#i don't know. it seems like the devs really do think they made a big statement About Abuse.

[metanarrates]

i guess im like. what even is the statement that could b made there About Abuse. stp exists in such a weird heightened space and while obviously you can get metaphors About Abuse from weird heightened surreal spaces (hi I'm a revolutionary girl utena fan hello) it's not really a surreal space that's. conducive? to conversations about abuse?

you're playing as a god who has 0 context for the world, repeatedly interacting with another god who has 0 context for the world, in ways that are situationally forced to generate conflict. the game makes pretty clear that neither you nor the shifting mound process interpersonal harm in the way a human might, when all is said and done. you're playing out scenarios where you hurt each other in order to learn more about the world and yourselves and each other. in that light it's rly hard to say anything About Abuse that's at all applicable to a real world context! you're both in a freaky torment nexus together!

and while it's understandable that a player might want to walk away from tsm or even kill her after all that shit it's just like. ??? why are people saying the towers abusive. we made her that way because she's a weird perceptionbeing. what's going on there. why is the smitten abusing the princess in hea - what does that say About Abuse and why is the smitten not really treated as part of ourselves in that scenario. what

[szynkaaa]

The Shape of Monkey

EDIT 22/01/2025 @blackknight-kai has made some additional interesting observation about the shape of monkey and their fur placement with things that I previously missed, please check out her post for the details

xxx

Some of my friends were talking about the monkey design in Black Myth Wukong, in terms of how much of monkey features the DO/SWK has, and how we wished they devs added a bit more "monkey" ness to the DO, which then made me realize, the devs did do that, but just not for the "normal" game model that we use to play.

The anatomy here is pretty much very normal, the only few traits pointing at him being a monkey are his feet, tail, his face and his fur.

My friend (who doesn't even play BMW or knows about JTTW but is a certified monster fucker) said she doesn't count him as a monster because his shape is too human LOL

This is how he looks in Chapter 5 ending animation:

very human shaped.

which brings me back to the monkey that looks more like a monkey in the game

The Stone Monkey is a two phase we fight in the final boss battle, after we defeat him he breaks and out comes the Broken Shell of the Great Sage

After you finish the first playthrough, you get the Stone Monkey as a transformation, called the Azure Dome.

If you do the True Ending, you transform into the Azure Dome for the first time towering over monkeys and beat the shit out of the four heavenly kings and Erlang. Great fight 10/10

proprotionally speaking, his arms seems a bit longer, or least looks like it due to his big hands. His tails is also longer (don't have a screenshot of that unfortunately), and his ears are pointed. I also think that his mouth structure is a lot more monkey like with it being more pointed forward than his normal model.

Canonly, SWK can change his size into very big or very small, but I don't think in JTTW it was ever described that he had a Stone Monkey form. He is a stone monkey, or monkey born from stone.

I really love that the devs took it literal and created a form and transformation that looks like a monkey and you can see from his tecture that he is supposed to be made from stone

He punches people and also when he dodges he walks on all four. So I guess that is the closest to a monkey we will get from DO/SWK

Chapter 6 ending animation also goes with a more "monkey" like anatomy for Wukong's design

point ears, longer limbs, shorter legs. I love that they added the red face blush here too. His tail is never shown in the animation, but looking at his pilgrim outfit set and the pulge in his pants (no not that one), he probably hides his tail inside his pants. it's kind of a cute detail

The Old Monkey we see also has more human like proportions:

all the other monkeys in the background (beside DO) are more monkey.

Here are the models I pulled from the game

I also love that each monkey has a different fur "pattern", gives them more variety

This one we only see when you reach the normal ending, when the DO did not break the cycle and the headband is put back onto his head, we see this monkey in the fetal position and then it zooms out to the stone egg and sad credit song plays. You can watch the clip here.

I think it's clear that the devs are trying to show an unbron monkey still in the womb, the stone egg/birth stone being the womb in this case, waiting for the next DO to come and finish SWK's revival.

I guess the stages of growth could be like this:

Why did Game Science went for a more human-like approach for the Monkey in terms of design?

We don't know the answer, it was never mentioned anything in the game about it and I have not come across any interviews about it yet.

I do think that the choice to make the Stone Monkey more monkey like and the "normal" monkey more human like was a deliberate choice by the devs.

For the animation, I believe the Game science gave the studio some references on "hey this is how our monkey looks like" and then let the studio do its own thing style-wise, hence why in Ch. 5 animation monkey has a more human like anatomy but ch. 6 comes with more monkey like anatomy

My personal HC is that SWK has a more human-like anatomy to show that he has a high level of cultivation maybe? We have seen in the game there are few yaoguais that are able to take on human appearances, such as the Pingping and the 5th spider sister. And yes, I also hc that SWK does have a monkey-form too that he can transform into.

I'm really begging for Game Science to release an artbook with concept art and background info on why they did this and that

[ladyofthebookcase]

i need to yap about cultural nudity in nine sols NOW. context for new followers is that i watched kill la kill this summer and really enjoyed it and the commentary it made on nudity and the desexualization of the naked body. not sure how i want to structure this so i'll just kind of block it out based on the three main characters that are relevant to this. also when i say "the text" i mean the game of nine sols as a piece of media, like how english majors would refer to the book or movie they're studying. im not an english major but i could be.

goumang: my initial reaction to seeing her was to be like "huh she's not wearing any pants that's weird", followed by "well that's probably normal for solarians, they're cat people after all so it's probably less of a big deal in their culture" and then i just didn't care about it for like the rest of the game until i replayed it and got to her again and went "oh that's right, no one else has their pussy out like that. i guess that's just a goumang thing?" and, while i think it IS probably just a goumang thing to some extent (see the post about her being pussy out because of furgonomics basically/it's comfortable for her bird legs), an interesting thing to note here is yi's complete lack of reaction to it. goumang doesn't interact with any other characters in this outfit (the jiangshi don't count cus they can say like 2 words ok), and it could be argued that yi simply has bigger priorities/is not into women, but i do think it's notable nonetheless that literally zero acknowledgement is made to the fact that goumang is just walking around pussy out. not even non-diagetic elements interact with that at all; she's never censored in her manga cutscenes or posed in a way that either hides or exposes her. what this means is that her nudity isn't really treated like nudity. the text completely ignores it! now, we also know from a dev comment that solarians are matriarchal, which i think definitely ties into the different treatment of goumang and jiequan in this regard (i.e. why he's censored and she's not, from an in-world perspective, probably is similar to the way "women's" chests are censored in our world, although non-diagetically we know why he's censored lmao.)

jiequan: ok hmm. i'm no jiegolar, so i'm open to input on this one, but the element here i find significant is that jiequan is seen interacting with another person (aside from yi) while being naked. the fact that ji is hidden behind a screen is most likely just to obscure their identity (specifically his tall form) from the viewer, since they don't seem to have a problem also going around essentially pussy out the entire game; this is to say, it's not because jiequan is naked. i will say that the jiequan naked scenes have quite a different Vibe than the goumang and lady e scenes (no seriouesly why is that one cutscene so sexually charged help) but i think it's reasonable to chalk that up to 1) jiequan is a freak and 2) he's obsessed with yi so that changes the overall vibe of their interactions as opposed to, say, goumang. yeah i don't really know what i'm saying on this topic i don't have enough jiequan brainrot experience for this really. it does kind of give the vibe of like an emperor chilling in the nude in his palace and he's allowed to do that because he's the emperor though.

hm. yeah let's move onto something i've thought a bit more about.

lady ethereal: now THIS is really interesting to me for a few reasons, the first of which being that yeah, she's hot, and the game treats her as such! and yet at the same time it doesn't oversexualise her, or portray her as attractive at the expense of her personality. in fact, once again yi makes zero acknowledgement of her nudity-- his focus is on her, and that something strange is happening to her. yi also shows no discomfort or shame about entering the hot spring-- there's no "wait, you want me to get naked?!?!?!" moment that some media might have had, and i think that's really good not only because im a sucker for different cultural and hypothetical-cultural interpretations of nonsexual nudity, but also because a moment like that would have been cheesy and annoying and made the scene less serious. the focus of that scene ISN'T that the hot lynx woman is hot, it's that there is something mentally wrong with the hot lynx woman. the fact that these scenes take place at a hot spring without the text ever interacting with the nudity of the characters is to me a really strong argument for the idea that nudity is fairly normal and definitely not inherently sexual for solarians. the idea that it is inherently sexual is a very historically recent and western thing anyway and maybe i just haven't consumed enough media where it's not portrayed that way but i found this portrayal really refreshing ESPECIALLY WHEN ITS WOMEN ok this isn't even in a gay way i literally don't care about bodies like that. i dont having sex. i just think it's really really refreshing and nice for women to be, like, able to have these kind of scenes and character moments without the text reducing the entire scene to "ohh look boobies lol". without them being censored or hypersexualised or made into a joke. rips off shirt to reveal a tattoo on my bare chest that says "I FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT AFAB BODIES BEING TREATED LIKE THEY'RE INHERENTLY SEXUAL AND THE STRONG EMOTION I FEEL ABOUT THIS IS THAT IT FUCKING SUCKS". thank you for reading my essay.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I don't know if this has already been asked, but what did you think of the Halloween event? Is it too early to ask? How did it compare with the other events?

Aaaaah, thank you for asking!! I was actually in the middle of writing my own "these are my thoughts" post even if no one specifically asked 😂 but I'm glad I can just reply to this ask with what I was cooking up~

***Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!!*** ***Please also note: these are just my OWN thoughts and opinions! In sharing them, I do not mean to disparage those who think differently than me; I only mean to contribute to the discussion.***

I'll be quick and rip off the band-aid now: I liked this event about as much as I did Stage in Playful Land, maybe a little better than Playful Land if I think about it. If you know anything about my thoughts on the previous Halloween event, well... Let's just say it's a mixed bag. Neither of them comes close to toppling the peak that was Glorious Masquerade. (Fandom consensus seems to be quite positive though, with many liking Nightmare more than, if not the same as, GloMasq while Playful Land is still considered the weakest of the bunch.) Playful Land and Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas both suffer from general pacing issues. The former had an intriguing premise and setting but also many plot holes, a lack of active involvement from the SSR squad, and a resolution that was way too convenient. The latter, Nightmare, was very boring throughout because the majority of the event was centered on party preparations. I enjoyed everyone's bickering and the SSR squad's role in the event, but I wanted more than just that. It's basically like Terror is Trending, but if it had the Nightmare Before Christmas characters also featured. However, Nightmare did have a really interesting ending that played with amnesia and time paradox tropes. It's just that the road to get there wasn't anything special. I'll now get into all of this in detail, but it's quite long. Ready for a read? Then let's go ^^

My Extended Ramblings:

The initial aesthetic is strong. VERY strong, especially to me, a girlie that loves Nightmare Before Christmas and formal wear😭 BY GOD DOES EVERYONE LOOK SHARP AND DRESSED TO KILL IN THOSE NIGHTMARE SUITS... The devs totally popped off with the fits. I also loved how all the characters' coloring shifted once they entered the book; there's notable hatch marks on their shadows and even their skin and hair adopt bleaker saturations. These are SO much better outfits than the GloMaq and Playful Land ones, I'M SORRY BUT THAT'S JUST THE TRUTH. The other events tended to have chunky silhouettes and/or overly embellished elements to their designs that didn't sit quite right with me. NIGHTMARE SUITS HOWEVER ARE PERFECT AS THEY ARE...

