#They announced the EoS of Food Fantasy

[mooyuun]

bye bye, Boston Lobster, Raindrop Cake, Whisky, Feijoada, Coffee, Iberian Ham, i will miss you.

[pure-theseries]

Our Favorite Sci-Fi Audio Dramas

The producers of PURE are big fans of audio drama podcasts. Some of the best sci-fi serialized stories are being told today in audio form. And because this genre of storytelling is more logistically accessible to creators, great stories are being told that may never have been able to come to fruition otherwise. Here is a fun, little list of some of our favorite sci-fi audio dramas that we highly recommend.

Wolf 359 by Kinda Evil Genius Productions Set on board the U.S.S. Hephaestus space station, the dysfunctional crew deals with daily life-or-death emergencies, while searching for signs of alien life and discovering there might be more to their mission than they thought.

Life/After by GE’s Podcast Theater, written by Mac Rogers A man attempts to cope with his wife’s sudden death only to find himself hooked on and haunted by her old audio posts on social media. 

Limetown by Two Up Productions Ten years ago, over three hundred men, women and children disappeared from a small town in Tennessee, never to be heard from again. A reporter explores what happened to the people of Limetown and gets wrapped up in a conspiracy no one could have imagined. 

EOS 10 by Justin McLachlan The hilarious stories of two maladjusted doctors and their medical team aboard an intergalactic travel hub on the edges of deep space — along with a deposed prince who's claimed the food court kitchen as his new throne.

Steal the Stars by Tor Labs, written by Mac Rogers Two government employees guarding the biggest secret in the world: a crashed UFO, fall in love and decide to escape to a better life on the wings of an incredibly dangerous plan.

Ars Paradoxica by Mischa Stanton, written by Daniel Manning and various guest writers When an experiment in time goes horribly awry, Dr. Sally Grissom finds herself stranded in the past and entrenched in the activities of a clandestine branch of the US government.

Tanis by the Public Radio Alliance & Minnow Beats Whale As a podcast host pursues what he thinks might be one of modern society’s last true mysteries hidden in obscure works of science fiction, he stumbles across a world that bridges the gap between sci-fi and fantasy. 

Rabbits by the Public Radio Alliance & Minnow Beats Whale  Carly Parker attempts to find her missing friend Yumiko, who seems to have vanished while playing the most complex alternate reality game of all time.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris by Procyon Podcasts, created by Jessica Best In 2189, Earth narrowly won a war against extraterrestrials, but at a tremendous price. Two years later, in a distant patch of space, a mysterious explosion kills nearly the entire crew of the science vessel Starship Iris. The only survivor is Violet Liu, an intrepid, sarcastic, terrified biologist.

Welcome to Night Vale by Nightvale Presents, written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor A radio show host presents community updates for a small desert town, featuring local weather, announcements from the Sheriff's Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

MarsCorp by Definitely Human A clever comedy following Station Supervisor E.L. Hob’s first year at MarsCorp, a terraforming colony established on the red planet in 2070.

The Bright Sessions by Lauren Shippen A mysterious psychologist provides therapy for patients with supernatural abilities as their struggles, discoveries, and motivations are revealed. Disclaimer: Of course we’re biased because our two lead actors, Julia Morizawa and Briggon Snow star in this audio drama. But it’s still one of our favorites.

And there are many more! Please share your favorite sci-fi audio dramas so we can find more great content too.

[theroguebadger]

Review: Final Fantasy XV

That’s it! I’ve come up with a new review! (No spoilers)

Following a game's development from the day of its initial announcement can be a difficult prospect. For many AAA games, that can mean two or three years of patience, with only a new trailer every few months to keep the fire of anticipation burning. In this sense, Final Fantasy XV is the most extreme of anomalies. It was first unveiled as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a companion story with loose links to Final Fantasy XIII, at E3 in 2006, a whopping ten years before it would finally see the light of day. In the following years, updates and new information were so scarce that many feared that the game would never see release; even when it was officially rebranded as Final Fantasy XV at E3 2013, seven years after its first trailer aired, fans were subjected to a three-year wait before they could get their hands on it, though two demos and several trailers filled the gap. With a game like this, whose development history was so troubled and uncertain, it isn't enough to simply ask whether or not the finished product is a satisfactory one. Perhaps more importantly, we have to ask: was it worth the wait?

