#but i also kinda wanna keep this set the whole game lol
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i know height doesnt matter but i still feel weird having all my companions look down at me, and karlach has to take a knee to kiss me. not my fault dwarves have objectively the sexiest bodies
#*delirious with list* shadowheart i need to borrow the ice staff right now right#maybe next level up i can learn an ice based monk ability#but i like the ones i have now#bout to get cursed amulet completing the ultimate monk fit#i know ill get better stuff like the cats grace gale will get the lightning fit#but i also kinda wanna keep this set the whole game lol#karlach is sooooooooooo cute i cant believe i waited so long to kiss her#i wanna do the camp scene a million times and hear everything she says#had a one night stand with lae'zel but broke it off just in case it messed with the act 2 scenes#astarian had the nerve to disapprove when i said im excited to sleep with karlach when i didnt even screw him this time#karl said shes good with poly but still#cant risk it#dove plays bg3#LUST
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Brandi and Bruce’s S/o looking after the bakers dozen on their own, what shenanigans occur?
Anon this is?? Literally so cute what the hell??? Also referring to them as the "bakers dozen" is so genuis sfhjjfdadfggh—
Reader & the Bakers Dozen: babysitting solo
Includes: GN! Reader, mentions of polyamory, mentions of Vacay Lovers, slightly Parental! Reader, the Bakers Dozen
CW: Bruce Jr.
🍪 POV: your partners go off to some fancy convention to promote their business, leaving you to watch after all 13 of their kids. Chaos ensues
🍪 These little shits are already a lot to handle, so when you suddenly find yourself being the only adult in the house responsible for them? Yeah, babes, you've definitely got your hands full
🍪 Luckily, you've spent enught time at the Vacay Lovers household that things are at least a little easier for you lol
🍪 They definitely behave much better for you compared to other babysitters. Partly because you're smoochin their parents (and don't wanna get in trouble), and partly because they genuinely like you :3
🍪 But they're still little shits thru and thru, don't forget that
🍪 If they happen to have school? Chances are Bruce and Brandi already took care of their lunches and stuff before they left, so it'll be up to you to pick them up (WARNING: THE KIDS WILL TRY TO CONVINCE YOU TO GO ORDER AT THE NEAREST FAST FOOD PLACE! Unless you've got money for 13 happy meals, prepare to hit em with a firm refusal). Definitely helps if you blast some music in the van! They've kinda lost interest in Velvet & Veneer after learning the two literally tortured their dad and uncles...
🍪 Play Brozone. They'll go crazy and shout-sing along with Bruce's parts lol
🍪 Later in the day you can expect a few to come up to you for homework help. They might also wanna help with dinner, but fyi there WILL be a mess. Pasta sauce on the floor, flour all over the counters, stains on your clothes— the whole shebang
🍪 Want the least amount of casualties? Just let them set the table (no worries, all the plates and stuff are made of plastic ajdjakkala)
🍪 A few of them have some dietary restrictions tho so keep that in mind!! Luckily, you can always find a list of reminders/examples up on the fridge courtesy of lovely muppet wife Brandi <33
🍪 If the kids don't have school that day, then be prepared. You're gonna have very little time to yourself ://
🍪 Like they've each got their own interests and hobbies to keep them occupied, but sometimes they'll need you to reach somewhere up high, or for you to play tiebreaker/settle an argument, or they honestly just want you to join them for a game of hide and seek which???
🍪 "Aw, you sure you guys don't mind me joining in?"
"Yeah! Just cuz you're old doesn't mean you can't have fun, too!"
"...Gee, thanks :D"
🍪 They're merciless
🍪 They've all got their own set of chores they need to do. Each and everyone will try to worm their way out of them. All of them. Everytime
🍪 Sure, they can be a little hyper sometimes, but they're like 6-8 years old so that's expected. For the most part, they're all pretty chill
🍪 It's Bruce Jr. who you've gotta watch out for
🍪 He is a shit- stirer and I WILL FOREVER STAND BY THAT
🍪 This guy won't hesitate to rally his siblings into whatever plan he's been cookin in that feral little head of his. Prepare yourself because you're MOST DEFINITELY getting pranked. It's like a requirement or something
🍪 One nice thing i have to say about Bruce Jr. is that he's actually pretty resourceful. Like this little dude is using everyday household items like he's staring in his own Home Alone movie AKSJSJAKA—
🍪 Rest assured, tho, none of his pranks are seriously harmful or anything but like... at the end of the day, expect:
1) to be covered in craft supplies
2) your clothes/skin/hair a mess
3) to have one limb stuck in a bucket
4) all of the above
🍪 Honestly I feel like Bruce and Brandi would be surprised if they came back and DIDN'T find you sporting paint-stained clothes or with glitter in your hair. Maybe a few stickers slapped on your forehead??
🍪 The trick to dealing with this little agent of chaos is to either keep him separated from his siblings long enough so he doesn't manage to rope anyone into his schemes, or strike some kinda deal with him. Considering he's got 12 siblings, all of whom you need to be watching over at the same time, chances are the second option is your safest bet
🍪 Chances are he'll ask for something semi-illegal, or at the very least something that DEFINITELY requires adult supervision
🍪 DO NOT LET THIS BOY TALK YOU INTO BUYING ANYTHING RELATED TO FIRE. Seems like an easy task, I know. Unfortunately this little shit enherited his dad's charm so watch out o_o
🍪 He'll settle for a happy meal tho. Hopefully you didn't already cave and take him and his siblings out to eat earlier, otherwise you're spending even more money ajsjakkala
🍪 If any errands need to be run during your time there, you BETTER BELIEVE they're all coming with. You'll need to be incredibly vigilant during this time cuz these kids are even more rowdy in public than they are at home. If you're smart about it, you can turn the whole thing into a game! If everyone manages to grab everything off the grocery list in a certain amount of time or if they're able to find the best quality (but relatively cheap) brand of laundry detergent, then you'll buy each of them candy or something uwu
🍪 You can count on them to be cooperative, but like... bring the family child leash just in case
🍪 Cough cough (Bruce Jr.) cough cough
🍪 MOVIES BEFORE BED! It's a bit of a family tradition in the Vacay Lovers household. Yknow, just some way for the kids to spend time together before the day ends
🍪 You're most definitely gonna be playing tiebreaker when the time comes. All 13 of them have wildly different tastes
🍪 Absolutely no scary movies tho. They'll try to argue that theyre able to handle it, but at the end of the night expect to find yourself under a pile of frightened children who've ctawled into bed with you
🍪 Their collective nightly routine is literally?? So chaotic??? Like all of them are simultaneously trying to squeeze into the same bathroom just to brush their teeth... running in and out of their respective rooms... trying to sneak some extra dessert before bed
🍪 Literally never a quite moment in this household jshskakakam
🍪 You might have to read a few bedtime stories or sing a lullaby—
"Dad does it better"
"Just go to bed, Benji"
—but once they've settled in under the covers? Out like a light. They are unconscious the moment their heads hit their pillows
🍪 You'll probably have a mess (or two... or three) to clean up afterwards, but once they're taken care of? Dishes washed? Counters clean? You're more than welcome to crash on Bruce and Brandi's bed <33
🍪 Said couple returns home the next morning...
🍪 Just to find their kids drawing on your face with marker. Cross your fingers that none of its permanent 💀💀
Hope this was good! I know I call them all little shits BUT I MEAN IT AFFECTIONATELY OKAY AJSJAKA
Ngl I feel like this could have been like... more colorful? Like I was very general about the kids and their behavior as a whole, but now I'm super tempted to make a post describing each of them and all their little quirks! Just something fun to do that'll help me write them better in the future ;3
#anon i hope you know im using Bakers Dozen as an official term from now on#big brain move#love that for you <33#i shall continue to slander bruce jr. till the grave#trolls#trolls band together#bruce trolls#brandi trolls#Vacay Lovers#Bakers Dozen#trolls x reader#brozone x reader#spruce trolls#x reader#headcanon#ask
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Round 1
Propaganda why Robin is insufferable:
"Annoying control freak"
"his mere existence is a vile mockery of the real Robin. Why do they always have to ruin everything by reducing the characters by the jokes they can make against them?"
"Not even because it’s a far cry from how Robin is actually characterized in the comics or the OG cartoon, but his exaggerated impulsive and controlling personality is really hard to watch most of the time.
If you do compare it to his original iteration, it’s just insulting, but not even taking that into account, I don’t understand why anyone can stand to watch a show for fun with a main character like that? Lol"
Propaganda why Stuart Little is insufferable:
"Bad vibes"
"Even from his first ever appearance he was insufferable. I remember when I was a child my mum took me to a carboot sale, trinkets, clothes, games, dvds galore. It was a lovely day. On one stall we stopped and decided to take a closer look at their goods.. My mum decided to buy the stuart little box set containing the entire trilogy inside. this would change my life forever. Now, you may thinking ‘what is so bad about Stuart little?’ Well I’m just about to tell you. First of all his appearance. He’s got that little submissive twinky build with a stupid smug little smirk on his stupid little mouse face (ALSO WHY IS HE A MOUSE AND NOT A RAT? RATS ARE SO MUCH BETTER) I can’t even sexualise him or call him a tumblr sexy man bc he’s a minor and an orphan minor at that (embarrassing) which brings me into my next point. The whole adoption scene??? Just screams??? Entitled??? Like imagine you are an orphan and you are super excited to get adopted you put on your best orphan outfit and orphan smile and then the family come in (eccentric but also very nice) and they take a look at you and you smile and think ‘wow this is my moment to be adopted!’. Then they say to the head of the orphanage ‘yeah I’ll take the rat.’ I DONT KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT THAT WOULD PISS ME THE HELL OFF AND GIVE ME TRUST ISSUES AND RELATIONSHIP ISSUES AND SELF ESTEEM USSUES AND ISSUES WITH ISSUES. Then this smug little twink rat just walks out with a family??? My mind would say??? This bitch??? Anyways now that that is outta the way can we talk abt the gay little saying the family has. ‘Little high little hey little low’ so so gay like I’ve had lesbian sex and that is probably gayer than that. Infect you know what?? Maybe the littles adopting stuart did the poor orphans a favour. Like it’s kinda like if two sexual deviants dated bc at least it keeps them off the streets. You know what this now a little family hate account. They also have another saying that ‘anyone can find the little house if they are a little from anywhere’ I think they should find a gun and let it go off but ig uts not as cool. I wanna go on for longer bc idk id this is too cringe"
"he got stuck in a washing machine once and also i imagine they would smell pretty badly irl and also im racist towards white mice and also i dont like him. He should have died and drowned in the washing machine."
"stupid fucking rodent he can actually go die i hate his stupid voice i just wanna step on him"
"hate this stupid mouse want to put him in a mouse trap"
#ttg robin#teen titains go#stuart little#insufferable protagonist poll#insufferable protagonist tournament#tournament poll
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can i request first kiss with tetcho and anyone else you want? ^^
yes you certainly can my love!!
Their first kiss with you
♡ pairing: Tecchou Suehiro, Atsushi Nakajima, Oda Sakunosuke, Lucy Montgomery x gn!Reader
♡ synopsis: Your first kiss with them!
♡ cw: Very slight implications of NSFW in Tecchou's part, but otherwise pure fluff :)
note: Well, this took far too long. I'm sorry anon T-T fortunately I am starting to catch up with most of my reqs, so hopefully I'll be able to open reqs again soon! (for clarification I'm currently completing ones I received before closing my requests) Apologies for errors and I hope you enjoy x
Tecchou:
Offbeat as he is, he's secretly so serious about it. He's crazy adamant on not messing this moment up lol
He initially intended to make it fun and fancy, like take you out to some restaurant and make it all romantic (that's probably what the other Hunting Dogs suggested), but in reality you're both just sitting on the couch at your place together playing video games and eating pizza and other random snacks
Your relationship was progressing steadily but Tecchou wanted to make the next big move, so he wanted to kiss you while he was spending the night with you (and possibly do other things idk)
You guys were currently watching a movie (it can be whatever film you want) and Tecchou just keeps thinking about kissing you. He's even more aloof than usual and you do eventually notice it.
When you decide to ask him if something's wrong, he turns to you and asks "Is it alright if I kiss you?" Tecchou's always been a very direct person after all!
You pause out of shock for a second or two, but you quickly tell him that you'd be more than happy if he kissed you.
So, Tecchou does kiss you after gently caressing your cheek. He's a surprisingly soft and gentle kisser. You two end up making out for a while and ignoring the movie lol
Perhaps the casual staying-in date was a better setting for your first kiss with him after all ^-^
Atsushi:
You've never seen him so nervous in your life
Throughout your whole date you were already aware that he was planning to end it with your first kiss (poor thing is too obvious) but you didn't say anything because you didn't wanna embarrass him.
He tries to keep the mood at ease but he's just so clearly trying to build up his courage to do it so it's kinda hard to be normal with him without giving away the fact that you're in the know.
The date is the two of you going out to eat one evening (perhaps at a diner of some sort), and then wandering around the port together and admiring the environment (city lights are quite romantic, after all)
You two are sitting at a bench near the sea, it's comfortably quiet between the two of you, but you know Atsushi is still trying to figure out how to approach this
Eventually you decide enough is enough and just do it for him. You grab his attention, pull him in and kiss him. He short circuits and when you pull away is speechless, and his face is also so pink. It's honestly super cute
But when you kiss him again he's less shocked, and so he kisses back. And, what do you know, he's great at it! If you could, you would make out with Atsushi for hours.
"I've been wanting to do that for the longest time," he breathes, after you two pull apart for air. And that's hot, my friends. Only cowards would deny it 😌
Oda:
You two usually spent your dates in places that most people wouldn't really consider romantic (eg. Bar Lupin, just strolling through the danker streets of Yokohama, sitting in your car in a parking lot somewhere (it's an aesthetic guys))
On these dates you two tend to have conversations about life, philosophy, literature and other stuff like that.
You and Oda are sitting side by side, and he's watching you with this lovestruck look on his face while you're talking about something you're passionate about.
When you notice, you ask him what the matter is, to which he simply smiles and tells you that you look adorable.
As if that wasn't enough he then adds "To be honest, I'd really like to kiss you." Cue your short circuiting, and Odasaku's chuckling while he watches this.
Eventually though you tell him that you really wouldn't mind that, and so he slowly leans in and presses his lips to yours. Afterwards he tells you that you taste sweeter than he could have imagined, and he'll also kiss your hand like the gentleman he is
Whether or not you continue really depends whether or not you're in private or public, so you can either go back to talking or you can just make out with him (he's more than happy to do both)
On the surface your first kiss with Oda seems casual enough but you're both reeling with butterflies afterwards (help I want him so bad)
Lucy:
She kinda drags it out for a while. Lucy really wants to kiss you, but she's too afraid to admit that to you, but she also doesn't wanna kiss you out of nowhere because that's rude. She doesn't know what to do
You and Lucy would have super cute dates- cafe visits, walks in the park, classic romantic stuff. She's very cute and old school like that
This particular date is a picnic, like on a summer afternoon in the park. Often Lucy is a bit of a chatterbox and loves to converse with you but today she's a little quiet.
You ask her if she's alright because she's also eating less than normal, and with a blush she insists that she's fine and tells you to enjoy yourself.
You try to brush it off and the date continues all fine and well, but when comes the time to eat the cake that she brought, she offers to feed it to you. She's so clearly nervous while doing this, even though it's not the first time she's fed you
Once you both finish eating she takes a breath and finally blurts out "Can I kiss you?"
When it clicks that this is why she's been nervous the whole time you start laughing and she gets mad at you (though she's just a little embarrassed is all)
You tell her that of course she can kiss you, and so she does (with a huge blush on her face lol). And she tastes like strawberries <3
man it's been so long since i kissed someone...or had physical contact with another human being in any capacity...i'm not coping well guys T-T
#bsd#bungo stray dogs#bungou stray dogs#x reader#bsd x reader#bungo stray dogs x reader#fanfic#fanfiction#bsd fanfic#bsd fanfiction#bungo stray dogs fanfiction#tecchou#bsd tecchou#tecchou suehiro#tecchou x reader#tecchou suehiro x reader#atsushi#bsd atsushi#atsushi nakajima#atsushi x reader#atsushi nakajima x reader#oda sakunosuke#bsd oda#bsd odasaku#odasaku#oda x reader#oda sakunosuke x reader#lucy maud montgomery#bsd lucy#bsd lucy maud montgomery
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Devlog #126
Hi-ho, Wudge here.
Happy new year! And open disclosure, I uh... kinda worked through the holidays. And in fact, I... worked this past weekend...
My friend @crescencestudio informed me I also worked through the holidays last year... So uh, I think I owe myself a break.
ᵂʰᵉᵗʰᵉʳ ᵒʳ ⁿᵒᵗ ᴵ ᵃᶜᵗᵘᵃˡˡʸ ᵗᵃᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵇʳᵉᵃᵏ…
A-- Ahem.
On expressions - I'm reaching a point where I drew enough assets that I can mix and match! ... Mia doesn't have a single smile just yet.
I organized the PSD/.clip files for Mia and Warden a great deal too - much easier to find revelant layers now. Haven't finished importing/coding the expressions into the game yet - that'll be a whole song and dance for another day.
There's a few more small parts I wanna draw (namely irises to the side, and a 'talking' open mouth), and then she should be all set for her demo scene. Fingers crossed.
I'll either jump back to Warden next, or move onto Griffin.