... That being said, I think this event's premise was not great. I know everyone's mileage with this will vary greatly, but personally I don't like Lost in the Book events. I don't enjoy having Disney properties so blatantly shoved at my face; I'd prefer it to just be a distant part of the lore and history of the Twst world. The other issue with the event being so closely tied to its Disney film is that the story becomes so predictable. You can't really explore beyond the bonds of what the film has already set up, so you're trapped with whatever status quo Disney has mandated is "okay". (For example, in Nightmare, it has to be set BEFORE the events of the actual film in order to keep things "the same" when the film events actually play out.) Lost in the Books rely on individual nostalgia to some extent to get you invested in what it's trying to sell. This was particularly evident in this event, which featured several characters from the film and made Jack a very big fixture in the story. I for one was not sold on it despite my own fond feelings for Nightmare Before Christmas. I needed it to prove its own merits to me, and I'm not entirely sure if it was successful on that front.

I have made it no secret that I don't like most Twst events in general. Too often does it feel like pointless meandering and sightseeing without anything of real substance happening (though I do enjoy meeting new characters and learning new lore). That's also the case with Nightmare; the scale of the conflict isn't anything spectacular--but that's fine, it can still work as is, even if I don't personally find it interesting. I was still plenty entertained by all the bickering between the boys and between them and the residents of Halloween Town. The highlights for me definitely have to be Jade being a little shit to everyone, Jamil being tormented with bugs, Sebek's big speech in the climax, and Leona just beefing with EVERYONE in sight (particularly Malleus). The comedy and character interactions helped the middle part of the event not feel dull. I do feel like them having to switch groups around halfway through was short of a shoehorned way to prolong the middle of the event though 💦

One thing I noticed like, right away as I was playing this event was how disjointed it felt. And for the life of me, I could not pinpoint why… until I went back and compared the number of chapters per part. This is how the parts break down:

Part 1 - 13 chapters

Part 2 - 22 chapters

Part 3 - 20 chapters

Part 4 - 13 chapters

Part 5 - 16 chapters

For comparison, Glomasq:

Part 1 - 15 chapters

Part 2 - 18 chapters

Part 3 - 17 chapters

Part 4 - 19 chapters

Part 5 - 18 chapters

And Playful Land:

Part 1 - 16 chapters

Part 2 - 21 chapters

Part 3 - 11 chapters

Part 4 - 16 chapters

Part 5 - 18 chapters

Generally, Part 1 is dedicated to setting up the scenario and reason for travel. Parts 2 and 3 are meant for exploring the new location, with a big reveal dropping towards the end of 3 that kicks the conflict into high-gear. Part 4 is for combat, and then Part 5 is the continuation of the combat (with a focus on confronting the Big Bad), climax, and resolution. … Did you notice it? GloMasq (the only event of the three I consider overall excellent) is pretty evenly spaced out. Playful Land meanwhile has a weirdly short 11 chapters in Part 3 but had the extremely long 21 chapters in Part 2 beforehand. The discrepancy is made even worse in Nightmare, with Parts 1 and 4 being woefully short and Parts 2 and 3 being 20+ chapters each. It has the (likely unintended) effect of making the conflict resolution feel really rushed.

Alright, I think I've held off for long enough. Let's talk about the elephant in the room, our new addition to the Halloweenies, Mister Skully J. Graves himself. Right from the get-go, he had a mysterious air about him, especially since he's the first ever character to meet his twisted inspiration. Like I said in my first impressions post, I'm really into his design, but his personality shocked me. I expect some whimsy, but not a guy that flat-out kisses everyone he meets and calls total strangers "lovely dears". At the same time, he has the spirit of "sad wet cat" energy, and his expressions can whiplash between that and being absolutely deranged, which I found kinda charming. I get the feeling that he charmed a LOT of fans, as I saw many gushing about his otome-esque behavior and loving how he always calls attention to Yuu and Yuu's opinions. Unfortunately, Skully has what I lovingly dub "Ashengrotto Syndrome" due to my own experiences with Azul. That is to say, I started off liking both Azul and Skully, but after a certain point (book 3 for Azul, part 2 for Skully) they both took a nosedive right into my dislike zone. This is something I vaguely alluded to in my halfway through the event impressions post. I'm under the impression that this is a surprising opinion, so I'll try to do my best to explain why Skully lost his appeal to me. So the initial deterrent was his defensive and controlling behavior surrounding Halloween. He also gets so nasty and speaks down to others who don't see his perspective, which I don't find cute at all. I've mentioned before that I hate it when characters act elitist/gate-keepy and refuse to accept other opinions or change, and Skully fits that bill to a T. Sure, he might have his reasons, but I still find the result of his reasons distasteful. It's fine if he wants to respect the past or celebrate Halloween the way he's been taught, but it's another thing entirely to force those views on others. I've been on the receiving end of this kind of attitude and it was very unpleasant; I would not wish that upon anyone. (To make a long story short, I had invited a friend from outside my culture for a holiday meal so neither of us would be alone that year. That friend then complained that I was eating "non-traditional" food for the holiday.) Really rubbed me the wrong way when Skully started to tell others about HIS Halloween while being totally against everyone else's suggestions. Some of the others (like Jamil) even made an effort to try and include him anyway after his outbursts, and Skully was still unable to accept this lying down.

The hand-kissing thing was... charming at first, because I thought it was just his way of greeting people. But the more Skully did it, the less charming it seemed to me because of how everyone reacts to it. The others are CLEARLY uncomfortable with it, but he disrespects their boundaries by continuing to do so. To me, that seems very invasive and rude. Skully especially kisses Yuu a lot, and whether or not you like it will be up to individual preference--but personally, as someone who doesn't like strangers touching me intimately, I'm not into it.

During the Halloween planning, I noticed Skully speaking to Yuu directly quite often, which is different than the previous Halloween events. I started to feel a little uneasy about this, and for the longest time I could not tell you why. Then I realized. I don't think I can explain it any better than how I did in a previous post, so I'll copy and paste from there:

Another thing that really bothered me was that Skully keeps asking Yuu for their opinion. It SEEMS polite to consider them, but his intentions are way less selfless than they appear. Skully is often asking Yuu for their thoughts AFTER some other character has disagreed with him. So he is literally only consulting Yuu because he wants someone on HIS side. If you ever pick the dialogue option where you disagree with him, Skully insists there must be a misunderstanding and he will explain it to you no matter how long it takes. Don’t you see??? He doesn’t want to know what Yuu truly thinks; he wants validation in his own way of thinking. That’s NOT actually being considerate. The same shit happens when Skully tries to kiss Grim again. Grim dodges but Skully sneaks behind him and kisses him anyway because I guess that’s what gentlemen do according to him. Bro has demonstrated time and time again he does not value consent nor what others’ thoughts are on anything that differs from his own thoughts.

Skully lets his true colors show around the end of the third part. There, he feeds Jack Skellington a sleeping poison, turns Grim into a pumpkin, then takes Jack, Grim, AND Yuu as his hostages while claiming he'll reign over Halloween. Okay, that sounds great on paper, right? But there's so many practical problems with this.

Firstly, HOW does Skully plan to achieve this??? He's not that powerful since he's a first year; how does he intend to stand up to the NRC students? We even know at this point that he can't use his UM that much. Skully has shown he is impulsive and doesn't think ahead too, because he just assumes that Grim figured him out after walking in on the scene of the crime instead of lying/deceiving him about who poisoned Jack. He could have easily blamed someone else or claimed he walked in and found Jack like this already, but he didn't. It comes off as very near-sighted and not well planned out on Skully's part (which may very well be intentional; I don't think he was written to be a large threat.) I know this event's plot isn't meant to be as serious as prior iterations of Halloween events, but it sure doesn't help build tension for the finale.

We find out later in the event that Skully isn't mistreating his captives; he's keeping them in the bathtub Lock, Shock, and Barrel ride around in, feeding Grim and Yuu snacks, and asking them to please keep quiet. He also rambles on a lot about how he admires Yuu and how he wants to grant them a perfect Halloween, etc. That's... wholesome for a kidnapper, I guess??? But what I don't appreciate is (again) how he keeps shoving his ideas onto me and acting like he knows what's best for everyone. He’s not respecting my autonomy or right to think how I want. Skully is literally made of the most negative traits of Idia and Malleus while having none of the danger level of either one/j 😭 This makes me continue to not take him seriously and think that Skully could easily be beaten up--which does, in fact, end up being the case.

The ones who truly shine in this event are Sebek, Jamil, and Leona. The implementation of the SSR squad in Nightmare is much better than Playful Land. In Playful, it felt like Kalim, Ace, and Ortho hardly did anything unique to save the day; instead, it was a convenient phone call that rescued them from demise. The most I can say is Kalim was open-minded and tried to welcome Fellow and hear him out. Most of the other things could have been fulfilled by any other character, which didn't make the SSRs feel as integral as they were in GloMasq (with Azul's UM being needed, Malleus being the one Rollo has beef with, and Idia understanding the feeling of losing a younger brother and mourning). In Nightmare, each of the SSRs is similarly given a chance to shine with their special skills and UMs.

Beginning with Sebek! He leads a lot of the planning and serves as the one to draw up plans, which earns him praise from everyone, including his seniors. It's excellent set-up for him to later confront Skully about the idea of being recognized and acknowledged by one's idols (which I will discuss later in this post). Sebek is also the first to confront Skully on Spiral Hill after Skully has kidnapped Grim, Yuu, and Jack. In an act of desperation, Skully starts firing off magic and making really deranged expressions; Sebek unleashes his own UM, Living Bolt. This results in a strong flash of light in their location. The impact destroys Skully's shades and causes him to break down--he wore them as part of his ensemble, trying so hard to emulate his Halloween idol, Jack. Skully manages to pumpkin Sebek in the midst of his fit, and Sebek insists that Malleus--his own idol--will surely rescue him. NEXT UP IS L*ONA OTL WHO HAS MADE ME SO ILL THE ENTIRE MONTH OF OCTOBER, HURK 🤢 who heard the shouting. He rescues Sebek (he’s de-pumpkin’d) and Skully isn’t able to touch him because King’s Roar is just too OP 😭 (I’m sort of confused about how tf Leona’s UM works though?????? He seems to be sanding Skully’s MAGIC, which shouldn’t even be tangible???) I’m confused. dbsvsjsnskwk And he tells Skully to get back up do he can keep beating him back down????? BRUTAL. Leona’s been pretty useful up until this point too, taking charge in leading the group, strategizing, sussing Skully out, and thinking long and hard about what his true identity is. Bro’s really working those fat brain cells of his, huh…

I think this is the first of the Halloween events (that introduce new characters) where the new guy’s explicitly said to be in danger of OB. Not sure why that is, it’s just interesting to note???

SkULLy RUNS FOR IT and bumps into Lock, Shock, and Barrel, who proceed to subdue him. Surprise, turns out that Jamil had gotten to them first and Snake Whispered the trio. The kids call Jamil MASTER and -SAMA… My guy, you are so repressed 💀 (I recall it being said in book 4 that using his UM on multiple people can result in rapid blog accumulation so UHHHH I guess I’ll overlook this for now or assume 3 people isn’t an issue????) Earlier in the event, Jamil was like the only person to approach Skully to try and include him in the planning. Must be used to this being a big brother + always dealing with his dorm.

I’m not sure if it’s just me but??? It feels like they overlooked how some of the SSR trio’s UMs worked just to have it fit in the context of the climax they wrote. For Jamil’s, maybe you can excuse the fact that he’s controlling 3 kids by saying it’s easier for him to manipulate young minds. BUT THERE’S NO EXCUSING HOW LEONA CAN SAND MAGIC 😭 At least say he has strong defensive magic that Skully cannot break through????

