" (ok, the latter statement was just an exaggeration, but you get the gist of it). So they just didn't get rid of him.

During most of the murder attempts during the Live Performances, Lusamine hit Mickey, both in normal form and in her big boss form, and just ram all she got into him like his face. Both out of impulse, and because she snapped after being attacked for her character's canon crimes for so long. This WILL be important for later :}.

After the whole Mouse x Pokémon gen 7 rampage went down, it was SpongeBob's turn on the Live Performance or Pokémon LARP sesh. It went smoothly and normal. Just kinda rocky here and there because he'd try to derail the story sometimes either for the fun of it or out of boredom, and the actress who's originally the main character in the canon Pokémon SuMo story was not having any of it and tries to rope things back to how the original plot line should go. There'd be times when SpongeBob and Lusamine would have secret and illegal meta gaming talks over the phone throughout the course of the live game because the latter who was waiting for her cue to show up got bored and wanted to talk to him and give her company. I mean, there are other co-workers around, but they're too busy doing their own thing, keeping the act running, reviewing their script, and all. So they talked whenever Sponge is not preoccupied with a scene. There's this one point where SpongeBob accidentally steps out of the overworld and into this void place full of code. It's like a skeleton of the world if you will. Lusamine had to guide him out of there without being suspicious of an important figure being in danger in her own workplace. Don't worry, he got out.

When the story got closer to Lusa's big reveal of her canon nature, her actress kinda freaked out and gave Sponge a heads up on what it "might" go down. Like, a warning, and the option of turning back, since she's worried that what Sponge reassured her was not fully true or that she's still unsure about SpongeBob's reaction ever since the whole Mouse crime attempt went down. SpongeBob still pushed through and progressed the story, leading him to That Plot Point of the story. They still talk about what was happening during that part of the story meta speaking in a form of morse codes without ruining or interrupting the original scene. While SpongeBob was surprised from the emotional whiplash of what canon Lusamine was like, Actress Lus was relieved that SpongeBob doesn't hate her or look her down as a person for carrying an emotionally heavy role as a reason of existing. He just felt bad for her and wished he didn't denied it out of grief, wished he had done something better than denying (yeeeeaaahh, he seen all the signs that point to Actress Lusamine playing the villain at work, but ignored them because he hated the thought of losing a newly made friend to a part of society and something that's out of his control due to past traumas related to losing friends).

They have more meta calls after that, but it's not as often as before because of how heavy the situation felt even if it's just an act. Then again, there are also other factors behind it, so there's that.

At the climax of the reenactment, they have a play fight that's more friendly than whatever Mickey has going on with the other actors. Anyways, that's how SpongeBob seen Lusamine's boss form. Oh, and there were multiple mistakes during that point of the reenactment because it's triggering Lusa's trauma of Mickey trying to kill her permanently. So they had to do over again and again until they got it right.

After all that, they finally cooled down, and went back to meta talking again. When the post game reenactment stuff came around, SpongeBob poke around and find out about what other stuff the game has in store before wrapping up the LARP sesh.

At one point, there was a post game bit that made him reflect on his actions back in his side of the plot and his character arc because he was becoming an asshole to a pair of characters while the whole disaster/existential angst inducing production of Pokémon SuMo arc thingy went down. He later thanks Lus for the Live Performance, not just for the general entertainment, but also for showing him see what he did wrong. Lus was oblivious to the whole thing and didn't know what he exactly meant, so she assumed that she just gave him some good entertainment with her performance. Recently, I thought of a scenario where Lus wants to have a Pokémon battle with SpongeBob not as her character, but as herself or actor self, so I thought of adding that in for the post game reenactment section.

Once the Pokémon LARP sesh wrapped up and stuff, the actors did their cool down and change out of their acting gear while Sponge does his own thing rating everything like the actors and their characters. The main priority of the rating are the actors, the rest are optional and not important.

Remember the rat? Well, he'll appear now.

So the rat bastard shows the fuck up again, and sues Lusamine because she punched and hit him back in his own Live Performance sesh (even if it's out of self defense). And then the whole trial arc ensued. It ended in disaster and a planned execution because Lus hit Mickey with her boss form, and her villain role puts her in a position that's less ideal than her opponent. So she's very much doomed from the get go.

Luckily, SpongeBob helped Lus escape prison and her perma death sentence along side with her co-workers and some of SpongeBob's co-workers and allies from his homeland. But now SpongeBob has to confront Mario and the legal side of the Nintendo Empire—

(Screen Universe part two is fucking nuts, I tell you 💀. It goes bananas towards the middle and the end. And this is just the Jellyfish Duo sections of the plot!)

