#i can see people defending ai on technical grounds. BUT YOU ARE GIVING A CLASS ABOUT. ETHICS

[qrevo]

worst thing about computer science classes is hearing teachers defending generative AI

[lilyhoshikawa]

Yugioh Vrains & Trauma

The concept of Yusaku, Takeru, and Ryoken as characters and the way they each process trauma is so interesting to me and I wish we got more exploration of it.

The pieces though, are certainly there, and I think it's worth some thought.

We came close a few times to having a very real, direct statement about the trauma the characters face. For example, Takeru's duel with Blood Shepard, where he pulls a fast one and Blood Shepard attempts to use traumatizing imagery from Takeru's past against him, but Takeru- who has began the path of recovery- has reached a point where he can face triggering images without completely being overtaken by weakness. Having Flame with him grounds him in reality. All of this fitting the theme of his deck, Reincarnation, which he uses to turn the duel around.

Despite this, Takeru isn't healed completely. One of my biggest criticisms of those episodes is the framing of Takeru's trauma as something he has moved past, as if it's that simple. Takeru doesn't let his trauma define him, but it's still a part of him. He wants to be a cool hero and enjoys his duels against opponents he respects, aspects he does not share with the deeply depressed Yusaku, but one place the mask slips is in the confrontation with Revolver. He gets mad. He is faced with someone he can reasonably pin the blame of his torment on. He is not directly responsible, but there's enough room to make a case that he deserves to suffer for his actions. Takeru becomes angry and tries to defeat Ryoken, and this scene is great. It's powerful. It illustrates how two traumatized people- young people without parents, also- process their trauma. It's two people who are very hurt clashing. But they process it in different ways.

Ryoken blames himself for a lot of things. For his father's death, for his father's illness, even to an extent for the lost incident. In his duel with Go he explains that he doesn't duel for a grand symbolic purpose or for himself, but to accomplish his goal. This is an extension of how Ryoken exists in life. Ryoken Kogami, the person, hates himself. He, at the very minimum, blames himself for a lot of heavy things. But as Revolver, as the leader of Hanoi, he's simply acting out his mission to exterminate the Ignis. He doesn't have to deal with his feelings about himself because he's acting professionally.

The duel against Takeru is the only time he does not duel as Revolver, but as Ryoken. He is being faced with someone who wants to hold him, personally, accountable for his actions. This isn't like the duels with Playmaker, who despite being a victim of the Lost Incident, is trying to stop the Knights of Hanoi and their plans. Takeru only wants to defeat him for personal vindication. And as a person, Ryoken is unable to stop him. He has the cards to make a play, sure. He could even very well win. But what does that prove, if he does? It'd be refusing to own up to his actions. Ryoken fully believes he is guilty of everything for which Takeru accuses him. And he is prepared to face that. He doesn't value himself enough to defend. The duel will always end either with Takeru defeating him or forgiving him and moving on.

Now the character whose trauma we get the most insight on is Yusaku, but it's a strange way. So much of it is much more subtle. Yusaku has nothing and no one, this is the foundation of his character. On the surface, he's surrounded by people. Naoki is present in his life trying to be his friend, Kusanagi is his mentor and ally, Ai never shuts up, he's got Roboppy at his house, countless duelists in Link Vrains look up to him as Playmaker.

And yet, Yusaku is distant. He chooses to be distant. Perhaps not even in a voluntary way, but out of preservation.

Almost as second nature, he keeps his distance. He ignores Naoki. He avoids roping Go Onizuka into the fight against Hanoi. He shares his feelings only with Ryoken, who understands his past, and later with Takeru. He does share these feelings with Kusanagi to am extent, but even then, he's careful not to show too much. Kusanagi is a friend and ally, but not someone who Yusaku wants to drag into his deepest turmoil.

This can also be observed in his role as Playmaker. Unlike Takeru, Yusaku does not want to be a hero. He operated in secret until he was dragged out into the open. He fought for the personal goal of revenge until the danger became massive enough to affect innocent people. Even then, though, he didn't care about saving others so much as he did fighting Ryoken. In season 2, he is cast countless times as the hero of Link Vrains, but he doesn't care to be that. He owes Ai and wants to help him, and to assist his friends, but he has no interest in being a "cool hero". In fact, he's all but ready to drop the veil when Kusanagi loses.

While Takeru has Flame to keep him stable, Yusaku has Kusanagi. A close person that grounds him in reality. Yusaku is forced not only to watch him vanish, but to be the one to do it. He's vulnerable and afraid, but there is no one to comfort him. He has no choice but to fight back and win to fulfill Kusanagi's promise with him- not so that he can keep fighting, but because he made a promise. It's the same reason he wakes up and keeps going. He doesn't care about defeating Bohman and saving the world. All he knows is that he owes someone close to him, and he has to keep moving. But having to directly end Kusanagi is understandably traumatic. Yusaku comforts himself with the knowledge that Kusanagi was proud of him, but even then, it's a huge burden.