It’s times like these that make me really question whether or not Yuu is actually important for helping these people learn to get along, because they seemed to have resolved the issue just fine without any kind of intervention from Yuu. Yeah, they bickered and picked on each other too, but they still fixed things on their own (albeit on their own, but it comes together in the end anyway) while Yuu is kidnapped and completely out of the picture.

Vcdnsksksksn The moment that follows is kinda funny and wholesome… Well, for the SSR trio, not for Skully. They all sort of rub it in Skully’s face that he lost and then praise each other but in a back-handed way??? Like they call each other nasty and shit at planning, etc. Leona says Jamil bullied Skully so much that the poor thing started crying, then Jamil accuses Leona of threatening Skully a ton… then they gang up on Sebek (wow, they’re both awful and I love that for them).

Seeing this camaraderie makes Skully throw ANOTHER fit because he’s jealous that Sebek gets all this praise and attention. Meanwhile, Skully is all alone, always alone. Though it’s not explicitly stated, it’s implied Skully is deeply insecure about being by himself, as his classmates at school don’t understand him and rejected him + his interests. He extols a lonely and desolate version of Halloween too, something that reflects his own soul... clinging to the only solace he has in this world, the one constant. A holiday that he cherishes so very much--to the point where his own UM is linked back to it. The big dilemma he goes through this event seems to be a mix of having his own views being questioned as well as having his impression of his Halloween idol challenged. This makes Sebek a good foil character for him, similar to how Kalim was for Fellow and Idia for Rollo in the previous Halloween events. Skully even calls out Sebek explicitly, saying that he has all of the things he has never had. He'll never be disappointed by his idol Malleus (sadhbaslidbas this is ironic, considering the events of book 7), he has senpai who praise him, he has Zero for a friend, etc. Life’s soooo unfair, Skully claims. And like??? I was so shocked to see Sebek acting mature about the whole thing??????? He refutes Skully's claims and tells him straight up that to believe in someone isn't to force your own views onto them so your idol stays how you pictures them in your head. It's a mistake to think of one's idol as perfect--not even Malleus is perfect. Even so, Sebek explains that agreeing with someone and loving/respecting them are very different things... so he will accept Malleus's flaws and love him nevertheless. Even if he disagrees with Malleus, even if they have to part ways, Sebek will accept it. That's really surprising coming from him, seeing as how Sebek acts absolutely SURE of Malleus's absolute goodness in the main story... Now I'm wondering if this event must take place after book 7??? Because that's when Sebek has his own views on Malleus totally shaken. Still, I'm so proud of Sebek for dropping this hard truth on Skully--it's definitely something Skully needed to hear and be reminded of to be pulled back to reality. He also just outright calls Skully put for all his cowardly moves, including going after those who cannot fight back 💀 Very Ace of him to do…

Speaking of Skully, what really put the final nail in his coffin and sent him to the Shadow Realm (my dislike tier lol) was all the tantrums he threw this event. I understand being upset and frustrated. Really, I do. I understand being envious of others, of feeling like you've got no one by your side. But is it REALLY necessary to react like that…? And so frequently… He just shouts “shut up” over and over again… OTL I don't know, it feels like I could sympathize with him more if they properly explained why it is Skully is so into Halloween (besides his hometown being the same) and why he holds the past in such high regard. The most we get is it's just something his hometown is into and when he left for school, none of his peers really accepted that. Is the implication that Skully retreated further into his hyperfixation to cope with his loneliness????? If so, I'm not sure if this was properly conveyed so now Skully is left acting like a big baby and overreacting to everyone trying to get him to calm down. The worst of it is when he claims he’s the one who TRULY loves Halloween and everyone else is fake. That sounds like something straight out of an angry elitist otaku’s vent post. Other characters acted similar to this when on the brink of OB (which Skully was) but never so childishly. This might just be a me thing though, I don't really care for overly emotional characters; they're usually not my cup of tea.

I'm not sure how I feel about everyone forgiving Skully and partying with him at the end for the Halloween celebration. On one hand, yeah, forgiving him makes sense because it's not like he was plotting anything crazily world shattering like Rollo or a participating in a large-scale crime ring like Fellow. Skully didn't really harm anyone (though he did try to shatter someone he pumpkin’d), at least not on a large scale like Rollo and Fellow did. On the other hand, I think it was a little bit too overdone with how sappy it was??? Like why did Jack say he was PROUD of Skully for being so passionate that he went to these extremes for Halloween? Why did Jack give Skully a HEAD PAT after the shenanigans he pulled?? I felt that saying he's forgiven and inviting him to join the festivities anyway would be sufficient. And again, I detest how Skully disregarded everyone’s consent and kissed them (Yuu and the SSR trio) as an apology even when they (SSR trio) already made it clear they didn’t want to be kissed. That just felt super gross to me, not funny or cute 😔

One of the big highlights of this event was, of course, the Twst cover of This is Halloween. Everything about it is just so... *chef's kiss* from the strong vocal performance to the perfect selection of characters to recreate each scene. It's a shame that we can't access the song outside of this event, but I know that I'll be playing it on an endless loop off of Youtube 😂

For all of the issues I had with the story up until this point, I'll be the first to say that the ending was genuinely sweet. Skully actually expresses gratitude towards everyone (a first, lmao) and calls us his friends, the best thing that has ever happened to him, etc. He wants to meet with everyone and celebrate Halloween with them again. BUT. I don't like that he singled out Yuu specifically as someone he really likes. I get the same feelings from him as I do with Malleus... Like, there's a weird over-familiarity and attachment he has with Yuu despite Yuu not doing or saying much to bond with him. His reaction seems unwarranted to me, with a lot of the appeal of his friendship coming from how much the player projects onto him. (And to be clear, I say this ONLY for myself, as Yuu is meant to be a character for self-inserting; in the case where I put myself in Yuu's shoes, I would be uncomfortable with how Skully is acting toward me.)

Now we get to the ending that seems to have emotionally broken the fandom.

I said earlier in this post that I don't like Lost in the Book events, and another reason for that is because there's amnesia involved at the end. I feel like an event isn't worth it if the memories get wiped anyway because then it's like the events never happened at all. However, Nightmare actually played with this trope and did something really cool with it. Even though those who leave the book have their memories erased, they're still left with some residual feelings that can propel people to act. In the Stitch event, this resulted in the boys wanted to vacation to the beach. In Nightmare, Skully--who was transported within the book from his original time HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO--was so touched by the connections he made in the book that he essentially becomes a changed man. He graduates from NRC and travels the world to spread the joy of Halloween, thus being responsible for why it's such a big holiday in modern Twisted Wonderland, the era which our main cast is from.

No one remembers the book's events, but Skully is so thoroughly motivated by his lost memories... He somehow recreates the Nightmare Suit, BUT DROPS THE SHADES (a symbol of him trying to emulate Jack) BECAUSE HE HAS NOW BECOME HIS OWN PERSON. He shares a jubilant version of Halloween because that's the version he cherished celebrating with his idol and first real friends. History doesn't remember him, but his legacy is still going strong. LIKE THE GAO POSE... DID IT ORIGINATE FROM HIM???? ? ? ? ??????? ?? AND NOW I'M THINKING ABOUT ALL THE FUN THE GHOSTS AND STUDENTS HAD IN THE FIRST EVER HALLOWEEN EVENT... BECAUSE OF HIM SPREADING THE HOLIDAY AROUND

The NRC students don't remember him either, but they must somewhere in the deepest recesses of their hearts... CUZ THEY ALL STILL MAKE COMMENTS ABOUT HIM, LIKE LEONA SAYING BRO LOOKS LIKE A PATHETIC LITTLE MEOWMEOW (exaggeration). There's also the implication that Skully's spirit is still around, since the characters remark feeling a strange cooling sensation on the back of their hands. We never SEE him, but we sense that there's something there. In the end, they promise that they'll make the best Halloween ever in honor of his legacy and we get sequel bait.

Twst REALLY had to go and drop that ending on us and then peace out, huh 🤡 It's hard to put my feelings about this ending into words, but I think I would personally describe it as very bittersweet yet romantic. Not lovey-dovey romantic, but like... it portrays a hopeful future even though it's sad too. Like, it's tragic that the NRC students and Skully will never be able to celebrate together again. But isn't it cool that even though they were born in totally different eras, fate still allowed them to meet and completely change the course of history? And even if they forget about their encounter, that meeting still impacts them to this very day. It changed the world and their lives forever. Reaching for that thing you're missins and forgetting, without really know what it is... Something lingering there, without a form... There's something so dream-like about the concept, I have to commend the Twst devs for coming up with it. In that sense, I'm quite satisfied with the conclusion despite the bumps in the road I ran into on the way.

IN CONCLUSION. Yeah, I thought this event was another mixed bag. The pacing was bad and nothing that interesting happened since the story was mainly about preparing for Halloween. I'm not a fan of Skully. However, what I can say is that Nightmare had a good showcase of Sebek, Jamil, and Leona's strong suits and actually allowed them to resolve the crisis. The ending is also much stronger than Playful Land's and poses many interesting questions about Skully and his impact on history.

[danileepearce]

hey, do u miss forums

ive been meaning to post here for what feels like forever, but i've been so busy for so long now that i've just forgotten to until now

from october to november i got heavily involved with building a forum website alongside 5 others, as a very deliberate return to creating a new internet third space at a time where we are sorely lacking in them. it's called "yellowtealpurple.net." (link in image)

this site is built and designed with the intent of making a space for artists and creatives who don't want to deal with the chaos and uncertainty of social media. its entirely self owned and funded with yours truly as one of the central admins under the alias of "dani_phantump". its meant to be a guaranteed space where creatives can share their work and know that it will be seen, as well as a space meant to intentionally nurture a close sense of community online, which i also feel we are sorely lacking in the present day.

we also have a very clearly outlined policy about AI absolutely not being welcome, as we've seen that this is something artists everywhere seem to grieve over and we think we are greatly in need of a space that allows art to be art without trying to "generate" anything from it. social media circles/cliques for me just don't cut it. if you've been around online for as long as i have, you'll know on a deep level that this is the some form of real thing, warts and all. obviously forums are not for everyone, but what we have just has never felt satisfactory. corporate entities controlling online space has just never been what ive vibed with so this is essentially acting as my own lil circumvention

there's spaces here outlined for artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, game devs, programmers, video artists, sound artists, even archivists. with social media and other sites being so corporate with their design, this site is deliberately made with a more old-school "homespun" online aesthetic. much of the direction of this site's purpose, functionality and look has been dictated by my instruction, as i approached this project with probably the clearest vision of all the admins. ive found lately that this kind of community organizing is one of my true callings and i want to use what i know from experience to try to make at least one site on the internet a more colorful and human place to be again.

as an admin i am deeply committed to maintaining a degree of safety, harmony and quality for my site and for the community that organizes on it. my dream is to rally together creatives of all stripes and have us cross pollinate in ways that social media doesn't really allow. we've already got some big site-wide creative projects underway that allows everyone to each show off our creative talents in cool ways, such as art quilts, a collaborative experimental film, and a lot of other stuff. i want people to feel like they're a part of something meaningful, as i also want for myself, because we all deserve that today.

sign-ups officially opened last November and we've already reached almost 400 members! i greatly encourage everyone i know, not just creatives, to consider checking this place out and all of our hard work. we would love for you all to join us and add whatever it is youre willing to contribute to this community!

