#but apparently the game actually exists and may or may not be playable

[captainwentworth]

hello this is a very important psa to my dear followers (all 10 of you that are still active):

if you do not follow me for dragon age, filter the tag RIGHT. NOW

this is not a drill, it's for real this time!!!

[getvalentined]

HI THERE!! A fellow FFVII pleb here 🙌🏼🙌🏼

But I have not played Ever Crisis, and your art is

💥mega💥 from it.

May you infodump at your will where these outfits are from in the game, if you have any reference pics, and what the game covers?

If not, that is fine too 🌷

Thanks!

Thank you for the nice comment about my art! I've been in a slump recently on account of the world being on fire and having chronic pain in my hands, so I'm glad people are still enjoying what I have put out there.

Most of the EC outfits are only really "in-game" as related to non-canon seasonal "Portal" events, referred to as such due to their existence being explained via the existence of a spell of the same name, originally developed by Shinra before being ruled useless and put on a shelf. The materia for the spell was apparently stolen at some point in the early '90s, and it periodically crops up due to fiends, Cetra, or other nonhuman entities creating an excuse for the cast to get into alternate universe hijinks. The lore indicates that the Portal materia may have been stolen by the A.I. that ran the simulator originally used to train P-0 Class SOLDIERs during the course of the First SOLDIER Battle Royale, which eventually developed a form of sentience and literally ran away. This seems to be what caused that training program to shut down in-universe. (IRL the game was shut down because of real world financial fraud perpetrated by one of the co-creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, because we live in the weirdest timeline. Getting some closure on it in-game was super interesting, though.)

The game itself is intended to be a sort of abridged version of the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (not the funny youtube haha kind of "abridged") told in short sections with frequent breaks, allowing it to be played basically anywhere.

There are currently three active titles:

Final Fantasy VII: The OG, but make it bite-sized. The pacing here is pretty poor, but mostly because the devs seem intent on pushing it as the flagship title of Ever Crisis even though it is not the one that they use in advertisement. (Current chapter: recruiting Vincent in Nibelheim.)

Crisis Core: Everyone's favorite gay tragedy. The pacing on this one is about the same as it is in the original, although there are a couple new little bits. The translation is still ass due to "no homo," and recently they seem to be working very hard to retcon Angeal being a self-righteous trashbag for some reason, which is kind of ruining the whole storyline, but we'll see if they fix that. (Current chapter: Genesis' siege on Shinra HQ.)

The First SOLDIER: Not to be confused with the battle royale title of the same name mentioned above, this game starts with three unenhanced P-0 Class SOLDIER randos (they're relevant to Rebirth) and segues into the backstory of Sephiroth starting around age 13-14. This is what they used in advertisement, and then delayed updates on so many times that the ending was spoiled by Tseng during a board meeting in Rebirth. I am not joking. (Current chapter: Act I end.)

The game is intended to eventually also include Dirge of Cerberus and even Before Crisis (which has never been released outside Japan and hasn't been playable even in Japan for over a decade), but not until after the OG and CC's storylines finish. There is roughly one chapter update to a single active title every 4-8 weeks, so it's going to take a while.

All that said, there are currently around 80 alternate outfits spread over 13 playable characters (some are more favored than others, Aerith has about a dozen while Barret has three), and I don't actually even have half of them altogether. I do have a lot, though, so I'll put details under the cut of what I have and if there are any specific ones you'd like to see I can get screenshots for reference purposes.

— Cloud [5/9] Murasame, Bandaged Coat aka Death Gigas cosplay, Festive Garb, Saber Style, and Bahamut Garb. Missing Battlefield Garb, Maritime Sailor, Zidane, and Glavenus Armor.

— Barret [2/3] Fiery Cape and Electroarmor. Missing Scrap Armor.

— Tifa [2/10] Metalfoot and Fairy of the Holy Flame. Missing Lifeguard, Amarant, Guide Uniform, Bunny Bustier, Feather Style, Kirin Suit, Passion Mermaid, and the upcoming Bahamut gear that I will not be pulling for.

— Aerith [2/11] Rosy Battle Suit aka postcanon Genesis cosplay and Chocobo Suit. Missing Sunny Robe, Prism Dress, Garnet, Fairy of Snowfall, Floral Gown, Classic Coney, Kamura Dress, Citric Dress, and Bahamut Robe.

— Nanaki [2/4] Seaside Aloha and Canyon Duds. Missing Rubber Harness and The Hellhound aka the Sonic OC recolor skin.

— Yuffie [1/5] Puckish Lion. Missing Winter Moogle, Sparkling Skater, Shinobi Hawk, Summer Moogle, and Bahamut Mantle.

(No image because I hit the limit and it's a disaster tbh.)

— Cait Sith [2/3] Marching Jacket and Felyne Kamura. Missing Party Jacket.

— Vincent [3/3] Bouncer Suit, Stray Dog, and Formal Attire.

— Zack [4/8] Tropical Beach, Guardian Style, Glacier Armor, and Zinogre Armor. Missing Valiant Suit, Black Hound, Holiday Suit, and Shinra Full Dress Uniform.

— Sephiroth [8/9] Aeroglider, Edged Wings, Dark Harbinger aka the half-Galian Beast cosplay, Kuja, Celebratory Garb, Lethal Style, Shinra Formal Uniform, and Natant Jacket. Missing Dark Attire because it was running the same time as one of Vincent's outfits and I didn't have the crystals for both. (sob)

— Glenn/Matt/Lucia [1/who cares] I only have 1 proper alternate outfit for each of them and only because the game gave them to me, plus Lucia's Vivi, which is just a recolor of the first alternate outfit with a hat on top.

No images because I hit the limit and I don't care for any of these people.

[spider-xan]

Okay, so apparently, in this alleged early story outline, the opening action scene is you as the player taking control of the symbiote at the meteorite crash site when Oscorp is investigating and you attack and kill the scientists there, including ripping off Connors' arm djdjdkhshfj

I feel like this fits with the early concept art of an entire Oscorp facility being built over the meteorite at the crash site with many scientists working there, but it's interesting that in the final game, this idea seems to have been split into the flashback scene showing how the symbiote came to earth and Connors lost his arm, and the playable Venom section where Harry as Venom completely destroys all those guards at Oscorp.

That said, I do like how in the actual game, the way the flashback plays out says something interesting about Norman's character and his relationship with Connors in how he has the security guard go right to shooting Connors' arm off to separate him from the symbiote (which could have killed him?) instead of trying to shoot the symbiote first like I'm sure Connors expected when he was yelling at them to 'shoot it off', but risk destroying what may be Harry's only chance at survival - on the one hand, he loves Harry that much, but on the other hand, he is also horrible to everyone else and they only exist to serve his ends.

[fostersffff]

Made it to the third level of the Reverie Corridor, and based on how Act III ends for each party and where I've gotten to in Rean's story, I'm gonna take a stab at what the hell's going on:

Trails to Azure and Cold Steel III and IV establish that causality exists and can be tracked thousands of years into the future, even accounting for manipulations (see: KeA rewriting causality to have the SSS survive the Sun Fort), and Cold Steel IV reveals that the nature of the world is that there is no world, just Zemuria, and entities like demons and McBurn are from beyond Zemuria, and that Ouroboros and a few other key figures understand and can seemingly observe the world beyond Zemuria. This isn't quite a multiverse, but it's similar in concept (and boy is it strange that "multiverse" has become a mainstream enough concept that it can be used to simplify this).

The key points I've encountered thus far in Trails into Reverie are:

Novartis revealing that the supreme leader contacted Ouroboros- not the other way around- and apparently did it by hacking the Astral Code, which is Ouroboros' fucked up world hacking program.

All of the duplicates created by Novartis are mechanical (McBurn, Arios, the Emperor)

Rufus was affected by Ilya's dance, but Lapis was not*

Rean's party was convinced that Mecha Mishy was more "real" than would be expected, considering the circumstances

The Mecha Mishy thing is, funny enough, the biggest thing for me right now, because it implanted the idea that there may actually literally be a multiverse, or something like it, including one where Mishy (and Mecha Mishy) are real, and that it's already possible for things from beyond Zemuria to enter, what with The Divergent Laws. Combining that with the fact that Ouroboros is purportedly not behind the whole thing, and instead it's largely just Novartis acting independently after being captivated by how advanced the supreme leader's tech is even compared to Ouroboros leads me to the following:

The Supreme Leader is a Rufus from beyond Zemuria where the Great Twilight was not prevented, either because Osborne or Rean failed to take out Ishmelga, or because in this alternate Zemuria the plan was never to take out Ishmelga. The consequences of this are naturally Very Extremely Bad, and Rufus is thrust into a uniquely powerful position as... well, The Supreme Leader after the fall of civilization. Using the resources at his disposal (including the Black Workshop and Schmidt, who would've stuck around in this version of events), technology advances dramatically, just like they speculated, but the population has declined so severely that there is no "rising from the ashes". It literally was the end of the world and now they're stuck in it.

However, their technology became so advanced that they were able to peer beyond their own Zemuria, and said "hey, we can apply what we've learned to another version of Zemuria and everything will be great!", and the Zemuria the games take place in is literally the only one that didn't succumb to the Great Twilight, especially since the final Black Records are like "there is an infinitesimally small chance this will not come to pass if you are Big Heroes". Which also makes me believe that's the point of the Reverie Corridor and the operator (which I have to assume is AZOTH, the "causality engine" who wrote the Black Records), who's going "this situation is so fucked that you guys are allowed to use The Hyperbolic Time Chamber as much as you want to mitigate this because Jee-Zus".

Not entirely sure how the eighth Divine Knight factors into all this, but it doesn't contradict what I've put forth so far, and only suggests that Rean's roll is- as expected of Rean Schwarzer- extremely important.

*There appears to be a meaningful difference between Lapis and the duplicates Novartis creates, but I think it's safe to assume that Ilya's dance just doesn't work on non-organic life, so the playable (native) Rufus is not a robot.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Older Titles

So here we have one of the big problems with this “Always Online” bullshit.

Some games I own, I own in two places. Because Reasons, mostly, I think. One of them is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. And one of the things about that one is that all the DLC you get with specific editions can only be accessed when you’re logged into your EA account.

