#honestly if they made dallis the villain it would make much more sense

[faneposting-my-beloved]

I know the replies are off for a reason but I have, uh, info that is usually lost to dos-only players. Lucian's character in dos2 was absolutely mishandled and miswritten. (Not to mention the main villain of the game should be uh God King not poor old protagonist that literally did nothing wrong to Larian but I digress) Dos2 development was a turmoil in and of itself. With the number of cuts made to the original concept, we could just call it a slaughterhouse. Things (in usual larian fashion, make no mistake, they've been in the exact same spot 5 times before) went to shit. Badly. Now, Fallen Heroes is a whole new can of worms but one thing has to be made clear - it's not THE Seal the Veil ending. I mean, Larian would gut themselves if they made Source nonexistent now because it's EVERYWHERE in the sequel following dos2 - Dragon Knight Saga; and I am SURE it was the new writers who forgot about the tiny teeny pivotal facts that mind-read (dos2 info), Dragon Knighting, ghosts (also dos2 established) all require Source to function. And they have a key role in the sequel. So the ending cannot be as it was (overdramatically) painted. And they did backtrack on things heavily with FH trailer. Dead Origins? Not a thing anymore. Source skills? Still present!

Blessed and cursed surfaces (very Source-dependent)?

Check! Now, to get to the point. I can't phantom how much cut content Lucian has had, but I assure you - he was dealt the worst cards. I know many people don't have this emotional connection - but Lucian is the player character in Divine Divinity, and he has been lovingly expanded on by a fan through the Child of Chaos novella, and then made into an unlucky hero by Jan Van Dosselaer in Dragon Knight Saga. Dos2 spits on it all - depth and characterization - for no reason. And it is not to say a *main* character cannot go astray, but this sadly requires an arc that Lucian was devoid of - he's turned into this machiavellian character because...Because. That is the answer. But!! Larian (Jan Van Dosselaer) did a downfall of a good character masterfully before. Maxos' arc spans two games, 10 thousand years! And it's a story of goodwill and hubris that leads to a terrific fall. To see him go from a wise scholar doing everything in his power to save Rivellon from itself to this exact desire turning him into a self-proclaimed god is a story to behold. Lucian sadly had nothing like this in the end product. But there had to be something before the end product, right? Now it wouldn't be a faneposter post if we didn't do some lore digging!

I found this in the dos2 text file, I couldn't track it to any in-game content so it's safe to assume this has been cut.

It appears to be a letter from Lucian to Alexandar, where Lucian warns him about the Seven Gods, we assume it was meant to be placed somewhere within the Academy of the Seven.

Alexandar. My son. You have come. You have fulfilled your potential, as I knew you would. Alas, you will not find what you seek. I don't doubt you feel abandoned, as I would. I led you here so you might prove your worth, your strength - so you could see you have earned the right to be called Godwoken. Yet you cannot yet claim the mantle of Divinity. That is because Divinity is still locked within me. And there it must remain so that we can be free of the Gods tyranny. For they do not mean to guide you, my son, but to use you. And as long as the Gods exist, our suffering will never end and the Void will forever encroach. Only without the Gods can we be free. Only without them can there be peace. Without Divinity, they will fade, one by one. Until the day comes when we can return their Source to a deserving world, you must resist the Void with all you can muster. You may think your voyage here pointless now. But that isn't true. Your voyage here gave you the iron will required to face whats yet to come. Stand fast. Your father, Lucian

This seems much more in line with Lucian that old Divinity players know, and more often than not grown to love. I don't know why dos2 strayed so far from everything that has been established before, I don't know where old ideas weren't finally honored as they were supposed to (Atlantean undead, Raanaar). This is half lore dump and half a desperate plea to look beyond the confinements of the unfortunate title in the series that dos2 is. There's more to the story I assure you.

You know what, I’m relatively chill when it comes to the Discourse and wank over canon considering it’s a running half-joke for people to constantly be dunking on the canonicity of various stories - maybe the most annoyed I’ve been was at the ME3 ending and that wasn’t even that strong a feeling since it’s easy to personally handwave all that nonsense and do my own thing

But you know what! I finally found my one thing! My one piece of canon that I will let myself get madder about!!! I’m talking to you, Larian! I’m talking to you about your choices regarding Fallen Heroes, which you know what!! I’m gonna say it!!! I’m glad it’s been put on hiatus because FUCK THAT NOISE

Not only do you disrespect me by choosing the Seal the Veil ending that puts the old man back in power, which honestly I could have excused by itself, BUT!!!! You are telling ME!!!! You want me to believe!!!! That Ifan, the character who canonically can spit on Lucian’s grave and much more!!!! Would go back to be in his army???? After all that??????

And fuck off with that “ambiguity of player’s choice” deal WE ALL KNOW THAT OPTION WAS BULLSHIT!!!!!!

How. Dare. You.

[theauthoressdefiant]

okay, so, fresh off of the westworld season 3 finale and i feel the need to get my thoughts off my chest.

i was really, really disappointed this season. 

