#It's very possible that I'm mislabeling sound effects

[lx1920jmax]

We continue the snow battle. (I got quite a lot of pages.)

To be continued…

[utilitycaster]

Imogen's Dex has been mislabeled 16 since level 8. When she leveled up it said her Dex and Cha both increased by 1, from 15 to 16 and 19 to 20 respectively. But she took Shadow Touched that level, which only allows one ASI increase and it has to be a spellcasting stat, Cha in her case. After that she still always said her Dex was 15 and her AC was 13 without Mage Armor, which is accurate to Dex+2 and RoP+1. It was only after she reached level 12 that she finally started saying her Dex is 16, and this last episode was the first time she said her AC was 14, Dex+3 and RoP+1. I understand you might want to wait if she ever uses the extra proficiency to confirm Skill Expert, but I'm telling you that there is irrefutable proof she took Dex+1 at level 12. Add that to the expertise and it can only be Skill Expert.

Hey anon!

This is all very good evidence! If you don't mind, if your motivation is the wiki, I am going to encourage you to make those edits yourself or go to the wiki discord and talk through this with others for a couple of reasons:

At this point, I do not want to undermine the incredible work the other editors do, particularly focused on a lot of mechanics, housekeeping (creating new episode pages), and most crucially infrastructure which is not my specialty but the fact is I do pretty much all summaries, a pretty significant number of the edits to current materials particularly C3, Candela, and any one-shots; and pretty much all citations. This is effectively a side-gig for which I am not paid, and I have some (positive) stuff going on in my personal life that's taking up time as well. I do not want to discourage people from making suggestions - far from it - but the unfortunate truth is adding suggestions is, effectively, adding things to the bottom of a very long list and it will get done faster by not going through me.

It sounds like you know where those citations might be re: Imogen saying her Dex is actually 15! I don't! You are better positioned to do this than I.

A month or so ago someone got annoyed at something I said here and when I blocked them, took it out on the wiki (where they were ultimately blocked for vandalism). I am not obviously hiding that I'm heavily involved with the wiki and it does come up since that's often why I rewatch or revisit things, but I'm increasingly trying to draw a line between work I do on the wiki and my personal inbox. This is also just good practice since it's entirely possible that at a future date someone else will be elected into my position. Unlike the Fandom wiki this is not Supreme Court Justice style appointments; it's Congress-style elections.

I appreciate the suggestion and think it's valid, and as mentioned, if you're unsure how to make edits please don't hesitate to check the wiki discord. I would also advise you contact @encyclopediacr with questions (or the discord, or the suggestions page on the wiki). The socials won't be as quick as contacting me but it is checked pretty frequently, and the discord or wiki itself will be checked pretty much as frequently!

[bearborg]

This is a really neat delve into some of MP2's sound design, so I'd already be inclined to reblog it even if it DIDN'T specifically tag me in by name. But since it DID...

whaaaaat the heck is that??? more organic-y sounding stuff. like huge roots straining against each other, or tendrils. i dont remember hearing this involving portals (it's possible it's mislabeled and used in dark torvus somewhere), but i am due for a prime 2 replay.

I did a bit of digging into this, and it looks like all these sounds are absolutely used in association with portals. Due to the way they're set up in the level scripting system, we even have names for them: The sample found in DarkPortal8 is named "Dark Rift Creak, Small", while the samples in DarkPortal5 are named "Dark Rift Creak, Small 2" and "Dark Rift Creak, Big" respectively. The "small" sounds play on a timer after the portal is activated, while the "big" sound seems to be attached to a ViewFrustum test and a random timer, i.e. it plays some amount of time after the player has recently looked at an active dark portal.

there is some evidence that supports these folder names being the internal ones

Yep, these folder names are directly from the game files. Specifically, sound effect samples are stored in AudioGroup (.AGSC) files, which each have a name included near the start of the file- the ripped sounds here were labeled according to their AudioGroup.

Minor tangent: When the game actually references a sound effect, it uses some additional layers of indirection, partly because the game's audio engine supports effects like reverb/pitch-shifting/etc. that are applied to the raw samples from the AudioGroup. Your previous post about the "Recorded to logbook" sound is a good example of this; the raw sample is stored at an oddly high speed, but the associated sound effect lowers it down to a more natural sound during playback. You can MOSTLY rely on AudioGroup titles lining up nicely with the in-game sound effects, but occasionally Retro will grab a sample and use it for something unexpected, e.g. in MP1 the Space Pirates use some sound effects from a scrapped Magmoor enemy as part of their weapon sounds.

what does it mean? well, on the japanese metroid prime 2 site, there was a Q&A that dropped the name of phaaze way before prime 3

I always thought this comment was pretty interesting too, because Retro's foreshadowing is usually open-ended, while this is a very specific detail that was directly paid off.

Despite that, though, I'm not convinced that the DarkSamusPhaze samples are anything to do with Phaaze. The associated sound effects are named "phase2", and from what I can tell, they're mostly used for when Dark Samus becomes invisible to the Combat Visor.

Her animations for that ability are also named "phazeOut/phazeIn", so my best guess is that someone at Retro just misspelled "phase" a few times (probably not surprising, given how many times the word Phazon shows up in the series).

Still a neat find, though- I had never even noticed the ambient "phaze" sound when Dark Samus cloaks herself before, but sure enough, it subtly plays the whole time until she returns to visibility. There's always some new little detail to find replaying the Primes...

``Portal control system online. Portal generation initiated. Walk into the portal to transport to Aether.''