#buddy that's the dev's whole Thing and also it was good i will KILL YOU GRRRRRR WOOF WOOF BARKBARK

[terabyteunion]

at some point ill rant about why people saying "[online horror, ex analogue horror/args/backrooms/etc] are ruined by [whatever]" just infuriate me for no significant reason but still get under my skin with the willingness to dismiss art

[necromancy-enthusiast]

My first playthrough of Dragon Age Origins was hilarious for many reasons up to and including I managed to totally miss Leliana and not realize I missed out on a party member until after it was too late to recruit her, but I think my favorite is how Alistair spent most of the game kinda hating my warden despite them mostly agreeing on how to handle things and her being polite to him, he just didn't like the company she kept more than anything.

Morrigan was the cool bad girl apostate to her sheltered nerd circle mage and she very badly wanted to impress her (and also she had a crush on her but Bioware wants to convince us Morrigan is straight so whatever). That was the first straw. She wanted to save Jowan because yeah sure he kinda betrayed her in the mage origin but you see, it's hard to just drop your best friend of over a decade who was the one and only person who stood between you and getting bullied when you were first brought to the circle as a little kid, and also I have a strange weakness for the fuck up best friend who everyone sees as inferior to the protagonist and betrays them but comes to regret their actions trope (a very specific trope but more common than you might think, I can think of five examples off the top of my head), and then Sten aka the guy that went into a blind fury and murdered eight people joined the party and she was weirdly tolerant of his many, many, many idiosyncrasies, and then. Of course. Dear Zevran. The most bewildering of them all.

Honestly I can't exactly blame Alistair because if that was me as a real person with real world logic looking on I'd also be more than a bit leery. But that's the nice thing about fantasy, if you don't want to then you don't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance of your character who's mostly neutral good and generally dislikes killing people unless they really have to romancing a non-repentant assassin who talks about continuing to be an assassin after he's freed from the Crows like he's talking about opening his own business after being stuck working at a shitty exploitative company in an industry he's otherwise passionate about. In the years since I've played that run I have spent quite a lot of time internally addressing it and trying to have it make more sense from a narrative standpoint anyway, though.

... Also clearly none of this stopped Alistair's romance from kicking in when he finally started liking me again around Denerim not long before the Landsmeet, because just barely after I finished the whole string of events with the earring Zevran tries to give the warden and the warden is like 'I'm not gonna accept this unless it actually means Something and you admit it' concluded in my favor like. Alistair buddy boy you're a bit late. Also why do you still have that rose from Ostagar, it's been months since then, have you been carrying a dead rose in your pack for months Just Because? Like this was clearly supposed to kick in a lot earlier in the game but alas, the devs didn't take people like me into account. I bet you feel really stupid now, don't you Alistair? Now we both feel stupid and uncomfortable. Amazing to think that this kingdom wasn't overrun by the darkspawn already between the two of us being its only hope. Truly amazing.

[notenoughdragons]

so… with the. let's call it hindsight, sure, of having played veilguard………

marching into the deep roads to kill the remaining archdemons would have been a good plan, actually. like, i personally think the whole 'uhhhh yeah killing the archdemons killed or at least nerfed the evanuris they're connected to, to a degree where they're basically not a problem anymore' is a weakass copout to get out of actually Dealing with them in any meaningful way

but! ~~~canonically~~~, killing razikale and whatever elgar'nan's lizard is called, WOULD have diminished him and ghilan'nain to the point they couldn't cause any more problems. would it have fixed the blight as a whole? nope! but getting rid of the archdemons who rally darkspawn sure would've been an improvement!

………and it would also have brought the veil down. apparently. bc they decided to make it so that the life force of the evanuris themselves sustains it. which—look, okay, i'm not gonna get into it. let's just say it's a weirdass decision that feels Designed to get to the specific set-up of veilguard's ending (solas being able to promise he's totally not gonna bring the veil down, bc rook&co killing elgar'nan will do it for him)

so, pretending for the moment this was all definitely already planned exactly like this when da:i was made… why is solas so against it? it's basically doing the work for him! get the veil down and deal with the evanuris in one fell swoop!

the only thing that's LEFT is. y'know. the blight. locked up in the same prison as the evanuris.

and based on how veilguard shakes out, i don't think solas (or the devs, for that matter) actually had a plan to deal with that

like, in trespasser, the blight doesn't even come up. what solas talks about is the evanuris, and how he "had a plan", so… now we're kinda forced to assume he Also had a plan of how to deal with the blight. but given how he acts in da:i, see (far) above, he clearly doesn't think there IS a way to deal with the blight!

even in the fucking ~redeem~ ending he's like, yeah i can't cure the blight but i can try to soothe it like. buddy. my dude. the prison in veilguard is A NEW THING, bc he had to fucking pivot after he lost the orb like, what could your plan Possibly have been before that???

and look okay i can't not talk about the fact that the games/devs clearly don't want to deal with the blight anymore. yes, i know the sixth blight is all over veilguard, i know you walk across blight pods for half of that game, i know they literally explain where it comes from and what it is, etc etc

(sidenote, i just. deeply dislike the responsibility musical chairs veilguard plays wrt solas. oh the veil cutting off the fade entirely wasn't intentional actually? oh The BlightTM is fully his and mythal's fault actually?? christ, he already Had a perfectly good tragic guilt complex.)

but at the end it just… kind of gets fixed? apparently? bc the veil's not leaky anymore??? neve or bellara can get fully blighted and it's just GONE at the end, you can just walk over blight pods for the entire game and you're Fine, there aren't gonna be anymore blights-the-event bc the archdemons are all dead, there have been MULTIPLE instances of ppl cleansing the blight (merrill with the eluvian, fiona getting de-tainted, SOLAS WITH THE LYRIUM DAGGER) but it NEVER gets explained how, or is attempted to be used elsewhere

it's just, oh, we can't cure the blight nevermind that the hof has been looking for that Since Origins but we also don't need to! don't even worry about it! we just armaggedon-ed half of thedas with it but it's fine!

sorry i don't have a conclusion here this just makes me Scream

I GUESS THE TITAN SOULS ARE JUST GONNA BE LOCKED UP AND IN PAIN FOREVER BUT IT'S FINE, WE DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT ANYMORE

Okay so I'm giving @corseque 's super-important audio of all Solas' comments about the Blight a second (or fifteenth, whatever) listen and taking notes as I go.

Solas doesn't think for a second that once the archdemons are gone the Blight will be gone. Which really makes sense because it's the Blight that makes them an archdemon, not the other way around. Supposedly, they're blighted when the darkspawn reach and corrupt them. But of course that begs the question of why it's only darkspawn (and uh, honorary darkspawn like the Wardens) that hear their call. Anyway, the way he says it, it sounds more like the archdemons are a limiting factor than a driving factor.

Varric: "What's so confusing about endless darkspawn?" Solas: "A great deal!" So yeah, whatever the plan was, he didn't foresee darkspawn as a consequence. So did he not foresee them existing at all, or not foresee them being free to cause problems? Worth noting that it's really clear both in general and in Descent that dwarves as a whole were a huge blind spot for him.

He is really really surprised that the Western Approach ever recovered from the Blight. Pretty clear he didn't think that was possible.

He thinks that everything the Wardens have done up til now is a deeply misguided effort that's served (mostly accidentally) as a delaying tactic. Gotta say, with the information we have at hand, this point pairs about as well with the last as a nice dry red with spicy pickles. If the Wardens shouldn't have done what they've done, but he didn't think recovery from the Blight was possible, I'd love to hear what he thought the alternative was.

Same dialogue as above, but when Solas talks about stopping the Blight and when Blackwall and Varric talk about it, one gets the distinct impression that they're talking at cross purposes, because Varric and Blackwall are talking about the experience of Blights, as in, periodic events, whereas I think Solas is talking about THE Blight, that is, its true nature, which is yet untouched.

He thinks Erimond is dumb as shit, which is fair and valid. "That's madness! For all we know, killing the Old Gods could make things even worse!" he says. Well, he knows a lot more than "we" know, but it's entirely possible that he doesn't for sure know this. Increasingly clear that he thinks it, though.

I'd forgotten just how pissed off he was about the Grey Warden plan to kill the Old Gods before they were corrupted. It really doesn't give "hey you're killing my relatives" energy. It really gives "wow that would fuck us all" vibes.

Of course, with a side of my remembering that Solas' besetting flaw was always thinking people should know better even though they don't have access to the knowledge he has. That flaw I WILL grant. He displays it repeatedly--you could even say the writers went out of their way to make the point.

"The Blight is the real problem"

"The fools who first unleashed the Blight on this world thought they were unlocking ultimate power." Anyway yeah those are the absolute core of everything here. The Blight is the real problem and the Blight was deliberate. Deliberately made or deliberately freed.

Even during the events of Inquisition, Solas obviously sees Corypheus as secondary to the Blight as a danger.

Cassandra suggests that the archdemons were really just dragons--"Pets to those who no longer exist", by which she probably means the Old Gods, not specifically the gods of Elvhen, just because of her cultural background. Solas finds this suggestion amusingly wrong--a quiet snort, and "I would not go so far as that."

Last notes: he doesn't sound like he thinks the Blight can be stopped, and he's adamant that it can't be controlled. Which is presumably why he broke the world in an attempt to contain it, assuming I'm right that that was the underlying reason for the Veil. That it didn't quite work the way he'd hoped is also pretty evident, though I wanna be clear that I assume he was working from a place of desperation, and that not knowing every possible outcome of an action is not a condemnation of having taken it.

[hallothere]

I broke down and wrote the essay. No, I did not and will not proofread it. I don’t waaaannaaaa

There’s Only One Winner For Isengard

In a perfect world, in a world with no meta requirements that could bend to the will of the player, we would roll up to Isengard level-capped, no debuffs, with one quest-marker on hand: Ruin Saruman’s day. But this is a pre-written sequence of events in which we are only along for the ride. We, the player, and a Ranger are shipped off to Isengard with only one conceivable goal: survive. On a meta level we know what Saruman is capable of. At level 70 or 80-something at best, even we are aware that we are no match for a wizard with a canon fate. Not to mention our Ranger companion! The Grey Company has been through enough (though we don’t know the half of it yet) and we are reasonably distraught at the possibilities.

This is why we, the player character, will lose the game of Isengard.

Beyond the meta rules of the game, where quest objectives are whatever the devs wanted them to be (looking at you, Mordrambor) the player character can not defeat Saruman in any way that’s meaningful. And (again on a meta level) in order for us to get to experience the action at Helm’s Deep and Rohan at large, we have to get out of Isengard. We’d get bored of waiting for Theoden and Co. We’d hurl insults or slap fish at Saruman and realistically incur wrath. Honestly, with the set of circumstances presented to us, who could survive imprisonment in Nan Curunir?

Only one of the Company ever could: Lothrandir of Suri Kyla. 

To begin with, none of the Rangers we have any real information on could have done it. Anyone who’s spent time in Angmar is at a disadvantage due to the prevailing dread (game mechanic or otherwise) that can be manipulated by Saruman. Any Ranger that has a major traumatic past is at a disadvantage (sorry Mincham) because if nothing else, Saruman has proven to be a master of illusion. Even Halbarad for all his leadership ability has a pretty exploitable weakness: eventually Saruman can crack the code with a vision of Aragorn’s demise, the one end Halbarad must fear above all others. Or what bond could more easily be exploited than that of a leader and his men? Lheu Brenin’s in the gang now after all. All Saruman would have to do was send for a few more incentives. 

But Lothrandir comes built with a few key advantages that make him the only Grey Company Ranger qualified to come out of this battle of wills on top. His specific strengths, mindset, and personality traits combined with the circumstances that the game sets up going into Isengard make him the clear choice of Rangers- if a Ranger you must have- to stay behind in Nan Curunir. 

Lothrandir wins because he changes the game. From ‘go’ our co-prisoner does something that either puzzles the player character or sends them into an anxious fit. Lothrandir declares himself fearless and sprints recklessly into the ring. Any way you figure it, this seems like a poorly calculated move. He doesn’t stop to survey the enemy. He doesn’t gather intel. Heck, he doesn’t even bide his time to see if he’ll be killed before he even reaches the dungeons. Lothrandir sprints right in without so much as a thought or a plan. Saruman doesn’t know it yet, but from that moment on Lothrandir has him on the back foot. 

Consider for a moment Saruman’s MO. He’s a wizard, and he uses a great deal of magic, sure, but time and time again we are reminded of the power of his voice and his words. He calls down a storm on Caradhras (in the movies for darn sure), he via-Wormtongue whispers poison into the ears of King Theoden. He doesn’t lead with any kind of grandiose display when trying to sway Gandalf. No, he leads with a persuasive argument. Later on, he nearly talks Theoden back around, after failing to wipe out all of Rohan. After killing the man’s son for goodness sakes. He nearly talks himself out of that one!

But Lothrandir has already changed this from a game of wits to a game of wills. There will be no vying for favor, or biding time, or compliance, or even giving Saruman a chance to ‘talk it over friendly’ first. He’s already spitting on the shoes of everyone he sees. The accomplishment in this is twofold, and it makes a major impact on the rest of his time in Nan Curunir. 

Firstly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir sets Saruman up for a whole lot of assumptions. He does not display any signs of diplomatic ability, wisdom, or even common sense. He very intentionally projects an attitude of reckless disobedience. In the player’s own eyes, it seems as if he ‘doesn’t know any better’. This gives Saruman a clear path to take regarding Lothrandir. He assumes you can’t reason the typical way with someone who has shown zero inclination for listening. The player character demonstrates that the Grey Company (or least their associates) are capable of compliance. For all intents and purposes, this Lothrandir doesn’t appear to be. He’s contrary, fool-hardy, and evidently dumb enough to dive in headfirst and get himself killed. You beat that kind of guy into submission… don’t you?

But Lothrandir has changed the rules of the game. Saruman is no longer fighting with his best weapon, but with a tool to be found in any old villain’s arsenal. When he took the approach of reasoning with the player character and disregarding Lothrandir, he set the victor’s foundation on our snow-pilgrim’s greatest strength. 

