#Nintendo playtest | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

downtroddendeity · 11 months ago

Text

@turnkeyassurance saw your tags and figured I'd take the opportunity to pause my descent into madness to give my more sober opinions on the Ni no Kuni franchise, lol. (Warning: I am a humongous JRPG nerd)

The NNK games are really odd ducks, quality-wise. You can call either one a good game or a bad game and call either one better than the other, and any combination of those opinions can be something I think is entirely justified. Both of them have things they do remarkably well and also serious, profound, deal-breaking flaws, and the really weird thing is that there's almost no overlap between those two lists for the two games. What clicks and doesn't about both of them is going to be deeply individual.

What Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch does, with resounding success, is Vibes. It sets out at every single step with the goal of being a playable Ghibli movie, and it sticks to that principle. It's all about beautiful, cel-shaded whimsy. It's a game for people who want to feel like they're wandering through the meadows in the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle. There are lots of puns, and you can befriend all the random encounter monsters and feed them ice cream.

But that's also its Achilles' heel: because it's dedicated entirely to imitation, it has trouble bringing things to the table that are really its own. It has the visual and narrative aesthetics of Hayao Miyazaki's films, but it doesn't have the raw emotion at the heart of them. And as a game, its mechanics combine the clunkiest features of menu-based combat and action RPGs, and while everything about the Pokemon-esque mechanics seems designed to encourage players to collect and experiment with them, the balancing turns attempting to do that into a miserable grindy nightmare.

The other problem is that it... isn't actually the first Ni no Kuni game. Wrath of the White Witch is, in fact, a remake of the Nintendo DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn, which was never released outside Japan. The reason for this is pretty easy to explain, because DDD had another gimmick besides its aesthetics: it came with a real-life physical copy of the wizard spellbook, and the player had to look things up in it and draw sigils on the DS touchscreen to cast spells. So, we've got a high-effort remake that had to completely cut the central mechanic... and which also expanded the plot so that the original main villain was no longer the primary antagonist. This results in a game with what is very clearly a final dungeon and very clearly a final boss and very clearly a resolution to the story, which suddenly has a completely different plot dropped on it like a fucking anvil that it expects you to be just as invested in even though it hasn't had anything like the same level of buildup.

And ironically, this is almost the exact opposite of the biggest problem with Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom, a.k.a. the one with my new blorbo, the President of the United Union of Eagleland. 2 is an effort to try to cement an identity for the series that can be its own, rather than requiring them to depend indefinitely on borrowed Miyazaki nostalgia. It just has the teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy problem that at some point in development it had a budget shortfall so bad that you can finish the game without ever realizing that there is a continent-sized crashed interdimensional spaceship on the world map.

This game has had a machete taken to it. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely respect the work they did to make what they could with what they had, but you can see the signs of massive scope cuts to literally every aspect of the game. The back half of the game has almost exclusively recycled enemy and environment assets; voice acting has been trimmed down to canned voice clips; the catboy protagonist's ears and tail are barely animated; one minigame was so inadequately playtested that a level 16 mission is massively harder than level 50 ones; and while whatever restructuring they had to do to the main plot still left the final version with a more solid and coherent central arc than WWW in my opinion, it also left a lot of truly gaping plot holes, like oh, I don't know, why the President of the United States got turned into a 19-year-old.

Literally, they just. Entirely forgot to explain that. Half the DLC is just the writers scrambling to fix stuff like that and add a bunch of character development that should have been in the base game.

However, despite all this, I personally enjoyed NNK2 more than NNK1 unironically, not just for Rolandposting reasons. Compared to the first one, it plays much more smoothly as a straight action RPG, and while it can't provide the same knock-your-socks-off aesthetic cohesion, to me it seemed a lot more heartfelt- that is, like a game that was made because people had a story they wanted to tell.

But, well, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the non-unironic reasons, because the story they really, genuinely wanted to tell was about a magical catboy growing up and learning to become a leader, and somehow, miraculously, they really thought that was the story I was here for too when they opened the game with the President of the United States being isekaied by Nuke-kun.