Final Fantasy XV picks and chooses aspects from earlier series instalments and takes them for itself, whilst occasionally throwing something new into the mix. Reminiscent of Final Fantasy III and X-2, your party is limited to a smaller group of people – four, in this case – all of which are present from the opening stages of the story. Noctis Lucis Caelum, prince of the kingdom of Lucis, departs the capital city of Insomnia in the opening scenes, accompanied by three close friends: Ignis, a sensible caretaker charged with keeping Noctis out of trouble; Gladiolus, a combat instructor responsible for training Noctis's combat skills; and Prompto, a close friend of the prince's from his school days, who brings a carefree enthusiasm and his photography skills to the team.

Together, they set off on a road trip to attend Noctis's own wedding to Lunafreya, princess of distant kingdom Tenebrae. It all quickly goes wrong, of course. Insomnia is invaded by an imperial army       moments after you leave; your father the king is assassinated, your fiancée disappears on a journey of her own and the kingdom's Crystal, a magical relic needed to keep the world safe, is pilfered by the empire. As with much of the story, this is all communicated in a very rushed, head-scratching sort of way. The impact of events is made underwhelming by how little time or focus is dedicated to them. The invasion of Insomnia is shown to be a battle on a catastrophic scale, but the seconds-long cutscene that reveals it hardly adds anything to the immensity of the event.

With their mission now changed – they need to find Lunafreya, bring down the empire and restore the Crystal to Lucis – Noctis and company's true journey begins. Here the first portion of Lucis's open world becomes available to you, with the other sections locked behind early story progression. When you're not travelling between story areas – your means of transport being the Regalia, on foot or, eventually, via chocobo – you can tackle some of FF15's innumerable hunting missions, help out troubled NPCs at the various outposts or gather useful materials. Food sources will provide you with ingredients to bolster Ignis's list of recipes, which when prepared at camp will give the party a time-limited boost to various stats. In many cases, the right meal can make all the difference in a tough fight, of which there are many outside of the mandatory story fights, and Ignis's own enthusiasm for the culinary arts makes the whole process quite charming to watch.

Alongside ingredients, you can also discover ore with which to customise your car, or sources of magic to craft spells for use in battle. Gone are the days of scrolling through your acquired spells to find the right one for the occasion. Final Fantasy XV has its own approach to magic, allowing you to mix and match your stock of each element to create stronger variants – the classic -aras and -agas – but the most crucial aspect is adding in items you've collected along your travels. These can do anything from increasing the uses of a particular spell (they're all finite and must be replenished) to adding extra effects such as healing Noctis or boosting the experience you earn from any battle in which they're cast. Fiddling around with different combinations is interesting enough at first, but after a while I couldn't help but wish they'd stuck with something more traditional. Having these usage-limited tools of devastation is a novel concept, but friendly fire means you're just as likely to set your team ablaze as you are to turn the tide of battle with a well-placed, triple-cast Firaga.

Combat puts you solely in control of Noctis, with your allies only controllable through the activation of their own specific skills. Whilst your teammates are limited to two weapons of specific types – Gladiolus uses greatswords and shields, for example – Noctis can wield anything and everything, including the Royal Arms of the Lucis line. His unique, princely abilities allow him to teleport around the battlefield, instantly warping to a distant enemy and landing a fearsome blow that only grows stronger the further he warps. In bigger, more chaotic battles, the combat truly shines; at times, it feels as if Noctis's friends only fight with him to better enable his showy fighting style, and it works. Incapacitating a group of enemies with well-timed warp-strikes before following up with a combo attack – Gladiolus is capable of massive damage, whereas Ignis provides support and Prompto destabilises and hinders the enemy – is never unsatisfying.

