#It'd be cool to do a full run through of the games in order

[factorydefaultlu]

Fallout new vegas crashed twice while I was trying to finish the vault 22 mission

I guess it can't handle all the greenery. I even have new vegas anticrash installed so idk

I'll play fallout 4 survival

[bookwyrminspiration]

i was rereading neverseen, and it made me realize how i completely forgot about the spyball sophie used to use to watch her human family. i know it was relevant in nightfall, but i honestly think shannon probs forgot about it too because now i’m thinking about sophie has a full-proof way of knowing where keefe ran off to if she decides to use it (which i doubt she will, i don’t think keefe will come back into the plot until grady hails him)

oo the spyball is certainly a technological detail that I'd love to see more of. Though there are logistics of it that make it a little confusing about how it functions. The person has to have a file in the registry files in order for it to work, right? So reasonably, Sophie could watch Keefe as he has a file. But if something happened to it, then she couldn't (the same way she couldn't see her human family or Mr. Forkle without their names).

I have a possible explanation for how the spyball can exist and Sophie still can't find Keefe with it. We saw in Unlocked that Keefe knows how to access the registry files and was able to change information--redacting things, changing details, adding comments, etc. This was also something that the council/the people in charge of the files were unable to fix or do anything about yet. So perhaps before he left he redacted the necessary information about himself to make the Spyball null and unable to find him.

Though I do wonder if Shannon considered the full implication of spyballs when she created them and how often they could be used. I don't think the kotlcrew's personal information was redacted or deleted in Neverseen when they ran away to join the Black Swan, so conceivably the council could see where they'd run away to and who was with them at any given time. Having a single image of where a person is doesn't mean they'd be able to figure out where they are, though! But I think if they watched it for long enough they might be able to pick out an identifying location and be able to track them down.

The spyball doesn't give you any more than an image as far as we're aware, so that does leave a lot up to the person viewing to determine. Have you ever head of that map game, geoguesser? I think that's the name at least. The one where you get dropped in a random location on google maps and have to try and guess your exact location in the world. That's what it'd be like trying to discern a location from a spyball, except more difficult because you lack freedom of movement and have to follow the person you're viewing and wherever they decide to go.

also I don't know when Keefe will come back into the plot. I think the imparter connected to Grady will definitely have something to do with it, but I'm very much in the dark about this all! I frequently mention how I am constantly filled with thoughts, which makes it very hard to guess what will happen next because my brain will come up with like 12 different possibilities in a minute and it just keeps going.

I could see the appeal of Keefe staying true to his word and going no contact until Grady reaches out, but I'd also be interested in seeing him break down and realize he can't do this alone and reaching out to Grady instead. It'd be cool to see Sophie track him down, but also cool to let her go "fuck it and fuck him for doing this again." and not bothering herself with it and letting him work it out on his own. It's be fun to see him learn to control his power but fascinating to see how dangerous he could become when out of control and untrained. SO many possibilities!! But I do doubt she'll use her spyball to look for Keefe anytime soon.

adding fun details like spyballs is fun until you have to actually think them all the way through! definitely easier to judge smudge the lines a little bit and ignore some of the ways they could be used, so if it did come up and Sophie tried to use it I doubt she'd be able to see keefe; it'd be dramatic and great for emotion purposes in the plot, which outweighs logistic consistency!!

[thephantomporg84]

I have complicated feelings about the reboot, it's kind of a shame that it was rewritten after the backlash. It seemed way more interesting than what we got by the 2010 teaser. It'd still be way more grimdark in spirit than DMC but at least it'd probably be better? The protag not being insufferable would be a plus. I wish they at least shared what the original story was. I know that the reboot is an old discussion but it's so clearly the skeleton of what it was planned to be, and it makes me sad

Nah it’s cool! It’s still interesting to bring up — I’m not one of those people who are just... unreasonably nasty about the reboot despite my distaste for it. I pretty much agree. I think there are some good ideas in that game, and that, on a whole, it’s not a terrible video game. It’s just a terrible DMC.

I’m with you, though — I’ve always been curious as to what the original story was, despite my dislike of a dark and gritty DMC as a whole. It’d still be nice to know. I feel like going full grimdark would have been better for the core content of this series versus the pseudo-intellectual conspiracy theory-tinged bullshit the reboot had to offer.

I feel like there are some changes you could make to the reboot as it exists to make it a much more interesting story. It’s... ah. Well. None of this is a great improvement, but just pulling from my memory of that game and a lot of suggestions that others have made for how they’d fix it (I think this has all been compiled once or twice on YouTube as well, for the the most part), this is what I would have done:

From jump street, the infamous succubus scene has to go. That is quite possibly the most cringe thing I have ever sat through in a video game and, to date, it makes my skin crawl thinking about it. Anyway.

Donte always came across, to me, like he’s trying to do an impression of Dante while lacking the original one’s wit.

I think Donte should have turned out to be an imposter. Let him be someone Dante saved or someone that saw Dante at work when they really shouldn’t have. Something like that. A good copycat — like a version of the guy that’s running around ‘wearing hockey pants’ in The Dark Knight.

