#finally decided to play the dlc on hard too and well.... he is just so pretty | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pikatrainer99 · 10 months ago

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So...I figured I should probably elaborate on Kieran after my last reblog so you all get where I'm coming from with my stance on him...

(Basically the TLDR of this post is this: I like Kieran much better when he's like this, look how happy he is, it's adorable 🥺)

(He legit terrifies me when he's like this though...😖)

My thoughts on him changed drastically throughout my playthrough of the DLC multiple times...and I'm gonna explain why.

First, when I first met him in the Teal Mask, I thought he was an adorkable socially awkward shy bean and I loved him because I'm very much the same way. Being (what seemed to me like) his first friend reminded me of how much of my childhood I spent friendless and the joy I felt at finally having one friend back in my last year of elementary school. As the Teal Mask story went on though, Kieran started to change...and I didn't know how to feel about the direction his character was headed...because it triggered traumatic memories in me...memories of that friend I had finally made...well...one day suddenly revealing that the friendship was never genuine and that they hated me the whole time, and they betrayed me...in a HARD-HITTING WAY...completely out of the blue, too...I had no idea what was happening with them or what I had done to deserve that awful treatment, but it didn't matter because I still got that treatment. I'm not going to go into the details because it's still terrifying to think about...but it was BAD...bad enough that I have severe PTSD because of this person. So, as you might expect from what I just told you, the way Kieran just suddenly turned on me in the Teal Mask story really made me have to make sure to use my coping skills and calming strategies in order to not have a PANIC ATTACK over a VIDEO GAME. And the ending of the Teal Mask where Kieran seemed to HATE me made me feel really scared for the Indigo Disk story and I tried my best to not think about it too much until it came out because I always felt nauseous if I thought about it. And even when it came out it took me a long time to be able to bring myself to finally play it... Kieran's new look reminded me even more of my real life friend turned bully I mentioned above, who also changed their look and even dyed their hair to a similar purple-ish color after the whole incident (yes I know Kieran didn't dye his hair, it's naturally purple-ish underneath, but my point still stands, it was similar enough to trigger me further), and I had a panic attack over it when I saw it in the trailer before the Indigo Disk came out. My thoughts were basically 'This is middle school all over again...' and I was not looking forward to facing the memories again, it was making me feel more and more anxious and sick as each day passed and it got closer to the release of the Indigo Disk. I also had more and more nightmares about that real life person which made me more and more tired and irritable, so that was not fun either. But...I knew I had to play it eventually, so to prepare myself for my own playthrough, I decided to prepare myself both physically and mentally by watching other people's playthroughs of the story first...multiple times. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found out that the story had a happy ending and Kieran was able to snap out of it, feel serious remorse, and resolve to change his ways and make everything right again. As you can probably guess from how visceral my reactions to this entire thing were, that did NOT happen with my real life friend turned bully...I'm pretty sure that individual still hates my guts to this day and I still to this day have absolutely NO CLUE what I did to make them turn on me so viciously like that. Anyway, I watched probably ten or twelve playthroughs on YouTube before I finally worked up the courage to play it myself. I finally finished it yesterday and I am glad that everything ended all well and good. I am so relieved and I am back to being a Kieran fan again now that he is back to his normal adorkable self. Now I only have the epilogue left to do in Violet and then I have to go through the entire DLC again in Scarlet...but I think I'll be fine for the DLC playthrough in Scarlet now that I've experienced everything in Violet.

So yeah, lots of complicated emotions and visceral reactions and stuff with my view of this fictional video game character...but I couldn't help it since he was a legit PTSD trigger for me during the last bit of the Teal Mask and the majority of the Indigo Disk...at least he's back to normal now though.

Anyway, what are you guys' thoughts on Kieran? How did you react throughout his arc? Which look do you like better on him, hair up or down? Feel free to let me know your thoughts on Kieran in the comments below!

#pokemon #pokemon sv #the teal mask #the indigo disk #kieran #this character is complex and i like that pokemon is making more complex characters...#...but kieran legit TERRIFIED me for a while #and i wanted to explain my thoughts and feelings on this subject and character #kinda long post #pika talks

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greenshi · 3 months ago

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alright tell me about YOUR current favorite guy now

I AM FINALLY DOING THIS i have been. so distracted lmaooo. BUT I decided to do the guy in my icon, fifth member of weezer and best FE character, Python <3. He may not be the Number One guy in my brain right this moment, but that spot and most after it are all taken by OCs, so. We're doing him instead. Also because of this tag because I think you'd like this guy jort

ANYWAY, Python. My guy. He's a character from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, a recruitable archer early on in Alm's route.

Now, in Echoes, the class discrepancy between nobles and commoners is a prominent theme, especially in Alm's route. This is something that comes up in a lot of FE games, unsurprisingly, seeing as princes and thieves fight together side by side. And the games (at least those I've played, which is only FEA-FE3H. I know.) tend to handwave a lot of the more unsavory points of that topic. A lot of the time, conversations or supports that delve into that topic end in "yeah, being poor and starving sucks, but you know what also sucks? Being royalty! It's really hard :[" which, like, yeah, it is, but also one party here has the means to help the other, but is choosing not to instead say how their life sucks too, actually. Idk, these conversations always rubbed me in the wrong way a bit.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, Python is a commoner. And he doesnt buy any of that "being rich is hard too guys :[" shit for a Second. In his support with Clive (a nobleman knight who's opinion on the whole situation is "well some people have to be poor so I can be rich") he straight up tells him that his ideas on how society should be run are wrong and that his view on common people are condescending at best.

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Python doesn't fight for honor or any sense of duty, he fights for his paycheck and his childhood friend who does feel that duty, Forsyth. Even if he and Forsyth disagree on many things, there's a mutual respect between the two, an understanding of their station, and a small rivalry between how to best navigate said station. Forsyth encourages Python to get out there, try things, put some effort into life. But Python just, doesn't see much of a point. But it's not for any depressive reason, or even straight apathy. Python just prioritizes rest and relaxation. He doesn't live to work, he has no dream job (which Forsyth takes as having no dream at all, not that Python would disagree), he just wants to enjoy his life; sleeping in the sun, having a few drinks, spending time with friends, and sharing stories and gossip.

Speaking of friends and gossip, I'm going to drop my favorite support of his, maybe even my favorite support in the whole game (even though its locked behind a dlc map like seriously what was up with this games dlc why is a support between two base game units behind a paywall-)

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Going from this support, and the fact that neither of them have romantic endings, (Lukas' even saying he 'never wanted for companionship') this is a pretty clear attempt by FE at writing two aroace (or at least just aro) characters. And, idk, I think its really special. Neither are framed as missing out or needing another to be happy, the conversation is to the point and respectful, and they are both allowed to be full characters beyond this detail of their lives.

And that's a common thread through Python's character that I admire. In any other story, the character that had no want for big dreams, constant improvement, or romance would be framed as an empty person, someone deeply unhappy without anything to strive for. But, even as the other characters try and impose that narrative onto Python, that's never actually the case. He is happy as he is, doing just enough to be as comfortable as he can, taking rests and shortcuts all along the way. He will not sell his time more than he must, he will not work harder than he has to, he will not allow those who push themselves to breaking for those above them to guilt him into doing the same. He has nothing to prove, nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, the one time he could push himself, in his bad ending after Forsyth dies, *THAT* is when he is empty and miserable, fighting like his friend once did until his early, untimely death.

Python is just such a breath of fresh air. He was the one in my brain telling me say no to my boss long before Chilchuck, he is a character that not even FE has been able to write like that again (even when writing for him specifically, like his Heroes characterization is so off and bad augh). He is one of the very few canonically aro characters I can find, and I'm proud to have him napping in my icon for the foreseeable future.

#ask #fire emblem #fire emblem echoes #shadows of valentia #python fire emblem #python fe #i love this guy a lot. if you couldnt tell wjhebckjwenj #python my friend python

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mysticmistral · 9 months ago

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After 97 (98 counting the wolf from the beginning) deaths, I can say that I FINALLY BEAT MY FIRST (90 percent) BLIND BLOODBORNE RUN. DID IT. SPOILERS FOR ENDING.

And so, this is the last Bloodborne Run update and I know I skipped much. Last update, I defeated Rom. Killed Master Logarious after learning you can just visceral attack him to stop him from going into his second phase, Alligned myself with the Vilebloods, gave Alfred the Summons and was shocked yet not shocked to see him going crazy (I didn’t expect him to turn the Queen to mush) and then turns out he just… dies at the altar. I was so sad to see that, my only friendly person just dead, probably by offing himself.

Played a game of tag with Micolash and died once to the people on the stairs, and found a glitch that he just stands right by the cell door when I was fighting off the skeletons and hit it, so I did not kill him the intended way but I did not want to play tag anymore it was 4am. Gained access to Upper Cathedral Ward, lost a lot of Insight by the brain suckers and fought the blue alien people in the Lumenflower Gardens, defeated Mergo’s Wet Nurse and went to check on the lady in white who peaced out after the boss.

The Dream’s on fire, went to the handicapped old man Gehrman at the tree and refused his offer, of which cured his kneecaps and slaughtered me throughly right before I would reach his Second Phase. Since it was endgame, I decided to explore more. Found the Altar of Despair and with the help of NPC acting as a distraction and the fact I was over leveled by this point, killed the Daughter of Cosmos and accidentally revived Queen Annalise making Alfred surely turn beyond the ‘grave’, I’m sorry man. Found the Darkbeast Paarl who by this point, was easily bodied and made peace with Djura, the man with the machine gun until I realized it is endgame, and me probably has loot. So I killed him, then the guy in the Forbidden Woods, and the other guy who came cause I killed the other guy and got a whistle out of it and forgot to kill the Ward man.

DLC was on sale and I am not counting those deaths literally, the hunters in the first arena wrecked me and their weapons have unfair range, Ludwig wrecked me, got a glow stick out of it, the two guys in the hall wrecked me. Got to the Research Hall and gave a woman some brain fluid, died many times to the Living Failures until I realized that the doors are a safe spot from the meteors. Then I met Lady Maria, she can fist my chest any day but wow was she easy with the Augur and just sticking close. Gascoigne does not teach you parrying, she does. Got lost in the Fishing Hamlet and called on online hunter to help me kill the fish giants, Orphan of Kos and Laurence.

With the DLC tackled along with my sanity slain over how damn hard it was, Gehrman was less tough and just when I thought I won, a creature appears as the Moon Presence and smashes me to pulp since I had barely any items left. I defeated it, and became a Black Leech and the Plain Doll is now the mother figure of a new Great One.

The End!

Game is maginificent and now that I can finally search up everything I missed a lot but I did a lot too. 10 out of 10, great music, hate/love gameplay and fun weapons. A wonderful first soulsborne experience. Hunter Hat, Cainhurst Armor, Hunter trousers, Knight Gloves and armed with my Threaded Cane and Holy Moonlight Sword. Currently in NG+, just beat Gascoigne and loving how you can sweep, but not without challenge still. Do I understand the lore? Probably not. But I am to get the refuse ending this time, and with the help of searching finally, try and get anything I missed. 57 Hours well spent!