Amalur’s one of the ones I reinstalled on Steam, but apparently it has a tendency to bork out before it even hits the title screen on Steam. Does it on the EA app too, but ironically, that’s easier to deal with - you just run the Repair function and you’re fine. (Or rather, it was; today that fix is not working.)

Then I ran into the other problem of “Okay, it won’t log me into my EA account”.

First thought was “Did I misremember my password?” It’s possible; there’s a lot of autofill on passwords nowadays. So I changed my EA password and ... still no.

Did some Googling. Turns out that in May this year, EA shut down the server that services Amalur. Which means the base game is playable, but I don’t know whether we still get the DLC. I mean, if we have to be logged in for it, I don’t see how we can.

So there it is - I know there are other examples of this, but this is supposed to be a full-on single-player game with no actual need to be linked to Being Online, but they did it to validate DLC, and now they can’t validate DLC anymore because the servers shut down. So everyone who’s starting a new game at this stage loses their DLC, which includes entire zones, I might add, as well as some gear I really liked. Fine, it’s an eleven-year-old game, but ... people play those. *gestures emphatically at Dragon Age*

(I’d be gesturing emphatically at Mass Effect too but the LE kind of made that superfluous.)

Not that it matters when the damn game really does not like Win10 and now I can’t get it to load no matter what I do. I guess I’ll just have to find something else to play. I struggle to decide which game to play, and get my wheel spoked at the outset with tech incompatibility and the problems inherent in lack of physical ownership of product. I mean, I’m trying really hard not to be “Old Man Yells At Cloud” here, but I look at my computer, which didn’t come with a disc drive because that was apparently a more expensive option somehow, and I look at this shit, and I go, “...Honestly, doesn’t anyone miss games where you just owned the disc and you played?” I can see console players being smug but given the online store and subscription services run by the biggies, we’re not far from losing disc drives on consoles either.

There’s a lot I could say about how precarious an existence it is these days. We own less and less, and there’s a security in ownership. There’s knowing that no one can take this away from you on a whim. But most people can’t afford to actually own a home, so they’re beholden to landlords who could play silly buggers with the terms of the lease at more or less any time. Job security doesn’t exist for most people, particularly given “at-will employment”. And as for things like entertainment...

Side bar: If Netflix wasn’t being such a stingy bitch about cancelling programmes before they’re due residuals, I’d probably be more or less okay with the renting of that particular service because I remember a time before all this when we couldn’t afford a VCR or cable TV so we were at the mercy of the networks a lot. And even with cable, it was just more channels where someone else controlled your programming entirely. They do have to consolidate server space somewhere - I just wish they’d do it more with older movies instead of original programming, and that it really was space consolidation instead of screwing the writers and actors and so on out of hard-earned residuals.

For things like video games, though? I mean, come on. How many of us are sitting on games we’ll play eventually but haven’t got around to yet? It’s absolute shit when we do get around to those, only to find out that no, apparently the publisher decided that it’s not profitable for them to run the game that we specifically paid for anymore. It’s one thing when it’s a MMO; it’s another when it’s a single-player game that didn’t have to be online that you paid full price for but suddenly can’t play because the publisher said so. I can live with the technology no longer being compatible because age - it annoys me, but I get it. But they didn’t have to make it need to be online. Yeah, I know, digital rights management, anti-piracy action, blah; it never works anyway and I have a whole other rant about piracy that I don’t really want to go into right now. I just want to be able to own what I bought.

Right. I’ll stop bitching and go find something else to play.

[p5x-theories]

P5X: What We Know About The Game

Now that P5X’s beta playtest, which ran from March 29th to 31st, has closed, here’s a summary of what we know about the game itself so far. Hopefully this’ll be useful both for anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with the news about it and for anyone who has been keeping up, but wants the information all in one place.

After this post, I’ll make separate posts going into what we know about each new playable character, as well. I’ve also already made a post summarizing the first Palace’s worth of the story (as that’s what the beta playtest showcased) which can be found in my pinned post once I update it hopefully tomorrow.

I’m keeping this post as succinct as possible, but it’s still enough to belong under a readmore, haha.

Overview

P5X is a turn-based RPG mobile game with gacha elements, developed by Black Wings Game Studio and published by Perfect World Games. While not directly creating it, it is officially licensed by Atlus, and Atlus has apparently been very involved in its production, including Shigenori Soejima designing the protagonist and his Persona.

The game’s text is in Chinese, but all the voice acting, at least in the beta, was in Japanese.

There are specifically two gachas in the game- a character gacha for gaining teammates, and a weapons gacha for gaining better weapons for those teammates.

Right now, we know the game will release on both mobile and PC, but it’s unconfirmed whether it will release anywhere outside of China, and we don’t have a release date for even the original Chinese version of the game.

The Characters

So far there are nine known new Persona users: Wonder (the protagonist), an owl whose name is unofficially translated as Luffy (codename Cattle), a sporty girl named Motoha Arai (codename Closer), three characters that were only obtainable via the gacha in the beta named Seiji Shiratori (Seiji), Kotone Montagne (Mont), and Yukimi Fujikawa (Yuki), and three future teammates identified via datamining: a rules-abiding student named Riko Tanemura, a blue-haired punk student who some files call “Soy”, and a green-haired person of the Star arcana that files refer to as both “Hupo” and “Leo”, with “Leo” being their codename.

The Velvet Room also has a new attendant, named Merope, pronounced like the star.

Also available, only in the character gacha (at least in the beta), are the original P5′s playable characters: Joker, Skull, Mona, Panther, Fox, Queen, Oracle, Noir, and Crow. In-game they are explained as cognitive beings, rather than the in-game real-world people. Datamining has also found some of Wolf’s battle voice lines from P5S, and an icon from P5S with Sophie, in the files of the beta playtest, suggesting they may later be added as well. No sign of Violet has been found yet.

Munehisa Iwai also returns, running Untouchable and specifically the weapons gacha in P5X. Tae Takemi was able to be talked to in the beta, but had no game role, and Chihaya Mifune also made a cameo. The other original P5 Confidants’ talk portraits have been datamined from the beta, but it’s currently unknown whether they’ll actually return in any capacity.

The Music

Three new songs sung by Lyn were found in the beta: “Last Strike”, “Wake Up Your Hero”, and “Shadow Loop”. In addition, two other new instrumental themes were found: “Elite Battle” and “Fatal Desire”. The rest of the beta’s soundtrack was just songs from P5.

Locations

Many of P5 and P5R’s locations have been confirmed for P5X, including Yongen-Jaya, Kichijoji, and Shibuya, but the protagonist lives in a new location called Zoshigaya, and goes to a new school called Kokatsu Academy.

(Note that while Yongen-Jaya exists, Leblanc has been replaced with a generic coffee shop, run by someone other than Sojiro Sakura. Similarly, the Big Bang Burger in Shibuya is now just called Big Burger, with no apparent traces of the space theming.)

Mementos and the concept of Palaces also return in P5X, though there are some differences. At least in the beta, Mementos operated as a sort of hub, with characters entering the single Palace included in the beta through Mementos, from the entrance to the Palace located within the massive, set (as opposed to randomly generated), singular floor of Mementos available in the beta. Mementos also had three special battle locations apparently similar to “domains” in Genshin Impact, where completing the fight gives special items to strengthen characters and weapons, themed after the first three of P5′s Palaces.

Basic Game Mechanics

For the most part, P5X’s beta operated extremely similarly to P5, both in and out of the Metaverse. One notable difference is that the calendar doesn’t seem to be progressed by anything but the story- other activities, such as working, crafting infiltration tools, and spending time with Confidants, instead cost hourglasses to do (which are replenished daily), without being restricted to a single afternoon and nighttime time slot each day, as was the case in P5.

One interesting and more significant change made in this category is that the Confidants have what appears to be a total of 20 ranks, instead of the series-standard 10.

The UI elements of combat look a little different (as well as all the skill animations), appearing to be more optimized for mobile play, but otherwise seem largely the same to P5, though one notable difference is that it seems Navigator skills can be called in at will, rather than occurring randomly. There is a new kind of special attack called a Highlight Attack, which is similar to P5S’s Showtime attacks where the character executes a special attack with their Persona.

The protagonist can gain Personas by talking to shadows, and fuse them in the Velvet Room. Challenge battles in the Velvet Room, like in P5R, are available to attempt. Palace exploration also seems relatively standard, even if the Palace itself and the method of entering it is different. One major change is that several shadow/Persona designs have been censored- such as Incubus now wearing shorts, Bugs’ stomach is repaired and the bloodstains are gone, and Hell Biker has a helmet covering his flaming skull- but this only seems to be a cosmetic change.

Miscellaneous

It’s worth noting that because the game has yet to be officially translated to English in any capacity, character names can only be absolutely confirmed when they’re either written in Japanese kana (as opposed to the Japanese kanji characters names are typically written) or spoken aloud in official material, to confirm which reading of the names is correct. All the codenames are written in English and thus easily confirmed, but the only teammates’ names confirmed in the beta are Motoha Arai, Yukimi Fujikawa, and Riko Tanemura. Seiji Shiratori and Kotone Montagne’s may have also been confirmed in the beta, but at least as of posting this, I haven’t been able to find proof of it in any gameplay videos available online. Luffy’s name is a particular outlier here, in that it is spoken aloud in the game, but as “Ruferu” instead, and it’s currently unknown whether Luffy will be the official translation of that or not.

And just to close this out, keep in mind that the majority of our information about the gameplay specifically comes from the beta version, and thus things may change in a later beta playtest and/or in the actual release of the game. This post is up to date as of 4/1/23 when it was written, but it won’t necessarily be accurate forever!

[ewa-jednak-chce-spac]

Jenna Moonlight Dating Sim walkthroughs

If you’re interested in the history of amateur flash otome games or wants to have a small nostalgia trip, you may watch Jenna Moonlight Dating Sim walkthrough videos I’ve uploaded on YT today. I decided to record only the good endings.

I wasn’t into this type of games, when it came out, but apparently it was quite original among other amateur otome games at the time it was released, due to being a postapo horror story instead of an another romantic comedy.

