#Video Game Writing

[madameevil]

Gotta love the polarizing reviews of "the story moved me to tears with intense choices that mattered" and "I couldn't be a racist asshole so the writing was boring." (heavy sarcasm)

I just need to stop looking at polarizing reviews for my own mental health at this point. It's exhausting. I just wanna play the game and enjoy it without people on the Internet insulting everyone or calling them "shills" if they do enjoy it. I think I'll just vanish until it releases and enjoy all the fan art on Tumblr instead of venturing outside.

(personal rant below cut)

1. Haven't played the game so I don't know if there will be conflicts between party members but also the world is actively ending.

In Origins it was just Ferelden and a slow moving horde that would EVENTUALLY threaten the whole world.

Dragon Age 2 was an isolated conflict that would grow to have impacts on Andrastian Thedas.

Inquisition has an opponent moving really only in Southern Thedas who was constantly getting out maneuvered.

I think all of those allow some allies to be a bit cross with each other. But not really sure I would pick allies who constantly bicker when the threat is what it's advertised to be in Veilguard. If Inquisition took place in the future timeline where everything had already gone to shit, the last thing I would need are characters having a spat in the kitchen pantry. Like that's great guys but we just lost the whole Eastern continent because you're arguing over petty things that have NO MEANING IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING.

2. I have to wonder if part of it is also weeding out people Bioware doesn't want in their communities anymore. Maybe they don't want to give you the option to be pro-slavery because IDK it's super fucked up?? And maybe if you're the kind of person who consistently made that choice in DA2 they don't want you in the community anymore. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ There are less horrific choices that can be presented to the player that are difficult to make for reasons that aren't grounded in "to be a racist, sexist, asshat and to be a human capable of understanding ." If you're mad you can't be the asshat way in this game then, maybe it is best you just leave the series for good.

3. NOT EVERY FANTASY PIECE OF MEDIA HAS TO BE GAME OF THRONES LEVEL DARK. GEEZE PEOPLE. I've recently replayed origin for the umpteenth time and 2 and Inquisition. They're not "dark and serious" games. Even my friend playing through them for the first time is like "People call this dark and serious?" I don't want every media to be dark and gritty. I don't want all fantasy to be Game of Thrones. It's not the end all be all.

Anyway that's all. Just had to rant into the void a bit.

[acquired-stardust]

Game Spotlight #14: Pokemon Blue (1996)

It's time for another game spotlight! Join Ash as she recalls Pokemon Blue with this essay to celebrate Acquired-Stardust's 151st post. It might be the beginning of the highest-grossing media franchise in the world, but don't take that fact for granted - there's still a lot to talk about! Come read an overview of the game as well as some of how it came to be and why it's so important to so many people.

Few things can be as mainstream and ubiquitous as Pokemon - it is, after all, the highest-grossing media franchise in the world. It seems a commonly accepted fact of life now that every Nintendo platform will see at least one iteration of the series, which in recent years have been marred by various controversies such as the disinclusion of various individual pokemon from newer releases, and it will sell an ungodly amount of copies immediately without losing too much steam in the long run. But this wasn't always the case, and Pokemon is an interesting example of just how much we can take innovative and groundbreaking things for granted.

Time and tide plays funny tricks on our perception of the present. What was once groundbreaking can become so commonplace that what originally made it so groundbreaking becomes almost imperceptible to us. An example I often use is that it can sometimes be hard to look back and distinguish just what made the Beatles and Beach Boys just as innovative and special as they were both in music and culture at large when you grow up in a world so far removed from their immediate influence. So many artists have taken elements of what they've done and advanced them to the point that we take them completely for granted and can come away rather unimpressed with some of those original points of inspiration.

Pokemon is much the same and modern conversation about the first few entries in the series is dominated by the recurring opinion that they're simply not worth playing anymore. Old, ugly, outdated, glitchy, broken and lacking - dusty relics made irrelevant and superseded by their sequels. This is usually the part where I'd tell you that those opinions are all wrong but here's the thing - they're not necessarily. Pokemon Blue (released to the west in 1998) was actually a revision of the original Japanese versions that were released in 1996 and contained a number of bugfixes as well as updated sprite artwork, definitely has some glaring issues. There's the balance which is notoriously botched on many levels, there's the large amount of glitches, the spritework for some of the pokemon (even in this revised version) can indeed be ugly and off-model, and it's certainly true that the game can be seen as lacking in content when compared to the many sequels that have built off the platform of the original with the series now containing over a thousand different species of pokemon as of the time of writing. All of these things are true, but there is still so much to be in awe of and it's hard for me to respect an opinion that discards such incredible games that were not only great for their time but still hold up remarkably well.

A role playing game inspired in part by series creator Satoshi Tajiri's childhood spent collecting things like bugs and frogs, Pokemon's premise and formula are simple enough. A young boy sets off from home, tasked first with retrieving a parcel for his hometown's senior pokemon researcher (functionally the equivalent of a biologist) and eventually with continuing the researcher's life's work in traveling the world cataloguing every species of pokemon (functionally the equivalent of wildlife). For this task you are given a pokemon partner of your own from, choosing from a selection of three different creatures alongside your rival and neighbor, and officially becoming a pokemon trainer. Running alongside the goal of capturing and researching every pokemon species comes the primary narrative and gameplay hook: raising and battling your creatures.

Being a fairly traditional Japanese role playing game, you likely know what to expect from the bulk of the gameplay of Pokemon. There is turnbased combat, a large variety of items, experience points and leveling up which increases the stats of your pokemon. One aspect of Pokemon that sets it apart from many other JRPGs is how highly individualized your experience can be. Obtainable throughout the game are 151 different species of pokemon creatures, each with their own elemental typing, some of which will be strong or weak against other elemental typings. Each of these pokemon are also able to learn a wide array of attacks which also have their own elements as well as a variety of functions. Some attacks, such as the powerful water attack hydro pump, serve as a means to deal damage to enemy pokemon (whether they be in encounters with wild pokemon or in teams headed by other pokemon trainers), while others such as minimize or growl can either raise or lower specific stats of ally or opposing pokemon for the duration of their time in battle.

While you may be tasked with completing the encyclopedia of pokemon by capturing each of the game's 151 species of creatures (some of which evolve into other creatures upon reaching the prerequisite experience level), the ultimate goal of a pokemon trainer is to prove their mettle by defeating strong trainers from around the Kanto region, in which the game is set. Defeating these strong trainers centralized in the game's various cities' gyms will earn you a badge symbolizing your progress as a trainer. Collecting eight badges will grant you the right to progress through the cavernous Victory Road before reaching the Indigo Plateau, upon which you will face the Kanto region's four strongest trainers in a back-to-back endurance battle culminating in becoming the Kanto Pokemon League's Champion. Along the way you will become tangled in the dealings of the nefarious Team Rocket, a band of criminals who seek to use pokemon to further their goals and bring general misery to the inhabitants of Kanto's cities. Players are also able to connect two Gameboy consoles via link cable to battle against each other or trade their pokemon.

If this structure sounds familiar to you, you're right: this is the same basic formula that the franchise uses in every mainline release to the present day. It's easy to take that as meaning that this is a lesser game - a more stripped down and basic (and indeed quite glitchy and unbalanced) experience, but to me it's wildly impressive just how much of the formula introduced in the first generation of Pokemon games remains in place to this day as something that resonates with people to the point that the series has largely not deviated almost at all from it. Game Freak, a studio with experience up until the release of the first generation of Pokemon games mostly creating small scale contracted games, hit a homerun with their first time at bat and created the runaway successful franchise that persists to this day with no sign of slowing down. It's truly remarkable how many of the same basic formula and structure was completely nailed in this first entry.

There are ways Pokemon Blue retains the core of Japanese role playing games, but there are certainly instances in which Pokemon stands out from traditional Japanese role playing games and positions itself strikingly similarly to another atypical JRPG that you may also be familiar with (and has been covered on Acquired-Stardust before): Shigesato Itoi's Mother. And I don't think that's any coincidence. Series creator Satoshi Tajiri actually wrote a fairly critical review of 1989's Mother during his time publishing a successful zine (which would eventually blossom into the company that developed and released 1996's Pokemon), before becoming a colleague of Itoi under Nintendo's banner. In fact Pokemon's first generation of games was developed alongside 1995's Earthbound (the sequel to Mother) and even saw Mother developer Ape, Inc. invest in Game Freak in order to keep it afloat during the games' shockingly lengthy development (taking at least six years). Earthbound also seems to take some of Satoshi Tajiri's criticisms to heart, even if by coincidence, and makes changes accordingly and is widely considered one of the greatest games of all time across the world in part due to that.

The two series have a rich history of parallel inspiration and references to each other, likely through Tsunekazu Ishihara (former Ape, Inc. employee introduced to Satoshi Tajiri in the early 80s who eventually went on to head Creatures, Inc. before ultimately settling in as president of The Pokemon Company). Mother/Earthbound broke the mold by having a JRPG set in a contemporary society which is also utilized for Pokemon's setting. It is also structurally inspired in part by 1986 film Stand by Me, which is directly referenced in the opening minutes of Pokemon Blue. Just as well, Mother final boss Gigue is strikingly visually similar to Pokemon's Mewtwo, a legendary pokemon possessing incredible psychic powers just as Gigue does. On that front the title of the first Pokemon movie (released after Earthbound) is subtitled "Mewtwo Strikes Back", identical to the subtitle of Earthbound/Mother 2 "Gygas Strikes Back". Pokemon also contains numerous musical allusions to Mother, particularly noteworthy in Pokemon Black and White (2010)'s allusion to several songs from Mother 3 (2006).