#bloodborne #bloodborne ps4 #bloodborne playthrough log #childhoods beginning #Bloodborne screenshots

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mrslittletall · 11 months ago

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So, it is the last day of the year... Let's reflect, shall we... You probably all know what happened at the end of last year. My husband got sick, I brought him to the hospital thinking it is an easy fix and then he was basically dying with sepsis. So yeah, that was... not great. Especially with all the complications that arose. He is home now, but he is not healthy yet. We have at least one surgery left and it will happen in January and then I hope he can finally go into rehab for good. The good news are, he is getting better and better at home, he even can stand for a few seconds, so I am positive a proper rehab can be done towards the end. He will be disabled for a good while though. Anyway, this year has been a challenge, both emotionally and physically, because I was suddenly alone and had to handle things that my husband normally does. I kinda realized I am stronger than I look then because carrying two sixpacks of 1,5 l water bottles was impossible for me once. It isn't anymore. I tried being creative when I found time, but I had to admit to myself that it isn't happening somewhen in Summer, so I went on hiatus, only writing when I truly had nothing else to do and going on a complete art hiatus. I miss it though. I want to write and draw regularly again, but there are still too many things in my mind. Mainly the stuff with my driver's licence because for some reason me running to my husband in hospital while in distress and accidentally damaging a car while parking which I didn't even notice is a warrant to punish me really really hard. I am still salty about that, yes! So how did I cope? Easily with indulging myself in video games: Let me put that under the cut:

When the thing with my husband first happened I barely was able to do anything. I was mostly cleaning and tidying up the apartment and then watch videos on Youtube because if I broke out in tears during this it was easy to pause and blow my nose. It took a few days and my husband getting better so that I could try and do other stuff again. And I really really indulged myself into Pokémon Scarlet. The games were pretty fresh during that time and I played them a little but not much, but now... I was hooked. I had days off work and if I wasn't visiting my husband, I would sit in front of my Switch and play Pokémon Scarlet and my god, did I love it! The story, the characters, the open world, the music... yes they are technical not well programmed, but I did never mind because that game gave me a peace of mind. Even after I finished the story I sat there each evening doing the Tera Raids. I love the Tera raids. Gen. 9 games are easily my favourite Pokémon games since Gen. 4 and funnily enough, when Gen. 4 came out I also had a hard time in my life, so I guess Pokémon is like my therapy game now... But of course I wasn't playing Pokémon the whole year. After I was done with it, I decided to finally finish Darkest Dungeon with a little help of one of my Discord servers. I pretty much only had the Darkest Dungeon left, but it takes a while because a group that went into it will never enter it again, so you basically have to level up four teams for each quest and that only if you don't fail it. Anyway, I had the game on hiatus for a whole year, so it felt good to finally finish it. And then I was like "Oh, I remember Anno 1800. I bought the History version a while ago but never played it. Let's do it." I then installed the game and was like "Hmmm, maybe I should get the other DLCs as well?" and they were on sale so I just got the last pack and started Anno 1800 with all DLCs activated.

And I got hooked for the first part of 2023. God, I played this game a lot. I also streamed it to friends so they could indulge in the towns that are being build up. Me and my friend Panda called it the "Autism game" because it basically is like building up your own miniature model town, only that everything is alive and moves around. The game however, can get overwhelming, especially with all DLCs, so I wasn't able to play it lately. I want to come back to it though. I also got myself into the Cooking Mama games when I was depressed and browsed Amazon for used DS games to see if I can get some nice deals. I bought the first Cooking Mama, tried it and was hooked. After a while I decided to buy the rest of the series and had five games to play for my DS and 3DS. I finished them all and they were a really good time. They also renewed my interest in trying new recipes at home, but that has to wait until my husband is better. And then I downloaded Final Fantasy 14, in an attempt to connect better to my husband because he played this game a lot before he became sick. I quickly got hooked, mostly because of the music. I upgraded to the full game even before I finished Heavensward (which is included in the free trial) and am currently at Endwalker and wow, just wow! There are flaws of course, but this story has been a roller coaster and I really have fun with the group content like the dungeons and the alliance raids and stuff! I hope my husband can go back to his character soon (his hands bother him still so he doesn't want to play) so we can play together. And that after I was like "Nah, after WoW I will never play a MMO again." Whoops... Speaking of Final Fantasy, in February TheatRhythm Final Bar Line released and I played the shit out of that game! I love the FF music, I love rhythm games, it is a match made in heaven. I even tried my hand on the supreme scores and they are truly super duper hard! Could only clear them with a full healer team, but playing them also meant that ultimate felt easy... I also played a charming indie game named Ato at the start of the year. It is basically a Metroidvania bossrush, but a really really good one with hidden lore you can find in the world. The final boss had me in tears and the music was so so good! I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It isn't super long either, you can finish that game in eight to ten hours depending on your skill.

In summer there released the new Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons games, but I kinda wasn't hooked with them. I will probably play them more once my husband is better. Instead, however, I got hooked by Rune Factory 3. I bought both 3 and 4 Special Edition for my Switch and decided to play 3 for and this game is so charming and I love the characters a lot and the gameplay loop is fun and ugh, why didn't I play these games sooner?! Yeah, I played RF3 a lot and I still have to finish it, but my husband mostly has the Switch at the moment and he deserves it after being away for a whole year ^^ Speaking of the Switch, Metroid Prime Remastered! My birthday gift for myself. The game is as fantastic as ever and even though I didn't 100 % it, I got a lot of the items and then beat the final boss. And speaking of big Nintendo IPs, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Like BotW it needed a while to grip me, but once it did, I was fascinated! I still have to finish it however, it is a big game and it will keep me busy for a while longer. Now it is the end of the year. I am still busy with FF14 and Zelda ToTK. Pokémon DLC released and I wanna play that. And I bought Lies of P for my PS5 and love it so far! I am updating you guys about Lies of P regularly and sometimes about FF14 and Zelda. Also, I decided to use my Steamdeck more, so I play a dungeon crawler named Silent Hope on it (from the Story of Seasons developers, that got me interested) and I started a cozy game named Potion Permit. Of course I threw my Laurence into it. Feels fitting for him to be a chemist xD What will the new year bring? Hopefully my husband will be better and will be able to walk again. Other than that, I hope that I keep my licence. And then... I just hope that I can continue being creative and if not... I keep playing my games.

#little's end of the year rambles

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kittykatinabag · 1 year ago

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I've finally finished an entire play through of Baulder's Gate 3, and boy what a ride the final portion is.

First off, the Wyrmway.

What.The.Fuck. Somehow this twist shocked me more than anything else in the game. Made me want to stab the Emperor even more than I already did.

Ultimately though, I decided to keep him around because I didn't want to deal with going to the House of Hope or dealing with the devil to get the other ending. Technically this is the Emperor's fight after all, might as well let him have some glory. Lets me not become illithid either.

Astarion's little ending scene makes me so sad though. Since I romanced him I thought there might have been a choice afterwards that maybe shows us two figuring out things that night. There was that book in Cazador's castle that detailed some research into curing vampirism, my character read it and everything that could have been a little easter egg for those who did all that. Or like I'm a sorcerer, and Gale is there too, there has to be some magical way to cloak Astarion in darkness.

In the end though, I ended up almost crying at Karlach's scene and made her bring us to Avernus so she could live. I guess my headcanon for my Tav is that she spent her time split between gallivanting around Avernus with Karlach, maybe getting back in touch with Dammon and maybe seeing if Raphael was willing to help us out in exchange for details of where the Netherstones and crown fell to fix Karlach's engine. And then we make it back to the city to meet up with Gale, Halsin, Jaheria, Minsc, and Lae'zel who in the meantime have been researching ways to cure or manage vampirism and then one night I end up coming across Astarion again and its a happily ever after. As for Wyll, honestly don't care but I assume he took over some of his now-dead father's duties.

Anyways, I was going to do a Dark Urge play through but... this play through alone took 90 hours. My previous not-finished play through was around 85 hours. Steam says I've been playing BG3 for over 200 hours, which I guess means the amount of failures in attempts of one battle or another is over 20 hours (rip me). My computer storage is struggling mightily. Also, Stardew Valley is getting another update with new events and I haven't tried any of the mods yet and watching youtube videos about the game is resparking my interest in doing a slow-life play through of all the popular mods. Also my storage is at critical capacity and I need to get back my over 190 GB of space.

I'll probably eventually come back to BG3, especially if they release any DLC. But the idea of having to slog through another round of Moonrise Towers makes me kind of want to vomit. Also my DU play through would probably have way less allies for the final battle and I barely managed to scrape by with as many as I had this time around.

Anyway 10/10 game, probably my game of the year. Shout out to the writing team for how much content they packed into a $60 game, its only eclipsed by a few jrpgs, and the character writing is frankly much better than most jrpgs. Although huge shout out to the voice actors, everyone absolutely killed it, no notes, it was fantastic. Also amazing queer representation, and not just player-sexual romance options. You can be non binary in character creation, you can be trans in character creation too, everyone's player-sexual, there's a good amount of poly representation (oh I forgot to mention up above but I also slept with Mizora lol Astarion didn't seem to mind), and Dame Aylin and Isobel are peak lesbian, not to mention the various amounts of other NPC queer relationships (especially among the gnomes). Fantastic game. It has a learning curve with mechanics, but highly recommend everyone to give it a try, there's also an easy mode too if even the normal difficulty fights are rolling your party (I had to drop it to easy mode for a few fights here and there, but usually normal isn't too hard).

#bg3 #bg3 spoilers #late night ramblings

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measuringbliss · 1 year ago

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WELL. I just did the shadowy moor skirmish (took me 3 tries....), which was my recommended level (I should know better than to trust that though lol) and wow!! really shows you who your MVPs are.

my go-to team right now is Merrin, Yunaka, Louis (I gave him Ike and he's an insane tank. I don't think he lost 10 health during the whole skirmish), Alcryst, and Pandreo (he's not like, on par with those guys, but he's my best healer); then I padded out the team with a few other good units, although they didn't survive the encounter (thank goodness for casual mode lmao.)

did Alear suck for you too? maybe I assumed they'd be OP like Byleth was and didn't level enough early game. but they do like 2 damage and the stat %s are awful :(

I've been slacking on paying attention to lore/supports (you were right -- the story isn't as interesting as 3h, which is fine, but noticeable,) and I hate to just be an "um gayyy!" sort of person but I kinda love how flirty a lot of the supports are!? Alfred asking guys how their muscles got so big and Chloe fawning over Merrin for being such a good lady knight. kinda great. in that respect, they're a bit more interesting than, say, Hilda just not wanting to clean her room lol.

anyways thanks for being my diary again lmao!! what have you been up to lately?

Omg, Hedge gracing me with new impressions!!!

Your first error was to do skirmishes hahaha. They're known to be very hard in this game.

Yeah Alear isn't supposed to be a great unit, they're alright but not an outlier... at least, not until *something* happens in the later chapters. Alear rarely gains Strength points but I think I was lucky! They definitely need Emblems to be useful.

And YES a lot of supports are soo flirty, it's delightful! Boucheron and Alfred, Yunaka and Etie... And I agree that it's oddly more fun that many 3H supports (*flashbacks to the Golden Deer cast and to Bernie*)

I LOVE being your FE diary, please keep going!

I actually bought the DLC and started a game on Maddening. Well, let me tell you that Camilla (from Fates)'s map really sucks and Tiki's is ridiculous. The new Emblems, I mean, bracelets, are either OP (Tiki) or very good (Veronica, Chrom, Edelgard, Hector). Haven't played the new chapters yet since the units they give don't scale, I'll wait until the Solm chapters.

Aside from FE, I fought my bank over buying a new laptop because the one I had decided to stop working just as I was starting to get jobs again after one whole month of nothing. But the payment finally went through today so that's a relief.

I hope you're well!

#I also introduced my bf to my family and it went great. after a complicated trip.#Asks

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roadtodeltarune · 11 months ago

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Earthbound Beginnings: Final Week

It's surreal to make this post, but I finished Earthbound Beginnings! I knew I only had an hour left in the story, but with all the grinding and leveling up, I thought I wouldn't finish in time. Especially when you consider it took me 3 weeks overall to play the game, plus me getting distracted by the Pokemon DLC.