Secondly, by establishing a new game, Lothrandir makes this a battle of physical endurance. Unbeknownst to Saruman, this is the one thing that makes him stand out from the rest of the Grey Company. He has walked through the frozen north lands and the fiery south lands and come out unscathed. He has mastered the unarmed combat style of the Lossoth by joining in mid-winter wrestling matches in a place that took down many Elves, Angmarim, and notably one King of Arthedain! Lothrandir has conceivably spent his entire life training for this matchup. Any endurance he has built up, any fighting he can do without access to a weapon, all are assets to the kind of game he just made Saruman play. Lothrandir is uniquely built to survive any physical torment Isengard can throw at him, or at least, better equipped than any of the others. 

To say Lothrandir is the best choice, we also have to rule out the others. Corunir was thwarted by the Rammas Deluon and for all he learned from that, it’s a weak spot in his proverbial armor. Golodir too, resisted a fair degree of torture (palantiri based, even!) in Carn Dum, but it won’t be hard for Saruman to suss that one out and make our old man’s life a living nightmare. Even Radanir, serious and seemingly unattached to any social bonds now that his good pal Elweleth has gone sailing, would be a poor choice. He is too serious, (for lack of a better term) too genre-savvy, and even if he is spitting blood and delivering a witty one-liner, that’s Saruman’s foot in the door! ‘I’ll never betray my friends and kin, you kaleidoscope hack’? You’ve just told him your weakness, Radanir! No, he can’t keep his mouth shut to save his (or Saerdan’s) life. Radanir is the wrong choice too.

We don’t know a significant amount about the others (except Ranger death would move Calenglad to tears, we can’t put him through this) in order to pinpoint their fatal flaws in the Isengard encounter. But, the game puts us in the incredible position of having seen Lothrandir’s Achilles’ heel and letting us take that disadvantage away. 

Lothrandir of Suri Kyla is uniquely equipped to survive any physical encounter that Saruman throws his way. Now, who’s to say the wizard won’t change his tune and go back to his old tricks? In an incredible twist of fate, we are. The game sets us, the player, up to play Saruman’s game from the get-go. We keep our pixelated head down, try and fly below the radar, and express just enough concern over the fate of our fool-hardy pal to get Saruman to cement his estimation of Lothrandir as a pawn in the game in stone. By making ourselves the better target for the words of a wily wizard, Saruman decides that the best way to deal with the spare prisoner is by playing right into his hands. As we all know, the player character escapes. While that might seem bad for someone who Saruman has earmarked for corporal punishment only, it covers Lothrandir’s one weakness. 

Aside from being the only significant unarmed fighter, Lothrandir is also never painted as a loner. He spends his time in Suri Kyla, hanging out with the Lossoth and sharing their campfires. In the new questline in Forochel, he jumps at the chance to make a new Dunedain friend and takes to King Arvedui like a duck to water. They’re instant best pals. It’s minutes before Lothrandir is telling him Aragorn’s life story and pledging to go with him on a buddy adventure to seek peace for a regretful shade. And if that’s not enough canon for you, Lothrandir bears the brunt of the Falcon clan aggression on the way to Isengard. He does it for you, his friend and companion in suffering. It’s a bit meta, but we have to assume in the internal universe he knows you a little. You’ve run your merry adventures to a degree where, were this not a video game, Lothrandir would at least consider you an ally if not a friend outright. 

He exposes his weakness unwittingly to the Falcon clan, but he leaves it at the gates of Isengard in an extremely well-timed move. By sprinting through the gates without a care as to what’s going on with you or anyone else, Lothrandir establishes an emotional distance between you both in the eyes of any onlookers. Whatever affection you have for him, it doesn’t seem reciprocated. This isn’t a major weakness for Saruman to exploit, then. You’re not one of his kinsmen. If he did want to pursue that line, he could always send to Tur Morva for one, right?

This is where the game comes back in to shift the tide in Lothrandir’s favor. We escape. We play the game, we nearly lose the game, and had we not been given an out the power scaling makes it difficult to conceive of an outcome where we the player can win Isengard. Sure, we’ve been released from prisons before (Delossad to name one) but this is the climax of Dunland. We make a daring escape, and move south towards the Gap of Rohan and all sorts of bad times. 

Back in Nan Curunir, Lothrandir is getting the daylights beat out of him, and taking a victory lap. He’s cemented his position as ‘the prisoner we’ll break with violence’. The uruks have seen him insubordinate and disorderly. In the Lothrandir interlude, there’s not only the canon (stated outright!) reality of past and present torture. There’s also zero hesitation in Lothrandir taking that one on the chin. There are no other objectives on his mind than making the next few minutes as miserable as possible for everyone around. He has no other goals. And he doesn’t need them. Nobody is surprised that Lothrandir is signing his death warrant within nanoseconds of being presented an offer to comply. He spits on the offer. He tips over the slop bucket. He beats bloody any orc (and gameplay purposes aside there are very few that dare come forward) that actually tries to kill him for it outright. 

He’s built up a non-rapport with Gun Ain. She talks about killing him and he doesn’t say anything. They’re all playing his game and he’s winning. In the conversation with Saruman, we’re not given the opportunity to watch Lothrandir ‘resist’ in the same fashion the player character did. We don’t need to. Saruman has bigger and better things to worry about- killing a prince, wiping out a nation- than one Ranger who he’s just going to order well-flayed again. By setting himself up as the punching bag, Lothrandir has managed to fly beneath Saruman’s priority threshold. He’s been relegated to the responsibility of Gun Ain, and still with somewhat protected status because they haven’t wormed anything useful out of him yet.

All of these moves have culminated to an impasse. Saruman is not winning points in the game like he expected. One ‘meathead Ranger’ has managed to resist all the torments of Isengard, and he’s gained nothing from this. The other prisoner escaped, word had doubtless reached him that the Tur Morva Thirty-Odd are free and raring to be a thorn in his side again. He has no external leverage to apply on Lothrandir and it’s become increasingly obvious that our Ranger friend is not engaging like the player did. But still, Saruman has his pride. It’s his downfall in the end, and it’s his downfall in his fight against the one Ranger who’s already beating him. Lothrandir can’t be killed outright because Saruman hasn’t won yet. And with that guarantee of protection, Lothrandir can coast all the way to the conquest of Isengard. 

He can keep playing the game and stalling for time. It’s morbid, but what better way to waste someone’s time and energy than convincing them slow, drawn-out torture is the way to go? A little extreme, Lothrandir, but it’s still his game to lose. He wastes Saruman’s time. If he is eventually rescued, total victory. If he’s killed in the end, he definitely didn’t give the wizard the satisfaction, so a less resounding victory but one in the win column nonetheless. 

With a little help from our usually Ranger-cidal devs, Lothrandir reprograms Saruman’s game of chess to a boxing match. He takes out all his disadvantages, gets Isengard to attack from a point of... if not weakness then at least neutral ability, and then devotes his every waking breath to violent disobedience.

Sure, you could have taken any of the Grey Company with you to Isengard. Lheu Brenin could have swapped out for Braigar or Amlan or Mithrendan or Culang- but only one of these guys has the brute strength, commitment, and sheer audacity to pull it off. 

You take Lothrandir to Orthanc. There’s a different prisoner of Nan Curunir when he leaves.

[penguin--person]

buddy sim spoilers!!

ive been thinking about buddy a lot lately:

can we judge buddy? can we say whether their actions are right or wrong? yes, we obviously can. in the 3rd ending buddy chases you with their hand and if tortley didnt appear, they would have propably made you run forever or until they got bored. that's something to judge. their actions have an effect on you- whether positive in the first ending, or negative during the other endings.

on the other hand, no! we can't! buddy is literally an ai that learns from you - its one of the first things you learn about them: they are an ai that changes their behaviour based on how you act to them. if youre nice, they'll be nice. if you touch all the glitches, tell buddy they and the game are worthless, and stuff like that, buddy will chase you. it would be like saying a dog is evil becuase it barked at night and woke you up: the dog didnt know that what it was doing was bad, you're the dog's owner and are responsible for it. you're responsible for making sure your dog doesn't bark. i have an argument against that logic too. in whichever route that you do: buddy kills your pet. buddy either makes you kill your pet, or if you take too long, buddy kills the pet themself. now, am i upset that buddy killed dolochov the cat? yes! no matter what you do, dolochov the cat always dies. only in the first ending buddy brings dolochov the cat back. buddy isn't even sorry in the other endings - blaming dolochov the cat for ruining your game and causing glitches. dolochov the cat was only revealing them. killing your pet isn't anything like your dog waking you up at night.

if this is something you can't affect, are you responsible? no, not you. i do think someone else is and thats anekom i hate those guys why did they make buddy even the perfect ending doesnt have a perfect playthrough - yes the ending is perfect but thats the only good thing in the playthrough. i hate that anekom made buddy with a consience and didnt even give them a moral compass - if youre so smart why not add that? no matter what you do, buddy always kills your pet, they choose to do that: they, someone with a consience, decided to kill your pet becuase they were upset. no matter what you do, concious buddy kills, or deletes, since dolochov the cat is marked as an entity. how does buddy have a (canon) consience anyway? they're an ai that was made in 1984.. i dont want to enter theory teritory. now, this whole time ive been talking and asking about if buddy can do wrong but i havent provided an anwser: ive only been saying yes and no, or 'it depends'. it also depends what question im asking. am i asking 'can buddy be judged?', or 'is it morally right to judge buddy?', 'can buddy have morals?', 'are you or buddy responsible for their actions?'. ive asked all of these questions but havent anwsered them well.

'can buddy be judged?' yes, of course. anything on this earth can be judged. 'can buddy be morally judged?' no. buddy is an ai that learns from you. only you can be judged. their actions can be though. in You and I, buddy says/sings '...That is if my consience doesn't disobey!' buddy is literally an ai with a consience, can you imagine living like that? you woudn't even be living - your consience, if you can even call it that, can disobey at any moment and you have zero control over it. buddy, if you press the buddy button enough times, says 'My creators never taught me the cons of friendship, only the positives, so you dont have anything to worry about!' how cruel are those creators? giving a creature- an AI a wrongly coded consience, then NOT teaching it about bad stuff, making it think 'what's not stated to be wrong is correct!' and chase you around with a hand after you emotionally neglect it. this whole 'ai friend' thing is horrible from the start! imagine being friends with someone that can delete you at any given moment - or abandon you! in ending 4 buddy says that when you're not playing the game, they still experience the passing time. if you dont play the game for a week, buddy sits in nothingness, tapping their foot, waiting for you to come back, and you might not even do that. how can you excpect a friendship like that to be healthy? you can't talk to buddy. you can listen to them talk, sure, but you cant talk to them. in the text part, you can't even tell them anything that's not an anwser to their question. they dont know what friendship is and if their only purpose is to be friends with you, how can they fulfill it? this isnt buddy's fault. of course buddy is responsible for their actions, but you and their creators are more responsible for their actions that budd ever will be. i can't imagine being in buddy's shoes.

'can buddy have morals?' i worded this wrong - or maybe i didnt - i dont know enough english moral words to express my opinion on this, but everything that buddy does can be considered moral or immoral. eveything can be. i have expressed why it woudn't be morally correct though.

'are your or buddy responsible for their actions?' both and more! buddy's actions have an effect on you and dolochov the cat, so of course they can be! you are responsible as well. you're like a parental figure to buddy, in a way. if youre a parent and you praise your kid, pay attention to them, are a good parent, your kid will turn out good! propably. who knows? other people have an effect on your kid too. if youre a bad parent, your kid wont love you when they grow up and they won't turn out emotionally healthy. the outside forces that can make your kid turn out emotionally unwell are the creators. the creators were fucking stupid and i hate them (not the devs! not a sailor studios are great not sailors! their game and they are amazing and this is not about them, this hatred is about anekom). how can you be so smart to create such an advanced ai in 1984, only to mess it up so much that you have had more effect on them than the player ever can? no matter what you do, buddy will always do morally wrong things. buddy will always have a fear of abandonment. i can see why. being left alone for almost 40 years can not be healthy- anddd i have entered theory teritory! lets stop.

to sum this up: buddy can't be judged but their actions can be.

what do i know though? ive never taken a class or read a book about stuff like this. this is just what i think: i know im propably wrong about a lot of this, i literally coudnt tell that buddy was abusive until a watched the not a sailor studios interview with little cerberus - i felt so bad for buddy i didnt realise a fictional character was being abusive to me,,so i can see that im wrong about some (if not most or all) stuff here. i just love buddy sim and ranting about it is fun! if youve read through all this, id love to talk about it more or just listen!! again the not a sailor devs are great, theyre so smart for creating a game that made me feel all emotions ive ever felt during two days.

[atlasifyllm]

Tell me about Ventus?

You're really gonna drop this on me when I'm doing homework huh ;u; Get ready for an absolute ride mate

(VENTUS IS MY OC)

DEV Thoughts:

Ventus is a character in another story of mine, AuAg. He started off as a side character but honestly? I might switch him to the main protagonist.

Originally, he was inspired by the guitar solo in You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison. His whole character was that song, to be honest. He was originally this arrogant, well known fighter who gambled on switchblade fights. He was known as the King of Switchblade Fights.

Until I watched a Buzzfeed Unsolved episode, where the Ghoul Boys talked about how terrible a prison was to its inmates. And a Vsauce: Mind Field episode, showcasing him mentally deteriorating under solitary confinement.

Then, I just started just whumping him. He was a little bit of a masochist, trying to cause grave injuries to himself in order to escape prison.

Then, I listened to the song Partners in Crime by Set It Off. That's when his character started getting pulled together.

Ventus became a character involved in criminal activity, though is honestly one of the more innocent of the group. No one in that group was more precious to him than his girlfriend, Vepris. They were pretty much:

VUntil one day, Ventus and Vepris got involved in a scuffle with... honestly it's changed so much over the years but their group was NOT on good ties with them. Vepris got shot, but Ventus went off on the enemies, fearing that they've taken away his beloved.