The experience of playing these games in their time is something that can be hard to truly convey as we now live in a world so far removed from their release windows, but allow me to try and set the stage for you. The year is 1998 and, after Pokemon Blue finally makes its debut outside of Japan, my mother gifted a very young me a Gameboy Color along with Pokemon Blue. It was the very first game and system specifically given to and owned by me rather than the family. The internet is in its infancy, the widespread distribution of cellphones is still a long way off. You are unable to instantly interact with someone across the globe. It is remarkably easy to disconnect from the world and to not only feel isolated but to be isolated. The world is infinitely smaller.

Pokemon Blue, a game about being at harmony with nature, traveling the world and uncovering its mysteries hits on a very relatable level to many people in this time, especially children. Each of Kanto's cities (despite Kanto being a real region of Japan, the Kanto of the Pokemon universe's cities are all named after colors), connected by deep forests and caverns and populated by new and unique creatures as well as people, represents an opportunity for tourism and adventure that your average person is not able to easily see or attain for themselves at the time. Highlights of the tourism aspect of the game that Game Freak has made very clever and authentic attempts to nail are things such as Pewter City's museum and the cruise ship St. Anne docked at Vermilion City. Although the game is a little 8-bit role playing game, it feels remarkably like a real adventure because of details like these.

Another aspect of Pokemon Blue being a very particular experience of its time is many of the details surrounding the aforementioned Mewtwo, the result of a genetic experiment and attempted cloning of the pokemon Mew. A detail of this subplot lost to time is that the world was grappling with ethical concerns and implications surrounding the 1996 cloning of a sheep named Dolly, the first time a mammal had successfully been cloned. Although two years had passed since Dolly's cloning and the release of Pokemon Blue outside of Japan it was still very much something on people's minds at the time. Ethical concerns about training pokemon to battle each other may have been brushed aside, but this was certainly a fascinating element to Pokemon Blue at the time the conversations around cloning were more contemporary. An interesting sidenote is that the exact date of Dolly's birth (July 5th) is referenced in a diary laying around in Cinnabar Island's abandoned Pokemon Mansion as being the date Mew, the pokemon from which Mewtwo is cloned, was discovered.

On the subject of Mew, Pokemon also leans very heavily into rumors and self-mythologizing. It's one of the very last games I remember being a 'playground rumor' type game, the sort that would become extinct as computers and the internet became more widely adopted. Rumors of secret items and pokemon swirled and dominated discussion around the games, and helped the first generation of Pokemon games become a true obsession in large part because there was substance to many of these rumors. Mew, the hidden 151st pokemon, did indeed exist, and is only obtainable through clever manipulation of the way the game is programmed and stores data. Similarly, a popular exploit involved specific actions that would allow the player to encounter "Missingno." (pronounced 'Missing Number'), a glitched out sprite that would enable various further unintended glitches such as making a certain item in your bag infinite in its usage or even scrambling graphics and corrupting save files. There's even ways to access the fabled Glitch City, an unintended scrambled version of Fuchsia City.

It is factors like these that combine with how strong the games are that lead to many children playing these games to become deeply interested in programming in a very hands-on way. The internet (and computers for that matter) being in a less advanced and proliferated state also does contributes to something else extremely important: a whole generation of kids growing up playing these games began to think about them less as isolated bits of entertainment and more as software - collections of data and numbers and values, all of which could be manipulated (and indeed created) by individuals. The hobby of glitch hunting became a phenomenon unto itself as countless kids began to experiment with the games to see what unintended glitches could be discovered and reproduced, alongside probing the game for leftover graphics and sound effects from the game's time in development that weren't ever meant to be seen by players.

All this is to say that Pokemon Blue is something like lightning in a bottle. Developer Game Freak, headed by video game superfan Satoshi Tajiri, clearly understood exactly what they were doing in a way not many people making games seem to, especially in the modern era where many big studios are stuck dealing with executive meddling in an effort to chase capitalism's curse of infinite growth. Tajiri understood what made video games not only fun but what makes them so interesting, and to be able to produce a work the quality and scope of the first generation of Pokemon titles to the level they did with as little experience they had actually making games is nothing short of a miracle, and the result of that miracle is the spot people have in their hearts for these games. Each pixel became evangelized, each bleep and bloop of the game's sound burned into people's memories forever.

Children decided to get into programming because they experimented with Pokemon glitches and were so grabbed by the revelation that software programming was even a thing, which is another aspect of the cultural impact that has been lost to time given the advancement of computers. It wasn't that long ago people assumed games just sort of 'happened', oozing up out of store shelves in complete forms for our consuming. The story and text are straightforward enough that many children used the game to learn to read their native languages, and to this day use them as adults to help learn foreign languages. Pokemon Blue was not only an incredibly charming and deep experience (especially for a handheld system, one of the small handful of times a handheld game has rivaled and even been head and shoulders above many console games of its era in quality), it also radically shifted the way in which people thought about video games and software as a whole, and the connection people have to it is a reflection of that.

Just as well, Pokemon also blossomed almost immediately into a multimedia franchise at this time with several different video games (including releases on the Nintendo 64), a suprisingly quality and fun anime directed in English by the director of Snatcher's English release Jeremy Blaustein and even featuring the vocal talents of his late transgender sister among many others, as well as a trading card game that continues to be not only relevant but extremely popular to this day. All of these releases combined to create the phenomenon of "Pokemania", obsession born of the ability for people to consume the series in various different forms all to a fairly high quality standard, that ensured a launch into the stratosphere. Pokemon also contributed significantly to the ongoing paradigm shift in the west spearheaded by television titan Toonami with the broadcast of Akira Toriyama's mega-hit series Dragon Ball that saw Japanese media (particularly anime) begin to gain widespread acceptance in the west as something distinctly their own without needing to have their cultural identities and roots tampered with as much as they had previously, if they ever even made it outside of Japan in the first place.

Part of the purpose of this blog is, as a fellow gaming content creator once said, to take you back to the past. To be able to provide history, cultural context and perspective to some incredible titles that are well worth being remembered and revered. Pokemon Blue provides a wonderful example of why this is so necessary: even the biggest media franchise in the world can still become muddled in our memories and present day conversation, and as such it is worth the preservation and celebration of some of the finer details and obscure cultural notes that being now nearly 30 years past the original release of this particular game may cloud you to.

Pokemon Blue was a time and a place, and the perfect game for that time and place. You may never be able to time travel back to 1996 to play these games for the first time, your memory of what video games and even the Pokemon franchise have become by the year 2024 erased, but it is my hope that you will be able to turn on Pokemon Blue and appreciate it not only for what it was at the time but what it still continues to be despite how far removed we are from that time and place, because it is nothing short of remarkable. And if my spotlight has taught you even a single thing or can help you do any of that then I am all the more happy to have written it. Oh, and by the way, for those of you already familiar with Pokemon, my name is a total coincidence.

A gem hidden among the stones, Pokemon Blue is undoubtedly stardust.

-- Ash

[maspers]

Weather Update: The First Danganronpa Game secretly had TWO rivals the entire time.

Lemme explain (spoilers, obviously, and this is gonna be a bit a rant whoops):

Usual Danganronpa Format as the fandom usually sees it: Students trapped in an unfamiliar location with no idea what's going on, plot driven partially by the mystery but mostly by the character interactions.

Trigger Happy Havoc: Students trapped in an altered but still familiar location with no idea what's going on, plot driven partially by the character interactions but mostly by the mystery.

In a setting like DR2, V3, or a vast majority of fangans, the participants in the killing game are given very little information about their circumstances aside from what Monokuma gives them, which is deliberately vague and designed to direct them towards killing each other. Additionally, the students are given very little ability to react to and retaliate against the Killing Game system in ways Monokuma won't expect. Weirdness aside DR2 basically went all according to plan until the final trial due to Monokuma's nigh-omniscience, and V3 was similar with the only debatable exception being Kokichi's elaborate scheme in Chapter 5. Since the students are dealing with such restricted conditions, the plot can't be fully driven by the students figuring out the setting, so instead the plot focuses on the conflict that derives from the various characters reacting to the game. In a story like this, it makes sense that the most antagonistic characters aside from the mastermind would be the ones with EXTREME personalities that shake things up a lot. Nagito, Kokichi and that character archetype that everyone expects to be in a fangan are necessary to make the plot more INTERESTING.

But THH is different. The students KNOW where they are (or at least they think they do, and turn out to be right). While they don't have any recollection of the Academy itself, they at least know what to EXPECT from Hope's Peak, and can from there point out nooks and crannies for delicious little clues that reveal more about the situation, putting together a narrative without Monokuma's handholding. Additionally, despite his blustering Monokuma is explicitly NOT omniscient here, or even practically omniscient, as methods to hide things from him are figured out early on. The students are able to DO something about their situation as the story progresses, and have figured out some aspects of the overarching mystery as it pertains to them long before the final trial (and NOT because the Mastermind deliberately put the info in their path). This greater information access and greater character agency in general means that while the character conflicts are still very much a part of the plot, the overarching theme is solving the mystery while adapting to the circumstances to avoid dying.

In a setting like this, extreme/bizarre personalities aren't really a boon to the plot. While the character reveals add layers and information in other settings, here it's a distraction. The students HAVE resources, and at least SOME of the tools they need. Engaging in over-the-top schemes and traps is a DETRIMENT to their current course of action even more than in later games, which is probably why Monokuma tries to encourage them to do such. Other characters in THH fit the bill of "stereotypical DR Rival" probably better than the supposed-rival Byakuya and THH's other Rival character actually do. Celestia Ludenberg comes to mind, in another DR setting she could be exactly the sort of mysterious and interesting rival the series is known for (and that she clearly wants to be), but in THH she's just another annoyance. Toko Fukawa and Genocider have the extreme personality down, but they only advance the plot in the students' favor when they approach things logically and in a less crazy manner. If Rivals in this game are supposed to fit the bill of "causes unexpected occurrences and advances the plot but still clashes with the rest of the cast in intense ways while doing so" like the other Rival characters in the series do, they have to play the role under a different ruleset. Rather than representing a philosophical extreme through their personality, these rivals have to represent a different extreme: their methods and rationale when it comes to SOLVING THE MYSTERY / ESCAPING THE GAME.