He had to face someone who he loves and trusts and directly be the one to end his life, and it takes all he has. The giant scream he lets out right before his last turn- the only turn in which he can bring himself to declare an attack- is the moment he builds up all his strength to make one strong move to win all while pushing back his own feelings. As soon as its over, he can't keep himself together.

Yusaku waking up is also deeply symbolic. For people with serious depression, just getting out of bed can be a tremendous ask. It's so hard to get up and face the world. You're tired. It's easier just to give up. Yusaku repeats all of these points. "I've had it with everything. I'm tired".

Yusaku never got the help he needed. His attempts at therapy didn't fit with his needs, as he was already so deeply traumatized that he shut himself off to trusting others. He had night terrors. He lived completely alone. He found a person to live with and stabilize him in Kusanagi, but the depression still majorly controls his life.

He sleeps in class, he has no interests or properties outside of his mission. He barely knows anyone and makes no effort to connect with people, in fact, he actively pushes them away- not just to preserve his identity. He abandons anything that doesn't involve his mission if he can. He ignores the words of others, especially Ai, and only focuses on his dueling.

You get the feeling that while Yusaku is pushing himself, all of this is taking a lot of effort for him. Every action is a massive request, it's difficult. And Yusaku remains alone in this journey even as friends amass beside him. He does not confide in them, he simply relies on them for technical and strategic help. At no point does he come to them about his personal struggle. So of course he doesn't see himself as a hero. Being a hero takes work, it requires a sense of duty and honor. Yusaku has none of those qualities, or at least, he doesn't believe he does. He simply motivates himself to keep going, nothing more. He struggles to grow, to better himself, to recover. When he finds Ryoken and Takeru, it's a step up for him, much as it was when he met Kusanagi. They are people he can confide in and feel close with, but they are as traumatized as he is. Ryoken is distant and confrontational. Takeru is kind, but his personality is too different from Yusaku's own to connect. He remains in large part with all of his feelings internalized.

But what this does to Yusaku is set him up in a very vulnerable place. When he fails, when people close to him and that rely on him are let down, or taken away, he is damaged more and more. He has already lost so much in the course of the series. He allowed himself to rely on Go Onizuka and Blue Angel and ended up hurting them. Now his closest friends and allies are being defeated in the war against the Ignis. He has faced so much loss and had so many people he cares about get hurt that he is emotionally fragile. It'd be interesting to see him finally crack, finally open up and admit to someone that he's hurting and needs them. He has the people there, he simply needs to be open with them. And that role which would normally default to Ryoken can't be fulfilled because of Ryoken's own very poor coping making him distant. This is why I think Takeru is the right person to set both of them on the path to recovery. He's a kind person who wants the best for others, that's what Bohman even says upon defeating him. His earnest and caring demeanor is what it would take, in my opinion, to break through Yusaku's walls of defenses and distancing that he has set up as a coping mechanism to isolate his struggles and weakness from others, both as a result of a lack of trust and the duties placed on him as Playmaker, the Savior and Hero of Link Vrains. Only someone who has been in that position can really understand, or if anything, connect with him.

There is a lot more, honestly. I think signs of Yusaku’s intense state of depression brought on by his untreated trauma is really evident in almost everything he does as a character, and that’s why I like him so much. All that said, though, I’d basically be repeating myself so I’ll just close by saying Vrains has the potential to explore this in more depth and I hope desperately that that’s what we’ll get out of season 3. The Bohman narrative is pretty cliche and played and it doesn’t have quite as many opportunities for intimate character moments as I’d like. Yusaku isn’t gonna, y’know, open up about his trauma to Bohman during the final duel.

A forced duel between Soulburner and Playmaker, in a similar vein to the Kusanagi duel, could open that door and bring them closer together as well. It’d be nice to naturally integrate Takeru in the story a bit more, too.

[nazih-fares]

Over the past two years, between a hostile takedown by Vivendi and numerous other industry stories, I saw French publisher and development house Ubisoft continue to take risks and launch new IPs. After the recent Steep (which I said in my review needed a bit more of finishing touch), it is now the turn for For Honor to emerge, in a weird genre between a fighting game and MOBA mechanics, where three mighty Middle-Age warrior tribes fight an eternal war. Weird? Maybe, but it works.

First, let me start by saying that MOBA are not really my thing, and while I had fun with MMOs back in days (mostly World of Warcraft and Guild Wars), DOTA 2 or League of Legends are games that didn’t get the patience – or time for that matter – to fully get into it to a point that I know stats and traits of over 100 different characters.  Even with my short phase of playing both DOTA 2 and League of Legends, I had enough to understand the core concept of a MOBA, which is basically supporting a bunch of creeps that are your canon-fodder while you gain experience and be strong enough with your team to take over the enemy base. For Honor in this case is neither a MOBA nor an MMO, and feels more a fighting game that anything else, which was shocking for me as being in my top three most played gaming genre.

