#good game. 10/10. sometimes playable
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jacqcrisis · 4 months ago
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Hmm, I've never done the tiefling party without sleeping with Astarion and I've already done Gale's Act 1 romance, so what happens when Al goes to sleep?
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Oh well that's kind of cute if odd phrasing, but I dig it-
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The scream I scumpt.
Alfonso. My man.
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ominous-horse-noises · 8 months ago
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as someone who fell off of genshin for similar reasons (gameplay loop became meaningless busywork way too quickly, the story became too self-referential and unfocused, etc.), i also want to add that i feel like the writers wrote themselves into a corner from the start with the traveler.
the traveler's motivations are kind of counterintuitive to the interests of players. from lumine's (the twin i played) perspective, she wants as little interaction with this world as possible, and thus any story conflict she's drawn into has to be kind of against her will. sure, lumine can make connections with the characters, but genshin isnt really written well enough to express a lot of those relationships as organic and a meaningful obstacle to her objective of grabbing her twin and leaving teyvat. there are exceptions (xiao, for instance, has actually been built up to have a close bond with the traveler specifically), but overall, the writing strongly implies that if it wasnt useful for her to be helping others, she would have stopped by now.
full admission, i stopped playing soon after sumeru dropped- partly because i had gotten bored with the gameplay, and partly because a lot of the new mechanics and puzzles introduced were too dense to parse easily. however, from streamers i watch who've played up to fontaine, there seems to have been an overarching arc of the traveler's good nature being taken advantage of so often and for so long that they're starting to become embittered over having to lend a hand at all in all threads of the plot- because the writers keep having characters (usually the archons or similarly high ranking members in each nation's society) promise them progress and then go 'teehee guess i can't help you after all' in a cycle that feels a little like the writers taunting the players themselves.
now, i say this is counterintuitive to the players because the players WANT to linger in the world. they want to get to know all the characters, they want to explore every inch of the map for puzzles and chests, they want to do all the quests, they want to understand the lore. so now the story is caught between inventing more and more grating reasons why the traveler has to get involved with the narrative of the world against their will, the characters seem more and more like assholes for being able to provide nothing useful in return (bc as op accurately pinpointed, the writers keep holding their story cards tight to their chests), and the traveler becomes more exhausted and cynical about doing the things that the player is playing the game to do. its basically a running joke in the fandom at this point.
the difference between botw having a similar 'racing to save someone dear to the protagonist but getting involved in the minutiae of an open world' and genshin is that botw is VERY clear why link can't just grab a few overpowered allies and run straight for the castle. in genshin, because the story is so bloated and yet underdeveloped, the player doesn't get a real sense of the scope of the danger beyond cryptic allusion and other characters just saying so.
and the tragic thing is hoyo knows this is, objectively, a bad set up to tell a story like this from, because the first thing they did with the protagonist of honkai: star rail (i have complaints about the storytelling from the second world, but overall, the writing is head and shoulders above genshin by every metric) is give them no past and stick them on a crew of people who are literal do-gooders. amnesia is a cheap writing trick for player avatars, but it ends up working because the avatar is put with a group of people whose whole motivation is to travel and help others, which gives them an easy and plausible reason to get involved in conflicts of both A plot and C/D plot importance.
so. uh. in short, writing a protagonist whose express purpose is to get out of the world the entire game takes place in as soon as possible punishes players who want to try and be immersed in the story and their avatar's goals with endless frustration.
i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay
I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok
genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.
it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.
Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.
So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.
this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.
As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.
The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.
From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.
Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.
I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.
Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.
Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.
Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.
Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.
The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.
That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.
Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!
The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.
Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.
basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.
That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.
Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.
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obae-me · 18 days ago
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Folks... *clap*.
I'm all done with the Nightbringer story. And for whatever reason, I feel the need to share my opinions on it as a whole. So, to simplify the churning spaghetti mess of thoughts in my brain, I'll be following a Great, Good, Bad, Ugly sort of format.
Disclaimer: I'm not a professional game designer or writer or...anything really. I just write a lot and play a lot of games. This is purely my opinion after being hooked on Obey Me for... five years? Jeez....
Is this really analytical? Not really. This is quite literally me just saying what I did and did not like in such a way that I hope makes me sound somewhat smart.
Let's get into it!
Warning: Spoilers for Nightbringer ahead!
Music Design:
The Great- Some of the songs are so good unironically! Most of them fit the characters so well. I remember when they first were coming out, so many people wanted Satan to have a heavy metal song, and when his song was one of the softest ones, I remember the entire fandom cried. "We also judged him based on just his anger when he's so much more!" the people wailed. I know, I was there, I was one of them. Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch.
The Good- Some cringe and heavy autotune aside, I can tell they all improved every time a new song was released. They are just so fun, and I can tell that most of them had fun singing them. It's just a good vibe all around. There's something especially fun about the holiday ones... If only it had been around long enough to maybe do a Valentines....
The Bad- This one and the Ugly opinion kind of tie into each other, but I feel like there's a lot of missed potential here. I've played a few rhythm games here and there, so I wouldn't call myself the most knowledgeable about them, but I'm so surprised they only relied on new songs. Meaning character songs and the like. Some of the OST slaps! I don't understand why they didn't take some of the already existing songs and remix them into playable levels? Maybe the songs just couldn't transform into something catchy enough? And mentioning that, I'm going to immediately lean into the Ugly.
The Ugly- Oh....my god...it gets so repetitive after a while. Not even a while, it gets repetitive FAST. And maybe this is mostly just a 'Me' issue, because even with other rhythm games, I usually only have about an hour in me before I have to move onto something else. There's no way to pick the song you'd rather listen to, and like I said before, they ONLY use the character songs, nothing else. Some lessons have three or four of the same song... I love them, and I often have my songs I listen to on repeat for hours, but even I have my limits. I've played each song so much, I kid you not sometimes I can play with NO music on, and be able to tell which song is playing just based on the level.
Overall: The songs? So cute, even if a little cringe. And for something that used to literally just be tapping game sprites after a few seconds to "battle", making a whole rhythm game is such a step up. And for the VAs to not only work on voice lines for the game, but also work on podcasts and songs at the same time? I can only hope they are paid better than... most VAs here at the moment. And because for some reason I love ranking things? Obey Me Nightbringer's music gets a 6/10. I subtracted one point because I CAN'T FIND the OST for that very specific one music box background song!
Game Design:
The Great- I thought the UI looked so much nicer in Nightbringer! Moving around, even just basic swiping felt a lot more fluid. They added a lot more shortcuts to get to places faster. The chats looked better. The little details and the backgrounds were so cute! (Although my one stipulation is that for a while I thought the Ruri-Chan backgrounds correlated what was happening in the lessons and I was very disappointed when that was... not the case). I loved that some of the cards had moving wallpapers for the app. The moving background for Akuzon? Mwah, love. Aesthetic is very important to me, and they pulled off demonic but modern well in my opinion. The design team, may your pillows stay cold.
The Good- If I remember the first game compared to this one, I think Nightbringer had more chats and phone calls in total? Which I enjoy (let's not talk about the 30 dollar one). I love little flavor texts, it makes the world feel a bit more alive, and helps add to characterization. The addition of the occasional audio message? So good! I wish there were more chats that we as MC could participate in, but that's just a personal preference. The new emojis/stickers are also so cute! It's just a damn shame they came out shortly before the game wasn't going to have anything new. I wanted to see and use so much more of those...
The Bad- Now, some of these complaints of mine are based on my experiences with other otome games. Which, I realize, is quite like comparing apples to oranges. But....seeing that it's all I have since I've never played any of the other Solomare games, we'll have to make do. The Gatcha aspect is SO expensive, in my opinion. I'm used to other games where there's some kind of pity system for pulls? To my knowledge, there's no eventual guarantee for the one you want? Well, until they added in the ticket system, but that came so late in the game... If I recall, 100 tickets allows you to pick the card you want. 100 feels like SO much in Nightbringer. A lot of the best bundles are hidden behind VIP, you don't get a lot of bang for your buck, and a lot of times 50 bucks only really gets you like 30 pulls (don't quote me on that). Yes, that's part of the gambling, and I recognize that, but other games seem a little more forgiving. Even if only by a little. And if I'm totally wrong with the pity thing, that's my bad. I don't ever really see anyone talking about it, only ever if they got the character card they wanted or not.