And in this regard, Byakuya Togami plays the role wonderfully. The vast majority of the students in the game are very passive when it comes to solving the mystery. Sure, they get very active when trying to escape by killing someone, but that's just dancing to Monokuma's tune. Rather than wondering what to do, Byakuya makes his actions clear from the start, and everything he does in the game that's antagonistic fits that same M.O., while not doing anything that would put him in an uncertain position. He learns how the trial system functions, then during Chapter 2 he performs an experiment to analyze the other students further. His antagonism largely stems from viewing the other students as opponents, so his pragmatic approach makes sense, but he doesn't JUST analyze the players. He also analyzes the metaphorical board, and it's clear he's trying to get every scrap of info he can on his situation before fully committing to action (exhibit A: him spending so much freaking time in the library). The only stereotypically "nuts" thing he really does is down that bottle of poison/protein in Chapter 4. He's proving a point. He'll do anything it takes to win, and knowledge is power. Hence his active role in acquiring info about the game, the setting, and the other students' behaviors.

But Byakuya can't be the only Rival here. While he might be solving some mysteries in the background, we don't get to see much of it because the whole point of his character early on is conflict: his active versus the other's passive. He won't share his findings or really work with others, which is not good when our precious baby protag Makoto is trying to solve the mystery himself. Byakuya can't move the plot forward like that until after Chapter 4. Chapter 5 onward, Byakuya's method to his madness is revealed, and he contributes a lot to solving the mystery and directing the other students to getting more of the info he needs (exhibit A, dismantling Monokuma). And... that doesn't really fit with the formula later games set. Chapter 5 is when conflicts with the rival comes to head, and shenanigans abound. Nagito does it. Kokichi does it. But Byakuya isn't particularly inclined. Shenanigans with his own life at stake aren't his methods, they're just complications. But... the stuff still comes to a head with THH's other rival. The other character that's been progressing the plot in active ways that contrast with the other students, and clashing with the rest of the cast AND the player. The character whose life IS on the line in Chapter 5.

You've probably guessed by now that I'm talking about Kyoko Kirigiri.

When we look at her in retrospect, Kyoko doesn't raise any alarms compared to the craziness of the rest of the franchise. She helps with the investigations and moves the trials forward, she's nowhere near the craziness brought by Nagito and Kokichi, and generally just really competent. We categorize her in the "Assistant" role, similar to Chiaki and Shuichi/Kaede/Kaito/Maki/whoever (hey wait a second where did we even come up with this archetype anyway, if V3 doesn't even really seem to have one character who properly fits it?) She definitely fits the Assistant bill in DR3, but this ain't DR3. She doesn't fit the bill for stereotypical Danganronpa Trial Rival... but as previously established, Byakuya doesn't either. So let's go deeper and look at things in context. Because from the start of the game, Kyoko is weird. Really weird.

We're introduced not knowing anything about her, and she keeps it that way for a LONG time. "Ultimate ???" just screams she's going to be important later but you just don't know how (remember, this was BEFORE Rantaro). She's really helpful during the trials and is three steps ahead of everyone, but... aside from that a lot of her actions are really, REALLY conflict inducing. She is happy to get info from other students, but it's clear there's a lot she isn't sharing. She says ominous things to Monokuma that make no sense ("What did you do to my body?" anyone?) and seems VERY focused on the mystery. Just like Byakuya, she's taking an active role in analyzing every detail about the circumstances. And interestingly enough, she's just as paranoid as he is, just in different ways. As Makoto spends more time around her she manipulates him (and others) in some really unnerving ways, and her dynamics with other characters outside of trials are always either generically placating to keep things calm or downright low-key hostile when things don't go according to plan. Just like with Byakuya, for the vast majority of the game she doesn't trust anybody. And in chapter 5, these aspects of her character are brought into full view. She spends the entire chapter hiding away, she mysteriously appears in Makoto's room (side note: Nagito and Kokichi both have "looking over the protag in an unnerving fashion" pics. Byakuya doesn't. Kyoko DOES). It becomes clear in the trial how much she's hiding and how much she's been manipulating things. Chapter 5 is an impossible trial designed as a trap for HER. Her seemingly innocuous actions have come in full domino effect. And only Makoto and the power of being a Man Literally To Unpredictable To Die can save her.

(Makoto obviously isn't a rival character, but it's interesting to see how by THH's requirements he very well could have fit the bill. Think of him from Hina's or Hiro's perspective: he's seemingly innocuous, yet survived way longer than anyone would expect him to, often figures out just the right thing to say, both Byakuya and Kyoko interact with him a lot when neither of them seem to care about anyone else, and ultimately seems to become a lot more actively involved in mystery solving despite not having any right too. Couple that with the fact that he spent a couple days "bedridden" when from an outsider's perspective he could have been doing anything, and ngl Makoto sus. He even survives an execution!)

Both Byakuya and Kyoko take turns providing conflict to the story in ways that develop the plot but COMPLETELY clash with the passive methods of everyone else. They practically take turns being the one doing whatever crazy crap needs to get done. Their character arcs parallel each other too. Byakuya has to learn about the value of human life and emotional connection. Kyoko knows perfectly well how important life and emotions are, but she needs to learn that it's a two-way street, that trust needs to be established and that she doesn't have to do everything important herself. Byakuya, while lacking in empathy, is fully willing to work with others and outsource important tasks. He just views it as a business transaction. BOTH of them are prideful frickers who think they're the only one with a brain cell, and it's up to Makoto to undergo his own character arc, become their friend, and prove them wrong. And then once Makoto DOES finally take control and prove he's the one with the audacity required to actually get everything working, he's able to redirect both Byakuya and Kyoko into finally teaming up with everyone and stopping chaos so much chaos. Without either of them, Makoto couldn't have made it to the final trial (we can see when Kyoko dies in the Bad Ending that it's basically game over, the mystery CAN'T be solved, and I fully believe that the circumstances would have ended similarly if Byakuya had died and they'd lost his pragmatic logical reasoning). But without Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya couldn't have made it THROUGH the final trial. All three of them are literary foils of each other.

(This is another reason why seeing all three of them in the final trial of DR2 is so fun, because the Trial Point Getters are a well-oiled machine by that point and you get to see them play off each other as 100% allies, while once again getting to see through Hajime's eyes how 100% sus all three of them really are once they get going.)

So that's why I think THH has some really good Rivals, despite neither Byakuya nor Kyoko fitting what we've come to expect from the formula. They aren't insane or representing a philosophical extreme, they're representing clashing viewpoints in solving a mystery and escaping the killing game. In other entries in the series, Byakuya and Kyoko would be killing game fodder for twisty midgame chapters and otherwise not being able to contribute much of interest. But in Trigger Happy Havoc? They're exactly what the game needs to elevate it from simple mystery-solving to full-blown ART.

TL;DR Byakuya and Kyoko are awesome and I love them and a lot of people sleep on their status as Danganronpa Rivals because they grade them on a standard that I think is unfair and ignores their strengths as characters. Also Makoto suddenly becomes way more interesting when viewed through a perspective other than his own. The first Danganronpa game is a materpiece and more fangans need to realize that they don't have to play by the supposed "series formula". After all, this game didn't.

[offshoreblogupdates]

A snippet of the first story

This is 'rewritten' for better understanding; the original is riddled with notes and player's actions, etc

---

Bing awakes alongside Titus, in his hand. He shifts a tad, causing Titus' fingers flinch back. Bing glances up at him, but Titus is focused on writing something down. 

At this point, Bing glances over the edge of Titus' fingers to see what he was writing. It appears to be a description of the metal object that sat no more that a few inches from his notebook. Titus occasionally would pick it up, examining it, then continue to write something down. He also tried to sketch it out as well. Sunny, Titus' sister was asleep in the side of the room, book open in hand. 'Mechanics for dummies' is what the title reads.

After a few moments, Bing taps against Titus' hand to gain his attention. it's gained almost immediately.

"What's up?" Titus asks, barely noticeably caressing him on the back.

"What're you doing?" Bing asks

Titus looks at his paper then back at him. "Uh well.. I'm trying to figure out what this is from." He explains.

Bing quickly crawls out of Titus' cupped hand and slides to the notebook to get a better look.

"Have you found out anything yet?" Bing asks, looking over the paper. Bing can read somewhat, but not well.

"Well it's man made for sure.. But it's nothing detectable or anything I've seen before." Titus starts, rubbing his neck 'sheepishly'.

"What about Sunny?" Bing asked, gesturing to Sunny by looking in her direction. Titus glances up to see her and kind of grimaces.

"She fell asleep on the job." He remarks, then notices the book she was reading. "But she had the intentions right, I guess."

Some time passes but soon Titus holds his hand out for Bing to climb on. He looks at questionly, a bit confused.

"Should head to bed." Titus says, soft smile on his face.

Bing made a silent 'ohh' as he rushed back to Titus, crawling onto his hand. Once situated, Titus lifts his fingers around Bing, like a guardrail, as he stands up.

".. How'd you fall asleep so quickly earlier?" Titus remarks as he sets Bing 'somewhere' to sleep (like a blanket on a bed side table)

"Asleep.." Bing turned to look at Titus, almost horrified. The atmosphere changes.

"Yea.. you've been asleep for the last couple hours. I just figured you were really tired." Titus' voice fades out to Bing as it seems he is immediately thrown into a million thoughts. It seems to last forever..

"Bing." Titus' words snap him out of it . "Are you okay?"