The MOBA and fantasy part of the game comes with its lore, arena fight mechanics as well as its character designs and choices (which can be also compared with the Omega Force’s titles). For Honor’s story is grounded by a fictional and eternal fight between Knights, Vikings, and Samurais, even though in real-life history, these “factions” never fought, but they do now because of some sort of world-changing cataclysm. Anyway the story is quite strange, and you discover slowly that there’s a mastermind behind this whole clash between factions, but what’s important to know is that the script of this game is not really what will get it awards. Nevertheless, there’s a “story” mode that tells the tale of three mighty Knight, Viking, and Samurai warriors, that will attempt to explain the mystic scenario of this game, while basically act as a long tutorial of each character class in each faction. Because of the AI enemy not being optimal in this story mode, I would advise to play this campaign with a friend that just grabbed the game as yourself, and play coop trough these 18 missions that need around 10-15 hours to finish depending on the difficulty levels, alongside the chance to find collectibles and other actions that will help you in customizing your gaming experience.

As you advance throughout the story, you’ll gain gold coins based on some criteria, and once you reach the 500 count, you’ll be able to start buying your very own new warrior class on top of the three starting one for each faction. Like the same strategy as Rainbow Six Siege’s operatives unlocking mechanics, Ubisoft Montreal decided to follow the same pattern and give you the chance as a player to unlock new characters the more you play the game (12 in total, 4 per faction). This logic also applies to the season pass owners, which will only get a seven-day head start to unlock the new characters, but if you wallet is heavy, you can also buy yourself the same coins with real-life currency and “speed” things up or unlock cosmetic upgrades to make each character unique in their own way.

In any case, let’s talk about each character class, shall we? First to be introduced in the story mode, are the Knight’s Vanguard, being the most versatile, easier to handle and do not have complex attack combos. However, don’t see them as the beginner class as they can become effective once you learn the depth of their technique, and their Viking counterpart can be tricky to handle with its two-handed ax, followed by the Samurai’s version with a long reach Katana. The second category includes the assassins (fitting for a Ubisoft game), which are weaker in terms of armor, more difficult to handle as they agile dual-handed warriors, except for the Samurai’ Orochi. Finally, the Heavy class of the game are like any tank in RPG: a beast of a warrior in terms of defense, and hit hard at the expense of slow movements. Finally, the hybrids are combinations of these three previously mentioned classes, with my personal one being the Viking’s Valkyrie armed which can harass swiftly like an Assassin, has Disabler abilities of the Samurai Heavy, and a long reach attack thanks to its lance (like the Samurai Vanguard).

With all this to take in consideration, and the depth of each faction’s differences even within each classes, comes the importance of training, and lots of it. The heart of the gameplay resides in a smart and simple to understand guard position (or stance), which is done to control which part of your body you want to attack and defend. So on screen, you’ll see this small chest overlay, with an arrow that is oriented up, left or right which respectively means that you are about to attack/defend your upper body, left or right side. While this seems simple by base, you discover a deeper and richer attack and defend mechanic, with a parry function that needs to be timed at the exact moment, counter attack combos, guardbreaks, and finally the map/arena itself plays a big part in the combat. You see, each arena has its own amount of obstacles, traps and cliffs which can become a viable solution to get rid of enemies, by using these environments to your advantage. There’s a fire in the middle of the field? No problem, harass your opponent until he’s forced to back into the pit and see its health fall dramatically.  present in each arena make it a viable solution when it comes to getting rid of an enemy who is unconcerned. When it comes to singleplayer, all these actions are perfectly responsive on the controller, but watch out when you play online, as a strict NAT will make you fall into the same misery of every fighting game: not being able to hit that perfect milliseconds life-saving parry because of lag. Technically speaking it’s worth mentioning that there’s difference between all platforms, with both base consoles running the game at a locked 1080p and 30 frames per second, while the PlayStation 4 Pro can reach 1440p and 30 frames per second, and PC can go as high 4K resolution but locked to roughly 40 fps (in comparison up to 90 fps with 1080p).

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Considering the fact that its main multiplayer mode sets up large battle scenes with dozens of soldiers duking it out, For Honor runs the risk of making your system stutter and lag as it tries to render all the carnage. However, I’m pleased to report that the game manages to pull off its epic stabfests with nary a stutter. Optimization is top-notch here, even with fires raging and explosions popping up. I set the dial to Ultra at 1080 and ran the game’s benchmark tool, which put my fps between 70 and 90. In real combat scenarios, I was able to hit 100 without Vsync, and with Vsync I managed a smooth 60. There were some minor stutters while turning quickly, but other than that the experience was noticeably hitch-free. In terms of controls, I will firmly recommend a controller. The reason for this is that the game’s super-intuitive and fun blocking mechanic is bound to the mouse on PC.