Leave the sloppier fighting mechanics alone — he’s not trained like Dante and should, as a consequence, be left open and vulnerable a lot.

Real Dante has to keep saving him because of this. A Dante that’s just starting out would easily get fed up with doing this pretty quick and probably go off on Donte. Donte then seeks out demonic power like other DMC villains have done and slowly becomes a villain himself. Donte being delusional and copycatting Dante also could explain the darker depiction of things and the way Limbo works in this game. It makes all the galaxy-brained conspiracy theory bullshit type of vibe the game gives off (to me, at least) make more sense.

Vorgil shouldn’t have been Vergil or even Donte’s sibling — just some conspiracy theory wackadoo that Dante sees as a brother/listens to. Maybe even mistakes him as a missing brother (that he doesn’t even have) because he overheard Dante’s brother Vergil is actually missing or something.

They still plot to assassinate Kyle Ryder (Mundus) and his demon army/overlords or whatever (like the Bill O’Reilly stand-in). That basically stays the same.

At some point though, as they fight their way through these demons, the other shoe drops:

(:

Get to the late stages of the game. Get to Kyle Ryder’s office to kill him. He’s just a greedy fucking pig of a man, but he’s not a demon. Real!Dante shows up around this point to essentially stop a misguided, but ultimately-not-terrible kid from committing what would be a very public execution. Tries to talk him down despite Dante probably not being much older than this dude.

The Bill O’Reilly Clone and whatnot probably had it coming, but a lot of the ‘demons’ killed were just regular people that worked for Ryder or whoever. Not killing ‘Mundus’ still doesn’t just wipe the slate clean for all the domestic terrorism stuff they’ve been doing to satisfy their delusions and crackpot conspiracies up ‘till now.

This makes Dante vs Donte and Dante vs Vorgil the last fights of the game. Maybe Vergil was being manipulative from the sidelines the whole time and that’s the ultimate ending or something. You could end the game on a sinister note and open it up for a sequel or something. I think the original leaves the ending open, too.

Doing all this then changes the tone of the game from this fake-deep, frankly really uninteresting meta commentary on the power behind media and consumerism — which is more than a little hilarious and hypocritical for a $60 USD piece of media for consumerists — to a meta commentary about mental health and the absolutely insane lengths some people will go to (and things they will convince themselves of) in order to commit horribly dispoportionate acts of violence and terror against people whose worldviews and practices they disagree with... something that, ultimately, has a lot more staying power in the current social and political climate we live in. It’s been done before, but I feel like the game would have had more relevancy. And given that Ninja Theory was already planning/working on Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, they would probably have been more in their element this way.

All that said, though: the mental health message is kind of tired as well, especially in the wrong hands, and the game still woulda been better in its own franchise. Or marketed as an AU/reinvisioning versus a hard reboot.

Also, outside of the actual game: Someone should have muzzled Tameem Antoniades’ stupid ass with a quickness the microinstant he started spewing his unfiltered bullshit. He did more damage to that reboot more than anything in-game ever could have.

[hashtagsmitty]

Smitty's Thailand Adventure - Day 3

In this installment - American Ice cream, shitty VR games, a pretty decent burger, many long minutes of waiting, and the ultimate Asian BBQ.

I slept better last night. Still awake at 6am, still not sleeping very well. I got up, got breakfast from Asia's forefront of white hegemony (White Family Mart. That's what it's called in Google maps, anyway. The signage doesn't indicate it's preference for an ethnostate, but the place is much whiter than other Family Marts.), and then waited for Josh to get back to me about our plans for the day. I read some more of Growth Mindset - one chapter about whether you believe that your partner's traits are static or able to be changed, and how that could impact your relationship.

I got bored of sitting around. Josh said we were meeting at a train station at 12. I left at 11, intending to explore. I'm feeling pretty confident with Bangkok's train system - Google maps helps a lot. I got to the station at 11:20 and started walking around. I was immediately hit by the smell of the pollution coming off the street. Cars, garbage, smoke from street food, sewage - it affected me pretty hard today. I saw on Google maps that there was an open art place on the street next to the station, so I went to check it out. It was closed, and the rest of the street was pretty gross, so I went back to the station and waited.

The plan was for me to have lunch with Josh and his Girlfriend Espy. She's Thai/Chinese, from the fancy area. Josh calls her Gucci Gang because of all the branded shit she buys. I met her the night before, briefly, at the drinks thing in District W. I didn't really get to interact with her - too busy entertaining everyone else.

I got back to the station at 11:30 and started playing Pokemon on my phone. I got a text from Josh at 11:45 - change the meeting time to 12:10, she's running late. Okay, no problem. Another text at 12 - still running late, probably gonna be 12:20. Sure thing. Josh stopped waiting for her and got on a train. She sent him a picture of her walking into the train station. He sent her back one of walking into the train and said see you at the next station.