"Yeah.. I'm good." Bing, who is obviously not okay, sheepishly smiles softly and crawls onto his bed, curling up, turning away from Titus. Titus' doesn't seem convinced, but decided not to press any further.

"Okay.. sleep well."

---

I have yet to revise this one.. because it was the first I wrote, rewriting it and editing has been a challenge. Buuuuut I'm about finished with it, and then I can move on to something else. Every other story I have planned is already finished also, so I may do some rewritten snippets of some of those as well--

O-o

[cannedwyrms]

I think the game Scorn has one of the most interesting video game antagonists I've seen in a while, up there with Agent Black, Five Pebbles, Morgott, Picayune, and Le'garde. (All of which i will probably make posts on)

Now, I've yet to dive into the deep lore or whatever of the game, but I'd still like to share my thoughts on them because I think they're very unique when it comes to video game antagonists.

One of the most surface-level things that makes them so interesting is that we get to play as them at the start. Immediately, that's a really good way of making the player empathize with any character, especially when we don't know much about them. After they get buried in what is, apparently, energized, fermented cum (I'm not going to explain that, fuck you), we transition over to the actual protagonist.

The next time we see them, they are completely different, having horrifically mutated into some kind of lizard parasite. Then, they attach to your player character, digging their hands into your stomach and wrapping the skin flaps that cover their brain around your neck.

And this is what makes them so much more compelling to me. For most of the rest of the game, they actually help you. Their tail is the weapon you use, they hold your weird, gross little healing eggs and reload pod. They remain mostly passive, but their very presence in your body starts to hurt you, making you more and more immobile with root-like growths digging out of your flesh. They are attempting to fuse with you completely, 5 it's killing you.

Near the end of the game, you finally get them off of you, which takes a lot of effort and leaves your character with all their organs spilling out of their body, the parasite's last attempt to remain with you. It slinks off, wounded but not dead.

In the end, it attacks you mere feet away from your ultimate goal and fully fuses with you, turning you both into some kind of nightmare tree.

So why do I find this dynamic so interesting? Well, on a surface level it's not often you see an antagonist in a game so passive, and even helpful at times. Often, in video games, the antagonist is proactive, while the protagonists is reactive. This serves as an easy way to get the player to get invested in the game. In Portal, for example, Chell only does all the puzzles because GLaDOS is forcing her too. Link only embarks on his quests because Ganondorf is threatening Hyrule's peace, etc.

But in Scorn, you don't really need an antagonist like that, because having an antagonist who actually understands what's going on any more than you do wouldn't make sense in the context of the world. The world of Scorn is already so hostile, so alien and borderline nonsense, that the protagonist already reacts enough to it without the need for a character to push them forward. Plus, it seems like they already have a goal in mind, one that the player isn't necessarily privy to, which the parasite might already share with them.

Because of this, Scorn is free to make their antagonist more passive, more reactive to the protagonist (yet still proactive in their own way, they are the one to attach to you, after all).

On a deeper level, though, I have some thoughts. And none of them are normal. The parasite in Scorn attaches to the protagonist, which immediately strikes me as not some kind of power play or instict, but as a survival tactic, a way to gain back any sense of control, of belonging that they have lost. Their body had been warped beyond understanding, and they've been alone for who knows how long. Of course when they find another human (idk if they're actual humans, but you get my point) they'd want to stay close to them. Maybe they thought that, by fusing together, they'd be more able to survive. Or maybe they just wanted to be close to someone. That's why they reattach themselves after you remove them. That's why, even when it's clear being with you is so obviously not helpful to anyone involved, they try desperately to remain attached no matter what. It's such an interesting way to build an antagonistic character, because I fully believe that nothing they are doing is out of malice. Even when they ruin(?) your character's plan(?) I don't believe they did it to spite you, or with any anger or evil at all. Instead it's more likely that they did it out of desperation, out of a deep need to be accepted and loved, to be close to someone in a world so hostile and alien, so antithetical to human connection. They help you—or at least try to be helpful—and because of the nature of Scorn's world, it harms you both.

Thematically, Scorn is about life and death, the cycle of creation, intimacy as a method of control, and intimacy in general. And what's more intimate than literally becoming one being?

Ok, that's all go play Scorn it's a mad trip of a game with an aesthetic that I haven't seen in any other game. Its inspirations are obvious, but I just haven't seen many games use its style. I'm sure there's more to it, like I said I haven't really delved into the lore, but this was just my interpretation of the events.

tl;dr: Scorn is good, guys, go play it

[ideas-on-paper]

Chris L’Etoile’s original dialogue about the Reaper embryo & the person who was (probably) behind the decision with Legion’s N7 armor

(EDIT: Okay, so Idk why Tumblr displays the headline twice on my end, but if it does for you, please ignore it.)

[Mass Effect 2 spoilers!]

FRIENDS! MASS EFFECT FANS! PEOPLE!

You wouldn't believe it, but I think I've found the lines Chris L'Etoile originally wrote for EDI about the human Reaper!

Chris L’Etoile’s original concept for the Reapers

For those who don't know (or need a refresher), Chris L'Etoile - who was something like the “loremaster” of the ME series, having written the entire Codex in ME1 by himself - originally had a concept for the Reapers that was slightly different from ME2's canon. In the finished game, when you find the human Reaper in the Collector Base, you'll get the following dialogue by investigating:

Shepard: Reapers are machines -- why do they need humans at all? EDI: Incorrect. Reapers are sapient constructs. A hybrid of organic and inorganic material. The exact construction methods are unclear, but it seems probable that the Reapers absorb the essence of a species; utilizing it in their reproduction process.

Meanwhile, Chris L'Etoile had this to say about EDI's dialogue (sourced from here):

I had written harder science into EDI's dialogue there. The Reapers were using nanotech disassemblers to perform "destructive analysis" on humans, with the intent of learning how to build a Reaper body that could upload their minds intact. Once this was complete, humans throughout the galaxy would be rounded up to have their personalities and memories forcibly uploaded into the Reaper's memory banks. (You can still hear some suggestions of this in the background chatter during Legion's acquisition mission, which I wrote.) There was nothing about Reapers being techno-organic or partly built out of human corpses -- they were pure tech. It seems all that was cut out or rewritten after I left. What can ya do. /shrug

Well, guess what: These deleted lines are actually in the game files!

Credit goes to Emily for uploading them to YouTube; the discussion about the human Reaper starts at 1:02:

Shepard: EDI, did you get that? EDI: Yes, Shepard. This explains why the captive humans were rendered into their base components -- destructive analysis. They were dissected down to the atomic level. That data could be stored on an AIs neural network. The knowledge and essence of billions of individuals, compiled into a single synthetic identity. Shepard: This isn’t gonna stop with the colonies, is it? EDI: The colonists were probably a test sample. The ultimate goal would be to upload all humans into this Reaper mind. The Collectors would harvest every human settlement across the galaxy. The obvious final goal would be Earth.

In all honesty, I think L’Etoile’s original concept is a lot cooler and makes a lot more sense than what ME2 canon went with. The only direct reference to it left in the final game is an insanely obscure comment by Legion, which you can only get if you picked the Renegade option upon the conclusion of their final Normandy conversation and completed the Suicide Mission afterwards (read: you have to get your entire crew killed if you want to see it).

I used to believe the pertaining dialogue he had written for EDI was lost forever, and I was all the more stoked when I discovered it on YouTube (or at least, I strongly believe this is L’Etoile’s original dialogue).

Interestingly, the deleted lines also feature an investigate option on why they’re targeting humans in particular:

Shepard: The galaxy has so many other species… Why are they using humans? EDI: Given the Collectors’ history, it is likely they tested other species, and discarded them as unsuitable. Human genetics are uniquely diverse.

The diversity of human genetics is remarked on quite a few times during the course of ME2 (something which my friend, @dragonflight203, once called “ME2’s patented “humanity is special” moments”), so this most likely what all this build-up was supposed to be for.

Tbh, I’m still not the biggest fan of the concept myself (if simply because I’m adverse to humans being the “supreme species”); while it would make sense for some species that had to go through a genetic bottleneck during their history (Krogan, Quarians, Drell), what exactly is it that makes Asari, Salarians*, and Turians less genetically diverse than humans? Also, how much are genetics even going to factor in if it’s their knowledge/experiences that they want to upload? (Now that I think about it, it would’ve been interesting if the Reapers targeted humanity because they have the most diverse opinions; that would’ve lined up nicely with the Geth desiring to have as many perspectives in their Consensus as possible.)

*EDIT: I just remembered that Salarian males - who compose about 90% of the species - hatch from unfertilized eggs, so they're presumably (half) clones of their mother. That would be a valid explanation why Salarians are less genetically diverse, at least.

Nevertheless, it would’ve been nice if all this “humanity is special” stuff actually led somewhere, since it’s more or less left in empty space as it is.

Anyway, most of the squadmates also have an additional remark about how the Reapers might be targeting humanity because Shepard defeated one of them, wanting to utilize this prowess for themselves. (Compare this to Legion’s comment “Your code is superior.”) I gotta agree with the commentator here who said that it would’ve been interesting if they kept these lines, since it would’ve added a layer of guilt to Shepard’s character.

Regardless of which theory is true, I do think it would’ve done them good to go a little more in-depth with the explanation why the Reapers chose humanity, of all races.