The Ugly- Now, this might sound spoiled of me. But... there's just... not a lot to do? Yes, it's a rhythm game, so most of it is music levels, but like I mentioned before, it doesn't feel like a full rhythm game. Farming the hard levels is... sometimes torture. So, then they added that minigame for farming for card materials. It was cute the first five times I played it, and then I never touched it again... The Fab Snap videos? Cute for the first few days, and then I haven't touched it since, and I haven't even seen anyone else talk about it. The Wanderer Whatever (I forget the name) cute for a while and then hardly touched it. At some point too I think the game just...stopped adding those as well. I haven't seen a notification for it for ages. Not to mention most of the events/interactions are locked behind a paywall. Normally like...four to five American dollars for a 45 second scene. Extra calls and chats and 3D model scenes are stuck in cards behind skill levels, and with chats especially, they don't even always talk to you! If I spend extra Grimm and materials leveling up the skill just to get to a chat and it's one I can't even make a chat option in?? What are we doing here, am I not the Main Character? Sometimes it feels that way. Although that particular take is nuanced, and one I will dive deeper into with this next one... my white whale...
Oh, but rating first, I give the overall Game Design a 4/10. Looks super nice, lacks a bit of substance. I could've given it a 5, but based off of other games I've played, it needed some more substance to keep me around more as a player.
Writing Design:
This one is gonna be a doozy, folks.
The Great- I'm gonna be honest here. Most- if not all- of my praise is directed towards the first season. Was the writing perfect? No, of course not. Was it revolutionary? I would not say so. Did it keep me engaged? OH yeah. I sat there every week or so waiting for the new lesson to launch like I was waiting on the next episode of my favorite anime. It had me kicking my feet and giggling. It had drama, it had love, it had curses, magic shenanigans, goofs, gaffs, but most of all- what do we say, class? It had, yep, that's right, commitment. I'll explain that more in detail when we descend into the ugly, but just to give you my favorite examples. Lesson 12, when MC was affected by the curse of the reapers cave or wherever that was, after Lucifer attacked us because of the grimoire. That whole scenario was SO good. Finding out we were human, Belphie and Solomon being angry at each other, running away, all of it! And then again when Lucifer was taken prisoner and brought down into Cocytus, bound in chains away from his family. That is what I came here to see!
The Good- I love that a few characters had very distinct differences being that far back in time. Satan being so new and sounding so... clumsy and confused. Barbatos just having some absolute vitriol towards Solomon. Seeing Solomon having a lot more jealousy and anger and vulnerability than we had seen before. Diavolo needing much more validation and guidance than usual. Wonderful, I love it, it's not very often in media that we get to see character development devolve. I only wish they would've played around with that a liiittle more, and maybe for all the characters. But what we got was good! Good delicious characterization soup.
The Bad- Alright... let's start to crack this bad boy open a little, huh? This is just the bad and not the ugly yet, so we'll just go over my surface level complaints, along with some acknowledgement of why I assume most things are the way they are. I get that translation might be an issue. I get that censorship might also be an issue. Even sheer workload, pumping out lessons and cards and events oh my. Which is what I will be covering in The Bad... the events. Now, don't get me wrong, I know there was a lot to fully be desired in the first game when it came to the events. I remember the Paw Panic and the Halloween Mask event really sticking out to me, and then the rest... I doubt I could even pick one out and describe it. When you have SO many events to make, ideas start to sometimes run low. Some of Obey Me's events sounded like some sort of plot a Mad Lib would come up with. (YET WE STILL NEVER GOT A MERMAID EVENT). So, unfortunately, a lot of events fell short. Just a little pause of entertainment we got to have while we tried to grind for those beautiful cards.
The Ugly- Quickly moving into the ugly category, it's time to get into the meat and potatoes of what I'm really here to talk about. That's right. All of what you probably skimmed through before was just the last minute free ramble I put together to essentially throw a bit of spackle and glitter on this rant I'm about to go on. Why am I so keyed up about this? I don't know, life has been hard lately and it feels good to channel some irritation and anger into something I'm passionate about. Because clearly I love Obey Me, right? The characters feel like old time friends and even after my many hiatuses (hiatai? Hiatusees?) opening the game feels like coming to a comfortable old home.
That being said, there seems to be plenty of cracks in this old home that no amount of caulk will fix.
Let's start with my first problem. The length get your mind out of the gutter. It felt as if every event got shorter and more pointless. I would do one, sometimes two, rhythm courses, only to get five or so lines of dialogue before it ended. Let's play a game. One of these two scenarios is from an actual in game event that workers got paid for, while the other I came up with in two minutes. Guess which one is which, okay?
A)
Leviathan: Wait, you can't sing?
Belphegor: Sounds like a cry for attention if you ask me.
Mammon: I swear! Why would I lie about somethin' like this?!
MC: >Are you okay, Mammon?
Because you lie about everything.
Mammon: MC is the only one who cares! Take notes, ya jerks!
Lucifer: I'm assuming this must have been something to do with the light we saw earlier.
Leviathan: His throat started to glow when he wrote down his song on the form, right?
Which means...
(End Scene)
B)
Satan: This is...
Asmodeus: A boutique! I get to sit down and buy outfits?! This must be the hidden paradise after all!
Satan: Hold on, we don't know if it's safe yet. He's already gone...
Simeon: Ahaha!
MC: We were scammed!
>What are you laughing at?
Simeon: No matter what my expectations are, the Devildom continues to catch me by surprise.
The map leading us to a secret store is so simple, I can't help but laugh a little. Ahaha!
Satan: I'm not so sure we can write this off as simple just yet...
???: Eeeeeeeek!
(End Scene)
Place your bets, folks! Put in your entries now for the scenario you think is the real deal? Ready for the answer?
The correct answer is A!
Scenario A is from the Marine event, while B I came up with on my own.
For the record I reeeeally wanted to pull a B99 "they're both your locker" on everyone, but then I was curious to see if I had what it takes to come up with something so similar it might fool people. Well, did you win? If you picked my scenario B, you are tasked with letting me know in the reblogs or replies that I would make a good Obey Me writer, thank you /j
I also spent a well earned LD Ticket to find that scene, thank you very much.
Anyway, I hope that helps emphasize my point. It can take up to sometimes 4 minutes to get to a scene like that! And then it ends! And you have to play more rhythm levels! I think honestly this particular problem exacerbates the feeling of repetitiveness that I mentioned earlier. It takes longer to wait to skip an ad on YouTube than some of these scenes last. Nightbringer is a rhythm game, yes, but it's supposed to predominately be a visual novel. So when you have what feels like only part of a rhythm game and only part of a visual novel, you get overall a game that feels incomplete as a whole.
I didn't feel that way in season 1. Only with the events, which I ended up mostly skipping or skimming anyway. I didn't really notice it.
But then when Season 2 came?...
Boy howdy...
What is the best way I can describe my feelings towards Season 2 of Nightbringer?
Season 2 of Nightbringer was some of the worst padded infuriating nonsensical filler I've seen from a game in a long time.
And with the announcement of Nightbringer ending, I can tell from Season 2 that they've been planning on ending the game for a while now. It's the written equivalent of "we lock the doors in five minutes, start closing now!"
I got over the brothers not knowing that MC had disappeared to the past. I sighed but shrugged my shoulders when they started the Science Fair Festival thing. I had a twinge of hope when it seemed focused on Simeon turning into a demon.
And then the lessons kept going.... and going.... and going... and... nothing was really happening.
And I started to notice a pattern. One that really- UGH. Sorry... I am zen, I swear.
Let me ask you this? How many times did you notice the lesson ending on a cliffhanger, only for it to immediately be resolved by the beginning of the next lesson? Some of the time we didn't even get to experience it happening, the game had to tell us. Because I noticed it. And it happened A LOT. One of these that I noticed made me so frustrated, I had to put my phone down for a bit. It's the very end of lesson 56 going into 57.
We're supposed to be at some real juicy story. Raphael can't handle that Simeon is turning into a demon. He disappears. Everyone gets sucked into Babel. We find him, and he starts having such a mental breakdown, Babel is collapsing. Lucifer calls out MC's name frantically!... Then to wait for lesson 57.
Yes! Lesson 57 is here! Time to get back into the action! A small recap. Everything is about to crumble. We call out Raphael's name. We reach out!
Then get sucked into a vision? One of Raphael and everyone in the Celestial Realm, leaving one by one till he is all alone. In the back of our mind, we hear someone trying to call out our name...
"MC, thank goodness you are awake. Do you not remember what happened? You fell out of the tower as it collapsed."
Then wacky music starts playing as the brothers with wings complain about carrying everyone else.
Huh?
The action and drama? Over in an instant. Flattened.
Raphael isn't freaking out anymore and I think we find him standing off alone somewhere away from the group and convince him he isn't alone. I can't remember, it didn't feel very meaningful or memorable.