I also drew.... three concepts for potential upcoming characters (and for 2 objects!). I don't wanna show them off since there's no guarantee that they'll be in the game/that this will be their final designs, but I can at least give a lil peek:
I had a nice time comparing these concepts to my concept art from 1-2 years ago! My line confidence seems to have improved :D
It's kinda weird since gesture and linework were always My Thing when I worked traditionally, but when I transitioned to digital art there was still a huge learning curve! I'm happy to have gotten better at it, but it took a surprising long while.
Writing-wise - I came up with what I think is a preeetty solid idea for showing off Mia's powers in-game! I have a rough draft/notes of the scene, it's not remotely near first draft completion, but I can at least show off this choice menu:
That's about it, I think...!
Sorry I've been slacking a bit on getting back with yall - I see yalls messages and they are delightful. I've been spending my spoons too recklessly - I'll really try to take a bit of time off to get myself back to normal. So uh, maybe no devlog next week - I'll try not to hold myself to it and just. try. not to work. lol.
Thank you for bearing with me!!!
Stay safe and keep warm,
Wudge.
#herotome update#how can I rest when my work is so exciting?!?!?! SIGH#but ill do my best ill do my best TT_TT
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Ok weird opinion of mine I guess idk how to start posts aaaa
I think Simon’s “barbarian” design really works story and character wise.
Yeah, it’s silly and absolutely not historically accurate whatsoever, but it kinda makes sense in a certain weird way.
We know from Lament of Innocence and Dracula’s Curse that the Belmont family is generally on rough terms with the public. Leon gets his title taken away and, even though he gets his sword back at the end of the whole Walter situation as confirmed by how Belmonts onward have that sword, he’s still generally kinda shunned for going against the church’s wishes and the tail end of the crusades happening at the time. And Trevor is straight up banished from the country for fear of his strength. He’s much isolated from other people off in the house in the woods until he’s called to help fight against Dracula and gets some friends on the way.
And this kinda sets up the situation that the family was living in during Christopher’s time. The Belmonts are social outcasts; their existence is acknowledged, but they’re not really associated with or thought of very highly at this point. So, it wouldn’t be unlikely that they just wouldn’t really care for or be caught up with social expectations like fashion. When people are going to be wary of you regardless of what you do, why not dress however you want? Especially if you know no one’s going to do anything about it! Especially if it’s practical; the longer, looser sleeves and pant legs of the time would be restrictive in a combat/acrobatic context. So Christopher probably just wore whatever he wanted, and to be fair he doesn’t really seem to interact with anyone besides family very much.
First I wanna mention that I am completely aware that Simon was designed way before any of these other characters. But these characters are chronologically before him and can explain where he gets these design choices from in universe.
So, what about Simon then? Well, Simon has a lot of themes of wanting to be like his ancestors. Christopher is directly mentioned as someone he wonders he’ll ever compare to. Judgment shows him looking up to Trevor as well, and even though that game is of interesting canon status lol, it’s an example of that character element being used again. And this is reflected in his barbarian designs! The cape he wears in the manual drawings resembles the cape Trevor throws off in the opening of CV3. The general light armor and skimpy clothing is reflective of both some of Christopher and Trevor’s designs. The metal armor in Simon’s Quest being reminiscent in shape to Trevor���s on the CV3 box art. It just makes sense that Simon would be trying his damnedest to emulate the guys he’s been looking up and comparing himself to his whole life.
And the sudden transition from the barbarian look the family had for years to the more with the times fashion that Juste has makes a lot of sense considering Juste grew up in a time when the family was highly respected and in the middle of town, somewhere where keeping social expectations and appearances would be expected of him.
Idk if any of this makes sense, but aaaaaa random stream of an idea I guess. I like Simon getting to being weird and out of place for his time period and country lol. Also I’m not saying that other designs are bad!!! I like all of Simon’s game designs tbh, Ayami’s is really cool too and works for some of these points cause it’s also kinda barbarian esque but just in black and red, I’ve cosplayed it before lol. Yeah idk that’s it and I am sleepy goodnight—
#castlevania#castlevania games#text post#simon belmont#speculation post#analysis post#theory posting#I think????#that’s the closest tags to what it is idk#I feel like Simon would’ve been genuinely unnerving in the 1600s lmao#Simon is really weird guy#shout out to Selena or whatever her name is in canon for being into that#I really genuinely don’t what to tag this#this is like purely me ranting about details of an NES game that might not even be intentional lol#but yippie!!! making ideas fit together with each other!!!#aaaaa I feel like the whole looking up to ancestors thing gets glazed over a lot#but it’s a neat character detail!!!#a personality trait!!!#a story significant thing!!!#asdgfkkdshfhkdhakslfhwja#okie byeeeeee
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Resi Reviews pt3
Well, it’s been a little bit, huh? The first thing I wanna say is… I kinda fucked this up. Just a little bit.
See, I played both the Revelations games in 2022, but I put off writing about them because only writing two entries- both of which I felt luke-warm towards at best -seemed underwhelming. I was playing one of the Wii shooters with my sibling, but we never ended up finishing it, and new year’s came around. Then, suddenly, RE4R released, and I caved and bought it to play, taking notes all the while. And well, I figured I’d just write about all three and bundle them into this year’s Resi post- and here’s where I fucked up.
I only started using my new notes system this year (2023). So I’m running on memory for games I played 2 years ago now… And then one game I have ridiculously in depth notes for.
Don’t get me wrong, my memory is pretty decent, so I had no doubt I’d get the gist across for a review when I started writing – BUT……….. Since I leveled up my note-taking and go even more in depth with my new system, the Rev reviews may feel a bit more glossed over compared to RE4R. I have quickly studied the games and their plot again to jog my memory, and booted up the games to replay the first few chapters- everything short of a full replay. But yeah. I fucked up by putting it off for a whole year longer than I intended. Lol. Normal warning for surface level to mid range spoilers, and I’ll make a note of when I go deeper than that.
Anyway, here they are. Enjoy.
~~
Resident Evil Revelations, PS4
Well. This uh. This certainly is a Resi Game.
I played this on PS4, but found out pretty quick into playing that it was originally made for the 3DS. This is noticeable not only by the strange gimmicks along with simple and somewhat sparse level design, but also by the fact that the story is presented episodically. Viewing it in the context of it being a game designed for handhelds, ok, fine, I guess a more pick up and play style would have some benefits from a chapter recap as you play. However, the levels aren’t very long, and it was almost immediately tiresome to see a reel of what I’d just played at the start of new chapters. And boy, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I wanted to like this game so bad, and it almost had me, but ultimately, I can’t really say I favour it.
One thing I will give some credit to right away, is the setting of this game. Most of it takes place on a cruise ship, the Queen Zenobia, and it has a stronger focus on the slower paced survival horror style of gameplay- especially compared to games in the main numbered series at the time that were becoming increasingly action focused. The idea of being trapped on a ship with a bunch of bioweapons for enemies is a confronting and scary setting, and this game certainly had its moments. While you’re on the ship, the waves are simulated by a slow and constant dutch angle rocking back and forth. While this is a cool choice stylistically, I found myself motion sick fairly quickly when playing on the tv (which got me wondering if I’d feel as sick playing on handheld as intended, but I’m sensitive to these sorts of things regardless). Generally, the gameplay itself was fine, but the plot… oh, the plot…
It is So. Fucking. Messy.
It has the dumbest ‘twists,’ and a frankly awful and confusing presentation of cast and plot. The chapters aren’t chronologically presented, which isn’t necessarily a detriment- if done well. But, with how convoluted things get, I think this was a shit choice. Not only were there certain characters I couldn’t recognise were the same person across different time periods, I just plain ol’ couldn’t keep up with certain character motivations and was left with a confused expression for a majority of my playthrough.
See, in the greater Resi timeline, this game is a little after Chris and Jill have founded the BSAA – their solution to counter bioterrorism, post RE3. There’s some fucked up bioterrorism going on at an… artificially floating island, named Terragrigia- that is self sustained by it’s advanced solar energy network. Then, when it’s infested with bioweapons, some guy makes the decision to vaporise the island and destroy it. Some characters speculate on whether this was an inside job or something- but honestly, these flashbacks/history settings are so terrible that I honestly cannot follow. I have played the game myself, watched other playthroughs/lore recaps as refreshers (both while playing originally and now for this write up lol) and just generally read up on the wikis, IT STILL MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE TO ME. Pair this with the fact that Jill is paired with a bland, knock off Barry Burton, and Chris is paired with a one-note, oversexed, homebrand version of Jill… UGH!!! It feels like they can’t focus on or commit to anything! The plot bounces all over the fucking place, setting up things that are seemingly there just to waste your time and fuck with you. I don’t find this kind of thing fun or enjoyable, and it’s a great example of what I mean when I say something feels like it’s punishing you for paying attention.
So, the Terragrigia thing is just the backdrop (that’s honestly not enough to justify how much they harp on about it imo) to set up the fact that Chris has gone missing. His signature was lost in the middle of the ocean, and some middle-aged man tasks Jill and Parker (homebrand Barry) with going out to find him. The first chapter is the two of you arriving on the boat, and investigating to try and find Chris. There’s signs of bioterrorism, and there are even a few recent victims that were killed moments before Jill or Parker could do anything to help. This was a pretty good introduction, and I liked it! It set the scene, showed off the unique and claustrophobic setting of being on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and it genuinely felt like a return to survival horror despite keeping the ots action shooter setup when fighting. It was a much slower pace, creeping around the derelict halls of a once grand cruise ship, with the occasional jump from this game’s ‘zombie.’ I remember the first time playing through this section, I was thinking that it was an interesting choice, and generally looking forward to what was going to happen… But that engagement didn’t last long, as it’s immediately destroyed by it’s shit pacing and storytelling.
The next section of the same chapter is a flashback to just before Jill and Parker get sent out to find Chris, and you’re just on some gross beach with a bunch of beached bioweapon corpses. This section exists SOLELY as a tutorial on how to use the scanning thingy, which could’ve been integrated into the hand-holdy intro sections on the boat more seamlessly. If you’ve already got little cues that tell you to hold L2 to aim and R2 to shoot, what’s so bad about having a prompt during a close encounter with a bioweapon saying hold L1 to aim and R1 to scan? You can even have Parker just say some shit like, “Scan this thing, I’ll keep it distracted!” Cue button prompts, scan completed, kill the thing, maybe make a comment on how their boss will be glad for the info and to keep an eye out for more shit to scan. WHY does there need to be an entire sequence that grinds all momentum to a halt because you’re jumping back and forth in time within the SINGLE CHAPTER. It just gets worse, and I’m going to TRY and keep it brief, cause I seriously get pissed off thinking about this game for too long lmao.
Turns out, Chris wasn’t on this ship, and now Jill and Parker haven’t been able to be contacted since they went looking for him. Chris is suddenly able to be contacted, and he along with Jessica (homebrand sex appeal) were actually in some snowy mountains, and are now going to try track down Jill and Parker. You bounce between these two plot lines, AND a third where some ragtag duo go out to the same places other characters have been to, (but not at the same time as them, it’s before or after) and just do general recon or something. That’s three character povs to keep track of, not to mention the secondary characters that are supposedly important AND all the bouncing around between times. STOP IT! JUST PICK A FUCKING THING AND COMMIT TO IT. SO MUCH OF THIS GAME COULD’VE BEEN GENUINELY GREAT TO PLAY AS A RETURN TO FORM, BUT YOU FUCKED IT UP WITH THIS INCONSISTENT SHIT! IT IS PURE SLOP!! IT IS NOT FUN TO PLAY OR FOLLOW ALONG WITH AND WHOEVER WAS DIRECTING OR FORCIBLY ADDING THIS SHIT IN NEEDED A SLAP ON THE WRIST AND A FEW HOURS IN A TIME OUT CORNER TO ACTUALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT THE HELL THEY WERE DOING. If I can’t really communicate the gist of this game in ONE paragraph, let alone multiple, something has gone terribly wrong. I admit I get more heated over this kind of thing, as I am someone who cares very much about the narrative and presentation of stories- and spend a lot of time crafting my own stories to make sure that they are interesting and understandable. I KNOW how hard it can be to create a game, or a film, or a written text- ANYTHING. I have been working in teams and on my own to create stuff for YEARS at an indie level, and have an understanding of the industry level too. I’m not just saying this to bitch and moan, I’m saying it because I care and would expect the same criticism if the things I made were getting this out of hand!
Anyway!
There are more plot points that set up some shit about the cult (?) that started the bioterrorist attack on Terragrigia, as they’re the ones that have lured the BSAA to the boat in the middle of the ocean- and how there’s double crossers amongst them. Whatever. I don’t care. Nothing makes a lick of sense, and it’s hard to find any justification to play like this. Jill is the best and I like Chris fine enough, so it should’ve been reeeeaaal easy to set up at least one of them to have the best plot thread or gameplay in the game. But no. I actually found myself getting the most enjoyment out of two side characters named Quint and Keith.
Quint. And Keith.
Two guys who the designers apparently put so much effort into, making visual choices like ‘epic tattoos to show that he’s cool’ and ‘has a slightly larger head than usual to show that he is smart.’ They have a cool soundtrack during their sections, and they’re dorky as hell, but idk man. Amongst all this slop and just... Bland or irritating personalities for Chris and Jill to bounce off of- these two had so much more of a tangible personality and chemistry to them, so their parts are some of the more memorable that I played. And I still didn’t care that much, cause it felt like I was playing a different game during their sections. I think, looking back on it, their sections are fine; but it seemed better because it was sandwiched between two other things that were a lot more tedious. Chris and Jill had their moments too, but I’m honestly struggling to recount anything that isn’t fighting the same pale looking gloop bioweapons on a boat. Even the incessant ‘last time on resident evil’ recaps didn’t help, as there was just too much going on and nothing was actually clear!! Even in a recap!!! And, the whole cult thing is just… eugh. They quote Dante’s Inferno a lot, but none of the quotes used felt particularly fitting to what was going on- rather, that it was being referenced for the auto fellatio that it truly was. This game thinks it’s a lot clever-er than it is, and I often found the reveals or ways the story was explaining things was presented in a smarmy and almost condescending way. IF the story was presented well enough, these things wouldn’t have come across in such a negative way; especially because there is nothing smart going on here. If there was more care and effort put into making the story interesting, yet still mysterious- scaling back all the unnecessary wank and just focusing on one or two core plot points, that branch out into a few subplots or side info, and really hone in on what is motivating these characters instead of leaning into cliches… There could’ve been a REALLY great game here. Instead, all this convoluted crap has blended together into a forgettable mess, which is a massive shame.
Anyway, to finish retelling the plot... It’s just shit. Turns out Jill and whoever weren’t even on the right boat to begin with because there was a twin ship and whatever. It takes ages for Chris and Jill to reunite, and it is genuinely nice when they get to team up near the end- but the whole mess with the cult who kidnapped them is annoying and frankly boring, and the grand reveals at the end didn’t actually reveal much. It was an inside job to try get more funding for the BSAA or some shit, and it went a bit sideways. Some bland middle aged man is the true evil behind it all, and that’s just so interesting and thought provoking because who would’ve guessed that the random late 40s white guy with no personality would be the big bad pulling the strings, especially when it’s easy to forget who he is.
HOW BORING.
It’s all just an honest let down, especially when they forced us to play through so many sequences IN THE TERRAGRIGIA PANIC… WHO FUCKING CARES!!! ITS JUST SHOOTY SHOOT BANG BANG AND I DON’T CARE!!! I’VE COME HERE TO PLAY RESI, NOT COD!!! Also, if it wasn’t annoying enough to have been duped into playing the same fucking maps twice, but with Chris and Jill, and scratching your head wondering why these seemingly parallel events aren’t interacting with each other, only to have it slammed on you that nothing in this story matters or makes any sense- I found two characters particularly miserable.
Our two.. uh.. protagonsists? Antagonists? Double crosser- no, wait. TRIPLE CROSSERS. Jessica and Raymond. Tbh, Raymond is simply a victim of shitty writing and characterisation, as he was trapped in some stupid fucking contrivances and misleading moments. I found him frustrating due to how many times he’s set up to be a blatant double crosser, but with just enough leeway to maaaaybe not be. He’s a bit standoffish and hostile, which doesn’t help his case, but it’s disappointing because just as he was finally getting interesting towards the end, its fucked up with a double-cross-turned-triple-cross for one final moment of ‘huh???’ that kind of undoes anything for him. His character motivations are so sloppy and didn’t make sense to me. Is he for or against the cult? What does he gain from this? Why is he part of this whole mess? Nothing is clear, not even the way he acts as you interact with him on the ship. It’s a shame too, as during one of the flashback sequences to the Terragrigia incident, he was wounded pretty badly and Parker had to help him to safety. He seemed pretty disillusioned by it all, and was already questioning if it was an inside job or not- which is a pretty good setup for if he WAS going to be a double agent for either side, depending on which one appealed to him the most. Instead, he just feels like a let down, and is constantly hanging around in the peripheral of everything as a permanent red-haired herring.