[kopiicryptid]

Sometimes I think people don't discuss enough about how human Curly's character is.

And I don't mean in the 'he's a guy with good intentions but fails' way, I mean in the sense that literally, he acts the most human in the game. He has the most human reactions, dialogue, and flaws. I know the devs made Jimmy's design with the idea of him being an "everyman" in mind, but to me, Curly feels more like an everyman.

Curly's good enough that he doesn't raise red flags or alarms, but he's also not perfection incarnate. He's just some dude who happened to be good at piloting but not with managing a crew, which emphasizes the idea of Take Responsibility. He can be a good pilot, a good friend, a good person, but all that is meaningless because of one big flaw and that's his inability to Take Responsibility as a captain and consider all the measures or actions he could've taken to protect his crew.

That isn't to say he was lazy or completely ignorant, another thing that makes him human is the stress from the job, how overwhelmed he must've been from the layoffs, finding that of the crew members he got along with best was pregnant without consent, and that it was caused by someone he considered a friend for potentially *years*. And it's clear from the very first scene with him that his mind is not in the right place, he simply assumes it to be.

His reaction to Anya's news is painfully human and that of a cis man as well, someone who has grown with the privileges of being a male but also of a best friend. I don't consider his confrontation of Jimmy to be out of disbelief of Anya (I argue he believes her because he doesn't seem to deny the statement and seems to quickly understand who was at fault), but out of shock and confusion, the need for clarity and to hear it from his friend himself, despite already knowing the truth.

And God, does Curly put the 'man' in 'human' in this moment, thinking that he and Jimmy can fix this, instead of the consequences for Jimmy, instead of punishing his friend or berating him. Maybe it's out of fear of possible years of abuse from Jimmy, maybe it's because Curly is just a man, or maybe it's because it's all Curly can think to say in the moment. Either way, it doesn't excuse the trouble his inaction causes for the rest of the crew. All because he had the privilege of thinking like a man.

So I think it's real ironic and tragic that post-crash, everything that made Curly human was taken from him. His looks, his voice, his bodily autonomy. He can't make choices, can't move, can't speak, can't do a damn thing because he didn't do anything when he had the chance to. And what's really damn ironic to me is how the audience dehumanized him, too. From people's first impressions that post-crash Curly was the 'antagonist' or 'monster' of the game, to fans reducing him to a pet or infant of sorts, to people glorifying his intentions over his actions, and even to those who demonize him as someone who directly supported Jimmy's actions or treat it as if Curly did the crime himself.

To say that Curly was just a good-intentioned guy would be undermining his flaws, but to say that he's just as bad and if not worse than Jimmy would also be a great mischaracterization to Curly and completely miss the point of his character. Curly is just a human, just a man. A man with more power than the rest of his crew, but simply an average cis man you'd find on the street. He has traits that many people share and that we can find in ourselves, because he's a normal man. Painfully so.

Though perhaps the greatest disservice to his character and what people overlook in relation to his humanity is the abuse of it. And no, not from Jimmy, but from Pony Express itself. Although I suppose that's a conversation for another day.

[blueskittlesart]

I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

[inkabelledesigns]

It's incredibly frustrating and exhausting to have to question every piece of media that passes your screen as to whether or not it was made with generative ai. I don't like that I can't trust people not to use the literal theft machine for their projects. Especially when it comes to indies.

Like, so there's a new indie horror game called Zoochosis, right? I have no stakes in Zoochosis, a game about a zookeeper that's trying to stop the spread of a mutation with the animals isn't really my speed. But I'd heard of the people who made it before, and I wanted to see if they'd grown. The devs behind it are also responsible for another game, Sparky Marky, which used ai voices, much to my frustration. I tuned into a stream today where someone was playing it, and after hearing a little bit of the dialogue from Doc, I asked if they'd hired actual voice actors. The streamer seemed unconvinced that they had. So I immediately turned it off and decided to go hunting instead, because I needed to know if real people voiced in Zoochosis. I needed to know if this dev team learned anything from their last experience.

Thankfully, there are credits for the voice actors of this game, but they're very far down, which is a little disappointing. The common threads between them is that most of them have a Fiverr page, so I imagine they were hired through there, but I can't confirm that. Frankly I don't love Fiverr given they are also run rampant with generative ai right now, it's not inspiring confidence. But a number of these voice actors have full on websites for their voice work that seem pretty legit to me. In the case of Doc's voice, Tim Stephenson, most of his work is in commercial voice over, not character voice acting, so that explains some of what I was hearing. Commercial VO and character acting for games, shows, etc. are different skills with different needs. Just because someone can do one very well doesn't necessarily mean they're perfectly equipped to do both, especially when I didn't see credits for a voice director here. Without a director, you're recording remotely and going off of your instincts, and while many actors can have great instinct for performing, getting a performance that fits the vision of the project still requires some communication.

I think it's too soon to tell if these actors were actually paid for voice acting, of if these are ai voices synthesized from their likeness. The game is so new that it hasn't shown up on their imdb credits or personal website credits yet, and until it does, I'm gonna be a little skeptical. At the same time, there are many explanations for why the voice acting sounded off. The dev team behind Zoochosis has a lot of names that lead me to believe they may not be native English speakers (and I'm fairly certain I've heard that from others too). Writing and editing dialogue for a game in a language you don't speak is NOT EASY! That's a big ask, and if that's what's happening here, then I'd actually be very impressed by the quality of what I'd heard. It's just...frustrating. I expect this from big corporations and companies, but Zoochosis is an indie game. The folks over at Clapperheads are a small team making this thing real. And I'm troubled by the idea of an indie team, something built on passion and a desire for creative freedom, using generative ai. They're not the only ones to do so. Pastra, a YouTuber who loves indie horror, has started a series of videos that play into this found footage/news broadcast horror story, and for part of it, they used ai generated images of photographs of children to represent the victims of the monster. And they defended this by saying that it was better to use these generated images of children than actual real children. And I'm just sitting here confused by that. Because like, the model that that generative ai is trained on is using stolen images of real children to make those fake photos. So not only does it fall under using a child's image without consent, but you don't even know what children you've stolen the visage from. That is not a good look. The same goes for Indigo Park. AI was used for the opening footage of Issac Indigo introducing the park, and that's part of why his facial movements are so janky. Mason from UniqueGeese at least apologized and said he'd do better next time, but like...the chapter 1 revamp came out and that wasn't changed.

It's small stuff and big stuff, but either way, it's not okay. Until generative ai is trained only on data that is given to its developers consensually, it is not a viable tool for creation. It's not ready to be tested until the ethics part is worked out, and even then, I don't think I'd ever want to touch it. Like I get it, game development is hard, and in the indie scene, it's hard to make it all come together. But also, I expect a project built on passion to at least TRY to be creative in its solutions, and for the people making it to know better than to use stolen content. I expect better. Maybe I'm wrong for expecting better. But I expect better.

I'm just...disappointed. It makes me feel like I can't touch anything in modern media. Like I may as well go back and only play games, watch shows/movies, and explore stories made before 2023. At least then I can trust that it was probably done without the use of the theft machine. That's such a hopeless thing, giving up on modern art and all the potential it comes with. I don't want to give up on art. I don't want to give up on people telling meaningful stories in modern times. Please, humans, keep making art with your own two hands. Please give me something to be hopeful for.

[lxrd-ren]

ALRIGHT

PART #2 OF NICO MASTERMIND THEORY

https://www.tumblr.com/lxrd-ren/763859465077456896/nico-mastermind-theory-hear-me-out?source=share

^ Refer to part 1

Now

MonoTV + Nico Likeness

Already listed a lot of these in the last post but I found more somehow

Never thought I'd be comparing colours for theories again, let alone shades of red, but here we are once again

So, in some of MonoTV's sprites it's got red claws, so I thought, kinda reminds me of Nicos red eyes

The colour on Nicos default sprite does make it seem like a stretch, but fortunately, the dev released the sprites of the cast without any shadows or similar things added to the colours (bottom right of image), and you start to see how the reds do seem to look pretty similar; the colour on the wheels are also quite close in hue

Also noted down how the little dent on MonoTV's right antenna thingy may be reminiscent of Nicos little tuff in-between their own cat-like hair, but I may just be reaching

MonoTV Being Made For Nico

Also concerning MonoTV, in the last post I mentioned how MonoTV might've been made for or with Nico in mind

Now, take into account how Nico literally feels better being around things that remind them of cats, and MonoTV basicly being a cat really makes it seem like it was built specifically for them

Think of it like Semiotics, like Veronika mentioned at one point funny enough. Nico feels better being around things that remind them of cats, so MonoTV is built to resemble a cat so Nico feels better around them

Or, Nico could've just asked for MonoTV to be like a cat, cause, y'know...

Cat-THEMED things they like specifically, not cats surprisingly

Narrative Things

(And yes the birthdays might be significant)

^ Straight from the Dev

Their birthday might fit into two narrative things:

1) The whole narrative of Teruko and David being swapped with the protagonist / antagonist role, I know I saw a post mention Greek mythology and fate with those fighting against fate (David + Xander) being the heroes in this story and those who accept fate being the (I guess) villains (Teruko), for lack of a better word

Normally the one who started the killing game is the villain, but if the roles really are swapped, then the masterminds birthday being on Hero's day lines up perfectly

2) If the killing game was started out of revenge for Mai, Nico could consider themselves to be Mai's 'hero' of sorts; doing her justice after death in a way

Speaking of narratives..

Rose + Nico Friendship + Parallels

Yep, I wanna talk about these two

First off, they both seem to be significant; atleast to each other. Nico doesn't seem to interact with many people, and Hu seems to be the only other one they actually choose to speak to. Aswell with Rose sleeping so often, we don't really see her hang out with people, let alone a specific one. But, the time she spent with Nico in the boutique was brought up again. Sure it was because of Nico stealing the turpentine, but the fact that it was their friendship and the broken trust that came with it that was also touched upon makes me think that we might be getting more out of this duo besides how Nico got the turpentine

Now that's established, I'll talk about they could parallel each other (and how they do so more if Nico is indeed the mm)

I believe they parallel each other in relation to memory; specifically, how much you know

With Rose's photographic memory, she is at one end with knowing a lot, and is even suffering with so much knowledge

With Nico, I believe they are at the other end with not knowing anything

Not sure if I mentioned this in the last post, but I believe that if Nico is indeed the mastermind, then they are not even aware of it themselves; and this time, I got things to back it up YIPPEE

Nico Is Unaware

(Thank you to @1moreff-creator for the masterpost that the image above came from)

So, this makes a lot more sense if a big part of Nico is indeed how they are not aware they are the mastermind. I could see this being relevant in the last chapter when they are confronted

'Dude wtf why did you start the killing game'

'I don't remember. No matter how much I think, I don't know.'

Etc, etc..

Revisiting the Mai statements also adds to this

Nico: Everyone confided in her.

Now, we know they are connected to both Mai and whichever cast member the sentence is assigned to. However, I saw someone (probably @demodraws0606) talk about the possibility that some of them are connected to the character in a different way. And that way is that whatever the statements say, the opposite is true for the character

What this means for Nico exactly?