And that right there is my biggest issue! Remember what I said before? What was the word? Commitment. It felt like every single plot that was created had no satisfying follow through, if it even had a follow through at all! Nightbringer? Who is he?! Why did we get sucked back into the past? I don't know! Simeon turning into a demon? He decided for himself he wasn't ready to leave the Celestial Realm yet so Levi helped make a potion that drew out some sort of chromosome so he could become fully human again so maybe he could be an angel again in the future. And that's really how Season 2 ended!
And something about the moon crashing down but us trying to stop it and shield the whole Devildom but it didn't work and one of the brothers of our choosing falls into a coma but suddenly he wakes up again and the moon is fine and the exchange program is ending hurray!
All in like two lessons, just so you all know. It was so random and quick it made my head spin, and was over with so fast I didn't even have time to maybe be upset that my favorite brother was in a coma.
My biggest issue with Obey Me is the lack of follow through, and even in the first game I've always felt like we are more observers than like an actual character in the game? The first and second season of the last game and the first season of this one felt involved. This other one? We didn't really do a whole lot. And I know that's a personal preference. I know people in this fandom can get really upset when something happens to MC because they don't like that. Me? I want to be in the action! I want things in the world to happen to ME too. Even in the events, it's always like, "oh no, I guess because I'm a human, the curse only affected you guys? And Solomon? Well because he's a unique human, it affected him too". That's why lesson 12 stuck with me so much. We were finally affected by the world! Instead of having some sort of godly plot armor.
I don't even know what else to say, really. Only that I hope they end up making another game? Maybe the rhythm game aspect couldn't be sustainable for too much longer and so they're setting something else up? If they aren't working on this particular story anymore, it's very unfulfilling. And I understand that sometimes circumstances force things like this to end before they would like to? Maybe if I'm filled with enough stifled rage, I'll write an alternative ending to this like when I wrote The Reunion we Deserved?
Closing Remarks?
My biggest pet peeve I see in bad writing is commitment. The "it happened in your head", "it was a dream", "do you not remember", "they didn't actually die" (revival or fake deaths can be done properly, but it's difficult to pull off) loophole is so cheap, and it makes me so sad. Because then it softens the blow of what you just spent time to build up.
Nightbringer season 2 had good moments, it's just that the good moments were so abrupt, cut off by ending a scene really quick or interrupting it with something wacky. And trust me, I love wacky shenanigans, but there's a time and a place! I loved Diavolo catching MC when they fell off the train, but nearly as soon as he caught them, the scene ended! I loved Simeon getting mad at Lucifer, Solomon, and Diavolo. It only lasted for three little scenes, and the three of them doing something so dangerous for something with very little threat felt very out of character.
Somehow the story went in about a hundred different directions, and then ended up really going nowhere.
Again, these are my personal rants. If I were smarter, I'd probably be able to critique this in a much more clever and enlightened manner, but I'm just a fanfic writer writing all of this at 2 am running on fumes and a weird amount of spite.
Writing rating? Season One gets a 7/10. Docked one point for denying us hugs and tears when we got back to our own timeline. "oh, it'll destroy the timelin--" ITS FICTION. Get that out of my face and give me my hurt/comfort!
Season two: 3/10. Maybe harsh, I know. I struggled getting through it, especially when the first season had set those really good expectations.
I still love the characters. Love the world. Love this fandom. The brainrot is still real, who knows if it will ever let me go.
If you read this whole thing, wow! Why?... Genuinely impressed. Take a Happy Mammon as your gold star!
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thelakesuite · 9 months ago
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The Rusty Lake Story in Bitchass Baby Terms
this is ALL off the top of my head (and i haven't experienced like 10% of it maybe?) so i might be wrong but i don't care right now
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the lake itself isn't, like, that well established 'cause it's a mystery game or something so we don't need full exposition. it's some deity-like thing as old as the mammoths (not canon) that eats time. or rather memories that are stored in lil cubes. and it gives its zookeepers immortality so they can keep feeding it. they call themselves the Rulers of the Lake but we all know the truth. 'immortality', or rather enlightenment, is represented by you becoming your fursona and living maybe an extra century. mr. owl's looking for a new heir pretty quick in the process but we'll get to that.
corrupted souls are kinda a byproduct of all this. truly the lake's farts. when a person dies horribly, when their memories get extracted wrong, or when the plot demands it, they become corrupted. corrupted souls still talk, and some of them are even sensible (like your mom oooooh), but generally they're jumpscare beasts or wet little puppies. sometimes both. yes you can get corrupted when you're enlightened, and right now it's the more likely outcome actually. there's a whole 'elixir of immortality' that gets harped on, where one drinker gets corrupted and the other gets enlightened, but that is literally only a thing for roots and a little bit of cave so don't worry about it too much. unless you're making dramatic fanart in which case leverage that shit.
cubes come up a lot in cube escape, believe it or not! black ones are bad memories, white ones are good memories, blue ones are connected to the past in a way that's somehow not a memory, gold ones are connected to the future, red ones only exist in my fangame that ellesian recently unearthed, and green ones are jello yum. also suck it anyone who told me pre-tpw the gold cube thing was unestablished. anyway. it was a big thing mr.'s owl and crow were working on, creating a golden cube (presumably to extend their own lives) as seen in cave, but then one just kinda appears in the past within when albert does electric jujitsu. jury is still out on that.
onto the actual narrative i think.
in paradise, you're mr. owl pre-owling (1790-something). the lake's current suckass servants are your family who tried to sacrifice you to it way back, but your mom took your place for mom reasons. now mom's corrupted and guiding you to... well, to get sacrificed for real this time. but with your powers combined (yes mr. owl was two people, no it is never addressed) you get enlightened and tell your family to fuck off 'cause you're building a hotel on that island now. you also get a tease in the secret ending that dale and laura will do a similar fusion dance to be the lake's next suckass. we've been waiting 6 years for that to happen.
in roots, two alchemist brothers get that elixir shit going (1860-1935). one of them becomes mr. crow, while the other becomes a playable character for a game. and corrupted. you rope your whole bloodline into this, harvesting their body parts (usually after they die from other means, but you totally caused most of their deaths) for a reincarnation ritual involving a magic seed (that also only exists for this game). this is where the best characters come from because rusty lake actually wanted to tell a story with this game. you reincarnate into a woman! don't think about the implications.
in samsara room, the inside scoop of reincarnation is fuckin' weird, dude (1935). the original was made before rusty lake began, so it's not truly part of the narrative, but it got folded in for the fifth anniversary.
in hotel, you do not get the backstory of the third bird man (1890ish). instead, you get to kill mr. owl's family again, but one-on-one as animal people. how did they become animal people? fuck you that's how! mr. owl probably did it on purpose to spite them with shit sandwiches and bullets to the brain. oh, also, there might be an evil twin of mr. rabbit that shows up later.
in arles, you're vincent van gogh. that's it. he's not relevant. but it is funny seing the death date of paul gauguin in the timeline docs.
we're talking about the past within later but the 'past' segment takes place around here. 1926 iirc?
in birthday, your parents get shot (1939). you're going to be an important detective, dale, but like right now you're getting traumatized. or rather you're experiencing that memory, then doing blue cube magic to fix it and have your grandpa shoot evil mr. rabbit instead. is your grandpa actually mr. crow? no. shut up about it now.
in underground blossom, your mom gets abducted (1935-1972 maybe). okay, well, not you. this is the laura backstory metaphor game but you're actually playing as the third bird man who is both her stepdad and her pet. and her grandpa albert takes her mom rose for his own nefarious reincarnation schemes maybe probably. rose is surprisingly okay with it but characters rarely put up a fight with the plot anyway. laura's a lonely kid, starts dating robert, picks up art to soothe her nightmares, gets murked, then reaches some kind of epiphany that we just train ride away from before finding out what actually happens. she's your daughter, damnit, you should support her transcendence. not enlightenment importantly. also, no, laura's life didn't literally happen at train stops, it's just a vehicle. not even a pun don't fucking laugh i see you snickering.
in seasons, you set up a really interesting plotline that gets utterly countered by everything that came after (1960's-80's). it's just laura time in there, and she uncorrupts herself, thank you very much. the series has been struggling with how laura gets her corrupted self to 1980-whatever, and so far only one other game's even taken place after 1972. and that game's the past within which also counters every other plotline. sigh. maybe we're not smart enough for these puzzle games. at least harvey's cute and bird-shaped. key point that's impossible to fuck up is that laura dies in 1972, and it's unclear whether it was a murder or suicide. that's why we get a detective.