Sorry, guys, I have a crippling addiction to dramatic irony and my day job is tech work in local politics, you could not have more laser-targeted this at making me specifically laugh my ass off if you tried.

#turnkeyassurance #reply #gameblogging #/#//#ni no kuni #ni no kuni 2

82 notes · View notes

oathkeeper-of-tarth · 8 months ago

Text

@buckysleftarm replied to your post:

After reading this, I happened across this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/-X5l5GFeg1k?si=H2lrsmx0pv60wn1h They're not in our camp anymore and I wouldn't know how to view the non companions anyway on PS5, but it feels like she definitely is taking some time off from Selune without breaking her oath full?

I sure did use this reply as an excuse to mash out a giant post! Hope you don't mind.

I do actually love that you've brought this up, because I keep seeing variants of it around and have been wanting to comment on it, if for nothing else than to make me feel better. The gist of it goes something like this: after killing Lorroakan, Aylin's "Child of the Moonmaiden" ability no longer shows up when you examine her character sheet, meaning her immortality has been taken away, she is being punished by her mother, has broken her paladin oath, or is feuding with her in some other way. Now... people in the comments of that video sure have takes on Selûne and on Aylin and on paladin oaths and aasimar abilities in general that make giant question marks spawn above my head.

Personally? I dislike it immensely and think it makes zero sense for a variety of reasons, both in-universe and out! To be fair, as with most headcanons and theories, I'd genuinely love to see someone get creative and do something interesting with it. But I have this knee-jerk reaction to it because so far I've only seen it in the context of people parroting it completely uncritically, just regurgitating it on endless reddit or forum or discord threads and what have you, and actually shutting down or completely derailing Aylin-related discussion. Which frustrates me, obviously, because I want cool, detailed, thought-out takes on my fave, always, and - to be really petty for a moment - since my fave isn't the fandom darling, I only get crumbs to start with! It grinds my gears because so very often I'll want to read this potentially interesting thread about a character I love, but nope, instead here's a dozen comments how "nah man she broke her oath and there's special oathbreaker paladin dialogue with her about it" - no there isn't. That's a very easily verifiable fact, my guy. You made that up, my dude. How dare you just go and make things up on the internet.

A ton of BG3 discussion has been flooded with a weird wave of statements that are just put there as well-known fact but in reality read like "I heard from a friend whose uncle works at the Nintendo Larian department and he told him Halsin went on a special mission and killed Isobel a century ago because he wanted to emotionally compromise Ketheric but then playtesters reacted badly to it and Wizards made them take it out but it's still hinted in the game, and also if you use an Elixir of Hill Giant Strength and do an unarmed attack on the cart at the entrance of the Emerald Grove you can get Mew" and I find it so grating. And then people waste time debunking this and arguing in the same circles and nobody ever moves on to more interesting stuff. I say this, as if I haven't been an active participant of internet fandom for decades and have literally anyone but myself to blame here, hah.

For instance, the way you phrased it here, as Aylin herself taking a break or trying to step away instead of the "being abandoned and punished by her mother" angle from the video and the comments? That's something I think has potential and something I want to rotate in my mind - would she do it? Could she do it? What would this entail and what would it mean for her? What would actually be enough to prompt her to even try? And it's cool that a little gameplay mechanic thingy prompted that! However - and I'm keeping it kinda vague because I don't want to spoil you on things that happen after the point you seem to be at - if we're talking purely established canon things and not brainstorming an AU or a post-game trajectory for this character, there is nothing actually in the game to indicate Aylin is taking a break from Selûne or her duties, especially not to the extent of having any of her abilities suspended. Quite the contrary, in fact. Everything we get from her and Isobel after the Lorroakan situation is handled shows she is, for better or worse, very much resolved to be her old self and very righteously angry and smiting evil in her mother's name as the Sword of Selûne and actively engaged in protecting Selûnites Realms-wide, and she has her full set of powers and blessings while doing so.

In this essay I will In the rest of this post I will try to be less cranky and I'm going to get a bit technical to try to actually explain what is going on with the "Child of the Moonmaiden" ability.

