#good gameplay bad story

[iwillwringyourneck]

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[ganondoodle]

since i cant stop thinking about things i care about and also i cant shut up ever im gonna say my bit about the "well of COURSE they destroyed everything shiekah after botw bc it nearly killed the entire country DUH do you not understand basic worldbuilding??" type of comment i had directed at me (mostly on twitter to no ones surprise and almost exactly worded like this)

--how would you even destroy it, the only thing you can actually damage with anything are guardians and nano-guardians, anything else cant even get scratched, hell you cant even climb the darn things, are you seriously trying to tell me they somehow completely pulverized not just the shrines but titans (divine beasts), the shrine of life and the pillars holding the guardians in storage around hyrule castle and the dome beneath it (whereever that went lol) when it was built to and DID last over 10 000 years ... and if you did somehow find a way to dismantle literally all of it why would you not ... use its parts for something else and also research it (lets be real here, purahs new towers are just the sheikah towers but more impractical and would by all means not need all of the material from all the missing stuff and the purahpad is just ... literally the shiekah stone but looking more like the switch and also worse bc its got almost none of the functions the shiekah stone had) they were so integrated into botws landscape removing them and their chambers would have been so much effort better spent in other places and just so unnecessary (think of the shrines at the twin mountains, removing all of that would be so dangerous and difficult to do), removing the pillars and the dome under the castle would endanger it collapsing no? there also would have needed to be a giant mechanism down there to make the pillars rise up, why would you go and try to destroy that instead of focusing on rebuilding the most important infrastrucutre

(on a sidenote, yes there are holes to the underground in the place of some shrines but its by far not all of them .. .even so there at the very least should be some rubble of them lying about at the bottom plus in most of their places its just plain earth, or sometimes even a cave locked by some puzzle which is.... so weird)

really the only explanation would be that it all just ... disappeared after zelda sealed ganon, which wouldnt only be hella unsatisfying as an answer but also again pose the problem that i would have caused the castle to collapse considering how shiekah tech was so integrated into it... unless it turned to earth somehow ... which would explain that but still be as satisfying of an explanation as 'it was all just a dream uwu' additionally, the zonau stuff under the castle wasnt even that far down so it must have intersected with the shiekah stuff, like the pillars or the dome?? but no its all just zonau ruins now wahoo

if literally all traces were gone and totk was a paralel to botw but with zonau instead of shiekah OK, they still called it a sequel tho, they still talk about the events of botw but in a way that sounds like it was just another lost legend, the tapestry exists as well, and there are a few old guardian parts on top of the hateno institute (still feels like an oversight considering how cleanly everything else was wiped off the map), plus purahs towers and the purahpad are clearly based off of it, so it cant really be some time fuckery either, some things still remain; it just doesnt add up and its frustrating as hell .. ... especially if you were like me completely thrilled and intrigued to learn more about the ancient shiekah, what WAS that dome under the castle for?? what WAS ancient energy really and why was it found in these specific places only?? did they know about ganondorf?? if they built stuff down there shouldnt they have inevitably come across the old tunnels?? the monks literally talk to link in botw why would they withhold that info, what reason could they have?

--by far my biggest annoyance with that excuse is that ... if you are so afraid of tech you dont fully understand being taken over by the bad guy again to the point you destroy not just the titans you basically worshipped as divine protectors but also immovable shrines that literally couldnt do shit to harm you even if they were pumped up to the brim with malice/miasma after they have already become non threatening/non functional anyway... HOW could you just go and fully trust and personally play around with new tech that LITERALLY rained from the sky out of nowhere, from a group of people no one knows shit about (like at least the shiekah were still existing and had a small part of recorded history) and never cared either until now that they are suddendly everywhere, even if it cant get corrupted somehow (kinda disproven by the spirit temple) how the hell would anyone know that?? if anything this would be a reason to be MORE afraid of it

even the ancient king that persecuted the shiekah bc he was afraid of their tech when they invented it didnt order them to destroy it, just bury it, despite them of all people knowing the best of how to completely destroy it??? and zelda doesnt seem like the type that would order old history and relics to be destroyed liek that??