Well, to continue my experience, play through, review, whatever you'd call this post: I last left off right before Mt. Itoi.

I heard tales of Mt. Itoi and how difficult it was. In some ways, it was easier than I thought but also harder. First, I leveled up Carrot (NinTen) to the low 30s with Beet (Teddy), then I went through the cave, got our new weapons, and went to the mountain house.

Several things happened there I want to touch on. First, I love Potato (Ana) and Carrot's relationship development, from friends at first sight to admitting their love and dancing, it was all very sweet. Then, we were attacked by a giant robot. Onion (Lloyd) came to our rescue, but Beet was too injured to continue. This made me a bit annoyed. While I loved having Onion back, Beet's time on the team was too short, and I feel like his section was a bit of a waste of time.

Anywho, with Onion back, I started leveling him up. In fact, my goal was to get Carrot to level 36 and Onion/Potato to at least 32. It took me a long while. I had to heal lots at the house cause of all the strong enemies, but Potato's Beam Y helped a lot, especially with the Grizzly Bears. I also decided to go back to Ellay to fight the BB Gang. I got 3 Flame Throwers for Onion, one to use, one for backup in our inventory, and one at home in the closet. Since they can break, I wanted to be prepared.

Once we were strong enough, I pushed on toward the lake. Thanks to the leveling, we weren't in much danger. I found the whirlpool in the lake and decided to jump in. Luckily, that's what I was supposed to do. In the submarine, I was worried it would be another Duncan's Factory, but it was peaceful. Then I found EVE.

Eve was a great addition to the team, reminding me much of Beet. I figured that maybe this meant Beet would rejoin at some point? With Eve, we leveled up a couple more times and then found the Sea Pendant- I gave it to Potato. But then, we fought another robot.

I'll admit, I knew EVE would die, that was spoiled for me by wal throughs, but I didn't expect to get so emotionally detached to her. She was so powerful and so helpful, and all she wanted was to protect us. And she was powered by a melody.

After EVE fell, I figured surely Beet would appear and join the team again, but he didn't. And with EVE gone, the mountain was much worse. Up until now, the mountain has been hard, but I have been able to fight back. Even against Grizzly Bears, strong enough to one-shot my party members, I was starting to outspeed them and survive their attacks, but now it was crazy. The peak of Mt. Itoi was horrible, and I'm glad I never had to climb it again.

I got the final melody from the grave and then went to Magicant. I reorganized my items and went to the Queen.

The scene with Queen Mary was beautiful. She finally regained her memories, revealed the truth to me, and accepted her death. Just like Beet and EVE, another ally is gone. It's up to us now to stop Giygas.

We returned to Mt. Itoi and went into the cave, to find the parents. It was a little disturbing, but it hardened my resolve.

Now, it was time for the last battle...

I didn't look up this fight, wanting to do this on my own. I figured it would be like a normal fight, but it wasn't. Potato went down, then Onion, then Carrot. And at that last turn, I realized I had a new option in my menu: "Sing".

My second attempt wasn't much better. On my third turn, I realized I should have set up my defenses on the first turn. Everything was out of order, so I reset.

My third attempt was the final attempt.

I started by having Carrot use Defense Up B and Potato use Psi Shield B and I had Onion guard. This combo buffed us up enough to tank his hits for a few turns without guarding. I then went on a cycle of guarding, Singing, and healing when needed.

The first few turns were mostly healing. I learned from my second attempt that singing wouldn't work until he finished his monologue.

My method worked, however; and I was able to beat Giygas, sending him back to his home!

It was in this final battle and while watching the epilogue I realized something. Beet and EVE are all about dealing damage, but Beet and Queen Mary said it themselves, we need to believe in our friends and use the power of love. The melodies were her memories of love, broken into eight parts. Most were twisted for evil by those who rejected love, like Giygas, but some were used for love like EVE and the Canary Village. When put together, the full song is the power of love, the love of a mother, of friends, of family, and even the romance between Carrot and Potato. This love Giygas rejected, turning him into a creature of hate.

"When you think about it, this series is all about love. And those who understand it, and those who don't." - Mswordx23 from the YouTube comment section

One more thing though. I have an issue and it's that I had to name Beet at the beginning of the game. He was barely in this game! If they ever do a Link's Awakening-style remake, I'd love it if Beet was introduced earlier in the story. I used to think the same about Onion, and my idea was to have him replace Pippi, but I think Pippi should stay. Instead, I think It'd be fun if we got to name NinTen, Pippi, Lloyd, Ana, Teddy, and EVE since they're all party members.

Thanks to anyone who's been reading this. I might just be talking to the void right now, but this journey is something I've really wanted to do, so I ain't stopping here.

Before I leave this game behind and put it back on the shelf, I'm going to walk some retrospectives, reviews, and the sort, get some community feedback, as well as see if there's anything I left out that I want to touch on. I don't know if I'll make that a separate post. I plan on it, but there might not be enough for me to work off of. We'll just see. So expect either that or an update once I start Earthbound/Mother 2.

#earthbound #undertale #deltarune #mother #toby fox #spoliers

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sweettoothedtrickster13 · 1 year ago

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On the Run Chapter 45

Fandom: Outlast Whistleblower DLC

Tags: OFC, Waylon Park/Eddie Gluskin, Slow Burn

Summary: Waylon feels guilty.

Notes: *rolls up on a skateboard 8 months late with a smoothie* What’s up, bitches? Actually, sorry about the long wait. But uh. It’s here. Yay.

AO3 Portal

Waylon pets and spends time with most of the chickens, with the exception of Izzy because she only give affection sometimes. And today, or at least right now, appears to not be one of those times. He gently picks up Gigi, who had taken up residence on his lap, and sets her on the ground. She runs off and he stands, brushing feathers from his clothes. He walks over to his tomato seedlings and smiles at them- they’re doing well. He’d watered them that morning, and they’re stronger in the dirt.

He goes to the house and knocks on the glass door, and thankfully Eddie looks up. He nods and comes outside.

“Ready to carve again,” he asks, shutting the door behind him.

“Yes.” Waylon sits on the step again and Eddie sits next to him. Waylon picks up his working project and examines it. It doesn’t look like much of anything except a block of wood with the corners cut off, but he can see the pencil lines and knows that’s the final project. Besides, he knows that the first forays into anything doesn’t look like much of anything- the first line of code doesn’t look like much, the seeds of plants don’t look like much. He anticipated woodcarving to be the same. He puts the knife to the wood again and starts to peel off small curls.

Eddie was right; it’s meditative. He still has to pay attention- cutting off his thumb doesn’t seem like a fun time- but he’s starting to get it. All he has to focus on is the project. That’s part of why he wants Eddie there; he gets so engrossed in any project he enjoys that a Murkoff employee could probably stand in front of him and he wouldn’t notice. That and he enjoys the man’s company. He could always ask Jess, too, but there’s something about Eddie. He also thinks that Eddie needs his companionship more than Jess does. Jess cleared the air after her brief self-imposed solitary confinement; Eddie still needs comfort after what the Groom did. And Waylon needs to familiarize himself with him again, too. He’d missed him. He smiles softly, remembering how he had spied Eddie being so gentle and playful with the kids. The other man hadn’t seen him, so he had stood on the corner and just watched. The kids had laughed, seemingly without a care in the world. They didn’t know what Eddie did in the past- he was just a new face that could play with them. And a big enough person to cling to without being shaken off. Waylon’s face had warmed after seeing Eddie so easily move with the kids clinging to his legs- he’s just so strong. Waylon had turned away after that, returning to Agatha. She hadn’t done anything other than smile slightly and squeeze his elbow, but he had still felt his cheeks warm further.

Waylon pauses, knife hand stilling. He glances at Eddie out of the corner of his eye, but Eddie seems not to notice. Or if he does, maybe he just thinks that he’s trying to decide where to cut next. He feels guilt twist in the pit of his stomach, crawling its way to his breastbone. He knows he’s married, that Lisa is waiting for him back in Boulder, but it’s hard to remember that when Eddie is right here. And he and Eddie have gone through so much together, he’s sure that’s part of the reason why. That and he’s strong and handsome, that traitor voice whispers. He shakes his head, erasing that thought. He’s married. He glances at his left hand, but his wedding ring is long gone, back at Mount Massive. He’s married with kids. That thought just makes the guilt twist tighter, this time around his lungs. He exhales slowly and keeps carving.

They sit like that until the light starts to fail, and then Waylon puts his wood down with no prompting. He covers his knife and he and Eddie go inside. He brings the knife up to his room and makes a mental note to go to town and see if they have bats. He’d feel a lot more comfortable with one of those in his room for defense than with a little hobby woodcarving knife.

When he comes back down, Eddie and Trevor are on the couch and Jess is curled up on an armchair with the laptop. He stands near the foot of the stairs, unsure. But he soon recovers and walks forward. “Do you want me to show you how to use your phone,” he asks. Eddie looks up with a surprised expression.

“Sure.”

Trevor moves over to the other armchair and lets Waylon sit on the couch. Waylon extends his hand and Eddie puts his phone in it. Waylon touches the screen, surprised when the home screen comes up automatically. “Ok, you should set up a lock code.”

“A what?”

“A series of numbers or a word that you’ll remember, that will lock out anyone who tries to get in.”

“You can do that?”

Waylon fights his shock- Eddie’s never touched a computer, he probably didn’t have a smartphone. And he seemed surprised when Waylon showed him the Internet, so that’s just more proof he either didn’t have a phone entirely or just had a flip phone. “Yes. I’ll show you.” He scoots right next to Eddie. “Ok, see that gear,” he asks, pointing at the app.

“Yes.”

“Touch it.” Eddie does so, and it opens the settings menu. “Find ‘privacy.’” Eddie reads through the options and taps it. “Now lockscreen.” Eddie opens it. “Now you can choose whether you want a word or a number,” Waylon says, handing his phone back. Eddie ponders for a moment and then chooses one, tapping on the screen with his thumb. Waylon takes that to mean he chose a number- he doesn’t do that when he texts. Granted, he’s only seen him send a text once- Jess was out one day and Eddie had put his phone flat on the table and used the ‘hunt and peck’ technique. Then Waylon had shown him how to hold the phone so he can use his thumbs.

Eddie hands the phone back. “Ok. What do you want to learn,” Waylon asks, and Eddie thinks.

“Could you walk me through finding the Internet?”

Waylon nods and points at the screen without touching it. “See that symbol?”

Eddie peers at the screen. “It looks like a curly fox wrapped around a blue ball.”

“Right. That’s a browser.” Eddie looks up at him. “Ok. It’s what people can use to search.” Eddie nods. “Tap it.”

Eddie does so. He extends his hand and Waylon hands the device over, their fingers brushing. Eddie painstakingly types in ‘Mount Massive Walrider’ and gets a list of websites.

“How do I know which one to choose?”

“You can go by the order they’re in. The ones at the top are generally the most relevant, but sometimes it’s worth it to scroll a bit.”

“What’s scrolling?”

Waylon leans over and moves his finger up, making the screen roll that way. “That’s how you read more.”

Eddie nods and seems to read for a second, then points to one. “This one is safe, right?” Waylon looks- the New York Times.

“I’d say so.”

Eddie clicks it.

“Anything else,” Waylon asks.

“The news said that they uncovered files from the Congresswoman,” Eddie starts, and Waylon nods. “Could you help me get through them?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” He goes back to his phone.

“If you need any more help, don’t be afraid to ask,” Waylon says. Eddie looks up and nods, smiling a little.