Well

The opposite of this would probably be to withhold information from someone. Could be referencing everyone at the XF-TURE company or any potential traitors purposefully not telling Nico they are the mastermind, especially if they went out of their way to prevent them from knowing this

Could explain why MonoTV keeps insisting they are not a cat; just another attempt to keep Nico from the truth. Afterall, Nico is heavily associated with cats. But ofcourse, MonoTV is incompetent so its attempt is not the best. Furthermore, although MonoTV doesn't know who the mastermind is, they may have just been programmed to, idk, 'Don't bring up the cat thing whatsoever, and if it's pointed out, deny deny deny.' Lest the very cat-like mastermind gets discovered. I mean, even Arei's drawing of Nico includes cat ears; not hard to put two and two together. Mf even smells like cat

From Last Post:

(Thanks to @takesometimetoreflect for commenting)

Now, they mentioned several things that add onto this

First,

1) They are consistently placed last / next to MonoTV

Both in the heading and cast list, they are dead last. I don't think this would be significant if not for the fact they are like the only one who this applies to

Whilst the default sprites are on display, I'll talk about the next point

2) Nico is the only one to have their default sprite looking away and not in front of them

Again, hella suspicious purely based on the fact that they are the only one to do this

(Also I checked; David's new default sprite is also facing the front like everyone else's)

And finally..

3) Their secret quote is the only one to be a question

Similar thing, they are again the odd one out

(Their secret quote is: Why should I own up to the mistakes that someone else made?)

Nico if you keep this up you gonna be as suspicious as Whit

Extra:

Just something else I noticed

Again from the masterpost, the first thing that appears is the above sentence. Only thing I wanna point out is with nicknames, only two scenarios come to mind. First is how Hu's nickname used to be Julia, but no one really uses it as a nickname. Only time someone even refers to her using the name is David, and at the time the fucker (/aff) is mocking her

Only other time is how during the introductions, for some reason, Nico calls Teruko 'Teru' as a nickname. Its never brought up again, and I found it quite strange given that Nico has never called anyone else by a nickname

I mean the statement is basicly saying to not call anyone by a nickname, except the protagonist (aka, Teruko)

If that moment is not what that statement is referring to, then I'll eat my none-existant hat

[chronicdelusionistsart]

Gotham Knights: A Game I Sure Played

I'm a pretty prolific gamer, but I don't often stop to do reviews. Not publicly posted, rambling breakdowns, anyway. But I did have a very interesting experience with Gotham Knights and frankly I think the world needs more people to talk about this game that haven't played the Arkham series to make the comparison since that base is. More than covered. Also, notably, I was forced to play singleplayer because I couldn't in good conscience ask anyone I know to drop full price on this game. Here we go. Spoilers under the cut, obviously.

Part 1, Gameplay: Ohhhh they definitely ran out of money huh

Gotham Knights' gameplay is squarely in what I'd call the hump of compelling mediocrity. It's a solid base but it needed more time and playtesting to cook, imo. The early game is a huge hump to get over, it's really empty of stuff to do until you get through a bit of the story.

I know academically that they lifted large parts of it from the Arkham games, and despite what I'd call Sonic Adventure 2 levels of jank, I actually didn't find it too hard to handle. That might be because I have the brain that unironically likes SA2 jank, because I found myself warming to the controls considerably by the time I'd gotten to the midgame. The most frustrating component is that a lot of the attacks are context sensitive and I blew my cover a lot by accidentally clicking the stealth takedown button 0.001 seconds too late which made it a ranged attack. F

Unambiguous likes: Schmoovement. I liked zipping around rooftops and while the bike kinda hurt my ears I ended up really enjoying the bike courses and just jetting around on it.

I actually really like how each character handles noticeably differently. I suck ass as Jason, mind, but everyone else I felt like I could really get into the groove of it. I particularly enjoyed the stealth elements and I played largely as Tim because he's specced into that. There's something nice about being able to pick the character that complements what you like about the game the most, and I can see how co-op would have been a blast. It holds up in this regard even in singleplayer, though that leads neatly into my next point.

PADDING. Playing singleplayer, this game has SO MUCH PADDING. A big problem with the game is that they often ask you to do busywork before letting you enjoy the next part of the story, and really, the story missions are generally fun and engaging.

I think this is for a variety of reasons - one, it wouldn't be as bad if you were playing co-op and everyone was working together, and two, it looks to me like they ran out of money to do side missions. Like, there are only three side cases and it really feels in my heart of hearts like a lot of the game's problems would have been solved by adding like, double that many. It would have eased the grind on random crimes a lot and allowed a much more natural advancement curve. I don't blame the devs for this, though. I think it's clear this was a funding issue. They just needed more money to make more game and had to settle.

As it is, random crimes seems to serve only to feed into my least favourite part of the game: the fucking crafting…

Part 1.5, The Crafting system: Gameplay Loops need to be fun

This is the only part of the game I'll call outright Bad. While not all the advancement in the game is bad (The ability trees are AWESOME and I visibly whooped when I unlocked some of those options), the crafting system is both necessary to keep up with enemy healthbars and also really really boring.

Let me clarify something about what I meant about padding: The primary gameplay loop for this game is that you beat people up, get clues for premediated crimes to stop, you go to those crimes, you get crafting rewards, you craft better gear, and then this equips you to maybe take on the next part of the story.

IN THEORY, this sounds good. It is a classic complete gameplay loop - crafting makes it easier to take on new crimes, new crimes give you more crafting, and it all pays off in the Big Cool Missions. Except that the results of crafting are… boring. The only - and I mean the ONLY meaningful non-aesthetic choices you'll be making while selecting what to craft are "is the number big" and "what element do I want, and do I want it more than big number".

It's really noticeable when put next to the ability trees. It's just… bad! This element of the game could have stood to benefit from more meaningful gear customization a LOT. Off the top of my head, making mod chips the things that decided what elemental damage you do and having a better system there might have done a lot of heavy lifting. Things for future modders to think about, maybe.

This is one of those things that just needed more time and budget to cook. I think they did it this way to cover the gaping hole where the extra content was supposed to be, and to their credit, some of it's cool. Like…

Part 2, Music and Visual Design:

THOSE FUCKING SUITS ROCK!!!! Sorry Jason you didn't get many bangers but YEEEEAHHH!!! ART!!! I have nothing but praise for 99% of this game's visual design. Aside from Jason and Tim's ugly ugly buzzcuts which are really a personal preference, they knocked it out of the park. The character designs, the environmental designs, the setpieces (holy shit man the Mr. Freeze giant-ass blizzard tho), all of them are super polished and super tight. I can't think of a single miss that isn't a Me Problem.

I really like how Gotham looks. It's got such a range of architectural styles and it has so many little homages to the comics and little details and it's just so fun to look at. My friend who was watching me play also commented that they like the light and dark ratios that make Gotham seem dark but still allow you to see what the fuck is going on, always a plus. The way they use colour in the landscape is really neat and allows you to recognize important buildings, which are of course intimately connected to Batman lore. Soooooo cooool.

The music is serviceable, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Very few tracks stood out to me, but I felt the score carried the right emotions and sold the right moments. There are some memorable uses of rock songs, particularly during the prison riot.

My one nitpick on the environmental design is that because the game was intended to be co-op, I think they didn't go much in for mook chatter. Rooftops feel empty and silent. I want a radio station or one of these podcasts that Tim is subscribed to to listen to as I zip around, it would make a huge difference.

Part 3, The Goddamn Writing: This is why I stuck it out

This is why I played the game. I'm someone who really is a sucker for character writing and I love the characters and the premise here.

Short of it: Good.

Long of it: Everyone in the batfam is good here. They all have their own arcs and they all have complex interpersonal relationships and their own opinions and comments and quips on what's going on.

No, these versions of the characters are not accurate to comics. I see people complaining about that all the time. But they aren't bogged down by fifty years of continuity and retcons, and in this bottled narrative, in this self contained timeline, they're allowed to have a run where a version of them get to be a family. A REAL family, too, not bogged down by soap operaisms to sell books with shock value or ruined by the next writer that comes along that wants to fridge someone or has a hateboner for Dick. I'm not exaggerating when I call their interactions siblinglike in a sometimes painfully real way, or when I say that this is the best execution I've seen of the Jason-returns-to-the-fold premise.

The comics aren't bad, but there is value to giving characters new reinterpretations in adaptations. I particularly like adaptations for this reason!

Also of note is that the game is FUNNY. They know when not to be funny, but the writers have a lot of funny character based humour. Their banter and sometimes their one-liners (Robin's "WHY???" at Harley hitting some of her own guys through a door lives rent free in my head now) are incredibly memorable and charming. This is something they have over Batman himself, who's often a bit wooden.

The main story, which I would usually have started with, is more of a vehicle for the character stuff, and it does its job well. It's not super remarkable on its own, but it does have its moments. I think I enjoyed getting mad at the Court of Owls being huge losers with their fuckass Zelda puzzles more than I enjoyed the mystery of it. Seriously, fuck these guys. They were the right choice for the game's bait and switch antagonists, with Talia more saliently playing off of themes of what it can do to you to refuse to move on or grieve and let go and bringing the story to a thematically satisfying conclusion.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

I give the game a HUGE thumbs up of respect for keeping Batman dead in the end. Batman media has a tendency to never let go of Bruce Wayne, but this one was brave enough to make it about grieving him and his ripple effect on the people he knew after his death. I feel it would have undercut the narrative a lot to have him be permanently back, and the writers didn't flinch in doing what needed to be done here while still making his metaphorical ghost a major character.

The game's about grief and growth and moving on. And it does it pretty well.

Also, they going to Pride. YEEHAW-

Part Final, Should I Play This Game?: Depends. Man I guess I spoiled the whole thing though huh

Sooooo I'd call this, again, right in the hump of compelling mediocrity for me overall (Which is to say I'll never ever forget it and it will consume me). The gameplay problems hold back a really well written game a LOT and I can't in good conscience recommend the grind. But I enjoyed it, even though it annoyed me a lot. I really REALLY held on for the character writing but I can't say I didn't enjoy being a cool stealth guy.

I think if you don't mind beating guys up a lot and like the grappling hook life, or if you have friends to play it with and it's on sale, or if it's on sale in general… yeah, maybe pick it up. If you're only here for the story, maybe pick it up on sale if you want to support it and watch cutscene compilations or someone else's commentless playthrough???

I think it's a flawed game that some people will love anyway and that it's really a shame didn't get the budget it needed, and I hope that down the line some mods come out that smooth out its issues. But Timbern is canon in it so uhhh 10/10! See ya

[ksoon42]

Designs of Women in Marvel Rivals need to be more varied, right now the game promotes harmful "Beauty" Standards.

(TLDR: There is a poll at the bottom of this post about whether or not the marvel rivals devs should give Magik an 8-pack of abs, you can go ahead and skip the essay if you are just here for that! (: )

I think by now most of us know that our modern beauty standards are very stupid, harmful to the self-esteem of way too many women, and frankly outdated. So why do big companies like Marvel seem to think that people only like skinny women with an "hourglass figure"?

It's clearly not true! Remember how Squirrel Girl blew up on the internet when the game launched? How everyone was praising her for being thicc and whatnot? Well Marvel should! It was their fans who were that excited about a character from their new game! And she was praised for rocking a body type that has not yet been deemed conventionally attractive!

But the real kicker is, Squirrel Girl is not even fat! Barely even chubby! She has a completely normal build, quite average really, and yet people just went absolutely crazy over her!!! And I don't blame them!

We've been so brainwashed by woman in media being so skinny all the time that we didn't even notice. Think about it, if you saw this woman in real life, would you think of her as fat? Would you think of yourself as fat if you happen to look like her? You shouldn't! SHE'S HECKING AVERAGE!!!

