#did you know the vault has all named npc dialogue

[lesvegas]

Am I the only one who just uses the archived fallout wiki aka the vault

[rottenappleheart]

I finished “Heaven’s Vault,” that archaeology/alien translation game that everyone was so excited about before it came out, and then I never heard of again. I think I know why. 

Short version: it seems as though it was made by people who were very good at the worldbuilding/linguistics parts, and not very good at making a video game.

Long version:  I did enjoy the game, eventually.  Beat it in just under 20 hours, feeling fairly good that I hadn’t missed anything major and had done everything I could find to do before the end. I also see now that there’s a New Game+ which gives the opportunity to spin things out again in a different manner, with more information, and this really neat article (spoilers ahoy) talks about how the mere concept of a NG+ is part of the worldbuilding (the Loop religion centers around the idea that everything that has happened will happen again.) 

The learning curve was very steep at the beginning, because of the aforementioned gameplay problems getting in the way of the “meat” of the game. Some low points:

The controls are extremely janky and remained frustrating throughout. I had to turn the mouse sensitivity to its very lowest setting to avoid spinning like a top, and the restricted camera angles often send you walking off in a direction you never meant, leaping back and forth through doorways when you just wanted to enter (or exit) a room, etc. 

The mandatory and constant “sailing” minigame, while beautiful, is aggravating and not as fun as I assume the developers thought it would be, given how much you have to do it. Whereas Wind Waker’s equally mandatory and equally constant sailing is a feature of the game, here it was mostly a lengthy interruption between the snippets of actual content. Except that bits of the story are also spun out in conversations between Aliya and the robot Six on these sailing interludes, so you’re encouraged not to skip them, the few times you are even given that option.

The graphics are... odd and awkward, unfortunately. The developers tried a very neat thing with (beautiful and detailed) 3D rendered environments, populated by (also beautiful, but jarringly animated) 2D hand-drawn characters. Who don’t have feet, but kind of fade into invisibility just below the knees, so as to avoid rendering walking animations, I guess. It’s very strange. There’s also no “collision sensor,” so your 2D player character is constantly clipping through other 2D NPCs, which sometimes interrupt everything you’re doing for a 15 second animated scene where they greet you, then walk away. There’s no way to avoid this. And when that happens, it overrides and cancels any ambient but plot-relevant discussion you were having with Six, which was deeply frustrating.

Speaking of which - there are a lot of strange, time-consuming transitions. Walking out of one section of the Elboreth marketplace into another takes another 10 second scene triggered by you entering a doorway, just to show you walking through a side alley. Every single time. When you show artifacts to a colleague, he will walk all the way to the other side of his office and walk all the way back before offering the same dialogue as every time before. Realistic, to grant him time to check his data? Yes. Extremely frustrating as an element of gameplay? Also yes.

Also, my game glitched multiple times, everything slowing to an infinite limbo as a triggering event failed to trigger, requiring a full reset. Any interaction with Oroi, for whatever reason, had a 33% chance of glitching. 

All of this adds up to a game that creaks and clunks, and is deeply frustrating to play. These are all things which seem fueled by bad design/poor planning, and it takes away from the GOOD parts of the game. Namely:

It’s really beautiful (once you get over the 2D/3D intersection.) The music is lovely, and all the designs are top notch. I really enjoyed spending time in these various worlds and discovering their history. (Actually WALKING through the worlds, less enjoyable, but...)

The development of the story and the character interactions is mostly organic and nuanced. Like a Bioware game (I’m sorry to reference them but it’s the easiest comparison), your responses to different plot events and side characters, and the order in which you discover things (or even what conclusions you draw! there isn’t necessarily a single right answer!) shapes the narrative. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes obvious when the NPCs have run out of interactions for you... such as when you take a twenty-minute sail to revisit your home planet, suffer through endless clipping issues and mandatory transitions, only for your contacts there to have zero dialogue options. (Whoops, this was supposed to be the “good” section.) 

The translations, which are the heart of the game, become really fun after the first few. Initially, you have ZERO information when you are given your first line of text to interpret, and have to guess blindly. In a little bit, you are given more information to determine whether that first guess was right or wrong. It’s a little frustrating, but I think what the developers were going for is that Aliya is already roughly familiar with Ancient script, and whatever initial guess she makes is about 50/50 correct. Each new line of text you uncover builds on the glyphs you already know. It became very fun to make more educated guesses - ah, I recognize the symbol we identified as “Gods,” so maybe combined with this other symbol, it might be “Prayer” or “Temple” - something related. Or when you start breaking down the “me/you/we/my/your/our” glyphs, it all makes SENSE. That was the fun part I eventually couldn’t get enough of - parsing out what Ancient meant, and piecing together the story behind the Nebula.

I genuinely did gasp when I figured out A Big Thing about the world story.

I really love stories about robots. Long-suffering, mildly sarcastic robots who are trying very hard to keep you alive while you do stupid things like climb down cliffs they can’t follow. I am very glad I was warned about the risk of losing Six forever and could avoid that particular path, because I think the last third of the game would have been a real bummer without Six as a companion.

Do I recommend it? Yes... mostly. Yes, with the caveats above about how clunky and frustrating the gameplay is. I probably will replay it in a while, taking advantage of the NG+, but not right away - I need to play something less inherently frustrating.

I wish there were more games like this, but I also wish it had been better developed, so that the good parts of it could really shine.

[missnight0wl]

Unpopular opinion: I wish dating was never introduced to HPHM.

I was always rather open about the fact that I don’t have much interest in dating content in HPHM, so you might say it’s very subjective rambling. But I think I also have some more objective arguments for that statement, so… hear me out (or don’t; I can’t tell you what to do).

Some spoilers for the Festival Fun TLSQ, the Celestial Ball TLSQ, the First Date TLSQ, the Valentine’s Day TLSQ, the All-Wizards Tournament TLSQ, and “Cooking Up Trouble” SQ.

First of all, I want to address the most obvious counterargument for my wish: “but people want dating!”. Yeah, I know. But here’s a thing. A long time ago, almost at the very beginning of the game’s existence, when we were only speculating about any love interests, people were referencing one article. The article where the creators claimed that romance is planned for the future (among other things). And if you ask me, it was their mistake. It was a mistake because it created expectations which they had to react to. The problem is that they were never ready to introduce such type of content. I mean, just look at the past events. Andre mentioned dating when he was first introduced back in Y3 (!), and he said then that most people don’t date until they’re in the fourth year. And yes, the Celestial Ball was eventually placed as Y4 Achievement, but the main story was well into Y5 already! What I take from this is that at best, they had only a rough idea for the ball when they wrote Andre’s comment in Y3 (if it took them so long to actually create the quest). And so, I have to wonder – why they even talked about dating in Y3 if they were not ready? Now, I’m not saying that nobody would ask for dating if Jam City didn’t mention it in that article, or Andre omitted that topic in Y3. There’d definitely be people still wishing for some romance. But there’d be no actual reasons to expect that. Because HPHM was created as a mystery story (even if people don’t remember about it anymore), and a mystery story doesn’t really need romance.

The second thing I’d like to point out for the sake of this discussion is that the dating quests require quite a lot of work from the devs team. Admittedly, the quality of those efforts is sometimes questionable, but still. I’m also no tech or game design expert, but here are some things which I believe make dating quests more time-consuming than most of the others:

Designing outfits. Each of the datable characters is given a new outfit (+ new outfits for MC). I also want to notice that most of those outfits are one-time-use. Well, except maybe for the bundles available to buy for real money…

Creating new locations/characters. To be fair, some of “regular” quests require those too, although the majority uses things already existing and being used in the main story.

Creating new animations: dancing, holding hands, pecks on the cheek, more (new) dancing.

Creating multiple routes for different date options – and even if it’s mostly copy-paste, it takes time nonetheless.

To be clear, creating new things for the game is not bad. My point is that basically every dating adventure required ALL of that invested in one single quest – and pretty much none of that can be reused outside of dating. In fact, they’re not even reusing those animations completely for each new date. The kiss from the Valentine’s Day was different from the recent one, the Festival had new dances added to make it more diverse in comparison to the Celestial Ball etc. And what those unique quests have to offer? One cute moment with your date, which is… kind of meaningless. I’m sorry, but dating stories are basically irrelevant in the bigger picture. I mean, yeah, they’re adorable, but that’s it. And it’s just NOT proportional to all the work put into them. Because look…

The dating quests add very little to nothing to flesh out the characters – and if they do, it has nothing to do with dating.

The Celestial Ball did a pretty great job at adding to Rowan and Ben. People often criticise MC for “forcing” them to come to the party, but the problem was clearly about them feeling not good enough to go (not necessarily about them not wanting to go), and so I really loved working on their self-confidence. Bill also grew a lot in that quest, overcoming his rejection from Emily Tyler. Andre discovered his styling talent, so he was no longer “just” a brilliant Quidditch player. Even Penny had some insecurities to face as she wanted to prove that she’s not only popular but she can also create fantastic decorations. So… couldn’t it just be a quest about FRIENDSHIP and our friends growing? The whole dating subplot felt kind of forced to me, or maybe rather detached. Not to mention that THAT was kind of a dick move to leave Rowan and Ben after using the argument:

The next quests were more oriented on dating itself, but at the same time, they’re focused less on the characters’ individual personalities. Sure, there are some differences between dates, but it’s more about distinction than adding anything new. For instance, in the Festival Fun TLSQ, every character yells out loud that you’re on a date (unless you chose to keep it a secret), MC just points out that it’s unlike them in the case of Talbott, Jae, and Chiara. Next example: I thought it’s pretty amusing that Jae writes dreadful poems with cheap rhymes, but it turns out that the note with Butterbeer could also be left by Barnaby. I know that in MY playthrough, Barnaby didn’t leave it, but I can’t see it as Jae’s characteristic, simply because it wasn’t written for his character – it was written to fit Jae and Barnaby, so it’s kinda meaningless in my eyes.

Another thing is that even if those dates added something individual, it’d be relevant only for a limited audience. Like, I’m really happy for people who wanted to date Badeea, but for me, she barely existed in this quest. It added NOTHING to her character. During the First Date quest, Tulip revealed that girls in her family are being named after flowers (her cousin is called Marigold), which is a pretty neat fact, but I wouldn’t know it if I didn’t put extra effort to see different options. And believe me, there’s a big part of the payers who don’t do it. I’m still seeing on social media people being surprised that Rowan’s gender and House are connected to MC’s.

And speaking of that already: this is why the dating options are being cut off. And honestly, it sucks, but I get it, I really do. The devs have to spend the same amount of time on a character dated by 6% of the players as on a character dated by 36% of the players. Let’s add real money to that, and let’s say that 10% of all players buy gems/energy on TLSQs. Jam City will make more money out of that 36% than out of 6% - it’s as simple as that. At the end of the day, they are a business. Would it be nice to make all players happy? Of course, but it’s easier to keep the majority happy.

The dating quests don’t really matter for the main story – and they won’t matter more in the future.

Why? Because it’d be too complicated at this point. All we’re getting (and what we’ll ever get) are subtle differences in dialogues. And you know what? Even that doesn’t matter much. For example, in Y6, there’s a scene where Talbott calls MC to the Owlery and offers his help in searching through the letters. He talks then about their friendship, and if you took him on a date, he mentions it as well. The thing is that Talbott is pretty heart-warming here in general, how he opens on us being friends:

Sure, that one additional line is pretty cute, but again, is it really a satisfying pay-off from the dating quest, considering how much was put into it? And I don’t think they even can do more because they always have to keep in mind the players who didn’t manage to finish TLSQs in time or just didn’t want to do it.

I don’t want to be only negative about dating because that’s not really my point, so here are some ideas on how to invest all of that time better (and no, it’s not just the lore and in-depth history of the Cursed Vaults because I know I’m in the minority who cares about it):

More outfits for NPCs which could be used for variety. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of seeing characters like Penny, Merula, Ben, or Talbott in their full school robes ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Ideally, I wish every character to have three outfits: full school robes, some variety of a uniform (so something like Tulip and Barnaby) used in the school but outside of classes, and something totally casual used outside of the castle.

More animations between characters like hugs, patting on the arm etc. Anything which could be used almost on a daily basis, and which would make our interactions looks more natural and less stiff. Seriously, I’ll take a supportive hug instead of a peck on the cheek ANY DAY.

More character-centric quests. So many of our friends need their own SQ: Tulip, Badeea, Liz, Diego. The rest could probably also use them to expand their characters – because those SQs do a great job at this. Like, I took Jae to the festival, and it was alright, but to be completely honest, his “Cooking Up Troubles” SQ was SO MUCH BETTER for his character. We learnt new things about Jae, we had some really cute friendship moments (like this and this)… And it was a super simple quest with only seven parts in total! It just needed to be written: no new locations, animations etc. Yet, the pay-off was just… better, more meaningful.

Another thing that could be done in those character-centric quests is more focus on the relationships between our friends because, in my opinion, this is needed as well. I want to talk here a little about the “All-Wizards Tournament” TLSQ, which I think is really underrated. This is probably because of people claiming that Jam City is reaching too much to reference the books events AND because of Rowan’s absence. And don’t get me wrong, those are valid objections. But when it comes to the characters… this TLSQ was pretty great. We saw a lot of our friends' insecurities (Barnaby, Jae, Liz), we saw their more competitive side (Andre, Badeea)… Badeea was especially interesting to me as she showed that she can be quite cunning when she somehow learnt about the first task. She also didn’t reveal that information to Merula and Ismelda because they were occupying the training dummies, but she did share with MC (meaning that you really want to have her on your side…).