The identity of “Higher Paid” who insisted on Legion’s obsession with Shepard

Coincidentally, I may have solved yet another long-term mystery of ME2: In the same thread I linked above, you can find another comment by Chris L’Etoile, who also was the writer of Legion, on the decision to include a piece of Shepard’s N7 armor in their design:

The truth is that the armor was a decision imposed on me. The concept artists decided to put a hole in the geth. Then, in a moment of whimsy, they spackled a bit Shep's armor over it. Someone who got paid a lot more money than me decided that was really cool and insisted on the hole and the N7 armor. So I said, okay, Legion gets taken down when you meet it, so it can get the hole then, and weld on a piece of Shep's armor when it reactivates to represent its integration with Normandy's crew (when integrating aboard a new geth ship, it would swap memories and runtimes, not physical hardware). But Higher Paid decided that it would be cooler if Legion were obsessed with Shepard, and stalking him. That didn't make any sense to me -- to be obsessed, you have to have emotions. The geth's whole schtick is -- to paraphrase Legion -- "We do not experience (emotions), but we understand how (they) affect you." All I could do was downplay the required "obsession" as much as I could.

That paraphrased quote by Legion is actually a nice cue: I suppose the sentence L’Etoile is paraphrasing here is “We do not experience fear, but we understand how it affects you.”, which I’ve seen quoted by various people. However, the weird thing was that while it sounds like something Legion would say, I couldn’t remember them saying it on any occasion in-game - and I’ve practically seen every single Legion line there is.

So I googled the quote and stumbled upon an old thread from before ME2 came out. In the discussion, a trailer for ME2 - called the “Enemies” trailer - is referenced, and since it has led some users to conclusions that clearly aren’t canon (most notably, that Legion belongs to a rogue faction of Geth that do not share the same beliefs as the “core group”, when it’s actually the other way around with Legion belonging to the core group and the Heretics being the rogue faction), I was naturally curious about the contents of this trailer.

I managed to find said trailer on YouTube, which features commentary by game director Casey Hudson, lead designer Preston Watamaniuk, and lead writer Mac Walters.

The part where they talk about Legion starts at 2:57; it’s interesting that Walters describes Legion as a “natural evolution of the Geth” and says that they have broken beyond the constraints of their group consciousness by themselves, when Legion was actually a specifically designed platform.

The most notable thing, however, is what Hudson says afterwards (at 3:17):

Legion is stalking you, he’s obsessed with you, he’s incorporated a part of your armor into his own. You need to track him down and find out why he’s hunting you.

Given that the wording is almost identical to L’Etoile’s comment and with how much confidence and enthusiasm Hudson talks about it, I’m 99% sure the thing with the armor was his idea.

Also, just what the fuck do you mean by “you need to track Legion down and find out why they’re hunting you”? You never actively go after Legion; Shepard just sort of stumbles upon them during the Derelict Reaper mission (footage from which is actually featured in the trailer) - if anything, the energy of that meeting is more like “oh, why, hello there”.

Legion doesn’t actively hunt Shepard during the course of the game, either; they had abandoned their original mission of locating Shepard after failing to find them at the Normandy wreck site. Furthermore, the significance of Legion’s reason for tracking Shepard is vastly overstated - it only gets mentioned briefly in one single conversation on the Normandy (which, btw, is totally optional).

I seriously have no idea if this is just exaggerated advertising or if they actually wanted to do something completely different with Legion’s character - then again, that trailer is from November 5th 2009, and Mass Effect 2 was released on January 26th 2010, so it’s unlikely they were doing anything other than polishing at this point. (By the looks of it, the story/missions were largely finished.) If you didn't know any better, you'd almost get the impression that neither Walters nor Hudson even read any of the dialogue L’Etoile had written for Legion.

That being said, I don’t think the idea with Legion already having the N7 armor before meeting Shepard is all that bad by itself. If I was the one who suggested it, I probably would’ve asked the counter question: “Yeah, alright, but how would Shepard be convinced that this Geth - of all Geth - is non-hostile towards them? What reason would Shepard have to trust a Geth after ME1?” (Shepard actually points out the piece of N7 armor as an argument to reactivate Legion.)

Granted, I don’t know what the context of Legion’s recruitment mission would’ve been (how they were deactivated, if it was from enemy fire or one of Shepard’s squadmates shooting them in a panic; what Legion did before, if they helped Shepard out in some way, etc.) - the point is, I think it would’ve done the parties good if they listened to each others’ opinions and had an open discussion about how/if they can make this work instead of everyone becoming set on their own vision (though L’Etoile, to his credit, did try to accommodate for the concept).

I know a lot of people like to read Legion taking Shepard’s armor as “oh, Legion is in love with Shepard” or “oh, Legion is developing emotions”, but personally, I feel that’s a very oversimplified interpretation. Humans tend to judge everything based on their own perspective - there is nothing wrong with that by itself, because, well, as a human, you naturally judge everything based on your own perspective. It doesn’t give you a very accurate representation of another species’ life experience though, much less a synthetic one’s.

I’ve mentioned my own interpretation here and there in other posts, but personally, I believe Legion took Shepard’s armor because they wished for Shepard (or at least their skill and knowledge) to become part of their Consensus. (I’m sort of leaning on L’Etoile’s idea of “symbolic exchange” here.) Naturally, that’s impossible, but I like to think when Legion couldn’t find Shepard, they took their armor as a symbol of wanting to emulate their skill.

The Geth’s entire existence is centered around their Consensus, so if the Geth wish for you to join their Consensus, that’s the highest compliment they can possibly give, akin to a sign of very deep respect and admiration. Alternatively, since linking minds is the closest thing to intimacy for the Geth, you can also read it like that, if you are so inclined - that still wouldn’t make it romantic or sexual love, though. (You have to keep in mind that Geth don’t really have different “levels” of relationships; the only categories that they have are “part of Consensus” and “not part of Consensus”.)

Either way, I appreciate that L’Etoile wrote it in a way that leaves it open to interpretation by fans. I think he really did the best with what he had to work with, and personally, the thing with Legion’s N7 armor doesn’t bother me.

What does bother me, on the other hand, is how the trailer - very intentionally - puts Legion’s lines in a context that is quite misleading, to say the least. The way Legion says “We do not experience fear, but we understand how it affects you” right before shooting in Shepard’s direction makes it appear as if they were trying to intimidate and/or threaten Shepard, and the trailer’s title “Enemies” doesn’t really do anything to help that.

However, I suppose that explains why I’ve seen the above line used in the context of Legion trying to psychologically intimidate their adversaries (which, IMO, doesn’t feel like a thing Legion would do). Generally, I get the feeling a considerable part of the BioWare staff was really sold on the idea of the Geth being the “creepy robots” (this comes from reading through some of the design documents on the Geth from ME1).

Also, since “Organics do not choose to fear us. It is a function of our hardware.” was used in a completely different context in-game (in the follow-up convo with Legion if you pick Tali during the loyalty confrontation; check this video at 5:04), we can assume that the same would’ve been true for the “We do not experience fear” line if it actually made it into the game. Many people have remarked on the line being “badass”, but really, it only sounds badass because it was staged that way in the trailer.

Suppose it was used in the final game and suppose Legion actually would’ve gotten their own recruitment mission - perhaps with one of Shepard’s squadmates shooting them in fear - it might also have been used in a context like this:

Shepard: Also… Sorry for one of my crew putting a hole through you earlier. Legion: It was a pre-programmed reaction. We frightened them. We do not experience fear, but we understand how it affects you.

Proof that context really is everything.

[hopeymchope]

This is interesting, and the article/interview (and his follow up post on Facist Xwitter) give more insight into what Kodaka means than the headline does alone.

My take is that this is easy to say when you're a really good writer, and even easier after years and years of experience. :P But my guy... not everyone who works in gaming can write a video game story as compelling as you can.

[while-the-days-slipped-by]

Hey friends and mutuals I just got around to putting the finishing touches on this article I wrote, it’s a fairly long piece and goes into the history of Pokemon Red and Blue, as well as my own history with it. I’m quite proud of it and I hope you choose to give it a read and enjoy it.

[deadheartsstillbeat]

Hey yall, it’s the head writer here. Just came to share that we are officially done with the main scripting of all the routes!! It feels so weird to be done with all that writing after two whole ass years of my life. I’ve never done any project like this before, and have always been too embarrassed to share my works with others. This experience has been challenging, and at times I’ve wanted to quit and throw it all out, but I’m glad I stuck through it and finished it

As they say, do it even if it’s done bad, and maybe it’s bad, but they’re stories I’ve always wanted to see in a dating sim. Things like helping out a few messy lesbians find love in a route, or finding a deep and fulfilling qpp with an aroace character, or fucking the most sleazy loser of all time lol. Put out what you want in the world I guess.

Anyway, here’s to 234,000 words for just the main routes!! What a time to be undead. Thanks for being here and can’t wait to see yall at the full release

[deadandbeautiful]

𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖘𝖐𝖊𝖙!

you feel a sense of dread coming down your back...this place isn't normal, and from what you can tell...it may even be haunted.

welcome vampires, zombies, and ghouls! my name is dee [they/he/she], and i'm your nightmarish fic writer who has a love for fandom and a lust for blood <3 i come from beyond the grave to bring this sweet lil' corner of death, my "alter" if you will; where i'll be posting all kinds of ghoulish and scarifying content for all your bloody and gouged out hearts desires :)) but first, let's take a look into our catacombs!

𝔪𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔩𝔦𝔰𝔱:

break the habit [eren jaeger x reader, wip]

𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔪𝔞𝔦𝔫 𝔞𝔩𝔱𝔢𝔯 [𝔱𝔞𝔤𝔰]

#spiritshotline [sfw content]

#bloodywinebottles [18+ content!]

#deadandbitchy [posts from dee!]

you turn around, but nothings there...could your mind be playing tricks on you after all?

[starlightgames]

Let's talk magic systems!

Magic systems are the bread and butter of fantasy settings and choosing how your magic system interacts with the characters and the world could change a lot of things.

Broken Kingdom went through a few different iterations with vastly different magic systems before Starlight became its magic system.

What made me iffy about the past magic systems was that they weren't a) developed enough and b) were simply not interesting enough for the audience to stay with it. For example, Broken Kingdom's past magic system was that of the moons.