The combat system only begins to exhibit major faults when you face off against certain screen-filling enemies, so large in size and scale that the camera doesn't know what to do or where to look. The hit-detection on these enemies is similarly inconsistent, meaning what you intended to be a critical blow with a warp-strike actually results in you sliding along the enemy's bulk before clipping through them and becoming lodged inside. These encounters are limited, however, and for the most part the fast-paced battles continue to be one of Final Fantasy XV's triumphs. It's a system where simplicity proves to be the a viable approach, though fans of Final Fantasy's turn-based roots might yearn for something more traditional. Summoning, a recurring feature of Final Fantasy combat, has also been overhauled – don't expect a designated summoner class in this game. The small but familiar selection of summons are a real spectacle to behold, towering high above the battlefield as they unleash a devastating ability. With their acquisition tied to story progression, however, there's no satisfaction or challenge in acquiring them, and their specific summon requirements – they're more likely to appear based on factors such as allies being knocked out or Noctis entering the danger state – make them awkward and fiddly at times, resulting in a mountain-sized, god-like creature appearing to end a battle against low-level enemies, or at the very end of a lengthy boss battle where their intervention would have been better appreciated early on.

Where Final Fantasy XV truly struggles is in telling its story. Its more recent predecessors had particular narrative issues – FF13's reliance on handing the player files to read in order to properly learn about the world, for instance – but never before have I felt that a Final Fantasy game's story is in dire need of fixing – until now. The problems start early and rarely abate, with one of FF15's rare, albeit beautiful, CGI cutscenes showing the king's death in mere seconds. The actual invasion of Insomnia, home to all four party members, is detailed mostly via radio transmissions heard by the group. After a little bit of moping, Noctis seemingly forgets his father has died at all; he doesn't move on from grieving so much as that particular plot thread is abandoned entirely. Later, another brief cutscene introduces you to the main group of antagonists, some of whom are never actually seen again. Whilst the open-world does a good enough job of showing the player a living, breathing Lucis, full of settlements big and small, their people engaging in conversations about anything from everyday minutia to whichever crisis is ongoing at that point in the game, the empire receives barely any development at all. Knowing your enemy is a major part of becoming invested in the experience, but I found myself unable to care about what little I knew of Noctis's foes.

By the end of the game, the imperial presence in FF15's world of Eos meant little more to me than the aircraft that would so routinely interrupt my travels to drop a group of Magitek Soldiers on my team. If you engage in optional activities to even the smallest extent, these altercations will be your main source of interaction with the antagonistic empire; what few officers and leaders they have disappear permanently not long after being introduced to you, and not necessarily because they were defeated. It's a baffling inadequacy in a game that took a decade to make. Final Fantasy has for years been a name synonymous with rich world-building and compelling stories, but Final Fantasy XV's decade-long development has produced an incoherent, muddled narrative that fails to match the scope and depth the developers no doubt intended for their world. Whilst the plot and its delivery do bring down the overall experience, there is a great deal of good to balance out the bad.

In some ways, Final Fantasy XV is both endearing and spectacular. Someone on the development team clearly understood how great an impact the little things can have, and it's in subtlety and nuance that FF15 is at its most charming. Although driving the Regalia is almost entirely an on-rails affair, it's made more enjoyable by the group's humourous exchanges and, best of all, the ability to listen to the soundtracks of previous Final Fantasy instalments, which can be purchased from vendors across Lucis. The track listings aren't complete, but there's something undeniably nostalgic about listening to FF10's Blitz Off or Blinded by Light from FF13, not to mention classic tracks from the series' earliest instalments. When you're done for the day and settle down at a camp or inn, you'll get to see the photographs Prompto has taken that day, and you can save any you like. Some are fairly typical – locations you've visited, people you've met – but the rest have real potential to amuse or delight. Alongside pictures of the group posing together by a landmark, I had photos of the four of them mid-battle with fearsome daemons – powerful enemies that only appear at night – or trekking across Lucis with a town visible in the distance and the sun just right in the sky beyond. Having Noctis and company settle down at night with a meal to pore over Prompto's handiwork always succeeds in strengthening your connection to them and the bond they so clearly share; it's just a shame that the rest of the cast wasn't treated so lovingly. From helpful mechanic Cindy, with her inexplicable accent and ridiculous attire, to fearsome warrior Aranea, anyone who isn't a part of Team Noctis will receive little in the way of character development, if they get anything at all. It's another jarring disappointment from a series that has in the past so consistently created compelling and likeable supporting casts.

