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kindatired · 1 year ago

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Genshin Impact: First Impression

I know, "You just NOW getting into Genshin after four years?'

Well, I didn't want to play on my phone so I waited to buy a laptop. I did bought a MacBook for school but then I found out that even though this game runs on IOS it doesn't run on MacOS...

(I should've known since the game isn't on the Switch...

Why most of the games I want to play isn't playable on the devices I have- Anyways back to the point.

I just finish Mondstadt in Genshin and so far I really like the story which makes me excited for what they have in store in Liyue. So this is all my thoughts about the first Archon quest, all in one go.

This chapter was a nice introduction to the world of Tevyat and I like how we already have to worry about two antagonistic groups (The fatui and Abyss Order)

Matter of fact let me list down how I think of each character:

The traveler:

I wish they have more character to them especially during the cutscenes. Despite being the protagonist I feel like they’re just in the backseat most of the time with the exception of them needing to action scenes. (Due to this my version of the traveler is that they're snarky but their heart is in the right place.) But I like how they showed us what the other sibling is doing because most stories they will have it a mystery right before the final arc

Paimon:

She’s cute but also WHERE IS HER PARENTS? At the start, she said that she was saved from drowning and I was like “Who was watching you?? Do you have any friends or anything?” I truly believe she will be a plot point in the story considering she can float around and have a space aesthetic to her

Venti:

I really like how mysterious he was at the start of the story and then later we see how much of a doofus he is. (Not saying he's dumb but carefree) Despite not wanting to be a ruling god, he still cares for his city in his own way. I don’t know why but if you mix Pit and Palutena together and then boom there’s Venti.

Amber:

I love her design so much. It's simple yet effective especially with the red bow. I feel like the team knew this too which is why she comes with her own plushie which is so freaking cute! Her character quests is fun too when she taught us to get our own glider's license. I don't know why but she gives the first classmate you befriend in class energy (Probably because she is the first person beside Paimon that we met in the game)

Kaeya:

I’m down bad I like how he has a laidback personality yet he’s always behind the scenes. Despite the front he puts up, you know he’s doing something else. Kind of wish we get to see more of him but I’m satisfied with what we got

Lisa:

At first I thought she was going to be a flirt she kinda is But I found it funny how she’s has a “I don’t have time with this bs” attitude on her side quest but still have a lot of patience for people's BS at times. I can't exactly remember but I think when she was trying to find all the overdue books, she went "I might as well make it fun" and brought the traveler and Paimon along too.

Jean:

Once I take a step back and think of all the things she had to deal with during this arc, it was definitely something. Abyss Order, The Dragon, The Fatui and trying to keep the citizens calm. She doesn’t get enough credit where it’s due. There's this one line delivery in the English version, I can't exactly point out when but it was about how the Fat couldn't get the upper hand in the situation. I don't know why but her tone of voice was passive aggressive, like she was praying on their downfall.

Diluc:

Mix opinions on him due to him sending us to find four of those ice flowers and I had to spend a hour and thirty minutes trying to find the fourth one. So yeah I have bitter feelings about that Serious note, he's probably my favorite character in Mondstadt if we're not including Amber and Kaeya. Bro is the Batman of the game, they even call him the Dark knight

Abyss Ice Mage:

Yeah I dedicated a whole section to this NPC because Imagine being electrocuted by Lisa and flamed by Diluc within a week. Like bro was put in the wringer (rightfully so). Kinda hoped they appear in the future story so this trend of Ice Mage being comedically abused continues.

My thoughts of the story:

I thought the first archon quest of the story is neat. It has nothing too spectacle as it works as a exposition to the world of Teyvat and it done that job very well.

The twist of knowing where the traveler's sibling is doing was definitely something I never thought would happen. Usually in most stories, they would have the sibling in prison but nope.

Your sibling is doing fine just helping out the big bad organization that is trying to destroy Teyvat.

Now this may be a reach but I like how each character has the freedom of accomplishing their goals by their own way.

First you have the traveler, by default they have the freedom of not being born in Teyvat as they are not from this world. Because of this, they have the ability to use more than one element. Another note is that because the traveler isn't bound by the nation's rules as they wasn't raised in Teyvat, they're always the person with a third option, sort of like a spectator...

is this why they're so quiet? So he can hear the opinions of others before making their own conclusions???

Paimon also has freedom as she doesn't have a parental figure which allows her to tag along, traveler on their quests.

Moving on to the people of Mondstadt, even within the Knights of Favonius who are under strict codes, handle tasks using their own method.

Example of this is the uniforms.

While Amber, Lisa, Kaeya, and Jean share the same motifs as being in the same group, their uniforms are completely different. You know how in magical girl shows, where you have sailor moon, where every soldier wears the same design but different color palette? Then there are other shows like Magica Madoka, where the girls where completely different outfits? The knights of favonius fits the latter, with the exception of the NPCs.

Even the way they handle tasks are different. Amber make sure she does her best to follow the rules but with a bit a flare. Lisa is a tad strict but her approach is passive. Kaeya always tries to find a loophole in the situation to see the whole picture. (Example: Him "staying behind" in the city, to get more information about the Abyss Order). Jean who follows the rules, but know there are times when the rules have to be bend.

Then you have the outliners like Diluc and Venti who are not apart of the knights. Diluc doesn't trust the knights to completely solve the problem so he acts as a vigilante, to pick up the pieces they fail to notice.

Venti who is the god of freedom, decided to not rule his region like the other archons. Instead, he watches it from afar, like the guardian he is, and steps in when the time is right.

All these characters are different in one way or another but they all come together to work together because they all share a common goal. Still even if you do things your own way, you still have to bear the responsibility of your actions.

Venti was too nonchalant in his approach of protecting his region which resulted in a Harbinger, La Signora, taking his Gnosis.

I say he was nonchalant because he was focus on the current problems of his country, which was storm bringer, and not future problems such as the Fatui. Because he wasn't focus on them, he let his guard down when the problem with storm bringer was solved.

I know this may be a stretch and I'm just writing what pops up in my head but that's what I got from the message of the archon quest.

Speaking of La Signora, how the hell did no one saw her attacking Venti and traveler or at the very least heard it? I know Barbara did but you're telling me that only ONE person heard that shit?!

So after talking to Venti it appears that we have to go to every seven regions to find the traveler's siblings. Or in this case, try to convince them to not destroy this world.

The fuck do we look like Pokemon Trainers?... Because I can sing the theme songs if you want

Either way, I had fun with the story. Gamplay-wise... I'm not really much of a gamer myself. I don't go into the mechanics of the game.I play fighting game, barely knowing the combos and just smash buttons to win

However, I can say the gameplay of Genshin is easy to get into. Unfortunately, it's a rpg so I have to farm for materials... yay, I guess. But it's not as bad as Fate Grand Order, Fate grand order farming system is a shit storm especially considering how it's a turn based but doesn't have a auto-farm system.

(for those who want to get into the story of FGO, just look it up on Youtube, do not play the game. )

When exploring, I often hesitate of where I go, because the game doesn't want you to explore said region yet, They will send Paimon telling you "Let's explore that later" only to yeet you off the cliff.

Speaking of Gameplay Paimon, she always setting us up. There was this purple spot, and she told us to blow it away to see what it is, only for it to be the eye of the storm... Its not like it was hard but it was annoying to fight it.

At least she let us control the time though.

Overall, I had fun with the game, I'm looking forward for Liyue and thank you for reading all of this as I was writing as I go so I know there is MANY grammar errors in this review.

Can't wait for Liyue because then I will get to see the character that convinced me to play the game.

#genshin impact #genshin impact review #genshin venti #kaeya alberich #diluc ragnvindr #lisa minci #jean gunnhildr #genshin impact amber #paimon #lumine #aether #Genshin Impact thoughts #hoyoverse #mihoyo

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jumpscaregoose · 1 year ago

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hello wonderful mutual, may i inquire what shaman king is?

you've triggered an unskippable cutscene be prepared. was it me calling hana kentacoded that did it for you

shaman king is uh... certainly something

editor's note I go on about the history of the shaman king media franchise for like. way too long and I'm not deleting it so. plot summary starts after the flowers anime image

it started out as a shonen adventure manga created by a mangaka named hiroyuki takei which ran from 1998 to 2004, where it somehow Ate Shit And Died, leaving the manga ending unfinished somehow (idk I wasn't there)

it got its first anime adaptation in 2001

this anime had 64 episodes and covered a complete story. hey goose but if it aired in 2001 and the manga ate shit in 2004 how did they- they didn't. they made shit up. remember kanata dying on the cross? take that extend it to cover half the story and make it FUCKING AWESOME

shaman king 2001 has this impeccable Vibe to it that I really love (the only other thing I can think of with similar impeccable Vibes is sk8). a lot of fans prefer this anime to the manga and I can't blame them it sure has its perks. it also has its downsides. which is mostly terrible dated character designs and diverging from the manga if you're not into that.

I love this show though this is what I rewatch when I want any old shaman king in my spare time

but what's this? a whisper on the wind? that's right baby

SHAMAN KING KANZENBAN MANGA

that's right- between 2008 and 2009 the entire manga was reprinted to get its "true ending", including redraws of some panels

later in 2012 BAM SHAMAN KING FLOWERS

yes there's a full mainline sequel. flowers itself ended in 2014 when the magazine it was in Ate Shit and Died. the story was continued in another manga, The Super Star, before last year the magazine publishing TSS, say it with me now,

Ate Shit and Died (yeah Takei has real bad luck with that)

and then, just a few years ago...

BAM SHAMAN KING 2021 REBOOT ANIME

finally, an anime adaptation of the kanzenban manga, true ending including... this is where I show up. finally! I needed something to watch on a long car ride in august 2021 and happened to download the first eight episodes on netflix, a decision which would have no repercussions on my life philosophies or me as a person (lies)

there are pretty mixed feelings about this anime overall (the pacing goes fucking BRRRRRRR that's for sure) but I can credit that thing with getting me into shaman king and restructuring my brain so it has a special place in my heart

(it's also what I first get people to watch when they agree to shaman king with me. you should really read kanzenban instead because it's better)

lastly there's the flowers anime airing right now

(yay excitingggggg)

and like. soooooo many more sequel prequel and spinoff manga. and also all of takei's works (I'm planning to read ultimo soon because someone said that's where the spirit based on the vermilion bird came from and that has a common ancestor with allen sugasano so I'm going) oh shit and funkuro/funbari chronicles the mobile game that is either closed or on its way out. and so much more

I'm not going to explain every one of them because I realized you probably wanted. a plot summary. so

copy pasted from my mankin slideshow:

"laid-back Asakura Yoh is a shaman, someone with a connection to the afterlife. He participates in the Shaman Fight, a tournament to determine the next god. Hao, a mysterious and overwhelmingly strong shaman, wants to use the powers gained from becoming a god to wipe out humanity. Shenanigans ensue across multiple continents and the boundaries of life and death."

like I said before it's a shonen adventure manga so it follows a lot of tropes, but I think it does them pretty well and in its own way. if you read through the entire mainline manga (kanzenban, flowers, and tss) it's clear takei has a lot to say through his work and he's pretty explicit about his view of the world (shoutout to evil triangle who invented capitalism)

takei's writing and research can be kinda iffy at times and I would never say his work is for everyone but I love it to bits and it has really helped me out over the years

my personal favourite pieces of shaman king media (besides kanzenban) are:

Red Crimson (spinoff of the main sequels following an adult legacy cast, brilliant story about love and grief except for the Horrors)

& a Garden (prequel spinoff about the hanagumi witches, side characters from the first manga)

2001 anime (explained this one already)

if this has interested you go read the kanzenban manga and then come back for sequel recommendations

need more information? I got you

my beginner's shaman king slideshow (if you're reading this within an hour of posting you might see me updating it dw about that)

the patch cafe fansite which has up to date news about the entire series

there's also the funbari hill discord's tumblr account, which reblogs a lot of great shaman king stuff. everyone there is lovely and it's a great community (it's actually run by a mutual of mine hi frost 👋)

I ALMOST FORGOT THE SEQUELS FANSITE WHOOPS (run by an incredible artist and has some fun information about the sequels)

please tell me if you want clarification or more specifics I'm bad at explaining this concisely

#shaman king #koi don't ask me how a cult classic shonen manga fan like myself wound up in the twink rapper project fandom #I don't know either #hope you enjoyed my massive infodump

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styrmwb · 1 year ago

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Favorite Final Fantasy Music (FFXIV - Endwalker)

This was a hard list. This might be the hardest list out of all of them, actually. This is the (currently) most recent expansion of FFXIV, meaning it's the last part of my XIV favorite song lists. I love the Endwalker OST. I think overall, it has the highest number of tracks I absolutely love. The base game, the raids, the side content, it's all so strong, and I firmly believe there is not a single bad track in the entire list, only songs that I don't personally vibe with, and even then it's like, not even that much lmao.

The hardest part of this list was thinking what I didn't feel right including; a part of me as I'm writing this is thinking "fuck it dude top 20 let's do it", but I'm gonna hold strong and say: I love Pandaemonium. I love the remixes, I love the medleys and covers. I want to make this list a little varied! So I'm trying not to go too ham. (also there's no official youtube uploads of these yet so let's hope square doesn't kill these links!)

5. Finality This right here? This spot was the reason this list was so hard. The next 4 songs were locks, but I was like "what song hit me enough that it lands right above honorable mentions?" And after several listenings of every song you see on this page, this was the guy that did it. This is the final dungeon boss theme for this expansion, and that intro? Sold me. I know whenever I hear this song, I am getting ready for a fight for the literal end of the world. This song SOUNDS like the apocalypse. I love the heavy hits, especially the use of bass drum (like the opening bass drum roll??? fuck dude). I love how sorrowful the orchestra sounds, yet still loud to give you that sense of intensity. Not to mention, the choir version of Footfalls? My god man, this is a banger, but less in the sense that you're dancing along to it, and more to the sense that it gets you pumped the fuck up every time you hear it.

4. With Hearts Aligned I couldn't not put something from the final trial. It's an amazing fight. But I felt bad choosing The Final Day, cause, while glorious, it is ultimately a medley of songs from past expansions (which to be fair, is why it fucks).

This, is Endwalker specific. And not only is this Endwalker specific, this is generally considered to not be The Endsinger's final boss theme, but your final boss theme. Your friends all praying for you, the guitar shredding like the intro cutscene, the strings rising the song further, and to top it all off in the intro? The Maker's Ruin. The Theme From Phase 1 Of The Ultima Weapon. You're hyped at this point. You're powerful, you're undefeatable, your friends are giving the coolest fucking power of friendship speech you've ever fucking heard, and then the vocals come in. Everyone's favorite part of Footfalls finally shows its head of "yeah, this is the main song this is from." Singing about our song of hope, which, as far as I'm concerned? Is you. On wings of hope, you rise up through the night, higher (oh higher!), carrying our song, cradled fast within your arms, that it's chorus might ring for all (side note: this is also all the achievement names for the msq). This song is hype incarnate. This song is you conquering over despair, and bringing light to the entire universe. This. Is. Your. Song.

