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zombieheroine · 4 years ago

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TFP: the backstory of the war and some points

This is more about my pet peeves than anything else, but still I think some of my points might be of interest.

Basically, there are popular takes and headcanons and interpretations in fandom about the backstory Ratchet tells Jack, Miko and Raf during the finale of the first season, and sometimes I have different ones I really haven’t seen much elsewhere.

I think it’s really interesting to note that the flashback is told through an unreliable narrator, Ratchet, who has multiple reasons to let’s say adapt the truth: He wants it to be short, so he simplifies, he is telling it to the children, so he includes things he thinks they need to know and excludes things he doesn’t want to mention, he is summing up not only the politics but also Megatron and Optimus’ past, some of which he wasn’t there for and only knows what Optimus has told him, and finally his own personal feelings about the events and the people involved in them.

There’s also the visuals of the story, how the medium changes the animation style into 2D-like, almost still frames and includes emotionally charged visuals like characters just posing, changing colours, and a ball of fire consuming the picture. These elements aren’t meant to be taken literally.

So, pet peeves:

Megatron started out good and later lost his path.

I don’t buy this. There’s nothing tragic or confused about Megatron’s character. He was aiming for an authoritarian state led by him from the start, he simply lacked the means at first. I’m not saying that he didn’t have any central ideology, he clearly did as he is clearly driven by it and he has followers loyal to the cause (Skyquake, Dreadwing, Soundwave), but I think to say he must have been a great and noble philosopher greatly overestimates how much it takes to rally suffering and oppressed masses into revolution.

Also, he sure had an organized and functional military force behind him, fully armed and ready to fight. That kind of a force isn’t built, trained or armed overnight. He was prepared.

The Council saw Orion Pax as worthy and noble

This is my theory about it, because yeah, no they didn’t. This is just Ratchet simplifying or even buying into the story.

Something like this would be plausible in a fantasy story or a fairy tale, and even though TF: Prime is aimed for children, its overall tone and how seriously it takes its story and themes doesn’t fit the trope. It’s not an adaptation of “here are Decepticons, they are evil because they are evil”. Instead of fun or wacky adventure, it takes time to talk about war as a devastating conflict with political motives as well as horrible concequences like death and destruction of civilization and infrastructure. Instead of simple “evil” and “darkness”, there are politics, ideas and ambitions.

So, the Council, what are they all about? Trying to pacify restless and protesting people and prevent violence and their own power grumbling. I don’t think it’s so much Orion’s “worthiness” as much as his “let’s change stuff and not kill anyone”-ness. Megatron was too dangerous, too radical and too powerhungry, and obviously prepared for violence.

Naming a Prime was the Council’s last effort for settlement, to let the people on the verge of open revolution to have a Prime of their own and take their grievances up with him. They knew they would have to give up something and change, and they didn’t want a revolution or violence. They were simply too late: The crisis was too ripe, things gone too far, too much anger and too many guns in the game, and so war was inevitable.

(Not that Orion wasn’t worthy, since Primus approved of him, but that had nothing to do with the Council.)

Megatron used to have blue optics

This is a small pet peeve compared to the ones above, but it still bothers me and goes together with the first point.

Megatron is showed with blue optics when he’s friends with Orion and preaching his ideology, then comes the point in the story where he “reveals his true nature”, leaves the Council without Primacy and decided on open war, and his optics turn red.

That is not literal. He doesn’t change the optics, they flash into red at a dramatic point in the story, and the story element works because of the audience’s associations with the colours.

Then again, the colour of the optics is those elements that are clearly design choices to make the bad guys looks scary and the good guys look friendly, and obviously it also ends up being a feature in-universe. We could talk about the optics and what they mean, but I’m just concerned with Megatron here. The only indication that he had blue optics is that one story-telling element.

(Not that I have anything against artists drawing him with blue optics, mind you.)

Ratchet speaks the truth.

I’d just like to point out that the backstory is told to us by Ratchet all of. It’s interesting how Ratchet is simultanously the best and the worst source of information: It’s implied that he’s the only one of Team Prime who’s known Optimus before he became Prime, but as such he’s also one with most emotional investment, and that’s not even mentioning his personal beliefs that he demonstrates across the series.

Ratchet was there, yes, and has a close perspective, but Optimus and Megatron have a lot of private history, and much of it is so sensitive Optimus probably hasn’t shared it. We know Optimus has many mixed feelings about Megatron, like how he hesitates to kill him, mourns him alone, and doesn’t join in speaking about his character or deeds in emotional moments. So Ratchet doesn’t know the whole story.

Then again, I’d argue he sanitizes it for the children. We know Ratchet hates Megatron perhaps the most of them all (he’s the only one who strongly opposes to allying with him against Unicron, for example), but still the story about his origins is fairly clean. Multiple times through the series a history of horrific violence is implied, but there’s very little of it in the backstory. Even though the theme of bloodless but oppressed peace versus destructive and bloody freedom in war is an interesting one, I think it’s more likely that Ratchet leaves things out, for better or worse.

So in conclusion, I think it’s a really interesting scene and I love that the origins of the conflict are so murky. I also really like how the series pulls ambitious things like this, such as an unreliable narrator, and the style and how the truth is multifaced and unclear.

So many things in Prime are worth a deeper look.

#maccadam #tfp #transformers prime #Optimus Prime #Megatron #Ratchet #tf meta #kapteenin raapustus

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goodlucktai · 4 years ago

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I am reading some of your older Natsume Yuujinchou fan fics and I absolutely LOVE them! Can u please write some more about him idk what topic I'm sorry T.T but any good ones u can think of ?

well i was in the MIDST of answering a nishinatsu prompt but my drafts seems to have consumed that ask entirely, so i guess i’ll just write that prompt here instead !

“I mean,” Nishimura blurts, “just look at him!”

He gestures with both hands, as if words are failing him. Across the room, Natsume is laughing, shaking off snow and unwinding a borrowed scarf. Tanuma is thanking him profusely for the hot tea he ran to the vending machine outside for; given that Tanuma just returned to school after being out sick for a few days, it makes sense that Natsume and mother-hen Tsuji wanted him to stay put. The whole thing is very mundane and in no way out of the ordinary and Nishimura, for whatever reason, is pissed about it.

Bemused, Kitamoto settles into what has been his default state since he was three years old and humors his best friend.

“I’m looking,” he says gamely. “It’s Natsume. He’s wearing a hat.”

“Do not over-simplify this,” Nishimura warns with utmost severity.

His tone causes Suzuki to glance over from her desk in alarm, but Kitamoto makes Meaningful Eye Contact with her and she glances from him, to Nishimura, and then across the room at Natsume, and out loud says “oh.” Then she gives Kitamoto a pitying expression and returns to her book. Kitamoto wishes it were that easy for him to escape.

“Okay, sorry,” Kitamoto concedes. “Is there something special about the hat that I’m missing?”

“It’s adorable,” Nishimura hisses with real, actual venom. “It has a pom-pom on the end. What the hell? Who gave him the right?”

It is pretty cute, Kitamoto has to admit. He thinks Taki is the one who got it for him, but he can’t remember, and now he’s certainly not going to mention it. He wouldn’t throw his friend under this bus, not even to spare himself.

“Right,” he says. He flips a page in his magazine. “Some nerve.”

“I mean it’s bad enough that he’s the most handsome guy in our grade,” his best friend goes on, outwardly seething, “no, scratch that, our school! I mean, already way, way out of my league, and then he has to go and--”

Kitamoto looks up. The conversation has taken a new, unlikely turn, and with Nishimura, you have to catch these things quick, or he’ll get the idea that he’s allowed to think them.

“Hey, hold on a second. What’s this about ‘out of your league’?”

“Sorry, I thought you said you were looking,” Nishimura says with enough bitterness to make Kitamoto frown. “It’s Natsume. I don’t have a chance in hell.”

This crush has been a thing for going on a year and a half now. It’s the most open secret in school, because Nishimura is about as subtle as a bullet train and wears his heart on his sleeve-- he always has. But up until this point, Kitamoto had thought all the dithering and nerves was a little bit just because it was kind of fun to like somebody, and nerve-wracking to confess. It’s not as though any of them are gonna vanish any time soon, not with another year until they graduate, and plans to go to university together after that.

Kitamoto figured that when Nishimura got tired of drawing hearts in his notebook and then screeching when someone asked to borrow his notes, he’d tell Natsume that he’s been in puppy-love with him since about two days after Natsume moved to Hitoyoshi in the first place, and they’d all have a good laugh about how long it took them to get their shit together, and that would be that.

He never expected to hear something like this out of Nishimura’s mouth.

It’s the worst thing he’s ever heard out of Nishimura’s mouth.

Kitamoto gets up, so abruptly that his chair screeches back across the linoleum. Nishimura’s head snaps around and he reflexively grabs Kitamoto’s arm. They’ve been inseparable since before they could walk and that means that, generally, they can sort of read each other’s minds.

Kitamoto wonders if he’ll ever stop being furious with himself that he missed something as big as this.

“Hey, woah, what are you doing?” Nishimura says. “Why are you mad?”

“I’m mad because my best friend is an actual, honest-to-god idiot,” Kitamoto snaps. “And I’m going to prove you wrong.”

He manages one step in Natsume’s direction, and Nishimura yanks him back into his chair with a super-strength born of absolute terror.

“Don’t you dare! If you love me you’ll stay right here!”

“Of course I love you,” Kitamoto says, whirling on him. “You know I love you.”

For a brief second, he finds himself terrified: what if this is something else he’s missed? What if--

But Nishimura rolls his eyes, and his grip on Kitamoto’s arm slides down to his hand, and he tangles their fingers together as easily as if they’re in kindergarten again. This is one thing, it seems, neither of them have ever had to doubt.

“I know, Acchan. I’m just having a bad day.” Nishimura bites his lip. He looks down, and away. “But... you know what I mean, right? You know that Natsume is-- he’s on another level. You get that, right?”

“He is not better than you,” Kitamoto says, perhaps too loudly. A few classmates glance in their direction. From Nishimura’s nervous twitch, one of them is probably Natusme, but he’s all the way across the room. There’s no way he could have overheard. “He thinks the world of you. You spend every waking minute together. This is the first time I’ve managed to steal you away in like two weeks.”

Nishimura slants a bit of a smile at him. It’s nothing like the megawatt grins he’s usually throwing around, but it’s something. Kitamoto squeezes his hand, refusing to back down.

“Even if he doesn’t like you back,” Kitamoto says, “he already loves you. And I love you, and so does Taki and Tanuma and Tsuji and Ogata and even Shibata, even though he’d never admit it. I’ll make him if it would make you feel better, though. I still have blackmail.”

And there it is-- a laugh. Nishimura leans back in his chair with it, a loud ha-HA that he muffles in his sleeve, and Kitamoto grins at him.

“For now, let’s go find Taki,” he says, standing up again. He draws Nishimura up with him by their joined hands. “There’s still a few minutes left before the bell.”

“Sure,” Nishimura says, following along agreeably. “Why do we need Taki?”

“You’ll feel better after you can gossip with her about your hopeless crush,” Kitamoto tells him dryly. “And I’m gonna tell her all that nonsense you said about not being good enough, and she’ll yell at you about how much we love you till you cry, probably.”

Nishimura gasps, the perfect picture of betrayal. He’s back to his overly-animated self and the whole room feels lighter for it. Kitamoto tugs him along, smiling, and waves at their friends as they pass by.

“I told you that in confidence!” Nishimura shouts.

“Next time get it in writing.”

He’s prepared for it when Nishimura throws his full weight against his back in revenge, and manages to haul him up piggy-back style with enough grace that they don’t immediately fall over.

Nishimura wraps one arm around his neck, squeezing too tight for comfort, just to be a brat, but at that point they’re both having fun as they make their ungainly way toward the door. Whatever hurt Nishimura has been holding onto has been left behind for now, and if Kitamoto has his way, it won’t be coming back.

And behind them, Natsume buries his face in his hands. Tsuji and Tanuma trade a swift, knowing glance over his head, and then reach over to pat him on the shoulder and the arm respectively.

“I mean,” Natsume mutters, eyes drawn to where Nishimura is crowing with laughter, noisy and charming and the brightest thing in the room, “just look at him.”

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #nishinatsu #kitamoto atsushi #nishimura satoru #natsume takashi #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic #ah nishinatsu....my one true weakness...

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defeatedbyamerechild · 4 years ago

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How well can each villian draw? I'm especially curious about Maxie and Cyrus's skills. I've probably said this a lot but I love your art! I don't have an account on Tublr so I search up your blog every day! The first thing that comes up on my recently searched is always DBAMC! XD

Oooh OK! I have in fact some drawings of how each villain draws... Some drawings are from the “meet the villains” post and some are from a future project that I’m not going to talk about for now... XD I didn’t have drawings of all characters, but... I made some for the occasion too!

Anyways, here they are:

Giovanni:

Although Gio has a good visual-spacial intelligence, it’s more about a good sense of direction and capacity to understand visual information than about his artistic abilities. He is good at understanding visual input, but not good at translating the visual info on his head to an actual paper. Besides, he doesn’t make an effort. He just “decided” that he is bad at it and so he doesn’t try to do anything other than simple stick figures.

Archie:

Archie likes drawing with crayons and thick pencils, usually. He is a fan of “children media” like child games and cartoons, so his style is influenced by that. He doesn’t have a great knowledge of anatomy, but that is not important for him, since his style is simplified and cute. In terms of colors, Archie is not super consistent with his color choices. He uses the colors available at the moment and that’s good enough for him.

Maxie:

Being a perfectionist, Maxie really cares about the proportions in his drawings. He draws a structural skeleton before drawing people, so that he can have an idea of the proportions and positions involved. He has a very delicate hand so his drawings tend to be light and have thin lines. He likes coloring with watercolor and tries to keep it as close to reality as possible. He has a strong aesthetic sense and to him it’s important that the drawing looks pretty in the end. He doesn’t add lost of shading, to him, color is more important than the shadows, making his drawings a bit 2d-looking.

Cyrus:

Cyrus is also very delicate in terms of physical touch, so his drawings also tend to have light lines. However, differently from Maxie, he is not very much concerned about the final product’s aesthetic appeal. He wants it to be recognizeable and similar to reality in terms of basic shapes and shadows. Usually prefers pencils. Colors don’t matter much to him, as he considers the interactions between light and dark more important than them. However, if Cyrus is drawing just to illustrate an action, not to create a portrait, he will definitely simplify his drawings a lot, like the first example here. In that case, he will use the first pen or pencil he finds.

Ghetsis:

Ghetsis is not only very talented for arts in general, but also knowledgeable in the history of art and techniques involved. He is not a fan of cartoony styles, and prefers to use paint other than pencils or pens. Ghetsis works with masses of colors and lighting other than contours, lines and bidimensional shapes. He is also very fond of realism, and will keep working on one same piece for days, even months... That, of course, when he has the patience and will to actually make art. When he is out of patience, well... You have the first example.

Similarly to Giovanni, N is not very talented for drawing. The difference is that N is acutally trying his best. He tries to put all the shapes he can perceive in his body into paper, but doesn’t have any idea of how these shapes interact when put in a certain angle and from a certain perspective. You can notice how the hand is inverted, for example. Here, he used ballpoint pens of different colors.

Colress:

Colress also likes the cartoon-like proportions, just like Archie, but his style is not that much inspired by children’s media. He doesn’t care much about consistent propotions, as long as you can see that it’s the same person on both drawings, for example. He tends to draw all faces the same, because facial features are not that easy for him, so everyone has those same black eyes, nostrils and mouth. He will change the expressions depending on what he wants to show, though. He likes pixelated edges on his art, and usually works on the computer.

Lysandre:

Lysandre loves to experiment with different styles, usually on the computer, but sometimes by hand too. He is very fond of warm tones adn curved lines. He usually likes to make definite contours, strong and visible outlines that make the drawing pop out from the backgrount. He will sometimes break that rule too, since he loves to try different things all the time! Most of Lysandre’s drawing depict himself with all sorts of emotions. In his opinion, art doesn’t have to be true to reality, what matters most is the aesthetic result of an artwork.

Lusamine:

Lusamine will work with wathever materials she finds. On her old drawing of “herself” (Nihilego), she used thick whiteboard pens, but on her newest drawing, she used thin pens on paper. Her style is slightly inspired by Dr. Seuss in terms of propotions, but with many differences in terms of execution: instead of several lines composing the outline of her drawing, Lusamine draws with one long stroke for each shape. Her aesthetics usually include lots of curves and curls.

Guzma:

Most of the time, Guzma uses thick markers for his drawings. He is careless when drawing outlines, but his style is somewhat consistent. On “meet the villains”, Guzma traced a generic anime-style man to make his own portrait. For that, he used a thin felt-tip pen, to try to make it look more “professional”. Guzma cares more about the big picture and much less about the details.

Piers:

Piers has his own style, just like nearly everything about him. He developped a technique to make his lines look like barbed wire, and loves to use pointy shapes and spikes all over his art. The keywords for his style are “sharp edges”. Although Piers loves colorful stuff, he thinks he is “bad at colouring”, and so he prefers to keep his own art black and white. He says it’s better to have something black and white than badly painted.

