#I only play this game for the story

[artist-issues]

Sometimes I interact with the tiny little Zombies, Run! Fandom and I wonder how some people can view the story the way they do.

Specifically, I keep seeing that Sam and Five are "drifting apart," and I keep seeing lots of attention for Peter. Like, going into Season 6, 7, and 8 (which is the one I'm on now) I kept waiting for something big to happen to suggest that Peter was as impactful to Five as Sam seems to be.

But there just isn't anything. I mean, if you tilt your head and squint, and take everything Simon did or said to Five before dying and coming back as "Peter," and combine that with Peter...you still only have a handful of moments where they even seem close.

Like. Sure. Peter was willing to die for Five several times since coming back, but...he was lowkey willing to die for literally everybody? Because he wanted to heroically sacrifice himself? He had a whole character arc about it?

And it's not like he knows Five better than anyone, either. He has one or two moments where he notices that Five is being asked to do dangerous things even though Five is not indestructible, but that's really it. He doesn't even seem to get more concerned for Five than he does for others; just that one time, in the catacombs or whatever, when he's like "IS FIVE ALL RIGHT?"

And sure, that was sweet, but also, the writers clearly put that line in there so that Colonel Sage could point out that Peter shouldn't sacrifice himself if he really cares about his friends' safety, in general, because he can do more for them alive than dead. It wasn't a line to communicate to us that Peter cares a special way about Five. It was a line to communicate to us that Peter cares about friends, conveniently placed so that Sage could use that to convince him not to sacrifice himself.

Guys, one time should not a strong connection make.

I guess I remember he also said, when Janine was hinting that he was Simon under a different name, that Peter said "I don't want to talk about it in front of Five!" But...again, that's just. Or enough for me to believe that Peter is replacing Sam in estimation.

And speaking of Janine, there is WAY more evidence that Five is getting closer to Janine, if any character. Janine is given much more story focus than Peter, throughout the most recent Seasons. She runs more missions with Five. She's present for moments when Five is given rare character beats, like being visibly distressed at the Glassdoor Monster chasing her or ANNIE playing Five's friends' screams.

Which, is another thing, by the way. When the player is meant to notice that Five is being emotionally traumatized by a demonic A.I., the writers choose to play clips of Simon screaming and dying--sure--but the A.I. also plays those same screams for Janine. And the A.I. spends MORE time replaying Sam's screams and taunting Five with the idea of Sam Yao's mortality.

AND SPEAKING of Sam, the other side of this conversation-coin is the idea that while Five and Peter "get closer" (which I see very little evidence for,) Sam and Five are "drifting apart."

I keep looking for a big falling out, or a difference in the character of Sam Yao's reactions when Five is in danger or has to do something hard or is in an emotional situation, etc. But like...I'm halfway through Season 8 and zip. Zilch. Nada.

There's just as many instances of Sam insisting on helping Five, or appealing to Five, or hinting that he knows Five better than everybody else, or exhibiting special concern for Five, as there have been in any other season. The only thing I could maybe say is that the writers no longer put Sam on every single mission...but that's still not saying much. And all the post-mission email material? It's all still Sam writing to Five. I get maybe one or two letters from other characters, but literally only like, two letters from Peter, at most.

DISPROPORTIONATELY, Sam is still the closest character to Five. No matter how you spin it. And Peter is no closer to Five than Janine, or Jody, or even Veronica.

Now.

I'm not trying to start a shipping war or anything. If you want to say Sam and Five are drifting apart in your specific, in-between-canon-missions headcanon, go right ahead. If you LIKE Peter more than Sam for some reason, go right ahead.

But unless something happens further on in Season 8 or 9 or some extra-mission stuff I haven't unlocked yet, why are you saying they're drifting apart in-canon? Are you just...projecting that on it, because you find Peter more interesting, or because Sam's character has more going on than just "radio guy directing Five and missing his dead girlfriend" in later seasons?

This has been a niche rant that basically nobody but the teeny tiny ZR fandom will bother reading all of, but it felt good to get off my chest. Cuz sometimes, with the self-indulgence/self-insert trends of modern fandom, I think we're losing the ability to understand story. And we just blur the lines between what's actually in the story, and what we like to imagine ABOUT the story.

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[assorted-things]

This is how I feel every time I talk to Zaeed and I kind of love it tbh

[auden-dahn]

just started my first playthrough of pokemon mystery dungeon: explorers of sky!!

[swampybogg]

[marypsue]

Man, it's cool and all if you see a metaphor for marginalisation in the monstrous, and if you want the power fantasy of 'what if you could just eat anybody who threatened you/pissed you off'. Me too.