in harvey's box and the lake, uh i don't know really (1969). these are early games that are basically spinoffs of seasons. they help with the overarching stuff but aren't much for the narrative at this point. also they suck
in case 23, dale starts investigating laura's death and gets wrapped up in the lake stuff (1972). it was supposed to be just another murder case, but he got too into it and it got too into him, so he gets teleported to the lake chapel and ferried off to. somewhere idk. he goes into an elevator that takes him down memory lane to the lake floor.
in the mill, mr. crow is really trying to clean house before dale gets here (1972). this is where laura gets her ass corrupted by mr. crow, and we find out how the lake eats memories or whatever. it's supposed to overlap with case 23 and it almost succeeds. whatever skrunk is still there is forgiveable, this was the flash era after all.
in theatre, dale learns about ripoff hinduism, goads a man into suicide, and abandons his darling toilet fetus son (1971). it's like birthday again, where this is a memory we're seeing, but that is a light distinction. robert kills himself at the bar, and we take his memories for legal reasons. there's some sixfold wheel we learn about that doesn't matter much.
in the cave, mr. crow still cleans house before dale gets to the Magic Memory Machine (1972). mr. owl's kinda sorta dying, and dale's been elected his son or something. gotta get his mindmeats. you read a textbook about cubes, pilot a submarine to the lakefloor, put dale and laura in a surrogate fusion dance machine, then give dale the golden cube it makes before sending him up the elevator again. hotel did imply something serious was gonna happen when he gets to the top, but that was eight years ago. the devs probably forgot and fell too in love with albert vanderboom in the meantime.
in the white door, robert unkills himself and gets wrong psychiatry (1972). as it turns out, mr. owl has a front business running a for-profit psych ward to extract totally good and healthy memories from people. this one is an actual factual spinoff but is kinda relevant for the greater rusty lake metropolitan area.
in paradox, fuuuuuuuck who knows maaaan, isn't it all just a metaphor? (1972). there's a consensus that none of the stuff that happens in paradox actually happens, and that it's all in dale's head while he's in the Magic Memory Machine from cave. even though there's five different endings, he kinda walks away at the end, which might be the worst ending of the lot. the information's solid though; mr. owl spells out the whole heir thing, there's bits of backstory for dale and laura everywhere. also the movie's sick.
in the past within, albert becomes a mechanical engineer for the sole purpose of making plot armor (1926/1984). yeah, remember that guy from roots? the voodoo murderer who got third-hand alchemy information to make up for his lack of pussy? yeah, he invented a time machine decades ago. and he enlisted his daughter to talk to her past/future self to grow him back to life in 1984. with a gold cube that he somehow got. and somehow his scar is genetically coded in him. and we don't see his wiggly lineart dick. what does he do in 1984? trap his daughter in a time loop then who the fuck knows. he's stuck in his jumpscare beast ways from being corrupted for so long. how did he get corrupted when he was literally buried in the ground and salvaged bones from? next game!
there's an ARG that i never saw a thing of because i hated it, best kept memory. from what i gathered, it was another front scheme for memory harvesting, except in the 2000's. does that mean it's enlightened dale/laura doing this one, since mr. owl presumably passed on the title then turned into a fish? i'd like to know too!
also, a chapter of underground blossom i haven't completed, and a paper-based game coming out within the next two years or whatever. i don't know how much they'll clear up.
toodles!
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fireemblems24 · 1 year ago
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Azure Gleam - Special Chapters
Spoilers for the special chapters below.
SHEZ VS BYLETH
I didn't get the special chapter for SB or GW. SB, I just straight up did not care. GW, I tried, but it involved an "escort Claude" part and he just sat there and didn't move forward, and I didn't care enough to bother with the chapter a second time.
Shez sounds like Arval. Did Arval take Shez over? I'm guessing to go after Sothis?
Oh, cut scene! Shez vs Byleth again.
Byleth holding his own against Arval!Shez. Good to see. Shez is trying to hold Arval back though.
So . . . if we kick out Arval out in these chapters, does Shez loose their abilities/special class, because no :(((((
Felix, Dedue, and Dimitri are worrying about Shez and Byleth (also, awesome to see all my favs). Rodrigue has news about what happened.
Scouts report that Byleth and Shez are fighting. Felix accuses that Dimitri suspected this.
Dimitri tells how Shez worried that TWSITD would take over her. And Dimitri's promise to kill Shez to stop her from killing others.
Oh, we cut straight to the battle and have to defeat Shez. Makes sense. I'm guessing do it before Byleth dies?
My Shez is, eh, a bit stronger than Byleth, so I'm a bit worried. But Dimitri's such an overkill at this point, he's just going to blaze through this chapter like he did the last one.
It's weird not having Shez among my playable characters. I'm using Jeralt instead of Shez for my missing 8th person because he's the highest level (and I can't use Byleth either so).
Edelgard is around somewhere? Claude showed up to hunt her down.
My Byleth is like 10 levels below Shez. It's not going well.
Atrocity is one hell of a drug. Took Shez out.
Defeating Solon feels good. Got a cut scene too. He just ran away though. Wait, Arval/Shez killed Solon? Ohhh, like Solon killed Kyrona. A sacrifice is needed to open Zaharas. Karma I guess.
Claude and Dimitri talking is kinda cool. And weird Edelgard showed up. It's so amusing to me that they wrote themselves into such a corner with Edelgard they just yeeted her brain lamo.
ZAHRAS
Arval is talking to Arval.
Dark Arval created Normal Arval because Dark Arval wanted typical TWSITD nonsense, domination, restore the world to TWSITD, etc . . .
And in the most shocking twist, Normal Arval is programmed to kill Sothis, so therefore Byleth, and while Arval took over Shez.
Oh, Shez woke up! And Claude's there with Dimitri.
So they all got sent to this Zahras place.
Shez doesn't have a lot of memory of what just happened, and tells Claude and Dimitri about Arval, who's gone though.
Now they have to find a way out of this mess.
Dimitri found Edelgard. Since there's like 4 people, no one plans on fighting each other until they get out. Then it's time to kill people.
So Edelgard doesn't remember what happened and got some spell cast on her by TWSITD.
Claude cheerily tells her what a fuck up her country is lamo.
There's this mini map with the 3 lords just standing there, chilling, in this dark abyss place. It's pretty funny looking.
All my other units are gone, but I expected that. Dimitri's my most overpowered unit anyways.
DIMITRI & CLAUDE
Is this like some kind of support?
So AG Claude wants to get rid of the central church and kill Rhea. Like, I'm down for removing any sort of political power from a religious institution, but this fixation on Rhea is weird.
Lamo, is this game serious? Did it really just blame nobility and arrange marriage on Rhea?? OMG.
I knew Claude went completely dodo bird in this game, but he somehow became even more of an idiot?
I'm kind of impressed lol.
He drank the Edelgard koolaide.
Dimitri's like, well, as long as you just dislike the church and not Faerghus.
It's interesting for Dimitri to acknowledge that his personal beliefs and his beliefs as a king are sometimes at war.
He also lays out why Claude's plan is an awful idea. Meaning, all the death and suffering he'll cause.
It's just a classic, Claude is too rash - Dimitri is too cautious.
Claude tells Dimitri that he's too good for him. And that they could've been friends if kingly stuff didn't get in the way.
It's overall a fine support, except this absurd idea that the church is solely responsible for stuff human nature always comes up with, and I think it's more a symptom of a huge flaw in the Fodlan games as a whole than anything else.
DIMITRI & EDELGARD
Dimitri finds it hard to talk to Edelgard because of all the people she's caused the death of. But way more polite.
Edelgard doesn't feel that way. Which, not surprised. She doesn't really care too much about the people who've died like he does.
Lamo, she also is way less polite and is like "you don't want to talk to the tyrant who's gotten everyone killed." See, though, it's acknowledgements like this that make me like this game more. She knows that's what she looks like to everyone not in Adrestia.
Dimitri gets annoyed with her for placing words in his mouth. And good for him. That's always annoying.
Edelgard is less confident than Dimitri that he has no regrets of his actions and carefully considered all of them.
Oh, good, Dimitri asks about Patricia. But Edelgard doesn't know what happened either. So, still no answers about her.
Dimitri wants to just end the conversation. I am loving how much he really doesn't want to talk to her. It's so different from Claude who he was curious about.
She falls down because dark magic place does it's thing, then helps her stand up, and they get a picture, which is cool.
It reminds her of when she fell once and took the help without thinking about it. Now she thinks about it.
Dimitri remembers helping a girl up.