Jessica is one that grated me more, however, and I feel like its a triple whammy of the shit writing, oversexed and wildly different outfits she has, and the fact that she’s with you through half the game when you play as Chris, so you can’t escape her. She’s supposed to be a coy, flirtatious and danger seeking babe- but it came across to me as a desperate, attention seeking wreck who prioritised trying to get a reaction out of Chris over their mission. Like, hello? She complains near the end about Chris not getting the hint, as she’s been annoyingly suggestive with him- and the first thought I had was, ‘girl, why didn’t YOU get the hint?’ Chris has never really had any romantic inclinations explored or depicted in the games, and while he’s on missions, he’s very much focused on the mission. Why he’d make an exception for you, Jessica, I don’t know. I also didn’t like how she changed looks so drastically between time periods, in the past she has a bob cut, and in the present mission she has very long wavy hair. I know people in real life can have very different haircuts over the years, (I know I certainly have), but for a game… Being able to know who someone is, is actually really important. Instead of worrying about how to make her oh so cute (in a way I can’t help but feel seems distinctly from the gaze of a group of horny middle-aged men…) I think they should’ve focused on a specific character motif, and kept it similar to how we see her in the present so that it reduces confusion. There are three main costumes she wears across the story, and each time I thought it was a new woman. And don’t get me started on the goddamn fucking wetsuit. A WHOLE leg, AND ass cheek, out for the world to see… You literally work against bioterrorism. Yknow, the thing where if you make contact with the wrong stuff, you’ll become a monster???? Let’s just… leave a whole leg and half my ass out for the bioweapons to have a cheeky nibble on. That’s going to be really cool for this mission. I have the same thoughts about Jill practically having her tits bulging out of her wetsuit, and think her wetsuit is wayyy more sexed up compared to her male co-workers, but at least she doesnt have an ass cheek hanging out. I wanna say the same for Chris, who’s always got his sleeves rolled up, even in the winter tundra, or wherever the fuck they were, especially because he uses his big, strong arms to block and defend… But you get the picture- plus he’s got the illogical costume choices for cool dude points, not cause the designers were horny. I’m not even saying this cause I hate sexy things, I usually enjoy seeing the alt costumes you unlock and playing with them for fun, and most of them are cute or sexy and almost always impractical- it’s just incredibly annoying to me when the sexy comes from this objectifying and frankly stupid thought process, instead of the inherent sex appeal coming from something that makes sense for the character. Jessica is completely a sex object here, and the fact that everything down to her personality revolves around that annoys me. She’s not a good femme fatal type, but she could've been. If she was even a TINY BIT more subtle about things- her flirting, her sketchy behaviour, all of it -THIS COULD’VE BEEN INTERESTING. Again, like Raymond, WHY is she double crossing, what’s in it for her? If she wasn’t so overtly flirtatious to the point where Chris seems to be playing up how oblivious he is, and instead went for something more friendly and seemingly genuine to get info on Chris and his character, it’d make sense that she’s trying to play into her sexuality and sex appeal to break down his walls and get sensitive info that’d benefit her. If she wasn’t always acting like a reckless fool with a death wish, there might have been a way to make it look to her partners that she’s always just at the wrong place at the wrong time and use that to cover for the real reason why she’s there. Like, cmonnnnnn I don’t want to hate her if I don’t need to, but there’s nothing there that I like!
Sighhhhh. Bit of a tangent there, but seriously. It annoys me. I hate lazy designs and writing like this, do better.
Anyway, the controls were fine. Standard ots shooter style that you’d expect from a game like this, and it generally handles pretty well. While some of the locations and set design can feel bland and sparse at times- as I mentioned at the beginning, it was made for 3DS originally -but given that, the HD overhaul here is pretty nice and the character models don’t look too bad. It’s nothing stand out, but nothing looked or felt particularly wrong to me either. The only real gripe I have with this game, other than the ridiculousness I’ve just spent a few rather long-winded paragraphs getting into, is this scanning reticle. I did mention this briefly, but I need you to understand just how odd of a gameplay choice this is. When you scan enemies, you get to increase the percentage amount at the top, which will give your a healing item when you reach 100%. That’s nice, but there are plenty of healing items scattered about, AND if you just scan around the rooms, you’ll unlock more items to pick up. There’s barely any enemy variation either, so it’s not like you’re compelled to scan various new kinds of bioweapon you haven’t see before, because all of them look the same. It’s hard to ever feel pressed for resources due to the abundance of them you get from using the scanner. There are also little handprint things you can find that are only visible through the scanner, and whatever. They’re an optional collectable, that’s nothing bad. It was just a shame to me that there was only ONE instance where it genuinely felt cool and worth it to be using the scanner.
Right near the end, there was a lazer puzzle you had to navigate through, and you could only see the lazer beams through the scanning reticle. THAT’S AWESOME. If this was more integrated into the gameplay, beyond getting a few extra items here and there, that would’ve been so much more fun! Particularly for puzzles, as there were quite a few puzzle sections here that were nice to see as a return to classic resi vibes. The soundtrack was pretty decent, too. There are some tracks I genuinely enjoyed, but a few got annoying real fast. I don’t really have much to say on it beyond that.
So, in closing. This game sucked, and I wish it didn’t. It had a lot of promise as a return to classic resi for fans that felt alienated by the action focus modern resi was taking. It’s a strange game with some genuinely good ideas buried beneath the shit, and I think it needed a bit more time to be refined, or a director with a sterner and clearer vision for this as a project. And less sex for objectifcation’s sake, please. The main resi cast are already beyond hot and dripping with sex appeal, you don’t need to try so hard. Put that energy into a strong and enjoyable gaming experience next time.
Quint and Keith
Rest & Intensify
A Drop of Rain
~~
Resident Evil: Revelations 2, PS4
This game is so much better than it’s predecessor. Not perfect, but a massive improvement. I actually had fun with this, too, and got sucked in pretty quickly while replaying chapter 1 as a refresher for this write up.
Like it’s previous counterpart, this spin off game is an attempt to bring back the horror aspects to the franchise while the main numbered games veered off into action shooters- and for the most part, I’d say it achieved that goal. It is certainly scarier than I found RE5 or RE6 to be, and often reminded me of RE0 and Code Veronica at certain points. If I were to describe Revelations 1’s scariness as: an unsettling but building fear that’s always in the background, paired with high strung tension from encounters with friends and foes - Revelations 2 felt more to me like a mix of two types of horror scares: immediate danger, and the unease of never feeling safe enough to recover from that danger. Sure, Rev 2 is as cheesy as a B grade horror movie at times- but with a plot that’s easier to follow and gameplay that was generally fun and memorable, I had a great time. I can’t deny that some of my feelings towards both these Revelations games comes from originally playing them back to back- but as a sort of call and response to each other as spin offs, I think it’s fair enough to draw comparisons in this way.
This game starts with Claire at a work function, meeting Moira Burton, Barry’s eldest daughter, as she’s a new recruit for the same organisation she works at. We have a little exposition to find out that Moira and Barry have a strained relationship, and are currently in some form of estrangement from each other. The two ladies are working for Terrasave, a humanitarian company that aims to help those affected by bioterrorism- with one of the worst slogans I’ve ever heard: because ‘terr’ doesn’t have to end with ‘orrist.’ I thought it was a fairly well known thing within advertising that you DON’T want to put anything in your marketing that will remind customers of competitors or negative connotations - but this bad slogan is a form of self fulfilling prophecy, as some terrorists crash the party, shooting up the place and kidnapping Claire and Moira. When Claire wakes up, alone in a grotty jail cell, she notices a strange bracelet that’s been welded around her wrist. Before she can really take in anything, her cell door opens, and she’s able to wander around the derelict halls where she hears Moira calling for help. She’s also got a strange bracelet, and the two of them are directed further into the facility they’re being held in. There are telltale signs of bioweapon experiments, and before long they come across one of Claire’s coworkers, covered in blood and desperately trying to get help before she passes away at their feet. The further into the facility they travel, the more they find strange experiments and have to fight off zombies, (yes, zombies are in a resident evil game again!) and they come to realise that there is a woman closely watching them, who eventually makes herself known via the bracelets. Both girls clearly want out, and head for a radio tower to put out a distress call, and it’s here that they realise they are on a small and isolated island by themselves. That’s already an enticing plot: they’re stranded, there’s a dangerous variety of traps and bioweapons to contend with, and they have some crazed woman watching over them as she curates danger around them. To really add the cherry on top, at the end of every Claire and Moira section, each chapter is closed with a Barry section, set 6 months after the events we’ve just played through with the girls. Barry’s side of the story starts with him traveling by boat to the island, listening to the recorded radio transmission of Moira in the hopes of recovering his little girl. It’s unclear to him whether she is alive or not, but he is determined to find out what happened and bring her home, no matter what it takes. As soon as he docks, a little girl named Natalia finds him, and insists on coming along with him to find Moira. As they journey, they start to grow a bond like father and daughter, and together they set out to get to the bottom of things.
That’s a lot of gameplay per chapter, and it’s a welcome amount compared to the previous game’s chapter length. Instead of playing what feels like 10-30 min worth of the game before you’re hit with a chapter break and ‘last time on resident evil revelations;’ here it feels closer to 30-60 min PER SECTION, making it at least a good hour or more that you’d play both parts of the chapter before you’re hit with a recap. This is a much better pace to experience the story, as it not only gives time to get familiar with the game and it’s controls, but also lets the environment and story have time to breathe and sink in. While there are still recaps, they don’t feel as eye-rollingly painful, and are actually decent recaps of what was just played. The chapters feel like a decent play session; and in it’s original release, each chapter came out episodically week by week. The game wasn’t developing the chapters each week, as the entire game was completed and they just spaced the releases as a way of spreading out the content and potentially making more money- copying the hype of other games around that same time that were seeing success with this episodic model of play. I won’t speak much about that particular aspect, as when I played, it was years after release and I had the entire story ready to play at my leisure. But I will say I get an odd- and cautiously critical -feeling when larger AAA studios mimic the methods that smaller/indie studios use (often out of necessity) to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers, just because it was successful for a few select titles. I’d like to give a more thoughtful and nuanced opinion on this, but due to it being out of scope for this written retrospective, I’m not going to research further and I’ll just leave you with that comment, and you can draw your own conclusions based on it.
Other improvements to the formula of this spin-off series is that, instead of a clunky reticle to scan shit in the environment, the two supporting characters can make use of passive moves that act in similar ways to the scanning reticle, but in ways that are better integrated. See, in each scenario you play, there will be one character who is more geared to offence and active attacks, and the other to passive and supporting attacks. Claire has gone through this shit before, and Barry is an ex-STARS member who currently works in the BSAA - both of them have had extensive weapons and combat training, along with the experience needed to make their way through bioweapon littered landscapes. They are both the active halves of their duos, with most of their moves tied to their guns. The other halves, Moira and Natalia, do not wield guns, and make use of their own melee weapons for attack and defence. Natalia doesn’t use any firearms because, well, she’s like nine years old; and Moira has a very strong aversion to using guns after an accident in her childhood. When she was little, she was playing around with one of her fathers guns and accidentally shot her little sister, and Barry was upset and blamed her, even though the sister survived. This guilt on both sides, and lack of communication or understanding towards each other is what’s led to the strain on their relationship, and is why Moira and Barry haven’t been able to see eye to eye for a long time. So, instead, Moira makes use of a torch and a crowbar to blind and stun enemies accordingly; while Natalia can pick up and throw bricks, and make use of an uncanny sixth sense that allows her to see the auras of enemies nearby and point them out to Barry. During gameplay, it only takes a second to switch between characters as you’re playing, so you can easily look around for clues or blind enemies with Moira using the torch, or scope out the area for enemies with Natalia before switching over to Claire or Barry to start attacking. I quite enjoyed this for the most part, as both characters in each section feel distinct in their own ways without feeling that one is too much of a burden over the other. The ai for the characters isn’t too bad either, and feels like a nice refinement on the gameplay ideas from RE0. Having the characters be a duo also meant that expositional dialogue didn’t feel as awkward as it would be if they were on their own, and I really enjoyed seeing how the characters got to know each other and evolve in their own ways during the story. Sometimes the responses during conversations did feel a bit stilted, with unnatural delays between responses as you’re walking around, but in general, this dynamic was fun!
There’s all the standard guns, melee attacks and sub weapon usage here you’d expect of a modern resi game, along with a dedicated button to use healing items, evading enemy attacks and to sprint. The healing button is great, and so much better that you have to press and hold to confirm it’s usage, instead of accidentally wasting a valuable heal when you accidentally press the button. The inclusion of the run and evade buttons elevated the combat, and allowed a bit more freedom for how you want to approach them- but it did make the game feel a lot more action heavy, which is at odds with some of the horror elements by reducing the tension somewhat. Nitpicky, yes, but as this spin-off series has been presented as an alternative to the fans that miss the earlier survival horror aspects, having such an action-biased combat scheme feels a bit strange in that regard. However, I do think that it works while you’re playing, in the sense that it didn’t feel like I was struggling against the controls during encounters with enemies. At least, not much…
There were a lot of moments that felt very stop-starty, where there were overly directed sequences that took the camera controls away from me so that it can force me to look where it wants. This happens a lot during slower gameplay moments where I found that I’d already seen and put together what it wanted me to look at, or I just plain don’t want to look at it, yet the controls are yanked away from me in this manner. I get it, you want to make sure the player knows where to look during certain moment, but I really don’t like this style of camera direction. The whole point of having the camera in my control with the dual stick is that, well, I CONTROL IT. I don’t want to have to struggle against it during a section that is still technically in gameplay, aka, my domain of control. If you REALLY want to direct my attention to something specific, either make it visually interesting enough that I naturally want to direct my eye towards it, orrrrr just have a fucking cutscene. I found this struggle against the camera particularly egregious when using the sprint button- the camera zooms in a bit and just snakes very narrowly behind you, making it difficult to see where you’re going or even move! I don’t know if they did this to discourage sprinting across levels, but at that point, why include it at all if you want to discourage it? I ended up having to do a shitty claw grip of my controller where I had my thumb pressing the button to sprint, and my pointer wrapped around to control the camera because I would just be running into walls and corners if I couldn’t fight against the camera myself. There is also something… strange… about the way Claire moves. It’s hard to really say, but there were lots of little things, that, added up made me feel very strange about her. She walked in a strange kind of hunch, one that looks like she’s unpracticed in wearing heels, and at certain times she dawdles strangely instead of the normal walking pace. When she walked faster or started sprinting, I noticed a very strange weight that made her a bit hard to direct at the start and stop of things, which I didn’t notice to the same degree with her partner Moira. And this was strange, because during the Barry sections, he felt weighted and moved in ways that felt more natural; which leads me to thinking that Barry and Claire might share the same move sets, or at least the same base, which is odd. That’s purely speculation, but on a quick replay of the first chapter, and some rounds in raid mode, Claire just felt off to me to play as, and that’s my only hypothesis as to why.
Getting more into the mechanics of the game, there were some choices made here. Firstly, the weapons upgrade system from Rev1 is back. During the game, you may come across certain weapons parts, and when you can access a gun table that’s placed somewhere within the levels, you can combine those parts with your guns to upgrade and custom mod them depending on your play-style. This is fine, I used it to upgrade my stuff but I don’t particularly care for it- I’m just not that much of a gun guy. I appreciate what it brings, but I think I prefer to just have weapons be what they are like in RE1make or RE2make, or like RE4 where there's just a certain amount of upgrades in certain categories that you purchase. It just gives me a similar frustration as starting up Mario Kart 8, where you have to build a kart combo with stats that aren’t the most clearly spelled out (and some stats that are important are just.. not mentioned at all?) before you can race. I don’t want to spend ages figuring out a kart build, I want to race. I don’t really care to collect certain weapons parts and create a custom gun, I want to find the evil residents. You get me? I feel like that particular frustration is just exacerbated by the fact that there’s a skill tree. Now, this isn’t a completely fresh concept to resi, but, I didn’t like how they did it in RE5 or RE6 either lol. Here, when you complete chapters or do certain cool things for cool points, you’ll get a currency that you can use to purchase skills within the skill tree. These are things like: giving Moira a melee attack or finishing move with her crowbar, increasing the power of subweapons and certain attacks, increase the range between partners to use healing items on each other- that sort of thing. I don’t love it, but it’s perfectly fine as far as skill trees go. They add some much needed moves to the characters, especially for Moira and Natalia, that makes it easier for them to not only survive, but contribute to any fights you get into. While I find myself frustrated at times by the fact that there is a skill tree, it works fine, and once you have unlocked most of the good things, it makes itself worth it. Overall, it feels more refined compared to the way systems like these were implemented in Rev1, so I can’t complain too much. I didn’t even use the weapons upgrade shit in Rev1 much to be honest, so I think overall, I just don’t care for these things that tie into the game being more action focused than I would have liked.
In general, the locations you play through look and feel nice to explore, as much a grotty horror settings can. They’re definitely campy, but that is kind of expected of a resi game, if I’m honest. What sucks though, and I know I just praised it, is the fact that when you play a Claire section followed by a Barry section, you go through the same areas. Yes, there are changes, and there are some areas that are unique to each duo, but it does get pretty tiring when the differences are so slight that it dampens the more unique aspects of each. And although I really loved that there were more puzzles here, and some that genuinely had me thinking, I did find that a good majority of puzzles felt more like fetch quests to gather items in a certain order to unlock places and things, and not disguised enough to stay interesting for me. Within each level as well, it felt like there were separate sequences to go through as separate layers while you play. I don’t know exactly how I feel about it, as I enjoyed some of the spookier sequences, and did enjoy some of the more action focused areas; but there is a slight feeling of oil against water for me. I’m more than willing to chalk it up to the necessities of game design, and again I think it’s the fact that these spin-offs are talked about as being the scarier alternative of it’s time that makes it stand out so much to me. This in itself is frustrating, as on the whole, I think I really enjoyed playing this game despite my gripes with it…
A gripe I don’t really have is with the visuals and sound design. I enjoyed the look of the various buildings and landscapes, and although sometimes it was silly, it worked for me. And the music and sound design was just great, there’s a moody feel that the soundtrack brings to the visuals that just makes it all a really nice experience. The sounds of the weapons especially felt nice and had a good weight to them, which is always nice when they can pull it off. The UI is a slightly different manner, as it’s all a uniform orange type of thing. I appreciate the consistency, however, at times I found it difficult to actually tell what I had in my pockets or figure out what upgrades I was giving my gun because things are too similar. I think it’s still better than Rev1’s, and you get used to it, but readability in UI is something I’m becoming increasingly nitpicky and passionate about, I think. It does it’s job, though, so I can get over it. It’s not the tic-tac-tetris style UI of RE6, so I can live with it.