The creator wrote in 2007:

“Bomee's last dating sim for the 2007 year, completely drawn with a mouse, with backgrounds from real pictures taken by my sister in Montreal Canada. You play as Jenna Moonlight for an unlimited amount of time as the war between the living and those infected by the Blood Pond Ensue. The Blood Prince is the son of Fantom and Ari from Love Dating Sim 1, taken away from the lovers by the Jealous Blood Pond Craven. Those with Vampric blood are not affected by the fumes from the Pond. Those affected become vampires like Stas. And those with witch blood like Jenna mixed with Vampric blood are very powerful-- you as Jenna can choose to destroy the world or save it... with eight different endings and five original characters...

This may be a very simple dating sim, but it's like no other with an original storyline and hentai-less graphics/gameplay. Is it love or lust at first bite? You decide.“

The original is still playable here.

The love interests:

1. Annej - the only female LI. This poor girl tormented by self-hatred is not an actual human being - she’s Jenna’s shadow and was created to become the Blood Prince’s bride. She ran away to the last existing city in the world and now she’s a clerk in the local shop. And she’s very happy, when you drink her blood ;P

2. Mobley - the scientist and Jenna’s supportive friend. At the beginning he gives you your first mission and you may accept it or deny it. No matter what will be your choice, you still may date him in the end. Poor guy doesn’t like, when you drink his blood, and unfortunately for him he doesn’t fight back.

3. Logan - the distrustful hunter that Mobley wants you to find. This guy may train you (which is a must, if you want to kill the Blood Prince or Stas), even if initially he claims he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t get along with Mobley and finds him to be an annoying weakling (although he admits he’s very intelligent). He doesn’t like, when you drink his blood, but unfortunately for you he fights back, when you cross the line ;P

4. Stas - my personal favorite (and maybe a fellow Slav?). Poor guy was turned into a vampire and despite not wanting to do so, now he preys on people, who had misfortune of coming near him. Luckily for you, he immediately falls in love with you and is not able to kill you even when you try to kill him. 

5. The Blood Prince - the main villain of the game and the master manipulator, who finds you interesting for some reason. Any why the hell his runaway bride is your shadow created specifically for the purpose of marrying him? You may become his Blood Princess and then rule the world together as the ultimate villainous power couple,

[gascon-en-exil]

It is because in Nel and Nil's universe Alear is not a fell dragon, but a divine one. They are Lumera's bilogical child in this universe as implied by Alear support with the Four Winds, Nel and Nil. Nel in her support with Veyle explain that her Sombron is not Veyl's father therfore they are not siblings and that her Sombron is a different person. Their Sombron had children by pair of twins while our Sombron had kids without this peculiarity. In short, they want to make it crystal clear that Alear is not related to the twins because they don't have the same father albeit being both Sombron.

I am pretty sure that in their universe, Alear is not Sombron's child while both the twins were not OUR sombron's kids because they were not born or simply did not exist. either way, this is giving me a headache but the idea is that their are fell child but not related ?? like they are just part of the same species or some shit ?

That must be why somehow in their universe Alear is a divine dragon and not a fell one. But by the time you can S support them, you apparently got rid of all your fell blood by becoming an emblem and in both universe you are not related even if their are the kid of Alt!Sombron... wow this is really a headscratchers....

"but you could absolutely play it that way if you were so inclined." what do you mean ?

Wow, four anons about this already.

My point is not that there isn't a non-incestuous explanation, because regardless of any ambiguity that would be covered by the playable Alear and Nel being from different dimensions. My point is that if you need such a complicated explanation to justify why Alear/Nel isn't technically incest, it's probably worth stepping back and thinking about why the writers would construct such a scenario in the first place. It's quite similar to Rhealeth in that regard; Rhea is not, biologically speaking, related to Byleth - but you could also squint a bit at the convoluted circumstances of Byleth's birth and call Rhea their mother, father, grandmother, and daughter simultaneously. What's the point of coming up with something like that? It doesn't even work as shock value like the Lachesis archetype because the game never actually says it out loud. I can only conclude that it's meant to appeal to players with a fetish for that kind of thing. Engage already has a number of Pact Ring options with racy implications regardless of how much the localization may have tried to obscure them, but even though I haven't seen any of Nel or Rafal's supports yet I'm confident in guessing that their Alear supports lean more in that direction than Alear/Veyle does. The game as such has three separate flavors of sibling romance - provided you want to read it that way.

I do however have to include the disclaimer here that I'm not attempting to shame anyone who ships their Avatars with the Fates Royals, Rhea, or the other Engage dragons. I'm aware that purity culture types can sometimes make the same point: that if you justify shipping something "nasty" with a technicality, like that two characters aren't biologically related or that age of consent is not universally 18, then you're just as much of a degenerate pervert and deserve to be shamed for it. I'm just pointing out that IS has done this before, and it continues to be amusing. I think that after Fates went really in on the pseudo-incest angle they didn't really have any way to top themselves without getting into absurd, dragon-blood-and-alternate-dimensions territory. With the partial exception of Tellius, nothing in FE has ever come close to tickling any of my personal kinks. I thus have no personal stakes here - but in my professional life I've learned that it's better to be non-judgmental about kinks, even the uncommon ones.

[godtier]

Hello! I got suggested to come here recently and have a little question for ya--

I was reading the pixiv and jp wikipedia page for Leon and it says he has antibodies that prevent him from turning into a zombie, even if he's bitten...!? Is that true?? Apparently it's only the T-virus or something since they make it clear that he can get infected by the C-virus. I was wondering if this was just a fan theory about why he could be bitten in gameplay and still not turn into a zombie, or if it was kind of true...?

hi there! thanks for the follow!

aight so the antibody thing is a weird one. this is gonna be a long tangent, brace yourself!

to be clear, there are only a handful of characters that canonically have antibodies. Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin (kind of, she's a weird case) are two big examples. I went and found the posts/wikis you were talking about and the first thing I noticed is that they didn't source anything for those specific claims. second thing I noticed is that they directly referenced "game over" wrt RE6 and the C virus.

that tells me exactly what I need to know, which is that those lines are merely a way for the JPN fandom to explain how the playable characters can continue to exist semi-normally after being bitten during gameplay.

this is actually a pretty common way to explain away game mechanics, not just in RE. for example, say you have a game where you build up an arsenal of weaponry in the first installment, but your character has none of it at their disposal in the sequel. sometimes game devs will write in an explanation as to why that is. maybe their weapons got stolen, or maybe they lost them, or whatever. it's a way to better immerse the player, especially if they're playing sequels back to back. but a lot of devs don't or didn't bother because they rely on the cutscenes (or in really old games, the instruction manuals) to tell the story. it's sort of an "old habit" of game dev, I'd say. and that's why it's especially prevalent in older games; older games were way more heavily treated like... well, games you play for getting a high score or whatever, rather story-telling experiences (JRPGs notwithstanding). gameplay actions (such as game overs or status effects like getting poisoned) and story were almost always separate.

nowadays, a good chunk of game devs like to make the player character "unique" in some way in the sense of examining why certain gameplay mechanics operate the way they do and why a character may or may not be affected by them logically. this is especially the case in zombie games. how can they survive getting bitten? well, maybe they're immune (left 4 dead, dead island, etc).

but gameplay itself is not always canon, and in RE in particular, the "canon" way of looking at it is that... well, Leon just never got bitten at all. that's the canon of the game, anything else is set dressing or just part of the gameplay itself. if you get bitten while playing, but still beat the game, the canon doesn't change around that. it just proceeds with the assumption that Leon never got bitten. that's how he survived in the story, regardless of how well you did in the gameplay.

so the idea that Leon and other characters have antibodies isn't exactly true unless outright specified, which it never has been, from what I could find. if they did have antibodies, I feel as though it would have a much, much larger focus of the stories as a whole.

take Jake from RE6, for example. his entire character arc was that he had specific antibodies that made him totally immune to the C virus. this was a huge plot point as his blood was required to create a vaccine and he was the only verified case of total immunity. if Leon and other characters had T virus antibodies, for example, I feel like it would have been explored or at least mentioned consistently in the story, or pointed out by someone during a cutscene.

so tl;dr: Leon having antibodies is a headcanon or fanon likely created out of a desire to explain away how he could survive being bitten during gameplay. but gameplay actions aren't always canon. the canon of RE2 is just... he's insanely lucky and never got bitten!

I hope that answers the question for you! I'm happy to chat about RE or other Capcom games any time 😊

[prototypelq]

How would you feel about Nero, Nico, and Patty being a trio in a potential DMC 6?

Hi, dear anon

what kind of question is that? Their trio would be absolutely awesome!

Actually, I think Patty could have easily fit into the 5 crew too - she did call Dante right before the Qlipoth attack so they were in contact at the time, and he did dissappear for a month after that. Perhaps Patty was pissed that he hanged up on her excited birthday rambling, but I don`t think she would hold on to that grudge for very long if she saw the news about Redgrave. It would be strikingly obvious demonic bullshit is involved and that Dante is in the middle of it. Plus, he did get stuck in Hell for some time after DMC2 so the situation could be very familiar to Patty.

All of this is to say, I think Patty can be easily inserted into the narrative of 5. She clearly cares about Dante (I headcanon their relationship and father-daughter one, or at the very least he is a mentor figure for her) and wouldnt idly sit by if something happened to him. Or she could help with the civillian evacuation - one of my favorite things from the anime is that they used the fire alarm to clear everyone out of the building, when it became apparent demons were about to attack. DMC is a series that doesn`t usually concern itself with civillian casulalties, and well, understandable, but particularly in 5 this aspect is brought up a couple of times. You see a lot of human husks lying around the Redgrave, and we know that V felt remorse for them, so devoting a side-character like Patty to help survivors in the background would only work to strenghen this theme.