It somehow made me think about the situation from Y5 when she admitted that she tricked Jae into thinking that she knows Apparition by using an Invisibility Cloak. It’s nice to know there’s more to her than meets the eye, which was also cohesive with the main story (even if we don’t see it much). The TLSQ also showed some dynamics between our friends, like Jae and Andre (which I mentioned here). And of course, I really enjoyed the ending conclusion: that some tasks can be dealt with only when you work together. Again, I’d love to see this theme being explored more because it creates such a compelling contrast between Jacob and MC. Jacob didn’t have many friends at school. We only know about Duncan and Olivia, and it’s still unclear if Olivia was an actual friend or a colleague they worked with. Not to mention that it was implied that for some time, Jacob was working all alone. Meanwhile, MC has basically the whole army at this point. It’d be interesting to see that this is one of the things which makes MC stronger than their brother.

Now, the reason why the “All-Wizards Tournament” TLSQ could focus on all of that is because we didn’t waste the time on all of “secret admires mystery”, “oh, who should I choose” etc. So, just as a thought experiment, let’s think about how the Festival Fun could improve if we’d eliminate the dating aspect. First of all, more characters could get more screen time, like Badeea, maybe Tulip… Liz? Diego (our dancer!)? Ismelda? Even Talbott didn’t have a big role unless you chose him as a date. The plot could also be more dynamic instead of a whole bunch of stalling. I’d leave the investigation with Andre because I think it’s a great addition to his character, but it’s also fucking sad that any development he’s getting is around dating. Like, the boy deserves so much better. So, let’s change that! Let’s say he asks MC for help because he’s styling some summer outfits for the upcoming festival, but one of his fabrics is missing. Perhaps it’s a bit more expensive material, so they suspect that Jae might’ve “borrowed” it to make some money. Jae, of course, is deeply insulted because he’s a smuggler and an occasional cheater, but not a thief! They argue with Andre, but eventually, they come to understanding. Then, MC remembers that Badeea wanted to experiment with painting methods, so perhaps she decided to incorporate some fabric into that. We find Badeea and Barnaby, they don’t have what we’re looking for, but there’s some action going on there, maybe including Talbott… Long story short, it turns out that Tulip needed it in preparation for Cruppies race or something. I don’t know, I’m coming up with it pretty much as I write. The point is that the time spent on talking about dating could’ve been used on something more specific, individual, which could be more meaningful in the light of the main story. And since there’d be no routes, all of that would be relevant for everyone after completing the quest. Want it to be even better? Make it a regular side quest, not time-limited.

All right, but couldn’t we just have both: characters development and dating? Of course, that’d be ideal. But as I said before, Jam City is a business and rarely any business is ideal. They’ll always prioritise a limited number of things, and since people whine about dating, we’re getting dating. And again, I’m not saying that dating is totally worthless, and I get that people find it cute and whatnot. I just believe that what dating ultimately adds to the game is not proportionate to the time and effort those quests require to be created. That it could’ve been invested better. Dating is basically stopping us from getting better content (at least in some areas). And we’re kind of asking for that…

[wolf-mask]

Borderlands 3 Nitpicks

Since my post about what made Borderlands 3 so disappointing got popular, I figured I might as well write down my big 3 nitpicks for the game as well. The following disappointments aren’t necessarily ideas that broke me out of the game, but they did either annoy me or just made me give a disappointed sigh as I continued playing through the game.

If you want to read my post on “What Makes Borderlands 3 Disappointing,” it can be found here

More under the cut, and of course SPOILERS for all the Borderlands 3 and The Pre-Sequal.

Misunderstanding Aurelia

    I won’t lie, I didn’t think much of Aurelia when I first saw her in The Pre-Sequal. I thought she was just a rich bitch who didn’t care about anyone. I didn’t understand WHY some people were so upset when the player kills her in BL3. She was just a money hungry capitalistic asshole, right? 

    Then I got curious and learned more about Aurelia. I learned she’s not as much of a bitch as I first thought. Yes, she’s still a “rich popular bitch” so to speak, but she’s not one dimensional. Aurelia feels regret when she erases Felicity’s consciousness. She’s disturbed by Jack’s decision to airlock the scientists. In the Claptastic Voyage, when Claptrap’s Consciousness breaks down over the fact that people just keep hating him despite how hard he tries to help, she says sorry to him. And at the end of the DLC, she thinks Jack’s decision to kill all of Claptrap’s line is too extreme. The only other people who ever disagree or show discomfort with Jack’s actions are Athena and Timothy.

    Aurelia herself says that she’s evil, but sees Jack as even more evil for killing innocent people and commiting genocide against an entire line of robots. Aurelia has layers. She's a bored CEO who can't handle her own company because her mother is still running it despite being in retirement. That's what caused her to become a vault hunter, boredom. Not a sense of greed. She doesn't mind killing bandits for fun but she doesn't like killing innocent people or betraying her allies.

Unfortunately the writers of BL3 seemingly didn't look past her first layer of being a rich bitch. They just saw her as Alistair's bitchy rich sister and decided that's all she was. She's never given me the vibe of wanting to murder her brother either. Hell in Hammerlock's quest in TPS, Aurelia goes out of her way to avoid getting into an argument with him. They also overlooked something vitally important: AT THE END OF THE PRE-SEQUAL AURELIA WAS CAPTURED BY THE CRIMSON RAIDERS.

If you've played the holodome DLC for TPS, you'd hear that after Athena tells her story, Axton and Gaige come back from hunting down the vault hunters that helped Jack become a dictator, and they had just caught Aurelia. Hell, in the trailers they made it look like Aurelia would be joining you to fight against the COV. There's gonna have to be a big retcon to fix this issue.

Aurelia was done really damn dirty in BL3. I may not have understood her at first, but I do now. She's a 3 dimensional character, but the BL3 writers decided to boil her down to "rich bitch."

Criminally Underutilized Characters

Everyone was excited to see the old characters come back to BL3. Everyone wanted to see Tiny Tina all grown up, to see the BL2 characters interact with each other and characters from the other games. In the end though, most of the side characters were sidelined to give the big three sirens the spotlight. 

I really wanted the B Team to come to the ship with us. I wanted Wainwright with us. Really I just wanted everyone who was on Sanctuary 3 in the trailer to actually, y'know, BE on the ship with us in the game. The fact that so little characters joined us, to the point that it was just Ava assaulting the cathedral with the player, just disappointed me.

The new side characters in BL3 get some focus, but nothing else besides a surface glance. I wish they'd given more development to them. I want to know Clay's backstory, why he stopped being a smuggler and started working with the Jakobs family. I want to know more about Lorelei's struggles. I didn't even realize she was nonbinary until I read it a freaking news article. I had listened to her Sit Rep echo before but it never clicked in my head.

Really I just hope the side characters get more content in the DLC. I want to see more of these characters, they're so lovable and interesting.

Character Dialogue

One thing I adored about The Pre-sequal is how unique the NPC dialogue was. Playing as Timothy, Moxxi and Nakayama would point out that they can tell Tim is a doppleganger, Jack hits on Tim, and Roland asks what his real name is. As Athena, Janey hits on her, Moxxi and Roland and Lilith remember her from the time they helped her kill General Knoxx. 

Every interaction felt so unique that I wanted to play as the other Vault Hunters. I liked knowing the NPCs thoughts on the Vault Hunters.

Now, BL3 does have unique voice lines for the Vault Hunters. And I love them. I love how deadpan Fl4k is, how insane Zane is, Amara's cockiness, and Moze's sarcasm. All of them felt like unique characters. 

But, I feel like their interactions are harmed by the fact that none of the important NPCS acknowledge them differently. I really wanted to see how the other Vault Hunters would react to Zane FLYNT, the younger brother of two guys they killed. I wanted to see how Amara's fame would impact the NPCs. If not, then that fact that she's a fucking SIREN. Y'know, the people that the whole of BL3 centers around. How would the sirens act around this new siren? Why wouldn't Tyreen leech Amara? I don't know, because it's never addressed.

It feels like a step back from the unique interactions in TPS. I don't feel motivated to do another playthrough just to see the unique dialogue and how the NPCs react to the Vault Hunter like I did in TPS. I wish they had had continued that idea into BL3.

That's all the nitpicks I have for BL3 for now. If you have any of your own, let me know. If you feel like any of this stuff can be explained away by canon, let me know that too. This is all just my opinion and you're not obligated to agree with me. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day my dudes.

[ravencrossffxiv]

Trial Boss Ask: The Howling Eye, Thornmarch, The Chrysalis, The Singularity Reactor, The Final Steps of Faith, Urth’s Fount,

Oh boy... This person also asked for Ultima’s Bane as well so it’s going in the same ask. This is gonna get long and it’s gonna hurt.

I feel a need to add context for these: This would be the canon timeline where everyone Raven has ever loved and cherished dies a horrible death. Most likely: The 8th Umbral Calamity. Broken by grief, her Fray takes over, lets loose and can’t control what’s happening to her. She hoards crystals and becomes Tia Lyn, goddess of grief and vengeance. (Tia Lyn was the name I snagged from Klutzy_Dragon’s Fall of the Gods Campaign that I play in. :3)

The Howling Eye -  Write a description of the opening cutscene preceding the fight.

--> As the party moves through the familiar halls of the Holy Vault, the bodies of friends and family are laid about the floor, and when they reach the top they see a woman clad in blood-stained black armor (think Abyss armor (lvl 70 AF armor if you don’t know the DRK armor sets) but stained in blood), Balmung hefted over her shoulder and crackling with black lightning. She turns to the party and her once luminous amethyst eyes were now dark and tinged red in blood, forget-me-nots woven into her short hair

She clutches a silver kite shield locket to her chest as she speaks. "You saw them did you not? Our friends, my family, all dead because of that accursed weapon. I intend to make the world BURN for the death of all those that they have taken from me! Should you stand in my way, you are no better and you will die by my sword.”

Thornmarch - What would be your character’s opening dialogue(s) upon the start of the battle?

--> “Blood for blood.”

The Chrysalis - What would be your character’s final words upon defeat?

--> "Is that...my knight?”  ((Ok I have this whole cutscene ready for after the fight and it HURTS!! As the goddess falls a familiar soul is there to catch Raven's spectral form. She looks up at him and asks if it's time to come home, if she's forgiven? He nods and her armor changes to a simple bustle, the greatsword forgotten. She looks back at the player and asks them to take Balmung with them. “To where the silent guardian rests with a broken shield.” The player nods and she walks away from the arena with the other person to the airship landing, vanishing after a certain point.))

The Final Steps of Faith - How would some of the mechanics of the fight operate? Include as many as you want and specify whether it is for hard-mode or extreme (if applicable)

--> It's a relatively simple fight with easy mechanics to dodge, though in Extreme a lot of AOEs will no longer be obviously telegraphed. The add phase might be the hardest, and only because of WHO she summons

The Singularity Reactor - Will your character summon adds and companions throughout the encounter, or would it be a single-target fight?

--> Tia Lyn does summon the bodies of her family using Myste’s powers to make them act like puppets and the party will be forced to kill them should they wish to make it through the fight. She'll summon a tank (Aymeric, Artoriel, Emmanellain, Thancred), a healer (Alphinaud, Y'shtola, Urianger), and two DPS (one melee one ranged take your pick there, some can and will interlap like Y'shtola can be either a healer or DPS, same with Thancred.) who all say the dead must not be brought back and to end them quickly before she kills the party. During this, she jumps and is charging her ultimate and if that goes off it results in the party being blown up with the Vault. (In EX, it will depend on the order, if you don’t take out the healer first the party is fucked.)

Urth’s Fount - Would there be any mechanics that when ignored would result in an instant wipe?

--> During the add phase if the NPCs she summons aren't killed in time, Tia Lyn will jump, fire and lightning wrapping around her greatsword like twining dragons and she strikes the arena, the collision of them upon hitting the party will result in a wipe (Think like in Bismarck where you get the cutscene of the whale eating the island, but instead it's the Vault exploding.)

Ultima’s Bane - On a scale of 1 to 10, with ten being the most extreme, how would you rate the difficulty of your trial?

--> It's a relatively simple fight, but it definitely is an emotional wringer. It will kick you in the emotional dick multiple times and rip your heart out. So I'd say a 3 for mechanics but an 8 for emotional damage.

