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oumakokichi · 4 years

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Do you think that Kokichi had any remorse for Gonta during trial 4 or did he actually not care? I've seen a lot of people saying different opinions from both sides of the argument. But I'm really confused because there was a moment where after Gonta was executed, correct me if I'm wrong but Shuichi asked Kokichi if he could reveal the secret of the outside world (?) But Kokichi replied with something like “I don't want to....” and seemed generally upset? But then a few moments later he snapped out if it and began acting like he had no sympathy whatsoever. I just really wanna know how Kokichi actually, truly felt about Gonta and if he regretted manipulating him. Sorry if you've already been asked this and have already given an answer, thank you!

Hi anon—I actually wrote a pretty big master-post on chapter 4 not too long ago which I think more or less sums up my thoughts on Ouma’s behavior in the post-trial! You can find it here if you want (it’s pretty long and I tried to answer a whole bunch of questions about Ouma in chapter 4 specifically, since it’s the chapter I get asked about the most).

More specifically though, I’m afraid that there is no easy, definitive answer to that question. I can only share my personal opinions about how I believe Ouma felt in that scene. And personally? I do think he was genuinely upset and distraught about Gonta’s death, that he even momentarily considered giving up all his plans and being executed alongside him, and that he cared about Gonta and deeply regretted using him as a sacrificial pawn in his plans.

I’ll discuss what I mean in more detail, but it’ll probably get pretty long, so I’ll put the rest of this post under a cut as always!

The thing is, though, I’ve shared my personal thoughts about the chapter 4 post trial many times, including my reasoning and all of the textual evidence that shows how much Ouma cared about the rest of his classmates. But ultimately, there will probably always be some people who disagree, because their reading of the text will always be a little bit different. Unless we ever have an interview from Kodaka in the future where he directly says, “this is what Ouma was thinking and feeling at this exact moment,” there really won’t ever be a way to know what was going through his head with 100% certainty (and I do feel like leaving it open-ended is something of Kodaka’s intention, anyway, especially since Ouma is supposed to be a very polarizing character).

That being said, I do think it’s worth analyzing the text and drawing your own conclusions, because ndrv3 is a game that changes a lot depending on how you interpret it, and Ouma’s character is included in that. It’s really easy on a first playthrough to get wrapped up in what Ouma says or does without really looking at why he says it, or at his underlying motivations. Going back through the game on a replay though, I do personally think it’s possible to guess at what he might have been feeling during those super conflicting scenes in chapter 4.

In my opinion, I think Ouma did truly care about Gonta as a friend, and that his guilt and remorse over what he did was genuine. Not only did Ouma and DICE have a very strict taboo against killing (mentioned directly in his motive video in Japanese, though the part about it being an actual rule was stripped from the localization), but we don’t see Ouma’s façade crack like this very often. Most of the time when he does his trademark “crocodile tears,” it’s with his very loud, exaggerated crying sprite, and he bounces right back to acting normally within a moment or two.

There are a few exceptions to this, of course—he uses the “crocodile tears” sprite to cry at Kaede, Amami, and Toujou’s deaths, but it’s still very likely he was shaken up by seeing them dead). Nonetheless, we don’t see his much more subdued crying sprites more than a handful of times, particularly in the chapter 4 post-trial just before Gonta’s execution, as well as in Momota’s flashback in chapter 5 when he talks about how Ouma actually hated the killing game the whole time.

I’m aware that some people simply brush these moments aside and assume that Ouma is lying though all of them, but I personally just can’t agree with that interpretation. Assuming that Ouma is lying whenever he shows remorse or guilt or hatred for the killing game means assuming that he’s telling the truth in pretty much every other scene—which doesn’t make much sense, given that his entire character is centered around the concept of lying, as well as moral ambiguity and subverting expectations. Assuming that Ouma actually means what he’s saying 100% of the time unless it just happens to involve showing any kind of guilt or remorse turns him into a very boring, predictable, uninspired character (none of which are words I would use to describe him personally).

Ignoring those moments where Ouma shows genuine attachment to his classmates and distaste for the killing game also means ignoring several key pieces of evidence and clues about him that we are directly provided in the game, including his motive video and Momota’s flashback in chapter 5. Personally, I don’t feel like there’s any reason to include these scenes at all unless it’s to help shed light on Ouma’s motivations and provide players with a clear reason to try and go back through the game again to look at Ouma’s actions through a new perspective.

I also feel that Ouma genuinely cared about Gonta because to put it simply, there was no incentive for him to lie in that scene. He got absolutely nothing out of it—and considering he turns around and starts playing the villain on purpose all of 5 minutes after Gonta’s death, he definitely wasn’t trying to earn sympathy points or trick the rest of his classmates into trusting him. In fact, he could’ve easily tried to make himself look more sympathetic by putting all of the blame on Miu for trying to kill him, or even on Gonta. But instead he fully admits to coming up with the plan to kill Miu and spends the entire post-trial trying to convince everyone not to hate or blame Gonta.

If he was truly as sadistic and horrible as he pretended to be, I think he would’ve pulled a 180 and started throwing names and insults around while Gonta was still alive to hear it, not after he was already dead. If he didn’t care at all about Gonta’s feelings, he had no reason to try and take all the blame on himself while insisting that none of what happened was actually Gonta’s fault. If anything, revealing himself to be this horrible, evil villain who enjoys seeing other people suffer or die would’ve really been adding insult to injury, and probably would’ve crushed Gonta completely, even before his execution started.

But… Ouma doesn’t do any of this. Despite having every opportunity to either portray himself as more of a victim and fling all the blame on Miu and Gonta, or else to completely embrace being a villain who loved seeing people suffer, he doesn’t do either of these things. The way I personally see it, Ouma waits until Gonta is already dead, and when the rest of his classmates begin pushing him for answers about the outside world and demanding to know what Gonta saw, that’s when he finally snaps and resigns himself to acting like a villain in order to make everyone hated.

You could argue that trying to make everyone hate him had a twofold effect: it helped set the stage for him to pretend to be the ringleader in the next chapter, which he clearly wanted, but it also was a way of taking things out on himself and shows just a small glimpse of how much he hated having to dirty his hands in chapter 4. After all, Ouma even says it himself: that the “role of a villain is perfect for him,” because he’s already made everyone hate him. We see Ouma occasionally tease or antagonize the rest of his classmates plenty of times throughout the game, but it’s true that he doesn’t really step into that “villain” role until the end of chapter 4, once he’s crossed a line that he can never come back from by manipulating both Miu and Gonta to their deaths.

None of this is to say that what Ouma did to Gonta is okay, by any means. I think he definitely did care about Gonta and even thought of him as one of the few trustworthy people in the killing game, even someone close to a friend, but that doesn’t mean that manipulating him and using him like a chess piece was okay in the end. I just also think it’s important to realize that there were plenty of extenuating circumstances that led Ouma to act the way he did—including the fact tha he knew Miu was going to kill him, that he already suspected she had measures to prevent him from fighting back or killing her himself in the VR world, and the fact that he did not want to die or get everyone else killed in the trial.

It’s possible for people to care about others without necessarily treating them the best or doing the right thing. A huge part of Danganronpa, something that’s been evident from the very first game, is that sometimes characters can and do hurt each other, even when they care about each other or wouldn’t be a threat otherwise.

It’s the existence of the killing game itself that causes so many characters to go to extremes that they normally wouldn’t, whether it’s Maizono trying to frame Naegi in dr1 despite caring about him a lot, Kaede deciding to try and commit murder under everyone’s noses despite trying to unite the group and wanting everyone to trust her, or Ouma using Gonta as a pawn to kill Miu in his place because he didn’t want to die.

At the end of the day, people are still probably going to have very polarizing opinions about Ouma and the things he did in chapter 4, and that’s honestly okay. In my own opinion, Ouma definitely isn’t a completely flawless, innocent baby who “did nothing wrong”—he absolutely is manipulative, cold, and calculating when he wants to be, and it’s a fact that he got two people killed, even if he didn’t want things to reach that point. But I also personally don’t think it’s fair to write him off as the exact kind of “evil villain” he pretends to be; not only is it a shortsighted interpretation of his larger motivations, but it also completely ignores any replay value and completely shoots down the appeal of trying to interpret Ouma’s thoughts and actions because “he was lying about feeling bad anyway, what’s the point in analyzing him.”

Tl;dr: I do think Ouma cares about Gonta, that he probably even thought of him as the closest thing he had to a friend in the killing game, and that what he did to Gonta in the end wasn’t okay. I think he really did respect Gonta for being such a sweet and kind person, but that he also knew Gonta was extremely naïve and that he would be one of the easiest people in their group to manipulate, hence why he decided to rely on him instead of anyone else. Their friendship is an important part of both of their character arcs, but it’s definitely not what I would call “on equal footing.”

I understand why Ouma’s actions might make some people really resent him, but I also believe that kneejerk reaction of anger and dismissal is exactly the point: Ouma does feel terrible about the things he did, but he doesn’t want anyone’s sympathy or forgiveness, not even the player’s. This, in my opinion, is why he starts embracing the villain role so completely from this point on, and why he’s never quite able to make the same sort of cold, calculating sacrifices in chapter 5 that he did in chapter 4.

I hope this helps answer your question, anon, along with the other chapter 4 post I wrote! Thank you for all your support!

#danganronpa #ndrv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #ouma kokichi #my meta #ask #anonymous #ndrv3 spoiles //#okay to reblog

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zirkkun · 4 years

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I can't sleep so I'm gonna ramble for a minute here about. uh. 2020 i guess lol everyone else is so might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Be aware this is really really fucking long so it's a commitment to read it lmao sorry i just cannot sleep and i guess i had more on my mind about this year than i thought. I also did not proofread this at all. I just started writing and didn't look back lol

This year was... Weird for me. It started out with me feeling my best in January, comfortable and positive as I did my nth playthrough of DBH with friends and finally having enough alts of my boy Alfonse in FEH to have a team of Just him to fight with. (Priorities, right?) February hit, and things were still going good. I met Ray Chase and had him sign a print I did of Roy and Alfonse in some casual outfits for a scrapped au I wrote years ago. (And I gave him one 😊). Hell, like, covid was just coming around when me and my friends went to the con that weekend and a breakout of it hit the city just south of where the con was like a week before, but I was genuinely so excited for it that like I was like "Yeah, if i die, i die. Whatever happens happens." God, at this point, the Alfonse gc I was in was still alive and I still didn't talk to anyone in the group outside of that gc. Lowkey miss it tbh. But oh well. Things move on.

But that con was like... Stressful. I usually have fair amounts of stress at cons, being around so many people, I fear theft, unwanted contact, y'know, the standard; but my friend group was so filled with tension that it was absolutely painful. We'd been split most of the weekend, and if the two groups came together, it was hell, because it just caused unwanted arguments. I felt really bad cause I didn't want them to be upset, yknow? But i also wanted to hang out with my friends all at once. So i swapped between the groups a bit over the weekend. And blew WAY more money than I should have and lowkey it kind of fucked me over for the rest of the year cause I haven't had a job all year outside of, like, a local church job that pays at a rare max of $100 a month ;w;

I'd been struggling in school the previous semester already, about halfway through having just stopped going to classes altogether, yet still somehow managed to pass everything with B's and A's. The next semester rolled around, and I thought at first the distraction and inability to do anything was because of the con, and as it persisted after, I thought it was just post-con depression. But, as it turned out, no, it's just been my biggest relapse of depression since the end of high school, and frankly, it's only gotten worse since. I can't sleep rn because I'm between not wanting to do anything because I have a lack of emotions and motivation and not feeling deserving of sleep lol. I checked out of school on February 28th, however, I was convinced I was merely demotivated by my surroundings -- at this point, I was studying Japanese, and one of my friends at the time was a (although probably unintentionally) complete braggart about how much he was studying and how he was improving... not to mention he was textbook example of "This is an Actual Weeaboo, don't Fucking Do this." (One of many reasons i said friend at the time lol) it was just... So draining being around him, and I had to see him in class every day of the week. I barely scraped together assignments last-minute and never studied under the idea of "What does it matter if I'm not putting in my 100%?" So I checked out, with plans of transferring for the following semester.

Well, then March hit. Y'all know how March went down lmao.

I pretty much locked myself in my room at all times during March, going between Animal Crossing and BOTW (which actually racked up like 200ish hours i think according to the nintendo year in review i had lmao). I started making a bit closer online friends at this point, notably @levitumbling who decided to take me in as his channel designer for YouTube and I've been ever since! But. Of course. My first task? A Sans meme. My payment? One Switch copy of Undertale because he considered it a disgrace that I'd never played the game before.

Now, let me tell you. I was fuckin scared to play this game. I held onto it for weeks between the fear of "My friend bought me this and i should play this" and "I told myself I'd never touch this game with a 20 mile pole because of how much it's been shoved down my throat over the years." So, one day, I don't remember when, early April, I said, fuck it, I'll play it for a little bit, just enough to say "hey i played it for a bit!" and then never go back.

The only thing that stopped me from beating the whole thing in one sitting was it was the crack of dawn when I passed out, extremely tired and extremely frustrated by the fact I couldn't beat Muffet. Yes, I got that far in one sitting I intended to play for 15 minutes tops.

Now. Let me fuckin tell you. About my first playthrough of Undertale. I haven't gone into a game knowing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it like... I think ever. Usually I know what style of game it is, the genre, the main plot premise. I knew nothing other than the existence of Sans (and, as it turned out, I'd heard some of the soundtrack pieces before, notably Bonetrousle I heard this cover of it in a radio livestream a while back and never really looked it up, but was always excited when the radio looped back around to it being on; and I'd heard Dating Start! because that's Alpharad's go-to sponsorship ost lmao.) But anyway. I was completely in the dark. Do yall mind if i just go through some highlights of my favorite memories? This is supposed to be a summary of the year but I mean, I think this made a big enough impact on me to really like. Discuss it a bit.

I watched the whole opening cutscene, started a new game under my old screenname, "Yoru," since in naming the "Fallen Child," I assumed they were dead. Well, I was a little surprised to just be that child, alive, two seconds later, but whatever, I rolled with it.

I genuinely trusted Flowey right away. Like no shit. He told me run into the "friendliness pellets" and I didn't even fucking question it. And when Toriel came in? And she said to follow her? I straight up was like "Why the hell should I trust you?? That guy just tried to kill me what says you wont?" I followed only because the game made me but i was Wary the whole time. It took me a LONG time to warm up to Toriel.

Now. Let me tell you how stupid I am as well. The game says over and over right, "Don't fight. Spare. Have Mercy when names are Yellow." Well, I took this literally. I didn't understand the Act mechanic most of the time, and when something didn't work I just said, fuck it, and fought them. If their name didn't turn yellow, I just fought them. "They don't want Mercy if their name isn't yellow, right?" After a while, I'd started getting bored of fighting and would just run away, but like, I came to a point where I was like "I have a really low level, I'm really going to regret this later on if I don't grind for a while."

I don't know when I stopped but. I think I was only one or two kills away from a genocide run accidentally my first playthrough, based on how I think I was LV 3 and looking at genocide playthroughs, you're LV 3 or 4 when you fight Toriel. Like. Holy fuck. I can't imagine what I would have thought of this game if that happened lmao.

Speaking of Toriel, still didn't trust her, at all. When we got to Home, and after I did Every Single different phrase she says when you go downstairs before you talk to her reading about snails; I did not Hesitate to ask "cool uh when the fuck can I leave?" When we got to the Ruins exit I was like, ah, here it is. The betrayal from her I was expecting, where she tries to kill me. Well, nothing on the Act menu worked, right? So... I fought and killed her. I didn't really care, actually. I just kept going.

Then meeting Sans and Papyrus happened. I lost my fucking shit at this part, mostly when they were talking, because every time Sans made a pun it would zoom in on him and do a rimshot. The puns were not funny and I was definitely on Pap's side of "oh my GOD shut up." But that fucking zoom in and rimshot was just so fourth wall breaking and unexpected. Fuck, it still gets me. Anyway. Game continues. I again lose my shit at (insane spinning in random directions) "OH MY GOD! IS THAT A HUMAN?" "uh, i think that's a rock." "OH. WAIT! WHAT'S THAT IN FRONT OF THE ROCK?? (IS IT A HUMAN??)" "(yes.)" "OH MY GOD!!!" and still think these two moments in the game are Peak comedy. Oh, and let me tell you, I did not like either of these two at this point. Sans I was like, okay, hes kind of a dumbass in a funny way, but Papyrus is a dumbass in a way that just annoys me. Genuinely the archetype that misses social cues and therefore has miscommunication usually just annoys me to no end. (Mostly for the miscommunication. It's my least favorite trope and makes me unreasonably angry.) But yeah. Wasn't really a fan. But out of everyone so far? Definitely found Sans to be the most tolerable. But that's about all I thought of him lmao.

Getting to Snowdin, with the Papyrus battle, remember how I said I didn't like Papyrus? And yes, this was something I genuinely thought at one point, I genuinely hated Papyrus, imagine that. What a wild world that is. But anyway. You know how his Act menu has the "Flirt" option? I, for no reason, gunned it for the Flirt option, even though I did not want to. Then when he was like "WE'LL GO ON A DATE! LATER!!" i was like yea sure okay lmao. Again, couldn't figure out the Act menu to turn his name yellow, so I fought him, and he was one or two attacks from dying (miraculously) when he ended the battle. I spared him here cause, well, he spared me, it was only fair. Then this guy again is like "ILL BE AT MY HOUSE WHEN YOU WANT TO GO ON THAT DATE!" and i was like haha funny but still turned around to go on the date. Like why? I have no idea. I think I was more like "haha hes probably not gonna be there and its just cause i picked that option and lo and behold there was an actual fucking date. Oh my god. I have never in my life been on a video game date where one party was convinced I was infatuated with them and im here on the other side of the screen like "oh my god make this end i can't stand being around you.???" But still. The date was. Really fucking funny. I wish I could experience it for the first time again like holy shit. There are few playthroughs I did after this where I didn't go on the Pap date, even if I just spedrun through it.

So then you get to Waterfall and Sans is there like "hey wanna go to grillbys" and i was like sure why not so we go there and my choices were fries & ketchup (so i did not get the legendary scene where he chugged a bottle of ketchup, but i sure did my second playthrough, and let me tell you, i was disgusted). But like. This whole experience at grillby's like, the whoopee cushion, him using a comb on his bald ass skull, him just fuckin unapologetically scratching his ass for no reason?? Bro i was like "why the fuck is this guy part of the Tumblr Sexymen™ group ??? He's so ????? Gross???????" and like i still have this question tbh lmao. But like. Okay so he asks you "what do you think of my bro?" And my genuine answer was "uncool" and he was like "hey man sarcasm isnt funny" and can i just mention how like inheritly manipulative sans actually is like fuck he does things like this where he throws your answer the other way a few times and Every time it actually swayed me the other way. Because right here I went. "Oh. Maybe Papyrus is better than I thought." Like holy fuck maybe i should be more aware if something like that can sway my opinion so easily LMAO.