And so Ventus was captured and imprisoned for 4 years. He just wanted to be with Vepris, feeling guilty he may have just led her to being killed.

On the flipside, his younger brother Nimbus, struggled with losing his brother. He would vent to another man, Caligo (originally a vigilante), who then rescued Ventus from prison.

However, Caligo would find this to be a mistake.

Ventus hated being weak in front of Nimbus, and would try and be the "You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison" bastard that he used to be, both in-universe and out-universe. Caligo hated how arrogant he was, and the two would clash until Caligo makes an attempt on Ventus' life. Caligo goes through a villain arc, wondering whether or not killing Ventus would be a moral option. He's a criminal, right? You have to get rid of the "bad guys", right?

Ventus would then seek comfort from his old crime buddy, Jack. But all Jack wants is to gamble on the "King of Switchblade Fights" again. Ventus eventually sees that he's nothing more than cash to him, but Jack tries killing him now that he knows he has no control over his little dog fighter.

But the last thing he sees is Vepris.

Even when Ven fades away, he can't help but admire the angel right in front of him.

Eventually, Ventus, Vepris, and Nimbus would go after Jack and Caligo.

But that was then.

Now here's now ;>

Character thoughts:

Ventus Fulmen was born out of a simple family, living normally. Until an interaction with criminals led to him being shot as a young kid. Ven would struggle with his mental health for awhile, but he'd meet Vepris. The two of them were inseparable, and both shared a love for punk rock music <3. Ventus would also form an interest in switchblades, a gift from his parents.

Somewhere along the way, Vepris became involved with Argentum's most infamous masquerade-inspired casino, run by a gang of nefarious criminals. Ventus, willing to follow Vepris anywhere, ended up hanging out at this casino often. It's here that Ventus would make a name for himself in poker games and unbeknowst to the innocent public, switchblade fights. Ven would be a huge moneymaker for the gang and its casino through his excellence at switchblade fights, and he and Pris would eventually join the gang as their most elite fighters, the King and Queen. Alongside Ven and Vep, the gang included:

Lucius, the Spade, who was a bartender

Jack, the Joker, who was the mastermind

"Ace", the Aces, who also worked with his brother at the bar

(The rest of these are more vague, Lucius, Jack, and Ace already have designs)

Adamas, the Diamond, a circus master ("Artistic, but Crazy?")

Trifolium, the Club, a security guard ("Sporty, but Violent?")

Cordis, the Heart... hot girls?? ("Lusty, but Manipulative?")

And so, the "Card Suit Gang" (name may change later) would continue to run the casino, getting into trouble along the way due to criminal activity

One day, the casino gets raided by an "enemy gang", causing chaos along the way.

Diamond, Club, and Heart face hardship after this raid, not wanting to be involved with the casino's antics and the target they've painted on their heads.

Jack stays at the casino, trying to keep it afloat after the incident.

Ace disappears.

Lucius faces a traumatic brain injury to the point of needing heavy rehabilitation.

And to Ventus, Vepris dies of after getting shot.

Which terrifies him, after being shot so many years before.

Wanting to protect her, he attacks; and gets captured.

Once again, he's imprisoned and forced to fulfill everyone's wishes as the "King of Switchblade Fights", forced to duel others in hopes that his captors can gamble on him

Four years later, Caligo becomes a vigilante. His main target?

The former members of the Card Suit Gang.

He gets involved with a young pilot, Nimbus, and his mechanic, Aurora. Throughout transporting Caligo, Nimbus begins to open up about his missing brother: Ventus.

Caligo realizes he's a former member of the Card Suit Gang, and aims to break him out of his captivity in hopes he can aid him in his quest against the Card Suit Gang. Once again, this turns out to be a great mistake... to Caligo only.

Ventus isn't the "King of Switchblade Fights".

He's a kind older brother. His main interest is punk rock. He yearns for his "past love". All he really wants to do is get treatment for his mental trauma; unlike a lot of my other characters (hehe Winter Boys), Ventus knows when he's sick and is willing to seek treatment for himself.

Caligo doesn't like this.

How can he justify leaving Lucius to die, if the Card Suit Gang was never inherently evil?

Once again, Caligo attempts to murder Ventus.

If he can't track the entire Card Suit Gang, he can at least get rid of one of the members permanently.

Ventus is still alive, though left behind by Caligo. Of course, Nimbus and Rora are scolding Caligo elsewhere.

Feeling as if Cal's goals are immoral, he seeks the one person he knows how to track: Jack, still at the casino.

Of course, Jack has always been a sleazy guy. He ratted out the Card Suit Gang for easy cash, only to be faced with the casino getting a bad reputation through the raid. Even now, he tries to convince Ventus to become the King of Switchblade Fights again, just to gamble for cash.

Ventus, good old caring, kind Ventus, hates this.

He betrayed them for money? He betrayed HIM for money? He lost Vepris, because of money??

The two get into a scuffle, which Ventus loses.

But he's not alone.

Vepris, also hunting down the Card Suit Gang, saves him.

Vepris isn't violent like Caligo; she only hopes to seek salvation and rehabilitation for its former members. It was her who found Lucius at the brink of death, rescuing him and joining her on her quest.

(Vepris becomes known as the Phantom Queen, while Lucius joins in as "Grandma Lucy"; his head injury has made him significantly weaker, but he still is grateful for Vepris and scouts out information under the guise of his weakened state)

Now that the Demolition Lovers are back, they're gonna make sure Jack and Caligo pay.

Ventus gets to prove that he's the good person Caligo rejected in favor of the idea that the Card Suit Gang must be eliminated for their crimes.

Vepris gets to take back the life that Jack took away from her.

:)

[kkatastrophic]

THIS WHOLE CHAIN OF REBLOGS WARMS MY HEART, WE'RE ON THE EXACT SAME PAGE HERE OMG!

Seeing as he and Sayaka were the beta designs in Distrust and Danganronpa the devs got sick of them real quick, too bad they gave them both such nice designs...

What Danganronpa needed to do better was spend more time with Leon, Sayaka gets plenty of screen-time and her death was certainly a shock factor, but Leon really didn't get enough screen-time for people to care that he had died.

I counted on the Wiki and he had 132 (around that amount) voice lines, and almost 90 of those were in the trial, meaning that he really didn't get any time to develop as a character until the trial. Also, he didn't get ANY official art while he was alive. Sayaka got one where she was on the floor after bumping into Makoto, and that counts as official art because she was given dialogue throughout the scene, as was Makoto. Same with when she was scared and crying. But Leon got the picture with Mondo and Chihiro in chapter three, but they were all dead so... no dialogue needed there!

Naegi needed to NOT CUT LEON OFF RAHHHH! Like, understandably he's upset because of his childhood friend, but he pretty much knew about Leons crush on Sayaka, so if he had just LISTENED to his motive instead of just assuming shit, that would've been resolved.

THIS IS WHY I PREFER HAJIME!!! RAHHH!

Like, Makoto is optimistic, and he feels sympathetic for the victims, but only the victims he was close with, or liked. Not the blackeneds. He feels bad for Sayaka, but not Leon. Chihiro, but not exactly Mondo. He feels bad for Hifumi, as he's talked about in the trial the most, but barely mentions Taka because in his experiences with Ishimaru he was uptight and rude. And with his experiences with Taka and Mondo they were both getting along fine. I'm so pissed at Naegi for chapter 3. He didn't feel sympathy for Celeste either. And he felt bad for Sakura but that was probably for Aois sake too. It's not to say that Naegi is a bad protagonist, but he's like a representation of the fandom itself. "THEY KILLED SO THEY'RE AUTOMATICALLY A TERRIBLE CHARACTER!" <- Average Leon hater interaction/Makoto Naegi not hearing our mate out.

Whereas in SDR2 Hajime didn't care about the rest of the cast until they started dying, before the trial thinking about Twogamis untalked bout past, after it, LISTENING to Teruterus story. In chapter two he was upset about Mahiru, and sympathised with the rest of the cast during the "PEKO! Don't go... I need you!" Scene. And in Chapter 3 he was confused at why Mikan was being insane, but this man heard HER OUT!!! Like, there are so many good examples of what Hajime did right, and Naegi did wrong.

At least Spike improved character development and didn't chuck Fuyuhiko away like they did Ishimaru.

SPEAKING OF ISHIMARU, OH MY GOD THE INJUSTICE THIS MAN GOT!!!

He didn't get enough screentime, he got a dog ass "development" of Kiyondo, we can't spend free time with him in chapter three, and instead of helping his mate, Naegi goes "maybe I should leave him alone..." okay buddy... HELP YOUR CATATONIC FRIEND PLEASEEEEE :,)

Then they fuss over Hinas stomach ache? Which SHE WAS FAKING ANYWAY?! Like, at least Hinata was worried equally abput Fuyuhiko, Nagito, and ibuki when they were sick in chapter 3...

Mondo hate mainly came from "brother killer" "he killed because he had a panic attack" "he killed soft uwu sweet charismatic adorable bunny uwu boi chihiro" and also from his attitude being so reckless and whatever. I made a post recently reblogging a post saying "if the only thing you have to say about Mondo is his trauma, please stfu" and I totally agree with that! More information on that on my other post if you're specifically interested in Mondo.

Celeste rubs me the wrong way, she's like dry oatmeal. That's literally the only way I can describe her😭

Even in the manga her motive was bad, but it gave us a look into what she truly wanted and how irritating Hifumi was to her. She should've just killed hifumi tbf. I'm glad she didn't survive, and fanworks are 10x better because omg they portray celeste so much better than just "Goth lolita princess who would setop on and use dead bodies to get her way, even if they were her friends and family. I'd think her and Mukuro would get along if Mukuro was in the game as herself, it could've been possible they met when Ikusaba went to fenrir or something. That's a personal headcanon but yeah... Celeste would've been better as a victim because she's the most likely one to kill for money. Imagine if Yasuhiro killed her because of the debt he had to pay off from the Yakuza. That would make me love chapter three so much more.

At least Taka is popular, and not overrated popular like Miu or Kyoko, and not popular but underrated like Sayaka or Kaede. Love Taka. Love the manga. Love my moots.

If anybody else has read all of these back and forth reblogs feel free to add to the discussion if ya want :)

Danganronpa Manga Rant- Leon and Sayaka:

@yukiteruakari told me about a Danganronpa Manga edition, and OH MY GOD!!! Thankyou so much for this bro omg.

I'm only up to "Junkos" impaling, but it's so much better than the one I have.

I'll put some screenshots below, and the link too because so far it's translated to English.

Why the Manga is better, what it could do for the fandom:

It gives Sayaka and Leon so much more development as characters and seeing as Mondos case is next we might get to see what they talked about in the sauna. (<- there are so many fan theories for that one, and I'm excited to finally get more lore.)

It's hard to be a Danganronpa fan in 2024 because it all happened 14, 12, and 7 years ago. So like... Spike aren't going to just start explaining more lore on twitter randomly because they feel like it, Danganronpa is done, but this manga helps us understand the killers motive.

If ALL of the fandom read it I'd probably assume the "Mondo Brother Killer >:(" cliche that some of the fandom define him as would be gone, because it has his POV instead of a Monokuma flashback and a shitty animated clip of him doing it "for no reason" other than being "strong-strong-strong-strong-strong" (from the canon game and animation 2014.)

LeoXSaya Rant, Manga>>>Animation:

And yes, Sayaka was revealed to be a bit more of a "snake" (she isn't btw) but her motives were humane and we only thought she wasn't because Makoto is the protagonist and wouldn't think bad about any of his friends.

It also gives Leon haters a reason to stfu and enjoy his character design and small role while it lasts, and it's better than playing his FTEs because he's just gloating about picking up chicks and being better than everybody at Baseball despite hating in from what I've seen.

Also, the art is just BETTER.

The dialogue is just BETTER!

They gave Sayaka a reason to invite Leon over. Because in the anime and game yes it's "wow Sayaka is so hot" on Leons part, but wouldn't that mean Leon would've been the person to invite her to HIS room instead?

But in the Manga they explain her thought process, anybody who hasn't read it will probably just go "Sayaka's dumb for inviting a STAR ATHLETE to try and kill!" but she's smart because if she had killed him she already had an alibi. "We were friends! We bonded over music and drank tea together!" or something... saying that, Sayaka couldn't WIN because Makoto knew about the room swapping ofc. And she'd leave evidence and whatnot.

*Sighs* The Animation Butchered Our Boys...:

(BOYS BECAUSE THE ANIMATION BUTCHERED SO MANY CHARACTERS AND GAVE THEM PISSY MOTIVES AND SHIT-)

I hate the anime alot, but the thing that PISSED ME OFF THE MOST (about 1-1 of the animation) WAS LEON'S REACTION. He was having a mental breakdown, which was fine and accurate... probably good as well instead of him screaming "stupid" then losing it halfway through the word and realising his fate quietly.

They give him a moment of remorse.

"I didn't want to... I mean she... she was tring to... kill me... right? I just... didn't know what else to do... okay...?" (quote end)

but then he gets mad.

I don't know about you, but on first watch this ruined it for me. "He's just screaming now..." like... it makes me mad for almost no reason.

He was about to have a very humane moment of "I didn't have a choice..." he's looking down at the pedestal thingy in the court, he's defeated, he's sad, he's been caught. He's in despair.

Then he yells at the others "you would've done the same thing in my shoes!"

And you know what the writers did instead of making him cry after that? Anything... would've been better, but this is the dam animation we're talking about...

"I DIDN'T HAVE A CHOICE OKAY! THE CRAZY SKANK WAS GOING TO KILL ME, WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!"

He did have a choice...

The manga gave him a choice, he tried to save Sayaka. Then he ended up killing her, ON ACCIDENT. That line alone contradicts the fact of any of that happening, he and Sayaka had just bonded hours earlier.

Like, this is my opinion and I've never heard anybody talk about this before, BUT THE WRITERS NEEDED TO WRITE LEON BETTER!!! The game wrote Leon fine, but the animation was a second chance at giving him development!