[tomiyeee]

finished the story quests for bl3 (but barely any of the side missions yet) and i got...Opinions(tm)

(sorry if this doesn’t cut on mobile! also if you want to hide spoilers i’m tagging all my bl3 posts as “bl3 spoilers” so ny’all can blacklist it)

in no particular order:

i honestly wanted to give gearbox some slack and try my best to like this game bc i know people had probably unfairly high expectations for this game given all the build up, but they really just kept letting me down in everything but the graphics

said this before but overall, the characters are all Quite lackluster

^^ tyreen and troy included. adding the word "bitch" to every sentence does not automatically make it funnier

that being said, i super love their backstory + relationship with typhon/nekofeyo-whatever

the character designs are equally boring. moxxi was the only one who got a real improvement imo. lilith and maya are okay. rhys...i dont think i have to explain. lia...i dislike her hair; the black felt like it balanced out her design better and the white streak was interesting and cool but full white just looks bad tbh. zer0 feels less sleek and more bulky which doesnt fit him much. tina lost her pretty color palette and cute outfit. where are all the bright pretty color palettes in general???? there are other colors besides brown and black???? use them?????

ending of pre-sequel: “you will need all the vault hunters you can get” me: “ooh does that mean all the vh’s from previous games are back? i can’t wait to see everyone meet each other! :D” bl3: only nine of them come back, 3 of them die, the rest are involved in maybe one mission at most

boss fights. super. boring. and tedious. i mean this could be partly because i was playing on ps4 which made it extra not fun but if the only reason the fight is difficult is because they have a lot of health...it's not fun or challenging. i want fights like handsome jack with interesting mechanics. i want fights like angel with emotional impact. i want fights like the pre-sequel final boss that i forgot the name of with variation that isnt just "now they have an attack that shines bright lights in ur eyes, covers the whole arena, and can knock you down in one hit im looking at you traunt and killavolt". tyreens fight was the only one that i somewhat enjoyed because of this. all the others were just like "ughhhh again?"

im really enjoying melee amara playstyle. taking out badass enemies in four hits is my jam. this is just my fallout 4 playthrough all over again babey heck yea

typhon just wanted to be a good dad!!! he called tyreen starlight which is adorable!!! he did the best he could and tyreen hated him for it!!! i don’t blame either of them for that tbh, it makes sense from both their perspectives. tyreen definitely should have been more understanding, but she’s a dick so :/ (not saying this is a writing flaw, just a character flaw)

hammerlock needs higher standards in men but i really appreciate the undeniably in-your-face "fuck you" to all gamer dudes

i really. hate. how little the player character seems to matter in the story. in pre-sequel the vh's all had unique dialogue AND npcs would respond, sometimes even with character-specific lines. even when it was the same across vh's, it still felt like the npcs were interacting and speaking directly to them. the player character felt like a character of their own, rather than just a vessel for the player to do quests and kill enemies with or an errand runner for the important characters. i thought that was the direction they were going in with bl3 too but this just feels like bl2 only worse. there’s a separation again between you and the story and it feels like you’re just watching things happen. now ur not just a silent protagonist, but instead your a speaking protagonist who gets completely ignored. whats the point of including unique dialogue if it's not even acknowledged beyond an "uh-huh, moving on"?

sometimes the logic just feels kinda dumb. the twins killed/disabled maya and lilith in a heartbeat, they can literally disintegrate the most powerful beings in the universe, but the vault hunters? absolutely not. they must fight them for 40 minutes and then die.

after the fight with troy, no one even touched tyreen. there's no way they could have thought "yup she's definitely dead, no need to shoot her in the head or anything just to make sure. we didn't do anything to even hurt her, we just assumed." turns out she's 100% alive and gets up to start the apocalypse. who'da thunk! i know they wanted the end to seem more dramatic but it just seems stupid that they could have stopped tyreen like 5 missions earlier had they even the slightest bit of common sense.

lilith was one of the biggest threats to tyreen and troy's whole plan. of course they should leave her alive and simply steal her powers. let's kill the monk siren instead.

i know they didn't include this to give all players a fair experience instead of favoring sirens, but it kinda sucks playing a siren character and it's just completely ignored outside of ur action skill. tyreen and troy are sapping siren powers left and right, but they choose to leave you with yours. when you enter the eridian place with typhon tannis starts glowing because it has "something to do with sirens". what about the one standing right next to her? this applies to bl2 as well...jack i would willingly charge ur vault key for u pls why do u take lilith instead :'(

oh yeah speaking of tannis! i LOVE that she got angels powers. for some reason it just makes me really happy. maybe it's bc i think it's sweet that part of angel survived. maybe it's because it makes for cool fanart. maybe it's just cool. idk. also like that we got a solid explanation of what angel's powers were (influence over technology). i always thought her having control over it in bl2 might've been cuz it was hyperion tech and she had access to it same as she had access to the satellite from bl1. it wasn't super clear since it seemed like she could also materialize things like the ammo during her fight.

that also reminds me: all the dramatic reveals in this game felt kinda badly done.

the very first one with zer0/katagawa. like the whole time i was walking around looking for him i was trying to think why he might've turned/something must have happened to him or rhys. everyone was saying it was undeniably zer0. i finally meet him and take one look at his bright ass maliwan armor and its like. really. you couldnt have made it anymore obvious that thats not zer0. and then his helmet gets knocked off and surprise! it's not him. i totally didnt already figure that out with one glance 10 seconds ago. (maybe even earlier when you got glimpses of him around the building but i always missed it cuz i was looking at the fish tanks n shit)

also the tannis reveal. she was speaking to me in the same way that only known siren characters could. weird unexplained things were happening and seemed to be related to tannis. i wonder if she's a siren? surprise! she's a siren.

tyreen and troy knew about the great vault through some unknown means. typhon was talking about having a son and a daughter who he told stories about the great vault. typhon calls tyreen his daughter a while later and lilith acts surprised like honey ur a little slow, i figured that out several lines ago.

basically i'm not saying they were so obvious that i knew from the beginning of the game; i only figured them out a little before they were outright stated. but it was enough that it kinda ruined the effect and the characters acting surprised only when it was blatantly spelled out for them just made it annoying.

i feel like most of this is pretty negative, but i don’t mean that i hate the game and was miserable playing it. it was honestly okay...like i said i wanted to like it, but gearbox hates me specifically and killed/ruined all my faves just to spite me sooo...*waves hand back and forth in a sort of “ehhh” gesture*. i think my opinion on bl games from most to least fav would be: tftbl, bltps, bl2, bl3, and bl1. so it’s not the worst, but deeefinitely not one of my faves. i mean jack’s not in it (or if he is he doesn’t have a big role) so it’s already at a huge disadvantage. the ending was ok, it was all dramatic n stuff and it kinda makes sense i guess, but it was just about as okay as the rest of the game really. i don’t hate it but it’s not great either yknow?

[atamascolily]

lily liveblogs “terminator: dark fate,” part five

HEY, time for our industrial end sequence!!  This time, it’s on a dam because we had fire and machinery in previous films, and we’re switching to a different element.

(this means that the next film would have ended with a FOREST fight scene, right? Right.)

[parts one, two, three, four]

The NPCs run for cover. I have no idea what dam this is supposed to be! It looks like Hoover, but I honestly have no clue where they are at this point.

Carl and the chassis are fighting in the water. Then the oozy metal part comes up and grabs him from behind! I hate it when they double-team like that.

Wow, they just barely keep from going over the edge there. Oh, wait, too soon...

Sarah dislocates her shoulder. Ow. Grace pops it back in. Sarah gets another "Fuck!"

The Rev-9 vaulting out of the water is just like in the beginning....

"No, no, Grace, really...?" YES GRACE. She yells back at them to wear their seatbelts!!! WOW... Sarah snarks back at her because what good is it if you can’t get a one-liner in right before you go over the edge into the abyss and certain death?

OH my god the Rev-9 on the windshield is so fucking scary right there they are UNDERWATER in the DARK aaaaaaaaah.

Okay, I'm not sure how if they would have survived that in real life, but fuck if that underwater fight scene isn't as cool as hell.

A legit complaint I've seen is that the bulletproof vests would weigh them down too much to get to the surface with the air they have, but... I mean come on, if that's your only factual complaint about this movie, I think they did a good job.

Cut to them on top of the dam again, wow that was fast. This scene with the three badass women battered and bruised and clinging to each other.. MY HEART. MY POOR HEART!!

Ah, here it is... Grace's power source! The EMP substitute I’ve been waiting for. Then Carl shows back up.. with a weapon for Sarah. Triumphant theme music. The whole family is here. Oh, and meds for Grace. YAY. wouldn’t want to pass out halfway through the climactic fight scene.

Wow, this functionally dysfunctional found-family is only together for like half a day and I need a million TV episodes about them STAT.

Oh, of course it's a hydroelectric dam...so generators!

Oh, hey, Grace gets her chains from the poster! Nice.

Murderbot bonding time! The Rev-9 talks to Carl: "You and I were built for the same purpose. And Legion is the only future." SO MANY FEELS ABOUT THIS.

"I know she's a stranger to you. Why not let me have her?" POLITICAL QUESTION OF THE MOMENT, KTHANX. But also proof that even though the REv-9 is good at mimicking humans and predicting humans, it still doesn't UNDERSTAND humans.

"Because we're not machines, you metal motherfucker," Sarah snarls. And I think we're up to six fucks for Sarah at this point? I've lost count.

Have I mentioned that the splitting Terminators are creepy? Have I? HAVE I? Because they are.

Oh, dear, Sarah Connor confronting her nightmare of flaming death murder skeletons again.

Geeeeee, I wonder if that turbine will do anything...

Oh, Grace is stabbed, I guess she's gonna pull the power source out and take him down with her... or not. But at least now Dani’s going to object way less about self-sacrifice, since she’s already doomed.

I don't know why the REV-9 goes back to one; I feel like he's stronger and fights better in two parts? But you do you, I guess.

Pretty sure it's not over yet because Dani still hasn't done anything against the REV-9 herself. Oh, good, and Sarah gets to relive yet another nightmare of a metal skeleton stalking out of the flames. ONLY THIS TIME IT'S ON FIRE, TOO. (I guess that's the polyalloy bits melting away??)

Yep, Grace is gonna sacrifice herself to save Dani from the REV-9 and remove her power source. Oh, wow, Dani has to stab her and pull it out herself. That's gonna cause some more trauma. Another round for everyone!  

Dani gets to go after the REV-9... but it goes badly, because drama. Sarah yells for Carl to wake up, and it works!! He distracts the REV-9 long enough for Dani to stab him in the eye with the power source and... I guess that sets it off???

[why the hell didn't they augment Grace with more than one of those things? Maybe Dani will fix that in the future when she gets there. maybe that's something to add in fix-it fics. And where did they get them? Did they take them from destroyed Terminators and weld them into humans?? What happened?? ]

Carl and the REV-9 fall into the abyss together, because OF COURSE THEY DO, because just when Sarah has learned to forgive/accept Carl as he is, she has to lose him because RULE #1: SARAH CONNOR MUST ALWAYS SUFFER. And the REV-9 rips his flesh off and they both die when the EMP goes off, and it mimics the lightning flash in the beginning.

Oh, so yet again, Sarah Connor has to stand and watch a Terminator she cares about die in a fire. GOOD JOB PACKING ON THE ANGST, PEOPLE.

"For John." OH MY GOD, WAY TO GO OUT IN STYLE AND ALSO MY HEART.

The difference between this and the first film is that Sarah isn't alone at the end. The difference between this and the second film is that Sarah and Dani are... not equals, exactly, but they are more equal than Sarah and John were at the end of T2. They're veteran and leader, not mother and son. Dani and Sarah understand each other in a way that no one--not even John--can because of what they've suffered and lost. The cycle repeats, and yet it’s subtly different each time

cut to Grace as a kid on a playground, oh now there's some loaded symbolism in this francise, lol. And there's Dani looking through the chain-link fence at her right on cue, like Sarah looking at her might-have-been kids in T2. Is this where the filmmakers got the idea that Dani is Grace’s “mother”? LOL, nice try, guys.

She walks over to the car where Sarah is waiting for her. It's a Jeep, just like the one she drove to Mexico in at the end of T1. She tosses Dani the keys and moves over to the passenger seat AND IF THAT AIN'T A STATEMENT, I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS.

"I won't let her die for me again," Dani says. "then you need to be ready."

Dani puts the car in gear and they drive away down the eucalptyus-lined streets of the California suburbs where everything is green and tranquil and beautiful, and while the movie ends perfectly here as is, I can also see how they would have linked it into a trilogy like they'd originally planned. But alas, this is probably the end until the all-but-inevitable next reboot.

And THEN the credits roll, and we get the main theme at the end, and I jut have to say, it's not the same as in the other movies, where we had to listen to the whole thing first THEN we heard it in the film itself. But nobody has the goddamn patience for credits anymore, which is why Marvel started sticking bonus scenes in theirs to keep people in their seats.

...but wow are these credits long. Oh, well, the music's good and I learn random tidbits this way, like how the writers have little imagination when it comes to naming minor characters, and just give them the same name as their actors (Diego, Gabriel, Alicia, etc). 

sadly, all the deleted scenes and bonus content is on the blue-ray and not the DVD sigh.

So. Was this a perfect film? No. It was written by committee, and I think it shows. Did it deliver what I hoped for--Sarah Connor being a badass, snarky dialogue, and cool action sequences? Yes. Did I enjoy watching it? HELL YES. Will I be thinking/ranting about it for a long time. YOU BET.

Was it "necessary"? Of course not-but is ANY piece of art ever really "necessary"? Who cares! It was fun, and it was thoughtful, it was interesting to me, and it was wayyy better than most of the recent rounds of sequels and reboots. 

And to be honest, if they can make a bajillion Fast and Furious movies, and James Bond, and John Wick, and Mission Impossible and Karate Kid action flicks featuring men (not to mention Star Wars and remakes of every single animated Disney film AND a three-part Hobbit movie trilogy), I think I can enjoy a female-led action movie with zero guilt whatsoever without having to justify its existence to anyone.

(I can’t think of a single other action film with three badass female leads, who have complete character arcs and aren’t sexualized for the male gaze... and if there is, I want to watch it STAT)

[vaxieon]

BL3 - Perspective pt.2

Part one: The “First” Vault Hunter

Back again with part 2 of my multi-part personal evaluation. Once again it will be under a readmore so those not interested don’t have to scroll far. This one is a bit of a dozy regarding Lilith.