3. Flow Together Before any of the patch content came out, this was my favorite song. If this didn't exist, The Ewer Brimmeth would be right here, but this is my absolute favorite version of this melody. This is the fight against Venat (Hydaelyn), but also the final credits song. It's honestly beautiful. The vocals give it that elegance perfect for the person who's Basically your mom, but the band gives it a roughness befitting a sparring match between two Azems. My absolute favorite part starts after the song gets a little heavier, beginning at "Deep dark, far away~". The lyrics here are so meaningful, the guitar is beautiful, and the melody itself brings me to tears; it goes into this wonderful electric/acoustic type solo, and then doubles down. It takes all the same strengths as the part before it, and increases it (I know there's an official music term for this but I can't think of it and I'm too busy tearing up to google it!!!). Listening to the lyrics itself, which applies to normal Flow (same song with no band), it means so much for the meeting between you and Hydaelyn, or Venat in this case. She's talking to you. She's asking you what your journey's been like. She's telling you she's watched and listened to you all this time, and saying how you can rest. And I'm sure this meaning can be turned into anything, but that's what I get out of it, and it's what hits me the hardest (I am literally choking up writing this; the chokehold this goddamned song has on me I swear to god).

2. White Stone Black We're exiting the emotional Styrm-won't-stop-crying corner, and entering the realm of hell and demons, the castle of bangers. Pandaemonium has my favorite soundtrack out of any one section in the entire game. Literally every song in this raid fucks (even Scream and I don't even really care for that song!), and if I didn't have self restraint this whole list would have been Top 5 Pandaemonium Songs.

Anyways, to this one specifically: not enough people get to experience this wonder, because it is locked behind savage content, being Phase 2 of the final boss in the second set of fights. The phase begins with a horrific transformation, and the song itself is this intense droning synth on top of these heavy guitars, adding onto the creepiness and intensity, the main Shadows Withal melody previously used in Embers and generally associated with Lahabrea (cause it was his facility) turning into this terrifying chanting chorus (Silence.... holding us to violence. Violence... swearing us to silence.); Then the bop starts. The percussion ramps up, there's this really cool trancy noise in the background (that low key reminds me of super monkey ball), and the song gets heavier and more chaotic with all of the instruments and layers happening at once. The main meat of the lyrics also start at this point, with that heavily filtered screaming creating another layer of intensity and terror. This whole song represents this fight perfectly with the horror vibe and chaotic instrumentation (did you know a synonym for chaos is pandaemonium (did you know this bit also works for FFI and II)). There's also the peak of the song, when the less demonic voices take up the lyrics, and this is really where the dance floor energy creates itself (if you look up the Fortnite dance Infectious, I am always doing that in my mind to this song). it's an earworm, it's a head banger, it's creepy and terrifying, it's an absolutely beautiful mess of a song and I am so glad it's getting a Primals cover.

1. Hic Svnt Leones What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!

I'll start this by talking about the main Pandaemonium motif. I was originally disappointed it wasn't the classic tune used in II and IX, but it has really grown on me, especially because this raid series is its own entity. XIV doesn't always have to be a theme park (although I do love when it is don't get me wrong). It's normally creepy, ghostly, and very befitting of the horror gothic death castle that is this raid. Love the arrangement, and the notes hit JUST right. You enter the raid, you do the first 3 fights, and you're expecting this really heavy classical (is it baroque? is that the genre?) vibe for the entire raid series cause that's the vibe it gives off!

Then you get to surf rock Dracula. And you remember "Oh yeah I'm playing Final Fantasy XIV!". Hic Svnt Leones is my absolute favorite version of the Pandaemonium motif (but believe me, Ancient Shackles and Athena are CLOSE FUCKING SECONDS), and my favorite song in Endwalker period. Taking that amazing melody, with the amazing combination of guitar and organ creating this classical/modern fusion that exemplifies what makes XIV's soundtrack so unique and awesome. The lyrics with the filter and again, the melody, are addicting, and extremely fun to sing alongside to. And then you realize what you're singing along to? It's talking about death, violence, murder, demonic creatures and rats and rot and blood and all sorts of horrific topics, about how you're gonna lose your mind and break your soul and your bones are gonna burn AND IT ALL SETS THE ATMOSPHERE FUCKING PERFECTLY! YOU'RE FIGHTING ANCIENT TERRORS DRACULA IN THE DEMON CREATION CASTLE OF COURSE IT'S GONNA BE SINGING DEATH AT YOU! The lyrics go so raw: "Here in the valley your death casts no shadow"? God Fucking Damn. The "ooooo ooo" in the chorus is super strange, but I also love it? Continuing that really weird surf rock vibe this song has for some reason?? But then also going right into the haunts of the damned with the really deep choir, and then the raspy, rotten, creepy voice whispering about how it's gonna open you up and reveal the black inside and it's just. Fuck man. This song fucks. The melody is amazing, the atmosphere is perfectly horrifying, the lyrics go hard, and I could honestly listen to this song, not to mention this entire raid, for hours.

Honorable mentions go to the entire soundtrack, but more specifically: Footfalls, The Ewer Brimmeth, The Labyrinth, Divine Words, Vibrant Voices, On Blade's Edge, Home Beyond the Horizon, Garlemald Express, As The Sky Burns, Sky Unsundered, Miracle Works, Your Answer, Close in the Distance, The Final Day, Carrots of Happiness, Where Daemons Abide, Ancient Shackles, One Among Wonders, Radiance, In The Balance, Hippo Ridin', Embers, Rhythm of the Realm, Dedicated to Moonlight, Dreamwalker, One Amongst The Weary, Fleeting Moment; Athena, The Tireless One; Myths of the Realm, and finally, all of the remixes and covers: The Day Will Come, Tower of Zot, Welcome to Our Town!, Troian Beauty, Battle 2, Battle With The Four Fiends, Forged in Crimson, Voidcast Savior, Ultima's Perfection, Crimson Rise, The Final Battle (FFIV), and The Red Wings.

i really did try to keep that list reasonable but jesus fuck the music team was on some shit this expansion

#final fantasy #final fantasy xiv #textpost #jared's final fantasy music opinions

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wolfbuns · 2 years ago

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I'm glad the tumblrinas have caught on to Goncharov because I've been meaning to talk about one of the most underrated games of all time: Goncharov the Videogame (2007) by Vivendi Games.

No one ever talks about this game. Sure, it was one of the many GTA clones of that era, and the driving and shooting sections were attrocious, but the atmosphere of this game was immaculate, and it did so many incredible things ahead of it's time. A build-your-empire game, where you play as Goncharov, showing you the behind the scenes of his rise-to-power in the streets of Naples, taking back territory against the Italian mafia. All the actors who were still alive reprised their roles, except for Pacino (they had to get the same impersonator who played him in the Scarface game), and they even did mocap for all the cutscenes, where they recreated key scenes from the movie from different perspectives.

Of course what people remember the most about this is the incredible mid-game twist. As you know there's not that many action setpieces in the movie, so after the 5 assassinations where does the game go? Well, as you know from the movie, Goncharov dies, but after the funeral scene, and a fake-out credits sequence, there is a 20 year timeskip and you now control a grown-up Gonchivetta, and you set out in a journey of revenge to reclaim your father's empire and clean up his honor. Of course in order to unlock Gonchivetta's story you needed to max out your affection with Katya before Assassination 3, a mechanic that was not properly explained anywhere in the game, and so the second half of the game remained mostly undiscovered for the next 15 years, with many of the low scores citing the seemingly short play time.

However, the final nail on the coffin was when nearing release of the game Matteo JWHJ 0715 was asked about the game in an interview and went on a 15 minute-long tirade against the entire gaming industry, fully denouncing the production of this game for not sticking to his vision, and claiming this was just a cash-grab set up by Warner Bros., who owned the licensing rights of the movie at the time. Many people cancelled their pre-orders and started boycotting the game, many gaming forums even having dozens of threads dedicated to discussing the ethics of purchasing the game after Matteo's declarations. Scorsese even had to make a statement for several gaming magazines asking people to support the game, but it was too late, and the game was a financial failure across all platforms.

Still, this game is fantastic, and I think it fully deserves a re-release or a full-on remake on current gen consoles. Activision just needs to settle with JWHJ 0715's estate and come to an agreement on the licensing. Maybe they can even include the Wii versions' improved aiming and vehicle driving, and the 2 extra missions and 15 songs for Gonchivetta's story that were added in the Xbox version. Maybe they can even get some of the talented people from Katya Team, the guys who are working on Goncharov Definitive Edition, the extensive fan patch aiming to fix and modernize the incredibly buggy PC release.

#lizk post #goncharov #ps2 #robert deniro #gonchivetta #retro gaming

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carlyraejepsans · 3 years ago

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I tend to headcanon that the "type" Sans talks about is the "Flowey" type: a Determined being hellbent on getting their way purely out of curiosity.

We know Sans dealt with Flowey's reset bs for a long time before we fall into the underground (caused more than a fair share of resets, right?), and I'm pretty sure Sans is aware of him on some level (that "Echo flower" warning is mighty suspicious to me. After all, you want me to believe Papyrus WOULDN'T tell his brother all about his little flowery friend, including that he is golden? And that someone who can keep track of events between RESETs [see: the post-pacifist picture in his Workshop drawer] wouldn't try to keep an eye-socket on an anomaly like that? I don't buy it)

The parallels between the player and Flowey are highlighted to an outstanding degree just before Sans' fight too, so I'm pretty convinced the "type" Sans is referring to has to be him. I'd never thought about Gaster in that role before though, that's super interesting. Could be either, could be both 🤔

you're absolutely right about Flowey being THE foil/mirror to the player (i might have to write a full meta on that, one of these days!). my saying his comment was about gaster is pure speculation and normally I'd agree with what you're saying. I only have one problem with this: I don't think sans knows about flowey in the game's timeline.

because you see, he HAS known about him in flowey's past runs. at some point they were likely friends! but when flowey began to... experiment with the game, how many people he could kill and which ones, sans intervened. "at what point exactly did he do that" is a whole different matter to discuss, but we know from flowey's own words that those interventions caused him to reset the game multiple times because he was unable to proceed.

so there is NO WAY flowey let sans know anything about him. not in the game's timeline, ie the one we end up in. sure, there was papyrus talking about him, which was kind of a necessary evil since he was his fave needed to manipulate him to get the golden ending. but if flowey's plan in the game is to finally get to the six human souls and gain total control of the world, you can understand how he couldn't let sans know anything about him. what with him being literally tasked with guarding the entrance to asgore's garden (...more or less)

the photograph is... oof. congrats, you got one of the few bits about the workshop sans lore I don't have an explanation for 😅.

partly I don't think it HAS to be explained? sure, it's very likely that the group photo of our little found family that shows up in sans lab and the one at the end of the credits are the same, but I don't think it HAS to be anachronistic. after all, the photo shows up in the "i have places to go" ending, as an alternative to the cutscene where toriel leaves the pie in frisk's bedroom, but it shows up regardless in the photo album. so it's entirely possible that it's just a photo they took in a moment we didn't get to see.

i think its purpose is not to add more lore to the fire (and I've mentioned before how i think that sans remembering other timelines would go against his character arc) but to show sans' character development at the end of the game. after all, we only see it in the photo album after the asriel fight. he's let go of the life he lost and finally looks at the future we made together as a life worth living. a life worth caring for.

he looks happy :']

#undertale #answered asks #sans #entry log

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that-foul-legacy-lover · 4 years ago

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Digital Heart

Foul Legacy Childe x Reader Gender Neutral (no pronouns mentioned) Angst Warnings: Falling, fighting, minor injuries, nausea, breathlessness

In which Genshin is an interactive RPG accessed through an immersive headset, and you find yourself pushed to play it by your friends.

~ * ~

It started with a game.

For thirty days and thirty nights, your friends have been pleading for you to play it. Genshin Impact it was called, an free immersive open-world RPG with hundreds of weapons, characters, and power ups. Accessible through a specialized headset that tracked movement, it had only been a month since the freely downloadable game’s release and it was already a success, garnering praise from the customizable main character and the interactive playstyle. Play it. Your friends beg. You’ll love it. We can play together.

You refuse at first. The game might be free, but the headset isn’t, and you need to save that money to pay for food and clothes. Alongside your financial state was your schedule, a long list of work and chores that left little time to play games with constant updates like Genshin, so you told your friends- politely, as that’s how you were raised- that it’d have to wait. They agreed, quietly.

Then the next day, they ask again. You make an excuse- too much work. They agree, again.

The second day, asking. You’re too tired, you say. Of course, they respond.

Everyday, the same question. The same request, the same demand. It wears on you, amused exasperation drawing a sigh from you everytime you open your notifications.

Play it.

You can’t.

Play it.

You don’t have time.

Play it.

You need to focus!

Play it.

…

…Alright.

Finally, you cave. You create an account, a headset en route to your house. You clear an area in your house so you don’t accidentally hit anything. The headset arrives, and you insert the batteries, said to last up to an entire day playing nonstop, a stage you dearly hope you never reach. You pull it down over your head, cringing at the thought of your hair getting so mussed, and switch it on. A long and potentially worrying warning flashes before your eyes and you blink, not used to the in-depth cameras yet, as the screen goes white.

Welcome to Genshin Impact! Please name your character… appears, and you subsequently slip down the rabbit hole.

It’s fun, you find. Your friends were right, you did like Genshin Impact, although you thank your lucky stars that you weren’t as attached as some players were, as you still had work and life to attend to. The combat and story were enjoyable, and the characters were funny and diverse in personality and playstyles. The main character, who was also your customizable avatar, was quite literally you, the story explained, a traveler from distant lands who fell face first into Teyvat by mistake and tragedy. Of course you still haven’t gotten entirely used to the whole immersion thing, and sometimes shuddered under the eerily real programming of the NPCs and characters, but that was nigh unnoticeable when focusing on fighting monsters. Your deep love for exploration and discovery surfaces, and you take as long as you want exploring every inch of the wonderfully modelled map as you follow the main story, or “Archon Quests”. You calm the great dragon Dvalin and bid your friends at Mondstadt- Kaeya, Amber, Lisa, Diluc, Jean, and Venti- goodbye, Liyue sprawling out before you in wooded forests and cloud-covered mountains. A mysterious man runs across you at the Inn, the immortal Adeptus Xiao, although you would’ve thought he was quite young due to his short stature, and you encounter Zhongli in the Harbor, along with Lady Ningguang and her subordinates, Keqing and Ganyu. A member of the malicious-seeming Fatui also greets you and introduces himself as Childe, a name you don’t trust for a second, yet find yourself getting strangely attached too. The story progresses with you at Zhongli and Ningguang’s sides, the suspicion being pointed more and more to the Fatui, and you find yourself staring up at the elegant pillars of the Golden House, the mora mint building.

You gulp. You know this is where Childe’s boss battle takes place, and you’re not sure if your team is prepared, even if you stocked up on food right before leaving the Harbor. Inhaling a deep breath, you shove the enormous front doors open, and a cutscene pulls your fear tight against your throat. Everyone’s suspicions were right- he was here to steal the Geo Archon’s gnosis, and you have to stop him.