As for her gameplay, I wish she had gotten Vs moveset but more refined. I like how extremely distinctive V is out of all the other characters gameplay, and think they were really onto something with the summons gimmick, but V is somewhat poorly balanced (who isnt overpowered in DMC though) and much more shallow compared to other characters. I think if it was more iterated upon, had more moves or variety of demons you can summon and better balanced - it would be my dream kit for Patty as a playable character. she also needs a non-sexualised outfit

As for team - I think Patty and Nero would get along like a house on fire (they are cousins), but I feel like she could have something like a rivalry friendship with Nico. Patty would get some custom weapons for herself for sure, but probably won`t like Nico's odeas for "improvements" on them.

And the final part of this very small reply - Nico, Patty and Nero being a potential trio for DMC6, my thoughts are... i have no idea

As my understanding of the series goes - DMC was always about Dante and Vergil, and their conflict. DMC5 finally lets them resolve their differences and shows us that underneath years of separation and trauma, they still want to be brothers, and are willing to work together to achieve that. This IS their happy ending and it is the best ending the series could have gotten. Both narratively and mechanically speaking, there is no higher place to take the twins story. And how do you do a next entry in the franchise that has, by all means, reached it`s happy ending? again, I have no idea.

I would love to see Dante, Vergil, Nero, Patty, Nico and others again, but I cannot imagine what form that may take. From my perspective either the next DMC (if there is one) could be a prequel about Sparda (and it would help to establish some actual demon lore), it could be sequel of the reboot DMC dmc (which has it`s fans, and a story to continue), or a very detached from the main games spin off about the existing characters (Lady, PATTY, Lucia, Trish).

Actually, I`d love to see an 'post-5-twins-return' epilogue-like graphic novel game. DMC could use some more dialogue and a chance for the characters to relax, and not be constantly fighting for their lives or showing off. The anime has already shown us something like that, maybe the upcoming anime will too, who knows. But I`ll take a graphic novel DMC game any day, just to see more character interactions.

Thank you for the ask! I hope somewhere in this wall of text were some thoughts on answers you were looking for. Have a good day

[aquillis-main]

I remember a sonic fangames with playable sally. It was called Sonic Epoch . It was a DOS game I vaguely remember from my childhood. Played it on the family PC (and may or may not introduced a virus on it LMFAO).

It was really dark and edgy AF, even moreso than the . There was an Expy of metal Sonic with a really dumb name. Sally was playable , she walked and shot enemies with a blaster pistol. I don't recall the other FFs being playable .tho

Sonic... Epoch? I have never heard of this fangame...

*insert one Google search later*

... Huh. It exists -

Ah, yes. Because nothing says 'we're so relevant, guize!' like equating the Sonic Fandom's success to this obscure as fuck fangame with a Back to the Future style plot and edginess upon edginess.

... Wouldn't have it been more... thematic to have the GBA game version of it be a Gameboy game? I mean, if one wanted to go for the sweet, sweet nostalgia points, I'm sure a dedicated group of fangamers would have been able to fit the 'epicness' of Sonic Epoch into a Gameboy game. /sarcasm

But then again, apparently the GBA version wasn't made by the original creators, from what I'm getting with this blurb, so it might not have been their intent to make Epoch an unlicensed GBA game.

This bit's apparently from the original FUS version of the page itself:

LOLs, they actually admitted this game sucks, and telling people not to actually play this hot mess! That's so funny!

This little bit comes from an update from the SFGHQ, and it practically sums up what this is supposed to be:

There's not really much of a game in this, apparently. Last I checked, a Fangame needs to be more than a bunch of still images and some interactivity for it to be a, well, game. I won't be counting this 'game' as an actual game.

Link to the Sonic Epoch website, for everyone else to laugh at it's ameturishness along with me. (Warning you now, I kept on trying to look through the other bits of the website, only to find it giving me a 503 error. I think only the landing page is avaliable)

[mishamalda]

Casualties of Perspective: An Analysis of Díthorba

Introduction to Díthorba

Díthorba is an enemy boss character in the fourth game of the Fire Emblem series, Genealogy of the Holy War, recently added to the mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes. She is a Heavenly Knight of Silesse, an elite pegasus knight. She is most often portrayed as something of a mustache-twirling villain, comically evil; however, the truth of her character is a much more complex one. Kaga told me so. I’m writing this essay because I got her in Heroes and I have ADHD. It’s a love story for the ages.

Context: Politics of Silesse & The Heavenly Knights

Silesse is, in general, a neutral country; during the game, it does not serve as a power, but a battlefield, suffering its own civil war rather than taking part in the larger battle. The history of Silesse is sparse, with its characteristics centering on the fact of its foundation being by Crusader Ced: as such, it is principally peaceful. The martial strength attributed to the characters from Silesse lies in their association to wind, whether that be through flight (in pegasus and falcon knights) or magic (in wind mages).

Among the pegasus knights, there are four elite warriors who are considered the best in the country. These are the Heavenly Knights: Annand, Pamela, Erinys, and Díthorba. Annand is the captain. Both Pamela and Díthorba express jealousy toward her that borders on hatred— and toward one another and Erinys, as well. The Heavenly Knights, despite being the crown jewels of a country which values peace, are thus shown to be an order constantly at one another’s throats. This may be because of the intense stress that they must have undergone in order to become as skilled as they are, or it may be because of the competitive nature of their stations. Regardless of the origin, however, this tension makes the eventual shattering of the order understandable.

During the events of Genealogy of the Holy War, the conflict in Silesse revolves around an attempted coup d’etat. The queen of the country, Lahna, is not of Silessean royal blood, having married into the royal family, and was therefore seen as not capable of holding the throne after her husband passed. Her son, Lewyn, was meant to take the throne, but his uncles, Lahna’s brothers-in-law, saw him as weak, and together they attempted to take the throne. Díthorba held these views as well, stating in her Heroes lines that she believes Lahna “invited crisis to Silesse”.

The coup was eventually settled by Sigurd’s army, and both of Lewyn’s uncles were killed, along with Díthorba and Pamela.

Motivation and Morality

In the context of the political situation in Silesse, it becomes easy to discern Díthorba’s motivations, although her morality is still gray at best. Unlike her counterpart Pamela, who fights in the name of her own lust for power, Díthorba seems to have some desire to see her country changed for the better. When speaking on her hopes in Heroes, she remarks that her two greatest wishes are to see her country thriving and her daughter happy.

Díthorba does express a desire to become the captain of the Heavenly Knights, actively competing with Annand and Pamela while dismissing Erinys as an “amateur”. She is consistently portrayed as ambitious and proud, and only seems to question herself when she is defeated and killed: unlike Pamela, who is proud to the end, Díthorba’s dying line is “What have I done?”, implying at least a measure of self-awareness. Extrapolating from this quote, it may be assumed that Díthorba genuinely did want what was best for Silesse, and it is only upon seeing her own pride disproven, her arrogance torn open and her weakness exposed, that she recognizes the reality of things. In this we see the keystone of her moral code revealed: to seek strength and success both in herself and in her country.

Ambition alone does not make a villain. In different circumstances, Díthorba may have been a great servant to a better cause. Her desire for power, though a factor in her choices, is peripheral to her actions in the civil war. Serving Myos does not actually further her in the Heavenly Knights. By shattering Silesse, she does stand a chance of becoming the new commander, but the order as an order does not exist thanks to the civil war; therefore, she cannot be acting in her own self-interest. She provides a contrast to Pamela in this respect.

Despite this, Díthorba is by no means a good person. She may be serving a cause that she believes to be right, but her methods are terrible, and she is not an honorable knight, threatening extreme violence to Erinys when confronted and failing to show her basic respect. Though from her own viewpoint she is doing the best thing for Silesse, she does not present her side of the conflict to her enemies— although, again, since the enemy she has dialogue with is Erinys, this may be due to the deep antipathy that the Heavenly Knights hold for one another. It is next to impossible to judge Díthorba’s morality from the player’s perspective. She is shown through a lens that does not allow her to be good.

Relationships, Attachments, & Misha

Díthorba has very few attachments. Her only known associates at the time of her death are the Heavenly Knights, who— as stated above— do not act as friends or even allies. This is likely why she is defined as a traitor: although she may have technically been “allied” with the Heavenly Knights, they provided no reason for her to consider them her friends. Her duty was never to the other Knights, but to Silesse, and she did attempt to fulfill it in her own way.

The only loving attachment Díthorba has is found in her daughter, Misha. She never mentions her in her battle quotes— again, this is an issue not with her character but with her framing as an enemy— but does mention her in Heroes, as referenced above. Misha, who is a playable character in the intermediary game, Thracia 776, references Díthorba not only in her quotes but in her personality. Misha expresses great affection for her mother, and resembles her in being a pegasus knight. When she is captured, it is said that “The Pegasus Knights of Silesse value honor above all,” further shining a light on not only Misha’s but Díthorba’s actions.

Furthermore, Misha is serious and proud, similar to her mother, but is presented as a hero, not a villain. Although her morality is also questionable, her cause (feeding the orphans of Silesse) is unequivocally good. Misha fights in a war she knows is wrong in order to save innocents, and when her actions lead her own soldiers to their deaths, her honor demands that she die with them. Like Díthorba, she is complex, and they seem to be very similar in many respects; the difference between them is that in Thracia 776, Misha does not have to be your enemy. The picture this retroactively paints of Díthorba is a tragic one. A person with a cause she thought to be just, fighting on the side of someone she thinks to be the best choice for her country, never given the chance to see the truth of it— Díthorba is not a villain, but a flawed hero whose heroism only exists in her own warped view of the world.

To redirect back to the relationship itself, Misha’s unquestioned love for her mother (and the same affection from Díthorba in Heroes) provides a softer facet to the broken image we receive. It can be assumed that Díthorba treated her daughter with love and kindness, and fights for her future as much as for Silesse, but we are never allowed to see any of Díthorba’s warmth. In including this detail, Sigurd’s action of killing Díthorba— thus orphaning Misha— becomes a tragedy, not a victory.

Conclusion

Díthorba will always be an incomplete personality. General ideas may be extrapolated about her, but she is a casualty of perspective, unable to be shown in her entirety simply because Sigurd’s army does not have the luxury of coming to understand her. However, enough of her is revealed that her relative honor becomes painfully apparent. In different circumstances, or in a different story, she could easily have been something more than just more meat for the Sigurd grinder.

Also, she’s a lesbian, because I say so. Thanks for reading!