*spoilers ahead*

i really think it was a tactical error on the writers and directors parts to take us basically entirely out of the parks and delos. firstly, the aesthetic of the wild west mixing with that of sleek sci-fi underneath was lovely and something that set the show apart from other sci-fi shows. secondly, i think they bit off a little more than they could chew with having to introduce us to an entirely new world, characters, and villains in only eight episodes. 

when i first saw the trailers, i was really disenchanted with the thought of caleb’s character. he did grow on me a little, mostly thanks to aaron paul just being a good actor, but ultimately, caleb added nothing to the story. he was just a white guy getting told he was going to save the world, which felt tride and overdone--and most of the time, even once he learned about the data and everything, it felt like he was a pawn in everyone’s game. it never felt like he had a true drive of his own and thus there was no reason for me to care about him at all. if it had been clearer that he really did care about the fate of humanity, or that he really did care for dolores (he did seem to love her but it wasn’t explored; not that i really wanted it to be but at least they would have done Something), then maybe he would have felt more essential. in my mind, he could be cut altogether and it would hardly make a difference to me.

i was also so disappointed with how they took maeve this season. she’s one of my favorite characters. for her to have worked so hard to find her daughter, for her to be one of the strongest and smartest hosts in the park, to be one of the first to wake up, and then just make her be controlled again? one of the best things about maeve has always been her autonomy; her right to choose for herself what she cares for and what she does. it’s absolute bullshit to just blackmail her into being muscle for this new villain we don’t even know. i understand, on some level, her desire to reunite with her daughter, but we all know that if serac hadn’t had that button to control her, she would have killed him and found a way herself. it confused me that at the end of season 2, they imply that the boys are gonna take care of her and make sure she gets back into a park, but then she gets taken from the parks by serac; we got moments of her in a park, but those were all just in her head. it  could have been a good jumping off point, but they dilly-dallied there for multiple episodes when overall, it didn’t even matter and she just needed to get out into the real world. 

another thing that frustrated me was the copies of dolores; while it does make sense that the only person she would trust was herself, it didn’t totally make sense who she picked as her vessels, in terms of other host from the parks. those cameos, as well as the ones of clementine and hanaryo, felt shoehorned in, like a nudge nudge wink wink of “you remember these guys, right? aren’t they cool? isn’t it cool they’re here?” when really it made little sense for dolores to even bother with those vessels. as for clementine and hanaryo, they are my BABIES who deserve the world, but they were brought in as “backup” and we got one cool scene where they kill a dolores double, and then nothing else. they have no desires of their own? they don’t even show up in the background in any other scenes? it feels like a cheap way to get some hype from people who cared about those characters. (also what they did to hector was fucked up and useless. like why would halores just do that? i understand to like, eliminate maeve’s allies or whatever but she could have just taken his core? she didn’t have to squish him? what was the REASON it was CHEAP and BORING is the reason)

speaking of halores, at first i found her arc really interesting--was this the good, loving side of dolores coming out, or charlotte? why was she pulling apart at the seams? this never really even got explained, just that she cared and something was “wrong” with her. i lOVE tessa thompson but once again, she was just a pawn, and i wish she had gotten autonomy and started making her own choices earlier in the season. that being said, i thought it was kind of cheap she just became an angry, vengeful husk at the end, emotionless and all, when the whole problem she’d had was that she had compassion. it would have been much more powerful for her to embrace her compassionate side. however, it seems like she’s gonna be a player next season, so i guess we’ll see how that goes. 

honestly, i think one of my biggest issues this season was pacing. there was so much filler. episodes 1-6 could have been condensed into 3, maybe four episodes, and then the stuff in episodes 7 and 8 could have been developed better in the remaining four episodes, instead of all squashed into one. 

bernard and stubbs were bumbling around the whole time; i could never really figure out what they were trying to do other than a vague “stop dolores”, and they never came close enough. if bernard’s role to play was to recieve the key, why didn’t that come earlier in the season? 

the stuff with william came at a point where i was already done with the season, and seemed kind of stupid from my perspective, but he was still more interesting to me than a lot of the things going on, i think his assholeness is just easy to enjoy. but once again, his whole arc could have been done a lot earlier so that he had his goal of “save the world/kill all the hosts” earlier on and more could have been done. not to mention he gets killed by host!william in the post credits scene anyway so its not like anything he did mattered?

and, dolores. look, i love evan rachel wood. dolores being a badass is so, so hot, i know. but the fact that most of the storyline this season just follows dolores along, with minimal stumbles for her in her plan, i think takes away a lot of the interestingness she held. i wish there had been either a little more mystery to her, or that she at times showed a little of her compassion that we finally got at the end. i felt kind of blindsided by her “there is beauty in this world” stuff; it felt more like a “gotcha!” than a natural progression for her as a character. if we had seen her start to care about humans, seen her clearly caring for caleb, something to show that maybe her views had changed, it might have made more sense. at the same time, i love murder-all-humans dolores and kind of wish the writers had just committed to her. 

so, yeah, i finished this season feeling pretty frustrated. westworld season one was impeccable, season two was pretty good, but season three really lost its spark. there was so much potential for a really interesting season, but instead we got a meandering mess. i honestly think the writers didn’t know quite what they wanted and settled for middling mediocrity instead of making any bold statements. 

the intro and music still slap tho

[imadeletingmysocials]

My Final Say On The Final Fantasy 7 Compilation:

DILLY DALLY SHILLY SHALLY!

Now let me say something: I don’t fully hate the remake, my feelings are at best mixed towards it, because of course it plays on my heart strings at moments, I grew up with Final Fantasy 7, I recognize and fall for the fanservicey recreations of PS1 moments, I just hate it’s tone and different atmosphere because I recognize this is obviously fanservicey everywhere you go and rarely comes as close to the original feel, more on that later of course, here’s what’s core: Final Fantasy 7 Remake at best feels like a compromise between the new and the old fans, with some old fans not really feeling 100% about it from what I gathered around many people I know. Everything I hear is “The gameplay is fun and engaging! but some shit is definitely silly and could have been cut” stuff like: the amount of filler, characters that honestly don’t add that much to the world building, and the saturday morning cartoon prolongation of certain moments which were straight to the point in the original, this is a remake where you get to see fast-paced deep cut moments turned into a slow agonizing over-redundant slow insertion of a knife, it’s like using a butter knife to cut a well done stake.