I see where this is going, but it's funny such a mundane thing will trigger important memories, lamo.
Edelgard is like, yeah, knowing you, you probably helped a lot of people get up who fell down.
I'm living for these supports acknowledging that Dimitri's a way better person than the other two lol.
He's like, naw, it was you. Edelgard keeps insisting it wasn't her.
He calls her El at the end.
Is this the same support in SB? It works for AG, but man, this asshole just killed Sylvain (and Annette, and Gilbert, and Ingrid, and Rodrigue, and tons of other people from Faerghus simply bc she wants that land back), so I'd be furious seeing it there.
In AG, though, it makes sense.
BACK TO THE CHAPTER
Dimitri's the only one who asks about Shez's wellbeing. Does their dialogue change in different routes?
Oh, cool, I had some access to stuff like the blacksmith, which makes no sense, but ok.
Bad Arval showed up behind Shez, but she alludes it.
Arval says none can escape. But I doubt it.
Dimitri's like, that's bullshit, bc there's no way they'd build this without a way out, and if they can get out, so can we.
And then Dimitri's proved right when Arval says he'll leave, alone.
Ok, I learned this other Arval's name, but I am not going to spell all of that.
So like, after this, do they all just go back to war? Because if they do . . . lol.
They let you use all the 3 lords, but I'll probably only use Shez and Dimitri. Neither Edelgard nor Claude impressed me much when I started this game (and at the time I started, I liked Claude a lot more than I do now).
Oh, so a dark Hubert, Hilda, and Felix showed up. A bit sad it wasn't Dedue, though. I feel like he deserved to be the BL rep even if Felix is more popular. But maybe it was for variety? Like Dedue is another axe like Hilda, but then switch Claude's people out.
At the same time, Felix makes sense, esp in Hopes. He and Dimitri are practically married lol.
Dimitri's like, that's not Felix. He wouldn't get mad at me for doing this and not avenging people. He's not wrong.
Ohhh, not they're fighting phantom versions of themselves.
They had some throwaway lines explaining why Edelgard is normal now.
Lamo, Edelgard doesn't trust herself.
Meanwhile . . . Dimitri . . . is like, really excited about this. Because he gets to kill a version of himself. :((((
Claude's line wasn't as interesting as the other two. I know. Shocking. /s
Dimitri wants to thank Arval for letting him fight and kill himself. I cannot with this man.
Evil Claude just about totaled regular Claude. Edelgard isn't scratched though.
Edelgard and Claude were way more normal about reactions to fighting themselves lol.
I had to make Claude an adjunct. He was nearly dead. It's actually surprising how much worse he is than Edelgard. (Dimitri's not fair to rate against them since he's more built out and not dropped into this map for a one-time battle).
Ok, he summoned more dudes to protect him, and one was a Shez copy the other Dedue. So Dedue got credit too. So now I'm less conflicted about Felix making an appearance.
Shez is upset at fighting herself.
Dimitri feels awful about fighting the shades this time. He's only motivated by all the people he's kept alive in real life.
I defeated Epimedes. That seemed too easy.
Cut scene fight between Shez and Epi. It's pretty badass looking in the dark magic place with falling rocks everywhere. Like, in a cheesy but just roll with it way.
Shez wins. Arval pops back up and they almost hold hands. Arval's never felt more alone :( Honestly, kinda sad things end badly for them. So not recruiting Byleth gives Arval a better ending? Will Arval not be there in the final map before the final battle?
They escaped!
Dimitri's like "it felt like a strange fever dream" and honestly, not a bad way to describe it.
They lost Edelgard and are we back to the normal stuff? Oh, no Shez asks to go back to the search for her and the others. Claude wants to get back to his people too.
Ok, so moving onto the final chapter now.
xxx
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three-dee-ess · 9 months ago
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i played attack of the friday monsters to saturday the bonus stage and you know what this game feels like? it's like a game adaptation of a nonexistent movie older than a decade that you keep close to your heart because you watched it so many times as a kid but forgot its name after a few years
then when you randomly scroll through social media, there it is, the childhood movie you love! then you google it to confirm it is the exact thing you cherish and see some adults not filled with whimsy rate it a 4/10
later, you rewatch the movie filled with joy and end it with joy too, what were those losers rating it low thinking? then you read through the wikipedia page to see more info on it and it turns out there's a game adaptation so you go to get it just to see what it's like
you finish it and it's great, not as great as the movie but it didn't cut anything too important out, the graphics are as beautiful as the source material, they even made the fictional game playable, and got the original voice actors
sorry for the essay but i just had to describe this super specific vibe im getting from finishing this game, maybe this is vision is from a past life idk
anyway, i love it! i just wish it was longer because i didn't want to leave this world yet
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YES YES YES you get it exactly.
it's part of a series called Boku no natsuyasumi (My summer vacation)
attack of the Friday monsters is actually considered a short title in the series and the first to be translated to English. the only other one to be translated to English is the crayon Shin-chan tie in game 😭 it's really good but admittedly I know nothing about crayon Shin-chan so I might be missing a lot. I have it on the switch, it cost about $60. I think it's wonderful but holy shit sometimes I make bad purchases. I think there might be a steam port? so uh. you know. wait till that goes on sale.
wait post cancellef the second game just got an English patch released oh my god well I know what I'm doing tmmr huge day for me
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thefirstknife · 1 year ago
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Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.
IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
MOOD. Go off.
It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.
Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.
One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.
And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.
It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.
And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.
#destiny 2#gameplay#ask#long post#i really do love helping but i can't not feel bad because once the people i helped are out of my fireteam...#...there's no telling what other experiences they'll have#there's so many speedrunners and people who don't care and people who just aren't helping and are instead mocking others#you can only do so much for a few people you see in activities#this season's activities are super tough. every time so far I've played everyone in the team was struggling#i'm gonna have to start going into altars of summoning with my full support build warlock just to sit in there and help people#istg the 'pros' have to get their loadouts restricted. go play with non-god tier armour sets and guns#equip the same loadout that some casual player has available and let me see you then#this idea that everyone has minmaxed best equipment available at all times is bizarre. please get your head out of your ass#'i have perfectly rolled all artifice armour with perfect stat exotics for every loadout because i have infinite time to grind' okay dude#most of us aren't being paid to play destiny. lmao#'the game used to be hard' no. you got better. you mastered it#why is this so difficult to understand. everything is hard when you first start. 5000 hours later it no longer is#the game is fine. the 'health of the game' is fine. you mastered it and outgrew it#either impose challenges on yourself or find something else#like. when i first started GMs they were almost impossible for me#now i play them for fun. they're still challenging but they're not the same level of hard and I'm fine with that#i enjoy them as content and they're still entertaining#and when a new GM comes out it's a new challenge to master so it'll be hard at the start#as everything ever in the world#if that's no longer enough for you then you just outgrew the game and should probably move on#the only reason why some things used to be hard was poor quality of life that got improved over time#not being able to mantle in d1 is not difficulty. it's just not good design. it was fixed and improved#the bitching about light 3.0 as well. man. just don't use the 'OP' fragments. it's so easy to unequip them#i personally love the variety and all the options i have now as opposed to before#okay tag essay done. fhkajhakfhksjf
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twipsai · 2 months ago
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heyoo! just wanted to say love your rewrite comic of sonic forces!! tis very cool :)
if you don't mind me asking, is anything else going on in this rewrite which you could let us know about? or tis a secret?
ok first of all this ask, the two reblogs you added tags to, and the comment you left literally made me wanna write so much more for this rewrite you have no idea. genuinely such a large motivation burst TYSMMMM
SECOND OF ALL! this rewrite is kind of vague rn, i have an idea for a four or five chapter fic that takes place in the month gap between forces and idw, but (glances at my 2/3rds finished wip thats 32k words rotting in my gdocs) well. im trying to finish something else for the time being, so i have no idea when thats gonna happen
in terms of actually rewriting forces itself, i have quite a few ideas for it but not a lot of concrete things written down -- my main problem with the game, especially after fully playing it (5 hours of my life fucking WASTED), is that it is simultaneously such a serious story, but doesnt take itself seriously in the slightest -- you have, on one hand, Sonic being tortured for six months in a tiny prison cell, but on the other, you have Sonic walking out of there completely fine and it's never acknowledged again. you have, on one hand, two teenagers leading a resistance in a war, but on the other, you have those two teenagers acting bland and uninteresting the entire time. theres so much that could have been done with this story, but instead of grabbing hold of that spark, the writers, instead, decided to write something bland, boring, and worst of all, disingenuous. this is worse than writing something thats bad, in my opinion.