“I’ll ask you.”

“Good,” Waylon nods, leaning away from him and scooting back a bit. His leg and side are warm from where it was near Eddie, and his hand tingles slightly. He touches it with his other hand, rubbing it. Eddie seems engrossed in the article he pulled up and doesn’t question it.

“Any more news on that Congresswoman,” Waylon asks Jess.

“No,” Jess says. “But they just reported on it, said it would happen in a week. And we have the video call tomorrow.”

Waylon feel guilt twist in his stomach again- he forgot. How could he forget seeing his wife? He loves his wife.

“Plus, Congressional inquests take time,” Jess continues, unaware of his plight. “Even though they said they’ve gathered enough evidence, that doesn’t mean it won’t take longer to get more. Hopefully VIRALeaks nudges them along in that respect.”

Waylon listens to Jess’ quiet typing and clicking and relaxes back into the couch. He stands and the three look at him. “Gonna close the chickens in for the night,” he says, and leaves to go to the backyard. He looks around, but sees no chickens. He puts his head inside the coop and counts them- all are present. He nods and closes the door, barring it. He sits on the back porch and looks at the stars.

He’s lived in cities all his life. He’s never seen the stars as clearly as he does right now. He feels so small, but in a good way. Like his problems are small, too. He knows some people look up at the night sky and feel intimidated and insignificant, but he doesn’t feel that way. At least he hasn’t yet. He’s seen photos taken from the Hubble Telescope, seen galaxies. The stars are just another part of that. He imagines each one having planets rotating around it, just like theirs. Somewhere Murkoff hasn’t touched. In the greater scheme of things, things have a way of working out and he knows that. But sometimes it means taking a step back to see that.

He stands and goes back inside, finding Jess and Eddie cooking dinner silently. He sits at the island alone- Trevor’s still in his chair- and watches them. They work well together, never getting in each other’s way. He’s never heard them say anything to each other except to divvy up the tasks, and even that stopped weeks ago- they’ve worked out a rhythm by now. When he was cooking alone, it was more enthusiasm than skill, even though he’s cooked before. It was an unfamiliar kitchen, and even though he helped stock it and the appliances are new, he couldn’t help but start reaching for ingredients based on where they are in his own kitchen with Lisa. He sighs, making Jess look up and shoot him a concerned look. He shakes his head, and she nods and pays attention to cooking again.

He pulls the laptop to him and looks up if chickens eat flower seeds out of the ground. They don’t, so he can plant the seeds Agatha gave him. Speaking of Agatha, Waylon needs to see her tomorrow- he needs to talk this out with a neutral party.

“Trevor,” he asks when they sit down to eat. The man hums a question. “Could you arrange for Agatha to come pick me up tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Trevor says, fishing out his phone. He sends a quick text and they eat. Trevor gets a response as they’re clearing up. “She’ll do it. Told me to tell you when you get up.”

“Thanks, Trevor,” Waylon smiles softly.

“Any time.” Trevor rolls up his sleeves and washes dishes.

Waylon heads to bed not long after. He wishes the three good night and gets them in return, and he walks upstairs. He wishes he could carve again, but he wants to do it with Eddie. He groans, putting his hands over his face. He doesn’t know why he’s feeling this way. He turns out his light and tries to sleep, thinking it’ll help to get his thoughts in order before he sees Agatha.

#trickster tales #outlast whistleblower #outlast #eddie gluskin #waylon park

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bread--hood · 2 years ago

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Sonon Kusakabe

#final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy vii #ffvii #ff7 #sonon #sonon kusakabe #final fantasy vii remake intergrade #ffviir #finally decided to play the dlc on hard too and well.... he is just so pretty #cant help but screenshot a lot...#also #hi again.... after what...2 years?😅#wont become a regular again but I still missed tumblr a lot

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tau1tvec · 2 years ago

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What do you recommend that’s a good base pc to build off of over time, one that’s cost effective but good enough to run ts3 and ts4 simultaneously but I can add better graphics cards and ssds later on?

I think it depends, it's hard to really recommend any specific one bc, I've only ever used one, and they don't manufacture them anymore. I also got my PC to play Fallout 4, bc my old PC crapped out, and I was over sims at the time. Considering its open world, and all the mods I would likely cram into it, I didn't wanna waste money on just anything, so I did some research on gaming PC's ( which I'd never bought until then ) and ended up getting an Acer Predator for about 1299$ at the time.

When I bought it, it had a 1060 GTX, 500GB SSD, 1TB HD and 16GB RAM, dealt with 6 years of my bs with not an issue.

Now the reason I say it depends is bc, many games can run on anything honestly, a lotta them these days want to get in as many hands as possible, so making them work well on lower end systems, esp laptops and consoles, is the best way to do that, since a lot of gamers honestly couldn't give chicken noodle soup about how great a game looks, just that it doesn't lag. However if you plan to play on high to ultra settings, with mods and cc, esp high texture cc, you're going to have to keep some things in mind.

Processor

Intel i5's are pretty powerful for the cost, but I'd recommend an i7 if you can fit the bill. Replacing it shouldn't be too difficult, so long as you find one that's compatible with your motherboard, and they tend to cost a little less, and be more readily available than GPU's for instance.

GPU

I've seen some mid-high gaming rigs run on a 1660 GTX which I hear is a pretty good card, they also run a bit cheaper than the 20 or 30 series RTX, and honestly... you don't need a 20 or 30 series RTX to play The Sims 3 or 4, it doesn't even have any built-in options to utilize a lotta the innovative features these cards have.

I played The Sims 4 on ultra on my 1060 GTX, and it ran and looked fine. Though should you decide to upgrade, understand it might be quite costly, and also a bit difficult to find considering we're still technically in a chip shortage.

Memory

16GB is pretty standard these days, anything more is for those into heavy multi-tasking, however some games are beginning to suggest 32GB.

SSD

Main drive needs to be a 500GB SSD minimum... 250 will absolutely get you nowhere with how Windows updates gobble that shit up. You'll also be storing all your saves, mods, and cc on this main drive, so honestly if you can, go for the 1TB, you won't regret it, especially since upgrading mine to a 1TB was an absolute nightmare.

You'll likely need a second drive as well, and although it's common a second drive will be a regular ol' hard drive ( HD ), which is fine, you've gotta install your Spotify app somewhere, do absolutely consider getting another 500GB or larger SSD installed later, games these days basically start at 80GB install size easy, this doesn't include updates and dlc added later, and a drive doesn't run well when it's almost full.

Brands

I've had my Acer Predator desktop for roughly 7 years now, and it's an absolute champ... my husband's Acer Predator Helios on the other hand... crapped out like two years in, he only ever played Skyrim, and only ran it on medium-high settings. So when it comes to brands it's kinda... eh, I would just try to avoid anything that's like HP or Dell... they're kinda iffy and difficult to upgrade unless you're willing to drop 2k+ on an Alienware, I hear a lotta pretty good things about Lenovo tho, and MSI, if a laptop is more your thing.

Finally, a lotta straight out the box gaming rigs are outfitted with AMD processors and cards these days, and they've come a long way over the years. They're pretty powerful now, almost equal and at times even better than their Intel or Nvidia counterparts, but can be more cost effective if price is a big concern.

#sorry this is long #lol #asks #anon

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doycetopia · 13 years ago

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Mass Effect, Tolkien, and Your Bullshit Artistic Process

It may seem a bit odd that I’m posting this here rather than on my gaming-related blog, since it is about the Mass Effect game series and other related geekery. I debated where I should post it, but ultimately this is about writing as much or more than it’s about gaming, so here it is. Everything that follows is my opinion and, further, is infested with spoilers for both the Mass Effect series and, I suppose, The Lord of the Rings. Reader beware.

In late February, I said (on twitter) that I thought the Mass Effect universe was probably the most important science fiction of a generation.

Since then, the executive producer for Mass Effect 3 has been working tirelessly to get me to retract that statement.

If you follow gaming news at all, you’ll already know that there have been great clouds of dust kicked over this particular story — the gist of it is that Mass Effect was brought to a conclusion with the release of Mass Effect 3 (note: not brought to its conclusion, just brought to a conclusion — more on that later), and while 99% of the game was the same top-notch, engaging, tear-inducing stuff that we’ve come to expect, the last five minutes or so is a steaming, Hersey’s Kiss-sized dollop of dog shit that you are forced to ingest at the conclusion of the meal, like a mint, before they let you out the door.

It’s fair to say that it’s soured many players’ impression of the experience as a whole.

Now, I realize that many of the folks reading this may not have played through the Mass Effect series. First of all, that’s really too bad, because it is very, very good both in terms of play (which steadily improves from game to game) and story (barring one steaming exception) and (I think) completely worth the time.

But secondly, I’d like to keep you non-ME people involved in the conversation, so I’m going to draw a comparison that I think most anyone likely to visit here will understand, so that we can all proceed with reasonable understanding of the issues.

Let’s pretend for a moment that The Lord of the Rings was released not as a series of books, but a series of games. More importantly, the company behind the series decided to do something really hard but rewarding with the game — they were going to let you make decisions during play that substantively altered the elements of the story. That means that some of people playing through this Lord of the Rings story would end up with a personal game experience that was pretty much exactly like the one you and I all remember from reading the books, but that story is just sort of the default. Whole forums were filled up by fans of the series comparing notes on their versions of the game, with guides on how to get into a romantic relationship with Arwen (the obvious one), Eowyn (more difficult, as you have to go without any kind of romance option through the whole first game, but considered by many to be far more rewarding), or even Legolas (finally released as DLC for the third game).

And that’s certainly not all of possible permutations. Some players actually managed to save Boromir (though he leaves the party regardless, but gets you a whole extra army in the third game if he’s alive, and makes Denethor much less of a pain in the ass to deal with). Some folks don’t split up the party, and spend most of the game recruiting supporters through the South and North, from Aughaire down to Dol Imren. For some, Gimli dies at Helms Deep; for others only Merry escapes into Fangorn (which makes recruiting the Ents all but impossible). Hell, there are even a few weirdos who chose NOT to recruit Samwise back at the beginning of the story, and actually play through the whole first game without him (though the writers reintroduce him as a non-optional party member once you get ready to leave Lothlorien).

And what about the players who rolled the main character as a female? That changes a LOT of stuff, as you might well imagine. (Though, thankfully, all the dialogue options with Legolas are the same.)

Are you with me so far?

Okay, so you’re playing through this game — you’ve played through parts 1 and 2 several times, in fact, sometimes as a goody-two-shoes, and sometimes as a total bad-ass. You’ve got a version of the game where you’re with Arwen, one with Eowyn, one with Legolas, and one where you focus on Frodo and his subtle hand-holding bromance with Sam. You’re ready for Part Three, is what I’m saying, and out it comes.

And it’s awesome. You finally bring lasting alliance between Rohan and Gondor, you form a fragile-yet-believable peace between elves and dwarves, and even manage to recruit a significant strike-force of old Moria orcs who don’t so much like you as much as they just hate the johnny-come-lately Uruk-hai.

The final chapters open. You face down Saruman (who pretended to fund all your efforts through the second book, but then turned on you at the end of the Two Towers), which was really satisfying. You crawl up to the top of Mount Doom, collapse against a rock, and have a really touching heart to heart with Sam. It’s over. You know you have all your scores high enough to destroy the One Ring with no crisis of conscious and no lame “Gollum bit off my finger and then falls in the lava” ending, like the one you saw on the fanfic forums last year.

And then out comes this glowing figure from behind a rock, and it’s… Tom Bombadil.

And Tom explains your options.