(cont.) after taking Lusamine out of prison and not in a bailing way. SpongeBob negotiated with Mario about the terms and conditions of Lusamine's fate to ensure that she can still live without dying to legal consequences. Later, they agreed that she can stay with Sponge and in his Territory as long as she doesn't set foot upon the lands of the Empire's surface unless with the intent of going to actor work or under supervision. Basically, she got banished from the Nintendo Empire after all that happened.

#immersive daydreaming #screen universe #spongebob #screen universe rambling #paraportal #maladaptive daydreaming #lusamine #ask #there's more but this is taking too long #I'm sure I just rambled about most of part two's plot with the ommision of the other sections like the Waltian Cult and SpongeBob'sbackstor #and side of the story but it'd just make things longer than it should've been #I'm honestly flattered that I got someone seemingly outside of the daydream community brainrot about these two #like yes! come join me and a handful of other few people in crack shipping hell!#jellyfish duo

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lesvegas · 2 years ago

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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.

#fnv #fonv #fnv quests #fnv mods #fnv modlist

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darishima · 9 months ago

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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

#🦴 anon #also your ask about togachako has been sitting unanswered in my inbox because i know that the minute i decide to answer it #im going to be typing for three hours and youre going to get a 10k word essay #so. im waiting #until i have the time and also the brain to do all taht #im sorry in advance for whatever my reply to that will be

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hatredmadeofgold · 2 years ago

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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.”

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ad-hawkeye · 1 year ago

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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.

#tears of themis #lovebrush chronicles #c14 dating #our life beginnings & always #trouble comes twice #artem wing #addy rambles #I STILL HAVE SO MANY MORE GAMES TO PLAY #I HAVE MY LIST!!!!!!!#i will update this if i wanna recommend anymore i just had to get the word out

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intervalart · 1 year ago

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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.

#live a live #anon ask #answers #not art #long post #the sundown kid #headcanons #head canons

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miloscat · 2 months ago

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[Review] Dark Souls Remastered (PS4)

The real Dark Souls starts here. Again.

After my playthroughs of Darks Souls 2 and 3, there was another disc in the PS4 box set that was crying out to be played. Dark Souls 1 was my first From game years ago, and my friend Max Brimstone's recent first-time playthrough prompted me to revisit it via this rerelease. The remaster boasts a boosted framerate and resolution, DLC included, and some very minor gameplay tweaks. Although I've seen some quibbles about slightly misguided presentational changes, this seems to me like a definitive way to play this highly influential game… warts and all.

While Demon's Souls was the first entry in this meta-series, Dark Souls is the one that really caught on (being cross-platform helps). Playing it in such close proximity to its sequels was revelatory: it's really different! And I don't just mean the limited equipment slots, the clunky column-based menus, or the many other small inconveniences that were smoothed out in subsequent entries. This game is hard! Yes, yes, it's a meme, but I genuinely found DS1 to be much more difficult than its follow-ups. This may be partially down to a higher level of jankiness and roughness, less responsive controls, etc., but I think there's deliberate choices too that stack the odds against you.

It's also much bolder in its structure: being unable to warp in the first half of the game can be a real hassle, but it also forces a very tightly linked world structure; the level design is really interesting, full of shortcuts and unexpected connections. It turns traversal into a more involved process that asks more of the player, which is both cool and makes for exceedingly tedious runbacks through huge areas with necessary fights along the way. Even when you do unlock warping, you can only do it to a select subset of bonfires. It's also possible to lose bonfires for resting purposes; doing so is even necessary to improve your healing flask.

These design choices make Dark Souls stand out compared to the relative convenience of the other games… even if some of its mechanics are hostile to the player. But there's other choices that I noticed more sharply that just made me go "huh??". Why are certain weapon upgrades restricted to certain blacksmiths? Why can you enhance armour, but not all armour? Why are there random drops tied to non-respawning enemies? Why is the humanity mechanic so weird? Who thought the wheel skeletons were a good idea??? And of course there's the usual highly convoluted NPC questlines that require hours of wiki-diving to follow properly (and even then I missed things).