[sage-nebula]

Game Review — Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Well, it’s that time. While some might already know at least a good chunk of my feelings due to one or two posts I’ve made while playing, I’ve now beaten the newest Hyrule Warriors game (at least in terms of the main story + secret ending) and I think it’s time for me to write up a review. 

Overall Score: 5.5/10

I know there are probably at least a few Legend of Zelda fans out there who want to tear me apart right now, but I urge them to actually read everything I have to say before they do. I’ve been a fan of this series since I was nine years old (I started with Ocarina of Time and Link’s Awakening simultaneously), and while my favorite Zelda game was Majora’s Mask for a very long time, Breath of the Wild unseated it and also took the spot as my favorite video game of all time, period. Thus, my expectations for this game were already pretty high, and the fact that Nintendo lied in the marketing . . . well, we’ll get to that. But overall the point that I’m trying to make is that I am a diehard Legend of Zelda fan, and I did like the original Hyrule Warriors as well, so this isn’t a case of “she just doesn’t like Zelda” or “she just doesn’t like Hyrule Warriors.” I promise my opinions are more educated than that. So with that said, let’s get to it (under a cut / on my blog for formatting reasons).

The Pros:

The little touches to make sure that Age of Calamity felt like it belonged in the same realm as Breath of the Wild made my heart sing the moment I first played the demo. Hearing the same menu sounds, seeing the same UI — all of that made me feel like I was returning home, and I really hadn’t realized just how much I missed the world of Breath of the Wild until that moment. While it is a Hyrule Warriors game for sure, it’s clear that they didn’t want to make it “Hyrule Warriors 2″ as much as they wanted to make it a Zelda game befitting Breath of the Wild, and I really appreciated the respect that went into that.

Overall, the voice acting was pretty top notch. Zelda’s voice still bothers me—there are times when she sounds okay, but I still wish they’d chosen a different actress to voice her—and Riju’s voice was a little weird, but overall the voice acting was just as good as it was in Breath of the Wild and I was happy to see every single cutscene voiced.

They put a lot of effort into giving everyone distinctive playstyles, even when it came to two characters of the same race who use the same weapons (e.g. Revali and Teba). The Neo Champions weren’t just clones of the previous Champions; rather, they stood out in their playstyle so that while you might like playing as one, perhaps you don’t like the other as much. (For instance, I hated playing as Revali, but Teba was very fun to play as.) And while I did stick with Link most of the time, there were enough characters that I really enjoyed playing as that it was no problem at all to me when I needed to switch characters mid-battle. In particular, I really loved playing as Impa and Urbosa aside from Link, with Riju, Zelda, and Teba as backups.

The music was incredible, but that’s to be expected from a Zelda game, let’s be honest. Of particular note is this track, which filled my heart with awe every time I heard it due to the inclusion of the Song of the Hero (seriously, when that choir kicks in at about 1:45 . . . [chef’s kiss]). But really, the entire soundtrack was incredible. I don’t think there was a single bad song. Which, again, is typical of a Zelda game, but I still feel it bears note.

Being able to pilot the Divine Beasts was AWESOME, no doubt about it. The best one (in my opinion) was Vah Naboris, followed by Vah Medoh. Vah Medoh was the easiest to use, but Vah Naboris was the most fun. After that comes Vah Ruta, which seemed always on the verge of dying, and then Vah Rudania. I just didn’t have as much fun with those two.

As far as I can tell, there aren’t any Points of No Return as far as the overworld quests go. While this does offer a gameplay and story segregation break (e.g. you can still face the Yiga as enemies even after they join you), at the same time I like it because you have to complete all the quests to get 100% completion, and it’d be rather awful if quests were deleted / cut off after a certain story point without warning.

Similarly, you can replay even main story quests at any time, which is useful for gathering materials you might need for other quests (or gathering apples which you need for healing and which, for some reason—I’ll save this for a later section).

The Neutrals:

Terrako. I just . . . okay. On the one hand, I hate Terrako because it is the catalyst for all the bullshit that happens in the plot, and the fact that Terrako was actually the most important one all along is annoying af. (Who will be key in defeating Calamity Ganon: The Hero & Princess of prophecy, or one eggy boi? The answer may surprise you!) But on the other hand, Terrako actually has a personality and is kind of cute as hell, and it was really sad when he succumbed to the brainwashing and you had to murder him. The memories Zelda has of King Rhoam taking Terrako away when she was a child as she sobbed and screamed for him to stop were also painful. So it’s like, I would like Terrako if, say, he’d been introduced in Breath of the Wild 2 as a tiny Guardian that Zelda built after the events of Breath of the Wild as like, a little companion / pet of sorts. In theory I like him as Zelda and Link’s child. On the other, I hate its role in this game, so I have really complicated feelings on Terrako over all. (I also apparently can’t decide which pronouns to use, but somehow I get the feeling that Terrako doesn’t even know what pronouns are and thus probably wouldn’t care.)

While the missions themselves were usually fun, the gameplay really isn’t friendly to anyone with any sort of carpal tunnel or anything similar. That is to say, a little bit of button mashing like this game’s gameplay requires made my thumb and wrist ache something awful. As a result, while I did have fun playing, I also experienced pain playing, and so I can’t really decide if this is good or bad, especially since there at least was some strategy involved depending on who you chose to play as (yet I feel it was less finessed than in Breath of the Wild, but since it’s a Warriors game that’s not too surprising to me).

The missions were fun, but they followed a similar format to the first Hyrule Warriors where you were going to be doing the same tasks over and over and over in different missions (e.g. capture the outposts, etc). The one plus is that I feel there was a bit more variety here in that there were escort missions and the like too, but again, that wasn’t too much and so it could get a little tiring after a bit. 

It was nice being able to see a lot of characters from Breath of the Wild that I loved again, but honestly? I feel like it was mostly a wasted opportunity because none of them (at least no one in the main group) received any more development or fleshing out that we didn’t already see in Breath of the Wild. In fact, arguably they were flattened. Revali was an arrogant, argumentative jerk from start to finish, with none of the respect he had for Zelda or any softer sides showing through. We saw that Mipha had a crush on Link and that she was protective over Sidon, but we already saw that in the original game + Champion’s Ballad. We saw that Urbosa was caring, but again, we’d already seen that . . . and so on. This was an opportunity to delve into each of them deeper, but the game just rehashed what we already knew of them from the previous game rather than going into it in any more depth. Arguably the only ones we got to see more sides of were, of all characters, Kohga and Rhoam, and even that wasn’t much. So while it was nice to see these characters again and spend more time with them, I also feel that there was a major wasted opportunity in terms of writing and characterization, particularly since we never saw any major bonding moments with them unlike what we saw in the Champion’s Ballad on photo day.

I LOVED Purah, but I was insanely disappointed that she wasn’t a playable character. At first I thought it might be because they didn’t want to give us two Sheikah, but they were fine giving us two Rito, two Zora, etc, so I don’t see why Purah couldn’t have been playable. Yeah, she’s a scientist, but she’s also a freaking ninja. You can’t tell me she wouldn’t be able to defend herself. So while I’m happy that she had such a big role in the plot (bigger than Robbie, arguably), it disappoints me that we weren’t able to play as her.

Astor is a fascinating character, and I feel it’s at least heavily implied that he was the oracle who foretold Calamity Ganon’s return in the actual timeline. But that’s not specified and we really don’t learn anything about him other than Ganon apparently chose Astor himself, and wanted to use him as his right-hand, so that was a bit of a letdown all things considered. If he was the prophet, why didn’t Rhoam say anything? And how could Calamity Ganon choose Astor from the Dark World, or wherever he was sealed this time? Before playing my original thought was that Astor was basically like Agahnim — that is, a manifestation of Ganon that he uses to act while he’s still sealed in the Dark World, rather than an actual person who exists. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case, so . . . who knows.

Some of the maps could be really frustrating, in that the path to take either wasn’t clear enough or there were gates closed with no clear clues on how to open them, blocking off an outpost you needed to get it. My method of getting around this was usually to tell one of the A.I. characters to go there and then follow them (or switch to another character and tell the character I had been playing with to go there and trust the A.I. to accomplish it, etc) but it was still pretty annoying. That said, at least there were ways around it, and the maps themselves tended to be pretty big and well detailed, so I don’t hate the map design too terribly.

Did Sooga die? I honestly could not tell. On the one hand, it sure seemed like he died considering he was never again shown in a cutscene after Astor betrayed the Yiga Clan. On the other, I seem to vaguely remember seeing him on the battlefield sometimes and I find it very strange that Kohga wouldn’t mention wanting to avenge Sooga in particular if he was dead. But I honestly couldn’t figure out whether Sooga was dead or alive, so this goes in the neutral category for now because I don’t know whether to be mad about it or not.

The Cons:

NINTENDO. FUCKING. LIED. ABOUT WHAT. THIS GAME. WAS SUPPOSED. TO BE. Yes, that needed to be bolded, and yes, it needed to be in all caps. Nintendo advertised Age of Calamity as a canon prequel to Breath of the Wild. They did it over, and over, and over again. And do you know what? They lied! Because Age of Calamity is not, and could never be, a canon prequel to Breath of the Wild. It can’t be, because it’s an Everybody Lives AU that negates Breath of the Wild in its entirety. And as someone who downloaded the demo thinking that this was going to be a canon prequel—as someone who tried to hold out hope for that even with the warning signs in the demo—that made me really angry, upset, and concerned about the canon sequel. Because you see, Breath of the Wild merged the original three timelines so that we wouldn’t have to deal with split timeline nonsense anymore. But now Nintendo, for some incomprehensible reason given that Aonuma himself was allegedly the one who didn’t want to have to deal with split timelines anymore, went ahead and created a new one. And my concern is whether any of the bullshit that happened in Age of Calamity will affect Breath of the Wild 2 or not. Realistically it shouldn’t, given that Age of Calamity can’t lead into Breath of the Wild at all. But with the Neo Champions having gone to Age of Calamity to help them, I have concerns. Major concerns. If Age of Calamity affects Breath of the Wild 2 in any way, I’m going to be livid. And before I continue, let me just take a moment to say this: It’s not that I wanted to see the Champions be murdered, per se. I love all four of the Champions and I think that their deaths were absolutely tragic. But at the same time, that was kind of the entire point, or at least part of it. The fall of Hyrule and the death of the Champions were traumatic scars on the land. Countless people died that day, on top of the Champions being murdered in their Divine Beasts. Link himself technically died, or at least very nearly did. Entire villages were wiped out. You can still see those ruins on the landscape, untouched, crawling with monsters. But despite that, over the past 100 years, Hyrule has rebuilt. People are still alive, and are still thriving in different villages across the landscape. Many have not forgotten the past, especially those who had sent Champions to defend Hyrule 100 years ago. But they’ve still continued living, and in that, have refused to let Calamity Ganon defeat them. Moreover, the battle from 100 years ago is not finished yet. Zelda has trapped Ganon in the castle with her and waits for Link to come help her finish things, which they do. The Champions died, but Hyrule did not lose. Hyrule put the battle on pause until they could win, which they did. Breath of the Wild, through having a massive tragedy take place in its backstory, gives us a tale about how victory can be grasped from the ashes, about how you can be broken, but not beaten, and how you can still push yourself up and win no matter how long it takes. That is a beautiful, a powerful story, and taking the Everybody Lives route completely demolishes that.  So suffice it to say, I thought the story presented in Age of Calamity was complete garbage.