Oh, and you're totally going to die too. And all the roads and horses throughout all of middle earth vanish. And by the way did you know that Sauron and the Nazgul all actually just work for Bombadil? True story.

Now, let’s just ignore the fact that the company behind this game has been quoted many times as saying that the game will end with no less than sixteen different endings, to honor all the various ways the story could go, and focus on these three options.

None of them have anything to do with destroying the ring, do they?

Has ‘destroying the ring’ (alternately, destroying Sauron) been pretty much THE THING you’ve been working toward the whole game? Yeah, it has. In fact, it mentions “Rings” right there in the title of the series, doesn’t it? Rather seems to make The Ring a bit of a banner item, doesn’t it?

But no, none of these options are about the Ring; they’re about one of the b-plots in the series, and one which you pretty much already laid to rest a few chapters ago.

So… okay, maybe this isn’t the END ending, you think, and you pick one of the options…

And that’s it. A bunch of cut-scenes play, Mount Doom explodes with fiery red light, you die, and the credits roll. The end.

Ohhh-kay. Maybe that was the bad ending. Let’s reload a save and pick option 2…

Same. Exact. Cut scenes. Except Mount Doom’s explosion is green. What?

Alright… umm… let’s check #3…

Nope. Mount Doom’s explosion is Blue. That’s it.

And, absolutely inexplicably, every single one of these cut scenes shows Gandalf, Aragorn, and SAMWISE escaping the explosion on one of the eagles and crash-landing somewhere in Lorien where they all pat themselves on the back and watch the sun set together.

What? But… Sam was with you. Aragorn and Gandalf… did they start running away halfway through the last fight at the Black Gate? Your boys abandoned you?

So, given this example, it’s possible — even for someone who didn’t play Mass Effect — to understand the fan’s reaction. The ending has no real connection to the rest of the story; barring the last scene and one conversation with an unnamed Nazgul in Book 3, it would lift right out with no one even noticing. It completely takes away your choices at the end of a game about making world-altering choices. It effectively destroys the Middle Earth that you were fighting for 100 hours of gameplay to preserve — no magic? Maybe a completely wiped out dwarven race? No one can travel anywhere without painstakingly rebuilding roads for a couple hundred years and replacing horses with something else? Also, no matter what, no matter how much ass you kick, you’re dead? Yeah. No thanks, man.

And that’s not even paying attention to stuff like how (and why) Sam and Gandalf and Strider ran away at the end. I mean… even if you’re going to do a shitty twist ending, don’t be so goddamn lazy about it. Don’t sit there and claim that criticism of the ending is an attack on your artistic product, because frankly that ending is full of holes and needs a rewrite and probably two more chapters to flesh out. (More on that in a bit.)

So… that’s where the Mass Effect franchise was after ME3 came out. A lot of confusion. A lot of rage. Some protests of a very interesting sort, where the gamers against the terrible ending decided to draw attention to the issue by raising something like seventy-thousand bucks for geek-related charities.

Now, let’s go a bit deeper.

Let’s continue with this Lord of the Rings video game analogy. Let’s say that after a bit of digging, people realized that Tolkien actually left the company to work on other projects before the game was complete. He wrote up a detailed outline, though; something that clearly spelled out exactly how the main arc of the story was supposed to play out, in broad strokes, basically laying out what we would expect the ending to be, pretty much.

But Tolkien left. So they get another guy in. Someone else who’s written stuff about some kind of powerful ring…

They get Steven R. Donaldson.

(Those of you who know me and my history with the Thomas Covenant books can guess that this analogy is not going to be a positive one, because seriously: fuck Thomas Covenant.)

So they get this Donaldson guy in to helm the end of the series, and it turns out he’s the guy who comes up with the Tom Bombadil, fuck-the-continuity-of-the-series ending.

Why? Maybe he’s pissed about being the second choice. Maybe he’s not getting paid enough to give a fuck. Maybe he just really wants to do this kind of story, but can’t be arsed to write a series of his own for which it makes sense. Maybe the original ending outlined by Tolkien got leaked on a forum the year before the last game came out, so people decided it had to be changed, even if the alternative makes no sense. I don’t know.

What I do know is the there was a different ending written out for the Mass Effect series, the short version of which is that the Big Reveal in ME3 is that the Mass Effect itself — the magical black-box technology that allows interstellar travel and powers a ton of other things from weapons to expensive toothbrushes — is causing a constant increase in dark energy in the galaxy, and that’s causing all kinds of bad things (like the accelerated death of stars).

The Mass Effect — you know, the thing from which the name of the series is derived — is the secret behind the Big Reveal. Who would have thought?

So, in the end of the game-as-envisioned, you’re given a choice of saving the galaxy by sacrificing the human race (making humanity into a biomechanical, synthetic-life, communal-intelligence “Reaper” that can stop the Dark Energy decay), or telling the Reapers to screw themselves and trying to fix the problem on your own (with a handful of centuries left before the Dark Energy thing snowballs and grows out of control on its own).

Which, in a word, would have been better. Certainly FAR better than some kind of stupid Tom Bombadil/Star Child explanation where we are told that the (synthetic AI) Reapers destroy advanced organic civilizations every 50 thousand years to prevent organic civilizations from… being destroyed by synthetic AIs.

Now we don’t just have some gamer complaints about the terrible ending, we have a demonstrably better ending that was actually supposed to be the one implemented. Complicates things, doesn’t it?

But Why All the Hate?

The simple fact of the matter is that Mass Effect is a story, and it’s a very good story — in my opinion, it’s one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. People can hem and haw about what constitutes a story — about whether a game can really be a story if people can play it — as though a story is only a story if it’s spoken or written or projected up on a movie screen. That’s like saying a person is only a person if they walk or ride a horse or drive a car… because we all know the vehicle in which the subject is conveyed changes that subject’s inherent nature.

Some people say it’s not a real story because the player’s choices can alter it. I think they’re full of crap, and I say the proof of its power as a story is right there in the story-pudding — it affects me as a story does — and that’s all the criteria met. Walks like duck, quacks like duck, therefore duck.

But the problem (if you’re BioWare) is that human beings understand stories; we know how they’re supposed to work, thanks to thousands of years of cultural training. Mass Effect (until that conclusion) is a nigh-perfect example of how a story is done correctly, thanks in part to the medium, which allows (if you’ll permit me the slaughter of a few sacred cows) a level of of immersion and connection beyond what a book or movie or any other storytelling medium up to this point in our cultural history can match, because of the fact that you can actively take part in that story from the inside. Heresy? Fine, brand me a heretic; that’s how I see it.

And since it’s such a good story, people know how the thing is supposed to proceed, and they know how it should end.

You start out in ME1 trying to stop a bad guy, Saren. He’s the guy who gets us moving (because he’s a bad guy, and that’s what they do — bad guys act, and heroes react to that and move the story along). As we try to stop him, we find out there’s something bigger going on than just a rogue cop on a rampage. The picture keeps getting bigger, the stakes keep getting higher, and we keep getting our motivation and our level of commitment tested. Are we willing to sacrifice our personal life? Yes? Okay, will we sacrifice one of our friends? Yes? Okay, how about the leaders of the current galactic government? Yes? Okay…

It goes on like that. You fucking invest, is what I’m saying, and that’s just in the first game.

In the second game, the fight continues, as we have merely blunted the point of the spear, not stopped the attack. Our choices in ME1 had consequences, and we start to see them play out, for better or worse. Meanwhile, we’re trying to stop Evil Plan #2, in a suicide mission that could literally cost us nearly every single friend we’ve made. In the end, we get the joy of victory mixed with the sadness of the loss of those who didn’t make it, and it’s all good, because it’s a strong, healthy, enjoyable emotional release.

And now it’s ME3, and the stakes are even higher. We’re not recruiting more individual allies — we’re recruiting whole peoples — whole civilizations. Planets are falling. Worlds are being erased.

In the words of Harbinger, this hurts you.

Why? Because you know these people who are dying. You’ve spent over a hundred hours traveling this setting, meeting people, helping them, learning about each of their little stories; building relationships with, literally, hundreds of individuals. Every one of these planets going up in flames has a face (even if it’s a face behind a breathmask), and no one falls in this final story that wasn’t important in some way to you or someone you know.

(By contrast, the enemy is faceless and (since the reapers harvest your former allies and force them into monstrous templates) largely indistinguishable from one another — as it should be in this kind of story. You do not care about a Husk, though you might mourn the person killed to create the thing.)

In short, you aren’t just playing this game to get the high score. You’re fighting for this galaxy of individuals you’ve grown very, very attached to; to protect it and, as much as you can, preserve it. You’ve spent several hours every day on this, for months. It matters.

"Hard to imagine galaxy. Too many People. Faceless. Statistics. Easy to depersonalize. Good when doing unpleasant work. For this fight, want personal connection. Can't anthropomorphize galaxy. But can think of favorite nephew. Fighting for him."

(Best of all, you get to shoot bad guys in the face while you’re doing it, which takes this heavy topic and makes it engaging at that level as well. It’s like soaking up all the gravitas of Schindler’s List while enjoying the BFG-toting action of Castle Wolfenstein at the same time.)

The end comes. We talk to all our friends. Everyone’s wearing their brave face, talking about what they’re going to do afterwards, which beach they’re going to retire on. You start to think that maybe the end is in sight and maybe, just maybe, you might even be able to see some of that ending.

The last big conflict starts. You fight some unkillable things and kill them. You face off against an old nemesis and finally end him.

And then…

And then you’re given three choices, none of which result in anything any different from the others, and none of which have consequences that have any connection to the goals we’ve been working on for the last hundred hours or so.

Those people you were just talking to? They’re gone. Or stranded on an alien world. Or dead. All those planets you helped? They’re gone too — cut off, or starving, or maybe just destroyed in manufactured super-novas. Nothing you did or accomplished in the last three games actually matters — it’s all been wiped out by one of three (red, green, or blue) RESET buttons you pushed, because pushing one of those buttons was the only ‘choice’ given to you at the end.

As a species, trained for thousands of years in the way stories work, we know this is a bad ending. Not “tragic”. Just bad. Poor.

This isn’t about a bunch of priviledged gamers complaining about a sad ending, because there are well-done sad endings that make contextual sense.

This is about a mechanical ending to the game that doesn’t end the story — that provides no emotional release — one so disassociated from the previous 99% of the story that the fans of the series collectively hope it will later be revealed to be a dream (or, in the context of the setting, a final Reaper Indoctrination attempt).

Dear writers: If you create something, and your readers hope that what you just gave them was, in reality, an “it was a dream all along” ending, because that would be better than what you wrote, you seriously. fucked. up.

Is the ending, as an ending (taken out of context with the game we’ve been playing), a bad one? No. It’s an interesting theme that was explored extensively in a B-plot within the series and which could certainly be the central thread of a series of its own.

But it’s not the ending of this story. Our goals — the one we’ve been fighting for — are never addressed. There is no closure, either happy or sad — we want our emotional release as it relates to the game we actually played. Maybe that means tragedy at our own stupid hands — maybe victory wrested from the biomechanical jaws of defeat (and at the cost of a greater looming danger ahead).

The ending we got? It didn’t make me angry or sad or happy. It left me unfulfilled, because it ended the game talking about something I didn’t actually care about, and left me waiting for that emotional release that ME1 or ME2 pulled off so well.

The idea that the player’s should just deal with the ending, because it’s Bioware’s ending and not theirs is one of the interesting points in this debate, simply because it rides this weird line where we don’t really have a cultural context for what the Mass Effect series is: Is it a game? Is it a story? If if it’s a game, then who cares about the story, and if it’s a story, then treat it like a book and stop pretending you get to influence it, stupid consumer.