Rose:

Rose’s style was inspired by comics and cartoons, specially short strip comics that work on a “gag-a-day” format. Resemblance to reality is not vital for him, so people won’t have different shapes of head or eyes in his art. He works with a kind of “formula” where every human follows the same basic structure and differences are added later on. He thinks the facial expressions are very important on his drawings, so his characters have big eyes and mouths most of the time.

Anyways...

I usually don't like to talk about drawing "well" or not when it comes to art, because it's actually pretty relative... Although, yes, sometimes there are people who can't really draw much. Giovanni is one of them, for example, and N is also not great. That aside, we have some with more skills like Ghetsis and Maxie, and some with average skills... Each one has their own style! Here are the examples of their art! ^^

Also! I'm really glad to hear that you like my art that much! I wanted to take this content other places than Tumblr, but Instagram and Twitter didn't really have the same charm, specially because of how photo albums work there. I'm still thinking about what to do, then maybe you'll be able to see the comics on another media! ^^

#dbamchalloween2020

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ladala99 · 3 years ago

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Pokemon Presents - Reactions

Well, my predictions were completely wrong, aside from small details like Contests were in the presentation and they showed characters present in Legends: Arceus.

But for my reactions:

Mobile Games I really don't care about these. I might pick Masters back up but I got super burnt out about gacha games a while ago and it still doesn't sound fun to pick anything like that back up. But maybe. I mean, N's my favorite character and he looks stunning in that outfit.

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl In order of me remembering: - Following Pokemon - Different outfits for the players - Expanded Underground (although Secret Bases seem less "let's make a pretty room" and more "let's place some objects that unlock stuff") - The Underground seems to be where Platinum Expansion Pokemon are, by the narrator's commentary while Houndoom was onscreen. So general encounters may be identical to Diamond and Pearl - Munchlax in places other than Honey Trees - Contests seem a bit nerfed. The Dance round looks more visually interesting, but the actual gameplay looks simplified. No mention of Dressup round. Appeal round we didn't see enough to tell if it's the same complexity or not. No mention of Poffins - Ball Seals are replaced with Stickers. You still get to customize them for special effects, which is neat. - I like how they call Cynthia "mysterious" as if everyone doesn't already know who she is.

Overall, I'm still unsure what to think of these. My main reservations (always-on Exp Share and whether Pokemon from Unova and later are usable at all) are still unanswered. It also doesn't help that some of my favorite features (Contests and Secret Bases) seem to be simplified. Following Pokemon and Customization are neat, but those don't make this a must-buy.

Legends: Arceus In order of me remembering: - Regional Formes/Evolutions! - Riding Pokemon - are they yours or is it like Alola? They seem to all be Regional Formes from what we've been shown - Doesn't seem to be truly open-world. You have missions in specific places. Maybe you can explore further but there's no nearby healing place until later? - "Galaxy Team" huh? And that guy woman looks a lot like Cyrus. So are we the badguys or did Cyrus just steal the name/iconography of these guys, believing that since he's the descendant of the leader he has the right to do so? Because there's no way they're not related - The weird bloomy lighting I disliked in the first trailer looks more intended now. I still don't like it that much but at least it doesn't look unfinished anymore - Wild Pokemon act differently, require different strategies to catch, and attack you. This is basically what I hoped for! - They're experimenting with how battles work with the strong/agile style thing

Overall, I am more convinced than before that I want this. My only real reservation is that I don't like the lighting/shading, and that's a minor thing. They're really experimenting with the formula, and in this case I welcome it.

HOME Compatibility At the end they mentioned Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl, and Legends: Arceus would be compatible with HOME with no further explanation. I'm still wondering how compatible, although confirmation that Legends: Arceus will be compatible is very welcome.

Competitive Stays in Sword/Shield

I take it that means Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are not going to be fully compatible with Sword and Shield. Which was almost a given, but it does mean I'll need to get Sword at some point for futureproofing reasons (trade evolutions).

After seeing the Websites:

Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl: - Dressup round is gone. Contest stats are a thing, though, so Poffins may be in it still. - The Underground section has a screenshot with a Sentret and a Numel. So Pokemon outside of Sinnoh dex confirmed, but only ones that were compatible with the originals so far. - Manaphy's the early adoption bonus for BDSP - Statues are the only decoration mentioned for Secret Bases. While I used to only decorate with Pokemon plush, I like being more creative now so that's a bit of a letdown - Underground (and the Union Room) is online! - Game Corner is replaced by the clothes shop - Like all recent games, you have a few skin/hair/eye color choices for the protagonists. Unknown if you can further tweak them later or if you only have the choices shown. (Given LGPE doesn't let you, I'm guessing no)

Legends: Arceus: - Trading exists in Legends: Arceus. It's a Nintendo Switch Online feature. Does that mean trade evolutions are still trade evolutions? :( - Opposite gender player character is a rival or something - Time of day and weather change Pokemon spawns/behavior - Not truly open-world - you gain access to new areas when your rank increases - Seems completing the Pokedex is the main task, and it involves not only catching but also raising and observing each Pokemon - Pokemon joins Animal Crossing in 'games you wouldn't expect to have a crafting system but now they do' - Early adoption bonus is clothes. So you can change your outfit, even though they haven't shown anything else about that

None of these things changed my opinions from above, but are good clarifications.

#pokemon #pokemon presents #pokemon diamond and pearl #pokemon legends arceus

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bestworstcase · 4 years ago

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👗💜🌈

ask game

👗- Favorite character outfit?

answered here but i will add that of the core cast i think i am most fond of lance’s look. it’s a crime that he didn’t get any wardrobe changes because gosh he deserved them, but on the flip side at least he got the most aesthetically pleasing outfit of the four mains

💜- Characters you think should have interacted at all or more?

SURPRISING NO ONE i desperately wanted to see zhan tiri interact with her disciples, like, at all. it’s one of those on the one hand i’m disappointed it didn’t happen, on the other at least i have carte blanche to headcanon whatever i please without worrying about whether it’s ~canon compliant~ or not. but gosh can u imagine. we coulda had it all

i’m also extremely sad we never got to see sugracha and tromus working together kjsfjkdfsjklfdsj i want! demon shenanigans

i would also have liked to see more 1-on-1 interaction between lance and cass, and lance and rapunzel. i think lance and cass could be a brotp for the ages and it would be really nice to see rapunzel and lance get to bond some more vs just sort of mutually being friendly via their relationships with eugene.

i think “varian and the members of the brotherhood should have interacted more” is something like, 95% of the fandom agrees with haha but it’s true. even if they didn’t have the DK connection and the potential for varian to learn more about his heritage through them, they’re all such quirky personalities that it would be a blast to see them working together or just hanging out.

more time between lance and the girls? i love that he adopted kiera and catalina in the end but at the same time, there’s way more screen time with them and eugene/raps than there is with them and lance and that makes me :( because i would have liked to see more family bonding between them and lance.

and more arianna interacting with...anyone, including rapunzel. i love way of the willow and i loved that glimpse it gave us into the family dynamics on ari’s side of the family and i just... i wish we got more of that sort of thing!

and i know cass spends like the majority of her screen time in s3 interacting with zhan tiri but i wanted... more... gkjdjfks honestly not even for character development purposes! i just liked the energy they had, whether they were working together or at odds! their interactions were far and away the highlight of s3 and whenever they weren’t around i was kinda like... man i wonder what they’re up to now. lmao

🌈- Best moment in the entire series?

ok you know the part at the end of race to the spire when rapunzel is like :( and trying to pick herself up after bungling the mind trap / calliope rescue and zhan tiri rolls in to gloat at her? I LOVE THAT MOMENT

s3 was sort of funny in that i started writing zhan tiri prior to s3 beginning to air, developed a characterization for her that ended up being... rather significantly different from canon, but there’s still these little moments of congruity between the two that just. made me so happy whenever they came up in canon and that little gloat session at the end of RTTS is one of them. it’s so petty and dramatic and zhan tiri even does the thing she does in bitter snow where she doesn’t quite introduce herself; she just describes herself and goads rapunzel into saying her name. which is a little thing, but it’s such a nasty petty little power move and i’m so happy that it showed up in canon. and the speech itself is just [chef’s kiss] mwah.

RTTS is my favorite s3 episode in general because it’s just raw unfiltered chaos and zhan tiri has so much FUN in it and frankly i think she deserves that! and i deserve that, because it entertains me! but god her monologue at the end makes me feral. i love gremlin baby

other standout moments include:

- zhan tiri mocking cass for her terrible/ineffective redemption attempt in once a handmaiden

- “oh, cassandra, have you learnt nothing from me? no matter how formidable an obstacle may appear, everything has a weakness... and i have a gift for finding it!” and then she puLLS OUT A VIAL OF ACID SHE PICKED UP IN THE DEMANITUS CHAMBER HOURS AGO AND MELTS A HOLE IN THE FLOOR VDSALJBSDF

- gay baby jail in general. good job cass ⭐ You Tried

- the bit in painter’s block where sugracha sort of melts back down into her human form to talk to rapunzel? i just love the fluidity of that animation, and the little pop of sparks that come off her when the transformation finishes. is good

- “SORRY YA BLEW IT BUT IT WASN’T MY FAULT!” god bless

- crossing the line in its entirety

- gremlin baby actually getting the drops. pouncing on cassandra’s head like an enraged feral cat; the face journey when she picks up the sundrop; the spin. big dumb monster!zhan tiri wishes she had even half that energy,

- the QFAD and LAF exposition/lore sequences. that simplified animation style is sooooo good and also. zhan tiri :D

- jennifer veal’s voice acting in general my god she did not have to go as hard as she did but she did and i’m so grateful. it’s not a singular moment but the gradual shift from saccharine and childlike in RR to lower and more of a frustrated or scolding edge in like beginnings/BVA to the harsher/rougher and not at all childlike sound after she gets out... god. thank u for your service ms veal

#rta #purplespacefairy #''best moment'' I CAN'T PICK JUST ONE

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smerehardrolin · 3 years ago

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10 Best Sports Games For People Who Hate Sports

One common gaming stereotype is that it's antithetical to sports. Not so with these sports games!

It takes a special kind of sports game to appeal to players that aren't normally interested in sports. Some key features are accessibility, fast-paced gameplay, and simplification of many qualities of the sport in question. Features that exaggerate for the sake of spectacle or humor tend to be well-received additions.

In certain ways, sports games that manage to appeal to non-sports fans barely feel like sports games at all. Without all the usual technicalities in play, they can become more enjoyable when reduced to their essential aspects. It helps when the games have a bright and colorful aesthetic too.

10 Mario Golf Makes The Sport More Exciting By Adding Fantastical Elements

Ever since way back in 1991 with NES Open Tournament Golf, Mario, his friends, and his enemies have enjoyed playing golf together. The Mario Golf series began with the original game on the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Its popularity has remained steady, with each new entry in the series offering something new for players.

Having a familiar cast of characters and simplified controls appeal to non-golfers. The games give players visual information about how far shots will go with each club, the trajectory and lay of the course, and the strength being put into each shot. Some Mario Golf games even have RPG-like elements, or special powerups, making play more unique and exciting.

9 Ice Hockey For The NES Is Still One Of The Best Hockey Games

Just because a game is old, doesn't make it bad. Ice Hockey for the NES is a good example of that concept. Its controls are fairly straightforward, its visuals are bright and colorful, and the music is catchy and memorable. The gameplay itself is simple, but very satisfying too. There's a sense of challenge to it, but it's the fun kind that makes most players want to keep trying.

https://lasc.instructure.com/eportfolios/405/Home/ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_2021_HD__F_I_L_M_E_COMPLETO_DUBLADO_ONLINE__Grtis_Legendado_em_Portugus

https://lasc.instructure.com/eportfolios/406/Home/AssistirPT_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_2021_Filme_Completo_HDDublado

https://aps1.instructure.com/eportfolios/1274/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_filme_completo_2021__filme_completo_dublado_grtis

https://lasc.instructure.com/eportfolios/407/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_filme_completo_2021__Filme_Completo_Dublado_Em_Portugues

https://aps1.instructure.com/eportfolios/1275/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9__Filme_2021_HD__Filme_Completo_em_Portuguese

https://lasc.instructure.com/eportfolios/408/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_filme_completo_2021__filme_completo_dublado_grtis

https://aps1.instructure.com/eportfolios/1276/Home/VERHD_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_2021__Filme_Completo_em_portuguese

https://pdx.instructure.com/eportfolios/1071/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_filme_completo_2021__filme_completo_dublado_grtis

https://aps1.instructure.com/eportfolios/1277/Home/Vem_ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_2021_filme_completo_em_portuguese

https://lasc.instructure.com/eportfolios/409/Home/ASSISTIR_Velocidade_Furiosa_9_2021_HD__F_I_L_M_E_COMPLETO_DUBLADO_ONLINE__Grtis_Legendado_em_Portugus

https://capolista681902302.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/10-best-sports-games-for-people-who-hate-sports/

All these aspects work out in its favor. Despite the game's age, it remains a very accessible experience. It's easy to pick up and play a few matches and walk away from it feeling satisfied, even decades after its creation.

8 NFL Blitz Bends The Rules In Ways Only A Video Game Can

NFL Blitz is a franchise that started in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It takes the usual rules of American Football and bends them into a fast-paced arcade experience. Player movement is very quick, and tackles have much more flourish and pack a punch. Often, the animations look like something from a wrestling match rather than actual football.

Players have a turbo gauge and can use it for temporary boosts of speed. Hits can be late, even very late, and there is no punishment. The commentary is loose and humorous. The playbook is reduced to just a handful of options for simplicity and speed. All of it combines to make a very exciting version of football that would not be safe in reality but works great for an accessible and fun video game.

7 Wave Race Has Satisfying Watercraft Racing With Easy Controls

Nintendo's Wave Race series of games is an excellent example of accessible controls in a racing game. Players proceed through a racecourse in a slalom-like fashion, with buoys placed throughout the course. Depending on the color of the buoy and using the large arrow signs as indicators, players either have to go around the left or the right side of each one. Missing buoys lowers overall watercraft speed and missing too many forces a restart of the race.

Wave Race 64 on the Nintendo 64 can be played with just one button to accelerate the watercraft and the control stick to steer. This simplicity in approach makes for a fantastic game that anyone can pick up and play.

6 Arms Is A Radical Mix Of Boxing And Fighting Games Arms is a mix of 1 vs. 1 arena fighting games and boxing. Motion controls help bring some accessibility to the experience, but this isn't necessarily the simplest game to play. It is a wildly different approach to boxing, with each character having spring-like stretchable arms to use for their offensive moves.

Arms plays like a boxing game from opposite ends of a large arena rather than having to get up close and personal. Defense is possible as well with a guarding motion similar to how it would be done in traditional boxing. Add in the game's more fantastical elements like ninjas and mechs, and you have a unique and exciting take on the sport of boxing.

5 NBA Jam Is Fanciful Basketball With Turbo Jumps And Flaming Powerups

NBA Jam started out as an arcade game, and it shows. It has simplified controls, flashy dunks, and features like turbo boosts and powerups to make the game more exciting. If players make three shots in a row the announcer remarks: "He's on fire!" The ball changes to a smoking fireball and shots have an increased chance of making it in the basket.

In NBA Jam Tournament Edition especially, more powerups and fantastical elements were added to make the gameplay really stand out. Hot spots appear on courts, and if a player's character makes a shot while standing there, they get increased points. Powerups spread around the court can increase turbo gauge duration, shot accuracy, movement speed, and more.

4 Wii Sports Utilizes Motion Controls Across A Variety Of Accessible Sports Games

The Wii Sports franchise brings accessibility through motion controls to a wide variety of different sports games. Being able to play just by moving one's arms to mimic the real sport adds a fresh new feel to the experience. Even people who never play video games or the sports in question may enjoy it.

While not all of the games are created equal, there are 5 offerings in the original Wii Sports game and a whopping 12 in its sequel, Wii Sports Resort. Chances are good even if players aren't fond of every one of them, there are probably one or two that they can enjoy playing repeatedly.

3 Punch-Out!! Simplifies Boxing Gameplay And Has Memorable Characters

Another game series that started in the arcades, the Punch-Out!! franchise's most popular entry is on the NES. The controls are fairly simple, though precise timing with button presses is required to make progress. The bright and colorful visuals and memorable characters add charm to the experience.

Punch-Out!! on Wii is a revamp of the series, harkening back to the NES era. It adds motion controls, even supporting the Wii Balance Board accessory in addition to the Wii Remote + Nunchuck controller setup. For players who prefer something more traditional, NES-style controls are also an option using the Wii Remote turned sideways. The variety of control options make the experience approachable for many.

2 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Makes Skateboarding Appealing For Many

Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games were at the height of its popularity. Many players who have never even considered the sport of skateboarding took interest in the games. Backed by a then-contemporary soundtrack, its trick-chaining gameplay often resonates with players.

A recent modern remake introduces the skateboarding games to a whole new generation of gamers. Players can easily perform tricks that would be risky or downright dangerous in real life. The controls take some getting used to, but they follow similar patterns using the different face buttons, so it becomes second nature after acclimating to them.