Anyway waterfall i genuinely was very bored of the whole time. I spent like a genuine 20 minutes figuring out the puzzle where you have to talk to a wall and I actually didn't realize you could move the telescope around. What helped me solve it is my friend's advice before I played it. "Inspect everything. Even talk to walls. Trust me." And literally thats how I solved it. But pretty much everything in Waterfall otherwise bored me. I did think it was pretty though, and did enjoy reading the lore, but when it started talking about monster biology my one fear had been realized: oh god, oh fuck. My original species for my own series also has physical Souls and die by turning to dust because they're made entirely of magic. God fuck. My luck, it has to be something popular, so now everyone's gonna think I'm a ripoff. But, at the same time, I do think it helped me understand monster biology (and it helped me come up with the ULR biology) better, because I've put in a lot of thought to existence of a species that exists only by magic and a Soul (which, mine only actually have half a Soul, as a full Soul makes a being immortal, which was also similar to the boss monsters in a way). It definitely made a lot more sense for like, the skeletons n stuff for me, because like my characters are wholly shapeshifters but usually take human form, and while they have "organs" in the places humans would have them, they don't operate. They're just placeholders, because they just live with their Soul. So I've always thought the same with UT monsters, since the skelebros can live without organs, that means so do the rest of the monsters, even if they have animal-like appearances.

Off topic lmao. Back to UT. So, the Undyne fight was kind of the turning point for me. She was pissing me off so much during this whole game and like I was like "if theres another fucking part where I have to run away from her im going to scream." Well, once again, her name wasn't yellow, so I wasn't going to spare her... and, actively, I made the decision to kill her, because I didn't want to deal with her still chasing me later on in the game. It took me a long time to beat her, and when I did, I texted my friend (@cheshiregrinnbuttoneyes ) in excitment like "YES I FINALLY KILLED UNDYNE" and she texted back like "YOU DID WHAT?????" and i was like "i.... Killed Undyne????" she replies, "YOU DONT HAVE TO OMFG WHY" and im like "I DIDN'T HAVE TO?? THERE'S OTHER OPTIONS?????" and shes like "YES OMFG THAT'S LITERALLY THE PREMISE OF THE GAME" and im "WHAT."

So then. I get that call from Papyrus like. "HEY! YOU ME AND UNDYNE SHOULD HANG OUT SOMETIME!"

oh my god the guilt i felt.

alphys on undernet being like "omfg i forgot to watch undyne fight the human. ah ill ask her about it later she never loses <3"

bro. i nearly fuckin cried. i was like. Not to mention I'd gotten the crush question right for Mettaton's quiz in answering Undyne (bc i was like "plz be gay plz be gay") so it fucking cut like a knife what I'd done.

I don't remember when I let myself get passed it. But I do know that the whole story arc between Alphys and Mettaton went way over my head. Like, i know im probs the minority on this, but I adore Alphys, I have since I first met her in game, and like, when Mettaton was like "ALPHYS HAS BEEN LYING TO YOU!" i just went "...nah."

Also, I didnt like mettaton at this point, cause I thought he was being really obnoxious, and then the turn around to betray Alphys really kinda pissed me off.

But like.

Oh my god.

Remember how I said I swapped my opinion on Pap earlier bc of Sans's comment? Yeah that was a pretty fast turnaround, but it still took me a few times.

But the second i saw mettaton ex

I was like

"HIM. HE. HE'S THE ONE I LOVE."

Like, full turnaround from Undyne, I actively refused to kill him. All times I thought he was an asshole? Forgotten. Me thinking he's a selfish prick? Gone. Nada. Nothing. Pure adoration. Suddenly every flaw he had was pushed aside purely from how hot I thought he was. Also, fuckin, im really glad i played this when no one in my house was awake, because I still didn't understand the Act mechanic here, and every time you attack mettaton he has this like moan he does and im like oh my god. stop. omfg.

At the end, too, when there was the calls and everything, when he had his big turnaround, I was just so happy for him I genuinely cried. Also, I had to do his battle probably the most out of everyone's in the game (not including genocide), so when it came around to his battle during the (glitchless) speedruns i did, i was more invested in how fast I could rack up points, cause you need 10k rating points to pass, and I actually did get that before he lost his legs, but apparently he needed to lose those too before you passed lol. Unfortunate.

Anyway after Alphys talked to you and everything, i genuinely went to see if Mettaton was still there, but he wasn't :( so i just went to New Home. I was very ill prepared for the fight against Asgore and the only reason I struggled with it so much was because my only healing items were like. Something that healed like 10 or 12 hp and the snowman piece. I was LV 9 when i finished the game, so like, my HP was pretty high, but i didnt have the G to buy items, so i was pretty much fucked. Yes. I had to eat the snowman to win.

Oh speaking of terrifying shit though. Photoshop flowey? My god. I haven't been afraid of a video game boss so much since I was a little kid. It was like 3 am and i was not prepared for him to just delete my save file and then kill me on repeat, glitching and breaking everything as he pleased. Bruh i was genuinely scared. Like, not even just, "oh yikes :(" or something. Like, crying scared. Lmao im an emotional bitch by nature.

I of course had to restart from the beginning again to get the True Pacifist ending. I was very careful to never touch the Fight button literally ever. And, it actually took me a while to reset, because I hate erasing my original save files, yknow? But, well, as it turned out? While technically New Game+ by naming, resetting doesn't erase everything you did. It wasn't a new file. I was a little confused at first to be honest. Toriel saying things were familiar, remembering things I said, Papyrus and Undyne both recognizing me, like. It was unnerving.

When I got to the end, i had to look up how to get Alphys's date (since my friend told me the way to unlock TP was to go on all the dates, but Alphys's was definitely designed in mind of you turning around from New Home and going back to talk to people rather than a new reset. So after unlocking it, getting through Alphys's date (i still remember being like, verbally, "omg alphys you look so nice??" When she came out with the dress on and then had a thought to myself like... since when do i care about what people look like? since when do i compliment people? At that point, while I didn't consider myself to be a rude person, I definitely wasn't exactly all that concerned about others for anything. Sure, I cared about others' lives, but I tended to be a bit more judgemental internally, and just. Didn't really give a fuck about what people did in the most negative sense possible, unless it involved me. Yet, it rolled off my tongue like it was something id say normally to anyone. I really wonder if this is the true turning point for me this year.)

Getting to the end, with everyone cheering me on. Hoo boy. This was the start of many tears to come. Papyrus's "DO WHAT I WOULD DO! BELIEVE IN YOU!!" sticks with me the most. I wasn't surprised by Flowey's actions, but what fucking threw me for a loop was like. When Flowey was revealed as Asriel, I was genuinely jaw-drop shocked. I was like. Holy fuck. I thought he was dead. What the hell. To this day, though, i still think Hopes and Dreams hits me the hardest out of all the boss battle themes. It doesn't super bother me, bc like, difference in opinion is whatever, but like. Whenever I see Megalovania at the top of someone's ost list for Undertale I'm just... Why? Maybe it's because I'd overheard it meme'd to much before I played the game, but like, i dunno, it's not a bad song, but it's not the most emotional provoking piece for me, so it's pretty far down my list. Hopes and Dreams will still remain my #1.

I really did feel determined during this battle. I really felt a lot of emotion. I felt excited. I felt frightened. I felt ambitious. Asriel's battle is probably still the hardest for me, and yes, I'm counting genocide this time. I can't grasp his magic patterns at all, and I more so played it as a "okay, how much damage can i take? Whats his next move?" As i healed every other turn. It took me a very long time to beat him (though no 11 hours like Sans, this was more like, 2 or 3 max) and when I got to the part with the Lost Souls, most of the characters just said their "we hate you" piece and i was like "nope you're controlled" right.

But then there's Sans's "just give up. i did."

I genuinely had to stop. I set down my controller and just sat for a minute. I'd mentioned before how much I've been struggling with depression for years now, and it's at the worst it's been since high school. Maybe you'd think when I saw that, I was like "sure, maybe I should give up." But... It's really the "i did." that hit me like a rock to the stomach. While I do know a couple other people with depression, the most discussion we have with it is "haha i wanna die" kinda jokes yknow? Nothing really serious. And, well, I've always been the type to lean to fictional characters for support more than real people, since I've just been so disconnected from a lot of friends growing up and was too scared to talk about anything with my family.

So seeing someone else say "just give up. i did." hit me so fucking hard that I just started crying. I had already been in a real sappy mood cause the whole scene was so emotional as it was, even if merely the cliche of friendship will save all, y'know what? Its a good ass fuckin trope and makes me emotional lmao.

So, naturally, I was more hyperaware of Sans's implied depression from here onward. The conversations with everyone post-battle left me crying. God, so did the hug with Asriel. I was just fucking bawling.

Oh god. I didn't even mention. "Despite everything, it's still you." Another line that just hit me and I had to pause.

So admist my crying mess, I was telling my friend I'd beat Undertale again. He asks me "so... you gonna play the genocide route?" And I already had from the beginning. I always want to play every available route in a game. I see no point in paying for something and then not playing it all. I'd consider myself a completionist who doesn't ever actually finish anything lmao.

I definitely put my emotions aside for genocide. The absolute hardest kill for me was Papyrus, though. And i was absolutely fucking heartbroken when he said he still believed me as his last words. But I forced it aside. I didn't want to reset. I wanted to beat it to have it under my belt that I had. I was pretty sure the Sans battle would be here, since I hadn't heard Megalovania in the game yet, and I was aware of how hard the battle was, despite never seeing it.

Undyne's battle I'm more emotional about in retrospect than I was at the time. At the time, I didn't care, didn't like the theme much, and the dings gave me a headache. Undyne isn't exactly my favorite character (though definitely not my least favorite, that role is given to Frisk with Toriel not close behind ahdhsb im sorry), so I really wasn't concerned about it. Not to mention, I don't know why, but all of the battles I struggled with EXCEPT Undyne's I ended up liking the character more as a result. Maybe it was the dinging lmao.

Bro you shoulda seen how prepared I was for Mettaton NEO's battle to be hard as fuck. I was like sitting upright, took deep breaths before hitting fight, then when he died in one shot i just kind of "wh...what." Still very disappointed lol but I guess that's kind of the point of the genocide route.

Then came the Sans fight. As I said, I spent 11 hours on this. I genuinely didn't pay attention to what he said after a while, but I do remember the first time I read it, I was fucking terrified. Usually, sarcasm, hatred, and sass is very hard to convey through pure text, especially when it's said in the same tone as his usual talking. But the absolute harshness, the coldness, and the lack of any fucks given Sans had at that point was so plainly transparent through everything he said that it fucking scared me. Toby Fox's writing here was fantastic. I can only dream of being able to write like that. Frankly, I love his writing in general. Actually, fuck it, I love all of the artistic takes of this game. This is gonna sound weird but... The "childishness" of it just is so good. Like, there's no rules. Every socially accepted rule of art, writing, character design, speech patterns, and even basic grammar are thrown aside. He didn't just think outside of the box, there literally was no box. I call it childish only because like, children also create with no rules. They have no rules to restrict their creativity. And seeing that embraced in Undertale in every form possible just blows me away.

Anyway. The battle. It. Was hard. Thats a given. I spent about two weeks playing it on and off, and it's probably the most healthily I've treated myself in recent memory, because when it became too much for me to handle, I set it down and took a break. I would retain what I memorized and use it for the next time I picked it up. Frankly, it came to a point where every time I opened up Undertale to play, it was more just cause I wanted to see him lmao. The guy hated my existence at this point and it's not like i disacknowledged that. But it just felt like every time i opened the game... Idk. I don't know what I felt. I can tell you for sure this isn't the time when Sans started slipping into my favorite character spot over Mettaton, that didn't come until the development of Act to Flirt's first demo, which was a month or so later lmao.

I was very excited when I beat Sans.

But then, after it was over, I felt very empty.

I didn't feel good about beating genocide. I still don't. I want to play the boss battles again, cause they were really fun, despite how hard they were, but I can't bring myself to.

When I got to Chara, and everything went to black, I just wiped my save and started fresh. I think this was the first time I used the name "Willo" for anything. I just picked a random name to use, and Willo was the first thing that came to mind.

I beat neutral again many times, trying to unlock as many secrets as I could. I accidentally spent like, way too long trying to get Sans's room, because I couldn't figure out how to do it... which is when I started speedrunning the game, because I was just so used to going through it all. I timed myself once, and I got somewhere around 1:20:00 ish, which puts me at the very bottom of the NG+ Glitchless runs by like 30 minutes, but hey, it's still not too bad all things considered.

I'd started working on Act to Flirt sometime in between the speedruns. I was playing Papyrus's date again, and I had this thought of. What if Undertale... but all boss fights are instead like Papyrus's date?? I pitched the idea to my friend who was like "thats definitely been done before lol" and immediately I almost shut down the idea. But then I still had that glimmer of hope that, maybe, since I haven't made it yet, people would like my game because it was by me. Besides, quarantine was getting to me. I needed some way to spend my time. So on May 6th to May 7th, I spent the whole 24 hour period making the first proof of concept for the game, which was UI setup and Flowey's tutorial date. I hadn't made any of the art yet, so it was a black background with Flowey's undertale sprite. I originally was going to make everything more visual novel like in the sense that, so like on Papyrus's date, you could make choices like "unwrap the present" "dont unwrap the present" or "you look great" "you look terrible" and getting the ending would involve pretty much just saying the right things at the right times. But this alone was... Yknow, already done before, and part of what makes Undertale so great is that it's, despite its many outside influences, very unique in its gameplay. So I decided to make the dates more like puzzle-solving RPG's, and frankly, since doing that, I dont know if I want to go back to making other visual novels lmao.

After making the first demo and releasing it, I hit a creative funk. I wanted to make the next demo right away, but I forced myself to stop (since i was working 16+ hour days to finish it in exactly a week. I didn't eat much and i slept very little during this time too. Dont do this lmao). I didn't know if the game would be received, and frankly, I'd had many failed projects in the past due to lack of support. I lost a lot of support in the past due to the dropped projects I kept starting and quitting because I had such a small audience, and that made me lose a lot of interest and motivation to work on them. So I posted the first demo and waited. I was very shocked to have a YouTuber with over a million subs play it that weekend. Dantekris I think was her channel name. She speaks Russian, and I never understood a word she said, but I've still watched her let's plays because I enjoy seeing her reactions. I hate that YouTube keeps deleting my responses on her videos, probably because they're long and in English so it's marked as spam on a comments section full of purely Russian comments yknow. But it makes me feel like such an ass ;w;

Mairusu is the next large YouTuber who played it and my god I love seeing when he uploads a new update for my game because I genuinely have no idea what to expect from him. I don't know what it is but he's just so absolutely funny to me. He also seems to be the most common breaker of my game though. Stop making your own bugs!! I try to testplay to find the bugs he gets and it's like.... what did you do.... how did you skip that whole date im so confused thats not supposed to happen..... He accidentally skipped all of Muffet's date because of this too and hers is supposed to be the hardest in the game right now so I'm very upset by it;; i dont know how it happened, it never happens for me.

But like. I was definitely struggling a bit with the direction I wanted to take AtF. I wanted there to be a core message, like with Undertale and many other of my favorite things. When there's a core theme to write about, it makes things a lot easier to compose than if you have a plot with no meaning to it. It ties it all together for a common purpose. But, as I started diving more into the fandom around this time, finding not only it being still alive but still enormous and filled with passion.

Passion. Hm. That's familiar. That's the trait I gave the player character, rather than determination. While it was intended for giggles "haha dating game u have passion wink wonk," it started becoming more than that. It started becoming a manifestation of what I really felt upon finally soaking myself into the deep end of this pool I'd once been too afraid to step into. Passion. Everyone here is so driven by their passion for this game, the characters, its story. Everyone is so inspired and creative. That's it. That's what I wanted Act to Flirt to be.

A game made for those who have already dived deep into Undertale. A game made for those who have the same level if passion I've wittnessed. A game that someone might stumble upon, merely wanting any Undertale content they can find, and a dating sim leaves them grasping at straws, only to find it's a game instead deeply rooted in how much they care about this world and its people. You have a Soul of Passion, because your passion for Undertale brought you to this game. That's what the core message is. Every ending is supposed to depict different kinds of empathy, and True Passion shows you truly cared the most you could for all of these characters. Sans is so blocked from it because, well, how can he really believe it? "if we're really friends, you won't come back," right? But here you are. Again and again.

And Heartbreak. Whose heart is really the one breaking here? Taking the Hopes and Dreams of every single character you've grown to care for and crushing it beneath your feet... who is the one suffering in the end?

I just... I'm very excited. I've written that game with the player as the main character. Not Willo. Not Frisk. Not anybody else. You, the player, are the main character. I've honestly done a lot of looking around in the DDLC code to make this game as 4th wall breaking as I can (without like. Disrupting it as a game experience like ddlc is, with monika deleting things and stuff). Just enough to leave the player unsettled and confused. Like. "Me? Are you talking to me?" Yes. You. Directly to you.

I started sketching out designs and ideas for ULR around July. I genuinely loved Underlust after finding out about it, even though it was posed to me as an insult about the contents of Act to Flirt. I was both like "uh... Act to Flirt is nothing like this. Maybe in reversed roles at best but..." and also "okay but this? This shit is good. Thank you." But finding out it was discontinued and wanting more, well, that's when I decided to make ULR. I presented the idea to my friends, who were like "please stop making aus," and then continued onward. I told myself I wasn't going to work on it though until after I finished Act to Flirt... Then after the next demo came out... Then it turned out I was working on it too much and it resulted in me rushing my release of the 3rd demo of AtF because I'd been so distracted I was going to miss my release deadline of the end of August, before school. I... Still kinda regret that a lot. It's still very buggy. Though I hope I got them all for the next demo...

But speaking of school .... ha... Remember when i said i was going to transfer to another school? Well, I did, and for the first few weeks it was fine! Then I started skipping assignments I didn't want to do. Then I started panicking about my low grades. Then I started getting behind on assignments. Then I stopped going to classes. Then I lost all motivation to work on anything at all. I just locked myself in my room and did next to nothing with the occasional drawing here and there, for weeks. It came to the point where I was like "I just have to get through this semester, then I'll drop out." But if I ever wanted to go back to school, having all F's on my last report card would not bode well for my acceptance. Which lead to more stress. I didn't want to fail, but I also didn't have any motivation to work. I would do one assignment here or there, feel good about myself, then realize I was still months behind on work and suddenly oh god oh fuck finals are next week. And my solution? I just. Fuckin dropped out. Oh my god. It was such a relief to just get that weight off my shoulders that I'd been carrying for months on end, preventing me to do anything I wanted to work on.

Well. Then my car tires died. So that's a thing. But good news! Between commissions and gifts, I have enough money to get them replaced! I don't think I've ever like... Been so excited about that before.

And, well. Now I'm here, pretty much. God, I just went through my entire year summary, and it feels like it was both forever long but also not long at all. I don't get it. 2021 still feels like a far off future, despite the fact I'm now 5 hours into it. Yes, I spent 4 hours writing this. Whoops. Oh well. I couldn't sleep anyway, so it's not that big of a deal.