I’m going to take this chance to talk about the story more in depth so next few paragraphs will be the spoilery ones. To start, I really liked the way Barry was written. He had an interesting dynamic with Natalia, and it was nice to see that despite their differences, he is clearly willing to go to any length for Moira, and having that paternal affection and protectiveness extend to Natalia. Moira herself is ok, she swears like a sailor in ways that felt silly at times, and felt more like out-of-touch adults writing a teen instead of authentic teenagery mannerisms to me. Natalia is fine, she’s a young girl who’s gone through a lot, and tbh I think she’s more memorable when she’s with Barry compared to any sections where she’s with Claire and Moira. And Claire… UGH! Claire is probably my favourite protag in the franchise, and I feel like she was done dirty while it was also a really nice game for her. On one hand, it is soooo nice to see how she’s matured into such a capable and level headed woman who is clever and quick-witted. WE LOVE TO SEE IT. On the other… She’s seemingly forgotten certain things that were character staples for her in RE2 and CV. There’s a scene where Claire and Moira bump into Natalia, and she’s frightened cause she’s a little girl and these are two strange women she’s never met before, and Claire comes off too cold and demanding in a way that frightens Natalia even more, causing Moira to step in and be the comforting presence. Like?? HELLO?? Did the writers forget about Sherry? How Claire was not only a comforting presence to her while she was UNTRAINED AND INEXPERIENCED, but continued to be a nurturing figure in Sherry’s life as she grew up? Does that mean nothing? It especially annoys me because Claire is literally being the guiding and nurturing figure TO MOIRA. RIGHT HERE IN THIS GAME. Moira is a total rookie, I think she’s literally just joined Terra-Save the evening she was kidnapped and probably wasn’t meant to go on missions any time soon; and Claire is the one that is not only keeping them together and taking charge in trying to get them out of there, but she’s able to quickly adapt to the fact that Moira is gun averse and takes on that role for the both of them.
Due to the fact that Moira’s ptsd regarding guns and the incident where she accidentally shot her sister is such a prevalent talking point for her character, I would think it makes more sense for Moira to be more out of touch with what a little girl needs as a comforting presence- as she was traumatised when she was young, and we can easily add that she became avoidant of not only her dad, but her sister and family in general too - and that seeing Natalia is bringing up a lot of buried feelings that’s she’s unsure how to deal with, because she’s a frightened teen in a traumatic situation! If Moira had self imposed an exile on herself and didn’t get along with any of her immediate family, that can mean that seeing Natalia periodically and then losing her a few times give her a chance to talk with Claire about how she feels guilty and sad about that fact that the issue with the gun robbed her of her childhood innocence AND a childhood with her sister. This would just strengthen the themes presented with Barry, where he is going to drastic lengths for Moira because she is STILL HIS DAUGHTER, and that protecting Natalia is allowing him to kind of process how poorly he had handled the incident with Moira, and do better for Natalia right now at the very least. This super small change would also give Claire the chance to reflect on her own sibling relationship, and give her a chance to talk about what Chris and Barry mean to her, as they were both family figures for her. There’s a really fucking fantastic framework here that suits the dramatic heights the game is going for, but it squanders it with stupid things like Claire suddenly not being calm and kind enough to comfort a scared girl. She isn’t too badass to do things like that, she’s badass because she can do things like that. Things like this made me feel like Barry was more prioritised as a protag, despite Claire being clearly presented as the main character. It just sucks and I feel sad about it, because there’s not much I feel needs changing about Barry’s side of the story. He feels like Barry, acts and talks like Barry, and it’s so nice to get a game that takes a closer look at him as a character. It’s a great entry for him, but I feel conflicted about Claire’s depiction here.
I think the other major thing that felt strange about Claire is actually the way the main antagonist is presented as well. See, she’s apparently a Wesker, and she’s continuing her brother’s research of the Ouroubourous Virus to help her create the T-Phobos virus- a virus that only triggers mutation when the subject is afraid. She wants to become immortal and live a life free of fear, convinced that if she can find a subject that is immune to fear, she can transfer her consciousness to them and live on. There’s a lot to unpack here, because they were setting up a lot and it didn’t quite live up to what they’d hoped. In general, yes, Alex Wesker here is a more tangible antagonist- and she has a fantastic presence in scenes due to the work of her voice actor. The narrative-theme-based-on-a-classic is back, where they took to the writings of Franz Kafka as some rather on-the-nose themes for the game- Metamorphosis, And All That. I’m glad they actually feel thematically relevant, but I just think it’s a shame that Wesker felt… weak. With all the themes of family and siblings here, I think it would’ve been nice to see that Alex is becoming desperate because of Albert’s death- as it is, we don’t really see any mention of how their relationship or his death affected her, just a mention that she’s used his research to assist in her pursuits of perfection. It also sucks because I can’t help but feel that they were trying to set up a rivalry, or at least make a call back to it, because the antagonist is a Wesker and the protagonist is a Redfield. Chis and Albert had such an insane rivalry because Chris trusted Wesker, working underneath him for presumably years, and then it went wild when they cross paths in CV and RE5. Claire only just met Alex once she’s been kidnapped, and figures out that Alex is directing the horrible events on the island- there’s no history, or push and pull tension here; other than the fact that Claire wants to get out of here and stop this mess. I don’t think they could’ve drawn a comparable dynamic between Alex and Claire as there was with Albert and Chris – but there is room for some narrative tension and parallel!
Firstly, I don’t really understand WHY Alex is pursuing perfection, as it’s not really discussed in depth. Albert isn’t a biological brother to Alex, but he is the only other subject from the Wesker project who survived this long- and clearly it affected her when she learnt of his death. The first time she heard of his death, he had faked it as well, so who’s to say there won’t be some strange reaction to her hearing about his death after RE5? When playing the first time, I honestly thought that she was trying to perfect this consciousness transferring thing in order to ‘resurrect’ Albert in some capacity. That might not be the best path narratively, but I think some more story reasons that touch on their relationship would’ve benefited her. Claire also shares a kind of pseudo-familial tie with the Burton's, as though it isn’t shown much, in previous games there were notes that implied that Barry welcomed the Redfield siblings to be a part of his family and looked out for them where he could. This game is a very personally interconnected one, and to have the protagonists see the antagonist struggling with something that is so viscerally relatable to them would’ve been cool. It would’ve been especially nice if some of the thematic aspects of Natalia being chosen as the vessel for Wesker to transfer her consciousness were given more weight, and that affects everyone in some manner. Secondly, the final evolution of Alex is just… bland. She’s infected herself with the T-Phobos virus in order to transfer her consciousness into Natalia, and to complete that transfer, she kills herself in front of Claire and Moira near the climax. But, despite trying her best to be fearless, she experienced a microsecond of fear right as she shot herself, triggering the virus and turning her kinda-corpse into a mutated mess. She’s ashamed of it, and covers herself with cloth to hide her face and such- but during the six months between campaigns, as she waits for her consciousness to wake up inside of Natalia, she starts to develop a complex out of a fear or concern over potentially having two Weskers. She starts to hunt Natalia and try to kill her, deeming herself the only one who can be allowed, but… well. Do you see what I mean about this feeling weak? I honestly think the fact that it’s six months contributes to this, as how the hell did a little girl manage to survive on a small, isolated island that was devastated even before Wesker started her bioweapon research on the locals?
It also feels strange that, in the climax, when Wesker’s tower is self destructing, Moira pushes Claire away and sacrifices herself, and Claire is somehow found and rescued, but Barry takes six months to get to the island, and Moira was surviving on the island for six months, and also didn’t seem to bump into Natalia during those six months. It’s just unfocused and stretched out, I could believe one month, but why not have Barry just drop everything and rush over to try get Moira if they know where they recovered Claire from? I think it might’ve been interesting to have Natalia be more of a threat, as parts of Wesker come to the surface. And I think that it might’ve been more narratively interesting for Wesker if her struggle with the transferal was due to Natalia rejecting her. This rejection could be a literal one on a biological sense- despite being the perfect candidate, her body won’t take Wesker, or she is mentally strong enough to push her down and cause complications. OR, just emotionally reject Wesker, as she is afraid of her. How ironically haunting would it be for Wesker if she rushed into this project when she got news of Albert dying, and the perfect candidate that is supposedly free of fear turns out to be afraid of you? I’m really just spit-balling and getting rambly and philosophical here, but there are ways that this could be better constructed into something that is more tragic and thought provoking. The point Wesker wanted was to not be afraid, and I wish that was explored more, as there’s so many different types of fear. Her being a pretty weak antagonist just compounded the feeling of Claire getting fucked over for me, as it could’ve been so much more, and Claire could’ve been written to be a much better suited narrative foil, or even just someone who pokes holes at the very ideology Wesker is working under- fighting her by planting doubt into her work. I dunno. This could’ve been a real interesting battle of wit between two women, with interesting narratives tied into the other girls of the protagonist cast- yet I can’t help but feel they weren’t written as strongly and had wasted potential, because Barry ended up the main focus in the writing room, as men are just easier to write, probably.
In closing, I really liked this game, but I’m cautious to say I loved it. I very much enjoyed my time with it, despite it being more action heavy than I would’ve liked, and some sloppy writing and game design here and there. I loved the mood and atmosphere for this game, I love how campy it gets at times, and I loved the moments where this game really shined. This retrospective has been so complicated to write (and not just because I accidentally left it so long before writing), but I can say that I got sucked in almost immediately when I went to replay the first chapter as a refresher, and that’s always a good sign. It’s a game I’ll definitely replay in future, just maybe not as often as other resi titles I like more.
Theme of Barry
Lost (Enchained Version)
Heat On Beat 2015
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Resident Evil 4 Remake, PS4
Wow. I was not expecting this, and overall, I think I’m pleasantly surprised by it.
I was a big fan of the og RE4- it was campy, a bit of a hot mess, and a really good time. This remake seems to generally respect and enhance that original feeling, while taking the game in it’s own direction. There’s plenty I don’t like about this remake, but plenty I do, so lets get into it.
The general trend for the remake series is definitely one that tones down the exaggerated and kinda goofy nature of the originals, and replaces it with a more Hollywood-esque style of gritty and ‘grounded’ realism. Speaking broadly, I can get behind that- however, with each remake added to the series, I get more and more concerned that ‘updating to modern standards’ is slowly morphing into a streamlined homogenisation that strips away most of the charm the original games had. Before I start the nitty-gritty of my dissection, I just want to get the inevitable out of the way: REMAKE FATIGUE. OH MY GOD. Sure, this remake has some brilliant parts that I’ll get into, and it looks great and whatever, but Jesus. It makes me feel extra cynical that every other thing that comes out is a remake these days! Are bigger studios incapable of taking risks and trying something new? Is it really so bad that higher ups are afraid of taking a chance on a new IP, that the creatives trying to work on these things are forced to rehash old things that did well that one time?? Do the fat cats up top even trust the creatives they’re using and abusing??? The original RE4 has a cult-like following, any attempt at remaking it is a HUGE responsibility, as the fans (myself included) are vocal and incredibly whiny. It doesn’t really need a remake, other than continuing the newly reworked canon CapCom is going for in the remake line, so… Huh???? Even outside of gaming, remake and franchise fatigue is hitting hard, and I’m tired. It’s not exactly inspiring or exciting to see remakes get announced anymore, especially when the trend of REmakes in particular are getting to games that are only like, a generation or two behind.
I needed to get that out of the way, as I was not really interested in RE4R the way everyone else was when it was announced, instead feeling more disdainful; reading press releases and fan talk with a cynical and apprehensive view. As should be obvious, I ended up caving and getting the game, and had a good time with it despite it all. But man... You feel me?
Anyway.
The plot of this game has been heavily renovated. Things are darker and more ‘realistic,’ favouring story beats that have an overall more cohesive narrative. The basics of the story are still largely the same, but with expansion and refinement in certain areas. The follow through of plot and motivation between chapters makes a lot more sense compared to the original, and certain beats were changed (and even omitted) to give greater and different impacts for each scene. For the most part, I really liked what they did- it gave a chance to better understand the characters we’re playing with, and it’s pretty hard to feel lost with how refined everything is... but it is at the expense of losing some of the more ‘iconic’ moments from the original, as they are ‘too goofy’ to be translated into this tonal shift. Leon S. Kennedy has gone through a lot of training to become the government agent we see him as today, and is tasked with rescuing the President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, after she was kidnapped from her college campus. After tracking her down to a remote village in rural Spain, Leon is tasked with bringing her back home, safe and sound. It’s a really simple plot, same as the original, but where it gets more depth is through finding out about the bioweapons and locations you battle against as you try to escape with Ashley. There are three main areas that the story takes place across; the village, the castle, and the island. And, just like with the narrative beats, the locations themselves have been renovated to be more streamlined and expanded in certain areas to make this game an enjoyable, modern rendition of it’s original counterpart. There are a lot of call-backs to the original too, the main example being the shooting gallery- which is not only a fun mini game to play, but has an expanded remix of the iconic drive song. I’m not great at shooting mini games- especially not on PS4 -but damn, the shooting gallery was so much fun. Having the remix of drive and ramping it up made it an absolute blast! (Pun intended). There’s a lot to love about the way so much has been enhanced by getting more attention, and I can say that I did genuinely enjoy a majority of the narrative changes.
Into the gameplay, which again, was generally pretty good! The item management is still here; you will find treasures and collectables alongside weapons, ammo, healing and currency as you explore and fight enemies, and can arrange them physically in your inventory screen. The modern Resi convention of quick-equipping weapons and sub-weapons to the d-pad is back, but expanded to have two options per direction, allowing you 8 possible slots to customise with weapons in whatever order you’d like. I appreciate this, and enjoy the seamless nature of the quick equip- though I do miss seeing Leon to the side modelling the item or equipment I have selected… When collecting treasures, sometimes you get pieces with empty recesses in them, and sometimes you’ll get gems of a certain shape that you can place in those recesses- of which combining items to be fully decked out with whatever colour combinations you choose will result in a much higher price when selling those bedazzled items to the merchant. The merchant himself has been fleshed out a little more too, his shop feels nice to browse through as you decide what you want to sell and upgrade, and he has more missions to give you around certain areas! In the original, the extent of these missions were pretty much just ‘shoot the medallions in this area,’ and you get a reward for doing so. Now, he has more that add a bit of variety- things like killing pests, bringing certain items to him, and circling back to specific areas when you’re nearly done with an area in order to fight a mini boss. It’s a nice optional thing to flesh out the time spent with each area, and expanding upon them in ways that are more involved than a simple scavenger hunt- though don’t worry, the medallions are still around and the merchant still wants you to shoot them! There was actually enough things to do that I didn’t quite get all of them in my first play though, which in turn meant that there were still things to do and places to poke around in upon replay. (Though, the merchant talks A LOT during the various screens while shopping… Idk if I’m just misremembering, but the og merchant never felt this annoying with the incessant chatter… hm...)
Moving around as Leon was… pretty good. It took me a while to get the hang of it, as he felt very weighty and had a much stronger follow-through in his momentum than what I was expecting. His sprint also felt faster than I remembered the og feeling, and perhaps that’s simply the difference between the tank controls of the original and the dual stick controls of this remake. This quick pace suits the action side of this action-survival-horror, and honestly, once you play for a few minutes, the speed felt normal anyway. I just think it surprised me a lot to feel how weighty AND fast Leon felt in my first impressions, which is why I wanted to mention it. Leon also feels skilled; he felt fluid moving between various guns, using the knife, and fighting with throwable items and melee attacks. More attention has been placed on the fact that he's spent 6 years in special military training, and it’s certainly paid off. However, I can’t help but feel the various melee attacks feels a lot more limited here… Now, I’m more than willing to admit a rose-tinted bias here, but I remember getting almost giddy when I had the option to kick and supplex enemies with ease. There was an almost explosive feeling to it in the original, you could literally kick people’s heads off – and yeah, yeah, I get it. This remake is trying to be more grounded and less arcadey in this aspect, but despite the melee attacks having a good weight and follow through to them, it just didn’t feel as impressive to me. That’s totally a personal feeling and not really anything the game has done objectively wrong, but that is unfortunately one of the many little nitpicks of things the game has to contend with when trying to remake a game that has been placed on such a high pedestal by many.