my rewrite takes a lot of notes from my buddy Chip's rewrite called Reinforced (which theyve only really posted about on artfight here), so much so that sometimes i talk about them interchangeably lol, one of the biggest changes in the story is that Tails and Rouge work together. also Infinite is a much bigger threat, specifically to Sonic, and his death is much more intense
this might sound like a deranged thing to say but ive been tossing around in my head what i want Sonic to go through during his time in the death egg, whether i want it to be a white room torture sort of deal, or if i wanna torment him with visions (illusions), so ive sorta been trying to figure out in exactly what way hes fucked up LMAO
additionally, like most other people, im cutting the avatar and Classic Sonic from the script -- theres something to be said about Sonic going through something that fundamentally changes both him and the world, and fighting that threat along side his younger self, but the source material isnt interested in exploring that, so im not either (i actually am, but not in this rewrite,,,, not in this rewrite.) and im cutting the avatar from this in favor of bringing Tails back into the story beyond him being scared and smart for like 10 minutes of the total runtime and then saying "true dat" at the end. i mean cmon!! he watched his big brother presumably die right in front of him! the unbreakable bond, well, broke! thats fucking important! Frontiers and IDW explored this, and i want to as well. its very interesting to me. and he should have been playable. i will die on this hill
also, Sonic doesnt get rescued at the start of the story, it happens wayyy later into the story (right before the climax probably). i hated how they found him practically two seconds after they lost him
a lot of this may be influenced by Sonic Forces Overclocked, which i have plans to play (once i have. free time), since ive heard a lot of good things about it and am very interested in the story it has to tell.
"wheres shadow" idk :( probably brooding in a cave i havent thought that far ahead
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soultwisters · 4 days ago
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hii ok so random question but i have tales of berseria in my steam library, would you recommend it??
hi 👋 hmm i havent finished the game yet (currently near endgame) but im having fun playing it with friends!! :) i like the story and the characters so far, the mc is really interesting and the combat is fun, but also i have to mention that sometimes the misogyny in this game is crazy 😭 well, tales of games in general idk if you're familiar with the series but yeah, my reply got kind of long eek so im adding a readmore ↓
we’ve been playing for a while so i might have forgotten some stuff but for the negative points first outside of like some npcs saying out of pocket things there is one recurring character that keeps making weird comments at women, he is the mascot character and isnt a main playable character but still sucks whenever he opens his mouth… some of the girls' outfits are sexualized like the mc (velvet) needs a sports bra so bad, we changed her outfit so she'd be wearing a shirt but still… there is a monster kid who has a terrible design with skin tight armor :( jesus christ. and also i remember in a few dialogues they tease a kid from the main party (who is 10) implying he has a crush on velvet (who is 19) this is completely one sided but it's still weird that they would add that 😭
for the positive points i think when the game story is good it’s really good with its themes i’m liking the characters’ arcs so far and their dynamics :) they are very genuine... i like that the mc is an edgy girl with a demon arm she is awesome and im liking her story, some of the character interactions are very silly and i like that too, this happens a lot in tales of games where specific events and locations trigger some little scene events and then it can be characters talking about beetles fighting or something that happened idk i think it’s a nice detail that adds to the story. and again the real time combat of the game is a lot of fun with different combos and strategies you can do, even though it took me a while to get used to it, i feel like that also happens a lot with tales of games HELP the only other one i played besides berseria was zestiria and yeah, the mechanics are fun once you get to know how they work!
so yeah if you decide to start playing it i hope you have fun ^_^
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godofclosure · 5 months ago
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TOA Anniversary Munday!!
I, too, have stolen this from Neffi. I’m sorry you keep getting robbed crime has truly become such an epidemic in TOA it’s a shame really. Will no one keep our streets safe 😔 (if it wasn’t obvious that was a joke ty neffi)
Name: Metal
Pronouns: She/Her
Birthday (no year): 10/6
Where are you from? What is your time zone? PST! (So like 3 hours ahead of TOA time), AMERICA RAAAAHHHHHHH‼️‼️🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️🦅🦅💥💥
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How long is your roleplay experience? That. Is complicated. Not entirely sure but let’s just go with 3 years i think.
How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? Okay so like looking back I was totally roleplaying with friends in elementary school via text but like we didn’t call it that so that didnt even register until I’d already been in TOA for a year so idk if that counts
How were you introduced to TOA? Mindlessly scrolling the Fire Emblem Three Houses tag and for some reason some random acceptance post caught my attention and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it
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Do you have any pets? One dog, two cats!! Do not ask for pictures you will never stop receiving them this is for your own good
What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) Winter because the bugs are dead and I can live without fear!!! (+ I live in some weird climate vortex where the temperature never gets lower than 60 or higher than 80 so I don’t have to deal with whatever temperature nonsense is going on everywhere else)
What is your IRL occupation? Student x2 😔
Some interests and things you like/enjoy? Hatsune Miku has me in a death grip. My world is a shrine to her being. So is yours. So is everyone. Hatsune Miku is all. The world is hers. SEKAAAIIIII DE—
What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Genshin, pjsk, pokemon, sometimes I stare longingly at persona 3 but I haven’t had time to actually play it yet, whatever random farming game has decided to trap me in my room for the next month straight
Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Fire and Torchic :)
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How did you get into Fire Emblem? I’m ashamed to say I’m one of the smash players who was confused by the random anime men 😔 at some point mentioned it to a friend while playing and he was like “oh the mobile game is a good starting point” and forced me to download it which started the spiral (my disappointment when I learned Sakura is not actually a cat and it was just a Halloween alt was immeasurable)
What Fire Emblem games have you played? Three Houses, Heroes, Fates (all three), Awakening, Engage (+I own Shadows of Valentia but I haven’t opened it I’m sorry I’m a fake fan)
First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: First: Heroes 😔 but if that doesn’t count then Birthright, Favorite: Three Houses
List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! No particular order: Edelgard, Plumeria, Líf, Yuri, Kagetsu
Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! Ashe. I have no idea why. I do not feel this way now I forget he exists frequently sorry buddy
If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: First: Chrom (accident, wanted Henry), Now: Chrom (on purpose)- Fates: First: Jakob, Now: Kaden- Three Houses: First: Ashe, Now: Yuri- Engage: Kagetsu. And I’d do it again. Love that guy.
Favorite Fire Emblem class? Dark Flier
If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? I want to say “random village npc that lives a peaceful life and doesn’t get involved in the war” but every school I’ve ever been to has had the stupid house system so I cannot deny the truth. I am random academy phase npc that dies on the first mission.
If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? Realistically Golden Deer but my heart lies with you beagles
If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Reason & Riding, Banes: Faith & Gauntlets, Budding Talent: Heavy Armor
If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? Probably Firene if only because I would die in any other climate
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How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔 letters. It took me months to understand why everyone kept talking about toasters
Current TOA muses: Elise and Embla!!
Past TOA muses? Constance, Sothis, Kaden, Kagetsu
Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? Constance, but I don’t see that happening. The more I looked into her character the more I made connections to stuff irl that I felt like I didn’t have the right to talk about and that fear of accidentally offending someone slowly killed her off
Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? I have three moods: “blonde girl that dyes her hair purple sometimes”, “hyperactive man”, and “what”
Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? Plumeria my beloved writing you would make me so uncomfortable which is technically IC but I can’t put myself through that I’m sorry girl I’m not strong enough 
What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? I like the silly. I do very much enjoy the drama of course also though. Haha emotional pain :)
Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? TOAAAAA!!!! DROP AN ASKR MUSE, AND MY LIFE, IS YOURS. (No pressure to anyone though of course!)
Favorite TOA-related memories? So many. Too many. Cannot list them all here this is long enough as is. I love you TOA :)
Normal size text, small text, no preference? Small text is too much effort for me but I don’t ever notice the difference unless it’s right next to normal text tbh
Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 He lurks. Every day he grows stronger. I don’t know how long I can fight off his return. He has a sword and he is strong and he knows it. Also Metodey for some reason??
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optimismxmagicism · 5 months ago
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TOA Anniversary Munday
(TY for the template Neffi!)
Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.
Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!
Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.
Name: Queen
Pronouns: She/Her
Birthday (no year): October 18th
Where are you from? What is your time zone? Netherlands, CEST
How long is your roleplay experience? Uhhh about 10 years now I'd say?
How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? Gamefaqs had a thread where you could create your own Fire Emblem Fates character. I joined out of curiosity when i was like 13 or so and things just kinds went from there.
How were you introduced to TOA? Rosie, my online big sis, sometimes shared snippets of her experiences with me. I got curious and the rest is history.