TL;DR: the buff is disabled as soon as Aylin enters the wizard tower, before any fight or backbreaking or feelings of loss and sadness, likely for the purpose of you being able to win or lose the fight no matter if you side with Aylin or betray her. It is a purely mechanical contrivance and has no narrative meaning, nor is its presence or absence mentioned or reflected in the narrative at all.

Here's Aylin in camp just before being told about the wizard:

Here she is at the start of the fight, when she is sided with:

And here she is, when you side against her:

The above is an oversimplification, however, because the actual implementation of Aylin's immortality is a bit of a mess.

There are two implementations of her resurrection active in the game, and both are implemented as a Status: "GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION" and "GLO_NIGHTSONG_RESURRECTION". Now, I don't know what was going on there and I'm certainly not a Larian dev, but that underscore situation there is... weird. I also don't know enough about BG3-specific scripting yet to come up with an explanation on why there would be two variants of it at all - if anyone does, please let me know! I'm very curious. However, these two implementations of her resurrection ability work very differently, and you can see the effects of both of them in-game.

The first one, GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION, is named "Moonmaiden's Reconstitution" and is tied to the "Child of the Moonmaiden" Passive (itself called SHA_NightsongResurrection, side note: GLO is the "global" prefix and SHA is a prefix that signifies the Gauntlet of Shar area in Act 2). This ability makes Aylin auto-stabilise when downed instead of rolling death saves, go into the kneeling stabilised animation where she can be helped up or healed just like your party members - you know the one, with the little asterisk hovering above them. Then on the start of her next turn she heals for exactly 1HP (unless she's under a healing-disabling effect, such as Bone Chill, which is why people have trouble with her in the Myrkul fight) and she has only her Bonus Action, the same as any other previously downed character.

Mechanically, it applies the "GLO_NIGHTSONGRESURRECTION_DOWNED" Status to her which modifies what happens when she is Downed to implement the above non-standard behaviour, and also does stuff like turn off her Moonbeam if she had it active.

The "Moonmaiden's Reconstitution" Status itself is completely invisible in-game: it has properties such as "DisableOverhead;DisableCombatlog;DisablePortraitIndicator" aka doesn't show up as that little text popup above the character, doesn't show up in the combat log, and doesn't have a visible indicator icon anywhere.

The description for "Child of the Moonmaiden" is:

"Blessed with the favour of a goddess, Nightsong cannot be permanently killed. When unconscious, [at] the start of her turn she recovers 1 hit point."

The second one, GLO_NIGHTSONG_RESURRECTION with the extra underscore, is a Status called "Nightsong Soars Eternal", and that one doesn't have any other Statuses or Passives tied to it, it simply resurrects her immediately when she dies, and at full health. When it triggers, you can actually see her portrait drop out of the initiative tracker at the top of the screen as if she completely died, and then she gets put in again. This one is active even when the first one isn't, so you can see it in places like camp after she comes back from Lorroakan, and after she comes back for the finale all the way until the end of the game - and by "see it" I mean since it doesn't have any Passive ability connected to it, you have to actually get Aylin killed to see it trigger (I'm so sorry Aylin, it was important for the post, I swear).

The description for "Nightsong Soars Eternal" is:

"Nightsong will be resurrected by the powers of Selûne whenever she dies."

In Lorroakan's tower, BOTH of these are disabled, and if downed, Aylin will just lie there as if she died for real with the little red skull and the "Dead" status until she gets rezzed for a cutscene after the fight or, if betrayed, you go to long rest and then come back to see Lorroakan's progress, at which point she will be up and in the cage with a total of 1HP and that "Soul Caged" status instead.

Note again that she visibly has "Child of the Moonmaiden" disabled as soon as she enters the wizard tower area, betrayed or not, before she does anything to anyone. It's a way of making sure the Lorroakan fight is actually winnable/loseable/concludable without her getting stuck in that revive with 1HP at the start of her turn loop. "Nightsong Soars Eternal" also obviously doesn't trigger. Instead she says her "I will rise again!" line and stays down. She has every other ability and buff active normally, even ones that explicitly mention coming from Selûne, like her iconic following Moonbeam, for example, or her fancy unique Smite.