While I’m nitpicking differences in the gameplay and mechanics, I want to talk about the QTEs. Quick Time Events were prompts in the original game that played during certain scenes (mainly cutscenes, but in some boss fights as well), and would prompt the player to do things such as hit a button combination in a short time limit, or mash buttons and wiggle the stick in rapid succession. They are divisive, to say the least, but if you read my retrospective on the og RE4, you’ll remember that I said I kinda liked them! I’ve heard that some people don’t like them due to the panic of being quickly prompted and only having a second or two to respond, and hitting the wrong thing results in an insta-death half the time- and yeah, that’s definitely annoying. But, I don’t know… In the same way that the tank controls of RE1 made me feel more connected with my characters by getting flustered and struggling to move in a way that I could link to the feelings of fight or flight responses for the characters I’m playing as, I quite enjoyed the ways QTEs were used in RE4. Leon’s feeling just as flustered when there’s suddenly a boulder, or giant mechanised statue of the antagonist, chasing him down some narrow corridor as I am suddenly having to mash a button to get him out of there. I particularly enjoyed the cutscene QTEs for the Krauser knife fight in the og, requiring you to get the right combo of buttons within a split second to successfully parry and continue the fight. They’re fun! It’s not like I love all QTE by default, as I did not enjoy their usage in RE5 & RE6 half as much- but when implemented smartly like the og… I just appreciated it. The QTEs for this remake have been dramatically reduced, and for a lot of people, that’s a plus. I really loved the accessibility options for the QTEs here, giving the option between mashing buttons or a press and hold. Some of our hands/reflexes aren’t what they used to be, and sometimes the option for something less physically demanding is nice. However… It does feel a bit lesser without the QTEs, if I’m honest. It’s not even that every single QTE in the original was good, but there was a frantic-ness about it that I miss. I felt this the most with the Krauser knife fight I mentioned earlier, which has been turned into a more traditional mini boss instead of a QTE cutscene.
Which brings me to the biggest issue I have with the renovation of mechanics here.
The Knife.
In the original, the knife was a permanent sub-weapon you could rely on in the game. Run our of ammo? Get up close and personal to slash with your knife. Need to open boxes? Knife attack! And fighting Krauser? Well. Let’s just say, you’ll wanna use your knife. It felt special, and to me was a defining characteristic of how I played and thought about gun and weapon usage. In this remake? There is a knife degradation system. I understand from a game mechanic view that having degradation might encourage players to get creative with other weapons instead of relying on the knife, or treat the knife as something more special because it comes with a limit- but I felt the opposite. I HATE WEAPON DEGRADATION SYSTEMS. SOOOOOO MUCH. I didn’t feel like the knife was special, because you’d find knives everywhere to make up for the fact that they can only be used so much. Once you use them all up, they break and you can’t use them again, except for Leon’s special knife, which can be repaired for a cost at the merchant’s. This is supposed to be the trusty knife! It doesn’t feel trusty or even special anymore! Resi on the whole is KNOWN for it’s knife only runs, as knives are ALWAYS present in some capacity. I didn’t like the way knives broke in RE2R either, but it didn’t feel as offensive to me, as they were only sub-weapons, and mostly used for defence. IN THAT CONTEXT, I can begrudgingly agree with the philosophy of knife degradation, because that game was much more focused on surviving the horror with limited inventory. Here… it’s an action game. Depriving Leon of his knife just feels cruel. I want to be free to attack boxes and barrels while I’m looking for items, to kill snakes and rats indiscriminately alongside hoards of ganados when I’ve run out of ammo, or when I simply want to use my knife. In this remake, I can still do all of that, but there’s a greater cost to contend with due to the degradation. I can’t even enjoy some simple knife fishing, as I’ve gotta keep it in the back of my mind that every slash could be my last. I pretty much never wanna see weapon degradation in games, and will only begrudgingly take it under very specific circumstances. It feels like it detracts from the game far more than any ‘innovative thinking’ or game balancing it may provide, and it’s simply a frustration I hate having to put up with. Have the guns run out of ammo! Have limited inventory space that makes me hum and haw over which items are important to me and which I’ll need to use up and get rid of! But do NOT make my knife so brittle that it’s useless after a few hits!!
‘But the realism-’ I hear you say. Yeah, sure. A kitchen knife, heck even some survival knives, are probably not going to stand more than a few hits when used in combat - but when there’s an option to parry a chainsaw with the knife… I think some liberties can be taken. Although the game postures itself as something more mature and realistic compared to its original goofy and contrived nature- it’s still filled with silly shit! It’s a video game! It’s ok to lean into it; the original did with the arcadey feeling that ran through it all. Why is this new direction so hesitant to allow certain things, while being equally goofy in other areas? I know that the knife thing gets better when you get a grasp of the parry system and learn the most effective ways to make use of it, AND that there’s much better options for it when playing in NG+ and you have all the upgrades- but why do I have to wait for a replay to have it feel tolerable? That’s still a full first run through where it feels miserable! And just due to the fact that it is the way it is, I actually felt discouraged from engaging with the knife at all during battle, and felt more comfortable using it only for things outside of battle. L. Skill issue. Whatever. But I fucking HATE weapon degradation in general, so I’m sure you understand that even though I’m aware of the nuances and probable intentions the dev’s had when implementing this: I don’t care, I don’t like it, and I don’t think it achieved what they set out to do with it.
Onto graphics, the game looks fine. Maybe a little flat in the colour grading at times, but that’s something I’d expected due to the original having a muted sepia look. I don’t really know how to articulate this the exact way that I want to, but I’m just not the kind of guy who’s overly impressed with 'realistic graphics' in games. I’m fine if things look a little janky- and in all honesty, I think that jank or intentional style choices add charm and a unique look to certain games. RE4R is using the same engine that a lot of previous games in the series have been using- it seems to be a great one for what they want to do with the look of it all, but I can’t help but feel that it looks a little too familiar at times. I think this is partially due to assets being reused, having played a lot of games in this engine and starting to see how it works and where the seams are, and remake fatigue. I could complain about it looking like RE2R and RE8, but I feel so half-hearted about that complaint. It’s the same engine, and a remake of a game I remember decently- of course it’ll look familiar. I’m fine to chalk that up to primarily my own tastes and fatigue that I’ve outlined, but overall, the game looks fine. Great if you’re into this mostly realistic style, I just don’t think I care enough to care. What I do care about, however, are the presentation for certain things that really pissed me off.
Firstly- STOP WITH 'CUTSCENE' MOMENTS THAT TAKE A HOLD OF THE CAMERA AND SWING ME IN RANDOM PLACES!!! FUCK OFF!! IF YOU WANT CONTROL OF IT HAVE A CUTSCENE, GAMEPLAY IS FOR ME!!?!!? And repeat all the shit you read previously for the Rev2 stuff I had the same complaint for.
Secondly- YELLOW MARKERS. This has been memed to death by now, and Resi isn’t the only game/series to go overboard with the yellow markers. But, whoever is walking around with open cans of bright yellow paint, reigning terror across this remote Spanish village - stop it! Who knows where they’ll go next! Joking aside, I want to go on a tangent and dissect this and give thoughts real quick. SOMETIMES, yes, the paint markers are helpful in showing me where I need to go, or what I need to do when I’m feeling lost. Yellow is such a naturally bright colour that it’s easy to draw the eye to, making it a psychologically/colour theory-ily understandable choice to make sure players see the hints you leave for them. A lot of the time, I believe the devs make these markers so obvious because they were common tricky points for their focus groups- which are often comprised of people with varying gamer skills, and I’d say that devs will try to pay attention to the less experienced gamer’s feedback to iron out any wrinkles and make the game more approachable. It all makes sense and I understand it, especially after having the opportunity to study this kind of thing a little bit and venturing into indie game dev myself. There’s so much to think about and consider that often will go unnoticed by the players, which can feel frustrating when you’re berated for choices you made intentionally with their favour in mind. HOWEVER, this yellow paint shit is getting out of hand. It often feels jarring and non-diagetic, bringing more attention to it than intended and breaking the immersion for the player. It can also feel very patronising to have the methods and solutions to puzzles pointed out so obviously to you, for both experienced and less experienced gamers. Things don’t need to be THAT obvious, and I’m not sure that slapping yellow paint over everything is the fix-all solution it’s being treated as. It might take more work, but maybe if so many players are struggling with certain sections, you need to discuss with your team whether this is an intentionally hard area that you want players to struggle through, or if there are better ways to create the problem you want players to solve. There’s not going to be ONE solution that pleases all players, but I feel as though many gamers with mid to high level experience in games are going to become too frustrated when they see the yellow paint and no longer want to be a part of the core audience anymore. It’s a tricky balance to make games inviting enough to appeal to new-comers or ‘the broader audience,’ without alienating ‘the target audience,’ - but too often with modern games, I can’t help but feel they’re spreading themselves too thin to catch every audience instead of focusing on their target. Look at ways that are less obvious than yellow paint, see what kind of diagetic methods to give hints would work, and really spend the time setting up ways to teach the players how you want them to play and approach the problems you throw at them.
What’s uniquely frustrating about the yellow paint in Resi is that, in RE8, they ALMOST had something really interesting in context with the yellow paint, but didn’t do anything with it. They knew the yellow paint in that game was garishly out of place, and called attention to it, but just didn’t deliver in the way I was expecting based on the way they set it up. To then go to a game where there’s no reason for the yellow paint to be everywhere, YET IT STILL IS, is frustrating. The one counter to this, which I alluded to earlier, is that these yellow paint signals ARE helpful to those that need them. Great, but that is only good as a stepping stone, and if people ever move up to a higher skill level in gaming where they don’t need it anymore, what then? I understand that from an accessibility standpoint, making sure that players who aren’t very good or don’t feel confident in playing but still want to play have an option. I support that, but to mix that into the DNA of the visual presentation of the game just sucks for every other player who wants an option to not have it. It’d take more work, but why can’t yellow paint-ifiying the landscape be exclusive to easy mode? That’s the area to have it, and by not not having it in normal and hard difficulties, it’s effectively training wheels for those that want it in easy. With this, there’s also some comment I want to make on the way older games did this. I’m more inclined to say that older games did a better job of communicating things visually, and in many ways the hardware limitations present helped devs to think carefully about the way they wanted to present things. Heck, even in RE2R, there wasn’t yellow paint slapped haphazardly around the place- I distinctly remember the use of lighting and contrast in certain areas to point out which way to go. This tangent is not just a critique exclusive to RE4R, but to all yellow paint games out there. I don’t like the overly researched and pathologised method of communicating things to players, it just says very clearly to me that you don’t trust me to play and enjoy the game the way you wanted me to, and would rather drag me by the hand through everything instead of giving me time to enjoy the spaces within the game you’ve created. Maybe there’s also an aspect of insecurity to this, which I don’t doubt could be from having unrealistic pressures and crunches forced upon dev teams in the increasingly dystopian work environments- but please. At least add a bit of diversity to the way you want to overly direct my play experience, it’s become so cliché even the meme of yellow paint is worn out.
And lastly, something I feel is the most relevant to bitch about regarding graphics, is the lack of boss transformation animations. To set the scene, in the original RE4, pretty much all the multi-phase bosses had grotesque animations showing the pure body horror of being a bioweapon. It’s memorable, and helps keep you immersed in the moment as you see the familiar human looking parts morph further into the inhuman. It’s kind of a staple thing to expect in the Resi franchise- bioweapons are a form of body horror, and bioweapons are behind every game - it’s what we’re here for. Now, in RE4R, there was a noticeable lack of transformation animations. I’m sure you can imagine the disappointment when I’m fighting the village leader in some sort of barn or shed that’s on fire, and instead of having some transformation to gawk at, he disappears behind a wall of flames, and re-emerges a few seconds later in his next form. Every boss felt like this, and even if some bosses felt like clever call-backs to their originals, or added something to make the experience unique to this game, I felt incredibly disconnected from the fight as a whole. For a AAA remake title that has the legacy it does, whadda hell!? I can’t imagine the time and resources it must take to model and animate such things, as I’m a 2D artist myself, but it is incredibly disappointing to see this remake take shortcuts like so. To pair with this, what I mentioned earlier about QTEs being stripped away hold for battle the most, in my opinion. I don’t think I was ever able to enjoy or get good at using the parry/evade mechanics introduced for this game, as their prompts weren’t as clear or understandable to me compared to something like a well placed QTE. And yet another thing to tack on at the end of this, is that I felt a surprising lack of unique death animations for Leon too… Again, maybe this is nostalgic misremembering, but I would have so much fun getting Leon killed and seeing a new unique animation depending on how he died. It was almost a little consolation; yeah you suck and you died, but look, isn’t it funny seeing Leon get his face dissolved to the bone, or decapitated, or dramatically falling-to-his-knees-at-the-realisation-that-Ashely-died to death?
I guess I could summarise this with something along the lines of: all the little details in the original, that might not seem like much on their own, all worked together to give the original the polish and charm that it had, and that there feels like a distinct lack of that here. Which is a shame, because there is genuinely a lot of details that ARE here that DO ADD to the experience- it just doesn’t feel like enough for me, unfortunately. Like, I really do appreciate that it kept some of the puzzle aspects across various parts of the game and even added more, and that there’s a semi-stealth thing going on that allows different options if you can approach enemies without alerting them. Considering the og was such a cultural influence on how modern OTS shooters were made from that point on, I found it really interesting to have stealth come back to remind us of it’s survival style origins. It just… also feels like it’s missing a lot, or only has call-backs to the original as a form of obligation.
In regards to music, I honestly didn’t feel like much stood out to me. I have a note written to myself to pay attention to the music, and after 3 playthroughs, the only song I knew I wanted to include at the end is drive. I didn’t really feel connected to or excited by any of the tracks, which is a shame because I really love a majority of the various OSTs this series has. Even the more ambient and atmospheric tracks can be quite memorable to me, but here… I just didn’t feel it. I really don’t know what it is, but to guess, maybe the soundtrack just felt a bit too generic for me? I wasn’t as keen on other remixes of tracks from the original, drive really was the stand out. Idk. It’s a shame, nothing felt really out of place as far as I can recall, but I can’t recall really enjoying much about it either. It just kinda lived in the background for me, which isn’t the worst, I suppose. The sound design was pretty good though, the weapons and various soundscapes sounded generally pretty good, and I like that they’ve used a different stock sound effect for breaking vases that sounds a lot less cartoonish.
And, well… That’s about all I can say in a vaguely non-spoiler-ish way without going into detail. I have a lot to say about particular details so. Here’s your fair warning.
I feel so complicated talking about the game from this point forward, though, I’m sure if you’re reading this far, you can kinda see why I feel a bit like a pendulum. The original never felt all that scary to me, but it had an atmosphere I liked and I was perfectly happy with that. Here, it’s also not really that scary, but in both it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you get a bunch of enemies to fight all at once. However, I noticed certain scripted set pieces with forced and cheap scares that just induced an eye roll for this remake. In particular, there’s a section with a giant at the castle and it just draaaaggggggeeeedddddd on and I didn’t care. Which is sad, because I really like the castle in both games, and otherwise I really loved the revamp of the castle here. In general, there was a strong sense of dread lingering in the atmosphere, which I think is enhanced by the devs trying to balance the action-biased nature of the game with a re-introduction of survival horror elements. And while I may not agree with every individual choice made when remaking and renovating the plot and layout, I think it’s generally a net positive - even making some areas that weren’t all that fun in the og feel tolerable, if not fun now!
The main thing I want to gush/rant about, is the plot and the way the characters were handled overall. I want to start with Ashley, as I liked her fine enough but thought she got dreadful amounts of unwarranted hate in the first game. There was literally only one section in the first game where I was legitimately frustrated with her, and that was partially a user error on my part making it worse. However, the devs absolutely know that this is a sore spot in the pop-culture knowledge of the game, and have taken steps to avoid the same kinds of criticism. Firstly, I wanna point out that the actress who played Ashley, Genevieve Buechner, was very nice to hear. I think she did a great job of keeping the balance between Ashley being a naive and scared young woman out of her depth, and a capable young woman who is trying to use her skills and smarts where applicable. One thing that I know a lot of people bitched about was the og Ashley having a grating voice. I personally only found the repetitive screaming grating when it went on for too long, but I definitely understand where it’s coming from, so it was a nice surprise to see deliberate direction for Ashley to combat this. While she’s a young, college-aged woman, her voice was a little deeper than I’d expected (most likely to combat the shrill allegations), and throughout the story she develops into being a little more confident and proactive. I think I can give the perfect example of what I want to praise with a certain change in a cutscene. In the original, when they’re in the castle, Ashley suddenly runs away from Leon, seemingly scared or disgusted at the fact that she coughed up blood, and is then promptly caught in some cartoonish trap, waiting for Leon to break her free. Now? Not only is there a greater emphasis on the plaga parasite that is infecting them both, but this emphasis gives Ashley a chance to actually feel something about it. In a cutscene that serves the same purpose as the one I just outlined, Ashley is suddenly taken over by the antagonist through the plaga (mind control style), and attacks Leon. When her mind is released, she’s on the other side of a locked gate, and she runs away, afraid and embarrassed that she lost control and hurt Leon, and doesn’t want that to happen again. Hooray! Character agency displayed!! We get a much clearer situation to display this, first of all, but also a much better way of letting the events breathe and show how the characters feel through their actions. This also means that when Leon and Ashley reunite, the conversation that they share feels more special. I’m so glad that there wasn’t as much of a stop and start with Ashley being with us one moment, and whisked away the next. Everything felt logical and understandable for why she was or wasn’t with us in each particular moment, and the reduced goofiness made it that much clearer what our goals were in any given chapter.