However, as soon as you start saying 'no, these monsters are a 1:1 on Specific Marginalised Group, and you have to treat them in the fiction like they are directly representative of real human members of the marginalised group', BUT you also, in the fiction, make them hurt/kill/eat humans? And then try to shame me, your audience, for noticing or engaging with the bit where they kill people, because you made them directly representative of a real-world marginalised group? You have lost me, and also, I think, the plot.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[thekitsandthekats]

no but do you understand that killing gihun would've been the easiest thing in the world for inho to do. the smarter play. like he was right there, weaponless, defenseless, vulnerable and yet, he didn't do it. he didn't shoot him, maim or injure him in any physical way.

gihun, this idealist on a revenge mission, who thinks the world is made of compassionate people. gihun who thinks the system will crumble under the power of the people, who's trying to end the games so to kill this power the rich have over the poor, to give people their lives back. gihun, who at every moment in these games has pushed for the better of the collective, even ensuring his own demise by caring for inho (though, not knowing who he is). gihun, who won an incredible amount of money and could easily live a comfortable life away from these games, who turned his back on that idea because he wants to save people, to collapse the system, to be a hero. it would've been so easy to kill him right then and there. but inho doesn't. and i think that's so so interesting.

yes, it's more painful to kill his friend, and that's the obvious first reason. but under that there's also the obvious 'consequences for your actions' reason. but under even that, i think inho genuinely didn't want to. i think, in his experience of the games, getting to see gihun's good nature, getting to experience his compassion first hand, i think inho saw something in him. be it absolute insanity, or a futile chase of a hopeless dream or a level of tenacious he sees in himself.

if nothing, gihun persists. he spent two years trying to find the recruiter, every round he tries to convince people to quit, his drive to succeed knows no bounds, sees no obstacles. and the same can be said for inho. the games must persist, his work must be complete, nothing will stop him, not even an uprising from some nobodies. in this, maybe inho sees them as the same. not necessarily equals because i do think he still sees gihun as below him but, but. they're not opposites, they're not equals but a secret, third, worse thing. theyre reflections in a cracked mirror, broken in all the wrong places. they're the unstoppable force and the immovable object. inho can't kill gihun because then it would be over. their back and forth, their battle of ideals, their sparring match, their little game. it would all be over. and inho can't have that. because if he killed gihun in that moment then inho wouldn't win the game.

[stealingpotatoes]

hands you all this cal to announce i’ve FINALLY finished fallen order (by which i mean i finally picked it up again after those couple hours i played a few months ago and then finished the whole game in 2 days lol)

[amanitacurses]

Part 1

[beebfreeb]

One of the most heart-wrenching things that've ever happened to me occurred while trying to research the Super Paper Mario art style.

"Ohh what a beautiful and interesting art style! It is very distinctive! I wonder if anyone else has tried or wanted to try breaking it down and replicating it?" Obliviously, I typed in Super Paper Mario Art Style into my search bar... only to find many people calling it ugly and saying they hate it.

This simply could not be... permanent damage was done to my artistic soul.

No joy? No whimsy in this world? No love of computer graphics? Of a certain era of clipart? Of the art that was born from the computer and is difficult to replicate without one? Of the art made when this was something new and fascinating? No love for something unique?

Super Paper Mario don't listen to all those haters I love your geometric art style influenced by what shapes are easily drawn on a computer and the smooth mechanical interpolation within your animations. I love you. Also the music is banger.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[invinciblerodent]

See, the Treviso vs Minrathous choice would be cool! It's a good choice on paper, but it's executed... not so great (the game's framing as "if you don't save this city it will have Political Consequences vs if you don't save that city All The Civilians Who Can't Flee Will Die because the whole water supply will get blighted" when you have to make your choice is kind of ass, as a baseline) and then it gets further undermined when the final battle is in Minrathous so the city gets fucked up and the venatori mostly take it over in the chaos anyway because Rook gets stuck in Fade jail for several weeks. It turns the decision into "do I want to blight one city or both?" on a second playthrough which does, indeed, have a 'morally right' answer.

And that's the problem with this 'complex and interesting moral question'. This is why people are unhappy with it. Because it completely fails to stick the landing.

See, this is nothing against you, but I knew I was going to get messages like this, even before I would have hit "post".

I'm not saying that either decision is "right". That's the point of it all, that there is no "right" answer, and arguments can be (and are, within the game) raised in favor of both. That's what it's supposed to be about, that from Rook's point of view (as a character, not your point of view, as the player), there are good, significant reasons to save both, but they can only aid one, because they are only one person. It's meant to make your character feel small, and to highlight the enormity of the foe that they are facing. Its purpose is to make Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain feel like they have all the tools to win the war, even when they lose a battle.

Now, ngl, I'm just going to straight up ignore the "oh Minrathous gets blighted in the endgame anyway so there's no point" line of reasoning altogether, because Rook has no way of knowing that. That's metagaming, and if that's the way you want to play your game, you're obviously welcome to do so, it's no skin off my back, do whatever you want forever... but characters in linear stories should, theoretically, only be capable of acting within the confines of their narrative. If we want to actually talk about the ramifications of certain decisions, it doesn't make sense to me to act as if a character should have the ability to make a decision based on information that they have no way of having. I don't think that's productive to the conversation.