This poison has gotten to the point that it is affecting the gameplay in Marvel Rivals. Have you noticed that Dagger and Invisible Woman look practically identical?

They should not look this similar! I can't even tell them apart in a match!!! And this is in a genre that usually prides itself on each character having a distinctive silhouette!!!!! ALMOST EVERY WOMAN HAS THE EXACT SAME SILHOUETTE IN OUR MOST POPULAR HERO SHOOTER!!!!!!!!!! WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

To be honest, the gameplay part of this issue can really just be fixed with distinctively colored clothing and accessories. But this problem perfectly illustrates my point, that marvel was so focused on appealing to this archaic beauty standard, one that barely even exists anymore, that they made their own cast of characters look so samey that they blend together, likely making a lot of them more forgettable.

The only good example in marvel rival's cast is Squirrel Girl, but there are so many more bad examples in there. And the example that annoys me the most, is Magik.

Look at her, just go ahead and take a good long look at her.

She is a fierce warrior, commander and queen of the scorching demon realm known as Limbo. She wields a mighty greatsword, one that is almost as tall as she is (and she is very tall herself, or at least she really should be), and she swings it around like it is an oversized butter knife that she is brandishing with the strength of a giant.

AND YET, there's barely a singular visible muscle in her arms! And no abs to speak of!!! None at all!!!!! NOT EVEN ONE!!!!!!!!!! She even has an exposed midriff in her outfit just to show off her confounding lack of abs!!! The idea that she has not burned off the calories around her abdomen to grow extra muscles on her arms just seems physically impossible at this point! I really don't think that's at all possible!

I mean, come on. MAGIK'S HERCULEAN FRAME SHOULD STIKE FEAR INTO THOSE FOOLISH ENOUGH TO DARE TO CALL THEMSELVES HER ENEMY! HER BICEPS SHOULD BE RIPPED ENOUGH TO SHATTER STEEL-REINFORCED COCONUTS!!! HER ABS SHOULD BE SHARP ENOUGH FOR HER TO TO GRATE CHEESE ON 'EM, AND MELT IT FROM THE FRICTION THAT THE TWIN TANKS SHE CALLS HER ARMS CAN GENERATE!!!!! SHE SHOULD HAVE MUSCLES LIKE LUISA MADRIGAL'S, THAT LET HER CHUCK HOUSES JUST AS EASILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who, by the way, IS ANOTHER CHARACTER WHO TOOK OFF ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE THEY REFUSED TO CONFORM TO THESE STUPID BEAUTY STANDARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just like the champions \/right down there\/, queens of their own respective crafts, GODDESSES each of them, in their own ways.

I feel like the only counterargument I ever see to the idea of including diverse body types in games like this is the idea that it is unrealistic for women that do not look skinny and fit-looking to be able to manage a combat setting. I also feel like the people who make that argument are the type to have their minds blown when they gaze upon the awe-inspiring forms of Cheryl Haworth and Dawn Ellerbe, champion athletes in Weightlifting and Hammer Throw respectively! They are the bulkiest pair in this lineup by a respectable margin, weighing around 100lbs more on the scale than most of the other athletes, and Cheryl could probably grind a scale of any material into a fine powder with her bare hands, and Dawn could scatter that powder atop Mount Everest with a single toss from ground level!!! (I may be exaggerating a bit, but probably not by as much as a lot of you might think.)

Give either of these titans a half-decent superpower or gadget and you would get a new tank on par with the Hulk!!!

So checkmate, mudbrains!

(shoutout to TBSkyen for bringing this image to my attention btw! and yeah, I am just stealing their opinion and repeating it louder, but apparently I needed to, BECAUSE THOSE CORPARATIONS IN THE BACK HAVE NOT HEARD THIS YET AFTER WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YEARS OF SHOUTING!!! Check out the video that reinforced a subconscious opinion of mine so that I could shout it to y'all! Hope Bettina Levy and P.M. Seymour read this so they can shout it even louder!!! make this a real tumblr youtuber team-up!)

(here is TBSkyen's video on the subject, linked at the timestamp where he talks about what I am talking about, but maybe don't listen to that there video if you are under 18 buddy, he mentions some spicy stuff in there that might be a bit gross for kiddos)

To be clear, I think that the Marvel IP is at fault here, I don't think that this was formed from any conscious intention of any of the devs working at Netease Games. By bringing a large portion of Marvel's "diverse" lineup of characters to light. The game really highlights a problem that has been plaguing our media for way too long now. So I think that it is time that we, as consumers, address this.

Because there is still time to change this. For this game, for Marvel, for all of media as we know it. It can be better than this.

Marvel clearly does not have a problem with changing the design of their characters to help comics sell better.

(For reference, see the comic where Mantis absorbs some old clone[?] of herself that changes her skin colour to match the guardians of the galaxy movie, as recapped here by Comic Drake: )

And changing Magik's body type could be very solved by having her do a little thing called "working out". (I feel like I've heard about that, I wonder if it's worth the hype) So there is absolutely no reason for Marvel to not, say, canonically make Magik way more muscular.

Given Magik's outstanding strength and commanding presence, she should absolutely look more like Kathy Collins or Cathy Sassin!(awesome names) They are champions of Boxing and Adventure Racing respectively. The skills of fist fighting and racing across varied terrains either on foot or using slimmer mobile vehicles seems pretty applicable to superhero work to me. (Though sadly there are no massive greatsword dueling athletes to compare Magik to :( , get on that sports people!) So Magik should really look the part by now!

Plus, it is clear that changing a model is not that hard, as that tends to be the most frequent thing that video game modders do when they mod a game.

(For scientific reference, see Thomas the Tank Engine as Mr. X in resident evil, making Penny Parker of Snapcube his latest victim: )

So given that Marvel Rivals is still releasing new skins and cosmetics, there is really no reason for Netease games to not fix Magik's design (as well as some others) by the time that season 2 starts, as long as the fanbase clearly wants a change, and I don't know about you all, but I know that I want a change.

So, to recap what I'm saying, it's time that we demolish this stupid trend of unrealistic "beauty" standards from spreading throughout our media, right here and now. (or at least in the next month or three, I think we can be patient like that)

So Marvel, If you still somehow think that the masses still want this body type, and just this body type, check out what the \/poll below\/ says in a week.

If you'd like, you could post a similar poll on twitter, bluesky, discord, whatever site you want really. Just see if the results are different.

Go on, I'll wait.

[oodlyenough]

oblig dual destinies post

i finished the base game of dual destinies today, as in, everything but the dlc case. but the dlc case i assume is kind of a, er, side adventure that won't change much about my opinion of the main narrative, so here we go. spoilers for the first 5 cases

well that wasn't very good was it

things i did like

number one top spot MVP honourable mention goes to aura blackquill. aura is a great character, extremely my type of character, and her story was pretty interesting. every time aura was on screen i was having a good time. i cannot believe they hid the best, canon ace attorney toxic yuri in its worst game (that i've played so far). obviously wish we saw more of aura, more of aurametis, and more of aura with athena, but what we did get was honestly pretty good and much, much more explicit than i ever expected this franchise to get. i am a dog being tricked into taking a pill because it was hidden in a spoon of peanut butter.

i also liked athena. i was predisposed to like her because all the major female characters in this franchise start with a buff for me, but i did think her over the top exuberant competitive go-getter attitude coupled with the PTSD flashback sprites were a pretty good combo. i think she was unequivocally the star of this game, and i think we should have played her for a lot more of it. her power is goofy as all hell and mood matrix isn't a great minigame, but, well, uh, it's dual destinies i have to adjust my expectations somewhere.

i like that phoenix got his badge back. i can critique all the ways it played out, because you can critique just about everything in this game to the moon(rock) and back, but like. fundamentally. i like this choice and i'm glad it happened. i also like that we got to see edgeworth and pearl and got a letter from maya. it seems obvious this is the franchise trying to course correct after a rough reception to aa4, but frankly i don't really care, because i do think aa4 fucked up there. i liked aa4 and i think it was a better game than this; i also think it's quite a bummer of a game and in many places a middle finger to fans of the trilogy, so, i'll take the olive branches DD is offering me. 🤷🏼‍♀️

fullbright started off annoying to me but i did warm to him. there's one bit in case 3 where he and athena just cheer "in justice we trust!!!" back and forth that made me laugh. i thought the idea of the big bad being the friendly cop was pretty good. more on that later.

turnabout academy was dumb as hell (affectionate) and i liked it and the npcs were mostly really fun and/or funny. i love you aa5 klavier you hot washed up mess. somehow dual destinies made me more invested in klavier than aa4 did.

things i did not like

where do i start

jk, actually, the first place to start is Why The Hell Can't I Play This Game. writing and characterization and everything aside, this game is SO disinterested in being a game. i can't click stuff. characters autonomously solve puzzles on my behalf without even giving me a second to think of them. the minigames are reduced. investigation days are dull because i can't click anything. it weakens the characterization of the player and the companion character because you don't get their inane chatter. characters don't react to evidence being presented in interesting ways.

the attention to detail and love that went in to so many facets of the trilogy that made it so beloved are just not present here. i don't know what the issue was, rushed dev time or what was going on, but the wrong corners were cut. i made a separate post aout this example because it's so galling: in 1-4 if you try to present the photo of gregory's body to edgeworth, you get custom dialogue where maya intervenes and tells phoenix off for trying to show miles his dead dad. in 5-5 if you present photos of aura's murder to athena she reacts with the same generic disinterest dialogue she gives every other piece of evidence.

the characterization of the returning characters, ie not the ones new to dual destinies like athena and co, is at best watered down and one-note, and at worst out of character. i said i was happy to see edgeworth, and i stand by that overall; but his behaviour in the trial in 5-5 is like madlib edgeworth dialogue, half-hearted fanfic rather than anything to convince you it's a character who lived through the trilogy. phoenix is dumbed down and it's particularly noticeable coming off of aa4, where NPC phoenix was a fucking galaxybrained 5D chess puppeteer who was always one step ahead of everyone, and now he's like, incapable of making basic deductions. all dual destinies phoenix knows is eat hot chip be bisexual and bluff. boring, weak writing. he barely even reacts to trucy being kidnapped. perhaps because trucy is no longer a character and instead is just one extended "teen girl says the word panties" joke.

apollo... lmao... i hate to say it but i don't think apollo should've been in this game. i think his fans would be right to say that he deserved a sequel and that was what was set up by aa4, but all he does in this game is compete for the spotlight with athena, and lose. athena's story is the main story of this game and it is hindered by the detours DD has to take to include apollo; apollo, meanwhile, doesn't even really get anything of substance. we see him mourn a friend we never met and go off on a sidequest we don't partake in. the rift between the WAA would be really interesting if they... wrote it better, or let it sit longer, or let any character react to it for longer than ten seconds.

which gets to the most frustrating thing about this game: there are a lot of pretty good ideas here, hidden under layers of uninteractive "gameplay" and clunky writing that misses its emotional beats. the dark age of the law is a hilarious term but the justice system in AA IS super mega fucked up and that's a fine subject for the game to tackle, until they start pretending it's somehow *new* and that for some reason a prosecutor being convicted of murder was the final straw (ignore all the OTHER prosecutors who were convicted of murder in the golden age). the finale case you can practically FEEL capcom breathing down its shoulder, desperate to right the ship of the IP, scrambling to put together pieces that worked in the past.

but despite athena's backstory being probably the most compelling part of the game, it's hard to shake the feeling that we're getting a remix of turnabout goodbyes, except, well, worse. and that feeling is exacerbated by phoenix and edgeworth, who lived that case, never having or expressing any feelings to suggest they ... lived that case. on paper, edgeworth prosecuting a child who killed a parent by mistake is really interesting! but DD doesn't do anything with it. i actually really like fullbright being the phantom, and if i hadn't been spoiled by fandom, i think i would've been surprised. but that twist is undermined by the reveal that actually the character we knew was ... um... an amorphous shapeshifting blob with no independent identity, there's no sense of real betrayal between him and blackquill bc he's not a real person and blackquill was lying about trusting him so like ... who cares...

in conclusion

i see a lot of the shared DNA with investigations 1, and i have a lot of the same complaints. fun new characters, albeit underwritten; disappointing characterization from returning characters; in aai i found the puzzles frustrating, whereas here they felt nonexistent. at least aai1 had really cute pixel art and let me click stuff, though. shrek meme they don't even have investigating.

i am saying aai1, because i haven't played aai2 yet, and fandom swears up and down it's way better. but i have to be honest. what are the odds that of the four ace attorney games this guy wrote, three of them suck and one is a banger... i guess i'll find out in september when the port comes out :P or maybe when i play SOJ next i'll love it too. stay tuned

[fountainpenguin]

Riddle watches New Wish - Post #8

"The Wellsington Hotellsington"

I'm glad Hazel's parents seem chill. They're not strict about "No sleepovers" or anything. They seem more involved than Timmy's (and holy cow, they're better at interactions with their daughter than Chloe's were with her).