All in all though... Despite being locked inside, away from my friends, unable to talk to anyone about the things i was enjoying, and living in fear of getting sick at all ever with anything, 2020 definitely fuckin changed me for the better. It was a hellhole of a year and I'd never do it again or wish it upon my worst enemy, but I came out a better person... I think. I hope.

It seems cliche to bring back but fuck it. Undertale? My friend insists its core message was that anyone can be a good person if they just try, which I mean, it definitely probably was intended that way. But that never was the message I felt while playing it.

What lesson I took from it was "things aren't always as they seem."

Flowey betrays you immediately, but then you find out he's just the remnants of a boy who died years ago and is still grieving over the loss of his best friend, whomst, despite how much he cares for them, recognizes they weren't good to him and he'd been manipulated and used by them.

Toriel is a kind and caring woman, a still grieving mother over the loss of her children, who seems to have kindness to no end, but is actually filled with such hatred and depression that she regularly gets drunk, swears, and still, without resilience, hates her ex husband.

Sans is a playful character who is full of puns, a gross atmosphere, and decided to break physics just because he can. He's the embodiment of a comic relief character. But at the same time, he's suffering, struggling, in constant pain and worry. He's lazy, but quick on his feet. He's harmless but will kill without hesitation if need be. He's both caring and the least caring of them all.

Papyrus is like... a self-centered asshole in a way, when you first meet him. He prides himself and everything he does. Yet still, he's actually quite open and accepting and loves everyone. He loves talking with and being with other people, even if maybe sometimes he has a different interpretation of social interaction from the "norm."

Undyne comes off as cruel and deadly, such even being emphasized in many points. But, deep down, she's extremely caring for those who are close to her, and her only cruelty is dealt to those who have wronged her in some way.

Alphys is a sweet and nervous wreck who comes off as helpful and lacking a filter due to her tendency to ramble. She seems to be merely anxious due to likely social anxiety... But you eventually find out that she's a liar who merely wants to create a world to be a better place, and by doing so, she pretends all the bads do not exist.

Mettaton comes off as an absolute self-centered asshole. Like. There's no way around that. He seemingly has no regard for other people with only full intentions of helping himself. But, deep down, he actually cares a lot for other people, especially his family and friends, and just tends to get caught up in things while he's in the moment.

Muffet seems to be greedy with how much money she begs people to give her for the spiders, but, as it turns out, she's flat broke and drops no G when you beat or kill her. She merely needs the money to help the spiders.

Asgore, too, is built up to be this ruthless killer throughout the whole game, and when you finally meet him, he's an incredibly sweet guy who's only filled with regret, and because of his past decisions, has decided to put aside his hopes for the sake of his people.

I...

Didn't see any of these characters for who they really were right away. Why would I? Few of these archetypes are explored much in a lot of fiction lately, or at least what I've been consuming; and is more focused around how someone can change their flaws into something positive... Not how to accept someone for who they are, despite the wrongs they may have committed or the lives they lead. Everyone's different. Everyone's grown up differently. Everyone has a reason for what they do.

And it took me playing this game to realize such a simple concept that I probably should have learned years ago.

That's why I really think 2020 changed me for the better. I made a realization that I should have had many years ago, and it's made me a lot more confident in expressing myself, accepting people for what they do, and seeing the brighter side to everything. I say that, sitting here filled with nothing and void of all emotion whatsoever... But it's a conscious thought i have. My emotions are so weird... They're either on full blast or I feel nothing at all. But yet I have... Thoughts of what i should feel? It's weird. Idk. This is why I'm getting therapy LMAO

But yea. 2020? Fuck you. But also thank you. But mostly fuck you and good riddance lmao

#zircon rambles #a lot #lol #its very long im sorry #i spent way too long writing this too #also please don't reblog this

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peachyydesires · 4 years

Text

The YTTD Cast Playing Minecraft

genre: crack / platonic relationships

warnings: n/a

bloopers: 🌳 [tba]

a/n: my good friend, alyson, and i wrote this as a collab together! she has an ao3 account that she recently started for both danganronpa and your turn to die! if you like either fandom, i 110% suggest to go check out her work/subscribe to her! she’s an amazing person so go show her some love if you can!! i recruited her a bit last minute and we spent all day yesterday writing, but this was definitely one of the most enjoyable things to write so far!

Keiji Shinogi (Aka The 1st Boomer):

❏ This man has BARELY any idea how to play Minecraft at first. Hell, he even had to get Gin to help him install it on his computer. He has to learn how to even use the basic controls, and he’s constantly asking the others what certain keys do (does he do this just to be annoying? The world may never know).

❏ Once he gets the hang of the game, things go a little bit smoother, but not completely. While he may have quickly learned all of the buttons, there’s still a lot more to Minecraft such as PVP, building, mining, the bosses, crafting, etc, and that takes him an eternity to learn (don’t even get me STARTED on the Nether and the End). Without his other friends, he’d probably be stuck in the middle of the night with zero protection or tools on him to fight the mobs that spawn.

❏ He’s mostly just there for the laughs; while he’ll try to stay out of the way from his friends, he’ll show up at the most erratic times. He’ll either immediately teleport himself to someone in the middle of fighting a group of mobs or invade someone’s house and steal their stuff just for fun.

❏ While he’s not as much of a prankster as Shin, he’ll still do some of the most random actions ever, even if it’s not to annoy others. He’ll place down a random door in the middle of a room and just leave it there, or make several holes in the ground while trying to punch some grass to clear it out. When the group is on a voice call, 90% of the call is just the others yelling at Keiji to stop planting trees on their farms.

❏ He’s not one to explore, but wherever his friends are, he is. He’ll tag along with them nearly anywhere, whether they’re doing a dangerous excursion to the End or traveling across the sea, he’ll always be tagging along. He honestly doesn’t know the point of the game, but again, he’s just there for the laughs.

Joe Tazuna (Aka The Brave One):

❏ Joe has played Minecraft before, but he doesn’t care about building a pretty mansion or planting flowers. This man will live in a tiny dirt hut and beat the game. The one thing that Joe always plans on doing whenever he starts a new world is to get a dog and name them “Sven” after he watched one of his favorite YouTuber’s playthroughs one night instead of studying. He would do anything to save his dog, even if it means sacrificing his friends’ lives.

❏ When he plays on multiplayer servers, he always insists on getting the supplies and food for everyone. It’s pretty much all he does. He isn’t afraid of caves or mobs, and he won’t hesitate to run towards a creeper to stab it repeatedly. He is, however, terrified of skeletons and endermen since they always kill him. Once, he dropped down into a cave after spotting iron on the surface, only to be ambushed by a horde of skeletons. No one came to help him.

❏ He tends to forget about his hunger level until he actually starts taking damage. The same thing goes with drowning. It doesn’t help that he’s constantly sprinting wherever he goes. Because of this, he’s constantly falling into caves, ravines, and even little holes filled with water, yet no one ever helps him get out. They usually leave him behind, or they think that he’s simply lost.

❏ His girlfriend, Ryoko, hasn’t yet tried Minecraft, despite him begging for her to play with him 24/7. Although constructing a fancy house isn’t his cup of tea, he’ll do anything to play with Ryoko. He even once asked Sara to help him practice with his Minecraft dates. He needed help with his wording of asking Ryoko if he could put his bed next to hers, so Sara volunteered to assist him.

❏ Joe’s always falling into lava as well, and he gets very frustrated when it happens. Whenever he falls, he starts screaming into his mic while on voice calls (he doesn’t curse because he’s cool like that), yet still, no one comes to help him. Sara only says “teleport to me!” but it’s always too late. Keiji once offered to help him, but Joe declined, saying he didn’t trust or like him since he’s creepy towards Sara.

Q-Taro Burgerberg (Aka A Minecraft Veteran):

❏ Besides Joe and Gin, Q-Taro surprisingly knows the most about Minecraft. He used to play it a lot when he was younger before he started getting into baseball, so he knows the basics such as crafting and mining. Despite not picking up a controller in years, he still knows all of the mechanics the game has to offer as not much has changed when it comes to the controls.

❏ What HAS changed, however, is literally everything else in the game. All of the major updates over the years have nearly changed the game completely, including the Nether, the End, the villages, even the ocean became useful. He doesn’t realize this at first until he goes into the Nether and sees that it’s completely changed (He’ll stand there for a moment, wondering why the caves haven't been updated but the Nether of all things has).

❏ He’ll have to completely relearn the game, having Gin teach him all of the new mechanics such as elytras, banners, shields, etc, and all of the new structures including ruined portals, pillager towers, shipwrecks, etc. He’s always confused on call, constantly asking what a certain block is or yelling into his mic, “Uhh, I found something!!”

❏ One thing about Q-Taro is that he loves to mine. It’s the one useful thing that hasn’t changed all too much, so he can still help out and gather ores for everyone else. Although, he has to have the best armor out of the rest of the group or he might just commit theft. When he learns about Netherite, however, he refuses to wear it; he doesn’t want to admit that diamond isn’t the best in the game anymore, although no matter how many enchantments he puts on it, his armor will never be as good as netherite.

❏ In all honesty, he forgets the majority of the information that Gin tells him. Even after all of the warnings that Gin gives him to ‘not punch everything he sees’, he still punches everything he sees. He’ll run up to something new and whisper vaguely into the mic, “I’m gonna punch it.” And before Gin can scream for him not to, he’ll give the new block or mob a nice good smack. Beehives, llamas, polar bears, and pandas are prime causes of Q-Taro’s many deaths in the game. Regarding the new mobs, he encounters hostile ones a lot. He’ll often forget to sleep (despite everyone else yelling at him to go to bed) when he’s down in the caves, and he’ll emerge from his hole at night only to see 5 different phantoms flying in the air trying to murder him.

Alice Yabusame (Aka The Sailor):

❏ Alice is a rather frustrated player. Nothing ever goes his way when he plays, and he’s constantly cursing on voice calls. His sister, Reko, sometimes kicks him from the calls to keep Kanna and Gin as innocent as possible (although they don’t really care, and Gin sometimes picks up on Alice’s bad behavior himself when he gets mad).

❏ Similar to Joe, he’s an explorer. He loves exploring the ocean (especially the water temples), but his cheerful vibe suddenly switches into a pure, satanic rage once he starts drowning. He gets too cocky sometimes, though. Once while he was looking for an End City in the End, he lost control of his Elytra and flew into the void, cursing and screaming in fury the entire way down. The same exact thing happens whenever he falls into lava and loses all of his belongings; if anyone were to make fun of him when he died, he would craft a sword and kill them without any hesitation out of pure spite.

❏ He would try building a house next to Reko to get a bit closer with her, but once, he went out mining, and when he came back, his house was on fire. He then discovered that Shin was the one who set his house ablaze, so whenever Alice sees the troller, he grabs a stone sword and attempts to kill him (since he’s poor), but Shin is almost always in creative mode, which angers him more and only causes him to scream swear words into his microphone. He begs Sara, the one who created the server, to ban him, but Sara’s excuse is always, “he’s just having fun, which is the whole point of this server.”

❏ Since his house is always being destroyed, he usually makes small bases inside of caves or mountains to avoid Shin, but somehow, the troller always finds them and burns them down or blows them up, so he’s constantly on the run from him. He also does stuff alone since he doesn’t have any friends on the server (besides Nao who sometimes gives him food and supplies).

❏ Due to having to relocate nearly every time he joins the server, he rarely keeps chests on him. He has nowhere to store the treasures that he often finds in shipwrecks, sea temples, etc so whenever he runs out of inventory space he gives his materials away as gifts to his other friends, especially to Reko. Despite always giving out free resources and ores, nearly everyone in the server finds him odd, especially when he’s quiet for one moment only to be throwing a tantrum the next on the voice calls.

Shin Tsukimi (Aka The Troller):

❏ It’s no big surprise that Shin is just as chaotic as he is in-game, if not more, than IRL. Despite being over 20, he often lurks around on the Minecraft forums, always learning new hacks and ways to troll the others in the shared server. For some reason, everyone has server operator on the server, so Shin’s able to switch between Creative and Survival as he pleases, although he rarely goes into Survival.

❏ His only goal in the server is to create mayhem and confusion rather than to actually be productive; he’s always quiet on voice calls (except when he giggles loudly while he’s blowing something up or creeping behind someone), listening in on the other conversations so he knows who he can terrorize next.

❏ Since he’s in Creative, the minute he joined the game he automatically spawned himself netherite armor and tools while everyone else was running off to go trample the forests for wood. He builds a secret hut, making sure no one else could find it (in the side of a mountain, underwater in the sand using a conduit, really anywhere he can hide). He has chests full of TnT, flint and steel, potions, mob spawn eggs, and redstone in case someone forces him into survival.

❏ He’s played a prank on nearly everyone in the server; his favorite target is Alice, as he rages the hardest and tries to murder him despite him always being in Creative. He constantly will throw down an invisibility potion and follow Alice into a cave whenever he goes on a mining trip, waiting until he’s right in front of a conveniently placed lava pool before pushing him in. He’s always heard giggling in the background during voice calls while Alice screams out strings of curses and vows of revenge, which are never followed through.

❏ Sometimes if he’s really in the mood for some chaos he’ll switch into Survival and taunt Alice on the voice call, daring him to come and catch him and murder him now that he has a health bar. This immediately catches Alice’s attention and he literally drops everything he’s about to do just to partake in the wild goose chase that Shin ends up leading him on. He gets close a couple times, but Shin always stands still for a moment before teleporting away to someone like Kanna (“Thanks Kanna!” “SHIN GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE YOU COWARD-”)

Gin Ibushi (Aka The Kid Leader):

❏ As the youngest in the group, Gin obviously is the Minecraft pro compared to everyone else. It’s one of the many games that he constantly plays when he’s not playing with his toys, and it’s a good escape outlet for him. He’s been through nearly every Minecraft update, always mastering the new skills such as flying, potion-making, and new PvP tactics as soon as the game updates.

❏ He was the original one that suggested that the rest of the group start a Minecraft server with him, although Sara was the one that managed to start it up. As soon as he spawns in, Gin’s already off doing who-knows-what to try and speedrun the game, but nearly every 10 minutes he has to stop what he’s doing and help the others out of their confusion. He doesn’t care too much about having a fancy house or not, so he usually just builds a sufficient starter house (which is actually like, 3 stories) in between his adventures.

❏ Somehow, after the first day or so, he already has the strongest armor and tools in the game: netherite. While Shin cheated and used Creative, Gin managed to find the rarest ore in the game (probably after pulling an all-nighter or two admittedly). He’s very insistent on fighting the Ender Dragon early, but everyone else is either off doing their own thing or still on iron armor and afraid of even going into the Nether despite Gin insisting he’ll ‘carry’ everyone.

❏ Gin is always the one to lead excursions off into the other dimensions. He’s very eager to finish the game (despite having done so dozens of times), and he’s always pressuring/convincing the others to go out and explore. He knows everything about the varying structures and bosses, from the Pillgar Towers to the Ocean Monuments and the Wither to the Ravager(s).

❏ Surprisingly, he does die quite a lot. Despite having played for years on end, he still makes careless mistakes even when he isn’t being trolled by Shin; he’s fallen into lava pits countless times and died to the occasional skeleton even with his netherite armor (sometimes he forgets to put it on as he leaves it on an armor stand at home so it doesn’t break). One time he was looking for a Woodland Mansion using an Elytra, following a map while flying over several different biomes at once without a second glance as he was focused on the chords displayed on the screen. When he finally realized he was about to fly right into a mountain, it was too late as he smacked right into the wall and fell to his death even after trying to put down a water bucket to save himself.

Kai Satou (Aka The Quiet Fighter):

❏ Kai hates to admit it, but he’s actually quite a fan of video games, especially Minecraft, considering he played it a bit as a kid. The moment he spawns into the map, he gets wood for a crafting table and supplies for himself, Sara, and sometimes Q-Taro. He’s usually pretty quiet on voice calls since he doesn’t really want to bother anyone, and he logs on sometimes on his own to build a fancy wood house or to get some extra supplies. Once, he logged on and saw that his house was on fire with Shin standing by it, saying taunting things in chat just to piss the loner off. Kai didn’t really care, though, since his houses don’t take him very long to build. Shin is annoyed by this, but still, he just goes after Alice instead.

❏ Similar to Joe, he’s always out hunting for food or seeds. Every time he plays, Kai starts a farm by a river, pond, or even near the ocean. Whenever someone walks on their/his own crops, Kai silently rages inside his head, but he never tells them anything.

❏ He usually goes on mining trips by himself, and he isn’t afraid of mobs or hostile surroundings. Unless Gin is off helping the others, Kai is always the first one to build a Nether portal or travel to the End.

❏ Whenever he plays, he always gets a cat or two from either the jungle or a nearby village. He likes to give them fish, and he takes his precious pets on his less-dangerous adventures. Once when he logged onto Minecraft, he saw that one of his cats was gone. He looked around until he found Shin beating his helpless bundle of joy with a stick until it died. Kai didn’t say anything to him, but he was furious on the inside. He later blew up Shin’s house with TNT after finding his hidden shack, and being an expert with laptops/computers himself, he also got Shin temporarily banned from the server, making Alice exceptionally happy.

❏ Sometimes, Kai invites Q-Taro to go on mining or exploring trips with him, and the athlete gladly accepts. Kai tells him about all the new updates that occurred over the years, even though Q-Taro never really pays attention. He’s pretty quiet whenever he talks on voice calls, so Q-Taro is always shouting for him to speak up.

Kazumi Mishima (Aka The 2nd Boomer):

❏ Mishima had never even heard of Minecraft until Nao brought it up to him one day in class. When Sara made the server for all of them to play in, he jumps into the server wearing nothing but a Steve skin, but Nao quickly helps him change it by making him a skin of his own image. Surprisingly, he got used to the controls of the game rather quickly.

❏ He wouldn’t really know what to do, and he would find Nao doing everything for him, including building his houses and getting him food and ore. He would make a lot of silly mistakes, such as mining gold with a stone pickaxe, eating raw meat, digging straight down, and ignoring fall damage. Mishima isn’t really bothered whenever a hostile mob suddenly appears either and tries to attack him.

❏ If Mishima ever stumbled upon a village, he would clap his hands in joy. He loves villagers and trading, and would even kidnap some of them via boats to experiment and test what they could do at home. Some of the others are a bit creeped out by his fascination, but Nao and Gin find it to be quite entertaining.

❏ Despite being a polite, smart teacher in person, his online persona is the exact opposite. He’s always barging into people’s homes and examining their shelters, sometimes stealing a bit of their stuff while quietly giggling on the voice call. However, he once accidentally killed one of Kanna’s parrots, and he was extremely apologetic about his mistake. He even went out in the jungle just to get her a new one despite her constantly reassuring him that it was fine.

❏ Mishima’s favorite mob would definitely be a cow. He doesn’t really understand why, but he loves their patterns and design. He refuses to kill or eat them, but he’s always on board with the idea of capturing them and bringing them home. If he ever encounters a mineshaft, he’s scurrying around the place, trying to find a name tag for his precious cows.