But honestly, it isn’t just the story completely demolishing and trashing all over the themes of Breath of the Wild that makes it bad, but it’s also what was done with the characters. There were so many pointless retcons of established story and character elements that were thrown completely out the window that a.) destroyed character relationships and b.) flattened characters and took away what made them well-written in the first place. As just a few examples: — It is established in Creating a Champion (the Breath of the Wild compendium) that Link pulled the Master Sword from its pedestal when he was around 11 or 12 years old, and thus was known to be the Hero from that point forward. Note that he had already been in the knights at this point; we know from Mipha’s diary in the original game that he visited Zora’s Domain as a small child and was already sparring with adult knights at that time (which seems crazy, but he is the Hero, so). Nevertheless, being the Hero made Link realize just how much was riding on him, and how everyone in the kingdom was now looking to him as the Hero who would save them, personally. This caused Link to completely shut down his emotions out of anxiety of letting the people down or disappointing them in any way. He also stopped talking for the most part, again afraid that he would say the wrong thing and disappoint everyone. But in Age of Calamity, this is thrown out the window. From a gameplay perspective I get that perhaps they didn’t want you to have the Master Sword at the start, but since you can keep strengthening the Master Sword anyway there’s no reason why they couldn’t have just started it off as a kind of weak weapon that you power up over time. More importantly though is that Link has the same exact personality that he had in the memories in Breath of the Wild, even though he is not the Hero at the start of the game. I mean, he is, but no one knows that yet, and as such he has no reason to be stoic and silent, because his reason for being that way in Breath of the Wild’s backstory is completely gone. We could have gotten to see a goofier, more personable Link (even if they still wanted to keep him mostly silent), but instead we got a stoic, silent Link for literally no reason. It makes absolutely no sense.  — As an added contradiction to the above, Mipha tells Link in Age of Calamity that he “hasn’t changed a bit” when they meet again in Zora’s Domain. This is in direct contrast to her diary, wherein she notes that the wild boy she met when they were both children has changed completely when they meet again as teenagers into someone stolid, though she’s not aware of the reason why. So once again, they doubled down on removing backstory that made Link into a more complex, well-written character. — To that end, Link and Zelda’s relationship is also rewritten entirely (and by rewritten, I mean “had all complexity stripped from it and with it any meaningful development). Since Link is appointed Zelda’s personal knight because he fights well instead of because he’s the Hero, Zelda has absolutely no reason to resent him being appointed her knight here like she did in the original history. You see, in the original history, Zelda resented Link for seemingly stepping into his destiny with zero effort given, and also thought (because of her own insecurities and the rumors that Rhoam told her to her face were being circulated about her being “heir to a throne of nothing”) that he looked down on her for not being able to awaken her powers and step into hers. For this reason, she spent most of her time either avoiding him or yelling at him, though she notes in her diary that she feels bad for doing so because she knows that it’s not fair of her to treat him badly when he’s technically just trying to do his job. It’s not until he saves her from Yiga assassins that she starts to do a hard reassessment of her treatment of him, and starts to try to get to know him better . . . which results in her getting him to open up to her, and her being able to open up to him in turn, and both of them becoming each other’s confidant. This in turn makes it understandable when it’s Link’s near death which finally allows Zelda to come into her powers; on top of having lost everyone and seemingly everything else, Zelda saw the one person she could be vulnerable in front of about to die protecting her. Link was so important to her by that point, regardless of whether you see her feelings for him as romantic or not, because he supported her emotionally on top of being there for her in physical defense. That is why her powers awakened when they did, why he was the final trigger. But in Age of Calamity, none of that happens. Zelda doesn’t resent Link because he’s not the Hero at the time he’s appointed her personal knight. Even when he gets the Master Sword later, Zelda is just sad about it rather than holding any sort of resentment or anger toward him. We never see them bond or become close; unlike in Breath of the Wild, where we have memories of Zelda trying to feed him a frog, opening a conversation about fate and destiny and whether one could make a choice in opposition to those things, or scolding him while patching up his wounds, all we get here are repeated scenes of Link defending Zelda from attacks. That’s it. We never see her have any sort of actual conversation with him, we never see them bond or have any non-battle related moments together. We certainly never get an indication that Link opens up to her either, which means that each time he protects her here it’s less “I’m protecting the one person who I’ve been able to open up to about who I really am” and more “it’s all about my paycheck.” Link and Zelda’s relationship, whether you saw it as romantic or not, was the core relationship in Breath of the Wild. And yet, in an alleged prequel (that wasn’t really a prequel after all!), it’s pretty much nonexistent.  — Moreover, Zelda’s character gets flattened, too. Here’s the thing about Zelda in Breath of the Wild: She’s written like a real person. She has many good qualities (selfless, devoted, intelligent), but also many flaws (stubborn, short-tempered, quick to judgement). The way Zelda decided she knew all she needed to know about Link right away and reacted accordingly (and by “reacted accordingly” I mean “treated him badly”) was a result of her flaws. But Zelda realizing that what she was doing was wrong and endeavoring to make things right was a direct result of her good qualities. Breath of the Wild’s Zelda is not a perfect person, not because she has a difficult time unlocking her powers (pretty much anyone would in her position, she was dealt the shittiest hand in the world), but because she’s a realistic person who has flaws and makes mistakes and is just doing her best in a world that is determined to knock her down at any opportunity. As a result, we see a lot of emotional range from Zelda throughout the memories in Breath of the Wild. We see her curious and inquisitive, we see her frustrated, we see her sad, anxious, angry, playful, determined, loving, impatient, brave. She’s a compelling character because she is a character, rather than the Deus Ex Machina perfect princess who exists only to either be rescued or be a holy figure who seals away the evil at the end. (Which I mean, she does seal away the evil at the end, but that’s far and away not the only thing she does.)  But in Age of Calamity we see . . . basically none of that. There are very brief moments where Zelda is curious about technology, or where she daintily laughs at something Terrako does. She does get determination and her anxieties wiped away after she awakens her power near the end. But for 90% of the game all we see from her is her being anxious or sad about her power. We don’t see her get irrationally resentful of or angry toward Link. We don’t see her getting impatient, making hasty judgments about people or animals (remember, she also judged her horse as unworthy of the royal bridle before Link helped her learn how to bond with her horse properly), or doing mischievous things like trying to make her personal knight eat a frog for Science. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you: While I deeply felt for Zelda in the flashbacks of Breath of the Wild, I got tired of her constant “:( I’m useless :(” angst in Age of Calamity. It got old pretty quickly. And most of all, I was so disappointed to see that the character I loved was now just here to be a woobie, rescued by Link half a dozen times and sad for most of the story. Breath of the Wild’s Zelda is my favorite Zelda, and she was done such an injustice in this game. It was immensely disappointing.  — Link and Zelda were not the only issues here, though. The way the Yiga Clan also needs to be talked about, and in order to discuss them, I have to first remind everyone of their history. So. 10,000 years ago. Civilization was thriving thanks to Sheikah scientists and innovators, who created things such as the Sheikah Slate, the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. It was this technology that allowed Hyrule to triumph over Calamity Ganon the first time he came around to play (or at least that time that he came around to play), and they won pretty handily at that. However, the Hyrulean King at the time quickly grew suspicious and fearful of the Sheikah. Although the Sheikah had faithfully served the Hyrulean Royal Family for milennia due to their goddess-given oaths, the King of Hyrule felt that the Sheikah not only could, but would use their technology to rebel against Hyrule and dismantle the Royal Family. As a result, he: - Exiled the Sheikah from Central Hyrule, as well as any villages or towns where Hylians lived. - Criminalized Sheikah technology, which included imprisoning (or even executing) any Sheikah known to be conducting scientific research, as well as destroying Sheikah technology (or burying what could not be destroyed, such as the Divine Beasts and Guardians).  - Essentially legalized Sheikah oppression. The people of Hyrule backed the king in his decree, for the most part, buying into the bigotry and prejudice that spurred it on. The Sheikah had everything taken from them and destroyed: their homes, their research, their artifacts, everything. And while some Sheikah remained loyal to the oaths they swore to the goddesses and decided to keep peacefully in a newly formed, yet secret out of fear of retaliation, village (Kakariko), another group of Sheikah were rightfully fucking pissed at being oppressed and subjugated for no good reason, especially right after they helped save the world. Their opinion on the matter was “fuck that guy, AND his entire family.” These Sheikah became known as the Yiga Clan. Now, why they felt it was a good idea to side with Calamity Ganon is not entirely clear, given that destroying the world would also mean destroying them. But I think that on top of being furious with the Royal Family for this betrayal, they were also furious with the goddesses, because not a single goddess stepped in to defend them when they were being betrayed and oppressed. The Sheikah had kept loyal to their oaths for millennia, and yet this was how they were repaid. If you think about it like that, then the Yiga siding with the one who would destroy everything and everyone the goddesses had ever created makes a twisted kind of sense, even though it assures their own destruction right along with it. And now that we’ve refreshed that backstory . . . let us visit what happens with the Yiga in Age of Calamity. So. First, we see that Astor is the one who has convinced Kohga to go along with reviving Calamity Ganon, even though that doesn’t really make sense since serving Calamity Ganon has kind of been the Yiga’s thing from the get-go, and that they didn’t hate Zelda and Link because Astor told them to, but rather because Zelda was a member of the Royal Family (a.k.a. the people the Yiga have held a grudge against for 10,000 years), and Link is the knight defending her / the Hero. Next, we see that they’re completely aimless without instructions from Astor, which again, doesn’t really make sense considering their goals have always been pretty clear and they’ve been a tightly-run organization from the beginning no matter how bumbling Kohga is. Finally, Age of Calamity has them join the Royal Family and heroes despite this being the antithesis of what they’ve been devoted to for, again, 10,000 years.  And here’s the problem with that: In Age of Calamity, Kohga’s alleged reasoning for wanting to join with Zelda (and bowing to her, what the fuck) is because Astor used Yiga Clan foot soldiers (and I think Sooga? It was unclear) to fuel Evil Terrako to resurrect Calamity Ganon. Kohga felt betrayed by this and thus decided to take Astor down. Given that the Yiga Clan have been established to hold grudges over betrayal for millennia, Kohga turning on Astor makes sense. However, it was also already established that the Yiga wanted to revive Calamity Ganon to destroy the entire damn world even though it would mean their deaths as well, because they hated the Royal Family and goddesses just that much. So Kohga deciding to join the Royal Family, and actually bowing to Zelda, makes absolutely zero sense and cannot be excused just because they gave him a line about gagging at the fact that he joined up with Zelda. It’s a complete dismissal of and slap in the face to the legitimate reasons that the Yiga Clan had for defecting from the Sheikah, and does absolutely nothing to address the oppression the Sheikah people suffered as a direct result of the Hyrulean Royal Family’s laws. And yes, that was 10,000 years ago and Zelda herself had nothing to do with it, but we also have little evidence that the current Royal Family has done anything to change it, at least for reasons other than their own benefit. It’s stated in Creating a Champion that King Rhoam was the first king since then to reach out to the Sheikah to try to repair that relationship, and that he only did so when the prophecy about Calamity Ganon rising again was made. Moreover, he made sure to keep a very tight watch on the Sheikah scientists, indicating that he still may not trust them. So whiel the actual betrayal was 10,000 years ago, it’s clear that the Royal Family has not once in 10,000 years attempted to genuinely make up for the oppression that was forced upon the Sheikah, and so the Yiga Clan have every right to still be absolutely fucking furious about it. I can’t blame them for that at all, and I hated seeing Kohga bow to Zelda like that for that reason. (All of this said, no, it doesn’t excuse their other bastardry, such as stealing the Thunder Helm, or murdering the wife of someone who tried to peacefully defect and then threatening to also murder his young children if he didn’t continue to do Yiga missions. The Yiga do some truly fucked up things and that bastardry is not excused by their sad history. However, when it comes to the Royal Family their resentment and fury makes sense, and I hate that this wasn’t addressed in a game that wanted you to team up with the Yiga. They’re not the haha funny bad guys, they’re people who had a legitimate reason to be furious, and the Sheikah as a whole were never given anything remotely close to reparations by the Hyrulean Royal Family. This is something I hope is addressed in Breath of the Wild 2, although my expectations for that are pretty low.) — Finally, while a much lesser note than all of the above, I also found Riju’s characterization to be questionable. I might be misremembering her small part in Breath of the Wild, but while we learn from her diary that she does have some doubts about her ability to lead the Gerudo at her age (particularly given that the Thunder Helm was stolen from her), I don’t remember her having such low confidence, or being so meek so that she would constantly need Urbosa supporting her. I feel like they may have characterized her that way because she’s a child, which I mean, I guess I understand, but it just felt like an alteration of her character to me. I could be wrong since it’s been a while since I played through that part of Breath of the Wild, but that aspect of her character just felt off to me.