Lilith and her struggle

This is one I genuinely feel upset with given we’ve known Lilith for a long time. She’s been established from day one as being very powerful and confident in herself and her abilities (albeit suffering from the sexism present in BL1). On top of that, she’s played a role in almost every single installment of the series in one way or another, really fleshing out her personality from her former player class to an NPC.  Borderlands 2 was where they introduced her as the mythical “Firehawk” an entity that struck fear into the hearts of bandits across Pandora, even unintentionally starting her own literal cult following. Yet, this wasn’t for sake of glory, Lilith is shown to be intelligent and strategic and though she wouldn’t know it yet, a leader in the making. This eventually shows up through the ending of the Pre-Sequel and further in with the Commander Lilith DLC for BL2.

It can be assumed that these were traits they wanted to keep from her original character profile in the first game, where she appeared to be split to the character we know and Tannis (See here: WARNING LOUD). Either way, Dr. Lilith Cashlin, whether that is still the case or not, is not your run of the mill NPC when it comes to the sake of intellect. She’s shown to have gotten away with faking her death twice, once as part of her origin and the second in BL2 to keep out of sight from Hyperion. Although we don’t know what she did to accomplish that, we follow with her echo correspondence with Roland (see here) and see that she’s been using her alias as a way to keep the Bloodshot Clan away from Sanctuary for Roland to focus on Hyperion. She as well as the other original VH had to deal with the aftermath of New Haven, an event that greatly effected all of them and made them more focused on saving the citizens that they’ve lived alongside. She genuinely cares for people and wants to do what’s right given the power she has, she understands she has a lot riding on her even if she’s still learning how to deal with responsibility.

In my opinion this makes seeing Lilith throughout the games a way of seeing her grow as a person and slowly get acclimated to being a woman of legend. At least that’s what I was hoping to see in BL3. It all seems to fall flat with her, becoming very little over a one-word catchphrase and her powers alone. Personally I feel the downfall of her started in the Commander Lilith DLC, where Sanctuary ends up overrun by Dahl (I’ll probably make a separate post on Sanctuary). After Roland’s death, Lilith stepped up to the Commander position for the Crimson Raiders, something she didn’t necessarily even have to do. While in position she even made the initiative of letting Tannis create a testing field for training the new Raiders in the The Form of Digistruct Peak. Now regardless on if it would be considered ‘canon’ or not, the idea that Lilith would like to have a training ground made for the sake of the Raiders very much shows she wants to build up a solid homestead for residents of Sanctuary to live in peace on Pandora. Something that honestly should have lead to them actually returning Sanctuary to the ground, and building it up further.

By them taking it away from her they essentially ruled out potential for more personal growth between her and the people of Pandora. She did what she could given the events but if anything it felt like trying to make the player accept the ship in BL3 as the next logical step. Her also naming the ship Sanctuary 3, three mind you, makes her character seem unwilling to accept mistakes from the past and just act like nothing has changed. Which was the whole point of originally having the sanctuary for New Haven citizens be named Sanctuary and not some blanket of New Haven 4. This gets further pushed by the lack of information between our flying city and the ship, and how or why Lilith gave up on the concept of an organized Crimson Raider military, reducing it to a more casual club status. Topping that off, neither Brick or Mordecai continue to follow under her regardless of their conversation at the end of BL2. The Commander title she was given really not being used for anything other than a DLC title.

People have discussed how poorly the scene was for her powers getting stripped away, but what really gets me is how Tyreen’s constant bashing over Lilith’s “Firehawk” title makes it seem like the writers know she can be better. Tyreen is never shown to have any fast way of travelling, so regardless of when they happened to arrive, Lilith could have easily gotten away. To begin with, she wouldn’t have been outside alone with the key in the first place. We have seen Lilith act strategically and plan further ahead in case of things going wrong, warning you of danger and even calmly talking you through while she herself was in danger. She had been through a lot through the events of the games and very well knows the various types of villains that come through the works, there was no reason for her to have her guard down. Once again just a victim of giving the villians excuse to have more to do with the storyline. Without falling Lilith’s character, Tyreen would have absolutely zero power to effect you during most of the game, which honestly is a failure on the potential of Tyreen too.

After taking her siren abilities, the writing makes the audacity to take away Lilith’s own personality and experience, rendering her almost nonexistent when it comes to basically anything in the game. Even Maya herself (who I will talk about on a separate post) refuses to let Lilith be present in battle, which is degrading when they both in canon were established to fight side by side together. Many of the VH in the series are not sirens, and yet are welcome to be present no matter the situation because the characters trust in their abilities. Lilith is headstrong, doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and wants to prove herself no matter the situation. This is just all thrown out the window for a Lilith that is complacent in people keeping her confined to the bridge of a ship. A ship that really could be managed by anyone (especially after Balex comes in).

Honestly, I don’t mind her getting her powers taken, even though i wish it to have been done in better, it’s not a bad story element. What I mind is that she’s never given a chance to prove to the player on how much she is worth regardless of them. She had done so much for the people of Sanctuary, she had the privilege of battling the Destroyer, she had faked her death twice, been captured by Hyperion and lost people she loved, but for what? The story gives her no way of proving her commitment, she doesn’t even get to hold a gun for a majority of it. She gets left on the sides only to be thrown around like a doll when she actually has a chance. Ava’s speech to Lilith after Maya’s death aggravates this more, because while Ava’s dialogue is very fitting given the situation, Lilith has never ran from anything the entire series other than in BL3.

In the end, even with her sacrifice it just feels hollow, because without her involving herself through the game, what was the emotion we were intended to feel for her? Because of her sheer incompetence through the story, the player ends up more or less feeling like ‘oh she did something i guess’ than actually having sorrow for her not being there simply because it was about the same when she was there to begin with. Roland’s death in the second game felt more impactful because he was constantly trying to get Sanctuary to a better point and when in battle, would actually fight with you to push you through. There was no need for special powers because the personality of a character just simply isn’t what they have, it’s what they do. Lilith deserved much more than that.

Once again I can really go on, but so far this is the longest one I’ve done. I really loved Lilith as a character and having her death not even leave an impact makes it really obvious how misused she was.

[vaultt-tec]

How did Fallout 1 ever get made?

PCGameN sat down with the Fallout 1 team and discussed its making.

This is in a read more because it is SUPER long. I added it all here but click the link and read it on their site, there are more pictures!

Tim Caine was at PAX when he first saw Vault Boy as a living, breathing entity - it was a cosplayer of 16 or 17 years old, hair gelled to replicate that distinctive swirl. ‘This is weird’, he thought.

Feargus Urquhart remembers walking into Target and seeing that same gelled haircut and toothy smile, not on a fan this time, but emblazoned across half a metre of cotton. ‘How is it that a game that we all worked on somehow created something iconic?’, he wondered. ‘How did it show up on a t-shirt in a department store?’

Related: the best RPGs on PC.

In the years since, Bethesda have taken Fallout into both first-person and the pop culture mainstream. Vault Boy has become as recognisable as Mickey Mouse. The series’ sardonic, faux-’50s imagery now feels indelible, as if it has always been here. But it hasn’t.

It took the nascent Black Isle Studios to nurse the Fallout universe into being, as an unlikely, half-forgotten project in the wings of Interplay, where Caine and Urquhart were both working in the ‘90s. The pair helped create one of the all-time great RPGs in the process.

“The one thing I would say about Interplay in those days, and this isn’t trying to pull the veil back or anything like that - there was just shit going on,” Urquhart tells us. “It was barely controlled chaos. I’m not saying that Brian [Fargo] didn’t have some plan, but there was just… stuff.”

One day, Fargo sent out a company-wide email to canvass opinion. He wanted Interplay to work on a licensed game, and had three tabletop properties in mind. One was Vampire: The Masquerade. Another was Earthdawn, a fantasy game set in the same universe as Shadowrun. And the third was GURPS, designed by Games Workshop’s Steve Jackson.

The team picked the latter, overwhelmingly, because that was what they played in their own sessions. But GURPS wasn’t a setting - it was a Generic Universal RolePlaying System. And so Interplay’s team had to come up with a world of their own.

“I would send out an email saying, ‘I’m in Conference Room Two with a pizza’,” Caine says. “And if people wanted to come, on their own time, they could do it. Chris [Taylor, lead designer], Leonard [Boyarksy, art director], and Jason [Anderson, lead artist] showed up.”

Interplay at the time was almost like a high school, as map layout designer Scott Evans remembers it: incredibly noisy and divided into cliques. Caine was building a clique of his own.

Traditional fantasy was the first idea to be dismissed. The team actually considered making Fallout first-person, a decade early - but decided the sprites of the period didn’t offer the level of detail they wanted. Concepts were floated for time travel, and for a generation ship story - but one after the other, they were all pushed aside and the post-apocalypse was left.

“One thing I didn’t like was games where the character you’re playing should know stuff that you, the player, don’t,” Caine says. “And I think the vault helped us capture that, because both you the player and you the character had no idea what the world was like. The doors opened and you were pushed out. And I really liked that, because it meant we didn’t have to do anything fake like, ‘Well you were hit on your head and have amnesia’.”

There was plenty about the Fallout setting that wasn’t as intuitive, however. Players would have to wrap their heads around a far-future Earth and a peculiar retro aesthetic, even before the bombs started dropping. The question of how Fallout ever survived pitching is answered with a Caine quip: “What do you mean, pitch?”

For a short while, Interplay had planned to make several games in the GURPS system. But soon afterwards they had won the D&D license, a far bigger property that would go on to spawn Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale. As a consequence, Caine’s team were left largely to their own devices.

As for budget - Fallout’s was small enough to pass under the radar. Although Interplay are best remembered for the RPGs of Black Isle and oddball action games like Shiny’s Earthworm Jim, they had mainstream ambitions not so different to those of the bigger publishers today. During Fallout’s development they were primarily interested in sports, and an online game division called Engage.

“It was almost like a smokescreen,” Urquhart explains. “So much money was being pumped into these things that you could go play with your toys and no-one would know.”

Which is exactly what the Fallout team did, pulling out every idea they’d ever intended for a videogame.

“Being just so happy and fired up that we were making this thing basically from scratch and doing virtually whatever we wanted, we had this weird arrogance about the whole thing,” Boyarsky recalls. “‘People are gonna love it, and if they don’t love it they don’t get it.’

“Part of it was a punk rock ethos of, every time we came up with an idea and thought, ‘Wow, no-one would ever do that’, we always wanted to push it further. We chased that stuff and got all excited, like we were doing things we weren’t supposed to be doing.”

The team laugh at the idea that Fallout might have carried some kind of message (“Violence solves problems,” Caine suggests). To these kids of the ‘80s, nuclear holocaust felt like immediate and obvious thematic material. The game’s development was guided by a mantra, however.

“It was the consequence of action,” Caine puts it. “Do what you want, so long as you can accept the consequences.”

Fallout lets you shoot up all you want. But if you get addicted, that will become a problem for you, one you’ll have to cope with. The team were keen not to force their own views onto players, and decided the best way to avoid that was with an overriding moral greyness. The Brotherhood of Steel - in Fallout 3, a somewhat heroic group policing the wasteland - were here in the first game simply as preservationists or, more uncharitably, hoarders. Even The Master, the closest thing Fallout had to a villain, was driven by a well-intentioned desire to bring unity to the wasteland. His name, pre-mutation, was ‘Richard Grey’.

“Everyone needed to have flaws and positive points,” Taylor says. “That way the player could have better, stronger interactions whichever way they went.”

Although the GURPS ruleset eventually fell by the wayside, the Fallout team were determined to replicate the tabletop experience they loved - in which players don’t always do what their Game Master would like. They filled their maps with multiple quest solutions and stuffed the game with thousands of words of alternative dialogue. “The hard part was making sure there was no character that couldn’t finish the game,” Caine says.

Fallout’s dedication to its sandbox is still striking, and only lately matched by the likes of Divinity: Original Sin 2. It was a simulation that enabled unforeseen possibilities.

“I am shocked that people got Dogmeat to live till the end of the game,” Taylor says. “Dogmeat was never supposed to survive. You had to do some really strange things and go way out of your way to do so, but people did.”

During development, a QA tester came to the team with a problem: you could put dynamite on children.

“Where you see a problem…,” Urquhart says. He is joking, of course, yet the ability to plant dynamite - achieved by setting a timer on the explosive and reverse pickpocketing an NPC - became a supported part of the game and the foundation of a quest. This was a new kind of player freedom, matched only by the freedom the team felt themselves.

“We were really, really fortunate,” Boyarsky says. “No-one gets the opportunity we had to go off in a corner with a budget and a team of great, talented people and make whatever we wanted. That kind of freedom just doesn’t exist.

“We were almost 30, so we were old enough to realise what we had going on. A lot of people say, ‘I didn’t realise how good it was until it was over’. Every day when I was making Fallout I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this’. And I even knew in the back of my head that it was never going to be that great again.”

Once Fallout came out, it was no longer the strange project worked on in the shadows with little to no oversight. It was a franchise with established lore that was getting a sequel. It wasn’t long before Boyarsky, Caine, and Anderson left to form their own RPG studio, Troika.

“We knew Fallout 1 was the pinnacle,” Boyarsky says. “We felt like to continue on with it under changed circumstances would possibly leave a bad taste in our mouths. We were so happy and so proud of what we’d done that we didn’t want to go there.”

Fallout is larger than this clique now. Literally, in fact: the vault doors Boyarsky once drew in isometric intricacy are now rendered in imposing 3D in Bethesda’s sequels. And yet Boyarksy, Taylor, and Caine now work under the auspices of Obsidian, a studio that has its own, more recent, history with the Fallout series. Should the opportunity arise again, would they take it?