Do you have any pets? I have an elderly doggy named Beef :)
What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) Winter, definitely. I'm a cold over heat kinda girlie and I like the early nights and cold weather. Perfect for soup!
What is your IRL occupation? IT support service worker and Maid Cafe waitress during the weekends.
Some interests and things you like/enjoy? I'm big into cooking, gardening and cleaning.
What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Final Fantasy, Genshin Impact, Persona, Danganronpa, Pokemon, Tales of, Uchikoshi games, just to name a few. Also big into Otomes and BL games.
Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Fairy! Favorite is probably Sylveon and Vivillon.
Tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! - I am an auntie to 3 adorable little nephews. Love babysitting them :) - Truly I am a girly girly girl. I love pink and cute things and all that goodness. Always have firmly believed that femininity is strength and anyone who disagreed with me has been ground to dust under my heels :) - I used to have a YT channel where I uploaded my own vocaloid covers. I stopped though because I lost interest and the videos gained little traction.
How did you get into Fire Emblem? *Deep sigh* Ike x Marth Yaoi during the Smash Bros Brawl days.... This was before I knew anything about either character and just thought they looked cute together.
What Fire Emblem games have you played? All of them except for Gen 2 of Genealogy (glitches killed that run) as well as Thracia. I'll get to them someday...
First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: My First game was Shadow Dragon. My favorite is a tie between Sacred Stones and Three Houses
List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! Ashe, Ewan, Nils, Nina, Dimitri
Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! Wolf. This was because I was still young and just entered my "started liking boys that weren't squeaky clean" phase.
Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳 Dimitri.. If you know me you know I'm down horrendous. Sorry kwdjwkdj. Chrom and Xander are also hot.
If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: Chrom forever and always. - Fates: Tsubaki was my first. Nowadays its Xander, Jakob or Shigure. - Three Houses: Dimitri. Its always Dimitri. If I play BL and I don't choose Dimitri I have been killed and replaced. - Engage: Diamant was my first! I also really liked Kagetsu and Amber.
Favorite Fire Emblem class? Dancer!
If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? I'd be the cleric that needs to be babied at first but gives cracked heals later on. High magic/speed/resistance, low Strength/Defense.
If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? (Black Eagles, Blue Lions, Golden Deer, Church of Seiros, Those Who Slither in the Dark, unaffiliated civilian, other - for example Almyran) Blue Lions baybeeeeeeee
If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Faith Reason Authority - Banes: Axes, Brawling, Heavy Armor
If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? (Firene, the Kingdom of Abundance; Brodia, the Kingdom of Might; Elusia, the Kingdom of Knowledge; Solm, the Queendom of Freedom; Lythos, the holy land of the Divine Dragon; Gradlon, the desolate land of the Fell Dragon) Wherever Kagetsu's from.
How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔(separate letters, to-ah, other?) To-ah.
Current TOA muses: Ewan, Nils, Byleth M
Past TOA muses? Uhhh from the top of my head: Saleh, Rolf, Nina, Takumi, Male Corrin.
Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? Ewan was my first! I don't think I'll be dropping him for a long time as he's just become so special to me :)
Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? Characters that put up a front of being easygoing or simple, but have a lot of inner troubles they hide from others. Those that like to make others happy.
Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? Very masculine types. Manly Men or Muscle Himbos are characters I greatly enjoy but just don't like to write.
What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? I like writing scenes where characters bond with each other, either over an earnest heart to heart or silly shenanigans.
Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? I would love to write a scene where the mask just fully crumbles and the entire truth is revealed about my muses deepest feelings. Also for Byleth specifically I'd love to write post timeskip scenes where he's in touch with his emotions and takes on the role of Archbishop.
Favorite TOA-related memories? A specific one was Andrei's turnaround on Ewan during the halloween candy game. It was one of the first major bonds Ewan would end up developing.
Present or past tense? I Try to say I'm past tense mostly but sometimes I jumble things up a little.
Normal size text, small text, no preference? I've started trying small text recently, but I'd say I have no real preference.
Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 Nope! I think I'm set for now. There is one character that, If the opportunity ever arises I'd want to get but not right now.
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bratfied · 7 months ago
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Windy City Roleplay
#Bratfied Fivem Servers
- - - The server is nice, and the community is great sometimes but can be very helpful sometimes (Not Always). Few admins can be bia, admins below Lead Amin should learn how to not pick and choose. The Server is still in beta, so please don't be surprised that the server to going down a lot, developers are fixing situations and really fast making the server a workable and playable place for New users and returning users. But I Can Say Windy City is amazing, V3 Is very fun and very different from V2, I have been here since the first time the server went up and there are a lot of things that have changed. Very impressed with the owners and developers. Shoutout to the Mang team and developer team for making the server look just like Chicago.
💜 ─── Server overview;
Roleplay Experience:
Roleplay from males: Can improve, less trolling; more being serious. It's very rare to see non-Staff teams that roleplay correctly, but there are a few people that are not staff that can roleplay correctly, but I can say. I love how they're kicking noobs out, including banning them! Great work. 7.6/10
Roleplay from females: Females can improve... 8.9/10
How Serious is the server?: The server can be serious if the community wants to be serious. But I have seen a lot of players be serious, few can be nooby, but It's not as bad as V2. 9.8/10
Faction Roleplay: I believe, a few factions are overpowered and love talking sh** to random people they don't know, must improve... gang members don't randomly check for someone inrl when the other party hasn't done anything. So if you join this server be alerted, a lot of faction roleplay can be nooby, But when the staff team is involved in Faction's is very a great place to roleplay, there are a few people that are not nooby into factions that are not staff, kinda rare. 6.9/10
Whitelisted Jobs/Business: Never actually had a job in the game myself, but I saw a lot of great ownership and leadership with the whitelisted Jobs, discord is organized; promotion is well-made following with their promotion flyers, can't wait for Jobs to open up. 10/10
Server's Staff Team:
The owners: The management team can be fair, Annoying, Cap & Zarty . Has a very awesome leadership on this server, they worked hard and made a very creative map I had never seen on a server before. If there was anything I believe these three people should change is the Staff team, A few of them are fair but a lot of them are not fair to other people, it's a pick-and-choose favoritism thing.
Lead Admins: lead admins are almost like what management does, but they are active in helping other people around, few of them are fair; few are not. But I will say my favorite Lead Admin that gives out great verdicts and amazing explanations is: Billion, Qac & Rey. These three leads are an amazing choice for the team and the community. They're willing to help at all costs!
Staff on Forums: Like I said, there are staff friends of friends with someone and do favoritism some are not and actually here to work, but one thing I can say is, that they do answer forum questions/reports/ bands quickly, also Whitelisted applications, It won't take more than 24 hours to view it.
Requirements To Join Windy City Roleplay:
Gaming PC/Good Wi-Fi/GTA & FIVEM Computer Requirements.
Must-Have a Forums account and pay for a whitelist in the Upgrades section
Must understand the simple rules of roleplaying on the server.
(ps. Be sure to learn all the basics about roleplay before paying for the whitelist, if you know all the rules you can purchase prio, it helps you up in Q, without it, you will be in a Q for a very long time, a lot of people are interested in the server)
SERVER JOIN INFORMATION:
Discord: Here
Forums: Here
Twitter: Here
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ganonfan1995 · 2 years ago
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Sometimes I feel a bit at odds with LoZ fandom, but only because of how old it is and how much it's constantly changing.
I generally love to engage with the lore, and I love to play with the characters and setting...But good god is it exhausting.
I genuinely feel like my exposure to OOT and WW early on as my only point of reference for years have greatly shaped the way I look at games as a whole...So at times it can be super frustrating to communicate with fans who jumped on between the SS and BOTW era.
There are unique generational gaps in this fandom that I haven't observed before in other spaces. In part because playing older LoZ titles is just not possible for a large portion of new fans, but also because LoZ has always had a "current" game that doesn't require the player to have knowledge of previous games.
Each game can be a stand alone as much as they can be a piece of a larger picture.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately as totk draws closer and closer. It's impossible not to run into a popular theory or a speculation that I find incredibly misplaced. And even harder to remember that the basis for these theories comes from the lack of exposure to the rest of the series.
I feel like SS takes up waaaay too much space when it comes to current lore. But also when it's one of the only other newer LoZ games playable on modern consoles for the last 10+ years, it's only natural that it would.
HD remakes and reboots are great, Nintendo needs to be releasing the entire LoZ franchise for switch like yesterday.