So instead of just flicking the right analog in the direction you wanna block, you flick your wrist to move the mouse. It’s uncomfortable and less precise, and I barely managed a few rounds with it. Stick to controller with this one, people. All in all, the game does a great job on PC and I had no trouble even when I scaled it up to 1440. Great optimization job all around.

Now as mentioned above, each “hero” will have its own advantage depending on the faction, meaning simply that my Knight Vanguard will not play the same as your Samurai version.  For example, the Viking Heavy called Warlords is equipped with a heavy shield and Gladius (Ancient Roman primary sword), which allows him to deflect blows easily and counter at close range. The list of combo styles are roughly no more than 8 or 9 variants, but the game is not lacking in depth as mastering each attack timing will require hours of actual AI or real-life opponent before it becomes a reflex.

For Honor as a game is played in confined arenas, which replicate what a medieval battle looks like without turning into an open-world game. This restriction is logical, as it helps makes the environment look stunning, whether it is the European style forest of the Knights to the exotic maps of the Samurai, passing by the snowy peaks of the Vikings. Yet the real prowess of the game lies in its engine and how it handles animations, with a realism that obviously reinforce the sheer power of some attacks, and how visually painful a hit can be. You just wait until you get to do your first assassination, you’ll just want to see more of that, like some sort of medieval Mortal Kombat style Fatalities.

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The game also has a great and effective UI and HUD, which pair visually in a great way with all actions done. For example, when you are in guard mode (a sort of lock-on aiming), the edges of the screen darken to better concentrate your attention on the locked enemy. Or my favorite is something called Revenge mode, which activates when you attack chain combos, or get damaged to near-death, and gives you this short couple of second invulnerable moment, and flashes with bright fire orange colors on screen. All these visual output are clearly Inspired by fighting games and the effect spectacle that follows great combos and super attacks.

But like most things in life, For Honor is not perfect, and has sadly the typical flaws of a newly launched internet-required game. First of all Matchmaking seems to be illogical for me, and getting paired with players of quite different skill levels, which explains the fact that the eSports/Ranked mode of the multiplayer is not launching until late April (in 2 month basically). It could be normal as matchmaking algorithms usually take time to identify a bunch of newly created accounts, but at the same time a technical beta, closed beta and open beta seemed to have not helped prevent server issues. In my case I managed to switch from a Strict to an Open NAT connection, but even that didn’t help with random disconnections from a multiplayer game.

Nevertheless, these launch issues will probably be fixed soon with a patch no doubt (as Ubisoft proved it with constant support on Rainbow Six Siege and The Division), but the biggest issue I believe is how niche this game is. You see, the campaign can be played alone or in coop, which offers several levels of difficulty thus could expand the lifespan of the game, but it’s the multiplayer modes and the number of variety that will truly make the game a long-term investment for players. Sadly due to this rare mix between a fighting game and MOBA style multiplayer modes, the complexity of it might not get the amount of players to truly make this a competitive or eSports hit, but who knows, it could become what Wargaming did with World of Tanks in Europe. In any case, its originality of gameplay features might arise curiosity in players, which will find everything you need of a game that is multiplayer firstly and a traditional singleplayer campaign game second. There’s 9 characters to unlock, a ranking system, “loot boxes” that contain equipment that boost your stats, or just cosmetic changes like a majestic mountain of golden spikes on top of helmet. To top thing off, there’s a sort of constant online Faction War (similar to the Mortal Kombat X system), which has you fight for one specific Faction, and all your feats during your multiplayer game will contribute War Assets to that banner. What this affects is the what territory each faction occupies on the For Honor world, which dictates which map you’ll be playing on as a defender in multiplayer, and which one when you’ll be the attacker.

One last thing to close this review, which is always a topic dear to me in videogames: the soundtrack. Sadly this is the thing that felt very unoriginal and bland, and even if some tunes are quite majestic, they don’t really ooze power and the fantastic theme that is a war between three iconic warrior factions of our history.

For Honor was reviewed using an Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC downloadable code of the game provided by Ubisoft Middle East. The PC version was tested by Mazen Abdallah on a PC running Windows 10, with an 8GB NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 fitted on a 4th Generation Intel i7 4790 3.6Ghz CPU and topped with 16GB of RAM, while the console versions were tested by Nazih Fares and Luciano Rahal. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.

Ubisoft’s For Honor is an enjoyable, visually stunning and gritty experience that might be a bit too original for its own good. Over the past two years, between a hostile takedown by Vivendi and numerous other industry stories, I saw French publisher and development house Ubisoft continue to take risks and launch new IPs.