Again, a compromise with the fandom, THAT fandom, the fandom that scared everyone into playing Final Fantasy 7 which was at best a REALLY Good regular JRPG, and it really was like this weirld proto-cringe culture built around a cult, Final Fantasy 7 was this grimdark game about ecology, direct action, the over reach of corporate control on resources, spirituality and all that, and it was ALL REDUCED TO YAOI SHIPPING, I will never forgive you guys for reducing Final Fantasy 7 to that shit and it is one of the main reasons why the Compilation became this anime shit, I’m not even someone who unironically says “this is too anime” but that’s my attitude with a lot of the compilation, there is stuff in this compilation series that makes it all feel like a fucking parody of Dragon Ball Z when outside of that, the original was pretty grounded.

The original was so grounded that it’s still debated if Final Fantasy 7 is cyberpunk AT ALL if not dieselpunk, with the compilation and remake adding more cyberpunk and high-sci-fi aspects like China-like social credit, or VR, and they’re all ham-fistedly added additions to the series, it’s just them running with the idea of “I guess we’re considered cyberpunk now, better play the part and add these cliche tropes”, Final Fantasy 7′s world clearly has a class division when it comes to who has technology and who doesn’t, some technology in the FF7 world is old and some is new, but in the original it’s really just a select places that hold power towards technology: Like the facilities of Midgar or the Golden Saucer.

Adding a lot of these sci-fi aspects and prolonging on the midgar section of course adds plot holes: In the original, the Midgar section flies so fast it’s just one event after the other WHICH IS GOOD, not letting air to breathe in your structure keeps the plot tight, keeps the momentum and pacing good, allowing that air to breathe too much results in what I like to call: Nomura’s Awkward Silence. You’ve probably seen it in Kingdom Hearts quite a lot but Nomura is a shitty director who manages to make scenes so badly and prolonged that by the end any logical person would go: “...But? Wouldn’t that not work?”.

FF7′s Midgar was fast-paced cuz this is a group of eco-terrorists which are on a constant verge of being caught so they’re constantly on the move, plot hole nitpicky shit starts to happen when you don’t have a fast-pacing to keep most hooked and here are examples which aren’t helped with the new plot device additions:

Why doesn’t Tifa confront Cloud’s past since they now have a lot of time to catch up

Why would a terrorist group just... Hire someone and let them stay in a normal ass 

Why is Avalanche just chilling around the sectors when they all live in a mass surveillance state, no really adding that mass surveillance plot device really makes everything fall apart, in the original SHINRA just IMMEDIATELY after the first bombing bombs sector 7 with absolutely no-restraint, them seeing AVALANCHE bomb one of their reactors makes them go: “Oh we can kill them all in one swell swoop and put the blame on them no problem we just giving them a false means of comfort” and the new bombing of Sector 7 REALLY does showcase my annoyance with all of the minor changes that were fine and better in the original: This is also best exemplified by how reno in the original just presses the button and is done with it but the remake prolongs this scene so much, that RENO has to fight you first??? Even if he is literally facing the fucking button??? cuz ANIME FIGHT! and then they make RUDE press the button when before they developed him as “somewhat nice guy” which only clashes even worse with the fact that he was the one who presses a button to SUPPOSEDLY kill an entire sector, well I say supposedly cuz now, there is no weight in that, Barrett doesn’t shoot the fallen sector’s walls in anger and (that’s what motivates him to go to Shinra once and for all) because actual stakes? what are that? No, everyone evacuated this time and the new NPCs are all fine :)

Throughout the whole game, they play up characters who are minor in the original but are FULL BIG FUCKIN IDOLS in the remake now, and as a result, the “bad guys who become good guys as the game on” HAVE TO HAVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IMMEDIATELY. Fuck pacing! We need to show that the HEROES HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS NOW! and STILL MAKE THEM DO EVIL THINGS. Like what is the point in developing your villains and showing they have a conciseness if they are still going to do bad things? In FF7 the only start developing a consciousness AFTER the bad things, like ff7 remake makes Dude somewhat decent and showcases Reeves as a nice person but they still did evil things regardless so it’s uselesss. Now I won’t say FF7 doesn’t do this and shows Reeves has his gripes but it doesn’t go

Again, BARRET HAS A FUCKING GUN FOR AN ARM, HE SHOULDN’T BE OUT IN THE PUBLIC... AT ALL, HE SIGNED HIS DEATH WARRANT WHEN HE GAVE HIMSELF THAT ARM AND DEDICATED HIMSELF TO THE CAUSE, THIS IS WHY HE ALWAYS LIVES ON THE MOVE AND ALWAYS HIDING. 

Again, why did they introduce the idea of everything being a mass surveillance state if Cloud, Tifa and Barret can literally storm Shinra’s headquarters and Shinra workers are just... chilling in the lobby, it’s all empty, but in the original you had a somewhat sense of danger and the only way to progress was through going through specific corridors in a certain order or tricking Shinra workers.

Every single time the dementors appear.

Examples of the anime-transformation of the remake and making everything a lot harder to not take seriously are: 

Scarlet being a comical dominatrix who like a cartoon character smacks the character when in the original she was truly like a serious fucking villain.

Aeris (or Aerith, not sure anymore) pretty much becoming a Disney Princess

Every single villain going to saturday morning cartoon levels of overreduncancy. 