it would have been such a golden opportunity to show that hey, the ancient shiekah based their tech on that of the zonau, they found the mines and tech and reasearched it to built their own from it, strucutres that show they were down here building the shrines from underground, titan prototypes, you cant do anything with it, its old and broken, but its there, environmental storytelling and all that

the shrine of life especially pisses me off bc thats like .. ok it was kinda not the best maybe but it still saved links goddamn life, even if it all became useless for some reason at least leave it there as a sign of respect, if there needs to be a cave have it be half collapsed after the cataclysm or something wheres the problem

(also idk if im the only one with that but in botws true ending when zelda says that vah ruta, i think, has stopped working it seemed like a good setup for more? and that she wanted to investigate that in the sense of ah shoot i want it to keep working tho and not in the sense of hell yeah lets smash it to pieces i know this is theory territory now but it seemed like it somewhat confirmed that the titans need a pilots strong spirit to work since they are not connected to the ancient energy network and the spirits of the champions passed on at the end ... the idea that ancient energy was spirit energy either gained from luminous stones or directly spirits is so neat, and i loved that idea of hey the reason why all of the energy went out all of the sudden is bc ganondorf is breaking free after having been kept in a stasis to use either his malice or his strong spirit to fuel it all has never left my mind since i first read about it bc its such a good setup for intrigue, like oh heck the ancient shiekah werent so coolio and 100% perfectly good either, maybe they knew about gans 'future' or history and hey why not trick him or sth into being sealed against his will so that problem is out the way and whoop hes pretty much an infinite source of energy nice lets use that for our research and not tell anyone oh no we created a monster (calamity gan) l guess we are gonna use the tech we fuel with his own life against him lol, OR you could have connceted it to the zonau maybe doing the sealing first and the shiekah discovering him later and being like oh neat an endlessly rich powersource we arent gonan tell anyone about weehoo

it would have tied into the ancient shiekah stuff, explained why it doesnt work well anymore, give a reason to explore the underground and discover it all, give a reason to why it was kept a secret bc no one wanted to admit yeah we made this monster ourselves whoops, give ganondorf a reason to be this angry and make it all more nuanced bc yeah ok maybe the zonau knew about gan and in their effort to prevent it caused it instead by sealing him before he became a problem and it all started a domino effect of disasters leading into all this mess that now poor zelda and link gotta solve

im not saiyng this is the better version or that i am better but again you can literally do so much with the setup for it all and what totk ended up doing with it feels so ... not even underused but straight up backwards treading you had it right on front of you INFINITE POTENTIAL AAARGH)

theres only so much fun gameplay and fantastic music can save and man can you imagine what could have been if the story got the same polish as the gameplay and music ;__;

[theosconfessions]

@ohsosims

if youd like to read the stephens from the beginning you can over here:)

if youd like to read the stephens continued you can over here:)

theo- scarlett brought up something she first approached me about this. about making it a making peace thing. im kind of thinking this is more FOR YOU than anything. dustin-oh.. for me? theo-for you. dustin-then if its for me why do it on tiktok? theo- well because shes also a bitch[smiles and nods] dustin- dont call her that [huffs a laugh] theo-look im cool to do this...in front of everyone. i think its a good idea to put my shit out there. dustin- but you can just talk to me theo. theo- i know. dustin-then TALK theo.dont do an interview for fucks sake. just talk to me. theo-i know i can talk to you about anything but i told scarlett i would do it her way. so thats what im going to do . answer her questions. bobbis questions. and have it recorded so that one day..when im long gone.. you can rewatch it. and get mad all over again. get happy all over again. feel my love all over again. i dont know, i just have to leave you okay.i want you to be okay that you spend the rest of your life with me dustin- theo... theo- i fucking love the shit out of you, really.. dustin-i love you too, but theo. theo- naw no more mushy shit. im okay..just remembering.

[perenlop]

okay so as a gen 5 stan who does adore the story in bw and bw2, and now that gen 5 has experienced both a vicious hatedom that wouldnt hear a single positive thing about the games, and now a super protective fandom that insists they were perfect and had zero flaws... can we admit now that the bw1 story at least was. a little mid.