“I’m not sure, to be very honest,” Taylor says. “I loved working on Fallout. It was the best team of people I ever worked with. I think it’s grown so much bigger than myself that I would feel very hesitant to work on it nowadays. I would love to work on a Fallout property, like a board game, but working on another computer game might be too much.”

Boyarsky shares his reservations: that with the best intentions, these old friends could get started on something and tarnish their experience of Fallout.

“It would be very hard for us to swallow working on a Fallout game where somebody else was telling you what you could and couldn’t do,” he expands. “I would have a really hard time with someone telling me what Fallout was supposed to be. I’m sure that it would never happen because of the fact that I would have that issue.”

Urquhart - now Obsidian’s CEO - is at pains to point out that Bethesda were nothing but supportive partners throughout the making of Fallout: New Vegas, requesting only a handful of tiny tweaks to Obsidian’s interpretation of its world. “I’ve got to be explicit in saying we are not working on a new Fallout,” he says. “But I absolutely would.”

Caine has mainly built his career by working on original games rather than sequels: Fallout, Arcanum, Wildstar, and Pillars of Eternity. But he would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about working on another Fallout.

“I’ve had a Fallout game in my head since finishing Fallout 1 that I’ve never told anyone about,” he admits. “But it’s completely designed, start to finish. I know the story, I know the setting, I know the time period, I know what kind of characters are in it. It just sits in the back of my head, and it’s sat there for 20 years. I don’t think I ever will make it, because by now anything I make would not possibly compare to what’s in my head. But it’s up there.”

[cathode-ray-rube]

big fuck of pathfinder occurences beneath the break

Shortly after arriving back in the Capitol Isle today in Our pathfinder session, we discovered that The Duke that has been dispensing our orders was busy and couldn't see us. To make up for this he paid to put us up in a really nice hotel/casino. Upon hearing this, our Dragonrider, Aurel immediately fell to scheming on getting laid. The friend that plays him turned to dramatically to a page in his notebook, and scrawled "Spank Bank" across the top with a boisterous series of strokes, declaring that he is now keeping track of all the NPC's he beds. We get the keys to our four separate hotel rooms and our DM controlled Gnome Witch, Hazel, runs off to her room. Aurel declares he wants a tour of the shopping district / hotel and the lady at the desk fetches him a guide. The guide is a very attractive and petite elven women that is suspiciously to Aurel's personal taste, and the obnoxious flirting begins immediately, as she coyly shrinks into her luxurious gown and bats purple eyes from beneath her rolling azure locks.

The DM and i groan audibly and i declare that my Warpriest, Szary, and Anne, our DM controlled Cleric, are going to spare themselves having to witness his lechery again and go back to the boat to change into the fancy dresses I previously stole from a vampire in a magical vault outside of time or something, and then hit the town on our own. Aurel is lead into town by this guide, Pyyrha.

While in town, they talk and flirt openly, he buys really fancy clothes, and takes her out for dinner, displaying both his knowledge for the wines of his subjugated (to his great anger) homeland and his..charm. He spends a ton of money wining and dining her, and they cozy up on a park bench under the stars together as he tries to subtly push the evening toward a mutual bed. "When do you get off work?" he says; "Whenever we get back to your room.." she says.

At this point my friend throws his hands up in the air and shouts "Well fuck if i knew it was gonna be this easy i wouldn't have spent all this damn gold!" She's an escort- this gives him zero pause as he likes cutting to the chase. They head back to the room as my friend writes her name at the top of his 'Spank Bank'.

While this is all occuring, Anne and Szary have arrived back at the hotel arm in arm, dressed in their best and find the hotel restraunt, the evening slowly becoming a date and compounding on some vague romantic subtext that cropped up over the course of the adventure. No one knows where Hazel is.

Back Aurel's room, they're sipping the finest wine, lying tangled in his bed, preparing for..yeah. Pyyhra rolls to the side briefly as she murmurs something to him..and a sudden stabbing pain sobers him up immediately as it pushes into his side, just next to the spine. She's slipped a dagger coated in paralytics into his back. Immediately, the friend that plays Aurel loudly exclaims "god FUCKING dammit" as he grabs his pencil and draws a heavy black line across Pyrrha's name at the top of his 'Spank Bank', to which I remark, well, technically there was still penetration.

Pyyrha rolls back into Aurels line of sight as her magical disguise dissipates in a cloud of familiar golden light motes; a familiar voice rings out from within the cloud, "And now we're even for the knife you drove into my back..", the sentence punctuated with a sinister smile on the now visible face of an old friend... Paradox. The changeling magician that Aurel sold out to the government so long ago on nothing more than a whim. "You ended my life. I had to mourn the identity I created for myself the moment they came for us on that boat..in the months since I've turned my magics to a different end, and assumed this more..palatable..Visage just to get close enough to drive this knife into you. All i want now Is to hear you scream."

Downstairs, Ann and Szary have had their fill of gambling, food and drink, and have come to sit in somewhat uncomfortable silence on the edge of a fountain, dimly lit by some magical neon light. Ann reaches to pluck the glass rose from behind her ear, but her hand briefly brushes Szarys on the way up, Szarys single eye, like a hateful pale moon occluded by clouds, meets Anns firey orange eyes and they both draw back, flustered, before Ann lets herself fall onto Szarys shoulder, resting her head there as they both enjoy the moment; catching sight of Hazel in the distance absolutely hustling a bunch of suckers at the card tables, all three of them utterly lost in their night, unaware of the peril facing Aurel.

Upstairs, Aurel has taken to playing the fool; "What? Sell you out?? Me? No!"...the charade falls on deaf elven ears that near twitch with joy at hearing him beg, proving himself the weasel Paradox knew him to be. He twists the knife and cuts Aurel off. "I want you to scream for me." Aurel again refuses and, sensing he can't sway him with lies, instead takes to threatening him. "My dragon will kill you for this! (Fact) Szary won't stand for seeing her best friend (not a mutually held feeling) cut down! She may have almost killed me for what I did to you but she won't let me die without retribution! Helianthus (Ann) will burn you alive for killing her future husband! (a notion that is again not mutual) Hazel-" he is again cut off by a vicious, and near seductive uttering from the Changeling that now rests his head on his hand, elbow pressed to his victims sternum. "I don't care. You already killed me with your words once." He draws a second knife and traces Aurels jugular. "The real me is gone. I'm anybody and everybody, now." he raises the knife for a final killing stroke. "How regrettable that you can only be your rotten self even unto your last miserable breath." At this moment, a bolt of lighting splinters the door and blasts the dagger from Paradox's hand.

Anne and Szary surmount the final step of nigh infinite stairs, rounding the corner hand in hand and seeking eachother as a crutch against the dual forces of intoxication and gravity. Their eyes both stray from eachothers, drawn to a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, and the figure within it- A masked woman stands akimbo, arm outstretched, tendrils of wicked electricity jumping from her open palm. She glances to the drunken pair, and then to the would be assassin and the man trapped beneath him, tensing up in frustration at words left unsaid, then sprints into the room, knocking Paradox aside as she blasts the window out with another bolt and leaps through the now open frame.

Szary and Ann, quickly sobering up, rush into the room after her, only to see Paradox clamoring to his feet- Though hardened by his lust for revenge, and hardly recognizable as the plucky and hopeful young magician they met little over a year ago- Szary immediately knows exactly what's going on and sobers up instantly; To leap onto Aurel and strangle him, suddenly reminded of the cruelty with which he sold out their friend. Ann, confused, reaches out to Paradox and shouts his name, but her words only echo in the empty space left by him vanishing to again become somebody else.

We actually left off after the masked women blew the door off and I took some liberties with the dialogue, but hey. I like to Imagine that in the commotion that will follow while chasing the masked woman down, Hazel will be embroiled in the chaos and not get to cash in her winnings.

.

[swablueskies]

100 days until New Horizons

Days 100 - 73

Created by bebebese and low-key tagged by Kendall and I’m so excited that I need to channel my energy into something Animal Crossing related! I altered the question numbers to be a countdown from 100 to 1. Watch me completely fail to do these daily from now on. 

100.  Do you prefer making up a new name for your villager, or using your own name? I pretty much always use my name or a derivative for my first player character (younger me used Rachael, now I use Rae). Anything after that is completely fair game!

99.  Do you use the first map you’re given, or do you reset for layouts? I used to use the first map I was given but now I’m an elitist and I’ll probably spend the first week of release resetting for the best island, which will be hard because there won’t be any online guides to show off what kind of island layouts are possible 😬

98.  Do you use the face you’re given, or do you wait for guides and choose your favourite? Wait for guides and choose my favourite, always. However, if player customisation is going to be more along the lines of HDD/PC, then I might not need to wait~ !

97.  Favourite town/island name?/Have you a name picked out for your town/island? I’ll assume this question is about my favourite of MY names because if I had to pick from every name I’d ever seen it would be impossible!? My favourite of the ones I’ve had over the years is probably Polaris, my second Wild World town. (I spent several hours after getting New Leaf for the first time agonising over whether to call my town Polaris or North.) I’m very partial to Paprika and Ginkgo too which are two of my New Leaf towns! I might name my island Ginkgo, but I’m not 100% sure yet. I need to start brainstorming

96.  Will you be sharing with friends/family, or is your island going to be all your own? ALL MINE B*TCHES I’M NOT LETTING ANYBODY SCREW UP MY SH*T (also my parents wouldn’t play and my brother has his own Switch and I don’t have any friends so)

95.  What’s a new feature you’re excited about? Pole vaulting?! I am also SO excited about the idea of getting to choose to have my town in the Southern hemisphere and being able to follow the real seasons! I tend to miss summer in Animal Crossing because I drop off playing over the winter for some reason, and I get bored of the snow really easily when I’m playing obsessively over summer, so that’ll be so nice. 

94.  Favourite fruit? Honestly I don’t really have a favourite. Maybe peaches or oranges?

93.  Least favourite fruit? Durians are ugly! I like pears a lot but I probably wouldn’t want them as a native fruit, as they blend in too much with the trees ... and I’m a little tired of cherries, I always seem to get cherries as my native fruit. 

92.  Favourite area? (Beach, campground, shopping district etc, from any entry in the series.) I’m not sure if this is 100% my most accurate answer and I’m probably forgetting a special favourite but I really loved and miss Celeste’s observatory. I also like the museum a lot in general! The music and the ambience and slowly watching the displays fill up is so nice.

91.  Where do you like to like to put your house? Do you like that level of customization, or do you prefer to have some things decided, like in older entries? In some ways, having restricted choice is easier because you don’t spend so long agonising over the perfect spot. I do like being able to customise my town to that extent though and by the looks of things New Horizon is going to be even better in that regard. I usually like having my house near water and a little bit isolated from my other villagers and shops etc. 

90. Favourite grass pattern?  Probably circles cos I’m basic, but I’m fond of squares too. I don’t care much for the star shaped snow which I know is a big draw for the circle patterned grass.

89. Least favourite grass pattern? Triangles.

88. Favourite villager(s)? Lily is my ultimate forever favourite but honestly I have so so many that I love. 😭

87. Least favourite villager(s)? It used to be Pippy but I have let go of that anger and become a more enlightened person for it and I even made her a very nice house in Happy Home Designer. Now my least favourite villagers are just the extremely ugly ones like Hippeux/Beardo/Barold (and extra bonus hatred points if they’re Smug, I don’t mind ugly Cranky villagers so much but ugly Smugs are just ... slimy)

86.  Did you like doing Tom Nook’s chores, or did you find those to be a pain? I used to not really like them when I was young, but honestly I would be so into those being reinstated or just like getting a part time job in general. (The shift at The Roost in New Leaf wasn’t really that great, I liked delivering items for villagers more.) 

85.  Favourite NPC(s)? Celeste! And Isabelle and Sable and Blathers and Brewster and I’m quite fond of Joan and Redd as well. AND LEIF!

84. Least favourite NPC(s)? Mmm ... I don’t think I really have one. I used to dislike Lyle in Wild World but now that he’s had a career change I don’t mind him so much. I guess maybe Don Resetti? Nothing against him but I have had literally zero interaction with him ever so he’s my least favourite by default.  Also ... as much as I like Tom Nook I’m not sure how I feel about him being like the “mascot” of New Horizons. 

83.  Do you use paths? Are you excited about the new path tool? I do sometimes and I am!! I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it because I really like grassy paths lined with flowers (and if grass erosion isn’t a thing I might even not use paths at all) but I’m definitely going to give it a go. 

82.  Favourite feature from an older entry? I miss Celeste’s observatory and making my own constellations. I also miss Flea Market day and when villagers developed their own hobbies that you could help them with ... like for a while they’d be really into gardening and they’d plant tons of flowers, or they’d really enjoy fishing and ask you to catch progressively rarer fish for them. I miss how much villagers used to talk to each other out and about, and how the NPCs had more dialogue and history to them. And I kind of miss how narky the villagers could get sometimes! I liked earning their love instead of having it from the beginning. Also the recycling bin was always fun to look at. OH and!! roof items from HHD and the customisable curtains/window panes/doors and ambient sounds etc. I really hope those interior design options make a comeback in New Horizons.

81.  What was your first Animal Crossing game? Wild World!

80.  Favourite activity (fishing, bug catching, fossil hunting, other)? I like it all really! I maybe have a special spot for watering flowers though. Something about it is very soothing. 