Easier said than done. The cutscene of your face shows a determined, fierce expression, instead of the nervous one you had in real life, and you almost laugh. You dearly hope your characters are strong enough, and step into the arena.

Phases One and Two are relatively short, as you quickly learn to avoid using Childe’s respective elements of his Vision and Delusion while his shield is up. The battle is fun and fast-paced, and you feel a thrill in your bones as you dodge another attack before swinging your sword in retaliation. Childe stumbles, and Phase Two ends with a cutscene. The corpse of Rex Lapis, something you considered a bit gruesome, is discovered to have no gnosis, and you can feel the raw anger in the Harbinger’s voice as the air crackles and hisses. A horrible, blinding light shines, and Childe is gone.

At least, human Childe is gone. In his place floats a monstrous version of himself, nearly 14 feet tall and complete with horns and armor, and your mouth drops open slightly as you gaze at him wide eyed. But your focus is violently shifted when the floor cracks and turns to dust, sending you tumbling down into the belly of the Golden House. You land with an unceremonial thump, thankful that the creators hadn’t been cruel enough to make you feel the damage you took in-game.

And Phase Three, the final phase of Harbinger Tartaglia, commences.

He has considerably more health, and his attacks can range from irritating to deadly, you just barely dodging the falling Hydro arrows that would’ve slaughtered your current character. Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re sneaking glances at your attacker every few minutes. Your mind wanders to the lore as you shield yourself from violet lightning. Does this transformation hurt? Where does it come from? Why does it look like a moth? Maybe one day you’ll get answers.

Despite the raised difficulty, Phase Three also ends rather quickly. Your characters, it seems, were overleveled. The remainder of the Archon Quest passes, Childe reappearing once at the end, and it’s over. The screen blips off as you log out and place the headset on a table before laying on your bed and using the last few hours before bed to contemplate what you’ve just seen.

The next days quickly fall into routine. After completing all your work, you’d take an hour or two to play Genshin, leveling up your characters even more and going through various quests, Childe’s included. You see his transformation, dubbed the Foul Legacy form, again, and almost swoon before stopping and giving yourself a harsh scolding. You fulfill requests and tasks for various people around Teyvat, or at least the parts of Teyvat you can access, and improve your skills and stats. You have a talent for dodging, you find, and use it to your advantage while fighting.

And every Monday, when the clock resets, you re-enter Golden House to battle with Childe and claim your just rewards.

Of course you could do it everyday, but a squirming, guilty feeling in your gut stops you, making you feel like you’re hurting him, no matter how many times you try to tell yourself that he’s simply a video game character, a program in an electronic system.

This thought makes you a bit sad, you think.

The fights are getting easier, something you credit to your rising stars of characters, and you stand before the Ley Line Blossom quicker and quicker each time, something you expect to be no different today.

Phases One and Two are just the same as you take advantage of Vaporize and Overload, drowning out Childe’s pre-programmed sounds of pain with your own abilities. The battle pauses, and you’re transported to the same chamber underground, with its fiery walls and glittering arches, as the fight resumes. With the same attacks and characters, it’s becoming a tad dull, and you frown, wondering if you should try to get another character soon.

You’re lost in your thoughts when you slip and fall.

This you feel in the real world, having landed hard on your back and knocked the air out of your lungs. For a few moments you struggle to breathe, and Childe takes the opportunity to appear right over you, his spear flashing purple. You swear internally, bracing yourself as he readies his weapon.

But the strike never comes. You inhale desperately, oxygen finally flowing into your chest, and open your eyes. The graphics of your game are gray and fuzzy around the edges, framing Childe as he slowly puts his spear down and, to your amazement and slight terror, jerkily reaches towards you. Voice clips play overhead, pieced together to make not words, but a static-interspersed whining sound, much like a concerned beast. Your eyes widen, and Childe stops, withdrawing slightly almost as if he’s worried that you’re afraid, and you whisper his name once, as a tentative question.

Then with crackle and a ping, your game crashes and everything goes black.

You gasp and rip off the headset, chest heaving as you struggle to comprehend what just happened. You’re shaking, nervous and fearful, but curiosity runs strong through your veins. Your finger slides towards the On button, and you press it and slip the device back on.

You’re standing outside, the doors of the Golden House closed as if the battle never happened. The guards surrounding it look ordinary, occasionally repeating phrases you’ve heard and ignored countless times. Glancing around and trying to squash the nauseous bubbling feeling in your gut, you push the doors open again.

It’s different this time. Instead of being in the upper room, you fall a short distance into the Third Phase Chamber, your shoes clicking on the tiled floor. Childe floats in the center, his back to you, and you take a tentative step forward. He turns and looks you dead in the eyes, before flinging his spear to the side and rushing towards you on his feet, kneeling to your height. Instinctively, you jump away as he sits on the ground before you, letting out joyful chirps and trills, sounds you didn’t even know he could make. You approach him, sword held loosely in your hand as an extra precaution, and he tilts his head and coos as you cautiously sit with him. Your hands are trembling as you try to understand that this is real, he is real, all of this is happening.

And if it’s not, then it’s some damn good programming.

Questions start to fill your mind, one after another, and you ask him, responses coming as a nod or a headshake.

Is this real?

Yes.

Or programming?

No.

Could you always do this?

No.

Just today?

No.

Over a period of time. Yes.

How…?

The final question hangs in the air, and he shrugs slightly, then points at you. You did this. You woke him up, made him feel pain, sorrow, and happiness, all stemming from you, his love for you. From the minute the Archon Quests let you meet, he was vaguely curious, the most emotion he’s ever felt in his cold, empty programming since before. And when the code broke, he adored you, not like Childe viciously adored battle, but a soft adoration, one with all his digital heart could muster. You smile, and he purrs at what a wonderful smile it is.

Something flickers in the corner of your eye. Then another. And another. You turn and squint, then gasp as your surroundings begin to dissolve into colorful squares, the game taunting you as it glitches and lags. You and Childe leap to your feet, only to watch helplessly as the world crumbles away. You look down at your hands and see them beginning to break apart into pixels. Childe reaches out to hug you, to hold you close, but his hand passes right through you, a sickening reminder of how unreal he is. He wails in anguish as you both try to grasp each other, only to shatter more, the pixels covering your screen like rain on a windowpane.

Your game crashes for a second time, the only sound a desperate whimper that soon fades into an electronic squealing.

It takes a week to fix your device, the tech people saying that it was “overloaded”. Finally the repairs are finished, and you’re back at the Golden House, the doors already ajar. You slip into the room, expecting either a battle or, hopefully, someone to greet you.

But the room is empty. No one, human nor monster, stands in the center. Instead there is one lonely Ley Line Blossom, waiting, the final gift from an impossible love.

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cogdis2-xx · 3 years ago

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New Update!

Noticed this should be my 100th post, so screw it, putting out Prerelease 0.6 now, with an EasyRPG fork just to avoid EasyRPG janking out over not booting from a regular title screen

Unfortunately the easyrpg build lacks the attract mode, but it's better than nothing. I'd recommend just using the regular build on windows.

Pre 0.6 Standard build here - Use on windows

Pre 0.6 EasyRPG build here - Use on mobile and literally anything other than windows, though I cant provide a tutorial myself for how to get it working. EasyRPG itself can be found here

Previous builds and changelogs here

This is probably the first build I'd consider a "stable release", just meaning it should be mostly stable for a standard playthough without it being too visibly unfinished.

Changelog for 0.6 below, beware of spoilers!

==[Prerelease 0.6]==

Internal LOOKINTO.txt added for things I should look into to see about tweaking

Blue Eyes White Giegue

Niiue Mouth/Nose placement adjustments

Niiue in mirror may be Dustier than he appears

More music tweaks

7 minute long Boss medley added during a Giygas fight where Niiue has a certain status effect

Remodeled the ship in attract mode to match the current interior layout

Made a certain unused Niiue sprite actually end up being used because I feel like it's too cute in current form to not include lol

Fixed Future Niiue using the wrong sprite in one cutscene

Fixed invisible barrier in cutscene mentioned above that had no reason to be there

Added an 80s carpet (and other changes) to a cutscene map

Fixed a minor oversight where Elmadan would replace the Mr. Saturn in a few cutscenes because I forgot to account for people not letting dan on the ship (Like a meanie :<)

Niiue hair

Reflect Crash prevention implimented; Slightly janks up enemy Flash Omega, though is probably a better solution than crashing. ONLY CURRENTLY WORKS FOR FLASH OMEGA. OTHER MOVES THAT MAY HAVE ISSUES LIKE THIS ARE NOT FIXED.

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Flash Omega reflect fix implimented for Doom Statue, N.K. Saturn, Flashzapbang, Influence inhibitor, surprise box, Foureyes, "Blue Mist", Hard shining jewel, hard Smilin' Sphere, Univese Saguaro, Hard Final Starman, Hard Ullrich, Gargiathan, Hard Voltzer!, Mr. Multiplicity, and Cmd. Deepsea. This should be all enemies with Flash Omega.

Changed a palette on a giegue sprite as to make the shading feel more natural

Tried fixing a bug where sometimes Giygas just doesn't fade in during phase 3, may add a bit of delay to the battle command right before fade in though.

Started working on putting people into the internal credits file

Changed the way the one room looks. the kind of out of place looking one where Niiue talks to you

Reduced scope of ship customization so it'd be a bit less overwhelming to impliment

Fixed some weird item quirks with Larice

Slightly toned down how harsh the Sataene color palette is

Changed Sataene's midi track in Chapter 1: Now split into two tracks

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Elmadan now calls for Lawyer Mooks, which are functionally identical to Lesser mooks, but look like ace attorney lawyers.

Added "Filter goggles" item which can be used to turn on an anti-eyestrain screen filter.

Finished ship customization, items are spread out across planets and chapters.

Tweaked earth dumps to properly utilize some parts of the tileset that were previously unused.

Made it so Dan can talk while on earth.

#Cogdis #mother cogdis #mother cognitive dissonance #Modding #Cogdis 2.XX development #Cogdis 2.XX

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karaloza · 3 years ago

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Breath of the Wild DLC Ideas (That Won't Happen, But I Wish They Did)

Okay, so.

I played Breath of the Wild last year, some 4-1/2 years late to the party. I loved pretty much everything about it. Big shocker, right? But I didn't go for any of the DLC, and I'm probably not going to--it's a borrowed game and a borrowed console, which would make it weird for me to order more content even if I got permission first and paid my friend right back. On top of that, I'm not all that interested in playing More of the Same But Harder, which is what the DLC seems to be. No, not even with the promise of a magic motorcycle.

What I wish is that they had come up with DLC to take place after the main game is concluded. Most Zelda games have a Happily Ever After sort of ending--the great grand evil is defeated, the kingdom is saved, roll credits. That's not the case in BotW. The kingdom isn't "saved," we've just prevented Calamity 2: Malice Boogaloo. There's still a lot of work to be done restoring civilization. I would love to have DLC that offered just that.

First a "main quest." Link is still a fighty swordy guy, so there would still be a lot of combat focus. Let's say that with Calamity Ganon defeated, there are no more Blood Moons, and we can finally Get Rid of All the Monsters. It must be very hard to rebuild civilization when Leekah can't even go for a walk without getting Bokoblin-clobbered. So your main quest is, just go through Hyrule and perma-kill all those monsters.

Now if the monsters no longer regenerate neither do their weapons, but weapons still break because it's not like the good metallurgists are going to suddenly come back to life. So, sidequest: Establish Some New Smithies. This would be an elaboration of some content that already exists--there's the grouchy Goron blacksmith, though you can't buy anything from him. What I have in mind here is that you help aspiring smiths--say one in each major settlement--acquire the resources to set up a forge (maybe introducing a new ore type that drops metal), and then bring them existing weapons that they can copy from. Show the Gerudo smith some Gerudo weapons, the Rito smith some Rito weapons, etc. And once they've learned how to make weapons, they can sell them to you. Breakage problem solved! The Hylian smith would have the most intricate branch of this sidequest because Hylian weapons come in multiple different "grades" (Traveler's->Soldier's->Knight's->Royal->Royal Guard) and it would be cool if they have to master the entire set of each grade (sword, greatsword, bow, polearm, shield) before they can start to learn the next one.

The next sidequest I call Hylian Homesteader, and it is an extension of that Hylian Homeowner quest that is just pure wish fulfillment for Millennials and is also similar in some ways to the smithy one. During my playthrough, I kept wishing that I could grow a garden on my land and stock my pond with fish, and have a few favorite ingredients always available. So for this sidequest, you would do just that. You'd need to dig the garden plots (let's say up to three) and you'd need seedlings or other cultivars to plant. For the first...well, Bolson isn't doing anything anymore, that could be added to his list. For the second...how about Zelda? She's a scientist, we know she has at least some interest in cultivating wild plants based on that one cutscene about the Silent Princess flowers, and she needs a presence in this hypothetical sequel DLC. So you give Zelda samples of the ingredients you've collected, and she figures out how to propagate them in your garden patch.

That's all I've imagined in detail, though in practice I would include more stuff like expanding Tarrey Town and/or building additional towns, re-establishing hallmarks of a developed society like a postal service and a school, recovering books from the castle library, and all sorts of fun things. It would be a different sort of game from BotW itself (though not too different, since your main quest is still about hitting monsters with swords), but I think it would do a lot to fulfill the implied promise of BotW, which at its heart is a game about healing from severe loss.

#legend of zelda #loz #breath of the wild #botw

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self-loving-vampire · 3 years ago

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I finished A Realm Reborn last night and am finally advancing into Heavensward soon, but first I will write a brief review of some story points (especially latter ones). Spoilers for the vanilla game below.

I heard that A Realm Reborn is basically average and the story only really “gets good” from Heavensward on, and especially in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. It is too early for me to judge these other expansions, but the assessment of ARR sounds accurate to me.

It was not a bad story, and it included some things that were interesting at least from a worldbuilding perspective (such as the primal summonings and the concept of tempering). As an introduction to the game’s world it works fine.

However, as a story it feels very much like it’s just serving the standard JRPG fare.

The primary antagonists are an evil Roman-ish empire and a sect of evil hooded wizards. This is serviceable but nothing special, and considering the powers available to said wizards I definitely got the feeling that they could be doing significantly more to hinder me than they actually did, which felt off.

After all, these characters are able to teleport and also functionally immortal until near the end of the story. Even if they can’t attack me or my base directly they have many options that they just don’t seem to take advantage of.

My main frustration, however, comes from instances of cutscene incompetence (one of my least favorite tropes) across a few questlines.

One egregious example was during the thaumaturge questline, where a character gets corrupted by a demon in a jar right in front of me. My character just stands there and watches as the character slowly makes his way to the whispering jar I was meant to destroy and opens it.

However, there was an even worse example of this near the end of the main quest, where several cutscenes play out in sequence.

I am talking about the event where you are framed for the poisoning of a city-state’s ruler while she was meeting with you in private to discuss her coming abdication. All so that the oligarchs (who have bought up all the guards) can take over. Once the deed is done, one of them arrives with the guard and accuses me. There are many things wrong with this setup.