1 Rocket League Is A Fantastic Blend Of Racing And Soccer

Rocket League mixes two completely unrelated sports genres: racing and soccer. It sounds bizarre, but it's a fantastic experience. Players take control of a vehicle on a team and drive around a huge soccer field. The goal is to bash their car into the giant ball and knock it into the opposing team's net, just like with soccer.

The racing controls are approachable and easy to pick up. Games can be played against computer opponents or real people, and there are rankings leaderboards and tournaments for those who enjoy competition. There are even other game modes to play that mimic different sports, like basketball and ice hockey.

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kaialone · 4 years ago

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Spirit Tracks Translation Comparison: Zelda’s Body Taken

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover the cutscenes in which Princess Zelda’s body ends up being stolen.

You can also watch these cutscenes for yourself in English and Japanese. If you want, you can check out the EU English version, too.

For the comparison, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

Cirokuni = Alfonzo, Kimaroki = Cole, Dego = Byrne

After Link’s Train Derails:

Alfonzo:

姫さまあれを！

Your Highness, look over there!

Your Highness! Look over there!

Zelda:

…なんということでしょ一刻も早くあの塔に行かないと

...My goodness, we have to reach that tower as soon as possible.

What's happening to the Tower of Spirits?

Cole:

…困りますねぇ姫さま ��忍びで散歩などされては…

...Now this just will not do, Your Highness. Going out for a little secret stroll like that...

Out for a leisurely stroll, Your Highness?

Tsk, tsk, tsk! You know that's not allowed!

Zelda:

大臣?

Minister?

Allowed by who? You, Chancellor Cole?

Cole:

ガキはおとなしく城で王様ごっこしてりゃいいんだよ!!

You brat should've just kept playing pretend-monarch at the castle like a good girl!!

Who else? Who do you think is really in charge?

Zelda, Link and Alfonzo:

…

Cole:

我が名はキマロキ…

長い間人間の振りをしていたので肩がこりましたよ

My name is Kimaroki...

Pretending to be human for so long has taken its toll on me. (1)

My goodness, pretending to be human is exhausting.

Who knew that chancellor was just another word...

for royal babysitter?!

Cole:

まあもう少し大臣でいるつもりだったのですが…

予定を早めました

Well, I had actually intended to keep being the minister for a while longer, but...

We ended up going ahead of schedule.

I had meant to keep up the ruse a bit longer.

Cole:

姫さまが悪いのですよ ? 余計なことをかぎ回るから

The fault is yours, Your Highness, is it not? You and your unnecessary meddling.

But you pushed me to this, Princess.

Cole:

しかもそんな小僧や機関士なんぞに手を借りてまで…

Moreover, you even went as far as to call a mere boy and an engineer to your aid...

Bringing in the boy and the engineer didn't help either.

Zelda:

あなたは… 一体?

What in the world... are you...? (2)

What are you talking about?

Cole:

おぞましき神の遺物…

The relic of that repugnant god...

I'm talking about your infernal meddling!

Cole:

忌まわしい結界が消えうせ今時は満ちた…

Now that this repulsive barrier is vanishing, the time is at hand...

But now that those vile tracks are disappearing,

the time is finally at hand!

Cole:

あと必要なのは…

All we need now is...

Cole:

あなたの… カラダ

Your... b o d y. (3)

A little help--hee hee--from you, Your Highness!

Alfonzo:

何者か知らねえが姫さまに仇なすってんなら…

I dunno who you are, but if you harm Her Highness in any way...

I don't know who these two are, Your Highness.

But with your permission...

Alfonzo:

このシロクニ容赦はしねえぜ？

I, Cirokuni, won't hold anything back against ya.

I'd be happy to teach them some manners.

Cole:

かっかっか… 人間ふぜいが

Ka ka ka... Typical human.

Nyee hee hee hee hee! How gallant! How brave!

How incredibly foolhardy!

Alfonzo:

なめんなよこちとら先々代から王家にお仕えしてんだ

Don't you underestimate me! My folks've been serving the royal family for generations, you know! (4)

Enough out of you!

My family has served the royal house for generations!

Cole:

!… ディーゴ様…

...! Master Dego...

Melodrama bores me.

Byrne, would you kindly dispose of this fool?

Byrne:

この男の言うとおりだ… かなり腕に覚えがあるようだな

It's like this man said... He certainly seems confident in his own strength.

This man speaks the truth, Cole.

His movements are not those of an amateur.

Byrne:

だが私の敵ではない…

But, he's no match for me...

But he is only human.

Alfonzo:

…なあんなって言っただろ？

...I told you not to underestimate me, didn't I?

I told you, I will defend the princess at any cost!

Byrne:

こちらも言ったはずだ我が敵ではないと

And I told you. You are no match for me.

And I told you. You're only human.

Cole:

キキキッさすがディーゴ様！お強に！イカス！

Keekeekee, I expected no less from you, Master Dego! Such strength! Tubular!

Nyee hee hee hee hee!

Oh, Byrne, you do know how to put on a show!

Byrne:

しょせんは人の技だ

あの程度で私の前に立つことはかなわぬ…

That's just the extent of human skill.

One can't hope to face me with something that meager...

It was hardly a fair fight, Cole.

Zelda:

あ… リンク…

Ah... Link...

Help me, Link!

Zelda:

こ来ないでください… それ以上近づかないで…

P-please stay away... Do not come any closer...

No! Don't come any closer!

Cole:

…まあ良いでしょう必要なのは王女の体…

...Ah well, that should be alright. We just need the body of the princess...

Good work, Byrne.

That takes care of the first step of our plan.

Cole:

さあディーゴ様参りましょうくっくっく…

Now, let us depart, Master Dego. Ku ku ku...

Nyee hee hee hee hee! Our work is done here.

Come now, Byrne!

Translation Notes:

What I adapted as “taken its toll on me” more literally translates to “made my shoulder stiff”, but from what I've seen, this is a generic phrase characters sometimes say when they’re exhausted? In any case, I adapted it the way I did because I thought it sounded a bit better. The English version likely did the same thing.

In this line by Zelda it’s not exactly clear if she is just supposed to be saying “What in the world are you...?” or if she means to say “What in the world are you talking about?” but doesn’t finish the line completely. The response from Cole makes the latter seem plausible though, which is probably why the English version went with that.

In Japanese, the word for body is 体/karada, but in this line here Cole drags it out for dramatic effect, saying it syllable by syllable as “ka ra da”, which goes along with the animation in this scene.

Alfonzo uses a somewhat informal word to refer to his family, so I translated it as “my folks” here, in case you were unsure what he meant.

Comparisons & Thoughts:

In this part, we are formally introduced to our main antagonists, as well as the central conflict of the game, which gives us a lot to go over.

Some of the changes to Cole in particular also become more apparent here, so I will start off with those.

A strange difference between versions is when and how we first learn Cole’s name.

In the English version, he was named right when he was introduced, but in Japanese it’s only at this point in the game right here that his name is revealed.

And the way he introduces himself with “My name is Kimaroki...” raises some questions. He’s using a rather dramatic way to say it in Japanese, too.

Since he was the minister, it seems unlikely that Zelda wasn’t aware of what his name was, so why would he need to say it like that?

Perhaps he was only introducing himself to Link and Alfonzo? But that's also kinda unlikely, since he doesn’t really address those two directly, he mostly speaks to Zelda.

Alternatively, this could imply he was actually working at the castle under a fake name, so this moment is him revealing his true name for the first time.

I think this would make the most sense from a story perspective, given how this dialogue flows.

But, we aren’t really given a clear indication of either option, so it’s also possible this was just a result of clunky writing.

Given this, I can understand why the English version changed it up so that Cole was already referred to by name at the castle.

Since it’s not really clear what, if anything, the Japanese version was trying to imply here, it's easier to go with something else that simplifies the issue.

As a fan, I am still interested in the potential implications of the Japanese version here, assuming it was intentional, but the change makes perfect sense from a localization perspective.

In the Japanese version, Cole says “You brat should’ve just kept playing pretend-monarch at the castle like a good girl!!”, when he reveals his true nature.

This calls back to what has been established back at the castle, namely Zelda being more of a figurehead ruler, with seemingly only Cole holding any real authority.

But it also shows us more about how Cole regards Zelda in this version. Whenever he addresses her, he scolds and berates her like one would a misbehaving child.

The English version does include these bits of information, with lines like “Who else? Who do you think is really in charge?“ and “Who knew that chancellor was just another word…for royal babysitter?!”

But I personally feel the Japanese version does it a bit better. It just feels slightly more natural, whereas the English version has Cole spell it out a bit too directly.

It’s not much of a difference right now, but the English version eventually drifts further from the Japanese version’s portrayal of how Cole talks to Zelda.

At this point, we also see more of how Cole’s general characterization has been tweaked in English.

Like I mentioned when he was first introduced, Cole has a formal and technically polite manner of speaking in the Japanese version, even if he is still condescending, of course.

But, that’s only half of it.

He actually has this character quirk where he flip-flops between that formal speaking style, and a very informal style, to the point of being almost crude sometimes.

And it’s not just him being insulting, he genuinely goes to talking more like a goon, no hint of class, not even ironic.

It’s different from the way Alfonzo switches up his speaking style, too. It’s a fairly normal thing to speak differently depending on the social context like Alfonzo does.

I’ve seen Cole’s flip-flopping being compared to the Happy Mask Salesman, who has some memorable outbursts in Majora’s Mask.

But with the Happy Mask Salesman, those are always caused by anger, whereas with Cole they don’t happen every time he’s angry, and can also happen when he’s delighted.

In any case, there is this clearly deliberate duality to Cole’s personality in the Japanese version.

In the English version, this aspect was dropped.

Here, Cole’s speaking style doesn’t really change, it’s always technically formal, but in a smug, more openly insulting manner.

It’s almost like a merging of Cole’s formal and informal sides from the Japanese version, slightly leaning more towards formal.

Compared to other characters, Cole’s lines will also see more rewrites from this point on, usually to make him seem more pompous, toning down how goony he can get during his informal moments.

Which characterization you prefer is up to you, of course, but it's arguably one of the bigger changes when it comes to the characters.

Though this change with Cole here is probably related to the next one I want to talk about.

Something that might have caught your eye is Cole referring to Byrne as “Master Dego” in Japanese.

Specifically, he uses the very respectful suffix 様/-sama when addressing him.

And yes, in the Japanese version, Byrne is presented to us as the leader of this scheme the two of them have going on, while Cole is his underling.

This is reflected by their interactions as well.

You could read them as equals, since Byrne doesn’t give out any orders, but Cole definitely addresses Byrne like one would a superior.

Of course, Cole doesn’t exactly come off as trustworthy, but still.

In English, this dynamic between them is completely turned around, so Cole is now implied to be directly in charge of this duo, with Byrne being an underling who does his bidding.

I’m guessing this is also part of the reason why Cole’s characterization was altered, or perhaps the other way around?

Since Cole is in charge now, he’s portrayed as less goofy, so to speak.

Most of Cole’s dialogue addressing Byrne in this cutscene has also been changed to reflect this change in their dynamic.

In Japanese, Cole acts subservient and flattering to Byrne, to an almost silly degree.

In English, Cole will flatter Byrne too, but in a way like a master would flatter an amusing servant of theirs.

I probably don’t need to go over each line between Cole and Byrne in detail.

But as a quick example, Cole’s reaction to Byrne actually stepping forward is completely different between the versions.

In Japanese, Cole says “…! Master Dego…”

Here, Cole is surprised about Byrne stepping forward like that, and seems a bit nervous, almost like he’s worried Byrne is getting impatient, or something similar.

If you pay attention, you’ll see his animation reflects the tone of this line, too.

But in English, he instead says “Melodrama bores me. Byrne, would you kindly dispose of this fool?”

In this version, Cole continues to be condescending, and dismissively summons Byrne to take care of the situation for him.

This also means that in the English version, Byrne presumably wouldn’t have acted on his own, while in the Japanese version he fought Alfonzo because he himself wanted to.

The latter is more consistent with how we see him act later.

It’s kinda interesting though that Byrne’s own dialogue remains mostly the same, despite these changes.

The way the dynamic between Byrne and Cole was changed between versions really does affect Cole more than it does Byrne. It’s really more how Cole plays off of him, and the implications of that, which are different.

There isn’t much of a direct difference to how Byrne treats Cole in Japanese compared to English. The implications are more those between the lines - Byrne working with a guy who acts more like a bootlicker to him in Japanese, while in English he works with a guy who treats him like a lackey.

One could speculate that the Japanese version of Byrne would have been too prideful to work with someone like the English version of Cole, but we have no way of knowing for sure.

Alright, so in my translation notes I already mentioned that during the line “Your… b o d y”, Cole is slowly dragging out the word 体/karada in Japanese, which goes along with how the camera zooms in on his face.

The English version adapted this with “A little help--hee hee--from you, Your Highness!“, which the last part is dragged out as “Your-High-ness”.

This is a clever adaptation, especially since you need to think outside the box a little here. A literal translation like mine wouldn’t work at all in-game.

Still, maybe they could have gone with something shorter like “your-bo-dy”?

Minor difference, but when Alfonzo steps forward, he directly talks to Cole and Byrne in the Japanese version, but in the English version he is talking about them to Zelda.

This could have been an oversight, or a deliberate change to give Zelda more authority in this part.

If it’s the latter, I’m not sure if it works, since it’s not like Zelda responds anyway, so it doesn’t feel any less like she’s being talked over.

I want to talk about the line “But, he’s no match for me“, because here we got a prominent example of the EU English version actually getting it wrong by being too literal.

In actual Japanese, Byrne says “だが私の敵ではない”/“Daga watashi no teki dewanai“, which literally translates to “But, he’s not my enemy”, and the EU version went with that.

However, that was a bad call on their part.

Because “He’s not my enemy” is a Japanese figure of speech which means “He’s no match for me”. As in, not being strong enough to even be considered an enemy.

Therefore it should not be translated literally like that.

The US English version adapts this line as “But he is only human”.

This makes use of information Byrne originally gives after the battle in Japanese: “That’s just the extent of human skill. One can’t hope to face me with something that meager…”

In turn, that bit is then streamlined in English as: “It was hardly a fair fight, Cole.“

I am impressed by the way they spread around the information they needed to convey in a manner that allowed them to use less text here.

But it also changes up the flow of this scene, as in the Japanese version, we don’t get the confirmation that Byrne is not human until after Alfonzo is beaten by him.

It’s an easy guess of course, but there is that initial bit of tension.

As Alfonzo and Byrne fight, Alfonzo’s dialogue is changed from “ …I told you not to underestimate me, didn’t I?“ to “I told you, I will defend the princess at any cost!”, kinda shifting the topic of this conversation, which was originally about pitting their strength against each other.

This is notable because Alfonzo has been built up for the audience as being one of the strongest people in the land.

And without confirmation that Byrne is not human, there is this illusion of hope that maybe Alfonzo can match his strength.

The power of regular humans compared to beings of demonic or divine nature is one of the themes of this story, so this fight is part of the audience’s more personal introduction to it.

I do think the English version does a good job of setting this theme up in its own right, it’s just done differently.

And lastly, Cole’s comment after Zelda’s spirit is expelled from her body and flies towards the castle differs between versions:

…Ah well, that should be alright. We just need the body of the princess…

Good work, Byrne.

That takes care of the first step of our plan.

In the Japanese version, Cole acknowledges the fact that he just saw Zelda’s spirit fly away, but brushes it off as being unimportant, openly dismissing Zelda as a possible threat at this point.

But in the English version, that part isn’t mentioned.

I feel this was probably an oversight due to lack of context.

In the actual cutscene, we see Cole watching very closely as Zelda’s spirit emerges and flies away, so his comment follows up on that animation in Japanese.

But translators are rarely able to see the visuals of what they are translating, as they are usually only given the text itself.

And if that was the case here, the translators would have only gotten to see what amounts to Cole saying something along the lines of “That’s alright, we just need the body of the princess”, without any additional context.

If we assume this is what happened, it makes sense that they adapted the line the way they did in the final version.

I don’t know how the translation process was handled in Spirit Tracks, but I do know that with many game translations, you will usually have a first translator doing a more literal, rough translation draft, and then a second translator who rewrites that raw translation into the final text.

And if that second translator is unable to check the Japanese version to clear up any potential confusion, you can end up with even more deviations from the original quite easily.

This is just some possible examples of how various factors can affect text translations in ways the translators themselves have little control over.

Overall, this batch of scenes is interesting when it comes to the localization.

They’re rather faithful for the most part, outside of general slight differences I mentioned previously, like Alfonzo’s speaking style. The dialogue is mostly the same, though.

The biggest difference is really Cole’s characterization and dialogue, particularly in regards to his interactions with other characters.

Especially the flipping of his dynamic with Byrne is a notable change to the story from a character perspective.

But this part is already pretty long, so I won’t dwell on it more than that for now. Feel free to check out the next one!

< Previous Part | Start | Next Part >

#legend of zelda #the legend of zelda #spirit tracks #tloz #the legend of zelda spirit tracks #legend of zelda translations #spirit tracks translations #my translations #spirit tracks comparisons

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kraztaco · 5 years ago

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Smash Bros Move Set for Quote from Cave Story

Been a while since I posted here, huh?