For posterity, my build relied heavily on stamina restoration due to the slow pace of this early entry. You can get the Grass Crest Shield pretty quick, and I then risked a very underleveled Catacombs run with the Drake Sword to get the Silver Serpent Ring which stayed on almost the whole time so I could get mo money. I used the Black Knight Sword for a while—powerful but slow—before picking up a lucky drop of the quick and efficient Demon's Spear. I invested a lot in an ultimately disappointing Divine-imbued mace and eventually got the slick Quelaag's Fury Sword, trading between it and the spear as required while beefing my armour as much as possible.

I planned my routes and interactions meticulously, and ended with a solid build that let me tackle the mid-late game well. I tried to save every NPC I could… until their time was up and I wanted their armour, of course. The optional DLC boss Kalameet was again my biggest struggle but unlike my first run through, I'm proud to have beaten every boss this time! My blue-skinned warrior lady Azimi (name provided by an online Andorian name generator) has been a conquering king, a weary wanderer, and a ruthless outcast, but at last the cycle of fire is over.

These games are known (even celebrated) for being unfriendly, complicated, and devious, but Dark Souls 1 takes it too far for me. I'm proud of full clearing the game this time, but getting there wore me down like no other Souls game has. I like seeing how far I've come, developing an overall feeling for the series, and playing them back to back throws into stark contrast how unique DS1 is. It's fascinating. It's ridiculous. It's genius. It's my least favourite Souls game.

#dark souls #souls #dark souls remastered #fromsoftware #review #ps4

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hood-simz · 1 year ago

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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

#ts4 simblr #simblr #ts4 #ts4cc #ts4 gameplay #ts4 legacy #sims 4 cc #ts4 story #ts4 cas #the sims 4 community #the sims 4 gameplay #thepinnedposts

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laurarolla · 1 month ago

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Huh. Youtube's AI video idea suggestion program seems to have actually figured out what kind of videos I make. Well, I suppose that makes it even more appropriate to have just played through one of my favorite "Hideo Kojima warns you about the future" games. Honestly, Jacob Geller already made an incredible video on MGRR that explains most of what it does right and why it keeps sticking around, so I wanted to talk about how I feel it could be easy to misinterpret the game and its message. Maybe. Honestly this post kinda turns into a bit of a rant or something reaching to a feeling about one specific thing that bothers me when I feel like it probably shouldn't.

Much of Metal Gear Rising is about the idea of what freedom means in a modern society, and whether things like Free Will even exist. There's also quite a bit in the story about Raiden's motivations and the nature and responsibility involved in taking a life to try and save others. Characters all focus on the idea of choice and will, from Monsoon's nihilism and obsession with memes (like, you know, as a cultural inherited idea, not the funny cat pictures) to Blade Wolf's slow growth to discovering what it means to make your own decisions when you felt trapped before to Raiden's decision to wield The Ripper within him as a tool to prevent other children from being turned into new killing machines. Mistral only began believing in choosing her own purpose because of Armstrong, while Sundowner revels in violence through an appeal to the idea of a violent "human nature." Khamsin (from the Blade Wolf DLC) is a former Marine who seemed less interested in the "freedom" part of "fighting for freedom" than in the "fighting" part, while Dolzaev acts to free his people from Russian interests by destroying a refinery he sees as nothing more than chains on Abkhazia. Sam seems to be similar in many ways to Raiden, but sees his crusade as straight-forward revenge, and falls pray to Armstrong's Social Darwinist bullshit at his lowest point. It all comes to a head with one of the strangest and most brilliant final bosses in video games.

Senator Stephen Armstrong is, as I stated, a Social Darwinist. He's also a man who had no significant financial struggles, saw no active combat while in the Navy, and has no problem turning those who don't have the means to fight back into his tools. He's a monster through and through, and of all the people he wowed with his power and apparent charisma, Raiden saw through his bullshit because Raiden has seen the results of his ideology. And yet, in the post credit scene, Raiden quotes something Armstrong says to him before beginning a fight with some cyborgs in an alley somewhere. The final song of the game seems to be a warning and a call to not be swayed by the system you're born into, but to follow your own path. This means the game's final word is about the idea of individual responsibility and motivation. I think the real criticisms of individualism as a sociocultural perspective and motivation can get lost in the whole "strike out and make your own way" thing. I suppose that comes more from my belief in the value of community and collective action. Communities shape individuals and individuals shape communities, so it is important for individuals to care. In the end though, we're not an island.