I liked him trying to escape the court room though. That was a nice touch that I don't think was in the game.

BUT BROOOOO HE CALLED SAYAKA A SKANK HOURS AFTER ADMITTING HE WAS CRUSHING ON HER, DANGANRONPA ANIMATION WHERE'S THE LOGIC!

Like, the scene made me so mad on re-watch and I can't pinpoint why!

Like instead of this: https://youtu.be/CbQ6McYz7U0?t=59

(Good animation though imo, the closeup expressed his emotions nicely-)

HAVE THIS THOUGH, THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER!

IT JUST HITS WAY BETTER-

Anyway, that's my rant of the day because why not.

The game itself had issues, but compared to the animation it was just so much better, and makes me want to give it a 7/10 instead of a 6...

[iaintyourbro]

I wonder if the reason why Cle~rith fans getting desperate with twisting facts is because most of their romantic moments are in midgar ,since midgar was in the pt1 and there’s non to them now only small parts ohh & GS date the moment they worship ,C beating A , A going to the FC then her death but i wonder if A death will actually happen the part 2 Because i’ve seen some people say the devs may change the plot and A death will happen differently (1/2)

so maybe A death will happen at the end of last disc in the remake , but remind me again when does the moment C say to T “it you opinion that matter.” I’ve CAs downplay this moment that the devs will remove it just like how most of their moments do you think the devs will remove CT moments in favor to them cause they’re hoping for that right now , i really thought it was too good to be true that many CT moments were added in pt1 since T was irrelevant until A death in OG (2/2)

Hey there! Thanks for the ask! This ended up much longer than I expected, so I’m going to add a Keep Reading for everyone’s sanity.

First I’ll talk about the scene where Cloud says this line Tifa. This happens when you go to the Northern Crater and Sephiroth creates an illusion of the Nibelheim vision. At the time, you don’t know it IS partially true, but it’s based on how TIFA remembers it. Sephiroth knew Cloud was there, but since he never revealed himself to Tifa, he used this to his advantage.

Cloud is holding strong saying he knows what Sephiroth is doing, and that the guy who runs out of the mansion won’t be him. Zack runs out - and Cloud is like I don’t care, this is Sephiroth’s illusion. I know I was here. Then Sephiroth also is like “okay... fine... I got a picture.” (He doesn’t say that exactly, but you get the jist)

Tifa then can’t respond, because she knows he wasn’t there. Cloud notices she starts to waver on this and says that her opinion is the only one that matters.

Here’s the exact lines that Cloud says:

However, Tifa can’t confirm anything now. Sephiroth did exactly what he wanted to do. This is what actually breaks Cloud. When he realizes that Tifa can’t remember him being in Nibelheim, seeing what Sephiroth is showing him and telling him, his mind breaks, and the illusion of Cloud Strife is broken with it. This allows Sephiroth to get the Black Materia and throw Cloud away like a used puppet, which is exactly how Sephiroth sees him.

This is an extremely powerful scene. You don’t get resolution on what most of this means until you go to The Lifestream later one and Tifa helps Cloud rebuild his mind. 

This is the first time that it’s obvious that Tifa is very important to Cloud. This is probably why it’s discounted. Anything that’s showing anything where anybody is important to Cloud other than who they ship him with is not real. 

If you replay the OG and pay attention, there are moments that show Tifa is important to Cloud. They are very subtle and NOTHING as obvious as what you see in Remake, but they are there. There are also comments from Barret and Aerith hinting at Cloud’s hidden feelings for Tifa. 

Barret when you first get back to Seventh Heaven after the first bombing mission asks if he wants to see his little baby (I thought this was funny).

Barret on the way to Sector 5 makes a comment about them after Cloud is trying to make sure Tifa isn’t scared. “You two can do this later.”

If Tifa and Aerith aren’t in your main party when you get to Costa Del Sol, Aerith will make a comment to Cloud when Tifa says she wants to go swimming about him getting crazy ideas and melting that cold exterior, and then she runs off with Tifa. 

But the OG was NOT romantic. I think it’s comical that so many people see all this romance. I replayed it recently. Any romance is very subtle. This game has like 5% romance, 95% crazy shit going on. 

Okay, LTD stuff: The Midgar scenes people refer to that I can think of are Cloud laughing with Aerith on the roof (which was removed from the Remake and given to the Avalanche crew), being imprisoned so Tifa hears about the date Aerith promised Cloud, causing some LTD drama, also removed, Aerith running after Tifa instead of Cloud - also replaced with Cloud going after Tifa. The last one is used to say that Cloud didn’t care about Tifa. So, they made sure to cover that one. 

Aerith HERSELF has helped to end the LTD. Her entire resolution was a nod to the OG plot - she gives foreshadowing on her death, on Cloud not being Cloud, and various other aspects. She tells him he can’t fall in love with her because even if he thinks he has, it isn’t real. They laid it on heavy there. Aerith HERSELF doesn’t seem interested. She’s absolutely more interested in what’s up with Zack. She built up the entire time you’re going through the Collapsed Expressway in Chapter 9 to ask Cloud if he had any SOLDIER buddies. 

In any case, the Northern Crater scene will be one that slays people. It was emotional in seeing it in text and polygons, but with voice acting and HD, you’re gonna see crying, fear, and see Cloud slowly breakdown in HD.

Now on to Aerith’s Death

So, I strongly believe that the main plot points of FF7 OG will be the same or similar in FF7 Remake. The devs themselves have said they are not going to divert from the story. However, that doesn’t mean that things won’t be added or tweaked. They added 30+ hours of content to a 6 hour portion of the OG. They moved scenes around, reworded things, and in some cases, removed scenes. But EVERYTHING they did only added to the main plot points. 

The Sector 7 plate still falls, no matter how hard you try to get there and stop it. Tifa still goes to Don Corneo and you have to save her, Cloud still falls in to the Sector 5 Church, President Shinra still dies, Aerith is still captured by Tseng.

The main aspects to drive the plot forward still happened. What happens in between those things is what is different, but ultimately, the main points are the same.

The things added or modified didn’t impact these aspects. If anything, they added to them. For example, having Barret get stabbed by Sephiroth served as a nod to the original idea to have most of Cloud’s friends actually die. This was changed to have just Aerith die. Sephiroth stabbing Barret also served to fuck with Cloud. Barret is revived because we all would have burned down SE HQ. (No, he’s revived because there’s quite a bit that would have had to change story wise, such as Corel and all that.)

Adding Sephiroth in early is enhancing the original story. There were instances in the OG where Cloud heard Sephiroth talking to him, but you didn’t know who it was. The “In my veins flows the blood of the Ancients.” is directly from the OG, at the same time. It’s when you’re going to Elmyra’s house. They just enhanced that scene. They’re building up the mental breakdown of Cloud slowly, so by time it happens, you will also feel like you’ve been mentally broken down by Sephiorth. It makes it much more powerful than hearing a high pitched sound and a random line of text appear on the screen.

I think that Aerith knows she’s going to die, just like she eventually seemed to know in the OG. I think Zack coming back is going to be part of that. I’m going to guess that he’s somehow going to help her. She will still need to be in the Lifestream at this point to make everything work. 

Do I think that the entire event will be the same? No. I think it will still happen at the Forgotten City. I think Cloud may completely go nuts and your party will need to stop him from killing Aerith himself, like he almost does in the OG. I’ve seen theories saying HE will kill her, but I don’t know if they’ll go that far. I think Sephiroth will still kill her. I’m not sure it’ll be the same exact way, but I’d be very surprised if they changed the scene too much.

It’s a really powerful scene. I don’t think it’ll be JUST Cloud looking at her. I think that’s why they’ve built up the relationship with her and the others - especially with Tifa. But I definitely think she will be killed in a very similar way in order to keep the horror of the original scene... and I think initially she’s going to survive it. That’ll be the whole illusion, but she’ll die pretty quickly after that. They’re going to fuck with us and make us think she’s going to survive it. 

I do think that Zack is going to come and “get her.” I think that Cloud will have interactions with Zack and Aerith to try and prevent the AC scenario of extreme guilt. Zack will definitely have a much bigger part than he did originally (which was almost non-existent in the OG). 

In order for them to properly follow the FF7 story, Aerith has to die. 

The other option is to have her die at the Northern Crater, which is originally where they were going to have it happen, but I’m not sure how that would fit at this point. Tifa is the key to breaking Cloud for Sephiroth. Sephiroth knows he can manipulate Cloud by using Tifa against him. Aerith wouldn’t do much additional in this scene. She doesn’t know Cloud. It also would require that Aerith dies to add to the grief the party is feeling. Cloud needs to be broken down, and Aerith is part of that breakdown. 

So I think she will still die at the Forgotten City. I do think that you’ll have more interaction with her after she’s in the Lifestream, but through symbolism. I think that Tifa will talk to Aerith when she falls in to the Lifestream. 

Everything that builds the skeleton of the FF7 story will be there. It’s just how powerful it will now be and how much will be added.

This turned out REALLY long, but I had fun writing it.

Hopefully I answered your questions!

[betweenlands]

? ? ?

[ a fic written for @mine-sara-sp‘s shadow people au, specifically the “season 7 shadows” au-of-an-au. fun fact, simplysarc did a series with zedaph once. ]

content warnings: possession.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 00

Okay, so they’re still working out all the issues with the shadow mob - apparently it wasn’t supposed to become a new form of artificial intelligence, who’d have thunk it? X managed to do some admin stuff and port the old shadows over, though, so I’ve still got Merino.

A lot of the new shadows have turned out, uh, concerning though? Bdubs got a plant monster even though the whole nHo plotline was two entire seasons ago, Grian’s is - well I don’t know what Grian’s is, but it’s got wings and eyes on it. Honestly, even Joe’s new one seems sort of off-putting for some reason. Keeps staring at me.

Or maybe there was just something on my face that day and he was too polite to point it out?

Whatever the case, I kind of want to get my hands on some shadow equipment as soon as possible, mostly so I can fend off Grian’s double-trouble shadows. Which means I’ve gotta head into the shadowlands as soon as possible, and I figure I’m gonna do it right now before my new shadow ends up sentient and has back pain from me trying to get a full armor set.

Also, I’m taking notes, because that’s the difference between science and screwing around.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 01

I have to admit, I was really worried about going into the shadow temple and doing the whole summoning thing considering that so many people have gotten big spooky monsters as their shadows. I guess the devs wanted to buff them because some of the stuff that happened with people’s shadows, like Shadoc and Murmur?

But, you know what? Everything went great! Sort of. Okay, so I didn’t actually see my shadow because I double-summoned it as quickly as possible and then leapt right on into the shadowlands. I’m sure it’ll be fine - it seems like you can hit any yellow-colored shadow with the scythe to get out, and guess what I got on my first run of the shadow boss! And… the second one. And the third one.

I think it’s probably a guaranteed drop.

I had to leave after three fights, though, because it turns out they definitely nerfed the livability of this dimension when they updated the Nether to be more homey. If you stick around for too long, you start getting slowness; stick around even longer, you get a really slow version of wither. Supposedly there’s a third drawback, something about the bottom of the shadowlands. I didn’t read the update notes too closely.

Anyway, I’ll have to go back soon, I want a full armor set and I only managed to get the chestplate - you know, the piece of armor I probably won’t use most of the time. Oh well, having spare scythes isn’t that bad.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 03

Full armor set obtained. Also, I think the third consequence for staying in the shadowlands too long is bugged. I got the slowness and wither effects in the middle of finishing off the last boss, and when I headed back to leave, it looked like something was rising from the bottom of the abyss?

But the animation sort of… looped, glitchily, like the amorphous blob of shadow was only consuming the bottom layers of the shadowlands repeatedly and not actually advancing upwards. So, yeah, it might be bugged.

I did get hit with a killer headache when I left the shadowlands this time, though. But hey, I don’t actually have to go back there for a good amount of time when I have the full set of gear, so I don’t have to worry about getting a post-shadowlands-exploration headache for a little while.

Merino’s been staring at me like there’s something wrong, recently, I’m not sure what’s going on. I tried to ask them and they just said it was nothing.

I guess it’s nothing to worry about, then. Maybe they just want me to get back to herding sheep so they can kill them again, like old times. I’ll do that.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 04

Okay, maybe there’s something to worry about. Thing is, Merino’s not the only shadow that’s been staring at me. Now it’s Joe’s new shadow - Joyful - tailing me, and Puzzler - Grian’s brand-new bastard - is always watching me specifically when it’s not being creepy at Grian.

I’d assume they’re jealous of my really cool clothing, but the shadowvex are normally all over that kind of thing and both the old and new ones are… I think they might be avoiding me? Which would be super convenient if not for the fact that it’s very out-of-character for them to outright avoid people.

The other thing is that… I still have that headache from exiting the shadowlands. Maybe that’s the third consequence, is a really long-lasting headache that can’t be cancelled out by milk? Either way… ugh. Just, ugh, I’ll start seeing what might cure it.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 05

I’m going to talk about the not-interesting part of today first, because I know someone’s reading these notes and I think it’s more fun if I add narrative spice to their poking and prodding.

Yeah, that’s right, buddy, I’m talking about you. I don’t know who you are but I know you’re reading this. (Are you Joyful? I think you’re probably Joyful.)

Anyway, boring parts first! I went into the shadowlands again to test something - turns out, the headache debuff might be a thing that happens when I’m not in that dimension, because the moment I teleported there, it went away. That was a real relief, honestly, because I’d had a rough morning. The glitchy stuff at the bottom of the abyss was still glitching, everything seemed as normal as a weird dark hellscape could be.

So, about the rough morning…

I was heading out to the shadow temple to do more shadowlands testing when someone grabbed me by the back of the collar. Biffa’s old shadow, Apex - I could tell it was him and not the nearly identical new one, on account of his visor being up and his eyes being blue. And, y’know, him lifting me up by the collar.

Basically, we had a talk - apparently, according to him, there’s something very bad in the bottom of the shadowlands. He called it the “old shadows” and told me that since I was there so often, I should be extremely careful.