I also like how Ashley was able to help out with a certain mini boss in the castle, and that her playable sequence was expanded upon. It hasn’t been long since she was kidnapped and infected, and she must be scared out of her mind, but I could really see the development from being stuck in a fight or flight panic, to now being someone who was trying her best to work through any problems she was stuck in. Leon has clearly rubbed off on her, and I think it’s nice to see that although jaded, he was able to impart some of his collectedness under pressure onto her - seeing how quickly she’s able to step up and take an active part in getting out of there was really fun for me.
Leon was interesting here as well, we’re given a much clearer info-dump at the beginning that tells us what he’s been up to, and shows us a little bit about Krauser before meeting him in game. It’s clear that Leon has been through a lot, and doesn’t have that bright-eyed rookie style anymore- though, it hasn’t completely disappeared. However, he’s focused on his mission, and it’s nice to see the developments he goes through when interacting with other characters. I don’t really feel I have as much to say for him, in part because it’s Leon, and everyone loves Leon- but also because there were a lot of things that I felt were cut from him and not replaced or repurposed in other areas. Most of his character is good and consistent here, it’s interesting seeing him with Ashely, meeting Ada and Luis, and going up against the antagonists. And although the Antagonists generally feel more fleshed out, there’s almost no banter anymore! SADGE!!! I get that it doesn’t really translate into the new tone they’re going for, but everything with Salazar in the castle felt weak sauce. There wasn’t really any back and forth going on, and it is sorely missed! Without that banter, and instead playing things a bit more straight with flecks of sass peppered in, I don’t feel that there was that much for Leon narratively. And although I miss it, I think overall, I’m ok with Leon not having the most narrative growth for this game. To be clear, I hate that the banter is gone, but I’m ok that otherwise he’s got a much smaller, almost static feeling character to me (at least comparatively).
Luis was definitely expanded upon, and I feel as though he had the most attention amongst the main cast. He’s a fan favourite, and with that charisma, how could you disagree? Despite the fact that I think my preference will always be for the swagger the original Luis had, I really grew to love Luis here in this remake. We get to know more about how he generally presents himself, and more about what’s going on. It’s clear that he feels plagued with guilt over his contributions to everything that’s unraveled into a shit show here, and he makes a point of helping Ashley and Leon rid themselves of the plaga and escape, despite it clearly being out of the way for him. Due to the increased amount of time Leon shares with Luis, there’s infinitely more homo-erotic tensions between the two as well – I even got to take him on a date to the shooting gallery to show off my epic skills! Adding more scenes with Luis here means that he didn’t die in the place he originally did, meaning that even for players who know the original inside and out, we still had new things to look forward to and were kept on the edge of our seats as we waited for the inevitable. I really enjoyed it, and think that the effort put into expanding Luis was great to see, as it kept me engaged the entire time and eager to read more in the lore files scattered around the place.
With all the emphasis on the plaga, I’m glad that the narrative was cleaned up and tightened in the way it was, and actually made the fact that Ashley and Leon being infected was a more tangible threat with a time limit. In the original, they barely scratched the surface of being infected, and it was so easy to forget until you are reminded in a cutscene and go ‘oh yeah…’ - the stakes here felt bigger and more cinematic, which nails the new direction right on the head. However, the actual details of the lore actually felt a bit… messy. I appreciate more focus on the plaga and Lord Saddler as the primary antagonist, but there were some lore files that were particularly dense and hard to make sense of. Perhaps that’s just a me thing, but there were some choices that baffled me and some choices that just felt a bit like pandering. I felt this the most during the castle, and I was eventually able to wrap my head around the history of the place; but there were some details and lore drops that felt more confusing than they needed to be, and not in a fun solve-the-puzzle kind of way. There were also some choices that simply frustrated me about the new direction overall, wanting it to be grounded and realistic, but still required to lean into some gamey things by fault of it still being RE4. To give an example, early on in the castle there’s a note about a particular enemy, the Garrador, detailing what a weird and fucked up kinda guy he was to increase the lore and world building. Leon and Ashley bring direct attention to it via dialogue during that section too, they REALLY want to make sure you know how cool and creepy this mini boss will be. But then, later on, there’s a room where there’s two of them. No lore notes for why there’s two more of these fucked up guys here, they just are- and this room toes the line between miniboss and just a room full of tricky guys to kill cause you’ve leveled up by now and know how to kill a Garrador. It feels stupid to emphasise a single instance of an enemy that you’re going to come across multiple times, and then do nothing with every other instance. I think I’d prefer to just be left a trail of crumbs so vague that we just have to assume the enemy is some weird fucked up experiment that the audience has to figure out. It’s so ehhh when there’s one guy with a backstory, and his twins are NPCs with nothing. That was a pattern that I noticed, where some areas were expanded upon greatly, but not in a consistent manner, which made it feel really odd to me at times. It’s a real tricky thing, and to be honest, I’m not sure if there would be a way I can suggest that’d make me happy, let alone a broader audience… It’s just that, in trying to expand and humanise certain characters and places, but not being consistent and thorough, I think it just prompts eagle-eyed players to notice holes quicker. I don’t know, it’s just weird! Some stuff has been changed in order to modernise things that didn’t age well, but still gloss over crucial things that needed more clarity anyway!
I feel this weird hyper detail with no substance was particularly prominent with Krauser. We got a name drop in the intro, good. We have some confrontations with him in the game, nice. There’s a tent, with lots of info, clearly Krauser has been brushing up on his Leon lore and even has a little Leon polaroid from when he was taken in after Raccoon City… huh? Obsessed much? In the original, Krauser was pretty much just dumped there, with dialogue and cutscenes that implied he and Leon had a history, but none of the players playing on GameCube and the multiple other ports at the time had any clue who he was… until they played the Darkside Chronicles on the Wii, years later. It was weird, but he is important to some plot developments in the story. The impression I got was that Krauser wasn’t expecting Leon to be there at all, and that seeing him has put Krauser on edge a little bit, which causes some of the more intense confrontations he has with Leon. Part of why he’s important is that he’d been hired by Wesker, but Wesker no longer trusts him, so he’s sent Ada to make sure all loose ends are tied up. Krauser and Ada never really cross paths here like they did in the original, there’s no indication that they’re in cahoots at all. We get an overly dramatic final cutscene with Leon and Krauser where he wants Leon to kill him, cause he’s the only guy who can, but not much in the way of contextualising HOW he mattered to the plot, other than a few stray lore files right before you fight him. I wasn’t really happy, and I don’t even like Krauser! At least give him something, but he felt so glossed over and flanderised into some typical trigger happy gun boy boot licker American with a dumb gravelly voice to show that he’s hardened from battle, and overused the term ‘rookie’ as a form of endearment towards Leon. Krauser, and the antagonists in general, didn’t have much in the way of tangible plot and lore in the original, but it had the charisma. In this remake, yeah they’ve expanded upon things, but forgot about the charm and whatever other immaterial vibe that was supposed to be infused with it, there’s too much dumping and not enough raw charisma. There’s no bantering back and forth with Leon, and they all feel flanderised to me. They picked a point for each of the antagonists and just zoomed in on that; the head honcho in the village is big and stomps around, the little brat running the castle is just a little brat (and not even funny cause there’s not banter), Krauser is just a typical American soldier type, and Saddler is just an evil cult leader. Adding extra lore details doesn’t really do much for me when the concept of these characters aren’t all that engaging to begin with. It’s a shame that there wasn’t a better balance here, at least for my tastes, as the original head honcho and castle brat were fun and memorable for me, and I’d forget about Saddler until the end, and they didn’t have that much lore to them. They do here, but it feels like a big fat nothing burger at times, cause I’m not sure what they really wanted to do with these antagonists at all! It may be a case of having too many, and not being able to put the same care and attention into all of them, but they’ve even cut a boss fight with a bioweapon from the main campaign! And of all the things I feel they cut and butchered, Ada irks me the most. Get ready, and grab the whole salt shaker, as I have a LOT to say here...
Ada’s physical involvement in the plot felt severely lacking, as there were a lot of things that were cut and not repurposed in other areas. She is supposed to have an interesting dynamic between Krauser as another hire from Wesker, between Luis as her contact to get a sample of the plaga, and Leon when she finds out he’s on the mission and could use him to make her job easier. The stuff between her and Krauser was cut, and the stuff between her and Luis in the originals were mainly detailed in her optional campaigns, Seperate Ways and Assignment Ada. Here, there are some moments where we see her interact with Luis, as there was more emphasis placed on making his story and arc feel more complete, but there’s still not a lot. And with Leon… they cut SO MUCH! I had this sinking feeling of ‘they’re gonna come out with her campaign as DLC and charge for it, aren’t they,’ and I was right. There’s even a name drop in the dialogue near the end that she and Leon are gonna go their ‘seperate ways.’ By cutting some things, it takes away a lot of opportunities for her and Leon to convene and discuss things, regarding their situation and regarding them. There was one scene in the original where Leon is overcome with the plaga, and when Ada tries to help him, he starts to choke her out, causing her to stab him in order to break free. This scene was such a memorable and important one for me, as it’s one of the only instances we got to see of Leon being affected by the plaga in the original. It’s also just a really good scene that just shows the way they act around each other; it was almost casual, they both clearly trust each other enough to let their guards down, and Ada lets hers down enough to show genuine concern when Leon starts to convulse, not expecting him to start choking her. She plays it off all suave when Leon apologises, but reiterates that he needs to get rid of that parasite cause she wants him to escape, but Leon is still laser focused on saving Ashley that he’ll lower himself in his priorities- there’s depth to that scene, goddamnit! And there is NO EQUIVALENT present in the remake. I have a feeling that they didn’t write this scene in out of fear around how politically correct it’d be to have a man choke out a woman, or something to that nature. Which is a shame, as I’m obviously not condoning that kind of assault- but it’s not a sexist hate crime here, it’s the antagonistic threat being demonstrated narratively. I understand the ballistics comment from Luis in the og getting cut, and that his flirtatious nature was toned down a tad to make it more palatable and less sleazy- that’s a fine adjustment to make since times have changed. But Leon choking out Ada… even with the quick context I’ve just given, you can see that it’s not a bad scene to have in the game, right? SO MANY of Ada’s scenes have been trimmed and cut entirely, and while some of these changes are due to the streamlining of the plot, but it’s such a shame that there’s not as much of her here! Especially when there was very clear attention put into Luis and Ashley, Ada feels severely lacking.
And speaking of lacking, I want to talk about Ada’s actress, Lily Gao. This is clearly a very sensitive topic, and I’ll explain the various aspects in a sec, but firstly the main thing lacking is a general respect from ‘fans’ towards Gao. I haven’t kept up with it, but the last I heard, she deactivated most of her social media due to the onslaught of hate she was receiving towards this role. I find that disgusting, frankly, and although I have criticisms towards her performance in this role, NO ONE should be harassed off the internet for simply doing their job. There are ways to voice your upset, but c'mon. Are we all becoming so juvenile and brain rotted that we think it’s ok to air grievances at someone who hasn’t asked for it, and continue to direct it at them even when they’ve expressed their disappointment and asked you to stop?
To give some personal context, I don’t normally keep up with reading announcements and leaks preceding a game about to come out, but I got a little sucked into reading about RE4R. I couldn’t help nervously looking through news about the game as it came out, as I was worried it’d be like RE3R and ruin the experience- but when I found out it was being developed by the team who made RE2R and RE8, I was happy to leave it at that, and decide whether I’ll buy it or not once it came out. However, one of the last bits of news I saw before I stopped being a hypocrite, was the news that Jolene Anderson would not be reprising her role as Ada Wong. Anderson played Ada in RE2R, also providing the motion capture for Ada in the second animated movie, Damnation, but did not voice her. She’s a talented actress; bringing a certain chemistry with Leon, and a sexy confidence that just brought Ada to life in the best possible way. She worked really well with the grounded style the remakes are going for, and it was sad to see her go. Now, a voice actor being let go is nothing new, and the amount of voice actors each character in the Resi series go through is nothing to sneeze at- that alone is not what felt off about this. Anderson found out at the same time as fans that she wouldn’t be reprising her role, mentioning online that she wasn’t given a chance to reprise her role, or a dismissal noting that they weren’t going forward with her. I understand that the industry doesn’t really have the time or established etiquette to keep up with relations like that, but damn. That feels a little harsh, especially considering that I think most people, myself included, assumed that with Nick Apostolides reprising his role as Leon, that Anderson would be back as Ada too. But, she was replaced by Gao, who had recently played Ada in the after credits scene of the most recent live action movie, Welcome to Raccoon City. I had no preconceptions to really bring, as one cameo in an after credits isn’t much to base off of, and I was ready to see what she brought to the table. I don’t want to just bash her and dismiss her talents, but she had big shoes to fill coming off Anderson’s performance (along with every other actor that’s contributed to voicing Ada), and the whole remake of RE4 thing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to fill those shoes, to my tastes. Scenes with her felt stiff, and the chemistry and depth to her performance just wasn’t all there. I don’t think it’s purely her performance, as I think the script and direction she was given didn’t really help her much either. Gao doesn’t seem to be as experienced an actor compared to Anderson, and didn’t bring that sense of Ada having control of the situation that feels important to her character. The lack of scenes like the one I described earlier certainly don’t help, as there’s not really enough chances for her to shine and show off what she can bring to the character.
I hope you have the salt shaker ready, cause here’s where I want to be very careful and nuanced about this… Ada, the character, is American Chinese. Anderson is a full American gal, and I’m pretty sure every voice actor that’s portrayed Ada previously was too- or at least, none of them are Chinese. Gao is Chinese Canadian, and I am absolutely in favour of casting POC in POC roles, especially here where Ada hasn’t even had the chance to be portrayed by a Chinese voice actress. (Theres even the famous trivia of the actress who played Ada in the Jovovitch movies being dubbed over because her voice wasn’t ‘enough’ for the filmmakers…) I really want to support this, but I feel conflicted, and bad about that conflicted feeling. I just think that if this was something that genuinely concerned CapCom, they would’ve cast a Chinese actress for RE2R, and not swap her out while they’re presumably going over scenario changes in the game and only just realising there are some aspects of the original that don’t fly in today’s landscape. It feels tokenistic in a sense, something for them to point at and say, ‘Hey, Look! We replaced the white lady with a Chinese Lady who looks like the Ada!’ Despite Ada being Chinese, there’s nothing overtly Chinese about the way she talks or behaves, she’s very American. The Red Dress she’s wearing in the original RE4 was clearly a romanticised, or perhaps fetishised, take on a style evocative of Chinese culture- and was very clearly impractical and foolish for the mission she was on. That’s about the only explicitly ‘Chinese’ thing that comes to mind for Ada, and that is more a product of designing her for sex appeal than any cultural representation. Her new outfit of a red sweater and otherwise black tactical, but stylish, gear is still a really nice outfit- and I prefer that change as it makes sense for her to be wearing it… Clearly there are changes made to be less insensitive, but the act of recasting and the resulting hate that Gao has received because of it also feels insensitive to me. Both actresses clearly have an idea of who Ada is to them, but for me- where Anderson brought a subtlety and nuance to the more subdued character direction, Gao came across as flat and uninterested. Again, I want to reiterate that despite not enjoying her performance, I think this is the result of a bunch of decisions up the chain, and not exclusively a failing on Gao herself. The scenarios she’s given, the direction she had to act under, even the casting directors are also responsible for this performance, but I haven’t seen them chased offline. I feel for Gao, as she’s been put in a role for a game on such a high expectation, that for some rose higher when they found out she’s replaced Anderson. But I want to ask, is dismissing an actress who was well received worth the risk of bringing in a newer, ethnically appropriate actor - one who isn’t quite up to the level of performance expected of her? I don’t have an answer for this, and as a white Aussie guy, I don’t think I should. Especially because, since playing the game, the Separate Ways DLC has been released, and I haven’t bought it yet- so I haven’t had a chance to view the full performance and see the other scenarios given to her. Overall, I just think she lacked the depth that made Ada Ada, and I am upset at the response others have had towards feeling the same thing.