The answer is more complicated: Is it a game or story? Yes. Moreover, it’s a game that’s welcomed player input into the narrative from the first moment, and as such, should be committed to honoring that input throughout. It’s a story, but it belongs to everyone telling it.

But It’s Art! There’s a recurring tune being played by Bioware in response to this outcry, and it goes something like this: “We might respond to these complaints, and we might flesh out the ending we presented, but we’re not going to change anything, because this is art — this is the product of artists — and as such it is inviolate and immutable in the face of outside forces.”

Which is, speaking as a working artist, complete and utter horseshit.

If you make a movie, and you put in front of focus groups, and they categorically hate the ending, you change it. If you’re writing a book and your first readers tell you the ending is terrible, you fix it. (Ditto your second readers, your second-draft readers, your agent, your editor, your copy editor.)

Or maybe you don’t — maybe you say “this is art, and it is inviolate and immutable in the face of outside forces”, which is certainly your choice — but don’t expect anyone to help you bring that piece of crap to print.

Anyone can tell a story. You can sit in your special writing nook and turn out page after page of perfectly unaltered, immutable art and be quite happy — you’re welcome to, in fact.

But when you decide you want to make a living off it? Even if you want to just make a little spending money?

Then the rules change. Then it’s work. Then it’s a job. More importantly, then it’s part of a business model, and those golden days of your art being inviolate and immutable blah blah blah are well and truly behind you. Name me a story that saw print, or a movie that saw the Big Screen, and I’ll show you art that changed because of input from someone other than the the original creator — from someone looking at it from the point of view of the consumer.

Bioware is a company. Making their stories into games is their business model. Hiding behind some kind of “but it’s art, so we’re not changing it” defense is insulting, disingenuous, and flat-out stupid. Worse, it perpetuates the idea that the creator’s output is in some stupid way sancrosant and, as art, cannot be “wrong” or “bad”. If you as a creator imagine that to be the case — if you think that kind of argument is going to defend your right to never do a rewrite or a revision or line edits or to ever alter, in any way, your precious Artistic Process — discard that notion.

Or become accustomed to a long life as an “undiscovered talent”.

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#crosspost #mass effect #randomaverage

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felassan · 4 years ago

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DA4 Lead Producer Scylla Costa’s BIG Festival talk, “Challenges of Dragon Age production during the pandemic”, can currently be rewatched on YouTube here starting roughly at timestamp 8:57:02 after a lil presenter blurb/intro. It’s 1 hour long. When it was streamed live, there was an English translation ‘voiceover’. There isn’t in this vid, however I want to post the link for Portuguese speakers, and also it’s neat for everyone to be able to see all the slides he presented with for themselves in context.

I don’t know if an English-language version will get put up so I’m sharing the notes I took during the talk below, in case anyone’s interested and because I might as well since I wrote them. The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Found a place to re-watch the English version of the talk

(Quick note: I didn’t note down everything, mostly things that caught my interest, so this isn’t exhaustive, and when I was watching I was real tired, so pls bear that in mind and don’t take these notes as bullet-proof 100% accurate gospel or direct quotes. If you watched it and think I’ve written down something wrong/misunderstood, let me know and I’ll fix. Also if you’re a Portuguese speaker and I’ve gotten something incorrect or missed something important etc, again just let me know.) **

** Edit: I’ve now gone through my notes while watching the talk again. I’ve filled in some of the gaps (although they still don’t cover everything said) and so forth, and now I’m no longer worried about there being possible errors in this post.

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For some context, this slide contained the breakdown of the talk’s structure. Bear in mind there are other slides present in the talk than the ones I’ve posted here, I didn’t include caps of all of them, just ones which were of note to me.

In the talk, chief Producer Scylla goes over challenges of DA4 production during the pandemic. He discusses the adaptations - necessary skills and learning from remote work - and he ponders on the future of teamwork.

After the launch of ME3 he became a producer, all his MMO and other experience helped a lot. He was on DAI for 3 years and MEA for 9 months, then Anthem. Today, on DA4, Scylla and another Lead Producer were the heads of the whole project, and there is his boss is the Executive Producer Christian Dailey.

^ the usual AAA game development cycle (brief introduction)

AAA games are games that are launched for several platforms simultaneously.

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase of the game development cycle can have from 5 - 30 people, and up to almost 60 people when they’re just about to go through the gate to production.

In the pre-production phase, they go through the game’s concepts and prototypes and start developing systems. They seek the game’s concept and focus, and its key features. They do lots of market research. In the case of BioWare, all their games are strong in narrative, so they have lots of tools related to game narratives and supporting the development of a narrative (cinematic design, dialogue system etc) that get focused on in this phase. Other parts of the team such as writers and cinematic design need these systems to do their own roles.

In BioWare’s case, the pre-production phase through to launch can take 4 - 6 years, but it does depend on the size of the team during development.

With regards to Dragon Age 4, they were coming close to the time when they would shift from pre-production to the production stage when the pandemic hit.

During the production phase is when the development of content and features takes place, with the systems mostly already existing from the pre-production phase. A few new systems may be developed in this phase. In the production phase is when things start escalating, and the team really starts growing, to like 2- or 3-fold the prior pre-production phase size.

(DA4 is currently in the production phase.)

In the alpha phase, features have to be fully implemented and systems all have to be running / working. All the game features should already be in the game by now. They test from pre-production onwards, but this phase is when they run heavy technical tests with lots of players trying to play at the same time. In the beta phase, the idea is that you should now have full content and that now you’re balancing it and running more and lots of different tests with players before launch. There are final tweaks and then the final launch, when in the weeks prior to launch, all the different business units and areas e.g. marketing team, technology team, publishing team, get together once a day and all of the game’s issues are reported and brought to the table to be prioritized. Then they decide the next steps re: these issues (this is known as ‘the war room’).

After the launch there are usually patches like day zero patches and other patches, this being standard industry practise. The last stage is the new content stage where there are DLCs and a game with more content.

On March 12th 2020, the team gathered to review the DA4 story in the new office. Everyone was very excited. (They had spent over 10 years in their last building and had noticed that with the team growing they needed more space. In August 2019 they found the new studio in the city center.)

Anyway that evening, they got an email from the CEO which contained instructions and said that due to the pandemic, they should from now all start working remotely. They had known that this happening was a possibility so they had been planning on how to have all the devs working from home, but initially less than 50% of the devs were able to work from home successfully/efficiently due to various issues e.g. you need a VPN to be able to log in remotely to do your job normally, varying home office setups. The day after this, the office was basically deserted, except for Scylla, the IT infrastructure people and one or two odd devs.

Scylla was part of the team that was working on allowing the devs to work from home. They first started looking at the short-term changes they needed to make to allow this.

“First, take care of our developers”.

When the pandemic first hit, their and Scylla’s [as Lead Producer] first priority was to look after the devs. Many of them are parents (schools and day-cares were shut, children were studying from home), others have relatives living with them, others have other personal circumstances which of course need to be taken into account when it comes to assessing what needs to be taken into consideration for this new scenario. So, they looked at each dev on a case-by-case basis in order to evaluate, speaking to each one and asking them what they could do to support them.

One of the first changes/adaptations they could implement was flexible working hours and flexibility around deadlines. Generally speaking the devs got a lot of support, EA was really good and really supported the devs especially in the first months of the pandemic (and they are still supporting them). Initially not all devs had suitable office spaces at home, some were working from the living room from laptops or at the kitchen table. The whole covid situation basically just happened over night and nobody was really ready to deal with that change. So their first step was to enable their devs to work remotely. As a producer, Scylla’s main task is to communicate with the team such as via a number of daily meetings. He doesn’t depend so much on powerful hardware.

“Enable developers to work remotely”.

This slide shows some of a BioWare audio team. Different teams have varying and specific needs in order to do their jobs and therefore in order to do them remotely. For example, the audio team need good-quality speakers and amplifiers, while the lighting and art teams need other specific equipment such as tablets and large screens. So there was a lot of work they had to do to go through each dev to understand their individual needs and what needed to be done for them. ‘Could they download the builds? Did they have the right performance [tech-wise]? Could they submit their changelists, their codes to the server?’

Some devs needed a more powerful internet connection as it would take 6-8 hours to download a build (some devs live rurally). Some needed a lot of cable, as they were working far away from their routers (sometimes up to 50m). As time went by things got better and better.

The chair devs work from is also important; a kitchen able chair etc is not suitable to sit in for long-term desk work, possibly leading to health issues like back ache and blood circulation problems in the legs.

Every 3 months they had money given to help devs buy new mice, keyboards, monitors - anything they needed really in order for their office setting at home to be improved. For a while, because lots of people [generally, in society] were needing and buying them, it was quite hard to buy things like webcams and microphones.

On mid- and long-term changes:

In terms of DA, we have to look at this from 2 perspectives, the change in the personal and the professional environments.

As a consequence of working from home, people tend to be less active during the day (even in an office, you go between meeting rooms, up and down stairs etc). Physical activity supports life quality and therefore work quality. Scylla noticed that he began to feel listless and such, and found that he needed to change his routine that he had initially developed when he started working from home, for example; having a normal start time (as in, have a semblance of structure in your day as if you were still working in the office site), get dressed at the normal time, not having meetings over lunch etc. This wasn’t just him, lots of other devs encountered this and had this experience too. Devs which adapted faster had better productivity and became more productive faster.

Scylla bought a stand-up desk which he can raise up and down, and at meetings he would be delivering a talk while standing or even while walking on a treadmill. Other devs also got stand-up desks. He tracked his body’s data on a Fitbit. These sorts of things helped improve physical and mental wellbeing. Other devs did similar things, like starting going out for jogs or began practising yoga. Essentially, everyone needed to make changes to their daily routine in comparison to what they had been doing prior to the pandemic.

The pandemic has been a thing for over a year now. In their location, every couple of weeks a new restriction is put into place or a rule is changed, and every two weeks there’s a new thing that you can and can’t do. Scylla also started moving around his property. He worked on his desk, fixed it up and painted - taking up a new hobby. Other devs picked up new hobbies too. These are good ways to be active and also to be somewhere else, i.e. to break up the working day and not be spending it all in one home office-type location. Scylla found that when he made these sorts of changes to his routine to improve his lifestyle, the data output by his Fitbit as indicators of his health/wellbeing etc improved, e.g. number of steps taken in a day, heartbeats per minute while at rest. As stated many of the other devs went through a similar process.

On the professional side of things:

They had to improve remote delivery of builds. Accessing things from home as a dev requires a VPN. They need to download a build every day and then upload it to the server after making their changes to the game. They had to work with infrastructure and research other tech, such as streaming tech to allow remote console access, in order to better facilitate this process. For remote access, they also had to work on adapting communications channels.

“Adapting channels of communication.”

In this slide, the team are working on the storyboards. Before you can implement motion capture & performance capture, you have to ‘run the storyboards’ like this. These are small illustrating drawings which reflect the drafts and are meant to quickly reflect the intention of the scenes that are to be built. Before the pandemic, the team would go to meeting rooms like this, sit down, talk and interact in person. After the pandemic, the question became ‘How do you do this over Zoom?’ You can, but it’s not quite the same; it’s harder to see peoples’ expressions, some people are embarrassed speaking over Zoom etc. Therefore they had to adapt their communications systems, and unlearn the ways in which they developed before in order to relearn and learn new ways of communicating.