[chronologically-challenged]

Get yourself out of that time loop.

Stop playing that gatcha game.

[maddymoreau]

I beat Dead Space 2 . . .

[fwwm]

Fromsoft saw that Miquella’s story is about unfulfilled potential and decided to apply that philosophy while writing the Shadow of the Erdtree…. Miyazaki is truly a genius

[tomwambsmilk]

need some of my succtuals to play red dead to elevate the fandom discourse just a little bit. I'm drowning in x reader smut over here and I need at least one (1) of you with whom I can discuss themes and motifs and what the hell is going on with d*tch v*n der l*nde

[zoya-nazyalenskys]

love da2 wish it was good video game though

[fiery-emblems]

The toxic unpopularity fire emblem tournament they're running over on reddit reminded me of a realization I had recently. I realized that Honkai Star Rail is giving me the same kind of sour feeling in my stomach that FE3H does.

I think this is because, to me, it appears that the teams behind both games appear to have prioritized selling the player a selection of waifus and husbandos over making a good game or writing a coherent narrative.

The terrible thing is that this approach clearly works as evidenced by the fact that everyone is constantly talking up these games as having great writing (neither of them has particularly stellar writing outside of a small handful of characters).

[velvetjune]

didn’t realize fallout new vegas is THE beloved fallout game and the rest have a bad reputation. im already hours into fallout 4 😭 although its fun so far. as a story, there’s virtually nothing interesting (yet), but its nice listening to the radio and building or exploring in a wasteland.

[smilesrobotlover]

I played the demo to the princess peach game. It’s entertaining and cute, just not worth $60 so I probably won’t get it

[bigboobshaunt]

Honestly it's really wild how often people post stuff like "what if monster hunter was an rpg??" even including fanart mockups sometimes... even though Monster Hunter has had rpg spinoffs since 2016.

[ravenwolfie97]

all pokemon games are good but they are not all equally as good

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[bridgeportbritt]

Willington Palace Gardens | Sage, SimDonia

Diana sighs contently

Diana to herself: I hope you love this place as much as I do little one. There's no better place to be alone with your thoughts.... hopefully you'll get more use out of it than I do lately.

Footsteps approaching and voices outside

Gaurd: Your Majesty, a Dr. Fitzgerald is requesting an urgent meeting with you.

Diana: Really? Please send her in.

Dr. Fitz: Your Majesty, I do apologize for the intrustion. I asked a member of your staff where to find you and they directed me here.

Diana: Doctor, is everything alright? It's unusually chilly out today. I'm sorry you had to venture out to find me.

Dr. Fitz: Not a problem at all, ma'am. I have some great news that I couldn't wait for our next appointment to share with you.

Diana: Really? Did you- Did you find a cure?

Dr. Fitz: Sort of. I think we're very close to finding a noninvasive treatment plan that will block all the symptons related to this defect. It's a short term fix, but the longer cure is still on our rader. But, I thought this is something you'd want us to explore, as well.

Diana: Absolutely! That's amazing! What do you need from me?

Dr. Fitz: Well, we still need to do some testing to see if the treatments are successful. It will need to be on each member of the family we found with the defect. Seeing the responses from this will help not only create a plan to block the symptoms, but hopefully fully cure them, as well.

Diana: This is music to my ears. When can we start?

Dr. Fitz: We can start right away if you like. Our team is about ready.

Diana: Fantastic. I say, we go ahead, then. Great work, Doctor.

Dr. Fitz: Of course, ma'am. I will, of course, need your go ahead on informing the patients of the ongoing treatment.

Diana: What do you mean?

Dr. Fitz: Legally, ma'am, our team cannot administer treatment without consent from the patient.

Diana: I see.

Dr. Fitz: I'm sorry, ma'am. I know discretion about this matter has been of the upmost importance to you.

Diana sighs: No, don't be sorry. I imagine it's time I come clean about this. I was just... hoping I had more time.

Dr. Fitz: I understand. Should we postpone the treatment?

Diana: Yes, I need to inform everyone myself. Then, we will move forward.

Dr. Fitz: Understood, ma'am.