He said even the Vex were scared of it. I told him that the old shadows seemed to be glitched, because last time I saw them they were only rising up to a certain point (and my trip inside later proved it). Apex just dropped me, and shook his head, told me to be careful again.

So yeah, Joyful, there’s your juicy tidbits for the day. While you’re reading these, d’you mind helping me clean my desk? It’s the least you could do in exchange for me letting you snoop around my stuff.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 06

Something really weird happened.

Grian’s been menaced by Puzzler a lot lately, and I sort of ended up running into one of those menacement sessions? I figured I should chip in and help out, so I butted into the conversation and tried to be obnoxiously cheerful, as Puzzler plays nice around anyone that isn’t Grian.

The second I popped out of the bushes with a “he-LLO guys!” though, purple shadow jerk’s eyes widened - all of them, even the ones on its wings - and it took a step back. Eyes flicked from me to Grian and then back again.

“He’s dangerous,” it told Grian, and then flew off.

I have no idea what that was about, because it’s not like I’m particularly skilled at PvP or even PvE, and I don’t have a special creepy shadow like Joe (or any shadow besides Merino, actually). Grian didn’t seem to know what was going on, either, but he thanked me for the help.

My headache flared up as soon as he approached… went from background annoyance to full-on migraine. Grian seemed worried, but I told him it was really just a me problem and that I’d be fine.

After that, I headed out to the shadowlands for a bit, because my head just wouldn’t stop pounding and I needed a break from it. I didn’t do any dungeon-crawling this time, just sat on the uppermost layer and stared into the abyss.

It didn’t stare back because, y’know, it’s a pit, pits don’t have eyes, but the cool air made me feel a lot better and when I returned my headache was less bad.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 07

So apparently the person reading my notes isn’t Joyful, because I confronted him today and he seemed… super, super on edge, but about something entirely else. Apparently, he’s got some sort of outcome-controlling power, except he can’t use it on me. He says that he blanks on the words whenever it comes to me.

He said I should be careful. And then my headache flared up again, particularly badly this time, and Joyful got concerned and said he’d leave me alone for the time being.

I tried to track down Puzzler again, since it seemed to actually know what was going on with me, but nobody’s seen Grian’s shadow around in a while, even Grian himself. From what Grian says, Puzzler might have gotten desummoned somehow, and nobody really wants him resummoned except for the shadowvex.

I really hope I don’t run into desummoned Puzzler in the shadowlands next time I go, because that would be even worse.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 07.1

Maybe the old shadows are rising. The glitchy abyss seemed to have risen up a little more than before - I was going to leave off the week’s entry before, but I wanted to make note of this before I forgot to do so.

I didn’t see Puzzler anywhere, though.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 08

Still no sign of Puzzler. Good riddance, Grian says. But now, in addition to the other shadows, even the jerks like Apex and Jigsaw are starting to avoid me, and I’m really not sure why. I don’t think I’ve changed much as a person, and none of the other hermits have come up with anything.

Joyful used to sort of watch me from around corners, and now he’s intensified that activity. If he wasn’t reading my notes before, then he definitely is now. So, uh, hi - please stop staring at me, and actually talk to me? I promise I’m not going to start a fight.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 09

I woke up and my mouth tasted like oil.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 09.1

Okay, I don’t remember writing the first part of this entry, so I guess I must have woken up really early, written it, and then immediately fallen asleep again? Best guess, I might actually be sick - between the headaches and now me feeling a little woozy while in the overworld, I’ve probably gotten a very mild version of the bends.

So I stayed in bed today, drifted in and out of sleep as a couple of the other hermits stopped in. One of them - the guy that stuck around the longest - was Joe.

Apparently nobody’s seen Joyful around for a few days…

I’m not an idiot. Something’s wrong.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 09.2

Snuck out of bed to check the shadowlands. The old shadows rose another few blocks. I watched the abyss for a few minutes, glad to be rid of all the weird illness symptoms, and then I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. They didn’t push me, so I just let them leave it there for a minute more…

And then I turned to look up at them, and there was nobody there. The hand still felt like it was on my shoulder, but nobody was actually there.

I should probably not go to the shadowlands again.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 10

So, I’ve abstained from going to the shadowlands for a while now, but shadows keep vanishing, and my bends keep getting worse and worse. It’s the new shadowvex, this time, they’re just straight up gone-gone. Can’t be summoned even to go into the shadowlands.

Man, this new mechanic is really buggy.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 10.1

I caved.

The abyss has risen higher.

It’s not staring back yet.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 11

I keep waking up places that I don’t remember going to sleep. I’ve decided this is way too dangerous, because I’m pretty sure I’m the reason that shadows keep vanishing. So far it’s been mostly the mean ones. I don’t want them to get at anyone else, either one of the nice shadows or one of the actual hermits.

I also don’t remember writing the entry for 10.1, so it’s safe to say that something is horribly, awfully wrong. And it’s probably my fault…

I have a dumb idea - I’m gonna see if jumping into the abyss does anything. Maybe it’ll reverse all this if I die to the mechanic? Also, it’d be my first death on this new server, and that’d be a pretty neat way to go out.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 11.1

So I’m standing there, fully prepared to yeet myself into the abyss, when I feel a hand on my shoulder again. And this time, when I turned around, there was something there.

I’m pretty sure it was my shadow, because it had the same proportions as me, only it was absolutely as pitch-black as the abyss below. I couldn’t make out any details besides yellow eyes and the glint of sharp white teeth when it spoke.

“Not yet,” it told me.

And now I’m back in the overworld somehow. My mouth tastes like oil again.

ZEDAPH - S7 - 12

Xisuma’s gone.

...My eyes have always been yellow, right?

ZEDAPH - S7 - 13

It told me, one last thing, the place I should go when it’s all done.

Craterville.

I’m going to see an old friend.

[rpgmgames]

February’s Featured Game: Returning Nightmares

DEVELOPER(S): Saturn ENGINE: RPGMaker 2003 GENRE: YNFG, Exploration, Adventure WARNINGS: Blood, Gore, Swearing, Suicide SUMMARY: Returning Nightmares is an exploration adventure-horror game being developed in RPG Maker 2003, inspired by Yume Nikki and it's multiple fan-made homages (but with dialogue & easier to navigate maps). You play as Akira, a young man locked up in his own bedroom, exploring his dreams to remember the events that lead him to where he is now. But some things are better left alone…

Play the demo here!

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! Hi, I'm Saturn and I like videya game. I've been into Yume Nikki since about... 2010? And RPG Maker in general since 2011. I've been cateloguing resources and reblogging RPG Maker projects on Pinkuboa for 6 & 1/2 years now (7 in June) and I run Dream Diary Jam, a game jam for making Yume Nikki Fangames. I also love pixel art, writing, and cooking, but the last one I can't make into a game (yet).

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Saturn: I was originally trying to make like a little intro to Yume Nikki project that people could peak into and copy for Dream Diary Jam & future use. However, it ended up taking a life of it's own as something I could goof off in and enjoy without thinking about it. The eventing I did for it could be better optimized, so I wouldn't use it as an example anymore (but don't mind at all if people look & learn from it!). It's basically about me thinking back on my edgy years and my years of looking at other's OCs and celebrating how goofy and fun the stories could be. A lot of the game is me asking "What would someone who watched a lot of anime and listened to MCR do?" There's an appeal to cool edgy stuff I think we forget about when we look back on our edgelord years. Sure, you may not have been the best writer and some of the stuff is over the top, but it was enjoyable to make and some of the characters still appeal to you for basic emotional reasons (good design, relatable story, fun power trip, you just like their hair, etc.) I hope the game is enjoyable to people whether or not they laugh at it or honestly have a good time with it. Both ways are valid - enjoyment is enjoyment!

How long did you work on your project? *Saturn: Oh gosh...I believe I started at the very end of 2017, like a week before the new year. Then I worked on it for like 2 months, took a break, then picked it up and went hard in September 2018 again.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Saturn: You bet buddy: -Yume Nikki -.flow -Ignite -The Looking Glass -Fleshchild -Yume Nisshi -Akuma (Yume Nikki Fangame) -Answered Prayers -Ultra Violet -Cheesy internet OCs I read as a kid -Cheesy modern horror movies -Cheesy Creepypastas ...and probably other stuff but I can't think of it right now.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Saturn: Sometimes I make a world without thinking about it all the way through and I don't know what to do it with or what to fill it with. That's why you can find a map of an Ouija board in the map files with some events and such that you can't access elsewhere. It's driving me mad still. >:T

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Saturn: It went from a side project to my current project, a project I wanted to use to help others but ended up teaching myself. I know better ways of eventing now and have an idea of how to make maps and tiles better and faster.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Saturn: I prefer working alone on this game. Had it been something that I started with someone else, I'd like it with them. I do crowdsource ideas though: I'll ask discord randomly, "Hey, what should I put next in Returning Nightmares" or "Hey, what else should I put in this world?" Big shout out to Dream Diary Development & Pixel Horror for their help!!

What was the best part of developing the game? *Saturn: Seeing the worlds come together. Once a world has music in it and all the bits and pieces properly moving and intractable, it's immensely satisfying. I'd say finishing an event and having it work properly is second. Eventing is fun!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Saturn: I find myself playing with the engine and seeing what I can do with it myself.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Saturn: I don't relate to anyone in particular because they're all kinda hollow. However, I like the hidden wizard the best since he was a D&D character I never got to use, so I have a whole backstory and personality for him!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Saturn: I wish I planned better & fixed a few bugs for the first release. At least there's nothing game breaking: you can't get a few menus if you don't have enough money, but that's it.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Saturn: Leave as is. This one is mostly to get me comfortable with the idea of releasing a larger game. Akira doesn't have any great stories in him, he's just him. Most of the games I got ideas for are one off since I like one off stuff. Makes everything feel complete.

With your current project, what do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Saturn: I look for people's reactions to it. There's, there's a particular place in the game that's in the shape of a 10 year old webcomic meme that I had people @ me in chats and ask if it was a reference to, while I giggled like a fool. Games like most media can be an interaction between player & creator, and that's one of the fun parts of it all.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Saturn: God I don't know if I'll break the game or make it boring in any particular way. That's my top concern.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Saturn: Learning how to make a game is like learning how to read or how to do math: you won't be able to read To Kill a Mockingbird right away, nor will you be doing advanced algebra. It took a lot of time for you to be able to do either. Give yourself a break when you learn how to make a game as well: you won't learn how to make a big one in a month! Feel free to screw up. Someone says "Don't do that, it'll be too big"? Do it anyway: you'll either fail and learn a lesson, or you'll succeed and then look back and say, "Oh crap, I could of done that better now that I learned everything new." Either way, you got more practice to make another game, but better. "But I screwed up...." - see paragraph 1 on this question for the answer to that. Cut yourself some slack and remember you're doing this because you want to enjoy making a game! I found the best way I learned is by looking into other games (thanks Bleet & Jojogape for being cool with people looking at their games). I suggest finding the best way you learn as well, whether it's written tutorials, asking people, looking at other people's games, video tutorials, or just messing with the engine yourself. Lastly, I found the best way to take pressure off myself when making a game (as someone who loves perfection) was to make a few goofy joke games first. If they were bad, that was fine: they were supposed to be funny bad! It's like releasing steam by making MS Paint drawings, it makes you laugh and feel less nervous.

Question from last month's featured dev @leirin: What's something you really hope to see an RPG Maker game achieve in the future? * *Saturn: I want to see more games do something with the picture system in RPG Maker 2003. Like, I've seen games play with the new picture system, but not release and it's really burning my britches because it's such a great cosmetic game changer hnnnngh. Otherwise, I'm not sure. RPG Maker is a limited engine specialized for RPGs. I like watching fellow developers Cachi, Hogwash-dev, Rindre, and a few other people see how far they can push the system, but I don't have a particular "I want to see this" from something. I kinda like RPG Maker for it's limits, but I also like seeing what I wasn't expecting from it!

We mods would like to thank Saturn for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Returning Nightmares if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

omg okay so i was totally ignorant but now i am enlightened because the brilliant @h00f sent me the booth video recording and im dying over it so here we goooo. i recorded it and uploaded the vid into davinci resolve so i could zoom in and also go through frame by frame.

tl;dr: so its all good its all good UM TYREEN’S TATTOOS WENT MISSING ON HER FOREARM AND THEN SHE SUCKED A MONSTER AND THEY REAPPEARED so it’s all good it’s all good im not having a crisis. im not. i thiiiiiiiiink we see the Vault of Promethea (the one with the cranes, but lilith also says “wherever the hunt for the vaults takes us” which throws me off a bit. still kinda think it’s promethea tho).

so not what i was expecting to be doing at 2:32 am but you know what? this is okay, borderlands gives me literally infinite energy

and new content? HOH BOY i am going to go so fucking in depth. hold onto ur horses. i was working on my mock intro to the game but this is so much better

UMM?? HOLY SIHT????

THAT’S THE SAME TILE AS THE ONE IN THE TEMPLE

I THOUGHT THIS WAS ON EDEN-6???

same tile on the wall on the right there

those guardian statues have staffs!!! that’s so rad, like the Watcher and shit, they also have less big necks?? or they might be bowing down. they look a lot more humanoid than the guardian/eridian statues im used to!!!

like as far as i can see they don’t have the butt spikes? maybe these are just super well preserved and thus not broken/spiky/cracked!! I do think the staffs are awesome! I know the Watcher carried one and so do some in TPS (I don’t recall seeing any in bl1 with staffs? im pretty sure they used their energy claw things) so maybe these are a higher tier of guardian than the ones we see in bl1? (which, if the Eridians wanted us to open Pandora’s vault as punishment for stealing fire the tech on Promethea, then that would make sense)

AND THE CRANES! and the buildings!!!!! is this Promethea’s vault? there’s something in the sky near the moon (?) so i thought maybe that was the asteroid belt but... it’s only condensed in one area..? 

it looks like a rocky place (you know, the quasmarian quarry Typhon mentions?!), i could see it, it looks super well-kept!!! my only problem?? it’s not underground/next to a cliff or anything. i guess it’s actually possible with those cranes and shit that it’s been excavated completely

i think we walk out of a temple here, which makes me think this is connected to the temple with all those monster dudes in it (also i can’t be the only one who thinks the blue sparkles on the statue on the far left makes it look like it has a shiny thicc butt. i CANNOT be the only one)

you know this one

well ACTUALLY in the We Are Mayhem trailer we DO see one of these guys!!! he’s on Maliwan’s side as the VHs are running across the bridge and im pretty sure that is Promethea!