I don't know, maybe it just bugs me more than anything else that the music, which is incredible, ends up often painting a troubling picture when you start paying attention to the lyrics at various points. It's usually set up as character motivation, with Blade Wolf, Mistral, Monsoon, Sundowner, and Sam getting songs that speak to their own perspectives, and "Rules of Nature" being used in battles against AI killing machines that literally cannot think beyond basic instinct. Khamsin and the MG Excelsis both have songs illustrating toxic elements of the military and nationalism/capitalism, and the credits music, while it does have a bit of a "wake up sheeple" thing going on, is still pretty beautiful and acknowledges that everyone is a person with their own struggles. The worst song narratively is also the one that keeps showing up in memes about the game. "It has to be this way" plays during the final battle and is a song that basically involves the singer, whoever that represents narratively, embracing Social Darwinism and saying that the fight is just the natural outcome. If the song represents Sam's feelings, which I do actually think it does personally, then that makes sense as he did end up falling into that ideology in the end before questioning it before his duel with Raiden. If the song represents Raiden, however... well, that's pretty fucked up.

Okay, this has largely been a rant and I don't know if the feelings I'm expressing here are even worthwhile. Overall, I think the game is really fun to play, and has a really great story that gets you to think about it. I worry about some mixed messages near the end, but overall it's an experience worth having.

#backlog resolution #video games #metal gear rising #metal gear rising revengeance #mgr #mgrr #pc games #metal gear #metal gear solid

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katyspersonal · 3 months ago

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Since Elden Ring, the DLC and now Nightreign I've noticed the community in general has become a lot more toxic in a lot of ways, even when it comes to critique. SOTE for example had so many sky-high expectations set up for it that a DLC was never going to meet that people screamed bloody murder over not happening, accusing it of being a 'rushed cash-grab''. It doesn't even feel like people enjoy these games. Was it always like this? I feel like you're a balanced voice of reason, but sadly an outlier.

fhsdhf I was going to passionately agree but you NEEDED to make it awkward with a compliment at the end XDDD 😳 Thank you, I appreciate this!

Though I feel like I am not very "balanced" on this regard; I take my sweet TIME to see flaws and not-so-solid decisions, and I am clearly biased towards SOTE's outstanding greatness! x) I think I can work with literally anything, even the dreaded Promised Consort Radahn idea! I know Fromsoft creates base game with the assumption that they won't get to make the DLC in mind, so this is why most of foreshadowing gets obscured or misleading. I knew how it could work in timeline before thinking of it from development standpoint, because Miquella wanted to recreate Marika's order but "better" ever since he literally created an Erdtree but better so having "Godfrey but better" and reserving role of Malenia to Maliketh-like is NOT far cry besides Godwyn was already married to Fortissax xD. He's always been a little copycat after his mother despite clearly dreading her flaws, which is kind of endearing tbh

Okay I side-tracked. Meanwhile, actually "balanced" people still were disappointed by at least a couple of choices! :p I am just... not. It helps to have prior experience with Fromsoft's games to not have unrealistically high expectations from their games, of course! And no, "playing Bloodborne but reading literally all of it through the lense of fandom's memes and mischaracterisations" is NOT prior experience with Fromsoft! I mean stuff like, being aware of development HELL of Dark Souls 2 and 3, what developers say through interviews all the time, all that!

Here is a very good compilation of every interview and every art work by Fromsoft so far, and trust me there are some interviews that you won't find in public that was also helpful so far! This stuff, and being aware of every other bit of cut content that is very insightful in most cases!

1) Fromsoft notoriously bites more than then can chew, 2) Fromsoft's base games are made with the assumption of the game flopping and thus DLC not being made and 3) Fromsoft lets out their intentions through nonverbal or indirect means are three crucial things to keep in mind when criticizing their writing! (I feel like people who complain that Fromsoft "accidentally promoted genocide by not explaining through words that Hornsent are people too an that Marika's trauma doesn't excuse her" need to internalise number three more often... :/ )

You just must try to understand how they create things, because they have very distinct approach, and above all, they are honest. There are so many decisions in both character designs/comebacks AND gameplay that would've sold way better, yet they still don't stoop to them if that's not what they believe in.

And yes needless to mention I have no idea what is wrong with kids these days (I am 27, kinda old) thinking that to engage with media and to have fun is to constantly find MORE reasons to be upset at both creators and the fandom. How is this fun to engage with something you clearly hate? We all feel pity for Youtubers who can do nothing but pump out the videos about how bad this new videogame or series is basically inventing reasons to nitpick and wanting to stay mad, wondering whether criticism is dead as a concept and if getting exposure by rage bait is worth it, but it should not be different for seeking reasons to trash on something on sites like Twitter and Tumblr.