Anyhoo, I made a Smash move set for Quote for a contest a while back, and I figured I’d share it here.

It’s long, so I’ll make a cut here.

Quote is a zoner with Curly Brace as an echo. The two characters being echo fighters rather than alternate costumes is more of a Peach/Daisy type of thing rather than any difference between the two play styles. Quote is a stoic, silent, protagonist, while Curly is far more outgoing and expressive. This would be reflected in their animations, idle poses, and one different move. Curly is playable in Cave Story, and plays identically to Quote after all. Any time Curly Brace has a different quality, I’ll be sure to say so.

Along with Cave Story, both Quote and Curly Brace appear in the fighting game Blade Strangers. While I will be using some moves from that game, Cave Story will be the primary source for the move set.

I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but some things are unavoidable due to the nature of the set. Quote’s name isn’t revealed until late in the game, so that is a bit of a spoiler but, going from his guest appearances, I doubt they care much anymore.

I couldn’t come up with anything else for the logo. I considered the island, but it would look too much like Castlevania, and a star would just be KoF.

Stats:

Height - Below Average (most crossover media portrays them as on the shorter side) Weight - Average (Can’t be a lightweight, being a robot and all) Walk Speed - Average Run Speed - Average Jump Height - High Fall Speed - Slow Air Speed - High Jumps - 2 (Normal) No additional movement options Takes damage while in water.

The Gimmick -

In Cave Story, each weapon in the player’s inventory has EXP. Leveling up your weapon will change its effect slightly, making it more effective (there are exceptions, but that’s not too important here). Enemies drop EXP, and gathering it levels up the weapon the player is currently holding. Conversely, taking damage will decrease the EXP of the weapon the player is holding.

Things will be simplified a little here. In Smash, Quote will have one EXP meter which applies to his entire move set.

Quote’s EXP will be displayed above his portrait.

Quote will start each stock at Level 1 with 0 EXP.

Every time a fighter takes 10% of damage from Quote (cumulative), they will drop a bit of EXP, which is a yellow triangle.

If a fighter takes 20% of damage or more in a single hit, they will instead drop a larger EXP triangle.

The triangles will disappear after 5 seconds, and no fighters other than the Quote player whose damage spawned them can interact with them.

If Quote touches the EXP, it will be collected.

If Quote is damaged, he will lose some EXP, if he has any. (being at 0 EXP is punishment enough)

Gathering enough EXP will level Quote up to Level 2, then Level 3. Gathering more EXP at Level 3, will give Quote Level MAX. Just like in Cave Story, this is a small buffer that lets you take some damage without dropping to Level 2.

Level 1 - Level 2 - About 10 EXP

Level 2 - Level 3 - About 20 additional EXP

Level 3 - MAX - About 5 additional EXP

(these numbers can easily be adjusted)

Leveling up will make Quote’s moves deal more knockback, but no additional %. They will also alter Quote’s special moves.

TL:DR - Quote is playing Coin Smash.

Quote’s moves in general are long range without much knockback or KO power. He will need to level up if he wants to reliably take stocks, meaning he has no choice but to get close to enemies and become more vulnerable when EXP is on the stage.

A Moves-

Quote’s Jab is a 3 hit combo taken from Curly’s Blade Strangers move set. Since Quote doing this little butt bounce would be ridiculous, his Jab 3 is a simple punch, taken from his own Blade Strangers move set.

The knockback angle on each Jab 3 would be slightly different, with Quote sending at more of an upwards angle than Curly.

Dash Attack is taken from Blade Strangers, having them both perform Curly’s elbow dash.

Tilts are pretty simple. Drew little pictures for them. F tilt is the only one that has any real reference to the game, being a down angled version of Quote’s most basic attack.

Conversely, F Smash is his most powerful attack; The Spur. It’s a beam that has a bit of startup, and travels further the more the attack is charged.

Down Smash is a spin from the Whimsical Star. It’s a multihit that hits on both sides then launches.

Up Smash is a Missile Launcher shot upwards, which falls to the ground. You know, like Snake’s.

Neutral Air is a two hit kick.

Forward air is a downward angles shot. It’s more powerful than the forward tilt.

Up Air is two shots fired upwards. Drifting during it means the shots will land in different spots.

Back air drags the for up with it and launches them. I considered it going down, but that would be kinda OP.

Down Air is your standard delayed spike with the Missile Launcher.

Grabs-

Grab and Pummel

Forward Throw

Up Throw (has the highest knockback of them, so it would be a kill throw earliest.)

Down Throw

Back Throw

Specials... oh boy, this is where things get complicated.

Neutral Special - Fireball

Quote fires a shot from the Fireball gun. It could have some start up lag, but that would be up to balance. Its a basic projectile that can just be thrown out to take space, like Mario’s Fireball. It will bounce on the ground at a similar arc to Ridley’s fire. At level 1, the ball will move at a moderate speed, and there can only be one active at a time.

At Level 2, the fireball increases in speed, and there can be two active at a time.

Same for Level 3, except the fireballs are now blue and slightly larger. They travel faster, and there can be 3 active at once.

The speed increase isn’t that much, but Level 3 fireballs can be tricky to avoid. Also, this is less fireballs than you’re allowed in the actual game (2/3/4 opposed to 3/4/5), but balance.

Side Special - Blade

Spoiler territory here.

Quote throws King’s sword, goes spinning a good distance in front of him. Quote has plenty of Blade Strangers moves that use the sword which could work very well for his moves, but I wanted to capture the main game more. In the main game, he just chucks the dang thing. It also seemingly comes back to him once its done doing what it does.

The blade flies about 2 character lengths in the direction Quote throws it, then disappears. It doesn’t go very fast, but it has good launching power and not much start lag. There can only be 1 active Blade at a time, regardless of its level.

At Level 2, the Blade moves faster, but not as far, about half of the Level 1.

At Level 3, the attack becomes truly dangerous. Instead of throwing the sword, the spirit of King himself will emerge and fly forwards. If he comes into contact with anyone, he will stop, and become a multihit cutting attack.

The Blade is a powerful projectile, but is fairly easy to read, and can’t be spammed since it sticks around for a bit. It can always be reflected, even as King’s spirit.

Down Special - Bubbline

There were some choices here, but I went with the Bubbline, mainly because it changes the most between levels (and the Nemesis gets weaker with levels, defeating the purpose of this gimmick).

At Level 1, holding down special will have Quote fire a pathetic stream of bubbles forwards. They deal damage, but don’t flinch. Quote can move and jump around as long as he holds the special button, but the attack will end if any other attacks are used. This is a pretty bad move, but it comes out very fast, and the bubbles linger, so it might be good to throw out from time to time.

At Level 2, more bubbles are fired at once, making the attack deal flinching damage directly in front of Quote. The attack still deals poor shield damage, and can’t hold foes in place.

At Level 3, the bubbles will now circle around Quote for as long as the special button is held. They can block weak attacks, and damage opponents who touch them. When the special button is released, the bubbles will fly off in whichever direction is being held at the time.

The Bubbline is a useful tool for defense, but it’s sub-par damage and shield pressure mean it isn’t a get out of jail free card.

Up Special - Booster v2.0

Holding Up special lets Quote use his upgraded jetpack. It has a fuel meter, and will continue to go until the special button is released, or the fuel runs out. Quote can have a second meter by his portrait, displaying his fuel.

Using the move does not put Quote into special fall.

While holding the special button, Quote can change directions by holding up, left, right, and even straight down.

The jetpack is great for mobility, but isn’t too fast at Level 1. Each level increases the jetpack’s speed and improves its fuel consumption.

Fuel works just like R.O.B., refiling when on the ground.

Final Smash - Super Missile Launcher

Both Quote and Curly have cinematic Final Smashes which trigger in different ways. For Quote, Balrog drops down from slightly above Quote. His hitbox starts in front of, and above Quote, and falls to his level. Anyone who Balrog hits is dragged in. Kind of the opposite of how Banjo and Kazzoie’s Final Smash works. Quote rides on Balrogs head, and barrages the caught foes with the Super Missile Launcher, with Balrog’s signature HUZZAH! text box displayed at the bottom of the screen.

For Curly, her four Migima friends, the Colons, pop up in front of her, and anyone hit by them are dragged in. Their hitbox is on the shorter side, but it goes a fair bit in front of her.

The cinematic has the Migima beat the caught foes with sticks in a cartoonish manner, they then leave as Curly readies her own Super Missile Launcher and blasts the foes.

I didn’t have many ideas for the Final Smash. Sure, the Spur is the most powerful weapon in the game, but I figured the Super Missile Launcher has more oomph. Curly’s take is inspired by her super in Blade Strangers. Also, I just like Balrog.

And colors for both of them.

And that’s all, hope you enjoyed it. I don’t see Quote getting in realistically, which was why I was comfortable making this move set. Honestly, I’d be ecstatic if he got a Mii Gunner costume with the level of love Sans got.

Making this set got me worried I was making another Belmont. In the end, I realized, I made something much worse.

#quote #cave story #curly brace #super smash bros #Smash Bros #smash bros ultimate #move set #moveset #fanmade #long post

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fancyfade · 5 years ago

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Everyone is doing this meme... so why not me too?

The difference is I will be selfish and do ALL my four main force using OCs. Extremely long post coming up, I won't be offended if you don't read it.

it will be under the cut.

Anyway

Force Sense (generic ability to connect with the Force)

Harin-So:

★★★★☆

Harin-So is by far my most connect-y with the Force OC. Zie can for the most part listen to the Force, but hates feeling like zie has to, though zie gets more confident in it the further zir plot goes on. Zie probably starts at 3 stars and end at 4 stars.

★★★☆☆

Early Messilandre thinks that the Force is just something you do to make your lightsabers better. Her main powers are in body-enhancement, like making yourself stronger and more acrobatic-y and fall resistant. She starts 2 stars and moves up to 3 stars though, as her perspective widens after Rise of the Emperor and she heals on Tython with Master Surro.

★★★☆☆

Lycaea is also three stars. Like a lot of darkside users, Lycaea views the Force as something she should impose her will on. You don't listen to what the Force is trying to tell you, it'd be like listening to what your toaster is trying to tell you (okay a bit simplified, but you get it – she views it as a tool). She connects to the Force through her anger and hatred.

★★☆☆☆

Nehari. Kind of ironic that the one who is most powerful in terms of raw power (due to her ghost power-up) is the shittiest at connecting to the Force, but she is. Nehari is similar to Lycaea. She wants to use the Force as a tool. But she doesn't have as strong emotions as Lycaea does when channeling them. Nehari's a bit too fatalistic. She has a bitter streak but sometimes will wonder if there's any point to it.

Force Empathy (ability to know what other people are feeling. Easier with Force sensitives than civilians)

★★★☆☆

All of my OCs are terrible and knowing what other people are feeling. Harin-So is the highest at 3 stars, as aforementioned zir ability to listen to the force, but sometimes other people are just a complete mystery to zir.

★★☆☆☆

Messilandre is 2. She's very independent and can kind of blitz forward without paying attention to how other people feeling at all at first, which makes her kind of insensitive.

★★☆☆☆

Lycaea is also 2 stars, for the same reason on independence.

☆☆☆☆☆

Nehari is the shittiest at it. For the most part, she doesn't care what anyone except the people who have somehow wormed their way into her heart feel.

Telepathy (what it says on the tin. Easier with Force sensitives than civilians)

★★★★☆

Harin-So is the best at telepathy, but doesn't use it unless zie needs to, zie prefers to rely on zir brain than reading people's minds.

★☆☆☆☆

If she tried really hard, Messilandre post Rise of Emperor can probably read people's minds. But not beforehand. It's emotion-reading to an extreme that she can't do.

☆☆☆☆☆

Neither Nehari nor Lycaea can read people's minds at all.

Thought Shield (What it says on the tin. It blocks both of the above skills.)

★★★★★

Having grown up in the Empire, Lycaea is the best at thought shield. She had to to survive. She has a killer poker face (well force sense, but you get it).

★★★☆☆

Harin-So is decent at thought-shield. Zie has a lot of Jedi discipline, but rarely feels the need to use thought-shield, so zie doesn't have the most practice.

★★☆☆☆

Nehari is good at thought shield considering how little time she's spent practicing the Corce, but that still doesn't mean she's great at it. As with Lycaea, it is a depressing necessity.

★☆☆☆☆-★★★☆☆

Early game Messilandre has a frustratingly hard time hiding her emotions. She gets better at it as she grows up, and post Rise of Empire probably gets to around 2 or 3 stars.

Mind Trick (Ability to influence people’s thoughts. You know, the “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”)

★★★★☆

Hey it's one Nehari's actually best at! Nehari is both powerful enough and comfortable enough enforcing her will on other people.

★★☆☆☆

Harin-So will use Mind Trick as a last resort. Zie isn't super comfortable with it, but if zie thinks someone has crucial information and it's the only way to retrieve it, zie prioritizes zir mission (and in zir mind, the greater good).

★☆☆☆☆

Lycaea likely has never tried mind-trick, but would be able to dominate someone's mind if she tried. She isn't comfortable using it though.

☆☆☆☆☆

Messilandre would not be able to do it at all

Force Stealth (Ability to mask your presence from other Force-sensitives)

★★★★★

Harin-So is the master at Force stealth. Zie can make zirself completely invisible (because zie's a shadow class) and disguise zir sense in the Force.

★★★★☆

Messilandre is pretty good for not being a shadow. She can become invisible for brief periods of time (IIRC that's a sentinel ability) and mask her sense from most force sensitives.

★★★☆☆

Lycaea is here. She can mask her sense from most force sensitives but not her visual appearance.

★☆☆☆☆

Nehari lacks the subtlety required for this. Subtlety is not her strong suit.

Farsight (the ability to evoke visions of events happening in other places)

★☆☆☆☆

Messilandre might be able to do this once or twice, but never regularly.

No one else has any stars in this. Harin-So, despite normally being able to listen to the Force, can't do this. It comes across as too similar to the visions zie was supposed to receive as a failed Mystic, and zie learned to count on intelligence and skill for finding out what's going on far away or in the future instead of the Force long ago.

Force Meld (A technique where in battle a number of Force users join their minds together through the Force, drawing strength from each other)

★★☆☆☆

Harin-So would be able to do this when meditating intensely.

★☆☆☆☆

Messilandre might be able to do it, but not well and always with more difficulty. (it would HAVE to be post Rise of the Emperor Messilandre, not pre).

☆☆☆☆☆

And of course none of the Sith can do it. Opening yourself? To other people? For the common good?!

Precognition (Passive ability used in combat to have premonitions of where danger is coming from)

★★★★★

In combat, Messilandre is 5 stars. She is annoyingly quick and able to adapt to changing situations.

★★★★☆

Harin-So is 4 stars. Better than the average Jedi, but not as good as Messilandre. Zie is still pretty perceptive to danger, though.

★★★★☆

Lycaea is also 4 stars. It doesn't look like she's necessarily sensing danger a ton when she fights, because she appears not to hop around as much as Messilandre, but she just has a different style of defence.

★★★☆☆

Nehari is average at this. She lets her massive amounts of Force power carry her far more than she should.

Instinctive Astrogation (Ability that allows you to find a route through hyperspace without the help of a navigation computer or astromech droid)

★☆☆☆☆

Nehari is the only one who can even attempt this, because of her long hours pirating and flying in her ship beforehand and getting used to poorly traveled lanes.

Comprehend Speech (Ability to understand the spoken language of any sentient, though it does not necessarily mean you can speak said language)

★★★★☆

Harin-So and Messilandre are 4 stars, pretty good but the 100 percent best at it.

★★★☆☆

Lycaea and Nehari are 3 stars and honestly they would be lower if I felt like they didn't need it for some parts in game (how does Lycaea understand broonmark? I highly doubt she learned Talzi. Same for Nehari and Khem – though she may have learned like the basics of sith in the academy she has barely had any time to study the language)

Animal Friendship (what it says on the tin)

All of my primary Force using OCs are SHIT at this so have a surprise Tai (my smuggler who flunked out of the Sith academy). He is the ONLY one who is good at this.

★★★★★

Tai is 5 stars.

Plant surge (Ability to channel life energy into plants)

No one can do this. RIP plants

Force Body (Ability to enhance your body, allowing you to jump mad heights, move super fast, survive otherwise mortal blows, etc.)

★★★★★

Messilandre and Lycaea are understandably tied for best. They each have their own strengths, Messilandre is quicker and can make herself stronger, but Lycaea can make herself temporarily lightsaber and blaster proof (like Satele Shan in the trailer).

★★★☆☆

Harin-So is actually fairly average at this. Zie was a decent combatant before becoming a Jedi and physically never needed the Force for it, and zie isn't the most jump-y either

★★☆☆☆

Nehari is actually a fairly frail Force user, compared to the others.

Force Healing (what it says on the tin)

★★★★☆

Harin-So is a fairly good healer, as is required of Jedi consular plot, but not the best. Messilandre is actually up here too, because the body is one of the areas Messilandre is confident at, even when it's not hers.

★★★★★

Lycaea is five stars ONLY IF IT IS APPLIED TO HERSELF. She can heal herself from great injuries, but for anyone else she's like... 0 stars. Maybe 1 after she leaves the Sith.