It's often people like those who will be issuing your quests, but outside of a few generic lines of dialogue you'll learn almost nothing about them, and lesser NPCs are recycled with a consistency that would be impressive were it not so tedious. One man, a hunter named Dave of all things, pops up in settlements across Lucis, tasking the group with going to a nearby location and retrieving the dog tags of a fallen hunter. His dialogue rarely differs each time – “Fancy meeting you here. Mind collecting some dog tags for me?” – but he somehow has more of a presence than many of the game's more prominent characters. Rather than taking a copy-paste approach to side quests to the extent that they're almost MMO-esque in depth and variety, more time could have been taken to show us more of what we need and want to know. For all of the occasional chatter about her, Lunafreya has shockingly little to do in the game, which is worrying indeed given that as the Oracle she acts as a liaison between humans and the gods. By the end of the game, I could only find three aspects to her character: she and Noctis were in a long-distance relationship, she could communicate with the gods and she opposed the empire. Beyond that, there's little to learn. With so many excellent leading ladies to draw from in the series' history, it's a shame that Lunafreya contributes so little. Outside of Noctis's group, characters seem to exist only to push the heroes in a certain direction, lacking a real purpose or personality of their own.

That's the prevailing problem with Final Fantasy XV: it feels aimless. Winning battles and accomplishing certain feats awards you with experience points and AP with which to power up your party members, but it hardly feels rewarding. Most enemy encounters can be won with minimal effort, making the huge number of side missions and hunts feel completely unnecessary. The story will drag you from place to place on the whims of one person or another, but when the credits rolled I found myself with more questions than answers, and not for lack of paying attention. It's easy to get lost in the experience, to allow yourself to wander the wilds of Eos, undertaking hunts to eliminate powerful enemies before you seclude yourself at a nearby fishing spot, but the facade crumbles when you go anywhere near a main story mission. Final Fantasy has been erratic in quality post-FFX, but never before have the problems been so glaring, so detrimental to the overall experience. With ten years of development time, no matter how troubled those early years might have been, it shouldn't have been like this.

7/10

[heartonmytrigger]

Adoption

I’m changing the story for Prompto’s adoption from neglectful parents to something else.

Prompto’s adoptive mother is named Juliet Argentum. She works outside the walls helping all of Eos. She delivers people in poverty-struck nations food and supplies. She helps refugees from all over find safe passage. She loves to help people.

Prompto’s adoptive father is named Adonias Argentum. He works for a big cooperation and holds a very important role in the company which causes him to travel all over Eos as well. While Juliet loves everyone, Adonias hates foreigners. He never shows his hatred in front of his wife because he wants her to be happy.

About twenty years ago, Juliet and Adonias found that Juliet couldn’t carry a child. This broke Juliet’s heart terribly as she wanted to have a big family with Adonias like she grew up in. However, one day, she decided that she wanted to adopt one of the orphaned children from outside the Walls. Adonias was of course very against it, but didn’t voice it because he’d prefer seeing his wife happy. That’s when they found Prompto in one of the orphanages, still not more than a baby, just recently brought in from a Niff territory. Juliet gave him the name Prompto because of how quickly she fell in love with him.

Juliet stayed home with him until he was about twelves years old. Just before the events of Final Fantasy XV: Brother episode 2 happened! She then went back to her work outside the Walls, sending her son back plenty of foreign gifts and food. She gave him his love of photography and music. She gifted him that tiny red camera before she left and sung to him a lot. They had a very close relationship.

Adonias however continued his work, never changing his schedule for the sake of their adopted son. As Prompto grew up, the boy realized how much his father hated him. It would always be in private moments when Juliet was out of the house or even town entirely. Adonias never spared him even a glance and held an aura of pure disgust around Prompto. In his teens, Adonias very clearly told Prompto that he did not see him as his son and even started going as far as hurting Prompto. The first time it happened, he made Prompto promise to never tell Juliet and he has never told her to this day. Prompto hid the fact Adonias hated his guts very well from everyone actually. Prompto does not see Adonias as his father and has not ever for about seven years.

When Insomnia falls, Prompto tries desperately to get in contact with Juliet. He received no answer and has not in the years following the attack. Adonias, he deleted off his phone contacts soon after the fall was announced. Obviously, he heard nothing from him following the attacks and doesn’t care to.