Scarlet Moon was that of external magic, mainly fire, heat, earth, and other offensive/outward magic. This magic came from the largest moon in Cein which was a red moon.

Blue Moon was that of internal magic, mainly water, air, and emotional magic, being able to affect your and other people's emotions. This magic came from the second largest moon in Cein, which shadow of the red moon made it look blue.

Lavender Moon was another off-shoot of these two, by the time I developed this section, I became uninterested in this magic system and I wanted magic to be a core tenet, but not the absolute end-all be-all.

Scrapping it, I ended up starting anew again and, after a few iterations, landed on starlight as a magic system. Starlight draws a few inspirations from the moon's magic system — starlight comes from, as in the name, the stars. Veruna is very interested in astronomy and stars, studying them, but they are also very interested in using Starlight offensively if need be.

Magic affects a lot of aspects of everyday life as well as in a much larger scope. Showing or even just thinking about how magic plays in a certain setting and how it affects the player/main character as they move through the world they're in.

[sylvettesylph]

The issue with video games as a story medium has nothing to do with the fact that its a bad medium for stories and everything to do with the fact that gamers are fucking stupid

[breakingarrows]

Killzone 2 Difficulty Analysis

Some time ago I was thinking alot about video game difficulty. This has been a topic of conversation and Twitter discourse many times, especially around FromSoftware releases due to their reputation for being difficult to play to the end and the lack of any options to ease that difficulty. However I was thinking about it from the angle of what exactly we mean when we say something is difficult. Does it mean the player takes fewer hits before being reset to an earlier point, whether it be the very outset of a run in a rogue-like or a checkpoint a minute earlier in a Call of Duty campaign. Is difficulty determined by how many hits an enemy can take before being defeated, is it harsher scoring qualifications for a Devil May Cry, is it enemy behavior becoming more adaptable or sophisticated, learning from the player actions or being given more capabilities the higher the setting? Killzone 2 has a reputation of being one of the tougher games to complete on its hardest difficulty level: Elite. And so I wanted to take an analytical, frame-by-frame look at Killzone 2 and its four difficulty levels to see what exactly separates each option from each other.

As a first person shooter I expected the main differences between difficulty settings are: player takes less hits to die and be reset the higher the setting, the enemy takes more hits to die the higher the setting, and I was curious as to whether the enemy AI is more aggressive with flanking/grenade usage/firing at an exposed player the higher the setting. Below is a table with my findings upon reviewing my footage in Premiere Pro going frame by frame to count the amount of actual hits to kill and milliseconds to die:

Former is multiple, latter two are a single enemy firing. No aiming reticle. Enemy moved while in cover back and forth, throwing grenades at my cover point. Blood splatter to indicate taking damage appears in the frame before the bullet is actually fired.

Reviewing the footage and the table both Recruit and Trooper are relatively tame. The standard ISA M82 assault rifle takes 6 hits on average to kill while the Helghast assault rifle the StA52 takes 5 hits to kill. Your time to die on Recruit is over 15 seconds while Trooper is barely over 10. On Recruit the enemy AI was more preoccupied with the ally NPC than my player character, focusing fire on him despite me standing in the open. On Trooper their hits were more consistent, and the time to die would have been even shorter if not for the enemy soldier reloading and taking time to take cover. Veteran is where things really change drastically. Enemies take more shots to kill, ranging from 2-4 on both assault rifles. The time to die is significantly shorter, about just 2 seconds continuously exposed before death. Elite had a consistent 9 bullets per enemy with the M82, whereas the StA52 was more varied between 6 and 10 bullets. Time to die on Elite is pretty much the same as Veteran. Additional details on the Elite difficulty is I noticed enemies would move while in cover to avoid the player zeroing in on their exposed areas. Grenades were thrown more often on Elite than on easier difficulties, and the player lacks the aiming reticule when firing from the hip that is present in every other difficulty setting.

Reviewing this it appears Killzone 2 has two main difficulty levels: Normal and Hard with more acute differences between their sub-divisions. Killzone 2 adheres to the expected difficulty variation of the higher the difficulty the more damage is required to achieve a kill and the less damage you can take before being reset to an earlier checkpoint. I do appreciate the finer details on Elite with enemy AI appearing to become more capable to combat the player’s actions compared to every other option.

Lastly, some miscellaneous details: Average time to load a checkpoint upon death was 9 seconds 39 milliseconds 26 microseconds. Average time to load a level from mission select was 28 seconds 59 milliseconds 40 microseconds.

[queenrizzardnthelizardscissored]

ok so i beat masseffect 1 for the first time! and i have thoughts:tm:! im playing it now basically because i played BG3 which i loved, then played through DAO, DAA, DA2, and DAI in order in a very short time span and got. unhealthily obsessed. very quickly. (well until DAV but that's not relevant i already have too long posts about why i Do Not Like it.) and so of course i'm like. well, might as well play through the other really big story-based RPG since the bundle is only 5 bucks on sale. a lot of this is me comparing the game to dragon age honestly lol

so i took 15 hours to beat the game. which is not that long. and thats cuz i did. like. no sidequests. which is not how i usually play games! i usually go through and do everything, all side quests, all the errands! but the issue is that doing the side quests in this game is so unbearable and ur never sure if you're going to get a good quest or a really boring one. Like let's strip away quality for a minute. say i get a side quest to kill. 5 guys across the galaxy. cool. that's a pretty normal type of sidequests in all sorts of games, sometimes good, sometimes bad.. in order to get to each of these guys, i have to go back to my ship, click through so so many menus, navigate through multiple layers of the galactic map, then find the systems i want to go to, and go through every planet in these systems to see if you can land on them or not. this is extremely, extremely tedious, just clicking on all the planets in a system to see if That's the One, based only on the fact the side quest is in the system or in the cluster. it does not tell you which planet has the sidequest on it, you have to find that out all on your own via trial and error. and all the while, every time you click between systems, it plays an animation of your ship travelling that interrupts you, and if you go between galactic clusters, it plays a different, longer animation of your ship going by a mass relay. which! cool! but why am I seeing this while i'm just navigating the map? show me this when i'm actually travelling please! but okay. okay, say you get there. now, you are dropped halfway across the map from the actual point of interest where the sidequest is, and after another cutscene, you now have to drive all the way across the map in rough terrain that requires skyrim-horsing up every mountain to a copy-pasted area where you fight some enemies, and then you're done. in addition to the fact this is janky and sucks, the really big issue is that it's like one side-quest per planet. People complain about Dragon Age 2 being clunky to get through with a lot of walking around, but in that game, I have, say, ten sidequests in the docks, so I go to the docks, and clean all of them up one after the other - and often the quests feed into each other. Here, each quest is its own barren, lifeless planet that requires you to spend so much time navigating to it and doing unfun driving just to get to the actual sidequest. Which is just kill enemies! And there's not even an interesting reason to do it! Again, I'm going to bring up dragon age 2, because people complain that that game has a lot of killing enemies for no reason or unnecessary repetitive combat, but sidequests in that game are really well written and interesting, even the ones that are just "go here and kill that thing!". There's all sorts of fascinating sidequests that tie back in to the main story. In Mass Effect? These side quests are chores for money that are not mentioned again. By far the most interesting side quests are in the citadel. And those are pretty okay! they're very okay! but there's barely any of them compared to the loads of quests that are like "go find X thing and kill X people on X planet."

One sidequest I remember is one where there's a colony of biotics that's become a bit of a cult, off in the middle of nowhere. This is a really interesting story, especially since biotics are, in the context of the game, often shunned, socially impaired (since they are stolen from their families and taken to training institutions once their abilities are discovered..... which is apparently something Bioware likes doing in their games, not that I mind, it's a really cool idea, especially if the tragedy and horror of it is fully explored, like it is in their other franchise with this trope <foreshadowing...> ) and exploited by corporations who deliberately cause these accidents that often cause mass death in order to create biotics. They are already isolated, not by choice, and find it hard to relate and engage with a society that seems to hate them, and so it makes sense they would form a commune with each other, and it makes sense it would become a bit of a cult. So I deliberately bring in two companions that might be able to sway them - Kaidan, who is a human biotic who I previously talked to about his experiences involving these training camps, and Liara, in the hopes she might somehow influence them or have unique dialogue.

This sidequest is in the same format as the other sidequests. I go and find a random planet by clicking on a bunch of other planets and hitting survey, and then drive for a really long time through awful terrain til I find a collection of the same prefab buildings. I walk to one of them, and I pass exactly one speech check to have them let me in to the colony, and they say to go to the "far side of the colony" (which is 3 buildings, so. Not much of a far side.) It turns out that despite this being the building with the intercom, they actually want me to go in to one of the circular ones. I find this out after having explored the main building, which, despite being a commune of potential cultists, looks the same as every other building. There are some perfectly tidy millitary cots alone in a mostly empty room. The floors are clean. There are crates everywhere, neatly stacked. These are people living on their own, unorganized! Where is the cooking utensils, the plates, the food, the community interactions? Where are the posters, the grafitti, the art, the pulpit for sermons (they call their leader "father"), anything??It's like a warehouse! I finally go in to the circular building and get the option for an easy speech (or intimidate) check to have the father stand down. And that's it. You can choose to kill them all, since he wants to tell his followers he's leaving and apparently that's dangerous, or choose to let them stand down and resolve the situation peacefully. Then you walk back to the car, and return to your ship. That's the entire sidequest. This has voicelines from your admiral TELLING you to check it out, and this is it? I spend more time finding the system, clicking on the survey button, and driving here in a beeline from the starting point than I did actually doing the quest! And despite the fact that one of my companions is a biotic in the same situation as these people, attended the same camp as these people, he says nothing? These are people he probably knew, relates to, as he even tells you! And Liara doesn't, like, judge humans for any of this? Has nothing to say whatsoever? I don't want to compare this to DA2, since i bet a lot of people reading this havent played it (please do, it's my favorite dragon age game) but there's a sidequest in that game that has the same exact central plot as this, and every character reacts to what's happening, and there are multiple endings where nobody dies or everybody dies, and multiple of the characters you meet there comes back in act 3 or show up in part of the world complaining about being imprisoned.