And of course I hate this shit, I have a connection with the original you know, if it wasn’t called a remake or if it didn’t touch the original maybe I wouldn’t have thought otherwise but because of the fact that it goes out to make these ridiculous changes feels like some sort of insult in a way. Minor inconveniences start to become major inconveniences and Final Fantasy 7′s remake is CHOCK FULL of it. 

It’s the weirdest comparison I know, but the one I feel still works is: You know how Disney movies would a TV adaption? Like how Disney’s Hercules had a Hercules TV show and it went on to develop background characters you barely knew, while basically overly expanding on that interlude of the movie? Well that’s what Final Fantasy VII remake feels like, some even said that this remake feels like as if they made a MCU movie series based on the original, honestly I don’t know which one is worse, sounds pretty bad which ever way you put it.

A controversial opinion but one that never the less is true is that: Midgar was not supposed to be ANYTHING BUT A SET UP, it was just there for the sake of world building, now I guess it’s just me and a couple of friends but we aren’t part of the gang of “I didn’t play Final Fantasy 7 pass Midgar” which apparently is a thing, it goes as far as cultural video game stereotype, I’m one of the few people who played passed Midgar, and i’m one of the few people who prefer the game past that section as everything when the world begins to open starts to build on that set up Midgar introduced, like Midgar isn’t everything FF7 has to offer, it’s just the setup, Midgar is the BIG BAD, but you need to recgonize how Midgar is pretty much a plot device at best and what is more important is the villages of the planet and how each are affected by Midgar’s reach and corruption, like Red Canyon, small villages with rocket projects or Wutai (which the Compilation LOVES to set up as the other super-power against Midgar, rather than letting Midgar be the only superpower like in the original I guess).

Midgar is structured like this fast-paced action film, beat by beat, in fact following the same structural high points of an action movie. Midgar was always designed to be a 2 hour experience, like a fun roller coaster ride or romp, it wasn’t meant to be the WHOLE GAME or that prolonged. 

And a lot of those things will be gone and sacrificed in the remake: For example, you cannot recreate well-placed shots and angles in the remake cuz it doesn’t have pre-background sets like the original. In doing so, you sacrifice shit and make choices LIKE THIS: 

Rather than the slow-panning of the shot that results in this iconic scene:

I want to be clear here: I do not hate Final Fantasy 7 remake for it’s lack of subtlety, whenever Final Fantasy 7′s remake has the chance to be political and preachy about it, that is actually where it expands VERY well on the original (unlike the whole fucking Compilation shit or the annoying quirky NPCs they introduce which honestly don’t add much and kinda remove and detach from what’s kinda important at the matter, again the pacing fucking sucks), the original works as it is with short burst of dialog without dwelling on actual political theory (It can get annoying of course for example: Barrett in the remake every 10 seconds talks about how he wants to save the planet, while Barrett in the original doesn’t need to be that repetitive, in fact I think you can count every time in the remake he says “SAVE THE PLANET”  almost as much “DARKNESS” is said in Kingdom hearts... NOMURA!!!), you know keeping it simple for all of the teenagers playing it in final fantasy 7, vague enough to be accessible.

I could go on about all of those weird changes in the remake which could have been left as it is, like almost every single side-mission, I don’t know of a single side-mission in FF7 I left thinking “Wow that was really worthwhile, thought provoking and added quite a lot to the world building!” cuz guess what, it didn’t. The children don’t add much like we get it children are not immune to SOLDIER propaganda (Cloud is literally the personification of this did we really need this), the angel of the slums shows stealing from the rich is good (like the entire game is about killing corporate people and despite Barrett feeling a lil bit remorse in his methods he never feels remorse in killing anyone related to SHINRA), like oh thanks for showcasing to me that thieves can be good people like the child I am. These are all engineered to make people who didn’t get the point in ff7, messages which feel are for children, which I guess a lot of gamers are, the dumbification of video games as a whole angers me but that’s a completely different subject, you ever notice how characters in the past didn’t talk about every single action they should be performing but every game after 2010 has to be annoying about that?

I still have mixed feelings on FF7R. Little things that are lil fanservice can be nice, but then the final fantasy 7 remake just throws the cake onto the ground as soon as it seems tasty, the best example of this would be the cutscene showing Shinra’s plan in Shinra’s headquarters, it is an EXCELLENT COMPLIMENT to the original, like the original has about the same amazing world building set up of how 2000 years ago FF7′s world was just a regular Final Fantasy world! Final Fantasy 7 is special because of that this particular world building, and compliments to that realism and tone ARE GREAT! Those are moments in which the tone of the game SHINE! It makes you go “Aw that was a nice recreation and it complimented the game fine” but then Sephiroth. You know... That one villain who isn’t supposed to be appearing every single second in the original but since the pacing is dogshit I guess he’s basically become Cloud’s little one winged angel on his shoulder that has to appear IN EVERY cutscene, I really do hate this mother fucker. I hate that Sephiroth bitch, I hate that he became more of an mascot for FF7 to the point it overshadows his role as just a pawn of a more deeper evil (JENOVA) sephiroth was nothing but the representation of soldier exploitation going wrong, and how that symbolically is connected to the end of the world and an evil very alien. Sephiroth was never supposed to be this actual character, in fact he stopped being a character when... you know.