Yeah, it's not like I ever doubted (because I loved Chloe's mental breakdown drama), but this and the dino episode are really cementing just how bad Clark and Connie were with parenting, sdkfj.

If Chloe tried to play with her parents at the museum, they'd totally shut down her giddiness and drag her into a lesson on naming or drawing dinosaurs. She'd seem hyped, but... Timmy would know. Timmy always knew.

I miss Timmy "will stay with you for an hour while you have a total breakdown" Turner... I miss the fairy step-siblings. Where's my boy?

... That is actually really interesting that I can't give Hazel a 50-years-of-frozen-time backstory. With Chloe, she blatantly raised herself on Fair Bears and I had a lot of other characters who got their lives screwed up by failing to emotionally mature or physically progress... but Hazel missed all that, so she's got Regular Childhood. And barring what I just said, I'm usually writing Fae in 'fics that span hundreds of thousands of years. Having such a limited timeframe to work with is... a new experience for me here.

Whyyyyy did Hazel and Jasmine not know who Wynn (sp?) is if they've been in the same class for weeks? (Hazel's over 100 wishes and mentioned weeks had passed during "Teacher's Pal"). Does this kid not talk to them? I thought they sat near Hazel, by the door? I'm pretty sure if I go back and look, this kid is 1 or 2 desks to her right.

Dev, don't you have better things to do than stalk Hazel and eavesdrop? This kid has issues. Tell me more.

I'm really glad we have a Dimmadome bully and not a Buxaplenty bully. Fingers crossed that Remy broke the abuse cycle, and also... the Dimmadomes are 100% known for butting into everything. I complained that he shouldn't stalk, but... he's a Dimmadome. Of course he's wandering around waiting for his chance to jump in for a line and brag about stuff.

"Hazard" is a very funny nickname for Hazel. Dev should keep calling her that.

This kid has insecurity issues about... his house? And/or being outclassed, but it's the house that seems to ruffle his feathers. The one thing Dimmadomes are known for is their big buildings. Hmm. Something's going on here...

I was going to make a joke about how Jasmine apparently didn't come over to Hazel's house despite their plans to play together, but Jasmine made it for me. Apparently she HAS been over and is sus. sdflkj.

Wynn is super nice. Hazel is being a creep sdkf.

Whoops, so much for the roof garden. Also, I like how the founder picture for the hotel is just Hazel in disguise.

His parents aren't at his party, huh? I see where this is going...

Either this kid's got a fairy - but he doesn't have brightly colored items or pets we've seen - or something is keeping him riding the border without tipping into miserable. We never got a canon reason why Tootie didn't have a fairy, though it's implied she can't keep her mouth shut and would endanger Fairy World. I wonder if those recording devices following him around are getting in the way, although that's probably not likely.

OR he's lost a fairy (similar to Remy gambling Juandissimo away), which would be hilarious. Imagine him getting a fairy and he's like "I don't want this. I have money."

I'm thinking he's got enough of his heart set in his pride and his things that he's finding enough joy to keep afloat, but I'm keeping an eye on him. Now that I'm thinking about it, Kevin Crocker with a fairy would've been funny. Then again, I kind of gave him Foop as a buddy... and even though he's the deadest kid inside, he was still pretty cheery.

Dev, however, does NOT give me cheery vibes. I'm sus.

Actually, I do not trust Fairy World to be functioning the same way it did in the old days, considering that enough time has passed for Cosmo and Wanda to retire and Jorgen to notably age. There WAS a fairy shortage in Season 10 - and so few Fairies left by Season 7 that they couldn't even fill the stadium when Timmy summoned them - so... hmm. Is he getting Cookie, who was actively looking for a godkid a few episodes ago?

If Fairy World's still under the same protocol it used to be, Jorgen's the only Temporary Fairy on-call, and we HAVE seen him introduced. Hmm...

I'm wondering if this is gonna be a Juandissimo comeback? He's got experience with rich kids, he IS a notable fairy from the early seasons (all the seasons), and he even loves bratty kids who don't listen to him to the point that he couldn't hold a job after losing Remy (because he was crying too much) and ended up defying Da Rules to return Remy's memories. Now that Wanda and Cosmo are so friendly in this portrayal, it could be really interesting to throw him in the mix again.

I liked when Cosmo showed him the "guest room" in "Jerk of All Trades" and then threw him in the freezer. Give me more of that.

This would be very unlikely since it's literally a deleted part of an early script, but... do I dare dream we see the return of "Juandissimo is terrified of only one person and it's Cosmo, whom he refers to as Wanda's cunning and calculating warrior husband?" That would be great! My dream. :)

I like how Cosmo in the OG series tolerated Juandissimo, claiming that he would tell him to stop flirting with Wanda, but he won't because he likes eating Juandissimo's food too much. 10/10 dynamic. It's so underrated; Cosmo's hilarious.

I'm loving early-vibe Cosmo and Wanda... do I DARE dream of a return with early-vibe Juandissimo? My super kind and polite boy who gets invited to at least 4 parties at Timmy's house, makes a point of letting Wanda talk to Cosmo before she makes decisions involving them alone in a room, and runs away at top speed when he clocks Wanda as not being able to consent to hanging out with him (because Cupid's love arrow?) Seasons 1-7 Juandissimo, my beloved... :')

I miss him.

My vague understanding is that this show is ongoing, probably multiple seasons if it does well, so I don't think they're wrapping it up at the end of Season 1... but if they did, I could definitely see a "Hazel gives her blessing for Cosmo and Wanda to go to Dev" plot, which would be an interesting direction (since we never got that kind of closure with Timmy and I doubt they'd do a share program plot twice).

It's kind of a shame we didn't get a separate reboot with the share program- That might've been better received than Season 10. Sparky could've been a shared fairy. Alas.

Okay, the chandelier in the helicopter being an inconvenience is a nice touch.

I'm dead (So are the animals).

Mmmm, the classmates are dunking on Dev for being "not cool." He's not even liked? Seriously, someone call Juandissimo- This kid is catnip for him.

[rottenbrainstuff]

A whole lotta thoughts here! We've been spoiled with so many big updates! And I'm going to be blunt about some stuff that is going to make everyone mad, so. Cue the angry anon hate maybe I guess.

I started playing this game in the fall and you know... I've been having a lot of fun, actually. I like the stories, I like the events, I like the characters, I like the marketing. It feels exciting to be involved. I have my one friend who recommended the game to me and we talk about it together and it's been fun. Compared to other otome games I've played, this is amazing, like, my gosh. They took the standard, overdone, cookiecutter character tropes and really expanded on it in a way that surprises me, even for the characters that are not my personal favs.

So......... because I'm enjoying the game so much, and I'm able to recognize where it stands compared to other otome games and other gacha games, it's irritating to me to see the fans start this entitled and absolute nonsense complaining about Sylus needing more content. Friendos, he was added six months after everyone else. Since I have started playing, it has been a balanced and equal release of content between everyone. Infold never told you (I mean, if they did, I missed it) that they were going to retroactively release extra content for him so that he would catch up volume-wise with the other characters. That doesn't even make any SENSE to me. Yes, it means he has less cards in the pool and statistically you have a lower chance of pulling his stuff. Yes, I wish they would hurry up and add more anecdotes and deepspace trial levels and whatnot. But I actually saw with my own two eyes people want to file a CONSUMER FRAUD COMPLAINT? Fraud??? What exactly was the promise Infold made that they are failing to keep? Having a rarer character that is harder to level up does not constitute fraud. You know what? Even if he was a special character that was never included in the group banners ever and only got special content released like once every two months and you always had to pay cash money for it, that would not be fraud. It would suck but it would still not be fraud. Sorry to be blunt, but you are entitled and insane. This is absolutely deplorable fan behaviour. I really do hope this is just a small pocket of vocal fans, because if Infold starts getting harassed en masse they will just pull the fucking game. Why would they not?

I totally understand not liking the way gacha games work, I totally understand not having the money to spend on gacha games, I totally understand wishing you could enjoy an experience that other fans get but you don't, I totally understand being frustrated because your favourite character is the one with the least content, I totally understand disliking it enough to refuse giving the game any money or to stop playing it entirely, but this entitled "I need to speak to the manager" Karen bullshit is absolutely embarassing. This is no different to me than toxic gamerbros complaining about things in their FPSs. Knock it off.

This makes me so annoyed that I'm also going to bluntly tell you something I've only said vaguely before: the english audio is AI. It's AI. This is apparently a very controversial thing to say, because when I went googling to try and find definitive answers, I saw everyone who brings this up get shouted down. I don't care if you don't like it, it's the truth.

You guys seem to think that AI all sounds like Siri or something, and you would be able to easily recognize that it's AI. You hear video clips that other fans have made using free-to-use AI apps that sound very obvious, and it doesn't occur to you that the big devs have access to much better professional-quality resources. You haven't heard, I guess, that even big North American devs are starting to replace humans with AI, and the AI is getting very sophisticated, truly next-level. (I recently watched a video talking about Activision and Call of Duty, for example.)

The AI in this game is very good. I did not actually notice it myself until I had played for a couple hours. And I think the only reason I started to suspect it at all in the first place is that the company that I work for has all these training modules that I take, that include sample characters speaking with AI voices, and after a couple years of this, I am really used to how it sounds. (and even then, it took me two hours of playtime to catch on!) It's hard to tell with just a casual listen, it honestly is, but there are some tells.

First of all, after you listen for a while, you notice an odd consistency. Surprised lines are always said with the same rise in pitch. Whispered lines are always said with the same drop in pitch. It's the same every time. There's an odd clarity to the words as well. English naturally has a lot of slurring inbetween words, but AI always sounds like it's being pronounced by a VA enunciating carefully like they're reading the evening news. That is a red flag.

But, you say, maybe the VAs were just given this direction, or maybe they're just such good VAs that their delivery is so consistent and the words are so clear.