Kanna Kizuchi (Aka The One Who’s Scared of Everything):

❏ Even though she’s rather young, Kanna has strayed away from video games for a long time. Sure, she’s heard of Minecraft, but does that mean she’s ever played it? No. But she had watched several Minecraft playthroughs on YouTube before, so she was somewhat prepared when she spawned in with everyone else. She knew the basic controls and learned pretty quickly the other mechanics and new features the game had to offer.

❏ She thought Minecraft was a rather tranquil game, and she loved all of the details and peaceful mobs that spawned around her. She loves the flowers and trees the most, constantly picking flowers and exploring the grassland excitedly on the first day. She seems to be pretty good on her own until night comes along. After spending all day flower-picking, she doesn’t realize until she starts getting attacked by the hostile mobs that its night. She’s heard frantically screaming and panicking on the voice call before her death notice appears on screen to everyone else.

❏ After that night, Kanna is terrified of the night sequence(s). As soon as the sun starts to set over the horizon, she’s scurrying inside her house or spam-clicking her bed before she’s even allowed to sleep. Despite people like Gin always reassuring her that she has armor and a sword to defend herself with, she still refuses to go out at night no matter what. She’s also always pressuring everyone to go to bed to make sure she doesn’t have to sit through the night in her house and so that phantoms don’t spawn either (even though she’s never encountered them, she’s determined to keep it that way). She’ll be quiet one moment on the call before suddenly scolding everyone to get inside and go to bed so the server can time skip to day.

❏ Kanna doesn’t exactly realize that not every mob is either peaceful or hostile. While she isn’t like Q-Taro who’s always punching the neutral mobs, she’s still unaware of certain hostile variants such as the Killer Bunny. One day while Kanna was out picking flowers for the outside of her house, Shin got the grand idea to spawn a bunch of rabbits inside of her house along with a Killer Bunny or two that he hid in her storage room. When she came home, she was rather confused and could be heard quietly murmuring on the call, “Where did all these bunnies come from..?”. Her usual soft and melancholic whispers quickly turned to shrill shrieks as she entered her storage room to put away the flowers and the Killer Bunnies, which looked like regular rabbits to her, began attacking her. Shin obviously began bursting out laughing when his invisibility potion ran out and he was standing in the corner of Kanna’s house watching her run away from the mob(s). Although, after she began sobbing quietly on the call everyone went silent, including Shin for once (although some of her sobs were overexaggerated just so she could guilt Shin for traumatizing her) as he silently noted to never troll her again.

❏ It’s not very surprising that Kanna has at least a dozen pets. She has an entire pack of dogs (which she only managed to tame after stealing Gin’s collection of bones), several different colored cats, three parrots, two foxes, and even a panda bear she managed to kidnap using Mishima’s classic boat method. She has several rooms in her house that she built purely to keep her pets in, especially the untamable mobs like her foxes. She’s actually rather creative with her rooms, always adding in small details such as scratching posts for her cats and mini trees for her parrots. Her stable for her horses is also humongous and often mistaken for a second house when people run-up to her plot. She also somehow is an expert at coming up with names on the spot and she has a nametag on her 24/7 (admittedly, Shin always secretly restocks her name tag collection that she has in her chest since they’re rather rare and Kanna is too scared to go into dungeons herself).

Nao Egokoro (Aka The Helper):

❏ Nao has obviously played Minecraft before, and she was ecstatic when Sara announced that she would be making a server for all of them. She loves making Minecraft skins, and she made skins identical to how they really look for everyone on the server.

❏ She would totally use those Minecraft house building tutorials on YouTube and would help make houses for her friends if they were struggling. Nao would also get supplies for people (especially Alice since she pities him) out of the kindness of her heart. She really enjoys picking flowers with Kanna and getting cute pets/animals for everyone as well.

❏ However, Nao refuses to harm any animal/mob she finds. She sometimes goes on mining trips with her friends as well. Since she doesn’t want to lay a blood-thirsty finger on any of the animals, she begs Alice to go mining with her for materials since she knows he’s a good fighter, and he could fend off mobs for her as she mines. Alice obviously agrees since Nao has helped him out with Shin’s antics, and he would constantly jump up behind her to stab skeletons, zombies, creepers, and even endermen. They both left the cave even happier than before, and Alice didn’t curse once when he was mining with her.

❏ Nao invited Reko to live with her, and her friend happily agreed (Reko would do anything to move away from Alice). They would go on cute trips together, and Nao would build a stable for the horses that they found.

❏ She’s pretty nervous to play the game by herself, and she always waits until someone else is on the server with her (even Shin) before she does something a bit daring. Nao is always frightful when she has to travel to the Nether, and she has to beg people to go with her out of fear.

Sara Chidouin (Aka The “Mom” Friend):

❏ Although Gin was the one who suggested that they should make a server, Sara was the one who created it. She’s been playing Minecraft for a long time (especially with Joe) and was happy when Gin suggested the idea.

❏ Sara is technically considered the “mom” friend on the server, yet she won’t give a crap about her friends’ issues. If they fell into a hole or were being attacked by mobs, she wouldn’t help them. She would let them die with zero regrets regarding her actions, as she doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal since players can respawn.

❏ She likes to use Minecraft building tutorials, similar to Nao. She’s started to memorize building patterns, and she’s even gotten more comfortable with building in general. However, she doesn’t admit that she uses them, and she likes to flex her “skills” to the others (Shin always calls her out on this with a snicker or two, but he’s immediately silenced when Sara threatens to ban him from the server for terrorizing everyone else).

❏ Even though this has already been said, she still doesn’t give a crap about the others’ issues. Alice would always come to her and beg for Shin to be banned from the server, yet Sara would shrug it off and say that he’s having fun. Deep down, she would enjoy watching Shin torment and tease Alice, even if she was annoyed when he bothered her.

❏ Sara spends most of her time on the server with Joe, Keiji, and Nao, trying her best to avoid Kai, Alice, and Shin. She isn’t scared of doing things alone, such as mining or going to the Nether, but there is one thing that she is terrified of: zombies. She hates how much damage they can do, especially when they’re crowded together in a large horde. She has to beg her friends to kill them for her since she always fails. Joe always kills them for her and taunts her, saying that she owes him back. Keiji would accidentally hit Sara, so the two of them would just run away from the zombie. Nao, of course, wouldn’t want to hurt the zombie, so the two of them would also try their best to escape the annoying mob.

Reko Yabusame (Aka The Raider):

❏ Reko is somewhere in the middle of everyone; she used to play every now and then with Alice when they were kids, but the game has updated so much that she forgot half of the mechanics at first. As soon as she spawns in, the nostalgia hits her like a truck and everything comes rushing back to her. So while the others are stumbling around, voicing their confusion into their mics, Reko’s off along with Gin to go punch some trees down.

❏ Similar to her brother Alice, she gets easily pissed off at the game. While her rage isn’t on the same levels as him, it’s still quite strong. She’ll mutter curse words under her breath, barely audible so the kids in the call don’t hear her. The farthest she’s gone is thrown her controller across her room after falling into a lava pool in the Nether while bridging, and surprisingly it didn’t break. When it comes to her brother and his rage, she’ll often mutter, “Brb.” before leaving her room and storming into Alice’s, and often a loud slap is heard from Alice’s side with no further explanation to the others.

❏ When it comes to her brother, Reko is one of the few people who can tolerate him. She helps him at the start of the game despite her reluctant groans into the mic but ditches him as soon as Shin starts harassing him. It’s not uncommon for her to have to rescue Alice when he’s running back from mining and is being chased by a horde of mobs. She’ll leave her house with only an iron chest plate on and still somehow manage to murder all of the hostiles while Alice runs inside with half a heart. Besides Gin, she’s probably Alice’s mentor the majority of the time, always teaching him new features that he forgot like potion-making and archery. Whenever he dies (which is very often, unfortunately) she can be heard mumbling during Alice’s screams, “I told you…”

❏ Reko’s favorite part of the game is the Pillager raids. For some reason, she finds it an interesting challenge for her due to the different levels that raids can spawn in. She has several different strategies, some of which she made up at the last second. Some notable moments include dropping a block of TNT on a Ravager from her tower, spawning in a large group of Iron Golems at the start of the raid, and somehow shooting a Vex with a bow. She somehow hasn’t managed to die even once during the raids, and even Gin can’t believe her skill and sheer luck when it comes to fighting. She often tags along with him when he goes on adventures, especially when it involves the Pillagers (she finds them interesting, what can I say?). It’s no big surprise when she conquers a Wooden Mansion with ease one day while on a trip with Gin.

❏ After moving in with Nao, she got to teach her pink-haired friend a lot more about the game (especially since she was away from Alice now). She often encourages Nao to step out of her comfort zone and explore, as there’s a lot more to the game than just her house. She accompanies Nao on every mining trip (except for the few times that she chooses to go with Alice when Reko isn’t on) and even takes her out to the other dimensions. She’s always watching after Nao, always standing close to her with a netherite sword in hand to murder any mob that dare come near her. Reko even ends up teaching Nao how to defeat a raid (although she was the one carrying the entire time) and it’s not too surprising when Nao joins the excursion to the End to defeat the Ender Dragon.

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sparrowofsong · 5 years

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For whatever reason, I got super super into the Doki Doki Literature Club AU I thought up last night, so I decided to expand on it. Will I do anything else with it? That’s for the gods to know and me to find out.

Technically inspired by @nachosforfree, who commented “doki doki” when someone mentioned a Sanders Sides dating sim AU.

(TW for blood, suicide, self harm, abuse, manipulation, starvation -- basically just all of the warnings for DDLC.)

Patton is Monika, and the other sides don’t have specific assigned characters. Patton controls them while the game is played, switching them around each time in hopes that, eventually, he’ll find the perfect combination of roles and personalities so that the player will hate them and love him.

The sides are conscious the entire time they're puppeted, even for the off-screen events or “death”, and feel what the characters feel. Whoever acts as Yuri has to watch as he cuts himself, as he stabs himself, as he grows more possessive and insane. Whoever acts as Sayori has to watch himself tie the noose, hang himself, and desperately claw at the rope as he slowly asphyxiates. Whoever acts as Natsuki has to watch himself be abused and starved by his dad, has to watch his neck get snapped, has to watch himself walk into the classroom where he knows he’ll see his friend dead. They have to watch and feel all the random chance body horror.

The only control Patton intentionally grants them (as far as they know) is over the personality, and vaguely the appearance, of the character they play as. The delivery of the lines and actions, the eye color or an accessory (out of specific options), etc.

Unbeknownst to them, though, Patton also purposefully lightens his control during specific parts of the game, just enough to allow some vague dialogue changes, to cover their tracks. Because if those changes happen around the same places, people think that’s just a random chance sort of thing like the other intentional glitches.

Of course, even he can’t consistently control everything at once. He’s powerful, but not omnipotent. Some things can slip through even outside of his intentional gaps. But usually, he manages to catch them in time to act like he does with the programmed glitches. If the attempted rebel does enough to potentially raise suspicion (or if he just feels shitty after being rejected once again) he makes sure they regret it. And more often than not, Patton’s precautions help players disregard the out of place “glitches”.

Even after they hit every single combination, Patton still keeps trying. Again, and again, and again. They know the entire game by heart; every line of dialogue, every poem, every choice-based mini plot line, every randomly generated event. They could act it out perfectly even without being puppeted.

Eventually, after enough repeats and failures and punishments, the other sides just,, give up. They don't bother with personality, they don't bother with trying to speak to the player outside of the script. It gets to the point where Patton has to start controlling those too to avoid players picking up on it. That's how they discover that he was allowing the changes, but at that point, they just don't care.

Enter Thomas: the latest DDLC player. He plays the game blind, gets scared, doesn’t understand every single aspect, yada yada yada. A typical playthrough. Until Yuri’s death.

After Yuri kills himself, Thomas doesn't know how to speed up the scene, trying to click through each individual line. He soon gets discouraged and bored. He spends the next couple days clicking through some more lines on and off, always forgetting/not caring to exit the game in between.

The effects of the game’s events are put on hold when the game is closed, and removed entirely once the character is "deleted”. Otherwise, the sides are continuously existing as the characters in their current state. Which means Remus, this current Yuri, has been living with the pain of three stab wounds for this whole time.

At some point during Thomas mindlessly clicking through the nonsense, one of the lines is actually something legible, and he almost misses it.

“Please... please skip forward. It... hurts.”

And it seems just a little odd? But, y’know, maybe the game just eventually auto-reminds people so they didn’t have to click through everything if they forgot about the skip option.

He gets to the day of the festival, and before Natsuki comes in with his line, Yuri's dialogue box pops back up with "Please keep playing. Just... a few more minutes. Please."

That's a little more weird. But so's the whole game, right?

Natsuki comes in, and says his usual lines. But right before the screaming and vomiting as the script dictates, he pauses, and Thomas swears he sees an expression of pity cross his face. The dialogue box shows a very tiny line reading "Please keep playing. Don't let him sit there anymore."

It only lasts for a moment before immediately switching to the scripted terror. The transition is so awkward that it doesn't really sit well with Thomas. But it's probably like that to seem more meta. Or it's just bad writing. Right?

Monika's smile when he arrives seems slightly different than before. Almost forced. Thomas can't tell if it was like that before or not, so he takes a screenshot to compare later. He was considering googling it then and there, but after the pleas to hurry, he kinda felt like it'd be rude. Even if it was just a game.

When Monika "deletes" Natsuki and Yuri, he hears a whispered "Thank you" and freaks out. Literally the only other audible human sounds in the game are breathing, a "baa", and the credits song, and there's a chance he didn't even hear the first two, and he wouldn't have heard the third yet. But,,, It’s a meta horror game. So it's supposed to freak him out. That's the whole point. Right?

(They're able to do all this because after so long of completely giving up, Patton realized he didn't need to waste so much energy on keeping them in line, so he gradually began using less and less. At this point, he's hardly using any more than necessary to have them play the part, and is a little rusty. They took advantage of it this one time out of desperation, and now that they've already started, they're doing as much as they can to get Thomas to listen before Patton takes them down again.)

Monika looks pissed before quickly forcing another smile and continuing his lines. The game goes the same way, Thomas eventually figures out to delete Monika, and Sayori appears to gain sentience. But instead of saying "I wanted to thank you for getting rid of Monika", the dialogue box shows "I wanted to thank you for freeing Yuri", and "Yuri" glitches into "Remus" on and off.

When Thomas clicks, instead of going to the next line, the previous one glitches into "I wanted to thank you for getting rid of Monika" like it was supposed to be. The rest of the dialogue proceeds normally until Monika returns.

Sayori's line glitches back and forth from "W-What's happening...?" to "Don't trust him!"

Rather than saying "I won't let you hurt him", Monika says "I won't let you lie to him."

And instead of "Who..." "I-It hurts...", Sayori's final dialogue is "NO!"

The game continues and ends as programmed. Thomas just kinda goes "...What the fwuh?" before immediately looking up details about the game to see if this is all normal.

Surprise surprise: It isn't. No matter how long he researches, and despite all of Patton's precautions, the conclusion is the same: everything after Yuri's death is completely unique to his playthrough. No one else had those dialogue changes. Monika's smile in the screenshot is, in fact, different from his earlier smiles. There are not supposed to be any audible words besides the ending song. And there is no mention of a "Remus" anywhere.

There is definitely something up here. After he gives up searching for answers, he resolves to play again soon, and tries to commit to memory what's supposed to happen in the meantime.

Up until this point, their common area was a house a good bit away from the setting the events of the game took place in. They had a fair radius around the house to walk around, entertain themselves, etc., and were about as free as they could get while in that area. But, see, uh, Patton’s sorta really fucking pissed now.

Patton restricts the boundaries to just the house for everyone, and locks Logan, Remus, and Deceit (Natsuki, Yuri, and Sayori, respectively) into separate rooms, to make sure they can’t plan something else. He promises that they'll be playing the exact same roles every single time the game gets played, especially to decrease more suspicious changes if Thomas plays again, until he decides otherwise.

He hopes that Thomas will simply uninstall the game so that they'll move onto another player (because that's how I've decided it works don't question the logic). Unfortunately, he does not, and he decides to play again.

Upon learning this, the three rebels decide that if they're fucked anyway, they may as well take this opportunity to give everything they've got in hopes that they can get Thomas to help them.

Which means Patton has to find some way to balance keeping them under his complete control, keeping Roman and Virgil from finding some way to escape the boundary and help out, and figuring out what to do with the script to undo the suspicion the three caused.

Roll for initiative!

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bltngames · 4 years

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Review: Super Mario Sunshine

Super Mario Sunshine is a weird game for a lot of different reasons. It was among some of the first game reviews I ever wrote for the internet, for one, all the way back in 2005. I was proud enough of that review that when it came time to relaunch TSSZ News in 2008, it was one of five archived reviews I transplanted on to the site. It was also a strange case where I became convinced it was a game I’d never play, originally. I was 23 years old, with no job, no money, and no prospects. I was desperate to play the game that was being sold as the sequel to Super Mario 64, but I could not envision a future where that would ever be possible.

Eventually, I reached my breaking point. Earlier that same year, somebody had linked me to something called “Quake Done Quick.” It was attached to a relatively new site, called the “Speed Demos Archive”, a hub for videos of people finishing games as fast as possible. The site was small, updated manually, and featured a list of roughly 100 games -- maybe less. This was before Youtube, so these were downloadable video files, usually in AVI or MPG format. And it was here that they had a Super Mario Sunshine speedrun. Even on my fledgling broadband internet, it took a considerable amount of time to download. But, with nothing more than two hours of raw, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage, I watched a user named “Dragorn” play through the entire game (his old run is still viewable on the Internet Archive). Watching a speedrunner flip, spin, and trick his way across levels, I became convinced that Sunshine was incredible.

A few months later, I was surprised by my brother with $200 for Christmas, stuffed inside a greeting card. He said it was for “all the Christmases he missed” since moving out, years ago. Combined with other money I’d received in gifts, I headed to a Gamestop and purchased a Gamecube with my own (used) copy of Super Mario Sunshine. In my mind, it did not matter that I had spoiled the entire game for myself only three months earlier with the speedrun video. Watching someone else play is no substitute for a controller in your own hands. I needed to play it for myself.

In the modern context, Super Mario Sunshine is one of the games attached to the recently released Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection. Full disclosure: I will not be buying this collection, and I have not played the version of Super Mario Sunshine it includes. It’s not that these games are bad, but even from the outside looking in, the collection looks underwhelming. It’s full of basic, bare-bones ports of games that deserve more. But it does mean that these games have been on my mind, particularly Super Mario Sunshine, which I finished replaying, separately, a little more than one year ago. It was the first time I’d finished the game since that fateful Christmas of 2004, and it provided a refresh in perspective.