And for a last bit of bitching (that needed that Ada context), I wanna talk about Wesker. I love him as a villain because I think he’s goofy. He’s a fun antagonist with an interesting backstory, but he’s also supposed to be quite serious and smart. Part of the appeal of having the Wesker cameo and seeing that he’s the one who hired Ada is that they are both clever and cunning - but in the same way that I don’t think Ada was written well, Wesker appearing at the end was ATROCIOUS. In general, I didn’t feel that Ada was her usual cunning, mysterious and suave self - and the after credits scene was the final nail in the coffin for me. In the after credits, Ada is has retrieved a specimen of the plaga used in the game, and is supposed to hand it over to Wesker. While she’s in her helicopter, she’s talking to Wesker on the headset, and she asks what he plans on using the plaga for. Wesker start spilling his guts, giving away exactly what he plans on doing with the specimen, and Ada just… Takes off her headset (which wasn’t given an explicit hanging-up, so I’m pretty sure Wesker is just on the other side and still able to hear everything lol) and she orders the helicopter pilot to change course. Like… DUDE!?? THAT’S SO DUMBBB WHAT ARE YOU DOINGGGG!!!?? BOTH OF YOU!??!?!?!??! For contrast, in the original, Ada had seen first hand how dangerous the plaga could be, and pinched both a dominant and passive plaga specimen. When she contacted Wesker, neither of them gave anything away, but Ada decided to switch and give Wesker the passive specimen last minute. This still allows her plausible deniability, as she fulfilled her side of the contract, but made a choice of her own while still being able to keep working as a mercenary undercover. Heck, you even see in her campaign that she was explicitly told to kill Leon, and would take every opportunity not to.That’s a deliberate part of her character growth over the series - she is very conscious of what’s going on around her, and although she does what she’s hired to do, she also grows increasingly more comfortable with acting upon her own code of ethics. To just… dumb her and Wesker down to whatever the fuck that after credits scene was is so fucking stupid and I can’t stand it! Way to assassinate both characters in one fell swoop! It would've been better to just not include the after credits scene if it was going to be this shit- it’s the exact kind of pandering that I hate. OoooOOhh look it’s Wesker, he’s sitting there and on his monitor you can see Excella and TriCell as a reFERence to a possible RE5R!!!!11!!!1! SHUT UP!!!!!! I don’t want this shitty fan service and pandering forced in, it feels the exact same as when RE8 tried to retroactively make Miranda a HUGE deal to umbrella, despite her not being interesting or solid enough to warrant having her be that impactful to the company. The whole thing with the original RE4 was that they killed off umbrella off-screen. They died cause their stocks plummeted. The devs wanted to move away from Umbrella as the antagonist, that’s why the game is like that (even though I think killing off Umbrella and being unable to stick with that and dragging it’s corpse around in some form or other, is what made the games go off the rails towards the end…)
And actually, I lied, there’s one more thing I wanna bitch about since we’re at the credits scene. HUNNIGAN WAS DONE DIRTY TOO. She doesn’t get much time to shine in general, it’s just the way the story is- but as Leon and Ashley are riding their jetski off into the sunset, you get to hear Hunnigan whining annoyingly at the end. It’s presented as like, her side of the one sided call as she’s trying to get back in contact with Leon, but, hello!? She’s a trained government handler, I doubt she’d be carrying on like a pork chop and risking anyone hearing that!? What if Leon picked up and heard that? The hell?? Was that really necessary??? Ending the game like that left a REALLY sour taste in my mouth...
ANYWAY…
I clearly feel complicated about this game, as there’s a lot I genuinely liked, and a lot that irked me. I love the way the overall story was tightened up and expanded, but I don’t like the way some of the details were handled. The gameplay was good, not perfectly for me, but I learnt more about the mechanics and had a good time playing overall. There’s nuance to be had, and I already waffled on about it… so, yeah. Hope your salt shaker is empty. The one no-nuance take I can close on, is why the hell are Leon’s alternate outfits so sexless? They’re not really cool, there’s not enough cunt in them, they just look kinda ugly and boring. Do better, this is the pretty boy of the series we’re dressing up here!
Drive
Baile de la muerte
A Familiar Place
~~
To close - Wow. That's it, that's all the mainline games so far. The only remaining games I have left on my shelf are the two wii shooters, which I will attempt one day... I'd like to dig around and try some of the more weird and niche spin-offs in the coming years, and properly try out the original PS1 trilogy. I'm also interested in talking more about peripheral media for resident evil, like the live action and animated movies, and the novel series as well. Who knows what I'll get up to, but you'll certainly hear from me again. I love this series, despite any frustrations I have with it, and always look forward to writing about them like this.
#resi rambles#rads reviews#resident evil#resident evil revelations#resident evil revelations 2#resident evil 4 remake
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introduction!
hi! I figured I should uh actually make an intro post cos I keep seeing other people's!
Basics: my name's May, im 18 and my pronouns are she/they! I'm British and have just started my first year of uni but that's kinda BORING !! I am currently seeking an autism diagnosis and have mental health issues so might not always be active but I can try. I wanna try make more mood boards and things now I have the new Pinterest Shuffles app because a lot of the stuff I see is very American and it's like ok but cbeebies and CBBC need to be on this moodboard lol
DMs open! just not to weirdos or creeps! anything s*xual or triggering (pro ED/SH) racist or homophobic is a) not okay and b) gonna get you blocked.
PLEASE MESSAGE ME ABOUT MY INTERESTS I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THEM!!! don't be shy I'm awkward at first but I love yapping
Big interests:
sherlock BBC (he is 100% a regressor), good omens (both of them regress fr), marvel specifically team family!!
I do fencing >:)
Little interests:
old cbeebies shows!! (specifically chuggington!! also swashbucklers, octonauts, abney and teal, charlie and lola, postman pat and NINA AND THE NEURONS!!) if you like any of these PLEASE message me I love talking about them!
similarly old online games! friv.com games but specifically the old version of Friv with all the flash games on (available online and no download needed as it uses ruffle! which is super cool flash emulator!) my favourite games are Shopping Street, Primary and the Papas franchise :)
horsies! I never got the chance to be a horsegirl when I was little so I try and live it out now :)
Wii sports resort my beloved
bluey!!
my stuffirs. I really like them and me and my siblings made up a whole world about them when we were younger and they all have their own lore!
httyd is a love big AND small, toothless is just toooo cute
I really like cats
imaginary games with set systems... yeah I probably am autistic eh
swings :3 climbing frames :3
abandoned swimming pools, specifically the one in the town I grew up in. we ignore this one
Characters I head cannon as regressors!
tony stark
loki
Crowley (GO) + Aziraphale (both flips imo)
sherlock + john (Mycroft + Greg are their CGs!)
uuuuh I think that's all!! *poofs into dusk*
#sfw age regression#marvel agere#age re safe space#sfw littlespace#sfw age regressor#sfw agere community#bluey agere
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:DD!!! yes!! a wither!! (i saw a video once of some guy spawning a wither in the nether and letting these piglins have at em, cuz theyre naturally aggroed on wither skeletons as enemies and i thought it was super cool- i think one suevived nearly the whole fight? and it just,, gave me ideas!)
the immortality thing is kinda like a player status thingy! so yeah! (in part cuz im super attached to some of them, namely dereck, rylan, and grimm; and so i while i was super cool with them getting hurt and outcasted and going thru a lot of angst essentially, i was super super uncomfortable with them experiencind death in any permanent capacity, so here we are 😔) so respawning is a thing! and my thought was since players (people playing the game) are able to be any kinda skin they desire, i figured itd make sense like this "player" status was bestowed upon them like a gods blessing! if that makes any sense,,
and yea so with dereck, with his withered status, it cant really go away cuz he was withered BEFORE the wither died and he got blessed, aha 🤭 🤷 (lol i just thought that what if he treats his condition with milk like in game, and so he keeps trades with zombie piglins and other players who go to the overworld so he can drink it since its not available in the nether omg *enter he needs some milk vine* and and lol if he does nothing to take care of it hes just gonna fall into a death loop cuz hes immortal 👀)
omg flint is so cute i wanna draw em together 😭 who knows if i have time tho. they WOULD be friends omg taking care of the littol ones together 🥺🥺
thank you!! i love the wither star idea! just a littol trophy for him ^-^
dereck loves u too
How tall would you say your ocs are? Dereck here but rylan and grimm for future reference? No reason (I lie, it’s for drawing reasons). I would love to draw them together also!! I love piglins :) if you couldn’t tell fhdbsjsk
Poor guy with his chronic illness & pain 😔 but hey he’s a good channel for staying on good terms with the local overworld villages and whatnot bc of trade routes, it works out! RIP dude, don’t fall into a death loop… maybe overworld like… cow’s milk has special properties that help soothe ailments that are caused by negative statuf effects? I assume they could probably get milk from hoglins or like. Idk. Ghasts or something fbdbsjjs or maybe if nether fungus variants of mooshrooms existed? Who knows!
I’d like to see that tbh— I’m surprised a bastion could hold their own against a wither in game 😳 that’d be interesting to see the outcome of for sure! Makes sense why an oc would come of it, haha.
I have a couple more piglins in the works, but I’ll have to refine designs, tbh. I’d love to have a solid brute, but most of the ones I come up with end up being retired brutes or dropouts/wannabes, lol. Maybe a good set of piglets to draw consistently or something, too. Idk I have a bastion in my head and I just need inhabitants for it 🤔
Trying to find a good in between for in-game mechanics versus irl influences is so tough !! I do my best but sometimes I realism too hard. It’s kinda fun to mess with though :D
#glowstone23b asks#zaltynn#minecraft worldbuilding#good stuff#I’ll have to draw something when I have a good chance to sit down and do so#leading all of my followers’ piglins together by the hand like they do with kindergartners to make sure we don’t get lost#but we’re just sightseeing :)
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Hi Nell0! I hope uni is going well for you and I like your recent posts! Hmm two questions! Do you think Elesa naturally blonde or naturally black haired because I kinda wanna say blonde but there’s not enough evidence for that and what region should Legends 2 be set in? I want Unova next even though more Legends games are not guaranteed (painful) lol. Thanks! ❤️🔥
Sorry for taking so long to answer! Thank you for your well wishes for uni, but oof, it sure is going, it's been keeping me busy.
Personally, I think Elesa's naturally blonde. Unova is basically poke-USA, so it would make sense. It also fits with her theme and the electric type really well. Both work, tho, but natural black or just dark hair color in general is considerably harder to de-color to dye properly (talking from personal experience). I mean, she could be blonde, black haired or another third option we haven't thought of yet. Hair colors in pokemon are wild sometimes, Elesa's natural hair color could be pink or blue for all we know.
About an hypothetical Legends 2, I would love a legends game in Unova, or just another legends game in general. I had lots of fun with PLA and would love to play pokemon with those mechanics again in another region. The Unova region has a lot of potential for it, with a lot of lore and culture that's implied in the main bw games! Team Plasma's uniform, the whole Harmonia Gropius family shebang could also be exploited in there, the conflict between Truth and Ideals, the heroes, the twin princes, certain pokemon dex entries, a resolution for Ingo and Emmet's situation too (since Ingo is chilling in Hisui)...
Some people prefer Johto because of Celebi, though, and I guess it makes sense. It could also work if they use that focus instead of Arceus again for time travel.
But I would love for it to be Unova. We hear of Irida wanting to travel to see the world in Legends Arceus, but it would be really cool if the rest of the Pearl Clan followed her example and scattered through the world in a pilgrimage to find their own Space in the world out there. Could be a neat detail to see an older Lian in past Unova since he's Clay's ancestor, for one.
#asks#talk tag#pla#pokemon legends arceus#legends arceus#submas#subway bosses#gym leader elesa#elesa#subway boss ingo#warden ingo#subway boss emmet#ingo and emmet#pla irida#clan leader irida#warden lian
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asmo x reader x priest AU rough outline
I had a nightmare I was being chased by a monster in a church and ended up coming up with this au because of the priest i saw in it! So I just wrote an outline cause I wanted to get it down I'm calling reader mc here (i use these two interchangeably in relation to obey me)
mentioning religion, i also mention sex like once or twice
------
i wanna say it's more of a modern setting cause it's easier to write but that lowkey doesn't make any sense so we are gonna just glaze over setting the time period (so its whatever makes sense in ur head)
asmo is asmo (so kinda unhinged at times especially in this AU)
mc i feel is one of those people who have had a lot of supernatural experiences their whole life
since they were young they would see and sense things other people usually wouldn't and i feel that's part of the reason asmo was attracted to them in the first place
one time mc offhandedly said that asmo isn't the first demon they've talked too but he is one of the nicer ones
this ability is an aspect of themselves they've accepted and even embraced at this point
but because of this, some people might be put off by them since they give off a "unique" vibe
i wanna describe the priest a little: -- he's an oc (i guess lol) cause he appeared in my nightmare for a moment -- he's probably in his 40s and could be considered a dilf to some people -- pale with dark hair and clothes (you know stereotypical broody, reclusive character) -- takes his position very seriously but lacks that warmth and approachability i feel a priest should have -- tldr: priest you would see in a horror game taking place in a church/cathedral
the story starts off with mc needing somewhere to reside for a few weeks until they can find a permanent place to stay -- they probably got kicked out of their home for various reasons related to their "gift"
i don't think the priest himself had the actual idea to bring in mc
instead it was one of the other cathedral hands who suggested it to help them out and whoever is in charge agreed to it (so i'm guessing the bishop??)
the thing about mc though is that they have a special friend no one else can see who likes to pop up time to time to spend time with them
(sometimes this friend can be sensed by people who are more sensitive to the environment which can freak them out)
this friend is Asmodeus, a demon who decided to keep coming back after meeting mc and ended up befriending them over time
they've known each other for 2-3 years at this point and would consider each other good friends
sometimes they toe the line of more than friends though -- they're interested in each other and there was no denying it since asmo could literally feel the moment when mc began feeling attracted to him (and of course he's attracted to them too, that aspect was there from the start for him)
however mc is worried to get intimately involved with asmo cause they think they have actual feelings for him and don't want become more emotionally attached to someone who doesn't like them just as much as they do (they are assuming this)
so sometimes they're kinda flirty but don't do anything past that
when asmo pops up to visit mc he's a bit shocked that they're just hanging out in a cathedral
i feel this demon has a bad rep with priests in general
its our boy asmo, i know he has been up to some nonsense in the past (and recently too)
he's probably been exorcised out of several facilities over the years for stuff that could have easily been avoided
and according to asmo, MAYBE he was trying to corrupt some religious figure's son or something but they didn't need to be so harsh~ -- we aren't gonna get too detailed we just know he has had bad experiences with religious folk
and even if he didn't have bad experiences, demons are usually code red level threats to humans involved in religion
anyways mc tells asmo they literally have nowhere else to go and they get a free room and food staying here as long as they help with chores, so he needs to just hold on tight until they find somewhere else to go
mc and the priest surprisingly kind of get along
I think mc themselves being somewhat (unwillingly) isolated from others and being used to putting people off made them kind of gravitate towards the priest
They aren't put off by his demeanor at all and treats him like any other person
asmo is whatever about it and is actively trying to stay away from the priest UNTIL he releases that the priest is starting to actively gain an interest in MC
And not in the ahah i have a small crush way
Like this is a I WANT you physically, mentally and emotionally type deal
I feel like the priest is so lame too trying to convert the mc behind the guise of him being a priest and that's what he does--save people's souls from possible damnation. when it's actually for very personal feelings
And mc is like nah its not really my thing (their current lifestyle would literally clash with this)
now asmo is a little worried
but he shouldn't be because hes asmo right?
he's beautiful and gets pretty much anyone he wants. mc is already interested in him too!
but part of him fears mc might fall for someone else one day
especially since mc always cuts things off before things get too spicy
also him being a demon and mc a human makes things kinda complicated for multiple reasons that i wont go into -- just know mc preferring a human partner is one of the things he worries about
So now he's like….i'm sabotaging and makes sure to actively monopolize mc's time so they won't seek out the priests company
no way is he losing his precious lamb to a PRIEST of all people
the priest has started expecting mc to show up like they always do to talk to him but they haven't in awhile so he goes looking for them
when he goes to their room mc is talking normally to asmo and the priest can hear them through the door
he knocks and mc is like oh shit and motions for asmo to get gone for a moment but asmo's being a brat and doesn't actually leave
so when MC opens the door, the priest is immediately like something is wrong
there's definitely something not of god in here
and mc is like huh what are you talking about but the priest is insistent and comes in to investigate
but there's not really anything obviously amiss since he can't see asmo and he fortunately leaves after
but after that he's paying more attention and starting notice weird things are happening around mc
sometimes for a split moment he'll see a shadow near them and sometimes even in mirrors (yes asmo is probably just moving casually about the building even though mc told him to be careful)
i'm thinking later on, he's passing by mc's room and thinks they're in there cause he hears humming and sees the shadow of feet passing by the door
but when he knocks and enters no one is there
and i feel that's when he does some shit to like purge evil spirits out of mc's room, cause he there's definitely something wrong and he's worried something has latched onto mc
so when asmo is like Okay time to go visit mc~! Nothing happens
he can't teleport like he usually does to them
and he's bitching and whining about it later after mc undoes whatever the hell the priest did
now i'm jumping to the last few days of mc staying in the cathedral
at some point, asmo and mc have a heart to heart and end up doing the devil's tango (out of all the places they can have sex it happens here SO cool of them lol. the priest may or may have not heard something going down. why is he always near mc's room hmmm 🤔)
the story is coming to a climax once mc is like yay i have found a new place to live and will be leaving soon and the priest is a bit surprised when he hears the news
he's gotten used to mc being in this place with him and he doesn't want them to leave (what will he do oooo~ i think he would suggests to the mc for them to stay and like join the church or something but mc is just like...no thanks)
asmo on the other hand is like I AM READY TO HIT THE BRICKS 🏃♂
he literally doesn't even have to be here, like go home dude but nah he wants to be with mc A LOT
he doesn't like the vibes of the place and honestly the priest is starting to annoy him with how he's always lurking around mc
i think this is around the time asmo and the priest have a proper confrontation
i don't exactly know what happened to make it get to this point but for some reason asmo shows himself to the priest
i'm not sure who even initiates it but asmo is just taunting the shit outta him for wanting mc in a worse way than asmo himself
in my head, the priest doesn't exactly see mc as a person with their own agency
they're more of someone he can hopefully mold into a more "god honoring person" (something like that)
someone he could be with long term without feeling like he's going against his own values
So it's ironic in a way having a demon being the better option of the two
and i bet asmo has like so much unresolved anger from past interactions he's had with religion, and then all of his feelings for mc and being in this place too often
just all these emotions mixed together just has him REALLY reckless
and he's projecting everything on to mr priest (regardless if all of it is his fault or not): "God you're so annoying! I wanna splatter your innards across the walls…" (Can demons use the lords name in vain idk lol)
So yea idk how this would end but I think at least one person should die fr AND i've decided i'm gonna talk about asmo dying cause of the angst:
He's already gone by the time they arrive. They quietly call out Asmo’s name, hoping he's just passed out or maybe even messing around. But the way he was laid upon the dirty floor wasn't right at all.