Just, generally I loathe the approach of "oh this game is so stupid writers fucked up on so many levels every character's writing is problematic there is so much misogyny in their works they are so transphobic they wanted to cater to that type of fans I hate but pls don't think I am a hater this is still my most fav game ever uwu". Put aside that every time, for both Bloodborne and Elden Ring, these "reasons why Fromsoft fucked up" are literally invented; if they are truthful in their eyes, what they are DOING here? Why bother engaging with a "shitty" piece of media by "shitty" people that you have to urge fellow fans to "fix" into something "actually good"? Why not go and engage with something that is already good and already made by good person? ..ah, right, they fucking CAN'T, because their insistence to invent reasons to get mad makes all those good things and people look also bad for THEM so they've got nowhere to go because in every fandom they take their seething selves WITH them.

fsjujhdds sorry lol.

I guess I could consider "staying mad and always wanting better" as one of the ways to express love and passion somewhat; for example, I am a type to harshly criticise someone I actually care about, because otherwise they won't improve. Only, when these people's reasons to be angry are just wrong and forced, and when they also attack fans that see things differently, and when they also weaponize their identities to have an excuse to be malicious (seriously wtf?!)... yeah, that's not "passion expressed differently". That's just being a jerk.

#fandomry rambles #elden ring #ask replies

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redsixwing · 3 months ago

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Gimme the 1)

From the Soulsborne meme!

Which game got you into Soulsborne?

Dark Souls 1, which my coworker hassled me to play for three whole years before I gave in and picked it up on sale in late 2019. I played it on Switch, running as free of spoilers as possible, and when I finally overcame my early wall boss (Gaping Dragon *spit*) ... I was thoroughly hooked. I spent over 100 hours in my first file.

I tried to explore every environment as well as I could, to read every item description I could find, and to weave together a web of understanding and characterization that made sense to me. In the process, I wrote a whole lot of words and kicked off a project that still isn't finished. Some day I ought to write up how DS1 helped me through 2020, and what it means to me as a story, but that's a bit out of scope here.

I went from there to Dark Souls 2 and its DLCs, Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree, and now Bloodborne. It's been quite the journey, and I'm very glad I picked DS1 up again. It remains one of my top 5 favorite games.

#six plays #asked and answered #thanks for the ask!#soulsborne #dark souls

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goblin-enjoyer · 4 months ago

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I SWEAR TO GORK AND MORK I AM SO CLOSE TO LOSING IT AND BECOMING HORRIBLY TOXIC

Been getting back into halo recently, been playing threw the campaigns of the master chief collection. was at local game store a few weeks ago and the owner happened to show me a new halo tabletop game called halo flashpoint. looks pretty cool, seems primarily based off of halo infinite. this is not really a liniar post as i want to go to bed but also need to vent off steam because its at a boiling point. I blog about homestuck, you get the gist of nonlinearity. i try to get into halo infinite, knowledge and appreciation gained for halo gameplay from beating reach,combat evolved and 2. note when originally making this computer roughly a year ago last black friday, i specifically wanted to have specs to run halo infinite. it worked but i didn't play much as i never played a halo before. shelved for a year but never uninstalled. flash forward, i load the game, i get to the part where i have to press enter, i press enter and once it hits "initializing" it crashes. i've tried enabling and disabling dlc and i've tried several uninstall and reinstalls. nothing works. only help posts are from 7+ months ago on reddit and they say either "its solved" or some nonsense about drivers. tried asking on the halo infinite reddit. 4 upvotes, 1 comment saying "same issue" 13 days ago i posted it. made drawing over a meme image to vent emotions.

and i'm not even going to mention the bloody submission i made to the homestuck anonymous twitter account 2 days ago still not going threw yet. It is actually a question about clothing that i am too scared about posting to reddit. but ill go to bed and i swear to the corpse gods i am going to just post the question here on my tumblr and if that doesn't work than who knows what. still gotta pre order monster hunter wilds too, bloody 70 dollar game. bloody hard to get that much money when you can't really have a job due to a lack of skills and a (reasonable, i know for a fact i would suck at all aspects of it) heavy fear of driving.

#rant post #midnight brainrot #art #drawing #paint.net #meme edit #halo #halo infinite

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randomshipperhere · 2 years ago

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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.

#text post #our life #our life beginnings & always #baxter ward

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icharchivist · 1 year ago

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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

#ichareply #pinkwesker #ichafantalks ffvii #ichablogging ffviirg #ichasalty

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