(where I spent an hour waiting)

She arrived at 12:30. She shook my hand and introduced herself again. She was wearing a black singlet and short denim shorts, and a Gucci belt with two Gs on it. She gave me a banana flavoured Kit Kat and then we were walking. She was very affectionate towards Josh. We got into a taxi to head towards our lunch restaurant. They sat in the back and whispered to each other in a mixture of Thai and English, and I sat in the front watching the taxi driver do his very best not to get us killed on the Thai roads. Josh had said it was a fancy area, so I had to dress nicely. Josh has also previously criticized someone else to me for wearing a similar outfit, but that's neither here nor there.

The restaurant was a burger place in a food court called The Commons - a shared space for artisinal foods. The burger was 260 baht - roughly $11. It was pretty good. I prefer Grill'd though. There was a tv behind in my line of sight playing weird clips from YouTube - the first was some Arabian princes doing a wheely in a 4 wheel drive in order to change two of the tires while it the car was moving. I chatted with Josh and Espy while we ate. They met on Tinder - Espy's full name is a Spanish word, and good old Columbia Joe made a pun in Spanish that went straight over Espy's head as his opening line. Must have worked though.

We took another taxi back to District W, where I had a haircut scheduled. We went to Starbucks, where Josh spent a while working on his business while we waited for my appointment. The Starbucks girls drew love hearts on his drink and Espy got mad. It was around here that I realized that I was participating in a date, from the outside. Time ticked on, I walked over to the barber.

I had to walk through the area we had dinner and drinks in the night before. It had been smokey and dirty and loud, but during the day it was peaceful. I found the barber. There was a guy getting a cut throat shave, and a bunch of people hanging out. A huge Asian dude was my barber. He touched up my fade and did a pretty good job - done in 20 minutes. It cost 500 baht - roughly $24. I think Josh said that 4000 baht - $200 - is the average monthly wage? Or weekly? Can't remember. Some stuff here is so cheap.

I went back to Starbucks feeling a million bucks after the haircut. Josh and Espy were playing PUBG Mobile, so I sat down and played some more Pokemon. They asked if I wanted a turn and I said I wouldn't be able to criticize my kids if I did. We sat at Starbucks for another hour while Josh waited for the last horse race to finish so he could push out his results for the day.

As we left, Espy needed the bathroom, and asked Josh to come with her. He later told me that she did this so he wouldn't be standing near the Starbucks girls who drew on his coffee.

A train ride to Siam, for their VR experience. It was pretty cool in there - a huge IMAX complex, with cinemas and shit. Think the one at Highpoint, but half as crowded and way more spread out. They had 8 small rooms for VR. Espy tried Beat Saber, and Josh and I did Arizona Sunshine - horde mode Zombies. In the VR, we were in a warehouse with zombies streaming in. We had to find a key to open a door. It took us a few waves to find the key. The animations were buggy - zombies jumping from one floor to the next without moving their limbs, janky flailing. The animations when they got shit were cool, but the guns were a little hard to control. The experience cost 150 baht ($6) each, but only because Espy had a half price coupon because of her phone company. It was only good once, and Josh didn't wanna pay $12 for 20 minutes, so we left to get ice cream.

Swensons is an American ice cream place. It's not as good as Pidapipo on Lygon street, but it was okay. While we were eating, Josh gave me a lesson on the Wai - the stereotypical Thai hand thing. He said you only do it to people above you in the social hierarchy. He also said that the social hierarchy goes Old People, Foreigners, then people above you like your boss or your parents. He insisted that I not Wai as a way of saying thank you, because people would be weirded out by it. I said that it'd be like if we had a social convention on who we were allowed to give a thumbs up to. He agreed that it was an inefficient social thing, but insisted anyway.

Another train. Siam, where Swensons and the VR was, is like the mini-Flinders street of the skytrain. We went back on our line to 3 stops past District W to On Nut. Musti, the Egyptian guy from last night, booked us a table at Best Beef. It, allegedly, is the best beef in Thailand. We walked along a dodgy sidewalk, past construction sites featuring a 10-ton crane sitting on scaffolding over a gigantic pit, until we got to this crazy warehouse packed with people.

There must have been 500 people crammed in there. It was BBQ, cooked on the table KBBQ style, but an all you can eat Buffet for 469 baht ($20). The line was long - when we got there, there were 60 groups of 1-4 people in line before us. Praise Allah for Musti, because he'd booked a table and we walked straight in and sat down.

We ordered almost everything on the menu. They didn't bring us everything we ordered, but what the brought out was enough. Towering stacks of plates of meat.

We must have had 5 or 6 stacks like this. It was smoky and loud, but we had a great time. We stayed for the full 2 hours we were allocated. I spent a long time talking Islam with Musti. I talked about teaching with Espy - she used to teach English to little kids. We cooked a lot of meat, with no regard to cross contamination or food safety.

We headed out around 9:30. Josh was taking Espy home, so I went back on the train alone. I wasn't worried or nervous - I'm finding the trains really useful and easy now. I walked home, past White Family Mart, past the massage girls who still haven't heckled me, and fell asleep almost as soon as I sat down in my room.