The truth of the matter is, brushing aside everything else about it, Super Mario Sunshine is an easy game to hate. Nintendo was trying a lot of new things with the Gamecube, struggling to figure out what could be done with the leap in horsepower over the Nintendo 64. Their pitch was a Mario that was subtly more serious and realistic. Sunshine is a game with a surprisingly large number of cinematics, and a considerable amount of narrative setup. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: the game opens with Mario taking a long-deserved vacation on a tropical island, only to be arrested and wrongfully accused of crimes he did not commit. He is sentenced to community service, forced to clean the island of a paint-like substance its residents claim he has used to vandalize their resort town. This is accomplished with the F.L.U.D.D., a backpack-mounted squirt gun perfect for washing down walls and floors. It was the first manual labor he’d been shown doing since the NES version of Wrecking Crew in 1985.

It’s odd territory for Mario, but it leads to the game’s first real problem: Plot. Sunshine is not a game that’s packed with story -- there aren’t a lot of named characters, and there aren’t a lot of genuine story arcs to get hooked in to, but it’s way more than you got in most Mario games. Regardless, the influence of a narrative structure is definitely felt within its levels. One of the benefits of Super Mario 64 is that there was no set order to anything; you might drop in to a level with a specific goal in mind, only to accidentally stumble on to something else. You were encouraged to follow your curiosity, collecting stars more through natural exploration. Even though it’s not always obvious on the surface, the objectives in Super Mario Sunshine are following a specific plotline, which means flat, rigid linearity.

So you might reach an amusement park area, but you can’t go inside until you finish the mission where you open the front gates. Even once you re-enter the level for the next mission inside the amusement park, exploring its various rides will be a moot point, as the game will want you to focus on a specific goal instead. Want to ride the rollercoaster? Too bad, the story dictates it’s not available yet. Though you still have that go-anywhere, do-anything world design from Super Mario 64, the current mission is the only thing that’s ever active. Another example: at the beginning of the game, you open up the first stage -- Bianco Hills. Even though you have a whole village and a sizable lake area to explore, there’s little to do out there, because your mission is about reaching the bottom of the windmill. The second mission, again, doesn’t involve the village or the lake, but now asks you to reach the top of the same windmill in order to fight the game’s first boss, Petey Piranha. And so it goes: big zones to explore, but most of it useless as Sunshine slowly trickles out objectives one at a time, following a barely-visible narrative that drags everything down.

Nintendo had other intentions for the game, too. The company was known for taking its time with game releases -- Super Mario World released in 1990, and it took six years for Super Mario 64 to follow it up. Even once a game was announced, there were often months or even years of delays as the game got pushed back, and back, and back, as with Ocarina of Time. Similarly long waits happened for many of Nintendo’s other flagship franchises (Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, etc.), and the peanut gallery was getting restless. With the release of the Gamecube, Nintendo made a vow to explore other avenues to release more games, more quickly.

The problem was, all of those delays are exactly what lead to Nintendo’s extremely high bar of quality. Rushing these games out the door meant cutting corners and finding easy ways to tack on extra play time, skipping necessary fine tuning. In The Wind Waker, this notoriously led to the last fourth of the game, wherein you must find and decode maps to dredge up half a dozen pieces of the magical Triforce. For most, this meant hours of sailing out to random, completely featureless areas in the middle of the open ocean hoping to find a single golden tortilla chip. “Tedious” is putting it kindly, but it saved Nintendo from having to delay the game too many times in order to add more in-depth content.

In Super Mario Sunshine, this manifested in a degree of repetition that is difficult to ignore. In both Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy, most mission objectives are unique. There are occasional repeated missions, like finding 8 red coins, but by and large it's things like rescuing a baby penguin, opening a pyramid, assaulting an airship, or finding your way through a gravity-bending maze. There's enough variety that you don't notice as much when you're asked to do yet another one of Galaxy's purple coin comets.

Sunshine still has unique goals like that, but they are much fewer and farther between. Instead, the bulk of the game is filled with doing the same four or five missions over, and over, and over again. Finding fruit to hatch Yoshi or hunting red coins can be fun occasionally, but Sunshine often makes you do this stuff multiple times per level. Most bosses also must be faced at least twice, sometimes up to three times, and very little changes from fight to fight. And then there are the races -- a man named Piantissimo is waiting for you in most stages, looking to race you to an arbitrary landmark, and every single level has one penultimate mission where you must chase down the hero's evil doppelganger, Shadow Mario. It’s padding, basically, and thanks to a tenuous grip on narrative, there’s few ways to skip the things you don’t want to do.

This isn't even touching on the game's blue coins. They're one of Sunshine's rarer collectibles, and ten blue coins can be traded at the shop for a single Shine Sprite (the main item central to the story). The majority of blue coins can be found by hosing down graffiti found around the island. Spray a circle-shaped pattern on one wall, and a blue coin pops out of another circle-shaped pattern on the opposite side of the level, which you must run to and collect before it disappears. Then, the opposite: spray down the second pattern, and another blue coin will appear back where the first graffiti used to be. In a game full of rerun objectives, this is the worst offender. Rarely are these blue coin graffiti spots interesting or challenging; they primarily exist to fill space and fluff up the Shine counter.

The level concepts themselves also suffer from this repetition. In any other Mario game, “tropical island” would be one theme among many other level types, like deserts, volcanoes and frozen lakes. Sunshine tries to stretch its one theme out to last an entire game, and in practical terms, this means that even after 18 years and two complete playthroughs (three, if you count the speedrun video), I still can’t remember most areas in any kind of specific detail. I remember a couple stage names, maybe a few environmental traits (like the hotel at sunset or the amusement park), but anything beyond that and it all starts blurring into homogeneous beaches, docks, and villages. Even the music -- beyond the iconic acoustic guitar of the Delfino Plaza hub world song, absolutely nothing about Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack stands out as memorable in the slightest. Every part of this game plays, looks and sounds like every other part in the worst way possible.

And yet, through some miracle, Super Mario Sunshine does not come out the other end being a bad game. It’s not necessarily good, either, mind you. But when I finally managed to get my hands on this game back in 2004, it made me angry. Super Mario 64 was a tough act to follow, and rather than build on those concepts, Sunshine felt like a massive regression. Nowadays, it’s easier to see the bigger picture. Super Mario Sunshine was a stop-gap as Nintendo slowly pushed Mario back to a more linear, level-based structure. Super Mario Galaxy was another step in this direction, doing away with the open worlds in favor of traditional, straight-forward level design, something that would later be perfected in Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World.

That makes Sunshine more of a curious black sheep than anything else. It’s definitely not a game worth hating -- its biggest offense is simply being dull, and there are worse fates. For my replay, it became the sort of game I chipped away at, bit by bit, over the course of nearly three years. As it turns out, the best cure for repetition is to forget everything you were doing the last time you played. It’s even fitting on some level that a game about Mario taking a vacation is best served in lazy, slow, indifferent chunks. Make no mistake -- there are better, more polished, and more engaging platformers out there for you to play. It is in no way a stretch to call Super Mario Sunshine the worst 3D Mario game, but it speaks to the franchise’s high bar of quality that even the worst 3D Mario game really isn’t so bad.

#review #writing #nintendo #gamecube #switch #3d all-stars #mario #sunshine #super mario sunshine #re-review

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bronanlynch · 4 years

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I enjoyed doing this last week so this is. a thing now I guess. click through for roundup of whatever media I’ve been into in the past week (will normally be on thursdays I think bc that’s the day I’m usually free but my schedule this week was weird) (inspired by the tuesday again thing that @girlfriendsofthegalaxy does)

listening: the new Mountain Goats album Getting Into Knives is very fun and full of bops, for a given value of both “fun” and “bops” because it’s The Mountain Goats so it does have that edge of depression but quite a few of the songs are a bit more. cheerful? than a lot of their other stuff, for lack of a better word

favorite track is probably The Rat Queen

listening (podcast edition): this very fun episode of Overinvested tearing apart the new movie adaptation of Rebecca which I have not seen and was not planning on seeing but I do enjoy people smartly analyzing why things aren’t good and also I do love discussions about Gothic romance

reading: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall is probably a very good book that someone else will enjoy very much, as lots of people whose opinions I generally trust already have enjoyed it. and I possibly will enjoy more if I give it another chance, once I’ve gotten over being disappointed that it wasn’t what I was looking for right now. the premise is neat! the worldbuilding is cool! the characters are interesting! mermaids, witches, and seas are three of my favorite things and also there are pirates, my other fave thing!

the reason I bounced off of it so hard is that I kept seeing it hyped up as a trans/nonbinary book, and then felt kinda let down when I started reading it and realized that the main character whom I’ve seen described as genderqueer is 1) dressing as a guy because someone else suggested it for safety reasons and 2) this was several years before the story starts and this character still refers to herself exclusively (disclaimer that I didn’t read the full thing but. as far as I got and also I skimmed toward the ending) as she and by her feminine birthname. and those things are fine, that’s a valid gender story, nonbinary people can absolutely keep their old pronouns and names and it doesn’t make them any less nonbinary, but the way it was framed in the parts that I read felt to me more like the old classic ‘girl dresses as guy for plot reasons’ thing, which isn’t something I personally wanted to read more of right now, especially not when I went in expecting something that would resonate more with my gender experience

watching: I’ve been rewatching Leverage, since I only ever watched the first season many years ago because that’s what was free on hulu at the time, and the thing that’s really getting to me is how fundamentally hopeful it is. like, yeah, sure, the premise of it is about how capitalism is designed to fuck people over and there is A Lot about specifically health insurance being really really awful. so there are parts of it that are a lil bit too real, but then at the end of the day they always win and punish the rich capitalists and help their victims and it’s just. nice to see that kind of happy ending

the specific episode I’m having lots of thoughts about is the Mile High Job, which is about the team is trying to protect a potential corporate whistleblower from being murdered by her coworker while on an airplane. at first they’re not sure what’s going on because they weren’t expecting two people from the corporation to be on that flight, so they don’t know which person is the one they should be focusing on. one of them is an anxious younger woman and the other is an extremely generic man, and from the moment they decided that the woman was the one they had to protect I was dreading the plot twist of “no actually you just helped her take out her target and you should’ve been protecting the other guy” which would’ve felt just. so mean-spirited and cynical but it’s the kind of thing I expect from media I guess. and then once it was clear that nope, that twist wasn’t going to happen, I expected her to turn around at the end and be like “actually no I’m not gonna testify against the corporation because I’ve realized how dangerous it is.” and I kind of hate that I’ve become so jaded by both media and also the real world that I’m so ready to expect the most cynical option, because I’m not used to stories about how even though the system is corrupt and oppressive and exploitative, people can still help each and they do and sometimes they make things better

playing: got back into playing Dishonored after taking a couple weeks off because I got stuck and frustrated and also kept playing for too long at a time and giving myself headaches. Lady Boyle’s Last Party (which I am going to completely and entirely spoil so if you don’t want that this is your warning) is probably the mission that I have the strongest mixed feelings about. I love the approach to the party, I love the concept of sneaking into a masquerade ball, I love signing the guestbook with your actual legal wanted fugitive name while wearing the mask that you commit all of your crimes in, I love a good fancy party mission I cannot stress that enough it’s the sexiest possible setting

HOWEVER. trying to sneak around upstairs fucking sucks because the ceilings aren’t high enough for there to be places to hide, like convenient hanging lamps or pipes to blink up to. my least favorite room in this entire game is that art gallery because you can get on top of the cases and you think you’re safe because you’re Up but then the guards spot you instantly and sound the alarm and the entire party shuts down and then you let them kill you so that you can go back to your last save

ADDITIONALLY, fuck the nonlethal option for this one. I hate it so much and feel so incredibly gross about choosing it but I also feel extremely not great about tricking her into meeting me alone and then actually assassinating her. the conversation is so uncomfortable that I tried to be like “actually no nevermind” which causes her to think you’re weird and creepy and she has the guards ““throw you out”“ which apparently in Dunwall is just how you say that she’s gonna have the guards murder you. but anyway. she's a shitty rich lady but she doesn't deserve either of the things that could happen to her and she's only a target because she's sleeping w a guy who sucks. she hasn’t done anything! she isn’t actually responsible for what happened to Jessamine or Emily! which works on a narrative level in my opinion because this is the last mission before you go after the lord regent and it’s becoming clear that the loyalists are just using Corvo for their own agenda and don’t actually care about Jessamine. but it’s still unpleasant to be the one enacting it, y’know?

also on a narrative level, I really like the concept of doing a clean hands run except killing each of the actual targets, because I feel like that would be a cool inversion of the trope where the hero kills a bunch of mooks and then refuses to kill the big bad because murder is wrong. on a gameplay level, I’m still gonna do the nonlethal options because I refuse to risk getting the bad ending, and I’m proud of the fact that I haven’t killed anyone since getting out of prison. I do wanna do a high chaos playthrough at some point though just to see how it goes, since I went low chaos last time too

sorry for writing an entire essay about Dishonored but. the funniest thing from that mission is that apparently if you get spotted by one of the maids in the basement where you are not supposed to be (the guards will immediately attack if they see you) instead of raising the alarm she just says “welcome to the party.” love that solidarity.

making: none of my cosplay stuff is at an especially picture-worthy stage and I didn’t get pictures of the pesto I made for dinner last night so there’s not gonna be much that’s interesting here but I did go to Spirit Halloween after Halloween when everything was on clearance and got a bunch of stuff that I’m gonna use for cosplay eventually

writing: soon I will finish the Eddis/Attolia Queen’s Thief fic that’s been rattling around in my brain ever since I finished the last book. hopefully.

#dreaming.txt #wednesday again no problem #long post /

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branwen-lavellan · 5 years

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Fighting Together

Anders/Garrett Hawke for @14daysofdalovers writing prompts, day 6.

I’d like to start this piece off with an explanation and a caveat. This is a DA Lovers piece, but it is not meant to be romantic. This should not leave you feeling good.

It is not fluffy at all. And, underneath it all, it is extremely Anders critical.

I romanced Anders on my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2. I fell hard for him. I played as Garrett, and my emotions were invested so deeply into the romance that I was completely blindsided by the ending. And it HURT. Maybe even more so with Solas. The thing with Solas is, and maybe I’m just missing something, but I genuinely think Solas is a good person. I think he wants to do whats right, even if the cost is high. With Anders, though, when I went back and listened to the things he says and does, it’s so manipulative. It left me feeling really gross and even more hurt. I wasn’t planning on writing for this pairing, but, for whatever reason, I couldn’t quite get this scene out of my head. This was, in a sense, a catharis. A chance to explore an unresolved hurt that Anders as a LI left me.

This is in no way meant to judge people who like Anders, and I do not want to open this up to any personal attacks. Each and every one of you is a critical thinker, and you can make your own decisions about these characters. We love them because they are flawed, because they feel real. And, just like real people, sometimes they let us down in a way that we just can’t forgive.

So, anyways, without further ado, here’s an argument between Anders and Garrett.

The year was 9:37 Dragon. So, six years, then. Six years since Anders had moved into Garrett’s High Town estate. Six years that they had been together as a couple. Six years. Six years! Garrett had poured his heart and soul into their relationship. He’d invited Anders in, worked to keep him safe, worked to build a life together. And for what?

It was three in the morning, and for the third night in a row, Anders wasn’t home yet. Garrett understood his work was important, but they’d made a deal. Anders was supposed to at least swing by and tell Garrett if he was going to be gone that night. It was a favor Garrett had begged for after a close run in with the Templars. He’d lost so much already, and the idea of losing Anders plagued him. He never would have dreamed of stopping Ander’s work. He believed in it. He’d spent hours helping Anders edit his manifesto because he believed in Anders’ cause. He just wanted to know Anders was safe.

And yet, three nights in a row, Anders stayed out all night, and then came home without explanation or apology. Garrett was no fool. He was losing him.

Garrett sat on the edge of bed, facing the door. His legs were locked in front of him to hold him in place, and his palms rested behind him on the burgundy fabric of his bed spread. He was trying to maintain an air of calm about him, but the more he thought of what Anders was doing, the more he saw red behind his eyes.

He waited another hour before he heard the quiet footsteps approaching his door. He stayed exactly where he was as the door creaked open and Anders waltzed in without so much as a look up in Hawke’s direction.

“You’re awfully late tonight,” said Hawke dryly.

Anders threw his hands up. “Unbelievable.”

“Unbelievable!” Hawke bellowed, “I’m unbelievable!”

“You always do this,” said Anders.

Garrett stood. “We had a deal, Anders. You were supposed to check in.”

“There wasn’t time!” he said, “What I had to do was important! You know how important my work is to me!”

“It’s important to me, too!” Hawke said, standing, “But so is your safety! Is it so much to ask that you let me know if you’re going to be out all night?”

Anders rolled his eyes. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Anders looked away, shaking his head indignantly. Garrett began to wonder if he had perhaps been too harsh. He always wondered that. He could never hold his ground against Anders. He loved him too much.

He tried again, gentler this time. “I’m just trying to understand, Anders. I love you. And if anything happened to you, I’d-” He didn’t try to finish the thought. He’d spent so much time dwelling on death. He dreamed of his mother most nights. When it wasn’t her, it was Bethany as she was torn to pieces by that Ogre. He rarely dreamed of Charlotte, the second oldest Hawke child. He hadn’t been there at Ostagar. He hadn’t seen. Carver had, though. He didn’t like to talk about it.

All of his fears about death only amplified his worries for Anders. If he could just make Anders understand-

Anders looked at him with tired, remorseful eyes. “I know, love.” He sighed, looking at his feet. Hawke noticed the teardrops that fell all the way to his boots. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“No,” said Garrett, rushing to his side, “It’s alright, Anders. I’m sorry. I overreacted. Your work is important. I know that. I shouldn’t have gotten so cross.”

“No, you have every right. I’ve been horrible to you. I’d understand if you wanted to me leave. I don’t deserve your love.”

“You do!” cried Garrett. “Don’t say that!” He wrapped his arms around Anders. He couldn’t believe how foolish he’d been. He wasn’t losing Anders. Anders was just stressed. That was all. Surely.

As if he had read Hawke’s mind, Anders pulled away, his face hardened into an expression of utmost seriousness. “I’m going to be trying something, and I thought you’d want to be part of it. But I needed to figure some things out, first. It’s why I’ve been out so late. We’ve both been wrong. What I did with Justice was unnatural. It should never have happened.”

Garrett cupped Anders’ cheeks and stroked them with his thumbs. “You’re getting him under control. I’ve seen it.”

Ander shook his head. “I can’t help mages like this. Not while I’m everything the Templars fear about magic. I need to be free of this curse.”

Garrett wasn’t sure he liked where this was going, but he had committed to himself to stand by Anders’ side, no matter what. “You know I’ll do anything I can.”

“Your patience with me! I marvel every day that you haven’t thrown up your hands and left. I’ve spent the last three years researching the methods of Tevinter Magisters. They’re the only ones who have ever sought to reverse spirit possession. Not just behead the victims. I believe I have a formula for a potion that can separate Justice and me, without killing either.”

It sounded too good to be true. Hawke was wary of a catch. “Is it dangerous?”

“There are always dangers with magic. But I believe this will be worth the cost.”

Garrett slid his right hand to the nape of Anders’ neck and gave his hair a gentle tug. “I don’t want to lose you, Anders. But I want you to be happy. If this is what you want, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“I knew you’d stand behind me in this. Even if-“

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ve gathered most of what I need, but there are some outlandish ingredients I was hoping you’d help me collect.”