Somehow Palmer can see Sephiroth but that makes 0 sense and is the dumbest fucking addition... Aren’t only people with Mako supposed to see him? And the idea is that Sephiroth can only gain physical form through the bodies of SOLDIERs cuz he’s more of a virus now. But you know... Sephy-kun is a star now! SO HE NEEDS TO SHOW UP EVERY FUCKING SECOND and PRACTICALLY SPOIL THE WHOLE ORIGINAL GAME, what clearer message of “we hope you played the original or else” than all of those forced flashbacks, and how funny that the original demon of FF7remake was straight forward and didn’t include sephiroth flashback but as soon as the game released they put them in! HM, I WONDER. I WONDER. That really does feel like a “haha you actually bought the game! sucker.” 

But by that point I’ve basically become that fan that goes “you should read the book, I don’t like it that in the movie they did all of these little changes”, but truth be told Final Fantasy 7 remake turned me into that kinda person. Again: It doesn’t help that this is literally not a medium conversion, but a full on re-writting from the people who worked, and I don’t care what Nomura considers a “remake”, this makes the original story flow a lot worse.

“You fuckers asked for it! So here it is” says Square Enix when people were angry that FF7 was being re-released over and over again, teased with tech demos since the PS3 era! Truth be told, I was always on the fence for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, I was fine with the original, I cannot speak for everyone else but on my side it was just people going “I REALLY FUCKING HOPE THIS ISN’T COMPILATION BULLSHIT“ AND hahah AHAHAHAH well

Final Fantasy 7 remake’s structure is... AMAZINGLY WELL PUT WHEN YOU START TO SEE THAT THE LONGER IT GOES, THE MORE IT STARTS TO STRAY AWAY FROM GOD’S LIGHT, In fact I think that’s brilliant, it’s like a well made bad prank, you get to see people in real time react to this shit and it’s almost a universal experience so props to the designers for managing to do that, at first it starts building your immunity with like dementors and you’re like “why the fuck did they add this? oh well i guess I’ll just keep going” but then by the end of the game throws shit at the fan and some people are devoted to those changes saying “ah fuck it” or you know: This is dumb. I’d say that 35% of Final Fantasy 7′s remake’s content compliments the original and 65% is modern Square Enix’s shenanigans.  

The rest of this thread is pretty funny also:

This might sound controversial but: When your shit is edited in the editing room, maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason it was edited out. Final Fantasty 7 Remake has this attitude of “WE GOTTA ADD EVERY SINGLE DELETED CONTENT WE COULDN’T HAVE PUT IN THE ORIGINAL, WE HAVE THAT POWER NOW TO GET SILLAY!” which is often the downfall of a lot of video games and their artistic integrity, it’s a constant thing and I’m sure I won’t be visiting it for the last time: video game directors are often these egoistical people who are left like children with this amount of power to just do dumb shit and because video games are an exceptional quirky medium, people just let bad writing and anime shit fly, I mean this is what I have always meant by video games as a medium being like b-movies and kitsch at best, you rarely see this medium be high art.

I think the best example of this is comparing to the movie medium, most importantly: George Lucas, George Lucas was a guy who because of a lot of editors their story became something that even overshadowed themselves, have you seen Star Wars without an editor? It sucks. This showcase should have killed the auteur but in the industry sometimes this is not the case, what results of that is a huge inflation of one’s ego and they start getting more and more power to direct stuff in whatever way they see fit!

The Video game medium has allowed the auteur theory to test it’s limits, I don’t know if it’s fair to blame everything on the black sheep Nomura (I mean Motomu Toriyama is as much to blame here, if not even worse, this is the guy who directed X-2, I’m sure if anything he might have done more harm) it is kinda hard to detach the directors from the product however, especially in this case when a lot of people’s gripes come from unnecessary filler, tone, and terrible pacing. That’s kind of all the directors job you know? 

I detest the idea that a good tone is only set by the standards of western cinema or the soviet montage standards. You can accomplish a good and serious tone by a lot of means, it doesn’t need to be 100% serious, but I don’t want it to become as ridiculous or redundant as a low-budget shonen anime. It doesn’t help FF7 Remake case because it doesn’t go out to compliment FF7 that well. It doesn’t matter what Nomura thinks a “remake’ entitles, because regardless, the changes in this will forever be compared to the original, FF7 remake does not exist in a vacuum, it isn’t a stand-alone original game, it just feels like a weird adaptation that doesn’t fair well to the original plot structure.

Which is where I’ll start to bring this long commentary to a halt! If Nomura himself admits that FF7′s Remake is Final Fantasy VII Compilation Part 5 well all I have to say, and what has and will always be my stance of this so called “compilation” is:

The compilation of final fantasy 7 has always been over redundant filler. It’s all either so bad it’s good or so fanservicey it’s obnoxious. Every single compilation is a mixed bowl of “This is actually cool” and “this is just dumb and unnecessary”. The novels, the side-entries on flip phones, they all feel as if they come from a smug aura of “Clearly you didn’t get the plot from one game alone so we clearly have to expand on it so we can get EXTRA MONEY!”

Oh and the whole one winged angel shit (now a plot device thanks to crisis core) and the NOMURA idea of “you gotta play all of the entries to understand this shit” fucking sucks man! 

Nomura games are so close to being so good, but there’s always that fucking CRINGE that appears, and this kind of shit makes me actually sincerely use the word “cringe”, cloud might as well pull a fucking keyblade in which LIGHTNING from Final Fantasy 13 is there saying how she is THE BEST CHARACTER EVER MADE whatever! Consistency and tone is dead, we get it. 

Every single sequel to Final Fantasy 7 is just cashing in on the fame and it’s unnecessary, you can enjoy FF7 on it’s own. It’s feeling a LOT, A LOT like Disney’s approach to Star Wars, you didn’t have to do all of this for Star War’s simple premise. I feel like that ungrateful child who got a shitty present: You really shouldn’t have.

