#hmmmm IDK DUDE

[aegagrusscholarship]

familiarity, the lack thereof, and the only way it could have ended.

the thing is, ultrakill is a very diegetic game. near everything, from the style meter to the bottomless arsenal to the shitass graphics themselves, are explained in some way by some in-universe fact.

so, what with violence and the implication that V1 was designed to counter earthmovers

what with 7-4 and the fact that it is a culmination of this implication

i wonder. when V1 looked up at that earthmover, did it know, with whatever passes for instinct in a machine, exactly what to do? and if it did, then, how is this conveyed to the player?

diegetic as the game is, how does it engineer a situation in which the player, themselves, knows exactly what they have to do?

the biggest factor, i think, is the fact that the earthmover's health bar appears the moment you lay eyes (or camera, or whatever) on it, and it does not leave until you have finally killed this colossus.

but this factor is much more subtle than it appears at first glance. yes, big honkin' boss healthbar on screen for the entire level, what more to it. there's a good deal more, it turns out.

first off- this is the shortest leadup by far to any bossfight in the game. you slide through a single vent, and you are greeted with benjamin right out in the open. even P-1, devoid of any other hazards as it is, gives you a long trek down the spinal staircase before you reach the flesh prison. 7-4 has none of it. you enter the level, you enter the stage, and there you have it. you know exactly what you are up against right from the outset, and it's not quite a feeling of familiarity but it tells you exactly what you have to do. which is the point of this all, isn't it?

7-4 is also... not a bossfight! it is a full level! it is a full level framed as a bossfight. the health bar frames this full complete level as a bossfight.

and on one hand, this is not new news. on the other hand, i think this is the crux of it. the thing is, most bossfights are near-to-entirely new. you do not know how the boss acts. you do not know their attack patterns. you do not know their capabilities. you are learning something new. levels, though, you have done a thousand times over and so the player knows how they need to play through this bossfight in a way that is not quite present with any other boss in the game.

the content of the level is new, of course, because that's how it goes. but you know the motions. you have done this for two acts prior, you know the motions. you know exactly what to do.

also! this level does not exist in a vacuum. what i am saying is this: the rest of violence layer shifts its storytelling and its tone and even its graphics. it is something completely new in contrast to the rest of the game. 7-4, though, returns to environments and graphics more akin to what you have experienced before, bringing you back to familiarity and again knowing what to do here in a way the rest of violence hasn't let the player experience.

one more thing about this level: it plays directly into expectations. which is something that the rest of the game actually does not tend to do.

the game, at base, is just not a typical FPS. it gives you movement like a roguelite or a platformer, it takes guns you expect to know the mechanics of and goes utterly wild with how far the archetype can be changed.

in a smaller scope, here is a comparison of the earthmover and the corpse of king minos as two separate colossal bosses foreshadowed in similar ways. and i mean, minos's bossfight isn't unprecedented in other works. but i think the thing that matters here is that you are not, in fact, the underdog as is the case with so many other bosses of its ilk. riven of many voices, destiny 2, similar bossfight similar scale. you are hiding from her you are a fireteam of many you are triumphing over a dragon larger than life. project gestalt, madness project nexus, you are pulling out every stop you can to take down something so far over your head (both literally and metaphorically). corpse of king minos- V1 looks up, stands its ground, and parries his god damn fist.

and the thing is, the earthmover plays into a different expectation, but it's playing into an expectation nonetheless. you look at this thing and you climb it and you dismantle it from within, like you have done in many games prior. you know what your goal is from the moment you see that healthbar and you hook onto the conspicuously placed hookpoints that tell you- you will climb this machine; you will fight your way up to whatever its core is and you will kill it. you play through the entire level with this expectation and you get exactly this expectation. you destroy its core and it begins a countdown, and so very many games have countdowns before the collapse of whatever level you have just beaten, and you know exactly what you have to do.

i don't know. i love diegetic storytelling. i love this level.

it's just familiarity, i think. this level runs off familiarity. it gives you, the player, things and tropes and designs you are familiar with. it signals to you that you should know what to do, and it lets you do exactly what you expect to do.

if i were any more cheesy i could absolutely end this by restating something about the only way it could've ended, but uh. i am not that cheesy. this time.

aw crud now i don't know how to end this oh well goodbye then

[borgialucrezia]

lowkey wish we had seen cesare's reaction after finding out that his whole dovecote was killed by the falcons that rodrigo ordered to sweep the city of the pigeons he had been beefing with. like something about rodrigo, despite having his oldest son as his adviser and confidant, he never seems to consider his feelings (tbh he always neglects his children's feelings because he's blinded by ambition). he fails to regard that those falcons might attack cesare's beloved doves (or he thinks cesare wouldn’t care much about it perhaps?) like it's just a tiny detail that juan briefly mentioned about cesare loving the doves while drunkenly attempting to evoke brotherly love in him. their father always scars cesare without even realizing it, just as he used juan as a grinding stone to provoke him, leading to the tragic outcome where cesare ends up killing his brother. he never foresees the consequences of his behavior and what cesare might be able to do by constantly stepping on him (metaphorically). he helped create the tyrant that cesare became in the final season. the cesare that he feared so much to the point where he thought his own son might end up usurping him as well lol

[littleplantfreak]

i know for sure i want ume to hunt me for sport

[florida3exclamationpoints]

My mom is always like we don't treat you like a middle child do we 🥺 and then treats me like a middle child

[songmingisthighs]

ateez : work

ateez's outfits : hobo

[gillanfryingpan]

commission :]

[keeps-ache]

buttered noodles 💫💛🍜

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

a major sticking point for most of the npc questlines tbh is that i straight up do not think arthur and john can get to the roundtable hold. like. i think you sorta need grace for that one

[loverboybrightsideghost]

2022 the year of good fucking movies. the batman. everything everywhere all at once. nope. wendell and wild. pinocchio. this year all those directors and filmmakers and writers and animators and composers just gave us MASTERPIECES.

[lilgynt]

i feel like an emotional support dog for a cheetah at work

[winter-jay-official]

I forgot sam is lowkey misogynistic wth 😭😭

[bmpmp3]

has anyone ever made an all girl vsynth ver of those yaoi love triangle visual kei esque sci project songs. do i need to take matters into my own hands

[searching-for-synpathy]

I wouldnt be constantly thinking about transitioning and feeling genuine pain at the thought of Not being transitioned if I was someone who Shouldnt transition right. That probably wouldnt happen if that was the case right. Pls tell me im right-

[ifeelfreewithoutmyshoes]

I would really just not use a stereotype as a way to describe anybody actually

[odysseys-blood]

going through fhr book 1 again bc i want to make a seaparate save for chen since i was already w/ mortum and i feel bad being messy and im connecting dots i missed entirely before

[darling-zain]

i f eel high