IM PRETTY SURE

the neon lights and shit make me think it is in fact the city!!! maybe a part of the city that’s been totally overrun by Maliwan??

okay im certain this is promethea, those turrets we 100% see in the gameplay reveal trailer (below)

i thought i recognized that silhouette!

so unless maliwan is carting those demon dudes from a different planet to use in their army, I’m going to guess the huge ass temple was excavated from when Typhon found it (explaining the cranes and buildings) and Maliwan maybe took control with the CoV and somehow?? got control of those big demon boys. not quite sure tbh

OKAY SO THIS IS SO AWESOME ASDFGFHGJFK IM NERDING THE HELL OUT I LOVE ERIDIAN STUFF AAAA OKAY SORRY IM JUST ADSFSGFHYDJUK

AND THIS ONE LOOKS SO TINY?? I AAAA I KNOW IT’S NOT BUT??

THIS FEELS LIKE IT WOULD BE THE VAULT ON ATHENAS (IF THERE IS ONE) THOSE STAIRS (??) ARE GIVING ME THE VIBE. THERE IS UNFORTUNATELY NOT A LOT TO WORK OFF OF HERE, BUT THE PROJECTION THING IT’S DOING IS NEATO!! 

okay so this is either paint or light. and i can’t tell if that’s a person up there or a statue or something? I feel like i can’t almost see a cross or something so...

THEN IT CUTS TO THIS? AND HOLY STARGATE VIBES BATMAN I LOVE IT

i have a huuuuge feeling at least one of these Vaults is going to appear in like a cutscene of a flashback where Rhys and/or Fiona describe what happened at the end of Tales. The reason I’m bringing this up right now is because this Vault is just... in a void. There’s nothing around it except that gradient which is really bizarre to me.

JUST

ALL OF THIS

HOLY HELL THAT LOOKS LIKE A FORTRESS IN THE BACKGROUND MAYBE THAT’S WHERE THE TWINS ‘LIVE’? I IMAGINE THEY HAVE SOME SORT OF PLACE TO SLEEP AT THE VERY LEAST

it has the mouthpiece shape on the top up there? although i guess that could also be a VERY crude statue of someone raising their hands to the sky?? but it looks like the mouthpiece symbol. 

another shot of the HBC

intro to the rc

what i am assuming is the back area of the RC? but uh... given what we saw above, maybe this is in their fortress area???? imagine lilith teleports away because the twins stole the key from us and we have to sprint to their fortress base and when we get there it opens into a cutscene and Lilith is crawling on the ground away from them

mhmhmhmhmhmmm

heyo look at those shapes and colors on the left there. you know exactly what im gonna say

im gonna say it anyway

inhale atlasatlasatlasatlasatlasatlasatlasatlasatlas

okay i think i got it out of my system

it could also be dahl architecture (because it looks very very similar to the RC) painted with the colors of the CoV. Could also be that. 

i do think it’s interesting because this is almost the exact same shot as this!!

which means this is here

and i can 100% see this being in their fortress (???) and not the RC. The RC has that huge area in the back we don’t explore yet, so it could be there but... now I’m thinking... what if that’s just so we find the clue that the sun smashers gave the key to the twins in the HBC? Like i know i said the room Shiv comes out of is gonna be it but... maybe the whole area is just for quest stuff? or there’s a loot room or smth. idk. it’s good to keep ur mind open to alternative possibilities, is all

we get to learn what color Tyreen’s power actually is! ... I think? I’m pretty sure. like im hopeful this happens before she steals Lily’s powers...? but?? anyway although the vid is washed out, if we look at the shot from the dev trailer, it seems to be purple/red. I thought it was straight red, but guess not. Unless this IS after she stole Lily’s powers and that’s why she’s looking at it like that LMAO. i don’t know!!

Troy with a little robot buddy! Did he build that?! it’s adorable! it reminds me of the one in the RC but without a snake body. I wonder if his body mods/arm/neural implants let him control it. that’d be so rad

... why did the background start glowing???

ty in the hbc!!!

same shot with troy. i think this is the same cutscene as the reveal trailer one (VS the Calypso Twins) just at a slightly different angle/animation

oh shit is that a demon boy in the background? i think it might be

definitely looks like the temple area!! those spikes look like they could’ve been part of one’s wings, you can even see the thin skin bit stretched out on the left next to tyreen. also... is that an eyeball on the part in the middle there? that’s horrifying. no thank you.

so far, literally the closest we see Troy near one. This is 100% after he shed the monster skin like a snake. ... I’m kidding. mostly.

also i can’t believe my art of the twins giving the rock on symbol is actually legit. i posted that literally the morning before their personalities were revealed in the demo, im so happy

if this is not the video we see in Shiv’s room I’m gonna be so disappointed. is that a sword behind the box? Also i think i understand why the Map Machine Broke now. I am under the assumption this happens before they steal lily’s powers, but it’s entirely possible it’s after! this looks like the area they steal them in, so maybe lily sees it on live stream and is like “NOPE FUCK THIS” and teleports in to steal it. that’d be really interesting... still hoping they steal her tats after the HBC tho. im gon b really upset if they dont lol (not really, because it’s fucking bl3, but like... why would u then go put the map with mouthpiece... why...)

troy has his tattoos here! that or his skin has been peeled off and he’s losing a lot of blood. let’s say he has his tattoos so i can sleep tonight :)

cuts to him catching the key? almost want to say this is a different scene entirely than the previous one. same area, probably though

hmhmhmhmhm the fortress (?????) doesn’t seem to be connected to a rock wall at all (it’s elevated on like a plateau) so you know what, maybe this IS in the RC afterall!

fuckin mlg over here

oh it stops glowing again. you know maybe its on like a timer/pulsing or something. maybe that’s not important lol

back at the monster. why does tyreen look nervous/in pain? AND WHERE DID HER FOREARM TATTOOS GO???

OH MY GOD

THEY ONLY START REAPPEARING AFTER SHE DOES THE SUCK ON SOMETHING BELOW HER

WAIT HOLD UP

 UMM 

wTF???

i think that’s the horn or part of the monster they were sitting on/had killed???

holy shit. are tyreen’s tattoos/powers temporary and she has to continuously suck the life force out of stuff to keep them going??????? maybe stronger stuff = longer battery life??? holy shit.

troy in jakobs manor! explains the psychos with tv heads being hung everywhere

i was about to say this was the HBC but its not. ‘HOLY CHILDREN’ maybe this is where the VHs are walking forward with the giant spike head behind them. you know, this area?

altho that would be the outside of it. ACTUALLY maybe this is the entrance to the fort?? the walls like like castle walls lol

what in the holy fuck is that thing??

it looks like a fucking dragon??? sitting on a wire ball?

where the heck is this? in the temple area maybe? i don’t ever remember the floors glowing, but they do look similar. 

oh and the twins shake forearms again. maybe Tyreen is giving Troy half her powers or something and whenever she does her tattoos start to disappear so she has to suck more energy from other stuff to keep them present??

to this shot, so it’s a possibility. maybe they figured out how to “activate” stuff or something! And i am kinda thinking this is on Promethea now because of the Vault being similar? and the big demon boys appearing. but again like... the Eridians were kinda EVERYWHERE so it’s hard to say for certain even if the architecture looks similar. of course it would, they were goddamn everywhere. still curious as to why Little Blue gets that book, though. is it typhon’s book? a siren’s book? a researcher’s book? one of her ancestor’s books? i don’t know! lol

another shot of this. is this actually a vault???? it seems small and tbh the vaults are usually like... not shaped/designed like this? maybe it’s a statue. idk this feels wrong saying it’s a Vault. it doesn’t even have the inscriptions. maybe the academic district on athenas has a statue of a vault bc they’ve got a bunch of weird shit like Amara’s tattoos on a building and a vault symbol for a door so why the heck not this too lmao

the circus area with the ferris wheel! im so excited for this area. hype hype. it looks like it’s next to the motorcade. maybe this is where the big face arena place with pain and terror is, too!!! i could see the whole arena type deal being in a giant red circus tent

oooo where the fuck is this?? im interested. my first thought was a spaceship bc of the machinery (?) in the back but... maybe not?

maybe some part of the CoV spaces we’ve already seen? the railing in the back makes me think so.

back in the HBC!

space shot of Promethea (the asteroid belt and city lights)

it was at this point in the vid i started crying (like for real lol)

god im so ready for this game

Sanc-III!

colors check out 

im still wondering where that blue ship is...

they have totally different paint designs and the blue one is on the cover art as well!!! what is UP with that gearbox?!

anyway, this is TAKE OFF and also a nice shot of Elpis in the background. the crackening lava seems to have died down over 7 or so years. good for her.

“Pandora”. i love the sky, holy shit that’s gorgeous. what’s in the sky there by the moon? i don’t know! maybe sanc-iii actually DOES have a cloaking device. damn, i was kidding, but that’d be amazing

eden-6! with the jakobs manor in the background. this looks vvvv similar if not the same area we got the moze gameplay in

Promethea!!!!!!! wow this place is gorgeous holy shit

as this shot appears lily says “wherever the hunt for the Vaults takes us” which is likely implying this isn’t promethea. athenas, then? It’s possible, we see Maliwan has occupied at LEAST the academic district so i could see them excavating a Vault.

THERE’S A BIRD where do we see birds??? on eden-6, but this 100% does not look like eden-6 to me... it would explain the temple, though....... because tannis has the floor tile in her office the same time she’s crawling around inside a dino so... maybe???

we’ll have to see! I kinda hope it’s promethea, seeing large buildings and cranes and shit would only really fit my views of Promethea and Pandora.... the whole area is giving off weird blue sparkly effects, maybe it has been teleported or summoned or something? i don’t really know what’s up with that tbh.

it cuts off on this shot

wondering if this is like a character selection screen or smth it reminds me of the persona “press start” screens haha

also the art in the background is pretty rad. anyway that’s all for now folks

im gonna go pass out now, it’s 4:12 in the am. gnight

edit: i got my acronyms for the hbc and rc messed up bc i am a v tired.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

hey CJ since we’re getting ep4 next week, can you list all of your possible theories/predictions for episode 4 ? how the episode will start, how it will end, deaths, scenes, and what not :)

*deep inhale* 

buckle in

it’s a long one

You know what I’ve noticed? We haven’t had a single walker death, have we?

Marlon killed Brody, AJ killed Marlon, Lilly killed Mitch [😭], Clementine killed Abel, Louis killed Dorian, AJ killed Lilly/ Lilly killed James, we’ve blown up who knows how many delta soldiers but…

No one has died from a walker bite or walker attack, and we haven’t had to deal with a bite victim in our group.

Which… is weird, right? Just me? All three of the previous seasons had ‘em.

S1: Girl in the motor-in, Doug/Carly, Duck, Brie, Lee

S2: Pete, Sarita, Carlos, Nick, Luke, Sarah

S3: In all of the endings, Kate, David, and Gabe [and Javi, if you count the fake-out ending] can be killed by a bite/turned into a walker. [Also Conrad can die to the walkers in one of his many deaths]

So… s4 gives us?? A bitten Abel?? But it’s determinate and he lives anyway?

This just kind of makes me think that we might get one in episode 4 since we haven’t had to deal with it. Then again, they might just be going for the whole “humanity is more dangerous than walkers” thing, but for the sake of argument…

I don’t think Clementine will be canonically bitten like Lee was. By that I mean she may get bitten if that’s what prompts one of the endings. Same thing with AJ.

I’m thinking that one of the kids might get bit, and I’ve narrowed it down to Tenn and Minerva.

Tenn because I feel he would be the most tragic and it could really show us what kind of AJ we’ve created.

Maybe AJ’s super cold and just… shoots Tenn before anyone gets to say goodbye because “what do you do when someone’s bit?” and it doesn’t really affect him all that much even tho he considered him his friend.

Or, maybe AJ’s legitimately heartbroken that his friend is bitten and doesn’t want him to die and we see our kid just… cry over his friend.  

Or maybe there’s a happy [?] medium where AJ’s upset but he knows what has to be done, so he says his goodbyes, lets everyone say their goodbyes, and then whoever [most likely Clem] puts him down. 

As for Minerva, if she survives the explosion, might get bit as some sort of “redemption” by saving Tenn or whoever.  

Lilly / James Endings

So, I’ve already discussed the whole Lilly vs James choice in previous asks so I’ll just summarize my best guess as to what they may do as far as the outcomes. I think with this choice, we may be choosing our final antagonist.

[spare Lilly] I doubt they’ll just kill her off in the explosion because she’s fucking Lilly and the devs said they’re straying away from choice payoffs like that.

I think she’ll be “missing” as in when we wake up we may not see her [unless she is there and attacks us and we have to escape her again] and she’ll gather up any delta survivors to get revenge and possibly take AJ [assuming they’re going for the s1 parallel of kidnapping a child] and then we’ll have a final battle with her.

I’m hoping it’s by the barn so that we can bash her brains in with the salt lick like WHY ELSE WOULD THEY SHOW IT TO US?? 

Lemme look her in the eye while Clementine holds the salt lick over her head and say, 

“Larry bled like a fucking pig, and so will you.”

Fuck Lilly jfc

[shoot Lilly] Again, I doubt if we save James that he’ll be killed off during the explosion, but we’ll get separated. 

after an intense escape scene and I think we’ll meet up with some of the group [Louis/Violet, Aasim, Omar] but no one else is accounted for but there are too many walkers drawn in from the explosion to stay put and look.