I mean don't get me wrong, the original has that pre-famous Square Enix comic relief, and the only time you ever got that kind of subtle comic relief again was in Final Fantasy 9, the last call-back to the series being traditional. I think it's impossible to recreate Final Fantasy 7 in the style and tone it was created in 1997, because that WAS LITERALLY before Square Enix became famous and that fame went up to their head.

That's like expecting a “Final Fantasy 6″-type game to not be made by an indie developer or a small dev team today, it's not gonna happen. An AAA developer just does not have the soul to do that today. Many people were like “What if they just did the same thing as the game but with jus priddy graphics” well given the crusty JPEG skyboxes in the remake they couldn’t have even concentrated on that alone it seems, also my answer to that is: of course they’re gonna do that. Square Enix has just enough of an ego to not let shit be simple.

I mean it’s a given right, a lot of people were angry about Chrono Cross because it wasn’t quite Chrono Trigger either (at this point Square Enix was already transitioning into Final Fantasy 8-stuff and going all over the place in terms of quality, with multiple teams developing multiple games, trying to catch the high of Final Fantasy 7, but not really seeing what FF7 did to hook so many people, namely on how FF7 is the most serious and accessible entry in the whole series that isn’t Final Fantasy 6 (although Final Fantasy 6 wasn’t as cinematic which the 90s video games loved the opportunity with the gift OF 3D!).

Also:

Bull fucking shit, I am not convinced you aren’t gonna plaster Sephy-kun flashbacks at every single moment like you have, like if you really were to do a beat per beat Final Fantasy 7 remake after that that’s just so funny. 

"OH WE JUST FUCKING SPOILED THE WHOLE GAME IN THE FIRST ACT"

"BUT THE REST OF IT WILL BE NORMAL'

Like... How? Will you lower the budget for the next parts of the remake. That would legit be kinda funny,  "we just wanted to make midgar really long and weird like that, thats all, the rest will be 100% a remake! The alternative universe ghosts won’t come this time.” I just cannot believe that until I see it.

Uh what should I end this long rant with uhhhh...

[supergenial]

Cindered Shadows was pretty decent

I recently finished the Cindered Shadows DLC and decided to once again write about my impressions, don't worry though, this one isn't as long as the previous ones. Spoilers: I think this is as good as fire emblem is gonna get for a while.

1) No Agarthans, thank GOD

A story as old as fire emblem: There's an interesting human villain with down to earth motivations or obsessions, but in the large scale of the story they're overshadowed by a supernatural being who wants to destroy the world for no reason other than "they're just evil". This is Edelgard and the Agarthans, Arvis and Manfroy/Loptous, Rudolph and Duma, Ashnard and Ashera, Walhart and Grima... you get it. This shit sucks to put it bluntly. Having these stereotypically evil bad guys who are clearly evil is one of the main things that brings down the plot of any fire emblem game. I'm of the belief that they should kick out these supernatural villains and just leave us against the human villains, the one's with actual ideals and beliefs other than "hurr durr, destroy the world".

And then there’s our villain for this DLC. Now yes, it feels like they recycled a certain professor from the Harry Potter series, but I like that he is "The" bad guy for the DLC, he's not being controlled by anyone. He's obsessed with Byleth's mom and in-game this makes a lot of sense. If Byleth, who is incapable of communication, can drive people crazy for them just by existing then just imagine a Byleth who can actually talk. Her "waifu" charms must be off the charts, so I can't blame this guy for being obsessed. More importantly he's not being controlled by the Agarthans, he's not being played by anyone. He's a man who's lived a righteous life, he took care of a lot of people who all love him but ultimately decided to use them for his own gain and his own obsessions. As far as FE villains go... He's good, honestly, great job Intelligent Systems, I expected a lot less.

2) Reduced avatar wanking

Shots fucking fired

Sure, Byleth's mom is a main focus of the plot, and Byleth is the one who sets the plot in motion, but rarely does it feel like the game is going "gee Player, you're so great, you're our god, we all love you and want to marry you". Byleth still plays a large role sure (unfortunately) but it still feels like this is the story of Yuri and his gang with Byleth being their strategist which is, idk, way better than the idea behind the main game? The one where Byleth turns into a literal god, gets every achievement of the army attributed to them only, has every other conversation remind us how glorious Byleth is, etc.

In fact the dlc goes as far as having Hapi constantly belittle Byleth and even make fun of their communication skills by calling him Chatterbox (good job to the localizers, she doesn’t say this in the japanese audio). Get that teacher’s ass girl, destroy them. (Obviously I would hate this behavior if it was directed to someone else, but in this case I'm willing to make a concession).

3) Yuri's backstory

Ashe: I admire and love this man who is my only parental figure but Rhea said he's kind of bad so I killed him Yuri: Church ordered me to kill a bunch of thieves and delinquents and I refused

You have no idea who much I love the fact that Yuri is someone who protested his orders and got kicked out of the church for refusing to kill civillians. This instantly sends him very high in my rankings. Playing through the first half of the game all I wanted was to stop and say "No, Lady Rhea, fuck you. I don't think it's very cash money for the most powerful military force in the continent to eradicate a lightly armed militia of farmers (with popular support in their locality!)" this is what true imperialism is all about! But there is sadly no option for that.

Just by telling us that Yuri is someone who was punished for saying "No, these orders are inhumane, I refuse to carry them out" that is enough for me, the game is saying "yes, we know, have your compensation price". In the end Yuri is extremely loyal to Rhea which is unfortunate but hey, at least they lampshaded one of the most glaring issues I have with the main game, so that's at least something.