I see so many ppl talk about Ganondorf incorrectly or from a post SS point of reference...but really I am just begging y'all to play WW....preferably immediately after OOT as a sequel if you can. (not TP, because he really was 2 dimensional and bland in that game. Even if he is daddy to me.)
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dragonchris · 2 years ago
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Game Review: Crosscode
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Imagine if you were playing an Augmented Reality Multiplayer Online RPG but instead of actually playing an Augmented Reality Multiplayer Online RPG you played as a character who was playing an Augmented Reality Mulitplayer Online RPG? Welcome to Crosscode, an absolute BANGER of a RPG and the single game I’ve been obsessed with for the last two months or so.
Story:
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Meet Lea, an amnesiac playing through the Augmented Reality game of Crossworlds to relearn her memories. Through the story, you meet incredibly fun characters and explore a gorgeous futuristic world, uncovering the secrets of your past and figuring out who you are in the present. This game’s got some twists and turns that kept me gripped the whole way through. I wanted to squeeze every dialogue option out of all the characters I met to learn everything about them that I could. Man this game has a story that’s so rich and plentiful I feel like I’m wallowing in a five-star course. I love a good lore-filled game.
Gameplay and Controls:
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As Lea, you travel through a 2D RPG, exploring new places, solving puzzles, and fighting monsters to level up! The world is vast and well-designed, the puzzles are immaculate, but one of the most fleshed out parts of this game is its combat system. I’m usually more a puzzle gameplay person than a combat one but man the combat just feels good. The enemies are interesting and varied, you’ve got an extensive amount of control over how to build the character that you want to play, and its super satisfying to go back to earlier levels that you’ve toiled through and just fucking disintegrate every enemy in your path. And there’s accessibility options too, for both the combat aspect of the game and the puzzle aspect!
Sound:
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The music is a treat and is very intuitive to the mood of the story and the environment, But also, past that, just the sounds in general are great too. I didn’t realize what a treat it was for certain attacks to sound so nice until I was using them. There are places in the game where the waterfall effects are a bit too loud, but other than that, the game is just really nice to listen to.
Art:
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Crosscode’s got a nice pixel style which lends a special charm to the game, almost calling back to older games with its style while making a story about a futuristic gaming environment. The only gripe I have with this style is that, due to its 2D nature, it can be hard to gauge perspective sometimes which can make platforming a bit tricky.
Playable, Replayable, or Unplayable?
God, there is so much in this game to do. It’s worth playing it, it’s worth going back and replaying it. For an indie game, it’s so richly made and there’s so much love put into it that I can’t recommend it enough. If you’re looking into this game, I’d HIGHLY recommend also yoinking the “A New Home” DLC, which offers a whole-ass epilogue chapter. And if you’re not sure if it’s the right game for you, try the free demo out! Man, I love this game. 10/10.
Steam
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dreamcast-official · 22 days ago
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GAY ROBITSSS. tell us the Bass information
HIIIIIHIHIHIHI did you ever notice that even though purple is barely in bass' design at all hes associated with the color? this is most likely because hes always seen with treble! that, plus a lot of purple effects and auras are used in his sprites, as well as super/treble boost bass being purple. curiously, no one seems to associate bass with the color yellow, which is actually featured quite heavily in his design. and lastly on this color scheme conversation, bass' color scheme can be rather inconsistent. while most of the time the blue gems on his armor are, well, blue, they will occasionally be made more purple, as well as his usually red eyes sometimes being depicted as pink. the specific shades of black and yellow used in his design also change, but never the purple in his facial markings. that always seems to be the same. his skin tone has also changed occasionally, going from the same as rock's to slightly more tan. a good example of this "alternate color scheme" for bass is his illustrations from mega man & bass (which are my personal favorites. if i ever need to use an image of bass chances are i am grabbing one of those. what can i say, i love bass with pink eyes.)
during the release of mega man: battle & chase, certain infocards about characters were released! while these are generally not considered canon, bass' card had his birthday listed as april 10th. which is a pun! because april 10th is written in japan as 4/10 - four-ten. which sounds like forte. very silly i think. generally, bass' birthday is more accepted as march 24th, which is the release date of mega man 7 (bass' debut game.)
bass' moveset in rockman & forte influenced bass.exe's abilities in mega man battle network! which is very fun for me :) due to battle network being an inherently different game from the classic series, it's not the most obvious, but bass.exe's signature ability (other than copyability, of course) is rapid fire, which was added to bass' moveset in rockman & forte to differentiate his playstyle from mega man's.
final bass fact of the day: he's slightly taller than rock (you can notice this pretty easily by looking at his mega man 7 sprites), but from mega man 8 onward, he's consistently drawn and animated as being hunched over to be the same height as rock. this is because he was first made playable in mega man 8's versus mode (which sucks. don't worry about it) and thus, had to be the same height as rock so the collision and hitboxes would be the same for both of them. bass' hunched over posture is the most noticeable in his rockman & forte sprites, as they actually have an animation for him settling into this posture from his natural height.
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nellasbookplanet · 23 days ago
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Okay enough talk about critrole let's talk about games!!
I'm not really A Gamer (played some horse pc games as a kid, mass effect in my late teens, then nothing for like 10 years before picking up portal and suddenly I was Hooked) but I wanna talk about what I've played over the last couple of years! Because I'm me and I love a good list, let’s rank them (under readmore bc this got long):
1. Portal (1 & 2 plus various mods): enjoyed the first but didn't see why it was considered Extremely Good, went absolutely unhinged about the second, I love it so very much, excellent balance of gameplay, story and character, also thank god there are scifi games with little to no combat. 10/10
2. Prey: finished this one just the other day and immediately started a second playthrough. Had a bit of a rough start for me and I nearly dropped it due to being super confused, but once I got past the first hour or so I was fully hooked. FANTASTIC story and worldbuilding, so much detail, good balance of player choice without losing focus of the core story. I have some minor criticisms but overall I adored it. 9/10
3. Control: picked up this one bc of this video on haunted houses in games. The lore and setting is absolutely wild and SO creative, the characters are fun, and though I found it too combat focused I still enjoyed the mechanics once i got used to them. I did however feel it would've been helped by being more tightly written and less open world; all those unimportant fetch quests and randomly spawned enemies showing up every time I entered a room sometimes made it feel like the main plot got a bit lost. 7.5/10.
4. Mass Effect Andromeda: nowhere near as good as the original trilogy, but also nowhere near as bad as general opinion makes it look. Frankly, the first of the trilogy was also pretty weak compared to 2 & 3, and if Andromeda had been allowed its sequels it may very well have risen to the same status. Cool story, fun characters, way too many fetch quests. 7/10.
5. Lightmatter: this one was fun, but there wasn't super much to it. Reminded me of the first portal game in that it has a pretty straightforward puzzle-focused plot with cool designs but pretty minimal character or worldbuilding work. Good for a quick playthrough but doesn't hold much re-playability (I recommend it if you yearn for mad science, spooky abandoned facilities and portal vibes though). 7/10.
6. Half-Life (1 & 2 plus episode 1 & 2): these should probably be ranked higher based on sheer quality, but my very subjective opinion is that they are very combat focused and I don’t care for combat. 2 especially felt like it was interludes of story meant only to point you to your next fight. Will probably never replay them. The overall plot and characters are really cool though (Alyx my beloved), and I hope to see the series reach a conclusion some day (would also work really well as a movie or show I think). The fact that it got me invested despite being a shooter (and the very dated visuals of the first) speaks for the fact that it is probably a lot better than I give it credit for. 6.5/10.
7. Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare: gonna be real with you, I didn't enjoy these. Clichéd and unlikable main character, repetitive gameplay, clunky combat, and it has no idea how to write interesting women (American Nightmare especially, yikes (cool villain though)). There are however interesting story aspects, and since it’s tied to the universe of Control and the internet seems pretty agreed that the sequel is Much Better, I may still finish the series at some point. 4/10.
Honorary mentions (games I played only bits and pieces of with a friend)
Halo: didn't like. Stop making me play as Big Muscle Man who Shoots Stuff. I'm sure there’s interesting lore but not enough to make me even slightly tempted to play more of it. 1/10.
Dead Space: really liked this one but also I'm a baby and it scared me lmao. I've got it on my wishlist so I can eventually buy it and finish playing because I'm Invested. 7/10 (likely to change once I've finished playing)
Alien Isolation: it was okay I guess? I feel like I can't give a fair judgment of it without playing the whole thing, but also it didn't hook me enough that I want to buy it and play more. 5/10.
Scorn: absolutely horrific but also really cool. Needed more story to work for me personally but also story clearly wasn't the point of the game. Will never forget it, will also never touch it again. ???/10.
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