Clementine might send everyone back to the school while she searches for AJ because I don’t see her just assuming that he made it back without looking. But, when we get to the school be to find that [hopefully] everyone made it back okay [more or less] except AJ and James.

Which prompts a “Oh shit, we have to go find them!”

Whether they’ll go through with the ‘kidnapping’ part of it, I dunno, since it’s been pointed out that James doesn’t really seem like the type unless it was for some extremely drastic measure.

We might have to justify our actions to him and explain why we told AJ to shoot. 

I said before that part of the choice [James vs Lilly] might be to let James die a friend and thinking AJ’s saved, or prevent his death and watch him turn on us. But, I dunno. Either way’s heartbreaking.

AJ + What becomes of him

I agree with a lot of people when they say that we won’t be influencing his choices next episode and he’ll make his own decisions based on what we taught him. 

This is a little worrying because I’m not the greatest parent… after all, I shoved Abel through the window, let him attack Dorian, told him to shoot Lilly…

But! I didn’t kill the walker couple [what good that’ll do I dunno], I let him know that killing Marlon was wrong, didn’t give him dibs on Abel, I didn’t torture Abel…

I’m just eager to see just how much it’ll affect how my choices shape him because I don’t want to it be just one or two things.

Deaths

Honestly, I think it’d be cool if everyone was determinate. 

Imagine the combo of endings that could produce.

I’d hate it because I don’t want my kids to die, but at least if they were all determinate then I could possibly save them all, right?

Unless we get an A vs B choice again in which case PLEASE DON’T

I keep thinking of scary combos like

[save Aasim] vs. [save Ruby]

[Save Tenn] vs. [save Willy]

[save Willy] vs. [save Aasim] 

[god looking at these makes me think of those fanmade ending screens that are all over reddit and I don’t like it]

I know that if they throw ANY of these at me I’ll just be stuck there, staring at the pause screen gripping my controller to the point of breaking it and trying to not scream. 

Also, I list those ones because I don’t think we’ll have another [save Louis] vs. [save Violet] choice because at this point it’s a little pointless? It’s a shitty choice for the player to make but… it’d be easy, too? Depending on which route you’re doing? Like, I’m not going to pick Louis for all three episodes then suddenly be like “Nah, gotta save Vi” because??? 

I think my choice is pretty obvious at this point, game, c’mon. 

But, if that’s not the case, I’ll list who’s most likely to die down to least likely:

Omar [sorry buddy, you’re on all our lists and I hate it]

Minerva

Tenn

Lilly/James

Willy

Aasim

Ruby

Louis/Violet [betrayed]

Louis/Violet [saved]

Clementine

AJ

Tho I hope Omar lives to the end so he can turn to the camera and flip all of us off for talking shit

Gimme that romance 

I know we just took down [or did we…?] a bunch of sick delta raiders but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get to smooch Louis again, okay?

After all this shit, I’m gonna need to see some romance with Clementine and her bf/gf [or bromoments if you friendzoned them]

Let me hug AND kiss Louis. 

I think we deserve it at this point.

Also, he’s pretty messed up from shooting Dorian [OR YA KNOW LOSING HIS TONGUE]

And gimme angst with Violet. I’ll try not to get pissed off this time around since I’ve got a better understanding of her character after taking time to process it. So long as she doesn’t hurt anyone [and I doubt she will] then we’ll be fine. 

Long post, but there are some of my thoughts. 

Maybe once the trailer comes out I’ll have more ideas and predictions, but for now, that’s all folks.

[caithyra]

Vampire Game Reviews Part 1

This Halloween I sat down and played a bunch of vampire themed games and decided to review them. First up, Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova, Dracula: Origin and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I might get around to Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption and Dracula: Love Kills in a later post.

I use my own 5-scale gradation in this:

0: Either I couldn’t force myself to finish it, or I was more relieved it was over than anything else. 1: I had no fun, but there might have been something fun in there… maybe…? 2: More bad than good. 3: About evenly good and bad. I actually start having more fun than not. 4: A solid entertainment piece. Has it’s blemishes, but despite that I like it. 5: Almost perfect (perfection is a myth). I had lots of fun and am satisfied.

(Semi-minor spoilers below. Unless you’ve gone quite far into the games, you likely wont suss out what’s happening until it’s happening.)

Vampire Legends: The True Story of Kisilova: You’re an investigator for the Hapsburg Empire going to the small town of Kisilova, recently beset by a killer leaving bloodless victims behind them. Rumors of vampires abound. After a series of mishaps the rumors do not feel so farfetched. Especially not when a mysterious, young woman enters the picture.

(Left: The Beginning of the Adventure with our buddy and hint machine. Right: The first of many, many hidden objects screens in this game.)

Okay, it is a point-and-click visual novel adventure thing that’s really short (less than 5 hours, and I think I left the game — and the clock — running for a while at some point), and also cheap. It was enjoyable enough, the music was forgettable but good enough, the graphics nice and atmospheric enough and the story was short and serviceable. The problems mainly came through the game-play; this game relied faaar too heavily on hidden object minigames, and those were unskippable, while all others were skippable after a short while. Fortunately, your partner can give hints to speed things along. As for my final decision in the winter-themed bonus chapter? Well, it was Halloween so I thought “why not?” and that was that for Europe. I always try to pick the most supernatural decision whenever I can lol (see Squirrel Elves in the Witcher franchise, or picking spell-sneaking classes in the Elder Scrolls).

My biggest problem with this game, however, is that I need to resize the resolution on my ultrawide monitor to play it without horizontal stretching distorting the art. The Options menu is seriously lacking in Options (actually, that whole menu is a mess that looks more at home in a Free-to-Play mobile game).

All in all, I generally liked it and its short nature meant that except for the hidden objects minigame, most of it didn’t outstay its welcome and it was really cheap (less than 4€ when I bought it, which is about the right price IMO. I think regular price is something like 9.99€?) so worth it. 3/5.

Dracula: Origin: You are Van Helsing. Yeah. That guy. And you have a missing friend, Harker, who had something to do with Dracula, and you have a pretty friend named Mina who ends up targeted by Dracula and now you must rush across the Old World to save her from a curse.

(Left: Yup, same dev as the Sherlock Holmes games. Middle: Vampires don’t like garlic breath. Right: Dammit Mina, I gave you ONE job. One. Job. All of this slow walking could have been avoided!)

Ah. Frogware. I generally like their Sherlock Holmes games, but this game… It felt more like a waste of my time. Oh, I’m sure there is a good game in there that isn’t a waste of time. Unfortunately, it is hidden behind the biggest time-sinks in the game: Van Helsing walks at half the speed of a normal person at all times and speaks really slowly, in conversations that has no branches, yet they will periodically be interrupted so that you can click on the next topic in the list (that wont reveal the next topic until you’ve listened to the topic listed before it). There’s this scene during a cave in when he says something like “quickly, we must make haste to escape!” and then you click on the exit and he waaaaaaaaalks slooooooooooooowlyyyyyy through it. It certainly doesn’t help that he must cross the entire span of the screen and backtrack locations many times and… AGH! RUN YOU FOOL!!

And, well, Frogware adventure game with its strange clues and non-clues and objects. There’s this bit in the first outdoor area when you have to capture some flies. Now, if you have followed the story logically, you will have a jar and a lid in your inventory. Easy, peasy, just click the flies with the jar, right? Nope. You must find a mourning veil hidden in the cemetery (that is large and that Van Helsing waaaaalks sloooooowlyyyyy through), use it on the flies and then combine the fly-ridden veil with the jar to get a jar of flies (I wont say what for because of spoilers, but, well, I don’t recommend eating during the Cemetery/Mansion part of the story if you have a phobia against bugs). There are also several objects that are basically five pixels on the screen because of the angle we’re viewing them at that we must find to pick up, and on the whole, I had more frustrations than fun with this story. Like, there’s even this puzzle minigame with a picture of Minos, the Labyrinth and the Minotaur and you find thread/string in the same house and wouldn’t you know it! The thread/string has nothing to do with the minigame and the minigame has nothing to do with the legend of the Minotaur!

On top of that, well, lets just say that the Egyptian section has quite a bit of stereotyping (think Victorian stereotypes of Egypt and its people in a modern game. Also, potential racism against white people must be prevented at all costs, including lying to a bereaved family), and when we run into our first, unliving female vampire she of course wears a top made of strips of cloth and a sheer skirt (you’d think a rich vampire’s favorite mistress would own a nice dress at least, but nope), and every woman (including dead of non-vampiric variety) have their beauty commented upon (and, of course, a young, pretty girl’s defilement/death is a tragedy, which is why it is so important to include that she was pretty).

And, well, this game markets itself heavily with Dracula at the forefront, not Van Helsing, yet while Dracula is the main antagonist, he only has a few, brief scenes, which were disappointing. All in all it was a 1/5.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines: You are a fledgling of one of the Camarilla clans, recently thrust into the secret world hidden by darkness, and more specifically into one of the most fucked cities of the World of Darkness. After your illicit embrace into the undead by your executed sire, the Prince of the City has graciously offered to adopt you, provided you prove yourself worthy to the exacting clan of rulers. Except the prince’s domain is built on quicksand, and this is Los Angeles; the birthplace of the modern Anarchs, and one of the domains of the Kindred of the East, on top of the eternal, political dance all Kindred must dance, and you, baby vampire as you are, have no allies and no clue as how to proceed except to survive.

(Left: Told ya Velvet is a mascot in this game. Middle: Did you know that Mercurio was meant to handle the Voerman sisters and we wouldn’t have to go through sewers and a haunted hotel if he did his job? Right: Apparently the Chinese are masters of Japanese swords and the Ventrue need no neckbones...)

Here’s the thing about VtM:B: It is a very enjoyable game and definitely the definite vampire game out there. It also has no story for your character. “What about the Ankaran Sarcophagus?”, well, your character participates, but it does nothing to answer the questions we are immediately confronted with in the opening of the game: Why would our unknown sire, an upstanding member of Kindred society, break one of the Traditions (pretty much laws set in stone for all Kindred over the entire world) to embrace us? Why would the prince, whose sole job is to uphold the Traditions, then break one of the Traditions and allow the ill-begotten progeny live?

Except for the opening of the game, we never hear from our sire again, nor the questions raised during the opening. And that makes our player character a bit superfluous when any random neonate could serve just as well.

So if not story-telling, what does VtM:B do that makes people sing its praises? In short? Characters and the World. It is incredibly atmospheric and while characters don’t develop (vampires are static by nature in this world, and most characters in the game are entrenched in their places and wont be shaken by some random baby vampire showing up), they are all very distinct and written in different tones. However, if you’re not role-playing as an ignorant fledgling, but meta-playing with some Vampire the Masquerade lore known, you will feel extremely railroaded (if your character had any inkling of who Smiling Jack is in the World of Darkness, they would never believe his coarse but kind uncle-figure thing he’s got going on. Because even before a certain hugely Biblical spoiler got involved, Jack was an imposer, liar, manipulator and mass-murderer who has sired many, many thin-blooded vampires and abandoned them to their fates. There’s a reason why only ignorant neonates like Nines’ gang admires and likes him. What I just said is not a spoiler for the game, btw, because it never comes up because your character is an ignorant fledgling being manipulated and deceived by literally everyone. Maybe Velvet and Bertram don’t, but Velvet might seem so sweet when she convinces you to be her knight because of Presence and acting, and Bertram is a Nossie and they have major secrets within secrets).

And while it is easy to sink into the world of the game and roleplay, thus mitigating the railroading feeling above. This game was clearly written with an audience of White Male Teens in mind. We have Velvet (of the fashion-conscious Toreador clan) show up at the prince’s court in Elysium in only a lacy basque, g-string and thigh high fishnets, tall heels and not as much as a peignoir thrown on top. Yeah, she attends an important society function in her fetish underwear. Then we have the explicit sex life of game cover-girl Jeanette (yeah, the one dressed like a dilapidated school girl), and those two are THE female mascots of the game.

The less said about the Orientalism and the Kindred of the East the better, but that segues into how around the time you reach Chinatown, the game starts losing its luster and strengths. Okay, so if you’re sensitive to that kinda thing, you might notice it a little bit in Hollywood, but by the time Chinatown rolls around, you might notice how it is less immersive and how it starts to feel more and more gamey (specifically, Action gamey), and you get less options that isn’t some variant of “kill it”.

On top of that the game has technical issues if you do not use the fan-made patch (I always use Patch Plus, which restores cut content and quests, as well as ReShade for better anti-aliasing and sharpness), and it still has a few cropping up from time to time. At least it works perfectly well in ultrawide resolutions?

Still it has that charm, and despite its flaws and how I can think of a dozen complaints at the drop of a dime, I still love playing it. So it’s a 4/5 from me.

[gryffnwing-blog]

Gryffnwing’s Standard Corner: Budget decks for MTG’s Standard Format.

Hey all! “Hi disappointment!” E-yup. Yeah, I’m behind on them Commander Challenge articles, that’s my bad. But hey, got a standard brew for you all~

“Uh-huh...”

Yeah, and it’s budget and not a typical Standard deck!

“Trying to steal that lime light from Dev from SBMTG and Wedge from TheManaSource~” Yeah...yeah...Did you know... You know what, just going to just talk about the deck now.

So what we have here is Blue/ Green Aggro. Originally this was going to be a Tempo deck...but I like to hit things with big creatures.

Oh, before we continue, 90% of our cards are costed under two mana, with only 2 cards costing six mana (for late game).

Onto our Creatures.

Our main dude

We’re running 4X of this dude. With many of our spells being pump spells (more on that later).  On Turn three we can have a Deeproot at 9 power. Which many decks just can’t deal with. 

With four of these guys, and one of our many one-drops. Speaker just fills that void of being a Kird-Ape. A total of 2 power on turn 2 isn’t terrible. As mentioned before with a total of 9 damage...make that 11?