★☆☆☆☆

Nehari can heal on a technicality (her class allows some heal moves) but she's not great at it. Or good at all. But she can stop you from dying!

Telekinesis (what it says on the tin)

★★★★★

Lycaea and Nehari are great at telekinesis, especially in Force Crush or choke capacities. They are offensive. Harin-So is also 5 stars, but uses more like... rock manipulation or shields.

★★★★☆

Messilandre is pretty good at it. Much better than average but not as good as the other 3.

Force Lightning

★★★★★

Did you say force lightning? Nehari is the bomb at force lightning! It's half of her offensive moves! (even though she's madness class, not lightning class, they still way over represent lightning abilities in it).

★★★☆☆

Lycaea has strong Force lightning, but doesn't use it much.

★☆☆☆☆

Harin-So would be able to manifest Force lightning, but not very well.

☆☆☆☆☆

And Messilandre can't manifest it at all.

Pyrokinesis (Ability to burn stuff)

No one can do this because I didn't even know it was a thing.

Addition by me (not original meme)

Body Corruption (making other people sick or weak with the Force)

★★★★★

This is a lot of Nehari's fighting style, and of course she's great at it.

No one else of my OCs can do it successfully tho

#swtor #me lovely little ocs #messilandre melina #lycaea archeliou #nehari racin #harin so #taimen kor #as a cameo lol #swtor meme #Force

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tonotbelionized · 5 years ago

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Volume 7, Episode One: The Greatest Kingdom

So, I’m gonna be doing something that I haven’t done before and make some reviews on each episode of Volume 7. After watching this first episode, I have many feelings towards it.

Under the Read More because spoilers!

I’m gonna start positive on this review before getting into the negatives, because there were actually a lot I liked about this episode.

First, the colours and animation. CRWBY have been getting better and better with their backgrounds and colour schemes throughout the years and it really shows. The industrial aspect of Mantle is sold with the dusk colours, purple and reds, and the neon lights distinguish it from the more rural and asian inspired Mistral architecture.

On top of that, the first episode does a great job in setting out just what it’s like to live in Mantle. The people seem disenfranchised, you have people drunk in street, and the racism is so ingrained that people just behave that way in the open with no fear of reprimand. With the billboards showing Ironwood telling these strict rules, and soldiers roaming the streets with droids, it very much paints Mantle in a dystopian light.

On the characters, I’m love that Ruby and Weiss immediately jump to protecting Blake from the drunk guy. With what little interactions we get for Ladybug, I’m glad that we’re getting something, and that Weiss has grown so much from her Volume 1 attitude to the Faunus to now. Great character development.

Also Maria is pretty funny again. She annoyed me at the end of Volume 6 with her antics, but it’s nice that she’s climbed back up my list again. I think it was a good idea that she’s not arrested with the others, and I hope that she takes a backseat this volume simply because she’s not needed anymore. The team are in Atlas, Ruby’s learned her silver eyes, and Maria isn’t good in a fight. She’s ran her course.

The new character we got in Pietro Polendina, Penny’s father. All I have to say about him is:

I. Love. Him. On top of his good design with elements connecting to Penny, he’s another disability representation with his wheelchair, and his chair has such a cool design. It looks exactly what a smart and innovative creator would make. And he’s voiced by Dave Fennoy. One of my favourite characters in all media is Lee Everett from The Walking Dead Game, and they got his voice actor to play Pietro.

That’s a big plus for me.

The fight we got in the episode was very well done. The animators knocked it out of the park with the fight choreography, especially with Qrow and his scythe. The one negative I have is that it feels a bit slow and static in some places, especially with Weiss, but that’s just a problem with her since now her fighting style is stand in one place and use your glyphs. The inter-team fighting is great, I love Weiss and Ren working together, and Nora using Jaune’s shield to launch herself is such a nice nod to her move with Pyrrha back in Volume 1.

Last thing that I like is Penny’s design. It’s really cute, reminds me of those Victorian dolls, and her new hair is so pretty, if a bit janky in some parts. I know that they obviously took inspiration from Dishwasher’s design of Penny, which makes sense considering he’s working for RT now.

And this is where I start getting negative, because there are some parts that I really don’t like.

#1 thing that has made me angry is Penny returning. I hate it. I’ve already made a post months ago about why they shouldn’t bring Penny back, so I’m not gonna repeat myself here, but the simplified explanation is:

It spits in the face of her arc. Penny was struggling with the fact that she’s not a real girl because she’s a robot, with Ruby helping her by saying that, because she has a soul, she is real. This has always been a driving point for Penny. When she died, it drove Ruby and Pyrrha to grief, but it served a purpose because that was when things were getting serious. Ruby just lost her best friend, and Pyrrha won like she always did, but this time her victory came at a price.

Pyrrha killed someone. She was devastated, Ruby was heartbroken, but now all this was for nothing because apparently Penny can just be rebuilt! Who cares that your friend is dead and you watched it before your eyes? She’s back now so it’s all okay!

Real people don’t come back from the dead. Pyrrha is not coming back, everyone who died is not coming back, the whole point that Salem never understood in her backstory is that people can’t come back from the dead. But Penny can, because she’s a robot so of course we can just put her back together. It’s reads off as Penny being a cheap plot point. Ruby could’ve gone through an arc of accepting that her friend was gone and finally talk to someone who knew Penny, but no, because we gotta have powerpuff girl back.

Also Team WBY’s comments are dumb. You guys didn’t know Penny, you only interacted with her once for the entire three volumes she was alive, why are you acting like you’re friends with her? I hate it so much it’s unreal.

Moving on from Penny, beside her, Ruby, Yang and Qrow, the new outfits are bad. The excess use of belts are not only annoying, but they’re clunky and disrupt the flow of the outfit. They make them too busy. The lack of textures makes everything look the same, the overall designs are seriously inappropriate for both Atlas weather and the fact that they’re meant to be fighting.

Weiss’ ballerina style fighting is going to be seriously impeded by her long and heavy looking dress. Blake is meant to be a stealth fighter who uses acrobatics, leather catsuits chafe and rub you up in all the wrong ways, and the fact that white is overcoming the black is annoying. Her colour is black, put her in it.

On top of colours, Nora’s is just way too bright. It’s colours from her original outfits but there’s just too much saturated blue and pink, it’s way too much. Her old outfit was perfect with the pink taking center stage and the blue being way darker in her jacket. The fact that it mimics the trans flag colours is funny though, as a trans man myself.

But a final note on the designs is the hairstyles. Jaune’s doesn’t look as bad as I thought if he’s moving, so that’s a plus, but Weiss and Blake’s are just ugh. I had wild hair like Blake’s when I had it longer, and even though I cut it now, it’s still curly. Why is Blake’s hair so lifeless? It looks thin, flat and greasy, and the added problem with it is that her face looks wierd now.

The whole braid on Weiss is way too thick as well, and just isn’t rendered nicely.

Moving on, we have the new characters introduced. Clover and his team, Robyn, Pietro, on top of the previous characters returning, it’s a big problem. The cast is already too bloated, we don’t need Clover and his team adding more and taking away screen time that the other characters need. Why even introduce him when you could easily use the wide cast you already have? Bring Neon and Flynt back, have them be older students than Team RWBY in the Vytal Festival and then they graduated the whole year since the Fall of Beacon.

It woulda added more to the scene, or just have it be guards who disappear after taking the team in. Just stop adding new characters, I literally don’t care about them. And the fact that the heavily Irish-inspired character doesn’t have an Irish accent is bad and I disapprove as an Irish person.

Finally, the OP. I like the actual animation of it, it definitely feels different to the other OPs in the past volumes, but it’s pretty good! I just don’t like the song. Not only can I not understand what Casey is saying, which is something not unique to this song I know, but it doesn’t feel like a RWBY song. All the other openings are rock with ripping guitars and wild energy.

This just doesn’t have that. It feels like a generic anime song to me, and that’s sad because the music has always been that unchanging praise for RWBY from me.

And that’s it for this episode! Overall, I’d actually really enjoyed it! It was fast, great fighting, good characters and interpersonal moments, and the fact that Dave Fennoy is here just sold it. I’d give my soul to that man.

Now if CRWBY has him call Penny “sweet pea”, I will literally cry.

So in conclusion, I’d give the episode a 8/10. Needs improvement, but amazing regardless.

#rwby #rwby volume 7 spoilers #rwby spoilers #crtq #episode review

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rwbyconversations · 6 years ago

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DmC Devil May Cry- Six Years Later

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay about Dante from the Devil May Cry series and his character development across his six mainline appearances. Doing it got me thinking about the franchise and got me to get around to finishing the DMC games I own in my possession- Devil May Cry 4, which has a great combat system but is let down by having far too few environments and missions, and DmC Devil May Cry, the black sheep of the franchise and one of the most controversial reboots of a franchise. Finishing DmC gave me a perspective that only finishing something yourself can provide.

I’d owned a copy of the original launch version of DmC but found it dreary and sold it less than a quarter of the way into the game, before grabbing its Definitive Edition during a Christmas sale on really a glorified whim- sort of a “Let’s see how bad it can really get” vibe, but then I put it down and didn’t come back to it for three months because other games and other projects took prominence. But about a week ago I was bored and decided to knock the entire game out in one day due to a lack of anything better to do, and after a few days to mull on it, I decided to write an essay about DmC and how this oddball entry into an otherwise mostly beloved franchise has aged.

1) Pre-development

Devil May Cry 4 was a success for Capcom, selling about two million units in its first month of release when Capcom were hoping for 1.8 million by the end of the fiscal year. On a critical level too it walked away satisfied, with Metacritic rating both the PS3 and 360 releases of the game with 84/100, praising the fluid gameplay and intricate combat system, but knocking points off for a very repetitive campaign which saw Dante literally backtracking through Nero’s stages. But Capcom were hoping for more from DMC4. This was the debut of the franchise on not just the Seventh Generation of Consoles, but the franchise’s Microsoft debut, and the hopes were that DMC4 would be a smash success potentially on par with the numbers Western games like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3 had made the year prior. 2.1 million was still good, but Capcom wanted more.

The mid-2000s marked a turn in Japanese game development, with the increased costs of HD modelling and Japan’s home market becoming more apathetic about buying games (some Japanese games reported only 10% of their total sales from Japan itself), while the West began booming. With the 7th Generation, gaming went mainstream for many people in the West- as an example of this, I’m sure we all know at least one person who went to college after 2007 and can share stories of nights spent playing Halo over XBox Live. The mass success of the God of War franchise in the West also told Capcom that this gold mine of a market was ready and willing to enjoy some classic hack and slash action gaming.

The decrease in local sales gave Capcom the idea that they needed to begin outsourcing their properties to the West so they could appeal to a larger market, which led to such projects as Lost Planet, Dead Rising and Bionic Commando being made by Western studios. This was largely the brainchild of Keiji Inafune, nowadays known for the utter disaster of the Mighty Number 9 Kickstarter game. Inafune had a mindset of “doing the same thing is going to get us the same results (if we’re lucky). Let’s try something from a different perspective.” Unfortunately for Inafune, his different perspective failed to set the world on fire, with only Dead Rising proving to be a success and making it into the 8th console generation when handled by Capcom’s new Vancouver team, and even that series has suffered some fatal blows due to the poor launch of Dead Rising 4.

Even though Inafune cut ties with Capcom in 2010 (a month after DmC was announced), his idea of Westernizing several dormant properties was still in effect and Devil May Cry became one of the franchises that was outsourced. British company Ninja Theory, known for their games Heavenly Sword and Enslaved Odyssey to the West, were the company Capcom gave a phone call to. While known nowadays more for Hellblade, back in 2010 Ninja Theory were known for two very simply action games that relied more on their stories and usage of motion capture and facial captures to fill in the gaps. What didn’t help was that in the interim period between 4 and the reboot, DMC1 director Hideki Kamiya had since formed Platinum Studios and proven themselves to the West with Bayonetta, a game hailed by many as a spiritual successor to the DMC franchise.

Capcom had faith in Ninja Theory to translate DMC’s vision to the west, and as such at TGS 2010, the first trailer for DmC Devil May Cry was released and... well the rest is history.

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The fanbase’s hackles were immediately raised and knives were out within seconds of the launch trailer dropping. A series that had become known for its over the top cutscenes and wry sense of cheesy humor had been Westernized into another gritty, bleak product. Dante went from the goofball who quoted Shakespeare to a gravelly voiced methhead who smoked. And for a series that prized itself on action and combos, that no proper gameplay was shown at the reveal was a worrying sign. The reveal trailer tainted the whole game right out of the gate; alongside Ninja Theory’s less than stellar track record with action games the fanbase was ready to hate this game on principle if it followed what had been done to Capcom’s other franchises that went on a foreign exchange trip.

Being fair to Ninja Theory though, several extenuating factors must be addressed. Among them is series director Hideaki Itsuno’s admission that he didn’t want to do Devil May Cry 5 yet after having worked on three straight games for the series out of concern that he would suffer from burnout. He wanted to go off and finally make a passion project he had been dreaming of for years in Dragon’s Dogma, which launched in 2012. Additionally, Ninja Theory did try and make a more faithful rendition of Dante, one who even kept the white hair and vibrantly red jacket, but these initial designs were shot down by Capcom, who told them to “go crazy.” In fact one of the people who rejected the designs that were close to classic Dante was Itsuno himself, who saw little point in Ninja Theory just copying Dante’s look if the whole point of the project was a new approach on Devil May Cry.

But the fanbase at the time didn’t know that Capcom were actively encouraging Ninja Theory to experiment, and what didn’t help was the quotes coming from the game’s director, Tameen Antoniades, which would prove to be a series of disasters that plagued DmC’s PR campaign. Tameen, put bluntly, wasn’t ready for the backlash to the game and its visual style and shot back at the fans. When asked by Venturebeat how he felt about the fan reaction to the TGS trailer, Tameen “took a drag of his cigarette and without blinking or pausing to exhale the smoke from his mouth, said: ‘I don’t care.’” People began to mockingly compare Tameen to Dante as seen in the trailer, which caused some fans to question if Tameen had used his own likeness as the basis for Dante.

And unfortunately for Capcom’s PR team, he didn’t stop there, mocking Dante’s original design in a later interview when saying that what was and wasn’t cool had changed in the years since DMC1: “If Dante, dressed as he was, walked into any bar outside of Tokyo, he’d get laughed out.”

I’d like to remind you that Tameen as director of the project likely signed off om some of these alternate concepts for Dante and keep that in mind whenever Tameen or a Ninja Theory staff member talk about A) what is and isn’t cool B) Original Dante’s character design.

The fanbase didn’t exactly make a good case for themselves after the game’s announcement though, with Ninja Theory reporting that they received death threats from some more hardcore fans. It still doesn’t make Tameen admitting he didn’t care if his game sold “a thousand or two million copies” look stellar, nor his derisive attitude towards the original series and its depiction of women, mocking Lady and Trish as “prostitutes with guns.” Ironically, despite being insistent that he’d made the game he wanted to play, Ninja Theory did dial back on methhead Dante, redesigning his model to be more beefy and replacing his voice actor, alongside redoing some scenes to make Dante crack more jokes.

On a technical level, hype was low from the hardcore fans due to simplified combat and, more egregiously, the game being locked to 30FPS on launch unless bought on PC which offered an upcapped framerate. For those unaware, all prior Devil May Cry games had run at 60FPS, including DMC4 which had come out some years earlier on the same console. 60FPS was a requirement by many pro players due to how it made animations silky smooth, so DmC being capped to 30 was an immediate red flag. Suffice to say, the fandom was ready for DmC to be a disaster at launch and began prepping their funeral pyres.

2) Gameplay

Early reviews for DmC were quite positive, with the game earning a Metacritic rating about even with DMC4, but the fanbase were far less forgiving. The 30FPS framerate lock outside of the PC port (which was admittedly one of the more polished ports of 2013, as covered by the late and great John Bain) had tainted the well pre-release and then came back with a vengeance to haunt the console launch in 2013. Without a lock on system, movement felt sluggish compared to the other games, hurting the flow of combat.

Difficulty was a major criticism of the game from long-term fans, particularly pertaining to how the style rank system rewarded damage done over pulling off varied combos. Whereas in the older games the player was punished for repeating moves over and over, DmC’s style ranks were so easy to abuse that so long as the combo was never broken due to taking damage, achieving a SSS rank was child’s play. Aquila’s Tornado and Arbiter’s Trinity Smash were especially broken in this regard.

Being fair to the game, it did introduce several mechanics that were later incorporated into DMC 5 in 2019- enemies get a subtitle during their first appearance (taken from Bayonetta), weapons getting a slight glint when the player pauses to let them know they can launch a pause combo attack (also taken from Bayonetta) and a dynamic soundtrack that racketed up the higher your style rank got, alongside the killing blow at the end of a fight getting a cinematic camera angle. These are all features that were genuine improvements over Devil May Cry 4, and while Bayonetta likely paved the way for most of these improvements, DmC still served as a test-bed to experiment on their integration with Devil May Cry as a whole.