79.  Least favourite activity? Diving. Great concept, horrible execution. I do hope it returns in New Horizons but I sincerely hope it is improved somehow because it was just painful. I don’t know a single person who actually enjoyed it after the novelty wore off and they started hunting the more skittish sea creatures. 

78.  Favourite bug(s)? Birdwing butterflies are prettiest but I love seeing fireflies in the summer. Also I like the crickets in autumn. Also honeybees and snails just make my heart full and I think orchid mantises are really pretty too! Possibly my number one hope for New Horizons is a revamp of bug containers so I can display them in my house. 

77.  Least favourite bug(s)? Basically the gross ones lmao, flies, ants, fleas, and mosquitos are f*cking annoying. I hate hate hate wharf roaches I don’t know why, I think I just hate the sound they make when they scuttle around. Also I hate centipedes on principle. Oh and diving beetles because they’re a pain. 

76.  A quarter of the way there! How’s the wait? I am so desperate for this game to finally come out. I thought I could make it to March 20 without losing my mind but it’s hit me all of a sudden and I WANT IT NOW

75.  Favourite fish? I really like Napoleonfish because they’re so iridescent when you catch them in the sun~ I like frogs because of the sound they make and goldfish on account of them being pretty much the only fish with a nice display, also soft shelled turtles because TURTLE and arowanas because they’re pretty.

74.  Least favourite fish? Hmm ... maybe eels? Also sea bass naturally. 

73.  Favourite fossil? I ... really don’t have much in the way of an opinion on the fossils to be honest. 

[thickasthievesrpg-hidden]

WELCOME TO THE HEIST, MARIE!

YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF PENELOPE KANG

A note from Admin Tris: Firstly, I think I speak for all of us when I say how excited we were to see an application for Penelope in our inbox. As someone who once considered applying for Penelope in the starting stages of TaT, I’ve always wondered why she got so little interest. Certainly, her occupation isn’t the most glamorous, and being one of the babies of the Heist, I can understand why applicants would favor other roles -- but I’m so glad that you found something special in Penelope, Marie. You understand her, the shyness and the innocence, but you also hint to the fire of her personality. She’s a very soft character, naive in the purest sense of the word, and despite the loss of her father, she’s never really been forced to see the darkness in this world. I can’t wait to see what you do with Penelope -- and your request to use Komatsu Nana has been approved! Congratulations on your acceptance! You’ve been to the museums, the banks, the isolated manors with their black dogs and gilded keys. You’ve stolen their necklaces, their jewels, the prized heirlooms in their vaults and their safes. They’ll watch out for you. Please visit the after acceptance page and submit your account within the next 24 hours – we’re excited to have you with us!

Name/Alias + Pronouns:

What name/alias would you like to go by? Marie What pronouns would you like us to refer to you by? She/her

Age:

I’m 19. 

Timezone + Activity

At the moment, I am in CST (GMT+1). I’d say I’m a 5-7, depending on the week. I’m currently working and might take up extra hours if I have the opportunity to, but I’m usually done early regardless. I try to write every day, but as I am a slow writer, I might not produce more than one or two replies a day if I’ve got a particularly long interaction pending. 

One thing to be noted, though, is that I am moving to another country in March. This means I probably need a hiatus/semi-hiatus in the first week of March before returning to my usual activity. If this is a concern, please contact me and we’ll discuss it!

I. BASICS

Desired Role:

Penelope Kang. Often nicknamed Penny, or even Poppy at times.

Analysis:

sexuality/romantic preference — Penelope is heterosexual - well, that is what she assumes, anyway, having only ever been in love with one person. With that, it has to be said that her sexuality is largely unexplored, as she has kept her eyes and heart on Magnus since the incident in the Lee driveway. This means her assumed sexuality might very well change once she gets her chance to explore it, but at the moment that seems like an unlikely event as she is both very timid and completely smitten with Magnus.

birthdate — September 21, 1997. 

birthplace/hometown — Tokyo, Japan.

occupation  — Officially, she is a housemaid of the Lees. While she is told multiple times that she does not need to do the work of a housemaid any longer, she loves the people she used to work with and spends a lot of her time off helping them out. Especially around the time for important events or dinners, she is always there to deck the tables, clean the rooms or cut the carrots alongside the cook. 

criminal occupation  — Penelope is an excellent hacker. Her brain is analytical, numbers are her forte and she has a quick mind. She can find solutions and loop holes in code and security systems quickly and precisely. While hacking was originally just an experiment, she is grateful that it turned into a profession. It’s her way of being a hero without being directly involved in the action in the heist itself. She is confident in her abilities and sees it as a key opportunity to show people - and maybe Magnus in particular - what talents she has brewing inside her. 

pronouns: She/her

languages: Penelope knows quite a few languages. Japanese was the language spoken in her household until she was six, when Arthur Kang came into the family. With him came an accelerated learning progress of the Korean langauge - she wanted to understand her father’s mother tongue, after all, and it was also a language she was met with all over the Lee mansion. It remains a language she can speak alright, but she has troubles reading effectively. English was another language she heard all around her in the Lee mansion, but one she did not have much use for until she got older. While her English is good indeed, she carries an accent. Untimately, Czech is the language she speaks the most - or at least did before being welcomed into the Heist. After all, she grew up going to a school in Prague and formed most of her friendships and connections in the Czech language.

hobbies: Sewing, sketching, gardening, cooking, reading.

Four Characteristics:

List and describe at least two negative and two positive characteristics that you believe define your chosen character best. Please be as detailed as possible to show us how these traits fit into your perception of them. 

+ Observant: Penelope is an observant girl, which some believe might be the key to her compassion and cleverness. She is particularly sensitive to people’s feelings, noticing nervous gestures, the way people’s faces express false emotions in pressed situations and unusual drifts. While she might see through the masks of indifference people hide their emotions behind, she will not always comment on it even if she wants to, simply for showing respect to the person’s privacy. Spots, wrinkles and stains are also things she notice quickly, along with odd numbers or letters in clauses of code among other things.

+ Bright: There is no denying her bright mind. She is quick, clever and can solve most puzzles in less time than what people normally do. As her shy nature shines through the most, people might forget her razor sharp mind; she’ll come up with simple solutions to complex problems, speaking up from the corner of the room with a confidence they might not expect. 

- Shy: Another rather dominant trait you will notice when you first meet her, but one she tries to break out from and lay behind her. She wants to explore, to experience. She wants to be able to talk to strangers like they were her best friends – she has seen people do so, and their confidence is admirable. However, she sometimes finds it hard to gather the courage to talk to strangers at all and is generally not a girl of many words. When people get to know her, she will open up, and the trait fades a little. 

- Stubborn: Although appearing to be quite reserved, she can be described as stubborn by anyone who knows her. Once she puts her mind to something, it is not easy to make her thoughts stray from it. She usually stands up to what she believes, and this is where her shy nature seems to dim ever so slightly; she might interfere – though in a rather quiet manner – into people’s discussions or insert a quick comment about the case if she disagrees strongly. 

Other traits: optimistic, a little idealistic, gentle, perfectionist.

Expansion:

Expand on at least two connections that you see your character having, whether they were mentioned in the bio or not, AND/OR expand on any part of the biography that was left vague or nondescript. 

Camille Delacroix: Penelope, as a rather shy and timid girl who hopes to break out of her shell, is fascinated by people like Camille. While she does not know much about her, she knows she has travelled the world and surely she has been on more adventures than most. While her outgoing personality intimidates her somewhat, she wishes for nothing but to befriend her. Maybe even just make her aquaintance. Certainly someone like her would not settle for the boring everyday life - maybe she could bring her out on one of her adventures? She sees Camille as an opportunity to break out of her comfort zone, but also thinks it as a opportunity that won’t show anytime soon; girls like her doesn’t notice shy girls like Penelope in the corner of a room. 

Dominik Woo: Dominik is one of the people Penelope trusts the most in the whole wide world. She knows he would never laugh at her for things that were not meant to be funny; he is��safe, and someone she feels she can tell everything to. She is relaxed in his company and does not feel the need to filter herself in such a way that she does with most other people, and her shy nature seems to dim even just a little in his presence. 

II. WRITING

Para Sample(s):

You may write as many para samples as you’d like

Your para sample(s) can be any length of your choosing.

In-character, third person, past or present tense are both acceptable. 

This is the most important section of the application. We are looking for a unique takeon the character, for you to show us that you really understand the character’s past, motives, and state of mind. Ultimately, we would like to see that you know the character better than even we do, so please don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and delve into the depths of their story! It is highly advisable to include dialogue andinteractions with NPC or canon roles, so that we can see how your character acts.

The ballroom was large and awfully colourless to Penelope’s tastes. There were cream-coloured walls and marble floors. Women in pale, long dresses and men in black and white suits made up the masses – important people from important families. The high roof echoed the hundreds of voices within the hall, and worked as an enhancer for the classical music played by live performers at the other end of the room. She had gathered that tonight was a particularly important night, and with that she was sure Magnus would show up. They had hosted two galas previously after Magnus’ return – she did not see him during those, and heard whispers that he had only been there for what might have been half an hour. She had attended them too, of course, but had left them by the end of the night with a lingering feeling of disappointment. Ah, he might be back from his five-year journey, but she saw him now just as little has she had five months ago.

She was dressed in black and white like the other serving girls and boys. Her friend Mina had fallen ill in time for the occasion. “I will not allow you to go,” she had told her sternly when she visited her that particular morning, placing a cup of green tea on her bedside. She was met with little resistance, and suspected the tea had gone cold in favour for sleep and fever dreams instead.

Though she was not happy that her friend had fallen ill, she counted herself lucky as she took her mid-day duty to do the rooms. Saturdays was the day she were to do the heir’s, and Penelope could not help but feel a little giddy as she entered the empty room. It was stupid, and she knew it well, but… it was really his! It was clear he had not been there this particular night – she had heard he did not always spend his nights in the Lee mansion – but she took her time to smooth over the sheets once more. She placed a small box of chocolates on his night table, too, along with a glass of water with small hand-plucked flowers in bright colours from her father’s own garden. She was not sure whether he would like the chocolates or not, nor was she sure if he would care about the flowers at all. And he certainly would not notice where they came from, would he? She hoped he see it and maybe smile a bit at  the gesture regardless.

“Penny!” She turned to find a girl dressed similarly to her, with dark hair and a wide smile on her lips. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ve got enough important work to do as it is!” She held her empty hands out to take the tray with glasses of champagne that Penelope had taken upon herself to walk about in the room with.

She returned her friend’s smile. “Don’t be silly, Hara!” She turned away slightly as to move the tray out of her reach. “I am doing very important things. You need a break every now and then, you know. Mina is sick, besides. I’m taking her watch.”

“Ari is already taking her watch.” Her friend let her hands fall, though, facing her defeat.

She offered her a light shrug of her shoulders, smile playing on her lips. “I’ll take your watch too. I suppose you can take a couple minutes off, if you want.”

Turning to look over the room, she leaned sideways in towards her friend. “I also heard they were doing important business today,” she said, voice low. Hara nodded knowingly. She only said so because she knew every one of the girls had caught on on the news already, of course. They had talked about before the event, and they had agreed that important people demanded excellent service – and they certainly was not going to disappoint. “I heard both the Kanes and the Bulletts wanted to strike a deal of some sort,” Hara told her seriously.

“I did so, too.” She paused a brief second. “Do you think Magnus will show up?” Her eyes revealing a hint of curiosity mixed in with excitement.

Hara straightened up and let out a snort. “The heir? No way. Apparently, he finds these kinds of things boring, so he doesn’t care to. That’s what happened the other two galas.”

“But those were mostly for fun, though. He didn’t have to come.”

“He left us for five years because he thought it was boring. That’s what Mandy says. He won’t show up at some stupid gala when he hasn’t been doing so for the last five years.”

Penelope furrowed her brows. She moved the tray from her right hand into both, holding it steadily in front of her. “Oh, but you don’t know that. He didn’t leave just because it was boring. He has his reasons, Hara. I know it.”

The other girl sighed, then shook her head, the corners of her mouth moving up slightly, forming a pitiful smile that Penelope could not help but feel a little annoyed seeing. “C’mon, Penny. This is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?”

“Yes! You talk about him all the time! You deserve so much better.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she insisted.

Another smile shaped on her friend’s lips. “Sure you don’t. Hey, I gathered you and Jaesuk are close. Give him a shot, come on.”

Penelope could not help but to laugh at that, though her cheeks felt slightly warmer than what they were before. “Jaesuk? No, no, no! We’re just friends, you know that.” She cleared her throat, threw a quick glance around the room, subconsciously searching for a pop of bright red hair among the black-and-white coloured crowd. Then she turned her gaze back to Hara and held the tray out to her. “Go take a break now. Take a glass too, if you will. They said I could, but I’m not going to.”

With a sigh, her friend seemed to consider it for a moment. Then, with a glass in hand, she offered her a smile and turned around to walk through the doors towards the kitchen.  

And he did show up that night. Of course he did – Penelope knew he would. Once Hara had returned, she offered her a triumphant smile from across the room.

Starter Example:

Provide an example of a mini-para starter that you might post on your character’s account. Feel free to include a gif if you’d like! You may also add a gif-chat starter or multi-paragraph starter if you feel inclined, though they are optional.

ONE:

A day off was not something Penelope was used to. Most days she would spent her time in front of the computer screen, typing codes and figuring out the keys to secret security systems. Other times, she did the beds with the housemaids or watered the plants alongside the gardener at the Lee manison.