First, I was the ruler’s guest at her own palace so obviously it is not my role to bring or serve the drinks around here. Servants are the obvious suspects in these situations for a reason.

During the meeting that is going on nearby at the same time, the evidence they present is a mostly empty poison vial the quest has you pick up before this event, but this is not very credible evidence considering they could have just as easily planted it on me after the fact and have much more of a motive to want her dead than I would.

To the game’s credit, not a single person in the entire world seems to actually believe this accusation, and they really should not considering how dumb it is. However, this whole thing is kind of frustrating for a few reasons such as:

1- The protagonist is idle the whole time.

This is one of the most significant events that has happened in the game so far and your character mostly just stands there for the bulk of it. You not only let the oligarch and his half dozen regular dudes capture you, but when you are brought to the gathering to have your “crime” exposed you don’t have any option to defend yourself or point out any of the issues with the accusation even though all sorts of established allies who could help with your defense are right there.

Immediately after this, a major character goes apeshit and starts attacking the schemers. However, even after being unbound your character does nothing to contribute to the battle, and neither do any of your other allies. You are just told to escape and clear your name.

The person behind this whole plot is right there. My character does not even need a weapon to squish him, and given that his whole army is motivated only by his money and knows that my character is at this point a god-killing war hero who defeated an ancient superweapon that was basically a walking nuke they probably would not realistically fight to the death for him like they seem to do (even after one of the people who was bribing them is cut down in front of everyone).

The protagonist of a story simply should not just remain as passive as a background character during events like this.

2- The party splits up for no good reason.

During the escape from the city, your allies gradually split away to presumably slow down your pursuers.

This did not strike me as the best of ideas. You don’t even need to consider the concept of defeat in detail to figure out that staying together for a combined effort might be a safer idea. Better yet, why are we not just teleporting out? That is also something we can do.

This makes the “sacrifices” (I don’t believe for a second that they actually died) to buy me time feel overly engineered, especially considering that the protagonist is still not really doing anything but running.

I have 55 Monk levels. Even if my weapon was taken away when the cutscene forced me to surrender I am easily at the point where I should be able to fight off an arbitrary number of mooks with just punches and kicks, especially with support from a full party of experienced badasses.

3- Am I an outlaw or am I not?

As mentioned previously, no one in the entire game seems to actually believe that I did a little regicide and I can still walk around the city as if nothing happened. Gameplay-wise this is a good thing because being cut off from one of the major settlements in the game for an extended period of time would be extremely inconvenient, but it still kind of undercuts not only the cutscene sequences where I was told to “escape and clear my name” but also the whole plot to frame me in the first place.

It feels off that the main quest treats me like I should be escaping to Ishgard and following the main quest there to bring the true assassins to justice but considering that I don’t seem to actually be wanted by the law anywhere I just end up feeling like I could probably just attack them directly or rally the population against them or something.

This whole escape feels unnecessary considering how useless the propaganda was and how many options I still feel I have to turn it all around, especially considering I’m friends with all the powerful people in the other city states.

Overall, playing through this sequence just makes me think about how these events might have played out in the less railroady single-player RPGs I am more used to.

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timeclonemike · 4 years ago

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Axiom Verge 2: Here We Go Again

So Axiom Verge 2 came out not long ago, but I don’t have a Switch and I don’t trust the Epic Games Store. Rather than wait and possibly get spoiled, I bit the bullet and watched a Let’s Play.

Consequently I can now build on this post. Cutting for length and spoilers right about here.

The Filter: The biggest revelation that AV2 provides is a refinement of the multiverse theory, plus defining some terms from the original game. Trace’s note next to his wheelchair mentions going upstream to the Filter or beyond for answers. As it happens, “upstream” refers literally to the Worldstream, and different universes are connected to each other in a serial fashion. The terminology used to describe the connections is upstream and downstream, with upstream leading towards the Source Worlds that are the progenitors of all other universes. Likewise, the Filter refers to worlds in the worldstream that function as firewalls and safety mechanisms to keep disruptive influences from downstream worlds from traveling too far up, since disrupting one world can damage all of the worlds downstream from that world.

We even get to see the Worldstream or some analog to it when Indra (the protagonist of Axiom Verge 2) travels to the Filter world upstream of Kiengir (which is either upstream of or parallel to Earth) and the background of the rooms is a MASSIVE fractal pattern originating from / coalescing into a singularity off in the distance.

There are also some notes from Trace to Dr. Hammond, his research partner in the cutscene for the first game who took Trace’s revolutionary theory and turned into a way to make Faster Than Light communication and computing technology. Dr. Hammond also finds herself in a unique position to test one of the possibilities implicit in Trace’s theory, namely if the existence of an afterlife is somehow accounted for in the multiverse. One of the notes in the first game says that different instances of a person across the multiverse can survive events that their counterparts do not, but that the survivors have no idea that they even have a counterpart who died.

What happens in the second game is more about what happens to the ones that didn’t make it, because Dr. Hammond is communicating with Indra through the prototype superluminal communicators (called ansibles) scattered here and there, but Indra can also find Hammond’s body and a suicide note in some of Kiengir’s ruins. Dr. Hammond refers to where she is as a sort of “detention center” that she needs Indra’s help to escape from, and this help involves hacking the control computer in the Filter world. An earlier message at an ansible mentions data throttling, which seems to refer to the memory limitations of the ansible prototypes themselves; they can only send so much data over their operational lifetimes.

Except there’s Trace’s original paper and the axioms he starts with, where reality is described as algorithms running a universal / multiversal simulation, and cognition is a sub-algorithm within the parent algorithm. Put it all together and the game all but states that there is an afterlife, but it operates on the same rules as life - it’s an adjacent or related universe to our own and minds / spirits / souls / cognitive algorithms can migrate between those universes under certain conditions even if the material body they used to pilot is no longer functional. At least, that’s what normally happens, but for some reason the transmigration of souls was limited or stopped or throttled. It’s semi-implied but never explicitly stated that there’s a trans-universal system in place to keep the Worldstream stable, and the Lamassu computer network that controls Kiengir is part of that network, and the fact that realities are starting to glitch and break down further implies that this system is damaged or overwhelmed.

Trace’s Motivations: Trace never shows up in the game, and only gets mentioned here and there in a few notes. The game takes place in the 2050s and Trace’s lab accident was in 2005, with Dr. Hammond starting Hammond Corp and making money hand over fist in 2007 by selling the world zero-latency computing technology. Hammond’s suicide note explains that Trace was already exploring the Breach before she started her company, but she hasn’t heard from him in decades and the entire antarctic expedition was just so she could try to find him again. She mentions a few things in passing that come up in the first game, like a device called a Scry that can locate anything in the multiverse, and the term PatternMind which Trace was but Hammond was not.

By itself, this would seem to imply that we don’t know anymore about what Trace saw or experienced that turned him from a pacifist to somebody willing to commit genocide. But there’s another factor in play, one that has nothing to do with Trace at all at first glance.

At a certain point in the game, Indra gets stuck in her alternate drone form until she finds the right upgrade to become human (well, humanoid) again. She can still communicate with people, such as the survivors from Hammond Corp’s expedition and one of the Kazakh members of a Russian expedition that came through the portal and decided to settle a world upstream of Kiengir. However, coming back to revisit those areas and talk to those survivors later may result in them not being in the same spot anymore. Instead, there’s a sort of flying enemy that looks like a miniature version of the first boss of Axiom Verge. People who examined the game’s code found that there is actually an “infection” mechanic involved based on time elapsed since Indra comes in contact with the survivors.

That the survivors turn into the types of monsters we see in Axiom Verge 1 is significant on its own, but it takes on more importance when we consider the endgame cutscenes. The Kazakhs have settled and colonized an upstream world, while a few of them are staying in an adjacent world where time passes differently; this is explicitly so that they can observe and track the changing of society over long spans of time and direct its evolution. After beating the final boss, Indra decides to team up with Drushka, the leader of the Kazakhs and a name mentioned in one of the notes found in Axiom Verge 1, in order to further her own goals.

Here’s the thing: What we see of the world that Drushka is standing watch in, called The Emergence, looks so similar to what we’ve seen of Sudra as to be almost identical. Given how time is explicitly stated to pass at different rates in different parts of the Breach compared to the worlds in the Worldstream, it isn’t out of the question that the Kazakhs were the ancestors of the Sudrans. The only problem with this theory is that long before anyone from earth showed up in Kiengir, the Lamassu had upstream technology brought in to allow the locals to defend themselves, as part of its broader directive to safeguard the Worldstream from disruption. Some of this technology included Rebirth Chambers - Indra even accesses the Filter through one - which was later destroyed to prevent too much cultural contamination. That technology had to come from somewhere, so either the Kazakhs inhabited a world adjacent to Sudra or downstream from it so there were similarities in art and culture and architecture, or the Rebirth Chambers and other advanced technology were themselves brought to Sudra from upstream worlds and simply shut down rather than completely destroyed after the Sudrans nearly wiped themselves out.

In either case, the important part is how Indra is subtly implied to be some sort of nanotech Typhoid Mary. She might be the actual source of the Pathogen that wipes out Sudra, not Athetos. In hindsight there is a hint to this effect in the first game because after Trace starts getting sick and hallucinating, there is a Rusalki called Ophelia that saves him. He doesn’t have any symptoms for the rest of the game, implying he is cured. If it was something unique to Trace that made him immune, he wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place and neither would Athetos. Same with him getting better, if Trace could do it so could the original. So it had to be something unique to Ophelia that she couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do for anyone else.

And during Axiom Verge 2′s credits, we see a detailed close up look of Indra’s nanotech-enhanced body. The face and head look a LOT like Ophelia. Not conclusive by itself, but too similar to be completely shrugged off as coincidence.

And that has got me thinking.

I ended my first post pondering what Trace could have found in the Breach or while traveling the multiverse that caused a pacifist scientist to turn to genocide to achieve his ends. It’s possible that nothing could, because he didn’t. Maybe Athetos didn’t release the pathogen on Sudra, the Rusalki did; it’s shown in the notes that they resented the way that the Sudrans crippled them and reduced them basically to talking heads, but still had some influence over what was going on either through manipulating the priests or through exchange of data that the Sudrans were unaware of or incapable of understanding.

Athetos refers to the Rusalki as masters of war just before the final battle of Axiom Verge 1. He might have shown up at Sudra thousands of years prior to the events of the game as Trace, gotten healed, traveled up to the Filter to try to learn more, and then come back after the flow of time had changed to find a civilization on the verge of collapse from a virulent contagion that turned people into monsters. Trace may be a pacifist, but he will still use the Axiom Disrupter and all of its bells and whistles to protect himself in game. It’s entirely possible that the original realized that the Rusalki were trying to escape Sudra and would cause devastation throughout the Worldstream, and he applied his knowledge to create weapons and tools to turn himself into a one man army once he realized he couldn’t cure the pathogen. (Or maybe he did try to come up with a cure, and the Rusalki’s retaliation / interference was what made him realize what was actually going on.)

He doesn’t say any of this before his boss fight because he realizes that Trace and the Rusalki have the advantage now. Trace can keep coming back using the Rebirth Chambers, so Athetos has to come up with contingency plan. The secret ending shows Trace in a Dream Algorithm set up by one of the Rusalki, but Athetos shows up and shoots him, telling him it’s time to wake up. During his boss fight, Athetos shows the ability to manipulate the environment to a certain degree, spawning in new enemies and replacing power cells for the Breach Attractor when Trace destroys them. It’s not clear if this is a result of Sudran tech of being a PatternMind, but whatever the reason, it’s possible that Athetos was doing all of it to buy time.

Time for what?

To hack Trace’s Nanogates so that the Rusalki couldn’t control him anymore.

Trace keels over not long after the final battle, but Athetos showing up with a gun implies that Athetos was able to at least get a Trojan Horse into the nanogates that would wake Trace up when the remote overrides were disabled. Then Trace could wake up, find all his equipment again, and take the fight to the Rusalki before they could cause too much damage to the Worldstream, possibly including Earth.

The only truly glaring flaw in this theory is that it doesn’t account for why Indra would side with a bunch of genocidal robots, one way or another; she refers to the storage bay in Axiom Verge 1 as where “our bodies” are kept, and these are massive war machines, while her humanoid nanotech form is about human sized. The Lamassu refers to some fairly devastating war machines from upstream worlds and the Rusalki might just be those machines; she was heading to the world they were stored in because it might have the technology to restore one of her Apocalypse Arm upgrades - the child Damu that controls her drone body - to a flesh and blood body that can live a normal life.

There is a big gap between trying to help this kid she found and teaming up with sentient weapons platforms to devastate the multiverse. At least as big as the gap between Trace being a pacifist and Athetos committing genocide.

Like so many sequels, Axiom Verge 2 has raised even more questions than it answered.

#Axiom Verge #Axiom Verge 2 #Analysis

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deiliamedlini · 4 years ago

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I did this Tier Ranking the other day of Zelda’s with the most to least amount of agency in their games, and I’m going to be honest... I’m still thinking about it. I was getting so annoyed when I played SS the other day because of something that happens that made me mad. So now, I’m going to rant about every single Zelda because she deserves better.

This is my short essay on which Zelda’s have agency in their games and why. Omg if only I could have done that topic in grad school.

So this was my list.

Before you keep going, this is just spoiler central. So, if you haven’t played, say SS yet, heads up.

I’m going to start by saying I’ve never played the Four Swords games nor watched a playthrough. IDK why there are 4 of her, but maybe it’s just ironic to have 4 of them? But that’s my ‘don’t know’ pile. Maybe she’s epic, but I remember her being captured by Vaati in an intro to the GBA game, so I doubt it.

~~~

Most Agency: Wind Waker Tetra, Sheik, and Spirit Tracks Zelda

I almost feel like this part of the list goes without saying. Tetra (WW) is a queen. She’s a captain, has a crew, goes where she wants, helps Link, hurts Link, literally, queen.

Sheik should also go without saying. We don’t see a lot of Sheik actually doing things, but we know she’s doing them. She’s been all over Hyrule for 7 years training, and keeping the world spinning. During the game alone, we know she’s out there rescuing Ruto, trying to fight the spirits in the well, etc. So we don’t see it, but we know it.

And Spirit Tracks Zelda! SHE’S YOUR LITERAL COMPANION!!! SHE’S WITH YOU THE WHOLE GAME, FINDS A WAY TO FIGHT, HELPS, IS FUNNY, IS ACTIVE IN THE KINGDOM, AND IS AN ALL AROUND UNDERATED ZELDA. She lost a little agency because she has no body, but she didn’t let it stop her.

~~~

Good Agency: OOT Zelda, BOTW Zelda, TP Zelda

This is the “I’m in danger of being smited for including these three here” pile. OOT Zelda isn’t in it for long as adult Zelda, and she does get trapped in a crystal almost immediately, but you know she was training for years and managed to stay out of sight of Ganon. And at the end, she holds up an entire castle for you to escape. I want her on my team, but I’d prefer Sheik. Plus, this Zelda is one in SSB sooo does that count? I don’t think so but whatever. I wanted to put her lower, but I was thinking of her off screen and she managed to make it up into the ‘good’ agency pile.