The level design was also a huge step up from the earlier games. Dante’s whip functions made platforming far more varied that it had been in prior games, and these new traversal mechanics allowed for the level designers to stretch their legs. DmC arguably has, even in light of 5, some of the best platforming in the entire franchise, and a gorgeous color palette in some areas when Dante is in Limbo. Gothic European cities were cited as a huge influence by the team, Barcelona in particular, and it shows whenever Dante is outside as he gets dragged into Limbo. The idea of the city itself being a weapon of Mundus that tries to kill Dante is inspired, with obvious homages to Inception, and allows for the designers to make environments that at the drop of a hat can try to kill Dante. The team did their best to bring their unique aesthetic mixture of grunge and color to life, and even goes through a full color script. The downside is that exploration is rarely allowed beyond side paths that lead to collectables, meaning the player is on rails for much of the game.

DmC’s largest gameplay addition is in Dante’s Devil Arms. As he progesses through the game, Dante absorbs angelic and demon weapons from the bosses, gaining Angel Weapons that serve as fast crowd control, and Demon Weapons that are single-target but heavily damaging. Both of these sets of weapons are accessed by holding a trigger button during combat, allowing Dante to fluidly switch between weapons as the situation calls for it. One of my personal favorite applications of this tactic was to use Rebellion’s opening two slices to lead into Arbiter’s Trinity Smash as it was easier for me to read the above-mentioned glint tell on Rebellion. Alongside Dante’s firearms, it gives the player eight different weapons to switch between in combat, allowing for some unique combo potential, albeit potential that isn’t as deep as the original games. Dante losing his styles from DMC3 and 4 alongside the unique moves from those styles like Royal Guarding and jump cancelling was a particularly heavy blow for the hardcore fans, to say nothing of the revulsion generated by the color-coded enemies who could only be hurt by specific weapons.

Another heavy blow for the fans was the handling of Dante’s Devil Trigger, which gives Dante his traditional color palette, slows time to a crawl and gave Dante an attack and speed boost, alongside automatically sending most enemies flying into the air upon activation. The air-boosted hurt the usage of Devil Trigger in the long run, as it reduced whatever encounter it was activated in a stomp for the player- even Dante’s basic combos could tear through enemy health with DT active. Devil Trigger in the original games was a mixture of emergency button and power boost, but here it just serves as an “I win” button on whatever enemy irks you today.

And yet for all that can be said of DmC at launch, it could have been worse. Despite being busy with Dragon’s Dogma, Itsuno still served as an executive producer of the reboot and often gave Ninja Theory advice on areas to improve the gameplay mechanically. One such story goes that Itsuno saw a design for an enemy with blades in its arms. Upon asking what purpose the blades served in combat and being told they had none, Itsuno ordered that the blades be removed. Capcom producer Motohide Eshiro later noted in a Famitsu interview that Ninja Theory had to be reigned in on several occasions in spite of the “go crazy” approach given to them in early design, in order to avoid the game receiving a rating that could potentially stonewall it being sold in physical stores in Japan.

Ultimately the gameplay failed to impress for DmC in 2013, which reflected poorly in its sales. Capcom initially hoped for DmC to break 2 million units like DMC4 had back in 2008, but then quietly lowered the projected sales to 1.2 million. Rumors circulate to this day that Capcom were so desperate to boost the game’s poor sales that when DmC was part of the PS+ membership offer in January 2014, Capcom counted PS+ downloads as part of the sales for the game. In a financial report for 2013, while not speaking of DmC by name, Capcom spoke of a "delayed response to the expanding digital contents market," "insufficient coordination between the marketing and the game development divisions in overseas markets," and a "decline in quality due to excessive outsourcing." Capcom would only report in June 2018, a full five and a half years post-launch, that DmC had met the original sale goals of 2.3 million units. But it wasn’t the gameplay that ultimately turned off the fans and prevented Capcom’s sales pitches from becoming reality. No, that matter fell to the story.

3) Story

DmC’s story isn’t so much a straw that breaks the camel’s back, as it is an anvil. Regardless of your opinions on the gameplay, the story is where DmC comes to a grinding, screeching halt and fails to capture any of the essence of what made Dante and characters from the original setting interesting or even cool. Before we dive into the narrative itself, we need to discuss what started the controversy back in 2010 at TGS, and that’s Dante.

Dante is simply not likable in the reboot. While the original Dante was a goofball and a bit of a jackass, he always backed up his actions with flashy deeds and was ultimately a good-hearted man. In this setting, Ninja Theory try so hard to make Dante cool and badass that it loops around and makes him look like a petulant child’s version of what’s cool- a hard-drinking loner who has threesomes with strippers in his trailer by the amusement park. Dante in DMC4 threw Shakespeare quotes out at Agnus, while Dante in DmC screams “Fuck you!” at demons and writes profanity on clipboards. Nothing about Dante carries that effortless swagger that the original had. His smug, IDGAF attitude tries to make him cool and more fitting for the gritty tone but it’s so different from the original Dante that the subsequent tonal clash makes Dante a much more poorly written character. Again, this is something that must be put at Capcom’s feet and not Ninja Theory, as they were the ones telling the developers to westernize Dante, but the end product stills fails to match up with what came before.

While Dante does have an arc over the game that sees him develop concern for the people close to him and humanity as a whole, the characterization and framing regularly undermines his arc. Dante is written as the archetype of “Jerk with a heart of gold,” but as a direct violation of a core rule of this character- that they must be fun to view and see their antics as an audience member- Dante fails to meet this tenant and it makes his obnoxious, smug and asshole moments taint the character and make it difficult to care for his struggles. Rather than see Dante’s dark backstory that puts his behavior into context and makes you understand why he’s so sullen and bitter, the audience just sees Dante being a smug jackass, and one who takes himself too seriously to be fun like mainline Dante. The one time I buy that Dante genuinely cares for other people is at the Order hideout raid when he stays in order to guide Kat through being arrested, and stays with her as the SWAT officers shoot her and beat her unconscious. His facial expression sells his anguish at seeing Kat be brutalized like this and it contains the best acting from Tim Phillips.

Ironically, despite how hated Methhead Dante was, I do have to wonder what the game would have been like had the developers stuck to their guns and committed to their original idea for the character- someone with psychosis who has no clue if he’s actually seeing and killing demons or if he’s just a mass murdering lunatic. It might have been even worse or it could have made the game work. It’s probably for the best we don’t know what Methhead Dante would have been like, but part of me can’t help but wonder.

It’s important to understand all these problems with Dante, since as the protagonist, the story partly rests on his shoulders. While older Dante had the charisma in most of his appearances to be able to sell the weight of a story moment when he stopped fooling around, reboot Dante’s heavy angst focus means that feat is harder for him to accomplish, and it doesn’t help that his supporting cast are less than ideal.

I mentioned earlier Tameen’s “prostitutes with guns” remark aimed at the DMC female cast, and I think it’s amazing how little self-awareness he must have had to say that when his own story’s approach to female characters is frankly insulting. DmC has one of the most sexist stories I’ve yet seen in any media, and it’s galling when compared to the mainline entries, DMC3 in particular. Kat, Eva and Lillith are all plot devices, Eva being long-dead and existing just to give Dante motivation to kill Mundus, Lillith being the stereotypical sexy villainess who gets reduced to her womb, while Kat is basically the subject of a snuff film with how she gets brutalized by the plot and the camera makes sure you see all of her injuries in extensive detail. And this all goes without saying how the second act revolves around the two female characters in the narrative being traded like Pokemon cards only for Vergil to perform the now-infamous sniper rifle abortion.

It doesn’t matter what joke you’re making in your head right now, it’s still not half as tasteless as this actual scene

Speaking of Vergil, his depiction in DmC is genuinely upsetting and while I’ve seen people argue for Dante’s arc in the reboot, Vergil is almost universally despised and seen as a black mark on the prime version of Vergil. Putting aside the sniper rifle abortion, Vergil is just not written well and he never gives the impression of being powerful. Vergil’s opening scene has him say point-blank to Dante “I’m powerless to stop you,” words that should never flow out of the mouth of anyone claiming to be Vergil. It doesn’t get much better as throughout the game, Vergil hands all the major physical parts of the plan against Mundus to Dante to preserve the secret of Vergil’s Nephilim heritage. The problem with this is that Vergil subsequently never gets to show his stuff in a fight until the very end of the game when he fights Dante and suddenly has a lot of his moveset from the old series transplanted. It makes moments like Vergil hiding behind a barrier at the hands of one demon that Dante has to kill undermine his character and make him look like a coward, to say nothing of his awkward heel-turn which just shows up for the sake of having a final boss. Compared to the depiction of Dante and Vergil’s rivalry in Devil May Cry 3, which was amazing on a thematic and character level, DmC falls flat on its own shoelaces. And the character Vergil gains through his DLC is just further unpleasantness as he rips off Bleach and the Hollow Ichigo fight wholesale. Vergil is just a mistake in this game, and alongside Dante is the cardinal sin in its writing.

Mundus represents a lot of the larger problems with DmC’s story, in particular its on-the-nose message and symbolism. The game is so focused on making sure you get the point that “Hey, we’ve seen this niche film called They Live and it’s the sickest shit also FUCK THE MAN, CAPITALISM SUCKS, WAKE UP SHEEPLE,” that Mundus doesn’t really get to be a proper villain. He’s just this stereotypical slimy corporation guy, with one slight hint to his character in that he’s obsessed with continuing his lineage. The problem is that his lack of writing makes him boring and one-note, a cliche rule-the-world dictator that’s been done to death. He’s not even a major threat in gameplay, his boss fight just being a giant blob monster. It’s visually drab and has the most boring boss fight in the game. Mundus may not have had much personality or screentime in the original DMC1, but he made up for it with a powerful presence that made him feel dangerous. This Mundus is just a bald guy in a suit. The only fear he puts in me is the fear that I’ll drop my controller when I fall asleep.

DmC’s story is a mess. While structurally well-put together, its dialogue is often weak and cringeworthy, most of the villains have no real staying power beyond Barbas, Vergil is a waste of the character name, Kat and Lillith are plot devices and Dante is just a jackass. It’s a cast of unlikable people being unlikable jerks to each other and when the story it’s making me sick with how repulsive it can be with its tone deaf themes and sexism, it’s putting me to sleep with how fucking dull it is.

4) Definitive Edition

The post launch years of DmC weren’t kind to Ninja Theory or Capcom. Capcom retracted their Western development philosophy after a string of flops resulted from it, while Ninja Theory became the whipping boy of the action community for several years post-launch, which led to the now infamous GDC presentation where Dante was photoshopped onto scenes from Brokeback Mountain by someone who had no hand in designing Dante’s old costumes:

Revenge, evidently, is a dish best served cold

What didn’t help them was that 2013 also saw the launch of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Platinum’s take on the Metal Gear franchise that quickly gained the adoration of the action fanbase while leaving DmC in the dust. According to Dante’s voice actor Reuben Landgon, Itsuno apparently was extremely close to retiring after DmC, and Capcom had to offer him the chance to finally make DMC5 before he decided to not quit (though this story has been disputed by Capcom USA producer Matt Walker).

Capcom, like many publishers, has taken Sony and Microsoft both refusing to have backwards compatibility in the PS4 and Xbox One as an excuse to re-release many of their old titles on the new console platforms, often slapping a new coat of paint onto the game and potentially adding achievement/trophy support and calling it a day. In the case of DmC though, the team went above and beyond in solving many of the mechanical problems that players had complained about in the following two years.

Released in March 2015, DmC Definitive Edition was handled more by Japanese side of the Capcom team, and they set to work on making DmC more mechanically in-line in with the mainline entries, as covered by this extensive changelog. 60FPS was an advertised feature on the box, Dante got multiple costumes that let players play with white hair, the style rank system was retooled to punish repetition more harshly and a slew of balance changes were made to the core game- some even based on PC mods players had made of DmC’s original PC port like a lock on function, though sadly the adventures of Donté, el exterminador de demonios didn’t serve such a function.

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Rest in piece, you brave soul.

The Definitive Edition goes leaps and bounds in solving the pressing issues of DmC. With the combat balanced and framerate bumped up, the combat had a much better flow to it. In particular the addition of a new mode, Must Style, where Dante can only damage enemies when he has an S Rank or higher, received a warm reception from the fans to the point where it was hoped that DMC5 would adopt it. With the DE upgrades, DmC goes from a flawed game with potential to being one of the best attempts by the West to emulate Devil May Cry’s frantic, stylish mode of gameplay while adding variety to how the combat and level design was handled. But even two years on, the damage had been done; while Definitive Edition was well-received by hardcore fans, it still failed to set the world on fire sales wise, and in fact was outsold by DMC4′s own HD remake that launched that year, even though the Special Edition was a digital only purchase outside of Japan. In fact, DMC4SE’s sales were so strong Capcom noted them as being behind the company having a good financial quarter during 2015, which many saw as an ironic nail in the coffin for any hopes for the DmC universe getting continuation.

There was no saving the story unfortunately, barring removing Vergil’s laughably pathetic fedora and one especially cringeworthy line from Lillith (”The world is at last your bitch, as am I. Nothing left, but to grab it by the hair, bend it over and-”), which means that much of the issues that DmC’s story presented are still haunting the overall product. One new scene added in the game has Dante calling out Vergil for shooting Lillith and causing countless deaths from Mundus’s rampage, but the scene was itself criticized for missing the point in the fan anger to Vergil’s .50 caliber coat hanger. And the further away the player and time gets from DmC’s outdated-at-launch messages and symbolism, the more the script just fails to entertain or educate, leaving just apathy and the ability to mock it.

5) Conclusion- Left in Limbo

DmC Devil May Cry is... alright. It’s not the worst game I’ve ever played and there’s far too many good things here for me to even call it a boring game. The level design and color palette has real moments of beauty, the combat system is a decent showing from Ninja Theory with Capcom supervision and the Definitive Edition showed that the teams from both cultures acknowledged the feedback and made a more mechanically satisfying game to play. DmC is one of the best Western attempts at emulating the over-the-top action of Japanese games alongside Darksiders 2 and does deserve credit for being a satisfying experience to play.

Where it falls apart is whenever control is taken from the player. This story is just terrible and wrought with bad choices that haunt the entire experience and taint the game by association. DmC’s cutscenes are almost slimy in how detestable they are, and it is odd that they inspired such loathing from me on my first run while I was left feeling nothing towards the entire cast other than pity towards Vergil due to what had been done to him on a writing level. I must repeat that I have never played a game as derogatory in its depiction of women as DmC and I pray I never will.

DmC is a flawed experience, perhaps one that you should experience yourself so you can formulate your own opinion on the matter. I wouldn’t recommend it for full-price but if you see it on sale for ten bucks, you can do worse- if nothing else, get some friends over and laugh at the story to get past the cutscenes and onto the mostly-decent gameplay. But you can also do a lot better, being honest. Ultimately DmC is this weird relic of Capcom’s attempts to branch out into the West, and one that ultimately just.. happened with no real lasting impact. Itsuno went on to make DMC5, Ninja Theory and Tameen redeemed themselves in the eyes of many with Hellblade and then got bought by Microsoft, while Capcom finally started to turn around and starting with the 8th console generation, made a concentrated effort to return to the “Capgod” reputation that they had before the 7th gen. Everyone came out of this story with a happy ending and got what they wanted, but that leaves DmC as this odd relic of a weird time in gaming, albeit one that certainly made... memorable experiences.

Thank you for reading.

I guess a million years just comes in at... about five or six.

#devil may cry #dmc devil may cry #dante devil may cry #devil may cry 5 #vergil devil may cry #devil may cry analysis #kat devil may cry #ninja theory #capcom #hideaki itsuno #tameen antoniades

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steve0discusses · 6 years ago

Text

Yugioh S3 Ep 9: So Tristan Died

Been resisting that springtime urge to buy a house plant and watch it slowly die while everyone else on my timeline posts beautiful terrariums and wallscapes. I have murdered nearly every plant I own, I have no idea why, I have killed several cacti. But I just found out about logees.com and y’all. Have you seen a rock fig? I want it so bad.

So, instead of wasting my money, I will write here and...not click buy on that rock fig. That beautiful beautiful rock shaped plant. That incredible and glorious miniature Deku Tree.

Also, this week Tumblr said that they’re extending the post limit size for text posts and like...there was a text post limit? Y’all I assumed these posts were hella long, (and in fact way, way, way too long) but like, I never capped a text post limit so...I guess I do all right.

So, switching over to Yugioh, we’re back with the Tristan-Duke-Serenity trio, who are still fighting over Serenity, the world’s most oblivious child. I haven’t gone over too much what their high and low points have been over these past like 5ish episodes but here’s what they’ve been up to, a refresher course of what they’ve been doing since Tristan drowned a Rhinoceros turtle in the lake.

1.) Serenity sneezed once and the Tristan and Duke had a big fight over who gave Serenity a cold

2.)

Sorry that’s all they’ve done. I really thought this would be a list when I started.

It’s been so boring that Serenity has decided this has been the best part of her tourney vacation (she is not wrong). And I just realized--she went to great lengths to get her eyes fixed and now she’s trapped in the VR zone and she doesn’t even need eyes to be here. Hell, if she gets trapped here, she’ll never need eyes again, she’ll have permanent perfect vision 24/7. We keep finding new alternatives instead of spending millions of dollars on Serenity’s eyes and the show kind of glazes over it.