Slack was a tool that they adopted on this front. Communications channels can be confusing on Slack, so there was a need to develop structure. For example, how quickly should someone reply (as a recommended convention for the purposes of work)? They had to define the process/procedures for the channels so it was clear for the team as a whole how it would all flow (this is important especially if you have a team with say 30 people or as a whole hundreds of people). Before the pandemic, they had stand-up meetings where they’d go around in a circle every morning and talk about their activities - what they’re going to be working on, any roadblocks they had encountered etc. The question arose ‘How do you replace these?’ They ended up doing Slack messages at a certain time of day and updating their statuses with some details on what they’re working on and color-coding (green - fine, yellow - need help, red - busy/blocked out).

Another issue that they faced was unforeseen - the number of meetings that devs were having really shot through the roof. When there wasn’t a good structure of communications channels, any conversation would become a meeting. Everybody began scheduling meetings left and right, and at the end of the day they would have little time left in which to actually work on their to-do lists. Hence, they had to work with the team to really analyze and be very pragmatic. ‘Which meetings needed to happen? Which didn’t? Is a specific meeting really necessary? Which meetings should be recurring? What can be done over Slack?’ This guideline had to be given to the team to help, and it improved things a lot. The number of meetings decreased a lot and they got more effective. For example, by making sure to set an agenda for meetings beforehand, and by having meeting notes (then a dev who didn’t really need to be at a meeting could skip attending and just quickly review the notes output after instead). They also decreased the standard length of meeting times from the default Outlook blocks of 1 hour and 30 mins to 55 mins and 25 mins respectively. This 5 minute change gave devs time for things like bio breaks (also 4 hours in a row at a computer in a home office with one meeting after another just isn’t good for a person).

“Adapting p-cap and mocap”.

On content:

From a content point of view, the most difficult thing in terms of the pandemic was adapting p-cap and mocap (performance capture and motion capture). They hire actors and it’s a large studio. The pandemic meant big limits to what they could and couldn’t do. The actors had to be masked and 5 meters apart in distance (although it doesn’t look like it in some of these shots due to angles). Also there could be no other person around in the studio - only the actors. The directors instead would ‘patch’ in remotely on big screens (you can see this in the second photo in the top right).

Before the pandemic, they felt that they wouldn’t be able to do p-cap or mocap properly remotely, as the directors would usually stand right next to actors giving guidance on their performance. The techs would also usually be near. But they adapted! The keyword is adapting, changing process. It’s harder and it’s different, but it is possible, and people start rethinking what is possible. What was said to be impossible before now is possible.

P-cap differs to mocap in that it also captures voice and facial expressions.

On the future of work after covid:

There will probably be more working from home and more flexibility for workers e.g. being able to work say 3 out of 5 days from home. It does depend on what a dev’s specific job is however. For example, the audio engineers require lots of specialist equipment and said equipment is of higher quality and quantity in the office. So, depending on role, devs might be working more often or less often from home.

Another development is that lots of devs are moving house. In lockdown etc people started reassessing what’s most important in life. Some are moving further away from the studio to get a cheaper rent or for example couples who both needed an office space to work from home from but their current place only had one area. Others are moving closer to nature for a better quality of life, and still others have other different reasons for doing so. Over 10 devs that he knows in fact have recently moved, including Scylla himself.

The pandemic changed certain skills being used by people on a daily basis. Scylla used as an example of this one of his soft skills, being able to tell from looking/interacting in-person with someone if they are stressed out. Obviously it’s less easy to tell if someone is stressed out when you’re remote, so you adapt different ways of checking in with people in the new situation. To continue carrying out his role as Lead Producer, he began checking in with his team pro-actively on the new comms channels and asking how they were doing.

Also, now that companies are more open to working remotely, there is going to be increased competition for hiring devs. They saw both sides of this coin at BioWare. They were able to hire devs from many places that they couldn’t hire from before e.g. Montreal, Vancouver, the US, as there’s less need for devs to relocate to Edmonton or Austin. This opens up opportunities to hire really intelligent and skilled people that they would not have had access to before.

Question and answer segment:

The pre-production phase has been concluded. They’re in the production phase.

They are not giving out a lot of details yet but Scylla is really excited as a big fan of the whole series. He thinks that with DA4, they will have the opportunity/possibility to launch the best story out of all DA games. He feels that the characters they’re making are amazing. He’s dying to say more but can’t.

When you work from home you need to keep your team as productive as possible. During the pandemic, when people started working from home, they noticed that some people became more productive and some people became less productive. They were analyzing it on a case-by-case basis so as not to make assumptions. They were interested in seeing what they could do to help. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were looking at the devs as people and seeing what they needed.

Production of DA4 still needed to continue during the pandemic because they want to be able to launch the game.

This slide shows a writer. Writing is an example of a role which is more able to work from home easily.

Their productivity did go down in the first month of the pandemic. After adaptations, some people then became more productive than they were before (this was role and personal situation-dependent, examples of this being artists and coders who were able to art and code at home without being interrupted, thereby being able to produce more). Covid has affected productivity in general, but this is part of our new reality. They have adapted and adjusted some deadlines. They have enough data (Scylla LOVES data) now to understand how long it will take them/how long they’ll need to launch the game. They have always had historical data for this purpose, but they’re doing more of this sort of thing now to ensure that they are doing things at the right time.

Remote hiring opens up the door to more talent joining, so if someone has talent geography will hold them back less. Some companies though may choose not to hire people from other countries due to labor issues, cumbersome legal aspects, time zones. But even in such cases there are activities for example that can be carried out while the rest of the team is asleep such as testing or working on the build, or there are cases where those companies still will want to hire a specifically/highly talented person even in spite of the potential legal aspects and so on.

On mental health: People were affected. There is the mental, physical and social impacts of the pandemic situation on people. EA supported them during the pandemic in terms of their mental wellbeing, there are specific companies (services offered, speaking to a therapist) that they can contact if they need something or help. EA had always been good at supporting them with this sort of thing but this has improved further during the pandemic. Another change was that they could/can take a couple of days off if they needed/need to because of the pandemic e.g. to take care of children, who were obviously not at school at the time. As a producer he had to be very mindful of all of this. How much they were monitoring peoples’ wellbeing really went up during the pandemic.

A question that was asked - in terms of DA4′s storybeats, is there anything in there that they decided to change due to the pandemic as it wouldn’t be sensitive or appropriate to include anymore, for example a plague plotline or something? Scylla’s answer is that DA and ME are games in which they try to have narratives that are relatable, which include things which people will identify with, so that players understand what characters are going through etc. Nothing in DA4′s plotline/storybeats has been changed (in the frame of this question, relating to the pandemic), as it didn’t have anything in it that could be specifically or a directly connected to a pandemic-type situation or anything. Of course the DA story has Blights and the Taint, but these are different & fantastical things and existed long before the pandemic situation. So this wasn’t the case with DA4 and there was no need to change anything, but this has happened to other games where they decided to change a storyline due to a strong correlation with something in the real world.

There were then concluding/closing remarks. The message he wants to send is that a crisis will always spark opportunities. Look at a crisis and try to see how you can grow.

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[☕ found this post interesting or useful? my ko-fi is here if you feel inclined. thank you 🙏]

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #video games #covid mention #long post #longpost #wanted to write these up properly and post them yesterday but wasn't able to #mass effect #anthem

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bri-notthecheese · 3 years ago

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my thoughts on Iki Island:

(spoilers under the cut)

I really loved this DLC! I had nothing but high hopes for this after playing the base game last year (and three more times after that), and Sucker Punch didn’t disappoint. The whole time playing it I felt like it was only adding to my love of the characters and the stories they set up in the base game, and then all the new quests and mechanics added a lot of fresh fun on top of that!

So where to even begin.

The opening scene was super cool and a neat way to introduce the new shaman enemies. And despite Yuna only actually being in one scene, it was a delight to see her again. Though since I’m playing the DLC after finishing everything, I don't love the continuity of Yuna not accompanying him, but gameplay wise I knew that wasn’t going to happen anyway, but I just love when she’s with us <3

Went for my horse straight away and I was THRILLED to see that Kaze can now kill enemies and the new charge mechanic was way more fun than I was expecting and I was having too much fun with that. After Nobu, I didn’t expect to get attached the Kaze all that much (even if he continued on into a later game) but I was quickly proved wrong with this because I now kind of separate Nobu as the more gentler of the two, that was always there for me, and while Kaze is too, I like imagining Kaze is a lot younger and his aggressive personality in this really sold that and I like that it probably eases Jin’s worries a bit to see his new horse being able to fend off attacks a bit better. Plus, with his new armor, he’s even safer <3 Really fell more in love with Kaze in this, which I didn’t expect.

Met The Eagle next and had that whole encounter. I love how right away if you pay attention, you know Yuna isn’t Yuna because she’s never once addressed Jin as ‘my lord.’ I think the only time she said it was when she was talking to both him and Shimura at the lighthouse, and it wasn’t because she wanted to. But still, even knowing something was wrong, it’s cute that Jin’s mind went to her as a safe place who he’d have no problem entrusting stories and secrets to, which was obviously the Eagle’s goal. And hearing her voice warp into the Eagle’s was creepyyyy and so good <3 (my Yuna loving ass was sad to realize that was most likely the last time we’d see her, but that’s okay) That next part of the hallucination really got you feeling for Jin, and I couldn’t help but be frustrated that he’s only a child, how was he supposed to help?!?!?

So I ignored Tenzo’s next mission and explored and pretty much completed the entire island. I got jump scared WAY too many times by her taunts, but I loved how that just added to the direness of the situation. I was obsessed with finding all the hallucinations and it just kept breaking my heart how Jin has all of this pent up guilt/heartache--with Ryuzo (he had so many I found), his father, his uncle, the Khan, Nobu :(, Masako, etc. I honestly had expected to find one regarding Taka and I’m a bit sad that I didn’t. Add those to the memories of his father and the ever-present taunting, I was going through it with Jin <3 At least you can pet the animals for him <3 The little smile he’d get every time was worth it. And the flute playing mechanic was really neat!

The first memory I got was their chat before Kazumasa’s death and honestly that got me all teary because Jin wanted so badly to hear him say he accepted him as his son, but deep down, would he have felt it? And my heart just breaks so much for Jin because as I kept going through the memories, I kept thinking how well 1) his dad sucks, but 2) both father figures kept wanting Jin to be somebody else. And it hurts that he was closer to Shimura’s way of thinking and how we even see that one time that Shimura corrects Jin, that his recitation of what honor means were his father’s words, and gets Jin to say that kindness is what honor means to him and wow. <3 <3 <3 But it hurts knowing their fate too <3 That while Shimura was more of a father to Jin than Kazumasa was, eventually, he couldn’t accept what Jin was doing in their way. Though it does hurt and make you wonder if Shimura was frightened that Jin was turning into his dad...I had that thought many times. (I loved seeing Adachi so much though omg <3 <3 <3) It was very interesting how the song Jin ends up playing for his father at the end of the memories is the ‘Jin Sakai’ theme. And then how that in turn, morphs into ‘The Way of the Ghost’ later on when in the final battle.

It hurts that Jin had Chiyoko in his life for such a short time. I’m glad he did have Yuriko at least, but all of Jin’s memories on his mother and how she emphasized just living was so prominent, and her love of animals clearly passed to him and that gentleness too. And of instruments. Such softness, and I love that he retains that even as an adult. It makes sense that he doesn’t speak of his mother as often since he has far less experiences with her vs Kazumasa or Shimura, but it was nice to see her influence within him.