Well, second of all: AI will make mistakes sometimes and emphasize the wrong word in a sentence. I have noticed this happening in the game, it sticks out like a waving red flag. It's been so long since I played the english audio that I can't think of an example actually straight from the game, but this is made up just so I can explain what I mean: let's take the sentence, "I hate wasting my time on busy work." Busy work is a phrase that specifically means tasks that keep you busy but are pointless, tasks that were assigned to you just to give you something to do. It is pronounced with an emphasis on BUSY and the "work" is dropped in pitch. (or, sometimes "busy" and "work" have equal emphasis) A human being saying that sentence would most probably put the emphasis on these syllables: "I HATE wasting my TIME on BUSY work." An AI might not understand that "busy work" is not just the words "busy" and "work", but a specific figure of speech, and might pronounce it like this: I HATE wasting my TIME on busy WORK." (and I think I did hear the phrase busy work in the game actually, which was why I chose it for this example) Any time you hear a weird sylable emphasis that doesn't make logical sense, that is a red flag.

But, you say, maybe these are just an honest mistake by the VAs that wasn't caught by chinese devs, or maybe once again maybe it was weird direction.

OK look. Then let's talk about the most important thing of all: an uncredited actor means it's AI. Period. Period. You guys are driving me insane talking about maybe the VAs want to remain anonymous, maybe they're embarassed doing a romance game, maybe Infold doesn't want to release their info because of political issues they had in the past with english VAs:

No! That's not how acting works. That's not how actor unions work. That's not how credits work. That's not how any of this works.

Actors do not get embarassed doing roles like this. I know you guys titter with every single update, but you do realize there's steamier stuff aired on regular tv, right? This game is not embarassing. Actors want to be credited for their roles so that they can have a resume of projects. Union rules REQUIRE them to get a credit. Do you know how many rules there are about even a simple thing like movie credits, and where and when and how large a font an actor's name can appear in the credits? A company like Infold can not just choose to not credit their actors. An actor does not want to not receive a credit for work they did. One uncredited main actor would be weird enough, but when they will not release the info for a single main character: that is a huge, enormous, and unignorable red flag. This rule is very important: No human credit, no human actor. Period. And you need to learn this rule, because like I said, even large NA companies like Activision are adding AI to their games now and are not apologetic about it.

I'm sorry if that upsets you to hear, but it is driving me absolutely batty to see you guys talk about these mysterious english VAs and you hope they're getting paid well and you don't understand why Infold won't release their info and you say things like "haha it's probably because they're all 50 year old men" as if that somehow makes it this embarassing secret that cannot ever be revealed (the japanese VA for Sylus is 51 and no one gives a shit) sigh. Look. Enjoy the english audio if that's what you like. I get some people prefer english, I get some people prefer no subtitles, I get that it makes it so you can listen to the audios with your eyes closed, like, I don't actually care if you want to stick to the english. But be honest about it, and don't repeat this nonsense about mysterious anonymous VAs that are all too embarassed to be credited. (my god, the japanese Zayne VA has hentai credits, you guys.)

I dunno. Maybe it's because back in the day I used to be a part of actor circles, I guess I find it a bit insulting to see everyone making up these weird excuses that don't make any sense with how the industry actually works. I've seen people asking about AI get shouted down that they're being offensive to the mysterious anon VAs: Well, you guys are being offensive to actual, real, professional actors by suggesting that a professional would be too embarassed for a credit, or suggesting that Infold has somehow gone around union rules and you're ok with that. I'm sorry, but this has to stop.

Well. There we go. If there's anyone left still reading who hasn't gone away clutching their pearls to send me a nasty message, I will say some nice things now: all these end of year updates have been really fun, and now we have Caleb's big trailer. There's been some fans who seem to be surprised he is positioned as an antagonist, or even just surprised in general that it was Caleb and not someone else... ??? Whatevs. Some people are comparing Caleb to Zayne, but to me the only thing they have in common is the fact they were both childhood friends of the MC. To me he's more comparable to Sylus. Sylus was introduced like he was going to be the bad guy love interest who acts way too familiar with the MC and is always pushing her boundaries, a standard otome game trope that I don't like very much, but surprisingly that's not what he ended up being at all - it seems like Caleb might get that role in the end. I'm kind of interested to see what they do with him (cyborg parts is a fun start) but the truth is I kind of only have enough money to invest in things for one character and I don't know if he can win me away, lol. I do love me a good evil dude in a sexy uniform though. We'll see.

Hey wait.... important PSA... I know you are all excited (???) about a period tracker........... look... if you think that's cute and want to see the content that comes with that... can you at the very very least not enter in your actual period dates? I dunno, it's hardwired into my brain to NOT use ANY app-based period tracking. You do not want anyone having that data. No playing around, guys. If you want the content, enter in fake dates. DO NOT enter in your actual accurate info. Stay safe.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion: 3.0 update is cute but I prefered the 2D mini games to the 3D stuff and I find the chibi characters a bit weird and unappealing. However, what I DO like is that two nights ago the game said hey we notice you have some duplicate files, can we run a clean up? And it did, and somehow freed up 6 goddamned gigs on my phone. Very happy about that.

I recently got a brand new phone, and now my old phone is a dedicated Love and Deepspace device, so I'm not so stressed anymore about it getting literally too large for me to play anymore. Super enjoying my fake digital boyfriend. This is just a silly otome game, but I continue to be legit impressed by the quality of it, the amount of content they put into it, and the way the characters are much more interesting and in-depth than other otome games I've played. I'm sorry to be cranky about some things today, but some of you really are behaving quite badly and this online echochamber amplifies the nonsense, and I don't like to see that.

Who cares what I think anyways, I am ridiculously outside of the target age range here.

[bogunicorn]

I honestly think I would be more willing to engage with harsher critiques of Veilguard if so many of them didn't seem to include projecting malice or cowardice onto the developers and/or frankly really insulting blanket statements about how people who don't agree with said harsh critique are only disagreeing because they have a child's sense of fantasy and don't like feeling complicated emotions with consequences in their fiction.

Both of them annoy me but the idea of someone looking at me, of all people, and saying "well you don't agree with me because you want a story that puts you in a safe bubble that's never sad or conflicted or realistic" is absurd. Like, no, I just think some of the basis of your analysis is kind of bothersome and flawed because you keep assigning motivations to strangers and then arguing with a guy you personally made up, and my willingness to suspend disbelief and engage with a piece of fiction on its own terms isn't proof that I'm a baby or a coward just because it would make you feel smarter if that was the case.

And there is a world of difference between "the story's perspective softballs X or pulls punches with Y", and "the writers are cowards who don't want you to deal with consequences because there's something wrong with them artistically and morally". That's fucked up, projecting malice onto someone you don't know and whom all evidence suggests (both by their own words the last few months and by past storylines they've written for Dragon Age) would actually probably agree with your critiques and agree that they'd either done things different or had been ALLOWED to do things different. It ALSO makes for less coherent critiques because some of your analysis is based off of, frankly, an underlying motivation that is literally just made up of your own personal projection of what other real humans were thinking (which conveniently fits the narrative you already want to spin), rather than interrogating the perspective of the narrative itself on its own terms, where all of the pieces are fully available to you.

Works of fiction carry unintended perspectives all the time, it's a whole thing, and you can engage with that without assigning cruelty or cowardice or malicious stupidity to a small group of real human beings that you do not know and did their job in circumstances that we as fans will never know the extent of. You have no idea if "the devs" as you conceptualize them are actually at fault for the things you have such harsh feelings about, or why that thing happened or whatever, because big media projects like video games have hundreds of hands on them and many people making decisions whose names we will never know because they're just not pulling PR duty or whatever.

And when it comes to other fans, unless someone outright states their feelings on something, you actually don't know if any individual person agrees or disagrees with you for a good or bad reason about something as subjective and low stakes as a video game. Imagining that anyone who enjoys something that you don't as a dumb idiot baby too stupid to see what you see is pretty gross.

I am, as ever, not saying that anyone must like or dislike something, or that liking or disliking something means you're smarter or stupider than anyone else. It bothers me when analysis in these spaces seems to reserve all of its empathy for fictional characters and leaves little of it left for the actual people that are in these spaces or made the work that's being analyzed.

[allmusesnobruises]

Disclaimer: I won't be spoiling anything major here but I'm going to be negative about Dragon Age: the Veilguard.

I really wanted to be excited for Dragon Age: the Veilguard, but the first reviews are basically confirming everything I was worried about. Honestly, it hurts a lot, but at the same time I'm a bit relieved to see that even people who played the whole game reach the same conclusions as I do, which are:

1- The Veilguard oversimplifies and sanitizes everything. You're kind or you're mean. You're good or you're bad. No dilemma, no grey. The main antagonists couldn't be less complex or more evil. The factions and the characters we already know are so simplified they sometimes look like caricatures of themselves. Three reviews openly compare the game to Marvel or Disney movies. The companions, of course, all like each other, and I hope you're fine with Rook talking to them like they're kids. You've been a flirt with everyone? Don't worry, as soon as you're engaged in a romance, everyone else will conveniently forget they wanted to bed you a minute ago. The found family trope must be protected at all costs. Which lead me to my second point.

2- God forbid there's anything problematic or nuanced - you know, things that could lead to believable, profound, flawed cultures (or to *shivers* Twitter backlash, I guess). As a result, past storylines are weakened. The assassins that tortured Zevran and made him want to kill himself are now romantic defenders of their city. Dorian and Krem's stories seem to belong to another world, as does Merrill's life goal. Kiss Anders' internal struggles and Solas' mystical tales goodbye: you can now see Lucanis' demon and Solas' memories. And did you know the companions had originally been written with specific sexual orientations? I'm okay with everyone being bi. I'm less okay with everyone's identities being erased for the sake of attracting more players.

3- The Veilguard assumes the player has no litteracy and no memory whatsoever. At best, it assumes you've never played a RPG. Forget about complex political and religious plots. Subtlety is a thing of the past. You're constantly reminded of what just happened or what you need to do. You know, just in case you forgot it five times. Or in case you are so stupid you don't know you just sassed Solas or clicked on a romance option.

4- The world is lifeless and lacks cohesion. The cities are full of people that don't look alive at all -- no resident, no guard gives a damn about what you're doing. The different atmospheres, that the companions are supposed to embody, don't always mesh well together.

5- You're not here to shape the world, you're here to watch. Of course, your past choices don't matter either. I wouldn't have believed it a year ago. Your decisions will shape your companions' stories, and you have another important decision at the end, but that's nearly everything. Moreover, you're told exactly what consequences your (few) choices will lead to. Several times, of course.

6- Gameplay > roleplay. The locations are designed for combat and not for the plot. Roleplaying is openly described by several reviewers as a weak spot. Rook's path is very linear. Different dialogue options usually lead to the same outcome. Don't even think of being anything else than a good guy. Sometimes you can be a little stern, as a treat. But don't worry, everything's already planned out for you. You don't have to worry your pretty little head. And the Maker knows it's pretty, and that the CC is inclusive, because that's all the journalists have been talking about for three months.

I'm just bleeding words at this point but entering the Fade was supposed to be a big deal. Mass Effect devs joining the Veilguard team wasn't supposed to mean the ancient elves had sci-fi equipment. Past games choices having an impact were supposed to be a given. The mysteries of Thedas were not supposed to all have the same explanation or even an explanation at all.

I can look past the unreadable expressions and nonexistent lip-sync painted on clay-plastic faces but I can't look past all of this. But the game is smooth, the world looks beautiful, and the gameplay is interesting, if you like puzzles a concerning amount.

A shame that's what I care about the least.