While the latter was indeed done in her time off, it was nothing like this. It was nothing like walking down the streets towards the local park, with no tasks  in mind, other than to drink up the hot cocoa she had bought from the coffee shop on the corner.

Her eyes were fixed on the pavement before her, carefully tip-toeing around the edges of the puddles left by the rain two hours prior.

“Oh!” She instictively stepped back into the puddle she had intended to step across, not seeing the person before her. “I’m sorry.” She turned her eyes up towards the other person, an apologetic smile playing at her lips. “It’s the rain, you know–oh, I know you.”

TWO:

Penelope would sometimes help out in the garden surrounding the Lee manison. She was rather fond of the work, and the head gardener - an older Korean man with kind eyes - was talkative and seemed to appreciate her company. As time had passed, he trusted her with more complicated tasks than watering the plants - on this paricularly sunny afternoon, she was replanting small trees that would eventually grow into a hedge.

The sun was burning in her neck, and she had parted ways with the gardener to take a break. She made her way outside the property. Up on her toes, she looked over the large fences to see if she could spot the hedges she had planted from the outside. And would you believe it? From her position on the pavement, she could see some of the leaves belonging to the trees she had planted. A smile spread across her lips.

Another step backwards. Maybe she could see more of them? Another step– she felt the very end of the pavement beneath her left foot, the stones separating it from the highway; she stumbled another step backwards to catch her balance.

Her cheeks burned hot with embarrassment as she spotted the other person. “I was just… trying to look over at the hedges.”

III. FREESTYLE/EXTRA

Optional.Time to let out your passion & creativity! This is where you may list anything else that you see for this character that is not stated in their bios. Go wild! This is the section that will be examined in the case of multiple applications, so don’t be afraid to let your muse out. (videos, headcanons, facts, song lyrics, diary entries, letters, memes, etc.) 

1. Penelope’s fashion sense can be describes as cute, but fashionable. She loves everything that is quirky and a little different in a simple way. Simple fabrics and simple patters. Orange and rusty red are currently her favorite clothing colours, and you are sure to spot the colour in every other outfit she wears. As for her hair style, she likes to keep it shoulder-length and with bangs. She might pin it up or braid it every now and then, but generally keeps it down. 

2.  Penelope writes a diary. She might not write every day, but tries to. She glues in fragments of papers, stickers and pictures that she stumbles upon through-out the day to the entires. Sometimes the entires strech over several pages becaus of it, other times there are only a collage to describe the day. She carries the pieces in a small pocket of her jacket until she pulls them out to glue them in.

Here is my inspiration tag for her!

[tshirtfashiontrend]

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

Link Buys Now: https://kingteeshops.com/after-the-backlash-bethesda-is-on-a-long-quest-to-redeem-fallout-76/

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

When Bethesda took the stage ahead of E3 on Sunday, there was an elephant in the room: Fallout 76. Feedback to the game, which launched in a rough state, has not been pretty. Bethesda knows it. That’s why the publisher kept referring to fan criticism that helps keep them on their toes during their E3 presentation, and why Bethesda announced a number of changes coming to Fallout 76 last night. But if you look closely, it’s all a part of an ongoing effort to revitalize its controversial game.

Fallout 76’s many faults have been well-documented by this point. Without NPCs, the story seemed scarce, and players weren’t given enough tools to meaningfully take up such roles themselves. Bethesda’s jank made a PvP-centric experience hellish. Players kept finding exploits left and right. The list goes on.

At first, Fallout 76’s updates functioned like emergency triage, with Bethesda scrambling to improve the wasteland’s dire state. But now enough time has passed that Bethesda can start to focus on actually improving the game. Bethesda added more quests and beefier dungeons, as well as a hardcore survival mode. Players got the ability to open up their own stores, which helped liven up the wasteland. While these additions haven’t been perfect, they showcased a willingness to experiment: In one update, Bethesda added an unmarked quest that seemed to hint at the opening of Vault 51, a bunker with people in it.

This, it seemed, was a tease for Fallout 76’s big new update, Wastelanders. For one thing, Fallout 76 will soon get actual NPCs with dialogue. While hardcore Fallout 76 fans were doing just fine without characters penned by Bethesda — roleplaying has been all the rage — the return of NPCs marks a curious change of course for the studio.

Previously, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard said the publisher was “leaning in” to the fact the game had no NPCs, as that was a feature that set the title apart from other Fallouts. The underlying message was that Fallout 76 didn’t need NPCs, because players would decide for themselves what characters would do to repopulate the wasteland.

“When we think about games, we think about worlds, and the choices you can make, the stories you create and tell yourself,” Howard said during Fallout 76’s reveal during last year’s E3. “We have a game, more than any game that we’ve ever done, where the choices are yours, where you’ll decide what happens. You’ll decide the heroes, and you’ll decide the villains.”

Some players took this to heart — one fan ended up declaring himself an endgame boss, for example.

Overall, the omission wasn’t very well received, though, with players noting that Fallout 76 felt strangely empty. And while Fallout 76 was still chock full of stories delivered through Holotapes and notes, the narrative was limited by the fact everyone inevitably ends up dead thanks to the game’s narrative. Bethesda must have reevaluated its stance, but instead of outright admitting fault, the developer is marketing their change of heart as a natural progression of the game. The point was to rebuild society, and players did exactly that, Bethesda’s E3 2019 presentation said. But we do know that these changes were a result of player feedback: The publisher flew out fans to discuss what was in the pipeline, and to talk about what could improve down the line. It was a move that ended up building goodwill among disgruntled devotees.

“I now see them not as a faceless black hole gobbling up our time and money but a group of people working hard and limited by a number of factors,” Reddit user u/Aten_Ra said in a post detailing their experience with Bethesda. “Change is slow, especially when it comes to large companies, but they are trying to find ways to ‘hear us better’.”

The other big addition announced yesterday was a trend-chaser: a new battle royale mode. It’s not really something that anybody asked for, but in a way, it fixes some of Fallout 76’s biggest problems. Right now, player-versus-player combat is horrendously imbalanced thanks to weapons that can one-shot players, and items that turn characters invisible for minutes at a time. With a battle royale setup, everyone is theoretically on an even playing field — it all comes down to what gear players can find, and appearance rates can be tweaked by Bethesda. And, like NPCs before it, battle royale has a lore-specific reason for existing. The base game, after all, allows players to nuke Appalachia to create endgame raids. Now, Bethesda is saying this mechanic was so devastating that it sparked an actual nuclear winter that will make up Fallout 76’s storm cloud.

It’s unlikely that Fallout 76’s battle royale mode will launch without hitches, as the base game itself isn’t always stable. But Bethesda seems determined to improve the experience: One of the other big tweaks going live today is a combat overhaul, which is crucial when the game is launching a new PvP mode. The battle royale mode also seems to be adding its own flavor to the mix by allowing players to gain access to the aforementioned Vault 51 as they rank up within Nuclear Winter. Which is to say: A multiplayer mode directly ties into Fallout 76’s story. Nuclear Winter may be joining a long list of battle royale games, but you get the feeling that Bethesda is making an actual gamble with the way the game is set up, all in the name of attracting new players.

There’s a lot more packed into today’s update, from new customization items to a new main quest. Notably, all of this is being released at the same time as a weeklong free trial where progress can carry over to the full game. Bethesda seems to be banking on an influx of new players here, as evidenced by the fact it’s recently published a long beginner’s guide to coincide with that same free trial. In many ways, Fallout 76 still has a long ways to go, but as we go into year two, it seems that the post-apocalyptic shooter is slowly becoming the game that Bethesda promised in the first place.

[kingteeshops]

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

Link Buys Now: https://kingteeshops.com/after-the-backlash-bethesda-is-on-a-long-quest-to-redeem-fallout-76/

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

When Bethesda took the stage ahead of E3 on Sunday, there was an elephant in the room: Fallout 76. Feedback to the game, which launched in a rough state, has not been pretty. Bethesda knows it. That’s why the publisher kept referring to fan criticism that helps keep them on their toes during their E3 presentation, and why Bethesda announced a number of changes coming to Fallout 76 last night. But if you look closely, it’s all a part of an ongoing effort to revitalize its controversial game.

Fallout 76’s many faults have been well-documented by this point. Without NPCs, the story seemed scarce, and players weren’t given enough tools to meaningfully take up such roles themselves. Bethesda’s jank made a PvP-centric experience hellish. Players kept finding exploits left and right. The list goes on.

At first, Fallout 76’s updates functioned like emergency triage, with Bethesda scrambling to improve the wasteland’s dire state. But now enough time has passed that Bethesda can start to focus on actually improving the game. Bethesda added more quests and beefier dungeons, as well as a hardcore survival mode. Players got the ability to open up their own stores, which helped liven up the wasteland. While these additions haven’t been perfect, they showcased a willingness to experiment: In one update, Bethesda added an unmarked quest that seemed to hint at the opening of Vault 51, a bunker with people in it.

This, it seemed, was a tease for Fallout 76’s big new update, Wastelanders. For one thing, Fallout 76 will soon get actual NPCs with dialogue. While hardcore Fallout 76 fans were doing just fine without characters penned by Bethesda — roleplaying has been all the rage — the return of NPCs marks a curious change of course for the studio.

Previously, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard said the publisher was “leaning in” to the fact the game had no NPCs, as that was a feature that set the title apart from other Fallouts. The underlying message was that Fallout 76 didn’t need NPCs, because players would decide for themselves what characters would do to repopulate the wasteland.

“When we think about games, we think about worlds, and the choices you can make, the stories you create and tell yourself,” Howard said during Fallout 76’s reveal during last year’s E3. “We have a game, more than any game that we’ve ever done, where the choices are yours, where you’ll decide what happens. You’ll decide the heroes, and you’ll decide the villains.”

Some players took this to heart — one fan ended up declaring himself an endgame boss, for example.

Overall, the omission wasn’t very well received, though, with players noting that Fallout 76 felt strangely empty. And while Fallout 76 was still chock full of stories delivered through Holotapes and notes, the narrative was limited by the fact everyone inevitably ends up dead thanks to the game’s narrative. Bethesda must have reevaluated its stance, but instead of outright admitting fault, the developer is marketing their change of heart as a natural progression of the game. The point was to rebuild society, and players did exactly that, Bethesda’s E3 2019 presentation said. But we do know that these changes were a result of player feedback: The publisher flew out fans to discuss what was in the pipeline, and to talk about what could improve down the line. It was a move that ended up building goodwill among disgruntled devotees.

“I now see them not as a faceless black hole gobbling up our time and money but a group of people working hard and limited by a number of factors,” Reddit user u/Aten_Ra said in a post detailing their experience with Bethesda. “Change is slow, especially when it comes to large companies, but they are trying to find ways to ‘hear us better’.”

The other big addition announced yesterday was a trend-chaser: a new battle royale mode. It’s not really something that anybody asked for, but in a way, it fixes some of Fallout 76’s biggest problems. Right now, player-versus-player combat is horrendously imbalanced thanks to weapons that can one-shot players, and items that turn characters invisible for minutes at a time. With a battle royale setup, everyone is theoretically on an even playing field — it all comes down to what gear players can find, and appearance rates can be tweaked by Bethesda. And, like NPCs before it, battle royale has a lore-specific reason for existing. The base game, after all, allows players to nuke Appalachia to create endgame raids. Now, Bethesda is saying this mechanic was so devastating that it sparked an actual nuclear winter that will make up Fallout 76’s storm cloud.

It’s unlikely that Fallout 76’s battle royale mode will launch without hitches, as the base game itself isn’t always stable. But Bethesda seems determined to improve the experience: One of the other big tweaks going live today is a combat overhaul, which is crucial when the game is launching a new PvP mode. The battle royale mode also seems to be adding its own flavor to the mix by allowing players to gain access to the aforementioned Vault 51 as they rank up within Nuclear Winter. Which is to say: A multiplayer mode directly ties into Fallout 76’s story. Nuclear Winter may be joining a long list of battle royale games, but you get the feeling that Bethesda is making an actual gamble with the way the game is set up, all in the name of attracting new players.

There’s a lot more packed into today’s update, from new customization items to a new main quest. Notably, all of this is being released at the same time as a weeklong free trial where progress can carry over to the full game. Bethesda seems to be banking on an influx of new players here, as evidenced by the fact it’s recently published a long beginner’s guide to coincide with that same free trial. In many ways, Fallout 76 still has a long ways to go, but as we go into year two, it seems that the post-apocalyptic shooter is slowly becoming the game that Bethesda promised in the first place.

[terryblount]

One Piece: World Seeker – Review

When I first heard of One Piece: World Seeker, I remember thinking it was about time they brought one of Shonen Jump’s most widely-beloved exports to gaming. Unbeknownst to me, the now eight hundred and seventy-three episode anime has actually ventured into our industry numerous times over the last nineteen years. Some quick research revealed that One Piece has inspired several beat ‘em ups, fighting games, turn-based JRPG’s, action-adventure games, and even a baseball game.

Now the series has finally sailed the treacherous waters of the open world, sandbox genre. Veteran One Piece developers, Ganbarion, have yet again given players the chance to don the straw hat of protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, but this time with unparalleled freedom to explore, find collectables, and pummel hoards of marines with his iconic, elastic fisticuffs. Thanks to the power of modern platforms, and not least of all the might of the Unreal Engine 4, gamers have the chance to immerse themselves into Luffy’s adventures like never before.