BOTW Zelda. She’s got a lot more agency in AOC than BOTW because she just runs around and basically commands the whole kingdom's army after a while, but in BOTW, she’s held back by everyone! She had the potential! She wasn’t a damsel, she was a smart cookie, she had character, but everyone was like nah girl. Go wander Hyrule doing stuff. And she did! Not because she had agency, but because everyone told her to. She wanted to work with the tech! Let her work with the tech!

And TP Zelda, my girl, I love the thought of this Zelda SO MUCH!! SHE HAS A SWORD!! SHE COULD HAVE USED IT IN THE GAME!! THE CUTSCENE WAS RIGHT THERE!!!!! But you know she defended Hyrule off screen anyway, literally fought with her soldiers to protect her people. Gave her literal life of her own accord, took full blame for things, like, no one told this girl no. She was full blown agency... except that she was locked in a tower for the whole game, then went poof, then got turned into a puppet, then only managed to show off her battle badassery in ONE SCENE aka one of the best multi-stage final boss battles. Just could have pushed her further.

~~~

Okay Agency: Child OOT Zelda, SS Zelda, ALBW Zelda

Child Zelda. She’s a child. She gave Link an instrument and was forcibly (but thankfully) spirited away on horseback. She doesn’t really DO much at this point. But she WILL! So she’s cool, but she’s just a wee sprout still!

SS Zelda: Don’t hit me! I love her, her general plot, and her relationship with Link. But she isn’t even allowed to hug him. She is dragged everywhere, captured MULTIPLE times, stuck in a big old amber crystal thing FOR I DON’T REMEMBER HOW LONG, nearly sacrificed, and is bombarded with memories of a life that wasn’t technically hers and she has to sort through being Hylia and not just Zelda. Poor bean. She’s not at the bottom because you can tell that before the game, she was top tier agency queen.

ALBW Zelda is just... meh. She’s not as bad as ALTTP Zelda, but she doesn’t really do much and then gets stuck in a painting for most of the game. Points if we’re counting Smash Bros again though!

~~~

NO AGENCY: ALTTP Zelda, Oracle Zelda, OG Zelda, Minish Cap Zelda, WW Zelda, PH Tetra, Zelda II Zelda.

ALTTP Zelda is just a sad, sad tale of ‘can you be more damsel in distress if you tried’? She: starts the game in a cell, hides in a sanctuary, is kidnapped again, is sacrificed, is stuck in a crystal, and finally, is chilling in the end credits. Girl. I’m so sorry for you.

Oracle Zelda is apparently the same Zelda as ALTTP and it shows. She hangs out in a house and tells you the weather and then (you guessed it) is kidnapped and nearly sacrificed. This poor bean has gone through too much.

OG Zelda literally pops up at the end of the game and is like HEY you’ve been trying to save me this whole time, in case you didn’t know. And Link’s like omg I have?? Because I don’t even remember her being mentioned outside the info pamphlet and the ending.

Out of order, but Zelda II, she’s the most relatable, because she sleeps the whole game. She’s under a curse, wakes up, sees Link and is like damn you’re cute, and kisses him. If we use the info booklet, it gets worse and her brother used a spell to blah blah. She sleeps. That’s all she does.

Minish Cap Zelda is so precious at the beginning of the game and you can tell her and Link are besties and I wanted more of that! AND THEN SHE’S TURNED TO STONE THE WHOLE GAME. But no, wait, she’s...... almost sacrificed in the process. Deja vu.

Wind Waker Zelda was cool in the final scene, but she spent her entire portion of the game trapped in a basement against her will for her protection. No agency. That’s really all the poor thing gets to do as Zelda.

THEN THE DIRTIEST OF ALL DONE DIRTY CHARACTER MOVES IS PHANTOM HOURGLASS TETRA! ONE OF THE BEST ZELDA’S REDUCED TO NOTHING! SHE IS CAPTURED IMMEDIATELY AND SPENDS THE ENTIRE GAME AS A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS WHO HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED AND TURNED TO STONE. I’m still salty and will hate Phantom Hourglass forever for many reasons, and Tetra being done dirty is one of them.

I feel better now. If anyone actually read all this and has other thoughts on this, I’m fired up and ready to talk because who needs to sleep at 1:30am? Not me!!

#legend of zelda #zelda #princess zelda #ranking things #rant #Zelda's agency #why do some of these games just HATE her #I was not recovered after ranking these Zelda's the other day #agency #zelda series #gaming

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voicefromthecorner · 4 years ago

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41. Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Writes Your Story

Original Song: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

The end.

The original song of this usually gets me. It’s beautiful. So it’s small wonder that combining it with the heartwarming ending of TWEWY has a similar effect. This song lines so much up so well and covers pretty much every facet of Neku’s final monologue, including his complicated yet trusting lingering friendship with Josh and his acknowledgement of his own growth. I said ages ago that Neku finds himself in Eliza’s role a surprising amount in these songs and I earnestly hope he lives up to the role here.

The big change of this song that I’m most proud of is the titular change. The original song follows up on the play’s question of legacy and who carries your name forward after you’re gone; this song plays into the theme of the game surrounding what we spend our lives actually doing. It’s a challenge. It asks what the Reaper’s Game asks, which is what’s most important to you and why we want to live. In other words, who writes your story?

Had to look up a YouTube video of the secret ending for the visuals to screencap. I noticed a subtle change to it, but I’ll bring it up another time.

The visuals are of course full of cutscene shots, but that last one of Neku discarding his headphones needed to be made by combining two different shots, since we follow a more zoomed in view that pans up. I’m no wizard with Photoshop, but I think it turned out pretty well.

As always, credit for the incredible RG Shiki sprites belongs to BlueRainbow 101!

Only have one song left that’s actually written out, but I’ll take a bit of time before getting to it. We’ve completed the end of the main story and that’s a good enough milestone for me. There are a couple more song ideas I have in the making beyond this but I’m not in a hurry. I spent all year making this much and I’m okay with taking a little time before seeing the journey through to its absolute end. Hope you’ve all had fun with me in the meantime!

First Song: Neku Sakuraba

Previous Song: Shibuya’s Wide Enough

Next Song: Dear Sakuraba

Index

Transcript:

[HANEKOMA] Let me tell you what you need to know, While you’re young and dream of glory, You had no control Who lived Who died Who wrote this story

[JOSHUA] Daisukenojo Bito:

[BEAT] Gotta give 'im this: he was there for me when I needed 'im I couldn't have saved Rhyme on my own if I tried ...And I tried

[HANEKOMA AND COMPANY] Who lives Who dies Who writes your story?

[JOSHUA] Shiki Misaki:

[SHIKI] He took all of us from despondency to victory. You have to admit it! He deserves a second chance For all the chances he gave us

[HANEKOMA AND COMPANY] Who lives Who dies Who writes your story?

[RHYME] Every other winning Player's story gets told Every other winning Player gets to grow old

[JOSHUA] But if you’re gone, why remember your name? Do I keep this flame?

[JOSHUA AND MEN] Or end this story? (Or end this story?)

[RHYME AND WOMEN] He'll end our story? (Our story?)

[COMPANY] To end this story?

Shibuya

[NEKU] You put us all back in the narrative

[COMPANY] Shibuya

[NEKU] I won't waste my time on tears I'm going to live out all my years It’s now enough

[COMPANY] Shibuya

[NEKU] I return to every Player who fought by my side

[SHIKI/BEAT/RHYME] We tell our story

[NEKU] I try to make sense of all your morally questionable actions You really did act like we were running out of—

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] I go look for—

[NEKU AND HANEKOMA] Hanekoma

[NEKU] If he was around —

[NEKU AND HANEKOMA] He'd(/I'd) tell his(/my) story

[NEKU] I'm sure wherever he is he's

[NEKU AND HANEKOMA] Near you

[NEKU] When we needed him most, he was right on—

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] I think those weeks through I ask myself, “What would I do if I'd had less—”

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] I learned to find kindness, To find out what I always needed, It just took some—

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] I still can't forgive you yet for the way that you treated us

[JOSHUA] This is your story

[NEKU] Those weeks were so hard on me And yet I still trust you, I know I just need some more—

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] And now the time has come, will I do enough?

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Will I write my story?

[NEKU] Oh. Can I tell you what I’m proudest of?

[COMPANY] New friendships

[NEKU] I have friends in my life that I can spend time with in the city

[COMPANY] New friendships

[NEKU] My world isn't just about me now And so I'm finally growing up

[COMPANY] His friendships

[NEKU] In my mind I also see you, Josh I see you every—

[NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[NEKU] And now we're meeting up We haven't done enough

[NEKU, SHIKI, BEAT AND RHYME] We will write our story

[NEKU] Maybe I'll see you there, my friend I hope it's a matter of [NEKU AND COMPANY] Time

[COMPANY] We will write our story Time Who lives, who dies, who writes your story? Time We will write our story Time Who lives, who dies—

[FULL COMPANY] Who writes your story?

#nekuxander hamiltaba #who lives who dies who writes your story #crossover #twewy #the world ends with you #twewy spoilers #hamilton #song parody #neku sakuraba

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razorblade180 · 5 years ago

Note

Ok I gotta ask this now since I just saw your post. How would you have written ddd and kh3 to make it a tighter more impactful plot? (Also would love to know how you would write narusaku or any other naruto ship

[please comment below. This took so much time and it would suck if no one read this😭💀]

I can already tell this will go beyond the line limit so buckle up everyone. We’re only focusing on KH right now. Let’s start with DDD

Dream Drop Distance

Let’s get the major change out of the way, Kairi is on this adventure. Why? Because there’s two previous games where they express how she wants to actively help and KH2 has lines of her saying she refused to be left behind anymore. This works out just fine for Yen Sid, since this test is supposed to be a relatively safe. Sora and Riku are officially taking their mark of mastery exam but for Kairi, this serves as a hands on learning course. Going the sleeping worlds together for them to learn proper keyblade wielding sounds perfectly fine. All three get out on the island, fight Ursula in the tutorial, and then Xehanort starts his shenanigans just like in the game. Here’s the difference! Sora and Kairi are still together, while Riku still accidentally dives into Sora’s dreams.

Immediately the trio would know something isn’t quite right but the only option is press on start figuring things out while completing their task from Yen Sid. This is where gameplay is now a bit different. You play as Sora with one dream eater and Kairi as your support characters while Riku plays the same. The drop system is still the same everything. Sora and Kairi go through worlds together and get to interact. At the beginning Kairi doesn’t know much but gains abilities/confidence as you progress. Sora ends up serving as a mentor for her and guides her through the troubles of going on your first adventure. It’s a good way to put Sora in a more mature role. He’s forced to keep his wits about in order to keep Kairi safe because he doesn’t know the organization is actually after him.

We get a couple of scenes of Kairi getting better and helping Sora through the worlds which still play out the same basically. Bad guys show up and say mysterious things before leaving and the two deal with Disney problems. Riku’s doesn’t change at all because. Things only start to get really different after Symphony of Sorcery. Young Xehanort shows up at the very end of it and goes after Kairi to bait Sora into rushing to save her. Sora ends up getting hurt in the process and Young Xehanort kidnaps him here and immediately leaves before Kairi can do anything. She’s now angry at herself for not being able to apply what Sora had taught her when it truly mattered. She couldn’t protect him or herself. Kairi almost wants to give up but meow-wow lifts her spirits and she finds the resolve to fight before. Sora would never give up, especially when it came to saving his loved ones. Kairi is now a playable character and able to do all the commands that aren’t character exclusive. His dream eaters stick around and become her party members.

You go through The World That Never Was as her back in KH2 attire, fighting her way through it and she’s the one that gets told how the organization has been tracking them and all the other plot things; including why they want Sora. Kairi ends up being the one to have to fight Xemnas and even though she’s outclassed, she’s gonna give him all she’s got. On Riku’s side he sees all the weird dream imagery in Sora’s head since he’s in Sora’s dreams with the added glimpse of Kairi trying her best against Xemnas; motivating him even further to hurry up and make it to her. He still confronts Ansem and makes peace with himself. Riku finally makes it out of Sora’s dreams but retains his dream eater powers like in the game and rushes to help Kairi. He makes it half way through the fight and Kairi tells Riku to back her up. The two of them fight together with you still playing as Kairi and manage to push him back. Riku is extremely surprised by her progress and both of them go together to save Sora because he knows telling her to stay back is not an option. Riku and Kairi both fight Young Xehanort together.

Everything is mostly the same after that in terms of plot and everything that happens in the cutscenes. Including Axel showing up. Riku convinces Kairi to stay when he jumps back into Sora’s dreams, telling her someone has to make sure everything goes fine in the real world and that person has to be her. Riku comes back out after is boss fight and those cutscenes and he sees those two slackers having a tea party. Yen Sid commends all three for their bravery, especially Kairi. He also apologizes. Riku gets named a master, Sora doesn’t. Sora thankd his friends and told Kairi he was proud of her before he left to go thank the dream eaters. Even though she did well, Kairi knew without Riku, the dream eaters, or Sora, she wouldn’t have lasted as long as she did. She wanted to be strong enough to protect herself and others. So Kairi asked Yen Sid if she could have further training. Yen Sid told her and Lea about the dimension where they could train and they both accepted. Riku asked what he should do now and then the 0.2 conversation happens off screen. Boom, DDD rolls it’s credits.

Kingdom Hearts 3 [internal screaming]

Okay! So I gotta tackle this one a little different. First of all, let’s live in a world where ReMind came apart of KH3 (as it should’ve) now let’s put the cutscene between Luxord and Xigbar where it belongs at the beginning of the game, and then let’s put the cutscenes of MoM/ the organization discussing the members somewhere in in middle of the game. Like after Monsters Inc. Because that information had no reason to be hidden. It reveals nothing, but explains how people are back which is important. This knowledge doesn’t even spoil the Luxu reveal!

Second, I have to explain my two major problems that really hurt this game for me. Plot pacing and only setting things up halfway or not at all. So I’m going to tell you what changes narritive and gameplay wise I would’ve changed. Then I’ll go through the game including those changes.

Sora getting his power robbed consequence will be in every world and weigh on him.

The time characters get rescued/revealed

Ventus and Roxas’s heart influence

Isa’s plan

Aqua’s trauma

Xion, Vexen, and Demyx appearances.

Multiple playable characters.

Kairi and Lea contributions.

Also if I don’t mention something then assume it happened just like in the game.

Okay, let’s get started at Olympus. Everything is the same except one thing that I will continue to do for the other worlds. Sora will try to be proactive in stopping an Organization member, triggering a 1v1 boss fight. He’ll fight Xigbar and lose so bad that his friends have to save him. This puts in perspective that Sora really has lost his powers and is frustrated about it. This will do two things. One of them is make him slowly get more upset when someone brings up him failing the exam, being a half pint, or not being able to do things on his own. I’ll come back to the second thing later. Sora is order to continue to gain the power of waking while leaving finding Aqua to Mickey and Riku.