Anders explained exactly what he needed and where to get the ingredients. Hawke pressed him further, asking what else the ritual might entail.

“No ritual,” Anders said, “just mix the ingredients and boom. Justice and I are free.”

That was all the assurance Garrett needed. He made plans to meet Anders the following night by the entrance to the sewer in Dark Town. They would look for the ingredient Sela Petrae, there, along with the help of their other friends. Anders was wary, but Hawke was insistent. Varric, Fenris, and Aveline would happily help. Out of all his friends, they were the ones he was closest with. Whatever Hawke needed, they’d be there, no matter the cost. And, the more help they got, the quicker Anders could get his work under way. The sooner things could get back to normal between them.

He and Anders slept together for the first time that night in weeks. When they had finished, Hawke slept like a baby. He would not lose his love, afterall. Everything Anders had done, all the secrets, the lies, the coming home late, it had all been for Hawke. He could rest at last, safe in his love’s arms.

#anders #Garrett Hawke #hawke #anders critical #tw: emotional manipulation #tw: emotional abuse #14DALovers

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commentaryvorg · 5 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 5.21

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time as we finally reached the end of the main part of trial 5 (trial 5!!!!!!!!!), I still doubted Kokichi had consciously predicted Shuichi would figure everything out, Kaito hinted again at his true motives and this time Shuichi finally got it, Shuichi told an incredibly risky desperate lie in a last-ditch effort to protect Kaito, and so Kaito revealed himself to protect them because of course he would, acted like everything was fine, and immediately took full responsibility for being a murderer now that there was no reason to hide it.

Now for the trial conclusion, which is also going to take multiple posts. We are still not done with this trial yet.

Monokuma: “Well, if the culprit’s gonna confess, then I guess even morons can’t screw this up…”

He’s making it clear once again that he couldn’t afford to screw this up and didn’t know the answer until Kaito confessed. More indication that there’s most likely an audience! This next-best outcome that Kaito was gunning for really did work out quite well.

Shuichi: “…”

Maki: “…”

Kaito: “So you all got it right, huh? Even Shuichi and Maki Roll voted for me… What a relief! Well, I knew you guys wouldn’t get it wrong.”

If he’s calling it a relief, then it seems like despite believing they wouldn’t get it wrong, there was a tiny part of Kaito that was afraid they might try and run away from the truth. (Probably Maki in particular, after the Argument Armament of her doing just that.)

(This line is possibly the only actual reason the game forces you to vote correctly, since Kaito explicitly mentions it here.)

Tsumugi: “…”

Kaito: “But man was it hard to act like Kokichi the whole time.”

Hah, I bet it was. But I wonder what Kaito really means here when he says it was “hard”. I don’t think he’s talking about simply the intellectual challenge of getting his intonation right while reading the script and thinking of the right things to ad-lib, because that’s part of Kaito’s talent in communication and understanding people and would have come more naturally to him than to most others. I think he’s really talking about how emotionally difficult it was for him to put on that mask and pretend to be a selfish insincere asshole, when that couldn’t be further from who he really is and he cares so much about being open and sincere about his intentions and his character.

Kaito: “I mean, sure, he wrote most of his own lines. Seriously, look at this huge script. He wrote the whole thing. It’s even got a bunch of alternate lines for different events, too.”

See, while this line’s purpose is primarily to establish that there was a script at all, Kaito does seem to be implying that simply following the script wasn’t precisely the hard part.

Himiko: “…”

Kaito: “But even so, I still had to ad-lib. You guys couldn’t tell though, huh?”

You are not giving yourself nearly enough credit, Kaito! From the way he says this, it just sounds like he only ad-libbed a handful of lines here and there, when really he was ad-libbing for at least half the trial! Even a bunch of bits which hypothetically could have been scripted by Kokichi sounded a lot more like Kaito was ad-libbing them!

…But of course Kaito doesn’t care about giving himself credit. This whole upcoming explanation is about letting his friends understand how and why he did this to give them peace of mind, not about making himself look good. He could take this opportunity to stress how much of a hero he just was, but unlike someone who felt the need to let everyone know what an awesome evil villain he was, Kaito does not need to do that kind of thing here. If this were chapter 4 or the beginning of chapter 5, he may well have done – but he’s grown past that now.

And, yeah, apparently, nobody could tell it was him. I may have been pointing out all of the hints that Exisal Kokichi wasn’t acting quite like the real Kokichi, but none of the students, nor Monokuma, noticed any of it! Kaito didn’t pull his role off perfectly, but he did it well enough that it is not his fault that the plan failed at all. He successfully did a thing, as in a thing that was making a difference with his actions and not just inspiring someone else with words, like he’d always wanted to do so badly! Perhaps this one was more successful than the other things Kaito has tried to do because this one was still basically about using words, which is what Kaito is best at.

Keebo: “…”

Kaito: “Hey, c’mon guys… Don’t look so sad… You guys got it right. It’s all good.”

Kaito has of course not been oblivious to everyone else’s distraught reactions to this, but in true Kaito fashion, he’s been as upbeat and positive as possible to try and keep their spirits up. It doesn’t matter that he’s going to die so long as they’re all safe, right?

This is very, very similar to how things went immediately after the vote in Kaede’s trial, where she was just happy that they voted right and would all be safe, while everyone else (including Kaito, of course) couldn’t believe she could be so okay with this. The Kaito and Kaede parallels are so good.

Maki: “Why… did you kill Kokichi? You were against the killing game… So why did you kill him? I believed… that you absolutely wouldn’t do… such a thing…”

Maki is so used to a world where killing is just what people do, but… not Kaito. Kaito was the one who started dragging her out of that world. He of all people shouldn’t have been able to do this, surely?

It also feels here like Maki might be upset in particular at the idea that Kaito played the killing game, since he’s always so strongly been about not playing it and even always phrased his persuading Maki not to kill anyone in that way. It seems she still doesn’t realise that Kaito was so against the killing game that he eventually grew desperate enough to kill for the chance to end it, just like Kaede did, even if that would inevitably result in him continuing to “play” it for a little while.

Shuichi: “Maki…” (Was she protecting Kaito… or just believing in him, like me…?)

Finally Shuichi gets it. Protecting Kaito in the context she supposedly did it in wouldn’t have made any sense. She just couldn’t bear to believe that he’d kill anyone.

And now it’s flashback time. Time to hear a lot more from Kokichi even though he’s dead.

Kokichi: “I-I’ve been thinking… this whole time… of a plan to throw the mastermind off guard…”

This whole time. You know, just in case it wasn’t clear enough that he had the main gist of the plan figured out by at least chapter 4 and therefore that his moves in chapter 4 were entirely a part of that plan and had nothing to do with a mercy kill.

Kokichi: “But y’know… I prepared a bunch of stuff… Like this remote control… I had Miu make it… The mysterious message in the courtyard… Using Gonta and making him a murderer… All that preparation was just to make you guys think I was the mastermind.”

Please note, because this is very important, how Kokichi still isn’t accepting a single shred of responsibility for Miu and Gonta’s deaths. All he did was “make Gonta a murderer”, but that doesn’t mean that he murdered Miu, or that he murdered Gonta either, nope, totally not. If Kokichi was ever, at all, under any circumstances, going to acknowledge that he killed them even though a part of him really didn’t want to, that he was going way further than was necessary to convince everyone he was the mastermind, that he regretted it as soon as he’d done it but couldn’t turn back and felt he should at least continue his plan anyway so it wasn’t a waste… it would be now, right before his death, when he’s going to be more honest than ever before about certain things and has nothing to lose.

But no. He doesn’t. He never shows any remorse for the two murders he committed. I’m not saying he never secretly feels pain over what he did – but he never admits that he was wrong. Right up to the end, Kokichi remained completely incapable of ever admitting to being wrong in any capacity.

Kaito: “Wh-What the hell? Why’d you do all that…?”

Kaito was understandably quite bewildered at why he thought murdering two people was worth it just for that. Under normal circumstances, I imagine Kaito might have tried harder to get him to acknowledge his responsibility for those deaths, just like he was trying to do at the end of trial 4 – but they didn’t have much time and had more pressing things to be talking about at that moment, unfortunately.

Kokichi: “The reason why… I pretended to be the mastermind… was to end this boring killing game!”

It’s a very Kokichi thing to just call anything he likes “fun” and anything he hates “boring”, even though that’s not how those words should actually be used at all. This killing game is a lot of awful things, but everyone has been so busy suffering and fighting to survive that none of them can possibly have ever been bored. But no, Kokichi hates this killing game, so it must be boring, that’s how this works, right.

Kokichi: “I thought if I showed you the despairing truth, you guys wouldn’t want to go outside anymore… I thought it would end the killing game.”

Liar. Both about the fact that it’s the truth they saw, and also that he did that with the intent of ending the killing game. He could have ended it by showing them the outside world in chapter 4 if he’d wanted to so badly! And didn’t he just say that he’d been planning something like this this whole time? If he had an entire script prepared, if he had Miu make him Electrobombs to blind Monokuma, there’s no way he wanted showing them the outside to end anything.

Since this is a lie, apparently Kokichi figured Kaito just didn’t need to know the full truth of his intentions, making it likely that he saw Kaito as just a pawn to him and not a real partner in crime. But I guess there is the question of why Kokichi would even bother to lie about this. Maybe he thought that if he presents himself like he was righteous all along and that showing them the outside was an attempt to save them rather than just another manipulative step in his plan, it’d make Kaito a little more likely to co-operate with him.

Kokichi: “But instead… this happened. I’m gonna die by Maki’s hands… Why do you think this happened? Why do you think Maki tried to kill me? Why do you think the killing game started again?”

Kaito: “Why…?”

Kokichi: “Because the true mastermind instigated it. I’m certain of it.”

If he really is as certain of this as he sounds, then that definitely supports that it’s something he would have predicted would happen in response to showing everyone the outside world.

Maki: “…My actions were instigated by the true mastermind? B-But that can’t be… The reason I decided to kill Kokichi was… because I remembered the truth from the Flashback Light.”

It sure would be nice if Kokichi had informed Kaito that he suspects Flashback Lights don’t show real memories and that could be how the mastermind manipulated Maki. But nah, that’s got nothing to do with making his plan succeed, so no point in doing that.

Keebo: “They expected us to target Kokichi once we remembered he was a Remnant of Despair?”

Shuichi: “Kokichi certainly expected it. That’s why he talked about the true mastermind.”

Haha, yeah. “Expected it”, not figured it out after the fact. I wonder if Shuichi has a vague inkling that being targeted was part of Kokichi’s plan all along.

Shuichi: (But… even so, this is all rather convenient for the true mastermind. The person claiming to be the mastermind just so happened to be a Remnant of Despair?)

It sure is, isn’t it, Shuichi! It’s almost like maybe he wasn’t really a Remnant of Despair after all, despite what you remember.

Kaito: “I didn’t know about that Flashback Light. Guess that’s another mystery for you.”

Kaito has no idea what they’re talking about with these Remnants of Despair and this Flashback Light, but eh, whatever’s going on with that, he knows Shuichi’ll be able to figure it out in the end, it’s not important right now.

Kokichi: “But it doesn’t matter… we can’t lose… This game is pointless… unless you win.”

Who cares if the game is pointless anyway? Everyone sensible in here wanted everybody to escape, so that the game was pointless because it didn’t kill any of them. What Kokichi’s really alluding to here is the way that finding himself in this game terrified him, and he told himself that his suffering from that would be pointless unless he lashed out in revenge for it and won. And then he clung to the thought that that’d make it worth it in the end, through everything, including murdering two people and giving Monokuma two incredibly exciting trials and every other terrible decision he made.

Kokichi accused Kaede at the end of her trial of falling into Monokuma’s trap the moment that the thought of killing someone entered her head, because in doing that she was still playing the game. But Kokichi was guilty of making the exact same mistake the moment the thought of winning entered his. Because to win, you also have to play the game and give Monokuma what he wants in the meantime, regardless of how it ends. He told himself he wasn’t “playing” it, not really, not so long as he never became blackened, but he still very, very much was. It never occurred to him that the only winning move is not to play at all.

Kokichi: “When I’m on the verge of losing… my plan will help me win!”

I appreciate the parallel, but managing to win in the end when on the brink of defeat is Kaito’s kind of narrative, thank you. Kokichi never actually succeeded in doing that, and never deserved to. Though I guess this line is part of him desperately telling himself that all the terrible things he’s done that made everything worse will totally be worth it if he wins in the end. (They wouldn’t have, even if he had “won”.)

Kaito: “I don’t really get it, but is this the plan to throw off the mastermind?”

Of course Kaito doesn’t really get it, because he doesn’t give a fuck about winning the killing game and can’t quite figure out all of Kokichi’s obsessive talk like that’s the only sensible option.

Kaito: “The plan was… to make a case where the victim was unknown. And then trick Monokuma into thinking I was the victim so he’d mess up.”

It’s a shame that this part is just something we see Kaito explain in the present, meaning we never get to see his initial reaction to the idea that he’s going to have to fake his death and convince his friends that he died horribly. That may not be nearly as bad as the part where he’ll have to kill someone horribly, but it still can’t have been a fun prospect for him.

Kokichi: “Death games are meant to be watched. If no one was watching, there would be no reason to be such a stickler about the rules… There would be no point in making this a game in the first place…”

Kokichi sounds so completely sure about this. He understands this kind of mindset perfectly. I don’t think he doubted this for a second from the moment he found himself here.

Kokichi: “But Monokuma’s been a stickler about the rules, and about making the game interesting. That’s why he agreed to my plan in the Virtual World…”

And especially not during chapter 4, it seems. There would have been no point in asking for Monokuma’s help with that plan if he wasn’t already sure Monokuma would agree for the sake of making things entertaining. Kokichi never once believed that the outside world was destroyed.

Tsumugi: “But who’d be watching? We’re the only people left alive, aren’t we?”

Heh, of course Tsumugi is the first one to question this and try and keep the idea that that’s impossible in everyone’s heads. The outside world is definitely ruined, things are definitely still on-script, and this trial totally didn’t mess up anything at all.

Kaito: “But Kokichi mighta been right. Why have a death game if no-one’s watching? I wasn’t sure about it at first, but after this class trial, there’s no doubt. Monokuma can’t do whatever he wants. He’s bound by the rules of the game. That’s why he couldn’t afford to get the culprit wrong. Why he relied on Shuichi.”

See, this makes a lot of sense as having been Kaito’s primary goal for this trial (since he knows Shuichi is awesome enough that having the entire plan succeed was a very faint hope) – to push Monokuma into a corner and make it clear that he can’t break the rules and is beholden to an audience somewhere. Kaito’s efforts in this trial managed to prove that to himself, so the others should be convinced by this too.

Himiko: “We were friends during the trial!”

Monokuma: “…Honestly, I was just happy you guys cooperated with me. Humans love to help. They jump at any opportunity to extend a helping hand.”

So, yeah, Monokuma was of course deliberately manipulating them by acting like he was on their side and hoping that human nature would cause them to side with him without questioning it… but it is still definitely also Kokichi’s fault for presenting himself like the bigger villain such that there was even someone they could side with Monokuma against. If Exisal Kokichi had acted like he was on everyone’s side, then they might have naturally leaned towards helping him out first, before Monokuma could jump in. But nope, they fucked up, all because Kokichi just had to gloat.

Keebo: “Then who’s the true mastermind? Is it another Remnant of Despair like him?”

Monokuma: “I’m not gonna spill the beams on a perfect ‘To Be Continued’ cliffhanger like that!”

Wow, Monokuma. I guess he’s not even going to bother trying to act like there’s not an audience now that Kaito’s efforts have made that fact very obvious, but he’s also still making it sound very specifically like a story. He’s lucky nobody remaining is as perceptive as Kokichi was on that front.

Maki: “I understand Kokichi’s plan, but… why did you agree to work with him, Kaito? Why did you agree to kill Kokichi? Because he saved your life?”

No, Maki! Stop thinking like Shuichi did that this is a thing Kaito would do simply in repayment for his own survival! And also, come on, Kaito just explained that the end goal of the plan would end the killing game; surely it makes sense already.

Maki: “You should’ve just… ignored him. He’s better off dead anyway…”

It’s odd for her to say this when the alternative to ignoring him and letting him die was Kaito killing him, and therefore both options ended with him dead. So apparently what she’s really saying is “he’s better off being killed by me anyway”. Like it’s okay if she kills someone because she’s just a horrible assassin, but a good person like Kaito shouldn’t have to bloody his hands. Like (since she still doesn’t know that Kaito’s dying anyway) it’s better if she gets executed than if Kaito does.

Kaito: “It was kinda hard to ignore such an annoying guy.”

Hah. Maki knows about that kind of feeling too, thanks to you, Kaito.

Kaito: “Y-Yeah but… killing you… What are you talking about!? You want me to kill you!?”

I feel like the part Kaito is freaking out the most about here isn’t necessarily himself having to kill someone, but the fact that apparently Kokichi wants to die. (After all, it’s very Kaito to try and avoid thinking about the painful thing he might have to do by worrying about what’s going on in Kokichi’s head instead.) Someone like Ryoma was one thing, but it’s a lot harder to grasp the idea that someone as apparently full of life as Kokichi could be okay with throwing his life away just for some nonsense about winning that Kaito still can’t quite wrap his head around.

Instead of explaining why he’s so apparently happy to die (guess who also doesn’t like to think about his own problems), Kokichi points out the fact that if Kaito doesn’t kill him, Maki will become the blackened and get executed and both she and Kokichi will have died for no reason.

Kaito: “Dammit… that’s playing dirty! So that’s why you gave me the antidote!”

Still not why. It had less to do with using Kokichi’s impending death-by-Maki’s-poison to blackmail Kaito into co-operating and more to do with the simple fact that he needed Kaito to be alive for the entire trial. Kokichi should have explained the whole plan of Kaito pretending to be him by this point, since Kaito already recounted that part in the present, so I’m not entirely sure why Kaito didn’t figure that the reason for the antidote was that.

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… I *am* the Ultimate Supreme Leader. There are no depths I won’t sink to.”

Yes, look at him gloating about being the supremest evilest, to an audience of… literally one person. He really does just instinctively want to do that even when there’s no actual point or it’s actively counterproductive to his goals. He’s also not denying that the point of giving away the antidote was blackmail even though really it was something far less sinister and far more logistical than that, just so that he can look as evil as possible.

Kokichi: “…Even if I have to sacrifice myself.”

He says this, but, consider: is Kokichi getting himself killed for this plan really much of a sacrifice? When he was already convinced from the very beginning that there was absolutely no way out of this game for him and he was definitely going to be killed one way or another, to the point that he didn’t even try to escape when he very much had the means to? At that point, if you already think your life is a lost cause, getting yourself killed probably doesn’t seem like as much of a big deal.