Moving on from the story and the characters, I also have to say that the amount of graphical inconsistencies in this game were really just . . . impressive in number. I’m talking specifically about Link’s different outfits, and whether he would actually be wearing them in cutscenes or not, because honestly? You could never know if he was going to be in the outfit you put him in, or if he was going to be in the Default Outfit for any given cutscene. I get the feeling that the difference lies somewhere in-between whether something was a pre-rendered cutscene or like, a quick time event one, but nonetheless it just felt incredibly sloppy and kind of defeated the purpose, at times, of being able to dress Link how you wanted him.

I had issues with the gameplay at times as well, apart from what I already mentioned before. Namely, I found it incredibly frustrating how sometimes, despite being locked on to an enemy, the Sheikah Slate apps wouldn’t actually target that enemy (e.g. Stasis activating on a bokoblin instead of the targeted attacking Lynel). Similarly, I wasn’t a fan of how A.I. characters couldn’t be easily pointed around the map at times, refusing to go to certain locations until you swtiched to them and forced them to go there (e.g. when you had to manually make them jump down to the field during the Akkala Citadel battle).

Why in the actual hell can you not a.) eat ingredients other than apples during battle to heal, and b.) BUY APPLES LIKE ANY OTHER INGREDIENT? Holy fuck it was so goddamn annoying having to go into random battles to try and scrounge up apples from crates and boxes, and only really being able to do it from lower level battles because higher level battles wouldn’t give them as readily to "increase difficulty” (more like to increase frustration). I see no reason why you couldn’t purchase apples from shops, or eat other food items like berries or fish like you could in Breath of the Wild. Apples didn’t even heal that much health, so you had to mash several of them at once late game, and you could only hold a small number and couldn’t buy more . . . frustrating. Just absolutely frustrating for no good reason. (Like if it was a harder difficulty restriction I’d understand, but for normal difficulty? Jeez.)

All in all, if Nintendo had just been upfront and honest about this being an alternate universe game from the very start, I probably wouldn’t have been as furious as the story as I was. I would have still been disappointed, but the anger wouldn’t have been there at the very least. But the weren’t honest—they lied in order to get people to buy the game, and so that dragged the score down along with everything else. While I did like some aspects of this game, overall I feel that it could have been so much better, and all I can hope is that none of it affects Breath of the Wild 2 in any way, shape, or form.

[finsterhund]

A comprehensive guide to Heart of Darkness lost media. Fake, and real

a forward: there appears to be some sort of conflict between Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir. Things Eric speaks about, Fred denies. However Eric generally has proof to support his side of things but Fred never provides such.

I will edit this as I go along. I intend to source things as best I can. I will not post it to a better website until it is adequately sourced.

I’m not currently planning to include press material, promotional renders, alternate releases of the final game, etc. here (yet!! that may change)

The Movie

What we know is true:

Dreamworks was interested in adapting Heart of Darkness as a feature-length computer animated movie. Predominant parties at play were Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. They invited several of the devs including Eric to the Dreamworks studio in LA, showed them Prince of Egypt storyboards, and toured them around. The movie was never made and development was never started.

According to Eric, the head of Virgin Interactive, Martin Alper repeatedly went to Paris to bother and harass him to abandon all work on the game and give the movie rights to Katzenberg. Eric didn’t want to throw away all that work and wanted to release the game first. Alper abandoned the team and project soon after, dooming the game to years of development hell as they needed to find a new publisher. Fred claimed that “half of the article (in which Eric discussed this) was incorrect” but never went into detail as to how or why

Rumors:

Even though George Lucas was interested in HoD’s display at several expos, he did not involve himself in any film ideas. It is believed he may have stolen ideas of alien monster designs for use in the Phantom Menace but this can easily just be coincidence and is unfounded.

The movie was not going to be live action despite some fan speculation.

The Pilot Animation/character test

What we know:

In Eric Chahi’s biography he mentions that a small animation studio did contract work of some animation concepts for Heart of Darkness. They were ultimately replaced with what Amazing would go with. This may or may not be associated with the same concepts as when they briefly thought to make the cinematics with 2D bitmaps but it is unclear. Eric states that this pilot was made however and in a demo reel from the studio they mention working with Virgin and Amazing Studio.

Rumors:

Fred said it wasn’t a thing but didn’t clarify.

This might have been the opening cutscene in 2D, or it may have just been character models and test animation. It is currently lost entirely with no actual stills of the thing itself.

Blood

What we know:

Someone untrustworthy but people latch onto this sort of shit said the original version of the game has blood in it. We know from tradeshow footage, digging through the final game’s code, an early build of the game, etc. that if anything the original versions were LESS violent. There is no evidence there was ever blood. Anymore than there’s evidence of the poison berries (which we will get to later)

The Gameboy Advance port

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was going to be ported to the Gameboy advance. According to Frederic Savoir the project was quickly canned due to cartridge costs that Nintendo didn’t want to pay for.

Rumors:

Someone claiming to work on this port said that Infogrames founder Bruno Bonnel wanted the game to have an Adidas promotion and change Andy’s shoes. Fred says this isn’t true, and there’s no evidence that this was ever an actual thing.

The Jaguar Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was briefly considered to be published on the Atari Jaguar. There are internal letters discussing how good of an asset it would be for the console. That’s as far as it ever apparently went.

The fake developer copypasta:

A copypasta of obviously fake ideas that were potentially given from Amazing to this apparent Jaguar dev has been passed around since 2014. This included poison berries that would make Andy explode, fan-theory sorta ideas about how other children perished in the darkland, a magic mirror, and what is very clearly just the maggots from spiritual successor “Limbo”. This individual provided no proof and his story was far from convincing. And no evidence that someone other than the Amazing team themselves having access to official development code from the game has ever been brought forward.

The Saturn Version

What we know:

Before the game ultimately came out for Playstation, it was going to be a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn with Sega purchasing an exclusivity from Virgin Interactive. This fell through due to Virgin intentionally (according to Eric) throwing a monkey wrench in things and the Saturn was not viable when they were finally able to publish the game after getting picked up by Infogrames.