Even if the other sidequests were good, which. maybe some of them are! I don't know! maybe they're even good enough to warrant me clicking on all these systems and watching these repeated spaceship warp cutscenes and driving the Worst Car Ever (even with the toggle to make the car actually drive like a car rather than weird third person shooter controls transposed onto a car, which. The car controls should be the default. i dont get why they arent) but. i dont trust it! This quest is set up for me to find, and it is tedious, and sucks, and the other combat quests I've done are also pretty awful. so why would i, when i get a quest like "investigate missing shipments" or "warn doctor" or "kill crimelords" go jump across the galaxy across the Worst Map Screen Ever and several minutes of cutscenes just for a quest? I have no idea if it's a "good" quest, which I hoped the biotic commune one might be, or if it's a bad quest, but it doesn't matter, because they're both really tedious and bad, and will likely lead to combat, which, let's get this out of the way quickly cuz I want to talk more about the writing:

the combat and camera are godawful. I actualyl really like the idea of an RPG that's also a shooter with companions that help! This is a great idea! I also really like the concept of the powers, at least from their names and lore. genuinely cool concept! The problem is that it kind of sucks.

the powers - Maybe i'm biased, because when I heard "lift" i imagined the abilities from Control, and when I heard "hack" i imagined the quickhacks from Cyberpunk and was very disapointed, but these powers are so flacid. Perhaps a more fair comparison would be, say, dishonored 1, since that's around the same time, but that just makes me think about how good dishonored is and how much i want to play it again. The mass effect powers seem to do so little, and they are really annoying to use (since I have to hold the pause button to use them), and honestly? It's faster half the time to just shoot them. I played the 'engineer' class, and by god did it feel like I was doing nothing. I'd hack the enemies and they would like. Stop shooting? but not actually turn and shoot at the enemies? When I deployed any of my abilities they'd seem to float in space at random points rather than at the enemy i was attacking. It felt so useless and random that i kind of ended up just spamming my assault rifle instead of using them, and my character didn't really have any combat abilities, so it was. the most vanilla third person shooter experience you can imagine. point and click on the enemies heads. but the thing is that even that, even the barebones shooter gameplay, just sucks.

the fundamentals. okay so this is gonna sound mean. but this game came out in 2007. quake 3 came out in 1999. half life 2 came out in 2004. max payne in 2001. i would say gears of war but i never played it, but i understand it apparently is fun! so why does mass effect feel like this? this feels so bad. it is so janky and wretched. when you zoom in on your sniper scope it zooms in to the air to the top right of your head. your character snaps to cover and then does not snap out of it or leave. the camera is claustrophobicly close, and you're never quite aware of where the enemies are relative to you - sometimes your reticle is perfectly aligned, and it flies past the enemy, as if the shots aren't actually going where you're pointing. the actual shooting feels surprisingly good (the SFX are great honestly, they sound awesome and really punchy) but everything surrounding them, from aiming to movement? it is just actively painful. especially since you cannot shoot while running, which makes me feel insane! Why is it when i hit the run button my character switches from normal movement to tank controls where A and D steer??? do I have too high expectations/am spoiled? i don't really play shooters! like. i play ultrakill, i love control, and i play helldivers with friends sometimes, i guess? armored core six is like one of my favorite games of all time. is that a third person shooter?? anyway its not like. my favorite genre, there's some good stuff there but if im gonna play an action-type game i prefer an imsim or a soulslike or whatever. i play cyberpunk 2077, i s'pose, but i don't really play that like a shooter i play it by jumping in to security cameras and hacking everyone to death before they know im there. but god all of these crush mass effect, not even in terms of the overall combat and abilities (though that too, like. very much that too) but just in terms of moving around, aiming at things, shooting people and blowing their heads up. yknow, the simple joys of video games. the gunfights are something i'm actively dreading, all the time, every time i play. the simple act of moving about and shooting enemies in this game is like actively painful.

and the thing is that in addition to feeling gross in combat this ruins exploration. I don't want to explore because the camera is really close to my head and I can barely see anything and I still have limited stamina for running. so the only way to move around at any speed is to hold the run button, hear the loud panting sounds of shepard, and then move at higher speed with weird janky controls for like 10 seconds before they stop sprinting and now hyperventilate for a bit. it also doesn't help that like. The controls are tremendously screwed up. Why is sprint and interact the same key, bioware? I keep hitting f to interact and accidentally drawing my guns! every time i try to navigate a space it takes way way too long and feels awkward and sisyphisean, especially because of the way the camera moves and pulls when i try to run and the way it settles back as shepard returns to her preternaturally precise jog. as a result of this despite the fact that when i play most video games i explore every nook and cranny for stuff, more lore, hidden weapons or quests or something, in this game, i'm running from critical point to critical point! and since, as i already mentioned, i'm avoiding sidequests, so, basically, this reduces my experience down to just the critical path of the main story missions, and maybe some companion quests.

the companion quests! i think i may have done something wrong. I'm writing this without reading the wiki and i only got two of them, but I talked to every single companion i got after every single mission and exhausted their dialogue tree. so. no idea. the wrex one is just the same thing as one of the prefab missions, where you have to kill a bunch of guys, but with some unique dialogue, which is cool. it's okay! he's not the most interesting as a character, and i'm really not sure how much of his attitude is the attitude of the writers as well. What i mean by this is that his race, the Krogans, were deliberately attacked by a bioengineered virus called the genophage that causes something like 90% of their children to be stillborn, resulting in a slow genocide of the species. This is horrifying, especially since the race that created and deployed this not only has not apologized for their actions, but in fact still govern over the Krogans, without a single consequence for their actions. Wrex is justifiably angry, and his quest has something to do with this - you must recover armor of cultural value that was stolen during the suppression of the krogan rebellions, and is now being held by a pirate profiteer. The mission itself is just a generic 'drive on a planet and attack enemies' thing, like all the sidequests. And the writing is so lackluster. he has like. no reaction to this. apparently you can use it to talk him down at a main story point, but I did it after sparing him at virmire, which i did via speech check (i levelled up charm + intimidate to max since. yknow. this is a story based RPG and that's what you do in story based RPGs if you want to enjoy the story), but. that's it. He has barely any reaction to this and then you just leave and its like what was the point of that??? he also has this awfully self-defeating attitude towards the whole thing, where he basically just says that krogans won't change or attempt to cure the genophage because they aren't scientists but warriors? but clearly they were scientists since they. yknow. developed space travel. so in addition to this being weirdly essentialist it also kinda makes no sense. at the risk of comparing this game too much to dragon age again, it's kind of like Sera from DAI, but without any abrasiveness or really indication that he's wrong. (sera is already poorly handled because the writers seem to treat her alienation as evil but that's a whole 'nother post)

garrus' companion quest is genuinely quite fun! It's in an environment that is unique (at least, for the way i played the game - i didnt have any other missions in a spaceship) and the writing is pretty good, i think, particularly since you can totally deny a guy due process and it's awesome and totally cool and not representative of anything real law enforcement does. but seriously i liked this one. this guy's crimes are utterly horrifying and murdering him is eminently justified, but it also reveals an interesting tension in garrus' character and serves the extra purpose of calling out why it's important a human is in the spectres and how grim and awful it is that these people are literally free from/above the law, with their only check being strength, and how they are relied on by a government so keen to wash its hands of the affair that they don't even want your character to contact them so they don't know all the details. it's not like. super unique cutting stuff but i thought it was cool.

lore and main story - i actually think the lore is great, at least a great deal of it. this is already really long but i think it's one of the better ways to do a precursor race, and i really like that the protheans, who were hyped up throughout the game as some important, mysterious past race that Saren really cares about, are just some guys. they are important purely because they were the last ones to be killed. it's just SUCH a good twist? ish? idk it's just super fun. I also like that there are no Mysterious Artifact type situations. everything is explained within the rules of the universe, and within that context, i kinda love the reapers? they are not sympathetic villains nor are they really understandable ones, and the fact they act as a dominating threat, a singular incomprehensible entity rather than as something operating on even ground is very compelling. it feels more like an eldritch horror type villain rather than a political one. in what is my last dragon age comparison of this blog post i swear, this reminds me a lot of DAO, and the blight - the blight in DAO is not the actual villain, but an unstoppable natural force, with the real villain being the forces of politics and capital being resistant to change - your role as a character against the law is to make them act more than it is to actually fight the threat. Unlike in DAO, though, this game seems almost afraid of dealing with the politics it itself sets up.

There's an obviously signposted fascist branch, which is the same as the be an abrasive asshole branch, which is called renegade. this is bad in my opinion! im sorry but why are the 'renegade points' gained both by being an asshole to corporate interests and generally going out of your way to ensure there is some degree of justice, however violent, served, and being a fascist who distrusts aliens and believes humans are superior? Your character does not say that flat out, of course, but they sure do imply it! especially your other crewmembers! to be clear, i think being an asshole/abrasive is a great option in video games, and i think being a horrible fascist monster is an excellent option to have in video games ..... so long as it is explored. The problem really comes in that these two things are conflated and also largely unexplored. You are defiant to a council and also to human interests sometimes, i guess. But the consequences of your actions never matter. People around you don't really react in a way that makes sense. I did a renegade run for my first time (there probably won't be a second, spoilers) bc i find this type of run a lot more interesting unless you start killing everybody. the reason i say unless is that when you kill someone, you remove them from the story.