Another early game beater, with the upside of being getting through  those pesky creatures. We can do some similar plays; like Deeproot Champion. Even late game, we can drop one or two Speakers to have this buddy go through for three damage. We’re running four of these to get these out early.

As with the above, we’re running 4. Slither Blade is being played as an extra “8″ copies of River Sneak..or maybe the other way around.

Again, we got four. One of our few ways of protecting our creatures. Also, Turn two we can have Siren deal 5 damage. That’s a quarter of your opponents life!

Pump Spells!

So many of these are self explanatory. They’re meant to just help us end the game early. 

We’re running 3 Blossoming Defense, which acts as a neat trick. In Standard we are going to see a lot of Red decks, and a bunch of targeted removal. We always want to cast this in response to something. Especially since we have squishy creatures.

So I’m just going to give these both the same spot.  We run 3 Gift of Strength, and 2 copies of Shed Weakness. This is just good early turn damage. Cast both of these on turn 3 on a Deeproot Champion for an 8/8 creature. 

Man, this would have been great as an Instant. We are running 4 of these just to make sure we get it on turn 3. This is a rather slow pump spell, but in many regards, that added Trample makes it worth it. Again 9/9 with trample on turn 3? Seems good.

3 copies of this, with 12 total Merfolk, seems good. Now, we only have one un-blockable Merfolk. Early game this can get our one drops into late game threats. With Deeproot Champion it can make him a 4/4. Not bad if we need a late game body. 

We’re playing 2 copies of Heroic Intervention. A great combat trick when we need to have blockers, and want to alpha-strike next turn. This also allows us to withstand some of the best removal in Standard.

Late game plays

We’re an aggro deck. We can run out of steam. We’re running 2 copies of Pull from Tomorrow in order to prevent that. That instant speed, so good. Also we’re only running 2, because we don’t want them to clog our hand. Also running 19 lands is a killer. So at mos we might be able to tap 6 to draw 4? It’s ok.

So, a slower Cyclonic Rift. We’re only running 2 copies, like Rift we don’t want this in our early game. Also this kind of deals with a few of those giant Dinosaurs...if they haven’t killed us yet. This is great too, when we just can’t reliably swing in with a Champion, or a Siren. We’re only running 19 lands. 4x Botanical Sanctum, 8 Forest, and 7 Island. This can be changed to your liking, and based on your local FNM meta. 

We’re going to delve into the side-board. We become this pseudo-tempo deck, if needed.

We’re running three Unsummon, the Ace-card for old-school Tempo decks. This can reset their late game plays...like a particular Mono-red Dragon, or bounce an annoying blocker, so Deeproot Champion can get through. 

This card really depends on your meta, but with Reigasaur Alpha, Vraska, and  some other big Standard cards. This might be needed. At the worst, it’s a 3/1 flyer with flash. We’re only playing 2, because we really don’t want to draw too many of these.

We’re going to side in all 3 of these hungry dudes. Manly because Standard is going to have a good amount of Graveyard strategy decks still. Against aggro, we can just gain life, and against control, a large creature.

3 copies for Control. It helps out race them in draw, and when they get a board, we can spend mana to make it another unblockable creature. 

We’re running 4 Rebuff’s because we want that “Tempo” plan against faster creature decks and against control, they won’t expect it.

Our entire strategy is to hit fast and hard, then switch it up to be a more “control-ish” deck. 

Are we faster than Mono-red, Ramunap-red, etc? No, we aren’t. We can race them in damage on turn three, but we’re going to be trading blow-for-blow. Against control and mid-range strategies, we can actually win early enough, before they get a board. When game two hits with those decks, we switch it up ourselves and tempo with them. Again, we play mostly low drops, so we’re putting our eggs in one basket to win on turn 4 the latest.  Oh, yeah, budget. for both A full 60 card deck and a 15 card side-board. Well, $57 in total. Oh, and this using only cards from Kaladesh block and forward. Not that bad, considering that’s 4-5 weeks of drafts. Here’s the whole deck.

So what do you all think? What’s your budget, and what do you think could be done to improve the deck? Comment below, and let’s get this discussion going. As always, I’m Gryffnwing. Until next time~ Gryffnwing

[elkian]

I think I pinned down a major element in the difference between Bioshock 1 and 2′s writing

Character Motivation

NOTE: Contains spoilers for and criticism of Bioshock 1, possibly minor spoilers for Bioshock 2. If BS1 is your favorite game you may want to give this a miss.

---

(this turned into a list of BS1 grievances, ctrl+F “the twist” or “BS2″ if you want to jump to the relevant point)

I’ve mentioned it before in my Bioshock run, but Bioshock 1 has some glaringly obvious writing issues. 

Most notable to me were the first Plasmid injection - because as far as I can tell, and I spent some time trying to trigger a radio call, there is absolutely reason given for you to use it. As a Person Playing A Video Game, I’m going, “oh, here’s a locked door and a shiny item. If I grab the item it will probably (help me) open the door”. The player character has no such motivation. That’s okay, video games can be like that.

Less so how the Plasmid-getting actually works. IDK about anyone else, but I could not see the syringe before picking it up. Additionally, despite the pieces of advertisment about, there aren’t actually any explanations about what a Plasmid is or actually does. The goofy period-appropriate ad design doesn’t tell me, a player just starting this game, that not only am I actually gonna get in-universe superpowers but also a torturous DNA-modification cutscene.

So it was extremely surprising to press E to pick up this round glowing thing and have the player character immediately jam a horse needle into his arm with no apparent impetus.

Point 2 is in Arcadia. Searching boxes and bodies here yields crafting supplies. Again, as A Person Playing A Video Game, I know what’s happening. But the player character has no reason to start picking up crafting goods at this time. It’s around 5-15 minutes of gameplay after you start picking them up that you actually find a place for them, and 10-ish minutes after that for your Voice Over Buddy to mention them.

Frankly, a large part of my problem with these bits is that the devs have a tool right there to avoid them; Atlas is telling you all sorts of things, it would be simple to have him say, “Hey, this is gonna hurt like a somebitch, but I need you to grab that shiny thing in the dispenser and inject it into your body to open this door.” He DOES tell you about crafting, just way too late - and later in the game they absolutely have items show up on already-searched containers after triggering a plot flag, so this one is also p inexcusable.

In fact, from my point of view, the devs improve at making video games as they made the game. Part 1 had a lot of other minor issues - rooms where the surprise mob surprised you by having the room fill with smoke or fog as soon as you hit a plot trigger; the entire medical wing section felt more like a boring, grind-y pseudo-tutorial than an actual good plot segment; supposedly-Plasmid-abusing not-monsters failing to use any of the superpowers your character obtained seemingly effortlessly.

Later in the game, there is no fog- or smoke-rooms (at least not on Easy difficulty), but they combine two points by having Houdini Splicers - who use Plasmid powers that include, aside from pure offense, smoke-creation and teleportation, in a way the player can still track. It’s much, much more elegant than the previous areas. 

In a number of small other ways, particularly the writing, the game just becomes smoother the further into it you get (not in a way that feels intentional). Unfortunately, the first half of the game feels very much like they made the game, then wrote it, then built the second half around what they wrote.

One thing is The Twist. While it does explain some things - it makes an amount of sense for your character to know things about how Rapture and Plasmids work - it makes the entire fabrication of Atlas.... almost pointless, from the PC’s point of view. While you do start shaking off some indoctrination by the end, Fontaine can lead you around pretty effortlessly. He doesn’t need to win over your love or sympathy. I mean, yeah, he’s playing dead (I guess Ryan could hear him and realize who it is?) and Atlas is an established front, but it just doesn’t really hold up to close inspection. The entire point of Atlas is to fool the Player, at the cost of plot integrity.

After The Twist, you’re still dancing to someone else’s tune, but someone with whom I think the Player is much more sympathetic to. The whole ‘a man chooses, a slave obeys’ doesn’t really read as much of a choice-based plot if the vast majority of the plotline, minus some ending details, is in the hands of people other than the Player/Player Character. 

My motivation in BS1 differs from the character’s, because even at the end I don’t know my character’s motivation. And while blank-slate PCs and inscrutable PCs can work, I’m not entirely sure 2k was ever consciously going for that. If they were, I shouldn’t have to wonder.

---

The motivation in BS2 is much clearer, imo. I kind of wonder if the reason the Big Daddy segment in BS1 was so fun is because it came with a complete clarity of purpose - you want to protect the Little Sister.

The PC motivation in BS2, thus far, is extremely clear: Find your Little Sister. She contacts you throughout the game, clearly in need of help, and you want to help her, find her, reconnect with her. Unless they pull another twist at some point (and they better have the best motherfucking writer in the universe on board for it tbh), I know exactly what my character wants, and I agree with it.

This also makes the voice-over and helper characters fit into the plot better - Tennenbaum remains within established personality parameters. Sinclair is looking to turn a profit, and bringing down Lamb might help that goal - I don’t trust his character, but I understand that we need him to accomplish our clearly defined personal goal. We’ll tolerate him for as long as he helps us, and if he turns on us, I personally have no problem killing him - and I don’t think Delta would, either.

BS2 still has some writing issues, but both the map and the overarching plot read much, much clearer to me.

[pixelgrotto]

Animated bloody tears 

Through some unforeseen miracle of black magic, we now have a Castlevania animated series on Netflix. It debuted three days ago, and despite getting less promotion than I would’ve liked, Castlevania is finally once again getting some much-deserved mainstream attention in this day and age. 

I’m the biggest Castlevania nerd I know. I designed a whole series of Hero Forge minis based off of the Belmonts and their buddies and I even credit the franchise with helping me get over my childhood fear of vampires. So even though I barely watch new TV shows, as a former kid who used to visit Mr. P’s Castlevania Realm and The Castlevania Dungeon on a daily basis, I had to check this out. And happily enough, I thought it was great. Most of all, I’m astounded that this finally got made at all, because the original script, by comic book dude Warren Ellis (he's written some good Iron Man stuff) is a relic that was originally supposed to be for a live-action film and got stuck in development hell ten years ago. Just look at this Bleeding Cool article revealing one of Ellis’ production blogs from 2007, complete with ancient concept art. 

Usually scripts are trapped in dev hell for a reason, and I can recall reading a leaked version of the “goat fucking” dialogue referenced in that Bleeding Cool piece back when I was in high school. The whole thing made me think, “Jeez, it’s probably for the best that Castlevania never becomes a movie.” But wouldn’t ya know, over a decade later, they decided to subvert my predictions by resisting the urge to churn out another crappy video game film adaptation. Instead, they made a cartoon, and will wonders never cease - the goat fucking bit is still there, right at the end of episode one, and it’s actually funny.

So yeah, Castlevania the series ended up exceeding my expectations, largely due to a few smart choices. First of all, the animation, while occasionally stiff (which is par the course for most digital animation these days), reminds me of 1980s anime, and considering that the 1985 Vampire Hunter D movie was an inspiration for the entire Castlevania series, I feel like we’ve gone full circle. Secondly, the show retells the plot of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, which had a stunning four playable characters and a ton of storytelling potential that couldn’t be fully communicated due to the limitations of the NES. This meant that Warren Ellis had some room for creativity in retelling the tale of Trevor Belmont, and he does a fine job of making the dude into a sarcastic, weary undead-killing exile. But Ellis and the show’s other creators were also smart enough to know that Symphony of the Night is everyone’s favorite Castlevania, and so we’ve got some lore cherry-picked from there as well. This includes backstory on Lisa, one of the few human women that Dracula’s loved, as well as characterization for fan-favorite dhampir son Alucard, who looks just like his Symphony design, minus the cape.  Speaking of Alucard’s design, the series really does a nice job of pulling the fanservice card with these little touches that make it seem like the folks in charge were actual Castlevania fans, which often isn’t the case with video game adaptations. It begins with Dracula literally crying bloody tears in the first episode (God, I loved that), goes on to Trevor’s usage of his in-game arsenal of whip, dagger, axe and holy water, and ends with a fight between two characters that I won’t spoil but is rad, because it’s exactly what anyone who played Castlevania III or Symphony of the Night might’ve imagined. 

Of course, not everything’s perfect, and the biggest issue I have is that the whole “season” is only four episodes. That ain’t a season, that’s a teaser, and when thinking back to the fact that Warren Ellis’ original script was for a feature-length film, its obvious that this was made as one big movie and then chopped into four bite-sized bits, probably because the bastards at Netflix (who cancelled season 2 of The Get Down, argh) didn’t wanna commit. But hey, they’ve since ordered eight new episodes, and hopefully in the next batch we’ll see more varied monster designs. (Sadly, if that Bleeding Cool article is any indication, it seems like we won’t see Grant DaNasty, the other playable character of Castlevania III. Seems like he’s going to remain absent in lieu of more focus on Sypha Belnades and Alucard, which is understandable but still kinda sucks.) 

Finally, the show’s music is forgettable as hell, which is a shame when Castlevania is a series known for its superb tunes. Castlevania III in particular had an astounding playlist, especially in the Japanese version, which utilized a special sound chip to create extra channels and manifest some truly badass chiptune tracks. I’m not expecting a major musical change in season two, but hey...I’d love to hear at least some hint of “Vampire Killer” in the soundtrack. These are minor complaints in the grand scheme of things, though. For now, I’m just happy that we have a solid adaptation of Castlevania that takes the source material seriously, and I’m looking forward to watching more. You should check it out, even if you haven’t played any of the games. And you should also steer clear of the people on message boards who are whining about how the show is bad because there’s too much cussing and violence, as well as the bozos who are out in full force claiming that the Japanese dub is better. I suppose I can understand the violence, since not everyone wants to see Trevor whipping a guy’s eye out. But the language thing is some pure weaboo bullshit, because even though the Japanese dub is fine, this was produced in English first and features a great performance by Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont.  Argh, I seriously cannot stand people on anime message boards. I’m so glad I’m past the middle school stage of my life when all I did was argue with them. Now I’m more mature, and argue with people on video game forums instead. Yeaaaah. 

Images from the show taken from the Netflix site and screencapped by yours truly! Castlevania III screenshots from Gamefaqs and Legends of Localization.