4) "You've obtained all information. Proceed with the story, NOW"

Rather than wasting time forever thinking up which activity I should carry out, abyss is simply a place where you talk to the abyssal denizens to get some plot information or speculation, and boom, you're done. No running around forever, no quests, no doors that take ages to load. You can perfectly skip the abyss parts and at most you'll miss out on Edelgard's conversation with Dimiri (which is fucking hilarious) and a few rusted weapons that can be forged but that's it. Upon talking to every resident of the abyss the game will actually say you’ve acquired all information and will prompt you to go into combat rather than assume you want to dilly dally for a while.

I actually rather like this and would not be opposed to it being the philosophy behind future in-between segments between chapters. I can understand IntSys wanting to load in a ton of features like a sauna and fishing to rack up excitement for the game, I know I was excited for fishing, but when these activities have rewards tied to them, replaying becomes kind of a chore, "aw geez, I have to fish 69 fish to reach professor rank A+ AGAIN" (I actually had to when trying to get the piss screen from clearing maddening). Getting only some conversations and a bit of context for the story, that's... pretty good honestly, I liked this better than the monastery and better than My Castle. Throw in some skits with multiple characters at once and I’m gold

(seriously how come there’s no scenes with the three of the bros, Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix all hanging out together, the fact that a third character never shows up in support conversations is fucking bad)

5) Sometimes less is more

I've extensively complained about three houses already but bear with me. Yet another thing that infuriates me about the game is the extensive amount of work it required. I truly do think that if they had released only the blue lions route and left everything else in the plot as mysterious and unexplained loose ends left entirely up to speculation, that'd be a great game on it's own. Instead I have to see all the hard work that went into making the other routes only so that, in the end, they just had me going "well it was ok I guess". Every scene in the game requires work, many hours of coding, writing, voice acting, sound editing, making sure the models don't look too messed up, bug testing, etc. The amount of work that went into three houses was brutal regardless of what you think of the final product, yet a lot of people didn't even bother playing through all of that. So yes, I honestly wanted less, give me a more concise game rather than spreading too wide and ending up thin.

Cindered Shadows on the other hand is concise to a fault to make up for that. The story is pretty straightforward and leaves no loose ends to itself, there's no anime cutscenes, no supports (within abyss, you can support them all in the main game). There's even that very awkward sacrifice scene where some characters are having their life and blood drained from them yet the visual representation we see is just them standing around like normal, with Yuri even doing that hand pose he does all the time instead of squirming in pain or something. It's very awkward looking, objectively not good, but it gets the point across and doesn't make me go "wow you put in all this effort for nothing" because the whole thing is also fairly short (5 to 10 hours in hard mode).

I know, it sounds like I'm shitting on the dlc, but the point is I'd much rather get something short that leaves me satisfied than something like the main game that makes me go "this could've been so hecking gooood if they changed X" for the rest of my life.

6) The gameplay

Chapter 4 is my favorite mission in the whole game

They made Hard Mode good. I previously said maddening was the one difficulty where this game made sense, but this one achieves perfection with just hard mode. This is because the team actually knows what you have. In the main game there's all sorts of variables to account for due to the large amount of player expression that is possible, you can reclass anyone into anything and throughout many lucky or unlucky level ups, maps can be entirely different based on that rng and choices. Here though, your characters already have solid bases starting at lvl 20, and you can't reclass too much so the devs know exactly what you're working with and can plan accordingly. Beating the maps feels incredibly satisfying not just because the objectives have more variety now, but also because you feel like you found the right way to use the tools you were given. This is why the first few chapters of any fire emblem game often feel so good, because the devs know exactly what you have.

Not that I think player expression is bad! It's very satisfying to warp skip chapters and to use broken units like battalion vantage+wrath Dimitri as these things make you feel like you've truly subjugated the game, but it takes some time for those things to really take off. There's a time to reap and a time to sow, and the sowing time can get pretty dull sometimes but that's what makes the payoff feel worth it. Still, for a short experience like cindered shadows is, this style just fits perfectly, plus chapter 4 has quickly become one of my favorite chapters in the whole game, along with chapter 6.

7) In The End

Idk folks, I just like it. If you just want more adventures with the three lords, this is it.

If you’re looking for any excuses to avoid this I'd say the better ones are: maps are reused from the main game (they work much better here though), it's 10 hours at most so it's price-to-cash ratio isn't very good with the expansion pass being $30, and also the Abysskeeper feels a bit TOO winkwink nudgenudge to me, especially since Gatekeeper was popular enough to make it into Super Smash Brothers. Like yeah bro, we get it, we all love Gatekeeper, you didn't have to do this.

I also like that they finally gave Dimitri a semi-problematic quote where he says he kinda likes the idea of poor people living underground out of sight, I think it’s a very rich-white-boy flaw to have and not entirely awful given his life experience up to that point. And yes I do think he has no flaws and is entirely unproblematic in the main game, “feral” as he may look it doesn’t seem like he goes around killing civilians or doing anything other than busting up imperial troops which is kind of justified since they started the invasion, on top that he’s the strongest unit in the game and the most chill and honest ruler once he calms down, so little dent in his record that’s irrelevant in the large picture is indeed welcome.

Overall though, after being so massively disappointed by the Fates DLC, so much I didn't even bother with the ones for Echoes, I certainly like what I'm seeing here and that's a good sign, bravo Intsys.

[racke7]

The storyline of Divinity 2

So I was thinking about how odd the linear nature of Divinity 2 is.

Not in how the leveling-system railroads you into taking a certain path of “this quest before that quest”, or even in the way that certain characters have a clear tendency to survive being both killed and having their corpses exploded, but rather in the frame of the chronological sense of the Main Quest.