Twilight Town is also basically the same. However, the Demon Tide really roughs him up. Ansem and Xemnas bring up how they hope Roxas didn’t get this weak as well just to anger him. Sora wants to put them in their place but is convinced not to by Donald and Goofy. Now he’s doubting himself internally a little. Also Merlin shows up now instead of later. The trio bump into him and He tells Sora that Lea and Kairi actually are almost done training because they trained in a place where time didn’t matter. The moment they went in should’ve technically they came out but I’m being generous. Sora is shocked to realize his short time at Olympus might’ve equaled months of training for Kairi or even longer.

Toy Box is the same with the addition of fighting Young Xehanort and losing to him before a gigas piloted by his friends intervene. We still get the comment about putting hearts into vessels of their pleasing. When the world is over Kairi calls to tell him she’s finishing training and wants to see him back at Yen Sid’s tower.

Kairi and Lea are both really jazzed about how strong they’ve gotten and ready to help. Before they do, Kairi asks for a friendly spar against Sora. While he does win, he is amazed by how strong she’s gotten. Kairi comments on how she’s still lacking the real battle experience and skill he’s gain over time and he actually starts to feel better, until she asks if she could go to a world with him to get it. He wouldn’t mind it if wasn’t for one thing, he’s worried he might not be enough to save her if she needs help. Not with all his strength gone. He keeps this to himself and Kairi and Lea end up tagging along to Kingdom of Corona. On this world you get the option to be Sora with Rapunzel Flynn has mandatory party members and the choice to choose Kairi and Lea or Donald and Goofy; Or you can play as Kairi which automatically makes the party during gameplay Flynn, Rapunzel, Sora, and Lea. This works out fine because half this world has Rapunzel and Flynn leave your party so the other two characters can fill in during those sections.

So the Disney plot in this world doesn’t have to change one bit. The changes that happen all occur with all the Kingdom hearts characters. For example, Marluxia now meets Sora, Lea, Kairi, Donald and Goofy when he first reveals himself. We get sassy and rude dialogue between Marluxia and Lea about being alive and who’s actually the traitor this time around. Lea can also fill Sora in on CoM since no one does it. What makes this scene important is the moment Marluxia directs his attention towards Kairi, she starts getting really nervous and Namine’s voice comes out unexpectedly, telling him to stay back. It’s Namine who’s actually nervous, terrified even. Sora might not have the memories, but the entire exchange is enough for his heart to remember the intense desire to protect Namine from Marluxia. Sora and Lea get in between the two. Marluxia only looks at everyone and can’t help but get a little nostalgic. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Except for one...” he says that vague response referring to how Lea and Rikuplica switching sides, then he leaves.

The next major change is Soar and Kairi spend time at the festival together and share a moment during the lantern scene. It’s at this time Sora expresses the doubt he has to protect her and the others with his current strength. Kairi tells Sora that he can do anything he puts his mind to and to never lose that smile of his. She tells him how they will protect each other and that his heart will never steer him wrong. This touching moment is ruined when Donald screams off camera. The Nobodies shown up. Everyone quickly jumps into action when another hooded figure appears. Sora goes off to pursue them triggering Lea to follow him. Sora is evenly matched with the figure back and then hood falls off. It’s Xion. Immediately seeing her causes an intense reaction from Roxas’s heart that screws up Sora in the fight and he his taken out by her. Xion planned to take him but Lea intervenes, causing both of them to get a painful reaction to each other. Marluxia shows up to retrieve Xion, who was sent there for a test run and leaves Axel in pain because Kairi caught up to protect both of them despite the fear from earlier. All he can see is Namine finally taking a real stand against him before finally going. Sora wakes up that morning on the outskirts of the kingdom where he sees Flynn riding Maximus with Lea still out of commission. Donald and Goofy looked after him while Kairi helped resuce Flynn. He tells Sora about what’s happened to Rapunzel and they all go rushing to the tower, except for Kairi who’s understandably tired, and chooses to look after Lea since he’s also still recovering. The rest of the world stays the same.

Sora and the gang try collecting their thoughts and info while in the gummi ship. So many things were happening so fast. Sora tried to apologize to Lea and Kairi but they told him there was no need. They end up going to Yen Sid again for answers to things like the new seven princesses. While there, Donald ends up taking another jab at Sora for still not having the power of waking. Sora actually gets fed up this time around, frustrated with himself mainly. He yells how he’s doing the best he can and it’s not like Donald is being of any real help either. Sora claims that he can do this on his own and takes off to the Gummi Ship before anyone could really get a word in.

Monster Inc ends up being the next world he finds himself in but not by choice. Sora had been so worked up he had forgotten the ship ran on smiles and crash landed to the nearest world. That’s not all, Kairi had actually manage to sneak aboard by surprise. Now he felt bad about endangering her but didn’t get to apologize before Kairi bonked him on the head. She reminded Sora about their conversation on the pier and expressed how determined she was to knock Sora out of his funk. They’d be stranded here otherwise. Through all of that it slipped their minds that they were monsters now and decide to look around. One thing that immediately stirred something within Kairi’s memories was the unversed which convinced them that this place was now definitely worth looking around. The plot points of this world are pretty much the same. As you go through the factory making Boo laugh. Sora is also gaining his cheerfulness back and opening up more to Kairi about how down this situation had gotten him. He was happy she was here to cheer him up. Vanitas shows up and still gets thrown through doors. Sora wonders about his desire to save Aqua so quickly stems from the possibility of Ventus’s heart sleeping in his. Kairi tells Sora about how Namine’s heart reacted to Marluxia which only made his thought more valid. He tells Kairi how he really thinks he can save her and Kairi agrees, but tells Sora it would be easier with more people. He needed to make up with Donald and to some extent, Goofy. As if on que the gummi phone rings with Chip and Dale telling Sora that they’ve lost trace of Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness. What’s worse is Donald and Goofy acted rashly at the news and took Yen Sid’s star shard, sending them to who knows where. It was possible that they actually got sent to the Realm of Darkness! Sora calls Ienzo to ask if he knows a way there but he only knows about the corridors of darkness.

Kairi tells Sora that he really is connected to Ventus then maybe he can open a gate. Even if he can’t, Sora’s connection with his friends might do something. He just has to do what he did to get to Olympus. Sora opened a gate that brought him and Kairi back to Destiny Islands where they found Donald and Goofy. More importantly, an unfimiliar keyblade. Sora uses it to create a door and heads off. The others try to follow him but he tells them that they need to stay behind just in case. He also apologizes for his outburst which prompts Donald and Goofy to apologize for not seeing how much the teasing was getting to him. Kairi tells him to be safe and Sora smiles truthfully. He just has to believe in himself like she said. He can do this. Sora goes through the door.

Sora drops right in the middle of the Riku vs Aqua fight and things play out normally until the halfway point where the darkness in her becomes almost too much for Sora. Just like with Vanitas, Ventus’s heart starts to react to seeing Aqua in such a state. Suddenly Sora summons Master’s Defender again and holds it back handed. Aqua is left shocked, she can only see the friend she promised to wake up. With a heavy heart she manages to ask for help and Sora nods. You play the remainder of the fight with attacks and even a command style used by Ventus. He’s calling the shots now. You beat Aqua and she gets saved. Everyone’s happy, everyone’s crying.

Aqua takes Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi to go wake up Ven while Riku and Mickey rest up. Sora gets more strange feelings at the sight of Castle Oblivion. He can’t help but think of Namine, as well as fuzzy memories of Marluxia and a few other people but he keeps it to himself. Aqua remakes the Land of Departure and they make their way to Ven. Vanitas shows up and Aqua challenges him alone. Instead of her loosing because she blocked a fireball with her body, We get Aqua losing because she’s still very tired and the PTSD she has from the realm of darkness. Everyone panics. Sora activates the power of waking to wake Ventus (I’ll cry when he thanks Sora) and he saves Aqua. Vanitas leaves.

Everyone regroups at Yen Sid’s tomorrow again. Finally, progress is being made in collecting guardians. Ventus and Aqua need more time to recover and choose to rest. Kairi keeps them company to learn more about them, her past, skills, and also take a break. All this adventure has gotten her really exhausted. Mickey goes looking for Ansem the Wise and Sora manages to convince Riku to tag along with him. Maybe they’ll find Terra? Onward to frozen!

Sora and the gang meet else Elsa and Riku empathizes with not being able to control power and being scared of hurting people close to him. Sora emphasizes with Anna when it comes wanting to help someone important to you but they keep running away and create things that make it harder to reach them. It’s one big moment of reflection and growth in this world. Larxene still shows up and Sora knows her by name surprisingly. The feelings of anger he gives her is all he needs to know that she cannot be allowed to do whatever she pleases. He tries stopping her but fails. He’s not too upset though. His previous accomplishments and encouraging words from Kairi push him forward. Unknowingly, Vexen shows up and has an argument with Larxene. She complains about why he’s heat and he tells her that he heard memories are extremely malleable here (trolls) and he’s come to look into it before leaving Larxene to her own devices. Elsa starts really thinking her powers are nothing but darkness but Riku convinces her otherwise. Elsa thanks him but that moment of weakness creates the boss of this world. Sora and Riku fight it with Snowball while Elsa goes to save Anna. Things work themselves out the same from there. Riku and Sora feel closer than ever and Riku tells Sora he’s a master in his own right which makes Sora’s day. Vexen got valuable data.

Ventus finally felt like his body was used to moving again and was ready to start getting back in the swing of things, but Aqua was still feeling down. The guilt of taking so long and trauma was weighing on her heart. Kairi tried everything to cheer her up but nothing helped. Kairi has no choice but to pull out the big guns. She called Sora. Through lot of persuading, he convinced her to tag along with him and Ventus to go traveling with him to get them up to speed. Part of the agreement was Riku and Kairi go finding more clues about Terra’s whereabouts so they stayed behind. Checking Radiant Garden again seemed like a good idea. Kairi hadn’t been so it would kill two birds with one stone.

Pirates world was next on the list. This time we there’s four organization members! Luxord goes looking for the box and Demyx is forced to help because Isa wants him to prove his worth or why even be around? They’re on the water so he should be decent muscle. Vexen is intrigued by Davy Jones but also dropped Xion off with Luxord to see if his recent research on memory would have her perform better than earlier. Aqua and Ventus marvel at the stars, thinking of Terra. Sora told the two of them about the first adventure he went on to look for his friends. Sora praises both of them by telling him that he was at least half as skilled as they were back then, telling them that they’ll find Terra way faster than he took finding Riku and Kairi. They came across the waterfall fell. Aqua nearly panicked at the thought of being trapped when they woke up in Davy Jones’s locker but Ventus calmed her down. Sora needed to find a way to build her back up. The plot of this world doesn’t change but gameplay does a little. Ven and Aqua will grant the pirates ship most of its abilities by controlling the wind and sea while Sora navigates. More fights by boat grant them more abilities and gets them back into the swing of things. Ventus and Sora team up during the air skirmish against the flying heartless. This invigorates Aqua not just because she wants to protect them, but they looked like they were having some fun. Yeah they were fighting a heartless but they were doing it together and trusted that they had each other’s back. Aqua had missed that feeling, it had been so long since it wasn’t her vs everything. She quickly got her chance to be apart of a team again in the underwater fight. Her nerves weren’t completely calm but Sora taking her hand and being excited about getting the treasure pushed those feelings away. She had friends again, friends that wanted treasure and to sail the seas with her. How could that not be fun. Sora happily let Aqua take the lead and supported her alongside Ventus.

The crew bumps into Luxord and the black box conversation happens that leads into the race but with the added wager of Luxord willing to tell them about Terra if they win. The race has still has the heartless boats but as well as the water nobodies to personally attack your crew and hinder your abilities. After you win, Luxord still cheats and you have that boss fight. Things change when you board the boat. He still leaves but Demyx and Xion stay behind with some Nobodies to by time. Halfway through the fight, Xion starts clenching her head again and Sora does the same with his chest. Seeing Ventus’s face and feeling Roxas’s presences is just too much. Luxord takes the opportunity of the chaos to nab is companions and attack the ship. Fortunately Aqua was able to protect everyone. Vexen orders Demyx to take Xion back and that he might as well not come back either. Demyx really doesn’t want to face Isa since he was basically told not to comeback without anything useful. So he drops Xion off and plans to avoid him altogether.

After the ship is repaired and Phantom Jack leaves, Aqua takes a minute to think. They were about to head into what sounded like a war. Their fun treasure adventure had turned a serious matter. She confessed that she might not be up to the task. This one, or even the keyblade war. Ventus pulled out his wayfinder and told her even if she decides not to go, she’ll always be fighting beside him as long as he had this. He believed Terra was still fighting and got his strength from them. Aqua pulled out her wayfinder and simply held it to her chest. He wasn’t wrong. All that time in the darkness and a piece of her never felt truly alone as long as she held this. Their unbreakable connection to her friends was something Aqua would never doubt. To top it all off, Sora had remembered he still had Kairi’s good luck charm from before the exams. He said he couldn’t count how many times this simple thing had driven him to keep going. Aqua joined them on the boat. It was only after seeing the other pirates did her resolve really hit its peak. All of them were ready to face staggering odds to fight for what mattered most to them, despite the fear. Aqua was sure of it now, she’d stand with her friends when the fated day came. Aqua raised her keyblade a creates the whirlpool for the Kraken fight. For the first time since she arrived, she looked at Sora and completely immersed herself in the moment. She calls him captain, and says she’s ready whenever he is. He couldn’t be more thrilled and Ventus was happy to see Aqua ready to go. The rest of the world plays out the same all the way until the very end. I would personally add a scene though of three sailing alone for just a little longer. Sora can’t help but think about how this was his dream with Riku and Kairi once. He wondered if is the only one who even rememberers or cares about a thing like this. Suddenly another ship Sails by them. They get ready to fight until they sea a papou fruit flag. Riku and Kairi unexpectedly reveal themselves on it with smiles on their faces. Apparently the gummi phone had really included all of information Jimmy had written. Riku explained that he just knew without question Sora would come here of all places to try and cheer someone up. Riku and Kairi told Aqua they hadn’t found much info on Terra but they did find her armor and keyblade thanks to Kairi’s foggy memory of certain places and Ienzo’s participantion in those lab areas. They all were about to continue their journey but since they were here, something had to be settled. Sora wanted another race to decide who would be captain. Riku laughed and told him they both have ships and that didn’t matter. However, he vaguely mentioned another reason to race, the real reason Sora tried so hard that day on the island. Riku pointed at the symbol on his flag and Sora immediately pouted. He grabbed the wheel of the ship and told Kairi to countdown for the race. No one knew what they were racing for except them and a giggling Kairi, who had a pretty good idea on what it was about. She says go and then the cutscene ends.

Big Hero Six is exactly the same except Sora sees Riku Replica and is pretty sure he’s from castle oblivion. Vexen uses the knowledge Rikuplica favs him about making Baymax filled with suffering so he can fix Xion to her absolute peak. When he’s done, Isa informs him that a Demyx has ran off and orders Vexen to go bring him back. Which is actually code for “good job, now escape while you still can.” Vexen informs him that it would take an extremely strong connection for Xion to have any “unfortunate” memories of the past to resurface. Things play out normally until Zexion meets Ansem the wise. What happens this time? He tells Sora and friends that he’s back with Vexen. (That’s kinda important.)