(plus, I would argue that adding that as a potential regret, the knowledge that them dooming Treviso ultimately didn't accomplish nearly as much as they thought it would, is far more compelling from a character- and a storytelling point of view, than going into it all with the intention of making All The Right Choices, with Rook secure in the knowledge that at least they are going to be proven "right" by posterity. That does far less for me, personally. I think your Rook is allowed, even encouraged, to have complex, contradictory feelings about the decisions they make.)

Second of all, for three games now, we have been told that Tevinter and the constant, decades-long war they have been engaged in with the Qunari is the only thing that stands in the way of the Qunari expansion towards Orlais, Nevarra, the Marches- there is a reason the occupation starts in Rivain and Antiva, the coastal regions of the mainland furthest from the Imperium.

For two games, we have known that the Venatori (due to many of them being old money, old blood, powerful magisters) have infiltrated the highest ranks within the Magisterium, that they are cunning and dangerous and lying in wait, and that they pull the strings from many directions, with not much besides a handful of Magisters (Dorian and Maevaris included), the Shadow Dragons, and the Archon (who, if the Inquisitor kept Radonis in power, is not only an ally to the Inquisition, but also vocally opposed Corypheus, and, by proxy, the Venatori) to stand in their way.

Yes, there are always many civilian lives at stake. Yes, Treviso is devastated in the attack and its aftermath (physically to a much more extensive degree than Minrathous), and yes, the immediate threat of the dragon causes more obvious destruction there- blighting the canals, causing a staggering loss of life, all of these effects will stretch far into the future.

But in Minrathous, the dragon is not the focal point. It's a distraction.

In Minrathous, the dragon is there to create chaos, to rampage and destroy all it can in order to sow discord and divert protection away from the Archon's palace (notably the place with the cannons that it very well can't turn onto itself), so that the Venatori can break through the Archon's guard, and successfully pull off a bloody coup that then puts them unequivocally in control of the capital city of one of the most powerful and influential countries of Thedas: military, magic, power all together.

And while saving Minrathous at that moment doesn't result in the city being perfectly peaceful, all fine, great and dandy, the Archon still dies as a result of the attack, it does at least ensure that their defenses are not stretched too thin, fighting on two different fronts at the same time. As a consequence of that, it ensures that the Black Divine, one of the pivotal people standing in the way of the Venatori expansion, doesn't contract the Blight. It stops members of the abolitionist group that's known- and respected for standing up for the needs of the disenfranchised and oppressed from being openly decimated, and strung up in the streets like Christmas lights.

It stops the Venatori, who then have next to no one to oppose them, from doing damn near irreparable damage, and tossing all the political progress of the last decade into the nearest shitter to catapult Tevinter back to times when nobody bat an eye to the rich and powerful using people as furniture.

(And, though this is pure speculation, this can be disregarded, however fractured the Antaam is, however many of their forces they have diverted towards Rivain and Antiva, I don't think it's such a stretch of the imagination to say that it'll likely only take them time to realize that with their allies now in control of Minrathous, they have an open avenue through Tevinter to enter Orlais, seize Val Royeaux, seize the Marches city by city, and force the Blight-ravaged south to fight on two fronts at the same time.)

I don't think any of these are things that I'm pulling out of my ass, or something that Rook isn't made aware of. Neve doesn't hammer it home quite so clearly, she also doesn't have the gift of foresight, but in the blind panic that she is communicating in that moment, she does say that her primary concern is the Venatori coup, and the player has been introduced to the Shadow Dragons and told of their significance before that, even without the context that Inquisition, Trespasser, and the comics provide. We've met the Viper, we've met Maevaris, we've met Dorian- we've talked to all of them, and we know what they're up against.

It's not an easy decision, and it's not meant to be one, or one you're meant to think about as "well you're either siding with X and are right, or with Y and you're wrong". This is not the mage uprising, where the choice falls flat because one side's point of view is "no genocide good", and the other's is "church-sanctioned genocide good".

I think that this choice is a relatively early game decision that is meant to make you think about whether your Rook, right then and there within their arc in the story, is the kind of person who would do anything to save even one civilian life even if politically it's devastating, the kind of person to think about the big picture and consider all the political ramifications even if it means a sacrifice of lives- or, alternatively, the kind of person who would do anything for a place that they call home, even if it means dooming another and letting down their friend.

You say that it fails to stick the landing. But that's very easy to say if you are the one yanking the mat from under its feet.

[kwillow]

will theo ever be happy

Maybe in another life.

[wizardsix]

"dragon age the veilguard is all about tough choices" and the majority of the choices are about the companions lmaoo fuck off actually