Again, significantly: she does not have her immortality buffs if you fight against her, either, betraying her and causing Selûne's wrath and desire to protect her daughter to manifest physically in the room, including empowering Aylin herself with buffs that are called things like "Moonmother's Embrace". See what I'm getting at?

Interestingly, she also doesn't have it when you first meet her:

What does this all mean? Well, I'd say that if we took every gameplay/implementation thing about this game as in-universe gospel, Aylin herself would look a lot different and be far more scaly, for one.

(Makes me chuckle every time.)

In all seriousness, though, if something as big as this happened to a side but still fairly prominent character, the game would tell us about it. Or at least make a bigger deal of it than the deactivation of a passive ability visible on the Examine screen that many people sadly don't really tend to look at and read.

And here's the best thing: nobody has to take my word for any of this, you can see for yourself, without actually knowing how to unpack game files or having my frankly ridiculous amount of hard saves! I think this is super helpful in general, especially for people playing on console:

Here's a link to a truly amazing and consistently updated resource - every bit of dialogue in the game, nicely parsed and laid out and super readable (as well as some additional tools to play around with).

Here's a website where you can search inside BG3 scripts and other files and take a look at a lot of the nitty-gritty implementation stuff in a convenient way.

I recognise that I go way too deep into things and overstuff my brain with minutiae, but that's just how I work. I take forever to post anything anywhere on the internet because I just physically cannot click a post button without triple-checking everything and quoting and screenshotting things, even if it's the same thing for the twentieth time, and that's certainly a me problem. I very much don't expect people to do things my way, but I also find the games of telephone these things so rapidly become really frustrating, you know?

But my biggest problem with this particular Aylin thing - beyond the annoying preponderance of it, as I've already whined - is that in-universe it just makes no sense and I, an aasimar paladin enjoyer, personally dislike it.

Oath of Vengeance paladins abide by the following tenets: Fight the Greater Evil. Exerting your wisdom, identify the higher morality in any given instance, and fight for it. No Mercy for the Wicked. Chasten those who dole out their villainy by wiping their blight from the world forever.

Putting the rest of this post under a cut because it's long and ranty and you didn't actually ask for it.

My first problem: the common argument that Aylin is in the wrong for killing Lorroakan like she did because he has "done nothing to her yet", and that she breaks her Oath of Vengeance because she attacked him preemptively.

The man put a price on her head and sent violent mercs to beat her up and kidnap her. He tries to (temporarily) kill her and imprison her as soon as she refuses to cooperate by… demurely waltzing into the prison and putting the chains on herself? He knows exactly who she is, what has been done to her, and he wants to do it again - no, doesn't want to, he is actively doing it again. The fact that (if you side with Aylin) he fails mid-attempt doesn't make him innocent of it. He refuses to stop and, if denied, gets violent and murderous.

Player: Have it your way. I'll bring her here. Lorroakan: Good. I was growing scared for you. The last person who disappointed me is suffering for it still. Do not return without my prize. Do you hear me? Good day.

Player: I'll think about it. Lorroakan: You aren't the only one who knows what's on offer for the Nightsong's retrieval. Consider carefully whether you'd like to see your fortune in someone else's hands. Someone who might slip into your camp at any moment, or harry you through street and inn until you're run ragged and surrender. The choice is yours: fortune or imminent death. I know you'll choose wisely.

Mark my words: the Nightsong is mine. With or without your help, she will ascend to her grand fate here, in this tower.

Player: You heard me. The answer is no. Lorroakan: Pity. Then again, perhaps word of your agonising death will draw your little friend to me. Myrmidons - imperatum!

He is fully equipped for it and has set up a whole magical trap and is just waiting for her to show up to trigger it, or for someone to drag her there against her will. He says she will go into the cage "kicking and screaming" and really, this is who she is wrong for "picking a fight with" and "attacking preemptively"? Surely nobody actually thinks that Aylin is at fault here or that she actually overreacted by killing him? I don't really want to go into some people's really, really shitty attitudes towards Aylin for sadly entirely predictable reasons but… man. She went over there and threatened him with violence, demanding an explanation after he sent cronies to attack her in her sleep? Wow, what a weird thing to do. Also, he literally is the one to attack first! She is there threatening and goading him, doing her little "face me charlatan" bit, but he is the one who sics the myrmidons on her (or the player) and actually starts the fight, every time. To be clear, I don't think this is very relevant at all, but people do seem to love bringing it up.