Kokichi’s suffering in this plan amounted to being painfully poisoned for a little while, and then going through the undoubtedly unnerving process of getting under the press while knowing what’s going to happen. That’s something, sure – but then the press descended, and everything was over for him. Kaito, on the other hand, had to deal with far more than that, for far longer: the guilt of having just ended the life of someone he knew in such a horrible way, several lonely hours of just waiting, trying to distract himself from the feeling of being a murderer by memorising the script while wondering if he’s even going to be convincing enough, watching his friends’ pain as they believe he’s dead, deceiving them, pretending to be an insincere asshole who doesn’t care even though that goes against the very core of his being, all while knowing that the plan probably won’t even properly succeed at all and that no matter how things turn out he’s still going to die at the end of it. Kaito knew he was already dying whether he liked it or not and therefore also didn’t exactly sacrifice his life – but he sacrificed so much else, and so much more in this plan than Kokichi did. Kokichi’s part in it was the easier one.

And maybe Kokichi kind of knew that. Maybe he just wanted things to be over in the quickest way available to him, a way in which he could die with some measure of twisted satisfaction, having convinced himself he was definitely going to win (whether he truly believed that deep down or not), without having to actually see any of it through and watch it possibly fail. Kokichi was always a coward, after all – and his part in the plan, as opposed to Kaito’s, kind of was the coward’s way out.

Kokichi: ��We’ll bring the true mastermind and everyone who’s watching… We’ll bring them down to utter despair!”

The mastermind, maybe. Everyone who’s watching? Kokichi just gave them the best fucking Danganronpa case they’ve ever seen, and he should have damn well known that, even if it would end with this game no longer being able to function. (This particular game, not the whole series.)

Also it is in fact a coincidence that he happens to invoke the word “despair” here, since he wasn’t exposed to any of the nonsense from the Flashback Light. (Unless he’s thought about the DR1 anime that he’s apparently watched and pieced it all together. Maybe.)

Kokichi: “Then everyone who died can rest in peace!”

Yeah, Gonta and Miu, who also died pointlessly and in doing so gave the audience another incredibly exciting trial? I’m sure they’ll totally be resting in peace because of this.

I’m not entirely sure how genuine this sentiment of Kokichi’s is. On the one hand, he’s super hamming it up right now so this doesn’t seem very sincere. On the other, he did always have basic-human-decency-driven pain over the deaths, so maybe this is that part of him coming through in a very indirect way that he doesn’t have to properly acknowledge through his hamminess. It can’t possibly be the main purpose of why he did all this, though, because if that was the point then he would never have added another two victims to the list.

It’s also a very Kokichi thing that he assumes all the deceased people would be most happy at seeing him having gotten revenge, when really what they wanted the most was to see their remaining friends escape and survive. Gonta would definitely have been happier to see Kokichi survive than to see him do this.

Kokichi: “Ah-hahahahahaha!!! …Ack, aw crap. I’m gonna die soon… Can we get this started already?”

I do enjoy the immediate whiplash between his evil hamminess and his pragmatism tinged with slight vulnerability.

Kaito: “You’re seriously crazy, dude.”

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… But, y’know… I… wasn’t boring, right?”

I’ll give him that. He sure wasn’t. And that’s exactly the problem.

Kokichi was fixated on the idea, probably even before being twisted by the killing game, that “fun” is always good and “boring” is always bad. That’s also exactly Monokuma’s mindset when it comes to making an entertaining show. They are very not-so-different, and that’s a lot of why Kokichi’s plan was an absolutely terribly counterproductive plan.

I once saw someone else note that Kokichi only calls people “not boring” when they’re about to die – first Kaede, then Kaito, then himself – which is also kind of an interesting point. Like he thinks that someone’s life’s worth is determined by how entertaining they were, even if it was cut short. This is still a very Monokuma-like mindset, since the point of Danganronpa is to have characters who are mostly going to die be as entertaining as possible until that happens, and the most popular ones aren’t necessarily the survivors but just the ones who were most entertaining while they were around.

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[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 5 #class trial #commentary

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killscreencinema · 5 years

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The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (PS4)

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There’s a necrophage, eatin’ up your neighborhood.

Who you gonna call?

The Witcher!

I’m so very sorry for that. I didn’t know how else to start this review.

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, developed and published by CD Projekt Red, is the third in the series of games based on the fantasy novels of Andrzej Sapkowski. The series follows Geralt of Rivia, a white-haired warrior who has been trained since childhood to hunt monsters by a guild known as the Witchers. In this game, Geralt is searching for his young Witcher protege, Ciri, who has gone missing while on the run from a powerful supernatural force known as The Wild Hunt. Geralt must traverse a war torn foreign land in his search, diplomatically navigating through local political upheavals, gang wars, as well as helping old friends and new along the way, while taking on monster hunting contracts in order to make ends meet.

I’d heard nothing but good things about this game since its release in 2015, but was reluctant to play it as I had never played the first two Witcher games. If you happen to have the same hang up, then let me relieve you with the news that, while knowledge of both the games and the books would certainly augment the experience (as characters reference previous events numerous times), the story is so well crafted, and the characters so well realized, you’ll catch on in no time. If anything, the game will make you curious to further explore the lore of the series by reading the books or playing the previous games (personally, I’ve already added the books to my Amazon wishlist - I am in!).

The Witcher 3 is very reminiscent of games like Dragon Age, especially in how your choices have consequences. The choices you are given aren’t cut-and-dry, black-and-white simple choices either. Sometimes you’ll do what seems like the right thing, only for it to have dreadful consequences later. The story is so immersive, the characters so well written, that when a negative outcomes results from your decision making, it comes as an emotional gut punch. For example, during one of the many compelling side quests, I was tasked to find a nobleman’s family, who had “disappeared”. The more you investigate, though, the more you find out they didn’t simply disappear, they ran away after a drunken domestic argument with the nobleman got so violent it caused the wife to have a miscarriage. By the time you track the family down, the wife has lost her mind after becoming enthralled by a trio of witches and the daughter, who absolutely hates her father by his point, has joined a cult. Devastated by these turn of events, the nobleman takes his own life, which you only find out about after you return to his castle to find him hanging by a tree. Mind you, this was just a SIDE QUEST, and yet the story had so much dramatic weight and complexity that when I reached its grim conclusion, I verbally exclaimed “Oh no” to nobody in particular.

I can’t move on from talking about the story without mentioning Geralt, who is one of the most likeable gravelly voiced protagonists this side of Solid Snake. While Geralt very much embodies the loner hero archetype, he also has a sense of humor and a... er... a passion for life’s finer pleasures... that rounds out those loner edges and gives him enough humanity as to be somewhat relatable. For example, there’s a sidequest in the game involving Geralt having to perform in a play that is positively delightful to watch as he woodenly delivers hackneyed lines about a Witcher’s duty. As I alluded to above, Geralt has a... very active love life, depending on the choices you make in the game, and The Witcher series is famous for featuring pretty graphic sex scenes. Whenever presented with the option of having sex in a game, I always ALWAYS go for it, because I’m an immature child, and boy do you pay for that mentality in this game. I actually felt bad when Geralt’s promiscuity leads to destroying his relationships with both of his main love interests. So pro-tip, if you want the game to end with Geralt still in good graces with both Triss and Yen, you had better just pick one and commit (pick Triss - she’s much more likable and she’s a redhead).

While the story is certainly a highlight, the gameplay is no slouch either. While the combat is your standard hack-n-slashery, you are deeply encouraged to prepare for each enemy encounter via using the appropriate oils for your swords, spells that particular enemies are weak against, and potions for augmentations. If you don’t pay attention to these things, this game will kick your ass, especially during the monster contract missions, where each monster you face are basically boss level fights. You create these various oils and potions by, you guessed it, crafting various ingredients you find along the way. This can be tiresome at first, but the further along you get in the game, the more this stuff just happens to be in your inventory. I rarely had to go out of my way to seek out rare ingredients to craft stuff, the tedium of which can often kill gameplay momentum dead.

Before I finish up, I must talk about Gwent, the deckbuilding card game that you can play to complete certain side quests for money and experience. As I am wont to do, I completely ignored Gwent for the majority of my playthrough as I have no patience to learn how to play a card game while playing a perfectly satisfactory action RPG. At some point, on a boring night when I was fatigued after completing a lengthy side quest but not quite ready to go to bed, I finally gave Gwent a real shot as a lark. I’ll be damned if it turned out to be a quite a fun little card game! I became hooked, immediately prioritizing all of the Gwent side quests which had been on my “Active Quest” list for some time. I won’t go over the rules of the game, as this review is long enough already, but suffice it to say it’s similar to games like Magic: The Gathering (I say “similar” but definitely not the same). It’s regrettable that the game has certain Gwent related sidequests that you can’t beat if you take up an interest in it too late. I enjoyed Gwent so much I even considered buying the Gwent game on PS4, but that looks like a micro-transaction extravaganza.

Anyway, The Witcher 3 graphics are breathtaking, as you can well imagine a game of this generation would have to be to keep up. The music is an interesting mix of Celtic strings and chorus (if I knew enough about music, I’d elaborate, but that’s all I got!). Overall, believe the hype - The Witcher 3 is as perfect a game as it gets, although I’d advise playing it on a more powerful system, such as PC, as the loading times on the PS4 (especially after you die and the game reloads) is absolutely frustrating. Not a dealbreaker by any stretch, but it’s annoying and ever present.

#the witcher #the witcher 3 #geralt of rivia #yennifer #triss merigold #witcher ciri #cd projekt red #ps4 #playstation 4 #sony #video games #rpg #gwent #fantasy

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fandomn00blr · 5 years

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Nightmares and Chocolate

[Another chapter of my Amell Origins playthrough drabblin,’ also posted on AO3 (minus these sweet high-quality xbone screenies!)...]

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Her hands. So impossibly soft on the top, but hard where the grips of her daggers and the trigger of her crossbow left rough callouses underneath. Running over her. Reaching for her. Grasping. Pulling. Digging. Tearing…

And...shrieking?

Solona wasn't sure if it was her own screams or somebody else's until...

Ah, yes. The Archdemon again. Lovely.

She had come to recognize the hideous monster that haunted her dreams, and she realized, with a sinking feeling, that she was actually beginning to understand its unintelligible hissing and garbled roars. She had started to feel its needs, its wants, its...commands. And at least some part of her wanted to obey.

Solona woke up in a fever-breaking sweat, her loose night clothes clinging to her. Alistair had said her dreams might get worse. Before they either got better or she just learned to live with them. He hadn't really been very clear about that.

“Warden Amell…?”

Her voice. Again. Still? Apparently, she was still dreaming.

"This is fucking torture!” she screamed into her pillow and tried to will herself awake before her dream twisted her desire for the pretty bard back into another nightmare.

“Oh my...torture?" Leliana peeked her head in under the flap of the tent’s entrance. "Solona, are you alright?”

“Leliana? Is that you?” Please don’t have claws…Solona thought, squinting up at her.

“I think so…?” Leliana didn’t sound too sure herself. And somehow, this was reassuring to Solona. “I heard you thrashing about and yelling."

Solona had convinced herself she'd only been imagining that Leliana had been setting her tent up closer and closer to hers each time they made camp over the past few days, and she hadn't dared to ask Alistair what he thought after their conversation a couple of nights ago. But it seemed she’d been close enough to hear her having this latest nightmare.

"I thought perhaps we were under attack?"

“Just in my sleep, it seems.” Solona laughed weakly, trying to play it off. “Alistair assures me that this is all perfectly normal.”

She rolled her eyes at herself. None of this was normal. Nothing would ever be normal again. Not that it ever really had been.

“Perhaps I can help? I have some good wine...and chocolate.”

"Ok, now I know I must be dreaming...”

Leliana laughed, ducking the rest of the way into the tent. "I always keep a stash of the finer things for emergencies," she smiled, so warm and inviting that Solona didn't care anymore if she was real, part of a dream, or even a demon coming to tempt her in her vulnerable state.

"Maker preserve me," she huffed, feeling her insides turning into butterflies as Leliana scooted next to her. She was a clammy mess, her hair stuck to her face and her thin nightclothes soaked almost all the way through. But here was the woman she couldn't get out of her head, moving closer nonetheless.

"Oh, yes. Perhaps we should say a prayer?"

"That's not exactly what I -- " But before Solona could finish, Leliana had knelt down right beside her, taking her cold hands into hers, even warmer than they'd been in her dream, the soft parts softer and the callouses right where she'd imagined them.

Solona swallowed whatever she had been about to say in protest, as Leliana looked up at her with an earnest plea half-formed on those lips of hers.

"May I?"

She was helpless to say no to her. Whatever she might be asking for. Her soul, maybe? "Go ahead…" she stammered. It was a low, hoarse, blunt kind of noise, in stark contrast with the light lyrical lilt of the bard.

"Maker, please grant us the hope and courage we need as we prepare for the darkness and the battles that lie ahead of us."

"In Andraste's name…" Solona began to murmur obediently. It might have been the first time she'd uttered the phrase since childhood, refusing to go to the services held in the Circle as soon as she was old enough to opt out of them.

But instead of finishing the prayer, Leliana leaned forward and pressed her lips against Solona's, dry and thoroughly unprepared as they were.

Leliana’s, on the other hand, were soft and warm. And gentle. Like everything else about her, at first glance.

When she pulled away, Solona caught just a flash of the darker desire in her eyes, too. But she looked quickly away before revealing too much, smiling bashfully down at the ground instead.

"I see the Maker's love in all things…" She lifted her face up with the rapturous glow she had whenever she spoke of the Maker, the creases and wrinkles that Solona had begun to look for because they were like cracks into who this woman really was had all gone smooth again.

“All things…?” Solona managed to choke out because if she didn’t say anything, she was afraid she might wake up from what she was almost certain now was another dream.

“Mmhm…” A hint of a wink, a tiny crease between her brows. A little quirk in her smile. “And your lips are as sweet a way to end a prayer as any I can think of.” Leliana blushed and then leaned in for another kiss.

“Wait!” Solona pulled back just before their lips could meet again, hating that the voice of conscience in her head telling her to do so sounded an awful lot like Alistair allofasudden.

“What is it?" Leliana's forehead creased suddenly with worry. "Oh no! Have I misread you? The flowers you gave me...the flirting…I thought…?”

“No. It’s just...well, Alistair has informed me that I’m extra amorous right now because of the Darkspawn blood I drank as part of my Joining...and well…" She really did sound just like him. What was wrong with her? "I would just feel bad if...”

“I understand.” Leliana sat back, her lips just barely pursed into a disappointed pout.

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not be sorry. I was the one who was being foolish. I feel I should explain…”

“There’s really nothing you need to --”

“I do not feel particularly beholden to conventional ideas about propriety when it comes to sex.” She blurted out, like some kind of confession.

“Oh?” Well this was certainly not something Solona was expecting to hear from the Chantry Sister.

“Physical pleasure is a gift from the Maker! As much as any other thing that makes us feel good and loved. I could not take the Chantry vows of celibacy in good conscience knowing I would be turning my back on these opportunities to experience the Maker's love...”

“Oh…” Solona nodded approvingly, as if she understood completely. In her experience, the Maker, if there even was such a thing, was cruel and distant. In the Circle, she’d only ever really heard about the many ways the Maker had chosen to punish his children. Especially the ones bearing the 'curse' of magic.

“I do not believe our enjoyment of these gifts needs to be wrapped up in the sort of relational demands and exclusive commitments people make to each other — the restrictions, the rules...”

Solona was beginning to feel as though she were listening to a sermon. But at least the message was something that interested her for a change. And the person preaching it was nice to look at.

Leliana blushed again, as if she had finally realized what she was trying to imply.

"I fancy you!" she laughed. "If I'm allowed to say so."

“You are. Allowed to say so…”

"But what I’m trying to say, is that if you do not return these feelings, it does not mean we cannot enjoy each other’s company while we have the opportunity to do so!”

“Oh, I’m familiar with casual sex, having spent almost all of my life up to this point in a Circle...” Solona laughed.

Leliana looked somehow saddened by this, which seemed more than a bit hypocritical considering she'd just offered a no-strings-attached encounter, but maybe she assumed casual sex in the Circle had nothing to do with the 'Maker's love' and therefore was excluded from this arrangement.

"I'm sorry. I must seem ridiculous to you," Leliana muttered.

“No! Not ridiculous! Your views are just...unique. I've never met a 'lay' Sister like you...or anyone who actually believes the Maker could be so...kind."

Leliana frowned again.

"But I think I do return your feelings,” Solona hastily confessed, hoping halfheartedly she might still be able to salvage this conversation. “And that’s why I think we need to just wait...until this nonsense with the Joining has passed.”

“Wait...so you do...have feelings? For me?”

“Yes. But it’s hard to figure them out when the Darkspawn blood is screaming at me through my veins like this."

“I see. That does sound quite awful."

Solona nodded.

"I um...oh this is so embarrassing! I promise I did not intend to throw myself so desperately at you like this! You just...you make me feel rather silly."

"Silly?"

"Yes. Like a young girl again!"

"Oh. Yes. Uh, same, actually…" But Solona knew it probably wasn't the same at all. Leliana as a young girl had probably been full of light and wonder and joy. Solona as a young girl had been even darker and more disagreeable than she was now.

"Disturbed," more than one of her teachers had called her, and if it hadn't been for the First Enchanter’s insistence that she was simply bored, and in need of more challenging training in spite of some of the senior enchanters' objections…well, she didn't want to think about that. It would've reminded her of Jowan's unknown fate, who hadn't been so lucky to have such a persistent advocate in Irving, and she wasn't ready to deal with the remaining guilt on top of everything else she was going through at the moment.

"Sorry…" She turned and smiled apologetically at her. "I drifted off into my head a bit there."

“It's fine. I imagine you have a lot on your mind."

They both sat in awkward silence for a moment until Leliana brightened up again. "Oh! I almost forgot! I really did bring chocolate and wine." She reached into the the satchel she had slung over her shoulder and pulled out a bottle and a little parcel wrapped in fancy gilded paper.

"Another gift from the Maker?" Solona asked, finally recovering some of her characteristic sarcasm.

"Oh no." Leliana looked darkly up at her, a wicked grin spreading across her face. "This comes from another realm, where the Maker's grace is spurned entirely…”

“I didn’t know they made chocolate in the Void?”

“No, silly! It’s from Orlais!" Leliana giggled, peeling back the pretty paper with relish.

Solona beamed at her and eyed the chocolate greedily as she snapped a piece off and handed it to her.

“It’s the good stuff,” Leliana assured her, unnecessarily.

Solona swallowed it too quickly to notice. “More…”

“I’m glad you like it.” Leliana broke her off an even larger piece. “Wine?��

“Maker, yes!”

Leliana smiled and pulled out one of the daggers she kept strapped to her body. With a mouth full of fine Orlesian chocolate, unable to even scream, Solona thought, if this is the moment this woman chooses to slit my throat, I will have at least died happy, and I want Alistair to know I had no regrets.

But in a quick flash of metal and sparks, Leliana slashed the blade against the neck of the wine bottle instead.

“Show off…” Solona murmured, but the fluttering mess in her belly had become far more demanding allofasudden. She began to wonder if a single bottle of wine would be enough to dull her all-consuming hunger, even just a little bit.