Anyways, we learn a lot about Serenity this episode, mainly that Serenity is a little bit of a space cadet.

(Every episode Duke’s necklace is a little bit more simplified and today it is...almost just a cross. I look forward to seeing what necklace’s final form will be.)

Duke is supposed to be the antagonist of the three, but it really comes off that Tristan and Serenity have goldfish memories and somehow do not recall being launched down a hyperspace tube by five insane computer ghosts trying to consume their bodies. Most people would not forget that happening so like...it’s kinda hard not to side with Duke. Weird that the guy with such ridiculous hair is actually the most level headed person here.

And honestly, if Yugi had been speaking, then Joey and Serenity would have sobered up. Kind of a bummer that Duke doesn’t have the card cred, although Tristan was there when Duke beat Joey.

Like this episode was somewhat frustrating because Duke Devlin really is supposed to be incredibly good at cards, a kid who has only been beaten by the Pharaoh himself, and Tristan and Serenity sort of don’t believe him for some reason. Duke owns a version of the game they are playing. Like, he has ownership over Dungeon Dice and they don’t...care? It’s really weird, but it’s not like Duke has really done anything for an entire season so maybe he deserved this?

But considering that he’s been running for his life/kidnapped since they met up again 2 days ago during Kaiba’s tourney, maybe Duke just has no choice but to hang out with these people who do not respect him at all.

(read more under the cut)

Also, they’re still keeping it a secret that Duke beat Joey because...they’re still lying out of their ass for Serenity’s self esteem. It’s Season 3 and we’re still very concerned that Serenity cannot handle the truth. This girl was in a hospital for weeks and completely blind, I’m pretty sure if anyone can handle hard truths, it’s this girl. But, she’s very pretty, so better not spook her.

I am impressed that this random throwaway plot point from the beginning of S2 has come back to haunt us.

It checks out. This was about as much credentials that Joey had when he joined Pegasus’ tourney. I mean, Joey trained with Grandpa but Grandpa full on died in the middle of their training so...Tristan should have been fine this episode, he’s been interning with card people for like...years.

Anyways, this is where everyone else is.

And Noah decides to try his carrot-under-a-box trick that has so far worked on literally every child he has tried it on.

These kids cannot resist a door to save their lives--and that’s really the whole thing. If they resist the door, then boom, their lives are saved. But nah. Gotta open every door. So they enter, and behind this door is, you guessed it--their favorite place, the ever recurring supervillain of all of Yugioh,

Wow.

Anyways, the fourth of the Big 5 is here and he is a robot that’s gonna do some Russian ballet to the Nutcracker Suite.

Finally, someone who’s strong enough to safely do the ballet alongside Tea.

*I did not watch Gundam, I spent my Torrent days watching Cowboy Bebop and Love Hina and I remember none of it.*

Speaking of, Love Hina--that one probably didn’t age well, didn’t it?

Tristan just digging his own grave for no reason is basically the rest of this episode. Duke Devlin was their out. Duke Devlin has been primed to die for like a full season but then Tristan had to go and fight a giant robot like an idiot. Which is not a sentence I thought I’d be typing about Yugioh, the show about a haunted card game.

PS, I just remembered something. One sec, let me dig this up, something I wrote in S1 that at the time, when everything was about magic and soul snatching, seemed so outlandish that it would never actually happen.

I can’t believe that I predicted myself but at the same time was still just so wrong, because not only do they already have Gundams, they also are card playing Gundams.

This giant VR Gundam could just step on them, right? Like just step on them? I get that would be against Noah’s set of rules but like...

...just a little step.

And what’s even more nuts about this show, is that some things I knew going in, some things you can’t escape just living here on the internet, like Yugi being strapped to a saw at some point (I just didn’t realize it would be from...a clown and would have *such freakin large blades attached*, it was very sudden) and them dueling from the backs of motorcycles (which apparently isn’t even this show. Apparently dueling motorcycles is a spinoff and y’all...kind of disappointed by that). But Gundams? This universe is so zany that Gundams just went completely under the radar.

*this robot casually wearing a jumbo duel disc*

Faced with the reality of none of his friends ever take him seriously, Duke decides to find a weird compromise and asks for double duel. Thing is, this robot also can’t take Duke seriously, and so this super backfires.

Would it in fact simplify everyone’s dating life if we had a 1 in 3 situation? I mean it’s already a mess because we have two 3 in 1′s, but we could balance that right out with a 1 in 3. Then the math will be correct. Balance will be achieved.

And that was how Disaster Serenity sort of stumbled her way onto a dueling platform and killed her brother’s 2nd (3rd) best friend (4th if you count Joey’s rivalry with Kaiba).

Tristan, who’s job as a volunteer janitor is to clean up messes, could not clean up after this Wheeler hot mess.

This is a card now? OK. I see you, product placement. I see why you made Duke Devlin pick up a deck again. Just for this product. That’s fine. At least we did something with Duke Devlin. But we could have maybe used him at any point outside of dungeon dice monsters, ya? Like any point?

Anyway, Serenity explains that if they tell her exactly what to do, they will be fine, so the robot catches wind of this and does this move

Of course. Of course the abandoned warehouse is now full of lava.

Serenity doesn’t even know the rules since she was actually blind until yesterday. She recalls faintly that on the train Tristan told her the rules, and that there were stars on the card that line up with power or whatever. So she looks down at the card and goes “Ah! there are little stars on here!” she plays it, and she realizes that no one has ever told her that sometimes they are placed sideways. Basically Serenity playing this episode as a recently not blind woman would be like me playing cards as someone who fast forwards through all the shuffling.

It’s hard to say if it’s Serenity who caused all this or Tristan who didn’t just let Duke do his one job. Either way, Tristan will absolutely find a way to blame this on Duke until about the point Tristan dies. Between Tristan refusing to play ball with Duke Devlin who is actually a card expert and Serenity playing all of her cards the wrong direction, I’m fully ready for Tristan to die by the end of this episode. Boy had a million chances to just chill and let Duke do his thing so ya, kill him.

Anyways, here’s a desert brought to you by yellow ochre. A LOT of yellow ochre.

Was this also a background for an 80′s space anime?

At some point Nezbitt sat in a boat and watched Kaiba launch what appears to be nuclear missiles at a missile factory. Kaiba did say he needed to throw out the old and start over so like...do Marie Kondo the way you need to do that Marie Kondo thing, Kaiba. This clearly did not bring you joy.

Anyway, lets skip to the good stuff. That’s right this boy: dead because he couldn’t not.

As you all know, I’ve been looking forward to Duke Devlin dying for such a long time now. I’ve been waiting here, tapping my fingers delicately together all Mr Burns-style expecting that the only way they could possibly find a use for Duke Devlin--since they refuse to give him any cards--would be to die.

But guys. I forgot about Tristan.

(bro wants to point out that right above the dungeon dice card was the revive card that would have come in handy right about now.)

Truly unexpected, standing in between Serenity and Duke, the most killable of the Yugioh franchise, Tristan freakin died.

But most importantly, we’re getting very close to death 169 (nice). We skipped 69 proper (a shame) because *somebody* had to kill just a chunk of people at once, Kaiba. So...who’s it gonna be? Probably the Big 5 member who’s cosplaying around as a Sexy Fish? chances are good.

Anyway, if you just got here, we’re in Season 3, if you would like to start at the beginning in S1, click here to read my so many recaps of this show. I cannot believe how much Yugioh content is in this Yugioh show.

#Yugioh #yugioh recap #photo recap #S3 Ep9 #Serenity Wheeler #Duke Devlin #Tristan Taylor #Kaiba was there for like a second

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animentality · 6 years ago

Note

In an ask you replied last year you mentioned how "Snk used to have MORE THAN TWO SHIPS, ain’t that crazy?" which ships would those two be and why do you think they are the only important ones now

Ereri and eremika.

I didn’t say they were important or even interesting.

They just happen to the only ships left that get any attention.

Snk used to be brimming with ship fanart and content.

It used to be like bnha, where everyone had a different favorite and you could find dozens of different artists contributing to their tags and giving them plenty of love.

We used to have some really fucking talented artists and gif makers and amazingly photorealistic moving art, that was like, animated art you could put it in a museum. it’d make your jaw drop because of how professional it looked.

It would evoke a raw feeling.

And not just one or two, but dozens.

If you wanna figure out what I mean go to the bnha tag right now.

I can guarantee you, there will be dozens of artists there, who all have wonderfully diverse styles and tastes in color. There will be aus and comics, both dramatic and serious and sexy and innocent headcanons.

Unlikely friendships. Popular ships. Less popular ships. Popular characters, less popular characters.

Some artists will have a very simplified version of characters, others will have a dramatic flair, and more will draw these like really gorgeous renditions of characters that make them sexier than they ever will be in Canon.

You’ll find a shit ton of urls too, that aren’t just “erenssexymistress” or “erenjaegerbitch” or “ereri-for-life.”

You’ll find people who are multi fandom.

Because you can be in the bnha fandom without being into anime.

That’s basically what snk was in 2013.

So enough about bnha, let’s look at the state of snk today. I had to explain what snk used to be for you to understand what it is now.

So let’s go.

It’s a Levi fest.

It’s literally 80 percent Levi, at any given time. Levi gifs, Levi art stolen off pixiv, reposted a million times. Levi shirtless, Levi posing, some angsty uwu most tragic character in snk gif where they basically just show Levi’s bloody face while flashing the background with some fake deep hot topic brooding boy quote that makes a valiant attempt at relatable anime grunge.

There will also typically be Levi Fucking Eren in a totally random roleplay cosplay au fanart.

It doesn’t matter if Levi was in the actual chapter.

He will always be the forefront of the tag.

And alongside him, a Levi and Eren fucking fest. Where, regardless of whether they interacted or not, there will be a totally irrelevant sex games au of Levi and Eren being pirates or sirens or secret BDSM partners or whatever.

Now I’m much too old to still care about ereri, that much I’ll admit.

I’m not like…ever gonna care enough about this fandom or that section of it to do what I used to do.

You learn a lot growing up, and one of my first lessons?

Just don’t talk to degenerates on the internet. That’s it.

And this art has always been around. It used to be a lot more abundant in 2013, actually.

Fandoms don’t change their spots, even after 6 years.

So the ereri Content? Yeah. Thats about what you’d expect in the snk tag at any given time.

But at least in 2013, if I wanted some Eremin content, I could find more than one post from three years ago, lmao. Or if I wanted to see erejean content? Or reimin. Or jeankasa. Or Mikasasha. Or literally anything.

I could find it. It wouldn’t always be the best but it’d be interesting at least. It’d have an actual artist behind it, who would be interested in the actual plot of the series. Or maybe not, but at least they were enjoying themselves, making new friends. They’d be making memes or funny comics. Or AUs where the characters are all together, doing something cute or fun.

They’d have Christmas aus, Halloween aus, Easter aus, whatever.

But now?

The snk fandom only makes new content for eremika or ereri.

Ereri because garbage floats, and fujoshis, like plastic, are immortal and enjoy clogging up a duck’s intestines, and eremika because heteros will go Misty eyed over any childhood friendship you give them, I mean Eren literally told Mikasa he’s always hated her but eremikas were theorizing that he was lying and actually meant hes always loved her?

I mean damn. Heteronormativity is one hell of a narcotic and they really do pump that into baby bottles before you’re even walking.

But anyway.

Those are the last two ships of snk, the one that makes no sense and never has, and reeked of yaoi bile, and the one that makes sense but bores us all to tears.

I mean I’ve seen levihan here and there. I’ve bizarrely seen a little bit of Rivetra even though Christ that ship has been literally dead for…real years. Actual years, in real time. But again, heteros amirite? Petra sort of liked him before she got fucking grandslammed into an American logging company. That’s pretty much true love for heteros, If a guy and a girl are within two hundred feet of each other?

I digress.

Point is, i even see snippits of life from yumikuri even though ymir got canned off screen and Christa was impregnated by the plot.

Sometimes I kind of see Armin and Eren, from two people I’ve known from ages, who have singlehandedly kept the Eremin tag from being removed off the highway by minimum wage federally imbursed immigrant workers.

But in the general snk tag?

Same as 2013, I am still haunted by cat boy Eren wagging his butt plug at Levi in a santa suit.

Without the little bumpers of Hanji or Mike or other veteran love to keep me sane.

And it’s not so much that that kind of thing is new.

It’s not. It’s always been there.

It’s just that there used to be so much content that that wasn’t the only content.

Now it is.

If you go it right now, I’m pretty sure you’d find mostly Levi Stans gushing over how hot he looked in whatever panel or hyper analyzing how tragic his entire life is, including that shoe he lost once when he was at the local Kroger’s.

You’d find… Maybe some art of Mikasa looking pretty, because eremika is still a thing.

You’d also find plenty of Eren stans thirsting over every panel of him with long hair.

You mayyyybe find a clumsy doodle someone did, or something that kind of looks low effort just cuz it was done on a composition notebook paper in a ballpoint pen.

And hey, you may even find some fanart for a character other than levi, eren, or Mikasa.

You may see Armin or even Annie.

And sometimes hey, you’ll see something that actually looks decent.

That looks like maybe the fandom has a glimmer of a soul left.

But content? CONTENT?

good luck with that.

I actually go through the bnha tag even though I don’t fucking follow bnha because it’s actually fun.

There are funny people in that tag. There are people who ship a million things.

These people don’t even always talk about the fucking plot.

They’re so creative all they’re doing is coming up with fucking headcanons and what if scenarios.

What if Todoroki took care of orphaned children? What if Dabi is a Todoroki and what would that mean for his motivations? What if Hawks and Dabi secretly both enjoy trashy reality tv shows? What if Mineta burned in a fire? What if Momo had this cool costume redesign?

I haven’t seen an snk headcanon in eons, and the reason is because the only creativity/life in that fandom is ereri/eremika headcanons, and god do I find both unbearably arrogant.

You also won’t find snk content, other than the eremika and ereri bilge we’ve all been forcibly dumping up our assholes through a funnel, zackley style, that does anything other than directly react to the manga either.

Like bnha, mob psycho 100, even fucking osomatsu will make content that has nothing to do with canon.

This is important because it means snk’s now limited to direct responses to the chapters it releases.

Other than those two ships, its only method of interaction is discussing the convoluted and completely uninteresting “oh no who drank the wine plot.”

Like I said. I don’t have to be in the bnha fandom to enjoy content from it. To see a funny comic and say haha that’s cute. That’s sad. That’s interesting. Oh wow, I don’t know what’s going on with Dabi, but he seems evil, and he could be a main character’s sibling. Huh, how cool.

The snk fandom? If you aren’t totally updated on the snk plot right now, OR aren’t totally enthralled by ereri/eremika, you’d better be a Levi or an Eren fan.

Cuz otherwise, you’d be better off following the three levihan blogs that create content from time to time, those two Eremin shippers, and the people who keep reposting eruri fanart from pixiv that we saw in 2015.

#snk #attack on titan

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klonoa-at-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Champion of Dreams: An Interview with Hideo Yoshizawa

Originally published Sept. 17, 2012 on 1up.com. This article was accessed through web.archive.org as it has been offline for a long time.

As director and producer of games like Klonoa, Ridge Racer Type 4, and Mr. Driller, Hideo Yoshizawa played an instrumental role in Namco's PlayStation-era console game renaissance. Emphasizing playability (and great music) over the increasingly complicated nature of their contemporaries, Yoshizawa's games may not have dominated the sales charts, but they certainly won their share of loyal fans who even now look back on those titles with a fondness that has faded from many other PS1 releases. I recently spoke to Mr. Yoshizawa at Bandai Namco's sci-fi office in Shinagawa, Tokyo about the birth of his PlayStation classics and learned unexpected detailed about Klonoa's origins in the process.

1UP: How long have you been at Namco, and what projects did you start with when you first came here?

HY: I came to Namco in 1992, so I've been here about 20 years now. First I started out with Super Family Tennis, which was released for the Super NES, and also a character IP-based game called Yu Yu Hakusho. It was a very famous comic book in Japan. And then I worked on Klonoa.

1UP: What was Namco's Yu Yu Hakusho game like? I'm familiar with the one that was made for Sega by Treasure, but I hadn't heard about Namco's before.

HY: It was like a visual animation fighting game. It's not a normal fighting game like Street Fighter. It was a fighting game where the animations unfold as you fight each other.

1UP: What was your role on that game?

HY: Producer and director.

1UP: Had you worked in the games industry before you came to Namco, or is this where you got your start?

HY: I used to work at Tecmo before I went to Namco.

1UP: What projects did you work on with Tecmo, if you don't mind my asking?

HY: Ninja Gaiden and Mighty Bomb Jack.

1UP: Okay, I'm familiar with both of those. What was your role on both of those?

HY: Director again.

1UP: With Ninja Gaiden, was that the arcade game or the NES game?

HY: That was the NES.

1UP: Were you involved with the arcade game at all?