Monkey D. Luffy, one of the most famous faces in anime.

So close, and yet so far. While there are merits to the idea of building a One Piece game out of a sandbox formula, I don’t think One Piece: World Seeker represents the ideal solution. The combat mechanics were relatively enjoyable, and it is obvious that the developers have put some serious elbow grease into the game’s visual representation. Nevertheless, the repetitive nature of side quests and the underwhelming attempt at world building simply did not take advantage of the rich and varied source material that is its namesake. This is simply not the game it should have been.

Watashi wa Luffy!

For the unfamiliar, One Piece is a long-running manga and anime series based around the escapades of Monkey D. Luffy, a pirate who seeks to obtain the eponymous ‘One Piece’ treasure. Whoever holds this legendary booty will be proclaimed as king of all the pirates, so the series is sort of like Treasure Island, but stretched to an encyclopedic length with the distinctive quirkiness and fanfare that only an anime can pull off.

Yet, Luffy’s whimsical straw hat and flip flops belie his true abilities because he accidentally ate the ‘Gum Gum’ devil fruit as a boy. The fruit made him stronger, highly resistant to enemy attacks, and enables him to stretch his body into extraordinary shapes much like Mrs Incredible or Mister Fantastic. With the power of his rubbery physique, Luffy sets sail on an epic treasure hunt across endless seas where he encounters new friends, gains crewmates, and confronts formidable enemies.

Eight hundred plus episodes later, and we have One Piece: World Seeker opening with our man being detained in a sky prison floating above a union of islands named ‘Prison Island.’ It seems Luffy allowed himself to be incarcerated as a distraction while the Straw Hats crew  break into a vault somewhere below. Unfortunately, the plan turned out to be a trap, resulting in Luffy bailing the flying fortress to escape the clutches of Isaac, the tyrannical warden of the whole region.

Isaac, the warden of prison island.

Once our hero crash lands on Prison Island, he befriends a new character called Jeanne, who eventually explains that the island’s populace has been split between Pro- and Anti-Navy factions in the aftermath of a protracted war. The Pro-Navy inhabitants live a life of comfort afforded by Isaac and the Navy as their new governors, while their counterparts struggle under their draconian regime.

Never one to turn a blind eye towards the troubles of the little people, our hero agrees to help Jeanne and the Anti-Navy resistance to rebel against their oppressors. As such, the player will take part in various missions such as reuniting Luffy with his crew, getting to know the colourful inhabitants of Prison Island, and steadily crippling Warden Isaac’s (literal) iron fists over the islands. Of course, you also get to beat up lots and lots of bad guys and bosses.

Missing the treasure in plain sight

One Piece: World Seeker’s setting is one of the most obvious links to its anime and manga roots. The narrative brings out the tried and trusted theme of Luffy stumbling upon a new island with a dilemma, and then going on a spontaneous adventure to assist the inhabitants with their struggles. It is the old, ‘good taking a stand against evil’ trope that has sustained the One Piece universe since its origins.

Moreover, fans should be pleased with how the writers have transitioned the characters and some cameos into the game from the One Piece chronology. Everything from their dialogue, to the depiction of the main villain feels like an authentic production from the central story line of One Piece. Considering that Eiichiro Oda, creator of the series, was involved, it is no wonder the game convinced me that I was playing through an actual episode of the anime during its best moments.

Nami, the resident thief of the straw hats. I cannot stop staring at her big… belt! Is she promoting Bitcoin!?

Unfortunately, it is also here where I began to notice how the gameplay of World Seeker ends up linking to the story in a rather shoehorned manner. After the tantalising opening cinematic of the narrative, most players would probably assume that Luffy will become the centre of a complex operation to overthrow Isaac. Instead, the game just falls into the same loop where he must travel to a certain location, and beat the crap of everyone he finds there.

Generally it boils down to you are at A, bad man at B. Go from A to B and remove bad man’s front teeth. World Seeker does try to mix things up with a few sections where you must infiltrate strongholds without being detected. As is usually the case with sandbox games that include ham-fisted stealth sections, they just feel like tacked on filler meant to lengthen your play time. It doesn’t take long for the gameplay to deteriorate from fun, to repetitive, to monotonous.

Gum Gum BAA-ZOO-KAAAA!

Luffy has a basic, three-hit combo that he can unleash upon thugs and navy soldiers, as well as his famous Gum Gum pistol serving as a ranged attack. There is also the option to sneak up on enemies either from behind or inside a barrel Metal Gear Solid style, which then creates the opportunity to perform stealth takedowns. It was rarely necessary to be stealthy though, since the bad guys are not only easy to kill, but sneaking around as Luffy just feels like a disservice to his character.

I must admit that the combat is very well animated, and fighting does a superb job at making you feel powerful. The camera also has the delightful habit of shifting to slow motion when you deliver the KO blow to the last man standing much like Batman and the Arkham games. Seeing the poor sod being launched slowly off a high building after receiving Luffy’s catapult fists was very entertaining… for the first fifty times I pulled it off at least.

Adding some variety is also the ability to switch between the blue and red ‘stances’ of combat on the fly. The red mode is essentially reserved for Luffy’s heavier, more focused attacks along with the ability to guard. Blue mode is faster and deals less damage, but the broad sweep of the attacks makes it appealing for confronting whole groups at a time. The dodge mechanic is also useful in this stance since you can zip out of the enemy’s reach if you need to.

While One Piece: World Seeker’s traversal fails to achieve the fluidity of recent super hero games, I thought that the mechanics of swinging and propelling my way through the game’s surprisingly big open world was implemented nicely. Like the combat, you really feel the forces at work in Luffy’s special ability, and it became a particularly exciting system once there were some high trees and buildings around me.  I even managed to gain a bit of fun out of collecting the overabundance of pointless loot scattered throughout the world.

To my dismay, the majority of the side quests have actually been built around this idea of collecting random loot items for citizens of Prison Island. I was horrified to catch myself looking for small flowers at the request of a random man standing near a wooden shed, or finding pieces of copper for a random little kid. Why must I do favours for bland-faced NPC’s who the game does not even bother to introduce to me? This sort of meaningless filler has no place in a One Piece game; I’d rather go looking for Riddler trophies.

At least the game is generous in dishing out experience points from these meaningless exploits. You can use said points to purchase new blue or red fighting moves, or you can spend them on Luffy’s traversal abilities and health points. However, let us not forget that One Piece has had an entire manga and anime saga to build up Luffy’s resume of moves. Does it really make sense hiding them behind experience points which can only be gained by grinding away at meaningless loot quests? No, it doesn’t.

It feels Unreal how much I love this game engine

Sorry about that atrocious pun, but sweet mother of monkey milk this game is pretty. I am not sure why many studios from the Land of the Rising Sun have made the Unreal Engine 4 their engine of choice lately, but World Seeker is yet another example of what a brilliant move this was. Just like the anime, this game is so colourful and vivid that I bet it would cure a defective monitor from stuck pixels.

This game can be seriously beautiful at times.

I cannot deny that the environments were eerily empty at times, nor can I look past at the lack of variety in enemies. However, the character animations, the sheer scale of some buildings, the beautiful landscapes and the particle effects really captivated me on a visual level. Honestly, if Toei Animation did an entire episode in these graphics I would be happy, and I cannot imagine better aesthetics for a One Piece video game.

If only for more time

What struck me from the moment I launched One Piece: World Seeker is that this game feels unfinished. There is nothing overtly broken in its mechanics, and certain elements of the gameplay are undeniably polished. Yet, the lack of voiced cut scenes, the general empty feeling of the world, the repetitive nature of the side missions, and using the same models for most of the enemies are all the tell-tale signs of a studio being pushed for time.

In fact, the stark contrast between the excellent visuals and the bland mission design makes me suspect Ganbarion had plans to make World Seeker more like a JRPG. In any case, it is clear that their plans never came to fruition and they settled on making a more fast-paced, open world game from what they had already finished.

If you are looking to play a good One Piece game, I suggest you look at any of the Pirate Warrior instalments, because World Seeker just feels like too much of a mixed bag. This is not the kind of game we want from this beloved series at this point in time, and playing it makes it clear that the developers share our sentiments. If, one the other hand, you don’t own a PS3, wait for a sale. There is still fun to be had with this game, even if it is very short lived.

Beautiful cut scenes

Graphics and sound design

Story fits the universe

Sterile world design

Very bland side quests

Too many collectables

Insipid mission design

Upgrades locked behind XP

          Playtime: 22 hours total. For the single player campaign and light grinding

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One Controller

One Piece: World Seeker – Review published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[tshirtfashiontrend]

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

Link Buys Now: https://kingteeshops.com/after-the-backlash-bethesda-is-on-a-long-quest-to-redeem-fallout-76/

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76

When Bethesda took the stage ahead of E3 on Sunday, there was an elephant in the room: Fallout 76. Feedback to the game, which launched in a rough state, has not been pretty. Bethesda knows it. That’s why the publisher kept referring to fan criticism that helps keep them on their toes during their E3 presentation, and why Bethesda announced a number of changes coming to Fallout 76 last night. But if you look closely, it’s all a part of an ongoing effort to revitalize its controversial game.

Fallout 76’s many faults have been well-documented by this point. Without NPCs, the story seemed scarce, and players weren’t given enough tools to meaningfully take up such roles themselves. Bethesda’s jank made a PvP-centric experience hellish. Players kept finding exploits left and right. The list goes on.

At first, Fallout 76’s updates functioned like emergency triage, with Bethesda scrambling to improve the wasteland’s dire state. But now enough time has passed that Bethesda can start to focus on actually improving the game. Bethesda added more quests and beefier dungeons, as well as a hardcore survival mode. Players got the ability to open up their own stores, which helped liven up the wasteland. While these additions haven’t been perfect, they showcased a willingness to experiment: In one update, Bethesda added an unmarked quest that seemed to hint at the opening of Vault 51, a bunker with people in it.

This, it seemed, was a tease for Fallout 76’s big new update, Wastelanders. For one thing, Fallout 76 will soon get actual NPCs with dialogue. While hardcore Fallout 76 fans were doing just fine without characters penned by Bethesda — roleplaying has been all the rage — the return of NPCs marks a curious change of course for the studio.

Previously, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard said the publisher was “leaning in” to the fact the game had no NPCs, as that was a feature that set the title apart from other Fallouts. The underlying message was that Fallout 76 didn’t need NPCs, because players would decide for themselves what characters would do to repopulate the wasteland.

“When we think about games, we think about worlds, and the choices you can make, the stories you create and tell yourself,” Howard said during Fallout 76’s reveal during last year’s E3. “We have a game, more than any game that we’ve ever done, where the choices are yours, where you’ll decide what happens. You’ll decide the heroes, and you’ll decide the villains.”

Some players took this to heart — one fan ended up declaring himself an endgame boss, for example.

Overall, the omission wasn’t very well received, though, with players noting that Fallout 76 felt strangely empty. And while Fallout 76 was still chock full of stories delivered through Holotapes and notes, the narrative was limited by the fact everyone inevitably ends up dead thanks to the game’s narrative. Bethesda must have reevaluated its stance, but instead of outright admitting fault, the developer is marketing their change of heart as a natural progression of the game. The point was to rebuild society, and players did exactly that, Bethesda’s E3 2019 presentation said. But we do know that these changes were a result of player feedback: The publisher flew out fans to discuss what was in the pipeline, and to talk about what could improve down the line. It was a move that ended up building goodwill among disgruntled devotees.

“I now see them not as a faceless black hole gobbling up our time and money but a group of people working hard and limited by a number of factors,” Reddit user u/Aten_Ra said in a post detailing their experience with Bethesda. “Change is slow, especially when it comes to large companies, but they are trying to find ways to ‘hear us better’.”

The other big addition announced yesterday was a trend-chaser: a new battle royale mode. It’s not really something that anybody asked for, but in a way, it fixes some of Fallout 76’s biggest problems. Right now, player-versus-player combat is horrendously imbalanced thanks to weapons that can one-shot players, and items that turn characters invisible for minutes at a time. With a battle royale setup, everyone is theoretically on an even playing field — it all comes down to what gear players can find, and appearance rates can be tweaked by Bethesda. And, like NPCs before it, battle royale has a lore-specific reason for existing. The base game, after all, allows players to nuke Appalachia to create endgame raids. Now, Bethesda is saying this mechanic was so devastating that it sparked an actual nuclear winter that will make up Fallout 76’s storm cloud.

It’s unlikely that Fallout 76’s battle royale mode will launch without hitches, as the base game itself isn’t always stable. But Bethesda seems determined to improve the experience: One of the other big tweaks going live today is a combat overhaul, which is crucial when the game is launching a new PvP mode. The battle royale mode also seems to be adding its own flavor to the mix by allowing players to gain access to the aforementioned Vault 51 as they rank up within Nuclear Winter. Which is to say: A multiplayer mode directly ties into Fallout 76’s story. Nuclear Winter may be joining a long list of battle royale games, but you get the feeling that Bethesda is making an actual gamble with the way the game is set up, all in the name of attracting new players.

There’s a lot more packed into today’s update, from new customization items to a new main quest. Notably, all of this is being released at the same time as a weeklong free trial where progress can carry over to the full game. Bethesda seems to be banking on an influx of new players here, as evidenced by the fact it’s recently published a long beginner’s guide to coincide with that same free trial. In many ways, Fallout 76 still has a long ways to go, but as we go into year two, it seems that the post-apocalyptic shooter is slowly becoming the game that Bethesda promised in the first place.