Did this quest near the end of my exploration but I got the BIGGEST smile on my fave when I barged in the house to find the Ghost of Iki Island was Kenji <3 <3 <3 I love this dumbass so much and it was so nice to see a familiar face <3 Plus it let Jin have an actual full laugh when Kenji referred to them both as ‘tough guys’ XD His quests are always enjoyable for me and so I really loved that (though I was also Jin when he’s like “...you didn’t say goodbye.”) but I was happy to see him do the right thing at the end <3 THEN I got to duel the Viper because I diffused the situation instead and that was fun. Love that Jin explains his knowledge of negotiation was learned from all the years with Shimura <3 Also enjoyed spotting Kenji later in the Refuge XD

Really enjoyed all the side quests overall, loved all the animal sanctuaries, and the archery was a TON of fun! Getting the horse armor was neat, seeing Jin actively stop a Mythic retelling, though I was surprised there was no duel for that one. The one for the monkey armor was so creepy, following the lights in the cave, but so damn cinematic and that fight was incredible plus that amor is my new best friend. Seriously omg, the duels in this DLC felt so much beefier than the base game (I was playing on hard so that could be a reason, but the fights didn’t feel this tanky in the base) But that armor just made them a piece of cake if you’re good at perfect parries and perfect dodges <3 <3

Loved the banter and camaraderie between Jin and Tenzo throughout. And I really enjoyed Fune’s character as well! Did the next few story missions and I couldn’t help that sense of foreboding slipping in as I was getting more attached to these characters. Love that they had Kidafure Battlefield on the map but it isn’t till the mission that they tack on the ‘Village’, really hitting home what happened there.

Maybe I should have been, but I did not see the twist with Tenzo coming at ALL! I physically gasped when he spoke the “May your death benefit all things” to that random Mongol and I was soooo tense, like Jin listen I know he was your dad but also Tenzo spared you. Which I love in the long run how he spared the Butcher’s child only to save him later in life, and Jin could save him and the island in return <3 Because ohhhhhh boy did I get emotional when Jin stopped the Eagle from landing that blow.

But before that, HER FIGHT IS SO FUCKING COOOOOL!!!!!! SHE IS SO DAMN FAST AND SHE EASILY WIPED THE FLOOR WITH ME THE FIRST TWO TIMES. I also love her references to Khotan and that her moveset with the spear shares some similarities with him. I tried once more in my Ghost armor (for fashion) and then I switched to the Sarugami armor and was flying through just to have that whole cutscene.

I know culture is different and obviously I can never understand that mindset, but to hear him say to Jin that they both should have died there broke my heart. What kind of a father wants his son’s death with him like that?!?!?!?! But I LOOOOOOVED ‘Honor and Ash’ playing in the background for that scene, as Jin is rejecting what his father may have thought/wanted (just like he did to Shimura with that track at the end of Act 2) and then it moved up a key just to reinforce that Jin is forgiving himself for this and letting go and again, forging his own path just as he did with his uncle. I loved that they used that piece for that pivotal moment...

...JUST TO KICK IT INTO AN EVEN HIGHER GEAR WITH JIN SAVING TENZO AND THE GHOST THEME BLARING IN WITH A KEY CHANGE TO THEN TRIUMPHANTLY FINISH OFF THE EAGLE!!!!! I WAS SO HYPED (and also hoping I wouldn’t die cuz how anti climactic would that have been?!?) but I didn’t and I really enjoyed the resolution between those two. I bowed to him after he bowed to me and I love that they even added dialogue for that if players do decide to do that <3 <3 <3

The next quest with Fune was sweet, though it felt a little odd to do after defeating the Eagle, but it was sweet nonetheless. I have to finish up some trophy stuff, I guess there’s unseen quests that I’m sure I’ve done a few of, but I have to figure out what I missed. The dueling ring was fun, though that lady was the most difficult for me.

A few things of note:

-I like that in this DLC, you really can’t tell if it’s better to kill or spare Shimura. And how there are lines that could mean slightly different things to Jin depending on what he’s done. I’ve done both and I was on a file where he spared him, but besides a hallucination mentioning the Ghost being hunted for the rest of his days, nothing else pointed to one choice or the other.

-Though a line Jin said to Sugi threw me a bit when he said something along the lines of ‘you’ll never understand how hard it is to kill your family’ and maybe he was referencing his guilt for his father, but I’m like ?????? who else did you kill Jin??? Shimura is fine in this play through XD

-Talking with her though, I like that Jin described himself as ‘someone who knows what it’s like to be hunted’ :((((((

-Tenzo also made reference to a friend of his being beheaded, but not finding the head till a week later, and asking Jin if he understands that and while the situation is different, I bet Jin’s mind went to Taka :(

-Loved the subtle storytelling elements with Jin falling into his nightmares during the fight through the Gorge and his resolve disappears each time. The second time it happened, I verbally went “oh my resolve.....oh.”

-I do think Sucker Punch made a lil mistake though because I started thinking about how in Tale 8 of Masako’s quests, I’m almost certain she mentions Jin not understanding her need for revenge or something along those lines, and she talks about Shimura hunting down Kazamasu’s killer for weeks and how Jin had his closure. But uhhhhhh obviously his killer was never found? Or they killed the wrong one? And they didn’t mention it was on Iki Island and obviously didn’t have that foresight that they’d be doing this DLC since he was killed in the snow in the base game and now it was under a wisteria tree, but besides that small thing, I had no complaints! except for always wanting more Yuna

It was so great and I felt it really complemented the base game, especially in regards to everything that Jin feels guilty and responsible for, but also puts his relationship with Shimura is so many new lights that I loooove and I need to talk about more!!! If you read this far, feel free to hmu to chat about it because my best friend who played the base game at the same time I did and screamed with me about it has not played this yet and ahhhhh!!!!!!

#ghost of tsushima #iki island #iki island spoilers #my thoughts #enjoy my ramblings before i sleep

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smolsix · 4 years ago

Text

The LTNM 2 analysis that specifically does its best to debunk the loop theory

I’ll preface by saying i still havent seen the mobile game so RIP me. [i can’t download it and never have the attention span to watch a video of it]

Oh and I haven’t seen the new comics either I wanna buy em and read em in person first WEYHO

Little Nightmares 2 is NOT a loop or time loop.

We’re shown Mono at the start of the game appearing from a TV, implying based on his later ability to teleport between them that he teleported there somehow. Where he got this ability is never implied, but I believe that because he is a resident of the pale city or near it that TVs have a certain affect on him. Note how Six is largely unaffected by the TVs throughout the whole game and makes an effort to pull Mono out of them. The Viewers are continually captivated by them and the TVs have some sort of affect over them.

Likely the Radio Tower’s signal warps people into being affected by the TVs, and Mono living in proximity was also affected by it.

Six also has her hunger again, although it’s only seen at the end of the game. I believe Six was already a resident of The Maw. In the room you find her in the radio tower you’ll notice on the wall a painting of a girl in a yellow dress with the face scratched out, which is also located on The Maw in the lady’s quarters. I also do NOT think the Thin Man created this room for her to calm her down, but rather this room was created by Six’s mind. If Mono is to be believe to be the Thin Man caught in a loop, he would have NO idea about this painting. And if he did, why would he put it there for her? I bring up her hunger as a possible correlation to Mono’s abilities, and that her hunger is a product of The Maw and likely its food has this affect on people, same way the Radio Tower has its affect on the residents.

So Six already having ties to the maw could imply ltnm2 is either a sequel or prequel, but w the presence of dark six from the tv appearing in this game w such a loud presence im highly leaning on prequel. but i know that some creators said a while back it’s a sequel??? idk

For a time loop to take place the radio tower or thin man need some control over time, which is not shown in the slightest. How could he possibly turn back all the events, and for what purpose? To prevent himself becoming the Thin Man?

I’ve seen a lot of people mention that the Thin Man specifically goes for Six in the first encounter w him, but I honestly think it’s just that he sees Six first. The pulse that goes through the room when he enters causes her to fall out from under the table, and if you specifically do not hide under the bed he will capture Mono first, completely contradicting this idea.

So why did Mono become the Thin Man? I believe that the radio tower simply replaced the Thin Man after he was destroyed. It needs to keep status quo and as a result, found and locked away a suitable replacement. I know people think he was trapped in there for a long time based on the sequence where we see him slowly turning into the Thin Man, but consider how long Six was also in there and how fast she turned into a creature as well. She was in there maybe a few hours, it’s likely that the sequence was a creative choice to get you confused and invested in what’s happening to him before giving the final reveal, not as a means to show a long time has passed.

Obviously because of this, it’s likely that this ending is also alluding to Six’s fate at the end of the first game. After she kills the lady and consumes her, she gains her ability to suck the life out of people at a glance. It’s entirely possible she will replace The Lady as a result, should The Maw function the same way.

Also, Six is NOT a monster, she is NOT “evil” and whatever else you want to call her. She is a child who is only 9 and she is a product of her environment. In this world the slightest mix up means death, and she has grown up in this world. When you first meet her she’s very apprehensive in helping Mono until she needs help, too. In the playground she hardly plays, opting for standing around areas [like standing up against the goal post instead of playing w a ball or anything] or vaguely doing things. This can imply that despite the fact she is a child, she hasn’t been able to have a childhood. She still enjoys childish things like toys [implied by her room], and has a sense of curiosity [how often she plays w the x-ray whenever you’re around it and her animation showing her looking at the toy she’s holding or at herself], but hasn’t been able to actually indulge in child things most of her life.

Her letting go of Mono was a case where either:

A) she wasn’t sure they’d both make it out in time and decided to save herself

B) she knew she was getting hungry and would kill Mono when they left together

I’ll honestly take either of these, they both make sense.

I also want to touch on the idea that the hanging man is either mono as the thin man, or original thin man, and here’s my ideas as to why it’s neither:

For it to be the original thin man, we need to assume he wasn’t destroyed by Mono. If he wasn’t, then why did Mono replace him. If he was, he couldn’t have gotten to the maw to hang himself, and why would he leave a note.

For it to be Mono as thin man he needs to have somehow gotten to The Maw before Six, and then killed himself there in that specific area. I want to mention that the Thin Man’s appearance outside of TVs is distorted and not at all solid in the same way as normal people. For mono to get to the maw he either had to have taken the normie way there on ship, or teleport through the TV. But based on what we saw, his teleport ability can only be done through TVs already turned on by the outside, and they must be near each other [he never goes great distances]. It also makes sense that he could possibly not even affect TVs too far from the radio tower where the thin man stays, and where the frequency reaches. Basically I’m saying you’d be hard pressed to make it all the way to the maw in the middle of the ocean [or where ever it is haha].

The only TV we see within the maw itself is in the library and must be turned on. so we can’t really guage TV population within the maw. and should the TVs affect people as they do in the pale city, i highly doubt they’d be left on carelessly should they warp the guests.

oh yeah and

the chair sizes are completely different, since i’ve noticed people saying they’re the same chair.

ANYWAYS all else i wanted to touch on was that it’s very very likely the bosses in the maw are actually puppets! in the hospital you will see their faces pinned to the wall, fitting for the mannequin area! not sure why the mannequin’s are affected by light but the puppets on the maw are not, who knows.

that’s all i got, i’ll post any changes i have to my ideas after the comics/vln

EDIT: I just remembered that we DO see the thin man in a TV at the end of the DLC for ltnm1, but it’s unclear if this takes place in the maw or the pale city.

This means that either he does have more power and is capable of jumping farther and that point is moot [but then that means he didn’t get here till after the events of the maw so, it still doesn’t line up w hanging man], OORR it was just in the pale city and was a simple teaser.

#SORRY THIS ENDED UP LONG I HAD A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABT THIS THEORY I KEEP SEEING HGHGHG #text #ltnm2 #spoilers #little nightmares 2 #long post #ooc #i hope u know im super nervous to post this HEGEEEEE

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