A game where the evil run is your character killing everyone who opposes them is both unrealistic and not in a fun videogamey way but in a 'how the hell did they get away with that' way, unless your character is a literal god, and also unfun, because you now end up with very few companions, very few characters, very few chess pieces for the writers to play with. on the other hand, a game where the evil run entails manipulating people to do your thing while fucking them over, or your character being a fucking asshole to everyone around you which changes how they interact with you and how they interact with the world in turn, is fascinating and really great and lets you win like. all the awards (i dont think bg3 really does this at all and don't honestly like that game that much psst dont tell). the issue is that your evil run is really neither of these things. it's kind of just saying a bunch of fascist things and getting very little pushback on them and no consequences. your character is in an immensely politically-fraught climate, and yet saying all this horrific shit seems to not really even matter. it bounces off of others. Worse even than the fact that 'being mean' and 'using intimidate rather than persuasion' are tagged the same as saying awful fascist shit is the fact that you are given basically no consequences for it, and worse than that is that this is counterbalanced with the most cheesy possible lines at any given point. every paragon line feels like somehting that the obviously good cop on a network TV show would say to let you know they're the good guys, ignore that they're doing this shit without due process and arresting these people, they're the good guys.

On that note - your character is literally an extrajudicial killer who is able to do whatever they want with legal immunity. this is both an excellent hook for a video game because it explains why you're able to do a lot of things without being obviously arrested, and also a very political concept for a character to be. the big issue is that the game almost never sets up situations where your abuse of extrajudicial power is ever portrayed in a negative or even neutral light. you can steamroll your way through oh-so-many corporate guards, who are just willing to die for minimum wage, i guess? and who you cannot convince to surrender? and this is fine and dandy and normal. you do shoot a bunch of corrupt cops in noveria, which is based, but... also your character is a corrupt cop also who literally gets paid to kill criminals by another criminal and is willing to fly across the galaxy to do it. the fact this is hypocritical is not a bad thing but a really fcking good one! this is such a good hook! but the game does not explore it, you have no choices relating to it, your companions do not mention it, the news anchors do not mention it. your character being the first human spectre is so important not just because it is a show of trust by the council but because it means/implies that there is someone representing human interests in this extrajudicial arena, able to make whatever decisions without oversight. this is a super cool concept! imagine, for instance, if the game made you pick between humans and aliens in some way.... but it never. ever. makes you do this. not once, as far as i can see. the closest thing is at the end where you can choose to hold the fleet back or have them save the council. that's about it.

the game is chock full of politics and such but it does not really touch on it or interrogate it. the council in itself is a horrifically unjust institiution. there is squalor in the citadel while the wealthy live in the presidium just above them. there are corporations that orchestrate 'accidents' to contaminate children with toxic chemicals on purpose and run horrific experiments. earth is polluted and overcrowded and filled with gangs everywhere. colonies are the best places to live, but also getting picked off by aliens and mysterious destruction all the time because corporations plant them farther and farther from earth to make a quick buck and fuel rapid expansion. the game itself is centered around a law enforcement agent empowered to extrajudicially murder, to skip due process. NONE of this is interrogated, once. The closest you get is Garrus talking about due process vs the freedom of a spectre. that's really it. it's so odd! it's like taking the aesthetic of all these really interesting things, all these super unfair issues and terrible atrocities, and doing nothing with them. i want to write my dragon age comparison here so bad but i wont. i wont. i will persevere.

art direction. its bad. i.. just. setting aside creative intent for a bit.

why does everything look so sterile, even the supposed 'slums'? i want to be clear im comparing this to dragon age 2 and DAO and dishonored when i say this. why does everything look so NICE. the only thing that doesnt look nice are ground vehicles which are always burnt out and partly destroyed! the citadel is at least 100k years old, and yet it looks so shiny and perfect. the current occupation by the council has been at least a few hundred years and yet there's no grafitti, no broken lamps. there's no plants even except in the strict areas they're meant to be, no sign of life. there's a whole 'seedy underbelly' area, and the 'seedy underbelly' looks like the nice parts of the DC subway!!! it's so odd. nothing looks like shit in this game at all and it's bizarre.

ojkay with the creative intent in mind. why in god's name does everything look the same? aren't these aliens? aren't the creators of the citadel nonorganic? why is the inside like this? why are the stores and promenades of NON HUMAN SPECIES designed with humans in mind? why is everything metal panelled? is it just because it's space? and if it has to be metal, why is it this shiny, 2000s apple store era future design? why does the citadel look Like That? Why do HUMAN SHIPS look Like That? humans are meant to be newcomers on the scene. and yet everything looks perfect and shiny and full of curves and Nice. there's no charm to either their core design or their presentation, adn there's even less charm because none of them look lived in. inf act, there's not even clearly enough places to sleep in your ship! have you seen bunks in ships, art-director-of-mass-effect? why do yours look so sterile and perfectly clean? why are there no posters, no clothes, no nothing? it's so boring and lame. and. okay. going back to the design of the ships. it's all touchscreens and holograms. fine. i wish it were CRTs and buttons and cool switches that you flick while turning it on and floppy disks and stuff cuz i love Alien and that aesthetic. but fine. why are they curving up above you like that? what do they do? its like no consideration was put in to how they should function. why is there a hologram for the galaxy map. sure the galaxy is technically 3d but it's a very flat disk. why not use a screen? and why are they all so flat with no interesting UI? im a big star trek nerd. look at LCARS in star trek TNG! or, since its more like what they're going for, look at the bridge in star trek enterprise (the show. i dont evne like that show that much but my god. that even has similar themes!) it's just so boring and bland. its like they threw all the sci fi of the era into a blender and this is what came out. i dont like halo but by god that at least has some inspiration to it. god its just so lame, both the core art design aesthetic is lacking, but then it also fails to have any sort of detail or intrigue. imagine if it was the same aesthetic as it is now, but there were dents or scratches or paint chipping, perhaps more as the game went on it so it started pristine. imagine if there were clothes hung up in the crew quarters or posters or. or anything! i dont want to be mean but my god. its just Not Good.

and then there's the armor. mr mass effect art director, since i assume you're a guy, how do you think armor looks? how does it look on women? do you think it is fucking skin tight? why god why? it looks bad on men too (esp with the goofy helmet) but my god. it looks so awful on women. it looks like one of those weird gross reddit 3d animated prn vids. its even shiny! its so awful its just its so so so so bad. like. what. why did you do this. i cant even understand what they were possibly using as reference to design this other than like. weird body suits or whatever. cuz it looks hateful. i mentioned helldivers 2 earlier, here's what the default women's armor looks like in that game:

heres what like. irl soldiers wear:

heres what mr. mass effect armor designer decided to make womens armor look like:

what the fuck is this? while googlign this image i found a forum thread where somebody complained about this and was beset upon by like angry male trolls mad that they dared to complain about the fact that the armor looks like this? like jesus christ. its so so bad. and even ignoring the male gaze-ieness of it (which is hard and also you shouldnt. ignore it. because its awful) it makes no sense. it does not work. it is ineffective and also ugly. like i feel like my characters are wearing pajamas. i dont even want to talk about the boss who is the mother of one of your characters and shows up with a huge window to show off her breasts that are literally spilling out of her too-tight dress. i don't. but this happens and there is a whole emotional conversation while this is happening. what the fuck is this, mass effect? who was in charge of this???? this sort of design is gross and oversexual and also just like. weird., and leaves me worried that they're going to get shot in the thigh and bleed out. there are arteries there! important ones! and honestly as a gay woman this isnt even attractive. do like. do men find this attractive? they must do right? cuz loads of games have stuff like this so clearly they must. please god give women plate armor and cool suits n stuff not this.... ugh.

anyway. off topic. but dear god. any interesting things this game could have are so undercut by so many things. the combat is actively painful, the sidequests are. bad. the art design is kinda awful. i do like the companions and the f!shep/liara romance is pretty cute honestly though. awful sex cutscene. but this is in general true of all video games up until like. bg3. i heard the later games get better but idk if im willing to play through them lol. i might give it a shot.

[nerdsandqueens]

I think in the last few years, the popularization of anti-God stories have been due to people in the death throes of their worship of cultural icons, celebrities, and role models.

Realizing they are just people. Flawed people. Bad people. That they could hurt them all along.

These narratives only work if you believed everyone tried their best to do and be good innately - all the time - simply out of the goodness of their heart. It is naive.

It requires having not seen the world in shades of gray to begin with.

[loressa]

I used to write a bunch for MUDs, and a few years ago, I decided I wanted to try making my own game. I started as a writer/QA/project management for my first few game jams because I was struggling to create something fully on my own.

This hybrid “help as needed” role let me get hands on experience and showed me a deeper look behind the scenes of how games are made, without being overwhelmed by all the setup needed to get my hands in the mess – I had previously been daunted by the basics of just setting up engines and SDKs and CLIs and virtual environments and all that stuff.

This was the result from the first game where I did design/heavy writing focus and no code: https://misc-mike.itch.io/bookworm

We had envisioned something impressive with the player changing the story, but as development continued we learned about scoping and timelines: our coder ran out of time, so I focused on finding us public domain images and twisting together a concept of a thing that would work with the functions we had coded. The result is kinda cute.

From there, I tried out making my own games using a range of different engines which focused on text-heavy development:

Twine: webdev (eg CSS, html) for interactive hypertext

Choicescript: uses very basic scripting for interactive cyoa novels

Ren’Py: uses python for visual novels

Quest and QuestJS: for text adventures

Adventuron: designed to teach children how to code via making text adventures

This is not an exhaustive list – https://intfiction.org/ is a great resource for even more options such as TADS.

Read more on my blog because I'm old and still have one and apparently Tumblr has a character limit for posts: https://thoughts.games/2024/09/30/getting-into-game-dev-as-a-writer/