Is Aylin brash and reckless and clearly struggling after her captivity, dealing with rapidly flaring up anger and outbursts of violence - only ever, may I emphasise, towards actually horrid people, and she is really rather shockingly forgiving and tolerant of the player character messing with her? Yes! Does she seem to have that classical aspect of "she might go too far one day" or "she might lose herself in the anger and vengeance if she focuses on it exclusively"? Absolutely! Do I think she could have been, say, a Devotion paladin before her imprisonment and it might have been the betrayal and century in the Shadowfell that made her change to Vengeance instead? I love that idea! I also think it's likely she has just always been a very zealous, very smitey and offence-oriented Vengeance paladin, called Selûne's sword for a very good reason, fulfilling a very important role in the ongoing struggle against Shar.

And the whole problem is… Lorroakan will, as we've seen, not stop trying, and people like him will always be around and never stop coming after her especially now that the cat's apparently out of the bag after Balthazar, and Aylin needs to live with this, forever. That is why she is so messed up about this one rando wizard she's never met before. That is why this specific incident is so triggering for her. She has just escaped torment on a timescale that's not something the normal human mind can really grasp. "In this moment, I want for nothing." ended up lasting, indeed, barely a moment! Her mum is a powerful god and right now it seems that what Aylin actually gets from it is having a target painted on her back and, to quote Isobel, she can be hurt just like anyone else, she just gets to suffer longer! She keeps being dealt these shit hands and, yeah, it'd make anyone go… why? Seems unfair, right? What exactly is the point of this?

The various dialogue options you have while warning her about Lorroakan's intentions and which include trying to convince her to just leave him be include her being so, so frustrated, and so understandably, it makes me feel horrible for her.

She always ultimately goes to confront him, because she has no other real choice. He will keep coming after her, he will keep sending people after her, and she will never, ever get a bit of rest, and she's, what, supposed to go live in hiding somewhere if you convince him she's dead? Until the jig is inevitably up or this guy dies by someone else's hand? And there's also the element Aylin herself will point out if you keep her in the dark about the plot and Aradin and his cronies come to attack your camp: how long until someone hurts Isobel during one of these attempts or actively goes after her as a bargaining chip?

I guess I just genuinely do not understand the arguments about this guy who has been deliberately constructed to be a horrible, hateful piece of shit with exactly zero redeeming qualities, to an almost comical extent. He beats his apprentice and uses his assistant for target practice! He's a sick, sick asshole! His life's dream rests on kidnapping and enslavement! The guy is conspiring and trying to ally with Ketheric and Balthazar of all people:

Lorroakan,

I have responded out of respect to my counsellor, Balthazar, who advises me that you may prove a loyal ally in the coming fight. I understand you wish to know about the soul cage which binds the Nightsong to me. Details, I cannot and will not provide. But the magic itself is necromantic in nature, designed by my aforementioned counsellor. I hope your curiosity is satisfied.

General Ketheric Thorm

This is who people think a vengeance pally will break her oath over? Over what, a technicality of who struck first? "Desecrating a corpse"? No, it was Ketheric she did that to, and nothing happened. She just finished this guy off in a violent and dramatic fashion.

While you can play a paladin yourself and kill so many people in so many ways without anything happening, this is more of a consideration if you play Oath of Devotion or Ancients. It's also one that makes parts of the game harder - comically evil cultists torturing and executing prisoners cannot simply be attacked out of nowhere, and instead you need to announce your challenge first. You need to walk up to them and start talking, establish their villainy, and then fight "fairly". This is also partially an issue arising from the implementation of hostility flags and game logic, by the way. However, Oath of Vengeance gives precious few fucks about this and is a really hard oath to break. In fact, in a very similar situation to the wizard tower, in the House of Grief, you break the Oath of Vengeance if you spare Viconia - at that point lying on the floor soundly defeated and bleeding out much the same way Lorroakan was. Viconia who, may I note, never "did anything to you" but did harm a friend of yours.