They kneel on the bloody ground. "S-Stop joking around Asmo." They gently shake the demon's rapidly cooling body. Realizing they will receive no response. They wouldn't hear his voice ever again.
A step sounds nearby and they sharply look up into an apathetic pale face. "Why?"
"Demons don't deserve mercy. It doesn't deserve your sorrow or tears."
"But he was my…" They trail off knowing it wouldn't be smart to finish.
"Even though you were…intimate with a demon. God is benevolent with his children." The priest reaches a hand out to them. "Repent and you shall be forgiven."
----
Mc would run away in this ending but i think its so sad they lost someone very important because they got too close to someone they thought was safe…
There can be other endings too tho! My favorite being mc and asmo leaving the church and being all happily ever after (well as happy as u can be after running off with a demon who attacked a priest in a cathedral and now you can never return to this town cause it's suspicious that you disappeared the day the priest was found dead/half-dead in the building)
Okay that's all! Thanks if you read this far. Hopefully some people liked it Heres a shoddy edit of asmo blocking someone's reflection in the mirror:
#asmodeus x reader#obey me asmodeus#i think i got pretty much got the main points down#i need to go to bed oh lordy#this was just me having nasty thoughts but the plot got extensive :^)#sorry for any heavy typos#i just need to get this out there before i lose steam#and it never sees the light of day#this is more og game asmo#like he dont be listening fr#he be in his own world in the new game too but like not to the same extent...#obey me#obey me nightbringer#obey me nb
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Alrighty make my brain work to remember who’s in the DC universe again lol. (I may get peeps names wrong)
Batman au
I love the idea of Tommy just being really clumsy but trying to help lol. Gives him love: by making him a crime fighter lol
Now we love good ol Gotham city. Who ideally would fit commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara? I’d love to think we’d get someone to fit batgirl here at some point lol.
And honestly I love the idea of Dream as like the Ridler but better. He’s really crafty and just word games! But like that could also be Quackity because again: mind games lol but he’s the joker. Idk these 2 villains could really be either character I think
Also is Techno like the standard Bruce Wayne in this with the tragic backstory and is a billion still? I wanna know his origins lol
And and and is Techno definitely batman or are you sticking with Technos boar theme lore wise? I’m curious :3
Okie thanks for answering 🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭🍭❤️
AGHH thank you sm becky!! brainrot for this au is real and these are amazing :] (and dw it's been a while since i've been into batman. at least it's the easier dc universe and not whatever marvel has going on)
YES love him. i feel that kinda sums up part of his character cause techno just always says "why are you like this" when tommy is running around techno's house stealing stuff and breaking things LMAO
also wilbur himself has said tommy breaks everything he touches. so mini-giant tommy for the WIN
YES we do love a good ol crime infested gotham city >:)
hmm well i might make some changes with the significance of barbara in this au just to fit techno's character, especially with batman's attraction to her. also i want to play around with the whole c!techno being used as a weapon trait,,, i could technically have gordon be schlatt and barbara be tubbo, which would then solidify dream as superman,,,,
god damn it's hard mushing two fandoms together cause usually i just make a new setting for my aus but i have to keep traits from two characters :')
i could see tubbo as batgirl, kind of? just techno taking tubbo under his wing for a bit, like he did with tommy. this could also offer some clingyduo bonding. and some angst if i follow lore iykyk :3
and YEAH the riddler & the penguin are the two people i'd like to have figured out,,, i'm thinking maybe having jack be one of them, but i'm not entirely sure what c!jack is to c!techno and vice versa, but otherwise i wouldn't be opposed to it. jack i can see being the riddler,,,,, but YEAH i do like dream being them, but i think i'm going for superman being dream,,,
i'll need to pirate the batman movies at some point to refresh my memory because i can't keep relying on fandom wiki to help me 😭
techno does have the same backstory as batman pretty much. parents died in a similar fashion. the only different thing is how techno met phil,,,,
and as for his current self i'm not really sure how he got rich. bruce had like his whole company or smth i kinda forget,, anyway i'd say techno just worked really hard doing a lot of different stuff as a kid. maybe phil created minecraft and techno helped a LOT along the way and got a lot of the money from it 😭 both of those can be canon for now fjsdfj
after techno's parents died and he met phil n all, he went into a foster home but ran away from it pretty quickly just because he wanted to do things on his own. and besides, he had a tiny father-figure to help him, he'd be fine. like i said, he did a lot of neighborly chores and worked around the city with part-times to just get some stability,,\
i thought about it, but i'd say he's definitely batman for this au. don't worry i have another superhero au coming soon where he's more technoblade :D
thank you sm for the questions !! fun worldbuilding >:)
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okay bestie I have an actual question for you about writing, because I always just have so many ideas but don't know where to start/never complete them. so like how do you start do you plot everything out and then start writing or are you writing and figure it out during? and like how do you keep motivated writing every chapter? omg and what do you do when something you had in mind doesn't work out with the plot? help pls
hi bestie!! i talk a lot so imma put a break for others to scroll past lol
so, ideas. inspiration. motivation. plot. it comes and goes. movies, music, random quotes, plot ideas/requests come from like anywhere for me. what i tend to do is name the project, write a basic summary and what character it’s for, and see what happens. i don’t force myself to finish any one project (hence the abandoned SOUR miniseries and recently revisited sin miedo). that’s in part why WCS and MAG have been such long running sagas here, bc i don’t force myself to write anymore.
when i did, i produced content that i didn’t love. i was posting stories that i wasn’t confident in and that i read and am embarrassed to have put that out.
typically, it starts with a bit of dialogue that comes to me in the shower or when i’m daydreaming at work. from there, i kinda work backwards. how’d they get to that conversation? what are the implications? what’s the setting? what do they know? all that world building fills itself in and sometimes i pick stuff for the fun of it.
when something doesn’t work, i change something. for example, mag s1 has some stuff that doesn’t match the canon timeline bc one, i didn’t plan on extending the series so far so i was nitpicking what i wanted and two i didn’t have the episodes in front of me bc i wasn’t planning a whole canon journey. i took out some relationships (matt x claire for example) bc it didn’t serve my plot.
i’ve also rewritten plots bc i just didn’t like them. i have a project where the reader is matt’s gf and is meeting foggy/karen but matt has the idea for a game where they just flirt with each other till his friends figure it out. initially i had it to where foggy starts flirting with her and introduces her and she plays along till matt gets too jealous but i didn’t like the way it was turning out. so i scrapped it and started over.
a big part of writing, in my opinion, is drafts and edits. ultimately, whatever your writing, it’s your universe. it’s your project. if something isn’t working, you are well within your rights to change it. it’s not canon until you post it so rewrite it as many times as you have to. no one said you have to immediately post what you write. it’s a little different with mag since i’ve established her entire dd canon and hinted her punisher canon so i have to fill the gaps of what ive already made so i have to keep referencing what ive posted to make sure she’s consistent but that’s it own thing.
lastly, let’s talk motivation. girly pop, it’s gonna come and go. i take so many breaks in posting or writing just bc im at a part that i don’t wanna write but i have to for plot purposes. sometimes i hate the exposition of a piece but i just wanna do the actual important scenes. so i lag and avoid it until im like ‘yknow what, let’s just do it’ and this is where the edits and drafts come in. usually, it’s just a ‘let’s throw some words on the page and come back to it’ situation. sometimes i rewrite all of it, sometimes i don’t, other times it’s just a few edits here or there.
the base of writing as i understand it is trusting yourself and your ideas. some stuff is gonna take off, like woman, others will fall flat like dirty thoughts (i think that’s what i called it, a marc spector piece). it’s also your blog so as long as it feels genuine to you and your abilities, go for it :)
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Movie date night with Vash! Which genre are you gonna go for? What snacks do you two have set up? Who snuggles into who more? Do you share a blanket? Give me all the details!! 💜💜💜
Under the cut cuz it long 😵💫 (when is it not long honestly)
Oooooh goodness UHM!! I’m not really a movie person, so Vash gets to pick almost always. I’m just not picky with movies as long as it’s not one of those comedies that’s very clearly “man funny” you know what I mean?
Action is fine (altho I specifically avoid Marvel movies like the plague because they are one). Romance. Tragedy. Documentaries. Science things. Movie adaptations of plays. Or that tie into shows/games. Animation. Fantasy. Smart comedies….. very rarely horror/psycho-thrillers cuz I tend not to like them as much, but sometimes. Vash does though and he’s considerate of certain content aspects that I just… don’t vibe with.
My faves are usually just whatever has a strong, high concept or are very emotionally compelling. Like if I cry then I probably am gonna like the movie and he’s very aware of that so there’s always a box of tissues somewhere in the middle of our snacks or beside us just in case.
Most times when we have movie nights though, it’s a marathon night and we make it a whole thing. Basically make a mini cuddle fort of pillows, blankets, and all things cozy in front of the couch. Just a giant nest so we can marathon in peak comfort cuz we go long. Like we’ve done the Pokémon movies. Lord of the Rings. Spiderverse. Old Pixar movies. We’ll binge shows together too if there’s something we’re both interested in. It’s awesome too cuz it allows for so much position freedom and we can move to the couch when we get tired of the floor (when I start getting sleepy but don’t wanna go to bed).
For snacks, we also kinda go crazy… We have a lil stock of specifically movie snacks like Bottle Caps, Runts, Nerd Clusters, gummy sharks, Skittles… Vash always insists on making a bag of popcorn every time that he either keeps in his lap or mine depending on if I’m already sitting on his lap or not. I need a can of pringles and we get a couple bags of the Lindtt truffles in diff flavors for chocolate cuz Vash lowkey loves chocolate. Some Trolli worms. Like we do it up on snacks and then there’s just my box of tissues and a bag for wrappers and stuff off to the side.
We usually put everything away by the third-ish hour though, maybe keeping one or two things out to pick at while we keep going but that’s usually when real cuddle time starts. Settling in for real and just being cozy together. We’ve def gotten, ahem… sidestracked >.> a time or two. If we go into movie night with no real plan for what we’re watching, maybe only a couple movies in mind, and we just end up scrolling to put on whatever by the middle, it’s easy to get distracted ok? Especially when he sits up on the couch and starts rubbing my shoulders. Gg ez clap, I’m officially uninterested in whatever half-baked plot I was trying to get into.
In my defense, Vash is always kind of looking for ways or excuses to give me attention. He genuinely does like movie nights for the quiet together time, but if neither of us are seriously invested after a while, it’s a good opportunity for some… less quiet together time lol as long as I’m not already tapped out, draped up over him like a blanket and very clearly sleepy. He’s stopped asking if I wanted to go to bed cuz I always say no. Tell him it’s comfy enough in his lap, wrapped up in his arms and the blanket he pulled around us both to make sure I don’t get cold. He just waits until the movie ends and moves us to the couch. Sometimes I’m already asleep. Sometimes I’m just barely awake. He always kisses me goodnight though. And I always wake up with him clinging to me <33
#this took way too long for my brain to put together#geez 😭#but we’re so cute holy-#thanks for your asks as always meags 🥺#love and appreciate you endlessly 🫂#color: red 🎨#m34gs ❤️#{freelance}#vluesh 💟☮️
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Pearlina (Pearl x Marina) Comic... made with just sticky notes
No idea how to use Tumblr, but I'm gonna post something regardless, so I want to talk about a comic i made entirely in school over a few days, literally just while i was bored in class.
They're all drawn in tiny little sticky notes, and there's only one chapter so far, and I want to make it a whole series. i will work on making a digital art version, cuz you know, i'll actually have time to make it look good there, because this comic... is very low quality. But it makes sense, it's literally drawn on sticky notes.
So, this comic is set in Splatoon 3. Since Pearl and Marina aren't seen in-game (yet), I imagined them being on vacation, so this comic is set as if Pearl and Marina are on vacation.
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not gonna lie, i'll probably remove this part in the digital version. Why would Callie call them asking for help when she's literally part of the Squidbeak Splatoon? lol
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This might be removed too, i'm not sure. I thought it would be funny to add an observer spying on the two, trying to find info about them and post it online.
They say "I KNEW IT, THEY ARE MARRIED!!", but i don't think that's really what I want to be canon for this. It's just a theory that this character immediately jumped to. I think Pearl and Marina are dating, but not married. Though, I do think that they both dream about marrying each-other every day.
Who knows, maybe I'll draw them getting married in the future...
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Is it too early to be cooking up some drama? I mean I suppose the first chapter just being setting up the scene is fine, but also... kinda wanna get people hooked on the story from the start.. gotta keep them entertained quickly or they wont stay for long.. maybe?
Anyway, I headcanon that Marina keeps a photo album that's absolutely jam packed with photos of her and Pearl, from their first few moments all the way up to today. The photo album has a ton of those sticky tabs on pretty much every photo, each coloured tab having it's own meaning.
She looks at the photos when she's feeling down, and it helps her feel better. Of course, she couldn't help bringing it with her on her vacation — or, well.. she meant to, but as it appears here, it's gone missing...
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I wrote this part based on a real event, one that actually took place while I was drawing this comic, actually.
As I said, I drew all of this in school, so I brought a little copybook where i had all the panels stuck together to create the comic.
One day, I took it out of my bag to take some photos of the panels, because I wanted to show them to my friend.
The next day, I put it in my bag, and went to school. Later, I realised that, the copybook.. wasn't in my bag at all. I couldn't find it.
I couldn't stop thinking about it. Did I drop it on the road, to be ran over by cars? Did someone find it, read through all the drawings, and laugh at how stupid it was?
I went home after school, and looked for my copybook. Nowhere. I tried to remember the events of that morning, when I put my copybook in my bag. I remembered picking it up from my desk, walking down the stairs to put it in my bag, then.. I don't remember what I did at my bag. My mind went blank, there was a gap in the middle.
I went about a week or two without the copybook, and I gave up at that point. However, I was called to the office one day, and they asked me if the copybook that they had in their office was mine. No idea how they somehow found it, someone else probably found it and gave it to the office. Which means.. yeah, I was probably right about someone looking through it and laughing, but nobody approached me about it, so it's probably someone that doesn't know me, and I don't know them, so to be honest, I'm fine with that.
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Pearl giving out a heartwarming speech, very rare... just kidding, she cares about Marina, of course she'll try to keep her calm during this!
I wrote these panels as just Pearl talking to Marina, but I'm hoping this speech speaks to other people as-well, about how people never try to see the bright side, and always consider the absolute worst has happened.
It's normal for humans to over-exaggerate things. How many times have you had an upcoming exam, and been really stressed about it, but then when you get the exam paper, you realise, "Oh.. this is.. way easier than I imagined it being."?
The second last panel talks about being sentimental, about how we treat things, physical or digital, as if they will be forever gone if lost. It's a hard thing to lose something you've held onto for years. I had my 5-year-old Discord account banned and deleted, and just like that, every single conversation i held so close to my heart was lost.
It's not easy to let go of something like that. It may sound stupid, but yes, I did cry over pieces of text being lost. Even if I never looked through old messages, it's really nice to just know the fact that they're there, and I can look back through my past.
But we need to remember that, even if the visual form of something we love is gone, we will always have the memory within us. I will never forget meeting some of my closest friends, and all of the great times I had. Never.
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That's the end of the first chapter. If I do end up creating the digital version, I'll post it here. Until then, stay tuned for the next chapter..!
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Wolfe/Mun info:
Mun: they/them - Bonez - 26 - very new to the whole ask blog thing lol
Not much of an artist, so all responses will be typed.
Wolfe will answer NSFW asks, but kinda wanna keep rp things SFW (besides things like gore and cursing), just until I get comfortable :)
Wolfe: TW for talks of experimentation
Alias: Wolfe - The Beast - Subject 2356
Age: 27
Birthday: January 1st (Capricorn)
Gender/Sexuality: Cis man, he/him - Demisexual
Height: 5’10”
Realms: Mount Ormond for trials - RPD’s art room is where he’s made his home during his downtime
Backstory: Hardly a kid at the time of the downfall of Raccoon City, Wolfe was taken in by what remained of Umbrella to be raised. As is the nature of the pharmaceutical giant, Wolfe was also experimented on: poked, prodded, and jabbed at with syringes full of god knows what. There was something that stuck with him though, the lobo virus. When triggered, it grants the infected super strength, a mutated form with canine features, and an insatiable bloodlust.
Before the government got their hands on him, he was lured away to a strange fog, cursed to be a relentless killer.
During trials, the Entity puts him on Mount Ormond. The cold temperatures triggering the lobos virus that dwells within. Outside of trials, Wolfe likes to hang out at the RPD.
Wolfe is the quiet observer outside of trials, but once he’s inside, The Beast is absolutely ruthless.
He has an odd internal conflict when it comes to trying to be friendly to the people he’s meant to kill. So, he tries to play nice (being generous with that), but not form close relationships with them. He can also be quite the cocky type, depends on how he’s feeling.
Don’t be shy, he doesn’t bite too hard.
Likes: Sweets (especially blue raspberry flavored), tattoos, video games, horror films, the colors of blue and green, cigarettes, classic literature, etc.
Dislikes: Doctors, hospital settings, piercings, the colors white or red, prudes, latex gloves, etc.
Playlist
Bloodlust Beginnings - A little bit of backstory
Torment - Continuation to Bloodlust Beginnings
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