Everyone rests up for the final battle. The Sora and Kair scene on destiny islands is now longer. Kairi asks if Sora is feeling like his old self again. Sora tells her that he is thanks to her never giving up on her. Both of them get quiet for a moment before Sora speaks again. He does confess that he’s still worried a bit. Every word he went to had one thing or another that ended up being too much for him alone, and couldn’t help but feel like it would’ve been different if he truly regained all of his power. Kairi tells him that he isn’t alone but he shakes his head because she’s missing the point. Sora wasn’t scared of the organization overwhelming him, but he was terrified of that he’d try protecting someone and fail. He admitted he was scared of losing her. Kairi admitted that tomorrow scared her too. Every adventure they went on together was filled with so many enemies and left her exhausted by the end of it. Now she was joining the war. Kairi felt more than a little unprepared despite all the prep she tried squeezing in. Sora tried asking if by any chance at all that she could wait here one more time and she refused outright. No matter how nervous she was about the whole thing, Kairi told Sora that she would never wait again. That they will protect each other no matter what. And for added luck, she hands him a papou fruit. Sora was shocked. Kairi simply smiled and placed it in his hand before grabbing another one. Sora pulled out her good luck charm to give it back but she said it’s basically his at this point. The two smiled gently and finally shared the fruit. You get OathKeeper

Keyblade war time! Woo! This is by far the easiest to put into words. Riku and Kairi are your party members for the 10,000 enemy battle because it’s a literal crime that the Destiny trio didn’t work together. You get past that and Terranort still bodies half the team. Aqua’s resolve starts the crumble as she races to Ven, he isn’t moving at all. Sora is left in a state of disbelief as Goofy and Mickey try getting Donald up, and Kairi checking on Axel. In no time at all, his fear seams to be coming true. They need to regroup. Unfortunately the demon tide appears and blocks the exit. Riku gathers the remaining forces to try and fend it off but seeing Ven taken out by Terra really shook Aqua. We see the shadows turn into Anti-Aquas as the real Aqua starts to slowy panic. She doesn’t even hear the others screaming her name, telling her to look out before Mickey and Goofy try saving her, but they’re all swept up. Now it’s the Destiny Trio vs the Demon Tide in a fight the player is forced to fight, but can’t win. No music plays, just the sound of the fight and the sight of the organization watching from above. Eventually Kairi slips up due to the overwhelming odds. Sora quickly tries to outrun the Demon Tide coming towards her but can’t. Sora screams for Riku’s help but turns to see nothing but his friends hand reaching for him before being swept away. He can’t hold it in anymore, Sora drops to his knees and screams. He wouldn’t have made it this far without all of them, but now they’re gone. Sora drops his keyblade, then is swept away.

He arrives in the final world and gets his task from chirithy. In the beginning he feels so defeated, then encounters Namine. Instead of her telling him that Kairi is keeping him together, Namine says that she can feel everyone connected to him doing their part. Sora has done so much to try and keep everybody safe and spent all this time with them during their adventure that it’s only natural that they would believe in him. Now Sora feels a twinge of guilt, he gave up way too soon. No way he can let that slide. He was going to make it up to them for this second chance. Sora tells Namine about all of these flooding emotions he’s had involving her and everyone else in castle oblivion. Namine is genuinely shocked. Despite the chains being broken, Sora retained the key events. He didn’t look at her like he did back in The World That Never Was. Sora had been talking to her like an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. Sora told Namine that he was going to save everyone, including her. He promised that they were going to get her a body and she had to wait just a bit longer. Namine believed him and said she will try to get in contact with Terra. For a moment it felt like Sora could actually see Namine smile at him instead of just being a star. Sora smiled back and told her thank you, for everything. He ran off to do his job. Namine simply watched and tried not to cry. Their promise really found a way for them to meet again in a way she would’ve never dreamed of. Instead of it fading away. You get oblivion.

Before Sora really starts piecing himself together, he encounters the mystery star, and then an extra star. This extra star follows him around and surprises Sora when it reveals himself to be Roxas. He tells Sora he should’ve expected this since Sora was barely hanging on himself! Sora sheepishly apologizes but Roxas isn’t too bothered by it because he knows it’s temporary. What bothers him is Xion. He tells Sora who she is and the reason he feels hurt when they’re around each other is because of Xion’s connection to himself. Roxas asks Sora to face Xion and embrace that hurt so they can save her. Sora agrees but wonders if he can handle it. So far all fights against her didn’t go well. Roxas tells him not to worry. All he needs Sora to do his try his hardest and Roxas will make up the difference. Sora has no doubt Roxas will and thanks him before heading off. Roxas continues to follow you just so you have someone to talk to. Sora puts himself together and opens a gate to go find the others. Chirihy tells Sora that for future reference not to use the power of waking like he’s about to and explains how incredibly dangerous it is. Sora nods and leaves.

Sora beats up The Lich like usual and Young Xehanort calls him dumb. Everyone gets rescued from the cusp of death, now thoroughly frustrated by how sloppy they were. They’re going full throttle this time.(Oblivion obtained!) The team runs towards the fight again. Aqua and Ven are ready for Terranort but Lingering Will beats them to the punch, taking Terranort away as they fight. The Demon Tide arrives again with heartless and you fight it with the Destiny Trio. The fight has custom team attacks and even a trinity limit. You win and it turns into the hurricane again. Union X keyblades show up. (It’s so cool.) Ventus puts his hand on his heart. He feels oddly happy. All the scenes leading up to the boss rush are the same.

Sora and Riku vs Xigbar and Dark Riku goes off without a hitch. Nothing changes with Xigbar but Dark Riku is different. The original Riku Replica takes over the vessel. It’s clear the other’s could use the help and Vexen is on the good guy’s side so they can make more, is his reasoning. The original Riku goes off to chase Ansem while Rikuplica stays with Sora. He tells Sora it’s nice to see him again and Sora couldn’t agree more. The two of them don’t even have to speak to know exactly where to go next. They rush over to help Mickey, swiftly beating Luxord and freeing him so he can go after Xemnas. Suddenly the war feels like an old grudge match. Sora and Rikuplica vs Larxene and Marluxia. The heroes point their weapons at their foes and tell them this one is for Namine. Marluxia is actually happy Sora finally remembers him. It makes this fight all the sweeter. The fight ends with the heroes win, but at a price. Larxene and Rikuplica had struck each other down at the same time. Sora rushes to his friend who was starting to fade. Rikuplica told him not to feel bad about it. He planned on giving up this vessel after the fight anyway. The only reason he took it was to make sure those two wouldn’t hurt Namine and to fight by Sora’s side again at least once. Rikuplica tells Sora to take care of her before fading away, leaving the vessel. Sora finally remembers Castle Oblivion in its entirety. He simply clenches his fist and accepts the hurt before pressing on.

Ventus and Aqua catch up to Vanitas and Terranort. Aqua demands to know what happened to the armor that appeared earlier and Terranort simply laughs. Enraged, Aqua summons Master’s defender and rushes in to fight. Ventus follows her lead and Sora joins in a few minutes later. While that’s happening, Riku rushes through the maze towards Ansem until he hears a familiar voice. It leads him to dark chains that suspend and crush Lingering Will until he cuts them. The armor is cracked but still functioning. He thanks Riku and starts heading off before Riku stops him. Riku hadn’t told Ven and Aqua but he found something else at Radiant Garden. He pulls out Terra’s wayfinder and gives it to the armor. Riku tells him to go protect what matters and heads off. Things aren’t going to well back at the battle. Terranort manages to break Ven’s keyblade and Vanitas rushes in after Aqua as she tries to save Ven. Sora is quick enough to try and take the hit for both of them but Lingering Will swoops in again to save them. They’re all stunned to see him. Terra thanks Sora for looking after his friends but he can take it from here. Sora nods and manages to escape the battle. Terra tries to convince Ven and Aqua to leave too but they flat out ignore him. They pull out their wayfinders and each one starts to glow. Aqua tells Terra from this point forward they fight as a team. She tosses Ven Master’s Defender and summons her original keyblade. Her and Ventus bring out their armor and stand beside Terra. Now the real fight begins. The fight gives you the same team attacks from the Mirage Arena and each character gets their original command style that transforms into their character exclusive one from bbs. Wingblade, Ghost Drive, and Rockbreaker; while Terranort uses Dark impulse and Vanitas loses his mask and fights like he does in the final phase against Ventus. Vanitas is the first to fall. He nearly beat a Ventus until the boy gained a boost of strength from seemingly nowhere, his swords of light turning into starlight keyblades and striking down Vanitas. He simply laughs, giving Ventus no answer to his many questions about Vanitas. The entire wayfinder trio is know souly focused on Terranort. Refusing to give up, the man summons the chains again and captures them. He goes after Aqua first who almost managed to break free. The others scream her and The Guardian rises from the shadows to save her. It breaks the chains and rips off the bandages. Ven quickly uses the keyblade to wrap Terranort in chains while Lingering Will holds his body down for The Gaurdian to fire his heart out. A massive beam of light shoots up before fading and only leaving the armor. Ven and Aqua are speechless until the armor lifts its helmet to reveal Terra underneath in tears. Ven and Aqua throw their helmets off too and ran into their friends arms. All three of them hugging and crying.

Sora runs right into the middle of Saix and Xion fighting Axel and Kairi. Instinctively he screams out Xion’s name and everything goes quiet. Axel is confused by the name until she finally takes off the hood to reveal the white hair and yellow eyes. His memory starts to reform bit by bit and he grabs his head. Sora and Kairi’s chest both feel heavy but for the first time, Xion doesn’t react. Because of all the experiments, the only thing she has is broken memories and the suffering from them. You begin fighting her alone but to no effect. Sora rememberers Roxas’s words and lets in the pain. Xion comes at him again but stops at the sound of her name, this time with Roxas’s voice coming out of Sora. Xion’s head gets a little fuzzy but it doesn’t break the rampage. Kairi and Axel manage to endure the pain as well and stand with Roxas/Sora. If one voice isn’t enough then they’ll all try calling to her as they knock some sense in into her. Sora/Roxas summons Two Become One. The three are ready. It’s now or never. After an intense 3v2 fight, Xion starts to mentally down in the middle of combat. Then the standard cutscene happens where Xemnas shows up. The only difference being Axel’s keyblade doesn’t break. Xemnas grabs Kairi with his lightning instead of her wrist and leaves. Sora tries running after her best Saix gets in the way until the Seasalt trio pushes him back. Roxas tells Sora to go after Kairi and leave this fight to them. Sora runs off and you basically play the Remind fight but with no Xemnas. It ends the same though.

The battle against the Nort court is the same. Kairi getting shattered is the same, as well as getting into Scala. Xion tells Sora she can still feel Kairi and for him to remember her words. The thirteen armors and Xehanort boss are all the same as well. The only difference I added was a clash that sent both Sora and Xehanort flying backwards. Sora gets up first and has the chance to end it but realizes the good luck charm had fallen to the ground in front of him. Sora picks it up and all the pent up anger frustration he has from Xehanort ruining his and his and friends lives gets put on a leash. Sora remembers Kairi’s words about never losing his smile. He can’t help but get emotional and once again asks Xehanort what was the point of any of this. Xehanort gives his speech about balance and the entire scene and plays out like normal. Next major change is the end. Riku and Mickey convince Sora to not use the Power of Waking right off the bat, fearing the consequences. Sora listens to their idea to see Yen Sid but even he isn’t sure how to get Kairi back but they’ll do their best to find her. Sora leaves to get some air outside. Riku can’t help but follow him outside minutes later and finds Sora looking at his keyblade. He calls out Sora’s name and the boy turns around and does a smile similar to when he released his heart in Hollow Bastion. Riku knows Sora better than he knows himself. He doesn’t even try to stop Sora, but tells him to be careful. Sora puffs out his chest and says he’ll be back with Kairi in no time at all. Sora asks Riku to tell the others thanks and not to worry before opening up a gate and walking through. The ending sequence plays out the same and then the credits roll.

ReMind is a bonus episode after getting the secret reports and nothing in it changes because it’s perfectly fine. The only added thing we get is Sora giving back the lucky charm before he fades away, telling Kairi to be sure and bring it back to him. Limit cut and secret episodes are DLC or more extra stuff but yeah, I’m done.

In Summary:Kingdom Hearts 3, but the characters interact with each other and are allowed to feel multiple emotions at a time for extended periods of time. I know I sound like I’m punching down on this game but I genuinely do love this franchise since forever and I have strong feelings about almost everything to do with it. Which is why I’m bummed that KH3 is like my least favorite kingdom hearts game. It has good things in it but falls short on so many scenes and opportunities. This soft rewrite was literally me taking 92% of what the game already had in it and rearranging it to create various new situations that inevitably end the same way it does in the actual game. So yeah I give this game a 7/13 I’m still buying every game though 💀 (I’m not getting into any of my ideas of how kh3 could’ve gone before we knew too much about it. Now that’s a rewrite!)

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retphienix · 5 years ago

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Ah. What a game this has been so far.

Now I had a million thoughts I wanted to share as this played out, lord knows I’ll forget a good portion of them but that’s the nature of my own ineptitude- plenty of things I’ll remember MILES after this post or only if prompted in a specific way and that’s just how it is.

To start- this isn’t the end of DQ11 for the blog just yet. I usually don’t dive into post game unless it feels right or people ask and I’m convinced- and more or less both happened this time. It does feel right- I have definite goals I want to tackle before saying I’m happy with what I did here- and more than one person has mentioned that the post game is worth touching so I’ll be doing that.

Also, for those unfamiliar with my long winded utter mess of a finale post style I go for- this is a lot of rambling as I try my best to touch on my thoughts on the game overall because I like to share. Feel free to just press “J” on your keyboard and skip right passed this- I know **I** struggle to focus my eyes to read long winded posts so I won’t blame you.

Also also, in order to try and spark some of those thoughts I had during this recording the first bit is gonna be me re-watching it as I wait on the video to finish processing and saying what comes up.

To start- really wish there was a save point there lol. I get that it’s a painfully easy backtrack to the save point at the start of the castle- but still, I like convenience.

The Dark Lord’s first form is a huge step up from his form before absorbing Yggdrasil and this first form fight was fun and had me itching to say some good things about it but honestly? I want to save praise for the fight that deserves it- phase 2.

PHASE TWO THOUGH!? GOD TIER RPG FIGHT.

I’ve seen better, sure, but come on, we’ve ALL seen better at all times on all things especially considering preferences coming into it- this was a 10/10 boss fight, top to bottom.

Design? Beautiful. Even continued the DQ obsession with puns with his tail being Mordragon, that is so PERFECT so ‘chef kiss’ flawless and it’s just a name. I LOVE how he looks. I LOVE how he moves around the arena changing which head you’re facing.

I love how each had different strengths to contend with (which I abruptly fucked up, don’t call me out, I’ll prove I know what was going on right here and right now-). The dragon had strong melee and breath attacks while the dark lord himself had magic aplenty.

I even utilized swapping out for the first time ever not because I hadn’t seen the value beforehand (I’ve spoken on how interesting a strategic option it was seeing as every unit has unique moves to bring to the table and it costs nothing but ATB for that unit to do).