Also, and this is a whole separate discussion, but... it's a FR DnD game. You kill bad guys in it. You kill vaguely morally grey, or even good guys in it. You and your friends kill so many people before this point. Multi-act quest arcs conclude with "go to place and kill someone". You mete out "justice" personally, repeatedly, and can harp on that fact, especially if you're playing a paladin. You don't exactly call the guards on people instead, even in the middle of the city. Ludo-narrative dissonance or no, why would this one wizard suddenly be different, and why would this one woman be singled out for a thus far completely typical approach and set of actions?

My second problem: a great big "Selûne wouldn't do that". I understand Forgotten Realms "lore" is a giant unwieldy self-contradicting mess of a beast and I'm not saying people should be scholars of it to participate in the discussion, far from it, but I would like them to engage with what is presented in the game itself at least.

For the most succinct possible example, look at what Selûne does when Aylin is betrayed. She buffs her in order to enable her to violently and zealously win that fight. Literally empowers Aylin to smack her enemies around more and with greater strength and also burn them alive in holy fire. Not after she's imprisoned and well and truly "wronged", but during this fabulously absolving "mere attempt" on Lorroakan's part.

Also, may I point out the sweet little shielding- and healing-focused cleric of the same goddess is actively disappointed that you and Aylin won't let her come with to hit the guy a few times herself! This goes for the entire party of assorted weirdos, goody-good or otherwise, who firmly believe Aylin should just obliterate that guy. Like, c'mon, my man Wyll! (Super sad and touching exception: Karlach, if you've killed Gortash already. When she begs you not to tell Aylin about any of it at all and go deal with the wizard yourselves, just so Aylin can have a bit more peace and keep her sword sheathed for just a little while longer. Ow, my heart.)

In summary, basically, my twofold beef:

"Selûne punishing and abandoning her daughter for over-zealously defending herself" - nonsensical and uninteresting. Stops people from actually delving into and discussing the complexities of that relationship.

"OoV paladin broke her oath by killing an evil wizard who is actively trying to do horrible things to her and attacks her" - nonsensical and uninteresting. Let's instead actually engage with the material and discuss Aylin's trauma and how she might deal or not deal with it in good or bad ways. What would recovery even look like, for her. How does the way she intrinsically ties her entire being into being a smite-happy moon-magic knight play into it. Let's actually consider the weight and role of duty in her life and the wombo-combo of being an aasimar paladin, an existence with a very "purpose-made" aspect to it. You know, the good ol' Being A Sword thing, including being born into it. Combined with being rather suddenly rather intensely humanised by a loving relationship with a mortal woman, with all sorts of ticking clocks, unique challenges, and both past and pending tragedy there.

Or let's talk about the dissonance present in Aylin's cool and badass scenes of smiting deserving evil. Scenes that go into very violent and very over the top territory, that make you both cheer and cringe, that make a point of showing the other characters reacting in shock. Because I genuinely feel so bad for her and deeply worried for her, all while my silly little brain goes fuck yeah smite him shiny lady! Ooooh look, a flashy Aylin scene, ripping a deserving villain to pieces! But at what cost to herself? Feels so good to have someone deliver some justice! But if I think about it for 5 seconds I don't actually want her to - no, no, I do. I don't want her to have to, is the thing. (It's kind of like that one Gundam meme.)

I will conclude this mess by doing a salty little yeah. It's fine, this is fine, this is sadly pretty much part of the standard experience of liking a female character in fandom. God forbid women do anything indeed. Outside of a few select, narrow and highly dedicated circles, half the (scarce) posts about her are something that's either flat-out wrong, or just assumes the absolute worst of her and reduces her to two and a half shitty stereotypes, and half the fics tagged with her are actually about fandom's favourite two dudes and barely feature her at all.

And on that note, I'm off to actually be a positive force and poke at my own fic some more.

#dame aylin #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #long post #and i mean it this is one long-ass post wow #also touches on stuff like #lorroakan #selune #paladins #oaths in general (my beloved)#will also put it under #datamine

50 notes · View notes