There is an incomplete playable demo of the first level and first two story cinematics in English and Japanese from the 1996 Toy Tokyo Show. In it there are slight programming differences such as a screen sliding transition animation, the inability for spectres to eat Andy, features cut from the final game involving the shadow dogs that are still mostly present in the final game’s code, and some slight graphical differences.

Frederic said the Saturn was easy for him to program on, and he finished things quickly so it was likely fully playable but no complete copy has been found.

Rumors:

It is unknown if there is a full build of this version of the game for Saturn. The Toy Tokyo Show build is the only publicly known one.

Based on footage from other events it appears to be from after changes were made to spectre sound effects and some behaviors. So this may have been a build from after the game was altered to be “easier” as mentioned by Eric Chahi at the time.

The Phillips CDI Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was offhanded mentioned a handful of times in a few CDI magazines in 1996. But there is no actual evidence the game was actually in development for the console and it was never confirmed in more trustworthy publications. CDI has less evidence than the planning letters of the Jaguar version. A supposed slipcover of a Heart of Darkness CDI CD was supposedly in existence but the guy claiming to have it couldn’t or wouldn’t prove this, with the only evidence appearing as convincing as a fake mock-up photoshop job and CDI websites discussing the final version of the game in full despite providing no evidence development for the console existed in the first place.

The most likely explanation is some idiot at Virgin said “CDI” when discussing this at-the-time secretive project because it would have had to be on a CD-based console and there weren’t that many of them yet at the time and this slip up briefly spread.

The iMac Version

What we know:

There was discussion of a Mac OS version of the game being developed, but nothing about the final product has surfaced online.

There was a page titled “imac” on the official website but the image files weren’t archived.

Heart of Dakness: The Return of Shados

What we know:

A scam artist on indiegogo pretended to be affiliated with Amazing Studio by using stolen assets and copying the kickstarter campaign of a different indie game in an effort to scam HoD fans out of money.

Both Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir collectively agreed that this was a big fat scam.

It got taken down in under 24 hours of its discovery after I personally called the guy out on being a scamming piece of fucking shit and tattled to Fred.

As it was a scam with its only “evidence” being stolen text and doctored fan art and concept art from the original game, it’s very obvious nothing about this mess actually existed.

Delicious meal.

Merchandise (various)

What we know:

There are photos of merchandise, there have been real items show up, and there have been rumors or discussion of potential merchandise. Real confirmed ones include:

The Vicious and Amigo action figures. Given away for contests, at trade shows, sold on the infogrames store, and potentially included as part of a special box set of the French version

The Japanese big box version came with a mousepad. It is different than the round mousepad that also exists. We do not know where the round mousepad originated from. Potentially tradeshows or contests like the other items here.

Playstation controller and memory card. A memory card was sold separate in the UK, and in France a controller and memory card set were sold. Only photo of the set is in Eric’s collection. Memory card has shown up several times online. I own a complete sealed one.

The hat. Given away at press events, potentially worn by team members, and a version was also available on the infogrames store. Only physically existing version documented has the VIRGIN logo on it however so there’s definitely variations

Skateboard and t-shirt. Discussed in contests. Photos in magazines. Have never shown up so far. skateboard may have been available on infogrames store.

Photos exist of a backpack and fanny pack. Eric has these, the only known ones to exist, in his collection. Fred said they were officially released but they have yet to show up.

Rumored Merch:

A blanket. Briefly mentioned as if it genuinely existed on a French forum

Probably more tbh but my memory is shit. As I am writing this it is 2AM

[alethiometry]

For the character meme... Brasidas aaaaand Alexios.

just answered brasidas here!

i’m going to assume you meant eagle bearer alexios, but if you want my deimos thoughts those are here!

How I feel about this character

i haven’t actually played as alexios myself, but i have watched my friend play and i think he is a sweetheart! he seems like that nice jock at your school who was friends with everybody, but also absolutely destroyed the competing school’s team at every game, so no one really dares to fuck with him.

also the fact that he is like 30 years old and does not know what a dildo is until alkibiades shows him... poor kid

All the people I ship romantically with this character

thaletas, lykaon, neema, and brasidas! this may, once again, have been colored by me watching my friend play alexios as strictly mlm (except in the case of neema, because... yeah.) but i think he generally goes for chiller dudes.

which does raise the question: Is Thaletas Actually A Chill Dude? not at first! but i’d argue that over the course of his questline on mykonos he learns to grow into his position as general of the spartan troops, and by the time you romance him he is able to relax and be himself.

i just really love alexios/thaletas ok

My non-romantic OTP for this character

deimos!kassandra of course! i wish we could see more of alexios actively learning how to be an older brother, but that is veering into the territory of the last question in this ask meme, so i’ll just leave that here and talk about other characters:

roxana! i vascillate between seeing her and alexios as a romantic ship and as platonic bffs, but either way i would romance her in-game just so i can recruit her for the adrestia. they’re both mature adults, they can navigate a post-hookup platonic friendship.

kyra! mostly because i love her as a character but don’t like to romance her because then i’d have to kill thaletas lol

finally: alexios and kids! i want him to be every wayward child’s fun and overprotective older brother. this is of course most apparent with phoibe, but i think he also sees a lot of himself in arsenios (tour guide kid) and ardos (minotaur questline kid).

(honestly all the kid characters in odyssey are just Spunky Orphans™️ with little/scarce characterization beyond that, but it works really well given our protagonists and what they, too, have been through from a young age.)

My unpopular opinion about this character

ALEXIOS’ VOICE ACTING IS GOOD.

also, i know that one of the (many, many) criticisms against ubisoft’s creative direction is that alexios was only introduced as a main character because they didn’t think that kassandra as a standalone protagonist would sell. yes, that is wildly fucked up reasoning. yes, ubisoft has a LOT to answer for with regards to the sexism in not only their games but within their company as well. having kassandra as the canon protagonist in accordance with the companion novel does not exonerate ubisoft of their deeply-ingrained sexism; but on the flip side, i don’t think having alexios as a playable option detracts from the game, and is not inherently a bad thing. i don’t like the reasoning behind it, but i do like that he is a playable character. because even though the protagonist’s lines are the same, the delivery and voice acting differs between kassandra and alexios, rendering them two distinct and vibrant characters. so i like that they both exist. and i think that alexios as a character rises above ubisoft’s backward, fucked-up, misogynistic rationale in creating him in the first place.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

my answer for this is the same as my answer would be if you’d asked me about kassandra: i wish the family storyline hadn’t ended so abruptly, and that it had explored more deeply the eagle bearer’s relationship with their family—particularly their relationship with deimos. it’s hard to do so effectively in a game format, especially since odyssey already has a crazy long runtime, so from a purely technical/logistical perspective, i understand why it was left out. still, i wish we had at least a couple sidequests that maybe unfolded differently depending on whether or not we let deimos live and if they were a lieutenant on the adrestia. so... basically like that lemnos quest where roxana reappears if you recruited her and got the best quest ending. just some short scenes where we see how the eagle bearer is adjusting to the family they worked so damn hard to reunite.

give me a character and i’ll deliver some sizzling hot takes

[evilisk-played]

Incomplete Games in 2020

They can’t all be winners

Minecraft vs. Zombies 2 System: PC Genre: Tower Defense (PVZ Subgenre)

Yes, you read that right. There exists a Plants vs. Zombies fangame... featuring Minecraft... and also Touhou for some reason... and it’s not even the ONLY game with all of these identifiers. It’s actually a neat game despite the layers of bootlegness here. The only reason I didn’t finish this is because one level, 2-11, is really dumb. Without spoiling anything, it has an interface screw that not only makes it near impossible to win, but I’m pretty sure is gonna send the wrong type of person into a seizure. Now, it may have just been my computer settings (I’m looking at footage at this, and the flashing lights aren’t nearly as bad on other people’s playthroughs) but on my version of the game, with my laptop? Holy shit is the effect disconcerting, and I’m not even an epileptic person.

It’s a neat game with some great ideas for what a PVZ sequel should have been, but fuck doing that level. That game needs an update, and that update needs to remove the flashing lights.

Suikoden System: PS3 (PS1 Classics) Genre: JRPG

I’ve been meaning to play this since that Suikoden spiritual successor got crowdfunded. I gave this game about three hours before dropping it. It just felt like a slog. Nothing in the three hours I played was interesting from a story perspective (oh gee, I sure am surprised that the empire ordering me to collect overdue taxes was actually super duper corrupt*) to the gameplay (three hours in and still no skills. Also JRPG’s with random encounter systems that aren’t like Labyrinth of Touhou or Etrian Odyssey are the worst)

*seriously, has there even been a JRPG where the words “taxes” have been uttered and they haven’t been connected to some super corrupt evil empire?

Crypt of the Necrodancer System: PS4 Genre: Roguelike / Rhythm Game

Add this to the list of games that become unplayable without a functioning d-pad. Seriously, it’s only the one button (the down button) but apparently that’s all it takes

Wild Arms 3 System: PS4 (PS2 Classics) Genre: JRPG

The game I’m most disappointed in not finishing. I’m actually really starting to enjoy the complexity of the battle system (despite how slow it takes for actual battles to play out). No one says I can’t finish it next year, of course, but I do regret putting this game off for so long.

Unravel System: PS4 Genre: Puzzle Platformer

Not sure why I decided to play this as I do not like puzzle games or platformers, let alone puzzle platformers. It’s a perfectly okay game for everyone else, just not for me

Demon Crystals  System: PS4 Genre: Twin Stick Shooter (with RPG elements)

Okay so I’m not actually ashamed to say I didn’t finish this. I picked this up on the cheap, gave it a few levels and eventually dropped it since it didn’t feel worth finishing. Instead of having tailor made levels with interesting challenges like a good little shmups, this game has randomly generated enemies and powerups on each level. The only reason this game is beatable is because 1) it has unlimited continues and 2) there’s a leveling system to ensure that eventually, you’ll be able to clear a level, not because of skill, but because you’re a high enough level to tank more hits.

I really wanted to like this, just because it has a neat, Ghosts N Goblin-style aesthetic but this just ended up being whatever. As a game, it is as passible and playable as it is forgettable.