Now, I fucked that up, but I did it purely because this is the first fight up to this point that felt right to do so. It’s the first time the tactical value of switching out to buff defenses with Hendrik outvalued ignoring that option and maintaining my ATB on whomever I would switch out. THAT FELT SO GOOD! And then I let my braindead fingers buff defense on a magic phase and you see the point. It was brilliant but I was not!

I did end up ignoring the option after a few turns not because the value wasn’t there, but because he ALSO spams stat neutralizing moves which made me reconsider focusing so heavily on buffs and instead focusing on maintaining steady heals (mostly with Hustle dance).

This fight? Beautiful. I loved every second of it. I loved adjusting my playstyle on the fly, I loved finding my footing. I just loved it.

Beyond that- the ending. I got a chuckle out of how abrupt the credits come in. It seems to wind up for an end sequence only for Erik to say “Well, let’s go home” and it cuts to the credits- but THEN the credits ARE the end sequence so it wasn’t ACTUALLY as abrupt as it seemed, but it got a laugh out of me.

Now those credit scenes? I’m a sucker for games that make you fall in love with the characters and this was an ending catering to those characters. Not too much to say outside of “I was smiling the entire time” which is true.

There were a couple moments in that sequence that I said aloud “JUST HUG HIM YOU COWARD” to various characters, like Hero and Rab, or the two dorks (hero and Gemma), etc.

And they played on the mystique of the post game’s content well enough to pull people in I’d say- certainly more than what I recall DQ8 doing with the dragon trials.

I am probably wrong, but I recall the game drawing next to no attention to that post game content aside from a few moments in the game dragging you to the location only to not let you access it (hinting at more being there).

Anyway.

Honestly, after rambling about the video itself I feel a lot of what I wanted to say about DQ11 was said during the playthrough just fine. I rarely feel that way.

DQ11 was fun.

As a DQ fan, you can best believe I had fun.

As a stick in the mud who is disillusioned toward the game industry and doesn’t like a lot of the filth that accumulates within it- I obviously have a few negative thoughts on the game, but there really aren’t perfect games so much as perfect experiences based on how it affected you.

And I’ve voiced those annoyances plenty I think. For completion sake there are cut corners on animations that seem off when other places have a ton of attention to detail, that’s like bottom rung “I don’t actually give a shit” stuff though.

The bigger problems were Sugiyama is a horrible piece of human garbage and the game is lesser because of his influence on it. There are plenty of reasons behind that both big and small. Big- it feels gross having a human shitsack touching this game after having been so vocal for years- there are replacements at the ready and we still have his LGBT hating, war crime denying fingers handling the music? Shameful.

Small (but man did it fucking suck) being that every five minutes I was annoyed at the music in this game. It sounds Bad. And I mean both orchestral and midi, it’s not great compared to anything he made before for DQ, but the fact that it’s midi in this is EAR BLISTERING.

I’m not one to listen close to most music while playing for whatever reason- and I admit that knowing who’s responsible is half of why my ears tuned it in instead of tuning it out, but man I couldn’t help it and it sucks.

The same 3 second ear rattling loops are ALL OVER THE PLACE. Grandiose moments are cut short by bland midi tunes. MAIN STORY MOMENTS ARE LACKING MUSIC ALTOGETHER FOR SOME REASON? When the hero gets the flute and plays it for the first time it just DIDN’T MAKE A NOISE? Subsequent uses of the flute made a noise, but not the main first cutscene?

It’s a whole thing.

And don’t make me get that dirty capitalist pain in my chest over the fact the S version was released 2 months after this and includes so much content that SCREAMS “This already existed and we diced and quartered it specifically to create the illusion of ‘value’ for this release”. Disgusting, man. :/

Gameplay wise, the biggest complaint I have is so loaded and half hearted but I have to say it anyway.

DQ is good because it’s simple.

DQ can also be a little lacking because it’s simple.

This was the second most fun I’ve had playing a main series DQ game (DQIII just hits right), and it definitely has better gameplay (so my opinion is subjective) than the one I prefer to this. But it was also a bit too simple... But you can’t change that and be DQ, it’s complicated.

To just say it- other than the final boss every encounter was a bit too easy. And I know I overlevel, I know that’s the point, I know there’s a hard mode modifier- I KNOW, but the final boss was REALLY GOOD AND still not too hard, so the fact that most every other encounter did the minimum or the minimum +1 is a little tiny (just a bit) disappointing because the gameplay could have been that much better.

But. That could just be my head spinning tales and being a biased asshole especially since I’m not offering any solution here and I’m admitting it’s both “better than my favorite gameplay in the main series” and “probably can’t be made more involved without losing DQ simplicity”.

But I’d kill for some different or new systems on top of this- dual and triple techs from Chrono instead of RNG pep, bosses with more varied strategies instead of “stun 2-3 and do raid wide attack”.

A reason to care about elemental damage (both incoming and outgoing), plenty of little things that would just make the already solid as hell combat more interesting to participate in.

Story was honestly fantastic. I didn’t know how I was going to end that until I just let it come. It was. This is the best DQ story thus far, and not to limit it to that scope- this was a GOOD DAMNED STORY overall and I’ve played a fuckload of games with good stories.

Before this I was a sucker for the original trilogy’s overarching story, which is unfair because that’s 3 games and that’s an old story and it’s only “good” because it’s unprecedented. But this is just plain great.

It writes such beautiful characters- it tackles a variety of conflicts both big and small- you have Sylv and his dad, you have a possessed king declaring his daughter Jade dead and Jade knowingly betraying him without knowing he’s possessed, you have Erik giving up on life and only putting himself so deeply into this adventure as a means of escape, you have Hendrik’s loyalty being- I can’t pretend Hendrik fits in he’s fucking stupid and needs to ask questions because loyalty for the sake of loyalty isn’t interesting at all lol.

You have Rab believing the world is doomed and doing all he can with Jade up until they find you are alive. You have the INCREDIBLE story of Veronica and Serena- you have all these intensely lovable and understandable characters (and Hendrik) and the story is so much more about them than just about the dark lord and the hero.

It’s so much more about each of their conflicts and growth because all of that is HOW the hero will defeat the dark lord.

It’s just so much more... investing than any of the stories I’ve had in DQ before and strong as hell amongst stories beyond just DQ.

I loved this. It was emotional at times, it was downright depressing at times which I wouldn’t expect DQ to successfully hit, it was downright rewarding getting to know these characters and I feel fantastic having beaten this.

This game is fucking good. I finally understand why some people have told me this is their favorite DQ now. It... yeah I think it might be mine too.

I’d be much more likely to revisit DQ3 than this because it’s shorter and has a specific kind of RPG (class based with freely recruited partners instead of named party members) I find more fun to revisit, but yeah, I think I agree.

I think for main-series DQs this is it, this is my favorite. It has to be, right? It’s got so many INCREDIBLE story moments and it’s pretty and it plays great- yeah. Hell, Sylvando as a character and Serena and Veronica’s arc BY THEMSELVES convince me of that.

Still got nothing on DWM and DWM 2 on the GBC, WOOOOT! Didn’t expect this post to divert from a serious closing thoughts (despite there being a few more posts to come) topic to posting this did you?

Behold the true faces of DQ perfection.

#RetPlays #Dragon Quest 11 #Dragon Quest XI #Dragon Quest

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inspector-montoya-fox · 5 years ago

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#8 - A Starry Eyed Encounter

Setting: this is our second outing in Asia but it’s extremely different. whereas Fire in the Sky was set in rural China and had sprinkles of Chinese culture on top, A Starry Eyed Encounter basks in prestige and elegance. i might as well start by saying that this is my favourite episode in the game. i love everything about this episode, its subtle orientalism and its storyline. the missions are fun, the sky is beautiful, there are enough twists, turns, balconies and tunnels to get lost in. everything feels authentic and charming, and there’s excitement because it’s a ball and everything coincides with it (meaning, everything has to be perfect and we destroy every last bit). also, there’s a nice balance and blend of nature and “man”-made structure. unlike the Canada levels where nature dominates the landscapes, here there’s a mixture. and i know this type of analysis belongs in the Themes section, but sweetie, lemme just lay this down right here, right quick for y’all: the walls keeping the jungle outside represent Rajan and his mental state, his need to present himself in a certain way. the lush palace is Rajan’s friendly image he projects, one of a great host, but his low temper and roots keep growing like the jungle outside. he’s made a fortune and built this amazing palace as a global entrepreneur and social elitist, but he can’t shed his past, how said fortune came from filth, growing up on the streets, how he belongs in the wild. this theory is further proven by the fact that the next level is full-on jungle and vines and rain and mud, etc. which represents Rajan when all hell breaks loose and he reaches his boiling point. this squeaky clean, pristine state of both Rajan and the palace mask his true nature, and set up the stage for his second level. in many ways, A Starry Eyed Encounter is a prequel because it plays out as too easy, and that kind of optimism is put into perspective as the narrative progresses forward.

Characters: basically a clusterfuck because it’s a party and literally everyone shows up. i’ve mentioned before how introducing every single character in the very first part of the game’s second level was a brilliant idea. SP managed to subvert expectations by supposedly revealing all the villains during the ball, just to then keep pulling off reveal after reveal. Neyla as the alternative romantic interest, the Contessa as an Interpol connection, Arpeggio as the petite bird that would 100% be the final boss. but let’s focus on Rajan. as i’ve already said, the palace is a mere illusion, its grandeur and glory representing what the tiger wants to be seen as. i love how A Starry Eyed Encounter and The Predator Awakes both pose as a test to see how angry Rajan can get - and he can get pretty mad (to the point where he summons lightning). but for now, Rajan isn’t shown. there’s the recon mission, and then some cutscenes of him talking with Bison but that’s just it, we don’t get any Rajan in this episode. no, this episode is dedicated to Carmelita, i think. i’ll go into detail in the Themes section but the dominant theme in this episode is romance. there are two dance sequences in A Starry Eyed Encounter and they both focus on getting with Carmelita, the theme of romance also giving this episode a softer edge. the game’s first two episodes are actually very vanilla: a quiet Paris night, and a prestigious ball in India. sure there’s climax within those episodes, but there’s no aggression or character development (brought on by high stakes). it’s like a honeymoon period before shit hits the fan. A Starry Eyed Encounter and The Predator Awakes might be a pair because of Rajan, but it’s actually the latter in combination with the two Contessa levels that are the game’s best. you’ll notice a fluctuation in narrative: everything goes as planned in the first two episodes (good) but Neyla’s betrayal throws the gang off their game in the next three episodes (bad) until Canada during which the gang manages to gather all Clockwerk parts (good) just to face complete chaos by the end (bad). and surprisingly (and to SP’s credit) the game doesn’t end on a good note. they actually had the balls to cripple Bentley and leave it at that, but also manage to not make it seem like they were just setting up the sequel. Sly 2 is very well a game on its own, even though it ends on a cliffhanger. amazing, but i digress. every character in the game minus Dimitri is in this episode but actually there’s not a lot of character development as seen by the analysis above.

Themes: uh, romance theme !!!!!!! outstandingly so, considering we’re on the brink of losing everything as 2/3 of the gang is about to get arrested in the next episode. but a first-time player isn’t aware so it’s all fun and games as far as they’re concerned. yes, this is pretty much a romance episode, complete with an erotic episode title card of Sly and Carmelita dancing intimately. even the fact that they’re drenched in soft blue and their characteristics/outline don’t have a 100% opacity shows how it’s a good time, time to forget about the spice shipments, the Clockwerk parts, let’s have fun whilst on the job, no need to worry, things certainly won’t go to shit, right? the narration hits its absolute rock-bottom in terms of love triangle storytelling by steeping to the most basic of tropes, having Sly use Neyla to get to Carmelita (something that will later come to bite him in the ass, when Neyla uses Sly to get Carmelita arrested). other than that, the romance theme doesn’t necessarily mean kissy-kissy, but can also mean romantic backdrops, items, etc. for example, the sky being violet and lilac, a mission to acquire a tuxedo, the ball, y’know what i’m talking about. it’s all very humble, pure and simple, but enhanced by Rajan’s wealth and the palace’s elegance. let’s talk about the masks theme (i call it that instead of deception or appearance v reality, because those themes are predominantly connected to Flight of Fancy in my head and i don’t want to do that theme-heavy episode dirty because its themes are its strongest asset). lots and lots of “masks” here. we have Sly dressing up as a tuxedoed cavalier in disguise, we have Rajan acting as a gentlemanly host, Contessa as a proper prison warden and Interpol agent, Neyla as the cryptic connection - nothing i haven’t already mentioned. what truly enhances the deception and the “masks” is the ball. a fancy dance, the opulence making it all fuzzy and blurry, very Florence + the Machine circa Ceremonials sans the gothic aspects, if you catch my drift. basically, it’s called the masks theme because it also includes the party aspect, this aura of pleasure and leisure which is also seen in The Black Chateau. there’s also the class theme, or class distinction. we often overlook the fact that the guards represent a hoard of employees, working mercilessly under the big bad. there’s something to be said about when one dies a replacement is easily found, but it’s just a game. well, in A Starry Eyed Encounter, this distinction is a bit more noticeable. there’s a ball going on, where all the elites and socialites are gathered, protected by the palace walls and the palace itself, surrounded by pleasures and artifice. at the same time, there are guards stationed within the guests’ rooms, patrolling rooftops and making sure everything is perfect for the ball. in other levels, they ensure the security of their employer’s operation, but here they’re responsible for the party, something way less important and dire. what really made me notice it is the moment you complete Elephant Rampage and a flashlight rhino guard escorts the prized elephants back into their room, it seemed like such a downgrading job, moving elephants, probably stepping into their shit as well because Sly frightened them, in comparison to Rajan and his guests drinking and dancing inside. i don’t know, maybe i’m exaggerating, but it definitely reminds me of that Rick and Morty episode where they spoof The Purge, when the villagers fight each other and the elitists are dining inside, maybe it’s just me.

What I Like: this is my favorite episode as an overall entity, so i’ll mention what i like most about it. the sky’s colour, the rapid tanpura music when you get spotted by guards, dancing with Carmelita, that turquoise 3D globe projection in the boardroom, the goofy voice of that guy that doesn’t allow you to enter the ball with the bulged-out eyes, the destroyed bridge next to the safehouse that leads you to a clue bottle and a treasure, and most importantly Steal A Tuxedo. i think Steal A Tuxedo and Spice in the Sky are my favorite missions from the entire game. ugh, idk, this episode is just so perfect. i sent a confession to @slycooperconfessions a while back saying how when i was a kid i always wanted to be invited to the ball, and that still stands today. i wish i was there...

What I Don’t Like: nothing. maybe Battle the Chopper, but other than that, nothing.

Quote: when Carmelita says You look familiar to me, are you in law enforcement? and Sly answers I often deal with police while on the job.

#episode project #i need to find a way to insert dialogue in the Quote section but without screwing up the format #i'm taking my time with these and i'm sorry but my energy's low because of this corona shit and i literally have 0 inspiration 24/7 #sly cooper

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