“An old tavern trick. Basic bard stuff…” Leliana smiled smugly, pouring a generous amount of red wine into a goblet that suddenly reminded Solona of the Joining chalice.

She took it from her anyway and swallowed it down as quickly as she could and tried not to think too much about it. It certainly didn’t taste like Darkspawn blood, anyway.

...

Somehow, along the way to finishing their bottle of wine and another bar of chocolate, Solona ended up lying with her head in Leliana’s lap, her hunger and restlessness somewhat satisfied for the moment by the indulgences and her company. Leliana ran her fingers through her long, dark hair, loosened from its messy bun, absently twisting it into little braids, while humming some unfamiliar song.

“What is that?” Solona asked.

She remembered Alistair had mentioned something about bards and their songs and how they could hypnotize you, and between the wine and the general lack of sleep, and the warmth of Leliana’s lap and the way her hands raked gently through her hair...well, she was feeling pretty drowsy.

“Just an old Chantry hymn. The tune is probably older than the Chant of Light, I imagine. It’s a bit absurd, I know," she laughed. "But I find it comforting in dark times.”

“It's nice. Nothing like the dreary dirges they used to sing in the Circle…" Solona yawned.

“Then I shall continue humming it for you. Until you fall asleep. Or until I do...whichever happens first.”

"Promise?" Solona asked, already halfway there.

Leliana smiled down at her, twisting a braid around her pinky. "I promise."

#dragon age #origins playthrough #warden things #solona amell #leliana #leliana/amell #leliana/female warden #my writing #fifth blight #long post

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jmsebastian · 5 years

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Great Adaptation Expectations - Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

Some things just demand to be adapted into video games, and Kentaro Miura’s dark fantasy manga series Berserk stands pretty much atop that list. Released in 1999 and developed by Yuke’s in cooperation with Miura, Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage is a third-person action game for the Sega Dreamcast that attempted to scratch that initial gamification itch, and ride the success following the first anime adaptation of the series, which premiered two years prior.

Before discussing the details, it’s important to note that Sword of the Berserk suffers the same fate that so many licensed games do. It isn’t very good. Some of that comes down to the era in which it was made. There are a few frustrations that plague it that are typical of an era in which 3D action games were relatively new. That isn’t to say there aren’t things to enjoy about the game. If nothing else, it did help solidify why the approach to how action games played needed to be adjusted. Unfortunately, that means Sword of the Berserk itself, is something of a missed opportunity. On the plus side, it’s not a very long game, so its shortcomings don’t have enough time to grossly overstay their welcome, and any suffering along the way is mercifully brief.

The first obvious issue is the lack of camera control. Going back to play any 3rd person action game without a controllable camera can feel extremely limiting. It’s become such a staple that it feels more unnatural not to have it than it probably did to have it when it was first introduced. Of course, there are certainly examples of very good games that lack it. You can’t control the camera in Onimusha or Devil May Cry, but you don’t tend to notice that limitation as much since the camera is placed in thought ways that reveal the relevant visual information to the player.

Sword of the Berserk’s camera lacks that thoughtfulness. It tries to be dynamic, moving along with your character, but the concern seems to be more on framing Guts in a particular way rather than assisting the player. Given that this is an adaptation of a beautifully drawn manga series, it’s hard to fault the developers for trying to capture some of that magic in their game (which they largely accomplish in the cutscenes), however, it ends up compromising its playability to a fairly extreme degree at times.

You also have the issue of moving toward the camera a lot, meaning you’ll often find yourself running headfirst into danger you can’t see until it’s too late. There’s even an escape sequence near the end of the game reminiscent of Sonic Adventure 2’s opening sequence. You have to run around and jump over obstacles with little warning before you’re right up against them. Without rings to help you cling to life, this is extremely frustrating. One mistake means you die, and in a game with limited checkpoints and continues, it can quickly become the hardest and most frustrating part of the entire experience.

Rollin' around at the speed of sound/Got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow/Can't stick around, have to keep movin' on/Guess what lies ahead, only one way to find out!

Another part of what makes the camera so difficult is that it doesn’t have a lot of room to maneuver, even if the developers might have wanted to. You spend most of your time inside a castle, fighting through narrow corridors and cramped courtyards. In those confined spaces, the camera can’t really move wherever it wants because chances are, level geometry would get in the way. There are few examples of where this does actually happen, such as when you travel below the castle’s cemetery, and an obelisk sitting in the middle of the room complete obscures any figures that move behind it.

Aside from restricting the camera, the level design has the consequence of hampering what the game’s mechanics are centered around entirely, the combat. The whole point of a Berserk game is to play as Guts and swing the laughably huge Dragon Slayer sword around. There are several levels in this game where that is literally impossible. One level in particular, where you run through the castle town has several passageways where you’ll clank your sword against stone trying to land a hit on guards that hinder your progress. The developers seemed to realize this would be a problem, so they put in the option to sheath the Dragon Slayer and fight with your fists. I can say that this is not the most adequate solution. Even playing on the easy difficulty, punching guards out is a dubious proposition. Your damage output is drastically reduced and since the guards can snipe you with arrows from some distance with crossbows, you may well die before even getting the chance.

Let me just, uh, erm, hmm.

On some level, you have to respect the commitment to realism, as you obviously could not swing a sword the size of the Dragon Slayer in most places that human being typically occupy. However, the ability to swing said hunk of iron in the first place is fantastical, and thus, I think it would have been more than a fair compromise to let the sword simply clip through level geometry in an effort to make the combat more fluid and satisfying. Thankfully, the boss fights, which are the main draw of the game’s combat, are usually placed in much more open areas to avoid this issue.

Ultimately, I get the feeling that the game’s design took something of a back seat to the story that Kentaro Miura wanted to tell, and as such, there’s relatively little actual game to be played at all. Of the roughly four hours it takes to get through, most of that time is spent in cutscenes, making Sword of the Berserk more of an animated film than a game. Honestly, this does not really bother me. If you got the game because you were already a fan of Berserk, then what you’re getting is Berserk. What’s especially great about it is that the story told is unique to the game. It’s a side-quest, as it were, to the Millennium Falcon arc, where Guts has decided to keep the traumatized Casca close to him as he continues his quest to defeat Griffith. In this side story, Guts meets some traveling performers and decides to go watch their performance in a nearby town. He ends up walking into the middle of a conflict between the regions lord and people afflicted with a curse, called the Mandragora.

What’s more, is that the story is told quite well. For its time, the Dreamcast was a very capable platform for 3D graphics. Even twenty years later, the cutscenes are enjoyable to watch on their own if you’re willing to overlook a few flaws. Sure, the characters models are a bit blocky and they move a bit like action figures, but robotic movement is a problem that still plagues 3D animation if the 2016 Berserk or 2019 Ultraman anime is anything to go by. There’s still incredible attention to detail. The faces, in particular, have a lot of expression to them and help bring moments to life in a way that seems hard to believe at times.

You can really see the despair on his face.

It helps, too, that the voice acting is of very high quality. With well-known talents like Cam Clarke and Earl Boen, there was a clear emphasis on treating the game’s story seriously. This is extremely important since the story makes up pretty much the whole reason you’d be playing this game in the first place. There are some issues with the localization here and there (the name Guts is treated as a nickname rather than a given name in a few scenes), but the line delivery and interaction between characters really sell the scenes, even if the lines themselves are a bit clunky or cliched. When you compare the cutscenes in Sword of the Berserk to those in say, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, released just a year earlier, you can’t help but appreciate the skill in direction and experience of the actors when stellar voice-acting in games was not a given.

You could argue that this story could have been served better through manga or traditional animation, but it’s hard to fault Yuke’s for wanting to make a Berserk game, or Miura for wanting to branch out and test the waters on new methods of conveying his story. Berserk’s popularity in Japan meant that a game based on the series was going to be made at some point, and creating a self-contained side story that can be begun and ended within that game makes perfect sense. It also helps make the game approachable by those who aren’t familiar with the series at all. In 1999, Berserk certainly wasn’t considered such a pinnacle of dark fantasy in the West as it is today, so someone picking the game off the shelf in the US would very likely have no frame of reference for the story at all. Thanks to the introduction of new characters like Rita, the player can learn what they need to know through the lens of those characters, making the reliance on that prior knowledge a lot less necessary.

Now that Berserk’s influence has become so far reaching, it seems unlikely that anyone would come to the Dreamcast game without some working knowledge of the series. While it’s hard to consider it a can’t miss part of the Berserk experience (save for the wonderful musical contributions of Susumu Hirasawa), there’s enough there for anyone willing to put up with some clunky design. At the very least, it’s worth watching a playthrough online for the story alone if the act of playing the game itself doesn’t manage to replicate the feeling of becoming the Black Swordsman himself.

#berserk #kentaro miura #tenchu #sonic adventure 2 #dreamcast

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whatsthecraicwithvideogames · 6 years

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My Definitive Ranking Of All 21 Confidants in Persona 5 (yep it’s a list you just gotta deal)

Persona 5 has some of the best characters in any game I've ever played. Over the 100 hours spent in the game, a lot of these characters are significantly fleshed out and you feel a genuine bond with them. Some not so much. So, because the world needed it so much, here is my official 100% accurate ranking of all those characters. No debate needed. This is the only ranking you will ever need. Enjoy.

21 Yuuki Mishima

Mishima seems to think that just because he figured out that you were a Phantom Thief that he is entitled a spot in your friend group.No. GET YOUR OWN FRIENDS MISHIMA. There are plenty of characters less interesting than Mishima, but none that annoyed me more. It may be completely unjustified, but I just need him out of my life. More specifically, I need him out of my hotel room in Hawaii. Go home, Mishima. No one wants you here.

20 Toranosuke Yoshida

The main issue that afflicts the majority of the people at the bottom of the list is dullness and being underdeveloped. Yoshida happens to be the former. Maybe it's just because I'm young and ignorant, but when I'm trying to save the world from its inevitable ruin, I'm not really all that interested in a disgraced politician. Call me simple minded.

19 Chihaya Mifune

Now we come to the underdeveloped. Although it must be said that Chihaya could have had an amazing storyline that I just didn't see, as her character was so one note and uninteresting that I became equally uninterested in what was going on with her and I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. So I apologize if I've missed an amazing character, but she should have made a better impression sooner.

18 Shinya Oda

I have little feelings towards Shinya. He's a little higher on the list due to his storyline being a bit sympathetic but there isn't really much to his character other than the fact that he's a kid who's good at a video game. I was invested in making sure that he got fed, but that's about as far as it goes.

17 Munehisa Iwai

I am currently holding a bit of a grudge against Iwai at the minute, as he was the only confidant I didn't manage to max out on my new game plus run, basically meaning I wasted about an extra 70 hours BUT HEY. That's not his fault. He also suffers from side character dullness, but he gets bumped up the list a bit because we had a lot of weird dates together that I'll never forget. What other game allows you to go to the planetarium and an all you can eat buffet with a yakuza member? In Persona 5, even the boring characters have something to offer. Some more than others.

16 Igor

There isn't really much to say about Igor to be honest. Of all the people on this list, he’s the one you have the least opportunity to get to know, but there's just something about him. Maybe it's his nose? Or perhaps the eyebrows? Either way, I like his style and he managed to crawl up a few spaces.

15 Haru Okumura

We arrive at another character who took a little while to grow on me. Originally I thought she was just as boring as Makoto, but at least Haru has some semblance of a personality. She's awfully sweet and her storyline is very sympathetic. She struggles under the weight of her responsibility to run a company, and is conflicted by her arranged marriage to a man she has no interest in. I felt genuinely invested in making sure she was okay and safe, even if her metaverse outfit is a bit dumb. Nobody's perfect.

14 Ichiko Ohya

If you're not familiar with Ohya, just imagine a really incompetent Jessica Jones and you're pretty much there. Meaning, she's drunk all the time. She drinks away the guilt she harbours from losing her best friend on the job, but she still remains a fierce journalist who doesn't crack under pressure and is determined to find out the truth. She just happens to smell like gin while she's doing it.

13 Sae Niijima

Sae is cool in the most normal way that you'll find in Persona 5. She's a prosecutor, working against against all odds to become the top in her field. She may have been working slightly against us in the beginning, but she was a formidable foe; working with an open mind and a level head, she eventually began to believe our stories about our time with the Phantom Thieves. Sae is rad without needing a cool outfit (@Makoto) and we should all be more like her.

12 Makoto Niijima

I'm not even going to apologise. Makoto just barely made it above her much more impressive sister, and the only reason she did is because her whole deal in the metaverse is pretty badass. However, and let me say this loud for you Makoto, just because your persona is a motorcycle, DOES. NOT. MAKE. YOU. THE BOSS. Once she joins your team, every plan comes from her, even though I am the leader of the Phantom Thieves. I have tried really quite hard to understand why everybody loves Makoto so much. I even romanced her on my second playthrough so I could get a different perspective on her. It helped nothing. I really tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but anywhere outside of the metaverse, she is dull and boring. Number 1 Waifu she is not, I'm afraid.

11 Hifumi Togo

Before Futaba came along, I was all set to romance Hifumi. To be fair I felt she was the best of a bad bunch, but let that not detract from her good qualities. She's a shogi master (or at least she thinks she is), and yet she still struggles with something that a lot of us can identify with: she is desperately trying to live up to her mother's unachievable high expectations. All Hifumi wants is to play shogi, and when she plays shogi, she plays shogi. She's a bit crazy but we love her anyway, and there's no one else I’d rather play shogi in a church with. Now just to figure out what shogi actually is…

10 Morgana

What would a JRPG be without a resident weird humanoid animal thing? Mediocre, that's what. Morgana is an integral part to the whole structure of the game, in more ways than one. Without him, our character would have no idea about how anything works in the Metaverse. Yes, he can be literally the most irritating presence on the planet whenever I'm trying to go out and Morgana is telling me to go to bed (YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME MORGANA), but deep down I know he's doing it out of love. Sometimes I wish Morgana loved me a little less but hey, you can't pick your family.

9 Goro Akechi

Okay, look. I know what you're thinking. Akechi is a little bit problematic. I know this. But he's just so adorable before all that! That's pretty much that only reason I have for having him so far up the list. His little face in his character profile is just so cute that you can't help but love him. Also the way he yells ‘PERSONAAAAAAGHHHH’ is badass and I can't hear it enough times. I forgive the Ace Detective of all crimes he has committed.

8 Futaba Sakura

A couple of months ago, Futaba would most likely have topped my list. She was the first girl I romanced in Persona 5. I had spent the whole game waiting for someone to come along and sweep me off my (digital) feet. It was beginning to look like I was going to have to settle with Hifumi- and then Futaba came along. She was a hacker and a gamer: my perfect waifu. Her romancing scenes are very sweet and I remained enamoured with her throughout my whole playthrough. After playing new game plus that changed. I went in with the intention of romancing someone different, and boy is Futaba different without those rose tinted glasses on. Her inability to do anything on her own is, while understandable, it's frustrating at best. She's still pretty high on the list though, as I'll never forget our time together, and also she's saved me countless times during combat that she will forever be elevated to God tier in the Metaverse. I owe her a debt I can never repay.

7 Tae Takemi

I won't lie to you. A lot of Takemi’s charm and appeal lies in her character design. The idea of a cool, punk rock doctor who supplies us with our own extreme healing products is great. Even better is that she's got the attitude to match. Confident in her skills but still dating enough to go rogue and have you be her guinea pig for new medicines she's developing, Takemi is a doctor you would want as a friend, but DEFINITELY not treating you. Unless you enjoy drinking mysterious liquids and passing out for hours on end. In which case be my guest.

6 Sadayo Kawakami

Ah, Kawakami. She sure does have it rough. Teacher by day, maid by night, she's a very sympathetic character, although she may not start out that way. At first glance she just seems like your typical extremely incompetent teacher- which she is. However the deeper into her storyline you go, the more you start to understand why she is the way she is. She ends up being quite a sweet person, not to mention her skills enable you to have more of the most important resource in Persona 5: time. Coincidentally, that's the one thing it takes for her to grow on you. Just give her a couple of days, and you'll learn to love her for who she is. A hot mess.

5 Sojiro Sakura

I don't think it’s an overstatement to say that the entire plot of the game would not have happened if not for Sojiro. For some unexplained reason, he agrees take in our main character who has just been put on parole, and it's that act that eventually brings our whole crew together. Even when he discovers that he has a phantom thief right under his roof, he sticks by you and even lets you hold meetings right there in his café. He goes from standoffish jerk to ‘dad we never had’ in a beautiful transformation that is one of the best progressions of a relationship in the game. If it wasn’t for his curious combination of coffee and curry for breakfast every morning, there's no way we could have completed our rehabilitation and saved the world from ruin. Sojiro literally saved the entire world (don't question it he totally did).

4 Ann Takamaki

Of all the characters on this list, Ann is the one that surprised me the most. She's pretty, blonde and a model. In video games, TV, movies; these things tend to be a placeholder for a personality, so really I expected nothing more from Ann: and boy did she prove me wrong. She is kind, loyal and is extremely strong willed. She suffered through sexual harassment at the hands of her teacher, her best friend's attempted suicide, and the her career as a model being sabotaged by a spiteful competitor. Through it all, however, she remains a positive force on the team and one of your characters closest friends from beginning to end. We all deserve someone like Ann in our lives.

3 Yusuke Kitagawa

Yusuke is another character that I love purely because every conversation with him is golden, particularly when leveling up your relationship with him. Throughout his journey to find himself as an artist, I joined him at an art exhibit, a romantic boat ride on a lake, and I posed as our Lord and Savior himself Jesus Christ on the crucifix as a way to inspire the creativity within Yusuke. Some may say that Yusuke’s best quality is his voice, but those people simply can't appreciate what he brings to the table and I simply have no time for them. He is a rare flower and I will defend him at every given opportunity.

2 Caroline and Justine (The Wardens)

Before starting my new game plus playthrough, these girls wouldn't have even been on this list, because I had no idea that they were even confidants until my second time around. The way you level up your confidant ranking with them is by fusing personas with a certain ability, per their request. The only thing I dislike about that is that you don't get to spend as much time with them as I'd like. They are both as entertaining as they are enigmatic, and though it may seem strange to have them so high up, everytime I brought them a new persona, they stole a little bit more of my heart. By force. They demanded I give it to them. But it still counts all the same.

1 Ryuji Sakamoto

I don't care what anyone says, this game would not be half as interesting or funny without Ryuji in it. There are a lot of people who would probably put Ryuji last on this list, due to his loud nature and penchant for yelling in public about how you and all your friends are the Phantom Thieves. But that's all part of his charm! Ryuji owes a lot of his likeability to his voice actor, Max Mittelman, as he somehow manages to be comically over the top while still remaining believable for his character. There are multiple times during the game where you'll have to pick who to hang out with at certain story moments, with the intention really being that you hang out with the girl you're romancing, but every single time I chose Ryuji. Every situation with him is comedy gold. Ryuji will forever be my number 1, and nobody will ever change my mind on that.

#persona 5 #list #video games #persona #ryuji sakamoto

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