(Spoilers ahead)

Like, the story starts out with you (and your fellow heroes) being on a ship destined for Fort Joy as a sort of tutorial. So far so good.

Then you arrive at Fort Joy and get to see the first real glimpse of what Sourcerers are being exposed to under the ruthless and dehumanizing heel of the Magisters. Chief among these being Alexander (the son of the previous Divine, and the one who's rumored to be destined for becoming the next Divine), along with his advisor Dallis (who features heavily when inhumane experiments are mentioned).

In Fort Joy you come to realize that you are in fact the chosen champion of your god for the spot of the next Divine. And there can be only one Divine (which, if you're playing with friends, might cause some shifty eyes to be involved).

Beyond that, you get to see more of the Voidwoken, giving you a better understanding of how very urgent the ascension to Divinity really is.

Then, after a final confrontation with Alexander (where he proves his immersion-breaking immortality when he mysteriously survives being killed), you set off towards Driftwood, where rumors have it that a powerful Sourceror would be willing to teach you how to ascend.

Driftwood then has you traveling the world and seeing more of the horrors that the Magisters are bringing in their wake, but also the many horrors that the Sourcerors bring in theirs, leaving you some room to wonder about which side has the right idea. You grow more powerful, you get some more hints about the Voidwoken, you help out tons of people with a variety of strange quests, and time and again you stumble across references to Arx (the capital city), at least one of which is a desperate urging for you to hurry to Arx immediately in order to prevent a horrific disaster.

Then you go to the Nameless Isles. Literally the only foreshadowing for this is that your god told you to do it, so you did it.

The Nameless Isles is being overrun with both Magisters and Voidwoken (and, more specifically, non-Voidwoken members of the Covenant of the God-King), so you solve a few puzzles and murder a few people, and then you stand before the Well of Ascension.

This entire area honestly feels more like a sprint for the finish-line than a proper world to explore, in no small part due to the extreme lack of quests in comparison to Driftwood (there are a few character-specific ones, but generally the whole are is just a matter of killing everything that moves).

Then, of course, there's a sudden plot-twist as Dallis swoops in and steals the Source in the Well of Ascension with her super-draining-wand (that we've had some references to previously, so fair enough), leaving you to fight your way out of a crumbling ruin and then give chase after her, towards Arx.

Once in Arx, you're back to doing hundreds of small quests for insignificant individuals, and saving the city from that aforementioned disaster, before finally finding the path towards Lucian's Tomb, where Dallis seems to have disappeared to.

And then you find Lucian still alive (there were hints in the Nameless Isles that he wasn't all that he was cracked up to be, but this is definitely unexpected) and he's working with Dallis. Now you get your final battle, where there's some other twists and complications but whatever. You win, you get to decide whether to ascend or not, The End.

Now, if I'd been in charge of the general setting of the story, I would've probably rearranged a lot of things.

For example, Alexander being in Fort Joy? No. Let's leave Alexander as a mysterious figure who will become the next Divine, and continue to leave hints about Dallis being up to no good. But if you want a fight that leads off of Fort Joy, let's just use a no-name Magister who swears that he answers directly to Dallis herself.

Dallis would still take chase after a bunch of escapees, since she wouldn't want word getting out about what's actually going on in Fort Joy, not to mention that we stole Dallis's ship.

Driftwood wouldn't really be any different, but we'd be going straight to Arx, instead of dropping by the Nameless Isles first, in order to keep the same sort of “mood” going.

After all, both Arx and Driftwood are based on this idea that there's tons of quests to do. Ways to help or harm completely insignificant people, and ways to help or harm very important people. They're also both very big on investigation.

So we go from Driftwood (where we caught hints of the Covenant) straight to Arx, where we see a lot of the Covenant's big-shots hidden in scarily powerful positions. All the while, we're pursuing rumors about Alexander, because we really do need to eliminate the competition, and Alexander is the only one with a map to get to the Nameless Isles.

Except, it turns out that Dallis is the one running the show in truth, with Alexander being a useful figure-head. How much of the battle between us can be avoided? Well, that'd be hard to say, but the end-results is us getting a ticket straight to the Nameless Isles, and the worrying knowledge that Dallis will be getting there before we do.

Then the Nameless Isles happen, and we can worry even more about seeing the armies that the Covenant has at its disposal. But our focus is on solving all of the puzzles and reaching the Well of Ascension before Dallis gets her claws in it.

Needless to say, we fail. But, as we continue to pursue her, she takes a path that leads straight to the place where Lucian has been hiding away for all of this time. And then the big reveal is made, and the battle for Divinity is on.

Basically?

Don't make Alexander into the villain of the tutorial-level Fort Joy and the supposed finishing-stretch of the Nameless Isles (especially since you're expected to fight him to the death in both places).

Don't give us urgings to hurry to Arx immediately in order to prevent a disaster, and then send us off to somewhere completely different (since there'd be no point in going to Arx when you're already Divine, as that would be the end of the game).

Don't suddenly shift the gameplay from “tons of minor quests” to “one quest only” and back to “tons of minor quests”, because that's kind of awkward.

But yeah, even ignoring all of the many problems I have with Divinity 2's gameplay (and the limited EXP and determined levels of encounters, which forces you to deal with them in a specific order every time, as if they were a bucket-list rather than an interesting world to explore), the storyline is... kind of odd in the order they decided to set it up in.

And I wouldn’t mind the Nameless Isles so much if they didn’t feel like such a shoehorned in stopover for the rest of the story-lines.