HY: No, not the arcade game. That was the one where you chopped off heads, right? [laughs]

1UP: Was the arcade game developed internally at Tecmo? There's always been this uncertainty about that. Americans are very familiar with the NES games, but we're not really clear about the history of the arcade game. Were you involved with that at all, or was it even made at Tecmo?

HY: It was internal, yes. It wasn't in alignment with the NES versions, though. It was developed at the same time, so it was two completely different lines working with the same name. They were separate projects.

1UP: I think it's interesting to know that you worked on Ninja Gaiden, because that game has such a reputation for its animation and the idea of cutscenes that it brought to action games. It was a very visual game, and I can see that in some of the games you worked on, especially Klonoa.

HY: What I wanted to make was a very dramatic game, back then. For Ninja Gaiden, actually, 40 percent of the visual capacity was used just for those scenes.

1UP: I remember how I'd always bring my friends over to my house... The scene where Ryu makes it to the castle, and the castle scrolls back in the background, I'd always get to that part in the game and show it off.

HY: Thank you!

1UP: And then I'd try to finish the game for them, but the last level was so hard that they never got to see the ending.

HY: You never got to show them the castle collapsing?

1UP: I finished the game on my own time, but every time I tried to show it off I failed and had to start the level over.

HY: Yeah, it was difficult, back then.

1UP: I don't want to take up too much time talking about something that wasn't a Namco project, but your history with that game... I think it's something that is important. It shows some impact on the later things you've worked on. I'm wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. What did you take away from the Ninja Gaiden project and bring into subsequent projects you worked on?

HY: From Ninja Gaiden... I wanted to really connect the story portion and the gameplay portion. That was only possible in TV games. I really wanted to do that at a high level, and I think I've still been able to do that with Klonoa.

1UP: What do you think of the way that story and game integration have evolved in the years since Ninja Gaiden?

HY: At the time, we called it a "cinema display" or "theater display." That was evolving at the time. Also, there was a game Tecmo released before I left, Radia Senki. It was an action-RPG. That kind of story, I really liked it, and that affected me. Some of that wound up in Klonoa as well.

1UP: In what sense did the story of that impact you? What was it about that game that caught your attention?

HY: Aspects like... The world is created with the energy of dreams. And some of the character names are actually the same in Klonoa as in Radia Senki, because it wasn't quite as well known back then. [laughs] But I took some parts of that and put it in Klonoa.

1UP: Did you work on Radia Senki, or was it just a game that you were familiar with and enjoyed?

HY: Yeah, I was the director.

1UP: Oh, I didn't realize that. One of my editors is a really big fan of that game, and he's talked about how he likes it a lot.

HY: He knows about that game?

1UP: Yeah, he wrote a really nice retrospective about it.

HY: Well, say hi to him for me. It's actually the prequel to Klonoa, in a way. That's the project where Klonoa started, for me.

1UP: I'd heard that Klonoa was influenced somewhat by Sega's NiGHTS into Dreams...

HY: Actually, Klonoa started development before NiGHTS, but it was released after NiGHTS, so a lot of people say that. There's really not any connection. Klonoa took something like three years to develop.

1UP: So let's talk a bit about Klonoa. It's a very interesting game, if you look at where it was released in the PlayStation library. That style of game wasn't very common at the time.

HY: At first, it had a really dark kind of world background. But the camera system was really popular within the company, so I tried to make it so we could get to more of a mass audience, not just the people who'd enjoy that darker theme. Here, these were some of the characters back at that time. As you can see, it's not bright at all like Klonoa is. But, thinking back to that time, everything released on the PlayStation had a very dark theme like that, so I thought, "No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to be the same as everyone." So it took a 180-degree turn and became a whole different game.

1UP: It seems like there was an almost Egyptian theme to some of that.

HY: Actually, the [Egyptian design, not shown] was a draft that wasn't approved. The other is the one that was approved. The background is that a human being is imported into a stone figure... In Japanese history, we have these stone dolls from ancient times. That's the theme of it. A human being's soul is pushed into it, the stone figure, and how that soul tries to get back to being a human was the idea behind the story.

1UP: So did this version of the game that you were developing... Would that have played like the game that became Klonoa, or was it a completely different kind of game altogether?

HY: It had a different game system, too. You were supposed to grab the enemy and swing them around and bang them into the walls in order to attack them.

1UP: There was another PlayStation game that was similar in style to Klonoa called Wild 9. Did you ever play that? It was by Shiny, and it had that same mechanic, where you grabbed things and threw them around and smashed them...

HY: I don't recall that game, no. But flinging enemies around, at first it seems interesting, but if you kept doing it throughout the whole game, it started to get boring. So I wanted to make a game system where you could use it to attack enemies as well as doing other stuff.

1UP: In the last image, the one before this, it seemed like when you grab the enemy, they inflated. That's one thing you did keep for Klonoa.

HY: This slide is actually something that was nearer the development of Klonoa than the previous slides, so that makes sense.

1UP: Was this inspired at all by Dig-Dug? I know there's a connection between Mr. Driller and Dig-Dug. I'm curious if the inflating-the-enemy idea came from there as well...

HY: When I was first thinking about it, visually it just popped into my head. Inflating them and throwing them around, it just seemed cool. Later on, somebody pointed out, "Oh, it's like Dig-Dug," and I saw they were right. But...

1UP: How did this eventually become the final mechanic of Klonoa, where you grab enemies and inflate them, but it's at a very short distance? And then you use them in other ways, to throw them or jump off of them as platforms.

HY: At first, there were three buttons. There was one for inflating them and one for picking them up, and then there was a button to... Not necessarily throw them, but to roll the enemy. That was kind of difficult to do, because if you wanted to do that, and you wanted to bounce off the enemy in order to go up, for instance, you had to get the enemy right underneath. It always bounced three times, so you had to do it over and over again. That was difficult at first. I wanted to make a game with a good tempo, but by doing the rolling thing, you had to get it right underneath, and it was getting annoying. The tempo was really bad. I was thinking, "No, this isn't what I want. This doesn't work." Then, a newcomer with the team came to me and said, "Why don't we just use them to double jump?" And that was what we did.

1UP: So your solution was to simplify the game. To me, that seems to be the opposite direction to the way most people were going with PlayStation games. In that era, games became more and more complicated. People wanted to use all the buttons on the controller, and you just used two. Can you talk about that more?

HY: The way I see it, human beings can only handle two buttons, when they're really concentrating. My policy is to use two buttons maximum for any game. When I was working on this, it used three buttons, and it was annoying me, because I wanted to make it use two buttons in the first place. I think it's the most attractive way to do it. If there's only two buttons, the controls are very simple, but there's still a lot you can do with just two buttons.

1UP: I agree. I think Klonoa does a really great job of giving you very simple, limited tools, and doing a lot with the world around it. Can you talk about how the game world evolved around the control scheme? Did it evolve that way? Or did you already have a world and this was just a better way to navigate it?

HY: I wanted to make the controllability, how you can utilize the controls... For Klonoa, it was only two buttons, but you could do a lot of things. From there, the level design and the world-building started.

1UP: I feel like Klonoa has a very strong... Almost a puzzle element to the level design. Was that a deliberate decision, or did it just evolve naturally out of the controls?

HY: At first, Klonoa was a lot like Ninja Gaiden, where you attack and kill the enemies and mainly focus on that. But after the double jump came about, the direction changed to not just killing the enemies, but moving them around and using the enemy in order to move forward through the story. That became the center of the gameplay. So it became more of a puzzle game than entirely battle-themed.

1UP: Something I always liked about Ninja Gaiden is, if you know the game and you know where the enemy placement is, you can really make a straight dash through the game and jump at just the right times and attack at just the right times. I do feel like there's a little bit of that still in Klonoa, with a lot of the puzzle elements. Knowing when to jump, when to double jump, when to grab an enemy that's in the air and do combination moves...

HY: You have a very good insight there. With Ninja Gaiden, what I wanted to do was an action game that flows very well. That's the same as for all of my action games, including Klonoa, so that part doesn't change.

1UP: There's a certain rhythm to the game. Once you really know it, then it's very graceful.

HY: My theme is always to have people understand that tempo and get that graceful feeling and sensation out of it, so I'm happy that you feel that way.

1UP: You mentioned that when Klonoa first started out, it was very dark. In the final game... When you start to play it, it seems very happy and very lighthearted, but later in the game it actually does seem to become a bit dark. Is that something that carried over from the earlier versions? Can you talk about that?

HY: Yeah, I wanted to lead into that ending. I wanted to use that ending, so I started out with the opposite feel. If it started out so happy that way, everyone would think, "Oh, I'm saving the princess and it's going to be a happy ending," but it's not. That kind of impact was what I was going for.

1UP: Yeah. When you first start playing Klonoa, it seems like the play mechanics are very simple, and it seems like it's very lighthearted. When I first played it, I don't think I really appreciate what kind of depth was under the surface of the game. I only made it about halfway through and then I put the game down. But then I came back a few months later and decided to try it again, and I went all the way through the game. I was really surprised, because the level design becomes more complicated, especially in the final stages. But also, midway through, when Klonoa's grandfather dies... The game really takes on a change in tone of how everything plays out. It really surprised me.

HY: Thanks. That's exactly what I was going for.

1UP: I think I underestimated you when I first played it, but later I came to appreciate more of what the game was about.

HY: Actually, I got that same kind of feedback a lot. That's why Klonoa 2 started out with a more impactful scene.

1UP: So you worked on Klonoa 2 as well?

HY: Yes, but I was more on the production side.

1UP: Did you have any involvement with the Game Boy Advance games?

HY: Yeah, I was the producer.

1UP: I really liked the GBA games, even though they're very different, especially in terms of presentation, from the PlayStation games. They have much more of the puzzle element to them, and so does Moonlight Museum, for that matter. Can you talk about that?

HY: At the time of the Wonderswan game, I'd actually put together two teams, one working on Moonlight Museum and one working on the PlayStation 2 Klonoa 2. One was more focused on the puzzle elements and the other was more focused on action.

1UP: It seemed like with Dream Champ Tournament, the second GBA game, you'd pushed those two styles together, the puzzle and the action, with the running boss battles and that kind of thing.

HY: Well, I wasn't actually on that one. I was only on the first one.

1UP: Then it's just a coincidence. [laughs] I was wondering, though, if you could speak to some of the thinking behind making the portable games more puzzle-like.

HY: Well, I wanted both of them to be fun in their own way. For console, I wanted people to enjoy more of the action, a more interesting kind of action game, but for the handheld games, I wanted to get more into the puzzles. To have the same audience, but let them enjoy it in a different way.

1UP: The EX stages in Empire of Dreams are probably the hardest way to play Klonoa out of all the games. Was that intentional?

HY: Hmmmm... I think I made those a little too difficult, actually. [laughs]

1UP: I remember one stage where it's just the little flying enemies, and you have to grab one and then double-jump and grab the next, all the way to the exit. I spent a long time trying to get through that one.

HY: When the double jump came about, everyone thought that, "Okay, you can do this, so we can make things like having tons of enemies, and you have to grab them and double-jump, double-jump..." Not eternally, but numerous times in succession. I thought that if we did that for the real part of the game, everyone would be really anxious to get past it. So it's not in the real part. For the real part, we only wanted to do it up to two times, for the grab-enemy and double-jump series. But for the extra stages, I told the dev team that they could do whatever they wanted. And that's what ended up happening. [laughs]

1UP: Can you talk about the camera system of Klonoa? I thought that was something that really helped set it apart from other 2D platformers at the time.

HY: At first, my manager called me in and asked me to try and make a different kind of action game with a new character, a new IP. At the time, it just came in to my head, that idea of using dynamic camera angles and making an action game with them. That just popped up. Also, at the time, on the PlayStation, everyone was making 3D games. But when I wanted to play games, trying to figure out how to control them within that 3D environment was very difficult. So I wanted people to be able to play it in 2D, but being able to experience that 3D feel. That's how I came up with the camera angles and what kind of action game I wanted to make there.

1UP: Not to call out the competition, but... Did you have a difficult time maybe keeping the cinematic camera elements in check? If you look at a lot of games in that era, like Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VII, they have these very interesting camera angles, but sometimes it wasn't very much fun to play, because all of a sudden the camera would switch and you'd be confused about where you were on the screen or how to control it. I saw that even in a lot of the 2.5D games that followed Klonoa. Did you ever look at things and say, "Well, maybe we need to pull this back and make it a little less exciting?

HY: At the time, with the PlayStation, the camera angles were pretty limited. We couldn't do much with that many polygons. We could do a bit with the camera system, but when we went to PlayStation 2, suddenly we could do a lot with the camera system, so I was using angles from way above or way below. Those kinds of things, I actually liked to do them.

1UP: I was just wondering if you ever pushed it too far, to the point where it affected playability and you had to say, "Oh, maybe we should tone it down."

HY: Not really, not during gameplay. For gameplay, I feel like the controllability, how people can control it as easily as possible, is more important. So I wouldn't do that in gameplay. But for the cinematic portion, I wanted to do a lot more. I always had it in my head that camera angles should support gameplay, so whenever there's an enemy that you're supposed to get far up here, the camera angle will move a bit towards that. But it should never work against the player.

1UP: Mr. Driller, from the interface standpoint, was actually even simpler than Klonoa. It was just the one button. Can you talk about how the Mr. Driller project came to be, and what your intentions for that were?

HY: At the time, the first director, who actually came up with that game system, was imagining something more like... There's a kid's game that Japanese people play at the beach, where you stand a piece of wood in the middle of a pile of sand. One by one, you're supposed to grab some of the sand, and whoever knocks over the wood is the loser. If a person was actually put in the middle of the sand pile, that'd be scary, so that's what the director was thinking of. It was a much slower-paced game at first. When I made it, it was much faster-paced, but it turned out better.

1UP: Was that originally conceived as an arcade game, or was it meant to be a console game first?

HY: Actually, I was on the console side of the company at the time, so it was made to be a console game. But when it was first going to be released on the console, I didn't think it would become very popular or that the buzz would grow too much. At first, I wanted to build up some popularity before putting it out on the console, so I asked a co-worker in the arcade division to release it in the arcades first.

1UP: I know there are connections between Mr. Driller and Dig-Dug. Was that something conceived from the beginning, or was it something added in later, when people said, "Ah, these remind me of one another"?

HY: The connection actually came later on. But since it's a digging game, at first the character was actually Dig-Dug and the title was Dig-Dug 2 at the time. But that didn't mean it was supposed to be a Dig-Dug game, exactly, it was just because it was about digging, so he was Dig-Dug.

1UP: So he was just a placeholder character?

HY: Yeah, just a placeholder.

1UP: But the connections did eventually come into place. Was that something you were responsible for, or was it someone else on the team who decided to draw the family tree up and create all these other connections to Namco franchises?

HY: The visual staff members actually went off with their imaginations, doing whatever they wanted. That's how we ended up with all that.

1UP: It is kind of interesting that Mr. Driller serves as almost a hub for all these classic Namco games. I don't know if that's something that was intended from the start. Probably not. But it's interesting that it's evolved that way.

HY: Yeah, the staff members are doing whatever they want. It's taken off a bit, so...

1UP: What really surprised me when I played Mr. Driller, it has this kind of clean, classic 2D look to it, and the action is very fast and very simple. But then the music is a little bit mind-blowing. It's such interesting and adventurous music. It fits, but it's not what I expected from the game. Can you talk about some of the design choices behind that?

HY: At the time, Go Shiina-san was still new in the company, and not many sound people wanted to do Mr. Driller, because it wasn't so popular at the time compared to other franchises. Everyone wants to do big titles, of course. Shiina-san was assigned to do it. When he first brought in the background music for Mr. Driller, it was pretty normal puzzle game music. I said, "No, I don't want normal puzzle game music!" I asked him to remake it, and he said, "Okay, then I'll make whatever I want to." And I said, "Go ahead!" He came up with this bizarre music, and I actually liked it very much. That's why I kept bringing Shiina-san in to create more bizarre music.

1UP: That's great. It felt very...contemporary, which is not necessarily what you'd expect from a puzzle game. It was very surprising in that sense.

HY: Yeah, I love that music too.

1UP: With Mr. Driller, given the simplicity of the gameplay, did you find it difficult to think of ways to build on that game for sequels? Ways that wouldn't be too complicated or miss the point of the series.

HY: It was very difficult, actually. I made a lot of modes for sequels and stuff, but at the end of the day, the normal digging mode is the most fun. I do love Dristone mode, though.

1UP: I was told that I can't really talk about your current projects, but where do you see both the Klonoa and Mr. Driller series going from here in the future? Do you think those series have a future? We haven't seen a sequel to either one in quite a while, but do you think it means it's time to let that series go, or do you have ideas and hopes for their futures?

HY: When we released the Wii version of Klonoa, I was thinking about sequels and stuff, but apparently it didn't sell that well. So right now I'm not really thinking about any sequels.

1UP: And how about Mr. Driller?

HY: There's the download version for the DSi [Drill Till You Drop]. If you have this version of Driller, you'll get the most fun out of it you can, so I think I'll stop at this one.

1UP: So you dropped the mike, basically.

HY: Yeah, I think this is the ultimate version.

#klonoa #door to phantomile #Mr. Driller #namco #Hideo Yoshizawa #concept art

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